How An Angel Came To Me

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org. And with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org.

And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, this has been a roller coaster of a research week for both of us. We've had several interviews with different people and books that we've had to read.

We actually skipped a week of recording because of just trying to piece together the history that the cult has mysteriously lost and forgotten regarding William Brannum's early ministry. And I haven't even told you this, but just last night I was speaking with a person who knew James Outlaw, who is a figure that most people in the message have heard of.

And he was confirming testimony that we've heard from other witnesses that claim that William Brannum had some severe mental health issues in the early years of his ministry. According to this person, they said that the suicidal, William Brannum's suicidal tendencies was actually towards the early part of his ministry in the 1940s, which William Brannum mentions that on recording, but it plays a huge factor into what we're about to discuss here.

Yeah, you know, there's certainly certainly some interesting stuff there to talk about and we actually have some fairly solid evidence for, you know, William Brannum's mental health issues. And I hope again we'll do a full episode on that at some point down the road. There's so many things we need to do a full episode on John.

This is something I'm probably more guilty than you for making us postpone a week because I wanted to double check everything and reach out to the different eyewitnesses that I knew to try and just reconfirm some of the stuff because this is really, in some ways, is a little earth shaking, the truth about that we're going to talk about.

today. And if you're in the message, this episode, I think, can be a little bit overwhelming when you hear it. Very much. You know, the stories that William Brannum told about how God gave him his signs and how he received the gift of healing and the gifted discernment. That's what we're talking about today. And it's like a brain teaser puzzle, all of the versions of the story that he told. And I know for me, one of the, it's one of the hardest things that I've had to try and wrap my head around as I've looked at William Brannum. And I, again, on the reason that you made

you post poem last week to look at this. And I, I think it's so hard for me to wrap my head around what William Brannum did with this story because it's so central to everything that we believed in the message. This is a central part of our belief, certainly in my sect of the message. And you know, maybe if you've never been in the message, the things we're going to say here, you're just going to grasp it real fast. But if you've been in the message, this literally makes your head hurt this stuff. And it's like I said, it's like a brain teaser puzzle. And you might

have to listen to this three or four times and think about this really hard to really grasp everything that we're, we're going to say in this episode. You know, we're working with cult experts who know this far better than me. But there is a psychological effect that has on people that are unduly influenced and manipulated to believe several different versions of a story and believe that each one of those conflicting versions are the absolute truth. The brain automatically tries to reconcile those varying conflicting versions of truth and basically merge them into one single story. And I know for me, whenever we left the cult, this particular issue that we're

about to describe, it took me several years before I could really wrap my head around it and understand what happened to my head. So I'm not at all surprised that it has taken you a bit to go through this. And I'll be honest, that feeling that you experience this week will probably continue for a couple of years because that's how this mind control works. That's how this manipulation of our brains works. Yeah, I, I'm definitely was completely bought into one of the false versions of this story. And as we'll go through, we'll, we'll find out which version of the story is actually

the closest to the truth. And so maybe I'll just share real quick, what is the official version of the story for our listeners? And as I say, what is the official version? There are at least four prominent versions of this story of how William Brannum got his gift of healing and his gift of discernment. There's, there's four main variants or stages that this story took on.

It evolved over time. And it starts out, maybe I'll just name the four main versions, and then I'll tell you the official version. So the main four versions is one, there's what we'd call the 1945 version, where he got his gift of healing in 1945 through not an angelic experience at all.

The second version is a version where he got the gift of healing and an angel came to him when he was in his room, more or less at his house at home. Then the next version is he was in a cabin in the forest when the angel came to him and gave him his gift of healing.

And then the final version is he was in a cave and an angel came to him and gave him the gift of healing. And the details of the story vary from version to version, but that's kind of how I keep track of it in my head.

There's the 1945 version. There's the in my room version. There's the cabin version and then there's the cave version. So there's four versions. And when I talk about that, the 1945 version and the in my room version are completely lost to history.

They don't show up anywhere. The cabin version, which is the third version, that's the kind that you find picked up in a man sent from God, it's in God's generals. So that's kind of the official version, I'd say outside of the message, but in the message, the official version, at least where I came from, is the very last version, the cave version of the story.

So if you're in the message, the official version is probably the cave story. If you're out of the message, the official version is probably the cabin story. Okay, and as we go through, we'll find out that neither of those are the right version.

And if you came from the main sect of the message, especially those that are still strongly tied to the cult headquarters, voice of God recordings, all other versions except for the cave or taboo.

You're not supposed to talk about those because the tour that they take you on, they take you to a cave and they even have videos online that you can watch of men going into this cave.

And they won't tell you that this is not even the original version of the story and it literally started from his living room. So I'm excited to get into this one because number one, it's taboo and I enjoy talking about it now, but number two, it's just so crazy interesting because there are people who aren't even in this cult that believe that William Brannum was actually visited by an angel and they believe that there is an official version and that William Brannum's cult believes the one single official version, not knowing that there are so many conflicting versions

of this story. So I said, you know, the four main versions, but they're sub versions of those main versions, even. Exactly. There is, I mean, I don't think it'd be an exaggeration to say there are 12 significant, there are 12 different versions of this, but four main genres of, of this story in total.

But yeah, the, I guess we can just start, John, you want to just start with the 14th, the 1945 version and kind of how it started. Yeah, it'd be good to recap a bit of what we talked about in the last episode, but go a little bit deeper.

William Brannum had many different attempts at starting a faith healing cult. I'm certain that when he started out, he wasn't thinking I'm going to create a cult and I'm going to control these people, but he wanted to create fame and fortune and, you know, who knows what his motivation was.

But when he initially started his ministry, it appears that it was before the 1937 flood that he, it appears that he was already touring when his wife, Hope, got sick. She died, which was a huge setback for a faith healer, for their, you know, their wife to die of a disease that they couldn't heal.

And there's a period of time in which it looks like that impacted his ministry. And so in this pamphlet that's called, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, he talks about having a, you know, a period of time where the gift didn't work.

So I'm assuming that he added that disclaimer to say that, well, you know, my wife died during this period of time when the gift didn't work. Then he tries again and he talks about his different attempts at starting a faith healing ministry, but he published this pamphlet. I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.

And he gives the clear timeline where 1945, he was given, quote, a double portion of the power to heal. And unlike all of the biographies that you'll find about William Brannum, you'll see that initially, at least in this version in 1945, it came by vision, not by an angelic visitation.

And there was a, there's a healing that is mentioned in that document, the healing of Reverend Robert Dordy's daughter. And it appears to be what really lifted his ministry into limited fame in the Pentecostal circles and eventually gained him national and an international fame.

That healing of Reverend Dordy's daughter is very, very important to this story, too, because it is the one single element that remains consistent in every version of the story. Every version of the story has William Brannum going to see Reverend Dordy and his daughter is healed a few days after he received.

leaves this experience. So that is the only element that is consistent across all the versions of the story. Right. And as we mentioned before, when you're trying to understand William Brannum's stage personas versus the actual fact, look for the elements that remain consistent. And that's the fact that you look for. It appears that something happened with Reverend Dordy's daughter, the daughter was sick. According to eyewitnesses, and we've even recently talked with people who knew the Dordys and say that the daughter was definitely healed.

That's right. Betty Dordy's sister is still living. And, you know, we've had indirect communication through intermediaries to obtain information for this episode just to try and confirm some of the facts around what we're talking about.

Yeah. And I'll add the disclaimer right off of the bat because a lot of people are going to take what we're about to say the wrong way. But it isn't at all that we no longer believe God can heal. I mean, that's, it's biblical. God can heal. And it appears that God did heal, you know, Reverend Dordy's daughter. What I disagree with personally is trying to make a mediator between God and man and say that she had a greater access to healing through William Brannum. I think that's anti-biblical. So I'll add that disclaimer before I continue. But regardless, Betty Dordy was healed in one of these meetings by William

Brannum. And it spread throughout the revival circuits that, you know, Reverend Dordy's daughter got healed. Dordy was from Kentucky. I can't remember the city right off the bat, but he became central city Kentucky, central city Kentucky. He became quite famous after he moved to St. Louis. And he was an integral part in lifting William Brannum into fame from St. Louis. And I believe it was through Robert Dordy that the connections came to William Brannum's Vandalia Illinois revival tours, his Houston tours. Basically, everything that he mentions in this, I was not disobedient pamphlet happened because of Robert Dordy. And

then that tour was so successful, he made either one or two more tours, 1946 and 1947. Yeah, you're exactly right, John. And that fairly matches the history that we believed in my sect of the message even because again, we were, our people were around in those days. And it was through the healing of Betty Dordy that William Brannum became popular. And Robert Dordy is the one who opened the doors to him and for him as a result of that healing that that did begin his rise in national thing. Yeah and I find it so interesting the difference between your

sect and the main sect because all of this is taboo. In the message we were not to talk about the things that happened before 1946 because William Brantham said that in 1946 an angel came to him he said it was the very same day that Israel became a nation and he gives the exact day and we weren't to talk about anything before 1946. It is very interesting. I know we've kind of shared back and forth just comments about you know maybe how that came to be because our sect was we were cognitive dissonance on this stuff too because we

believe the official version and we also believe these things happened in his down years but yeah we were I think again it had we had to in our sect reconciled this because the people who were there and knew what happened were in our churches so we had to we had to do something to answer those questions for our people perhaps in a way that the other sects didn't because they didn't have the witnesses sitting there you know going along with it. Yeah and it was a very interesting time in Pentecostal history as well because Pentecostalism like

the message had splintered into so many different sects and sub-sects and there was the you know the Pentecost of the world Pentecostal of Jesus Christ there was the oneness Pentecostals that you know through Indianapolis through GTA word you know started spreading all of these these different groups were talking about merging and William Brannum through his Pentecostal Baptist Church of God sect was wanting to basically merge into this thing this entity that was being created. Exactly and the UPC the United Pentecostal Church actually came together informed in 1945 and Dordy and some of the figures here that

William Brannum is gonna come into contact with his result of what happened with Dordy's daughter actually kind of propels him into fame within this you know the leaders of this new come together UPC church and they're they're gonna carry his fame through that and that starts him out. William Brannum initially just started kind of narrowly within the apostolic Pentecostal the oneness Pentecostal groups is where his initial fame rose from and then which will get to later in another episode his fame then spreads beyond that as resulted Gordon Lindsay into the Trinitarian and the other non-oneness sex of

Pentecostalism and then from there into just touching the broader elements of Christianity as you get into the the later part of the 1940s. Yeah. And there's some really interesting and unexplainable history as it transitions from a vision to an angel. You can go on our website and you can look at I think the page is Henry Brannum. We've got all the newspaper articles there, but it appears for whatever reason he is using the name Henry Brannum in his early meetings. And there's this weird shift in his ministry because remember he entered into this conglomeration of

Pentecostals because of being a bishop basically in Roy Davis's Pentecostal sect. But once he gets there and gets fame, it creates a big problem for him. He can't show himself as still being connected to Roy Davis because Davis just went to prison. And Davis is earning a really, really bad reputation throughout the whole United States. And he actually tries it appears. He tries to separate from Davis for the first time. I agree. It seems to me that as you come in into the early 1940s Roy Davis and his in jail, William Brannum is doing his best to distance himself from Davis

and his history of Davis. Now William Brannum never, ever repudiates Davis, right? So he never repudiates Davis, but he does distance himself from Davis. And during this period that the healing revival is kicking off and William Brannum's fame is rising, it appears he's trying to maintain distance from Roy Davis in these years. Now we know Roy Davis is going to come back and haunt him in later years. But at this point, there's some distance between the two of them. And I think a lot of it, I mean, Roy Davis is in jail, right? So I mean, how close can they be, right? Yeah, he's

a federal prison. He's doing a prison term for his crimes during this period. Yeah. What I can tell based off of the newspaper reports that we have, and keep in mind, this is history that's all been covered up. So it's very difficult to piece it together. But it appears that after his picture got put in the newspaper, he was, you know, he was touring as Henry Brannum. But his picture created a problem because now here is the picture of William Brannum in the newspapers. And he can no longer go as Henry. Also, it creates a problem for any failed healings because there were numerous,

according to the newspapers, people who came to be healed, they were turned away. He had the early gimmick that William Brannum had in these meetings was he would say that his hand turned a different color. And he put his hand over you. And if his hand stayed flesh colored, he would tell them, I'm sorry, God can't heal you, and go away and die. But if his hand changed colors, then those are the people that could be healed.

That gimmick later changed to a vibrating hand like O'Roberts had, but the early gimmick was that. And whenever he got instantly famous through the St. Louis meetings, or through the Vandellum meetings, it appears that is the point in time in which he starts to rewrite his healing commission.

Because we have, in 1945, you know, the tract with Robert Dordy, 1945 is the same year that Robert Dordy comes to preach at Jeffersonville, and it's the first instance of the church being renamed to the Brannum Tabernacle.

So William Brannum is literally a racing Roy Davis from his history in 1945. He gets famous in 1940, you know, through 1945, 1946 is when he appears to first introduce the angel story. Yeah, and I think it was actually even perhaps 1947 when he starts to introduce the angel story.

Let me show, let me just show some evidences, John, that we have here just for people to consider. So here's a little tract, and these are the tracks that you could get, this is an original, that you could get at William Brannum's campaign meetings in the very early days.

They're very, they're just small, you see they're just a tiny little thing, and you could get these for 10 to 15 cents would be like $2 in today's money, and they'd hand these out at the meetings, and so these are just really small little things, and I have a blow-up version of the Heavenly Vision tract that I wanted that I can show.

So this is one of the tracks that you could get at William Brannum's very early healing revival meetings, and these were from the years 1945, 1946, 1947, the very earliest printed materials that we have access to from William Brannum, and this, along with another tract called Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever, are the oldest tracks of William Brannum that we have access to, and they are describing events that happened in 1945, and it appears from best we can tell, these were published in 1946.

And in these tracks, William Brannum is very clear, he's very clear that it's in this is March 1945 when he received his gift and calling to go out and do his ministry. And as you come through here, you again, you see very clearly, it's after he got this gift, three weeks later, he says that he goes out to St. Louis and Robert Dordey's daughter ends up healed through these events, and he's very clear that this is happening in...

and March or April, roughly, of 1945. And again, we have additional evidence we have from the track Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever. We have a copy of Robert Dordy's testimony in that track.

And in that track, Robert Dordy says, our little girl Betty has been sick for three months. We had noted, we had two noted doctors of the city, but seemingly they could not find the cause.

We've also had many outstanding ministers of the city and country pray for her. She steadily grew worse. We sent to Jeffersonville, Indiana for a man named Reverend William Brannum who has a gift to divine healing.

Brother Bill, as he called to us, came at once. After hours of praying, he came in and told us that the Lord had showed him a vision of what to do for our little Betty.

She was mere skin and bones and shook all the time as if she had palsy. Brother Bill asked us if we could believe God and do what he said. And anyways, it comes down to the end of it.

It says, this was about 10 months ago. Our little Betty is in perfect health now. I'll be glad to write anyone in question for her healing or any of the healings that took place when Brother Brannum was here in St. Louis in 1945.

So even Robert Dordy's testimony puts William Brannum there in 1945, healing in the case of his daughter. Besides that, we have testimony from Kidston, who became a W.E. Kidston, was really William Brannum's first campaign manager.

And we have a newspaper article here where there's an interview with Kidston. This article is from July 1947. And in here, he says it was two years ago that these things happened. So again, from that, we've got the 1945 date.

And we can also confirm the 1945 date by another newspaper article. Robert Dordy came and preached at the Brannum Tabernacle after this happened, after the healing in October of 1945. So besides these printed evidences, so two of William Brannum's own tracks, testimony of Betty Dordy's father, newspaper articles, one with an interview with Kidston, these all put the healing of Betty Dordy in 1945.

Besides that, we have reached out over the past two weeks to people in contact with Betty Dordy's family who still alive. And everything we return comes back to Betty Dordy, the healing happened in the year 1945.

And just to kind of recap, it's dead set. It's dead certain, I believe, that this happened in 1945. And the reason I'll give you a chance, John, sorry, I'm monopolizing the time, ha ha ha, this is so important because if...

This happened in 1945. We can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that every other version of this story is false. Every other version of this story is false. And we can get into that a little more as we go along.

Yeah. So to sum up the recap, if you will, William Brannem's first campaign manager actually was Roy Davis. It appears that William Brannem was touring, you know, in the 1930s, a healing happened. It's something that he can reference, something that he can tell people, hey, go ask this guy.

Healed somebody. After this, after each iteration of finding somebody that will testify, hey, this guy can heal, after the event, he claims that he has a commission. And then after a few failed healings, he says the gift left and it comes back.

I think I've counted two or three times where the gift came and then the gift left. But each time that it comes back, it's because he has somebody that he can use as a prop and say, okay, this person's healed.

Yes, William Brannem did it. So then he invents a new commission story. The one that appears to have stuck is whenever he became very famous in 1947. Yes, you're spot on, John. It looks like this is the point in time, which it stuck and you're correct.

There is evidence that he'd been trying to do this repeatedly up until this point in time. Yeah. And here's where it gets really, really taboo if you're in the message sect. We were told that the healing was unlike all of the other stage act faith healers that even we in the message knew to be charlatans because in our version of what we called, quote unquote, the message, the healing was to attract the people to the doctrine.

So God sending a messenger and he's exciting people to attract them to the sting that everybody else, all of these other charlatans are doing. But this one is attracting them so that after he gets them hooked, we would say that you could hook them and then reel them in.

So the bait and the hook was the charlatan faith healing message, miracles or whatever. And it was so odd because even the Bible says, it talks about those people that seek after signs and wonders and it's literally talking about a false gospel.

We were told that the false gospel was so that we could reel them into the real gospel. We believe that very similarly, John, that the message, the healings, the miracles, the stage acts of William Brannum was at the draw to get them in.

And then once they're in, now we can indoctrinate them with the message and really save them, right? Right. So here's where it gets crazy interesting and crazy taboo. So we were told this thing, right, that you hook them, you're real a man, you bring them into so that they can hear the doctrine and William Brannum's, you know, quick rise to fame attracted a guy named Raymond Hoekstra. I think they called him Chaplin Ray and Hoekstra sees the money-making opportunity in William Brannum because of the throngs of people that come to see this guy who can heal Betty Dordy, you know, Robert Dordy's daughter, and

Hoekstra pairs up William Brannum with a boy preacher, I think he was 13 years old, named Little David, and it might have been 12, and the two paired up and the way that the stage act worked was the boy would do the preaching, basically give the people the message, and he was the main act.

He was the main act, and then William Brannum was the side show who could heal people. Yeah, and and you know, I this boy part of his act, he could levitate off the stage, right? Right. There's some things here going on that is it is so obviously something very fake is happening when you go and you look at that. So this boy is part of his, he's and he's the main act.

He preaches, he levitates off the stage and does certain things, right, and William Brannum is coming along using their tent, and he's the second part of the act. Yeah, that's what's happened in 1945, 1946, and into 1947. Yeah, I will never forget whenever I first came across this. Remember, I came out of this cult too, and my brain took a long time to process all of this.

I thought when I came across Little David, and I saw all of this, I thought, wow, the levitation is real. He's actually doing this. And so I started studying, and there was a vag, I wish I remember the guy's name. There's a Vegas act, and this guy would literally walk out right out onto the street and broad daylight, and he would just lift himself up, and he would, you know, he would always do it next to something.

There was either stairs or there was a chair, but he always did it next to something, and people to this day will claim this guy can levitate, this guy can float in the air.

And what he's doing, he's got a false leg and a false shoe, and, you know, it's put behind him. And I studied this thing, and I was just once I realized that this whole thing was a stage act to boost people's faith.

Then it became for me, you know, it literally is mind over matter. And while I do believe God can heal, I also believe that there are miracles. My father was healed, and will you brand him some ministry. My father was very...

be very sick and according to my grandfather would not have survived. He was healed in these meetings. So I do believe in healing. I do believe that people can be healed, but I also believe that God gave our minds the ability and our bodies and the cells, the ability to heal itself.

I mean, if you cut your hand, do you think it's going to bleed forever? Or do you think, no, it's going to scab over and it's going to heal because our bodies are made this way?

So these people caught onto this and they thought, well, if we can make the people believe, and William Brenner even says this, if you can just get the people to believe even cancer will not stand in your way, it was nothing more than a mind over matter, you know, self-faith, not faith in Jesus or anything like this, faith in you faith, basically, to heal yourself.

I know one thing that is really strikes me about, you know, him working with little David Walker is that it completely goes against the grain of what we kind of believed is how he rose to fame, right?

The angel, we believe the angel came to him. He's now got the great gift and he goes out and he draws all these crowds and, right, it's never really shared to us. Now wait, he went and became the side show for little David Walker, did that for two and a half years and then expanded out into his own tent, but he was touring with little David Walker in his tent as the second act and he was doing that all the way up into the early parts of 1947 with little David Walker and Florida even.

And it's at that point that he kind of develops his own solid campaign team at that point, gets his own tent and starts doing his own thing at that point, but they are together.

And exactly when they came together and started to working together, it's not exactly clear, right, John? But they certainly were together by 1945 as we're coming up into this point in time when Betty, the Betty daughter healing happened, the Betty daughter healing happened.

Yeah. I got to talk to David Walker over the phone a few times and I asked him two questions specifically. I wanted to know the year that they connected. And he never would give me a straight answer, which is problematic for me, because now that I know that William Brown and his ministry started long before 1946, what date was little David Walker doing the preaching?

I mean, was this, was it like a carnival show and William Brown and was the side show for each for years or was it just a period of months? I don't know. From the best I've been able to tell to, he, little David Walker started touring in either 44, 44, 45, 45 roughly.

So again, it's still, it's years before William Brown and was supposed to have got his calling that this was going on. You know, there's another problem when you think about it. Everybody who's listening to this, who wasn't in the message or thinking, oh my gosh, a 13 year old preacher, what kind of a message is that?

Well, it took me a while before my brain could unravel it enough to think, well, what kind of theology did this little guy have, right? You know, in the Pentecostal circles and, you know, some of these charismatic movements, they think that, yes, God is speaking through this 13-year-old boy and the boy has perfect doctrine because God's speaking through him.

But no, I mean, if you, you can go online and you can read some of the stuff that David Walker said, and this is, it's got signs, miracles, wonders, lights, cameras, action written all over it.

It's no, it's not anything that you would expect from a Christian minister. Did you ask a little David Walker how he levitated? I did not because, unfortunately, I talked to him before I even discovered that he had this stage trick.

I've seen the pictures of it, and it's clear he's wearing some kind of harness because you can see his clothes in the pictures. I noticed that too. His shoulders are too high. I did ask him though about his going, you know, he claims that he had an out-of-body experience and he went to heaven for a period of minutes or something.

I did ask him that because I knew that, and he was very, very adamant that this happened. He had some sort of experience, I don't know what it was, but I really don't think he levitated to be honest with you.

No, that's clearly an act, right? That was clearly part of some act. So this is what William Brannum is involved with in the time frame that Betty Dordy is healed. In 1945, in 1945, and that is so important.

And you have to pause for, you know, for everybody who was never indoctrinated in this stuff, they're thinking, yeah, this is another side show freak. This is another stage act. It's none of its real.

But if you were indoctrinating in this, this is very real to you. Yes. You have to ask yourself this question, why did they need tricks? Why did they need parlor tricks in order to get the people to come to the show?

Right. Why did they need this kid who could levitate in order to attract William Brannum's crowd? Right. And what I want to draw attention to again with saying in 1945 is that the healing of Betty Dordy in the year is wrong.

In every single publication on William Brannum, it's wrong. And it's wrong, you know, it's wrong in all of his biographies within the group that we would put out. It's wrong in the God's Generals book.

Right, it puts it in the wrong years there. It's also wrong and even you're more scholarly books like the ones by David Edwin Harrow or Doug Weaver. Every single biographer of William Branham has missed this and has not been aware that William Branham revised this story.

And they all go with, like I said, the cabin version at least of the angelic visitation. But the truth is this happened in 1945. It could not have happened in the ways that are described in these books.

It's impossible that the angelic commission happened in the way described in these books because Betty Dordy was not healed in the years described in these books. It had to have happened in 1945. And as you go into the other versions of the story, so the first one, 1945, I just described a little bit how this maybe changed a little bit over the years, John.

So 1945 in that version, there is no angel that comes to William Branham. He's at the Tabernacle, he's back in Jeffersonville and he has a vision, he has a supernatural vision. And in his vision, he's basically told, your Tabernacle don't want what you have.

I'm gonna send you out as a revot, as a touring evangelist. This is the sum of the dream. The Tabernacle don't want you. You're gonna go out as a evangelist and people are gonna be healed and so forth.

And then within, I think three weeks of him having this vision, then he gets called to St. Louis, right? And Betty Dordy is healed and sets everything off. But then as you come over time, that story changes.

Now, William Branham was still telling more or less the 1945 version of the story up into early 1947. But in 1947, William Branham changes campaign managers, right? He goes from Kidston and he changes.

So his whole campaign team changes from 1946 to 1947. He changes the story here and it transitions first. There's like, there's at least five times, I think I look, there's five times that he told the 1945 version.

Then there's a very short window of time where he tells two versions of the in my room. And this is where he takes elements of the 1945 version and then he mixes it with a, now he's in a room and an angel has come to him.

Then when you get later into 1947 into 1948, as you're coming into the time when books like this are being drafted, then he comes up with the cabin story. And the cabin story is actually the one he told most frequently.

And that's why it got into all of the official versions. And in the cabin story, now he's changed it all to, he was really depressed and he didn't believe he really had a gift or he was just all upset about it and he goes off into the wilderness.

And. to basically, he says, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to stay in the wilderness until God fixes me or I die, basically. And out he goes into the wilderness more or less to stay and it's the Clark County Forest is where he's going.

And he goes out there and he stays there and he fasts and he prays and he reads his Bible looking for an answer from God why he is so unusual in this version. And that's when the angel comes to him and tells him that he's got the gifts.

So that that that version though the problem is when he starts telling that version he's changed the years. Right. So that version he changes the year to 1946 1946 is the year that the angel came to him.

But then the same thing happens after the angel goes Robert Dordy calls him and he goes and heals Betty Dordy. But this version is now in 1946. It don't work. And then his time goes on he changes it again to the cave version and by the time you get to the cave version he's changing the years again he monkeys with the year several times he also says it happened in 1947 in 1948.

But most of the times he says 1946 in those versions again it's in the cave the angel comes to him the conversation slightly different. But again it's just about three or two to three weeks later he goes to St. Louis and he heals Betty Dordy right.

So these other versions of the story that he made up starting in 1947 1948 as he changed it. Cannot possibly be true because the year Betty Dordy was healed was 1945 so he's he's revising this story and changing it as time goes on.

Yeah I believe you know there's so many different changes and remember he's hiding from some of us past Roy Davis was a big monkey on William Brande was back. There's just no two ways about it so he has to reinvent himself in 45 and basically erased that past.

He also has as we've you know previously talked he has some hints at criminal past himself so he has to reinvent himself. Then he pairs up with little David and this was this actually was quite popular from what I can tell in the newspapers.

But it led to another scandal that created yet another monkey on William Brande was back. Little David's mother claimed that little David was being exploited and it led to this huge custody battle. They actually had custody of little David and the mother wanted the boy back and this was starting to make national news.

So William Brande was now caught in yet another scandal gets another monkey on his back and he has to separate from little David and basically reinvent his stage persona again without the kid. And we've got all of these notes we're actually going to have to split it off too.

other episode, but when you consider the boy who can levitate, you're literally talking about when you're talking in the concept of religion, you're talking about spiritualism, you're talking about these fantastic things that if it's real, then you're talking about something that you don't see in normal Christian circles as you just put it like that.

And Indiana was well known for the spiritualist camp, Camp Jesterfield. It was one of the six most significant spiritualist camps in the United States. And it was not far from Indianapolis where all of this originated.

Again, that's a fascinating side episode we'll have to have. But William Brandham has to disconnect himself from that. And yet he uses some elements because he's actually uses, we've mentioned, I think before, there was a Madame Mimi, who made the piano levitate, and the piano would say shave in a haircut to, would play, shave in a haircut to bits, the jingle.

And William Brandham mentions this on his recording. So he's separating himself from the spiritualism, yet he's including the spiritualism. He's separating from the boy preacher, yet he's probably including some doctrine that he heard from the boy preacher that was popular.

He's separating from Roy Davis from the vision story of his commission. And basically he has reinvented himself, you know, at this point, what is it now five times? I think he's reinvented his own stage persona, right?

And along that line of reinventing his own stage persona, that also ties to him revising this angelic commission story, of course, we know the 1945 one was a revision of stories he'd been telling prior to that, right?

Because he's trying to, he's writing David, it's Davis out of his past. But by the time you get to the cabin story, like I said, he's changed campaign managers. He's reinventing himself again, and he's really focusing heavy on his Moses stage persona, right, with the cabin story.

And when that version of the story is told, it's all about comparing him to Moses, right? It's all about the connections to the pillar of fire, like Moses, getting two signs, like Moses, right?

He's still in a Moses persona, but then you come a couple more years down the road as the ladder rain movement is taking off, right? Within the confines of the ladder rain movement, William Brannum wants to appeal to them.

And part of their beliefs is that what's going on in the land of Israel is intimately connected to what's going on in the church. So that's when he starts changing this event happened on the same day Israel became a nation.

I became a prophet with these gifts, and this will gifts and stuff was restored to the church, the same day Israel became a nation. And so he's reinventing this story and recycling it to try and put him within the framework of the latter reign movement.

And then it's time goes on, he's reinventing himself yet again, introducing his Elijah persona, right? And it's when he's trying to introduce the Elijah persona that he modifies the story yet again and places it in a cave, like Elijah went to the cave.

And he drops some of the Moses aspects and he starts transitioning it into Elijah. And so I think that's why we end up with the last version because most of us look at William Brownham and his Elijah persona in the message.

So it's very, when you kind of can step back and you realize what he's doing in a strategic way, these changes in the story start to make sense, why he did it. And the closer you get to us, you know, modern history, the more recent revisions are clear to us.

But the ones further away into the history in the past are more obscure because, you know, we are personally less familiar with what happened in those years. But William Brownham was just changing and revising this story over time in order to enhance his appeal to the audience that he was with on that given day.

And it's just an amazing, it's an amazing and sad truth when you come to realize that, my. Yeah. And you know, we should qualify some of that because we only can study what we have access to see.

And if you search the, actually just recently published this research that we started in 2015, there were over 2,000 blank spots on tape back in the 19, or back in the 2015 version that we were analyzing of his transcripts and his recordings.

And we actually went to the extent that we took the waveform and we looked to see, even in the text that they didn't label it blank spot and tape, is there a break in the waveform where some voice was cut?

We actually found some of that as well. And that research were getting ready to publish. But one of the things we haven't published yet and somebody recently shared with me, it wasn't just the Moses stage persona, it wasn't just the Elijah in between those two, is a Joshua stage persona.

So he's basically reinventing himself as these biblical figures each time there's a new variation of his stage persona. And what we can't see is what they won't show us. Anything that's been cut from the tape or any, you know, before this 1946 publication, we don't even know what he claimed to be from 1936 to 1945.

We don't even have access to any of that. And Roy Davis had a printing press and published the newsletter, newspapers. We know that there were, articles and things being published. William Brannum took over Davis's church, which meant he also took over these printing presses when Davis went to prison. So he had access to print, but yet not a single publication from those years are exist for us to look at. They've concealed all of it.

Everything before this 1945 stories, there's no cult material, there's no message material on it, and I think the reason is, John, is because none of it is compatible with the message. Really up until the early 1950s, maybe even the mid-1950s, there was not a message. The message, as we know it, was invented really beginning in the mid-1950s. Everything before it is something, is something else. It's leftovers from some other stage persona, some other act that he was performing before that time. It's something else. You know, there's one other thing about, you know, when you realize, so in the original version of the story, he never had an angelic commission,

and the original version of the story actually happened in 1945 when it has to be, in one sense, it has to be the closest to the truth, because at least Betty Doherty did happen at that healing did happen in 1945, right? The rest of them are completely under question, because Betty, the years don't add up, right? The events that we can verify and it did not happen in those years.

But on top of us being able to know that the events he described around Betty Doherty did not happen in the later versions of the story, there's also problems with what the angel said to William Branham. There's three things that the angel said to William Branham, this is my opinion, three things that the angel said to William Branham that were not true.

Three things. Number one, the angel told William Branham, and this will be controversial, John, the angel told William Branham that if he could get people to believe nothing would stand in his way, not even cancer, that was not true. There are plenty of people who absolutely did believe, and they died of the very thing that William Branham told them they were healed of, right?

So the angel lied to him on that account, right? The angel was not honest to him, people who did believe that he prayed for absolutely did die, and probably in our next episode or two, we'll maybe go through some of those. Number two, the angel told him he would stand before kings and pray for them. There is not a single king that William Branham ever stood before and prayed, and we have been able to determine that every single king he claimed to meet and pray for is a made up story. William Branham never met a single king and never prayed for a single king

in person, that never happened. That's two things the angel said to him that was wrong. Yeah. And the third thing that the angel said to him that was wrong, that never happened, was that he said, as Moses was given two signs, you'll be given two signs.

But according to Exodus chapter four, Moses was given not two signs, three. Moses got three signs. How does the angel not know how many signs? Yes, the signs where a staff would turn to a snake, his hand would turn leprous.

And the third thing is he could take water out of the river and turn it to blood. Those were the three signs that God gave Moses not two. So what kind of an angel would misquote the Bible and tell you things that aren't true, right?

Either a fake angel or a fallen angel. I mean, there's no way around it. So not only do we have the historical problems with his story, it fails on this angel told three untrue things to William Brownham in the story.

Yeah, I used to think it was a fallen angel when I first came out of this, but I'm now leaning more towards all of this, it was all fiction. There's not a single element of truth.

And the last thing that you mentioned, the two signs, the reason why I think he didn't even read the Bible to know how many signs there were, is because of the other two. He said, not even can't you will stand before him.

If this angel actually said this and this was an actual thing, you would not find in the newspapers he was turning people away. He would say, no, your case is too bad, it's too late, God cannot heal you.

He actually, you know, this is in, this is several accounts, this is in the newspaper. One of them is in a book by James Randy, the faith healers. You know, a lot of people question his statements because he's an atheist.

However, we have the research, we actually went back and looked at the newspaper articles and we verified, you know, right down to the boy that was mentioned in James Randy's book, we found the whole story there.

The kid, you know, the kid did not get healed. Praying for kings, I first learned that in I think it was Peter Dyser's book, Legend of the Fall. And my mind was blown because I thought he did pray for kings.

All of it was fiction, all of it was fiction. And so if you have a minister, a man claiming to be a Christian who is making these things up to the extent that he doesn't even read the chapters in the Bible that are talking about the two signs, the three signs and says there are two, the question forms, was this man even a Christian?

Did he even care what he was saying? And my opinion at this point is no. And you mentioned Peter Dyser's book, The Legend of the Fall. I believe Peter Dyser is the first person, at least the first I'm a...

aware of that actually identified that there were four different versions of this angelic commission story and he actually covers that in a chapter in this book if someone wants to to read about it. We've got more more researches on our since then since he wrote that book but he is the as far as I know the first person to really discover the huge discrepancies in these stories and start to put the pieces together and you're you're just spot on John something is I'm to the point where I think most likely that William Brownham completely made up the angelic commission and for me the the key detail is the Betty Dordie healing.

What year was she actually healed in and again we've showed newspaper evidence we've showed tracks and words things from William Brownham evidence testimony from multiple people including Betty Dordie's father and people that we've talked to here in recent days who know Betty Dordie's living family the year was 1945 and you take that knowledge that Betty Dordie was healed in 1945 and you go read every version of the angelic commission story and you will be you have to just come to the fact and realization that William Brownham is telling me something in this story that is definitively demonstrably beyond a shadow of a doubt false Betty Dordie was not healed in 1946

she was not healed in 1947 she was not healed in 1948 and all of the versions of the story about the angelic commission were invented down the road after after the original version when she was healed in 1945 and when she was healed in 1945 that version is very clear there's no angel that came to William Brownham and gave him his commission that is a later invention in the story and I know I've tried my best diligently search that out and maybe other people would have a different opinion than me that that's the key to proving which version is most true and which

one is false but for me I think that it's an open shut case 1945 is when she was healed and every other version of the story is demonstrably false at that point for me it's this simple this was a life-changing event if this happened you know this angel coming down to see him I don't know you know not everybody goes through in the life-changing events so some people don't have something to base this on but I have I've actually been through a few of them one of them I had a family member who was almost died I mean it was it was heartbreaking

I remember going to the hospital I remember and they're alive now so it's you know I'm happy you're ending but I remember it shook me so hard. It was a life-changing event. I can remember the trip to the hospital, I remember where I was at the time. I remember who I was with when I found out. I remember the drive over there. I remember the streets that I took. I remember walking in the hospital. I remember the smell. There was, you know, when you go through a hospital, there's different odors.

And I remember in the room. I remember the smell that was in the room. I remember the head was extremely swollen. I remember it. I remember what the head looked like. I remember the bed that the, it was a child. I remember the child was laying. It was a heartbreaking, heartbreaking event. It threw me into depression for a long, long time. Change my life. It really did. This was for me the most, one of the most traumatic things that I've been through in my life. What William Brannam is describing with an angel from God would make mine seem like going to the park with

and playing baseball. He's talking about an angel from God coming down into his room. And he can't remember was I sitting in my living room and looking out a window to see if it was a car.

And then ran to the door of my house to see was it headlights from a car or was I in a cave and there was a dirt floor or was I in a cabin and I heard the angel walking on old wooden boards that creaked. I mean, it's that level of difference. If you have a life-changing event, he is not going to forget this. So all of this together made me form my opinion that number one, he doesn't even believe the story he's telling. Number two, he is not a Christian because a Christian minister doesn't make this kind of thing up. Number three, this is not a religious cult. This is a political

cult. He is working with some very high ranking white supremacists and this is a political cult, not a religious cult. For me, the fact, just the mere fact that there are four radically different versions of the story proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that William Brannum was making some of these versions up. At least at the very least, three of these versions of the story has to be false, right? Because they can't all be true. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, William Brannum made up versions of this story. You know, there's no way around that. There is just no way around

that. You know, and I, when I just kind of discovered this, I realized in our part of the message, the explanation for the variances was that William Brannum was poor. William Brannum was poor and because he was poor, he was embarrassed.

tell the final version of the story in the cave. So therefore he made up the original versions because he was embarrassed for being poor. Okay, but that still makes Brandt William Brandt of a dishonest person, right? Like there's no way around. And I have to say I'm at the point, I don't believe that anymore. I don't believe that William Brandt made this up because he was embarrassed to be in poor because he told stories about being poor all the time, right? In fact, he wore poverty like a badge of honor. So yeah, his poverty claim, Peter Dyser actually examines a whole chapter in this book, the poverty claims.

And there was no way he was poor. He owned almost brand new automobiles, even from, I think age 16 is what he claimed. And whenever he toured in these revivals, he's wearing a long guy's watch, which is, I don't know if people know what this is, but this is a watch. And today's money, it's tens of thousands of dollars. It's not a cheap watch.

It's a very, very expensive watch. Our pastor went to William Brandt's house one time and to be prayed for and William Brandt took the watch off before he prayed for him. And his explanation was, my gift of healing breaks the cheap watches. Therefore I need, I got to have, you know, the most expensive model, right? That was what he said he needed the, you know, the top dollar watch. Yeah. I mean, he's, he's flaunting his money, but because he does it in such a way that he adds it to cult theology, people overlook the fact that

he's flaunting his money. I'm going on all these expensive hunting trips all over the world that cost vast sums of money because I've got the Elijah anointing and I love the wilderness and I got it. You know, it's all, everything is justified with, with, with, with the thinking itself. Yeah. No, maybe as we bring this episode down towards the close, I know for me, some key takeaways, I just share my key takeaways, John, and you can share yours. Mine is that William Brandt, I'm told at least four different versions of this story.

The only part that was consistent through these, through these stories is the healing of Betty Dottery. He totally changed every other part of this story from, from the initial version to the final version. And the biggest issue of all is that he changed the dates when this was supposed to happen multiple times. His first revision to the story in 1947 coincided with when he changed campaign managers. And that revision in 1947 is when he added the angel and he changed it from 1945 to 1946. Then he made additional revisions to the story in the early

1950s to improve, improve his appeal to the latter reign movement. And it's when he changed it the second time he did that so he could say his angelic commission coincided with Israel becoming a nation. And so again, I feel like we can say with certainty that every story, this version of the story he told after 1946 is false. And if you're still a message believer, I know if you're in there, you're left with this big gaping issue. Every version of the angelic mission story. I don't care which one you pick. Every version has details that can be proven

false beyond a shadow of a doubt. And if that's true, if he would lie to us about part of that angelic commission story, how can we trust that any of it's true, John? How can we trust that part of it where sure is a lie? How can we trust the rest of it isn't too?

We haven't even really talked about the failed healings. We'll get into that as we go on. But in these same newspaper articles where it's talking about, you know, there are actually people getting healed. And you can find newspaper reports of people getting healed. But there are also truck loads. And let me repeat that. Truck loads of people who came, who thought they were getting healed. And they left in the same, you know, people in stretchers. One newspaper wrote the arrived in ambulances and they left in ambulances. I mean, it's that kind of thing. And you and I know, and we're going to get into this in the next episode or two. So William

Brannum and this story prayed for Betty Dordy and she was healed, right John? Right. But this isn't the only time Betty Dordy got sick. Was it? No, it was not. And this is not the only time William Brannum prayed for Betty Dordy. Was it? It was not. And the cult has hidden this. I was surprised when I found this. And what happened the second time William Brannum prayed for Betty Dordy and told her she was going to be healed? She died. She died. She died. Okay. And we're again, we got the proof on that too. So this little girl who was prayed for and healed by William Brannum

in 1945 that launched his ministry in later years, William Brannum throws this girl to the curb in an incredibly cruel way in a sermon. I mean, what he does to her in the sermon is that I think is particularly cruel and we'll touch on this in another sermon. And she subsequently dies following that event. It's awful, John. It's awful, but there's so much here and I don't know, you know, there's so much here that we've not even talked about. I'm scamming through the notes right now to see what all we what all we miss. We're going to have to do some side episodes, I

think we are. I'm looking forward to more. I mean, we're going to talk more about the spiritualism aspect for sure. We got to start getting into these the failed healings, the healings that didn't stick and yeah, and then start digging into the timeline of these events and and what all else was going on in these years because this is just we're just starting to open a massive can of worms.

We've not even got to the good stuff yet. Oh goodness. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-brandom.org and christian-gospelchurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brandom and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods.

critical examination of William Brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.