The Birth of Latter Rain

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend, Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org. Together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Branham and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles today is the moment that everyone has been waiting for. I have gotten, I can't tell you how many emails and comments on the videos and

messages, private messages, text messages about when are you going to get into the restoration movement and when are you going to tie this history that we've been talking about to some of the leaders that exist today and some of the movements that exist today. And I always respond just, you know, hold your horses. We're going to get there soon. We have to lay some of the groundwork before we get to it. But now we're getting into basically what is the early stages of what will become later the new apostolic reformation as well as countless other movements, sex, cults. You can almost name

it bad theologies. All of these things that we see today having some way, shape, or form been influenced by the history that we're going to talk through today. I know, John, it's incredible stuff. The topic we're going to talk at today, the latter reign movement is I have so much literature, so much material on this, John. It's such a big topic. We're just going to scratch the surface today. Honestly, there's no way we can even get into it. Coming out of the message, and even my last years in the message, one of the things that drove me, once I started to discover that these

revelations we had been told, William Brannum brought to us directly from God, once I started to discover, hey, this is in the case, I became almost obsessed to figure out where did the stuff that we believe come from. In the message, you know, Oh, what you believe is what the difference between heaven and hell.

So I think that cult mentality did a little bit of driving me into figure this stuff out. But this library behind me, John, is the product of trying to figure out where the stuff that we believed came.

And a very large part of what we believe in the message came out of the ladder rain movement. And we're definitely gonna get in and start touching on some of that today. And you know, the ladder rain movement and the healing revival are two different movements, but they're parallel and intertwined a lot.

The two movements together could be referred to as the second wave of Pentecostalism. This is what starts off the second wave of Pentecostalism, which most historians will tell you, William Brannum was the leading figure in the second wave of Pentecostalism.

And this ended up producing the charismatic movement that you see, you know, charismatic movement came in as strong, especially in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And then from that, that kind of then birthed a lot of what you'd call today the New Apostolic Reformation.

And there is connections all the way back here to what happens in really the late 40s that kicks all of this stuff off. And yeah, I'm excited to talk about that, John. Do you wanna talk a little bit about how William Brannum came to Canada and how the Laterane was inspired by the stuff that he was doing?

Yes, and it's interesting because, so you took the approach of the books. And I'm, again, I'm fascinated by looking at the library that the viewers that are watching this on YouTube can see behind you, it's just incredible because you have literally recreated what William Brannum had in his own library.

And the access to the different doctrines, teachers, some of them good, some of them would be very questionable that he is based these quote unquote revelations on. Why took a much different approach? And we both interestingly came to about the same conclusion, but I've always been like this.

Whenever I was a child, my parents, they'd get upset with me for Christmas presents they bought me a radio. Well, the first thing that I did was take it apart and see what's inside of it, what made this thing work.

And when I discovered that William Brannum not only was participating in Laterane, but he was basically one of two main catalysts and he created a splinter group within Laterane that birthed Jim Jones and people's temple and some very, very horrific things.

I wanted to take it apart. I wanted to know what made it tick. So I started from the opposite end, not from where William Brannum started. I began researching all of these different trails that led back to Laterane.

And... Oh my gosh, I could not believe that this thing that I was in created this whole mass. And you write it all started in Canada because after, you know, we've been covering the episodes leading up to William Brownham's Birth of Fame, which is very important to understand.

Well many of those men had connections in Canada and the Pentecostal movement as a whole was spread throughout the United States and Canada at that time. And there are two key figures in that would be bringing, you know, the message throughout the United States and Canada as it was at this time, the Latter-Rain message is what it was called.

And those were AW Rasmussen and Joseph Mats and Bozay, who are two figures that I had heard their names over and over and over on the recordings of William Brownham. I just had no idea who these guys were.

Yeah, and they're big, they're big name guys. Like if you watch the deep, call the deep video, these are the men sitting literally and right behind William Brownham on the platform, they're at his meetings constantly.

Yes. And we'll get into it in the later episodes, but it's literally because of these two men that the message exists today, the charismatic movement, they literally kept his ministry intact after it began to implode.

And it all started basically with one semi-famous revival tour through Canada. William Brownham was asked to come speak at a few different small churches and conventions and by this time, everyone had heard of his 1947 fame that he had from the St. Louis travels that we've been talking about.

From 1945 to 1947, they were, his name was getting well-recognized and the spread into Canada. Right. And as you come into the middle of 1947, he comes in contact with Gordon Lindsay and Gordon Lindsay's who then organizes these meetings actually across Canada for him.

Right. Yeah. So it's quite a big deal and I know that historians have basically placed the origins of Laterane in North Battle for Saskatchewan, but from what I can tell from my research, that is just where Laterane became famous.

William Brownham was already establishing what would become the Laterane movement. It's just that these men helped carry it and basically helped make it popular in mainstream. You're right there. I think it is, you know, we historians will say that George Hutton met.

William Brannum or encountered William Brannum for the first time in Vancouver, and then he went back and the laterane revival fell out, but it's quite likely honestly that George Hutton had heard about William Brannum possibly as early as 1945.

George Hutton was connected with the Elam churches, and there's quite a few articles where he's connected with the Elam churches. And W.D. Kitson, who we've mentioned before, was very key in kicking off William Brannum's first revival meetings in 1945 and 46 in the period of the hybrising to his fame, obviously not the first time he preached ever.

He was also deeply connected to the Elam churches, and it is quite likely, I think, that George Hutton could have heard about William Brannum through Kitson and the Elam churches well before 1947. And certainly by 1947 he went to William Brannum meetings in Canada, and he really became enamored.

He became mesmerized and amazed by what he saw happening in these Brannum meetings in Canada, and he wants to go home and have the same kind of experiences in his church at the orphanage.

And that Sharon orphanage is, well, it's an orphanage, but it's also a Bible college, and there's a lot of young people there that grow up in the orphanage, and also ones that were there from around the region who'd went there for Bible study reasons.

So there's a group of students there that he's overseeing, and this is where things kick off, and the initial ladder rain revival kind of begins. One thing I think that's worth mentioning here is that George Hutton went to these revival meetings and was mesmerized, apparently, by the things that he saw in the miracles taking place.

But we have other eyewitness accounts from these exact same meetings, men like Alfred Pol, who is actually in a leadership with William Brannum on the platform through these things, and confirms that a lot of these things that appeared to be supernatural, especially the healings or hoaxes.

Vass numbers of people that William Brannum pronounced healed, like no doubt the very same people that George Hutton saw William Brannum pronounced healed and was mesmerized by and went back home. Vass numbers of those people actually died just shortly after William Brannum left town.

And so on that side of things, George Hutton was in one sense you could say taken, because what he saw was not entirely accurate, and the beliefs that he took out of it wasn't entirely accurate.

I think it's important to establish. There are two categories of people that we're going to be discussing. There were the people who were coming as part of the revival as participants. They were the ones who they, you know, some people were healed in these things.

We've established that before. There were a lot of people that were not, and there were a lot of people that were interested to see what was going to happen. That's category one. Whenever we're talking to people who were a member of the message sect, that's usually the category that they fall in.

They will usually say, well, there were healings. There were people healed, so this must have been by God. The other category of people, and this is the one that we're going to be focusing on heavily, were the ministers who were in Pentecostalism, as Pentecostalism itself was fading out.

And they were starting to see basically ministries fizzle out. And they saw the frenzy that was created by William Brannum and what this thing that he had could do. They honestly didn't care really what it was that he had, as long as it could bring the people back in.

And I think a lot of them, after reading some of the works of these men, who later said William Brannum was a good man, started out good, and then he went astray. If you examine what happened in each of their ministries, they're involved with this movement that's crumbling, and they see William Brannum come in and bring excitement to it again.

So they join into the hype, the excitement. They start drawing crowds. And I think each one believed that they could control what was going to happen after William Brannum left. So that William Brannum would excite the people to come.

They would establish control of their church, and then they would sway it in whatever direction that they wanted. But the problem was, this grew so much bigger than one single church that they absolutely lost control of this thing.

It was like a train barreling down the tracks with a section of no tracks. Suddenly the train has no direction, no heading, and they lost control of their own ministries. That's the category that we're going to be focusing on very heavily in this particular study.

Yeah, I think that's well said. You know, when the Pentecostal denominations, when the revival really kicks off, it's the Pentecostal denominations that are financing and sponsoring this thing at the very beginning. The money is coming from the denominational organization and structures themselves.

The UPC, the assemblies of God, if they're, you might say they're corporate, their organizational level are financially supporting and moving William Brannum in these meetings along. And so he has a very high level of support within these...

groups at the very outset. But very quickly, they realize that what's going on here is not all that it should be. Ranking members in these groups obviously realize that William Branum is not living up to his hype, right? And they hide this to some extent from the people, but the leaders recognize it. You know, in Canada, I mentioned Alfred Pol, there was another ranking leader in the Pentecostal Churches up there named J. W. J. Taylor. I mean, obviously, they recognize that all these people, William Branum, has prayed for, has died after he said they was healed. And church in Winnipeg, this is one of the better documented ones when William

Branum had his meetings in Winnipeg in this campaign, you know, in the same season that George Houghton was coming into contact with him. The church in Winnipeg, the newspapers discover that all these people, William Branum said, was healed, died. And they start confronting the churches.

So the Pentecostal churches go out and they conduct their own investigation of his campaign in Winnipeg. And they go out and they interview John, we have documentation on this. They interview every single person they can find that was at the meetings in Winnipeg, who William Branum said was healed. And the Pentecostal churches could not find a single person that was actually healed at that revival meeting, not one. And it turned out that they had all just been practicing positive confession. You know, I'm healed, I'm healed, I'm claiming it. But then at, so at these revivals, everybody's saying I'm healed, I'm healed, I'm healed, but a few weeks later,

it turns out they weren't really healed and their positive confession didn't work. And Winnipeg is one of the examples that I know where that apparently nobody was healed. When you're in this type of thing, and you have to have positive confession, otherwise that, you know, the minister's telling you it doesn't work, you're not going to say, well, no, it didn't work because then you've lost faith and you lose your chance at healing. Again, there were people healed, but a large majority of the people were not. And we, this will be published by the time this podcast goes out, but we recently discovered that this was such a problem for William

Branum that he had, like, like we saw with John Alexander Dowey, he had to start referencing healings that happened outside of the town he was currently in. And he began pointing the newspaper reporters back to Jeffersonville. He says, I just raised a man from the morgue back in Jeffersonville. Go back there and look at it. And interestingly, he did that in Winnipeg. That is where he did that at, John, at the very place where all of the people, where they couldn't find a single evidence of healing and even the church's hostinium couldn't prove it, you know. And the

newspaper reporters went back to Jeffersonville to verify and Jeffersonville evening news responded no there's no person who raised from a morgue we would that would have made news here we didn't see it so they continue to investigate and they found that there was another person who William Branham is the one who pronounced death on this person in any home in private and the family said that William Branham raised him from the dead because well William Branham said that he raised them from the dead yeah it's incredible and so if you if you put yourself maybe in like

George hot and shoes right and you're sitting in in this meeting from your perspective all these people are saying I'm healed it's amazing right all all nobody is saying I'm not healed everybody saying I'm healed and it appears that that this amazing widespread miraculous thing has happened right and of course he leaves and he goes back home and he don't know three and four weeks later that these investigations happen and they find out wait a minute yeah this was just positive confession it wasn't actual healings on the flip side William Branham comes back and he says

that this is basically his greatest healing revival tour ever that there were thousands upon thousands of people healed and this is what he's referencing the the people who investigated could not find one yeah and and he did pray for thousands of people and and and the same man here who goes through and tells a lot of the people who died he gives this is just one of multiple eyewitness accounts of what happened in in these Canadian meetings but he gives probably the most detailed one he he tells there was a small percentage of people who did get healed who did get

better but the overwhelming majority did not and a vast number of people that he pronounced healed died within a few weeks of him leave in town so yeah so but George Houghton sees this he swept up in it he he believes everything he's seeing is real you know he's got he's amazed by it he goes back to North Badaford North Badaford and to his the orphanage in the Bible college that he runs and they start having a prayer and a fast there and this starts in October 1947 they start praying they start fasting the students and they they start looking for some kind of a of a

miraculous outpouring they want these same things that they saw happening at William Branham's campaign meeting they want to see these same things happen in their Bible college basically and they're fasting they're praying they're they're looking for this and this is when the the ladder rain revival really starts to to begin by the time you get to February of that of the next year so February 1948 something starts to happen and the the young people there they start have very ecstatic experiences, very euphoric experiences, and they believe that they're experiencing something, you know, genuine, something supernatural.

And you know, when I look, when I look at the latter rain and I look at a lot of the people who participated in the healing revival in the latter rain movement, kind of like you said, John, I separate into two different groups because there's definitely people involved in this who are, they are charlatans. I mean, there's just no way around it.

They are dishonest, they're misleading. But then there's also, and this is perhaps the majority, you know, of the rank and file in there, they're honest-hearted people, right? Looking for, looking for some kind of connection to God, and they're just swept up in what's happening. And so there were, there were two groups of people that were involved in these revivals, in the healing revival, in the latter rain. You had your charlatans, right?

There were people who were definitely just in here taking the advantage of people and manipulating them, misleading them. But then there's also an element of people who are genuinely looking for some kind of experience with God, genuinely looking for something of a spiritual connection with God.

And, you know, I have a hard time, you know, obviously we don't know all these people personally, so it's hard to always know which category to put these people into. And sometimes, you know, you start out in one category and move to the other, as well. But there's people in here, they're looking, and I believe at the start, this is what the majority of the people to share an orphanage are like. They're people that are looking for some kind of an authentic experience with God. And they believe that what they've seen in William Brown's meetings is legitimate

and real. They want some kind of a, you know, repeat of this in their own midst. And so they go into this fasting and prayer. And after about four months of this, three to four months, they have this, this event, this lateral and revival event begins. And they all start having these ecstatic euphoric experiences. They, they begin, you know, they dance, they sing, they shout.

I don't know about the message sex you come from, John, but this is, this is very common where I've come from. And so this is, I don't speak about something, you know, I don't have, I have, I think I know exactly what this is like, okay? And, and they're, you know, they're slain in the spirit, they're prophesying, they're, all of this kind of stuff is, is breaking out in, in their, in their group.

And and this gives rise to what is then going to become the whole lettering movement and this is called the lettering revival and you know those those euphoric experiences that you have those ecstatic experiences that a person has.

They're things that they feel good. They're emotional releasing. They're something that it just feels good to have them and you know there's you see this in all kinds of religions too. This is not something unique to Christianity. You see it in Hinduism. You see it in pagan religions. You see it in the Hari Krishna. Different tribal religions even Islam. There's there is this genre of ecstatic experience across all of these religions.

And so it's not something that is inherently Christian even but it is it is a seemingly real phenomenon that that does happen in in religious movements. And so this kind of thing is happening in the lettering movement and starts to give rise. It gives rise to what what's going to take place next.

Yeah I went to churches from South Carolina to Arizona and everywhere in between message churches and there were some that had these experiences and you know I've even heard speaking in tongues and I think there's one church not many of them.

Then the brand of tabernacle the joke within the message cult was that the brand of tabernacle was called the wax figures museum because when you go to it it's dry and you know you're not allowed to even clap in this building whenever I was when my grandfather was in there.

So it was very very rigid. There was no emotion, no no frenzy whatsoever. And like you say I studied ancient religions, modern religions. I studied everything as I'm trying to examine this laterane and I you know there are a lot of people that still today believe that these experiences are by God and I'm not going to talk one way or the other about that. But what I can say is that I came to the same conclusion.

Psychologically there appears to be an effect among all religions, not just Christianity, that if you work yourself up into this frenzy, especially if you combine it with fasting. And sleep deprivation. And sleep deprivation. If you get your body into the state where the body is going into self preservation mode, that's generally how this occurs.

Then you become in this euphoric state that quite frankly there are several cults globally, not just Christian cults, but globally cults that form because they had a group of people who had this euphoric experience that they literally brought on themselves.

Now again, I'm not going to say it's not of God. It could be of God. I don't know. That's a conversation separate from this. But point I want to make here is that they assumed that this was the Christian God and that they were the only ones that could do it, and they were going to bring it mainstream into Pentecostalism because they had done it.

Right. And, you know, in their view, Pentecostalism has kind of dried out. It's become formulaic, it's in a spiritual drought. And basically, from their view, the original revival fires of Pentecostalism have died. And this thing happening in Latter-Rain, this thing happening in the healing revival, is a restoration, a coming back of that original fire that had started burning in early Pentecostalism.

Now the early Pentecostals, they believe they were the Latter-Rain fulfillment, right? And so that is kind of where this movement takes its name. They believe they're just, in one sense, a continuation of that Latter-Rain, and they call themselves the new order of the Latter-Rain.

So it's basically the Latter-Rain 2.0 is in their view. And what they do is now they think they have even a higher level of this revival fire than the original Pentecostal movement. And so you can imagine just at that aspect that it begins to create conflict with the older Pentecostal denominations, right?

Because in their view, we have Pentecostalism 2.0, okay? And the other Pentecostals are like, no, your guys are going crazy. Because you know, a rich Pentecostalism to begin with, it did have these experiences, right?

But the Latter-Rain takes it to another level, takes it to another level. And you can imagine the split that this would cause, because you've got, as we've examined up to this point, you've got the mainstream leaders of the United Pentecostal Church or what was becoming the early United Pentecostal Church, who were sponsoring Branham, who were bringing and establishing this new thing that brought excitement back into the churches.

And then suddenly, you've got this rift where you've got the new guys versus the old guys. And the new guys were basically saying, our version is better, we are the Latter-Rain. What happened back at Azusa Street wasn't.

It was something that was leading up to this event that we are now the leaders of. And the experiences that these people are having and the prophecies that they're issuing,

they begin to shape the direction that the Latter-Rain movement takes and the distinctive doctrines that they end up adopting in fairly short order after the revival goes on. And, you know, very early on, very early on, two major churches join the Latter-Rain.

Reign Revival. So it spreads beyond North Badafford and the Sharon orphanage, fairly early on. And these two key hubs become very, very important to the spreading of Laterane. And Joseph Matson-Bose's Church, the Philadelphia Church, it's located in Chicago. It is one of the most important churches. I'll tell you, it is the most important church that joins the Laterane Revival. Joseph Matson-Bose is more or less the informal head of the independent assemblies of God, the leading figure of the independent assemblies of God. And so the independent assemblies of God becomes a bastion very early on for the Laterane movement. And Bose published a magazine called

The Herald of Faith. You know, I have a whole collection of his magazines on my show. I should pull some off here to show you. We can put some on the screen for the people. I'll put some on the screen. But he, he, he, he becomes, his Herald of Faith becomes the premiere publication of Laterane Ideas, Laterane Concepts. And he is a very, innimly connected to William Brannum, and a very key figure in William Brannum's ministry, especially from the mid-50s on. He's, like he's there in the early fifties, but he probably becomes one of the most important figures

from the mid-50s. And there's some history there that is important to understand. You had the assemblies of God who wholeheartedly accepted this Laterane thing and then saw that they lost the reins to their own denomination, basically. And they, again, it caused a big split. And so they started separating. And the independent assemblies of God, which had joined into the main body of the assemblies, was led by A.W. Rasmussen, out in, I think it was Oregon, and then Joseph Matz and Bosé out of Chicago. They were basically two leaders of this. And when the split happened,

they chose the Laterane side of the split. So their independent assemblies of God churches, which was all across the nation, was in what was called the Laterane message. And that phrase basically became the message cult. So when you talk about the message, you're talking about the Laterane message, but then William Brannum went off into extremism of even this. And Joseph Matz and Bosé will get into this a bit into the future. He and Jim Jones literally salvage William Brannum's imploding ministry in the later years when Joseph Matz and Bosé brings Jones into the independent assemblies of God. Yeah. Again, that's, that's well said. So the

assemblies of God and the Pentecostal assemblies of Canada, which are cousin groups. They, they, they dentally spawn the ladder rain movement because they're the ones who bring the figures around that start the thing off.

And so by the time you get into 1949, they're going into damage control mode. They're trying to dump water and put out the fire of the ladder rain movement. And as they're doing this, they start trying to purge ladder rain from their organizations.

And many of the churches that are influenced and many, the people that are influenced by ladder rain, they start exiting assemblies of God churches. And they start joining independent assemblies of God, which it pre-existed.

Or another group that was very important that a lot of the ladder rain people went to was the Elam Pentecostal churches. So those are probably the two key ladder rain groups very early on, the Elam churches and the independent assemblies of God.

And I mentioned there were two important churches, individual churches that had joined the movement. One of them was the Philadelphia church with Joseph Matz in Bosé, who we're probably going to talk about him the most because it was definitely the most impactful.

But there was another church in Detroit called the Betheseda Missionary Temple. And that church was another very critical church that joined ladder rain very early on, like from the early days. And the majority of the publicity that ladder rain got and the spread of it can, the early spread of its ideas can largely be attributed to the publicity that these two churches did.

Because they were hubs of regional churches already. And so it's through those hubs that that ladder rain ideas spread into the broader Pentecostal community, right? Because Sharon Orphanage is a backwater. And so this is the conduit through which the ideas of ladder rain spread out into the broader Pentecostal circles.

It's also important to note that Indiana, the Indiana assemblies of God, Indiana itself became a rogue state because Roy Weed, who was the district superintendent, joined the message and defended the message on basically on the floor of the assemblies of God.

So you've got Joseph Mats and Boze from up in Chicago. You've got Roy Weed, who's working with Boze and basically keeping it together in the state of Indiana where William Brannum is based. Right.

And Roy Weed had a close relationship with William Brannum. Again, I've got some of his documented testimonies up here. He, like you said, John, he was the district superintendent of assemblies of God here in Indiana and he resisted the organization's attempt to purge ladder rain out in Indiana.

And so in 1949, that it... to purge Laterane out of the main Pentecostal organization started, but he resisted that effort here in Indiana and he held off that purge in Indiana for several more years.

It eventually happened. Eventually they did clamp down on Indiana and pushed the Laterane out of their churches, but it had a delayed time in Indiana. It didn't really start happen until 52, 53, 54, 55, and certainly by 56 was really the hard time when they really clamp down hard to purge out Laterane from their churches in Indiana. You've also mentioned John how the message is connected to Laterane. The Laterane movement is so complex. It takes so many twists and turns. It's doctrines and ideas evolve very dramatically in very short spaces of time. This is poorly understood. I'm going to be honest. This is poorly understood

in a lot of the literature that's out there. There's not a lot of good literature. There's not a lot of good sources on this. But I think perhaps one reason that we know about this, I always had John. I always had an awareness that we were descended from the Laterane in the message. Oh wow. I didn't know that. Yes. We, the Laterane stuff featured prominently in our sect of the message, our pastor preached Laterane topics. We always had a vague awareness. I always had a vague awareness that we were descended from Laterane. But the depth of it, I didn't really grasp until later years after I'd become a minister

and I started really investigating origins of our beliefs. The message is one of the main branches of the Laterane movement. The message is one of the central branches out of the Laterane movement. We're not the only branch. But we are a, we were a Laterane branch.

If you look at our cousin branches that came out of Laterane, so John, I watched a documentary one time on one of our cousin branches out of the Laterane movement. I could not believe what I would see. It was like the twilight zone, John. It's crazy. Like, oh my goodness.

They look like us. They talk like us. They preach like us. They sing like us. I mean, it's like I'm looking in a parallel universe. Their profit just has a different name. And it's incredible. And there are, yeah, there are multiple cousin movements. And we, our doctrines, our ideas, everything is so similar. And we all come off the same, the same Laterane root is why. Yes, from the main sect, they tried to hide this. So I was unaware that this Laterane connection existed. But like you said, after I knew that it existed, I started studying the transcripts of William Brown.

and I'm in, wow, I was, I was floored. Like the main phrase that Laterane used from the book of Joel is all throughout William Brown's sermon. So he was definitely in it. And what's really interesting is when I was thinking of it from a religious standpoint, when I thought of the message as a religious cult, instead of a political cult, I, I totally missed it because if you study it from that aspect, which I think is the mistake that all the historians do, they study the message, study William Brown and as though it's a religious cult,

it's too confusing to understand. You cannot understand it at all. But if you study it from the aspect that this was, or from the perspective that this was a political cult disguised as a religious cult, you're going to try to see how you can impact the largest number of people.

And during the early formation of Laterane, this was a widespread phenomenon. People were just flocking to it. Then whenever the split started happening in Christianity, now it became, you know, cut completely in half.

There was a split right down the middle. So 50% of your people was excited about Laterane and the other 50% hated it. So from a strategic perspective, from a political cult, you've just lost 50% of your audience so you have to distance yourself from it.

So William Brannum introduces this manifested son of God, doctrine and creates basically this offshoot branch of Laterane that's sitting off to the side so he can say, well, I'm not part of Laterane and I'm also not part of this other group.

I've got something better. Yeah, I think we're going to have to break a second episode to get into some of the details of this. And I definitely want to do that. I think, you know, John, the Laterane movement, a lot of the framework of message ideology is pure Laterane, okay?

So the Laterane, the main thrust of the Laterane movement is Restorationism. And the Laterane movement never really called themselves the Laterane movement. You know, they more thought of themselves as the Restoration movement. That's kind of an internal term that they would use the Restoration movement.

And they viewed themselves as, you know, restoring an early form of the Christian church, right? We are, they believe that early Pentecostalism had restored tongues and Holy Ghost Baptism experienced Jesus' name, right? And they believe now we have the next stage of Restoration.

And they, they take this Restoration mindset into hyperdrive, into overdrive. And they start touching all these different things. We're restoring this now and we're restoring that now and we're restoring. and that and the other and this forms the framework which they operate in and this also forms the framework that the message and all the other ladder rain groups work in.

And also, John, it forms the framework that carries down all the way to the present day through all these intermediate groups into some of the charismatic movement and the things of the day that you'd call the new apostolic reformation.

It's basically a concept and restorationism in general is not a, it's not a new thing. There's been restoration movements throughout the history of the church. But this iteration of the restoration movement that really came into focus with ladder rain, it defined how the majority of people today look at restorationism, right?

We go back three, 400 years ago, the majority of Christians, I mean, hardly any Christians would have been of a restoration mindset. But today, as a result of ladder rain, you know, a very large percentage of Christianity is restoration minded.

There's an idea that the church is being restored back to an original form and we want to find out what that original form is and we want to adopt that original form. And ladder rain and William Brannum specifically have a key role in defining what that looks like, how restoration is defined in broader terms.

And some of the key things, and I think we're going to have to get into this in another episode to go deeper into it. But some of the key things is it's a restoration and emphasis on the signgifts, on the manifestations of the spirit, it's very experiential.

It's a restoration of these power, power to the church through the Holy Spirit. Another one is restoring like a form of church leadership back to what they viewed as the early church leadership form.

And so this comes into the concepts of fivefold ministry, which I definitely want to dive into that deeper at some point. And so the concepts of fivefold ministry and the structure of leadership that exists in the message and in these other ladder rain groups and derivatives of that ideology just spread far and wide throughout charismatic Christianity as the years go on.

I think it's also important to understand the fertile ground that existed when William Brannum brought this, because these actually weren't new ideas. William Brannum, as we've said, William Brannum brought nothing new. He just repackaged what other people had.

Well, whenever the Azusa Street revival Pentecostals, the original ladder rain, were spreading one of their key figures in their theology was John Alexander Dowey, who will also get into in later episodes, but his religious cult was so widely popular in the United States that he was literally taken over the United States by storm. And in the latter part of his life, he began claiming that he was Elijah the Restorer. And he convinced his entire sect of what was it? It was over 100,000 people, I think, in the United States, that he was basically, he repurposed the book of Malachi. Malachi,

when it talks, you know, Malachi chapter four specifically, when it's talking about the restoration, he refocused it from the passages in Luke, which, you know, talk about the actual restoration that happened when Jesus came. And he points it to himself, saying that he is this Elijah that's the calm, the Elijah Restorer. And he starts bringing the restoration movement in. He's very key in understanding how the fivefold ministry spread. And this embedded itself in Pentecostalism.

So you've got 100,000 people plus all of the people that they influenced. So you amplify that. So like 300,000 people in the United States believe that there needs to be a restoration of the early Apostolic gifts in the church, and that there must be this key figure to come, who is basically the return of Elijah, etc. Some people use different personas, but the main, the one that stuck, I believe, was the Elijah, because of, basically, because John Alexander Yeah. One thing that the restoration movement does is it, is it, is it unmovers the movement

from historic Christianity, right? In a lot of, in mainstream Christianity, historical precedent within the church plays a big role, right? There's an emphasis on, this is a historic church teaching. You know, should we change it? It's historic. You know, did we believe this wrong for 2,000 years? And now we need to change it. So that's kind of how a lot of the, you know, streams of Christianity will look at a lot of things. But with this restoration views that become, it goes into hyper and overdrive with the laterane movement. They become unmoored from that. Historic teaching now has, has no value. Well, the church has been wrong for 1,000 years,

2,000 years, and now we can change this teaching, and because we're restoring back to the original. So it provides the framework for, basically, somebody, if they want, can cross out any doctrine that they don't want and revise it.

under the, under the heading of restorationism. I think that's very key to understanding what's coming in the next episode because like people are familiar with the charismatic movement and the hypercarismatics. I think what people missed off a lot of the time is that you had the laterane and then you had the hyperlaterane, very similar to what you have with the hypercarismatics.

Yeah. And, and so I think that's a great way to put it because the groups that come out of laterane, John, they, they take these doctrines and they go in a variety of directions.

You know, we talked about manifested sons of God, fivefold ministry emphasis on the sign gifts. They, they take these and they, they go to different degrees of radicalness with some of these ideas. Yeah.

Some of these groups are become incredibly radical. Some of them moderately radical. Some of them only a little radical, right? Right. So they take it, it gets different flavors of, of extremeness in, in these different groups.

And some of them emphasize different parts over others. So there's one other very big thing that comes out of laterane. And this is something that intrigues me very, very, very much, John. And it is, you know, in the message, we always had this, there is always a strong emphasis on Israel, you know.

Israel is, you know, is, is, is central to the end time teachings. It's central to how lots of things were looked at. And that focus on Israel also comes back to the laterane movement.

That, that viewing of Israel's place, I'll say this. That comes, it takes a turn with the laterane movement. So British israelism was another influence into laterane and the Pentecostal movement. And we need to do full episode on British israelism at some point.

And remember William Brannum tried to appeal to these people that were heavily influenced by British israelism. Yes. Yes. Not only that, remember you also had John Alexander Dowey, who his doomsday prediction was also tied to Israel.

So he heavily influenced all of these people to think Israel is the key. So William Brannum, when he reinvents a stage persona, he says, my angel came on the same exact day that Israel became a nation.

He's appealing to this laterane hyper carous, hyper laterane movement. So British israelism has been in Pentecostalism from the early days. Like you mentioned, John Alexander Dowey had a brand of British israelism that he believed and promoted.

The whole premise of his Zion illinois was founded on British israelism. Like we are we are Israel, you know. Oh, you British Israelism in a nutshell started out as a belief that the Anglo-Saxon people are the 10 lost tribes of Israel, and the Jews are the tribe of Judah.

So it starts out that way. It starts to take a racial turn in the 1890s. It becomes increasingly racial by the 1930s, but in the 1910s, 1920s, it makes inroads into Pentecostalism and early Pentecostalism embraces British Israel's thought in a flavor.

Charles Parham was strong on British Israelism. A lot of the key figures in early Pentecostal were British Israelite. There were two message key figures in the message that were British Israel supporters. Klim Davies who worked with William Brannum in the early years through the Kardashian family's sponsorship of William Brannum in Avakagopian.

They also sponsored Klim Davies. He was actually one of the leading spreaders of British Israelism in Canada. And Gordon Lindsay, who became William Brannum's campaign manager, was speaking at these events, helping basically distribute British Israelism throughout Canada and the United States.

Yeah. Lindsay was a member of the Anglo-Saxon World Federation in the 1930s and into the 1940s. And British Israelism, we can trace it into the Sharon Orphanage through the Angulous Temple. So the Angulous Temple had a Bible college there.

British Israelism was one of the topics that was taught at the Angulous Temple. So this is Amy Semple McPherson's Church in the, I believe it's in Los Angeles. Howton took the racial side of the equation and he was basically spreading the notion that the blacks were inferior to the whites in his version of British Israelism.

He did. And there was a man in the Angulous Temple named Wesley Swift and the Christian identity theology, a very racial version, a racist version that was birthed out of British Israelism, was birthed in the area really of Los Angeles by Wesley Swift and his predecessor, man named Philip Monson.

So yeah. That became William Brannum Serpent Seed doctrine, which is another side show we have to have at some point. Exactly. And so connecting this up to the Sharon Orphanage, Angulous Temple, so we're not saying Angulous Temple today is racist, or I don't even think they believe British Israelism any like, this is all faded into the past.

Back in those days, they were sponsoring the Sharon Orphanage financially, right? And there was ties from Angulous Temple and that two Sharon Orphanage. So, and we know that these doctrines were picked up, I mean, we have their, we have their teachings and rights, but anyways, British Israelism is where this focus on Israel originates from.

And by the time you get into the 1930s and into the 1940s, the aspect of British Israelism that the Anglo-Saxon people are the Ten Lost Tribes has started to fade away. But in order to keep a lot of the other end time teachings, they've transitioned to the Church's no longer biologically Israel, but the Church's spiritual Israel.

And so this then brings in that focus on Israel that spreads out through the latter-rain movement. And William Branum, he picks up all of these doctrines and more from the latter-rain movement and brings them into the message.

And this is also why, after he's really started to come in strong contact with the latter-rain movement, that he goes back and he re-invents his angelic visitation story to try and line it up with, I became a prophet, the day Israel became a nation.

Because within the confines of the latter-rain movement, they say, every time a restoration event happens in Israel, a restoration event happens in spiritual Israel, the Church. So... And he chose the wrong date. He said, I became this in 1947, but Israel didn't actually form until 1948.

Right. So there's a very heavy focus on restoration in Israel tied to restoration in the Church. And that idea, that concept, which is, I believe, is a foreign-wide concept, certainly in the message, and within other churches touched by the latter-rain movement, that concept, that ideology is birthed in latter-rain as well.

So there's these really interesting things that happen in latter-rain. And John, I'm like just chomping at the bit that deep dive in each of these different things. I don't know if we have time.

Do we have time today or are we going to do another episode? I think we're going to have to split into another episode. I get asked several times how big is the influence? How widespread is the influence?

Because we're just talking about the message call, right? But if you go back and you study this history and take any author, not just our word, just take an author and read about latter-rain, you've got Methodist, you've got Baptist, you've got basically every mainstream denomination at some point was influenced by latter-rain.

Not just influence, some of them became integral parts of latter-rain until basically it got exposed as heresy. There were a lot of people who were involved with this, but after they separated the problem is, some of them had become so fundamental in helping spread it that they- It didn't easily reverse their false teaching.

So some of the false teaching that they had continued in these mainstream denominations of faith. Yes, and, you know, in terms of broad impact, I mean, there are, at the minimum, there are hundreds of millions of people who were infected by what the ideology that came at, at the minimum hundreds of million.

I believe it's, you know, it might be fair to say since excess of a billion people have been infected by this idea. It's global. This is a global impact. Yes, what came out of Latter-Rain is very, very impactful.

I mean, charismatic Christianity would not exist without the Latter-Rain movement. So we could, we could say that the charismatic movement exists because of what happened in Latter-Rain. This is the forerunner movement that gave birth to the charismatic movement and, and all its outcraftings.

Let me, let me just give a book here if someone wants to, to read on some of these things. Like I said, there's lots of, there's not a lot of great material out there, but this is one book that is pretty good.

It's called The New Charismatics. It's by Michael Moriarty. This book is actually from the 90s. It's actually really good. I've still read, I get my copy coming, but I've actually started reading it and I'm surprised at how much it actually has that is correct.

Right. There's, there's so much of this information that in a lot of places it's just lost to history. And if it wasn't for the fact that some of us know that we are descended from Latter-Rain and we know the internal histories, I don't, I don't think anybody would even know some of this stuff anymore.

But, but there are some people out there like Michael Moriarty who, who do know what happened, know how to trace and connect all the people together. And again, I can just verify through personal knowledge a lot of what he says in here is true.

That's probably the best book on it that I know of. One of the things that he got right, see there's a point in time in which there was the voice of healing revival. That's what it was called.

And William Brannum was the leader of this. And then the Latter-Rain events happened. And basically Latter-Rain voice of healing revival, both of them merged. And it's very difficult for people to separate this because they merged briefly and then they split.

So after they split, now you've got, you know, people on both sides of the aisle, those who love Latter-Rain, those who hate it, they were all in the same pool at one time. But this book actually brings it out.

William Brannum was basically, without William Brannum, you had no Latter-Rain. He's the one who basically created this movement. And I think that book is the one that actually got it right that it started before the Sharon Orphanage event.

William Brannum is basically laying all of this groundwork. Then Sharon Orphanage is what took it mainstream. Yeah, there's there's a lot there. You know the the teachings the doctrines went far and wide out of ladder rain and they take different forms and I look forward to just following some of those twists and turns maybe in our next episode and maybe we can we can at least at a high level explain some of the key distinctive doctrines and try to trace them for people through the groups down to the present day to show how how the doctrine spread yeah there's so

much there and like like you said how do you split this I mean there it's such a complicated ball of wax anyway but how do you break it up logically and I think I think for a sake of time we'll just basically end it here and then in the next episode continue on with how the restoration movement birthed how it began how it exploded how it splintered there's so much that we could get into so I'll cut it short 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-Branum.org

and Christian Gospel Church.org for an overview of the historical research of William Branham and the healing revivals read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Branham and his message available on Amazon Kindle and Audible join us again next week we've got a great episode coming