Working With the Devil - Jim Jones and the Message

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

And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum for key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, we have now reached the point that I think all of our listeners have been just aching for us to reach in the point of history in this podcast.

And a very funny story, you probably remember this a few years back. I started a documentary series where I was going through the history and I was leading up to this event. And the cult heavily attacked that a docu-series trying to prevent the public from seeing the information about what we're getting into in this podcast.

And the real funny part is it's not even, you know, the meaty stuff. We're just skimming the surface of the things that we're going to get into. But this one particular fact is such a high sore if you will to the entire cult as a whole and its splinter groups and the different sex of Christianity that were built on top of it that the cult actually took down my original YouTube site.

It was called Seek the Truth. And basically they halted the production of that documentary series that I was working on. And what's funny is now that we have reached that exact point again and this time through you and I in a different YouTube channel, you know, through the course of this podcast, they have attacked it attempting to bring the new one down.

And Charles, it's like a religious whack-a-mole. You know, we have so many attacks that, you know, one pops up and then we just whack it down and move to another one. Well, the odd part about all of this is they've tried so hard to stop this one key figure from being introduced into the matter.

history because they've erased this history. And what I decided to do last time when all of this happened was I decided that I held all of the information and I'm a target and they knew this, they targeted me. So I went pretty much offline for about a year to rebuild the technology behind all of this. And I now whenever I receive information through this technology engine that I've built and I won't give any details to this, they would love to know and they've tried to actually get into my technology to know what it is. But it spreads like a spider web through the internet.

So if you are a member of the message you're interested in the message, you're going to learn this information. And that way the information is shared across thousands, maybe tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people. It's not just one person that holds this information.

So what I decided to do is while playing religious whack-a-mole, I would throw them back about 10,000 whack-a-moles back their direction. And so they just simply cannot stop what we're about to say even though they've tried. But I will say they put up a pretty good fight for it.

Yeah, John, it's pretty interesting how some people respond to things. It's really quite a shame, honestly. People would use such malicious tactics. I mean, even really even violating the law, honestly. Of course, there's nothing that we've done here that is incompatible with Section 107 of the Copyright Act, John. They went through the Copyright Wars back in the 90s. I'm sure you remember that. How they went through the... Yes, they did. And we all know how that turned out, which we have you got to do an episode on that at some point for our audience.

Yeah, I think we sure have. And anyways, basically they lost all of that, right? And so they're really kind of just repeating some of the same legal battle stuff they've already lost in the past.

Really, the only thing they can do is slow the spread of this information a bit. There's no way they're going to stop it because like you've said, John, this is in multiple locations. It'll be published in multiple ways and the public will find everything out. All in due course, right? So... And today, John, we've got a really good episode. One so good. And so do you see that some people don't want you to hear it. In this episode, it's going to be some things I do think people find pretty interesting. Today, we are going to start our deep dive

into the Reverend Jim Jones and his connections to the message in William Brannum. And to start, I think we should assume that some in our audience might not even know who Jim Jones is. So, I think we should take some time to talk about his life growing up.

in Indiana, and what ended up leading him to begin working with William Brannum. And I think a lot of that's an important context because Jim Jones is the biggest mass murderer in American history.

There's no American who has murdered more people than Jim Jones. No one has even come close. He's one of the most evil people in the history of the United States, and he's also one of the most evil people to have ever been in the message.

And William Brannum is the man responsible for launching him into fame and popularity. Yeah, and before we get into the episode, I think I'll start with this. We've had so many people contact us offering to help in the fight because, as I said earlier, we've reached the point now where an attack on this website isn't an attack on me.

It isn't an attack on all of us. The information has spread. There are many people who are invested in getting this information and helping to share it. So an attack on me doesn't work anymore.

It is literally an attack on all of us. And people have asked, how can we help to fund this? How can we help in the battle? And I just want to say this. This particular attack appears to come from one unofficial spokesperson for the main sect of the message.

And interestingly, there is some history with this one individual. I won't give his name, but there was some trouble that actually started when my grandfather was pastor of the Brannum Tabernacle and won't get into any of those details, but there is a history of problem here.

So there's some history behind us that I think is probably playing a factor. But back whenever we were first attacked, up to that point and even to a large extent up until now, most of what we do, I fund through my own personal account.

We have received just a little bit of money here and there and I just keep it in an account for people who have escaped the cult and are in need. For instance, I helped a person with groceries and we try to help if we can.

Obviously, there's not enough money to help everyone, but we try to help when we can. And there's a little bit of money there for that that they've set aside. But I don't want to immediately take the advice of so many people have actually contacted me asking me to go fund me page.

I don't want to do this yet because I don't want the appearance that we're trying to devise a plan for people to give us money. This isn't about money, this is about the sharing of information and helping people escape from a very destructive, very oppressive set of religious abuse through a false religion.

That's what this is. So... Ah... can't tell what we're doing in response. That will obviously come later. But for now, if you want to support the podcast, you can through our Patreon site. And when it comes to the point where we actually are going to need some money for what's coming, there will be something put up that we will clearly state what the money's used for.

Meanwhile, if you want to contribute to help people, to help Charles and I in the research and to fund, we have travel expenses. I've actually spent thousands of dollars in just traveling and research.

So if you want to help fund that, we do have a Patreon site. But for the purposes of what's coming, let's wait until we know exactly what it is that we're going to do.

Right, John. And I'm the same as you. I'm certainly not looking for donations really. If you do want to contribute to help support the spread of the gospel, that is perfectly fine. But in terms of this podcast, I'm definitely glad to contribute what I know pro bono.

That's been my plan. Yes. I never will forget. I was working with somebody who had escaped the message and they were leading their family out, their children, and you know all the emotions that go with that process.

I'm sure Charles, it's very difficult to go through. And there are times that there are a lot of people once you've been in a cult mindset. When you break free from that cult mindset, it's there's this aspect to it that you have to reconnect and plug in and try to, you know, there's a huge part of your psychological makeup that just has been torn out of your head and it hurts.

I mean, it's like literally a death in your head and people try to fill in that void. And so they try to reconnect. And I never will forget I was talking to this person who was going through this process with their family.

And I mentioned, did you know Jim Jones was a message minister and he was a leader in the cult? And they said, well, who's Jim Jones? And I was floored. Like, I was in the message.

I knew who this was. I, you know, I'm fascinated with history anyways. So this was interesting to me, but I was shocked that there are people that do not know. And I said, have you ever heard the phrase, don't drink the Kool-Aid?

And of course, everybody in the world has heard this phrase now, man. And I said, do you know where that comes from? And I started explaining that Jim Jones and his cult of personality went to Jonestown, Guyana.

And they set up a agricultural community. It was a utopia of sorts, very similar to Colonia Dignidad. And they, you know, over a period of time, the cult became more progressively destructive. And in the end, Jones convinced over 900 people to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.

One of the biggest mass suicides. in American history, although he was in, you know, Jonestown, Guyana, when this happened. And again, I was just, I was really shocked that this person, and there are other people out there who have never heard of Jim Jones.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's something. I think too, let me point out just a few resources for people to look into if they want to go deeper too before we dive in ourselves. There's a couple really good books I would recommend.

If you want to do a really deep dive into Jim Jones' life, one is, this is called the Raven, this is by Tom Readerman. Tom Readerman was at Jonestown. He was actually shot during the Jonestown massacre.

He survived, and when he got out and got recovered, he came back to the United States and he went around and did all kinds of interviews with Jim Jones' family members and people in the town where he grew up and, you know, just his whole life and compiled that book, The Raven.

And it was published in 1987. It's a, or maybe in 1986, somewhere in mid-80s. And it's a really, really good book. It is probably the best book out there on Jim Jones. I would highly recommend it.

Not Jon, I probably own and I've read every single biography there is on Jim Jones. I have them all in my shelf, but I was thinking the two that are the best to me that I thought were the best.

The other one is called, This One I'll Recommend The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Gwyn. And this book is a lot newer, this is from 2017. And the reason I recommend this one is also, it's a very good biography, but he, obviously, there's more stuff that's come out since the 80s when The Raven was wrote.

And he does a good job of incorporating some of the more recent information that has came out in those years. These are two resources I'd recommend for people interested. Two other places I would refer to as primary sources, which I think Jon is mostly all on your website.

I think they're all digitized, but voice healing. Look at voice healing through the mid-50s. You'll find Jim Jones and quite a few voice healing referenced in the voice healing. And also look in Harold Faith by Joseph Mats and Bozay and even more so.

Joseph, Jim Jones is mentioned in almost every single edition of Harold the Faith during the years that he worked with William Bramham. There's even full, you can even find full spreads on his. I pulled out just a few excerpts.

Like they're published in Jim Jones sermons in Harold the Faith, right? He's just all over that magazine. And of course, remember, Harold the Faith is really the main publicity organ for more so the latter reign.

So it makes more sense that he's more heavily covered in Harold the Faith. So anyway, those are some good resources to check out if you want to look into these stuff yourself. Yeah. I also recommend alternative considerations of Jonestown and People's Temple.

The website address is Jonestown.SDSU.EDU. I began working with the people at Jonestown Institute, which this used to be called, and Rebecca Moore, who's one of the founders of the website and community, her sister was in Jonestown and was one of, if I remember correctly, she was one of the leaders in the Jonestown community in Guyana, and her sister is one of the people who died.

Well, after the Jonestown events, the heads of the alternative considerations of Jonestown and People's Temple, joined the Jim Jonest People's Temple cult to learn more about the sister and what happened in the events there.

And over time, it grew into a research site and facility, and there are support groups kind of like we have for the message they created a similar thing for people of People's Temple. And just an overwhelming amount of research.

You can find actual sermons by Jim Jones, and you can, you know, search the website. You can search keywords. It is actually what led me to understand that William Branham was in the message, or Jim Jones was in the message.

You're holding up a book, and I'm holding up to one of my books, Jim Jones, The Malachi 4 Elijah Prophecy. I was studying the sermons, trying to understand more about Jim Jones. And honestly, at that point in time, I was falsely convinced that Jones just held a, you know, one revival with William Branham, and that was it.

I did not know he was a leader in the movement. And the people at Jonestown Institute were open their doors to me basically, help me find resources, help me learn how to search their site, etc.

And once I got into sermons, oh my gosh, I started reading them. And if you took the name Jones out, and you changed the language to a fake Kentucky hill building, to a fake Kentucky hill building accent, it was the same exact thing that we had with William Branham.

And I was reading, I remember just being floored, how can this be? This is like reading a different version of William Branham. And I come across this quote where there was this lady who was seeking healing by Reverend Jim Jones.

And she called him Elijah. And I was like, oh my gosh, so I started searching keywords. And that's how I found the manifest sons of God doctrine. Jones was deeply, deeply influenced by William Branham's manifested sons of God.

And just a numerous... other things, other similarities that I found, and over time, that developed into a working relationship where I now have them on speed dial and I send questions, et cetera, and they give me answers or point me to resources, one of which we actually have for this episode or for the next one, they recommended a book by Doug Weed, who we have mentioned his father who was, you know, the Indiana, what was he, the district superintendent of the assemblies of God.

So just overwhelming amount of information that I cannot say enough good things about alternative considerations of Jonestown and people's temple, that's Jonestown.sdsu.edu. Yeah, I'm like you, Jon, I had more or less the impression that Jim Jones' time in the message was short and uneventful.

And I think I've maybe mentioned this before, but our pastors, somewhere in the early 1990s, probably not very terribly long after he found out this book had been wrote, which talks about William Brannum in it.

So does the Jeff Gwynn book, you'll find William Brannum in the Jeff Gwynn book too. He preached a sermon and my recollection, this was like a midweek service. And kind of when the service was over, he took some time and he talked to us about Jim Jones being in the, you know, connected to William Brannum and in the message.

And this, this would have been, this is Raymond Jackson, I'm talking about the man who officiated William Brannum's funeral, okay, Junior Jackson on all the tapes. And he told us how William Brannum had worked with Jim Jones and, Jon, he told us that Jim Jones was a scarecrow and that God had put scarecrow's like Jim Jones in the message in order to scare away the denominational dirty birds.

Right, like this was like the, you know, the, the, the crows are, you know, the unclean birds is denominational people in our parlance. So in our sect anyway, I don't know if it's that way in your sect.

I think William Brannum used that same language himself. Yeah. So, so Jim Jones was the scarecrow to scare away the denominational Christians. And I look, and I look back then, I thought, oh, man, this is, this is amazing, God is so smart, you know, to use Jim Jones to scare away.

I think that might be the most ridiculous thing I ever heard, Jon, now that I look back like, oh my goodness, now, I mean, we should have been scared and ran away, like what in the world?

You know, in the main sect, they just simply covered it up. I think I've mentioned it before on here, but my grandfather and some other men were responsible for protesting to keep that book that you mentioned, The Raven, out of the Jeffersonville Library.

so that cult members would not realize that William Brannum was so deeply connected to Jim Jones. And, you know, I've, when I first began my research into Jim Jones, I remember publishing just one small blog article that I had learned that Jones and Brannum held that, that Cato Tabernacle event together. And I think I wrote a small article for the Jonestown site at that time. And I got a flood of attack from cult members. And they said, this is guilt by association. You cannot say that William Brannum and Jim Jones are connected.

And they actually fought very hard to keep my research off of the Jonestown Institute site. And if you go to their site and you just type in John Collins in the search, you'll see now I've got a list of articles on there where we're collaborating to get the Pentecostal history up. And very soon, I don't think it's published yet, but very soon there'll be a timeline up of William Brannum's interactions with Jim Jones, etc. But they fought because guilt by association. And at that time, Charles, I'll be honest with you, I actually thought they had a

valid argument. And I'm sad to say this, but it hindered my research because I did not go past that first event. I found that there was a second event. And I thought that was just the limited period of time. And maybe there were two just coincidental happenstance meetings where Jim Jones and William Brannum are in the same building. But no, I started researching. I was just curious. I wanted to learn more. I started reading the transcript of Jones. And it was because of reading those transcripts that I realized that this connection is much, much deeper than two happenstance meetings.

This is Jim Jones, who is preaching William Brannum's message. There's no question about it. Definitely. It is absolutely shocking, you know, and I'm the same. I thought it was just a meeting or two, but it is much, much deeper than that. And we'll go through that in these episodes. And Jim Jones, if you take William Brannum and you cross him with Father Divine, you're going to get Jim Jones. And that's exactly what happened. Right. Jim Jones is William Brannum crossed with Father Divine.

Yeah. And it produces Jim Jones. The, the ladder rain message forms a key pillar of the ideology of Jim Jones and people's temple in William Brannum. And Jim Jones learned these things during his time in ladder rain and working with William Brannum. And through our next few episodes, I am excited that we're going to have opportunity to share those things. So maybe before we dive right into all the juicy stuff, how about just mention a little bit about his early life, John. So Jim Jones, was born in Indiana. Not really all that far from where Jeffersonville is right now. Maybe about 150

miles from where we're at. It's in Eastern Indiana. His father was a World War I disabled veteran. He took an injury in the war and he was bedridden for most of his life. And so Jim Jones was born into really abject poverty. His father couldn't provide for the family and and as a child, as you read the biographies, he went hungry a lot. He didn't have enough food quite often.

A lot of times he was completely naked. He didn't even have clothes to wear, right? Like it was that serious, and to make matters worse, his mother totally neglected him. So he was just an utterly neglected child. And when you read interviews or the people who lived in his community, it was pretty common to that his neighbors would find him wandering the town,

stark naked looking for food. Like that was a thing that happened in Jim Jones' childhood on regular currents. And his neighbors felt really bad for him. They would take him in, they would feed him, they'd let him stay overnight at their house. And people who study Jim Jones believe that those things caused him to develop or he already had some very serious mental problems as a result of those things from a very early age. So

Jim Jones was a seriously troubled person from the earliest days of his life. Yeah, and I think that's key to focus in on because there are all kinds of histories about Jim Jones. I'm fascinated by them. I'm sure you are too.

And for people who have studied those histories, it's a bit different. I think that historians can fully flesh out because they don't have, most of them do not have the brand of history. Until you combine the two, you really can't get a full and complete picture of Jim Jones.

But according to general history of Jim Jones, people believe that he did have some mental issues that were a result of his neglect and his, you know, very horrific, tragic lifestyle growing up. And he was getting involved with the early days of the assemblies of God Church.

One of his favorite places to visit was a local, I believe it was either assemblies of God or Church of Christ. A little group where there were youth gatherings, etc. that transitioned into the assemblies of God. And they sponsor all of these youth meetings. Well, during this period of time, Roy Weed and others were building the assemblies of God churches. And by the time Jones becomes a minister and assembly.

of God, it is one of the most rapidly growing church organizations in the state of Indiana. It's massive. So he was deeply influenced by Pentecostal Holiness lifestyle. He had these mental health conditions and historians will generally say that this resulted in him becoming somewhat psychotic and towards the latter days of his life, they believe him to have been fully atheist because they do not understand the manifested sons of God doctrine.

Jones begins claiming that he is God and begins claiming that he is the manifestation of God and he's saying things that a Christian would not say. So any Christian researcher is going to say this man is an atheist, he does not believe.

But if you take what William Brannum said in the 1965 sermons, Jones is just saying exactly what William Brannum was saying that he was this manifestation that Brannum prophesied about. Jim Jones wholly bought into the latter rain, the most extreme latter rain teachings.

Absolutely. And that is what I look forward to deep diving some of his teachings in our next episode. I believe it, I think beyond the shadow of a doubt, those extreme latter rain teachings is both what allowed him to take absolute control over his followers and also what allowed him to create the path that he believed he was God manifested in the flesh.

Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. That's definitely what was happening and it's the same pattern we actually see with quite a number of other latter rain figures, William Brannum included. And if you examine the fruits of William Brannum's ministry, the fruits being the splinter groups that branched off of the main sack, Charles, how many have we counted so far that take the manifested sons of God doctrine that William Brannum created and they begin claiming to be either the new apostle, the new prophet, the new messenger, many of them, the new Christ, the new, you know, there's so many different flavors of this.

And it's literally, it is the fruit that is produced by the trunk of the message. That's exactly what Jim Jones did. And Jim Jones was actually Pentecostal from his childhood. So as I talked about him wandering the streets of his town naked, one of the ladies that tended to take care of him would start to take him to church.

And then that's how he ended up coming into contact with the holiness lifestyle and so forth was through that lady. I believe her name was Myrtle Kennedy. Her husband was the pastor of the church.

And so he's, he's going to church and he falls in love with an apostolic Pentecostal church there in the town that he lived in. I think it was called Linn Indian. Anna and he's going there on Sundays and he as a young very young kid decides he wants to be preacher and and he's preaching in the Apostolic Pentecostal style and as he grows up in life he's mortal canody and different ones take him to some of the actually larger revivals that are going on in Indiana and as you think about that as he's growing up

in Indiana it's quite likely John that he's probably heard of William Brannum from a young age because the most famous Pentecostal preacher in the world at that time is William Brannum and Jim Jones is in Indiana and William Brannum is this is probably you know is the center of his fame fame is right here so it's quite likely Jim Jones had even heard about William Brannum um as he just started to become come into popularity in the mid 40s you know I was just thinking as you were talking we have we have actually changed the timeline of William Brannum's

ministry since I began working with the Johnstown Institute we have determined that it was as early as what 1929 and we have seen William Brannum holding Pentecostal Revivals advertising himself all the way up to you know up to miss you walk up by the time he's there he's a he's a recognized figure well the earliest interaction that I find in the newspapers with Jim Jones is 1940 set a prayer meeting at the Apostolic Gospel Church of Reverend Lester McFarland and this Apostolic Church would have been in if not direct contact with William Brannum it would have been

in the influence of William Brannum yeah definitely it William Brannum was traveling in those circles certainly by the mid in late 1940s when when Jim Jones was was in those churches um so the point in time which we start to get more solid solid evidence that William Brannum or Jim Jones had heard of William Brannum actually comes as he comes as he goes to college so in 1948 Jim Jones moved to Bloomington Indiana where he attended Bloomington University and there is actually a message connected William Brannum message connected church in Bloomington it's actually still there to this day and the pastor of that church and that church was actually in my sect of the

message John I know we've we've talked these things through before and the pastor of that church is still alive he's about 90 years old now he actually left the message probably roughly 20 years ago but he pastored that church for nearly 30 years and while Jim Jones was in college that church was located in a storefront in downtown Bloomington at that point in time and we know through different things and that pastor as well Well, Jim Jones actually was at that Bloomington message church at some points in time while he was at Bloomington University, they're going to IU.

So he certainly would have heard of William Brannum by 1949 when he had access to that church. Now his wife was a Methodist and she actually wanted him to go to the Methodist church.

So Jim Jones actually ends up going a lot to the Methodist church during that time too. But he's crossed. He is going to the Methodist church with his wife and doing stuff there. And then at the same time, he's also going to these ladder rain churches, John, in the same time frame, like he's two time in the Methodist church, two than years.

You know, it's funny when you think back at this history, we're kind of warped in our way of thinking about things because of the environment that we have today. Kids are playing Xbox Nintendo and their world is literally their bedroom.

But back then, it was quite a different lifestyle. I remember even just 10 years ago, there were so many kids who wanted to be Captain Jack Sparrow and they're out with their swords and pirate, you know, get up and the way kids play, they see a movie and they start playing.

Well, back then, Jones was extremely poor and the poorest of poor, like Jim Jones, couldn't even afford to go to the theaters. And yet he could go to these revivals and he could watch these guys entertaining the crowds.

And he, I think the book The Raven captures this pretty well, but he wants to become this from an early childhood. He is mimicking them. He's, you know, he's out. I think one of the, one of the articles says, one of the pages in the books describes him out, you know, pretending that he has a platform and he's speaking to children and whatnot.

He's, you know, William Brannum becomes his Captain Jack Sparrow, if you look at it this way. We don't know that William Brannum, that he had seen William Brannum by this point in time, but the general sense I'm trying to portray is these were more than preachers back then.

They were your preachers. They were your entertainment. People would go to these revivals and there would be hot dog stands and soda pop stands. And I mean, this was entertainment and to the poorest of poor, this was free entertainment where you also got fed.

So Jones is highly influenced, but to the extent he sees it and he wants to do it from an early childhood. And he is mentally unstable. And the combination of all of this, remember Charles in the flat terrain, the way you get inducted into this is not by studying and learning your body.

table and becoming, you know, screened before you, before you get a congregation to make sure you are mentally stable. They laid hands on you and prophesied, and if this happened, boom, you had a ministry.

It didn't matter if you knew the Bible or not. Right. And Jim Jones, you can read the accounts of the other children that he tricked or forced into playing church with him, and he was doing very creepy, very weird, very sick twisted stuff all the way back when he was playing church with these other kids, right?

And it was creepy sick stuff that he was doing from a childhood when he would play church even. And he was doing it all in the Appstile, Pentecostal style too, you know, is that's what his influence was.

And you know, I know John, you and I both have talked to different people who actually knew Jim Jones while he was in the message. I just interviewed, I remember one person we even talked to him together, how he told us about how his sister went to a sleepover with Jim Jones daughter.

Remember that one? I remember that. I remember that. Right. There's lots of people that have reached out to share with us, you know, the details of what they know about Jim Jones through this period of time.

But anyway, after Jim Jones leaves Bloomington, he finishes college up there, and he moves back to Indianapolis and he's kind of two time in the Pentecost or the Methodist church. That's when he ends up becoming a Latter-Rain preacher, right?

The whole time that he's going to the Methodist church, he's also going to all these Latter-Rain Revival events. And you'll find this actually, this is documented in his biographies, how he's going to these Latter-Rain events.

And he catches his first big break in 1953. So, you know, he's going to the Boise Healing Latter-Rain Conventions, and in 1953, he goes to a Latter-Rain Convention in Columbus, Indiana. So we're, this is about what, maybe 25, 30 miles from Bloomington, right?

Yeah, I think so. It's about halfway from Indianapolis to Jeffersonville. So he goes to a great big meeting in Columbus, and a woman at this meeting stands up and prophesies over Jim Jones that he has been called to be a prophet to the Latter-Rain movement.

And gives him this big hurrah, and the convention actually invites him up on stage and asks him if he would like to preach to the convention, and of course he does. He preaches a sermon at a Latter-Rain Convention in Columbus in 1953.

This is his big break into Latter-Rain at this point. And he's been going to Latter-Rain events, and conventions, and churches, and stuff up to this, but this gets him on the stage for the first time.

One of the people that I recently interviewed explained how much this exploded, and honestly, it was because of that... person's testimony that I began to realize that the reason why the main sect of the message has, I don't know if you know this or not, the main sect of the message has actually tried to cover up the fact that William Brannum was deeply involved with Laterane.

If you study the history, there is no question. Brannum was deeply involved with Laterane. He's the reason it exists and yet the message tries to cover it up and they say that no William Brannum condemned the Laterane, which he did.

But they're hiding the fact that he also is the one who helped start the Laterane. Our sect actually fully embraced the Laterane. So I think it varies maybe even by sect. Our sect completely embraced the Laterane.

We were the Laterane, like we were we were proud to say we are the Laterane and are our sect. Yeah. Well, anyway, this person who was there, I mean, this is a person who witnessed this, Jim Jones was preaching in Laterane affiliated churches all through Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio.

He's just touring the country. And remember, this is a period of time in which William Brannum was extremely famous in every Laterane assembled church. If you look back to General Pentecostalism, views the Azusa street revival as their birth of their religion, basically.

And anybody who was at that was basically considered to be a Pentecostal founding father. They had authority in the, you know, in the ministry in churches. Well, the Laterane viewed William Brannum much the same way during those years.

William Brannum and Franklin Hall were basically the two catalysts that exploded. The revival was into the Laterane. And so everybody wanted to know more about William Brannum. And he became such a hot commodity that every church in Laterane, if you were in Laterane, you knew William Brannum.

And Jim Jones is touring through all of these Brannum related churches. Yes. Yes. And as he's doing this, you know, that church or the convention that he went to in 1953 was connected to Myrtle Beal.

So with Myrtle Beal faction of Laterane. Right. He ends up getting an invitation not long after that to preach another Laterane convention at the Fezden Missionary Temple in Detroit, Myrtle Beal's church. So Jim Jones, not later in 1953, is invited to one of the key hubs of Laterane where he preaches and holds a revival along with Myrtle Beal.

And so at that point, he is coming into the peak of what the Laterane can do for you as far as popularity. You know, he's not, he's not reached the top, but he's, he's getting there, right?

And so by the point, by the time he does that, Jim Jones is then a known preaching figure throughout a large subsect of Laterane. And this is all happening just in 1953. So after he finishes that time with Myrtle Beale, and roughly about that same time, this is when he ends up going to the Laurel Street Tabernacle in Indianapolis.

And Laurel Street Tabernacle was an assemblies of God Church. And to put that in context, Myrtle Beale and most of these other churches that Jim Jones had been touring, they were also assemblies of God churches or former assemblies of God churches that had successfully exited the denomination.

So it is assemblies of God's circles that Jim Jones is working within in the ladder rain. And so he goes to this Laurel Street Tabernacle John, which was a fairly new church that had been set up by none other than Roy Weed.

An interesting side note about Myrtle Beale's, I wanted to call her Maal Beagle again, about Myrtle Beale's church in Detroit. For the main sect of the message, they will be familiar with this, for the general public, they will not probably, but Myrtle Beale's church in Detroit was very close to Windsor, Ontario, just right across the country lines.

And Windsor, Ontario is where William Brannum had one of his famous message events. We all knew this in the message. But if you take a step back and you examine what William Brannum said about this event with the way that Jim Jones forms his ministry, I think it will make sense to the Jones researchers.

Jones had this very commanding, demanding, very authoritarian style of ministry. And people were captivated by fear and scolding. And he, I mean, right off the platform, he would threaten people with sorcery, basically. Well, William Brannum in Windsor, Ontario, apparently he was challenged.

And I've got some research on this. He was challenged because of, at that time, there were several healings that were proven to be faults. And in Windsor, Ontario, William Brannum holds this meeting and apparently somebody challenged him.

And after the meeting, William Brannum pretends that he won the challenge. And he says, and this guy came and he pretended to have something that was written on his prayer card, that he did not have.

God struck him down and paralyzed and they had to carry him out of the building on a stretcher because he was paralyzed. And then in another retelling, he says, and the guy was so scared that he ran screaming from the building.

And the story just continued to grow and change and morph. The guy was either dead or he was still alive and paralyzed or he had cancer or he had tuberculosis. All of these just weird.

conflicting stories. Well, this was right across, you know, right across the border to mobiles church, and mobiles is one of the heavy influences of Jim Jones' ministry. Something else. Yeah, the man from Windsor, that's another one of William Brownham's fishing stories, that every time he told it's fish got a little bigger.

And it's a different type of fish, Charles. Yeah, I know, like, one day it's a bass, and the next day it's a trout, and then it's a flounder, like it's, it's something else. Like that, that story is something else. Again, the, it can be safely concluded. The man from Windsor's story is a total fabrication of William Brownham based on some small little something that, you know, maybe it was a minnow, the day he caught it, right? That turned into, you know, a shark by the time it was all said and done.

But to Jim Jones, this, even though Jones probably knew this was also a fishing story, think of how it influenced him. This is a person who is mentally deranged and somewhat psychotic, and he sees this guy who can command authority by telling this big lie to people on stage that deeply influences Jim Jones. Yeah, William Brownham is essentially with that story inferring or saying that he has the power to curse people to death, you know, on command, right?

You looked at me funny. Boom, you know, like that. That's more or less what William Brownham is saying. He has the power to do with that story, which again, do you remember the story, John?

This was told to frighten us a lot in our part of the message that there was a woman who came to the Brown tabernacle, and she had freckles. She was very freckled. And during a service, she stood up to William Brownham after he preached and said, I wouldn't serve this to my dogs, and she stomped out of the church. Are you familiar with this story? I've heard it, yes.

Okay, and she goes home and all of her freckles turn into boils and start eating her skin away, and she dies. This gruesome, horrible, painful, you know, flesh-eating death because of that. And she sends word, oh, William Brownham, I'm so sorry that I questioned you and made a scene during your church service. Will you please come pray that God will take this curse off of me, and William Brownham thinks about it, but she dies anyway, right? Like that's how, yeah, this is the stuff they would tell you for questioning the prophet. Now, John, I have a few freckles.

This has not happened to me. John, I do not have cancer. I do not have any, you know, none of this stuff. Like, William Brownham made all that up, and, you know, people like me and you are living proof that he made these stories up because we're alive and well, John.

I'm immune to it, Charles, because I was one of the fortunate people who was under the blessing from William Brownham to my grandfather. All your- Children and your grandchildren shall be saved. So I'm under this blessing and I'm immune, but it reminds me when you were talking, I don't know if you've seen the cartoon, the sword and the stone, Disney's cartoon, but it reminds me of the two wizards zapping each other with the ones and one gets boils or turns into a frog or whatever.

And I mean, picture William Brannum and Jim Jones doing this to the congregation and then calling it Christianity. I know, it's in it, it's something, I mean, and here's the thing, do you believe that a woman's freckles turn into boils and age or skin alive after she went home from?

Absolutely not. I had never heard of anything like that in my life. I sincerely doubt that's even a true story at this point. But those things when you're in there, yeah, scary to death and think about Jim Jones, yeah, here in these kind of stories, like that man from Windsor story, this is Jim Jones did this exact same kind of stuff with his congregations, yeah.

So anyway, going back to Laurel Street Tabernacle, John. So this is Jim Jones first church, you might say. It's an assemblies of God church, Roy Lee actually dedicated set the church up. And as you look through the advertisements here, John, it seems like the pastor of that church was kind of an old guy who was going downhill and really wasn't able to keep up with things.

And as you look at all of the newspaper advertisements, I'll say Jim Jones is preaching all the services here. Jim Jones preaching all services. So he's there, I guess, but Jim Jones is doing all of the preaching at the Laurel Street Tabernacle, it appears.

And he's doing this in 1953, 1954, 1955. And as he does, this is the period of time that assemblies of God is going into its extreme crackdown on ladder rain. And during these same years that Jim Jones is doing this, Roy Weed is, and we have the articles from Roy Weed.

Roy Weed is personally defending ladder rain to assemblies of God. He is fighting, he's fighting against every attempt to purge ladder rain out of the churches, right? And so when you read articles like this and voice it healing, where Roy Weed is fighting to protect ladder rain preachers in the assemblies of God, realize Jim Jones is the preacher.

He is fighting to protect in assemblies of God, right? Then that is totally in context. That is who Roy Weed is fighting the assemblies of God to protect. He's fighting to keep Jim Jones and preachers like him for being purged out of assemblies of God.

And that's really, really something. And when you look at books like this one, John, which you've already held up, people's temple, this is by his son, Doug Weed. He's one of the co-authors of this book.

This book was published in, night. 78 I believe this was this came out immediately after the Jones town massacre and when you when you read this book

What's in here? It is very obvious that these people that Jim Jones was working with in the fifties are in immediate Full cover-up mode from the moment the Jones town massacre happens Absolutely. They are they are purging and trying to rewrite history from the moment it happens and When you read this the and this and I actually have other of Doug Weed's writings Doug Weed traveled with his dad There's there's almost every certainly that Doug Weed was at Laurel Street tabernacle himself, right probably in those years Okay, and for them To leave out the fact, right? So he's writing this about people for him to leave out the fact

Hey, by the way my dad started the church that Jim Jones was in and my dad was the reason that Jim Jones didn't get purged out of My dad defended Jim Jones and all the other laddering preachers to try and keep them from getting purged out of assemblies of God And my dad's the reason that Jim Jones was able to preach in the laddering churches in Indiana for those years. Yeah What a terrible disservice Doug Weed you've done to us by leaving the truth out right like these people are He knew he knew when he wrote this book

He knew when he was leaving out and if you read what's in here. It's a bold-faced lie. This is a bold-faced lie and he knows better Yeah, it's not a good book if you want to learn about Jim Jones, but if you want to learn how the The culprits have twisted the truth then you can read this book and you can see How the cult is responding in cover-up mode You know, it's it's so deep. I think I think historians don't fully grasp it because There has been such a cover-up of William Brannum's influence on Jim Jones

Jones would not have existed in the way in which he did without William Brannum and the message We're going to build up to this and people understand probably not this episode, but in the upcoming But the Laurel Street Tabernacle is another example of this This was an assemblies of God church and Laterane broke out and it was deeply Laterane They were holding full gospel healing revivals Jones preaching like you said a majority of them Well, what happened is the Laterane Was such a scar on the assemblies of God that they as we've mentioned before they condemned it and they said

This is not a movement from God these are these are extremists They are coming to sever the body of Christ and you know, they go into various points But essentially what they're summing up is that the manifested sons of God doctrine that William Brannum and I'm originated that Jim Jones propagated.

That doctrine is pure heresy, and they actually came in and shut down the Laurel Street Tabernacle, replaced everybody on the board, kicked Jim Jones out, and it was because of that event that Jones becomes fully established as a William Brannum message cult pastor.

Right, because the assemblies of God, which is headquartered, I believe Springfield, Missouri, and Missouri somewhere, they basically come in over Roy Weeds head in 1955. Right, like they've had it with Roy Weed, flaunting the orders of the General Assembly, right?

And they are, every church they hear that the ladder rain is got a foothold in, they are purging it out. Like they're, so they come, basically they come down from corporate, and they throw out the, they throw out the ladder rain leaders in Laurel Street Tabernacle, they dismiss the pastor, they set Jim Jones down, he can't preach no more, and they install a new pastor.

And it's something else because it is Roy Weeds policy that allowed Jim Jones to get established there, allowed him to preach there, and allowed him to flourish there for those years, right? And he did that in absolute contravention of what the assemblies of God leadership and General Counsel had actually issued, going all the way back to the 40s, right?

So he was in, basically he was in full rebellion against assemblies of God with what he was doing. And I think history proves out, at least on this point, that the assemblies of God's central leadership was correct.

Roy Weed was wrong, and we might not have had the Jones town massacre had Roy Weed obeyed the leadership at assemblies of God, right? So there's lots of people here who are responsible, and we can understand why Roy Weed would, and his son Doug Weed would feel the need to try and cover that all up in their book.

And why the message would try to cover it up, because again, the Jones town massacre would not have happened without Roy Weed and William Brannum. I mean, if you remove these two figures out of Jim Jones' life, the Jones town massacre would not have happened in the way that it happened.

Now, Jones was psychotic. There may have been another event who knows, but it would not have been to the extent of 900 people, over 900 people, dying in a religious community that would not have happened.

There's so many people that enabled Jim Jones. And of course, you know, at that point in time, like you can understand, it probably wasn't obvious that Jim Jones was going to grow up and be a mass murderer, right?

Like it probably wasn't incredibly obvious. So you can cut him some slack. maybe they didn't know, but you can't cut them slack for lying to us about what happened, right? Like that is not okay. Like I can understand that they had no idea this was going to happen, right? But to lie to us and cover up all their roles and hide the history from us, that's not okay, right? Because we have a right to know that this ideology produced this stuff.

Like we do, the people that lived in it grew up in it. We have a right to know the extremes that laterane produced. So yeah, so they're in cover up mode. Those people that got kind of Jim Jones has started there in that church. And as you move along through that, after he gets kicked out of the Laurel Street tabernacle, and here's the thing, John, I'm going to say this one with a touch.

This here article of defending that stuff, this is immediately after Jim Jones has been is been kicked out of Laurel Street tabernacle that he takes to the floor. He is still defending Jim Jones after he has been kicked out in these people. So and it's very likely that it is the purge in Laurel Street tabernacle that inspired Roy Weed to write this article right here. Yeah.

And remember in the timeline, this is the point in time in which Gordon Lindsey and the voice of healing, they're also coming to terms with the fact that William Brannum is A, not who he says he was, B, deeply embedded with white supremacy, C, introducing these very horrific anti-biblical doctrines, that they're starting to pull William Brannum from key speaking events. So at the same time that you have Roy Weed defending Jim Jones and William Brannum, you also have half of William Brannum's primary supporters cutting him off. So he's in this position where he really needs

to grow a new circle of friends. And here's Jim Jones, who's a rising minister in Laterane, who is supporting William Brannum, who better to lead the championship for William Brannum than Jim Jones. Yes. Now somewhere along the line through all of Jim Jones activities in 33, 53, 54, 55, somewhere through there, he has come into contact with Joseph Matson-Bose and got on his radar.

And as he's put out of the Laurel Street tabernacle, Jim Jones actually takes a chunk of that congregation with him when he leaves. So he's, Jim Jones, he loses the building, but he don't lose all his followers, his congregants. So a number of congregants leave Laurel Street tabernacle.

Basically they just move to another block in Indianapolis and they build and start People's Temple Full Gospel Church. So the birth of people's full gospel church happened, you know, immediately after their throat out of the Laurel Street Tabernacle. And they initially built themselves as a Pentecostal full gospel ladder rain church. So people's temple was born, John, and this blows my mind, blew my mind when I figured this out. And as you know, too, people's temple started as a full gospel ladder rain church. It was founded as a full gospel ladder rain church in Indianapolis. And like I said, somehow Jim Jones

has come into contact with Joseph Matson-Bose and no doubt Joseph Matson-Bose was at a number of these conventions that Jones was at. Most likely even some that he preached at. It wouldn't surprise me that Bose was at the Myrtle-Beal convention in 53 because they were still friendly at that point. And I could totally see that Bose and it probably wouldn't even be that hard to prove. That was true that Bose was at the 53 convention where Jim Jones preached from Myrtle-Beal. But anyway, Jim Jones and Joseph Matson-Bose have become buddies by 1955. And you know, we have Jim Jones ends up getting it

ordained. So Joseph Matson-Bose or Danes, Jim Jones, as a minister in the independent assemblies of God, right? After he starts people's temple. And keep in mind, Joseph Matson-Bose is at this point in time the primary advertiser for William Brannum. Right. Harold of Faith is the main publicity tool for William Brannum at that point in time. Before he is ordained though, John, Joseph Matson-Bose sends these letters to William Brannum, which we have copies of.

And here's when he sends to William Brannum. And here's another one that he sends to Jim Jones. There's just a page of it. He sends in letters to Jim Jones and to William Brannum, introducing them to each other. And in his letter to Jim Jones, he's saying, here's Brother Brannum's private phone number. Here's Brother Brannum's how to get private mail to Brother Brannum and bypass his handlers, right? Like he's telling that to him. And in this letter to William Brannum, Jim Matson-Bose says something in here that is really disturbing, honestly, when I read it now. And you're right, John. The reason that William Brannum is, or Joseph

Matson-Bose is doing this is because he's trying to help William Brannum rebuild his campaign team right here. And what's happened is, you know, earned backstories, been lost to a split. FF Bosworth is sick and his health is deteriorating. He's about to pass away. He can't tour nearly as much anymore. Gordon Lindsay and a lot of the other voicey healing evangelists are distancing themselves from William Brannum because of, you know, the splits that are going on with Laterane and the from the denominations. So William Brannum is losing a lot of key figures on his team.

And Joseph Mats and Bozay stepping in to take over Gordon Lindsay's spot, Harold Afeith is replacing Voice of Healing as his primary publicity tool. And Joseph Mats and Bozay is trying to help William Brannum build a new team and replace the figures that it needs to be pulling off these revivals. Because it takes a lot of people to pull off one of these big revivals, right? And Jim Jones is one of the people that Joseph Mats and Bozay introduces to Will Brannum to help replace some of these people he's losing on his campaign team. And I

think it's significant that people realize how important that letter is. As you mentioned, it is instructing Jim Jones in how to bypass the screeners to get directly in communication with William Brannum. To the average person listening, they think, well, that's no big deal. If I go to church and there's a minister, I can just walk up to the platform I can talk to him. It's not this way in the message. My grandfather did not have nearly the massive ministry that William Brannum had. But after church service, he had two, I call them bouncer's back then,

but basically there were two bodyguards. And when he walked from the building to his car, there were two bodyguards that screened the people and you could not access my grandfather. There were men with guns who were protecting my grandfather.

I have my concealed carry Charles. And once you get a concealed carry and you're carrying a weapon, you start to notice the way people walk and move and the way they wear their coats, etc. I knew in the message I knew when people were carrying guns. My grandfather had a gun. So it's not like you can just easily access these people. And it's quite different from a quote-unquote normal church where the minister is a shepherd and he's inviting and he wants people to reach him no matter who you are, where you're coming from. Let's let's

go talk about Jesus. Let's go get saved. In the message, it's not like that. You have an authoritarian figure, the pastor, and to get to the pastor, there is usually a level of screening. Now, I will say that in some of the smaller churches and remote areas in the message, they're not familiar with this because the pastors have no idea they're supposed to be like this. But when you get into the bigger main sect of the message and probably even some of the bigger ones in your sect, Splinter Group, there is a deep level of screening.

Now William Brannum's level of screening was far more intense than any of this that I've described. Yeah, you're spot on in what you're describing, John. And I have heard that from that was one very common thing, actually, when I interviewed all the old timers in our sect that I heard over and over how hard it was to get to William Brannum. And he did have some sort of a...

They use different words. These are people that came from the tabernacle that knew him. They use different words, but they were like enforcers that surrounded William Brannum and guarded access to him. And you couldn't, you couldn't even at the tabernacle just go up on the platform and have a conversation with William Brannum hardly, like these people controlled access to William Brannum.

They controlled disappointments. They controlled who could talk to him when they could talk to him, right? And you just could not get access to William Brannum if you wanted to, right? And so, yeah, it's a very big deal that Joseph Mattson-Bose is telling, or telling Jim Jones, how to bypass William Brannum's handlers, right?

And get rigged directly to William Brannum. Another example I'll give, which is, again, I want to point this out because this is significant. Today, we don't have nearly the popularity of William Brannum. Most people in the world have never heard of the man.

Most people in the United States have never heard of the man. And William Brannum's sons are still seen as the same sort of, you know, spiritual authority and people go seeking private interviews for, you know, basically it's, it's like spiritualism.

They go to a fortune teller. They want to know their fortune. And I personally know multiple people, not just one, who actually moved here because the sons are so hard to get an audience with.

One of them, I became very close friends with the guy's sister. She was from Alaska. And he got trapped into this cold and she was trying to save him from the cold. And she was trying to learn more about it.

So she came here, she stayed with us, I don't know, two weeks or so, trying to understand what her brother was involved with, where her brother had moved to this area a full year before.

And for an entire year was trying to seek audience with one of William Brannum's sons for spiritual guidance, basically for fortune telling. He wanted to know something in the future about his life. And she was trying to understand, well, why does it take a full year?

I mean, the guy is right there. You just, he goes into church, meet him at the building. It is not that easy. You cannot access these people. Yeah. And when you, when you study colds, one of the reasons they do this is so that the leader can appear to be above the fray, you know, above the dirt.

And so these people in, you know, this line around him can, can get their hands dirty, right? Yeah. And then he can be above the fray. And you know, that's exactly, exactly, certainly in my sect of the message how we looked at all the William Brannum's handlers, right?

They were the bad guys. They were the ones doing all this stuff. All the bad stuff that happened, this is the handler's fault. They didn't, William Brannum did not know that they was doing this that or the other.

Yeah. He did. And he's the one who put them in that position for the job of doing that so that he wouldn't have to get his hands dirty. Yeah. Absolutely. That is exactly what he was doing.

get it on purpose, right? And that's a very normal for high ranking cultish leaders to get some lieutenants around them so that they can keep their hands clean and keep the positive image of the people, right?

And so then all of the negative thoughts land on these people around it. Why was William Brown, like William Brown's enforcers were the people who A, thought he was God in the flesh, right?

Who B, handled all the money, who C, shut off the water in the building and forced church order and that kind of stuff, right? Like these are the people around and you don't think that William Brown knew what they was doing and supported them?

Of course they did, right? And then when the people could come complained to William Brown and he say, oh, well, that was just my lieutenant. I'll talk to him about that. And then he did talk to him about it.

Keep doing it, you know? Yeah. It's just, it's a little bit angering, John, those kind of things that went on. And this is the environment that influenced Jim Jones. This is the atmosphere that is creating Jones ministry.

Yeah. And Jim Jones did this exact same stuff, actually. When you look, he did the exact same stuff. So he modeled himself the same way. Let me read. So let me read just one little bit of this letter that from Joseph Matson-Bose to William Brown.

And Joseph Matson-Bose was super interested in preserving history. And John, I am so glad that he was because all of his correspondents, he kept let copies of all of his correspondents. And we have been very fortunate to be able to obtain copies of all of his letters to William Brannum, all of his copies of his letters to Jim Jones.

So we know through these letters, what was going on behind the scenes somewhat, with these figures. Let me just read the opening part of this letter to William Brannum.

There's something here that disturbs me. It says, I hear with dear brother Brannum, I hear with introduced to you Reverend James Jones of Indianapolis, Indiana. Brother Jones is a servant of God and a bosom friend of mine.

He has an excellent work, a young work in Indianapolis. And I consider him and the church he pastors, which people's temple to have a great future in Indianapolis. You will love the spirit that is in Brother Jones.

Brother Jones, you will love the spirit that is in Brother Jones.

Said Joseph, Matt, and Bosé to William Brannum. Now, I have some pretty strong feelings about the spirit that was in Jim Jones, John.

Well, if you look at what happened after that letter, William Brannum is involved with Jones for many, many meetings years. I mean, right? They're having meetings the month immediately following that letter. Yeah. It is very clear that William Brannum also loved the spirit of Jim Jones.

When I found that letter and I read that, that line, I felt sick and I feel sick to this day every time I read that letter. For the Brannum, you are going to love the spirit that is in Jim Jones. You know, William Brannum was a prophet, supposedly a prophet that had the greatest gifted discernment that ever was. So we told William Brannum was supposed to be the greatest prophet there ever was, right? William Brannum was supposed to be, he would even say he's greater than Jesus. I've done more miracles than Jesus, right? Yeah. He would make claims like

that. Well, he was also, to his cult of personality, he was supposed to be the greatest fortune teller that ever was. We've talked about this before, Charles, but Christians in general don't get this because this is purely evil. This is, this is what the Bible condemns and this is what the Israelites were commanded to stone people for. But there were a large number of people who went to William Brannum seeking an audience just like this guy that I mentioned who seeking audience with the sons of Brannum seeking to learn their fortune. They wanted to know,

they wanted William Brannum to peer into their very soul and into their future. And there were large number of people doing this. William Brannum even mentions on recording that he was holding these private interviews with the, with the, the promoters of the ministry who we now know are Jim Jones and people's temple. So he is actually holding these fortune telling. He calls them discernment. Well, you know, there's different names given for private interviews is I think the general term, but they are fortune telling and he is fortune telling for the people of people's temple. You know, in 1955, William Brannum had started working with Satan, okay? Well, that's

pretty strong, but he has and Jim Jones, he started working in Paul Shaffer. So in May, he gets this letter and starts working with Jim Jones. By the fall, he's also working with Paul Shaffer, okay? He, William Brannum picks up the two most evil people ever in the message within of just a few months right here. We're talking between the two of them. I mean, how many tens of thousands of people, how many tens of thousands of rapes happened between these two figures, right?

Yeah. William Brannum has started working with the devil in 1955. The greatest, supposedly the greatest prophet with a great gift of discernment is working with the devil starting in 1955. I mean, it's that bad. Well, you know, if you think about it, Charles, I mean, he was working with some very, very bad people. We've explained this from even before the history that we're supposed to know.

As early as 1929, he's working with the supreme religious chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, it's that bad. So he's, William Brannum has been influenced by some several, you know, several very bad people, but the two figures that you mentioned, Paul Shaffer and Jim Jones, and we'll probably get into this in two.

to either the third or fourth episode, who knows how far this will go. Remember William Brannum is predicting and prophesying that America's going to be obliterated by the rise of communism, which we now know he was referring to Jews and Mongols or Colors or whoever you want to call it, into what William Brannum preached was this impending race war.

And one of the most popular places to go to escape this alleged destruction with South America. And again, we'll get into that in future episodes, but picture what happened. It wasn't just Jim Jones from the message cult that went to a utopia in South America.

We also have Paul Schaefer who goes to Colonia Dignidad. And if you examine the similarities between the two cult commons, which were under the disguise of being agricultural communities, they're doing the same thing.

They're influenced by the same person. They're both in the lateral rain version of William Brannum's message. They're both deeply, deeply influenced by the manifested sons of God theology. These two men were the creations of William Brannum.

And they were already bad guys before they started working with William Brannum. Yes. Paul Schaefer was already a child molester, preacher who'd been kicked out of churches before he started working with William Brannum.

Jim Jones, three's biographies, was already a creepy, sadistic monster before he started working with William Brannum, right? Even from a child. So all of this, well, he could know the Jones town massacre. If that man actually had the gift of discernment, he would have realized he was working with the sadistic monster, right?

Yeah. He shouldn't have realized that. Yeah. So either he had a gift of discernment and knew he was working with the sadistic monster, or he didn't have the gift that he pretended that he had.

And I actually leaned towards, I don't think he had these gifts, John. I think not at all. I think the fact that he chose to work with men like this proves actually he did not have these gifts.

And somehow he fooled people into thinking he did. And here's the thing. We're just talking about the two worst cases, John. There are so many. We'll get into, at some point down the road, the child molesters, the rapists, the killers that were in William Brannum's inner circle at the same years besides these men, right?

Yeah. We'll get into that. William Brannum is working with a devil here from 1955. It is bad stuff. And so people come up with all kinds of mental gymnastics to explain that when you're in the message.

You're twist the Bible to justify all of this. But Jesus did not endorse mass murderers. He did not ordain child rapists. You know, these things did not happen in the ministry of Jesus or the men in the Bible.

Right. But it did happen in the ministry, William Brannum. It's something else. And so anyways, as this is happening, John, William Brannum and Joseph Matson-Bosei are really publicizing Jim Jones. And the actual oldest copies of Jim Jones' sermons are the ones that are published in Harold the Faith magazine.

The oldest records of Jim Jones and his ministry that are available are in these laterane publications. And so we kind of have an idea already of what Jim Jones is doing and preaching. And it's all got a flavor of everything that's going to lead the same stuff he's preaching at the end of his life, too.

It's all, you can get a flavor of it right there. And we also have some audio recordings of William Brannum's meetings with Jim Jones. And I know in a future episode here, we'll go through where Jim Jones and William Brannum toured together some of the things that they did.

But to me, I think it is very remarkable, John, that in their books, like Tom Readerman's books, that once Jim Jones starts working with William Brannum, that Jim Jones starts doing the exact same kinds of stuff that William Brannum did.

He seems to have a gifted discernment, just like William Brannum's. He seems to have a gifted healing, just like William Brannum's. You know, Jim Jones is telling people the secrets of their hearts at these meetings alongside William Brannum.

He's praying for people and the people are going away saying, I'm healed right alongside William Brannum. And so to me, as I look at that, and you can go on YouTube, you can find the testimonies of the people leaving Jim Jones meetings.

I was healed and Jim Jones told me the secrets in my heart, like these are all there. You know, if those things are something or criteria you can use to vindicate a profit, then we would have to say Jim Jones is a vindicated profit, right?

Yeah. I think the most important thing that you said was referring to the devil in the camp. And when I began publishing my research on Jim Jones, I started getting this flurry, as you can imagine, of message defenders who were saying that, well, what about in the Bible?

You've got Jesus who's preaching with the disciples. And then you've got Judas who's the enemy in the camp. But there's a significant difference that you have already pointed out and I want to emphasize.

Once Jesus learned, well, Jesus knew all along that Judas was going to be who he was. But once it reached the point where he was becoming that, where Judas was becoming the evil that was going to betray him, Jesus did not instruct people to go follow Judas.

Jesus did not lift Judas up on a pillar and say, this is a good man. Jesus is a man who's got a good... spirit. He's got a spirit you will love. This is not what happened with Judas. With William Brannum, he's talking to the people's temple. They're coming for their learning their future from the fortune teller, right? He is saying good things about the host pastor and he praises Jim Jones. He does not say, there's one who's going to betray me and he might be the minister on the platform. He doesn't say this. He says, this man, this is a good man. This is our host

pastor. Thank you so much, Jim Jones. I'm happy to see you. Jim Jones made William Brannum happy, right? Yeah. You know, Jesus did not endorse and partner with mass murderers, child rapists, homosexuals, Nazis, white supremacists, or drunken womanizers. Yeah. But William Brannum did, right? Judas was not like those people. Judas was bad, but Jesus was not endorsed, you know, the only person Judas killed was Jesus. Yeah. Okay. It's hard to think of it like this because as a Christian, you don't want to think of it this way. This is a man who resulted, the end result

was that Jesus died because Jesus was betrayed by Judas. But if you look at the scale of what happened, it's very arguable that people like Paul Shaper, people like Jim Jones, were actually worse than Judas. They killed 900 people in Jonestown alone. Granted, they did not, you know, betray the Christ. It's, you know, it's in a different category, different league. But these were very, very evil people. And you have to weigh into the balance. Well, one, Jesus knew was going to betray him. And this is what resulted in the cross that hangs on our churches, right? This is

the reason why we have Christianity. The other one, no, this was just a bad guy who killed a lot of people and destroyed the lives of way more than the 900 who actually died. Right. And, you know, I could put on my preacher hat for a second, Jon. You know, Jesus said, I have lost none that the father gave me except the son of tradition that the scripture might be fulfilled. Judas is a one and only exception. Right. Don't work again. Like, and that is the words of Jesus Christ himself.

William Brannum don't get a pass for this. And, and the whole premise on which that we're trying to say, he's, you know, Jesus had Judas. William Brannum was not Jesus. Wake up message people. William Brannum was not Jesus. The very basis of your, of what you're saying is predicated on your, on the ridiculous deity of William Brannum ideas, right? Like, that's normal Christianity would not even go there. Right. Like, you're, you're so far off-based, even start there. Wow. I mean, wow. I get sucked into that trap so many times because- Because I get so many emails, you know, Charles and they make that comparison, well, Jesus

did this and William Brannum did this. And it's very difficult to stay out of the weeds because there's so many problems and flaws with their defensive William Brannum that you go to the more obvious one.

Well, the obvious one is, you know, Jim Jones was quite a bit worse than Judas, but you're right at the very surface of all of this. Their comparison would not exist if they did not consider William Brannum to be their deity.

And that's very problematic. So with Charles, we've, I think we've gone a bit over and I'm, again, I'm so excited to get into this research and we're just now skimming the surface of the beginning of the Jim Jones history.

I think we have probably two or three more episodes to go after this to even begin to establish the deep connections between Jim Jones and the message called. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-brannum.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum in the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brannum in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.