Jim Jones: William Branham's Manifest Son of God

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org and together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Branham and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles I'm so excited to continue the Jones investigation that we're doing and you and I talked beforehand and we

both kind of agreed that this will probably be the most fun episode for us. Usually we stick with the historical facts and the you know the progression of all the various influences on William Branham and the healing revivals and we try to separate that a bit from the doctrinal positions of the men just so that we can examine the histories but today this particular investigation actually requires us to dig deep into the doctrinal positions of the men and I am about to unleash the Charles on Jim Jones. John I have also really been looking forward to recording today's episode and you know for me John the

the most interesting aspect of all of this to me and honestly the main central reasons that I even started digging into all of this was to figure out where in the world did the stuff we believed in the message came from you know William Branham told us he got it from God. Turns out that wasn't true. He got it from other men who may have got it from God or may not have got it from God but he did not get this stuff directly from God. He copied every stitch of what he taught from other people every last stitch of what he taught is copied from

other people. There is nothing unique and these ideas evolve over time they do these doctrines and concepts evolve over time and there's a point in time in which Jim Jones intersected with ladder rain movement and and took up some of these teachings and doctrines himself and you know as we said in the last several episodes the last one anyways Jim Jones was a ladder rain preacher and Jim Jones and William Branham and Joseph Metz and Bozay were all working together holding revivals together Either in 1955, 1956, 1957, you know, they were traveling around, holding meetings, revivals,

and multiple states, and all working together, and there's a significant amount of overlap in their ideologies. And the ideas that Jim Jones learned in Laterane and what will go over in this episode, at least some of them, they form some of the key pillars of the ideology of People's Temple.

And in this episode, we do just want to take a little time to explore how Jim Jones was influenced by and implemented some of these Laterane message ideas at People's Temple. And we'll be using some quotes from Jim Jones in this episode too, and if you want to find full transcripts of the Jim Jones sermons, you can go to the Jones Town Institute website, and you'll find full transcripts of all the Jim Jones known sermons on that website.

So you can listen to Jim Jones sermons themselves, and the truth is, there's quite a substantial number of Jim Jones sermons. You could preach in any message church and the average message church, the people would be shouting and saying, Amen, all the way through the sermons.

Exactly. And interestingly enough, Charles, I'm actually going to recommend the cult website today. Voice of God recordings, which is the headquarters for the main sect of the message, which is the cult following the cult of personality that has formed around William Brannum.

They have put all of the transcripts that were allowed to hear of William Brannum with their edits, et cetera, their blank spots and tape. But they're searchable online at table.brannum.org. And I'm not going to be honest, Charles.

This was a huge, huge help in me coming out of the message and escaping. If you actually read what the man says, and not just read it, but there is a deep level of programming and unfortunately brainwashing that comes with listening to the recordings.

And when you hear the voice, in fact, they'll tell you, hear the voice, play the tape, hear the voice, they push this. When you're manipulated into doing so, your mind almost shuts off, and you become in this weird state of slumber where you're just taking everything in.

You really don't catch half of what it said. But when they published, they're, they call it the table when they published the software. And I was like many message believers, the good ones. We constantly poured over this stuff, right?

So I remember one of my first programming jobs. We had a, I had helped hire a person who was in the message and he was constantly looking at the table on his computer at work.

And this is the way it was, man, if you're in the cult of personality, you're constantly pouring over it. Well, at work, you don't play... the recordings for the most part because you have to listen to your people, your co-workers.

So when they published this software and I could easily search and read, this was actually a key component of me leaving the cult of personality. So I highly recommend the website, table.brandom.org, especially if you are in the message and you're thinking about escaping, read the material man, read what the man says.

If you're out there and you want to investigate William Brandom, I would highly discourage you from listening to the audio recordings. Use the text. These audio recordings are dangerous. They can train brainwashing, hypnotic stuff in them.

They absolutely do. It's been, you know, universities have studied it and it even came out with it. Don't listen to the tapes, read the transcripts. It's actually documented. It does contain elements of neuro-linguistic programming is the scientific term for what is on this.

And interestingly, it's the same thing that Hitler did in his speeches, right? And I have actually, I've come on to fire a little bit because of this, but one of the strategies that I have, and I'm giving out some secrets, Charles, over the past decade, I have published a lot of recordings of William Brandom that have the voice because I want to hone in on some horrific things that the man said and also some conflicting things.

But the problem is people who were in the cult and come across it, they'll go into this hypnotic state of slumber and just not listen to it. And one of the things that I learned that I could do early on is to play this obnoxious music in the background and your mind can't do both.

It can't be hypnotized and listen to this obnoxious music. So that's why you hear, there's one of them even, Charles, I've got the banjo and this crazy banjo riff and people, I get comments, why are you doing this?

Well, they were actually was a strategy behind my doing it. But highly recommend table.branham.org and like I say, I'm just so excited because we're getting into some really fun stuff with this episode.

So starting out, one thing that a lot of people find very odd about Jim Jones, and I feel like we got to tackle this first because it's the most, it seems like the most obvious difference between Jim Jones and the message is, Jim Jones was a communist.

And during the years he was working with William Brandom, he was a secret communist, kind of like William Brandom was perhaps a secret white supremacist. They didn't know these things about each other at first, but then finding these things out about each other as we go on, we'll find out this actually led to them breaking up somewhat.

But a lot of the documentaries out there focus on the communist aspect of Jim Jones' teachings and they miss the latter reign side. things because they're so focused on the communist aspect. But Jim Jones implemented a communal lifestyle among his followers at People's Temple.

But as we start to go through this, I think it's really important to point out that a communal lifestyle, just like the one Jim Jones implemented, that actually works within the framework of the Laterane Movement.

A communal lifestyle and laterane teachings are perfectly compatible. And in fact, there are a significant number of other Laterane groups that did very similar things. The Laterane edits core is a restorationist movement. And they wanted to go back and re-enact and re-institute what they thought were the practices of the early church.

And one of the practices of the early church in Jerusalem was that they held all things in common, and they lived in a communal lifestyle. And you can actually find Jim Jones speaking to this in his very oldest sermons that were even published in Harold of Faith.

This was these concepts, the roots of these concepts were in the Early Laterane Movement when Jim Jones was still part of it. And his views on living a communal lifestyle can be credited to the Laterane, just as much honestly as anything else.

And in that way, when you read what Jim Jones eludes to his sermons there, he calls the living a communal lifestyle, living an apostolic lifestyle. And in that way, he's connecting his views of this lifestyle to restorationism.

So he's doing this communist lifestyle within the restorationist framework of Laterane. And Jim Jones implemented a lifestyle where everyone paid all of their income and do a common pot of money that he and his lieutenants and then they distributed out to everyone and provided housing or food to them.

And again, that all fits in that Laterane Restorationist framework. And Jim Jones is not the only one who did that. Paul Schaefer did that. Sam Fife did that in the move. John Robert Stevens did that in the walk.

There's a large number of people who were influenced by Laterane who implemented varying degrees of a communal lifestyle. There's even groups descended from the Laterane who were still doing that to this very day.

Even some message sex live in communal lifestyles, John. And so I especially want to point out that living a communal lifestyle, that itself is not something unique to People's Temple. Some of the other Laterane groups did the exact same thing.

And there's actually other groups who implemented in even more extreme form than Jim Jones and People's Temple did. And what's interesting, Charles, when you look at the cult of personality that exists today and you look at the various splinter groups that evolved from it, you would never think that this was a thing with William Brannum.

You would say there's no way that the people don't live like this. This is not the way that William Brandham wanted it to be. However, there was a period of time before 1977, which was William Brandham's famous failed Doomsday prediction, the one that got remembered of all of his many various Doomsday predictions. Before 1977, people in the message, cult falling of William Brandham, which at that period of time Charles was really, it was the latter reign, but it went into an extremist view of latter reign. During this point of time, this was a very common thing. This was actually more common than not. I remember my grandfather

telling the story that my grandfather was not in favor of this, and I remember in the years after 1977, somebody approached him wondering why he's not like this anymore, and he said, the guy said, we're supposed to give all that we have to the poor, and my grandfather's response was, well, brother, if we give everything we have to the poor, then I've become the poor.

And so there was a point in time after 1977 that this shifted, but this was a very, very common thing. And what's interesting as it relates to this episode, I'll never have the answer to this, I still, to this day, I still compare sermons of Jim Jones through the, uh, johnstown.sdsu.edu website and the table, table.branam.org to compare, because I want to know which was influencing, which person was influencing which, and it's a very complex, um, you know, both men are very complex, but their connection is very complex as well.

In these cults of personality, and even to some extent, some Christian religion in general, you take a view of a person and you think that view is static. Whatever this person believes, this is what they did believe, this is what they will always believe, because that's their, quote unquote, hard course set of values. And with Jim Jones and William Brannum, neither man continued the same course set of values, both of them diverged greatly from their course set of values. And Jim Jones was in laterane before his connection to William Brannum. He, like you said, was heavily into the communal lifestyle, the, the secret communism as you, if you will, William

Brannum was not that, but the two began working together. And there's a point in time, Charles, in which the union of their doctrinal beliefs in the recorded transcripts of William Brannum become more frequent. So as I'm studying the analytics of this, the question I have is, Jim Jones influenced William Brannum or did William Brannum influence Jim Jones.

The conclusion that I've come to thus far is they both were influencing each other. I would agree with that. His latter reign was everybody throwing something into the pot and if you could successfully throw something into the pot in latter reign and some people and it's stuck, well then you're something, right?

You're a big deal. And so there's no doubt things that Jim Jones threw into the pot that had some influence at some level on the overall latter reign movement. So moving on to another doctrine.

So Jim Jones was a believer in several of the core distinctives of the latter reign movement. We wouldn't call living a communal lifestyle one of the core distinctives of latter reign, but it is something that a fair number of the groups did embrace.

But you can find the core distinctives of latter reign in Jim Jones sermons and probably the most impactful latter reign teaching he adopted was the manifested sons of God theology. And if you remember back when we did our episodes on Manifested Sons of God in the latter reign, the fife-fold ministry is the means within the framework of latter reign to get two manifested sons of God.

And let me read here a quote just to show what Jim Jones does with these teachings and how he empowers himself with it. So here's one from tape, Q1055-1. He says, the Bible will kill you if you don't have God within and don't have the fife-fold ministry.

He didn't say Bibles would bring you to perfection, but apostles, pastors, teachers, evangelists, they're necessary for the perfecting of the saints, the work of the ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ. We have to have those manifold gifts and manifold fruits of the spirit.

And how can we hear without a preacher? And how can we learn, lest he be sent? And so what Jim Jones is saying there, John, is classic fife-fold ministry manifested sons of God ideas that float out of the latter reign movement, right?

He's setting up the fife-fold ministry as the special class of leaders sent from God who are leading the people to be perfected and reach this special level of manifestation of Christ's likeness. That's what Jim Jones is doing there in that statement.

That is one of the things, Charles, that began to clue me in that the two men had very intersecting teachings, very, their doctrines were intersecting because I began to notice Jim Jones preaching the latter, the latter reign version of the fife-fold ministry.

And as you know, there are preachers in William Branham's cult of personality from coast to coast that teach the fife-fold ministry. And at the time I began my research, I actually thought that came after William...

Brannum's ministry after his death because William Brannum does not really mention the fivefold ministry by name. But as I began to study, he is teaching it as early as I think 1953 and he's clearly identifying the doctrine of fivefold ministry and he's putting himself into the position of a prophet in the fivefold ministry. So we see William Brannum using the doctrine and we see Jim Jones using the doctrine at about the same time. I can't say that Jones directly influenced Brannum in the doctrine because you know this was common in Lateran, but what I can't say is as this began to be established as a core fundamental element of

Lateran, both ministers at the same time were teaching it. Right and it was a core distinctive of Lateran by 1950 and it the fivefold ministry was implemented in Lateran as the means to get to manifested sons of God and from everything I have been able to determine from listening to all the Sharon orphanage elders and different things. It was this concept was born at Sharon orphanage and George Houghton was the key figure behind introducing the fivefold ministry teachings in Sharon orphanage. Now the broader the way that it grew as it's related to manifested sons of God,

I think there may have been other men in north battle for it to help put those pieces together, but the basic ideas of a restoration of the fivefold ministry that is George Houghton's baby that started at Sharon orphanage and spread from there. There was there's nobody in the world who believed fivefold ministry in this way before the stuff that happened at Sharon orphanage.

This is where this stuff comes from and in every sect of the message, every single Lateran splinter group, they all have some variation of this fivefold ministry manifest its sons of God theology and the the extreme to which they take it varies, but they all have this basic concept that the fivefold ministry is going to perfect the church and that then the people will reach this fullness of Christ and usher in the end time and that all stems from the original teachings on this subject which were first formulated in Lateran and this is the vehicle that Lateran preachers like Jim Jones

he used to take absolute power over the people. Let me read one more quote here from Jim Jones, this is on tape Q1020. Jim Jones says not everyone can be in the hundredfold company immediately.

We all come at varying times into our consciousness of Christ, but as an Adam all die, even so in Christ she'll all be made alive, but every man after his own order. I have all nine gifts. I have each of the fivefold ministries manifested through me.

I'm an apostle. I'm yet a pastor. I'm a teacher. I'm an evangelist and I and certainly a prophet. So again, Jim Jones is demonstrating in that quote, what he's preaching there is, manifested sons of God concepts he learned in Latter-Rain.

And he's preaching this stuff all through his ministry right up to the very end. And this is the carrot on the stick, right? This is the promise that keeps the people following, this promise that you can all be like Christ, this promise of having these special gifts, these special manifestations.

This is what keeps the people following. And the people following Jim Jones, they really believe that they'll just obey him and submit to him. He has some special thing that is going to eventually empower them to be this, also this hundredfold or this hundred percent manifestation of Jesus Christ with signs and wonders and miracles and gifts and so on.

And that entire concept, again, is derived from the core distinctives of the Latter-Rain movement. This did not exist anywhere in Christianity before the Latter-Rain movement, these ideas. And William Brannum taught the exact same thing in his sermons, like anointed ones at the end time.

Original seed is the spoken word, stature the perfect man, right? In the message, we believe these exact same things from the exact same root. We had little bits, different terminology here and there, but these are the exact same teachings that flowed out of Latter-Rain that we believed in the message.

And I think one of the key points to make here is whenever people who have never been in this thing are looking at the five-fold ministry and they hear the apostles, prophets, teachers, et cetera, it's a clear hierarchy, right?

So you've got your rank and file members who cannot elevate themselves to this level. Then there's this hierarchy of leadership and that's really how the manipulation occurs through this hierarchy. The people feel that they're inferior to the five-fold ministry superiors.

And then within that framework, there's a hierarchy of leadership and there are five. And when you hear the terms of apostles, prophets, et cetera, the normal Christian is going to think, okay, the apostle must be at the top of the hierarchy because we have the apostles, Paul and Peter and we have the New Testament and that is the gospel, that's us.

That's, we're following the New Covenant. That's how a Christian would interpret that hierarchy. But William Brannum flipped it upside down because he's also teaching Old Covenant law. There is no real concept of the Old Covenant being done away in the New Covenant of Grace being established within the framework of William Brannum's doctrinal teachings.

He, for example, uses Moses as the example. He said, Moses was a prophet and Moses was the high priest to the people. And so he gives the example of the prophet leadership. And within the framework, work of the message, and by extension the frameworks of laterane, this means that the prophet is the supreme authority. He's the one receiving the word from God, so he must be the highest in rank. And the people who are listening to the prophet, many of them become enthralled with this rank, and they put him on a pedestal even higher than he should be, to the extent

that you'll find ministers who refer to William Brannum, and also even Jim Jones, that they are the prophet God, or they are the supreme prophet, someone called William Brannum, he's the word prophet, the one who's bringing the end time word. That is because the prophet is at the top of this hierarchy. I think what William Brannum tended to do was he kind of, in his take on fivefold ministry, he kind of merged the idea that a possible prophet is kind of the same thing. Like he would, he would call the apostle Paul a prophet, right? Like he kind of merged

these two to be one and the same in some sense. And you know what Jim Jones is saying here in his sermons, and stemming from those quotes that I read from him, is that this is very ideologically close to what a lot of people refer to as the last days revival. My church called it the brides revival. Other sects of the message, you know, I've heard it referred to as the third pole, you know, in message parlance, but different groups from descended from latirane have different terminology for describing this this thing at the last days. But at the most basic level, all of most all the

groups descended from latirane ideology believe in this coming great last days revival that will empower the church with signs and wonders and miracles. And this will coincide with the end of days and the coming of the heavenly kingdom, right? Like this is all flowing out of latirane. This is flowing out of manifested sons of God. This is what manifested sons of God will bring about.

And the idea of that great last days revival that flows out of manifested sons of God ideology, that developed in latirane. And that is what's supposed to happen when the people reach this final level of preparation or Christ likeness or the fullness of Christ in the church and usher in the last days. And again, this is a very, very popular latirane idea that spread very far and wide. And, you know, and of course, there's nothing wrong with having a revival, right? Most Christians would agree a revival is a good thing. But this idea that there's going

to be this massive sweeping revival at the end of days where the church becomes empowered like Christ on earth. I'm just pointing out that's what Jim Jones is building on here. And that is an idea that came from and developed within the early days of the ladder reign movement. And Jim Jones is looking towards that fulfillment with what he's saying here in these quotes.

Yeah. And you also have to understand, and I'm no preacher, but I do read the Bible, and I read it a lot. You have to understand that there are complete passages from, especially the Old Testament, sometimes in New, but more often the Old Testament, that the leaders in this have really bastardized to try to join together the five-fold ministry, the restoration movement with some of the other doctrines that we've talked about, such as the British Israel doctrine and, you know, etc. One of them that I find most astounding, you mentioned the bride, the bride revival, the bride restoration, etc. This was a concept that I studied heavily

whenever I began to leave the message because I've read those passages that they have fully taken out of context. And I remember there was a point in time at which I read some of these passages, and I was reading it with the mental state of being in this manipulation, and it said one thing, and then I want to say it was the very next day. I was reading the same passage after my mind kind of snapped out of it. I read that same passage, and it was completely opposite from what I'd read before, and I went back in a reread and reread. One of the biggest examples of this,

for me, is Ezekiel 16. It talks about, it's literally talking about the bride, it's talking about Jerusalem is the bride. And I remember reading this passage from the framework of being out of the message, and understanding this is literally describing the point of time in which the old covenant would fail. It basically doesn't mention Jesus by name, but Jesus is coming to his bride, which is Jerusalem. And it talks about, you are the harlot and your sisters are harlots. And you know, it's basically, if you take the anti-catholicism, the mother of harlots, you take the bride theology, the restoration theology, you've got Jerusalem. This one passage from

the Bible was fully taken out of context to be reused for this framework of restorationism. And by extension, it leads into the fivefold ministry theology. And if you just read the passage, entire chapter 16, you'll see that this in no way, shape, or form is talking about our day, it's talking about the time in which Jesus would return to, Jesus would come to earth.

Yeah, a lot of the way that things work in the messages. these laterane groups is there is a lot of old covenant prophecies that get recycled and applied to the church and that the roots of that go back to the days of British Israelism when they thought they were Israel, right?

So they could do that without any sort of logical fallacy, right? We are Israel, therefore we can apply the prophecies of Israel to ourselves. But of course, this time goes on and the British Israelism aspect dies, right?

We still have these prophecies we're applying to ourselves, but we no longer think we're Israel, but we're, you know, our ideology has become so twisted we can't recognize that the dots no longer connect, right?

So it's amazing how that the ideology evolves and gradually over time can become inconsistent and the people don't notice the introductions of the inconsistencies. Yeah, it's very interesting. And so, you know, traditional and historic Christianity, kind of going back to that last day revival thing, they tend to find the ideas of a last day revival to be, you know, certainly in the latter rank sense to be a little bit bizarre.

But to people who are descended from churches in the latter reign, right? What Jim Jones is describing is a core distinctive of the latterane movement and those, those latterane movements were baked deeply into the beliefs of people's temple.

Let me read one more Jim Jones quote on this topic from tape. This is from Q1025. Jim Jones says, truly beloved, you can only see God here. If you have a heart to listen, eyes to look honestly, you can only be, behold, God here.

I do not require that you behold God in me. If you reproduce God to a greater degree by not seeing God in me and seeing it in yourself that I'm happy for you. If you can sensitize yourself to a greater awareness of God without recognizing me as a personal minister of the fivefold heaven sent order, then I'm glad for you.

But in the meantime, if you haven't found all that you want of God, come follow me as I follow Christ. Take up your cross as I take up mine. Let me speak in the person of Christ.

As Paul said, what you forgive, I forgive also, anything I bind, I bind also, Paul said and I do it. Not in the name, not in a prayer, but in the person of Jesus Christ.

I'm speaking in the office of the hundredfold ministry to those who need it. But if you're unfolding on your own behalf, I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for your aspirations and your manifestation. I do not require that you call me anything, but Jim Jones, just do the works of Christ.

If you care to do the works of Christ, come and unite with me. So again, Jim Jones is presenting himself as this great minister, the fivefold ministry who had personally attained a hundredfold manifestation of Christ.

All this works in the framework of the manifest, it sounds a God theology, right? And what he's saying... Here is, I have achieved 100% Christ likeness, right? This is exactly manifested sons of God theology.

And Jim Jones is telling us followers that if you come follow me, I can show you how to be like Christ and become a manifested son of God too. And John, what makes me feel so sick, you know, my sect of the message, we believed a variation of manifested sons of God that was very, very similar to what Jim Jones is describing here.

And William Brannum was saying the exact same kind of things, you know, by the end of his life, William Brannum was also saying he was a manifestation of Christ. Remember, he says, the Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ, right?

He's claiming also to be one of these 100% manifestations of Jesus and the whole message of, they believe this in some fashion that God was manifested in the ministry of William Brannum. And we all had this belief that there's this level that we were all gonna get to and there's different groups had little different terminology for it, but we were going to reach the stature of a perfect man if you're in the thunders or other sects.

We're gonna get the rapturing faith, right? And have every sect had little different parlance for this, but we all believe that through this fivefold ministry through this special word from William Brannum, that we were eventually all gonna rise up and also become these manifested sons of God.

And again, we all had different terminology for it, but we believe the same concept. And that phrase, little, your manifestation, I started noticing that as I was reading this. The time, at the point in time of which I discovered this, I didn't fully understand the manifested sons of God theology, what it was and how destructive it was.

But what is interesting about what you just said, there are psychological studies that exist on Jim Jones that display that even from an early childhood, he had psychological problems. And then by the point in time in which he becomes a latering Pentecostal message believer, he is showing greater signs of that internal conflict in his head.

And then by the end of his life, he's completely off the rails. And those studies exist, you know, displaying the mental breakdown of a cult leader, there are countless studies of this. What's interesting is if you apply the same study to William Brannum's ministry, you see the same elements.

When William Brannum first began his ministry, he was saying the same kind of things, but he was very tactful. He would not come out and say, you know, after convincing his cult following that he is Elijah, that Elijah is Jesus Christ, but he would insinuate to lead people to that conclusion.

And he would use parallels like he would talk about, you know, the things that he's doing in his ministry, then he would go off into this parallel in the Bible about Elijah. And so people were led to the conclusion.

So he's doing this very deceitfully, very tactfully. And you cannot say that he outright called himself God. It did not happen. At least in the early phases of his ministry. But as his mental state began to break down, that's when you start to see he can't control it as well.

And in the same way that Jim Jones can't control himself as well, both men began saying things that people, there was no question that they were saying that they were the manifestation of God through the manifested sons of God theology, where it's interesting is Jones lived longer.

And Jones, although William Brannum had the same doctrinal teaching, to some extent, Jones was giving the people power by saying, you also, your manifestation, I have a greater manifestation, you too have a manifestation, you can find this on his recordings.

William Brannum does things like he says, we're, how did he phrase it? Little creators or little gods, miniature creators. And he's talking about his ability to speak squirrels into existence. He's saying you too can do this.

And there's a large number of people in the message who try this kind of thing. That's the same framework of theology, but it does, because William Brannum dies in 1965, it doesn't progress to the state in which Jim Jones and his doctrinal teaching progressed.

Right. And the way manifested sons of God theology works. And this is going to be confusing if you just listen to the terminology, the way people talk about it, you know, believe it. But on the back end, you know, when they say, I am this manifestation of God, they're not saying that God Almighty is not in heaven no more, right?

Like there's still this, there is still God outside me, but there's, but God is in me also. And I am speaking as God, what I'm doing is also God, right? Like they're not saying, when they say they're God, they're not saying I'm exclusively God, but they're saying I am a manifestation of Almighty God, you know, so it's not, it's not quite the way I think some people take it when they hear them say it, right?

Like William Brannum was not saying I am, I am the one and only God in heaven. And I'm right here talking, he's saying I'm a manifestation of God and God's, he's still in heaven, right?

But he's in me and talking to you, right? And it's, it's very, very, people outside of Christ, you know, outside of these groups, it's very weird, right? Like this is like, you know, convoluted nonsense, right?

But inside of it, we under... stand, you know, he's not saying, I am literally God Almighty, the one and only. He's saying, I am a voice of God. God is in me. I am God's agent to you in this moment. You know, it's funny because we'll eat and I'm certain we're going to see it in the comment feeds. People who are manipulated in this mindset are going to say, but the Bible says, you are gods, right? But the difference is, Charles, normal Christianity understands that that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal in normal Christianity is love. Love your neighbor as yourself. And to understand that

Jesus is the one who is empowering us because of what he did, not because what he's going to enable us to do. That's the difference between the two. Within the framework of a destructive cult, they give you this carrot on the stick that you too can empower yourself to achieve something.

And people become hyper focused on achieving the something, whatever it is, that they lose complete sight of the broader picture of, you know, in a Christian cult, they lose the broader picture of the gospel, for example. And that's why you don't see the gospel teach very much within the circles of the message cult following. Instead, you see this manifested sons of God theology taught. Right. You know, the when when normal Christianity, so normal Christianity believes in being like Jesus, right? Like, let's all be like Jesus. But when they say that, it means let's be humble, let's be kind, let's be loving, let's be caring, right? So yeah,

they, let's be like Jesus, right? But in the framework with this, with manifested sons of God, let's be like God, let's have power, let's conquer the earth, let's let's do great, you know, thing, let's pull down governments, let's let's go to your spiritual warfare. Like this is when they say, let's be like God, it's it's about power, right? As opposed to love, right? And of course, you know, God has power, right? But the focus, the focus shifts from let's be like God in his kind, loving, attribute, nature ways to let's be like, let's be like God, the almighty power,

you know, the focus is on the power as opposed to the divine nature. For our listeners who are helping to deprogram former members of the message cult and it's very splinter groups, that's a key concept that you need to hone into because you'll be talking scripture and normal Christian teachings to members of this type of cult of personality.

And they'll be nodding their head and let's say, yeah, I agree, I hear you and they'll even mention passages in the Bible. But when you say be like Jesus, that phrase is so overloaded that while you're thinking that they understand.

stand. This means peace, love your neighbor, you know, the attributes of Christ. They're thinking in something entirely different. So you have to actually take it down a level. You have to say, and become more like Christ, and by extension, that means do this, this, and this. You have to explain what each, each thing that you take for granted in Christianity, you have to explain what it means to the message cult programmed mind.

Yeah, you're spot on. When you say be like Jesus in the message or in these lateral reign splinter groups, it means it does not mean. The first thought on their mind is, oh, let's love my neighbor. That is nowhere near. And it probably wouldn't even be in the top 10 of what they think that means. Let's be like Jesus. Love my neighbor. No, it would be, you know, the signs shall follow, cast out devils, speak it, right, speak in tongues, wonders miracles, right? This would fill out the top 10 list of what it means to be like Jesus,

right? Yeah, sadly, to be like Jesus in the message is more like be like Harry Potter, be a sorcerer. And yeah, Jesus did do miracles and all that, you know, that's all wonderful, but I don't want to preach sermon, John. The focus of the gospel is redeeming people, right? And it's about changing their nature more so than empowering them to be miniature gods to go around like sorcerers doing this, that and the other, right? It's about changing people to make them decent human beings, right? I mean, that's what the gospel is about, making people to be decent

people, right? Not turning them into power-hungry monsters like Jim Jones. You know, and what Jim Jones did here? And what all this does, John? This is a very good example of how the laterane influence preachers use these teachings, and they totally usurp the role of the Holy Spirit. Like, John, Jim Jones is a case study for this, right? They totally, the preachers who believe this stuff, they totally overstep the biblical role of a preacher, and they end up inserting themselves where Jesus and the Holy Spirit should be in the life of a believer.

They go beyond just a preacher who likes to teach the Bible and offer encouragement and good advice, right? And they go into, they turn this into and become a power that totally controls the lives of their followers, right? You know, Jim Jones there in that quote, he said, follow me as I follow Christ. John, I heard that exact same thing many, many times. William Brannum said that himself many times, and they take it very badly out of context, and they, they use these fiefold ministry teachings to literally insert themselves between you and God.

That's exactly what they're doing. Like, when they say follow me as I follow Christ, they don't mean, hey, I'm a good example, you know, follow my good example. They're literally, they're inserting themselves between you and God. You follow me, and I will follow Christ, and I will tell you what Christ wants you to know, right? Like, this is what they do, and they end up totally just destroying the concept of a personal relationship with Christ.

And, you know, I know where I come from, John, there is zero concept of a personal relationship with, did William Brannum ever once mention personal relationship with Jesus ever once? I don't think he did.

You know, there's a point in time, Charles, and I'm embarrassed to say this, but I think I've said it before on this show. I had never heard the gospel in its true form for the first 37 years of my life.

It wasn't until after we left, I was in a new church and they explained the gospel, and we've talked about this on the show. At that point in time, I'm still kind of researching.

I had not fully started into the in-depth researching that I was, but I just wanted to know, did William Brannum ever teach anything that resembled the gospel? And I will say that in the early years before, actually before, now I'm thinking about it, before meeting Jim Jones, there's a point in time in which he was saying things that were very similar to other gospel preachers, because remember in the cult strategies, and not just William Brannum's, but every cult, there's a period of time when everybody's welcome.

Join us, follow us as we follow Christ, everybody's welcome. There, if your circles, if they draw you outside of my circle, I'll draw a bigger circle and draw you into it, as how William Brannum said this.

And so there are points in time in which he says some things that are similar to the gospel. Then in his later years after, again, oddly after meeting Jim Jones, this completely changes, and it's more a gospel of condemnation, if you will.

And there are points in time in which he does mention a personal relationship with Christ, but if you study, if you read the whole section of the transcript of what he's saying, it's not the same as what is found in the Bible.

It's not be humble, be like Jesus, love your neighbor. At the point in time in which he's saying this, he's mixed into heavy condemnation, and being like Christ, having a personal relationship, is condemning the world around you who are going to hell, especially in the later versions of his stage persona.

So there's a progression and a transition, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And it doesn't always look the same, depending on which year and which stage persona he's in, but also even worse, depending on the state of his mental health, it becomes completely anti-biblical.

I guess is the best way I could put it. Yeah. I can say unequivocally that my entire life in the message, I never once heard the phrase personal relationship with Christ uttered from the lips of a message preacher ever, ever.

not once, not a single time. That is not a concept that was I ever heard from a message preacher. And the message actually does not believe in that. The message does not truly believe in the ability of individuals really to have personal relationships with Christ, not in any sort of a holistic way anyway, because the preacher is always inserted between the believer and Christ. And in the message, certainly where I come from, they did not believe the average person is qualified to read the Bible or hear from God and get understanding all on their own. Like, if you... I mean, this would be said publicly. If you read the Bible and you

have some idea that the preacher hasn't said, you better keep that to yourself. Like, don't talk about it. This is not... You do not have a right to read the Bible and understand something different than what the preacher has told you, right? Like, this is explicit, right? So there's no...

no concept. It all has to come through the preacher. You're not allowed to read and get ideas from the Bible on your own about how to be as a human being. Here's an example of the way in which he uses the phrase personal relationship. He says, a Christian is not a tool or some kind of mechanical wrench to a big religious regime. That's right. A Christian is not some kind of a tool that keeps a religious organization moving. A Christian, that's not a Christian. A Christian is to be Christ-like and a Christian cannot be a Christian until Christ comes in the man, the life of Christ

and him, and then it produces the life. The things that Christ did, and he says, what am I talking about a personal relationship to Christ? So to a person who's indoctrinated with this and they play the tape and they hear the voice, they hear the phrase personal relationship with Christ and they kind of ignore what he just said before this. What he said before is do not be in any Christian denomination or you are not having a personal relationship with Christ. He's literally taking personal relationship and combining with condemnation of those who disagree with him that becomes his

personal relationship. There's other quotes you can find of William Brannum. I'm just going to pair phrase this one from memory where he'll say, I've heard people say that when I have the holy ghost, I, the holy ghost will teach me what I need to know and he'll say, no, that's not right. You still need a preacher. You can't rely just on this holy ghost that you have to lead you into all truth, right? You've still got to be dependent on the preacher, right? And so he has quotes along that line that that he said. So he, there, there is no concept that you can get the holy ghost. You can be

a Christian and you can rely directly on Christ or the Holy Spirit. You always have to filter it through your preacher. Right, that is the teachings of the message and that is fivefold ministry teachings that blew us stemmed out of Latter-rain that and that is one of the great Great terribleness things that that that these teachings do they they they empower the preacher in such a way that they can Take control of people's lives and Jim Jones is not the only one who did this right?

This is what they use to get control of people right the shepherding movement did this large parts of the message do this the move did this The walk did this the body didn't right all of these others Latter-rain splinter groups many many Latter-rain splinter groups did this and Just like Jim Jones says I'm speaking to you in the person of Christ the people end up looking at to the preacher as the voice of God He tells you what God wants you to know and The line between the preacher and God ends up totally blurred and

Depending on how authoritarian the preacher is you know, it ends up with preachers telling everyone how to think and act down to the Smallest detail and controlling every single aspect of their life and the teachings of the Latter-rain Provided the framework to do all of this right?

It is the fivefold ministry teachings needed to manifest it sons of God that enables this to happen And this is what Jim Jones did at people's temple And it's what a large number of Latter-rain preachers did and are still doing with this ideology John to this very day They are using this ideology to insert themselves between the Christian and Christ and and control the followers and They use subliminal Messages and hints and even the titles like You've got the headquarters is called voice of God recordings and The publication company was public spoken word publications Not many people realize that Jim Jones used those phrases Jim Jones

You know, he was God-spoken word to his followers Yeah, let me let me just take a second John here and Maybe help our listeners How this differs from historic Christianity? Okay, so in historic Christianity I'm talking about normal Protestant Christianity and I'll go back to you know the Reformation day They viewed the fivefold ministers which they didn't use that phrase But they've used what we would call the fivefold preachers in the message They viewed them as gifts to the church. So the preacher was the gift to the church and Then the church got to decide what to do with their gift right if you give someone 20 bucks

They get to decide what to do with their 20 bucks So they looked at these preachers as gifts and then the church corporate Decided what to do with their gift they decided what to empower or not empower them to do they decided Where to send them what to do with them right the church had control of the preacher not the preacher have control of the church right That is historic normal Christianity the preacher was the gift to the church that the church then Decided what to do with this flips it on its head right later reign

turns the preachers into, they instead of gifts, they're offices now. And these are offices of authority and control. And so now these preachers control the church, rather than the church control the preachers, right? And it completely changes the dynamic of what early Protestant Christianity do. And that's just a really simple little explanation. But this turns on its head. And people inside these movements, what I just said is a concept that has probably never touched their minds. They've never even heard the concept, wait a minute, they're a gift to the church and the church should control what? Like the, right? Their head exploded,

right? But that is how historic normal Christianity looked at it, right? There is an entirely different framework that is every bit is logical and perhaps more logical than this lateral rain framework that operated for hundreds and thousands of years before, right? That has its roots in these exact same scriptures, which are taken and interpreted an entirely different way within the framework of lateral rain. So anyways, I'll digress there.

What's really interesting is the irony, because the Catholic church, the word Catholic just simply means universal, the church, the church of God, the body of Christ is how it began and over time, because of the human problem, which exists and will always exist, evil minds got involved and it became more or less a destructive cult. And they were oppressing the people.

They had turned into exactly what you just described. The priest became an authoritarian control and governed the people with authoritarian control. Martin Luther rose up in opposition and he said, this is not the way it is supposed to be. This is not what's in the Bible. And so he creates the Protestant Reformation and they flip it upside down. They have a Reformation.

They clean this up and they set it back in order as it's supposed to be. Well, what's interesting is during the clan reign in America, and you know, as Catholics, churches spreading throughout America, all of these Protestant ministers that had just escaped this, opposed the Catholic church because of, you know, Martin Luther's opposition and various other things. There were still some problems going on in the church. But where it gets ironic is what this lettering ministry did, and especially this fivefold ministry hierarchy, is it reestablished the authoritarian control from which Martin Luther escaped from the Catholic church. So they have literally reestablished

the very thing that created the Protestant religion. They established it within the Protestant religion. Yeah, you're exactly right, John. That is very well said. And for me personally, John, in this podcast, I'm not trying to advocate people, you know, to accept one position or another, I mainly just want people to see their art.

There is alternatives. This is the way it was historically viewed. This is what Lateran did. This is how Lateran changed, you know, do what you want to do with the Bible, right? I know what I'm comfortable with nowadays.

So anyways, how about one more quote from Jim Jones on this topic and where he ties all this together. Jim Jones says on tape, Q353 says, I swear to you, this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.

This is that which was and is to come. This is your salvation. You are looking at the temple of the Holy Ghost. You are looking at the body of Jesus Christ. Some in the room are sick and asleep because they don't discern the body of Christ.

They don't understand the Godship degree. Jesus said, we are all gods and I have come back to remind you what I told you 2,000 years ago. I am on the scene to tell you, ye are gods and not to take it away, won't let you take it away.

So don't be judges of the fact that my people say, I am God. Jesus said, ye are gods, ye are all gods. And again, this is the carrot on the stick that's being offered, right?

Just like Eve, God, what the serpent said, you will be like God, right? This is the carrot on the stick. Just listen to me, right? And Eve aided up and people's temple aided up, right?

And the people where we come from, eat it up, we're going to be like God, you know, in this way that we're never supposed to meant to be like God, right? And William Brand, I'm taught all this same stuff, right?

The preachers in our sect taught it, John, John, I'm a former message preacher. I used to teach this stuff myself. I know exactly what I'm talking about, right? And Jim Jones represents the radical extreme to which these manifested sons of God ideas can be taken, right?

And this is the extreme end of what being like Jesus can mean in Latter-Rain. Jim Jones represents the extreme end of what Latter-Rain can do with these B like Jesus ideas. And it gets to the point where some people get to the point that they literally believe they are operating as God Almighty.

And you know, when you combine that with someone who's mentally unstable like Jim Jones, and God have mercy, John, you see what happened? What's real interesting, Charles, you have just described the actual biblical trail of the serpent.

And it's funny to people who learn in the cult of personality, William Brand, and was supposed to come back and preach a sermon that he had entitled the Trail of the Serpent. And if you study what he did and what he achieved and the year of God's, he's literally his ministry is the Trail of the Serpent.

There's no question about it in my mind. It is, what he's established is, unfortunately, the framework that has been used not just for Jim Jones, but we have, on record, we have several similar types of communes.

And one of the questions I had, Charles, before I got deep into the Jim Jones research was, it was, Johnstown, the only message cult, Laterane, inspired commune. And I found others, I honestly, I had some hints at knowing that Gene Goed and Leo Mercer, who were William Brannum's, you know, scribes, if you will, carrying copying and recording the tapes.

I knew that they had set up some kind of a trailer park. I did not realize the depth of which it resembled Johnstown, Guyana. He was in Prescott, Arizona. William Brannum visited this and gave his blessing.

He called it Little G ocean. And those of you who know the Bible know the symbolic meaning of G ocean, right? So it's a very destructive framework. It not only created these communes, but look on the broader scale, as it extends into the new apostolic reformation.

Now we see this militant style of Christianity that is emerging because they have taken this trail of the serpent, the single concept that you can become like God. And it is exactly what the serpent in the Bible was enticing, the evil one, right?

The one, the one that the entire Bible is written, do not be like this. That's what these latter reign, new apostolic reformation churches, they're teaching the people. Yeah. So John, it's something else to me, how Jim Jones implemented all of this stuff.

And what is, what is honestly very frightening, if you're, if you are an honest person and you sit and you look through, I just read through your four little excerpts here from Jim Jones sermons, if you just honestly will sit down and listen to Jim Jones sermons, he is preaching the fivefold ministry and what you call, where I come, we would call it maybe perfecting of the saints, other people call it stature, the perfect man.

He's preaching the exact same perfectionism ideas that are taught in the message, basically, which, which globally you could call it manifested sons of God, right? So he is teaching manifested sons of God, he's teaching these fivefold ministry.

And this is very, very clearly the way in which he empowered himself over the people and ultimately got them to be totally dependent on him. There's a few other things we're going to have to talk about.

I think this episode we're coming to running out of time, so we'll have to get some more in the next episode. But this is clearly, this framework of latter reign leadership is how he got control of his people and we see it repeated.

over and over again with multiple other ladder rain groups. And Jim Jones here, he is a case study example of the extreme end of what ladder rain can produce. And it frightens me a little bit.

I'll be honest, John. I am worried and concerned for people who are inside the message because there are people in the message preaching the exact same stuff here that we've read from Jim Jones, who I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, John, or they've got some problems upstairs too, right?

And some of them are also sadistic monsters. I gotta say it, John. I know message preachers. There are some message preachers who are, I'm telling you right now, they are some sadistic monsters in there.

And, you know, if you wanna go to my website, ChristianGospelChurch.org and read why I left the message, I left because of deaths that were happening. That would play a role into me leaving deaths that were happening.

I'll leave it at that. There are dangerous things going on in the message today. And there are a lot of people on the edge of some very radical things. And the end time message, teachings of the message leave the people susceptible to very, very dangerous things.

And there are people in there. I am very much afraid are totally capable of pushing people over the edge into dangerous things, John. I very much am scared for some of the people in the message.

It's very serious. And Charles, you know me well enough now to know that whenever I am on a very serious, very scary, very troubling topic, I try to balance it with something fun so that people aren't overwhelmed.

And throughout this whole episode, I've been thinking, how can I end this? Because what I have to say to wrap this up is so troubling that honestly, I lose sleep over it, Charles. It's very, very terrifying to me, very terrifying.

And honestly, I don't know how to wrap it up without just blatantly saying my fear for the people inside of these types of groups. And I think, so I can probably add, maybe I can add a joke or something funny to balance it and make it that there was one of my first jobs that I had.

There's this guy in this office. I'm kind of a prankster. You know this by now, Charles, and his desk. You walk into his office and his desk faced you and his computer monitor and everything's here.

A friend of mine and I, we started staying late every single night. I want to say for six months to pull off the ultimate prank in every single night. for six months, we moved his desk one millimeter closer to the wall. So that over the course of six months, he never notices desk moving, but you know, after about four months, he's saying, you know, I feel like I'm, I really need to lose weight. I'm getting overweight.

I feel almost full claustrophobic in my office. And it is, it was probably an awful thing that it did, but it was incredibly funny because by the end of it, I finally told him, look, we've been moving your desk. And he's like, what have you guys done to me? At least now I'm in shape. He started working out. But apply that to what is happening in these cults. Since I've left the cult, I've not been, I've not been actively manipulated by their doctrine. At the same time, I have listened to some of the sermons and the progression

of where it began into destructive theology is exponentially increasing, not just gradually, not just in a linear fashion, it is exponentially increasing towards destructive. It is moving gradually, Sunday by Sunday, Wednesday, you know, these people go three, four or sometimes five times a week. So the people who are being indoctrinated and manipulated, don't see the progression like the guy in the desk. He did not notice the desk was moving. But it is progressing in such a way that the cult leaders are manipulating the people into fear.

Fear causes a whole lot of problems. As you know, when people went to Jonestown, they were in fear. They were in fear of the impending doom of the United States. The destruction of the United States, that was a lateral in teaching. They were in fear of the communist rising and the war between communists and, you know, even though Jim Jones kind of cited with the communist, he is expecting this war to come. And look at the events that are happening today. When Jones moved there, there was a communist fear. In fact, we're going to get into it in future episodes. But even in South America, where he's at,

the United States is at war with communism in South America. So he's in the midst of all of this. Everybody's in camped around this fear. And fear will make you go to extremes that you would not otherwise go to the extent that they drank cyanide lace, cyanide lace cool aid. And they all committed mass suicide. If you take a look into the churches today that are still in this framework and just look at what the leaders are saying, doing, and scaring the people. Charles, it is terrifying to me. It's not funny. You know, even though

I try to balance it, it is, it is abs. loosely terrifying what they are doing to the people. And then you combine that with the political events that are going on in the world today because they are unfortunately continuing the same path that Jim Jones took his people. It is very scary. But on a lighter note, this has been a fun investigation and we've got to kind of explore the theology which we don't usually do Charles. So I did enjoy doing this and even though I'm ending with this horrific thing that I just said, it was fun and I'm going to be honest the next

episode will be more fun and more horrific. So we've got to somehow balance it. Come back next time. For more fear, we're going to scare the heck out of you. So if you enjoyed our show and you want more information, check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brandham and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brandham and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.

We've got a great episode coming. We've got a great episode coming.