Weird Doctrines: Excalibur

Hello, and welcome to another episode. Of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast, I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at www.William-brannum.org And with me, I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, James Goad.

And together, we're examining the very weird things that preachers say, the history behind what they say, and how it traces back through time through the Laterane Healing Revivals. James, today we have one of those episodes that it's just incredibly fun. Some of our listeners don't know this, but in the podcast, Charles and I are doing, there's so much research that we have to pour through that we're actually recording several weeks in advance so that we can dig through all of the information ahead of time and get everything properly lined up.

And we've actually recorded some of the background story behind what we're going to talk about today, but you and I are going to dive a bit deeper into the fun fantasy world that has entered message mythology.

Right. Yeah, so there's one of the interesting things that I found when I've been looking into some of these weird doctrines and stuff that surround the message. And it gets into the realm of myth when you start really looking at some of this stuff and how it sort of is treated in current message canon and stuff like that.

And it all depends on which group you're a part of and how they're sort of treating some of this stuff, but there's all these things that get elevated to the level of myth. And there's a few clips here we wanted to go through and just sort of examine what preachers are saying about some of this stuff and break it down and just take a look at it.

So yeah, let's take a look at these clips and let's go from there. As God in his word was made manifest in a man, a perfect man. So as God and his word coming again and making himself manifested in a bride, she will be him.

Eve was a manifestation of Christ, Adam, the first Adam. Not, we'll do like he did, hybridden to something else, but the unadulterated word of God will be born into that church. Now, I'll stop there for just second, unadulterated word means it can't be touched by human, unadulterated.

The word has been hybrid, adulterated, manhandled, misinterpreted, misquoted. The unadulterated word, and I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but let me tell you with the opening of the seals, what God did, the sword that was placed in the hands of the prophet in subbenal canyon is used at sunset mountain to circumcise this message by the revelation of the seven angels.

And now everything that was man made, everything that was man added is now cut away. So the sword circumcising the message. I'm trying to imagine a world where some stranger on the street, who's never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they have had the call in their life to go hear the gospel and they go sit down in a church, and the very first thing that they hear is the sword has circumcised the message.

What in the world are they going to think, right? I mean, if this was a message to a lost and dying world, the people are going to run screaming, thinking, what in the, especially in Jeffersonville, I don't know if you realize this, but in Jeffersonville, on the Brannum Tabernacle, there's an actual sword above the door, and it's really funny because there are some very mischievous people that steal the sword and they keep having to replace this sword.

And it costs this, it creates this big problem, right? Because now these, there is a free weapon, if you just go grab it, there's a free weapon in Jeffersonville, Indiana. But yeah, it's just, this is really weird, man.

Yeah, it's one of those, it's just another one of those examples where there are all these weird stories and myths inside the message cannon, and the ministers spend a lot of time struggling trying to make a lot of these things fit.

Because a lot of these things are incompatible with whatever version of the message that you're in. And so they end up twisting things and coming up with all these weird excuses and ways to make it fit.

And it can kind of get kind of comical at the end. into the day when you start laying it at all out and seeing where this is going. Yeah, and the history surrounding it is so fascinating because we're talking about the year 1963 and anybody who's a history buff who understands 1963 and just American history in general, there's so much going on.

It is one of the craziest, most fascinating times in American history. Given the message, because the message was a political cult instead of a religious cult, basically was a political cult disguised as a religious cult, the message also becomes crazy fascinating with all of these different trails of history that all just kind of intersect in 1963, one of which as it relates to this quote that you just found is very interesting because there was a point in time in which every one of William Brannum's inner circle just abandoned him, totally left him.

We're talking Ern Baxter who was toured with him, Gordon Lindsay who published the voice of healing newsletters, even FF Bosworth who toured with him and mentored him in how to do the art of faith healing.

All of these guys just kind of abruptly abandoned him in the, I think it was in the 50s. What happened is this exploded into a series of events that cascaded through time until William Brannum became ridiculed in the religious community because I think the phrase that they use is he is taking the pathway of Dauy, he's following the error of Dauy which in terms of a religious historian means that he is, he has convinced people that he is the return of Elijah the prophet which was apparently it was a problem back in the era that he

was talking to these people. He has created himself a very destructive cult and authoritarian cult and he's putting himself in position to become an authoritarian leader and people were separating from William Brannum and this particular statement, it comes from a quote from William Brannum where he says that he's out in the woodtaunting and suddenly there appeared this magical sword in his hand and I, you know, in the message, I'm one of the few people that believe this.

Apparently there were a lot of people that just kind of skipped over that part. I'm learning. I'm learning that in the ranks of the people who are leaving the message, when I asked them, hey, did you believe the king's sword, did you believe, there's a few different paths that people go and most of them are like, what in the world is that?

Yeah, it's, it's so funny because I was, you know, going off the sort of thought process of myth and stuff like that around the message, I was, I was, I was, I was looking at this from, from an angle of like, of, of myths that we're familiar with in, in literature and stuff like that. And I was noticing some similarities with the legend of King Arthur, believe it or not. And one thing that I noticed about this was that in, it's, it gets kind of hard to decipher sometimes because these, these myths and legends change. And I mean, we're

actually, I mean, speaking of the message, we're actually very familiar with that process. But, but so there are some different tellings of the, the legend of Arthur. But in, in some, there are actually two swords that Arthur has. One, some consider the sword and the stone, the one that marks him as the king. And then at some point, that sword breaks in battle.

And he is without his magical sword that marks him as the king. And so, him and Murland go on this journey and they end up at the lady of the lake. And she bestows upon Arthur a new sword. And she's sort of this, you know, magical, fake light creature. And, you know, and so through this magical sort of angelic experience, he sort of receives this brand new sword. And in some tellings, this is actually the sword Excalibur. And, you know, and everyone knows Excalibur is considered the sword of the king. And so there, there's just so many similarities there with how the story is told. And with Brannum's version

of receiving the king's sword. So it's, it's very fascinating to me to see how these message myths are almost seen like they're, in some ways, maybe copied or borrowed from myths that we're more familiar with. I don't, it's, it's strange. It is strange. And honestly, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode to further expand upon the fantasy that is, that has message cult mythology, right? I asked the question to Charles when I was recording that podcast, which again, it's going to come out much later than this one. But, you know, if you were a child, if you were in third grade, and your parents

told you, Hey, we believe a prophet was sent by God to prepare us for the end of the world. And God gave him a magical sword. If you're in third grade, you're going to say, Oh, wow, that's cool, man. And you're going to go to school. I don't know, you know, some other one allowed to go to school. But those who are, they'll go to school and tell their friends, Hey, my prophet guy has a magical sword. But once you get past third grade and you start to...

question, you know, just general curiosity of how the world works. They're going to suddenly stop and think, wait a minute, is that real? Was there really a magic sword? And what's really interesting is both of those myths, variations that you described. It really does appear that William Brannum was using that as the premise for this whole tale of having a magic sword because he is combining the attributes of both trails of that mythology, right? Because everybody's abandoning him. He is using the phrase ology of, you know, the Bible is sharper than a two-edged sword. And he's comparing it to symbolically,

he's linking it to him having the perfect quote unquote word. And remember, this is at a time in which everyone has literally abandoned William Brannum. He's only got this select few people who even entertain him anymore and allow him in their churches. And they're all condemning him because they say that his doctrine is heretical, which Charles and I have pretty well thoroughly proven that it was. Well, he's telling them that, no, my heretical doctrine is the true word of God. And all of you guys are wrong. And so God has appointed me as King Arthur with the sword. I'm now the

king prophet, right? Right. Yes. Yeah. The one major prophet to the age. Yeah. It's so interesting because when you look at how it sort of dealt with in the message today, so many different ministers and so many different groups take these things. And they do different things with it because, you know, because they've been trying to find ways to make some of these things fit.

And one of the things that I, another thing that I came across that I thought was really interesting is another way that they try to shoehorn the king's sword with Brannum into the larger canon of the message and try to work it into the Bible itself. And in this one here, a minister is, yeah, is in fact, trying to try to work it in with the larger Bible canon itself. So maybe we should take a look at that one too and see what we think about that as well. So here, the tree, the guards are there to guard the way. And we just read that that there's a chairbombs and a flaming sword.

Brother Brannum, there's a bino canyon and he was raised his hands, right? And he said, I looked and there was a sword. And it was an a sword. It was the king sort of fit him just right.

And so that sword... had come back again and it was doing the same thing again and it turned every which way to keep the way of the tree of life. That's pretty crazy, man. You know of everything that you have found so far in your research in the weird things that ministers say. This one is by far to me the most historically interesting because again I'm certain that this minister has no idea even though that he's the one that said it. I'm sure he has no idea of the actual history behind what he just said. He's likely just parading what others have said and you know there's

this whole mythology that existed in the political cult that later transitioned into a religious cult. And that history, Charles and I have explored it quite thoroughly in the historical podcast, but there are some aspects of it that relate to this version of him saying that the King Sword was the flaming sword, right? Right. Penta Costalism, when it when it was being birth, there was a man from Indianapolis, Indiana whose name was GT Haywood and GT Haywood is one of the most important figures in what was rebirth this Penta Costalism after the Azusa Street Revival. He was a black man who in that time in Indiana was holding racially integrated

camp meetings and you know services where people it didn't matter your color of skin, you could come join this thing. Indiana during those years was almost entirely ruled by the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, you know up to I think it's in the 20s, they had become so powerful that they were on the pathway to taking over Washington DC and the clan fully owned the Indianapolis government. And GT Haywood was being so heavily persecuted that he, one of his most famous tracks that he wrote and published was called The Victim of the Flaming Sword. And he is referencing this same

passage from the book of Genesis talking about being driven out from the Garden of Eden with the flaming sword. Well, for him under the persecution of white supremacy, it had a very symbolic meaning. They were, they were literally expelled from their homeland, right? Right. Well, what happened was during the transition of power in both white supremacy and in Penta Costalism, you had William Brannem's mentor Roy E. Davis, who was the second in command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan under William Joseph's.

Simmons. Simmons and Davis created basically a response to this called the Knights of the Flaming Sword. And it was a white supremacy group that was far more militant and vigilantes, you know, basically, then they were even worse than the Ku Klux Klan. And Davis, as you know, moved into Jeffersonville, Indiana. He planted what became William Brannum's church.

In opposition to this flaming sword, you had the Knights of the Flaming Sword, which was being birthed. It did fizzle out because there were some financial discrepancies, which caused huge problems. But they, you know, the cult that exists, believe it or not, the message cult of which this person, this minister that you've found is a minister in, it was actually birthed because of the Knights of the Flaming Sword. So him using that symbology is very, very concerning because that symbology came directly from white supremacy. Right. And that's something that when you start to dig into that, that history of, and all those connections with Brannum, it really creates a lot

of trouble for message ministers. And you see a lot of, a lot of, a lot of backpedaling, a lot of excuses being made and a lot of twisting and turning to try to, try to avoid some of that stuff, but you just, you can't. It's there. It's, it's, it's riddled all throughout it. And once, once you see it and once it's exposed, you just, you can't hide from it. Those some people still do try. Yeah, it's, it's, it's definitely one of those things that, you know, it's, it's, yeah, it puts them in a bind. It really does. Though I'm surprised some still try so hard to try and

avoid these things. And though, even though just like this, they step right on into it when they do. Well, you've seen the movie The Matrix, right? And you've got all of these people who are in these little pods and they're in this, they're in this fantasy world in their head. And they, they really don't know that they're in the world until they take the little pill. And suddenly, once you take that pill, you can never go back. Well, you know, this minister, again, we, we're not picking on any minister at all. This, he really likely can't even help what he's saying.

That he's just parroting what others have said. But they haven't taken the pill. And they're not aware that the roots of this thing, you know, when this religion, if you call it that, was planted, the seeds that were planted were seeds of white supremacy and it's woven all the way through it.

And no matter how you try to dodge it, the only way it can be dodged is if you take away certain aspects of history and you take away certain key doctrines of William Brannum, this is the only way you can take the whites of supremacy out. But we're, you do, you're left with something that does not even resemble what it was. So it becomes, like you say, it's very problematic, but more to the point, that's why so many people who are either in the message or at splinter groups or the religions that were created off of it. That's why they

try to conceal this past. When you look at the ministers and trying to keep people in, in the, from taking the pill, from reading the websites, from doing the research, they're literally acting like the agents in the film trying to keep people like Neo from awakening and seeing the truth of what's actually going on. That this steak that you're eating isn't real. It's fake. You're being programmed to think that this is a great steak and you're enjoying it, but in reality, you've never tasted a real steak before in your life. Yeah. And what's really odd about that

symbology, I love using it too. The Neo, the hero of, of this, is not even a person. It's just simply the information. The information is what is the thing that's doing the battles, right? And when you're standing against proven information that is, I mean, a solid facts, facts are immovable. And whenever you're trying to push hard against the facts, you, you're literally in this pod trying to, trying to wrestle with something that you really don't even understand. That's the biggest problem here. But back to the, back to the sword. You know, so the history of the

flaming sword is fascinating, but the history of the people who abandoned William Brannum and him using this King Arthur's tale as his message mythology to a psychologist. That's even more fascinating because the fact that you can convince people to believe that you're out in the wilderness where, oh, by the way, nobody's with you. Nobody can see this has happened. And suddenly, this magical sword materialized in your hand. And you can convince people that this actually happened.

It shows not only the level of mind control, but it shows how you can literally convince people to believe anything as long as you keep telling the same tale over and over again and push it in such a way that, you know, people are forefitting their entire lives for this thing. It's a movement that they are, they're giving up reality to choose the fantasy.

Oh yeah. And it's something that it's definitely pervasive because you run across this a lot. And we all experience this in some way, shape or form when we start to deprogram. And we find things like this where, you know, we were raised or we were in...

introduced to it, and we believe it is true, and we take it as fact, and we recoil when someone tries to say, well, there's more to this. That's not how it is. And then, you know, and it's such a, yeah, it's an interesting process, because there's so much stuff, like you said, that helps entrain your thinking closer into this, this, this cult mentality.

And that, to, these stories become, in these myths, become intercool into your identity inside the cult, because you're, and even people dive into them even further, because they, they see such mystical and spiritual meaning behind these stories in myths, and they want to understand the prophet more, and they want to be closer to, to the, to the understanding and be more spiritual. And it, and it locks them tighter and tighter and further in, and it creates such a, such a, a tight net that when you're deprogramming, it, it really is such a shock to the system when you start to realize these things aren't true.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's nothing new. As you know, you and I have talked about quite a bit. I'm a, I'm a big Marvel fan, I'm a big sci-fi fan. I love fantasy in general.

I, I really do. I grew up reading stacks of books about fantasy, science fiction, you know, and I'm a big fan of the ancient mythologies because they are fables, their fiction. And it's fascinating to me to think that even in the ancient world, people could say these kind of things, and it was widely accepted. I mean, it was accepted to the extent it became tightly integrated with governments. Your city was the city of, I don't know, Poseidon or Zeus.

You know, it was so tightly integrated into society. And if you were to take any of those same, like the children we mentioned, who is being told to profit out of magical sword, those same parents, if they were to understand that their child was being taught some of the ancient mythologies. And I don't know, say they're taught the, you know, the mythology of Thor and Loki.

And Thor has the hammer. Well, the parent's going to sit down with the child and say, no, this isn't real. We don't believe that Thor has a hammer. And his magical hammer brings the, you know, the wrath of the lightning or whatever. But yet, they'll say that William had a magic sword. Right. Yeah. And it's, yeah. And that's one of those things where I was, I was in those groups. And yeah, I love that stuff. That's that same stuff too. And you hold these two opposing things in your, in your mind at this time, where you know one thing's fantasy.

And, you know, you enjoy the fantasy because it's, it's this cool spectacle, whether it's in movies or comic books or video games or whatever. And you, you, you see it as fantasy and fun fiction.

But then yeah, like you have this other fiction in your brain at the same time, but you're being programmed to believe that it's fact. And like in like we've, you know, some people even think that these things were, like Brandon said, was he was in a trance maybe when this whole thing happened and then other people are like, no, it was a physical sword.

And so there's all these competing sorts of ideas and sometimes you don't know what to believe. And then you're told, well, it'll all make sense in the end anyways. We just got to believe it all.

Yeah. And I've been to churches from Arizona to South Carolina everywhere in between. And there's different variations of this. There are some groups in the message and some of the splinter groups that believe this was a physical sword that glistened in the sun.

And they, you know, there's even trips out to go see the place, the location where this happened. They believe it was a physical event. He was a physical, magical sword materialized in his hand.

Others believe that this was a spiritual event. He went on a spiritual quest and his quest gave him the illusion of having a sword. It wasn't a real sword, but it was an illusion of having a sword.

And again, it's just so much like the ancient mythologies, right? You've got the quest that's taking you to your journey to find out that you are of rank in supernatural, superior order, or whatever.

It's the entire world of the gods and the demigods of the ancient Greece and Rome. And I'm, as I said, I'm fascinated with cartoons. There are a lot of different types of cartoon series that are based off of that concept and they all have swords.

It's so funny. Yeah. So I grew up, you know, the message condemned television. And my family, sometimes we had it, sometimes we didn't. A majority of my childhood, we had no television. Some of my other family members did, some of my friends did.

So there were times I actually got to seek cartoons. And I, you know, some of the old ones, like, you probably don't even know these, but Thundar the Barbarian, he swings his sword and it's the sort of, what is it?

The sort of light. And you've got, I think my favorite was the Thundercats and the sort of omens and he would hold it up. And each one of these was a way of connecting the person to this supernatural realm.

The one that we weren't allowed to watch because in general Christianity was some, for some weird reason against this, you could not watch He-Man. Okay, I was, I was told, years later I was told that this was because of one phrase, the most important phrase of the show.

He would, he would get his magical sword and he would stand up and say, I have the power. You weren't supposed to do this apparently in the Christian world, even though this is a fictional cartoon. Right. And so, you know, he's standing there and when he gets the sword and he gets the power, he's in dude with this power of the demigods, basically, and he becomes a demigod.

Well, as a child, while I'm told, like, you know, this is evil, you're not supposed to believe that you got the power through the sword. At the same time that we're taught that mythology, I'm in a religion that truly believed that William Brannum got his power. He got the word from the sword and it was a magical sword. Right. Yeah, it's, it is, it is crazy, you know, because, you know, like, like you said, there's, there's so much that is, comes with this mythology when people are believe it and they want to, they want to retrace the steps of the prophet. And so,

like you said, they set up these tours and they take people on these things and they do all this stuff to try to build. And these, these, these men who, who do this a lot of times, they're building up their own personalities and their own sort of standing in the messes to try to link themselves with the supernatural event that happened, because they can lead you to the place that the prophet was. They can lead you to a place where this rock had this thing written on it. And it's like, oh, this is supernatural thing. That's the, the, the, you know, and so, um, so yeah, there's, there's,

it's, it's so fascinating. And that brings to mind another clip that I have here. Um, where this, this, this similar, the same minister that we, we just looked at a second ago, um, is talking about the, the, the process that they're, they're, they, they went through to try to track down the exact spot where the sword was defined because this, because the sunlight had to glean, glint off of it in a certain way. Um, yeah, let's take a look at this clip and, uh, and let's say, let's examine it further. They found that place where the sword came to the

prophet's hand, but according to the picture, there was a problem with it because according to the prophet, the sun had glistened off of that sword. And they couldn't find themselves and angled themselves properly because the sun never went by at nine in the morning between where the pictures showed to where it ever could happen that a ray of light came through between the rocks.

And what brother **** found out was that he stuck with the pictures and stuck with the program, but he knew the key was that he had to have sunlight. If he was going to be in the right spot, he had to have sunlight reflect off of that sword that was in the prophet's hand. And one day, it's not for you.

He was in the wrong spot. It's just that he was looking at it from the wrong angle. He's always saw the right spot, but he wasn't in the right spot where the sun could reflect off the sword.

It shows that this Bible, you've got to be in the right spot. Not just have a Bible in your hand. You have to be positionally placed in the right spot for the sun to reflect on your sword, which is this Bible.

So James, this is even more fascinating when you think of the ancient mythologies because there was always a spirit quest. You had to go on the quest and the journey itself was the spiritual aspect.

And the end result, you know, the getting the magic sword or the Thor's hammer or whatever. That was just the reward for the quest. And so William Bran was going on this quest which gives him this magic sword.

And the quest, apparently, if you read into what's being said, the quest was actually difficult because there wasn't a place where he could go that was high enough to have the light. So you've read the, or watched the movies or read the books on the mythologies of the gurus and the Chinese where they have to go up to the wise old man on the mountain.

Well, he has to go really, really high up in the mountain to even get a glimmer of light on his magic sword. In Arizona, for example, you've got a few ministers out there who spend a lot of time and effort to try to track down and bring together all these different stories to try to make them all fit because you've got all these different, throughout Branham's ministry, you know, starting in like around 63, you've got all these stories of a sword, a squirrel, a rock with the word eagle written on it and all these sorts of supernatural things

that Branham experienced in this mountain area where he's hunting and he appears to enjoy to be at. And so these ministers go on this quest to try to find all these places and try to make it all fit.

And they're going through pictures and trying to find the spot. And one of the things that they're trying to do is trying to find that spot where you got these two rocks where apparently this event happened.

And you got to find the spot where the sun, the sun rising at nine at nine o'clock in the morning because that's very specific in the story. You got nine o'clock in the morning for the sun to glint off the sword.

And so they come up with all these convoluted stories and all these convoluted ways to make it all fit. And then they create these, these tours and these experiences for people to go through and retrace the steps of the prophet for all these experiences.

And really when you step back and take a look at it, it really feels like a circus and a clown show. And to think that, you know, even I used to be caught up in some of this stuff in thinking that.

Oh man, if only I could go to some of these places and where these cool things happened. It's kind of ridiculous. It's so odd because if you visualize the location where this mythology happened, it's in this place where the peaks go pretty high.

So for him to have been in a specific place and the sun hit it at a specific time of day, where you've got this mountain range that's in the way, right? So there's no way that the sun can pierce through this unless the sun is magic also magically higher than the day.

You can't put anything past our profit, John. Exactly. So the whole thing is shrouded in magic and fantasy, right? And so what they're doing basically is they're wanting you to take the same journey.

It's the same spirit quest, right? They want you to become part of the spirit quest. And it's very much like even the Native Americans, they had the spirit quest for the young warrior who's rising up to become a warrior.

The adolescence would go through these spirit journeys and spirit quests. Well, they're doing the same thing with the younger generation within the cult framework. They want you to take the same spiritual journey that William Brannum took when he got his magic sword.

And again, if you're younger, this appeals to you because it's a magic sword. But it's really weird when you think about there are adults that take the same spiritual journey and they still believe the magic sword.

And I'm trying to envision what happens whenever they come back. Some of these people, they travel from all over the world. So they have to take off of work and you tell your boss, hey, I'm going to go take a religious journey.

And so they say, sure, go take the journey. Well, you go and you come back and how was it? And did you take your spiritual journey? What did you do? And I'm trying to imagine that conversation.

Yeah, I went there because there was a magical sword. Yeah, it's so fascinating because I've even experienced different people who, you know, whether it's these things of trying to retrace the steps of the prophet and try to get closer to that mythology and sort of make it more a part of themselves.

And so I've seen people in the groups that are, they want to be like woodsmen and outdoorsmen because the prophet was a woodsman and an outdoorsman. And then they also want to move to Arizona because Arizona feels spiritual because all these spiritual things with the prophet happen in Arizona.

So Arizona must be so spiritual and it's this need I try to be closer to the mythology that, you know, moving to Arizona is not a bad thing or wanting to hunt and fish is not a bad thing, but it's these irrational things that sort of take hold of people sometimes because their desire to be more spiritual and be more like the prophet in their attempts to gain a higher understanding and a higher relevance inside the group or the movement is quite fascinating to watch sometimes and troubling at times. It is. And, you know, we're just talking about the rank and file members here,

the people who, you know, like children in the cult, they want to go see, okay, where did the magic sword happen? But what's really, really weird if you take a step back from this and just step above it? William Brannum laid this framework of religion that many ministries were built on top of. And a vast majority of them today say, yeah, he was pretty good until about 1963 and that's where he turned. That's whenever he went off the deep end, right? Ironically, they're referring to this particular event because this is truly where this gets weird. But what if they didn't? That's the funny part. What if

they didn't? What if they believe that this was real? That all of this fantasy world was as real as the rest of the fantasy that they built their ministries on top of? You've got people who, I live here in Jeffersonville. We actually see this weirdness. You have people who come to Jeffersonville, who are in the New Apostolic Reformation or any of the various splinter groups that emerge because of this. And they do this thing called grave soaking where they go lay on the pyramid grave and I filled the power. And it's no different than holding up the sword and saying, I have the power. It's just it's fantasy. It's truly

fantasy. And then these men go back and they say that I've taken William Brannum's mantle. I am now, I'm now your new prophet. Well, what if they didn't cut it off at 1963? What if they said towards the end of his life, he remained true because he told the same kind of fantasy that he told the for the whole rest of his career as a minister. It's just a different version of fantasy. And then they said, I went and I graved soaked. And then while I was there, I stood up and suddenly this magical sword materialized in my hand.

And I held it up and I knew that I had just pulled the sword from the pyramid stone. Well, honestly, it wouldn't sound much different than what I'm familiar with honestly with coming out of the message. It would sound just about on par. Yeah, I know that the grave soaking, that is something when I was exposed to some of that stuff and I saw some of that stuff happening through through clips that have been floating around.

I was really taking it back, because honestly, I didn't even know until further research and coming out and seeing some of the stuff that you would found. And there were things that even people knew about Brandon.

I kind of thought that he was just this isolated figure just because how I was sort of raised up to believe and some of the things that I was taught. And then to see all these people trying to take on his mantle and of course, passing on mantles.

I mean, that's a familiar concept and Brandon's ministry anyways. So it's not that far fetched for these people to be trying to take on his mantle. Because you've got the whole, if Brandon's the Elijah, where's the Elijah, and all this kind of stuff like that that people get into.

So there's all these weird sorts of things that happen. Yeah, that is one of the creepiest things that I've seen. And I can't unsee it, and I wish that I could.

And it's, you know, I still go back to the ancient mythologies. It's so much resembling the ancient mythologies because you've got the succession of gods and the different pantheons. And some of them are the supreme deities like you've got the Zeus and others become the demigods.

And some have to go through spiritual journeys before they become the demigods. Some have to have the magical weapon, like Williams, Brandon's magical sword. Some of them transfer the power to the others. The whole thing is just rooted in mythology and fantasy.

And, you know, for me, James, it wouldn't be problematic if they were creating some kind of a fictional, I don't know, play. And they're gonna make a movie from it. And they said, the things that you're about to see are not real, the events that we're about to show are pure fantasy, but they don't present it this way.

They go back and say, yeah, I soaked up the grave of a Brannum and now I've got his mantle. And the crowd goes wild when he's got Brannum's mantle. And, you know, it's just so weird when you think about it.

But it's all rooted in something that in no way, shape, or form even resemblance Christianity, what's really weird for me is they have somehow packaged it to be Christianity instead of ancient mythologies. Right. And like you said, it does, it gets so far.

Even Brannum's own stuff is so far away from biblical teachings. He added so much on top, he twisted so many stories to make up his own weird theologies. And to seeing other people want to take that mantle and then also take and, you know, claim they have all these sorts of gifts because they've soaked up this mantle and they have all this supernatural power now because of, you know, grave soaking.

Is, you know, it's kind of par for the course when you get all these, we line all these people up and examine how they behave and what they do with this sort of... with this sort of stuff.

A majority of the central figures displayed narcissistic tendencies, and that's how it cult forms, because you've got this narcissistic leader who's rising up above the people, and they put themselves into this reality that doesn't exist.

It's one of the attributes and characteristics of narcissism. In most of those cases, they have to have a supreme villain that is their nemesis, and that villain can either be an ideology, an actual person, or a group of people, and that's what that's the premise for how it cult forms.

They form a group of people of like-mind around some ideology that is opposed to something else. Otherwise, they would just join the something else. What's interesting is, say it wasn't a sword. Say it was Thor's hammer in ancient mythologies.

It also resembles in the framework of how the cult works, because you've got Thor who had to have his nemesis Loki, and these two battle out for the ages. If you go look at the ancient mythologies, there's a lot of this going on, where there's a supreme villain who has his supreme nemesis.

It's so fascinating that even in the comic world, you've got to have your Superman and your Lex Luthor. You've got to have the supreme hero, the supreme villain, and a cult will set itself up in that way in which there is the nemesis, and with brannemism, the early nemesis was the Catholic Church, because the clan was against the Catholics.

There's many different variations of what became the nemesis, but there's always a central focus of us versus them, of the Thor versus the Loki. For me, when you take a step back from this, there just isn't a good way to represent this in Christianity, in which there's an ideology that the minister is trying to help people improve.

Instead, it's an ideology to put them against. Yeah, it's something that I've seen throughout my time in some of these groups is you have to find...there's constantly creating all these villains to set you up against, whether there's the Baptists, the Methodists, the Catholics, all these people, because we have this supreme understanding.

We're the hero on the hero's journey, and we've got the prophet with the king sword, and the mantle has been passed on to us, and we're carrying this on through to the rapture, and you set up all these things in their way and say that these...

These are evil, these are set up against you, and you've got to strive forward and get a deeper revelation and a deeper understanding to be able to withhold and withstand all the evil in all these other organizations and all these other doctrines.

And yeah, it further drives into the whole narrative of the myth and the hero's journey and to try to create this thing that is so captivating to people that it pulls them in even deeper and further.

And what's really sad, because when you assume a cult identity, you take almost an exact imprint of the attributes of the psychological makeup of the cult leader. You become basically miniature cult leaders, and there are many ministers in this type of religion that do that, and a lot of cases they pick up the narcissistic traits.

So now you have this whole array of sub-leaders who have the narcissistic trait of having to have some ultimate villain at all times. And when they run out of a villain, that's whenever it becomes really problematic because now they've got this group of people who are sitting in their audience, and they try to villainize different people within their own congregations.

And they'll start, you know, you've seen it, I'm certain that they'll pick out a person and just rail them, you know, sometimes not even naming them by name, but everyone in the audience knows who it is they're talking about.

So they pick out, they create a villain who's in the audience. And it's just so sad because what really needs to happen, they've created this fantasy world where they've, now it's them versus the people who are literally the sheep in their own congregation.

And the sheep, the person who's sitting there being railed, doesn't have the ability to stand up and say, I got a magic sword too. Yeah, because you do, you do see us as where people do get singled out.

And you know, I know of situations I've heard of, I've seen situations. And you know, it is tough because I know in some of the groups I was familiar with, you know, and then I was in, you know, the minister is always talking about, you know, take on the full armor of God and you know, you're starting to step up higher into Christ and all these sorts of things.

But then when it comes down to it, you're always taught to rely on the minister or the central figures understanding. And you're sort of, you're thinking is sort of hindered in a way because they try to, they always, I've seen this a lot where they use terms like little children when they refer to you.

And it's sort of, it's sort of, it's almost like it's trying to keep your thinking in an adolescent phase while also telling you, you're strong and you can take on the devil with this thing that's so powerful, but at the same time when you come up with any sort of, you know, any sort of challenges.

or trials or tribulations, you're supposed to rely more on the central figure or the understanding of the minister or the pastor, and then when you get singled out in these sorts of situations, you're so spiritually and mentally himmed in and kept down that it's hard to fight back because you don't know how to fight because you've not been taught how to reason through these things and how to think through these things properly, and that's when things start getting really destructive and really start turning inside and they start eating their own, where things can get really bad really fast.

Yeah, I mean, it's really the difference between real Christianity and fantasy religion, right? Real Christianity does not have magic swords. In real Christianity, this is one of the biggest problems that there were many reasons why I left the cult, and this was one of the biggest ones because I started watching people that were singled out like this, and not just in one single church, there were many churches like this, right?

And you know, the minister is getting up, and in many cases, they're reading quotes from Branum, which is also very condemning speeches, and I sometimes got bored with it because I had the tapes at home, and I've listened to all of the tapes many, many times, I knew what's on them, so why are these guys quoting them, right?

And a lot of times, I would just sit there and read my Bible, and while they're railing somebody in the congregation, I'm reading how Jesus is treating the woman at the well, or, you know, Jesus is with the prostitute, Jesus is with the tactical actors.

He's with the people that everyone hates. Some of them are sinners, some of them are political enemies, some of them are, you know, they were considered to be the lowest class of people in Jerusalem, right?

So he's sitting with the lowest class of people, and he's trying to give them something uplifting. He's trying to bring them out of the condition that they're in, and compare those two, right? You've got a minister who is just belittling, and if he were in the same situation, you take the woman at the well, and he would just shove her face in the mud, that's how this is.

Christianity is just so different, and again, there's no magical swords, there's no, the magical sword is a way of representing a way in which a human being can be put on a pedestal that's above all of the other human beings.

I'm the one who had the magic sword. I have the power. While all the rest of you do not have a magic sword, you do not have the power. Well, Jesus, who, you know, as Jesus is training these people to become his disciples and to send them out, two by two into the fields, to spread Christianity, he's giving each of them their own proverbial magic sword, and by magic, that's an awful word to use there, he's giving them...

the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's sending them out with something, the good news, the Jesus died for your sins. In other words, he's sending them out saying, there's no need for magical swords in your ancient mythologies.

All you need is to just love one another and be nice to one another. Oh, I know. I remember situations where, you know, it didn't happen that often because, you know, these groups were always so closed off to the outside, but every once in a while you'd get somebody who would venture in from the outside and maybe they wouldn't be dressed or maybe be a woman and she wouldn't be dressed like all the other women.

But she just wanted to go to church and for whatever reason she picked that church and then you'd see this snickering and the people being like, oh, she's, you know, she's gonna run out of here screaming because she's got a Jezebel spirit on her.

And it's just like, and there's no love. There's no, there's, there's no seeing the person. You just see them as we're, we're the special, we're the elite. We have this special message and we have a prophet who had a, who had a sword and all this stuff. And we had a special understanding and we're, and, and we're the light to this age.

And it's such a, it's so destructive way of thinking about things because like you said, you can't, it completely eradicates the way the Gospel is supposed to meant to be brought and, and received and, and even perpetrated to other people.

And yeah, you see such an absent of love and kindness for their fellow man. And instead of seeing them as another human being and be able to interface them and, and have just a genuine connection with them, they see them as though they are somebody greater than them, reaching down their hand to them as a, and them being a lesser being in their eyes.

And just them having an interaction with them, they're, they're getting, they might be able to see God through me because I'm so special. It's just like, you know, let's just worry about loving people and treating people better and not some of this other garbage. I mean, really?

Yeah, you know, the absence of love for me is the biggest thing. I've, I've gone through all of this history, you know, you can find all of the lies and the deception and the failed prophecies.

And in the end, none of that really matters because Jesus said the greatest two commandments is love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And I just have to take a step back and say, is that what is happening here?

And for me, I started filtering every doctrine through this. If, if somebody told me some great theology that they had, I would just run into that filter. Does, does that match up with that filter?

It's condemning this person because, you know, not allowing them to come into your church because she's a female and she's wearing pants. Is that following that filter? And I've seen it. I've seen women being actually kicked out. If they were wearing pants, they would be escorted to the door.

How do you save the person? If they can't come to your church, man, is it following, is it following that filter? Right? So for me, that's just the biggest thing. None of the other stuff matters.

It, magical swords doesn't fall through that filter, right? All it does is it takes a human being and it says, this human being is better than the rest because he has a magic sword.

It's ridiculous, you know? So if you've got questions and you want to, want us to talk about the weird doctrines that you had in your church, so you can send them into us. And if you want to, if you enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can also check it out on the website, it's www.William-Branum.org.

And for an overview of the historical research of William Branum in the Healing Revivals, you can read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.