Weird Doctrines: Bowling Just for the Sin of It

Music Another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, James Goad.

And together, we're examining the unusual things that preachers say, the history behind what they say, and how it traces back through time through the latter-rain healing revivals. James, we had some overwhelmingly good feedback on the first episode that we did, and had so many people contact us and tell us to please look at this thing that my preacher said, or this other thing that my preacher said, it's so weird.

Where did it come from? And I was actually just a little surprised at how good the first attempt at this went. Yeah, no, for a first episode, it was a good start. I think the biggest question that people have that we do need to answer is everybody suddenly said, who's James?

Where did he come from? And a lot of people don't realize just how much we've worked together for the past few years. We've dug into some very, very strange things, and maybe it'd be good if you just took a minute and told listeners who you are or where you came from.

Right, so I was born and raised in the message, and it was not necessarily similar to your sect because you were in the main sect, but I was in a sub-sect, but yeah, so I was born and raised, you know, was around it my entire life.

You know, things started getting, things definitely started changing once my parents left the message. That was a very interesting time, and I was still very much into the message, you know, it was the only thing that I knew, and I believed it is the truth.

So even when they pulled away, I was pretty steadfast, and I clung onto it. And then it was probably, sometime after that time, I started on my own journey of questioning, you know, seeing things stand out, and you're just like, you can't really understand that.

And then you start digging in and learning more about what's said and... what's not repeated later on in newer versions of different ministries and how people choose to present the words of someone like William Brannum. It really starts to open your eyes on all of which are not being told and then what you are being told, the larger context that is completely left out and completely changes everything that you've been told for your entire life. So that's that's kind of my origin story of how I got here. You know and then you know we've through my research I connected with you and started comparing things that I

was finding and the you know things that you had already had found and you know it's it's kind of just gone from there. You know it's kind of funny because some of the feedback and I'll be open with you and share it in front of the world right. Some of the feedback is John what are you doing this guy so young and you're just a kid right. But sometimes it takes somebody who's thinking in a much different way to help you think outside of the box you meaning me think outside of the box and it's it's a fresh perspective right. Some of the things

that you found are just mind boggling but some of it's ingenious because I you know I'm a little bit older and I was in this thing for 37 years of my life you know I was in it in a version of the message that actually no longer exists after we began publishing all of our research in 2012 it's so weird man because we I remember you know I went from churches from Arizona to South Carolina everywhere in between and you would hear these ministers stand up and say that this is more accurate than today's newspaper and you know they they

created the spulse notion that this movement was filled with nothing but truth it was you couldn't find anything more true than this and when we began publishing the research and we realized that a majority of what was taught was completely purely fiction they started changing it and I think right before I met you I heard this minister say well it's okay that William Brannum and all of these key figures are lying through their teeth because Abraham and the Bible was a liar and I'm like what in the how did it get into that well then you

know we connected and your research is just unbelievable I'm kind of excited to get into it but it was a new perspective because it was a version of the message that I never even knew existed it had transitioned and Some of the things that you found have opened many doors and I think the deeper we go it's going to blow some minds.

Yeah, it's quite fascinating to see, you know, the sex that I was familiar with have evolved so rapidly since, you know, your research has come out and has just blown so many doors wide open that people were desperately trying to keep closed.

So it's caused a lot of these groups to really hyper evolve in a very fast way and some of the things that they've tried to come up with to explain away some of the things that you found just help even create such a more strong dichotomy between what they're trying to say it is and what it actually is because they're just creating so much more of a mess trying to fix it.

It's like they're trying to bail water out of a ship that's full of holes, you know, and you know, it's kind of comical to watch in one sense, but in other sense, it's, you know, there are people who are affected by it.

So yeah, it reminds me of the Looney Tunes cartoon. I don't know if you've seen it where your Sam and he Sam is on the ship and he's fighting Bugs Bunny and Bugs Bunny is just obliterating the ship and he's standing on what, you know, as the ship's being blown away, there's just this little tiny piece that he can even stand on and it goes down and he goes down with the ship.

There are some ministers in this that are doing this. There's a large number though that I'm noticing our jumping ship just because they see the opportunity to jump, not because they would have ever changed their mind or their ways, but they realize that this is a problem, you know what I mean?

I think the bigger thing that has happened is, you know, through the history that's been uncovered, there are ministers who preach things that they don't even understand themselves. They have no idea where it comes from because it's not in the Bible and they're preaching it because that's what they've been told, not because they've looked into the Bible to find it.

And it's weird because if you hear two people preach the same thing, both of which know that it's not in the Bible, don't understand why they're preaching it. They go in different directions because they're completely, you know, standing on the sinking ship as it's going down. And the thing that you found for today's episode, it kind of paints the picture of that, but it's even deeper because you take an extra biblical thing, doctrine, whatever it is, and take another extra biblical doctrine, things that did not even exist at the time the Bible was written. So there was no way it could be a biblical doctrine. And then you take

another doctrine and build on top of that. You've got this weird thing that these ministers do not understand, and today's clip, the clip itself and the doctrine itself isn't that interesting, but the history behind it is absolutely fascinating. Right, and like you said, they'll try to take what the prophet messenger said, and then they'll try to shoehorn it into the Bible somehow, and they'll say, well, because it's not in the Bible, these things are new. They weren't there when the Bible was was was written and put into words. And so we need a prophet for this day to bring us the revelation of why these current day

things are wrong. Because without the prophet messenger, we wouldn't know that X, Y, and Z is wrong. So, you know, that's that's why it's required. And so that's how they try to weave in the extra biblical stuff. And it yeah, it just it really does get into some really comical territory sometimes when you can kind of step back and look at what's being said beyond the pressures of believing that this is right and you're trying to line up to it. Because when it's there, that is actually very harmful. And in the moment, because you're trying to force your mind to wrap around this this thing that can't possibly be

true, but you're being told it's true. And you believe that it's from a true source. So then you're trying to force yourself to conform to it. But when you take a step back and you look at it, it yeah, it does get kind of comical when you look at it from that perspective. Exactly. And they say, I've heard it so many times, we need a new prophet. Many of these people, you know, they came from this laterane movement, which had many, many prophets plural. And they built entire ministries and eventually cult followings that grew off of this

thing where there's this guy claiming to be a prophet. And they are saying we want the rules. Tell us what we can do. Tell us what we can't do. It reminds you of the children of Israel. And Moses came down the mountain with the 10 commandments, which were basically a moral code that could apply to any given situation. Be nice to people. Be nice to your wife. Don't cheat on her. Don't steal from people. The basics, right? And they said, no, no, go go tell us the rules. We want rules. And so that's how the mosaic law was established.

And the possible Paul called it as dung because it was worthless to live your life that way. And so these these men are doing the same thing today. And you know, like the clip that you have, it's just so weird because you can't even take this thing and apply it to religion at all, but they try to.

Christians bowling now in the message. How many of those just be honest? How many knows the program said about, but about bowling and. bowling alleys. He said it's one of the most foul places, more evil spirit, and that's where a lot of adultery goes on. We're going to go bowling. That's cool. Let's all do it.

We're all young people. We're all together. We're all going to have fun bowling. Great. What did the Prophet say? Well, why is he against bowling? I don't know. He knows. He knows why. It's the hour. It's the time. If any man loves the world, the love of the father is not water. Ruth, if you begin to go outside, you don't love me. No matter how much you can say you love me, buy your action. I can tell whether you love me or not. If you love the world, this is why it's tough for the young people to get this because he's cutting the world off

and they feel like they're cutting the fun out of us. We need to go to, we used to go to the soccer ball. We used to go to the basketball. We need to go, I mean, we used to go to the bowling alleys.

We used to hang out like this. When you begin to enter sanctification, ball has begun to cut them off. I don't want you to go there. I don't want you to go there. I don't want you to go there. I don't want you to go there. Praise God. We can be in the bowling alley or some crazy place today, but God rich and mercy saved ourselves. So James, this one is really funny to me because for I want to say the first 25 years of my life, I did not know that we were not supposed to bowl. I never went.

I was not really, you know, I'm more into music if you can't tell. I never really was into sports. So I never had really a desire to go bowling, but age, I want to say it was like 25 as the first time 26 something like this had some friends who were also in a different branch of the call to different sect and their sect had no idea they weren't supposed to bowl. So they group up and were going bowling and I went with them and I went bowling and I remember coming back telling some friends that I actually played really well. I think I want to say I got 230, which was really

good for your first time bowling, right? Right. And I get back and I tell some friends, oh brother, you went bowling. That's familiar. Yeah. So I'm curious. In your sect, were you also forbidden to go bowling? This is actually quite funny. So I was raised and you know, I know my family had interacted with a few different groups before they settled on the one that I was raised and ultimately, so there were some carryover between different groups and stuff like that, so I'm not really sure quite where this originated, but yeah, I was kind of raised that way to believe that it was wrong to go bowling.

It was one of the things that was off limits and we shouldn't do. It wasn't until I got older and started hanging out with some of the youth and was able to take myself places that some of the youth group that I was with were like, hey, let's go bowling today.

Let's go bowling. I was like, I'm like, wait, you guys want to go bowling? What's going on? Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong and I ended up going and I had a fun time and I've bowed many times since then, but it was also one of those things where these people were, these youth that I was interacting with were in the same group or in the same church that I was in, but then you go to another state or another city and that church claims to be preaching the exact same stuff and they're vehemently against bowling.

I'm not quite sure if my church took a stance on it or not. You kind of notice this, some churches in the message kind of be a little bit more liberal in some areas and some of it kind of tends to be where the pastor sort of leans and so some of that gets kind of hard to decipher sometimes and let through explicitly saying it over the pulpit, but yeah, it was kind of very interesting position for me to be put into the first time that I was asked to go and yeah, I'm glad I did because it was a lot

of fun and I just, I don't know, I can't see the big fuss that gets put on about it because it's really not that big a deal. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to picture a normal Christian who's never heard these weird things.

I mean, take a kid, you put a kid out there and you give him a ball and you give him something to hit and what's the first thing he's going to do, right? Yeah.

He's going to try to hit with the ball because it's just fun. I mean, that's what kids do, especially boys. Right. You know, there's all these minefields you have to walk around when you're in groups like this because there's always so many rules and regulations and it seems like when you really look at it, it seems like they're trying to take the fun out of just about everything.

And you know, you could find some bad example of some things somewhere where there was some bad thing that happened like you can say, you know, well, somebody got drunk at a bowling alley or some bad thing happened here.

And you could pretty much make anything off limits if you tried hard enough. And it's almost, it almost feels like that's what's going on sometimes as people are just deliberately trying to make this stuff as off limits.

as possible. There's so many directions we could go with this, James. The most fascinating history to me of all, I think, is the history of the Nostics and the Ascetics. The people who literally thought that they could become better Christians by putting all of these extra rules and nonsense on their shoulders and save themselves, which is the opposite of what the New Testament says to do. You've got the Ascetics. I don't know if you've seen the Da Vinci code where the guy is mutilating his flesh by beating himself with a, I don't know, belt or whatever it is. There are these people that they think that

they can do this and this makes them more holy because they're denying the flesh and they've taken one phrase of the Bible out of context and they're denying themselves. But they're avoiding entire other passages in the Bible.

All things are pure, all things are holy, but not all things are leading us in a good way. In other words, you can do these things, but is it helping you or is it hurting you? In other words, you know, there's a there's a scripture that don't let anybody tell you that you can't drink and you can't eat certain things because all things are righteous, but don't get drunken. You know, the Bible talks about, you know, all things in modesty, all things in moderation and what it's essentially telling you is that if you become drunk, you're gonna do

things that you wish you didn't do and some of those things may not be holy and maybe sinful. So interestingly, that is more in line with the current what the recent history of the bowling doctrine. And so I thought we'd dig in today a little bit into just how bowling evolved and how it how it became a thing in the United States and why in the United States, you've got these Christians who say don't go bowling. And in other countries, they're like, what in the heck are you talking about, man? Right. Because in America, it's not just the message

cult and it splinter groups believe it or not that teach against bowling. This was a widespread notion that if you bold, you're sinning and it has some very early roots in United States history that for me is it's just fascinating. So yeah, funny enough you should mention that because I also was looking into some of the history of bowling and just trying to wrap my brain around where some of the stuff may have come from. And one of the things that I one of the things I landed on was that the Puritans actually had an interesting history with

bowling as they separated from the church and things like that and they were trying to reform and they had all different views around what was going on. Even like when they first came to the States, it was pretty strict, and that was one of the things that was off limits.

It did eventually change over time in Lusin in some areas, but it is fascinating to see how these groups can, like the Puritans, for example, at one point in time, they have such a vicious reaction to something like bowling, and then over time, you know, that and other things were not, they weren't as against it later on.

Yeah, it's such a weird way in which the doctrines against bowling evolved, and as interesting how bowling itself evolved, because again, if you give a kid a ball and you give him something to hit, he's going to try to hit it.

And so they have a difficult time even determining the actual origin of the game, right? The earliest I think they found was in ancient Egypt, probably 5,200 BC or so, they found that there were some Egyptian, I think there were even hieroglyphs of a Egyptian figure holding a ball, and there's some pins.

It wasn't anything like today's game, but like the kid who has a ball, they're throwing a ball, and they're hitting something because, hey, that's fun, right? That same thing developed in other countries, and a country that weren't even influenced by ancient Egypt.

So it just kind of progressed in a cumulative way. So varying countries had varying ways in which you could hit the thing with the ball. And like the pins that we have now, the type of game that we have now in the pins in the shape of a triangle, did not evolve that way in other countries historically.

They might have pins in a line or they might have different sets of things to hit with the ball, but it progressed in Germany, in England, and in the ancient world, they have found it in ancient Egypt, but no doubt there were other countries that had a kid and had something that the kid could hit with a rock or a ball, right?

So it evolved almost universally as this thing, this game where you could hit something with the ball. And what's interesting is even though these groups in the, I think it was probably the late 1800s, early 1900s, American Christianity started deeming this thing to be evil for a reason which we'll get into.

But some of, you know, the game also came into the United States from Germany, from London, from England. America was this melting pot of all of these different nations, so they were influenced by multiple games of bowling, multiple kids through the thing, through the ball at the thing to hit, right?

Well, in Germany, the monks in Germany used this as a almost like a celebration of casting out demons. It was like a religious ritual where they could roll a rock into a club. I think they called it a cagle or something like this, and it represented the heathenistic ways.

And so you're literally taking an object and you're throwing it, something that you can symbolically do as a ritual to show that you are conquering your sins. So when the game came into America from Germany, it actually had a very good religious connotation.

When it came from England, however, the England, you know, I think it was a popular thing to do in the pubs in England, and so the English influence had the games was something that you do when you drink, and we'll get into that history a bit more, but it was the association of the game with the drinking that actually made it evolve into something that was spiritually unsound.

Right, and the thing that is so funny about that is that you have two ways of partaking in this thing, you know, whether some people call it bowling or not, it's the root of it's kind of similar.

And so you have these people today wanting to say that it's just evil. There is no way about it, you know, if you're caught bowling, then, you know, God help you, because, you know, we can't help you.

And so, but you look at this, and it's not as so simple as to just say that it's evil outright, you know, and just because you had a messenger that you believe to be true, say that it's evil, that doesn't just make it evil.

And it's, yeah, it is crazy when you start digging through the history, start putting more things together, just like this entire process of coming out of these groups, the more you put together, the more history you combine, it helps create a more accurate picture of how things really are.

And it really helps demystify some of these things and keep it from being so, yeah, so Googleish sometimes in the way it's presented. Yeah, so I guess, you know, for me, the fascinating history of bowling that I'm going to choose for this episode, I think, has to do with the temperance movement and with smoking, because believe it or not, in America, this notion that bowling is sinful came from two things.

The, the game itself was played in the pubs and the casinos. You can find old... Newspaper article is advertising come here and relax and drink at a At a relaxation casino at you know where there are hot springs etc And they have this game of bowling, which is not a strenuous game. So the the idea of bowling as it was associated with alcohol became very problematic for the early Christianity in America When the temperance movement gained steam in the United States that history in itself is really fascinating because It isn't that they were against drinking because that to be against drinking would be extra biblical

One of the biggest miracles in the Bible Jesus turns water into wine to drink right and There've been all of these studies. I won't pull them up for this show But you can go look if you want just type in drinking in the Bible or alcohol in the Bible You'll find that there are there are many situations where the distilled alcohol Was not in existence in the ancient world It was something that progressed much later, but fermented drinks such as such as fermented grapes producing wine They're the ancient world realized that you could ferment various things and create drinks from them and

The water itself was Some they realized that drinking impure water could make one sick the Bible You know Timothy I think it's in Timothy Paul says drink a little wine for your stomach. It'll kill the bacteria etc in your stomach So the ancient world was not against drinking at all But you'll find also passages in the Bible don't give in to drunkenness and you'll find Examples of men who did in the Bible They their lives went a direction that they probably wouldn't have taken had they not been a drunkard so in early American Christianity The temperance movement sprung from the notion that there were a lot of people getting drunk

The problem is it didn't really catch on at first because there were a lot of men who really wanted to get drunk and So you had this wide range of people Christian and non-Christian who were attending you know, they're going to bars. They're going to casinos. They're drinking It's kind of a the wild wild west of drinking and And whenever the industrial revolution hit America and you started having all of these factories and these were very Dangerous places to work Some of them in America had children small children that in today's world you think there's no way

I would let my kid go work in a factory But many families had to to survive and so when you had a drunkard in a factory Actually, where people could die, this became a problem.

And so it actually started evolving into this temperance movement might have something on, let's keep the drunkards out away from our children, especially in the factories. So it started catching on, you know, and I think it was the late 1800s or so.

And what's interesting is in the same way that we're talking about this bowling thing that came from an extrabiblical notion, people who recognized that drunkenness was a sin and joined into the temperance movement, became to over time evolve this into alcohol itself is sinful.

And wine is sinful, which created this conundrum because Jesus turned the water into wine to drink. But over time, this literally evolved into this notion that if you drink anything, you were violating the covenant that God made with the New Testament Christian as don't get drunken because you drank just a little bit.

And then in this, I don't know if you were this way, I know that my family was, they had this notion that even if you drank just a little bit, you're going to get drunk.

I'll never forget the first time I saw somebody just have a shot of something as at a business meeting. I thought they're going to fall into the floor drunk, man. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, that's common thing that you run into when you are exposed to these extrabiblical teachings that, yeah, you, something is so simple, someone just taking a drink socially and you think, oh, the worst thing is going to happen.

He's going to start beating his wife and he's going to, he's going to lose his salvation and he's going to be running around and all these things. And it's like, no, he just had a drink socially.

It's not a big deal. So what's funny, James, is that as this evolved and people became, I hate to use the word militant, but they were very strongly against drinking alcohol of any kind, even wine.

It was to the extent that they formed this militant stance against the production of, the drinking of, anything that was even associated to alcoholism. So whenever they saw these casinos, they saw these pubs or whatever, and in the pub, they had a game of bowling, which, oh, by the way, every kid's going to do if they get a ball and get a few sticks, well, they started linking those two together in their mind.

Not only is it wrong to get drunkenness, they build on top of that too. It is also wrong to even sip, even a little sip of alcohol to anything that's in a building that has alcohol.

anything in that building is also immoral, and that's how this became evolved into bowling as a sin. Right, and when you talk about the more militant side of the Temporous Movement, one of the characters that sort of stands out is Kerry Nation, or more affectionately referred to as the Hatchet Granny by some. Yes. She was a radical member of the Temporous Movement. She often described herself as a bulldog running along the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like.

And I'm sure many of us can picture somebody who fits this description in some of our experiences in some of these groups, so it's not that far-fetched. She took a very hard line stance against this, and she would go so far as to go into the bars with a Hatchet and try to destroy the liquor, the alcohol, and even if people got in the way, some people even got hurt in some of these situations, so it's just like, you know, things got rough. Yeah, they did. And it's so weird, man, because in the Pentecostal world that we came from, and I'm not saying, I'm not painting this blanket

statement that says all Pentecostals are this way or are bad, but there's this weird notion that emerges that if you're against something, and somebody stands not even just violently, but militantly against it, to the extent that people are getting hurt, they'll actually favor the person who's against it. So this Hatchet granny, she would go into these bars and just totally demolish the saloon, the bar, the casino. She would win it at first and just kind of, I don't know what she used, but she would just bust these gallons of whiskey or whatever alcohol they produce

beer and whatnot. And I think it was her husband that said, well, you might as well go in there with the Hatchet, if you're going to do that. And she said, oh, that's the smartest thing you've ever said. So she got a Hatchet. And she started going, well, once you have a weapon in your hand, and your radical, this was a radicalized person. She was radicalized with a doctrine of prohibition of temperance. She went in with a Hatchet, started destroying the alcohol, but she didn't stop there, buddy. She started tearing up entire buildings. And then you can think as

the owner of the establishment sees this woman come in, this wild woman, swinging her, I just hit my microphone, swinging her Hatchet like crazy. Well, they're going to try to stop her, right? And eventually, they're going to try to stop her with weapons. Well, she was from all accounts that I've read. She...

was the wieriest ball of fire that you couldn't catch her. She would wriggle out of whatever, you know, and she would enter people. And when you compare that into day's world, you've got the Islamic jihadist, right? These people who are radicalized with Islam. And they're doing the same exact thing for Islam that this woman is doing for what she calls Christianity.

And we would denounce the jihadist, but there are many Pentecostalists even today that would say, she was doing God's work, buddy. Yeah, I'm, it's like I'm so offended by your sin. It's, it's better that I injure you in my quest to free you of that sin than to just let you go about your own merry way because it's, it's you and your life, you know, it's, it's, you know, you're responsible. But no, I've got to take it upon myself to cleanse you of this thing, you know, because you can't stop yourself from partaking in these drinks. So I've got to stop it myself.

Yeah. I first came across her name whenever I was writing my book on John Alexander Dauy. And the Dauy cult in many ways was like this bowling, actually they even had this bowling doctrine. The, the Dauy sect was teaching people, it was a cult, you know, just like, just like the message, they're teaching people that there are all of these things that you must not do that quite frankly aren't in the Bible that you, you must not do if you want to be saved and going to heaven. And who's going to create all of these rules for you? Well, John Alexander

Dauy, the cult leader is going to create all of these rules. And he even took things that like, I'm certain in your sect you were allowed to eat pork. And I know in my sect we were oddly, we weren't supposed to eat eggs, but everybody did.

Just, I just conveniently left out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you weren't supposed to eat eggs and you weren't supposed to live in a valley. And ironically, the, the main sect of the core church in the Brannum Tabernacle was in the Ohio River Valley. But, you know, that's, that's, that's another story for another day. Well, in the Dauy cult, they, they like to take these, these lists of rules from the Old Testament, even though in the New Testament, it was fully abolished that we have a better way according to the book of Hebrews. But they would take these statements about, you know, the

vile creatures. You're not supposed to eat pork. So the entire city of Zion not only was not allowed to eat pork, you could not transport pork through Zion, which created a big problem for the railroad companies, because for them to stop in Zion, well, men, If these railroad cars were at Bork, they were transporting Bork to other cities.

And in Zion, smoking tobacco was just, it was completely outlawed. You could not smoke tobacco anywhere. And interestingly, this bowling, this idea against bowling, it wasn't just the alcohol. It was because in the casinos, in the bars, that had bowling.

They also smoked. And the dowryites taught that smoking was a sin. And it's a history I won't get into in this episode. But if you study the history of chewing tobacco and smoking, well, they weren't even doing that in the Bible back then.

They hadn't not yet figured out how to do this, and you know, this is not something that just grew in Egypt and ancient Israel. So it was, it was this rule that couldn't have existed in the Bible days, right?

Well, there was this scene that I discovered while writing this book, dowry and his militant force of Zion went into New York City, and they tried to take over the whole city and convert them in one sweep, very much like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

They went and knocked on door to door with the goal of converting everyone. He was in these big buildings, and he was preaching against all of the sin in New York City. Well, Carrie Nation shows up and stands up and just starts blasting this man.

You are an idiot. I can't remember her exact words, but she just mocked him and made him look like the fool that quite frankly he was. Well, they tried to catch her and they couldn't.

And this turned into this big thing because here's Carrie Nation, who is literally the face of the temperance movement back then, and she goes in fighting dowry, who's also preaching temperance and anti-tobacco, and these two just clashed head to head, and they couldn't catch her.

It would describe these men coming up trying to grab her, and before they could get their arms around her, she'd wiggle out and go stand somewhere else and yell at the man. Yeah, it's quite comical to see these various people interacting, because they're almost like they're fighting over their turf.

It's like, yeah, you're against temperance and I'm against temperance, but this is my turf. You can't do this on my turf. So what's really ironic in all of this, James, is you've got the Hatchet Granny, who is one of the most fascinating stories in American history, but she is militant and not just militant, but she's very violently opposed to drinking alcohol of any kind.

She's a Protestant. She's in American Protestantized Christianity. I should say that backwards. Americanized Protestant Christianity and the whole Protestant movement that she is a part of evolved because of Martin Luther's stance against Catholicism. He started the Protestant Reformation and because of him we have Protestant Christianity, because of him we have Pentecostalism, Baptist. All of these groups emerge who are non-Catholic because of Martin Luther.

Martin Luther, who came from German Christianity, not Americanized Christianity, they drink beer in Germany like it's like it's water, man. This man would have laughed at you. If you told him that he can't drink, one of my favorite quotes comes from Martin Luther. He said, whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep. Whoever sleeps long, he does not sin. Whoever does not sin enters heaven. Thus let us drink beer. That's Martin Luther and if you were in the message like I was, this is one of the quote unquote church age messengers. So this messenger gave us our

instruction. We need to drink beer and he would have laughed at you. He would have laughed at this bowling idea because show me in the Bible where it says do not bowl and what's interesting is the Dauy sect continued. Dauy's militant version of Christianity is literally what created the healing revivals that quite frankly created the message. You had numerous people who were in Dauy's cult of personality who became key figures in the message. FF Bosworth, who mentored Brannum in doctrine and in how to hold a healing revival. FF Bosworth was one of Dauy's right hand men. Gordon Lindsay,

who was Brannum's, one of Brannum's early campaign managers, probably the longest running in the most famous of his campaign managers was born in the in the Zion city in the Zion cult and so many people that impacted influence Brannum came out of this sect of Christianity. They were against bowling, which is why it continued in through the message and through the laterane movement splintered into all of these various sects. That's why people who've never heard of the message will have heard you don't bowl because it was a very popular notion in Zion city and it wasn't until

19 I think it's 1941 that they finally voted to overturn this idea that you cannot bowl in Zion city.

it's so funny because just like so many instances throughout history where you find where bowling would fill out a favor for whatever reason whether it was religious or political, you know, it always comes back into favor because, you know, you just can't, you just can't keep the fun away from the people, I guess. Yeah. What we're doing, I think it has a great opportunity to be interactive. And I thought we would open the door. If you have weird things that your minister has said or did or just questions in general, I thought it would be good if we

opened the door to answer them. So if you have questions, you can send them in at William-Brandom.org slash contact. And we'll get the question. Well, I can't say that we'll answer every one of them or even that every show will have them, but we'll try as we can to answer the questions. And what did this strange doctrine come from, right? One of the questions that came in, actually came in just this week is a person was, we've used the word cult a few times.

And a person was curious about that. What, what our mentality was? What are we thinking when we talk about a cult? And the specific question was, if Brandon was a leader of a cult, would you say that all of these other men connected to Dauy were also leading cults? And is the Pentecostal faith itself also a cult? And I have sent the answer already, but for the purpose of this episode, I thought we would just expand on that just a little bit. Because I'm assuming that by the word cult, this person is referring to a destructive cult, because not every cult is something that

you should even be ashamed of, right? I think we can safely say that in the Swifties, the cult fan club of Taylor Swift is not a destructive cult, although I'm going to be really honest, it's not music that I particularly like. Yeah, it is one of those things that when I was coming out and I was realizing that what I was in was a cult, it is something that I did look at because it does make you do ask that question, is this a cult? Are all these things cults?

And you're right. I think the thing that to focus on is the destructive side of that potential question, is it destructive? Because like you said, even in history, when you look at the word cult and church, there have been linkages between cult and church. So in some ways, before things got so destructive associations with it, it wasn't such a bad thing, but now today we think of cults as destructive. When you hear the term cult, think of Heaven's Gate, you think of Branemism, you think of all these other things, Jim Jones.

So yeah, I think that if it's destructive, I think that is the thing that's most important in that question. If it's destructive, then I think it's something to be worried about and definitely something to get away from.

Yeah. And by destructive, I think we should probably clarify just a little bit because when people get defensive, when they say, we're not a cult. Our little cult group is not a cult. They're linking that statement to the result of the destructive cult.

In other words, they're saying, we're not a cult because we don't have a Jones town. We don't have people who drank Sinai, Lace, Kool-Aid or we don't have a cult because there's recently this cult in Kenya that they starve themselves to death.

We're not that way. We're not starving ourselves. So they think we're not a cult because we don't have the end result of the cult's implosion or the sect that imploded. Ironically, both of those that I mentioned were also radicalized by Branem's theology.

And I think you really have to open the hood and look at what's under the hood in the engine of this car, so to speak, because the destructive qualities of a cult, Dr. Steven Hassan defines them as the bite model, B-I-T-E, behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.

You cannot say with a blanket statement that every Pentecostal church, or even every Branem church, displays the qualities of a destructive cult. Are they linked to a destructive cult? Maybe. Some of the ones that are in the Branemite sects obviously emerge from Branem.

Branem's core main cult was a destructive cult and is a destructive cult. You have to examine each group individually because are they controlling and manipulating your behavior? In other words, are they telling you that you cannot go bowling because they have special knowledge that even though it's not in the Bible, we can control that behavior.

Are they controlling information from you? Are they hiding information from you? Are they keeping you from learning that they're all of these destructive qualities? And Jim Jones is a part of this cult. Are they hiding this from you?

Are they keeping the information from you? The thought control is even the thought of going bowling evil. That's one of the things that I heard. Even the thought of drinking alcohol just to think about it is evil.

But they're manipulating if they are. manipulating your thoughts, this is a quality of a destructive cult. And I think the biggest one for me, James, when they start toying with your emotions, that is one of the most powerful tools that a cult has in their tool belt.

They'll make you weep, they'll make you cry, they'll make you have alter calls, and I'm not saying that an alter call is bad, but when they use that alter call as a means, as a vehicle for all of the other destructive qualities, they're manipulating you through your emotions, that's one of the true signs of a cult.

Interestingly, Dr. Walter Martin, he's famous for the kingdom of the cults. He actually labeled the United Pentecostal Church International as a whole. He said that the whole thing was a cult, and the reason why he chose the destructive label, he was calling it a destructive cult, is because they were severing themselves from the rest of the body of Christ.

And I remember watching the videos, a little shocked whenever I saw it, the leaders of the Pentecostal faith of the UPCI, they were asked the question, if a person who believes the Trinity wants to fellowship with you, and believes God, believe maybe if you're right and oneness is right, and they believe Trinitarian is right, can you still call them your brother and can they still go into heaven?

They were willing to at least in this one meeting where they were recording and filming the questions. The leaders of the UPCI said, no, we must sever ourselves from them because they're not part of us.

And in doing so, they become isolationists, they're severing themselves from the rest of the body of Christ. Dr. Walter Martin labeled the whole thing as a cult. I personally can't go that far because, I've seen the way this thing grows and splinters and grows and splinters, and you've got all of these different branches that were Pentecostalism, have the roots in Pentecostalism.

Almost every one of them can be traced all the way back to Dauy and some other very notorious God's generals that have huge problems. But I can't say that they're all destructive cults. I might can say that they're like the Swifties that they're in a cult of some kind, but unless they show the destructive attributes of a cult, I hate to call them destructive without even knowing who they are.

Yeah, it is such a broad label, just to throw around too loosely. Because you're right, it's one of those things that, because even when you're in it, it's just... so hard to identify, but one thing that I even think back on, one thing that if I was to see in media when I was consuming media like movies or something like that, if you'd see some sort of radicalized religious representation, I would always feel, I always had this weird feeling of feeling attacked by it because it was almost like I had a defense mechanism kicking up against that, and now I look back and I think that's with cognitive dissonance

and things like that, probably trying, my brain is recognizing that there's something wrong here, but it's trying to protect me from this fictitious representation of a radicalized religious movement, and so yeah, there are all sorts of things that personally can tip you off in our clues that something might not be right here, and if it's a family member or someone you're close to and examining from the outside, like you said, being encouraged to pull away and disassociate, those things are definite signs that something is not right and warrant further investigation because a healthy group should not be encouraging

people to disassociate from normal family members that, if there's nothing, if everything's on the up and up, and there's nothing wrong, there should be no reason why you shouldn't be able to have interactions with your family, that's not in the same group that you're in.

Absolutely. Well, James, this has been fun, I never knew that we could explore bowling so deeply as we did today. Right. There's so many things, I didn't even get through half of my notes, whenever you get into the temperance movement and prohibition and all of the ties to these different movements and how they influenced American Christianity, and more to the point, how American Christianity evolved in ways that other countries, Christianity did not evolve unless America influenced them.

It's just so fascinating and to take a step back from all of it and just realize that many of these things that we were taught are extra biblical, they're not in the Bible. There's just so much here and I think, you know, for me, just to sum this up, I'd say, one of my favorite passages from the Bible, and the Apostle Paul actually mentions this a couple of places, he says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are expedient or paraphrasing, not all things help you.

In other words, you really have freedom in Christ, you can do these things, but say you get addicted to bowling and you ignore your family and you'd rather spend all of your time at the bowling alley.

Well, I would have... I would go so far to say that's not right. You shouldn't do that. But if you're going for fun, then the Apostle Paul gives you a blanket statement. All things are lawful unto me.

All things. He doesn't exclude for bowling. He doesn't exclude for these other extra biblical rules. And to sum it up for me, just use wise judgment. I mean, think for yourselves. Think, is this a biblical doctrine?

Is this something that the Bible says I shouldn't do? Or is this something that some man has told me? And he has no idea why I shouldn't do it. Right. And the sad thing is sometimes some of these ministers will use the most egregious examples of somebody falling off, somebody getting addicted to just blanket, say the entire thing is wrong.

And that's such a sad and such a shame, because there's so many things out there that we can enjoy and partake in that are innocent fun. And it's just a shame that some of these things are being kept from people out of fear of sinning and losing their salvation and things like that, yeah.

Well, 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 for an overview of the historical research of William Branum and the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the White Hoods, a critical examination of William Branum in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.