The Park: Leo Mercier

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

With Charles last episode was incredible. I'm not sure that we can do better than what we did as far as interesting with Carlos last week, but this one I think for people who were in William Branham's message, cult of personality, might hit home just a little bit further, a little bit closer, and I'll be a little bit honest. It's going to be a little bit difficult and painful for me because it hits home very close to myself in the fact that my family knew a lot of these things that we're about to talk about and did nothing. I'll be honest, it

angers me, so you might seem like face flesh a little bit during the course of this episode, but I am interested to get into it because it's unbelievable that there are so many people in William Branham's cult of personality in the connected splinter groups that have no idea that this happened, and even worse than that, the people who were about to talk about in this episode were well-recognized names in the healing revivals, so there were other men, respected men who are widely known in the Pentecostal and the evangelical circles who knew this, and I don't

know the extent that they knew, but they, to some extent, knew which will get into this, but it is a fascinating, horrific, and angering episode we're about to get into. Right. In today's episode, we're going to look at a figure in William Branham's inner circle.

His name is Leo Mercer, and most people I knew have pronounced his last name, Mercer John, but I've also heard people pronounce it Mercer. here. He is a figure that we've definitely got to explore it. And like you mentioned, it's surprising that a lot of people nowadays don't really know anything about him because I can show you that back in the day, everybody knew who Leo was and what he was up to. Yeah. So that is equally shocking. Right. So now there's there's not a lot of printed information out there about Leo Mercer. And I've tried to point people to sources of evidence that they could

look at. And as we've went through this because I know John, when I was in the message, I thought people like you and me, you know, I would look at someone like you and me now. And I think, well, they're just making all of this up. So I've done my best to point people so they can do a little bit of their own research.

I'll try and do that here before we dive in as well. And John, you've got most of this on your website, but all of these can be tracked down through primary sources. You can get ahold of these things yourself. So one source of information on Leo Mercer, of course, is the transcripts of William Brannum. William Brannum actually talks about Leo a lot on tape. Another place you could look is in the Herald of Faith magazines. Leo was featured in these magazines quite a bit from the 1950s on. He had his own articles, his kind of

pictures in there. He's actually in these pictures in these magazines just about as much as Jim Jones was. And then in those years and then then even more afterwards. There's that. There's also a lot of things. I won't say a lot of things. There's a few things related to Leo. You can find in David Edwin Herald's book or Doug Weaver's book. They're both mentioned in there with a little bit of analysis. I think David Edwin Herald, they both have a little bit of an interesting unique cake on it, but you can get a little bit there. And last

of all, I'll point our listeners to a book called The Serpent's Tale. This is by Deborah Tibado. This is a lady who grew up in Leo's commune. And it's a book of poetry, but there's also some chapters of just interesting historical information about Leo in there as well. It's about her life living in his commune. So those are some good sources on the life of Leo. And I think those would be some great places to check if you want to verify some of the things we're saying. Besides that, John, there is one other thing I'll be including

in today is when I was still in the message, I was still in leadership here in Jeffersonville. And if our listeners don't remember, I am formerly assistant pastor of the second oldest continuously operating message church in the world. Our people were there when all of these things happen. I went to church with people who also escape Leo's commune. Leo is one of the people I asked everybody about before I left the message. He was a key figure.

to a whole lot of things. Very, very bad, bad things that happened in the message what William Brannon was still living. And I asked everyone about him, and I got all my notes I looked over here just recently from my interviews with the people, and I will share some of the stuff I learned in those interviews in this episode as well, John.

I also have some direct connections. I'm in contact with a lot of people who had escaped the commune that he set up. So I have somewhat of an inside view as to the horrific tragedies that happened in the commune.

But also I have family members that were either connected to, or I believe one of them was even in the commune. Maybe two of them were in the commune. But I have a lot of family who knew Leo Mercer, and at the time knew what was going on.

I have photographs somewhere, I'll try to find it for the video feed, but photographs of my grandfather, you know, on tour with William Brannon, they used to travel in a travel trailer, and they would set their travel trailer up in a park near wherever the event was happening.

And often my grandfather would be set up just right next to Gene Goad and Leo Mercer. And everyone, we'll get into the story, and my grandfather's connection to it's another story for another day.

But we'll get into the story, but most people who were there with them knew what was going on. It was blatantly obvious what was going on. But yeah, I'm excited to get into this a bit to hear your perspective as somebody who wasn't in the main sect who was around people who escaped, et cetera.

But it's troubling to me, and I'll mention this throughout the episode, it's troubling that people knew this. One other place that would be worth looking for people is in, there's some court records from California that mentioned some cases, which Leo came up in, and there was some level of investigation by the state into Leo and his commune with eyewitness testimony on their record.

I'll maybe read a little bit of that as we go through it, but you can also find stuff about Leo in court records in California. So maybe I'll just kind of start at the beginning and just tell what we know about Leo's background.

So Leo was from Indiana. He grew up in South Bend, Indiana. It's possible he may have been born across the line in Michigan, that's right, right close to the Michigan line, but South Bend is where he spent most of his time growing up, or he went to school, and he was raised as a Catholic.

Besides that, we don't know a whole lot about his early life. But somewhere in the early 1950s, when Leo was in his 20s, he connected with the latter reign movement, and he became a follower of William Branham.

and somehow he endeared himself to William Brannum. I think it's fair to say that William Brannum really loved Leo. They did. They spent a lot of time together and I actually question the fact that it's presented that he was Catholic. We know nothing about Leo Mercer. One day he just magically appears and there's no history as to why this connection happened. And again, William Brannum is in this white supremistic thing where he's targeting the Catholics and Leo Mercer just suddenly emerges out of nowhere and yes, he's a converted Catholic. Now he's my scribe. It doesn't really add up to me. Yeah, William Brannum and Leo did spend a lot of time

together. Like I said, his background is very fuzzy to us. Really, we just have their own words on it. We don't really have any hard evidence on his background, other than what's been told to us. And those words came from Leo and William Brannum, who, you know, we know they're not probably the most reputable people, honestly at this point. But they spent a lot of time together.

I would say from 1954 on, William, Leo was at William Brannum's side almost all the time. Like William Brannum was almost never rarely separated from Leo Mercer from 1954 on. Leo was at almost every single meeting. He was traveling with him almost everywhere.

They were together a lot from 1954 onward. And so William Brannum would refer to Leo as one of his student preachers, him and Jean. He'd refer to him as student preachers. And you know, whatever the case is, William Brannum ended up, he did take Leo into his inner circle.

He became an important member of his campaign team, traveling with him all over the place. And it seems like Leo's rise up in the ranks really coincided with William Brannum's first breakup with voice of healing at the end of 1953. And so it's as he's transitioning over to the full gospel businessman to finance his campaigns, right, at that point of transition.

The same time he's he's transitioning over to Joseph Matson-Bose for the Harold of Faith for publicity. You know, the same time he's coming into contact with Jim Jones and Paul Schaefer, honestly. That is when Leo Mercer rises up the ranks and begins to take on a prominent role in his campaigns. It's odd. I mean, you can almost say that William Brannum and Leo Mercer were hand in hand for the latter part of William Brannum's life. And again, we know very little about his backstory and almost nothing really can be confirmed. And I have tried.

This is during the height of William Brannum's work in helping to spread the Christian identity doctrine. So suddenly, William Brannum is getting into that mode and we have Leo Mercer who suddenly joins the picture. We have, you know, According to the timeline, we've got Roy Davis beginning his operation to rise up through the ranks of the white supremacy.

The timeline is suspect, but we can't really jump to that conclusion if you know what I mean. If you line up the timeline, it just falls right in place like a zipper, but we don't know.

There is no backstory really. The only thing that we do have are a lot of pictures of William Brannum and Leo Mercer together. Like you said, they were with William Brannum constantly because they were recording the message and the recordings that we have today are largely because of Leo Mercer's work in following William Brannum around with a tape recorder.

They literally went everywhere together. What's interesting is the recordings by Leo Mercer are by and large what is remaining in the message. I'll get into the history of the tape industry a little bit later in the episode.

But prior to this, I don't know if you knew this in your sect, but prior to the magnetic tape recordings that were transferred to cassette tapes, there were wire recordings. And I believe the very earliest few in 1947 that we have access to here were copied off of these wire recordings.

But there were a lot of wire recordings prior to the ones that we have access to. We knew this in my grandfather being in William Brannum's inner circle. We knew these existed. I don't know if you did you know that the wire recordings existed in your sect?

Yeah, we did know that there was recordings which were not available. And especially, you know, I don't think it's something that was ever really talked about, but it only is logical and makes sense that there is a lot of recordings before they started doing this because the cassette recording technology really was invented or became popular during these years that William Brannum's ministry was ongoing.

So there was a point in time which things like cassette recording didn't exist. So it really only makes sense that his earlier recordings were wire recordings because how else would there be that right?

Yeah, I do want to talk about those tapes. Let me interject this maybe before we talk about the tapes. So there's one very well-known fact among the message old timers. And it's this. Leo was a homosexual.

And if you've been listening to our podcast, you'll note that Leo is the fourth homosexual so far who is working closely with William Brannum and he is the closest of all, for sure. He's not the last one we're going to talk about either.

There's at least five more I know of, John, five more homosexuals for a total of nine. that were working closely with William Brannum through those years. Another one is a man named Gene Goad and Leo and Gene came into William Brannum's inner circle together at the same time and from all accounts John they were partners at the time.

Gene and Leo were, they came in together as partners into William Brannum's inner circle. Gene was the other tape boy, he was the second fiddle to Leo and I asked a lot of people about this John because I found this pretty disturbing because if you spent your whole life in the message I mean realizing that William Brannum's two right-hand men were homosexuals is pretty disturbing and these two men were very very close to William Brannum.

I mean William Brannum was having sleepovers with these guys okay that's, we got pictures of sleepovers okay that's a well-known fact we'll get into that but because of all that stuff I asked a lot about this John and from what I understand and a couple of the preachers told me this is that while they all confirmed 100% almost 100% of people knew Gene and Leo were gay I was told that William Brannum more or less prayed for them and that they were delivered from being homosexuals and that William Brannum helped them find wives and that proved they had changed they got married and they changed their ways that's the

story I got from a number of people two preachers in particular and John I do totally believe William Brann prayed for them and they definitely did get wives I can totally believe that William Brannum arranged for them to get wives but John these guys Leo especially they never stopped being homosexuals they were homosexual until the day they died and the wives were just a cover for them and Leo continued to carry out on his homosexual lifestyle his entire life yeah and I think we need to pause a bit briefly because in the message cult of personality and its

plunger groups and to a large extent through the you know through the entire latter reign they pushed homophobia and for the topics that we're going to discuss in this episode I think we need to logically separate the homosexuality from the sexual deviance because they're not the same in the indoctrinated way in which it's presented they are one and the same but in actuality there are two separate things there are homosexuals who are not sexual deviance and there are sexual deviance and what we're going to talk about and discuss today is very problematic in that there

were things that everyone knew that was going on that was a result of sexual deviance I can't go too deep yet about my grandfather in this picture, but, you know, my grandfather was very close to these men too.

And I think what I can say safely is that my family, in the way in which they describe Jean, God and Leo Mercer, is that they spoke in a way that made them present themselves as open homosexuals, the way in which they spoke, they can easily recognize that these men were homosexuals, the way that they acted around each other, the way that they acted around William Brannum, the way that they acted with my grandfather, was a clear display of homosexuality.

And in the message, and it splintered groups, and again, to a large extent throughout the entire laterane voice of healing revivals, homosexuality was one of the most unforgivable sins in the movement. To the extent that if someone was homosexual, they're branded, and people steer clear of them, you know, in mainstream Christianity, I know today there's this hot debate about homosexuality, which I won't get into.

But in mainstream Christianity, the Christians who are strongly opposed to homosexuality, view them no different as any other sinner. They're a sin, and there is Jesus who came to take away the sin and lift people up.

And the way in which the message presents Jean and Leo is that William Brannum was like this mainstream, but then they used Jean and Leo as an example for which to spread homophobia, which is another problem in the message.

So I don't want to go too deep just yet, but it really angers me that they use them as a tool rather than helping the people who were being victimized. There are victims who were being abused, I mean sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, by these men, and everybody knew it, everybody knew it.

Yeah. You know, it's part of the reason it's so shocking for me is that in the message, homosexuality is a major sin. You're correct, Jean. In biblical terms, homosexuality should be more specific. Homosexual acts are in the same category of sin as adultery.

It's not like it's some sin that would be far outside the bounds. It's just worse, high and above anything else. In biblical terms, adultery, fornication, and these other sexual sins, a lot of them are clashed right together in the same breath in the Bible. So it's not like it's not a sin that people can't be forgiven from or it's something that's worse than anything else. So we'll look at it like that. But it's very shocking. This would be on par in my mind of finding out William Brannum was, you know, staying with known prostitutes, right? I mean, this would be, this is what

it's on par with, okay? William Brannum was staying the night with known homosexuals, okay? And yeah, we're gonna do a full episode down the road on all of William Brannum's the homosexual stuff. So, but yeah, just know right here, these guys were homosexuals. William Brannum was staying the night with them on on fairly regular basis, and you know, and beyond that, like you said, the really, really horrendous stuff. You know, some stuff like that, you can look at, well, that's the sin, and the only person they heard is themself maybe, right? But that's not where it

stops with Gene and Leo. I mean, these guys went into full-blown child molestation and torture and things like that. So this is, with them, it is, it is far worse than just people wanting to, you know, live a private lifestyle with themselves or, you know, people like them. It's their dragon people to into child molestation with them. So, yeah, it's very ugly stuff.

And there are some research that exists out there that examines people who were closet homosexuals of the era who were forced into marriages because of either their social surroundings or their religion, etc. And it was a life they never wanted in the first place, and they became aggressively worse. And it turned from homosexuality into sexual deviance.

One of them is documented in this commune, which we'll get into later. But you look at what William Brannum did with these men and enforcing them to have wives for the appearance of being not homosexual, and trying to cover up this thing, which, again, everybody who was around them knew, it raises the question, did William Brannum create this problem himself by, you know, trying to enforce that they're married to women instead of each other? I don't know. There's no, there's no way to prove it either way, but it is a problem. And the problem can be

somewhat discussed in the fact that what was created by these men in this commune was exactly the same scenario through families who did not want to engage men and women into a into marriage. This is a huge problem. And just for context, I mean, This is a day and age, of course, when homosexuals can get married and enjoy equal rights with heterosexuals in that way, but John, that is a recent thing.

You go back here to the 50s. This was illegal. I mean, homosexual acts were illegal. They were actually illegal in the United States until the 1990s, John. I think it was, I can't remember what year in the 1990s that homosexual acts were legalized for the first time.

So this was actually criminal activity that William Brownham was around at that point in time, if you want to look at it that way. And people, we'll get into this in the home of a sexual episode. People were arrested around William Brownham for acts of sotamy while William Brownham was still alive.

This was, this kind of stuff was definitely happening in the people in William Brownham circle. So, anyways, kind of moving on, the original tape boys were Jean and Leo Mercer, or if you say Jean Goad and Leo Mercer, who were homosexuals. They are the original tape boys.

They were in charge of recording all of William Brownham sermons, duplicating and selling all the tapes. And so the tape library that is used by the entire message, John, which transcripts were, they were generated from those transcripts, transcripts were generated from the tapes.

The men who created all of those were homosexuals. And one of them was an evil child molester, and another one was enabling him. And these are the men who created the William Brownham tape library. So if you're in the message, every time you press play, I want you to think about that.

I want you to think about the men who made that tape you're listening to. You're able to press play on a brownham tape today because of the hard work of the homosexuals working with William Brownham.

They are the original tape boys. And today, I know in the sector of the message that's led by William Brownham's son, John, being called a tape boy is like a badge of honor. The kids, the kids wear shirts saying, I'm a tape boy or I'm a tape girl. And it's based on William Brownham talking about the tape boys on tape.

And every time you hear that term, and they're using it like a badge of honor, if you're in the message, I just want you to remember the original tape boy were homosexuals. And one of them was an evil child molester.

Brown here, they sell jackets and pins and all kinds of coffee cups. I mean, I've seen all kinds of things that say tape boy. I'm a tape boy. And it just blows my mind because the people who are producing these products for sale know that these quote unquote tape boys were molesting children.

And they brand the entire cult in this area as I hate to say it like this, but they brand them as child molesters. That's what they are when they wear this thing that is celebrating the child molesters.

It's something else. And we know. in the role of recording and creating all the tapes that Jean and Leo actually heavily edited a lot of the tapes. This is something that was well known in my sect of the message, John.

Our sect did not press play on random tapes on a regular basis, unlike your sect did. And part of the rationale for them to tell us not to do that was because all the tapes were edited.

And so they made a lot of hay in my sect over the fact that the tapes were edited. You can find Raymond Jackson talking about it on tape. And they would swear that a lot of the tapes had been altered and not just the blank spots on tape, but it was well known in our sect of the message because our people were there when the original sermons were preached, right?

That they would take things from different tapes and they would splice tapes in and out. They would take an ending off one tape and put it on another. They'd take a middle out of one tape and put it on another.

They were doing that quite a fair bit. And like I said, Raymond Jackson made a lot of hay out of that. And I know for sure that's true. We actually have proof that they were doing that because we have at least one example where we have William Brannum after service he goes to a hotel room and he records a new ending for his sermon and he has Fred Soffman and the McGuire guy recorded and get the tape edited.

Fred Soffman and James, they were the trustees on the organization over the tape. So like for Gene and Leo would have reported to them as their bosses. So we have that on tape, even to the extent that they were changing out whole ends of sermons.

And I think it's important to realize that a lot of those blank spots on tape, many of them go back to when William Brannum was living. And Gene and Leo were some of the ones who were creating, if not the primary ones, creating those blank spots on tape.

And some of it we know for sure was being done at least at the direction of William Brannum himself. They were. They were edited. My grandfather had some original recordings and you can be sure whenever he died.

The headquarters suddenly swarmed the place and they took all of these original recordings out of his house. They were altered and it was known by the inner circle that these recordings were altered. And there's, you know, I've tried to examine why did they alter these?

Why were they splicing? What were they doing? Your mind can run wild with the conspiracy theories, especially considering the timeline. This is whenever the third wave of the clan is growing. While the third wave is growing, William Brannum is spreading the notion of a third pool, which again, I don't want to connect those dots immediately through conspiracy theories, but the timeline matches just like a zipper.

And when you examine the one tape that they have put... aid public because it was so widely known that they had edited this to the extent of William Brannem as in the hotel recording without even the same emotion or expression in his voice.

It sounds like they're sitting in a hotel recording the ending of this. So everybody knew and if you line them up side by side and examine what is said in the original recording versus what they replaced the original with, it's interesting Charles because he starts talking about the third pull again, I won't make the connection but our listeners can you know in their minds they can do whatever they want.

It leads up to the notion that this race war is imminent basically. So the question actually could be asked were was William Brannem spreading messages encoded in these things to other people? We don't know.

We don't know everything that they cut out. This is just one example where we do have the original content that was cut and you can clearly line it up and see that William Brannem is making some very suggestive statements in what was cut from the recording.

Then those recordings were spread you know publicly in for sale etc so the average person who's buying these recordings does not have access to see these things and listen to these things that William Brannem is promoting in the version that has been cut from the rest of the audience.

Right and we do have access to some of the original unedited recordings in some cases and we know in some cases exactly what they were cutting out and John I know you have a couple examples posted up on your website with some original recordings unedited and you can press play and follow along in the transcript and you can find out what was behind those blank spots in tape and John you maybe could share a link to where that's at but there's at least a couple of those that I know that we've published since we started

working together and the thing with that is for me to sit down and listen to an hour and a half sermon just to find out what's behind these blank spots on tape is not something I really personally am looking forward to do and I'm not I don't personally want to release out originals that I have for the message to have so yeah so it's kind of it's kind of a catch 22 what do you do right you know I don't you know you can't stomach to sit through and listen to an hour and a half of that thing just to hear you know the 30 second blank spots

um anyways there's enough there's enough examples that would that have been published to prove there are originals and what's behind some of those blank spots I know a couple people that would probably give you a heck of a lot of money for those if you want to sell them Charles well not really willing to sell my soul to the devil John So I don't think I'll be selling these original recordings that I have, for sure.

But yeah, if they come out, they'll have some nice banjo music behind it with the blank spots edited, you know, so people can see what they are as well. Oh boy. But anyways, we know they have, and probably the most famous sermon that is spliced together is actually William Brennan sermon on the seventh seal, the one he preached when he preached the seals in 63.

The seventh seal sermon is heavily edited, spliced out, and I won't, you know, we're not, I'm not going to try and analyze that out, but hey, look at the original and look at the splice. It's unusual. It's weird stuff, too. The stuff they cut in and out. It's really, some of it makes you scratch your head. And like you say, John, some of it, it really who wonder what exactly is going on here? Cause some of it, like you said, it's the race war stuff.

It's the racial related stuff. It's the, it's weird stuff, some of it that they cut in and out on that one in particular. It blows my mind that the cult today openly advertises this fact.

I mean, if you listen to the recording, they're telling you, hey, we just spliced the tape, and we recorded this in a hotel room, because William Brannum did not want this original recording released. If this is spreading the message of the end of the world, Charles, to a lost and dying world, and you're trying to tell every Christian, hey, Jesus is coming here, my voice.

Why aren't you giving them the voice? You know what I mean? This, this whole thing just, blows your mind when you think about it. But then to think that a person who is a child molester, who's living a homosexual lifestyle in a cult that preaches against homosexuality, blows your mind even further because there is more going on in this story than we currently have information to know. Right. You know, one very interesting thing to me is how much they were charging for these tapes, John. You know, if you look at advertisements like this in Harold

of Faith, the war, the voice of healing, other places where you can find these advertisements, it's primarily Harold of Faith, where they advertise. They're charging four dollars a tape. John. Four dollars a tape. And if you do the math, and you would just four dollars in 1954 for inflation, John, that would be about $50 a tape in today's money. $50 a tape, John.

$50 in today's money. These tapes were very, very, very expensive, John. And John, you and I both know people who had libraries of hundreds and hundreds of tapes from that. This is one thing.

If you haven't noticed that, I love music recording and history and just take the history of the recording industry in general. This is one thing that fascinates me and I want to say it was 2012.

This is one of the first things I studied because these men were selling for $4 and recording. And to me, you know, I'm looking through these old magazines where you can buy a candy bar for what is it?

Ten cents or five cents and here's this recording for $4. It just blew my mind and the recording industry from 1950 to 1959, it is very, very, very complex. So it isn't like you can say, well, they were spending $50 a sermon in today's money.

This was a very complex thing. Remember, they had to, available to the general public, you could buy these wire recorders. And problem with the wire recorders is the quality was very poor. That's why in the very early sermons of William Brannum, you can barely understand what he's saying and they had a hard time cleaning that up.

But that was available to the general consumer. The magnetic recordings were not widely available, but you could buy them up until about, I want to say it was about 1955 when they started selling these things.

And at that point in time, this was an explosion into the magnetic tape. At that point in time, you could go to Radio Shack and you could buy consumers that, you know, off the shelves, they could buy it, Radio Shack for, between 60 cents and $3.60 depending on the size of the reel, they could buy the blanks and they could record.

And remember, the blanks were originally, you know, I think when they were first introduced, they were mono, but then they had two tracks and you could put, you know, one recording could hold double the length because of the two tracks, but the general person, the general consumer could buy a Pentagon recorder from between, I think it was $100 for the cheaper version and the average was about, you know, between one and 200.

You could buy the hi-fi, the quality ones for like $300. But at this point in time, consumers were more widely familiar with buying the long-playing records. And they were accustomed to paying about $3 and, you know, between $3 and $4 for a professional recording of the great hits.

And we're talking the big names, we're like $4, a LP. So here is, you know, I hate to look at it like this, but here you could buy Elvis for $4 or you can buy William Brannum for $4.

That was really the comparison that they're making in their minds and, you know, the message people chose Brannum. But to the average consumer when they start... buying these things and what was it? 1954, 1955 I think is when the message began selling this.

They were accustomed to paying the $4 and they were introduced at $4 and at that point in time according to what I fully understand through just reading what is available in the catalogs etc, wholesale prices weren't that much different than the consumer prices initially.

So Jean and Leo, when they were producing these things, I don't think they made a lot of money in the early years because the prices, the price difference between wholesale and the $4 was somewhat similar. But as you progress through 1955 and this industry explodes, the industry leaders also found ways to produce the magnetic tape much, much more cheaply.

And suddenly, while they're still selling these for $4 a tape, their costs dramatically dropped. So this turned into a very, very lucrative business for Leo Mercer. Right. You look as time went on and the prices came down.

Before it was over with, you could buy the Elvis Album for $1.25. But William Brown and Papers were still four bucks. Exactly. And when you can think about all those tape libraries that people had, John, one tape library would have cost thousands of dollars. I mean, these tape libraries that people had were thousands and thousands of dollars and today's money, tens of thousands of dollars and today's money to buy one of these tape libraries from these guys. So there is a whole lot of money flowing through this. And that honestly has a whole lot to do with it all.

Because what happened when you come to 1954 and William Brown, I'm started having his financial crunch after he broke it off with Boise Healing. He started working with Fred Soffman and Roy Roberson and James McGuire to basically create a little company with soul rights to create and sell the recordings of his sermons. And a lot of this had to do with trying to bring in revenue. And just to remind you, those three guys, they all believed William Brown was God in the flesh. And James McGuire was the man who, as far as I know, he's the

man who initiated baptism and prayer in William Brown's name. He was the first man to do that as far as I know, John. That's all everything I always heard. And he started doing that before William Brown had died. Well, anyways, Gene and Leo, they're working for this franchise. Those three guys are various point trustees, Roy Roberson, Fred Soffman is trustees. I think it's pretty fair to say that the whole thing was definitely an effort to try and bring in a revenue to boost William Brown's income as he was breaking away from Boise Healing when he lost that revenue stream.

If you line it all up, that's exactly when it starts. He leaves Boise Healing. They start selling the tapes. And at that time, like, yeah, Gene and Leo, they were in charge of the master tape.

February, they were in charge of duplicating and selling the tapes, and at $50 a pop in today's money, they made a boatload off of these tapes. And everyone got a cut, you know, Gene and Leo got a cut, Fred Safman got a cut, William Bramham got a cut, and the remaining, more or less, that remained the arrangement, John, until after William Bramham died.

And when you come into the 1970s, Roy Roberson and Fred Safman, who were still trustees, you know, Gene and Leo, they more or less were able to push Gene and Leo out as the years went on and get control of distribution rights for themselves.

And that was roughly when they formed Spoken Word publications, when they started transitioning away, they moved the rights into Spoken Word, and eventually they merged all into Voice of God recordings into the 1980s.

So that's a little history on how the tapes were made and eventually morphed into Voice of God. Gene, Leo, Fred Safman, all these guys are working for the organization that is the predecessor to Voice of God recording.

So that's who's producing these tapes. Yeah. And you have to picture the general public audience of this thing. You've got, you know, while William Bramham was working with the full gospel businessman, you know, Harold, the faith, et cetera, the general audience knew Leo Mercer was involved with this.

He's there again with William Bramham, almost throughout every sermon. He's just following William Bramham around. They'd set up the booth and they would record. But the general audience was largely comprised of people who were very poor, and they could not afford this $4 a pop.

I mean, we're, again, that's, like you said, with the inflation, that's almost 50 bucks. Nobody's going to spend 50 bucks for over a thousand tapes. That's, you know, people never saw that much extra in some of them in their lifetime with these poor people.

So what it did was it created this weird strategy wherein people who could not afford it did not have access to all the recording. So they could not say, take one of William Bramham's stories and have a copy of every version of every, every telling of how the story changed over time.

They might just have one example of that story. And to them, that was their story. That was what William Bramham told. The people who had a lot of money and by and large, the people who were working with William Bramham, they had access to the library.

They knew that these stories were changing over time. So the general audience just said, no, William Bramham was a man of God. His stories were consistent. They'll tell you this today, but they only had access to one or two versions of the story and really didn't pick up on it.

The problem for me is the other men who were working with William Bramham knew this. And it's just, it's unbelievable when you think about the level of knowledge that William Bramham's inner circle had.

Many of which, as you said, turned this thing into a deity cult. These men who knew these things, I questioned whether or not they really believed that William Branham was God in the flesh, but that is, again, a tool of manipulation.

The men who knew these things were manipulating the general audience. Yeah, I think that's a good analysis and what Leo ran like a little merchandise booth Leo and Jean at these events where you could go and purchase all kinds of William Branham memorabilia and literature and tapes.

Like you mentioned, they would sell little package sets where you could get several of William Branham's sermons packaged together and of course, they packaged ones together that didn't conflict with each other. Most people, you only bought one version of William Branham's life story because why would I need, why would I spend $50, $50, 10 times for five life story tapes when I can just get one because they're all the same, right, wrong, but that's just how it worked.

So, another thing that Leo was responsible for is, Leo was also writing a lot of William Branham's publicity articles, John, a lot of the William Branham articles in Harold of Faith were wrote by Leo and Leo had his own also sort of a recurring column in the Harold of Faith magazines.

I'll give you one. Maybe we can share up with the readers here's one I got here, but he did this recurring column in Harold of Faith under his own name where he would just share interesting tidbits of his own thinking with the broader ladder ring movement.

So he had, through Harold of Faith, a direct line of communication to the broader ladder ring movement, right, through that. And again, a lot of the William Branham sermons that are in Harold of Faith, Leo's the one who added those, typed those up, put them together and got them to Joseph Mats and Bozay in the magazine.

And he was working pretty close even with Joseph Mats and Bozay up until William Branham died in the 1960s. And the magazine features pictures of, here's a picture of William Branham, Leo Mercer, Joseph Branham and Matt Joseph Mats and Bozay, right.

Here's a picture of Joseph Mats and Bozay and Leo Mercer, the kind that you can see in Harold of Faith. So Leo's even got pictures, you know, in these articles that he's writing with himself and the key figures, the key players in this that are going in the magazine.

So he has been featured prominently himself in the literature coming out of this movement. And some of these articles, like when you read what he writes in there, it's pretty clear These publicity articles are geared around reinforcing the idea that William Brannum is the seventh church-age messenger, the idea of William Brannum being Elijah.

That's the kind of stuff even that he's publicizing. And Joseph Massimboze is publishing it all. And again, being disseminated out to really the main trunk of the lettering movement through the Hero of Faith magazine.

And some of Leo Mercer's articles, for example, there's a 1958 issue I should have printed it out. I'll get you a copy of it. But you've got Leo Mercer's article on page four of it.

And then you go over to page 15 of the same magazine, and here's Joseph Massimboze collecting money for the refugee children in Germany in Bonn, which is where Paul Schaefer's at, right? You've got Leo Mercer on page four.

You've got fundraising for the refugees around Bonn, where Paul Schaefer was running his children's home, you know? So all of this stuff is connected. These are all interrelated. This is all happening together at the same time, the same year.

Paul Schaefer was still in Germany at that point, you know, running that home. So all these people are connected, and David Edwin Herall and Doug Weaver both actually offer commentary on these articles that Leo was writing.

Let me just read you one excerpt from, this is from all things are possible, David Edwin Herall's book on page 41 in here. He writes in 1957, Leo Mercer, one of William Branham's workers, revealed a dream in which our dear brother, Branham, has told me, has spiritual significance.

The dream revealed Branham, ministering in a white disc above a pyramid, a voice from heaven proclaimed that no other man could stand in the disc unless he died or be killed, and that Branham was the only one who can and will stand there.

While Mercer did not attempt to interpret the dream, he suggested to his readers that perhaps the Holy Spirit may lead you to know the meaning of it. So that's the kind of stuff Leo is publishing, right?

And his own dream, his own visions and stuff. And it's all clearly pointing to William Branham as this special central figure, tight person that everyone needs to look to in respect. It really boggles your mind.

When you think of, I mean, this is a no name person who we don't even know if his backstory is true, who suddenly emerges as one of these scribes, one of the two scribes for William Branham, following him around everywhere, homosexual, in a cult that preaches against homosexuality, two men like Joseph Matson-Bose, who are fully, these men who are working with Branham are fully aware of this, and many of the men working with William Branham are also proclaiming that...

they are against homosexuality, and here's this man, these two men, who they knew were homosexuals. Following William Brannum, who's also filling the rest of his inner circle with more homosexuals, it boggles your mind. And the only weird clue that William Brannum gives as to their backstory is that they were investigating him and that they found him to be true. And Charles, I'll let you lead into this, but I wasted, I don't know how many hours yesterday because William Brannum made this statement. He said, every time an FBI agent investigates me, I convert him to the message.

And I looked up, you know, it just boggles your mind. I looked at George Lacey in one of the previous episodes we talked about, he was supposed to be the head of the FBI. And he investigated the halo and he deemed the halo to be supernatural. And so he makes this claim about, you know, Gene and Leo, they I'll let you tell it, but there are other names that he gave. And I got to digging and he is, William Brannum is calling men heads of the FBI when they've never worked for the FBI. And here's another example of this. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, William Brannum just made

so much stuff up. It's unbelievable. I mean, how he converted how many FBI people who A never worked for the FBI and B never actually converted to the message like it's just, he made the story up end to end, you know, it's just unbelievable. But yeah, you know, another interesting thing is that that way that William Brannum would often describe Gene and Leo as being a little FBI.

Right. That's how he would describe him. Gene and Leo, a lot of times he called them, this is my little FBI. This is the little FBI. Let me read you a quote where William Brannum says, this is from the 1957 sermon. God projecting his love. William Brannum says, Mr. Mercer here and Mr. Goad, I call them my student ministers, if you ever knew who they was, one's a Catholic and the other one I think is a steam fitter. And they made themselves a little FBI to come out, to come find out if these visions were right and to come in town posing as somebody else. And the Lord revealed it all

to them right there and they became friends of mine. And you find quotes like that and it's just interesting, John, because we know, we know with men like Jim Jones who were faking their discernments, they had little private detectives working for them. They would go to town, they would scope the people out, scout the situation.

out. They didn't let people know who they were, what they were doing, but they were gathering intelligence, passing it back to Jim Jones, people like Jim Jones, for Jim Jones to use in his discernments. And they also help pointing out people in the crowd, right, to help out the discernments.

They were, you know, go stand near the person that needs to be called out that way, you know, the person on stage could figure out where they are, you know. So and we know that went along with using the prayer cards with men like Jim Jones to help fake all of those discernments. So as I read comments like this from William Brannum, it does leave me wondering, John, was Leo and Jean involved in something like this with William Brannum, were they his spotters, were they, what, what all exactly was this little FBI investigating and reporting back to William Brannum, right?

And as his student ministers, as his little FBI, why were they going into towns and posing as somebody else, right? What were they collecting details for William Brannum to use in his discernments, right? For me, it's an open question, but I do think it's one that is legitimate for us to ask.

In today's world, we would call what these people have as it's a database, right? You've got Harold the Faith, who has all the list of the subscribers, names and addresses, phone numbers, you've got voice of healing, the same thing. You've got Jean and Leo, the database of William Brannum sermons that they can access, they can play, they know these stories are changing, consistently changing over time. And William Brannum even mentions on one of the recordings that they're altering the prophecies. So this thing is, this is bigger than people realize, these men knew this. And, you know, the little FBI unit that they formed, William Brannum says, every time

an FBI agent investigates me, I save them. One of these, again, I wasted too much time and it's it's worthy of an episode end of itself. It's really doesn't fit here, but Al-Farrar, William Brannum mentions Al-Farrar. He was head of the FBI and he investigated me and I converted him.

And you go back and you examine his alleged conversion by William Brannum and he says, he came to one of the meetings and I took him to the jail and I converted him in the jail.

And another time he says, and we was at the shooting range and I converted him in the shooting range. And I don't know how many different places he gave that were this alleged conversion happened, but you can tell the whole story's fiction because it is not consistent.

Well, I started looking yesterday and again, I wasted too many hours on this, but Al-Farrar was a member of a Pentecostal church long before William Brannum. He was converted in, I think, the earliest recorded advertisement for him at his Pentecostal temple in Tacoma, Washington was like 1945.

and William Brannum's meetings through Tacoma was what 1948, 1949. Before William Brannum's meeting, we find Al Farar in Earn Backster's Church, speaking on behalf of the youth, which is highly fascinating considering our last few episodes talking about you've got the Sharon Orphanage Youth program that's going on. You've got Roy Davis, who's created his orphanage. You've got Paul Schaefer and the youth going into Chile, and here's Al Farar. He was a chief of police in Tacoma, who's setting up these youth programs, highly fascinating. Again, it doesn't really fit here, other than the fact that William Brannum claimed he was an FBI, and Al Farar was a chief of police,

I've got his retirement in the newspaper. He retired after like 25 years as being with the police force. He literally started his career in the police force, and after his retirement, he entered politics. He was never working for the FBI ever. And like Jean and Leo, they formed their little FBI unit. Well, you can't just form federal Bureau of Investigation. You might create some private detective agency, but the people in the message by and large are uneducated.

And when William Brannum says they formed this little FBI, they think, oh, these guys are FBI. I can trust them. I can trust the guy who is molesting children. This is, it blows your mind that people do this, but they, anything William Brannum says, praiseworthy of any individual.

Suddenly, they're elevated to this platform above the rest of the cult. And that's what happened with Leo Mercer. William Brannum elevated him. And now Mercer is like you said, he's writing these visions and dreams and deity cult. And so he becomes a respected figure in the message among all of these other men, such as my grandfather, who knew this evil. Yeah. So the story of Leo Mercer gets really, really disturbing as you come to 1962. In that year, William Brannum moved Arizona.

And when he did, most all of his inner circle moved with him, the majority of them. There was a mass exodus from here in the Jeffersonville area to Arizona. And quite a few of the people I went to church with, John, made the move to Arizona. They later came back. They moved Arizona with William Brannum in those years. And it was not entirely, but primarily the people who believed in the deity of William Brannum, who made that initial move to Arizona that year. That was the majority. And among the people who made that move was Gene and Leo. And by that point, they were both preaching.

They were starting to try and recruit people to go build the commune with them in Arizona. And they did that successfully. I think they had in the neighborhood 150 to 175 people joined them before it was all over with, who all packed up, who moved with them to Arizona to start their commune.

And they called the commune the park, and it was located in Prescott, Arizona. It is one of the most infamous stories in the message that we knew about prior to realizing that Colonia Dignidad was a William Brannum cult compound.

The park was sanctioned by William Brannum. Again, I know several people who have escaped this, who were part of the original park. And also, I have family who were there. I have my grandfather who knew about this thing.

William Brannum sanctioned it, condoned it, praised it, and even preached his blessings on this place. And what happened here is tragic. You can go to the California Supreme Court records and you can see what happened, but they investigated this park after murders were happening.

And the murders weren't a direct result of Leo Mercer, but they were indirectly caused by Mercer, Brannum, and it was a very tragic. We'll get into that probably into another episode. I think this will probably carry forward, but they were setting up a military style compound.

They were marching them around the perimeter. The children would march around the perimeter. It's very similar to what was happening in Colonia Dignidad. They were, there's this militant form of religion that people in today's message world were even splinter groups in Latin, et cetera, they have no idea how bad this thing was and how just looking at it, it looks like an evil cult.

But everybody who was in the inner circle knew this thing was going on. Yeah, you know, we, like you mentioned, we both know quite a few people who made that and moved Arizona, including people who were living in the park with, with Jean and Leo.

And the people who followed them out there, they basically sold off everything they owned and bought trailer homes. And they pulled their trailer homes all the way from here to Indiana out to Arizona.

And like you mentioned, most all of them got the blessing from William Brannum to make the trip. And if you look in Debra Tibido in her book, she even mentioned some of this stuff in here, you know, about the blessings that William Brannum gave, the encouragement, how William Brannum even encouraged people to make the move with Leo in the beginning.

And on my grandfather, John, this is a common story that he told me a lot. He was right on the edge of moving to Arizona with all of them at the time. And But just at the last minute, something happened, and he changed his mind, and he ended up not moving out to Arizona.

But, you know, my family was right on the edge of moving out there when all of that stuff happened to John. But lots and lots of people made the move. And once they were all moved out there, William Brownham would come and visit the park periodically.

He preached a number of sermons, which are on tape at the park. And you can even find him endorsing the park on tape. And let me just read a little bit of how William Brownham encouraged people to live there.

This is from a 1964 sermon called The Oddball. And this sermon is basically, the whole thing is basically an endorsement of Leo Marcer telling everybody that he's something special. But that's the main point of the sermon.

Exactly. Let me read, let me read a quote here, William Brownham said, And to come here this morning and look, this fine little Jerusalem setting out here, little, what I call it, Goshen, I believe, when we come over this morning.

Remember, Goshen was one of the places that they worshipped, one of the first places the tent was pitched. To meet old friends and knew, and to have this time allotted to us, I just, it seems like that, that you just don't want to leave.

There's just something that wants to hold you. I can see why you people would want to stay here. See, something that grips you, he's calling it little Jerusalem. He's calling it little Goshen. And he's saying, why would you want to leave?

And I know at this point, John, according to testimony, there was people who did want to leave. And William Brown was being asked if they should leave at this time because of the stuff going on.

And William Brownham and this sermon is telling them, no, stay. Let me read you another little quote from this one. He says, brother Leo was led up here. And there you have little children that has to be trained up.

See, what he's just to find the child abuse to them here. This is exactly what he's doing. You have little children that has to be trained up. See, you've got women and young ladies here that don't like to walk in the way of the world.

You've got men here that's aged in retiring. They want a place to where they can settle down and feel at home. You can dwell among your own kind of people. Well, and see, I think that God can raise up something to take care of that.

Don't you think so? So William Brownham is endorsing this commune. We know in context of what's going on there. He's telling them your children need to be trained up. You've got older people. They can settle down here.

And Leo is the man to provide all of this to you. And he is making these statements in the sermon and others that we know he made privately to the people. He's empowering Leo to basically continue doing what he's doing to these children.

That's what he's doing to train them up to take power over them. And John, you and I both know from the people we've talked to, these children were already being molested and abused. At the same time, William Brownham is making these remarks at this park.

Right. And these meetings that William Brannum was preaching at, there was at least one family who came to him wanting to leave the park at this time and William Brannum has talked them out of it and preached the sermon, talking them out of it, honestly.

So that's an important point. William Brannum visited a torture and molestation commune, John. He gave his blessing to the people who joined it. He endorsed it while he was there while the molestations were going on and he told the people who were thinking about leaving to stay.

William Brannum did those things personally. It is awful. You mentioned Goshen. William Brannum caused this place Goshen. And to the average listener who's unfamiliar with this term, Goshen in the Bible was the place of peace, rest, comfort, plenty.

It was the place where you go to rest. And what happened here was the opposite of the place you will go to rest. These men were predators. Leo Mercer was a predator. He had a line of men under him that were his enforcers that by extension were predators.

You have William Brannum who's endorsing the predator, which makes him also either an accomplice to a predator or even a predator himself who knows what actually happened. Yet people like my grandfather, you have other big names in this message. Who knew this was going on?

They're predators. In my opinion, if they don't come in and warn the people and tell them, get out, get out because you are prey to these awful, awful men. You're going to be tortured. You're going to be abused. You're going to be beaten. You're going to be, your lives will be ruined.

Had they come in and said this, I would have respect for them, Charles. I have 0.0% respect for any man, any man who knew this was going on in this compound. My grandfather knew it.

I respect my grandfather in many, many ways other than this, but he knew this was going on. My grandfather knew this. These people were predators. The book you mentioned by Deborah, I read it and I know a lot of people who've read it and they questioned why she wrote it in sort of a poetry style.

What she's describing is so very horrific that if you were to read it in actual English as a book, you would not be able to finish this story. It is one of the most terrifying, most horrible stories in message-cult history.

And if you extend that out to the latter rain and all these people who are connected to this, Joseph Matz and Bozé, who's publishing the predator? I mean, how much did these people know? I have to ask. What one of the stories that's in her book that just tears you up?

their heart out. The enforcers working for Leo Mercer used to take children, and they would manipulate them. They would say, I think you're going to sin. Or you look like you have an evil spirit, and therefore you might sin. Or you have committed to sin, which you didn't really commit. But I'm going to say you did, and I'm going to label you as the sinner. And then they would take the children before the people, strip them down naked in front of the people, embarrass them in their nudity in front of the people, and take men with boards and beat them until the men's arms were too tired to swing the

board. Then he would pass the board to the next man, and he would do the same. He would beat them until he could no longer swing the board. They were burning children with fire. This is on court record. They were burning and torturing children. They were marching them. And if they got out of line, they would beat them. What was going on? It is too graphic for this podcast, but it is one of the worst tragedies that could have ever happened, and William Brannum calls this place little gochem.

John, we've got pictures of William Brannum at this place. Here's a picture of William Brannum with Jean and Leo munkying around at this molestation tortured commune in the park in Arizona. There's pictures of William Brannum in this place, why this stuff is going on. And like you said, John, I don't want to be too graphic, but if you read Deborah Tivito's book, I mean the horrors that were going on in this commune are unspeakable. The children were being raped regularly. They were being tortured, beat, burned, starved. The little boys were having foreign objects inserted into them, right? These things were being done to them

until they were left bloody messes, right? It's horrific stuff, John. And Leo was directing all of it. And he was getting many of the adults in the commune to go along with it and take part in these abuses. He was separating families. He was taking children away from their parents and reassigning them to other people. Abuse, molestation, torture was a daily thing in the life of children in Leo's commune. It was horrendous. It was just horrendous.

And if you go to Brannum.org and you go to their store, this is what is being advertised when they sell you something that says, tape boy, they know this happened. The leaders of this movement know this happened. Everyone who's involved in leadership in this cult know this happened.

And they're selling pins called tape boys. They're child molesters. Call it what it is. I'm going to wear a pin. I'm going to sell you a jacket that says, I will. Orcher and rape children.

That's what they're selling you. Yeah. John, there are so many sick things that went on in this commune. One of the sick things is that Leo was forcing a lot of the grown men to engage in homosexual acts with them at the commune, too.

That was going on, sick, twisted stuff was going on. But we do have on very solid authority that the majority of the adult men in the park were engaged in various homosexual acts with Leo during their time there.

And there were men in the message, William Brannum included, who were going to this park and they were having sleepovers and campouts. You can talk to anybody who's left this and there were men who would come in and then they would go camp out on the wilderness with these men who were doing these things.

Yeah. I went to church with people who grew up in the park. And in about 1974, I think, the park imploded and everybody left, at least, sorry I know most everybody left. Maybe it's possible if you people stayed.

And when they all left, a lot of them ended up back here in Jeffersonville. They also ended up in quite a few of the other message churches at that time. I know some landed in the Brannum tabernacle.

Some landed in the Tucson tabernacle. These people scattered out to quite a few message churches after the park imploded. And it's actually from people who were in the park with Leo and all this stuff was going on.

That's how I know about these things. Personally, John, when I was a young person, I heard the stories from the families of these people who had escaped the commune. And as I started investigating the message while I was still in there, this is one of the areas I started looking into.

And John, you are right. The leaders in the message knew what was going on back then. They absolutely did. All the significant figures of the message back then absolutely knew what was going on and what went on at the park.

And after these people escaped, even more people knew, even more people knew, because they shared their stories when they came back with the leadership of the churches that they came back to. And John, Leo still alive when this happens.

Leo still alive when they come out and all of this news comes out. And all the leaders knew, John, I know I got positive confirmation, Joseph Coleman knew, Leavale knew, Raymond Jackson knew, Perry Green knew, Ebald Frank knew, David Mammalis knew, Roy Roberson knew, Fred Soffman knew.

I mean, I can just keep going. I confirmed all kinds of people knew. Just go on and on about it. Lots of people knew all of the main leaders in all of the main sex knew what happened, John.

And none of them, not a single one of them anywhere ever called the police to turn in Leo for what he did. Not one of them, John. Not one of them, nobody, nobody, even after everyone escaped.

And Leo was more or less left. out there abandoned, they let him go free. Nobody turned Leo in. And John, I have heard multiple stories of people who were directed by the leading figures of the message here in Jeffersonville to keep it all quiet to protect the message. If there was a concerted effort to tell everybody, well, let's just keep this quiet. This will hurt the message.

And it's as a result of the message leaders, that is why this never went to the authorities. That is why this never went to police because of message leaders around the world telling the people, no, don't go to the authorities about it. Let's hush this up and keep it quiet. And John, even after the families came back here and Leo was still living, not only did the leaders not call the police, not even the parents of those tortured and molested kids called the police, not even their parents called the police, John. I mean, you want

to talk about a cult. This is a cult. Every significant sect of the message is guilty here. All of them. Every last one of them, they all engaged in this cover up. And almost every last old timer in the message knew, Jean and Leo, what they were and what they were up to, almost every last one of them. And certainly, nearly every single message preacher in North America in the 1960s and 1970s knew about this. And not a single person did anything to hold these evil people accountable. I'm in my late 40s. And I think I was maybe 12 years

old. The first time that we went to the house of a family who had escaped the cult. And you know, I'm just a kid. I'm playing with the other kids at that point. I didn't hear the whole conversation, but I heard enough that it made an impact. And there's no telling how much that the people told, but the people who escaped were very afraid. They didn't understand. They couldn't reconcile what just happened. And it spread throughout the movement. And I'm certain that it spread further than just the cult elite. There are people who are just your lay members

in the message. Who knew what happened? Everybody keeps it quiet. But the cult elite, especially keep it, they try to suppress this. But they were supporting predators because they didn't act. I mean, they're an accomplice to it. If you know somebody's going to rape somebody and you could stop it, if you don't stop it, you're part of this. You're the one who's helping assist this thing. If you know, they're going to be torturing children. And you know, they are torturing children. You are an accomplice. And that's what these people were.

If you're here in the Jeffersonville area going to one of the large message churches or if you're in Arizona and one of the large message churches, you almost certainly have victims of this in your church. Go ask.

what happened. We're not lying to you. This is the truth. Go ask him. Go find out. You know, and I have to say again, all of this happened on William Branham's watch. Leo was empowered by William Branham. Leo got his followers and they stayed with him through all of those abuses because of William Branham, right? And when you look at this situation, you can't help but realize, and this is painful, that William Branham bears some responsibility for what happened in the park. You know, and I'll let the audience decide just how much responsibility for all this belongs to William Branham, but he definitely has some responsibility. And you know,

and if you're in the message, and your message preacher takes the position that the message bears no responsibility for any of this, and that William Branham bears no responsibility for this, then I want to encourage you to run away as fast as you can from those preachers because they are dangerous. That is dangerous. These are dangerous people that would pretend like there's no responsibility in the message leadership for this stuff. The message in its leaders refuse to be accountable for anything, even torture and molestation of children. No one feels responsible for anything. And the message is designed in such a way so that men like Leo Mercer can thrive and

generally no one can or will do anything about men like Leo, right? And the way that message leaders pretend like there's no responsibility, there's no connection here, that's all the proof that you need that these people are. There's something seriously wrong. I mean, Leo Mercer is the man who made all the tapes. Without Leo Mercer, there is no message. There is no spoken word. There is no voice of God, right? You can't get more central to the message than Leo Mercer.

Yet the message leaders will pretend like they have no responsibility and this is not connected at all. I mean, what in the world, right in the world? And when you look at the absolute hypocrisy of that, I mean, we're talking in the neighborhood of 75 or more children who were being raped and tortured by Leo Mercer for nearly a decade. Some of the message preachers today, John, who are condemning me and you and people like me, who are telling the truth, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, some of those very men speaking against us were involved in covering all of this stuff up, John.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I hate to say this is just the tip of the iceberg of things that have went on and still going on in some message churches today, that's being covered up and hid from people. Think about it. They're molesting children, they're raping children, they're torturing children. And these men do not want this information out.

And so they try to suppress it and they try to target anybody who might pose a threat to them being exposed as either participating or covering this up like you and I. But even worse than that, the cult themselves are celebrating it when you wear these tape boy pins and jackets and clothing and this ridiculous stuff, you are celebrating the torture and rape of children. And that's what these people are doing. But worse than that, many of these men who were or victimizing or supporting the predators.

They knew this was going on and they started targeting the victims because the victims themselves might speak out. So they would target the victims and they would try to suppress their information. They would basically try to tell the victim that it's your fault that you were tortured.

It's your fault that you were raped. My own grandfather, I have testimony from not just one, but many people. The my own grandfather would go to the victims of abuse and tell them that it's their fault they were abused.

That's my own grandfather. My own grandfather, who knew this was going on, who parked his trailer right next to Jean and Leo, who knew this thing was going on with Jean and Leo, who I won't get into it too much, but there's a story there.

My grandfather was very close to this thing. So it boggles my mind that people celebrate this with these clothing and tape boy pens and all of this stuff, when they're celebrating purely evil. You know, when I think of all these horrendous abuses that have went on in the message and in the park and there's at least one person I've heard that died as a result of the things that Leo did in the park, at least one death.

You know, when I think about all of that and how everyone just went along with it and everyone also went along with the cover up. You know, you're just left wondering how in the world can hundreds of people go along with that, right, because at the very least several people had, 100 people had to turn a blind eye to this, John.

Hundreds of people had to turn a blind eye to this. John, I am really convinced that there is some terrible form of thought control in the message that enables this kind of thing to happen.

And I believe it goes really to the very heart of some of the things that William Brannum taught. You know, after I woke up, John, when I was still in leadership position here in Jeffersonville, I started trying to figure out why no one else could see all the abuses and make no mistake, there are abuses going on in the message to this day.

I tried very hard to try and figure out why people were so blind to what was happening right in front of them. And I really believe it is specifically the sort of teachings that William Brannum introduced in his sermon like the greatest battle ever fought.

He taught those concepts in lots of sermons. And in my sect, those concepts from that sermon, you know, they're encapsulated perfectly there in that sermon, but they're throughout. Those concepts were very consistently taught over all the years of the church I come from.

And in my sect of the message, and what I noticed is some of the preachers where I come from is they would use those thought control techniques from William Brannum about bringing every thought captive about thinking on, you know, whatsoever is good, whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is pure.

Think on these things and fight the unbelief in your mind. Right? You got to believe, right? They really honed in on that stuff, and it was, if I was going to put a label on William Brandham's Mind Control techniques, John, his Thought Control techniques, I would call it Only Believism.

And Only Believism. In Only Believism, you were trained to block anything that contradicts or could possibly contradict the belief that the preachers are the voice of God, right? Only Believism teaches you to focus only on positive thinking and to actively fight off and suppress any negative thoughts about the message or its leaders, right?

Negative thoughts about the message or its leaders will send you to hell. And you are actively trained in the message to suppress and block those thoughts. And John, positive thinking is a good thing, it sure is.

It's good to think positively. But when positive thinking is weaponized in such a way that it is blinding you to a dangerous situation, and positive thinking is not a good thing anymore, right? And that's certainly not what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote those scriptures about taking thoughts captive and thinking on positive things.

Paul was certainly not suggesting that we should not think critically about what's going on around us, but that is exactly how message preachers use those verses, and it's exactly how William Brannum implemented thought control in the message.

It reminds me, Charles, of the stories you hear in the subway, somebody's getting stabbed. And you've got all these people who are on the car who get out their cell phones, and they're taking pictures of the guy who's being stabbed, the guy who's going to die.

And nobody takes a step forward to help the guy and stop the man who's stabbing them. Well, in the message, all of these men who knew this was going on. It's like they're giving the guy knives here.

Have another knife stab them with my knife. That's what's going on with these cult leaders. Who knew this was happening could have stopped it and did not. It's just awful. And like you say, it is not the gospel.

It is in no way, shape, or form, even similar to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to the letters of Paul. They proclaim this is the same message that Paul taught. Is it? Is Paul teaching you to ignore the children who are being raped and tortured in these compounds that William Brannum himself condoned and called little Goshen?

Is that the message of Paul? For me, I'm glad I escaped this. And I'm just mortified that people in my own family knew this was going on and supported the predator. One last thing before we wrap this episode up, John.

I know we're planning on diving into this deeper in a future episode, but I feel like I just need to point it out right here. But during these years that Leo started these communes, they've all moved to Arizona, just like you mentioned, William Brannum was still spending the night with Jean and Leo.

Cures of it, right? William Brannum would go on these hunting trips. He would invite his inner circle. Here is a picture of William Brannum on one of his hunting trips in these years, right?

And there is Leo Mercer with his arm around William Brannum, right? It's something else. And when you look at pictures like this and you realize the man with his arm around William Brannum is a child molesting, sicko pervert, right?

And then you've got others like this. I mean, here is Gene Goad on the other side. Here's got the majority of the men in this picture are homosexuals, John. Okay? I mean, it's shocking stuff.

It's shocking stuff. And why in the world was William Brannum inviting them out to hunt and camp in the forest with him on these all male hunting trips? We know on a fair majority these hunting trips, the majority of his companions in the photos were homosexuals.

And we know beyond a shadow of a doubt William Brannum knew they were homosexuals, too. It's not that he didn't know. He knew what they were. And again, I positively confirmed that coming out of the message.

Why was William Brannum doing that? Why was he staying the night with men like that? This is seriously disturbing on many, many levels. And for message preachers to act like we are not justified in asking for a reasonable explanation to a question like that.

I think I deserve a reasonable explanation for why William Brannum was staying the night with homosexual child molesters. I think I deserve an answer to that that's reasonable and makes sense. And if you're in the message and you're some preacher and you think you don't owe me some reasonable explanation to that and expect me to believe the message, there is something seriously wrong with you, seriously wrong with you, right?

William Brannum was staying the night with these kind of people, right? And if you're in the message and you're leader, your preacher in the message tells you these things don't matter. Look the other way, there's no connection here, there's no responsibility.

I want to say again, you need to run away as fast as you can from that. Those people are dangerous. That's dangerous. Because here you catch them saying this stuff don't matter. What other stuff are they saying don't matter that's going on still today?

Because I tell you, there's definitely stuff still going on today. In future episodes, I know we are going to examine all of William's Brannum's relationships with homosexuals in detail, but I did just want to point this out here.

And for me, John, as someone who loved this message, as someone who spent his entire life in this message, who loved William Brannum, who loved the message, this feels like the ultimate betrayal right here to me.

This is right up there. This is one of the ultimate betrayals of the message and it gets worse. You know, we're heading there. We're heading into worst territory, but this is pretty near the top of the list for me when it comes to why I feel betrayed by William Brannum.

The message leaders lied to us about this. They harassed us when we asked questions about this. They threw us out of their churches. Right, they ran us out, they drawn us into the ground because we asked questions about this.

And you know when it's heartbreaking stuff to find this stuff out, it's still a knife in my heart today. But the truth about these things need to be told, and message leaders who pretend like they have no responsibility for this.

Somebody needs to start holding these people accountable because there are people today, John, who were involved in the torture and molestation in this commune, who are still alive today and are sitting in message churches and have never been held accountable.

And the leaders know it, and the leaders know who they are. Leaders try to deflect, you know. Whenever I began exposing William Brannum's many, many failed prophecies and lies, one of the things that they did as a strategy was my own uncle spread around the globe that I was homosexual so that people would not listen to me, which is blatantly false.

And the man who spread it knew that it was blatantly false. He had inside information that it was false. But because of the homophobia, he spread it around the globe that this thing that what John Collins is doing, he's doing it because he's this thing that he knows as false.

These same men, the men in William Brannum's inner circle, the men in the elite and the message, they know that William Brannum surrounded himself with homosexual people. It angers me to no end that they use that as a tool of manipulation.

You really, you're going to use that as a tool of manipulation when you know that William Brannum was surrounded by homosexual men. And we know from testimony by my grandfather on recording that William Brannum was sleeping in the same bed, in the same bed with men in his inner circle.

We know this. These men are doing this and they're deflecting. They're trying to transition your mind from the evil thing that's going on to a distraction, to something else. Point at Charles, point at me is somebody who's got sin in their lives.

What is the sin in everyone? Everybody's a sinner, Charles. That's why Jesus came to save the sinner. But the average sinner is not torturing and raping children. And these men who were casting this blame, they know that William Brannum supported men and they by extension supported men who were raping and torturing children.

I've got to stop here. You can probably see it on my face. I'm angry. I'm angry that my family was a part of this. So we have to end this on a lighter note and try to transition this to something some good can come with.

And the good is that people did escape this. People like Deborah escaped and they told their story. And I've met Deborah personally. She... is, as she's a trooper man, it made her stronger. She endured some horrific things and it made her stronger. She's a great person. I wish everybody could meet her. The people who escaped by her book, the serpent's tale, I'll put a link up into it in the video. But, you know, for me, Charles, I'm just so glad that my family escaped something that is so purely evil that the leadership wants to cover it up. And we go to something where, yeah, there's there's bad things in every church.

There are, you're not, you're going to find, and every church, you're going to find good people, bad people, and people who are just filling the pews and seat warmers, they call them. You're going to find everything from the devout religious to the center. And that's part of human nature.

It is unbelievable that this stuff went on, John. This is one of the dark secrets of the message right here that we're talking about today. And we'll probably go a little bit more in another episode. Yep, so I tried to lighten the mood. I don't know if I did or not, but, um, hopefully I did and people come back. 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 Gospel Church.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 in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.