NAR: Kenneth Hagin and T. L. Osborn

Hello, 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 www.William-brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend, Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org, and together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, we have today an episode of What Were They Thinking? I look back at this portion of history, and I just simply cannot believe that this is something that we'll be talking about today, and it's so widespread, this new apostolic reformation thing that has grown.

You know, I look back at the parlor tricks that they were using in the early ministries, like the levitating boy that traveled with William Brannum in the healing revivals, and I can kind of understand, you know, the days of yesterday, there were people that just were fully unsuspecting that a Christian minister would use stage tricks to trick them out of their money.

But there's a point in time in which people did become aware that there were some very evil minds who were posing as Christians, and I look at what emerged from the history that we're getting into today, and I just step back and I say, what on earth were these people thinking?

I know, John, it's something else. In this episode, we want to look at a couple different figures, a couple different groups that were really close to William Brannum, and as we talk about them, hopefully we can do some things that'll connect dots for people so they can see how William Brannum was connected to the broader charismatic movement that began to emerge in 1958, and then show how some of those connections lead into the new apostolic revolution.

There's a lot of information that exists today, and a lot of our listeners have asked us to make some sort of a diagram to show how all these different groups are related. And that is not an easy task. We're talking about several thousand preachers and several hundred distinct movements that came out of Latter-Rain.

It's not easy, and it's fair to say that the entire charismatic movement. atic movement today as it exists is descended in some way or another from lateral range. And there's estimates that, you know, 120 million people are in the global charismatic movement and it is a really big, really diverse movement.

It's one of the largest groups of Christians in the world today and so summarizing something as complex as that in a diagram is not something that can be easily done. I did try to make a small diagram where I've included the groups that we've talked about so far in this podcast series and then also some other significant groups that we've not even mentioned yet and maybe before we start talking about Paul Cain and Tommy Osborne and those figures today, I can just just give you a quick view of this diagram and you'll find them on this diagram just to show how these things relate.

So I can just take a minute to do that if you like. Yeah, I think we should go through it. When I first saw it, I was like, oh my gosh, I was actually going to try to write something programmatically that's a little bit interactive on the website and the problem I had in my head is the same that many of the people who contact us have in their head.

You look, you think in a very linear fashion, you think this person had some doctrine or theology or, you know, whatever, whatever, sometimes nonsense is in their head. And they influenced another person and then that person influenced, you know, somebody after that and you think in a very linear fashion.

But the problem is this is such a spaghetti mess of person A, influencing person B and person B, also influencing person A, multiply that by like a thousand and you've got this big mess of men who some of them had good intentions, I'm not going to say they were all bad guys, but some of them were insane, some of them, I mean, we have, we have on record that some of them were escaped from mental institutions and whatnot, it's unbelievable.

But they were cross pollinating and the problem is they would say something in this laterane revival and in the laterane, once it got into its full steam, there were no checks and balances. So if you claim that God spoke to you, you could say anything you wanted.

You could say that Walt Disney inspired Mickey Mouse to influence the nation towards Jesus Christ and you'd have a bunch of mouse cateers. I mean, it was that weird and it just, you know, it crossed pollinated and grew.

So we're still going through it on the website, but I have put the chart up and I'm trying to make each little node linkable so you can click onto it and go to the pages.

I doubt I have that up by the time this podcast is released, but I'm going through it and it will eventually be a thing that you can interact with on the website by clicking the little nodes.

screenshots in this video, if not for now, and let me just take a minute and I'll recap a few things we've talked about in early episodes, because a good part of the stuff that's on here we've already covered in quite extensive detail. But at the top, I have kind of three important ideological inputs to all of this, British Israelism, Christian science, and the higher life movement. And if you go back to the generation of men who started Pentecostalism, they were by and large influenced by all three of those things. And those three things were all

essential elements for the emergence of Pentecostalism. The restorationism comes from British Israelism, the positive confession practices come from Christian science, and the holiness lifestyle and teachings on salvation come from the higher life movement. So those are not the only influences into Pentecostalism, but in my opinion, they are the most critical. Because without those three elements, you don't have a zoosistry. It requires those three things to get you into a zoosistry.

And if you subtract any of those three, you don't get in a zoosistry revival. So all of the first generation of Pentecostal leaders were influenced by those. And we can actually even be sure that William Seymour was teaching degrees of all three of those things as well. There's even evidence in his writings for a watered-down version of British Israelism. And with Charles Parham and all the other leading figures of early Pentecostalism, they were without question. There's extensive documentation that they were all British Israelites, that they were all teaching positive confession, that they were all subscribed to the higher life movement. So out of all of the founding fathers

of Pentecostalism, William Seymour is really the only one where you could even make a case that he didn't fully embrace British Israelism. All the rest of them absolutely did. And so it's fairly easy to document that all those things are true. And if you take the time to study it out in honest way, you'll see that. And we've touched on those things in earlier podcasts. So this is what produced the first wave of Pentecostalism at the start of the 1900s. And if you want more information, you can go back and listen to our earlier podcasts. And we point you a lot of

books and resources where you can get more information on that in those episodes. But as you come into the 1940s, you have the healing revivals, you have the latter rain movement that have both go into full swing. And that leads into the second wave of Pentecostalism. And most every historian, you'll read on this, will tell you that William Brannum was the leading figure in the second wave of Pentecostalism. He influenced every faction coming out of the second wave. And now the healing revival during that time, which he was a leader of, was very heavily focused on miracles and positive

confession being required to have those miracles. And the healing revival side of thing had very broad appeal. While the latter rain side of things had a narrow audience and maybe narrow appeal, it was broader in the theology that it created. And William Brannum was also a leader in that side as well.

And that's where the manifested sons of God and five-fold ministry ideas developed. And the latter reign movement reformulated elements of the British Israel ideology as the nation of Israel was founded there in the 40s.

And they produced the version of restoration of teachings that I grew up with in the message, John. And so just to point out, British Israelism is where the message interpretation of Malachi 4.5 and 6 comes from, for example.

It's a, that is a remnant of British Israel theology that made its way into the message. And so as mainstream Pentecostalism gradually rejected all of that, the latter reign movement and the healing evangelist, they spun off and they created the charismatic movement.

And so that sets up a huge split that happens in Pentecostalism through the 50s and 60s. And the people who embraced the latter reign ideas largely separated out during the 50s, certainly by the 60s.

And two of the older and smaller Pentecostal denominations were actually totally taken over by latter reign. The Elim churches, which was a small denomination, they went full blown latter reign. And then the independent assemblies of God, which had originally been called the Scandinavian assemblies of God, which was international.

They also went full blown into latter reign. So those two denominations formed the framework for the early latter reign movement. Sharon Orphanage actually joined independent assemblies of God for a brief period of time.

Anyways, this time progressed, especially after that massive split happened in 1957, there ended up being hundreds of smaller groups and independent ministries all over the world spawned out of latter reign coming into the 1960s and the largest and most significant branches of the latter reign as it transitioned into the charismatic movement.

They're also represented here on this diagram. And that's the part we're probably going to be looking at today. And the two branches of the charismatic movement, which we want to look at today, which are part of what's called the second wave of Pentecostalism are the groups that were influenced by Paul Cain and the Kansas City Prophets.

And then the word of faith movement, which was influenced by Tommy Osborne and Kenneth Hagan. And keep in mind that each node in this diagram represents hundreds of different nodes forward and backward. You've got each one created their own splinter group of the latter reign movement.

Well, within that, that splintered as well. It is a never-ending splintered religion forwards and backwards. And you can trace it backwards in time. I mean, many people think that mistakenly that this started with William C. Moore and Charles Parham Dowie and these guys.

But this goes back as far as you want to trace it through time with records that we have access to see. You can go backwards almost in any direction because there's this weird influence of pagan and Christian religion that molded the characters of men throughout time.

We're talking millennia back in time, and this progressed into the influence that created this. One of the most interesting for me, you know, I went through several of these trails backwards, but one of the most interesting is the theaters of Dionysus to me, because you had this weird thing in the ancient religions that they, it was very much a stage act, and in the theaters of Dionysus they would submit, I don't know how many, it was like 30 different plays that were based off of the mythologies, and they would have awards.

If they selected your play, you might win an award, and I think they had four different plays that they presented, maybe it was two times a year, I'd have to go back and look, but each play represented a new element of the mythology, and it wasn't really so much that the people even believed that this was historically accurate in their mythological way, but it was new and inciting and entertaining.

The key element was it was entertaining, and what happened is the good plays entered into the mythology, and then plays were built on top of that, so you had this mythology that was pure fiction, and then they built on top of that mythology with more fiction, and this went on and on throughout time.

Well this type of thing, if you trace that all the way down in the lineage, you've got people like Jane Leed, who were Christian mystics, and her ministry was basically heavily influenced by nosticism, nosticism was heavily influenced by pagan religions, and it was this idea that you could take a Christian religion and mix it with the entertaining elements of the pagan religion and create new Christianity.

These weird entertaining things that they called Christianity prophecy or visions or whatever, and I think its Southcott had like the poetry style, where you fast forward through time and you find that entered into the United States, people like the House of David Colt were heavily influenced by this thing, and you find in Charles Price's Library, he has books by Jane Leed, and these were heavily influencing the Laterane Revivalists, and you can trace it all the way back into pagan religion.

And what's weirder is, if you look back at its origins, again its entertainment, it's not even intended to be true, but over time the people kept hearing it, kept hearing it, and it would enter into their minds and their mythologies as truth, what they're doing the same exact thing, and these Laterane Revivals, half the people that we've examined, I'm certain did not believe what they were saying, but it was entertainment, and they thought they were lies for the sake of an holy end or whatever, they thought the people coming to Christ because they entertained them. But then their children started believing this stuff.

And that's again, I say this is the episode where I'm going to say, what were they thinking? But Charles, you and I were raised in this. We really couldn't help what we were thinking.

That's what we were told. No, you're exactly right, Sean. And when you plug in the piece of British Israelism and you realize that's one of the influences into early Pentecostalism, you can trace so many of our beliefs back through that. I mean, that's where the belief in the Seven Church Age messengers come from. That's where the idea of a last day layout of seeing a messenger come from. I mean, all of that traces out to, you know, mid-18 and early 1800s of British Israelism is where all those concepts were born. And it seems like, John, the message in the Laterane branch of Christianity

or of Pentecostalism is the guys who got stuck with all of the remnants of British Israelism. And the rest of Pentecostalism seemed to escape that clutch. But somehow we, all the crazyness pooled over into Laterane and Pentecostalism reformed itself somewhat through the Laterane, through purging out all the Laterane. They pushed out all the crazy. And unfortunately our forefathers John were the crazy that got pushed out. And then that's what produced where we'd come from.

Where it gets scary as a Christian is that this was also, you know, the origins of this Laterane thing was also during a time whenever spiritualism was heavily influencing the United States. And John Alexander Dowey rode that wave when he came over to America. Dowey presented himself as a quote, Christian spiritualist. And he held sermons entitled How I Became a Medium.

And Dowey, you know, Dowey was one of the fathers of Pentecostalism, modern Pentecostalism. And you find in the Laterane movement, you find all of these men who basically were claiming to be mediums that they could communicate with the dead. William Brannum did this. He would often talk about how he appeared over the other side and spoke with the dead. Or I don't know if you've heard the stories in your sec Charles, but there would be mothers whose children died. And William Brannum would go speak to him and he would tell the mother they're happier on the other

side, which was all nonsense. You know, he was making this stuff up. But this was a, in the old covenant, this was punishable by death, what he was doing. And again, this is just modern spiritualism combined with all of this background of weird pagan ideas mixed that together and marry it with spiritualism. And you had the Laterane movement which produced the new apostolic reformation. Let's jump into the second wave of Pentecostalism. And as we do that, let's talk about Tommy Osborne first. Okay. So This is where we're connecting things from the message down to the second and

third wave of Pentecostalism. So, Tommy Osborne is a man who he stuck with William Brandham to the very end of his life. Through all the splits, all the divisions, Tommy Osborne stayed right in line with William Brandham. He never broke with him and I could be a mistaken but I don't think there's even anything on public record where Tommy Osborne ever broke with William Brandham even after his death to the best of my knowledge. Now, I could be mistaken there. And Tommy Osborne, along with the pastor of my church, was one of the men who

officiated William Brandham's funeral. So, we were very close to these people. And at the funeral, Tommy Osborne said, we got this on tape. Tommy Osborne said, on tape, at William Brandham's funeral, that William Brandham was God in the flesh. I mean, there's no way around it. And we got that Tommy Osborne saying that. So, Tommy Osborne was totally unbored with the manifested sons of God beliefs at the time. And Tommy Osborne believed that William Brandham was a manifested son of God. Yeah. It's really, really weird stuff, man. Because you're sect. I know you've mentioned it a few times. You embrace this. Our sect was

different. We, and I don't know how best to explain this because we knew that Tommy Osborne existed. William Brandham talked about him on recording. To some extent, we talked about it. We would say men like Tommy Osborne confirmed our prophet William Brandham. But it really stopped there. We never really made the leap to connecting this man that they're using as their example to the modern charismatic televangelist movement. I mean, when I discovered who Tommy Osborne actually was, I was like, they're talking about this guy. And this is their example for the prophet. And I was in the message at the time. I was like,

I was fully shocked whenever I learned who Tommy Osborne actually was. And again, like you said, he's preaching the manifested sons of God theology. He's the one, if I'm not mistaken, I think Tommy Osborne is the one who gave William Brandham that hideous slave statue that is in the dead. We've talked about he was deeply rooted in the white supremacy doctrines that William Brandham taught.

Now, whether he was a white supremacist, I don't know, but he was at least manipulated to to this level that he would give William Brandham this hideous thing in his den. Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah, my sect of the message still maintained friendly relationships with the people who were leaders of the word faith into the 1980s. Tommy Osborne, we were respectful and had good, like positive relations with them to the 1980s until Kenneth Hagen pulled what he pulled, which we'll talk about in the next episode. That was kind of the end of our of our positive relationship there, which had about that. But TL

Osborne was one of the pioneers of teleavangilism. He was on the full gospel businessmen program starting in the 1960s and he then moved over to TBN and CBN once those started up and those networks came together and he was very prominent. He had a lot of influence. He had a lot of name recognition and TL Osborne was one of the more senior ministers of the healing revival in that reign actually. He was highly regarded in all those circles and I would say honestly after William Branham and Oral Roberts and A.A. Allen, Tommy Osborne was probably

the fourth most famous evangelist coming out of those movements. I'd say he was certainly number four in popularity and as the charismatic movement began Tommy Osborne started working very closely with Kenneth Hagen and so Kenneth Hagen was more of a junior minister during the healing revivals and the ladder reign revivals. He was not all that famous at the time even though he's actually a little bit older than TL Osborne. Kenneth Hagen was another man who worked with William Branham actually to the very end. They were holding revivals together all the way up until 1964 1965. Here's some advertisements. We have the advertisements so they're meetings when they're

still together in those years. Even after William Branham died, Kenneth Hagen and Tommy Osborne continued to work with message leaders right up at least until the 1980s. I mean I know they were connected to leaders in our sex so there was a very long period for cross-pollination between the ladder reign and the message and these men who started the board of faith movement and those connections in that history was very well known to my sect of the message. Like I said, when we had direct contact with these people and so we also have documents you know of the business

relationship that they all set up with the voice of God and with Joseph and all that so they were all in a joint business opportunity together for their ministries now. Yeah I was really surprised the first time I saw that document ordinary people. There are actually two business entities created and if you look at the documentation there's if you are in the message there's some very recognized names in that document but Kenneth Hagen, TL Osborne were married with William Branham sons in these two business entities. Well I didn't discover this by happenstance. It was a person

who was very very close to William Branham that gave me this information and you know he didn't have all the documentation but he told me that they were still working together with the sons and he told me where to go look and you know he knew the county I think it was that it was it was involved so I started digging through the government records and oh my gosh I could not believe that the sons were still involved and they were setting up this I think there's a radio station back in the 80s they were they were planning on basically taking taking the show business

side of religion, marrying the message with Kenneth Hagen and T. L. Osborne and then going worldwide with it because this was, they called it ordinary people national, so it would be national radio and ordinary people, international.

And so they were preparing to spread this thing globally. And what happened there, I don't know, it kind of fizzled out. It honestly looks like two shell corporations to move money, but who knows what happened.

And anyway, this came directly from somebody who was very, very, very close to the Brannum family. I wish I could give the name, but I can't. Interesting stuff, John. Interesting stuff. Now, one thing that people say to defend Kenneth Hagen nowadays is that he claimed, and I'll be honest, I think this is garbage, but Kenneth Hagen claimed that he prophesied William Brannum would die for preaching false doctrine.

And according to Gordon Lindsay, he wrote that down on a piece of paper and filed it away in 1963. Now, of course, they never told anybody that in 1963, they didn't start telling people that until the 1980s.

Okay. So this is when I talk about our following out of the 1980s, okay. What better way to separate yourself from it? So when Gordon Lindsay wrote his autobiography here, which 20th century Barnabas, you remember the Brillian Brannum build himself 20th century prophet.

So Gordon Lindsay is by every 20th century Barnabas, you know. These people thought, well, highly of themselves, didn't they? So he wrote his autobiography, 20th century Barnabas, and he alludes to some of these things about William Brannum in his biography.

And eventually this finds itself into the hands of the leaders of our sect of the message, John. And we're like, you know, what in the world here 20 years later, you're telling us you had prophecies against William Brannum, like, you know, that's what about that, Gordon Lindsay?

What about that, Kenneth Hagen? So the people in our sect of the message, John, as that rumor starts going around, man named Richard Gann, who is one of the leading ministers in our sect of the message back then.

He's from Singapore. I've met him a number of times. He used to come to our international conventions. But he started firing off a number of letters to these guys to try and get to the bottom of all of this.

And I've got copies all of his correspondence. But he sent a letter to Gordon Lindsay. And in the Gordon Lindsay, in the letter to Gordon Lindsay, Gordon Lindsay wrote back, we got the letter from him where he confirms that Kenneth Hagen made the prophecy that William Brannum was preaching false doctrine and was going to die.

So then Richard Gann sends the letter to Kenneth Hagen. What about that, Kenneth Hagen? And Kenneth Hagen replies back very interestingly. Here's Kenneth Hagen's reply letter. Kenneth Hagen basically pretended like he didn't know anything about him's own prophecy and he pointed him back to Gordon Lindsay.

Zian said, basically blamed it on Anna Schrader. Yeah. But he basically did not take credit for this prophecy that Gordon Lindsey, so I don't know, John. It's all weird. It's all very weird to me.

And I gotta be honest, I think it's a little bit fishy that Kenneth Hagen didn't take credit for this prophecy when our sect of the message asked him about it directly. And so anyways, all those people out in the word of faith movement, you guys are cousins to the message ideologically, you know.

And back in the 1980s, we still had quite a few links between our groups. Kenneth Hagen knew who we were, right? I mean, Kenneth Hagen knew who we were. And he was still friendly with us.

That's why we got answers to our letters that we sent to him, right? And we were surprised to find out he had prophesied these things about William Brownham because we were, we thought well of these people somewhat still back then.

But here's the thing too, because while at the same time Kenneth Hagen was supposedly given this prophecy that was locked away that William Brownham was gonna die for preaching false doctrine, he was still holding meetings with William Brownham in the same years in part of the business enterprise with the Brownham family, which I gotta say to me, this is all pretty disgusting.

And John, I just gotta say, I have a very low view of people who pretend like they knew William Brownham was a bad apple. And then they did absolutely nothing about it, but write it down on a piece of paper so they could pull it out later and say, hey, look at me, I predicted the future, right?

Derek Prince is another guy who did that. Gordon Lindsey did that. Quite a few people did that. And I personally find that really disgusting, I think, having come out of this cult, because you know, if they knew he was a bad apple and they failed to warn the people about it, the Bible actually says some pretty bad things about them, right?

And to the best of my knowledge, none of those guys ever did the first thing to warn anybody about William Brownham in all those years. It was only well after the fact they trought these things out.

And to me, that's pretty pathetic. You know, what's interesting to me is, we have established connections that we can easily prove. I mean, you can look through voice of healing magazines, you can look through all of these different revivals in the newspapers.

And these men were married together, like family, up until the point, whenever the assemblies of God started denouncing William Brownham in the latter reign, these men were heavily laterane. And you know, Kenneth Hagen, T. L. Osborne, they were touring with William Brownham.

But before that, it gets even more interesting because both T. L. Osborne and Kenneth Hagen were concentrated right in the area where Roy Davis had the heaviest influence. I think Kenneth Hagen was from, is it McKinney, Texas?

He was right there, you know, in Texas, and you had T. L. Osborne from Oklahoma. Well, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louis. Diana was to concentrated area where Roy Davis was having his most impact as he was, you know, building his white supremacy empire.

Shreveport specifically was heavily influenced by Davis. And when the assemblies of God were promoting William Brannum and they were getting excited with the levitating boy, little David Walker, you had all these weird connections that were coming together.

And again, I'm not saying that they're white supremacists, but again, T.L. Osborne is the one that gave the slave statue. And Kenneth Hagen was heavily involved with William Brannum's laterane revival until William Brannum's dead.

And then after he's dead, you've got to kind of separate yourself from this weird thing that you're in. Once the nation realizes this is just not Christianity. So he denounces William Brannum and he says that I had this prophecy, which as you pointed out, he also denied.

So the whole thing, again, it's just so much like the stage act. It doesn't matter what they say. As long as it's entertaining, the people will eat it up. I got a lot of the correspondence actually between our sect of the message in Kenneth Hagen.

And like I said, we're still friendly with Kenneth Hagen up to the 1980s. And when the stuff happened and we found out Kenneth Hagen had prophesied against William Brannum, that was when things deteriorated there.

And I honestly suspect that's why Kenneth Hagen wouldn't straight up tell Richard again that he made this prophecy because he didn't want to alienate us at the time. Just that's a speculation. But at any rate, T.L. Osborne and Kenneth Hagen, they get the credit as being the founding fathers of the word of faith movement and Hagen especially.

But the word of faith movement is just a branch of the latter-ranked movement and it was highly influenced by William Brannum. There's no question. I mean, you can read interviews of T.L. Osborne and Kenneth Hagen where they both are very upfront and direct in saying that's where they learn their word of faith beliefs, you know, in the William Brannum campaigns.

You know, and here's the thing. Again, we don't even have to guess. They're very direct and open about where they learn their beliefs. And let me read you a quote from one of them here.

This is from an interview with T.L. Osborne in 1982. And in this interview, T.L. Osborne tells us how he was introduced to positive confession and the teachings that led to the word of faith movement. And here in this quote, he was in a William Brannum meeting and Robert Slareden was the one conducting this interview.

And he says, T.L. Osborne says, I was weeping at the Brannum meeting. I went out of the auditorium, changed for life. I believed I could do that because that was what the way they did it in the Bible.

Now right after that, I found books by two people, E. W. Canyon, who to this day I think is given the world the most wonderful remarkable collection of books next to the Bible that exists.

The E.W. Canyon collection of books, it's my only Bible school. I wasn't fortunate enough to go to Bible school, so I read his books. You can, you ask about Brother Bosworth, I got his book, Christ the Healer.

And if you recall, that book is basically excerpts of Kenyans book. To my delight, right after that, of course, we began to do what we saw Brother Brannum do, and it worked. Right after that, we went to visit another one of his crusades, an FF Bosworth with teaching in the afternoons and the evenings prior to Reverend Brannum coming and praying for the sick.

That's where I got to hear FF Bosworth, an old gentleman, 75 years old at the time, and I was 25. The thing that intrigued me and impressed me about FF Bosworth, he preached a great sermon, for example, one day on confession, positive confession.

When he got all through with the sermon, everybody was thrilled, everybody was convinced. He made a great impact upon us. So very clearly, Tommy Osborne's telling us he left the Brannum meetings. He got Kenyans books, which FF Bosworth knew Kenyans personally, right?

He was advertising Kenyans books at the Revivals. Bosworth had been with Kenyans in Zion, John Alexander's Taoise Commune. They were both in the Christian missionary alliance together too, right? And so Osborne learned the word of faith stuff in the Brannum meetings.

That is explicitly what he said. And that's not the only time he said that. And so I know we covered how all of this happened, how these guys got this ideology. We covered that back in episode 19, 2021, so you can go back and listen to that if you want more details.

But these guys got this stuff through William Brannum's campaigns. You know, you can't say that William Brannum is the one who popularized it. But if you look back at the sermons, you can find elements of what these men created for their entertainment strategy, right?

Directly from William Brannum sermons. The sermons we even have access to see. We don't even know what else they heard beyond the ones that we have access to see in here. So these men were heavily influenced by William Brannum.

And Kenneth Hagen, I mean, even take the name of his Rema Bible College. The word Rema just simply means the spoken word. I don't think people really make that connection. Rema means spoken word.

In Latter-Rain, Rema was a huge, huge phrase that was very popular in Latter-Rain because it meant spoken word. Yeah. So you had William Brannum in the spoken word publications, which distributed all of his books.

You know, the transcripts of his sermons globally was called spoken word publications. Partnered with, you know, according to government records. Partnered with Kenneth Hagen, who has Rema Bible College in schools. And they're all spoken word.

And you take all of these different ministries. They've got their twist on. what they call it, but essentially it is talking about the manifested sons of God who are bringing the quote spoken word to the people.

Some people in word of faith movement, John, they do, they might pretend that William Brannum paid no role in their beliefs, but you know, it's really just not true. You know, out of their own mouths, Tommy Osborne and Kenneth Hagen both tell that the Brannum campaigns paid a key, played a key role in teaching them their positive confession beliefs.

There's just no question. I mean, Kenneth Hagen and Tommy Osborne learned this stuff from William Brannum's campaign revivals, which they were both actively participating with him on the stage in, okay? And remember the beliefs, these beliefs are not original to William Brannum, but he was the conduit passing those beliefs to them.

And I want to point out again, you know, there is an authentic miraculous power of God. I absolutely believe that. But positive confession, like it's practiced in the word of faith movement and in other latter-ranked groups, is not, I don't believe Christian practice, and I know we've exposed that head on as we've went through this series, you know, walking around and saying you have something which you don't actually have is lying.

It's not faith, it's lying, right? You know, saying you're healed, but you're not really healed, is not faith, it's lying, right? And I would even see this first hand where I come from, John, you know, there would be, this happened many times.

Someone would be sick, and we would pray for them, and then we'd all claim their healing. They're going to be healed. They say I'm going to be healed, and then a few days later we're having their funeral.

And the preacher would be standing right next to the dead body, and they'd say, well, they're healed now. And the people would say, hey, man, they're healed now. You know, the dead body is right in front of them, they're healed now.

You know, in word of faith, the way that we would practice it, and people practice it, is not really a word of faith, it's just words of untruth, it's lies. You know, the body was not healed, that body was dead.

And training someone to say dead people were healed, I mean, that's training them to believe lies. And it's actually something that becomes very dangerous when it's combined with some of the other cultic practices that were developed in the latter-rain movement.

And positive confession is dangerous. It's something, you know, we've exposed head-on in this podcast because it's actually a key pillar of the mind-control techniques that were employed by these latter-rain groups. Positive confession is a killer.

There have been untold thousands of people killed by positive confession beliefs. You know, we've even went through some documented cases in these podcasts. And William Brannum and FF Bosworth were the conduit who passed those ideas to the men who started the word of faith movement.

And so everyone in the word of faith movement, who's practicing positive confession, is indeed partially descended in their idea. from William Brannum's Laterane teachings, whether they realize it or not. And again, not that the teachings were original to William Brannum, but he was the middle man bringing those teachings to a new generation who then produced the word of faith movement.

And so, you know, the ideology of Kenneth Copeland, and all of his followers today is partially descended from William Brannum. It is one of the doctrines that for me is, it just angers me and it hurts me deeply because I know people.

I know people who use the positive confession and they had some disease that the body could naturally heal itself or they got medication and healed themselves and, you know, they got healed. They got better and that's, you know, that's fine.

You can say God healed them or God gave the medical, you know, doctors and medicine industry, the power to give the drug that helped them. That's fine. But the problem that I have is that there are people who have incurable diseases or they have some affliction that can never be cured.

There is no medical science that could make it happen. And there is no way in which that they, like a person who has a severed limb is not going to grow another limb. That's just not going to happen.

But there are people that they take this positive confession and they say, well, I believe in my faith, my leg's gonna grow back. And the problem is it's not gonna grow back, but they will go until their grave saying, by God I'm healed and, you know, everybody around, as a kid, you're looking at this person with no leg, well, you're probably not gonna get healed, right?

But this person has this false hope that will never come to be. And I know people who have went to their graves dying with whatever affliction that they confess to be healed from. And if you were to not see the actual person just hear their testimony and they have these testimonies online, you can go see them, those zoom in on the face and they won't show so much of the actual affliction.

And this person saying, glory to God I was healed and I claimed it and I still, my body tries to tell me that I'm not healed, but by God I'm healed and they still have it.

It's just really, really sad because these people will never get this, they'll never get the fruits of their false hope. Yeah, you know, it's something else, John. It is something else. I look back on some of that stuff with a little bit of horror at this point.

I'm just imagining the preacher standing next to the dead bodies telling us that they've been healed. I mean, that's, it's very hard to wrap my mind around how we swallowed that back then. But I mean, that's, crazy things happen when you're in a cult.

You'll believe that dead people are healed, you know? We did, we believe that dead people were healed of it. They're healed, but they weren't healed. Oh my goodness. So anyway, on tape, William Brampton.

talks about Tommy Osborne a lot. And on tape, William Brannum actually says that Tommy Osborne spent a whole year with William Brannum's team to learn their practices before he then went out on his own.

So I show that quote. And Kenneth Hagen though, he's a little bit more of an interesting case, John. He's somebody who has been largely cut out of the tapes. Yes. And that's curious. So we know William Brannum was holding joint revivals with Hagen all the way up till 1965, the year that William Brannum died.

We even have some of the original uncut tapes where Hagen is indeed on the tapes, giving prophecies at the William Brannum meetings even, right? And playing along with everything. But for some reason, almost every single reference to Kenneth Hagen has been cut out of the tapes.

And unless you knew it or took time to compare the revival schedules, you would never even know that Kenneth Hagen and William Brannum were working together in those years. Because they have scrubbed a whole lot of the evidence.

And like I said, though, Hagen maintained connections with message leaders all the way into the 1980s for sure. And I also think it's worth pointing out, John, that Hagen incorporated and launched his independent ministry in 1963, which is probably the most important year in all of message history, 1963, which we'll cover in 1963 in another episode.

But where I come from, John, I mean, 1963 is right there with the advent of Christ in the most important year in human history, OK? 1960. Yeah, right. And so 1963, and then it was in 1966, just after William Brannum died, that Hagen actually started recording and selling his own tapes.

So it was just immediately after the death of William Brannum that Hagen sets up, really sets up his foundation and launches his own ministry. And so it's really totally accurate for us to say that the launch of Hagen's independent ministry was connected to what was going on in the message in those years.

And so I think it's fair to say William Brannum is even the man who introduced Hagen to the full gospel businessman. And there's even a prophecy on tape, or Kenneth Hagen is prophesying blessings on the message, right?

I mean, we have that on tape. So Kenneth Hagen was right in bed with these latter ring groups during the 1960s. There's just no way around it. And as you go into the later 1960s, it ends up with Kenneth Hagen turning into one of the big faces on the full gospel businessman's television lineup, which probably would have been William Brannum's slot if he was still alive.

Yeah. I've thought about that often. T.L. Osborne, Kenneth Hagen, all these guys that William Brannum were so deeply connected to, they all had this televangelist thing. And you know William Brannum would have been there.

You said the 1963 comment. And I think I've made it on here before, but... I never forget I was talking to somebody back when I was in the message and I said something that William Brannum said and they disagreed they even back then as a as a message believer I was a little shocked that I knew the tapes inside and out I listened to these things constantly in my head I get almost quote some of them verbatim and I said something William Brannum said and this guy just vehemently denied it he he disagreed with me and I said look man it's I've got the tape you

want to hear the tape brother was that before 1963 or was that after 1963 there are people who believe that anything before 1963 that William Brannum said you can completely ignore it it doesn't count unless it's after 1963 yeah that we've got to do full episode on that that is the year that the message generally believes that William Brannum became God incarnate yeah in some form or another yeah and I've got it in my book the preacher behind the white hoods but if you line up that with what's going on in the civil rights movement it's kind of weird because that's also the

move that's also the point in time in which the civil rights battle exploded and you had the third wave of the Ku Klux Klan so here you've got third wave of white supremacy and you've got third pool of William Brannum and they're all it's happening at the same time and like you've mentioned the people who were reporting of you know on the revivals of William Brannum and the others they're starting to notice wait a minute I just went to a Ku Klux Klan rally and these same people are in the same meetings so before we wrap this episode up let me touch on the full gospel business

amendment just a little bit because they were a powerhouse in the 1960s and 1970s and they were really a key to the success of this whole thing they financed a lot of the forays and to tell of evangelism they were financing all Roberts William Brannum Tommy Osborne, Kenneth Hagen, Paul Kane, Derek Prince on and on really the majority of the leading evangelists who kicked off the charismatic movement were all financed by the full gospel businessmen during the 1960s and I think it's fair to say that as the healing revival died down it was in a lot of ways the full gospel businessmen

who picked the winners and the losers who could survive and then go on to leading positions in the charismatic movement they picked the winners I think is very fair to say as it took their financial support for the big names to survive the financial pinch that happened as the revivals came to an end and Demeshikarian who's part of the Kardashian family he was the mastermind behind all of that yeah and again think of the entertainment industry you have the Kardashian family let me see that Again, De-Cardashian family, who's involved with this thing, and they're creating business men.

They're seeing this as a business opportunity. They didn't call it the good news opportunity. This is the business men. So you've got this business industry of creating entertainment, Christian entertainment, and they recognize the power of it, and they used it to its fullest potential, and these guys made billions of dollars.

I mean, if you combine every single one of these men who are under this umbrella of the full gospel business men, there is no telling how much money actually flowed through that thing. And as you come into the 1980s, the full business men started to fall on hard times.

Their membership went into steep decline in the 80s, and a lot of that corresponds to a decline in Demise, Shakarian's health. And from the things I've read, they honestly started to get very cultish in those years, full gospel business men themselves.

Demise, Shakarian thought he had a special mission from God, and he basically refused to retire, and we turned the organization over to someone in good health. And he more or less paralyzed the organization coming into the 1980s and through the 80s.

So the majority of the governing board thought he was running the organization into the ground, and they actually launched a coup to try and remove him as head of the organization. And Gerald Lee Walker, who, if you'll remember, is the same name as Sarah Brannem's lawyer, who threatened to steal all the message leaders, also in the late 80s and early 90s.

He was actually one of the leaders on the governing board of the full gospel business men. And he also found evidence of financial issues at the full gospel business men. And he accused Demise Shakarian of misusing, misappropriating funds of the organization.

And so the whole organization went into a pretty deep crisis and was paralyzed for quite a few years in that period of time. And the organization has never really recovered from those setbacks in the late 1980s.

They're still around. They're still an important group today, but they're no longer the central, no longer so central to the charismatic movement, like they were in the 1960s, 1970s, but they were a powerhouse of this movement in the 60s and 80s.

They were the financial engine of this movement in that time. And again, you have to take a step back and say, what were they thinking? You can take any one of these ministries and you can take any of the children who is involved with this thing, whose parents were involved with this thing.

And they will fight to the end to tell you that this was a move of God that these men were, quote unquote, God's generals, but this thing that was created was nothing but entertainment.

And the entertainment industry, the Christian entertainment industry, produced these men. with these weird things, we should play the clip, Charles, where Kenneth Hagen is going into one of his prophecies. It sounds ridiculous. Half of these people, I think, who are supporters of this movement have no idea what these prophecies actually sounded like. You can tell the guys just making it up on the fly as he goes, but they'll tell you he was a true prophet of God.

If some of these prophecies of Kenneth Hagen, and I don't mean to be disrespectful. I don't mean to be, you know, I love people, and I'm sure there's many, many good people in the word of faith movement.

God bless you all. I hope you all do well and prosper. I truly wish you prosperous blessings in the word of faith movement. Okay, but when you listen to some of these, Kenneth Hagen needed put in a straight jacket and sent to an insane asylum with some of this stuff. I mean, if it wasn't demonic possession, he was mentally deranged some of this stuff. I mean, the phew, phew. And then that's a prophecy. You got to be kidding me. Yeah. I mean, but that is literally his prophecy. Some of the stuff, it was just noises like that and you can

ahahaha Shuh, shuh, shuh. Mama, mama, mama Holy cow, John. I mean, there's nothing like that in the Bible, no, I mean, this is, it's uh, bizarre it's a bizarre stuff. He's having some kind of mental crack up if it's real.

I no longer think it was a demon, I no longer think it was real. This was a man who was entertaining crowds and he found that he could make these motions in these noises and the crowds would go wild.

They would eat it up. Oh my gosh, this guy is huffing and puffing for God. But again, just take a step back and think what you're going. Think if somebody come up to you from off of the street and walked up with one of these signs, Jesus is coming, the end is near and started huffing and puffing at you.

Would you actually listen? This guy would just walk away. But if you're in a crowd of a thousand people and they've hyped you up in this entertainment style, the people eat it up and again Charles, what were they thinking?

I think that if Jesus meant Kenneth Hagen, he would cast off whatever that terrible thing on him was a president. That's what happened if Kenneth Hagen actually met Jesus. That's not a healthy mind that behaves the way that Kenneth Hagen played.

Yeah, it's a crazy, crazy history. And again, what were they thinking? If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.hagen.com William-Branum.org and ChristianGospelChurch.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.