Jim Jones's Latter Rain Healing Ministry

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.

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 the series on Jim Jones has been crazy, fun and interesting so far, but today in particular, this is the episode that I'll be honest, I've been waiting to get into because this is the point in my research at which I started to realize that William Brannum was, there's no better way to say it, he was a charlatan and he was doing the same things that others were doing.

Whenever I began to compare the healing tactics of Jim Jones and compare the same to William Brannum, it was very odd to me because I could see Jones was not as refined and he actually wasn't as good at what he was doing, but there was a series of events that would happen.

Jones would bring the person up for healing and then that person, he would interact with them, practice some discernment and get into the healing part, and then for me, reading Jones after the point at which he starts interacting and starts healing, it looked like complete fraud.

Anybody in today's world who's looking at this, they're thinking, okay, this guy is just one of these fly-by-night faith healers and he's just out to make a buck and William Brannum would never do this.

That was the thought process going through my head, but when I started examining what William Brannum was doing, you would see the same process flow. You would see his interaction building up, the healing, and then there was a lot of blank spots on tape and then the question began to form in my head, well, what if he was doing the same thing?

So that's what made me dig a little bit deeper and... I won't tell the outcome of it just now, but as we get into this episode, I think we'll dig deeper into how the two worked very similarly.

It's all very interesting, John. And like you said today, this is our fourth episode of kind of our deep dive into Jim Jones in his time in the message. And the last two episodes, we focused on some of the core teachings that Jim Jones had picked up during the latter rain movement.

And his time working with William Branham. And like you mentioned, there is something else that Jim Jones picked up in his time in the latter rain and working with William Branham. And that was his use of faith healing, sign gifts, and you could maybe even say his revivalism style in general.

And as we examine that, I was thinking we could start by just kind of walking through the revival meetings that William Branham and Jim Jones held together. He's doing a look through the first couple of years that they worked together.

And then maybe just kind of talk a little bit about what was going on in Jim Jones's meetings. And so we do know for sure that Jim Jones was exposed to and working with the latter rain since at least 1950, and that he became a latter rain preacher by 1953.

And so he was already a little bit of a minor figure by the time he started working with William Branham. And again, we know for sure they had started working together by May of 1955.

We have the introduction letters and the correspondence between William Branham and Jim Jones and Joseph Matson-Bose, where they're starting to organize their meetings in May of 1955. And so we know for sure they had started working together and holding their meetings by them.

And the first set of meetings that they held together, according to Jeff Wynn, you can read his book. He mentions the first set of meetings in June of 1955. And that would have been just a couple of weeks before William Branham made his trip to Germany, though you know the one where he meets Paul Schaefer and those things happen.

So he's starting holding revivals literally with Jim Jones literally two weeks before he meets Paul Schaefer, John. But as I started lining these things up, I mean, it's incredible, isn't it? He starts working with Jim Jones two, three weeks later, he meets Paul Schaefer.

It's unbelievable how close in time these things happen together. It is unbelievable. As you know, working through my manuscript on the book on Paul Schaefer and Colonial Dignidad. I'll be honest, I nearly completed it and had not yet thought about Jim Jones to add, had him to the story.

And I had to go back and revise some of the chapters because I started comparing the intersections between the two men and William Branham and compared the timeline. Like you said, the interactions of where they first meet is about the same time.

But also the critical events and milestones in... and Colonia Diagnodad and in Jonestown, Guyana, are very much the same. They're, you know, the setup for their compounds is almost the same time. Jonest came in, I think it was 1974 whenever he purchased the land, but he actually came and was looking for a place to escape the coming apocalypse that William Brannum had predicted about the same time that Paul Schaefer was moving his first crowd of converts into Colonia Diagnodad from Germany.

So yes, it's just, it's mind-boggling, really, to think about it. And the question that began to form in my mind as I'm going through this, we know of those two only because of their climactic events.

How many more were there like this in South America and other parts of the world? Yeah, and again, as we went through in our last episode, there is quite a substantial more that moved into the remote areas of the world that just never became famous, like Jim Jones or Jonestown or Colonia Diagnodad.

And so anyways, Jonest is doing his first revival meetings with William Brannum. Those set was in Georgia. There's actually tapes from those June 1955 meetings with plenty of black spots on tape. And so we don't, from that, we really don't have a huge understanding of just what Jim Jones role was in that first set of meetings.

But based on what starts happening later on, it seems very much like Jim Jones was kind of working as a supporting evangelist for William Brannum at these meetings, helping build up the crowds, give exhortations, and maybe even be the main speaker at some of the services.

And so after those Georgia meetings, William Brannum went overseas, he went meet Paul Schaefer and work with them in Germany. Then he comes back in October. And when he gets back in October of 1955, he holds another series of meetings with Jim Jones.

Again, in 1955, and again, there are tapes. And these are the first set that we start to have pretty good documentation even what's going on in the meetings. There's tapes and there's again, solid documentation in the Herald of Faith magazine and also newspaper advertisements for that set in October, 1955.

So we can get a pretty good idea of what Jim Jones was hearing, which included the apocalyptic doomsday stuff, and also the practices and things that he was being exposed to in those meetings.

And the October meetings, there's actually advertisements in Herald of Faith on those where Jim Jones was being advertised publicly as a participant in the October meetings. Yeah, and there's another thing that I want to point out that the average person may miss.

And that is, when you have two men of ill intent that are doing this type of thing, you know, these... guys who are claiming that they can discern the names and addresses, et cetera, what's wrong with them. And they're using, William Brown, I'm using prayer cards, Jim Jones is using prayer cards. And there will be people who claim, well, I never submitted a prayer card.

And he mentioned me by name, he knew my address. Well, when you have two men of ill intent, this becomes incredibly easier. There is evidence out there that suggests that John G. Lake was doing the same for John Alexander Dowey. Lake was the one who was confirming the alleged healings and or working with Dowey to find what was wrong with people beforehand.

And there's a wealth of information about, you know, the tactics of these quote unquote faith healers. We have Jim Jones, who we know was not in any way a shape or form a man of God. And we have William Brannum, who Jim Jones himself said that, and in the mouth of two or three witnesses, he names his witnesses. He says, William Brannum told him, I don't believe a thing in this Bible hardly, but it's a good way to make a living. So you've got these, these two men who are very similar. Well, when William Brannum picks a person out

of a crowd during these discernment meetings, who's what's to say that Jim Jones had not told him already beforehand, what's wrong with this person, where they live? Jones has all of their information. And vice versa, William Brannum is lifting Jones up to be a leader in this laterane revival, who's to say that William Brannum is not also feeding him information. And we have the letters by Joseph Mats and Bozay that are connecting the two, you know, behind the scenes. So there's a lot more going on than meets the eye when you look at the surface of these meetings. Right. And we can have some idea of the things

that Jim Jones was even preaching during this period while he was, what he was there with them, working with William Brannum. Harold of Faith has published multiple, they published multiple of Jim Jones sermons in their, in their magazine. And what's interesting, if you actually open the magazines and look through them, these art, these Jim Jones sermons are on the page after the William Brannum sermon, right? William Brannum sermons are featured in here. Harold of Faith is William Brannum's primary publicity tool in these years, okay?

And almost every edition will have a three or four page William Brannum sermon in it, right? Yeah. And then several other supporting evangelists will get their sermon. Well, Jim Jones sermons are appearing right next to the William Brannum sermons in the magazine through these years. And so he's, he's being lifted up. And as you, as you read through his articles, kind of these bridge sermons that he was publishing there, it's very clear.

Jim Jones is preaching all of the same laterane themes. And he's also, placing, interestingly, he's placing a special emphasis on communal living and helping the poor in his, in his sermons, right? And again, connecting that into, into the laddering framework.

And as you come into 1956, Jim Jones takes an even bigger role in the revivals. We find articles like this in Harold Faith, where Jim Jones is appointed to the committee that's responsible for organizing the ladder rain conventions.

And this is a really important position for Jim Jones. And if you look at it, like they're representing panel-costal assemblies of the world in this thing, people from Germany are on this board with Jim Jones, people from all over the United States from Canada.

This is an international board for scheduling and organizing ladder rain conventions. At this time, John, William Brannem is 100% on board with this group of people, right? And this includes this group that Jones is with and they're organizing the conventions.

This includes Joseph Mats and Bozay at this time. He's in this group. All of the independent assemblies of God, the full gospel businessmen are still in this group at this time. Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagen, T.L. Osborne, Tommy Hicks, AWS Musin, on and on.

All of these people are still, they're all aligned in this group at this point in time. And this really represents, honestly, this is the main trunk of the ladder rain movement at this point in time.

And so just want to make sure I point that out. And there's multiple elders from Sharon Orfinage that are still tied into this group. And the herald of faith is their main publication, which has absorbed the ladder rain messenger at this point.

And there in every way, this is the main branch of the ladder rain movement that they're all part of. And again, just for perspective, Oral Roberts and William Brannem are the biggest names here at this time.

But this branch of the ladder, it also has minor figures, right? Like I said, Kenneth Hagen, T.L. Osborne, Paul Cain are all in this branch with them still, right? So this is, got pretty well, the majority of all of the figures who are going to go on and create the charismatic movement, the word of faith movement, the vineyard movement.

They're all in this group, right? And Jim Jones is on the board, organizing convention meetings, okay? And so it's something else, all of these groups and all, even the message calls, the seeds for all of this is in this group that's operating right here.

And in 1956, Jim Jones was on the committee that started planning their main conventions. And it's going to get even better because in 1957, he's going to become president of the committee. Exactly. There's another thing that's happening in the background.

I think we covered this in. The last episode, but William Brannum is basically replacing his campaign team. You've got the split that's happening between, you know, voice of healing and Joseph Matsum-Base, they get into this very public, I don't know what you call it, it's like a public verbal fist fight. But they're fighting each other. Well, at the same time this is going on, William Brannum is seizing the opportunity. He sees that voice, he no longer really needs voice of healing. They've literally crushed his ministry and there was a period of time in which he even

admits he falls into deep depression over this. But he suddenly sees that he's got this other group of people that he can go after. And this group of people may actually be bigger than Gordon Lindsay. And so he starts revising his stage persona again. We've talked about, I don't know how many different revisions to a stage persona. But 1955, about the time, and we'll get into this further, but about the time that he starts holding meetings with Jones. William Brannum revises his stage persona to include the 1933 prophecies. That's a very fundamental change to his ministry. Right. And it's just in the few months before he starts working with Jim Jones.

At the end of 1954, roughly, where William Brannum really turns into the Doomsday Prophet. And so he is really developing and starting to bring on heavy his Doomsday Prophet elements as as he's coming into contact with Jim Jones. Like it says developing side by side.

It's pretty interesting. And I look forward to our next episode when we do go through the big split that happened in 1957. That's going to blow people's minds, John, when we go through that stuff.

It's just it's mind boggling the stuff that happened in 1957. But as you come into 1956, Jones is becoming increasingly prominent as he works with William Brannum. And there's two very large conventions for sure. We know that Jim Jones was involved organizing for William Brannum in 1956. And we know that Jim Jones was preaching in both of them too. And I've actually heard eyewitness testimonies of people who were at those conventions, John. The former pastor of my church Raymond Jackson was actually at some of those Jim Jones meetings. And he shared some details with us personally back in the 1990s about about those conventions. And Jim Jones shared

the platform with William Brannum. Brannum headline the meetings and then Jim Jones was also there to, you know, to help support it. And he also preached too at those meetings. Jim Jones did preach with William Brannum sitting on the platform next to him, John. That absolutely happened.

And William Brannum, through those events, gave people's temple a very solid, solid endorsement. We can we find that throughout all the biographies. William Brannum endorsed Jim Jones and people's temple. As you read his biographies, you know, like the different ones you can get the Raven is probably the best one to look at for this stuff.

As you read that, People's Temple only had around 100-ish members before these 1956 revival meetings with William Brannum. But after these 1956 revival meetings, overnight, People's Temple basically exploded to about 1,000 members, right?

So it's really demonstrable that it was William Brannum's endorsement of People's Temple that really caused just the massive growth of the church. And again, it's all detailed in Jim Jones' biographies. So the importance of William Brannum to the launching and the popularization of Jim Jones in People's Temple is just unquestionable.

Yeah. What's really interesting for me is the massive cover-up that happened after all of this explosion with Jones and the parting of ways to cover up the fact that the two men were working so closely together.

I remember whenever I began looking at the big meeting, the one that made the book The Raven where William Brannum is the host at the Cato Tabernacle. And I thought that was the first meeting.

Even when I wrote the book, I thought it was the first meeting. But as I continued to dig, I started noticing in the advertisements for this, it kept saying the second annual. And I started digging through a newspaper, where's the first annual on the newspapers?

And it just simply wasn't there. It was not as heavily advertised by Jones. Like you say, Jones exploded in his attendance and that would have also included in his finances. So there's a clear point at which Jones starts bringing in so much revenue.

He can heavily advertise. But when you go back to the 1955, there just isn't as much evidence and it seems to have been scrubbed. So the fact that they're removing things is, for me, it's eye opening because you don't remove something if there's nothing wrong, right?

And as we'll get into it further, the fact that they have even removed key elements of the discernment strategy from the recordings themselves in the transcripts that we do have, that also, for me, is eye opening.

Yeah, and so I think we definitely need to take time and walk through what's going on in some of these meetings. And one thing that we see playing just that huge role in the ministry of Jim Jones is the use of the sign gifts and faith healing in his ministry.

And like what you mentioned at the opening, John, what really interests me on this topic as it relates to Jim Jones is his style. You know, you can go back and you can listen to the videos of other evangelists, like you can find the oral Roberts videos from the 50s, watch them, you can watch the A.A. Allen or the T.L. Osborne, right?

You can go back and you can... watched their videos and how that they operated and how they did things right and each of them have kind of a you know a unique style or a unique personal flair right to how they did the gifts of the spirit and William Brandham was the same way he had a sort of a unique signature style and when you go and you watch the videos of Jim Jones there's videos of Jim Jones to do in revivals that you can get a hold of too from you know roughly the same period you know the early

70s and or late 60s periods of time and Jim Jones clearly was trying to mimic or mirror William Brandham style Jim Jones style is is much more a kin or much more aligned with the way you see William Brandham operating these gifts as opposed to say or Roberts or A.A. Alan there's he's definitely he's definitely patterning himself after William Brandham in the style that he's that he's doing these things he is and that goes very deeply into even the doctrinal teaching is similar to what was in William Brandham style and you know as we've discussed often the things

that William Brandham taught were not his own he copied them from others and um you know he was heavily influenced by John Alexander Dowey and you find Jones who is he's basically learning from William Brandham as the you know Brandham at this time is the leader of the of the post-World War 2 healing revival so you have Jones who you can't say really mentored by Brandham but he's learning by example from Brandham and right down to the doctrine you know William Brandham had the mind body spirit doctrine it's the same doctrine that John Alexander Dowey used and

it's you know if you go back and you watch the old episodes of Bonanza Gunsmoke you've got the traveling snake whale salesman and they're giving you this thing to think through that doesn't really make sense and it confuses the people and they take the magic elixir well that's how these faith healers operated and they take just little passages from the Bible and they twist it to their own advantage and um you know here's an example by Jones he says many in the church age so he's got dispensationalism just like Brandham many in the church age believe in the spiritualization of

God as you believe in the spirit of God keeping with the spirit that you may be healed mentally and spiritually and what's interesting is there's a tape edit there in the transcript from Jones when you see God in the material realm then you get healed in your physical realm and then the deliverance comes in the physical body freedom comes in the natural we get freedom from poverty if you want from disease if you apply it to the spirit of God your spirit will be healed and if you apply it to the mind of God your mind can be healed but if you

apply it to the body of God, then your body will be healed. And you know, you can't say that we have this exact quote from William Brannum, but if you take Sermon's from William Brannum that's explaining this teaching, Jones is basically just summing up what he has learned from Brannum and Brannum has learned it from Bosworth and Bosworth from Dowie and Dowie from Who Knows Where.

But as we'll get into this deeper in this podcast, there's a strategy behind what Jones is doing and that strategy, it's more than self promotion. It's almost self-deification. And when you run the two men, their doctrines in parallel, you see that there was a method to their madness.

Yeah. Now, the reason that I find Jim Jones's style similarities to William Brannum so interesting is there's actually been pretty extensive investigations into Jim Jones' practices, both before and especially after the Jones down massacre, right?

And investigators uncovered pretty well how Jim Jones was faking most everything, right? And it was incredibly deceptive what Jim Jones was doing. If you get the raven, this has a lot of detailed accounts from those investigations about how Jim Jones faked all of this stuff, all the fakery.

And what happened was that somewhere along the way, Jim Jones got reported to the Indiana Department of Health. And the state board of psychology launched an investigation into what Jones was doing. And they sent doctors and investigators to people's temple to try and uncover what was going on.

And those investigations, they played a really also a key role in Jim Jones finally closing down people's temple in Indianapolis, right? Was because he was trying to escape what those investigators were clung into on the original people temple location in Indianapolis.

So the state, the government itself investigated this stuff while he was still alive and operating and uncovered some details about this that we can share with you. Right, and following the pattern of Brannum, Bosworth and Dowey, you have the same thing.

You had, you know, with Dowey, the government was stepping in because people were dying. People were dying from Dowey's alleged cures that, you know, by the masses, we have accounts of them, you know, just the number of people who they whisked away from Dowey's complex to the morgue.

And, you know, under the cover of nights and nobody knew to the extent that they weren't even reporting all the deaths in Dowey's sect, the government had to step in and... You know, Dowie was forced to change a little bit, not to the extent that the others did, but towards the end of his life, you can't kill people and just continue getting away with it.

So he was forced to change. Well, by the time Bosworth steps in, it's even more government scrutiny because this was not unique what these men were doing. You had faith healers by the hundreds, just like the snake of all salesmen in Bonanza.

And if they tell you not to go to the doctor or not to take medicine and you die from it, they're liable. So by the time, by the time Brannum starts into this, you won't find Brannum telling people this because he knows he will go to prison for it.

But what you will find, which is, Charles, this is just the most fascinating part of today's episode, you will find cases where both Jones and Brannum will tell people that they have diseases that they did not even know that they had because there is no legal responsibility for a disease that you do not know that you have.

You cannot sue somebody, a family cannot sue somebody if they die from a disease that well, there's no medical proof that they had it. And you find examples of Jones getting up and saying that you are suffering from something and you don't know what it is, but it's cancer.

And you've got cancer and by golly, I'll heal you from this. We find the same thing. In fact, we have seen, I think we've covered it in prior episodes and I tried to look it up to get the exact quote, I can't find it at the moment, but you'll find testimonies by quote unquote healed people even in voice of healing where they said, and I did not even know I had this disease.

Praise God, I'm healed for it. And I did not even know that I had it. Well, that's what these men were doing. And the fact that Jones is doing this and being, you know, learning may be mentored, but learning from William Brannum how to do this, it shows that there's a clear strategy behind the scenes.

And I've not dug too deeply in all Roberts and some of the other sermon transcripts, but I'll bet if we dig into each and every one of the men involved in this movement, you're going to find the same thing.

Praise God, I'm healed of this disease that I did not even know that I had. If you listen carefully to the prayer lines, right? You're going to see a lot of the people are coming up.

They've got something wrong, but like you mentioned, they don't even know what's wrong. They've never been to no doctor. These people don't believe in doctors a lot. They've never been to the doctor. So there's no diagnosis, you know?

Back in these days, the average Pentecostal believed the doctor was the devil, right? These people were not going to the doctor most of them. There would be, so they had no sort of diagnosis.

And they'd come up and William Brannum has a discernment, right? And he... tell them what's wrong with them. And, and you listen, he says, you're having this in that problem. Well, it's, it's lady troubles. Oh, it's a nervous condition. Oh, it is, uh, it's cancer. Oh, it's a rupture. It's a, you know, and he'd have all of these really, and he had some really weird way of describing some of the stuff that he diagnosed people up with. Don't even exist.

I think he just, you know, invented it in his head, these things. During that era, they were not as educated in medical science, the, the general population. So they would, they would come for healing of a female trouble. Well, it was this broad thing, right? I mean, the female anatomy, you can take any, anything that a female has wrong with them. And you can say, well, that's a female trouble. Well, if you mention this to a female who's in your healing line, who is obviously sick of something, well, the, the woman's gonna immediately say, yes, I have a female trouble. I am a female.

How did you know? They healed a lot of people of female troubles. That was actually one of his more common diagnosis was female troubles. Exactly. Um, which is a whole, interesting thing even to think about. But the, uh, but, but he would, he ulcers was another thing that was pretty common.

Well, oh, you, you don't know this, but you got an ulcer, you know, when you're this ulcer, and this ulcer is brought on by your stress, like he would even walk them through how this happened. All right. You've got a nervous condition. And this nervous conditions caused an ulcer.

And this ulcer has caused this, which has caused that, which is bringing on a cancer, right? And, like, he would go into these elaborate explanations, you know, which things that just,

it just don't even work that way, you know, when you, when you look at, you know, medical science and stuff. Yeah. Anyways, this stuff's happening. So let me share a couple of the fake healings that Jim Jones pulled off, John. Again, these are documented. They, they investigated these. And one way is that he would plant people from his inner circle in the congregation, um, and in the, and in the prayer lines. And they'd be playing along with him. So he actually have actors in the role of people coming to get healed. And they'd come on stage. He'd pray for them. He would heal them.

And the people watching had no idea that they were just part of the act that were playing along. And if you're out of town, a long way from home, um, you, you would have no idea that you're just watching actors. And it's the same thing, you know, with, with the deep call of the deep, I mean, how do we know that some of those people weren't actors when we want? We don't know, right? We really don't know. We actually do know. We have got some documented. And I'll put one up on the screen here. But we have people who were healed at the same disease multiple times during these healing

revivals. Yeah. There is definitely indications that William Brannum may have had an entourage traveling with him that he was healing over and over. There is, there is some evidence and indications of that. And so, um, when the state anyways, one of the, one of the popular things that Jim Jones would do which William Branham did the same thing. He would heal them of cancer and then they would cough up their cancer or their cancer would fall off them. You even see that? Did you notice her goiter fell off or her cancer fell off or whatever. So that was a very, that was something Jim Jones

did quite a bit too. And so the state got some tissue samples of the cancers that were being coughed up and falling off of people. And the state discovered that the cancers were actually chicken gizzards. So it wasn't really cancer falling off of people. It was just an act and they were using raw meat from the grocery store to fake cancers coming off of people. Yeah. For me, Charles, the cancer, I think, is the big deal when you think about the strategy that's going on behind the scenes. Today, if you're not influenced by this false religion, cancer is, you know,

it's just a disease. And if you go to the clinics, they can maybe not cure you, but they can extend your life for a very, very long time. I know a lot of people who have been, their cancer has been in remission for years because you go to the doctor and medical science can work with the cancer and they can help you survive it. Well, back during that era, that medical science was in its infancy. And it was the number one fear by these people. And it was used, which I'll get into in a minute, it was used as a strategy, really, to, um, to bring the people

into this fear that if something's wrong with them and they don't know what it was and they've been to the doctors and the doctors can't figure out what's wrong, well, these guys had an advantage.

They could say, well, your doctor doesn't know what it's wrong because they've not tested you for cancer. You know that you have cancer. And like you said, Jones was using a strategy, one of the sermons and I'll put it up on the screen, but he says, it's terrible these. They smell horribly and they taste horribly as they lose often, nearly always they do. And he's basically, he's getting them to spit out the cancer, right? And if you talk to any of the old timers in William Brandham's message, Cult of Personality, they'll tell you that they watched cancers just fall

from the body. In fact, I think if you look at the deep, call it to the deep, I think there's one on there somewhere, um, somebody has pointed out to me where a cancer is falling from the body.

And people who are indoctrinated in this belief system, they believe that this is possible. And they're not really thinking about how a cancer works. Cancer spreads like, it's almost like a spider web through your body. It gets into the cells and the cells network and spread. And I mean, think about it, Charles, if I've got a cancer, cancer is growth as a tumor. And it's in my side. It's not in the stomach. It's it may be next to my stomach, but very seldom is it actually in the passageway that would come out of the esophagus out of the mouth. Well, the people didn't

understand this. People back then did not understand that it can't travel that route. It can't go out of your mouth like they're saying they have brain cancer. It's not going to fall out of your mouth, right? Even though the brain is in the same location as the mouth, that's not how it works.

And Jones is doing this thing. But worse than that, because of the fear that's going on behind the scenes, we have William Brannum, who is claiming that you can get cancer without even knowing it.

He's saying things like worry causes cancer. In fact, one of the quotes, he says, God wants you to be happy. The human heart was made to be happy. Worry will cause cancer. Temper will cause cancer. And to this audience, Charles, they're sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I have worry or oh my gosh, I get anger very easily. I'll bet I caused myself a cancer. Well, that's what these guys are doing. If they can plant the idea that you can give yourself this disease and your doctor, well, I never told my doctor that I worried a lot. I never told my doctor that I

am easy to a temper. Well, suddenly, they've made this connection mentally that they can be cured of this disease that they did not know they had. And Jones is doing it, obviously, the government has investigated, like you said. Well, Brannum was doing it too. And whether they investigated him in the same way, I don't know, it hasn't surfaced yet. But they're both doing the same exact thing.

Yeah, you know, it was a pretty common thing. And this is a, again, comes out of similar to positive confession. It's kind of reverse positive confession. If you have negative thoughts and negative feelings, right, then that can bring about negative things in your body, right? That's kind of that also comes out of you'll find those streams of thought in new thought, Quindy is in stuff as well, you know, good thoughts bring good things, bad things, bring bad things. And I find the same thing, you know, you know, the churches that I came from, John, it was still a very common thing that, you know, if you're thinking negative, you're going

to give yourself this that or the other, you know, you're going to bring on your own problems with the way you think about things. And yeah, William Brannum kind of used those same tactics on people because in one way, it then set up the counter. And now if you will throw those beliefs away and now come believe and have faith and positive confession and what I'm talking about, now you can undo what your bad thoughts have done, right? You can undo what your unbelief and lack of faith has done by now returning to positive faith. Yeah. And, you know, for like you and I

We were indoctrinated in this Brannum style religion. When you look at the tapes of Jones, like I said earlier in the show, you look at this thing that's going on in today's world, people just wouldn't buy this in no way.

This man's a fraud. I have watched too many episodes of Gunsmoke. I know what this guy's doing, and we're indoctrinated to think William Brannum was different than this. Let me read an example here.

This is from a William Brannum transcript, and interestingly, it's in 1957 and March. This is during the same time that he's working with Jones. And again, Brannum is convincing the people that if they worry a lot, or if they're angered a lot, they'll give themselves a cancer.

And William Brannum says, look at this man, he's extremely nervous. But his nervousness is a worry that he's having. And that is because he's, oh, he's shadowed. It's a cancer. That's right. It's a cancer.

And that cancer is on your left shoulder. You believe me to be his prophet, and you're in the presence, not of your brother, but you're in the presence of him. Mr. Phillips, do you believe that?

Now if this were Jones talking, there would be the segment of bubbling up the cancer and spitting it out, right? And Jones would drop the gizzard or whatever it is. Right after the statement, he says, Mr. Phillips, do you believe that blank spot on tape?

So we don't know what happened. There's no, you know, that audio recording is missing for some reason. We don't know. I have to say, Charles, with the thousands of blank spots on tapes, if the recording equipment was that faulty for William Brown, why did they not buy new recording equipment?

But there are thousands of these, and you'll find almost every one of the blank spots. By and large is during these segments when he's doing this thing. So we have to assume that Mr. Phillips spit out the cancer, and we can assume that legitimately because people like my grandfather mentioned that people were spitting out cancers.

The cancers are falling from their bodies. William Brown himself mentions cancers fell out. So Mr. Phillips spitted out or whatever he did when he cured. And then the tape continues, Mr. Ollie Phillips, too.

That's right, that's your name. So we don't know what happened in between him being diagnosed and cured and giving the name. Something happened, but there's a blank spot on that tape. Another example of the links that they would go to for this.

So there was a woman one time, and again, you just read the raven. All these things are detailed out. There was a woman, and they drugged her, and she passed out. So Jim Jones, her team, they drugged her, she passed out.

And while she's passed out and unconscious, so this is outside of a church service, they wrapped a cast around her leg, okay? And when she woke up, they told her she fell, she broke her leg, they took her to the hospital, they've got a cast put on her leg, right?

So she had no idea what they did do it, right? And then at the meeting that night, Jim Jones healed her, okay? And he took the cast off of her and she runs around and jumps and shouts for joy, right?

She's been healed, hallelujah. And she runs around thinking she's been healed and given her testimony, but really, Jim Jones faked the whole thing, right? And that's the extent to which they were going to, to bring about these fakery in these things, right?

They were even, like, this is even more than convincing somebody, right? This is, this is totally fraudulently convincing people that something is wrong with them, so then they can heal them in the meeting, but those kind of things were going on to produce fake miracles for Jim Jones meetings, right?

And the number of things like that in these investigations is shocking. When you think about this era of Pentecostalism and you think about these healing sects, the first thing your mind goes to are the snake handling churches.

The snake handling churches, they're testing God, they believe that the last chapter of the book of Mark is instructing them to take up a snake if you handle deadly things, you will not be touched.

These people, whenever they had something like this, they would, you know, try to test God and prove their faith so that they would elevate their faith so that they could heal their bodies. That's the way in which this type of religion worked.

The thing that is clearly missing from all of those studies and journals that I've read that talk about the snake handling sect, there was another element to this. It was the poison drinking sect.

The poison drinking churches were so widespread during the early years of that type of religion spreading that there were actually, quote unquote, Christian poison companies that would produce and sell this, you know, arsenic or whatever it was that these people would drink.

And obviously it was diluted a bit so that they didn't immediately kill themselves so they could buy more of this stuff. And people would test their faith and think about this, Charles, as you're testing your faith with a poison, you're getting sick.

You are actually ingesting poison and you're getting sick and you're doing it because you're already sick. So these people are drinking poison to test and prove their faith to God so that they can elevate their faith and then they can heal themselves.

Well, they're causing things to get worse. And then once they claim their healing, when they stop drinking the poison, they instantly start feeling, better. Well, we have evidence, clear evidence of William Brannum and Roy Davis drinking the poison and testing their faith by God to the extent that Brannum claims that he's got...how did he describe? He said we've got notary public statements on drinking the poison. So he's doing this and think about the number of people that they are healed by this thing that William Brannum's doing and then they go home and then they they give these testimonies and after this suddenly I started

feeling better in ways that I cannot describe. Well, yes, if they're drinking the poison to test their faith, we don't know that they all were but we know that this was going on and we know William Brannum was involved with it. He says so himself. Yeah, you know, uh, another thing about it, you know, is the fake discernments or the discernments, the revealing of the hearts and minds and Jim Jones, like you mentioned, he did use prayer cards like William Brannum did. We know he did that but the investigators also turned up even more details into how he was pulling some of that off

and Jim Jones basically had little private detectives working for him and they would they would report back to Jones, you know, they'd go out, they'd collect details from people in the crowd in the audience or even people they knew were going to be coming and then they would report those details back to Jones so he could use it in his discernments and at the meetings the ushers who were in on it, you know, who were the detectives, you know, they would point out the people in the crowd like spotters in the crowd or they would go and get encouraged the people to come up and get

in the prayer line or what have you right and they would organize it to help Jim Jones know who and where to point and so forth with his discernments and there really was absolutely nothing supernatural about it right Jim Jones just had a whole team helping him pull it off kind of like you know the magician's assistant and magician tricks really and now just just because that Jim Jones was a fake right that don't necessarily mean William Brannum was a fake you know that would be a jump in logic but for me looking at Jim Jones what it does prove is just how easy it is

to fake all of this stuff right you can you can fake a meeting with people leaving it believing they've been healed you can do that and you can fake a meeting where the people walk away thinking you've revealed hearts and minds and did discernments you can do that you can fake cancer falling off people you can fake goaters shrinking away you can fake healing broken bones right and it's all sadly very easy to pull off right and Jim Jones is the proof of how easy this thing is to pull off in full thousands and thousands of people right and since it's so easy to fake all this stuff John

you know at At the very least, we should be very cautious about using miracles or gifts to the spirit as some sort of a way to measure the quality of the ministry. Because it's entirely possible that things that look like signs and wonders in miracles is nothing but a hoax.

It's entirely possible to hoax this stuff. And if that is the basis on which we would vindicate a prophet, then Jim Jones is a vindicated prophet, right? And so it's pretty, I think that, to me, is something that is just a huge sign of caution that flashes when I look at all this aspects of Jim Jones.

These are not things that can be reliably trusted to authenticate a servant or of God. Yeah, in the faking of healings, really bothers me, Charles. My grandfather told the story often from behind the pulpit that William Brannum was, there were people who would go up to be healed of one leg shorter than the other one.

And you know, at the time, I heard this as a, I was probably 15 or 14 or 15 the first time I heard my grandfather say it, at the time, I thought, well, that's amazing.

And you know, your mind goes all these different directions. It's quite a delay, not grow fast as the other one. And what must it have looked like whenever the, you know, the leg suddenly grew?

And you're actually picturing somebody going up to the platform with, you know, a foot or a foot and a half, yeah, stop, or you're kind of expecting this thing him to grab the leg and just pull it down and suddenly the guy stand, the way that these ministers describe it.

But they're not describing what they're actually doing. These guys go up to, you know, their plants, obviously, but they go up to be healed and they sit them down in a chair. You can find, I think there's a video of AA Allen doing this, but they sit with their back twisted just a little bit and to the audience, they can clearly visibly see one to two inches missing of the leg because the back is torqued.

And what happens is they divine healer praise and they watch and the guy just starts doing this while they do that, the people twist their backs. And some of them are so good at it that I think it's in the AA Allen video.

It's one of, one of the videos I watched. You can see the expression on the person's face and they don't know that they're leg is shorter. He says, Oh, I see the problem. It's because you're leg shorter and the guys like what?

And he sits them down and, and he, the faith healer places him and twists his body and the guys are like, Oh my gosh, I did not even know my leg was one inch shorter than the other one.

And the guy starts pulling and straightening and the guy stands up and praise God, he's healed of a shortened leg. Well. We know William Branham was doing this. You have people like my grandfather who were claiming that they were doing this with Jim Jones and his sermons. This is one of the strategies that he had for quote unquote healing the shortened leg.

Yeah, let me quote a Bible verse here John Matthew 2424. Jesus said for false Messiah's and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive if possible if it were the very elect. I have warned you ahead of time. Thank you Jesus.

You know, so Jesus warned us ahead of time that false prophets can come and do great signs and wonders right even that it would could potentially just it be so deceptive right and even deceive you know the the very elect the brightest and minds in the world right.

The best and brightest could even be deceived by some of the steps of signs and wonders John. In Jesus told us signs and wonders are as much a sign of a false prophet as a real prophet you know that Jesus said that himself. And so so to me we know I think Jim Jones's point in case that that what Jesus said is true signs wonders miracles.

Is not something you can reliably use as a means to identify some true servant of God and so one more important thing John. I think we should look at here as we keep going is kind of regarding Jim Jones preaching style.

So Jim Jones preaching style was also remarkably similar to William Branham right even more so than say you know or Robert or a Alan right William Branham had this manner of talking nice soft and mellow and then all of a sudden big loud explosive and great yelling screaming you know yelling you know and Jim Jones was very much like William Branham in his preaching style very much like even honestly a whole lot of message preachers we know.

And John a number of people who have spent time examining cults say that Jim Jones style of preaching was conducive for thought control you know especially when the crowds were tired or short of sleep.

And after the Jones town massacre you know when all those people are killed there was a whole lot of studies and investigations into the whole thing to try and figure out just exactly how that could happen because the Jones town massacre was a pretty strong evidence that there is some mechanism that exists that can be used to mass persuade people to believe something that's not true right.

And even to take really radical actions based on these false things that they've been convinced to believe right there has to have been some explanation for how Jim Jones got all those people to kill themselves right because that's not normal that's not a normal thing we see happen.

And so there's been a lot of studies into the topic at this point and as you read through. through them. There's quite a bit of agreement in the sources and the studies that there's something about constantly exposing yourself to loud, boisterous, authoritarian style of speaking that will cause people to suspend critical thinking and just accept and obey what they hear. Right. And you know, I really think God that William Brannum died before that the cult exploded into something similar to the Jonestown massacre.

It's a terrible tragic thing that happened to the, you know, to people's temple. And William Brannum was taken off the scene before something like this happened. However, had he still been alive and some horrific climactic event did happen in his cult of personality, the same government studies would have occurred after William Brannum's death into the message cult of personality. And by extension, you know, William Brannum is the leader of this movement.

So by extension, it's binding to every other one of the faith healers who are either meant toward by or copying what William Brannum is doing. Well, because Brannum died before the government could investigate what William Brannum was doing, there aren't the similar level of studies as to what is happening with Jim Jones. So it's, it's really problematic in that we don't have that research. However, we do have the research from Jones, uh, ministry. And you can find that on, um, Jonestown.stsu.edu. So you can compare what they've studied with Jones and then go back and compare it with Brannum. And you're going to find that most of their assessment that they

have applied to Jones ministry, it also applies to William Brannum's ministry. Yeah, you know, I've read quite a bit about how thought control works since I left the message. And it's really a lot different than what I would have imagined. And, and according to the books, the way it works is actually by getting people to control their own thoughts, right? You have to convince people something like the greatest battle ever thought is the battle of your mind, right? And you convince them that, uh, if they fight to keep certain thoughts out of their mind, it's going to benefit them

in some way, right? So for example, in the message, if you have faith, all these good things will happen to you, right? If you have faith, you'll be healed. If you have faith, you'll be blessed. If you have faith, you'll go to heaven, right? And then the opposite faith is unbelief. So, and if you have unbelief, you can't have any of those things. You can't have healed. You can't have a better life.

You can't go to heaven. In fact, you're going to go to hell if you have unbelief, right? So you've got to fight the unbelief in your mind, right? And so people get trained to do thought blocking.

And so they'll, they'll get to the point where they'll block anything that the teacher tells them is unbelief, right? For example, and if certain thoughts start to come into their mind, they will thought block their own thoughts.

And gradually, people doing that over time will get to the point where they'll block all of the key elements that will allow them to think critically. Like in my sect, for example, John, you know, the pastor can pull his pants down and shows private parts to kids, right?

That was going on in the sect of the message where I come from. And people are so trained in thought control, they'll not permit their mind to think critically about what is happening here, right?

That would be unbelief, right? And so you can get equal to that state where they, something very obviously bad has happened right here, but they will not permit their mind to think critically about it because they've through thought blocking that is a path that leads to unbelief.

And when you combine that level of thought control, you know, with loud authoritarian style speaking, you can really gradually radicalize the people. And that's exactly what Jim Jones did for sure. Yeah. It's horrific what the minister is in this cult of personality and all of its splinter groups do.

But there's a strategy behind what they do. And I too have studied, I'm no psychologist, but I've studied extensively what they did to our minds and how they did it. And it's like you said, it's, it's not that they're controlling their minds in the way that you see in the sci-fi shows or movies.

They're literally planting seeds that you yourself develop in your mind. And they just kind of gently nudge them in the direction that they want them to go. So for instance, you've probably seen it, Charles, but in the comic threads on these, even on these podcasts, we'll mention that William Brannum had claimed to be Elijah.

And there is not evidence anywhere in the transcripts where he blatantly says, I am Elijah. But the cult of personality has been convinced by and large that he was the return of Elijah. You'll even find on the, you know, on the cult's websites, they'll say, this is the Elijah of this day.

Well, those same people that believe that he's Elijah, that call him Elijah, will comment on our comment feeds and say, well, William Brannum never said he was Elijah. But they're the ones who were claiming that he is, right?

And that is because William Brannum never came out and said it, but he planted the seed that Elijah displayed these characteristics and his personality. And Elijah had these very evident things in his ministry.

And Elijah did this, that or the other. And then they go into this segment during the quote unquote sermon where they described, where William Brannum described his things that he did that were just...

exactly like he said Elijah did. And that's part of the mind control and manipulation. He's not saying that he's Elijah, but he is unduly influencing you to believe that he is or was Elijah.

Yeah, you know, so it takes time too. It takes time for this to happen. You know, it took William Brown of about 25 years before he had created a cult personality, right? It takes time. Like it's not, this isn't something you can just do overnight. Same thing with Jim Jones, right? It took about 30 years for Jim Jones to get his followers to the point where they were so, you know, under his spell, you know, so under that persuasion that they would all commit suicide, right? It don't happen all at once. It takes time to get

the people to totally suspend critical thinking and to buy into blindly following their leader. And if you look at all the groups, you know, that have done these sort of things like Heaven's Gate, like Waco, right? It takes generally a few decades to get people that radicalized. It's not something that happens overnight. It's a slow, steady, building process to get people there. And we've seen it play out over and over again. If you take any deep study of these cult groups that have done this, you know, it's all the same pattern, right? It's all the same methods. The doctrine itself just varies a little bit, but it's

the same methodology that they all use to do this, right? And you can, like you mentioned, what you see Jim Jones doing, William Brennan was definitely doing that same stuff in his later years. And I could list you off a long list of message preachers. I know that do the exact same stuff today. It's still going on. It really bothers me, Charles, when you think about what they did to our heads, because it's, you know, we can't say that they blocked us into a room. And like you see in the World War II movies, you know, with Nazi

Germany, where they're brainwashing by, they're showing all of these lights flashing in these videos and these snapshots of images and planting the images in our head visibly through our eyes. Instead, they did it through our ears. They did the same exact thing that the Germans were doing to brainwash people in these concentration camps, et cetera. They were doing the same exact thing through our ears that the Germans did through the eyes. And, you know, it just, it really angers me because as a father, I subjected my children to this. I literally let, I mean, if you put the comparison out there, I literally let the Nazi style regime take my children

and do the same thing to their minds that they did in Nazi Germany. Yeah, you know, and if you can convince somebody that thinking about this category of thoughts is going to send you to hell, is going to destroy you, is going to kill you, is the boogie man, is, it's an extra step.

and she'll threaten to you to even start to think about this thing. You will not think about that. You will be trained to suppress those things, right? And that is it. If you start thinking in the mess, and you know where I come from, if you start thinking that the preacher up there who's supposed to be God's voice is not actually God's voice, you're going to go to hell, right?

So if you don't even allow yourself to go down the path of thinking, wait a minute, is this guy lying to me and deceiving? You can't even start down that thought of... You can't even start down that thought trail because of the thought blocking that's all been imparted into you.

So John, one of the last things I think I do want to bring into this episode is the ecstatic experiences that people add at people's temple. And at people's temple, they would dance, they would shout, they would sing, they'd speak in tongues, they'd be slain in the spirit, they'd be drunk in the spirit, right?

All those kind of things that were very common in the latter rain movement, people's temple had all of that. And John, I know an interesting thing for me is once upon a time to brand them tabernacle, and most of the early message churches had all that too.

And I know some of the sects, John, like the thunder sect or even the sect I come from, they're still that way, right? They have very ecstatic services and people having all kinds of experiences all through those services.

It's really hard to believe that my grandfather's church used to be that way. When you think about my grandfather and the way he conducted his sermons, quote unquote sermons, they were really just, you know, telling life stories that was building up to him, telling the guy back in the room, okay, brother, press play on that tape machine.

And then they would play these tapes. I mean, all through my life, that's all they did. And when you think about how the church transitioned, the children that grew up into the message that I grew up into never saw what it really was, we only know what these elders or these, you know, unfortunately, I have to say my grandfather was a cult leader.

We know what these cult leaders are telling us about, the quote unquote message. And all of this history that you and I have expanded on, we did not even know existed because they're not telling the details that give you enough information to make the critical examination of their assessment of William Brannum and his ministry.

Had we known all the facts, I'll be honest, I would have left as like 12 years old, at 12 years old, I'm thinking, you know, I know enough to know that this guy is a snake or a salesman.

But because they didn't give us the information, there's no way that I could have made that decision. Yeah, the Brannum Tabernacle was that way up until William Brannum preached church order, which I think was about 1963 when that happened.

And there was all kinds of people, I knew them, that spoke in tongues and ran and shout and jumped and danced in the spirit of the Brannum Tabernacle. And after a church... border, they all came to my church.

Wow. They, that, that was, you know, the people who enjoyed those things, you know, brother Brandon, basically said, there's a back room. You can do this in the back room. And the people who, you know, wanted to do it in the open service, they generally found their way to other message churches where those things were still permitted.

So, yeah, so that, I grew up, I grew up with that, John. That was standard service where I come from for, for quite a bit of, of the time. Yeah, people dancing, shouting and, you know, what's, what's really crazy, John, in the Jim Jones stuff I found is that it is even possible to fake all of that too.

Right. And through the Jim Jones biographies, we have some insight into how it's possible to fake that stuff. We know through some of these accounts that the cults put drugs in the water founds, John.

And the people dancing and shouting, they was thinking that it was all from God, but really they was high on drugs from the water found. And they thought they was having supernatural experiences, but really they was high on drugs.

Yeah. And people's temple was big into drugging people, John. And after the Jones town massacre, they found a huge mountain of drugs that they had been using there. And people, you know, dance, shout, speaking tongues, people was, they were, thought they were seeing healings, right, gifts to the spirit were operating.

And to them, that was all some great proof that Jim Jones was a great prophet of God. And you can even watch the Jim Jones revival tapes where they're speaking in tongues and shouting and having the ecstatic experiences, which you look a whole lot like church services that I'm familiar with sitting in, but at least in part, it was just a hoax.

Like they, they were, some of those people were high on drugs that no doubt, you know, Jim Jones and them had unleashed on them. And, you know, miracles happen on stage, people being drugged and you can read the biographies about Jim Jones that spell all of this stuff out.

And John, it just blows my mind, watching those revival tapes about what happened, how that could happen in those services, you know, just the same things I saw in my whole life. You know, John, it blows my mind, just blows my mind.

And I, you know, you can get, you can watch the revival tapes of Jim Jones, you can see what's happening in their services. And it's the exact same, same kind of stuff I saw in my whole life.

Like watching those Jim Jones revivals and the way the people are reacting in the crowds, I cannot discern any difference between their behavior. And, you know, it, it looks just as real to me.

I'll put it that way as what I thought was real, um, concerning those things, you know, where I've, where I've come from, looks identical. And to me, that, that's just shocking that, that you discernibly, you cannot tell the difference between people high on drugs and a church service.

And people, um, you know, who are. Maybe having something genuine right and to me just to realize that and to realize just how you can bring on those kind of ecstatic experiences through fakery it and just how easy it was for Jim Jones to pull that off.

It shocks me John that just shocks me and I know it's something else it really is one last thing John before we close up this episode I wanted to point out too. We have a letter I know you've pointed this letter out before this is a handwritten letter that we have from Jim Jones to brother Jackson Earl Jackson and in this letter Jim Jones is telling brother Jackson about the message about how wonderful and important the message is and and how you know Jim Jones is inviting him to come join people's temple through the years and Jim Jones is advertising himself.

I just want to bring this home as a message preacher and he is encouraging people to believe the message right Jim Jones was a message preacher a letter rain message preacher Jim Jones was in the message right you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was in the message while he was doing all this kind of stuff that we're talking about today he was in the message doing the kind of stuff we're talking about today.

He was in the message faking healing he was in the message faking discernments he was in the message drugging his people into ecstatic experiences he was in the message implementing this mind control stuff right he was doing all of that while he was in the message right working with William Branna is when he was also doing this kind of stuff and John.

It shocks me because I know people I went to church were sitting there right there while Jim Jones was doing that alongside William Brown. Yeah it was the same years according to the timeline that my own grandfather became a message preacher so my grandfather joined the message at the point in time in which it was a joint Jim Jones William Branna message and the fact that there are so many similarities to what's going on.

It not only angers me Charles but it scares me if you think about had William Branna not died what would have happened and it scares me further to see the extent in which there are several ministers and I won't name their names but they're showing more signs of the mental breakdown or the mental instabilities that Jones had right before the Jones town massacre.

So it really bothers me that things continue to progress and it's not progressing in the right direction. Yeah. You know John as we bring this episode to close I know to me this is a very sobering episode because you can't examine Jim Jones ministry and read his biographies and watch the documentaries and walk away from that without realizing that it's possible for some of you.

Someone like Jim Jones, who was a lifelong psychopath, a lifelong sadistic monster, right? Someone like that, it's possible for someone like that to pull off signs, wonders, miracles, healings, discernments, and totally convinced tens of thousands of people that what they were seeing was real, right?

And I think that's a very sobering thought to realize that is what Jim Jones was. That's what he did, that's what he got away with, right? And for all our listeners in the message, I do hope you'll really think about these things, right?

And take some time to look into how cults work. Now go watch Jim Jones documentaries. Listen to some Steve Hassan videos about how cults work, or Rick Allen Ross videos about how to work the experts on these things.

Just see how cults work, how they implement thought control and thought blocking, how they lock people into a mindset and how they use ecstatic experiences and how they use all of these different things to hoodwink people and authoritarian style speaking, you know, to control them and to lock them into a line of thought where they just will believe and accept and do anything their leader tells them.

It is sobering. It's honestly the more I think about this, the sicker I've become to my stomach because they were doing the exact same things to our minds, the Jim Jones did to the minds of the people in people's temple.

And Charles, it just, I'm glad we got out when we did. I think if you compare the message that I left to what I see today, it's by far worse and even more controlling and destructive.

So it's heading down the same trajectory. I just hope, Charles, that before some event happens, I hope that people can wake up and snap out of it. Yeah, me too, John, I really am worried and concerned for a whole lot of people in there.

And like you said, you know, some, some sex of the message are closer to benign than others, right? Some sex are, there's even, there's a few in there, even that maybe are trying to reform, but we know that's not possible.

And the ones who are trying to reform it, you all are going to be expelled and harshly thrown out. And you'll be over here on this side with us chatting about this in a, you know, at a certain point in time.

So enjoy your journey, right? It's not going to be fun, but we'll be here to be your friends on when you reach our side. But the, there's people in there trying to reform, right?

But the, the ones with their hands on the lever of power in most of these groups, and especially, you know, the larger sex, it is becoming pretty, pretty ugly. In these churches, and if it's heading in an increasingly dangerous way, it is.

And, you know, we're, we're not there yet, but we're heading down the path. in the Jones section of the podcast where we're going to describe how it gets levels worse. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org and Christian gospelchurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branum and 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.