Jim Jones and the Race War

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 and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles's last episode was extremely interesting, especially for those who were in our Jones research crowd.

And I'm sure that the Jones crowd are all gearing up for today's episode. And I think I'm probably just as excited. As you know, I've been studying Jim Jones in the intersections between Jones and Brannum for some time now.

And even just talking through things that I already knew with you in the last episode, it's causing so many different trails of thought to open that weren't open before. So I'm excited to get into this one today and see how many more of those doors that we can open.

Yeah, you know, we've certainly got another episode, a good one for our listeners today. We're continuing with our analysis of Jim Jones' teachings and looking at how his beliefs were influenced by his time in the latter reign movement and while he was working with William Brannum.

And just to remind our listeners, Jim Jones grew up in Apostolic Church in the 1930s and 40s. And you know, the exact year is hard to be sure. But certainly by 1950, Jim Jones was connecting with the latter reign movement.

He'd become a latter reign preacher by 1953. And Jim Jones spent several years working with William Brannum, 1955, 1956, 1957. They held a lot of meetings together, actually. And all said, Jim Jones spent about 10 years connected to the latter reign movement.

And in our last episode, we, we especially looked at how Jim Jones used the fivefold ministry concepts and the manifested sense of God concepts and the last April revival concepts to really empower himself and take over people's temple.

Those were radical versions of those teachings were how he got power. And in this episode, we want to take some time to examine another very... significant teaching that Jim Jones used to radicalize his followers. And John, this is another big thing that Jim Jones actually believed in common with William Brannum. They both believe this. Other lettering groups, not all of them, but some of the other lettering groups believed in this as well. They held the belief that there's going to be an end of day's race war. And William Brannum believed deeply in this coming race war. He believed

in a second holocaust with concentration camps and everything. That's an important part of his teachings in the fifth seal, for example, and a number of other sermons that he preached as well. And John, you and I both grew up with those teachings. Just expecting this eminent American apocalypse to strike at any moment.

Yeah, we did. And you know, one of the doors that opened for me during the course of the last episode, I have been studying Jim Jones from the perspective of the information that we have to study. In other words, I've got newspaper articles that I can place Jones in revival meetings or in laterane type church services, some of which he led. And there's the intersection with William Brannum, where Brannum basically is the headline speaker for people's temple event at the Cato Tabernacle in Indianapolis in 1957. But as you mentioned, there's almost a decade where where Jim Jones is working with the laterane crowd. And where it gets really

interesting for me and one of the things that I started to think through as we talked last week, there's a period of time in which Jones is rising up to become the central figure of the people's temple cult, wherein he is becoming recognized among the laterane crowd, but not yet recognized enough to make newspapers or journals or publications. In so much that he is one of the ministers that a lady laid on her hands on and you know, prophesied over him so that he could become established in the laterane. Well, you don't just happen upon this. Like if you and I

picture you were not a minister, you're like me, just an average guy and not the incredible guy you are. And you showed up in one of these laterane revivals of just sitting in the seats.

You're not going to have somebody just walk up and lay their hands on you and say, hey, I pick you. You're the one. But this happened to Jones. So it means to me that Jones was becoming very, very active in laterane, even before the period of time in which we can place him, you know, together with all of this. We do know that the Laurel Street Tabernacle was a laterane church and that it was rededicated. I believe it was 1949 about the time laterane revival would have hit Indian Bliss, we don't have any information about the years prior to this.

Right. And you know, it's not like he was just walking down the street and saw this ladder rain revival and walked in right when this happened. He's an hour and a half away from his house like he's drove here for this purpose. He he has been in ladder rain certainly since I can say for sure since 1950 he's been connected to people in ladder rain and these things he's been doing on the side at the same point he's been in the Methodist church with his wife. And so somewhere he has been building relationships connecting to people,

people I knew John, people I went to church with actually. And just growing in in in stature in this in in ladder rain. Yeah. And through all that he's listening to William Brandon Preach. He's hearing the other ladder rain preaching. He's with Joseph Mats and Bosé, him and Bosé do hold a revival series in Maryland. I think in either 54 or 55 him and Joseph Mats and Bosé do a revival series together. He's around a lot of important figures in ladder rain in the early and going up to the mid 1950s. Yeah, for sure. In the perspective of what we're going

to talk about today, the research that you and I have done thus far is in the Jones communities groundbreaking. I don't know that there's anything like it out there and likely secret preview this may end up being the the newsletter article for this year for the Jones town community. But the race war as you and I are starting to understand it. The background to building up to this theme that was prevalent in the ladder rain movement. Not many people are aware that it was that widespread among the ladder rain movement. In fact, I would be willing to venture to say that

most of the ladder rain converts and leaders have sort of erased this history kind of like William Branham did. It's it's just not it non-existent, right? But we're starting to understand that the the heads of this movement, the people that basically inspired this movement were all involved to some extent with the race war theology. They may not be directly spreading it like we have key figures that were for example in the British Israelism movement who may or may not have been racist. There's no way to know, but they're connected to all of these racist people who do have a

white supremacy agenda. And that research as far as Jones is concerned is groundbreaking and fascinating because Jones was an advocate for civil rights. Had he known, Jones would have never joined into this thing Charles. Absolutely. And again, as we go One, in our next episode, I definitely would like to try and walk through all the times and, you know, meetings and stuff that William Brown and Jim Jones had together, at least give a high overview of it all.

But I think Jim Jones figuring this stuff out actually contributed to his breakup with William Brown. Actually, that's what my interpretation of the fact is that Jim Jones figured some of this stuff out, and that's what one of the things that led to the parting company.

So let me, as we go into this, let me read a quote here from William Brannum, where he shares his belief in the coming race war. And this is from a 1963 sermon called The Third Exodus, where William Brannum is sharing this one.

And in this one, William Brannum says, just like Hitler did over in Germany, he led them right into a death trap, then precious Germans. And let me pause right there, John. Don't you think it's weird that William Brannum is saying them precious Germans?

Okay, I'm just pointing this out to our listeners, then precious Germans, because the Germans were the people running the gas chambers, right? Okay, I think I know that much about World War II history, that the Germans was the ones putting the gas into the gas chambers, okay?

And William Brannum said so many disturbing things, and my family, John, was sitting here when he said this. Wow. Your family was sitting there when he said this. You go back, our families were sitting here when he said, then precious Germans.

I mean, let me just, let me just start over this quote again, okay? He says, just like Hitler did over in Germany, led them people right into a death trap, then precious Germans. And they laid millions or billions piled one on top of another, and that's exactly the same thing.

And remember, I'm on tape, you'll see it, maybe after I'm gone, that's exactly what's going to happen. Then precious people will die down there like flies, starts a revolutionary, both white and colored, will fight again, and die like flies, and what you got when it's all over, a bunch of dead people.

So this is one of the few, well, quite a few times that William Brannum is saying there's going to be another Holocaust, a terrible race war, concentration camps, right? And Jim Jones picked all of this up, right?

And he was preaching it too. At the same time, he's, he starts preaching the same stuff, and let me just throw in one more quote here from William Brannum about this. This is from the sermon handwriting on the wall.

William Brannum says, then what happens? Wave after wave of shiploads of soldiers, wave after wave of airplanes, would land in this nation. The women would be ravished in the streets. What would you do?

It belongs to them now, hicked out of your home, they'll take it over. What will happen to you young girls and you young men at all at this time? has to be paid for. No matter what nation it is or who does it, individually or nation, it's got to be paid for. A bunch of brutal, ungodly, whisker-jawed, communist soldiers would grab your wives and ravish them, your young girls, and you would stand there and like it. There's nothing you can do about it. So there again is, you know, William Brown given a really graphic descriptions of this appending, apocalyptic destruction of America

and Jim Jones was believing in all of this stuff too. You know Charles, you and I, we grew up in this kind of environment. We, to some extent, also thought he's talking about this event that, you know, for us, it was what 50 years ago when we were first hearing this.

But think of the context of, of the crowd that he's in. I mean, I grew up, my mother told us stories about how the Russians were soon going to come and ravish the women and how it was a curse for her to be beautiful. That's directly quoted from my mother. The context of the people older than us who were in this thing, they're all thinking that they're, this is building up to an event like the one that William Branham just described. It's not that he's describing the one in the past. He's referencing the one in the past to explain

and describe the one that is coming in the future. And that context, I think, is critical to understand as it molds Jim Jones character in his ministry. Exactly. And he, William Branham was always very clear that Martin Luther King and the race, racial, the inner, the civil rights movement was communist inspired. They were the communists that he's talking about in this, you know, they're part of. And, you know, when he talks about the whisker job, communistic soldiers grabbing your wives to their, Martin Luther King and his people are part of this group, William Branham is talking about. There's

just a few breaths, you know, before these in the same sermons he's talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. Okay. So. And the research that we have into when Rod changed that perspective, even for me, because I never really, now that, now that we know this, going back and look at the transcript, it's blatantly obvious. But I always separated the two. He would talk about the communists and we would be thinking Russia. And then in the very, almost the very next breath he's talking about the African Americans and the civil rights movement. He's actually combining these two. And I never thought about it. And think of this, Charles. Jim Jones is a minister

who is an advocate for civil rights and racial equality. He's like us. He's, he's learning the message. He's learning what William Branham saying. And he's also not picking up on this. He's, he's, he's, I mean, in many ways, he's like us being indoctrinated. Right.

Remember, in these guys ideology, communism is a Jewish conspiracy. So, you know, they view communists working hand in hand with the Catholic church. This is the covenant part of the, you know, the end time scenario, right?

It's communist working with, you know, the Roman church. And then everybody he labels communist is he's people he's labeling under the control of the Jewish people, right? So, this is, it's really bizarre stuff.

This, this ideology comes from Christian identity theology. It's actually where it comes from. But this is, this is what, how this works on the back end in these people's minds. So, let me read it a couple quotes from Jim Jones.

Now, Jim Jones has, he picks this stuff up from William Brown, another letter of rain preachers, but let me just read some, have how he takes it. And here's the Jim Jones quote from Q598.

Jim Jones said, we have to be prepared for that. But we also have to be prepared to go to other places in the world if a dictatorship takes over because I told you and I never have broken my word word.

I told you none of my children's going to end up in a concentration camp. I said they'll have to kill us all first. And when he says my children, he's talking about the people in his church, you know, his, his church children, then later on on that same tape, Jim Jones, he says, you're going to turn into concentration camps.

They're going to kill blacks and minorities, right? He's, he's sharing the same stuff. And Jim Jones was really obsessed over this coming American apocalypse and race war. The same race war William Brown was teaching in the message.

And, and if you take time to read and compare their teachings on this topic, Jim Jones and William Brown really give the exact same descriptions of things. And it's really very clear that William Brown played a significant role in putting these ideas into Jim Jones head.

Right. And what's fascinating for me is that, you know, Jones is working with the African American communities. He is actually well recognized in Indianapolis for working with the poorest of the poor section of the black section of Indianapolis.

During a time when Indianapolis is very racially segregated. So he is like the champion of the civil rights movement in Indianapolis. He doesn't understand that he's being indoctrinated this way. And again, what we'll probably get into this into, you know, either later this episode or in the next episode, but what's really fascinating for me is to understand that towards the end of Jones life after he has parted ways with the latter-ranked community, it seems as though he flips sides of who he supports in this race war.

Exactly. That's well observed. You know, John, one thing that really shocks me, you know, when I, when I think about this is how some of my family and your family too was sitting right there in the tabernacle listening to William Brannum say these things right they're sitting there with their wives and their daughters right beside them why William Brannum saying hey that wife and daughter beside you you're going to have to watch them get raped in the streets here before too much longer my family sat there and listen to that stuff John that shocks that shocks me and Jim Jones got to hear these kind of things too

from William Brannum John because he was there through the earlier years as well when William Brannum was saying this kind of stuff and you think about that John what kind of a person stands up in front of an audience with two and three and four year old little girls in it and tells those two and three and four little year old girls hey you're all going to get raped who does that and that they're going to end that the parents are going to have to stand there and watch their little kids get raped and they're going to have to stand there and like it even

tells them you're going to have to stand there and like it you know how could William Brannum say that stuff two little kids right and so I'm just so shocked on that side of things that my family sat there and and allowed you know my relatives to sit there even as children and hear this stuff you know and my I have an aunt and aunt um depending on which part of the country you're from after on uh she was going to the tabernacle back about 1965 herself and she I actually reconnected with her since I left the message um and she told me that there was actually a whole

lot of people who were really upset about William Brannum saying these kind of things back then actually like it wasn't this stuff didn't just nobody everybody's eyes was glazed over there were people there who actually did get upset when William Brannum preached this sort of stuff she was about 16 years old when he would preach this sermon and she shared the story of how different people really got a little bit hot over this when William Brannum would talk this way and he'd actually would lose people um out of the tabernacle crowd from time to time over these kind of things

and I can certainly understand why people were upset John with your preacher telling you your kids are going to get raped what what I what does shock me and what I don't understand is people who did not get upset and how can you let someone tell you your little girl is going to be be raped and not get upset you know when Rod has really for me been the key to unlocking so many hidden statement in nuggets as they call it in the message and you know I've I studied the civil rights in the white supremacy movements extensively leading up to our finding all of this and

it's really interesting because the civil rights movement was trying to build racial equality in opposition to the clan While the clan were saying the exact same things that we just described about black people, they were introducing fear into the white people that the black people were going to rape their children.

That's predominantly found in books and histories that when you study the South after slavery was ended. And then you have all of these different trials of men, people of color, who were accused of rape and convicted and executed for rape, and many of which, now years later, they have overturned those convictions. They, you know, the person's obviously dead, but the one that basically started the Ku Klux Klan's 1915 revival was a man by the name of Leo Frank, who was a Jewish man.

And they accused him of raping, I can't remember the lady's name, but one of his employees, basically, and they had a very public lynching wherein they actually hung him up and they actually cut pieces of him off. And they were like souvenirs. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever read.

They actually made postcards of people standing next to the man who's been lynched and spread the postcards around as an example of fear for men like this who might rape your children. It was predominantly in the South for, you know, against people of color. Now that with Winrod, we understand that communist was basically this code word or this loaded language to include basically the Jewish race, the African American race, and the political ideology. It was a combination of the three. So during the communist scare, everybody who's been using this code word, now this includes Russia, and there is a real fear because of the impending war. Here's where it becomes problematic

for me. And I'm going to be very open and honest. This is something I've had to work through with trying to deprogram my indoctrination. I grew up with these stories about how the communist would come and they would rape the children. I viewed Russian people in a different way because of this.

Even though they weren't communist, they were many of them raised, I have friends directly from Russia who, very good close friends from Russia, who came to the United States and they're no longer communist, no longer even support the communist ideology. But in the back of my mind, I'm thinking at the same time, well, they were raised in this. And think of what that does. When you're indoctrinated in this, and you have a minister who is basically driving a wedge between the good people and the bad people with something visibly distinctive about them.

In other words, I can select this crowd of people and I can categorize them and these aren't the good people. That's what this minister is doing. Instead of let's go save the Communists. Let's convert them to Jesus Christ.

Let's be more Christ-like and let's work towards ending this bad thing that's happening within Communism. And even worse than that, Communism itself, it's just a political ideology. It's not that they train these people to rape.

You know, these ideas, these concepts, they impact people, they do. And you think about how many little kids, John, even to this day, to this day, John, are growing up believing that they're going to somehow have to survive this end of days race war, George Washington's vision, whatever you want to call it.

I grew up believing that. I grew up believing I was going to have to survive this thing. I believe I was going to have to survive this thing until actually just recently. I can say firsthand the experience, you know how that impacts person.

And you know, they believe in the average person sitting in there where I come from, believes this stuff. They, in the average one believes there's a chance they're going to be raped in the streets when this stuff happens.

And because that's literally what they were told and are being told, you know, and where I come from, they all genuinely believe, John, this is just going to happen in just a few more months, actually, right?

Like it's not like this, they're sitting there believing this thing's far off into the future and you know, it might happen, it might not. No, the message sets this up. This is going to happen in a few months, right?

And we're living with this, this is going, this eminent thing is about to happen. And the people will live their whole lives believing that just in a few months, I'm going to have to live through this American apocalypse.

And at the end of the day, John, it's all been a total scam. It's proved out to be nothing but a hoax, you know, cooked up by a sick mind. And think of all the consequences of the people believing this, John, the fear they live with, the mental anguish.

And think of all the bad life decisions that people make as a result of this, right? You're, if you think that, you know, an American apocalypse is, you know, maybe six months down the road, you're going to make decisions different than if you think, oh, I need to, you know, plan to live another 20 years or something.

You know, you make completely different decision sets. It affects your life in a very fundamental way. These things totally shape the lives of the people who grow up with these beliefs. It shapes them in a very fundamental way.

And you know, when you're out, when you're inside the cold, you don't realize how much this stuff does impact your decision making. But when you get back and you get out and you look back and realize at that moment, you can see just how much this eminent doomsday type beliefs have totally and fundamentally shaped your entire life.

What's really interesting, Charles, is, you think about what the lettering movement achieved. This was not just a, you know, American movement. This was a global movement. They had a global presence. And when you think about, you know, when Roy Davis, William Brannem's mentor, when Davis created the Knights of the Flaming Sword with William Joseph Simmons, the founder of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan, he said, this is, we are creating an international movement, whereas the Klan itself was somewhat international, but did not have the international presence.

They wanted to spread white supremacy around the globe. We don't know that he did this through the laddering movement, but we do know that Davis remained connected to the laddering movement and even to some extent advertised himself in the voice of Healing Magazine, that's on record.

But what happened is this movement basically went globally. They had this loaded language of communism. And even though in America, it was intending to say this communist thing was including not only communism, as we see as the political ideology, but also the blacks and the Jews.

All of the white supremacists were saying this and that's on record. You can find this in the histories to the people around the globe that did not have the United States version of white supremacy.

They would not have understood this. So what this created, when you think about Jonestown, it created this scenario where, you know, laddering even spread into South America. So even in South America, you have people who would have been supportive of this ideology, not understanding truly what it meant.

And when Jonestown gets, when the people's temple get relocated into South America, I'm certain that there would have been people who supported this type of ideology. That's another interesting study that I don't believe is on record, but I'm certain that if we start digging deeply enough, you're going to find reasons why they chose Jonestown Guyana, why they chose Guyana as their place to relocate.

And Charles, it's just unbelievable when you think of the effect of the laddering movement on the history of people's temple. Yeah, it's something else. And, you know, Jon, something that's really bizarre to me is that the people's temple race war ideas and the Christian identity race war ideas actually come from the same root, right?

And, you know, and that's a powerful demonstration of how ideologies evolve over time and how groups of people who seem to be totally opposite, totally unrelated. can in fact actually have common origins. Jim Jones was a communist. Christian identity is Nazis.

They hate each other, right? They see themselves on two opposite sides of this race war, yet their belief in that race war shares a common origin, right? So in some ways, people's temple ends up becoming anithetical to the message, because Jim Jones identifies himself with the victims of this coming race war, and he's looking for ways to help them escape what he thinks is coming, whereas William Brannum is strongly on the other side of the issue. And you know, there's a reason that William Brannum and Jim Jones eventually break up, and this is part of it.

We'll cover these details in another episode, but what's scary, John, is you know, if you get enough people to believe in something, the prophecy's actually become self-fulfilling. If you get enough people believing in a race war, guess what? You're going to have a race war, right? That's how it works. Prophecies like this fulfill themselves if you can get enough people believing in them. And that's what makes this ideology so dangerous, right? You look at these people that have these really radical ideas, like you look at Waco. The people at Waco, their prophecies were fulfilled. They self-fulfilled them, right? John's town, their prophecies fulfilled. They

self-fulfilled them, right? Like in their eschatology and their doomsday scenarios, they all actually were fulfilled according to what they believed, right? Like they fulfilled their own prophecies, right? And that don't mean that this was all something from God in the end of the day, and they that this miraculous thing happened. But yeah, they fulfilled their own prophecies and they're all dead today, right? And we can look and we'll say, oh, well, they was a crazy cult. But in their minds, they was not a crazy cult. In their minds, they were fulfilling their deeply held religious beliefs,

going down these doomsday scenarios and arriving finally at the doomsday and self-fulfilling it. What would have happened had the world not been manipulated by this type of fear. The latter reign was a global spreading of this type of fear. So their fear is kind of like hours in the main sect. It's the fear of the Russia. Jim Jones was really obsessed with that coming American apocalypse, John. And you know, when you when you read all the people who've studied Jim Jones, they all kind of say this belief in this end of days, race war, apocalyptic scenario really

played a huge factor in how Jim Jones radicalized the minds of his followers. You know, they played a big role also in them choosing to move to Jones town. And fear of this race war also played a huge role in them all committing mass suicide, actually, because people's temple, the people there, they believe the alternative to drinking Kool-Aid was ending up in a concentration camp, right? You know, it when when they all committed suicide, it's not so much that they wanted to But in their mind, they were weighing out their options in their worldview, right?

They could A, choose to go into concentration camps and watch their children get raped and murdered, right? Because that's what they believed was going to happen, you know, in a couple more days after what they did, where they could be commit mass suicide, right?

And in their minds, they were making a choice. And in the ideology that they had been brainwashed in, their choice was a logical, reasonable response to their circumstances, right? And they fully believed they were making a good choice based on what they believed to be the truth, right?

And if you listen to that death tape, John, on that death tape, Jim Jones is telling the people if they don't drink the Kool-Aid, the exact same scenarios that we read here from William Brannum, he's telling them those kind of things are going to happen to them.

They're going to watch their kids go in the concentration camps and be raped and killed and tortured. And then they're going to be killed and raped and tortured themselves, right? Jim Jones is telling them this is what's going to happen now if we don't drink the Kool-Aid to us.

And, you know, William Brannum does have a degree of responsibility for this, I think, because he was partially responsible for giving these ideas to Jim Jones and people's temple, right? You know, in here 50 years later, it is obvious at this point that William Brannum was totally wrong.

William Brannum was dead wrong, John. There has been no race war. There's been no American apocalypse. There's been no concentration camp. And almost everybody who ever heard William Brannum say all of those things is dead and buried and in the grave tell the truth.

The overwhelming majority, none of them had to live through that. And they lived their entire lives in mental bomb shelters for nothing. That's the reality. I think to fully flesh out what you just said so that people can understand, we may have to do an Operation Condor episode.

But there was so much going on in the 70s and 80s that I believe the general message population and to some extent, even the full American population, were just fully unaware. And yet, at the same time, Jim Jones and people's temple were living this out.

They were, you know, they were in South America, they were in the heat of this battle. I think the earliest date that I saw was at 1974 when they purchased the ground, I believe it was, in Jonestown.

So for, basically for four years leading up to the Jonestown massacre, they have relocated to South America where we now know that through Operation Condor, being declassified, the CIA and the United States military were coordinating efforts to overturn communism in several countries in South America.

And Jones is understanding that, you know, the people's temple was founded as basically... this early communist type community. It wasn't communism like we think of Russia, but it was the communal lifestyle. It was the early communism. He's trying to build this utopia, and he's watching basically the United States overthrow overturned governments, and he realizes that he's become a target for this. I don't know if he was aware that the United States military and the CIA were to some extent working with the message in Chile through colonial Dignidad, but he is aware that the Chilean government is being overthrown by the CIA. We have actually speeches by Jones

describing this. So what's happening there in his mind is this political civil war to overthrow communism within South America. That part is documented, and you can find it in any, you know, Jones history. It's very easy to find. What's not documented, Charles, is the background to his mental state through the theology that William Brannum indoctrinated him with in the latter reign.

Yeah. You know, these doomsday beliefs didn't help anyone. They didn't help a single person, you know, but they sure hurt tens of thousands of people. And in truth, the only thing these doomsday beliefs have ever done is to help people become more and more radical. You know, whether it's William Brannum and message preachers or whether it's Jim Jones teaching in people's temple. These apocalyptic militant doomsday prophecies cause people to gradually become radicalized, you know, which is really the exact opposite of what Jesus instructed to do. And it takes time, but very slowly, people listening to this stuff become more and more radical, you know, bit by bit. I saw this

in my sect of the message, John, you know, there was this gradually increasing radical mindset, slowly building up year after year, year after year, getting more radical, a little more radical, a little more crazy, right? Their arm stark piles got a little bigger every year, right? And there's this element of people in the message who seem to thrive on it, you know, they thrive on the doomsday, looking forward to it, not everybody, but there's people in there that thrive on it. You know, and unless there's some way to release that pressure, these type of doomsday prophecies actually build

into a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like Jonestown or like Waco or like Evans Gate, right? Lots of other examples we could point out. This isn't not just happened once in history, there's happened over and over again. And these prophecies in a sense become self-fulfilling, right? If you think the government is going to come get you and you keep getting more and more radicals, guess what? Eventually you are going to cross a line and break some laws and the government really will come get you, right? And then it's Instead of realizing you're in a death trap of your own making, like Jonestown, what

do they do? They drink the Kool-Aid, and you do whatever your puck-lift at Doomsday teacher has told you to do and condition you to do, because you can no longer clearly see reality, right?

You become so warped in your thinking that you've brought your own doom upon you and you think it's the end of the world when really it's just, it's just your craziness coming back and getting you.

I think that's a good way to put it. I've read through the death tapes, the transcripts. I've actually listened to the death tape, which is terrifying to listen to, but I've also listened to some of, I don't know if you know this, but there were, there was a miniature radio broadcasting station inside of Jonestown, and Jonest would basically interpret the news and select the news, and the people would listen to it.

He is, he's very much presenting the notion that this end of day scenario is playing out, and this is their way of escape. This is their way to not be caught up in the battle that's coming.

It's very terrifying when you think that it was largely a result of the theology that the laterane movement indoctrinated, not only Jones, but even the people inside of people's temple. There were many of them who had the laterane background, so it's, it's horrific when you think that the ideology could manipulate a person's mind such that rather than trying to find ways to bring peace to the world, as Jesus said, the greatest of the commandments is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Instead, you're thinking, I should fear my neighbor, and I should kill myself. That's their only options, there isn't, there isn't even a resemblance of the gospel in this. It is basically the gospel of fear.

You know, if Jim Jones had spent his Sundays teaching people the hope of the gospel instead of Doomsday apocalyptic race war sermons every week, for 10, 20 years in a row, they probably would not have all died in Jones town.

In fact, I think we could say definitively, they would not have all died in Jones town, right? It's unhealthy for a church or for anyone of that matter to subject themselves to a constant, steady stream of Doomsday thinking.

It can only serve to radicalize people, and it's really actually totally contrary even to the way Jesus said to preach and to teach and to do things, right? And so, not all message churches are this way, but a large percentage of them are, you don't go a week without hearing that Doomsday is upon us and how it's all going to unfold at what's going to happen.

That is the main course bread and butter of the message. churches I come from, John. You know, as I studied the death tape, it's really interesting because when you think of the latter years of Jim Jones, you don't think of him as being a leader in anything even close to the Latter-Rain movement. He is saying things that as a Christian it just angers you. He says the Bible talks about the Sky God and there is no Sky God.

But when you think about the Latter-Rain influence, specifically the manifested sons of God influence. In the manifested sons of God, there is no Sky God. There is the Latter-Rain manifested son of God who's leading you and God is leading you through the man, through the human. So in other words, in his mind what they're practicing fits within the realm of Christianity by using the manifested sons of God as the vehicle that takes them there. Definitely. I mean, there is no question. And he, Jim Jones, like we covered in our last episode, he sets up manifested sons of

God using the exact same formula and the exact same scriptural references that is in the core distinctives of Latter-Rain, right? Fivefold ministry, perfects the people. I'll get you to this hundredfold manifestation and we'll all be like God, we'll all be manifested sons. You can all manifest it too. And then we can usher in the end of days and it's God on earth in us, right? Like that's the, that is the flow of how the manifested sons of God ends up coming out. And that's exactly what Jim Jones was preaching. And John, I do want to emphasize one more time that these,

the apocalyptic race war ideas that we've been talking about in this episode contributed very heavily to Jim Jones and people's temples' decision to move to South America, right? The people believed they were moving there to escape the coming race war, the coming nuclear war. And William Brannum played a big role in causing Jim Jones to believe in those things to begin with. And John, on your website, there's a list of meetings where we know that Jim Jones and William Brannum were together. You know, when I, when I was in the message and I knew Jim Jones was in the message

while I was in the message, I was under the impression, you know, you know, they made it had a couple meetings together, couple anecdotal, you know, uneventful, unimportant meetings together. But that is not true. If you just go through Harold of Faith alone, just the documented meetings they had together in Harold of Faith is over 50, just in Harold of Faith, over 50 meetings that we can definitely document that they were together. I mean, they were together a lot, a lot. And there's I'm sure, John, far more than that that they was also together where it was an advertised or we

might not have the documentation, but we can definitely document over 50 meetings that William Brannum and Jim Jones were together. And William Brannum has some responsibility for teaching to this stuff to him. And you can go back and there's actually tapes for a fair number of those.

And you can listen to exactly what William Brannum was preaching. Well, Jim Jones was sitting next to him on the platform, right? And Jim Jones was hearing these kinds of things out of William Brannum's mouth while he was sitting on the platform next to him, right?

That's it's it's it's indisputable that he would have heard these things out of the lips of William Brannum. And if you just look at that, I mean, the evidence is all there. And some of Jim Jones end of day's belief, including Jim Jones end of day belief about the end of day's race war, we can demonstrably prove that Jim Jones learned these things directly from William Brannum.

Where it gets really problematic for me, Charles, of those 50 meetings that we can confirm that the two men were together, over 50. Number one, we don't know how many that weren't advertised. Like you said, there could be 100, there could be 200.

We don't know, but there were 50 that we can confirm. Of those 50, William Brannum was recording. He was recording over 50 sermons that we can confirm that they were together. Of those 50, a majority of them are missing.

We know that they had recording equipment. I mean, this is picture, this is a revival. They've got the booth where they've got the seats where Jean and Leo or whoever is the current tape boys of the time are sitting there recording Jim Jones and William Brannum.

We find that Jones has been cut out of most of them. There's blank spots and tape. There's one place where he mentions, welcome your host pastor, Jim Jones. We're glad he's here from Indianapolis.

So we know that we know that William Brannum was mentioning Jones because they missed one. But we don't know how many statements that he said uplifting, supporting, promoting Jim Jones because they've been cut out if they existed.

But worse, there are entire recordings that we know that they would have been recording that are not for sale. You can't find them anywhere. That's problematic for me. And when you talk about the influence on people's temple for the move to South America,

they did not just move to Jonestown. Johnson, his family actually relocated to South America long before this, even while he was still a lateral minister. William Brannum prophesied using an unusual event that happened in Chicago.

There was some sort of a huge geological event. I think it was a tidal wave or something that was just abnormal. And William Brannum goes and uses this fear that it's the coming end of days.

There's this thing that just happened and Russia's going to send a nuclear bomb and destroy this place. Right after that, right after William Brannum says this, Jones is saying this at People's Temple. That's on record and we have the record.

So he is propagating William Brannum's fear of nuclear doomsday to his cult of personality that's forming. To the extent it scares Jones so much that he takes his family out of America in the event this nuclear holocaust is coming.

Nuclear holocaust doesn't come and at that point he starts to see there's something wrong with William Brannum. And you know, Jones further separates himself from this. He joins Father Divine as you as we've mentioned.

But the migration of Jones and People's Temple to South America was largely because of this nuclear holocaust and indoctrination to the extent Jones himself is repeating what William Brannum is saying. Yeah, that's exactly right.

And you know, John, just like we, you know, we can prove that there is, you know, I don't know, 30-ish tapes that we can say for sure are missing or William Brannum and Jim Jones were together.

It's obvious, you know, somebody didn't ever want those tapes to reach the public, right? Otherwise they'd be around. And here's the thing, you know, the church I came from, John, the second continuously operating message church in the world, which I was assistant pastor.

I know a fair number of people at that church were at these meetings with William Brannum and Jim Jones as well, because I know they were there meetings in Indianapolis meetings in Chicago that they were there, William Brannum and Jim Jones were there, yet of course still all lie through their teeth, right?

And say today they never knew Jim Jones, even though our old pastor Raymond Jackson was publicly even told us about it, right? That's how I know one way I know that there some of them are lying about it today is Raymond Jackson himself told us that he was there and I know who some of the people who's there with him.

So, you know, it's, it's, this is a cover up and they are lying about this stuff, absolutely. The message is, is, is people in the message who say that they were not there when all this stuff was happening, they're lying to you, they are absolutely lying to you, they were there.

There's people in the message today who are in prominent positions in the message who sat and listened to Jim Jones preach to him, right? And there's people in the message, I know myself, John went to church with Jim Jones, they went to church with Jim Jones, you know?

And there's people on platforms today who preach and you listen to them and it's like listen to Jim Jones, it's sick, it's sick stuff and they're doing the same kind of sick stuff. And the truth is, it's because they all learned a lot.

of it from the same source I hate to say. My YouTube site was attacked and brought down the Jones research. There were a few videos that they attacked heavily. One of them was the Jones research.

And one of them that got attacked is very interesting. Like you said, there were several people, key figures in the message, who were at this event with Jim Jones. At these events, I should say, with Jim Jones and William Brannum.

My grandfather, this is about the time that he joined. At the time in which Jim Jones and Joseph Mats and Bozay are leaders in the message, that's the time that my grandfather basically joined the church if I put the timeline together and compare them.

So my grandfather would have known. There, in the later years of my grandfather's life, he started suffering from dementia and his filter was almost nonexistent. He says a lot of things that if you know what he's talking about, it is incredibly interesting.

Some of the things that he said, I have other family members that are like covering their mouth. Oh my gosh, I can't believe he said that. We never tell people this. One of them is he started talking about his travels into South America, my grandfather, which is very interesting.

If you think about all of the things that are going on in South America, he was flying with one of William Brannum's sons. And as they're coming in to South America and they're getting ready to land, one of the sons apparently pointed down at Jonestown and said, that's where Jonestown was.

And that was in one of the videos that we had up. I had actually just that segment of my grandfather talking about it. And in, I don't know how many minutes, it might have been less than an hour.

As soon as I posted it, it was gone. The cult attacked it and it was gone. Because they don't want people to know how deeply connected the message was to Jim Jones. I think it's important also to know, Jim Jones is not the only guys that are connected, this latter-ranked stuff that all packed up and relocated to South America, right?

Because it is because they believed in this coming Doomsday. Of course, when you know Paul Schaefer also moved there, and moved there in the same years, honestly, that Jim Jones was down there the first time.

While William Brandon was still alive when all this stuff happened, too. But other latter-ranked groups, like you go look at maybe Sam Fife in the move, their latter-ranked group, same thing. You know, they were believing in, you know, the coming apocalypse of, you know, destruction of America.

And a lot of them moved to South America as well. Some of them moved to Alaska or other remote locations. And you find this repeated over and over again in quite a substantial number of the latter-ranked groups, especially the more extreme ones, where the...

They are all packing up, moving to South America, moving to these remote locations. A lot of them went to New Zealand, actually, John. There's a lot of people that packed up and went to New Zealand because it's even more remote than South America.

And you get a huge influx of laterane influence people into New Zealand. So this apocalyptic race war ended day stuff coming out of laterane actually caused huge migrations of these people to remote areas of the world.

And a lot of them are still there today. Not all of them went over the deep edge, but there's a lot of really, really, really extreme radical groups in these remote areas of the world that went there to flee this coming apocalypse.

One of the key elements of the laterane theology is the pre-tribulation rapture. They believe that before there's any kind of turmoil that is leading up to Armageddon, they're supposed to be raptured. Why do they move and try to escape the tribulation?

That's what blows my mind because if they truly believe this, they would believe that they would be caught up without any of their own doing. Christ is going to lift them up in the rapture and they're going to escape all of this.

But it shows that there isn't a trust in God for their safety. They want to save themselves, basically, by relocating and moving their group to some remote place where there isn't going to be this nuclear holocaust that laterane was teaching.

There is no trust in God. It shows the difference between true Christianity and what is being propagated through William Brannum and the laterane leaders. Right, that's well said. And a lot of that also is driven by the fact that this kind of two phased approach to the end of days, right?

Because not all the groups, but again, laterane varies, but a lot of them have this kind of two phased approach where first you're going to have this apocalyptic destruction of America and somehow we got to survive that.

So phase one and then phase two is actually the final end of day scenario where then the rapture and so forth would happen, right? So they set up this two phased end of days thing where the first phase you got to survive.

And it's unusual, it's something else, John. I think I've mentioned before in our sect of the message we called it George Washington's vision. I've heard it called other things, but at the end of the day it is this end of war, end of day's race war idea that evolved out of Christian identity theology.

It's interesting how the different splinter groups and even the main sect, they had their own take on this, but we all believe kind of the same thing in the message. In the main sect, even in the main sect they were different brain.

as of main sect. The one that my grandfather was in was the tent vision sect. We believe that William Brannum was going to rise up out of the pyramid grave and he was going to have one last tent revival in an actual tent, not in an auditorium. And in the tent would be this little room where the people, if you made it to the tent, if you were one of the fortunate ones who could make it there, then you would go into this little room and he would give you your new heavenly body while you're still on earth, which, you know, if you think through the logistics of that,

that's kind of odd, but that's what we believed. And I think that's why so many people believe they needed to live around Jeffersonville, right? So they'd be able to make it. Jeffersonville and Arizona. Exactly. You had to be in this concentration and it was split in two. It was divided.

Well, William Brannum said that, you know, look west. And then the people in Jeffersonville, this is the church. This is the home headquarters. So you had this weird split in the main sect as to how this would play out. And, you know, like you said, this is what we believed. It was a it was an extra biblical end of day scenario that, you know, not only does it not make biblical sense, Charles, it doesn't even make common sense. It doesn't, if you think of the logistics of how all of this could play out, it's actually impossible for it to happen. It is physically, biblically,

it's in every way impossible, but that's what they're teaching. That's what Jim Jones was indoctrinated with. He was indoctrinated with these weird ideas that he began to realize was not only not quite possible. It was also against his core beliefs. He was very much supportive of African Americans. So he realizes that this thing is forming. And Charles in this way, I'm going to say that Jim Jones, in many ways, I respect him for this specific piece. I'm not going to say Jim Jones was a good guy or anything to lift him up, but he realized that this was so wrong

that it must be the false gospel that the Bible talked about. And he decided that he did not want to be part of the false gospel. So he brought his entire church out of the cult. And even though he brought them into his own cult of personality, that, you know, there were probably already in the stages of a cult of personality, he's separating them from what he truly believes to be a false gospel. And we have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, this was a false gospel.

So in that, I kind of respect Jones, but the problem is it was too late. He had already been Nipulated into many of these beliefs that stuck with him after leaving, and we've seen it time and time again whenever people of leadership leave a cult.

If they don't take a step back and re-examine everything, not only what you see to be false, but your core beliefs, you have the potential to do what Jim Jones did, and it's very problematic.

Yeah, so John, as we wrap this episode up, we do still have a lot more we want to share about Jim Jones, and we can certainly pick up in the next episode. And closing, I want to say, I still have a deep concern for people in the message, because some message sects are becoming incredibly radical, even militant, John.

Some of their leaders are not in a good mental state, and their end of days teachings leave them open again to very dangerous possibilities, right? I really do fear for the safety of some of the people in the message, and that's part again while I'm speaking out here on this tape, or rather on this podcast with you, John.

The message is open, I'm afraid, to some of these same radical extremes, and people's temple represents the really radical edge, the really radical extreme to which you can go with laterane ideas. This laterane can lead you into Jim Jones territory if you're not careful, and most of the message churches, most of the message sects, they have no safeguards to protect themselves against Jim Jones type characters, they don't, they just don't.

They're in these authoritarian structures, and if a Jim Jones figure gets his hands on the levers of power, right? You're in trouble, you know, and very scary, and very sadly again. There are, and have been, and still are, Jim Jones type figures in positions of power within the message, John.

And I fear that many people in the message are indeed in serious danger, and I'd say if you are in the message and you intend to stay, I would strongly urge you to take steps to protect yourselves from these Jim Jones type figures, because they're in there.

You know, I've been to churches from coast to coast in the message, I've seen little small town churches where there are just a handful of people who are in the message, and you know, it's interesting, because I don't think they know they're supposed to be in the message.

I even recently had one contact me, and he said, he said, our church is in the message, but we never mentioned William Brannum, our preacher just, you know, preaches from the Bible every Sunday, if you did not know that this was a message church, then you would, you know, just think it's a casual Pentecostal church, and you know, they have some different beliefs, obviously, but it's not as destructive, and the minister who's speaking is humble.

I think he genuinely is a good man in these situations. me because he was concerned they started actually mentioning William Brannum some in the sermons and he found the website and started realizing, wait a minute, this is not quite right.

If you're in that type of scenario, it's not that bad yet and the man who's leading it is likely a good man. But what about the next person who leads? Are they going to be a good person or are they going to use this racially charged political ideology? Are they going to start introducing that in your church? That's what you have to ask yourself. But more than that, there were some like you say that if you were to take the minister who is on the platform and just put a face of Jim Jones on him as you're listening to what he's saying,

and then go look at these recordings that we do have of Jim Jones. Start playing them. Compare the two. I think you're going to be very shocked to see that it has progressed to a level of destructive that they in many cases I have seen are actually worse than what Jim Jones was during the latter rain years. Much much worse. And even border the edge of as bad as Jim Jones was in the later years leading up to the Johnston massacre. So if you're in that scenario, you have to really ask yourself, is it worth risking the lives of my family for this ideology

that now through the information that we have published, we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt is completely fiction. It has some good things in it, but the foundation is completely fiction. So if you're in those situations, I too worry for you. I fear for your safety.

The research is out there. Just go look. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org.

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