The Manifested Sons of God

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 ChristianGospelChurch.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, I am still reeling from what we just found, and our listeners are going to hear this long before this episode airs because

we record these several weeks in advance, but I just went up to Misha Waka, where all of this alleged history was beginning to unfold, and we identified a herald of truth magazine through one of the rabbit trails that completely overturns William Branham's entire history. William Branham was not only a leader of the early Pentecostal Church, he was the editor of their publication, and it just completely overturns the life story that I grew up, and it was a deep, deep part of my personality. These life stories, I was fully immersed in all things Branham, and to find out

it was so fictional, not just his own past, but now we're talking about his religious past, he completely rewrote his own religious history to cover up the fact that he was a leader in the early Pentecostal Church. It's really an exciting find, and you know John, I have been looking for those magazines for ages and ages, and the reason is I know they exist, I know they exist, and I know, so Doug Weaver, he wrote a book called The Healer Profit, and this is one of the more scholarly books on William Branham's life, and when I read this book, it appears to me that he

actually found some copies of that magazine somewhere, and somewhere there is a collection of those magazines from Kitson, and I would love to uncover the whole pile because it's to someone like me or you, John, who is minimally familiar with all of the dose of William Brannum, it would just be a treasure trove. And I know just in what Doug Weaver found, he found all kinds of conflicts. There's things that are only in his biography as a result of him finding some of those magazines. So I would love to find the collection and, you know, hey, if there's

any listeners out there and you know where Kitson's Herald of Faith magazines are and you want to snap a picture and shoot them to us, man, I would love that. I'll send you a handwritten thank you card. How about that? I'll take you to dinner. Or a more blanket statement. If you have anything from the years 1934 to 1947 of William Brannum, we've just learned that his entire history from 34 to 37 was complete fiction. So we want to know the real history. Yeah, it's a large part of it is reroute. You know, there's kernels of truth through there. But he just rearranges things and then

a lot of it is as we've went through. We've went through episode after episode after episode after this point. So I think a lot of our hopefully our listeners are aware without us having to go through every detail of what was mistaken in his early life. But yeah, he just he reroute it all.

He reroute it all as he as he started to rise to fame. And that wasn't the first time he reroute it all. No. And it's not going to be the last time he rewrites it either. You know, what's funny is it actually has, I don't know if you've thought through this yet or not, this actually has a tie into what we're about to talk about today. Because as we have explored in other episodes, there were key points in William Brannum's life where he got angry. And when he got angry, he went off the rails and introduced, you know, horrific doctrines. The biggest example we had on one of our podcasts

is he got angry and therefore the doctrine, the covenant of polygamy was introduced through his anger. Well, it appears based off of what I'm seeing here, he was a leader, a leader who wrote the newsletter for the early Pentecostal church. And then if you look at the transcripts and recordings, he gets pretty angry about the Pentecostal church and how they cut him off. And then he introduces this thing called the manifested sons of God doctrine. And oh my gosh, if you really put those two pieces together, his anger literally created the doctrine that was the single most empowering

thing for Jim Jones and people's temple. Yeah, you know, William Brannum did start having falling out with the Pentecostal churches, really starting in the late 1940s. And I know a few episodes down the road. I want to, you know, deep dive into that topic as well. But, you know, as you're coming into 1947, 1948, and even into the little in the 1949, he's still on the good side of most to the Pentecostal organizations, and he's especially the United Pentecostal Church, he is very popular there.

And you're right. The ladder rain kicks off, you know, I think we've mentioned in recent episodes, he went up into Canada in 1947. He held some meetings up there and inspired some people to start having a revival looking for similar things to what they were seeing happening in his meetings.

And this kicks off the ladder rain movement. And our last episode, we started deep diving a little bit into some of the doctrines of the ladder rain movement. And we're going to continue to do that today. And, you know, before, before we do, John, there's two things I just wanted to show,

just put a picture up to show the people. The message is one of the main branches of ladder rain. Here is one of the public, some just some samples from the publications that are sect of the message put out. Here's, we did a whole, you know, full spreads on the ladder rain.

Here is a cover from sermons on manifested sons of God, right? These are from the, this is from 1970 and 1971 that these were published in our group. And I just want to remind our listeners, I am the formerly the assistant pastor of the second oldest continuously operating message church in the world. Our people were there from the very early days of this stuff, our pastor, and then they converted into the message at the same time that manifested sons of God was being formulated. And so we, we, we, terminology changed over the years. The way these

things were talked about was changed, but the basic underlying concepts and ideas did not change. And when I talk about this stuff, I'm not, I'm not just completely talking about theory and things I've read out of books. Of course, I've read lots of books, but we lived this. We lived this. We, and so we're also including, you know, personal experience into this. I have heard manifested sons of God sermons preached. I have preached manifested sons of God sermons myself, John.

We just use different terminology towards the later years as the group, you know, as the, as certain things started, have stigmas attached to it. So I, I know exactly what I'm talking about.

I came at this from a different perspective. I was not a preacher, but I was around my grandfather who was a leader in the cult. And in the main sect, see, there's, there's a history that a lot of people don't know. This manifested sons of God was exposed as one of the purest forms of evil, because it literally empowers people to think that they are the new Jesus Christ. And in doing so, they became a different Jesus, and a different Jesus is the lowest form of evil according to the Bible. My grandfather would never use,

that phrase, manifested sons of God, and in private, he would talk about the manifested sons of God and how God was manifested in William Brannum, and we heard these wonderful stories of the manifestation of God through the manifested sons of God doctrine in William Brannum, but then publicly, it was completely whitewashed.

So if there were a visitor who knew that this was heresy and came into the church, they would have no clue that my grandfather believed this. And in fact, when I first started my website, I think I mentioned that, and I got called out.

There were several people who came and just, you know, through private messages and what not, said, no, your grandfather was against this. And then in his resignation speech, my grandfather, I'm trying to remember the exact phrase, but he says, we saw God, God was manifested in human flesh in William Brannum.

He was God, tabernacle in the flesh, nothing short of it. Which is the complete fulfillment of the manifested sons of God theology. So I knew that my grandfather believed this. I knew that it was privately taught among all of the leaders of the cult, but they all purposefully omitted the phrase manifested sons of God because they did not want people to realize that they were preaching heresy.

Yeah. And, you know, the way that the manifested sons of God theology and concepts go, it varies, right? There's different. There's an original concept that comes out of Laterane, but it takes different forms in different places.

And I want to kind of try just to talk a little bit about the basic concepts because, you know, when we say manifested sons of God, I'm sure at this point, most message people listening to us, well, we don't believe that.

We never heard that. Well, that's because you don't know what we're talking about yet. And you haven't taken the time to actually look into any of these things, right? Because it's actually, they're the ones who don't know what they're talking about, originally.

They've just believed what their leaders have told them and cut out the history of these things. But I'm going to talk, I want to talk a little bit about the set way. Hopefully, the average message believer and other people out there will get the basic concepts of this and understand where things they believe originated in this thought.

And, you know, in our last, last couple episodes, we talked about how the Laterane Movement, it developed a kind of a new and unique take on restorationism. And within the framework of restorationism, they believe they were restoring a model of model form of church leadership.

And they called that those concepts, the fivefold ministry and the Laterane, they actually popularize that. firm, fivefold ministry, and they played a key role in defining what that term meant. And most groups out there today who use the term fivefold ministry are using a definition or part of the definition that actually took form in the ladder rain movement.

You can find some uses of that term before ladder rain, but ladder rain is the ones who took that, played the key role in defining it and popularizing that term. And most of these groups, they tended towards creating autonomous churches, led by singular authoritarian leaders with really a capacity for near, total control of their followers.

And in some of the groups, the leaders were benevolent, right? And in other groups, the leaders were malevolent, okay? And so, depending on what kind of leader you had in your group, these things drifted into varying forms of authoritarianism.

And so, the fivefold ministry, though, okay? The fivefold ministry, that was just the means, right? But manifested sons of God was the end, right? That was the end goal. The fivefold ministry was a means to get to manifested sons of God.

So, you know, if you're in a church that embraces fivefold ministry concepts, realize that itself flows out of the broader manifested sons of God teaching. Fivefold ministry was the means to reach manifested sons of God.

And so, I'm trying, I guess, hard to kind of talk about this a little bit in generic terms, John. But the actual terminology, like I said, it's changed a lot since the initial concepts were developed in Latter-Rain, and kind of each splinter groups developed their own lingo to talk about the subject in. Some of that change of terminology, like we mentioned, is on purpose because the original manifested sons of God terminology comes with a whole lot of baggage attached to it. And a lot of the people, a lot of the people who believe a derivative

of manifested sons of God theology, they try to distance themselves from Latter-Rain. So, they alter that terminology a bit. But really, it's the same concepts, then it can be traced back to the Latter-Rain movement. And so, I think, for me, what's most important about the, thinking about Latter-Rain is trying to catch the concepts of it, rather than the terminology.

Because if you can catch the concepts of it, you'll see these concepts repeated in the things you believe, even though maybe your group has changed the terminology around it. Yeah, to put it into a human perspective, this manifested sons of God theology is like an illegal automatic assault rifle. If you put it in the hands of somebody who is criminal and dangerous, this is a dangerous weapon that can destroy lives. If you put it in the hands of a good person, it is still an illegal and very dangerous assault rifle. So, this is not a good thing that we're

talking about. This is... Again, it's one of the purest forms of evil, and though William Brannum isn't historically credited for creating it, the men who used the manifested sons of God theology to create their sub-sex and their splinter groups, based their entire theology on William Brannum's key elements of the manifested sons of God theology.

And if you look at the timeline of when this was introduced, he mentions the manifested sons of God from the very earliest portions of the recordings that we have access to here, but then around 1963, William Brannum becomes heavily involved in the manifested sons of God theology teaching.

Yeah, and you know, in some groups, like some groups this takes on a very, like I said, extreme form, and I think it is perfectly fair to call it evil, where it goes in some groups.

I mean, obviously, what Jim Jones did with it, I mean, that's evil, right? There's no question about it. You know, other groups, they have a very watered-down version of it, and it's, it takes, it's maybe somewhat more benign in some groups.

So it just depends, how terrible it gets depends on how the leaders use it to achieve their ends. So, you know, the earliest formulation of manifested sons of God, of manifested sons of God concept that I am aware of, John, the oldest formulation that I know of it is wrote in a book called The Feast of Tabernacles by George Warnock in 1951.

And I, I have a copy of that book, but I've landed out and I, I'll try and get that back, maybe I can show a picture of it in the next podcast, but George Warnock, he was, that, is the first book I'm aware of where the formulation is wrote down, 1951.

And Warnock did have a copy of that book in his personal library. That's how I was able to even know that book existed, was through, looking through pictures of his library. And Warnock was one of the leading figures in the latter-rain movement, and he and Warnock and Warnock influenced each other a whole lot.

And what Warnock wrote in his book is very nearly identical to the teachings and concepts that, that William Brannum also taught. And let me, let me also point out here to John. So Harold the Faith, here's Harold the Faith magazine.

This is another copy of it. Harold the Faith magazine, as I mentioned before, is a really important publication to latter-rain. And like on this page, you know, it, it tells us that their publication merged with the latter-rain messenger somewhere here before 1950.

So you know, if you really want to get a great idea and a good understanding of what's happening in latter-rain, you, you want to look in these Harold the Faith magazines because they, they track what's going on.

among leaders. The Herald of Faith really is the central publication of the Latter-Rain movement in the heydays of what's going on. And so that's another great resource to look at. But anyway, at the same point that Herald of Faith has become in the central publication of Latter-Rain, George Warnock is also publishing that book, The Feast of Tabernacles. And like I said, a lot of what he put in that book's identical to what William Branham taught on the subject. And so so there's a really important point about manifested sons of God theology that I do want to

point out just to just to try and share the concepts with our listeners. But the manifested sons of God theology introduces a concept that before the bodily return of Christ, there will first be a spiritual return to the church, okay? And his spiritual return to the church would then bring about the manifested sons of God. So that's an important component. And that Latter-Rain doctrine that the presence or the return of Christ would come spiritually was called the Perugia doctrine, John. I'm sure that's a name that's sent enough all kinds of alarm bells to message people right now. That was called Perugia in George Warnock's 1951 book. And it's about

the presence of Christ returning. You know, in the message most people will say Perugia, that's leave ails invention. No, no, that's Latter-Rain doctrine from manifested sons of God. And you know, almost the entire message believes in some form of the Perugia doctrine. Most of them won't call it Perugia by name. A lot of them use other terms. We used other terms in our group. But most people in the message believe that Christ would return spiritually to the church before we return bodily to earth. And most people in the message believe that already happened, right, John? Most people in the message believe that Christ, the spiritual return of Christ, already

occurred. And I know in our sect of the message and most of the sects out there, I'm aware of believe that happened in 1963 when William Brannam was out in Arizona when that cloud appeared.

And the way the different sects take that varies, right? Not every sect interprets it the same way. Some like, you know, like you mentioned with your grandfather, they more or less believe William Brannam became that manifested son of God or God incarnate roughly at that point in time.

Yeah, I agree. And you know, there's a lot of history here that it's very difficult and complex to piece together unless you study it deeply. The Feast of Tabernacle's book came out. I can't remember the date you said it was in the 50s, I believe. 1951. 1951. Well, leading up to this, see William Brannam taught that Jesus, and he emphasized the word manifested very heavily in his sermon.

he would say that God manifested himself into Jesus and that the people believed through signs and wonders, and he would always use those two together, manifested in Jesus, signs and wonders. And William Brannum had this very bad habit of taking verses of the Bible and reversing their meaning out of context.

In other words, the context means one thing, but he would reverse it to mean something else to fit his ministry, and the phrase, unless you see, there's a Bible verse, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

To the normal reader who understands the context of that scripture, it's saying that you guys just really don't believe, and you're seeking to see these signs and wonders, William Brannum would reverse this phrase to think it's a good thing to see signs and wonders, and then he would advertise, even in the newspapers, come see signs and wonders.

And he would tell the people that the reason they see these things is that God is manifesting himself in his ministry, and he doesn't come out and call it the manifested sons of God doctrine.

And even in the early years, I think the earliest of identified it was in late November 1947, as when it begins, and then 48, it really becomes heavily used. But he's essentially telling the people that if they come to these meetings, they're going to see God manifested in his meetings, which isn't necessarily a bad thing until he transitioned it to become, there are levels of manifestation, and I, William Brannum, have the highest level of manifestation.

And once he convinces all of the audience to believe that he had this superior manifestation of God, that basically incites Warnock to come up with this doctrine. He's literally manipulated into this doctrine by Brannum, but he runs with it, and he gives it a name called the manifested sons of God.

And he literally is just regurgitating these very, very wrong statements by William Brannum. Yeah, that manifested sons of God takes, like I said, different shapes in different groups, like in Warnock's formulation, he is more or less under the belief that every member of the church is going to become a manifested son of God, right?

And William Brannum, or Jim Jones, and some of the others take it that I, the leader, am going to become the manifested son of God, right? So there's that key distinction in how some of these groups take it, and that's an important distinction.

And, you know, I think my personal opinion is this, you know, I believe that George Warnock was certainly inspired by what William Brannum... was doing, like you mentioned, and he's he's trying to find a way to place what he believes he's seeing happening in William Bran was meeting. He's trying to find a way to place it in the Bible. And so he takes elements of what he sees William Bran am saying and doing and he does formulate that into manifested sons of God. And then William Bran am takes aspects of what Warnock came up with and he adopts Warnock's ideas and he adapts them

for his own purposes. And my my thought is they're influencing each other. And I I don't know, like I said, I'm not sure necessarily who originally formulated the fully formed manifested sons of God theology. I'm sure Warnock is at least the first one to have produced it in in any kind of form that we can read. But William Bran was preaching the same concepts we know roughly at the same time. So exactly how it all came together is a little is still a little vague to me personally. But either way, George Warnock, William Bran am and this very early ladder rain movement are formulating this together

at the same time and and inputting into each other. And you know, the the concept of Christ returning twice to the twice, you know, first spiritually then physically, you know, that idea that that developed in ladder rain, that's not actually even a new concept itself. That's actually Jehovah Witness belief. And they were relying somewhat on Charles Tase Russell's writings as they came up with these concepts. So so even the even the basic concepts into manifested sons of God that created the silo theology, none of the there's not a single concept that's really new in there. But what's new is this formulation

that they come up with, right? They're they're taking a little Pentecostal idea and a little Jehovah Witness idea and a little Adventist ideas and a little Baptist ideas. And they're just kind of picking and choosing what they want, right? To bring together a new formulation of doctrine. And really you see William Bran and Roy Davis were doing that from the very beginning, John, the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, right? Like they're they're merging just all kinds of ideas together to come up with, trying to come up with some kind of a unique new formulation. If you want to read about, um, ladder rain, perusia, if you want to read about

the ladder frame, perfecting of the saints, if you want to read about the ladder rain manifested sons of God, I'd recommend getting George Warnock's book, the feast of tabernacles. I'll try and get that to hold up here in another episode. And I'm not going to distill out that whole book to everybody, you know, in this podcast. But I think any message reader that sits down and reads that book is is going to realize, oh my goodness, this is where a whole lot of stuff we believed came from. And, um, yeah, it's it's something else. And I thought I would

Try maybe just to share a little bit of a high level overview of that manifested sons of God theology to the listeners, and maybe just share a few key scriptures that you can find in Warnock's book and that the way William Brannum used it as well.

But Ephesians 4 is actually one of the key verses, in verse 8 of Ephesians 4, it says Christ gave gifts to the church. Verse 11, it says they were apostles, prophet, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and then verse 12 says that those ministerial gifts are for the perfecting or the completion of the saints.

And the verse 13, it goes on to say that until the church comes to the unity of faith, the knowledge of God, and to the stature of a complete, perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

And that manifested sons of God revolved around those scriptures. What manifested sons of God does is it says there's going to be a climatic event in the future where the church on earth will reach a state or level of completion or Christ likeness, and that the fivefold ministry are the gifts that God gave the church to bring about this climatic event.

And the fivefold ministry, when they're operating properly, is going to produce a church where people become fully Christ-like. And that's the essential concept of the manifested sons of God, how they get there. And William Brennan believes he's doing that.

He believes he is a manifested son of God by the end of his ministry. He believes he is going to bring about the rapturing faith, the thing that's going to make this church reach its final state to be able to go into the rapture and to go into that next phase.

Yeah, and there's also a verse from Psalms 826 that is heavily, heavily used in manifested sons of God. It's actually how it got its name. The verse in Psalms says, I said, year gods, year all sons of the most high, which Jesus again references in the New Testament.

This phrase, year gods, was heavily used in the manifested sons of God sect. And for the researchers who aren't aware that Jim Jones used this to empower himself to become a god to people's temple.

I'll compare two verses or two verses, two statements by Jim Jones and William Brannum that you can compare. And if you go to the website, johnstown.sdsu.edu, just type in manifested sons of God and search.

And you can find this. But William Brannum says, the Elijah of this day, which he's referring to himself. He says, Brannum says, the Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ. He used to come according to Luke 1730.

The son of man is to reveal himself among his people, not a man god, but it will come through a prophet. So he's basically calling himself the prophet God, which is a phrase that...

You know, is heavily used by Jones in various ways. Jones says, he says, I swear to you that that which is spoken by the prophet Joel, which was, he's referring to the latter rain verse there, he says, this which was and is to come, this is your salvation, you're looking at the temple of the Holy Ghost.

You are looking at the body of Jesus Christ and he says, some in the room are sick and asleep because they don't discern the body of Christ. They don't understand the Godship degree. Jesus said, we are gods and I had to come back to remind you when I told you 2000 years ago, I'm on the scene to tell you ye are gods and do not take it away, won't let you take it away.

So don't be judges of the fact that my people say that I am God. Jesus said, ye are gods, ye are all are gods. So he's also doing the same thing, you can be God, I can be God, I'm a greater God than you're God.

And you know, he's doing exactly what William Brannum did. Right. And William Brannum preached, William Brannum preached Manifested Sons of God theology a lot. His sermon, anointed ones at the end time, that is pure Manifested Sons of God teachings is what that sermon is.

And he preached all kinds of sermons that is just Manifested Sons of God. One phrase he used at times was instead of little gods, he said Messiah etz. You remember him talking about that?

You can be Messiah etz, you can be little Messiah's. That was the phrase he used and miniature creators. Yeah. And he preached it. He believed he achieved that basically towards the end of his ministry.

And he believed that through his ministry, everyone was going to be able to achieve that at some level in the church. Another key Manifested Sons of God scripture is Romans chapter 8 verse 19 to 22 where it talks about all creation is waiting for the liberty of the children of God and the manifestation of the Sons of God.

And that verse is actually where the Manifested Sons of God gets its name from because it talks about the manifestation of the Sons of God there. And Laterane linked that back to the Ephesians 4.

They linked it to the year gods. They took Jesus more or less as a pattern and they said, we're all going to reach the stature and fullness of Christ at some point. And fivefold ministry is the vehicle to get us there, right?

And the different Laterane groups, they take the verses about what it means to reach that fullness of the stature of Christ or the manifestation of the Sons of God. They take that and they interpret it different ways.

So it looks different in each of the groups. But the initial comes. in the early 50s was that Christ himself would be manifested in the members of the Church in the last days, and that would take the form of miracle workers, divine healers, power over spiritual forces, basically people with power and authority of Jesus Christ. And it was viewed as kind of an total empowerment of the Church with the power of God, even to the extent that they could raise the dead and speak things into existence by their word of faith. And those ideas and their successor

ideologies go far and wide as laterane ideas spread. And some of those ideas come into the message, right? William Brownham, we had segments of those ideas, some go into the shepherding movement, some go into people's temple, right? Some go into the walk, some go into that body Christ group, some go into the Kansas City prophets, all of these groups and more coming out of laterane

have unique spins on this initial ideology that formulated in the early years of laterane. And in the message, we again, we did believe that William Brownham achieved this manifested sons of God's state. We believe that God manifested himself through the ministry of William Brownham, even in my sect, John, where we did not believe William Brownham became God incarnate as maybe some of the other sects do. I think every sect of the message believes that God in some way manifested himself through the ministry of William Brownham. I mean, I heard that said so many times and

each group just has their own unique way to say it because a lot of people are they are aware of the Jesus's or William Brownham is God, the deity cult, we've called them the deity cult, the people who prayed and baptized in William Brownham's name, okay? I think everybody knows in the message knows they exist and there's everyone wants to distance themselves from that, right? They want to say that God was manifested in William Brownham's ministry without making William Brownham God. And so there's this line that everybody toes, unless you're in the deity cult and you

just flat out say, yeah, William Brownham is God, right? You know, there's varying levels of indoctrination to our listeners who are Christian researchers who are interested in learning William Brownham and what he did. They're going to hear this episode and they're going to say, oh my gosh, how could anybody believe this? This is so purely evil. And then on the flip side, we have people who were in William Brownham's cult currently, some who have escaped, and even those who have escaped, again, there are building blocks of manipulation.

So on top of the foundation of this purely evil thing, our other doctrines, and other doctrines, and all built like this pyramid on top of each other. And there are levels of deprogramming. So some people who've left the message may have deprogram passed the first few tiers, but may not have yet ripped out the foundation.

And they'll be thinking, wait a minute, Jesus said, year gods, this is a good thing, not a bad thing, versus the Christians who are studying this, they're going to say, oh my gosh, these people are evil.

You have to understand there are also varying levels of acceptance of manipulation. If you were to have told me William Brannum was Jesus Christ, I would have laughed at you when I was in the cult.

There's a large majority who don't accept all of the manipulation, their mind rejects it. And to those people, like I think a large number of people I encountered believed that God manifested himself in the movement, so the movement was God.

And they would say, William Brannum was not God, he was just the one who sparked the movement and the movement itself was God. Then on the flip side, I'll never forget this. After I left the cult and I began my research, I met this guy in the post office.

And he looked at me, said, you're John Collins, I said, yeah, and he said, so you're speaking out against William Brannum, and I thought, oh no, it's another one of those people. He said, well, I commend you for standing up for what you believe in.

And I said, I was shocked, I said, really? And he said, yeah, it really doesn't matter what you say. And I thought, oh no, he's going to spark an argument. And he says, and he shocked me.

He said, because Jesus Christ has came and gone, we're now living in the day is post Jesus. I was, what? I had no idea that there are people that believe this. And he said, yeah, I was there in Shreveport whenever I watched him heal people.

And there can only be Jesus Christ. You can do the things that he did. So we saw Jesus come and go. I think I know exactly who you're talking about. And the same man I met in the post office one time said, it's a beautiful day, brother Brannum's given us today, isn't it?

You know, I think we're talking about the same person. They're out there. There are people who pray and baptize in the name of William Brannum. There's actually a lot of them here in Jeffersonville.

There's this whole group of people that meet in private and discuss that God came through William Brannum. Yeah, there's, we could talk a lot about that. That might be worth a full episode at some point, John.

So, you know, like you mentioned, the groups take this in different ways. Somehow manifested sons of God leads to God manifested somehow in the church and in person and something. And everybody's got their own unique spin on how this happened or how it will happen, right?

But the basic concept that it would happen in some form or another... I mean, the whole message believes it. It is baked deeply, deeply into message thinking. Manifested Sons of God is baked right into the core of message beliefs.

And, you know, William Branham, like I said, preached a lot of things on that topic. And, you know, John, I think one of the strangest things looking back, John, that I think, I mean, we believe William Branham did indeed get the power to speak things into existence, right?

We believe that. And William Branham told us that, and there's a meme you've got to put on the, okay, before we show this, if you are drinking something, swallow it, okay, before you put this on the screen, John. But in the message, we believe that William Branham spoke squirrels into existence. I will never forget, as I was deep programming, it actually took me a while to remove that from my head, the fact that I believed fully that he could create squirrels.

And I, there's a period of time which, as you're deep programming, everything's funny. You look back at what you believed in. It's just so absurd that it becomes funny. And I made this meme and it says, yes, I too believe that a man from Indiana could speak squirrels into existence. I bust out laugh and every time I see that, John, because it's so true.

And we did believe it. Oh my goodness. We did believe that a man from Indiana spoke squirrels into existence. And you know, some people, so I just believed he spoke some squirrels into existence, John. But I have met people in the message who believe that William Branham spoke all squirrels into existence. Like he was the, he was the creator of squirrels in total. Like there were no squirrels before William Branham spoke them into existence. I have met some people in the message that actually believed that, John. It, it's something else. But yeah, we believe William Branham had

the ability to speak things, including squirrels into existence. And William Branham told us that he did and there are people who claim to be witnesses to it, right? And so that, that's where it gets weird, because you know, some of the same people that tell us, you know, they witnessed William Branham speaking squirrels into existence, you know, are, you know, tell all kinds of stuff. And so you're, you're left wondering, I mean, what do you believe? Yeah, did William Branham really speak squirrels into existence? And, and you know, if you listen to his sermons, he's got these sermons

like with even the title, Speak to the Rock. He is telling you that you can do these things too. And he, he uses that phrase year gods when he does it. I grew up in this, this very,

sorcery type of world where I believe that if I lost my keys, I would speak and the keys would show up because I'm, I was so indoctrinated with manifested sons of God, theology that he gave, that he told me to speak. And so I spoke.

And by golly, if I found my keys, it was because I spoke them into being able to be found. Yeah, you know, it's a positive confession and word of faith is one of the things that feed into all of this, right? And we need to do a full episode on that too. But that is just one component of the of the overall manifested sons of God, theology. This whole thing turns into a complete package when you add it all up. It's basically a roadmap for people to become like Jesus and not just like they love like Jesus and they're nice like Jesus and they're kind like Jesus, but

they can speak things into existence like Jesus, right? There they go. That's some of them go all the way to that level. Some some dial it down, right? Some dial it down and it's okay. I'm going to be X percentage like Jesus, but song go the full. I'm going to be 100% like Jesus, right? And so it's it's the Hobbit religion, but instead of finding the ring, everybody gets to be Gandalf. And that's where groups vary in this, right? They've a lot of groups vary in just how far being like Jesus means, like how that's one big difference in how it takes. And another group.

So like some of the movements that come out, they kind of abandon a big chunk of the becoming like God part, but they keep the fivefold ministry parts. They keep some of the other framework around it. But the whole thing came out of Laterane as a package move as a package to get you to manifested sons of God, just some parts of it stuck more than others in different groups.

Yeah, one of our partners, if you go to the website and you, you know, go to the partners page, you'll see NAR connections. And there are people, researchers who now are exploring all of the connections back to the foundation of what is today the New Apostolic Reformation. And surprisingly, to them unsurprisingly to me, they're finding that William Brannum's doctrines that were introduced in these post World War II healing revivals become literally the foundation for several different movements, splinter groups, sects, cults. Basically, it is a wide variety of belief systems that literally would not exist. Had William Brannum not popularized some of these very,

very heretical theologies. Yeah, you know, as I said before, I think in the last episode, I just want to, you know, read this, you know, I still, again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be like Jesus, right? I mean, that is Christianity 101, right? But what do you mean when you say that, right? That's important, right? And when you, when you say that in the framework of Latter-Rain, manifest its sons of God, the Alli- It means an entirely different thing than in the framework of more normative Christianity.

So, you know, being like Jesus, that's a good thing. Having a good preachers and a good ministry and a healthy church, that's a good thing. Having a, you know, basically the basic premise of fivefold ministry concepts, the basic premises of being like Jesus, I think are good, healthy things in Christianity.

But Laterane does something with it that, again, clearly goes in a direction that produces all kinds of, all kinds of hurts and problems and, and abuses, you know. Yeah, there's, there's a real problem with this and I'm sure you're somewhat new out of the message.

You'll experience this the further we go, but the Laterane movement itself from its inception was built on top of, you know, the doctrines of Dauy. You had F. F. F. Bosworth, Gordon Lindsay, who were out of the Dauy cult.

Dauy's theology was built on the premise that the church had become apostate. And so he speaks very, very harsh condemnations against all Christian churches so that he can suck people out of those churches into his own cult.

And William Brannum comes, he does the same thing. So what you end up with is this. You've got a minister who is speaking very, very, very bad things about people. And he's manipulating his members to do the same thing.

So all of the good aspects of Jesus, when you say I want to become more like Jesus, you're talking about peace, love, Jesus said the greatest two commandments, love God, love your neighbor as yourself.

They fully abandoned the love your neighbor as yourself part. And instead, what they want to do is become the power of God. They want to become the sorcerer of God. They want to speak things into existence and harshly condemn their neighbors, harshly judge their neighbors, harshly rebuke their neighbors.

And again, you'll find this the more as you go, but the leaders of this movement, instead of trying to love the people who question the movement, they sever them. And then after they leave, instead of trying to pull them back, they scold them, they rebuke them, they are literally doing the opposite of what Jesus would be, except for they want this disability to speak to the rock.

Yeah, you know, these groups go in very interesting ways with this, and a lot of them degenerate into something that really no longer even resembles Christianity anymore. I think that's first... Perfectly fair. I'm like when you look at like the most extreme groups like people's temple people's temple Was a started as a ladder rain church, you know when you when you look at the The way some of these most extreme groups coming out of ladder rain went I Mean it it's not even Christianity anymore. I mean it is it it is something entirely different right and you get shades

Worse and shades better And it just it's a it all takes so many different Twists and turns You know and it's I'm I'm careful not to paint with too broad of a brooch Because there there are I do believe there are some people in there who are really genuine people and they're Really looking for some kind of genuine experience with God And they're trying their best, but they've they've just been presented a Framework that is Problematic that that they're not able to see through for some reason and and ends up leading them to really not be like Jesus

Right, but it doesn't produce Christ's likeness and some and a many people it produces

Abuse I mean that that's just pure and simple instead of creating people like Jesus Which is what the whole thing is about it ended up creating people that Really feeding the ego of people that love power. That's really what what what it does for a lot of people, right?

I would be willing to go so far as to say that a Significant percentage of the message cult has no idea that they're supposed to believe this has no idea that William Branham taught it and If they were to study the transcripts and actually see what William Branham taught a majority of that percentage of the cult would actually leave the cult just by studying William Branham But they're in these churches that just whitewash the whole thing and preach around it as though it doesn't exist and Tell them that William Branham only taught the truth and yet there's this thing that isn't the truth that they're

Not telling the people which is one of the qualifications of a cult hiding, you know, concealing the past concealing certain doctrines I would say that a percentage a large percentage just have no idea that this exists and you have to explain to them what they're supposed to believe Before you can explain to them why they shouldn't believe it Right, you know William Branham So in one sermon he preaches a pure ladder rain theology to the people and then the next sermon. He says ladder rains a cult Yes, and then the next sermon he preaches pure ladder rain theology again, right?

And so he he even is adjusting terminology coming out of it to try and distance himself from ladder rain And as time goes on each of these groups, you know, they take elements of ladder rain theology that they like some of them some of them don't take the really extreme stuff, right? Like there's elements out there that really don't go to to the extreme elements of this, but then there are others who do, but like I hope I'm conveying is not everyone is monolithic in how they look at this or how they apply it. Some are very extreme,

some are some are closer to, you know, more moderate, closer to a benign view of be like Jesus, right? It just depends where you end up on that spectrum, how they take some of this stuff.

I think that's why it's been so difficult for historians to piece together that William Brannum was the foundation that Warnock built on because the researchers or the historians that they're speaking with who were either in the message or had left the message that they're talking to had no idea how deep this ran, but the people who actually study and listen to the tapes are aware this came from William Brannum. Yeah, it's interesting stuff for sure to look at and consider. Like I said, if our listeners want to, if you're in the message, get George Warnock's

book, especially if you know if you're a message preacher, get George Warnock's book, you read that book and tell me that we didn't believe a whole bunch of stuff wrote in that book. And it's exactly, it's exactly a formulation of what we believe. It just evolved over time into what the message is today. And so I don't know if we have time, do we have time to talk a little bit about British Israelism, John? I think it's fundamentally important to this episode, so let's make the time.

Okay, so kind of moving on from manifested sons of God, you know, I want to talk about British Israelism just a little bit. So the latter reign movement also created a really intense focus on Israel. Okay, George Warnock, he also captures those ideas in his books and you know, George Warnock was a close friend and a personal secretary to earn backster before he, before he went out to South Battleford. And he had connections back to William Brannum, really from, from the very earliest days of the revival. And at the time of the latter reign movement, British Israelism was

dying actually, it was dying. It had been a somewhat popular ideology in earlier Pentecostalism, but it really started dying out in the 1930s. And by the time you get into the 1940s as latter reign is kicking out, British Israelism is nearly dead. And today it is, it's almost, it's a pretty well dead, dead ideology today. There's very few traces of people that believe original British Israelism anymore, but British Israelism leaves behind it two different legacies.

And both of those legacies of British Israelism are present in the latter reign movement. And we, I definitely want to do a full episode on British Israelism at some point, maybe we're redeemed out of the history a little bit, but let me just kind of give a quick sum.

or how this relates into later reign. So British isriallism basically is the belief that the Anglo-Saxon people and some other European nations are the 10 lost tribes of Israel, okay? And therefore the church is literally biologically israel, okay?

So that's British isriallism in a nutshell. They also, of course, though, believe that the Jews were also israel, right? So they believe the tribe of Judah was the Jewish people. And so it really wasn't replacement theology.

It was kind of a unique, a unique spin on it. Israel was both Jew and church, both literally and spiritually.

But like I said, that idea was mostly dead, kind of gasping for the last breath of life when the latter reign movement started. But British isriallism kind of birthed to successor ideologies. And one of those ideologies is the very, very radical, very, very racist, very, very evil.

I have no problem calling this doctrine evil, John. Christian identity theology. And again, we're gonna do another full episode on this down the road. But that ideology, it's a violent, it's racist, it's hate-filled, it's an ideology that forms the backbone of Ku Klux Klan ideology, the neo-Nazi movement ideology, and a lot of different white supremacist hate groups.

Their ideology is birthed out of British isriallism as it dies. And now traces of Christian identity theology make its way into laterane, right? There's traces, there's bits of it that find its way in there.

We mentioned before Serpent Seed teaching John. What we call Serpent Seed is a derivative of Christian identity theology, which developed as British isriallism was dying and as Christian identity theology was emerging. And so there is a form of Serpent Seed Christian identity theology that takes hold in some of these laterane groups and some of these laterane people believe it and promulgate it out.

So that's one legacy of British isriallism into the movement. Another one though is that really the intense focus on isriall, John. So British isriallism also built all of its end time teachings, put a big focus on end time teachings on isriall, the reestablishment of the nation of isriall.

And although the initial concepts of British isriallism are dying, the church no longer believes that they are literally biologically isriall, they still hold on to these end time teaching concepts that isriall is, you know, enemy connected to end time teachings.

And so what happens in ladder rain movement is they take this focus on Israel and there's a new development that happens right here and this is the point I want to draw the attention to.

In ladder rain, they come up with this formulation where a restoration event in Israel corresponds to a restoration event in the church. And so the ladder rain movement started in 1948, the same year, Israel became a nation.

And so they see this as this is too much of a coincidence for the ladder rain movement. So they begin formulating that anytime something happens in Israel that is significant, it foretells something significant happening in the church at the same time.

And this is flowing out of the history of British Israel thought. And so this idea that what happens in Israel impacts the church takes form here and it's a very popular idea John. I mean, I know we believe this all through the message all the way down, you know, to the present day.

And what ladder rain did is they kind of project out into the future, you know, this is going to happen in Israel and then that's going to happen in Israel and that's going to happen in Israel and each of these events are going to correspond to a new restoration event in the church.

And so they they start integrating this into their restoration theology. And so I just want to also point out to our listeners that this viewpoint that restorations in Israel are tied to important events in the church, that took form also in the ladder rain movement.

Yeah. And if you'll remember, whenever William Brannum reinvented his stage persona to include this angelic visitation, he claimed that the very day that Israel became a nation as the same day that the angel came to me, that's because of British Israelism.

And what's really interesting is the Christian identity doctrine because in my opinion, William Brannum was absolutely brilliant in what he did. He knew because, you know, this again, this is in the heat of the battle for civil rights.

He knew that if he were to just give the Christian identity doctrine in its fullness, people would brand him as a white supremacist and he would be excommunicated from several churches. So what he did was he separated the white supremacist views of Christian identity, took them out, introduced it as serpent seed as a quote unquote non white supremacy doctrine, not the people to accept it, believe it.

And then later, he comes back in behind it and introduces the high breeding doctrine, which says that there are two seeds and if you mix them, you produce a mongrel race Basically, all of the white supremacy ideas that were in Christian identity came in between these two doctrines, not by one. So what he did was he gradually got people to believe the Christian identity doctrine without them even being aware that he was doing so.

Yeah, and he had a very, the message has a very covert way of preaching Christian identity theology and such that I think it's fair to say the majority of the people in there have no idea that they even believe Christian identity theology, right? A lot of them, a lot of people have no idea that this thing that it's even descended from Christian identity theology or it's racially based. And when we do a full episode on that, we can kind of deep dive on that topic some more, but a lot of people in there don't know, but then a lot of people do know,

a lot of people do know exactly what they're talking about when they talk about serpent seed in a racial way. Yeah, and I know a lot of people are wondering why would bring British israelism up in the manifested sons of God talk, but you have to understand that the manifested sons of God theology was this complicated array of several false notions. Again, it's like this pyramid of false teachings that are built up to lead the listener to believe that William Brannum is the manifestation of God. And if you take the foundation of all of these teachings of incredibly wrong teachings,

and then blend them together, you end up with the core of the message. And the core is what all of these movements that we've been talking about are built upon. So the British israelism doctrine, which we're going to cover in another episode, is one of these building blocks. And there were significant people who were involved in William Brannum's ministry, such as Gordon Lindsay, who were basically speakers promoting the British israel doctrine. And the reason it's not accepted today is because they've proven it was a complete pseudoscience. There's no basis in reality in the way that there's no basis in reality for William Brannum to say that he is the manifestation

of Jesus Christ. And for me, what interests me most in all of this is like I've mentioned before, I want to know where the things we believed came from. Because we largely believed that God or an angel came to William Brannum, told him all of these things, and then he repeated them to us as divine revelation from God. I mean, that is how we believed that we obtained a lot of this knowledge in the message. But what interests me is where these ideas came from. And the truth is everything that we believed in the message. I mean, there is not a single unique doctrine in the

not one. Every single thing we believed did not have some mystical divine creation point in the ministry of William Brandham. Everything he preached was a derivative or an evolution or a modification or an adaptation of ideas and concepts that came before he was even born. He's taken preexisting ideas, preexisting revelations, preexisting knowledge, preexisting ideologies and he is turning them into what he's later going to tell us is the message from God. And these teachings

some of them come from reputable sources and some of them come from disreputable sources. And so when I'm interested personally in looking into where these things came from, that's part of what I'm doing in my own mind. And our listeners can do this for themselves however they so choose. So I'm not personally advocating really any specific position. I'm just trying to tell you where this stuff came from. For me, some of these things I see came from very disreputable places that cannot possibly, in my mind, be from the spirit of God because God didn't invent racist theology. So as I look at these things, that's my interest in these things.

Where did they come from? Did these people who actually originated these doctrines, not William Brandham? Did the people who actually originated these doctrines? Did they actually have a correct understanding? And if not, what are the implications of that for the doctrines and teachings that we spend our whole lives listening to and being taught? And so if I'm going to kind of summarize my take away from this episode, our focus on Israel is a byproduct of British Israelism, which may or may not be a bad thing. That's for people to look at and decide. I'm still

of the opinion. There's some value there. Manifested sons of God is a something, an idea, a concept that originated in ladder rain movement. It did not exist before then. And being like Jesus, there's nothing wrong with that. But this new concept that comes up in ladder rain, there's nothing like it before. And when you see the full scope of it and everything involved, all of the pieces that come into it, the framework and a large core of what we believe in the message is directly descended from manifestant sons of God. So that's important to know as well.

And then also knowing some of these pieces help us understand why William Brandham was changing his stage persona so much, John, because he was jumping from group to group. group. You know, when he's with the ladder rain, he's in favor of ladder rain. When he's back home, he says ladder rain is a cult. When he goes back to the ladder rain group, he's preaching ladder rain again, just like, you know, just like everything else, right?

Like when he's with the oneness, he's oneness, when he's with the trendeterians, he's trendeterian. When he's with the ladder rain, he's ladder rain. Um, so again, I, I wonder myself, did William Brown even believe this? I have my doubts at this point that he even believed this and really, um, he was just saying what appealed to these people when he was with him. Yeah, the biggest problem for me is that if you follow these teachings out to their conclusion and you know where they come from, William Brannum glorifies cult leaders before him who originated some of these doctrines. For example, John Alexander

Dauy was heavily into British Israelism. And even towards the end of his life, his doomsday year prediction was based on the nation of Israel and British Israelism. William Brannum, who was, you know, trained in the doctrine of Dauy through FF Bosworth and Gordon Lindsey, was also trained in British Israelism. And when William Brannum reinvents his stage persona to have this angelic claim and ties it to Israel, he also says, Dr. Dauy, died on one day and I was born the next. So he, he's literally tying British Israelism to God manifesting himself to the people in William Brannum. But if you follow that out

to its conclusion, that would also suggest that God manifested himself in the cult leader, John Alexander Dauy. So for me, it's hugely problematic. Um, the other big problem is William Brannum claimed all of these things were divine revelations. And yet he stole them from other men. So I agree, there's more than we can possibly talk about in this episode, but we need to do some side episodes of British Israelism and Christian identity and explore those a bit more. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brannum.org and Christian Gospel Church.org.

For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum and his healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.

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