How the Grinch Preached Christmas

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

And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, we have had a packed series of investigations into the latter reign and the manifested sons of God, the word of faith, and all of these various splinter groups.

And I thought it would be good to just put that on the shelf for a little while. And this is the season, this is Christmas, and be good to pause and just talk about something that was really taboo in all of these various groups that splintered off of William Brannum's cult.

And that is Christmas. It was very taboo to celebrate Christmas and many of the splinter groups. And I don't know how it was in your sect, but I went to churches from South Carolina to Arizona and everywhere in between.

And I saw this wide variety of some people celebrated Christmas. Some people thought those who celebrated were doomed to hell and everything in between. So how about we pause and just talk about Christmas for a while?

Yeah, I think that would be a good idea, John. I was thinking that it also would be a good topic to touch on. Like you said, it's one of those topics that's incredibly controversial in the message.

And it really don't matter which position we may take on it, we're going to make a large percentage of the other people in the message angry at us because there's no unity or there's no really universally way in the message to look at this and be accepted.

I know in my sect of the message for sure it was that way. This is a topic you just generally didn't talk about because you're going to make somebody mad if you talk about it.

So you just don't talk about it. Was it that way in your sect of the message too? It was to the extent that even within my own family, we had, you know, in the message it's almost one step away.

from pre-arranged marriage. You've got these people who are marrying each other within the Colton because you're marrying within the Colton. A lot of times you've got people who are in different states who go to different churches, different versions of the message, sometimes different splinter groups. And even in my family, we've got families where the spouse was strongly against Christmas or Christmas trees or presents. And then the other spouse, that's all they're new growing up. So it's such a controversial subject.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. So even within my sect of the message, the different churches in the different areas had very different views on Christmas. And just exactly what you mean. And in my own marriage, John, I married into a family that had different Christmas beliefs than my own. And that was actually the, really probably the only, you know, what's the kind way to say it. It was our first marital problem. What we're going to do about Christmas, and it was minor, of course, you know, we got through it. But I know exactly what you mean.

And before that, you really just didn't even talk about it. You almost didn't even know what the other people believe about it. Because it's in our part of the message, we, we took a kind of a lazy fair attitude. You do what you're going to do with Christmas and don't tell anybody else about it. And you'll be okay. That was kind of our approach. And I kind of feel like William Brannum, a little bit endorsed that approach in some versions of his stage persona, as you put it, but in others, he was, you're going to go to hell if you celebrate Christmas. So it kind of

depends which, which tape you like to listen to more is to make the Christmas views that you help. You know, it's really odd because as you know, my family came from the inner circle. So we were what I like to call cult elite. We were the ones who got to, you know, experience all the things that many rank and file members did not. And Christmas was this weird thing because my family, my aunts and uncles and father were, you know, close, close friends with the Brannum family. They spent time, I mean, hours and hours, weeks, days, months in the Brannum home. So

they were there doing Christmas. They saw the Brannum Christmas tree. They saw the presents. William Brannum did not live this, you know, anti Christmas life. But then in his stage persona, he would preach so strongly against, you know, anybody who has a tree and he would talk about the pagan ideas. Well, all of this kind of, you know, it created this weird scenario where now then all of the cult elites privately.

they'll, you know, have a normal Christmas, but then publicly they present this image as though they do not. And I'll never forget, for me, the most difficult part of transitioning after leaving the message was the lights outside of her house. When my wife realized that all of this was just, you know, pure hoax, all of this message stuff, she tried to convince me to get lights because she'd never had them. She wanted them. Their family was part of the group that was against Christmas trees. My family had Christmas trees, kind of like you said. Oh, no, are you going to tell me you put jet lights up, John? Not the first

year. So after you left, right? It took me a while to, I mean, that was just so grilled in my head, right? So I'm putting a lights up. I'll be honest, I had it, I had it doubly difficult because my father, you know, again, we're from the cult elite side. So my father wasn't against the Christmas trees we had one and my mother's side was against the Christmas trees, but lights was a whole different ballgame. Yeah, that's like the ultimate level of a Christmas sin. Yeah. Well, well, so for my father, it was more about watching the electric

meter span, right? He wanted to keep things, you know, at a minimum cost. But so we braved it. Finally, I don't know how many years it was two or three years. I finally got brave enough to put Christmas lights and very simple. I didn't want to go, you know, very extravagant, but just a string of lights around the top of the house. And at night, I was so proud of it, I put a picture up on social media of my house and the lights. And by this time, we had all of our, you know, we were very public in our accident if you didn't already know,

but I can't say that the cult did this, but when we put the picture up on social media, the very next day I go out and not just in one place, but in several places, my light string of lights was cut. And I want to say it was like 20, 30 places. So my entire, I was proud of this view of my house. And the next day I'm in my heart sank. I'm like, oh my gosh, what do I do? That's really sad. Yeah. Wow. You know, I, in our part of the message, that was,

that was the ultimate no no. So there were limits you could absolutely never go to putting lights on the outside of your house. You could, I mean, you, you would be excoriated for that. Because then, because then anybody driving past your house knows what you believe, right? Yeah. You had to, if you had Christmas, any Christmas type thing needed to be more or less kept secret, pull your blinds, right? And do something on the inside that nobody could see. But if you go putting stuff on the outside of your house, then everybody else.

That was what you believe, and you'd be in trouble at that point. Yeah, it was pretty wild some of the stuff like that that would go on. And I look back and the way William Brennan put it in his harsher side of sermons on this topic, he tended to call everything of historic Christianity, just traditions or Babylon or this that or the other. And of course Christmas is part of historic or traditional Christianity. And so that was number one thing he didn't like about it.

And then of course number two is, and I believe this is fairly universal in the message, nobody believes Jesus was actually born in December either. Right. That was another huge, huge thing that they used to completely say you should never celebrate Christmas. Jesus was not born in December. This was actually some pagan holiday to a sun god or something like that. I believe is the way.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's really odd too because in the message we thought William Brennan was the bringer of truth and he's correcting all of the errors of the church. Well, if you go back and you look at you know, during this era, there he was not alone in this and I'll be honest if he had have been alone in this and was you know, kicking against the prick so to speak, he wouldn't have done it because he would have alienated his crowd. He was preaching this because at that time it was very common to be anti-Christmas, anti-holiday, anti-cheer.

Basically, it's a it's a whole religion of the Grinch, right? And William Brennan was just praying upon that sentiment that things weren't, weren't wholly during Christmas and I always go back to that verse in Colossians now that I've left the message.

Let no one tell you and I'm paraphrasing you can go read it yourself but he says Paul says, let no one tell you that you can't celebrate a holiday and regardless of whether this holiday is on the right day or whether it's on the right month or whether it was, you know, pagan origin.

Paul is referring to holidays of pagan origin that are even worse than what they're talking about here. They were actually sacrificing human beings to these deities on these holidays of the solstice, etc. So Paul is telling you don't let anybody tell you you can't have a holiday but don't go sacrifice your children versus William Brennan saying, no, you cannot do this but I'm going to do it at home where nobody can see me.

Yeah, in our sector of the message, we used more or less that same passage as scripture to say that, you know, we're going to let everybody make up their own mind and everybody can celebrate if they want to.

know, just keep it very modest and humble. Right? Yeah. Don't get materialistic, don't get this out of the other. But then the people who didn't, then of course they always felt the class above, you know, we're holier than you all, you all are still in pagan traditions or you're, you know, this that or the other. So there was always a two-tier approach about it, right? And the people who didn't celebrate Christmas tended to look very narrowly on the people who did, even though they somewhat accepted their right to do it. But if they caught anything at all that looked the least bit like excess, you're in trouble. You're

in trouble. You're going to be outed and someone's going to, at our church, John, I don't know. I guess you're you're in the press play churches. So you I don't know if you had preachers that actually did things like I'm about to describe. The preachers would get in the, you know, in front of everybody. So you're in a crowd of hundreds of people and they'll start talking about, you know, the things that you did specifically. And they'll, you know, kind of berate you in front of the entire church. Right? That's very common. And it's not

always by name. But they you, you know who they're talking about. They do who they're talking about. And so it was half the people sitting there. So, you know, you, you know, if someone shot, you saw you with too many Christmas presents in your cart, right? You're going to get a sermon on materialism. And you're going to talk about the person who shot at the same store that you at was at and what they saw and couldn't believe how much money they were wasting on materialism, right? And so they, they would control any sort of excess that that went on.

Yeah. Pretty strongly. You know, and that's a real problem for this type of religion. Um, when you've got, when you've got this entity that is basically growing and thriving on groupthink, in other words, everybody's trying to conform to become like William Brandham says.

And then you've got all of these conflicting things that William Brandham says to the extent that he himself doesn't even practice what he's preaching. You've got all of these varying ideas in each person the way the group think works, they, in their minds, they think they're the right ones. And everybody else is wrong. Why would you not believe it like me because we're in this group think? Uh, in our sect of the message, the press play churches, if you will, it was actually a little bit worse than some of the others. Again, I went to churches all across the nation.

I've been to churches where they preached. I've been to churches where everybody gathered around and listened to this tape from the 1950s of William Brandham, berating everybody from his era. And it's always a berating. William Brandham, his, his way of preaching was basically to preach against something not to lift you up. So the idea is to break you down so that he can be the hero, the savior that Can save you from this being broken after he has broken you well then in these churches across the nation They're doing the same thing. They're breaking people down and like you said they will target people some not often by name

I have actually heard it by name my grandfather as a there was a Lady who got up and saying a special and she had I Want to say it was maybe a four-inch slit in the back of her skirt It wasn't even enough to be hardly noticeable, but as she's walking down after singing a special in the platform Grandpa just railed her because she had a quote-unquote scandal skirt because that was one of the things that William Brannum berated people for And if you apply all of this to Christmas, you've got these ministers in the cult and in these splinter groups

You know not even the message, but some of the latter rain You know churches that were birthed from this thing They have the same pattern of religion. They they will have people in the church and they'll preach against Everything that everybody's doing trying to break them down so that then they can lift them up to Jesus That's the structure of these churches Well, they break you down over Christmas and And most you know this idea was common in the fifties It's no longer common because more and people more people are realizing that Paul says you can you know, you can celebrate the holidays

but They're they're practicing this in such a way that People are confused as to what to do You know what I'm saying they do I celebrate do I not you know, there are cases where William Brannum says himself It's for the children do it for the children right William Brannum makes so many conflicting statements, you know in in in his teachings and I think it's almost fair to say there's not a significant thing that William Brannum preached that he didn't preach it multiple ways Yeah, right like you can find him preaching multiple ways about Easter you can find him preaching multiple ways about Christmas

You can find him preaching multiple ways about the League of Daniel multiple ways about the birth of Christ multiple ways about the Godhead of you know multiple whatever you pick you can find him preaching multiple formulas of salvation multiple formulas of baptism multiple form everything he preached he preached two and three different ways right and so You can honestly justify almost anything you want to believe from from his statements And so it just depends a lot of time I think in what people are predisposed to as to what they pick right and With Christmas the same thing people end up in these

Strongly on one side or the other and I think that I Think that the average person in there has no idea the depth of the conflicts right in what brother Brannum said are preached, right?

Nowhere near the depth. In my sect of the message, we acknowledged a lot of the depths of the conflicts of the things that he said, but we know we're near grasp the true depth of the conflicts of the things that he said.

I mean, he was all over the place. And you know, what that does, that is actually, and William Brannem is directly responsible for this. That is more than anything responsible for almost all of the divisions in the message.

All of the so many, many, many terrible things have happened as a result of William Brannem making all of these conflicting statements, you know. Families are broken up. People are divorced. People have died as a result of these misstatements.

People get so to the point that they're almost ready to fist fight each other and some of them have over these conflicting statements that William Brannem made. Like it becomes life and death for some of these people.

And it's the same with Christmas, right? So you've got these some people that are holding on to the Christmas is going to send you to hell, directly to hell, version of William Brannem statements, and then others who are holding to the, you need to do it for your kids and love your kids' statement, right?

So it just creates this terrible conflict. And so with the Christmas stuff, this is one of the few ones where you got both people in our church is both people holding both views, sitting in the same church, right?

And William Brannem endures both and we're all trying to get along. And so our rules are all in our stack, we're all designed about trying to not turn this into a massive conflict. Yeah.

I think the biggest problem that I have with it, you know, Christmas itself, even if after leaving the message and going to a quote unquote normal church, you find that Christmas is this subject that is in today's world, Christmas has became way hyper commercialized.

So you'll find ministers saying many of the same things that William Brannem said in modern, you know, normal churches, but the difference that I can see is it literally comes down to does the church preach the gospel.

The gospel in its simplicity is Jesus came, died for your sins, came to save you, came to, you know, to heal the broken wounds that the law had oppressed people and people were just, you know, the law failed according to the Bible and people were oppressed under the law.

So Jesus came and showed a better way if you read the book of Hebrews, it basically says now we have a better way. The difference is churches that preach the gospel will tell you that Christmas has became hyper, hyper commercialized.

I mean, they're right now, they're playing Christmas music. in Halloween. It's that bad. You go to some stores, they're trying to get you into this mode of buying for Christmas. That's what stores do. And it's all marketing. I understand the business side of what they're doing. But the problem is people are losing focus of what Christmas was for. Regardless of whether it was the right date, the wrong date, I'm not even going to try to address that question in this podcast. But people have lost focus about what Christmas is about.

It's about celebrating the birth of Jesus, which as Christians should be the greatest holiday out of all of the holidays in the world. And you don't find ministers who are preaching the gospel saying, don't celebrate the birth of the founder of our religion. You know what I'm saying?

It was it had a lot to do with the fact that we didn't believe Jesus was born in December. Now William Brannum, again, one sermon William Brannum says Jesus was born in October. Another sermon said he was born in April. There is not a single thing that William Brannum preached consists on. So in our sect of the message after William Brannum died, we went with the our pastor Raymond Jackson went with the October date. So we believe Jesus was born roughly on Halloween in our sect of the message. And so here's this is a funny story John actually looking back.

It made me cry at one point. It's a funny story now. So in our sect of the message, we had a really complex end of day calculations that counted down to the end of the world.

The sect I come from the world is supposed to end at about 17 times now. I'm exaggerating slightly but I think I think the world is supposed to have been extended about nine times now basically in the second of the message I was in. But anyways, all of it starts with with particular calculations which you know we hung on our wall that Raymond Jackson had come up with. And the starting point for all of the calculations is the birth of Jesus, right? Based on the October birth of Christ.

So after Raymond Jackson died some years went by our next pastor. He changed the birth of Jesus to April. And nobody even noticed. And it just and all of the calculations went sideways. And in my mind like my head is exploding like how in the world do I make sense of all of this?

Wow. Because to us that was like central to all of our end of the world ideas. And of course we didn't believe the world would end. But we believe that was the time that the end would usher in.

I guess you know when Christ would return and the week of Daniel and all of the you know the cannon fodder stuff that you would believe in your you know that kind of stuff would happen.

But yeah. So we went from you know William Brennan preached it both ways. We most of Our life believes the October way and then we switch to the April way, you know, in more recent years in our sect of the message.

But the message, even there's no consistency on any of this anywhere. Yeah. And it goes back to William Brandon preaching wildly different things. Yeah. And you know, it's really odd, too, when you think about it, because even in the Gospels, the birth of Jesus is a significant part of the Gospels.

God sent His only beloved son, the reason why we call ourselves Christians. And in the churches that preach instead of playing the tapes, the ones that preach against celebrating, most of them that I've heard are preaching against Christmas because it was the April date.

And they say, we can't celebrate Jesus. The world is wrong. So we can't celebrate with the other Christians because it happened on April. But then in April, they don't celebrate Jesus birth, right? They hold the normal Easter services.

And it's like they have forgotten that Jesus was born. You know what I'm saying? We didn't even celebrate. Easter was totally taboo for us, too. Easter was more taboo than Christmas. So we didn't do Easter either in, because that's not when Jesus really died either.

We had all, we didn't follow the same logic, but yeah. So you all celebrated Easter, John, and here's sect of the message. I guess you did, because you all was down, or they was down there around that grave every Easter waiting for the prophet to resurrect.

I, yeah, that's true. Yeah, Easter was a big deal because when William Brandham died, there were several prophecies that were supposed to happen before he died. And I know some of this history, because, you know, my family was deeply involved in this, but the cult itself was about to implode.

The prophet died. His prophecies didn't happen that were supposed to happen before he died. And so it appears what happened is that my grandfather and one other person got together and tried to decide, how do we hold all of this together?

And so they presented the notion that William Brandham is going to rise from the dead on Easter. And they held the body from the grave. William Brandham died December 1965. And, you know, Easter, 1966, they held the body for that long.

And they claimed that it was because of, you know, they said that William Brandham's wife was too badly injured. But yet the newspaper report says she's doing fine and, you know, there's this big confusion.

Why did they hold the body? Well, at minimum, I can say that a rumor was spread, and my grandfather was part of it, that William Brandham was going to rise from the dead on Easter.

So instead of thinking about the prophecies that failed, their minds were focused on he's going to rise, and then the end of the world is going to come. So people truly believed in night.

In 1966, the William Bran would rise, and when he did, that was going to begin the global resurrection of the dead from the Bible. And so Easter is widely celebrated in the main sect of the message because everybody comes to Easter to celebrate the resurrection of William Branum instead of the resurrection of Christ.

And it seems like they usually have a really good catered meal there. I've never been, but it's an excellent meal. Yes, I've seen the caterers come in several years and I know the restaurant there.

I love that. So if you want a good meal, you know, you can go to the resurrection service for William Branum every Easter. I'm sure they'll give you a nice plate of food. Yeah, but it was really odd when you think about it because my grandfather was one that said the birth happened at Easter or, you know, you know, towards the Easter months in April or whatever, but yet they're celebrating Easter on Jesus' birthday and none of it just really, none of it made sense when you walk away from it.

And the way it all lines up too. Okay, we're going to see William Branum resurrect on Easter. Like it all has this implicit underlying theme that William Branum is more than your average man, right?

Yeah, put it that way. Simply put, we were publicly told now in private again, some of the cults elite celebrated Christmas, but we were publicly told don't celebrate Christmas. But yet all of the things of William Branum, we were supposed to celebrate.

So in other words, don't celebrate Jesus, but let's all celebrate William Branum. Now, while while approximately 50% of the message is not having anything to do with Christmas, you know, not given any presents to their kids, not putting up a Christmas tree.

Um, not watching Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer like completely staying away. So half the people believe that's absolutely pagan and you're going to go to hell if you do it. Um, William Branum has the most immaculate looking Christmas tree in his living room with a great big pile of presents under it, right?

And which he personally decorated and put up every year from everything that I've heard and understood. I've heard, I've known multiple people to John who've been in his house, who saw his beautiful tree and he, I've heard stories of people actually walking in while he was doing the decorating of the tree and how he was so careful just to put the ornaments on and get everything evened out.

Like he took a whole lot of pride in his Christmas tree. He did. My family, like I said, my family spent hours inside the Branum home. They had televisions. They had the Christmas tree.

They had the gifts. They celebrated like normal, they lived like normal people. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a wild thing, you know, and I, again, I don't think a lot of people in the message grasp truly the way that the Branum family.

lived their lives while William Brannum was still living. You know, one of the things about cults is that the leaders don't follow their own rules typically, right? They tend to make really strict rules, but the leaders don't follow their own rules.

And that is so true with William Brannum. I mean, you look at Christmas. I mean, everything he told his people in son of his sermons was pagan traditions that was, you know, damnable heresy or damnable, this or the other.

He was doing every stitch of it and more himself at his house. It's just, it's outrageous, honestly. And so while he's expecting some segment of his followers to adhere to this really strict line of thinking, he himself is not willing to do it himself.

And he's that way with so many things, John. It's just so ironic, you know, when you look back, so many things that he was just so hypocritical on. I think the element that is missing is that we have the recordings of William Brannum that they allow us to have, obviously, that were more, but we have a set of about 1200 sermons approximately.

And what we have is by and large the main speaker of an event, but he was not the only speaker at an event. So you would have all of these other speakers that were rallying the crowds and building up their emotion, breaking them down, you know, toying with their minds, basically.

And so William Brannum would follow up behind this. And if he's coming to the platform preaching after a person who has just be railed the people who are celebrating Christmas, and he watched the crowd get all, you know, into this hype of condemning Christmas, well, once they're in that hype, the main speaker's job is to take that hype and accelerate it even further.

So that's why you see if he's, if he's following up behind a preacher who has just preached this fabulous, trainitarian sermon and talking about accepting, accepting the Holy Spirit into your hearts, the third person, the Trinity, will you see William Brannum coming behind this saying, we who have accepted the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.

So it applies to Christmas. If he's holding a Christmas meeting, and he's going to, you know, anti-Christmas meeting, he's going to follow up with an anti-Christmas sermon. But as you know, there are even some of William Brannum's campaign managers who even publicly in their literature celebrated Christmas.

Oh, yeah. I mean, Christmas was, Christmas is widely celebrated in broader Pentecostalism, like there's no problem with it. And even his, even, you know, his magazine's Voice of Healing ran a Christmas edition every single year.

So there's a Christmas edition of Voice of Healing every year, right? Harold of Faith runs a Christmas edition almost every year, right? So his primary publicity tools, his primary publicity sources are all about Christmas, and they capitalize on celebrating Christmas and publicizing Christmas every single year in William Branagh's publicity. And if you open these magazines and read them, page one and two of every one of these magazines about William Branagh. So here is Christmas scenes followed, yeah, immediately by William Branagh saying stuff.

And if I'm not mistaken, William Branagh's son Joseph is on the cover of the Harold of Faith. I know he's in some of the articles on the inside, but I think that's also, yeah. So he's...

I have it right here. That's Joseph on the front of it. So not only did William Branagh not practice what he preached, he was celebrating Christmas. He was taking it to the extent that he was putting his own family on the front of the covers of Christmas magazines.

Yeah, it's incredible stuff. And you know, when I step back, I try to... when you're in the message, you just can't do this, but when you can start to think clearly, you know, you start to... you can start to ask yourself a question, okay? William Branagh told us all that we're pagans if we celebrate Christmas and... but William Branagh had a Christmas dream presence and did it all, right? William Branagh told us we're, you know, it's all the terrible sin if girls cut their hair, but William Branagh's daughters cut their hair. He told us, you know,

all the girls need to dress modest, but all his daughters wore skirts above their knees. Yeah. You know, there's photos that you'll have to... I've got a photo, I guess I'm looking up here on the screen, John, and you'll have to put it up there for the people. But... but William Branagh's family did not even follow the holiness rules, right? William Branagh's... William Branagh and his own son both wore shorts, right? William Branagh's family, the boys and his family wore shorts.

Shorts are prohibited in the message. I have never owned a pair of shorts in my life, John. Okay, I still don't own a pair of shorts. You know, because you can't wear shorts in the message.

My father was playmates with Joseph Branagh, my uncle with Billy Paul Branagh, and the Branagh family wore shorts. As children, they wore shorts a lot, and then even as adults, like if they went swimming or, you know, their activities where they wore shorts. So I was raised, my family kind of separated from the main body for a period of time, and we lived out where there weren't really a lot of message people. And I was... I had shorts until I was probably 13 or 14, and this... this was common because my peers who I visited with also message people.

who had shorts, as children, because the brand-of-family had shorts. Again, I'm in the cult elite side of this thing. William, brand-of-himself wore shorts. I mean, it's that night and day difference from what the cult believes.

So I had it basically, and then once I became an adult, I was, you know, that was also part of the cult elite. Don't wear them in public, where people, other message believers can see that you're wearing them.

Do it in secret, right? So William Brandham and his sons were shorts. William Brandham, so here's another thing. So, you know, beards, facial hair is totally, I mean, totally taboo. But there's pictures of William Brandham with this 19, you know, this 19, 20s, 30s, mobster style mustache.

Yeah. And then there's pictures of him with full beards, too. What in the world, right? So how do we, how does he get away with all that? And then you can also find, you know, like I mentioned, pictures of his wife and his daughters with skirts above their knees, you know, showing off way too much.

You talk about a scandal skirt, John. Boy, they would, in the message, that's a scandal skirt. You can see their knees. I mean, in my part of the message, most people wouldn't even show their ankles.

But they were showing their knees and their hair is clearly been cut. I mean, my goodness. So here, I mean, what do you do with that? I mean, because William Brandham said, you know, and this is word for word, you need to get a barrel slat and take a barrel slat to people who do these things, right?

I wonder, I don't think he was taking a barrel slat to his family, John. But that's what he told the people to do in his church. You know, it's a funny story. Now, I'm going to preface this with, I no longer think this way, this was wrong.

Don't get me wrong by any means. This was horrific that I said this, but I did. Every year around Christmas time, see, again, we grew up kind of, you know, from coast to coast.

I'm influenced by all kinds of different message churches. And the ones that I grew up in did not know that it was wrong to have a beard. In the main body and the main sect of the message, yes, it was wrong.

You're not supposed to have a beard, but I didn't know this. I had no idea. And every year around Christmas time, I always grew a little beard, neatly trimmed just a small beard. When my family moved back here, and when we moved to Jeffersonville, my aunt and uncle were up talking to me, and they were abhorred that I had facial hair.

I mean, I could have smacked them in the face, and they would have been less surprised than seeing my beard. And so my aunt began... to tell me the story how, you know, my husband, my uncle, had facial hair and he was growing a beard and brother Brannum said that was wrong.

So one night I woke up in the middle of the night while he was asleep and I shaved his beard off while he was asleep in. And I looked at her straight in the eye and I said, and again, this is wrong, I looked just straight in the eye and I said, well, if my wife did that, I'd whoop her with a barrow slap.

Wow. You know, we can kind of joke about it, but it's also incredibly serious, all right. And so, so in my, in my shirt, I witnessed this. I know firsthand all everything I'm about to tell.

So there was a particular man who came to church who had a, came in with a beard and he was, you know, typical practice, the preacher, the platform, let him have it, blasted him in front of, you know, hundreds of people.

He went home and shortly thereafter committed suicide, John. Oh, no. And I always wonder, you know, how, how much of the harassment that happened to these people contribute to things like that, right? You know, and these things in the message, I know we can, it is funny, you know, to talk about the, you know, the stories, but these things are carried out to the point that people die, people die in the message for not following these rules, right?

It's very, very serious, right? And so it's a, I can laugh about a lot of the funny things, but then I also, I also realize it is, it is deadly in the message. These things become deadly in the message and it, it's, it's terrible.

And who's to blame? Who's to blame? Who's the one who came up with these ideas that you can't, okay, so you take a beard, right? But I think Jesus had a beard, didn't he, John?

I mean, he certainly does appear in my Hoffman head of Christ picture, the one that's hanging up in all the message churches. I mean, was Jesus a sinner? Like what in the world? But it don't make any sense, right, when you think logically about it, but in the message, it makes, they'll, they will drive, they don't care what happens, they will do whatever it takes to harass you and bring you into compliance with the rules.

Yeah. It is a very serious thing and I don't want to bring us down on our holiday cheer episode, but suicide is a big problem in the message. I've, I have had friends who have died, who have committed suicide.

I have family who have committed suicide and, you know, you, you can't specifically say that it was only the message that caused it. Mental health is a big problem. Mental health in the message is a big problem.

What you can say is that this type of religion that just plays tug of war with your brain and is under authoritarian control, accelerates the mental health problems. It makes it worse. They don't acknowledge.

until health issues as actual health issues, right? You're possessed by a demon or something like that. And there's no concept that you need to go to a doctor and get some help. No, we need to beat the devil out of you.

Well, in some cases, they actually have been to churches where they actually preach sermons about taking medication for mental health. And they said, that medication is the devil. I have seen time and again, someone get on that medication and they leave the message.

And it's horrific. I mean, I went through a series of very, very severely traumatic issues. I don't talk about this much, but I have a cousin who talked me out of committing suicide. So it's a big deal.

I know personally what it's like. And I was told by a minister, he actually took me out to launch and told me, do not take the medication or you'll leave the message. Ironically, there was a period of time while I was in the message that I needed the medication.

And ironically, after leaving the message, I did leave the message because I took, not because I took the medication, but I took the medication and I left the message. But what's interesting is after a year or two of being out of this authoritarian control and this internal conflicts of religion, I've not needed it since about 2013.

So it is a very serious thing. And when I first started my website, I want to say within two weeks, I had people emailing me and saying, I was highly suicidal. People had attempted several times.

And they said, now I've come across this information. And I realized what they did to my head and why I'm like this. And some of those same people, all of the same people were alive, but some of those same people went on to help other people who had mental health.

So again, not to drag us down on the holiday cheer episode, but this holiday thing that they're doing with people's heads, telling people it's wrong while they themselves are doing these things that they say are wrong, dis causes mental health issues to accelerate.

Yeah, something else. One thing that I have been curious, this is the one thing I decided I'd try to figure out for this episode, when did the message people generally stop celebrating Christmas and where did the influence to do that come from?

Like that was one thing I was, I thought I'd just look a little bit and I don't have a definitive answer, but I believe that from what I can tell, the majority of people from Pentecostal and traditional Christian backgrounds coming into the message all still continue to celebrate Christmas.

The prohibition against Christmas comes from Jehovah Witness Influence into the message actually. Yeah, that is where those ideas come from. And as you know, there were a number of former Jehovah witnesses at the brand of tabernacle And in in in other places and we know they were incorporating Charles Tase Russell's writings Into the formulation of ladder rain doctrines and so the ladder rain side of things had a Fairly strong Jehovah witness influence actually And it's actually those Jehovah witness influences that are

Really coming down strong against the celebration of Christmas and I think that it's primarily that Element of people that William Brandon was catering to with his anti-Christmas remarks Jehovah witnesses are really the only other I don't know if mainstream is the right word large group of professed Christians who um Actually prohibit the celebration of christmas. They're really the only other ones out there that that and do it in the exact same way that we do They use the exact same verses against christmas trees. They use the exact same verses say this is not when christ was born

They use the exact same logic that this is a Teaching of Babylonian confusion like they are the ones that use that language And and because the language is so similar and the rationales are identical I really tend to believe it's primarily the Jehovah witness influence into the message that Led to the widespread prohibition of christmas Yeah, I think you're right Their influence did have a deep impact on William Branham's theology especially in the later years I tried to also piece together, you know some of this history but this is a history podcast So I'm trying to piece together history

It's really hard because when you have a man who is Preaching one thing to one group and preaching another thing to another group and doing that That's the only consistent thing in the message is that there's inconsistency So throughout time you find you know, I'm against christmas. I'm for it. You can't have it for your kids But I'm gonna have it for my kids I like to see the little kids with smiling faces with presents and those kids who are smiling faces with presents are Celebrating the devil. I mean when is that wide variety it's hard to pinpoint a time that the entire cult shifted

But if you take a step back from the christmas, I think this is my opinion. There's no way to prove this obviously, but My opinion during the early years of William Branham's ministry when he was widely accepted into churches It was and everyone is welcome We're all Christians. Let's join together as one. It was all a unity thing You know, and that started from the early years you see it 1945 he even says If someone draws you out of their circle, draw bigger circle and draw them back into it.

So in other words, if they believe differently than you, let's just join together as Christians. We're building this movement. We're building this, hate to say it. We're building this cult. So let's join everybody together.

Well, over time, people started discontinuing fellowship with William Brannum over heretical doctrines and white supremacy, et cetera. The height of which was, we haven't got to this history yet, and I'm like chomping at the bits, but the civil rights movement and the anti-integration of schools played a huge factor in what would become the message called.

And the climax of this was when William Brannum's mentor and the partner in various ways, Roy E. Davis, was in Dallas at the time that Kennedy was assassinated. And was leading the protests against integration in the Dallas school system.

Whenever Kennedy was assassinated, this massive federal investigation happened. And you can't say that it was because of this, but you can say that it was along with this. William Brannum appears to have completely lost his mind around 1963.

He had suffered mental health issues leading up to this, and he mentions it on recording. But in 1963, he's lost all of his support. The feds are really cracking down on Roy Davis and anybody connected to him, which would have included him.

You've got, you know, it felt like literally to him, it would have felt like the walls are closing in. I'm losing all my supporters. I've got this little tight group of people. Just like Jim Jones, the government's against us, and we've got this little small unit.

So around 1963, he starts to lose it, and that's whenever it becomes no longer a, everybody's welcome religion, it's a, let's preach against every single person who has discontinued fellowship with me, including Christians who celebrated Christmas.

Yeah, he, it really is something how it all kind of developed, built out, you know. He was trying broad appeal, and as the years go by, and his broad appeal dies, he tends to come to cater more and more to this loyalist core group that he has, right?

And I think that, and we've heard this from quite a few people, as you come into these dwindling years, William Branham becomes more and more strident, more and more cultic, more and more extreme, right?

Right. And a lot of that has to do with the people who are left with him. A lot of them are very, extreme themselves and are influencing him and he's counter influence in the back, yeah, something else. Yeah. So back to the Christmas episode, you've got all of these wide variety of beliefs. Another interesting one that I have seen in the message sect, I've seen this in the main sect even, there are people who will let their kids celebrate specifically because William Branham said, I like to see the kids light up my children whenever I give them presents. So

torn with this conflict and trying to make it all fit together which it can't. So there are some people in the message that will say, let's let our children celebrate, but we as adults can't do this because the prophet said no. Did you have anything like that and you were sect of the message?

So my family was was quite divided on this topic myself. So we had

we had times. So there were years when Christmas parts of the family Christmas was totally prohibited. There was zero Christmas and it was generally because well there's no small kids this year, right? So no tree, no nothing. But if it was, you know, a year and there was going to be some kids around, well then they would do some level of Christmas something for the sake of the kids.

Yeah. So we we had that same thoughts in some parts of my family. Yeah.

And also I know the same, you know, with with other people in there, right? You know, if there's children around for the sake of the children, they would do some kind of Christmas Christmas thing privately, you know, outside of the church, you know, behind closed doors, hidden off and nobody tells anybody else. But the generally though, people tended to be either all in or all in as far as it's pagan and we're not doing it at all, or they tended to have some kind of a regular scaled down something that they did secretly every year. Towards the as the years went by though, I'll

say our sect of the message shifted. When I was when I was younger, it was entirely Christmas was a taboo topic. You just did not even talk about Christmas other than to say, you know, don't be extreme and Jesus wasn't born then and those kind of things. But it's time went on a larger and larger percentage of our people were celebrating Christmas and towards the last few years, John, some people actually gave out Christmas cards in the church. Can you believe that? I know. Yeah, so there was there was some people who were actually giving out Christmas cards in the church building

the last the last number of years. Wow. Yeah. So it shifted over time quite a bit, but when you back from the 60s, 70s, 80s, even into the early and mid, maybe even the late 90s, Christmas was taboo, but really the change up maybe started to happen late 90s and into the early 2000s in our sector, the message that Christmas became gradually more accepted.

So to wrap this up Charles, we've got, you know, our target audience is our people who are interested in learning more about the message and the splinter groups and how to impact at Christianity as a whole.

But we also have a large number of listeners who are either people who are in the message or people who have left. And I'll guarantee you that even after listening to this, some of them, because it's so deeply programmed into their being, there'll still be, I have difficulty celebrating Christmas.

There'll still be thoughts in their head of the things that William Brannum said against Christmas and presents and trees, even though he himself, you know, celebrated these things. So I thought it would be good if we wrap up by just talking about, this exam and the pagan idea a bit and then see what Paul has to say about it.

And I'll read what Paul says in Colossians directly, I'm reading the King James version, but I recommend, you know, the ESV, some of the newer translations so that you can easier, you can understand it more easily.

But Paul said, let no man, therefore judge you in meat, drink, or in respect of a holy day, or a new moon of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the bodies of Christ.

And I want to talk about the new moon, the holy day and the meat and the drink, because it's actually very critical to understanding the majority of the cult's mindset against Christians celebrating Christmas, because it's, quote, unquote, from the Sun God.

So if you understand the Sun God and you understand ancient cultures, ancient civilizations, how it worked, and you can find this globally around the world. It's in the pyramids, it's in the, you know, pyramids around the globe, not even just the great pyramid, but it's also in the stone hinge, it's in various temples around the world.

They celebrate the solstices, the times in which the sun is the strongest, because many of them were Sun God cults, moon cults, and they measure the distance because it's related to their harvest. It's related to when you plant, when the crops grow, how well the crops are going to grow, et cetera.

So there's a big part of their worship will back then worship of the deities. was also tied to politics. So not only was it part of their culture as a civilization worshipping a pagan god, it was also part of the city. The city each city would represent a god. So what would happen is whenever they would have these new moons or these Sabbaths literally celebrating the birth of this ungod, they would have celebrations. It was a holy day. And Paul said, let no one tell you that you can't eat meat or drink inside of a holy day. We'll see back then. The early

Christians had this had a bigger conflict than we have because of William Brannum because they grew up in these religions that literally sacrificed human beings and then they would feast after the sacrifice. And a large number of the sun god cults practice human sacrifice. It's a big, big, big deal, right? But as part of the celebration of the city, everybody celebrating and then there were these groups of Christians that tried to make themselves be holy on their own. In other words, not look to Jesus Christ to make you holy, but what can we do to become more holy than the rest of the city? And they would isolate themselves and they would

avoid eating with these holy days that everybody else in the city is. So here you've got this wide group of people who are potential converts to Christianity. And you've got this little group that's isolating themselves like a cult. And everybody else in the city is like, oh, why would I want your religion? You guys are isolating yourselves like a extremist cult, more extreme than our cult.

And it's even to the extent it's even no fun to be in your cult. So Paul comes along and he says, let no one tell you that you can't celebrate the holy day or the Sabbath or the new moons.

He is literally speaking against every single one of these ministers and all of these message and splinter group churches who are saying don't celebrate Christmas because it's worship of the Sun God. Yeah, I personally go down the route of Romans chapter 14, where Paul says one man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. And I like that. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. And I am of the belief that people can choose to do what they want to do.

And it's none of my business. And God, don't care one way or the other. So that's how I've come, you know, look at this. And Paul, you know, again, just like you mentioned there in Colossians in Romans 12, it's very clear. Paul is specifically speaking about holidays. Yeah. Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regard at the day regards it unto the Lord. He that regards it not not the day to the Lord.

He does not regard it. He that eateth the Lord. Give the Lord thanks and he that he is not eateth not for the Lord. None of us lives or dies do himself. Right. And so it goes on to say, you know, so why judge your brother one way or the other? So we I'm I'm of the opinion, let people make up their own mind, what they want to do. And the the the rule in the Bible is as I see it is not the rule is not that Christmas is or should not be celebrated, should or should not be celebrated. The rule is people get to make up their own mind.

And so when we and so that that's where I fall. So long as we let people give people the freedom to make up their mind, then that's fine. It's but it's when you cross the line and you start to turn things that, you know, the Bible tells you you have the right to make up your own mind about and we start taking away your right to make up your mind. Then we have, you know, went against the Bible. So I mentioned earlier, I I suffered through some severe depression. My cousin helped me. I'm deeply remembering him right now. He

died of COVID last year. But he he was talking me through this while I was in the message. I was I was a William Brandon believer. And he was literally, he literally saved my life. And he was not a message believer. And I'm trying not to cry. I will do this. But he asked him one day, why don't you believe William Branham? And he said, John, I believe the cowboy religion. I said, what's that Marcus? And he said, love God. Love your neighbors that aren't trying to kill you and be kind to animals. And at the time I was thinking, well, he didn't mention

William Branham in this. He's going to hell. But the longer I the further a distance myself from this cult, the more I realize how much more he understood about life and the Bible than I as this little message believer believed. It's literally down to the way I see it as this difference.

In a non cult church that believes the gospel, they believe that Jesus is the one who saves you. And they celebrate Christmas because Jesus came to earth and Jesus, God sent his only begotten son, right? So they're looking to Jesus to save you versus in the cult, they try to put all of these weights on your shoulders of these things that you do to save yourself. In other words, Jesus is powerless to save and us you don't do Christmas unless you wear these things that make you look like you're Pentecostal in the fifties or so on and so forth, they add these rules that you're literally

trying to save yourselves, which this is a Christmas episode, Charles. This is why Jesus came. This is why we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas. I'm no preacher, but I can tell you that I would prefer to speak about the things that celebrate Jesus versus the things that are designed to restrain you from celebrating the birth of Christ.

Right. Let me read one quote from William Brannum here. William Brannum says here, there is just only about a minute difference in the day when it passes from the 25th of December, the Sun God's birthday, not the Son of God, and every one of us play Santa Claus and decorate trees, heathenism, and things like that.

And then we call ourselves Christians. What's the matter with the Christian church? You know, William Brannum made statements like that where you, it's very clear he's saying you cannot celebrate Christmas, you cannot have a tree, you cannot have an image of Santa Claus and be a Christian.

That is clearly what he's saying right there. That is a gross sin actually according to the Bible. What William Brannum is doing there is committing the sin that Apostle Paul outlined in Romans 14, also in the book of Colossians.

He is sinning against every person in his church and every person that hears that statement. William Brannum has sinned against them, right. And this is the thing that we do in the message. We give William Brannum an out for everything.

William Brannum had no right to tell people what they could and could not do. He had to give them the ability to make up the mind themselves, right. And for him to take people who are exercising their convictions and tell them they can't be a Christian because they don't agree with his view on a holy day is a gross sin, right.

And so William Brannum don't get a pass for these things just because of anything that people come up with to give people passes. William Brannum don't give it a pass for this. This is a sinful thing that William Brannum was preaching when he told people they could not celebrate Christmas and could not be Christians and celebrate Christmas.

This is sinful that what William Brannum preached and did on this topic. And unfortunately he did that on many, many topics. And it's hard when you're in the message to acknowledge that and realize that and say that out loud.

William Brannum was preaching sin. William Brannum was preaching sin. You know you're right Charles, I think I'll end with this for anyone who's struggling with the notion of celebrating Christmas after leaving the cult of William Brannum or even if you're in the cult and you're now torn because what do I do William?

Brannum celebrated and told me not to, the book of James, it talks about people who are double-minded. And that's what we're seeing here exactly. We've got William Brannum, who's double-minded. He's telling you to not to celebrate while he and his family are doing it.

And I'm reading this in the new international version, but it says, those who consider themselves religious and do not keep a tight reign on their tongues, deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. So I think to wrap this up, I'm not going to go so far as to say that William Brannum's religion is worthless.

He did say some good things, but I will say it's worthless for somebody to condemn others for things that they're doing to be double-tongued, like the book of James is clearly talking about in many verses besides this one.

But think of the children. Even William Brannum said, think of the children. I'm trying to picture a life for my children that did not involve the joy that they had each year and still have each year.

When they come in and they see all of the things that were celebrating and the presence to a kid, they don't understand the reason why we're celebrating. But this present that they get, it's a big part of their life.

They enjoy it and that sticks in their mind and then when they become adults and they learn why you're celebrating, now you've just planted the seeds that's going to grow into this wonderful thing.

Why would you take this joy away from them? But not only that, why would you take this opportunity to train them in the way in which to live? It's a golden opportunity to train children.

So I think to wrap this up, Charles, I want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and I hope something in this has helped them to celebrate and to enjoy themselves. And I just, from my family to yours, I just want to say Merry Christmas.

Well, thanks, John. I've really enjoyed this episode too. And I've, I think the key for me is people can make up their own mind. It's like the Apostle Paul said, that everyone be fully persuaded in their own mind and give each other the liberty and freedom to do and follow your own convictions on this topic.

And it's when we start to condemn each other for things that we have freedom over. That's really when we start to sin against each other, which is exactly the kind of a thing that William Brannum introduced with his sermons, starting judging people and condemning people over things, which is their perfect right and freedom in Christ to do.

I think if anyone's listened to me carefully through this, you probably don't know what I do for Christmas. So I'm...

Practicing what I preach, I'm not persuading one way or the other. You were free to do what you want, and I will say to you all happy holidays from my family to yours as well.

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-Brandom.org and ChristianGospelChurch.org. And from our families to your families, Mary Christmas.