The Spiritualist Movement

Music 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 usually I wait until the very last part of the episode to drop the really explosive bombs on this podcast, but we have

something that is so significant that just happened that we actually should probably get that out of the way so that it's not a distraction for the rest of this show because it is really significant.

And by the time that this podcast airs, it will have already hit our blog. But last week after talking with Bernie Wade, and at the same time one of the other podcasts has aired, which has a key fact that was more significant than we realized when we recorded the podcast, we came across some new information and study that's worth mentioning. There was a little tiny newspaper advertisement.

And yes, you're holding it up right now. The Reverend Kurtz of Cincinnati, Ohio. And he's preaching at the Brannum Pentecostal Tabernacle. And that is the Tabernacle on Pratt Street, not the Tabernacle on Penn Street. On August 15th, 1934. August 15th, the date is actually of key significance. Weir the podcast and some Pentecostal historians noticed that name and that date. And it literally is the unraveling of William Brannum's entire life story. Because remember, he was supposed to be a Baptist minister. He claimed that he had, quote, never seen a Pentecostal before when he went on an accidental trip to Mishawaka. And he spoke at just happened to stumble on to the

General Pentecostal Assembly, one of the biggest Pentecostal meetings of that year. in the area that he stumbled on to. Well, this Reverend Kurtz, it turns out, was a very famous Pentecostal minister. One of, basically, one of the founding ministers of Pentecostalism today.

And he was in collaboration with GB Rao at the church in Meshewaka, where this big event was held. And that big event, the one that William Brannum claims to have stumbled onto. That big event happened just a couple of weeks after that, after Reverend Kurtz came to the tabernacle and preached before his Pentecostal church is even built.

It just serves to further debunk the story that William Brannum told us about his start in ministry. As we've known for quite some time, William Brannum was actually a Pentecostal from the 1920s. And he was certainly moving in Pentecostal circles.

He was certainly in a Pentecostal church of Roy Davis. Roy Davis's church baptized in Jesus' name. They practiced divine healing. They believed in the oneness of the Godhead. They practiced speaking in tongues, holy ghost religion.

William Brannum had been in a thoroughly oneness Pentecostal church since at least the late 20s. And what this confirms to us is that opposite to what he told us, he had prominent oneness Pentecostal preachers come to the Brannum tabernacle, right?

Even before the meetings when he went to Meshewaka and claimed to meet Pentecostals for the first time, in all of the literature, God's generals, everything, even the scholarly biographies put him as a Baptist minister with no contact to Pentecostalism at this point.

But the truth is, William Brannum was connected to preeminent Pentecostal ministers from the very earliest days of his ministry. He was a Pentecostal from day one. Right, and it's so significant, if you think about it, because his trip to Lake Pau Pau, for instance, which just happens to be one of the lake resorts where Pentecostal assemblies were gathered, according to the historians that we've spoken with, William Brannum didn't just stumble onto this.

He's already connected to these men. He's literally, he's already at Pentecostal, holding Pentecostal revivals in a tent before the church was built. So it's very important to understand that fact as we get into this episode, which is why I wanted to bring it to the front of the episode because you have to understand what was going on in the time.

you know, what was actually happening within Pentecostalism, but also within just general Indiana history. So I'm really excited to get into this episode because I feel, you know, as a historian, as a person who loves history, I feel as though this is one of the topics that is so exciting just to understand. We're talking about, you know, this history of Indiana, what was going on in the time, the culture of Indiana. We're talking about the, you know, basically the background to what was happening during the time that William Brannum was claiming to be a Baptist, you know, but he was actually at Pentecostal. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting

that period of time in William Brannum's ministry and life. A lot of times we miss a lot of historical context because, you know, we didn't live through that time. So, you know, we just don't know, but in the 1910s, the 1920s, you know, the period of time that William Brannum was growing up and coming, you know, into his adolescence and into the early stage of his ministry, Indiana was a very significant state in the United States far more so than it is now. It was really at the zenith of its cultural ascendancy in those years. The most prominent literary figures in the United

States lived in Indiana in those years. The greatest poets in the United States in those years lived in Indiana. Everything, Indiana was just at the height of its ascendancy in that way. For example, the Grand Army of the Republic, you know, the National Fraternal Order of Civil War veterans was headquartered in Indiana. The American Legion, the National Organization, the Fraternal Order of World War I veterans was headquartered in Indiana. You had these very large national organizations that operated centrally from Indiana and it just gave everything that happened in Indiana, a national publicity, you know, just through these organizations and other things like

that going on. And even like in the artistic community, in the musical community, Indiana was at the height of its influence in the culture. And as William Brannum is growing up in this era, you know, just talking about Indiana being from Indiana being influenced by Indiana, that carried some weight just in that time. And we know on the religious front, on the religious front, there were multiple major denominations that are headquartered here in Indiana. The United Brethren is headquartered here in Indiana, the Disciples of Christ. Their headquarters is here in Indiana. And we know within

Pentecostalism, GTA Wood was here in Indiana. And you could almost say, truthfully, we would be fair to say that the headquarters of Oneness Pentecostalism is in Indiana. Dianna during this period of time as well. So all of this is swirling in Indiana as William Brannum is growing up, coming into the 20s and kicking off his ministry, leading right up into these early years that we've talked about right here and shown that article from.

Right. And Dowie had influence. Dowie, Dowie's cult actually had a branch of the cult that was in Indiana. Dowie's influence was nationwide obviously, but one of the first locations that he was going to choose for Zion was actually in Indiana.

Right. And Zion, Illinois is just across the border. It is just outside of Indiana. It's not that far across state lines. And so that is where Dowie set up shop and was doing all of his stuff that. And there's actually a significant part of the people who were in Zion came from Indiana and obviously they had lots of family connections back to this area. So Dowie also had had significant influence into Indiana.

Yeah. I think it's like maybe 45 minutes north of Chicago and Dowie had set up a rail system, rail railway that would take him from Zion into his Indiana branch. As I said, you know, this gives us context and it is definitely a side story to our, you know, our overall William Brannum study of history, but it's really important. Just last night I was watching the new movie Elvis. I don't know if you've seen it, but it gives, it's a crazy, interesting story. You know, William Brannum was strongly against Elvis in the cult. We weren't even allowed to name our children Elvis. And when you think of Elvis,

you think rock and roll. And you think, well, he was just a rock and roll character. So William Brannum was against rock and roll. So that's why he didn't like Elvis, but it was much deeper than that. If you understand the context of history, Elvis was strongly in favor of integration, strongly in favor to the extent that he was actually, he was arrested.

He was, you know, he got into a lot of trouble, some for his movements, but also because he was trying to break down racial barriers. Even his music was a combination of the black, rhythm and blues, gospel type singing with country music. And the racist did not like Elvis, simply put. And that's out of context of this story, but it gives you an example of how context of history is so important to understanding the message William Brannum's revival, his influence on America as a whole. Yeah, you know, even within Catholicism, Indiana was was ascended in with Catholicism in that time too, you know, and that had a lot to do, I think, with with the

clan being so popular in this area as well. Notre Dame University, probably the most prominent Catholic university in school in the United States is in Indiana. St. Minor's Arch Abbey over in Jasper John is the only Arch Abbey in the United States, right?

The Indiana also has some of the highest ranking Catholic officials in the United States as well. And yeah, just William Brownham is growing up in this atmosphere. All of these things are playing in the culture around him.

The battle of integration and segregation is playing on in the background behind him. You know, like you mentioned with Elvis and different things. And all of this is impacting the ideology, the beliefs and things that are developing in William Brownham's mind and life.

Right. There's so much going on and it's for me, it's just so fascinating to understand it. Probably the best place to start is with the spiritualism in Indiana. If you remember when Roy Davis came to Indiana, you know, from his trail of crime and womanizing, etc.

One of the first things that he did in Indiana was he held a revival claiming to be a converted spiritualist. And it's really significant to understand the importance of that claim because he was not a converted spiritualist.

The whole thing was a gag, basically, or a gimmick. But he is appealing to the spiritualist community in Indiana. And William Brownham himself in his sermons talked about connecting to mediums and spiritualists and psychics.

You know, throughout his ministry, he talks about this. He also is appealing to the spiritualist community, which was very, very strong in Indiana. You're right, John. And it's very interesting, you know, because all of these different things are going on.

And I know one spiritualist camp, John, that we've talked about from time to time, is Camp Chesterfield. And you know, William Brownham in his sermons talked a whole lot, surprisingly a lot, about coming into contact with psychics, with mediums, with spiritualists.

William Brownham was in his sermons told us he went to these places. He visited these places, witnessed their practices himself, and was around others who were at who would witness those practices. And that is, it's really interesting. And so it's enough to make us want to pull the covers back a little bit and understand what was going on in these spiritualist camps and spiritualist places that William Brownham told us that he visited.

Right. I remember whenever another researcher identified Camp Chesterfield, I was literally shocked. Because William Brownham tells the story about how he's... and he tried to shift focus so people did not catch what actually happened, but he claimed that he was in some other country and this piano lifted up in the air and started playing the jingle that you hear on the Beverly Hillbilly, shaving a haircut to bits.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And he places the so far out of context, there's no way that anybody in Africa would even understand what shaving a haircut to bits was at that time. And Camp Chesterfield that you mentioned was one of the six most significant spiritualist camps in the United States.

At a time when spiritualism itself was extremely popular in the United States. Yes. And one of their featured attractions, which was all faked, they proved later that the leaders admitted that they were staging some of this stuff in this camp, but they had the stage act where this Madame Mimi would come on to the stage and she would do her focus, and this piano would lift up in the air and start playing Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

And that was one of the main attractions at Camp Chesterfield, which places William Brannum in the spiritualist camp. He saw this and basically revised the story to tell that when he's in the heathens in Africa, a piano is playing this jingle.

Yeah, there's a lot of influence in those groups by, I guess you'd say gypsy type figures. And that's almost what they're, I don't know that they were all gypsies themselves, but they're definitely impersonating gypsies up, but it's definitely with some of the stuff that goes on in those camps.

And they're performing just the, even the kind of stuff you kind of see in the movies, the stereotypical kind of stuff. They've got their crystal balls and things like this going on in these camps.

It's very unusual stuff. It's crazy and it's really odd to think about because in today's world, if you were to go to work and tell somebody, I was in the spiritualist camp and this piano raised up in the air and played the Beverly Hillbilly's jingle, there's not a single person in there that would believe it.

Even if you believed it wholly, if you tried to sell it and you took them to the camp and they can't figure out the gimmick, they're gonna know it's a gimmick in today's world.

But spiritualism was so popular and there were so many people that were using basically magicians tricks to claim spiritualism, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes actually believed this stuff and he literally stopped writing Sherlock Holmes.

The reason we have so limited stories of Sherlock Holmes is because he came to... America to become an evangelist for spiritualism, and he even wrote a two-volume book on the history of spiritualism. Yeah, it's wild. And, you know, the stuff going on, like we mentioned in these camps, there's there's also things that bear a striking resemblance to practices that we later see in William Brandt's ministry during the healing revivals, which we'll talk a little bit more about later, but the, you might say mind reading or things that these mediums were doing, where they were discerning thoughts or off-right personal predictions, personal prophecies to people. These kind of

things were very common, you know, in these things. And it wasn't all by, you know, some of it was the typical tarot card reading type of things like that, but some of it was more

esoteric in the sense that it was, it bore more of a resemblance to what we see in William Brandt's ministry, where they would wait for a spirit to come in the room. And we're waiting on the spirit to come in the room. And okay, the spirits are here now, and now we're going to ask the spirits these questions, and the spirits are going to tell us these things about people, right? And it was very, you just changed a couple of few words in the way that they would talk about it and do it, and it's strikingly similar to some of the things that happen in William Brandt's ministry.

It is. It's crazy. There's another show, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you watch called The Mentalist. We've almost seen the entire series at this point, but The Mentalist was, he was a, you know, some carnival mind reader, just like we're talking about in this story. He's doing the things that we're talking about here. All of it's fake, and he comes to the police force to become an investigator, and he uses his mind game techniques with the people as he's interviewing or interrogating, and he's literally using what William Brandt is using in his

sermons, whenever, or not sermons, but faith healing lines. It's called cold reading. Whenever a person comes up to you, you say, you're from a place not far from here, and then you watch their expression. If their expression lights up, oh, he knows I'm not far from here, then William Brandt knows, okay, it's in the surrounding cities, and then he goes a little bit further and tries to guess the name of the cities, not every time it's a guess, because there are other factors, other gimmicks that were used in Brandt's ministries, but if you know cold reading, how it works,

and you go study these faith healing lines, you're going to see very clear evidence of cold reading in his ministry, and it's interesting because it's a magician's trick. It's something that was extremely common. Harry Houdini, which is one of the world's most famous magicians of all time, to Arthur Conan Doyle believed that Harry Houdini's magic was real, even though we know it's fake, even though Houdini himself tried to convince Doyle otherwise. They thought it was real because this is a period of time, 1900 to 1930, where spiritualism was widely believed as a religion. Yeah, Houdini was always up front

that this is just tricks. Like Houdini never even tried to declaim that it was magic. He was always clear it was tricks. And whenever he would find people who were doing tricks, you might say, he was always intrigued to come show up and try to debunk what was going on. And he was usually quite successful at debunking what they did. And then he would repeat their tricks.

And Houdini actually came to Indiana multiple times during his life. I imagine you know that, and he would, when he would come to Indianapolis, he would do these incredible tricks in order to draw attention. And one time when Houdini came to Indianapolis, he hangs out on a beam, right, like right over the most busy street in Indianapolis, upside down and a straight jacket thing, right. And so all of these people basically shut down traffic, watching to see what's going to happen. And he, he finally, of course, gets out of out of all of his stuff, you know, and that's how

he shows up in Indiana the first time hanging off the side of a building in a straight jacket. And, and so he actually spends a fair amount of time in Indiana. And he's intrigued by what's going on in these spiritual camps again. And from the aspect he wants to debunk it. And again, he's, he is successful quite a bit in debunking the things that went on. And let me just read a couple quotes for our listeners too. That way, you know, William Brannum told us he went to these places, right. And so that's why we're, that's really why we're looking at these things is because

William Brannum told us he went there. And we just want to know, well, what was going on at these places? William Brannum said he went. So this quote is from a it's called debate on tongues.

It's from August 7th, 1960. William Brannum says, and so I've been in camps where the spiritualists and where the they are come up a piano, ways half a ton, lifted up off the floor, a guitar lay in the room. And it come through strumming music like that. A coat hang on the wall, sat down on a chair beside you, knives and forks come through and you see them and a wizard, a wizard lays a piece of paper down and takes a pencil on top of it. And you see the spirit come up on the stove

pipe and come back down playing shave in a hair bit, shave in a haircut, two bits and write in unknown tongues. And then this medium would stretch and pull himself together and interpret these things up and down like that and interpret those tongues and tell what was said. So you can't say speaking in tongues as the Holy Ghost. That's ultimately his conclusion there. But he's describing all of these incredible details of what he saw in these events. And let me just pick out one of those things there.

So here's musical instruments playing themselves, right? Right. At this spiritualist camp. Well, one very famous message story, John. I'm sure you've heard it told many times when William Brannum was was held in the meetings and the lady gets touched by the Holy Ghost and jumps up and screams in the piano keeps playing it. Exactly. These exact same kind of things happened in the message, right? Or through William Brannum's ministry instruments would play themselves.

And others of these things versions of this appeared in William Brannum's ministry. Yeah. Let me read one more too. One more quote. William Brannum here said, this is 1958, the baptism of the Holy Ghost. He says, spiritualism works through father, son, and Holy Ghost. I stood in a meeting where those witches was a working and don't think they won't challenge you. They stood there.

They throw the table up in the air and it floated. A guitar was playing. Stand there and they said they wanted to put me out. And then he goes on to say that he challenged the spiritualist and accused them of witchcraft while he was at the meeting. Yeah. But it incredible stuff, John.

Incredible stuff. He is basically continuing. He saw the power that Davis had when Davis came to Jeffersonville and started claiming to be a converted medium. This is basically converted spiritualist. This is basically what started his big ministry in Indiana is the spiritualist claim.

So William Brannum sees this and he sees the power of it and he actually takes it nationwide. And it's really odd if you think about it. So Harry Houdini comes to Indiana. He starts his magic tricks. My favorite magician today is Chris Angel. If you've watched Chris Angel, his tricks are so incredibly good. And there used to be a television show. I think it was called Mind Freak where he's going out right in the public and he's doing these crazy interesting things and one of them is levitation. So here you've got Harry Houdini who comes to the spiritualist haven in America.

And he's doing levitation. And one of William Brannum's first stage acts is a levitation act in his ministry with little David. It's just so crazy interesting. And another interesting fact about Houdini, his mother got involved with all of this spiritualist mumbo jumbo which he knew was fake because he's a magician himself. He knows how these tricks are working.

and he actually dedicated his life, the latter part of his life to exposing mediums who were faking all of this stuff because even the Christian community thought this stuff was real. They thought these are people possessed by demons and Houdini already knew this wasn't true. He's watching some of the same stage acts that some of the gimmicks that he's using in his magician act with these mediums and so it's just it sets up this really weird thing where William Brannum goes out with a magician act that you know the levitating boy and who comes later to debunk

William Brannum is another magician who's watching the same things James Randy. James Randy went and debunked Brannum and basically exposed Brannum as a fraud years ago in the book. I think it was the faith healer as he mentions it. I have that one on my shelf here. Yeah he he basically looked into these things that were going on during the healing revival and reverse engineered the practices of what was happening. You know and it's it's incredible it's incredible to realize you know that that these practices are so similar to what was happening in William Brannum's meetings and

where I come from John our part of the message magic and this stuff was completely taboo. You didn't watch magic on TV you didn't go if someone had a magic one in your hand you'd run the other way right like you right whatever you you completely stay away from anything like this. This is absolutely taboo in the message and part of that you know what on one hand why William Brannum is telling us about these these mediums and spiritual camps and stuff that he went to like on one side he's telling us he went to them but at the same and the next breath

he's telling us and they're all of the devil and don't you ever go around him and run as fast as you can away and and I wonder now looking back just just a wonder do you think that perhaps he could have told us to never investigate or look into that stuff at all because he didn't want us to discover the similarities to what he was doing I wonder if that's part of obviously I I'm still in the belief that there are demonic forces in the world and a person should should certainly not entertain demonic demonic spirits but I wonder though if it was more than that with William Brannum I wonder

if it was he did not want us to discover that he was performing some of the same feats that was happening in these spiritualist and in magician camps um I've greatly changed my perspective on the demonic spirits the Bible mentions demonic spirits so if you're a Christian you can't deny this however in my mind we have to separate what is being described in the Bible versus what is a stage trick the first instance. There are a large number of Christians that believe that William Brannum actually had a spirit guide and that this quote unquote angel was

leading him and it was a demonic spirit. There's a demon on the platform with them basically. William Brannum himself doesn't even believe this demon. He keeps changing the versions of the stage persona to the extent that at this point, there is no way that William Brannum himself even believed that there was this angel in the platform. And if you take the angel away, you've taken away the spirit guide that everybody claims is the demon. So in my opinion, there are demonic forces at play in William Brannum's ministry, which we'll get later, it will get into that a lot deeper. But the ones that people see as

the stage act is smoking mirrors because William Brannum himself doesn't even believe it. For example, if you open up the table, which is voice of God recordings, transcripts of William Brannum sermons, the very first sermon is for me, it's the most interesting sermon. It starts out with the words, we're getting some new gadgets for recording, which implies that there were old gadgets for recording. The very first word of his entire series of transcripts is now we're starting this new thing, which means there are old recordings and I've actually spoken to witnesses who say they have seen these old recordings

that aren't available to the public. So you've got this thing that starts out and in the very oddly, in the first sermon, he talks about doing a magicians trick. He talks about bringing forth a person from the crowd and he holds up a bracelet on a string and the bracelet starts moving. And there's this weird blank spot in tape right when the story is getting good. So something was cut out of that. Yeah, you know, you're spot on there too, because there's evidence in William Brannum sermons and people that have witnessed these things that William Brannum was more or less telling people he could

control objects with his mind. Right. You know, by the power of God or whatever, he could lift objects and move them. There's other places on tape, you know, he would talk about how you could use your mind and you could make a light bulb come on. Right. Like these are the kind of things that he that he was doing. And it was more prominent in the early days of his ministry, the early days of the healing revival that he was doing this stuff. But these are again, the exact same things that we read about happening in the spiritualis

camps. And really, the key difference here is in the spiritualis camps, they're they're pretty straightforward that it's not the Holy Spirit of God doing this stuff. Right. It's whatever whatever they're communing with out there in the ether, right? Right. But when William Brannum does it, it is it's also this is again very unusual. It's very uncommon that William Brownham would say this is the Holy Spirit doing this, which William Brownham again, it was his angel. It was the angel and just like just like the spiritualists had to wait for their spirits to show up so they could

William Brownham had to wait for his angel to show up and it was his angel doing this and the angel doing that and it's very very very unusual and it's very you know when you're in the message it don't grab you so much as unusual but when you've come out and you've you've stepped back and you've kind of looked at it, there's nothing like this in Christianity actually. There's no example of someone in the New Testament even in the old, someone having an angel going around with and this angel is helping them do all of this stuff and they're waiting on the angel for this

and the waiting there's nothing like that remotely like that in the Bible it's it's always they're waiting on God or they're waiting on the Holy Spirit or and it's and it's by the Holy Spirit or by God that these things are happened but William Brownham would say things like by the divine gift ministered by the angel when he prays like he it's everything is is more focused to this angel or the spirit than than God which which again is very similar to these spiritualist practices it's unusual. Yeah so another aspect that we need to bring in to

broaden the understanding of the culture. In today's world this would never fly if a minister were to come up to a church any church and hold a bracelet on a string and say watch I can move the bracelet you're going to have five-year-old kids in today's world that say mom he's just doing this magic trick and I can do it too look but in that string I see the string right you know it would never fly would never stick and then you would have a bunch of ministers rising up to you know the the victims in this or the people who believe it so you'd have people explaining how

this works and then it would just fall apart but back in that day you know with all of this spiritualist craze it's stuck and let's take this to a much broader scale because what we see what we're describing here is not just related to William Brownham's ministry this was one of the catalysts the spiritualist mumbo jumbo was one of the main catalysts that created the laterane movement which splintered into countless other movements cults sacks of pentacostalism the you had the you know the Kansas City prophets you had the word of faith movement the charismatic movement the new apostolic reformate

movement. You had all of these movements that they all claimed their origin was basically the Laterane movement and they associate William Brannum with their ministry because Brannum is historically credited as being a catalyst for Laterane because in later years William Brannum tried to separate himself and the cult historians have successfully isolated Brannum from the Laterane and limited the amount of involvement that actually happened in the minds of all historians.

William Brannum was not just a catalyst. I'm going to read a quote from Scott Haas, the son of Raymond Haas who was either Sharon Orfernage or basically in the Laterane early origins of the Laterane sect and he said one of Brannum's teachings was the ability to use the spirit of God to make things move on their own accord. My dad related to me that he had tried this just once and said that things in the room had moved on their own but the air became cold, dark and heavy.

It scared him and he never tried it again. So what he's describing here, you would actually see if you went to this Madame Mimi camp Chesterfield. He's describing a spiritualist event. Raymond Haas apparently believed this in the same way that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed this. They believed the gimmicks that were going on and they believed that William Brannum was like the sorcerer. He had the power to, if you watch the Harry Potter movies and you watch the sorcerer go into the room and all of the things start floating, what he's describing is sorcery. He's not describing Christianity at all but because the spiritualist movement was

so successful and so widespread at the time that the Laterane movement was spreading, they could use literally what the Bible condemns and stoned people to death for doing. They called it Christianity and then sold it as Laterane.

Yeah, it's something else. You're exactly right with Laterane. We have been deep diving into Laterane and I'm looking forward to when we finally get to do an episode or two on that and the tentacles of Laterane are I think somewhat different than certainly what I understood before I started looking into it because obviously you do have what happened up in North Battle, Badaford, right? You've got the the Houghton brothers and that where it started but really the it seems like the central hubs for spreading it actually come down to the United States since the church in Chicago and a church in Detroit. Yes. Which are

key players in actually spreading the ideas that came out of there. And William Brannum was deeply connected to those two churches. People in William Brannum's orbit were in those churches a lot. And we're also up at the Sharon Orphanage prophesying thing about William Brannum at the Sharon Orphanage at the time. So William Brannum was a catalyst, but he was more than a catalyst. He was a significant influence into them. And then there was counter influence too.

They, in turn, influenced William Brannum and beliefs that would then become the message. And yes, there's a whole smattering, a splintering of groups that came out of that. And some of these practices that came out of it are what we, what today you might refer to as hypercares metasism, hypercaresmatic things were introduced through this. An overreliance on what you would call the Gifts of the Spirit, an over emphasis on the supernatural miraculous things, even beyond, far above and beyond what the early Pentecostal movement placed on these things in significance.

And so it, it, it, it took something that was in a nascent form in the Pentecostal movement, and it poured gas on that fire and turned it into a form of hypercaresmaticism. Yes. So picture these spiritual camps. You've got the floating piano off to the side. You've got the levitation off to the other side. And then you've got the medium. In this case, in William Brannum's case, he met, apparently, Madame Mimi, but, you know, they had different ones, men and women. And the medium comes. And when we think of spiritualism, we think of a lady

sitting in this weird robe, and there's this crystal ball, and she's peering into it, but it wasn't just that. They were, basically, they wanted you to believe that they were like sorcerers. So they would hold their hand out, and they would do things. They actually had what William Brannum called discernment. They, it was called cold reading, and they would come talk to people, and they would do the hand thing. And again, watch mentalist, you'll see that there are subtle hypnosis techniques that can be used on people. If you studied hypnosis isn't just waving a watch on a string, and then causing people to act like chickens. You can very,

very limited hypnotized people, just with your speech, for a brief period of time, so that they say more than they should, or they think a different way. There are techniques that these mediums use. And a lot of times, it was distracting focus with the hand. As they're pulsing the hand, the person starts focusing on the hand. They're not thinking very much about, they're not critically thinking about what the person, person is saying. In the hand was a big part of William Branham's ministry. He actually, he claimed that he could heal people. He could detect the diseases by vibrating hands.

And again, in today's world, this isn't going to fly. If, I would say that probably 90% of the people in William Branham's Cult of Personality have no idea that he claimed his hand could vibrate and change colors. If they knew this, I think most of them would actually leave, because they would say, no, this is Harry Potter mumbo jumbo. This is ridiculous.

Yeah. And again, there is nothing like that. There is zero precedent for that in Christianity or the Bible. There is nothing at all like that where somebody in the Bible, in the scripture, somebody that is of God, goes and lays their hands on people and discerns their illnesses by a reaction that they then sense in their own body on their own, looking at their own wrist.

And you're exactly right, John. I mean, our part of the message, at least our pastor told us about this, because there were people in our church who claimed to be eyewitnesses to this manifestation. And I don't doubt that I don't know necessarily how he did it or it could well have been something spiritual. I'm still on the fence as to trying to understand just exactly what was happening here, but there would be people who would, I'll just share one case and point story that I know. This man went to William Branham's house, his wife was sick, and William Branham

comes into the living room to sit and pray for them. And I'll just give the story and compare this to the things we've been talking about with the spiritualism. And William Branham comes in, and he sits down and he talks to them for a while. And after he talks to him for a while, he says, now, I've been talking to you for a while because I need to contact your spirit. I've got to contact your spirit in order to be able to help you. And then he goes on, and I'm waiting for I'm waiting for that angel to come, right? And so he's a, I got to contact your spirit, be,

I'm waiting on this angel spirit to come help me. And then he takes his watch off and he sits it off to the side, he goes, now I can't wear my watch while I do this because this gift destroys my watches. If the watch is on my wrist while I do this, this gift is going to cause the hands to blow off my watch. And he's on tape. Let me maybe read a quote to him saying something like this.

This is from it is I from 1960. William Branham says, I can't wear a wrist watch. I had a $200 dollar longines give to me down here. It fell apart on the pulpit when he used his gift. And then someone else gave me a $300 Volcane credit cricket watch up over here. And in the meeting the other night, the same thing, it falls off and flew off me, loose from my hand.

when I use the gift and the and the stem come right out of it. So he would say these things that when he would operate his gift, it would cause mechanical things around him to follow part and blow up basically. Right.

So he takes his wrist, watch off with this lady. He puts it on the side and then he puts his hand on her and the man says he watched his wrist while he did this and William Brown and put his hand on him.

And when he did certain blotches or shapes and colors would appear on on on the wrist of his hand and then by these things, he could tell what was wrong with the person. And again, you think nothing like this in the Bible and and if this is very, I'll say this is creepy, John.

This is creepy. Now that we're out looking back at what in the world is what in the world is this, right? And and and so God, I guess or whatever it was, would cause William Brannum to have a negative reaction in his body when he would touch somebody with with this with whatever.

And then he would tell him whether you're healed or not based on how these blotches on his arm hives or whatever came or went after he had prayed for them. It's very, very unusual.

It's so odd, man. It's like if you would take, I don't know, some Stephen King movie, some some weird horror movie where this guy is contacting the evil spirits and mix it with friends and turn it into a comedy.

That's that's almost what this is like. The $200 watch. I have actually come to the conclusion that I'm no longer of the opinion that there's something evil going on. This is all stage act.

Again, watch the mentalist. You'll get some of this, but just picture that from a logic perspective, I'm a very poor man. I'm a evangelist who never takes an offering. These are things that William Brannum claimed.

There have been times that I could not scrape two pennies together because I never take an offering. And every time I discern your disease, it breaks my watch. So what does he do? I'm not going to go buy some cheap watch that because it's going to break, I can, you know, I'm going to buy these little $10 watches because they're going to break anyway.

He goes and buys a $200 watch. Now keep in mind, in 1946, $200 was the equivalent of about $3,000 today. So he's literally telling these poor people, I'd never taken offering. I have no money, but I bought this $3,000 watch.

None of it makes any sense. And praying for you breaks my watch, so I might need a new one. It's so great. You know, I have, I've actually met people, Christian men and women who knew things that I have no way how they, no way to understand how they knew.

They knew things that they should not have known. They've told. me one of one person told me that he had spiritual dreams and he dreamed something and sure enough it wasn't you know the dream was obviously symbolism or whatever so it wasn't like it was a literal dream and he saw this dream of witnessing the future but there were elements of the dream that he started to understand and piece together and he actually told me something before it happened. I've met people who had some gift that I can't explain but in every case that I've met a person who has something like this or in every case that I've read in the

Bible it is specific to the situation in other words his dream was something I don't want to give the details because it's very personal but his dream was something that was important for the person to know at the time and that person made a really good decision because they were informed through this Christian person who had this gift if it was a gift that I understand I believe I think is acceptable. In William Brannum's case the gift was always three things I know your name I know your address I know what's wrong with you and again I know your name address what's wrong

with you and sometimes you know people in the cult will say well sometimes he knew the name and address and what was wrong yes they wrote it on their card but sometime he did not look at the card well look at the cold reading and look at the other gimmicks used he'll he'll peer across an audience and say you in the purple dress you have x y and z you in the red hat you have x y and z you in the scarlet handkerchief bandana in your hair you have he's using color association he's using location association he's got his own son who's collecting prayer cards and sneaking

up to the platform while he's praying and slipping notes to William Brannum I mean all of this is going on and people like James Randy or Harry Houdini who does the same kind of things they have huge questions about this because here's a man doing what I do in my fake stage act William Brannum is doing these things so my opinion has changed significantly I do believe that there are evil forces in this world I do not believe that in the way in which we thought this was an evil spirit I don't think is now I think this evil force could be using William Brannum to

create a higher form of evil through other ministries I can actually see this happening but I do not believe that there was a demon who was on the platform with him and telling him secrets because we know how he knows many of these secrets yeah you know there there's there's so much to look at there and I know we're going to do an episode here before very much longer where we actually examine specific cases through William Brown's ministry of of things that happened and start looking at the actual facts and evidence behind some of that. I'm looking forward to getting into that. But

you're exactly right, John. With with William Brown, you know, it seems to me at this point that it's a mix. There are things that I can definitely see were a scam, things where like you might say, I can see the strings, right? We can see the string in a certain way. You know, I'll use that proverbably. We can see proverbily. We can see the string attached, right? We know how it's happening. But then there's other things that I still don't quite know how to explain except to say there had to be something going on, perhaps in a

supernatural way that I still don't have an understanding of. But that in itself doesn't actually prove anything, right? You know, even if even if there was some supernatural manifestation that was happening in these events and in these meetings, that itself is not actually a vindication of somebody, right?

It's from a biblical standard because that's the whole thing. That's what all of this mattered in the message. This is our vindication that William Brown is whatever label we want to slap on him because there was healings and there was miracles and there was the face of Jesus in the sky and there was this and there was that and the piano did play itself and whatever other thing you want to we would say these things are how we know William Brown and was this great amazing something. But really putting on my preacher hat for a second.

Biblically, there's no that's not actually a basis to say any of that because you know, when we go through the Bible, the devil and evil forces are capable of counterfitting all of that. The devil could give people dreams he did in the Bible. The devil can teleport people. We can see that in the Bible in a sense. The devil can read minds and give prophecies and speak in tongues. We see all of that in the Bible. The devil can even quote the Bible in preach, right?

There's nothing there's really nothing that William Brown did that cannot be counterfitted by an evil spirit. And you know, when you say otherwise you're true. You're really just kind of being unfaithful to scripture.

But yeah, I just don't see any. It's not actually the proof that we thought it was when we was in the message of anything. One way or other, whether it was genuine or whether it was a gimmick and I'm of the opinion, I certainly see a lot of it now was indeed just gimmicks. I see the strings. So Charles, for me, it's this simple. If I am a baseball player and I tell you that I can throw a ball so fast that I will get a strike every time every time I throw it, it's gonna go across the plate and nobody can hit it. What would you expect me to be

able to do? I would expect you to always be able to throw a strike, right? You should never be able to hit the ball. Absolutely. If I'm a painter and I tell you that I can paint a house and without any tape at all, I can paint a straight line around every window, every door.

I can paint just to perfection with my hand. What would you expect me to do? I expect you to demonstrate your talent by performing what you told me you can do. Right. I mean, it's that simple.

For me, if I could tell you I can do this thing, I should be able to do it. Yet William Brannum tells people that he has this prophetic gift and don't look at the gift.

Don't look at the prophecies to see if they're correct. Look at this other thing. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And whenever it failed and it failed a lot, that's when you know Arx is, well, he's just a man.

He's just a man at this moment. You know, you just have to excuse him. He's a fallible man right now. But now over here, this is the voice of God. You better listen. Right.

And the way the message sets this stuff up, there is an out. No matter what William Brannum does, he cannot do wrong. Right. That's the way the mess. William Brannum cannot do wrong in the message.

Everything that's good is of God and everything if he misses, well, he's just a man. He's just a, you know, you can't use that to do anything or gauge anything and where we would come from.

Well, that was just the spirit of God trying to, you know, lead astray, the unbelievers, right? Like it's everything bad that happened. Look the other way. Yeah. So quick, quick caveat. So in our part of the message, sports was of the devil.

Yes. So William Brannum claimed to be a prophet. And he convinced his entire cult of personality, his entire, even to this day, they believe that these gimmicks, that these mysticism, spiritualism, clairvoyancy, necromancy, communicating with the dead, they believe that all of this Hocus Pocus was vindication for a prophet and that the prophecies themselves, it doesn't matter if the prophecies fail because it doesn't matter if he failed, he can talk to the dead.

It doesn't matter if he failed, he can move a bracelet. It doesn't matter if he failed because he can make a boy levitate whatever it is. He actually, this is called in the magician's world, slide of hand.

I can, I'm going to distract you from this thing and give you this other thing so you can focus on it. If you really think about it, his entire prophetic ministry was nothing but a magician's slide of hand.

I'm going to give you all of these signs, wonders, Hocus Pocus and... don't check the prophecies to see if they're true or not. Because if you look at what happened to this day, you've got men who aren't even in his cult of personality who say that his prophecies are real because slight of hand they've never checked to see did they actually happen and did he actually predict them before they happened?

Yeah, you know, one thing that is just, you touched on there is speaking to the dead. And will you bring him, did speak to the dead quite a bit? Claims meant true too. Yeah, claim that he did, right?

And, you know, there's instances of it, for example, he claimed to speak to his, his, his dead daughter. Remember that experienced Sharon Rose who died in the flood. He claimed to meet her and speak to her.

There's times that he talked about that he went to hell and, and experienced and, and saw and spoke to spirits there. There's times he claimed he went to heaven and he saw and spoke to the dead, the spirits of the dead, his dead converts in heaven.

So, communicating with the dead is something that William Brownam actually did a fair amount of in his ministry, which again is, is, is entirely, no precedent for that in Christianity whatsoever, but there is within spiritualism and there is within, within things in the Bible that are connected to evil, right?

Which is in the Bible could conjure and speak to the dead. But you don't see anything like that in the practices of Christianity or in the practices that are endorsed by God in the Bible.

No, and in fact, people who pretended to do this or if they could even, you know, if it was real in the Bible days, I still have my opinion that there were people claiming to do it and couldn't actually do it, but they were doing stage tricks and they were distracting God's people.

And there are actually passages that, in the old covenant, they stoned them to death for doing, for, it was called necromancy, you know, communication with the dead. William Brownam, there's a, I can't remember the guy's name, I wish I could, but there was a failed healing.

William Brownam claimed that some person was healed, the person was not healed and the family was distraught. This person died and William Brownam says that he went and spoke with this person after their death, spoke to them in the realms of the underworld and said, no, they're happier here and we want to stay here.

And so that was his soloist to the family, his comforting statement to the family so that they wouldn't look at him as a fraud. Yeah, and I've heard similar things of, you know, William Brownam did a lot of private interviews, and you, you probably are aware of that, where, and these things, I look back now, these are very spooky.

What were these private interviews? So these, these private interviews, basically people would come to him to have a personal prophetic encounter. And so he would schedule them, they'd be scheduled. they'd come for an appointment, basically, like, in my mind, what I'm comparing this to is, you know, you're going to, you know, Madame Clio, right? And so you're going, you've got your appointment, you're going into the room, and William Brownem don't have a crystal ball, but something is happening here where he is speaking into their life, he is telling them the future, what's going to happen to them, given them personal guidance, using these gifts

that he's supposed to have in his life. And they're very similar, right? Any, almost anybody I've talked to about these things, these are, they sound very similar to people going to a psychic or to a medium. Really, they, they sound like the exact same kind of thing. And again, I transfer that over, I don't see anything like that in scripture or in Bible, in these practices that William Brownem was doing. But he was, he was doing these things with vast numbers of people.

And unusual things came out of it, like you said, John, where he would even seem to be communing with the dead during these events. Yes. I've actually spoken with people who were in these private interviews, and I've studied the private interviews extensively. I don't know if you know this or not, William Brownem held private interviews with the members of people's temple when he and John's were working together. And again, this is during a time when spiritualism is highly fascinating by many members of Christianity were curious about it during the early, you know, 1900 to 1930. Well, then after that, a lot of that remained in the state of Indiana because

Indiana was one of the hot spots for spiritualism. So William Brownem is basically holding these private interviews. And it is actually anti-biblical. The Bible, there's many passages about fortune telling, about how evil fortune telling was. And fortune telling is basically wanting to know your own future. And people who claim that they give you your own future is fortune telling.

That's a fortune teller. And William Brownem is basically giving a blanket, wide open invitation to any people who want to know their fortune, come to a private interview, and I'll tell you more about what's going to happen in your life. That was his fortune telling. And people say, no, this is a divine gift from God. Well, maybe, but it's not the Christian God because the Christian God says, this is the lowest, purest form of evil that he's doing. And he's doing it in these ministries. He does this to people's temple and they go die in John's town. It's when you think

about it is, if it were real, which I do not believe it was, if it were real, this is the most scary thing for Christianity that has been since the days of Jesus Christ, this is the worst form of evil, if it were real, because it is so anti-biblical, but he claimed it was Christian.

Yeah, I know lots and lots and lots of people who went into these private interviews with William Brandham, and many of them came out with private prophecies, private things, and one that really jumps out to me right now, John, after what you said, there's a certain family I know they went into private interview with William Brandham, and there's certain troubles going on, and William Brandham tells them in this interview, everything is okay, everything is going to be okay, it's all going to be okay, he's insistent that everything is going to be okay, and then shortly thereafter,

their son commits suicide, and the whole thing was kind of target around that, and there are these really ugly things that happened coming out of these interviews, like that, that stories that have been handed down to us, and it wasn't okay, it wasn't okay, and it wasn't going to be okay, right, but they'll hold on to that, as though William Brandham had some special insight when the truth is, if William Brandham saw what was going to happen, why didn't he say, hey, you need to probably get rid of those guns in your house, or something like that, right, it wasn't good, it

was not good things that came out of these, there's a lot of bad that came out of these private interviews that I could relate. There was a guy that was in a wheelchair, and William Brandham told him that one day he would say the right thing, and rise out of the wheelchair, that was his healing, I mean, it wasn't that God's going to heal him, and he's going to raise up, and God's going to give him this gift of healing, it was that the man would say something, in other words, it's almost like an incantation, one day you'll say the right thing, and you'll stand up out of

that wheelchair, well, he actually died, a cripple, he died, you know, his very last day on earth, was when he came out of the wheelchair into the deathbed, I mean, it was literally that, he never ended up saying the right thing, so in his case, this fortune telling turned out to be completely false, and yet there are several people that I know who knew this man, who kept looking for him to say the right thing, even the fortune telling is wrong, I mean, it's even incorrect, and people, because of this, I don't know what you even call it, it's like a conversion to

spiritualism, they've been converted to this other gospel that's not even close to Christianity, and even the elements of the gospel itself that William Branham introduced has turned out to be false, and they still will continue to serve William Branham as their master.

Now, there's another, you know, on along that same line, there's another couple I know who had went to a private interview. These would be actually in laws of William Brownham. And William Brownham gave them a prophecy basically

of something that was gonna happen in the future. And they lived the rest of their life in anticipation and expectation of this thing happening. And they built their entire life around being able to realize this prophecy that William Brownham gave them.

And they lived their whole life. They made incredible sacrifices and incredible things, life changing things that could never be undone for the sake of this prophecy that William Brownham gave them. And now they're both dead today.

They went to their graves. And you know, it's actually when they get on their deathbeds that they realized that William Brownham lied to them. And so you think of that, these things that William Brownham did, they had impact on these people for their entire lives, right?

And then at the end of their life, and I've heard story after story after story of things like this happening on their deathbed, they realized William Brownham lied to me, deceived me, and have a total collapse of faith on their deathbed.

And all because of these things that William Brownham said and did in these private interviews. And it's startling, surprising, and it's very sad. It's incredibly sad. And I know several, too. Both of us, I think, go on for the next two hours and talk about these private interviews.

But for a sake of time, I'm not a preacher. I never claim to be nor do I ever really want to be. But let's say Charles, let's say that this was real. I no longer believe it was.

I have seen too many examples of faking it. And in my opinion, if you have a real gift and you can do a thing, whether it's a God or not, you're not going to do fake things to make people think that you can do the thing.

Let's say that this is real. Let's say that these things William Brownham is doing is real. Let's say that he actually did have this spirit guide on the platform and the spirit guide was magically diagnosing the name address disease, name address disease over and over and over again in these revivals.

Let's say it was real. What does the Bible say about this kind of thing? Is this what you look for to see if a man is a man of God? Is this what you look for to see if the man is a prophet?

Is this what you look for to make sure that you're following Jesus and not the antichrist? What does the Bible say about this? Well, if you go to Matthew chapter 24, this is actually what Jesus says to be aware of.

It's actually a... negative sign in a lot of ways. Jesus said that false anointed ones would come and be able to do such signs and wonders and miracles that it would deceive even the elect if it were possible. Signs, wonders, miracles are just as much a sign of the false anointed ones as it would be a sign of the true anointed ones. So that itself is not something you can use to discern the good from the bad because according to Jesus Christ Himself, both sides of the aisle, will be able to perform miracles and feats of that nature. So that itself is

not. Ultimately, as a minister, I come back to what the Apostle Paul would say as the way to discern the true from the bad, if they preach another gospel, if they are not preaching Jesus Christ, if they are preaching something contrary to apostolic teaching from the Bible, right? That is the ultimate discernor of what they are. And that again is where we run into the issues with William Brandham because as we said, these practices we see at his many of them have no precedent in the Bible. There are many things that he preached and taught that sadly, when we step back, we realize have actually departed

from the true Christian gospel and into something pseudo-Christian or entirely something outside of the Bible. And so that ultimately is how I would grade it. Now, I know there are others who would go back to the prophecy or rather the instructions in Deuteronomy. If a prophet says, do such a thing and it doesn't come to pass, then don't be afraid of them. So if there's any examples of failed prophecies, that's another way to discount a prophet. And so I think by either of those methods, we can in many ways discount William Brandham because sadly, we can see failures in his prophecies, failures in his teachings and non-Christian

practices in his ministry. I'm actually sad to see this episode close, Charles. For me, we're starting to get into the really fun stuff when we're talking about history and culture and lifestyles. And it's just one of many side stories that we're going to have as we go through this podcast. And again, I just, I'm so fascinated by this. I think I talk for hours and hours. But in order for the listeners not to get tired of us talking, I think we'll bring this to a close and we'll start preparing for next week. So if you've

enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandham.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William-Brandham and the healing revivals...

Read Preacher Behind the White Hoods, a critical examination of William Branham and his message, available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week, we've got a great episode coming.