David Berg and the Children of God

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church. And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, today we have one of those episodes that you know we've come across some very very unusual things as we

started this podcast and began research. But today I think we have one of the most unbelievable mind-boggling topics to discuss today. Some background to this I suspected that this religious movement, this cult, was a splinter group of the message for some time, but I never could make the full connection to it. I have actually been researching this cult since I became aware of its existence, probably for about seven years-ish. I knew I knew of the cult leader, I knew what was going on, and some time ago I just came across a weird statement that really reminded me of the message cult that we escaped, and I began to wonder

was this religious figure in the message, and I never really could make the connection. And you know how it is, you've got the main sect of the message, which I was in, and then you have all of these splinter groups where a leader will basically use the foundation of the core sect of the message. And then because the prophet William Brannum died, they replaced the central figure with themselves, and they became the new central figure of the splinter group, and that's how a splinter group, and then what looks like a new cult is formed, but essentially this is the same cult.

And we had a person contact us on the website who had escaped this cult, and he began talking to me via email, and he said, John, this is William Brannum's message cult, he's teaching William Brannum's message.

And I agreed with him and then he gave me documentation and you and I began to pour over it and oh my gosh This this was the message. Yes, John. We have a really interesting topic today Um, and I would do and also give special thanks to our listener who gave us the tip on this topic You know is a really nice man who had left the message and he had personally met the man We're gonna talk about today David Berg and he filled us in on a few different things And he pointed us to a place where we could find all of or most anyway of David Berg's teachings and transcripts of his sermons

And that's who we're going to be talking about today David Berg and the children of God cult and if you want to look at transcripts of their sermons you can visit xfamily.org And you can find a lot of research there that's been put together by people who've escaped the children of God cult And in our episode today we're going to explore David Berg We're going to explore the children of God cult and we're going to pay some special attention to the influence William Branham and the ladder rain movement had on the children of God cult and as we'll go on to discuss

You know the children of God is one of the most terrible cult to the last century At a high point they had around 30,000 members. They were essentially a free love Doomsday cult And they recruited members and financed their operations through widespread what's been described as religious prostitution They eventually degenerated into widespread child molestation child rape Incess child pornography really really awful stuff You know before it was all over with and there's an incredibly high suicide rate among their members and the survivors of the cult So children of God they've renamed themselves to family international today

But this is by far one of the most evil cults of recent memory It is it's really Disturbing the the subject matter we're getting into today. It is really disturbing I'm going to say if you have small children and they're listening. It's probably good to Not let them listen to this particular episode because it is disturbing and You know most people you mentioned religious prostitution most people are familiar with this cult for the sex and that's That's really all they know you see all these images of these hippies and they're playing the guitars and they're singing and

They're having sex that's when you think of the children of God cult that's by and large what people think and

You know even for me until I heard that statement years ago I that's what I thought I thought this was just a sex cult and well what is a sex cult? How does a sex cult form?

You know, it's It took me a while to understand the concept of a religious group with a radicalized leader who goes rogue and then it turns even more destructive than what it started from.

And that's really what happened here, because within the framework, when you dig below the facade of the sex cult and the hippies and the singing, below all of this, you have William Brannum's message.

And again, it's mind-blowing to think of that, but like you said, if you go to xfamily.org, on the left-hand side of the page, there is a search box, and you can type in anything you want.

Since we found this, I have been just pouring through search after search after search. Did they believe this doctrine? Did they believe this doctrine? And by and large, the message, as I believed it, you can find traces of it all throughout David Berg's writings.

Now, he will mix this with sex, because this was a radicalized splinter group of the message, so at its core, you'll find all the message doctrine of William Brannum. Then beyond this, on top of this, you're gonna find the weird sex stuff.

But here's where it gets interesting, Charles. We're gonna compare William Brannum's doctrine to David Berg's doctrine, obviously, in this, but there's this whole study that is much larger than this podcast can hold of comparing David Berg to the other splinter groups of the message.

Every splinter group that we've examined has many, many similarities to what was created with David Berg's cult. One of the most interesting for me was that we examined Colonia Dignidad, where they were molesting small children, same as David Berg.

Well, in that cult, in their communes, they weren't allowed to have a normal, healthy view of the family unit. The children were required to call everybody aunts and uncles in Colonia Dignidad, and that's how they were able to manipulate the children.

In David Berg's cult, in the Children of God, which became the family international, everyone, all of the children, were required to call their parents, aunts, and uncle. And it's really odd that there's now two message splinter groups that did this.

I think we should probably start at the beginning, and maybe just talk a little bit about David Berg's youth and what he looked like growing up. And so David Berg was born in 1919, which would make him about 10 years younger than William Branna.

And he grew up in the atmosphere of early Pentecostalism. David Berg's mother was a Christian missionary alliance preacher, and they traveled around quite a lot for her ministry moving in the circles of early Pentecostalism.

During the 1940s, their family was living in Louisville, Kentucky, just about five to 10 miles away from the Brannum Tabernacle, they're in Jeffersonville. And they were living there at the same time that William Branna launched into national fame.

And it's during that same period that David Berg himself became an ordained minister in the Christian missionary alliance. What you if you recall, FF Bosworth, he was in the Christian missionary alliance himself right before he started working with William Branham. So these people are right in the exact same circles that William Branham and his other associates were at, you know, during the same time. And so David Berg, honestly, you could put him in a lot of the same circles that William Branham had been in all throughout the early years of his ministry, even though we don't necessarily know if they ever connected

during that time. Right. And whenever you think about the different circles that William Branham was in, remember, William Branham had many different stage personas. Each stage persona had different connections and different people as this cult was transforming over the years. During the early years, when he was working with Roy Davis, he was connected to some very sinister people from the clan. And then in his later years, after much of that had changed and morphed into something else, he was connected more to, you know, the full gospel businessman. And for a period of time, he was connected to the voice of healing

revival, the lateral rain revival. So there are different sections of time in which William Branham was connected to different people. But during the early years, we have mentioned previously that William Branham was connected either directly or one step indirectly to Gerald Winrod, who was the Kansas Hitler, the J. Hawk Nazi, they call them, teaching anti-Semitism, race war, theology, etc. That's he was connected directly to Roy Davis and Davis was Branham's mentor. Winrod was connected to Davis. Well, Gerald Winrod, we have found also was connected to the family of David Berg. And apparently Winrod is the person who David Berg's mother contacted to, you know, kind of save

her from some trouble, which will get into it a bit. But you're right, he was connected to William Branham through these men that were connected to his early ministry. And there is a strong possibility, Charles, that David Berg actually came in contact with William Branham in the early years. And as we mentioned, as we're going to mention in this episode, he comes in full contact with him in, you know, in the later years. So there are so many connections to explore here. Yeah, one really interesting thing that I noticed in his sermons is that David Berg talked quite a bit about Gerald Winrod in those writings and the

different sermons that he preached. And Gerald Winrod is a name I'm sure all of our listeners would be familiar with if you've been listening through our podcast from the beginning. We talked a lot about Gerald Winrod. We did a whole episode on Gerald Winrod. I think the great seducing.

trial. We also talked a bit about Gerald Winrod in our episode on the Gordon Lindsay documentary that we put together. But David Berg's mother had definitely been following the teachings of Gerald Winrod, of Gerald Smith, of these other sort of people. And as you call, yeah, those guys are Nazis. I mean, they are Nazis, right? I mean, these are Nazi figures. These were publicly proclaimed Nazi figures. They were the founding fathers of the Christian identity movement, along with Wesley Swift. And it's, it's in that same circle of people that David Berg and Roy Davis were, rather Roy Davis was affiliated in

the 1920s and 1930s before he went to prison, right? So there is a distinct possibility, you know, that David Berg could have came into contact with Roy Davis with William Brannum during the 20s, 30s, 40s, because again, they were definitely all affiliating with the same people in that time. So they, at the very least, if nothing else, we can say that David Berg and William Brannum had very similar ideological influences during their youth and ministry. So even if they didn't meet, they were certainly being influenced by the same circle of ministers. So David Berg taught a number of Christian identity ideas

himself as he got older and started his own cult. David Berg preached the racial version of serpent seed. He was openly racist in his sermons, especially against Jews. And he taught really the same thing the message taught from the fifth seal. And David Berg believed in a second coming Holocaust and the end of day's race war stuff, all of this stuff had a Christian identity. So David Berg, it just in that way had a whole lot in common with the message. And I think it's safe to say that David Berg and William Brannum both learned their

Christian identity ideas from the same circle of white supremacists. And like said, that stuff comes straight out of the writings of men like Gerald Winrod, men like Wesley Swift. Let me read you one quote from David Berg, just a little bit on this. This is from Mo letter 1465. David Berg says, we will be like a super race who will be above all the rest. Oh, yes. Yes, God is a racist.

He has an elite race of supermen who are all going to live above all the others in the Holy City. Right. So John William Brannum said the exact same kind of things. He just tames his language down a little bit. Remember William Brannum says, God's a segregationist. Every true Christians a segregationist.

Well, I mean, David Berg says God's a racist. All Christians are racist. It's the same stuff. And William Brannum also taught, you know, as we went through in prior episodes that the bride of Christ, the elite bride of Christ is going to live in the Holy City.

and all the lower classes are going to be servants and slaves to the bride of Christ living outside the city, which is, again, the exact same stuff that Davidburg was teaching that came out of Christian identity theology.

Yeah. You know, all of these people who were connected to this ideology, the leaders of this were in contact with each other to some extent. This was a movement that was spreading across the United States, this anti-Semitism race war theology, which, you know, was British Israelism in the early years and developed into Christian identity doctrine.

But many of these leaders would go to revivals, speaking, and they would join together to affirm what the other one was saying, and to further drive the point home. You know, Davidburg, his mother was an evangelist, and she was touring all through the country.

This was during the time that William Brannum was building the early version of what would become his message called. He was touring all through the country. He was sometimes with Roy Davis, when Davis was in prison, sometimes by himself, but he was always touring and trying to build a cult, right?

Well, a person might stop and say, well, if Davidburg lived in Louisville, Kentucky, and William Brannum is out touring, there was very little chance that they would come in contact, which is true. But Davidburg also toured with his mother. He was an evangelist during the early years.

So this actually puts him in a better place to have come in contact with William Brannum because they're, again, connected to the same sorts of people. They are connected to the same ideologies. They're basically teaching the same thing.

It's just that William Brannum is building a Pensacostal cult. And Davidburg and his mother and father were evangelists in the Christian Missionary Alliance, which was connected directly to FF Bosworth and some others that we've mentioned.

So the chances of them being together is actually pretty high during the early years because they're in these same circles. But more to the point, they're doctrinally aligned during the early years. And as we'll explore through the rest of this episode, every version of William Brannum's stage persona, as it changed and morphed with his ideologies, we have found traces of Davidburg's theology also changing and morphing in the same direction.

And for me, that's very critical. So in about 1951, Davidburg moved to Arizona where he became pastor of the community church in Valley Farms, Arizona, which was a Christian and Missionary Alliance church. And if you recall back to that, the diagram we have where all of the groups in or late, the Christian and Missionary Alliance is the church of Charles Simpson.

That's the group that EW Canyon preached in. That's where Sandford came from. FF Bosworth was in that group. This was one of the precursor organizations to Pentecostalism. This group was heavily influenced and heavily connected to early Pentecostalism back in those days.

So anyways, David Berg, he was serving as a pastor there in one of their churches. And at that time, 1951, he was involved in a sex scandal at the church. And the sources are kind of vague on what happened, but it seems like from what I can piece together, it seems like David Berg was having sexual relations with an underage girl at this Christian Missionary Alliance Church in Arizona in 1951. So David Berg was involved in sexual misconduct from the very beginning of his ministry. You know, David Berg was a sex predator.

I mean, there's just no way around. This is what this man was. And of course, once they found that out, they instead of calling the police and putting David Berg in jail, they just threw him out of the church. And we see in David Berg the exact same pattern that we see with figures like Jim Jones and Paul Schaefer and Leo Mercer and these sort of men. These guys who have serious problems, very serious moral failures. They're men who really had no business being in leadership positions anywhere. But we see the same pattern. David Berg is expelled from one church, the Christian

missionary alliance over his bad behavior. And just like Jim Jones, who'd been put out of assemblies of God or Paul Schaefer was put out of the Lutheran Church, right? What does David Berg do?

He makes a beeline for the latter reign, okay? Because the latter reign movement will let anybody be a preacher. All you got to do is claim some supernatural commission. All you need is someone to give you a prophecy or an endorsement and boom, right? You're a leader in that movement. No background checks, no questions asked. And so that's what Jim Jones did. This is what Paul Schaefer did is what Gene and Leo did. This is also what David Berg did. You know, John Robert Stevenson's did it. All kinds of people did this, John. And it's really, really terrible that all the sick twisted

people are able to join latter reign and become preachers this way with no, no checking into it at all. I mean, he literally left this church in Valley Farms having molested or having a sex abuse scandal with the underage girl. And the same year, he's being endorsed by latter reign people unbelievable. It is. And remember, in the latter reign, in the five-fold ministry doctrine and framework, to be a leader in this movement, you just simply needed somebody to prophesy over you and lift you into power. No background checks, just like you said, no even, you know, simple study

to see this person even know theology. They did not care. As long as you wanted to be a voice among the latter reign people, and you had somebody who's willing to basically, they vouched for you.

They called it prophesying over you, but basic they were just vouching for you. I vouch for this person. And we've explored in our Jim Jones episodes. This is what William Brannum did. William Brannum vouched for him and basically prophesied that there's this ministry coming as did another woman, which we can assume who that woman is, but they vouched for Jim Jones. And he became this leader. He was in the message and became this leader of the people's temple called, which is very much like the family of God. It was a splinter cult splinter group of the message, right? And David Berg, like you said, should have been

demoted and taken out. And he should have never ever re-entered the ministry after doing what happened. But within this framework of the latter reign, they didn't care as long as you had somebody to vouch for you by prophesying over you. And according to David Berg, that person who prophesied over him was William Brannum. Right. If you listen to David Berg's testimony, so just after being kicked out of his church for sexual misconduct, David Berg went to a William Brannum campaign meeting in Phoenix, Arizona during 1951. And this is actually the meeting where William Brannum gives one of the most popular versions of his life story, John. It's not the

version I generally listen to growing up, but I know that's a that's a version of his life story. A lot of people are familiar with. So, and of course, that's the version of the life story that that is told in David Berg's cult. But David Berg was sitting on the front row as William Brannum taught this version of his life story. And David Berg says that after that sermon was over, when William Brannum was doing his discernment stuff, you know, so this is off tape, William Brannum locked eyes with him and told him that God had a plan for him. And then after

the service was over and as David Berg is leaving the meeting, William Brannum is standing by the back door of the building, shaking everyone's hand as they exit. And David Berg meets William Brannum in person and he just falls on to William Brannum weeping and giving him a hug and William Brannum embraces David Berg. This is David Berg's telling of the story. William Brannum embraces him and then gives him a kiss. And let me I could read a direct quote on this from the Moletters, John.

This is from the Moletters. This is what the children of God transcripts. This is David Berg's account of this. When William Brannum prophesied to David Berg, he says, the Lord is going to open unto you a great door that no man can close. He is going to close all these other doors that no man can open. Don't even try to open them. The Lord's going to open.

until you a great-door, greater than anything you ever dreamed of, okay? So I don't, I want to be careful not to overstate anything, but this 1951 blessing from William Brannum does seem to be a critical part of the mythos in the backstory that David Berg presents all through his life as the credentials to his listeners to describe how he received his calling to be a leader.

And David Berg credits this encounter with William Brannum as the turning point that led to the creation of the children of God called. If you go back and you study the way in which David Berg reveres William Brannum all through these scripts, which you can search, you know, you just type in Brannum in that search and you can see.

The way that the respect and honor that David Berg gives to William Brannum, it definitely made a huge impact on his life. And I know that people who are in favor of Brannum for whatever reason, they'll say, well, this prophecy is so vague, it means nothing.

But remember, in the latter reign, that's the way it was. You gave this vague prophecy like this. And then it's like, it's opening the door to vindication that you're a prophet because if it, the more vague it is, no matter what happens, the outcome can be said, well, I prophesied that.

And William Brannum said, you've got this open door or whatever, you know, whatever was the actual thing that he said. Well, to David Berg, that meant William Brannum was a ordained prophet because that door opened.

In the same way that Jim Jones, when William Brannum prophesied over Jones, that there would be a great ministry coming out of this meeting that he's having with Jim Jones, well, Jones can look back to Brannum's prophecy and say, well, look, William Brannum prophesied about me.

And now I've got this big people's temple called David Berg and Jim Jones are very, very much alike in that both of them were received a vague prophecy from Brannum and started these, these big ministries.

But again, this was a man who claimed to have this power. He called it discernment, which is, you know, in essence, it's clairvoyance to peer into their futures. And we've made the argument before we can make it again with David Berg.

If William Brannum truly had this power and more to the point, if it was truly God who was speaking through this man, William Brannum, God would have known that Jim Jones would rise up and kill all of these people in John's town, Guyana.

God would have also known that David Berg would start this massive, you know, child pornography, child molestation, child prostitution cult in the name of William Brannum's religion. And God would have said, don't do this, right?

So we can clearly say that God was not involved with whatever prophecy that William Brannum gave over these two men. You know, if you take that prophecy that the William Brannum gave, David Berg, I mean, basically, William Brannum just prophesied, something good is going to happen to you in the future.

No kiddin', no kiddin', okay? Something good's gonna happen to you in the future, John. It's like the little fortune cookies that you get at the Chinese restaurant. I know, right? And these things honestly are, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of ridiculous, you know?

I mean, is it nice to have someone say something positive about you, sure? I mean, who don't like to hear a positive, you know, something positive said? But then too, is that proof that someone is anything?

I mean, come on, right? I mean, my fortune cookie is fairly accurate at times, you know? That does that mean, you know, the fortune cookie writer, you know, in South China is a, you know, I mean, it don't mean anything, right?

So, anyways, and you're right, this definitely leaves you with the impression that David Berg is gonna have a very positive future too, which David Berg did not have a positive future, I think, from the eyes of any reasonable person in David Berg is a terrible human being who, I mean, quite odd.

I mean, this man needed locked up somewhere where he could not hurt anybody. And the truth is he was already the kind of person who needed locked up where he could not hurt anybody else when William Brandham gave him this prophecy, right?

And I think it's worth pointing out to our listeners that William Brandham has a history of tolerating child molestation and child rape all the way back to the earliest days of his ministry, right?

Remember Roy Davis, the man who ordained William Brandham as a minister who was his first pastor, was living with an underage girl in his home which he was keeping for those purposes when he ordained William Brandham was serving as his first pastor, right?

And Roy Davis was arrested off the platform in front of William Brandham for this very thing in 1932. And William Brandham continued to support and promote Roy Davis for the rest of his life, right?

This is a pattern with William Brandham. William Brandham has been kind and supportive to child rapists throughout his entire ministry, beginning to end, right? Whether it's Roy Davis and those kind of people at the beginning, whether it's men like David Berg in the middle, whether it is Gene and Leo Mercer at the end, right?

William Brandham has a ministry long pattern of supporting child molesters, okay? openly supporting, openly endorsing them. You know, William Brandham personally went to Leo Mercer's child molestation torture commune multiple times and endorsed everything going on there, right?

William Brandham has a long track record of tolerating this sort of stuff. David Berg is just one more person on this list. William Brannum should not have been prophesying a blessing on David Berg here.

He shouldn't have been hugging him and telling him everything was gonna be okay. William Brannum should have been calling the police to have David Berg locked up for molesting kids in the last church he was at before he came to meet William Brannum, right?

There is just no excuse for William Brannum's behavior here. I mean, if this story is true, not now, not then. David Berg should have been sent to jail for raping children, not blessed, encouraged, and further empowered.

You know, at a minimum, when you think about what happened, I know that there can be many arguments that, well, this is just a crazy guy, and he was, he came in contact with Brannum and Brannum gave him this vague blessing, and we're gonna get there.

You know as well as I do, we're gonna get the comments in the comment feed that, well, there's always the Judas in the camp. Charles, how many Judas has we counted? I know. I think William Brannum has 75 Judas's at this point.

I mean, come on. Jesus only had one Judas. How does come William Brannum get 75? Yeah, and I wanna hit that head on right here right now because here's the problem for me, Charles.

This was a extremely bad call. We're not going to get into graphically how bad it was. You can go type in children of God into YouTube and search the documentaries. You're gonna find things that you wish you did not know about this call.

To put into proper perspective and to just say it in a way that you can understand what I'm talking about, River Phoenix, the famous actor, River Phoenix, was in this call. He was born and raised in this call.

From age four years old, he was having sex. Four, four years old. It messed his life up in ways unimaginable and he ended up taking his own life because his mind, his head was so screwed up from this thing.

That's how bad this call was. This call exists because of the message. Regardless of what William Brannum said, regardless of whether they even came in contact with each other, say David Berg is lying about the whole thing, which I doubt, but say that he is lying.

The reason this call exists is because of the message because you cannot just take an ideology of sex and say, hey, we're gonna create a cult and we're gonna go have sex. People just won't, they may go party with you for a while, but they're just gonna walk away because there's nothing to keep them with you.

As soon as they experience whatever it is they're trying to experience and the hippie stuff that went on, they're gonna go to another hippie guru. They're not going to stick with you. But William Brannum's cult framework, the framework of fear is what kept these people bound.

You can go back and you can watch the... testimonies of the people who were involved. You can read through David Berg's letters. You can find traces of every single element of fear that William Brannum used. You can find those woven all through this thing. In essence, David Berg used the message as the framework to hold the people captive by fear so that he could push his child pornography, child rape, child prostitution agenda.

And the people would willingly do it because they didn't want to get destroyed when the when the earth was destroyed according to William Brannum's Doomsday prophecies. These children devoted to the cult know all about its practices, including the religious prostitution, which until last year was advocated by Berg to win new disciples.

John, in terms of flirty fishing, do you think it works? It's a good idea. Yes, so I've heard of over about a hundred of our converts were one over thirty fishing. One of the only ways to get into their heart and to really show them the real love of God was to get in bed with them and to really share their hearts with them. David Berg claimed to have been to William Brannum's meetings multiple times, but the only one that I've been able to find enough information to place him at was the one in 1951 where he gives the the story of where he was blessed

and so forth. And David Berg told the story a lot. He told that a lot like this was his story about how he became a minister and the whole cult started, you know, the whole children of God got started. This is like the start of his story that he would always tell as to how everything got kicked off to create children of God. And William Brannum is a is a linchpin in in the story and the blessing that William Brannum gave him was a linchpin. So after David Berg had this blessing from William Brannum, he got invited to go have dinner with William Brannum and the other

ministers added nearby hotel. Again, just according to the transcripts of David Berg's sermon. And through all that, David Berg was accepted into the latter reign movement. There was a man named Fred Jordan who was one of the full gospel businessmen and he was there and they decided to sponsor David Berg and help him continue his ministry. And so David Berg moved to Los Angeles.

He was enrolled at the seminary at Guesswhere, Angeles Temple. And in our earlier episodes, we talked quite a bit about Angeles Temple, right? I mean, David Winrod had preached there. That church was the headquarters of the four square denomination. It was an epicenter for many different things, right? We've pointed out before the back end that period there had been Nazi figures at their church, clan figures, white supremacists, Wesley Swift. I mean, the father of Christian identity movement had been a preacher there. Gerald Winrod had spent some time preaching there.

Gordon Lindsay had been in that denomination for over 20 years at that point. And William Brannum had also been working with them with a number of years. Roy Davis, had connections there. The Sharon Orphanage had been sponsored by their denomination, which is where Laterane started. So anyways, this is where David Berg went right after his meeting with William Branagh, the Angulous Temple seminary. And based on the ideology he preached later in life, you know, it's very clear that David Berg would have found a crowd there to fall in with that was also influenced by Christian identity theology where he would have felt

right at home. And based on David Berg's transcripts, it seems like William Branagh and Fred Jordan were the guys who opened the door to David Berg to go to Angulous Temple. And so after he spent time there at seminary, David Berg then moved on to spend quite a bit of time at guess where Leeroy Cobb's Calvary Temple. Again is another church in LA that we've mentioned a whole lot of times.

That's where the congressman upshall healing happened. That's church also has a Roy Davis connection. And that church was closely connected to four square during the 1950s, right? And Chuck Smith and Paul Cain were also frequently at Leeroy Cobb's Calvary Temple also in those same years, right? And David Berg and Chuck Smith were acquainted with each other and I again suspect Calvary Temple is quite likely the place where they met. And so so through the 1950s and into the 1960s, David Berg was a low-level preacher on the fringes of the Laterane movement, especially around Leeroy Cobb's church after he left the

Angulous Temple. Right and even the low-level preachers remember this is a healing revival. It's kind of odd when you think about it from the perspective of having been in the message because we were told that it's this, you heard it too. It's one and a million. We're this little tiny, tiny group, right? But then you go watch the videos and see the pictures. There were hundreds, sometimes thousands, you know, all of these ministers who are in this revival movement.

Again, put it back into perspective. David Berg and his mother and father were semi-famous evangelists for the Christian missionary alliance. Paul Raider, the man who wrote William Brannum's theme song. What was he a director, a president, I think of the Christian missionary alliance? These were all interconnected people.

They all, you know, were in the same circles. And whenever one is holding a big revival and everybody's touring, if they can make the date, well, it's a way, you know, back then it was a way to advertise and promote yourself. You go to these meetings, people see you, people like you, and then they want to come to your meeting. So there's all of this cross-pollination going on. And you can clearly say by examining the doctrines, the David Berg's doctrine during the years that William Brannum is forming his...

What would later become his, you know, serpency, white supremacy, high breeding theology? You can find traces of that through what David Berg is teaching to the extent David Berg, if you take the white supremacy side of William Branham, David Berg, during the years he's with Branham, kind of matches and then it progresses even afterwards until he openly says that he's a racist.

Right, and David Berg didn't have to learn this, learn that stuff from William Branham. He was actually around the same people that William Branham learned it from. So did he get it from them?

Did he get it from William Branham? I mean, that's the thing that the message just tricks us on all of this stuff to make us think it's all divine revelation from William Branham. No, it's not.

I mean, William Branham, this is just an adaptation of Christian identity theology, a good piece of what the message teaches around serpency, to round like, you know, even the heavenly Jerusalem and the stratified control of heaven and all this stuff, that's all Christian identity theology, the race war stuff, it's all Christian identity theology.

This is not divine revelation to William Branham. And so David Berg was already around that stuff, really before we're for sure that he meant William Branham. And so it's just natural, they have a common belief set because they were coming out of the same groups of people who believe that stuff in years prior.

And so what was going on in Leroy Cop's Calvary Temple during the 1960s is still fuzzy to me, John. But there was some sort of a falling out between Calvary Temple and Four Square during the 1960s.

They had a split. And I'm unclear of the details of it and just what happened and who ended up on what side. But my speculation is that Chuck Smith ended up with Calvary Chapel as a result of that split.

And Calvary Temple itself, it ended up sold OL Jaggers who renamed the church. And David Berg would have been there in that time period of this split. And again, it's just fuzzy to me exactly how all that broke down.

But I would like to have more pieces just to be able to fit together with just what exactly went down at Calvary Temple during this time frame in the 1960s. I've mainly just piece this together from different sources of just common deduction what seems like it happened.

So I just wanna make sure I'm not 100% clear what happened at Calvary Temple that caused the split and the breakup and these people to go their different ways. But somehow or another, David Berg by 1967 or 1968, he and his mother launched an outreach ministry that started to attract a following among the hippie community, okay?

And Chuck Smith is doing it at the exact same time and they're both coming out of Calvary Temple doing this. Again, a four square ladder ain't. influence background. And if you believe David Berg, he actually claims that he and his mother were doing the hippie outreach first and then Chuck Smith comes and copied the idea from him.

Which, you know, it's hard to say if David Berg's even telling the truth on that or not, I'm not sure. But anyways, the summer of love happened in 1967. That's when there was a mass migration of hippies to Southern California. And back in those days, a lot of the hippies were, in fact, children who had ran away from home. They had hitchhiked to Southern California from all over the United States.

No jobs, no money, many of them were miners. And they were coming to Southern California because they were attracted to the free love lifestyle and the political ideas of the hippie movement. And on the sidelines of the summer of love, David Berg and his mother were doing outreach to these hippies, offering them free food if they would come listen to a sermon. And after doing that for a couple of years, they attracted around 150 of their first followers that would go on to really form the nucleus of the children of God Cult. And that's how David Berg recruited the early members

of children of God starting in the mid and late 1960s. Yeah, I've tried to piece together how and why all of that split happened. And, you know, what, what through David Berg on the trajectory that created the children of God? Because there's this period of time that's a little bit unclear for me. You've got William Brandham's prophecy over him.

And then to the historian who knows David Berg and, you know, all these documentaries, they'll place the date of David Berg creating this weird cult. And I think it's like 1968 or so. But there's one statement that David Berg made that me. I just, when I heard it, I just had to stop because this is a weird message only thing. In the message, there's this view of heaven that is not Christian at all. And I mean, when you think about it, you think more Aleister Crowley than you do the message. In the message, there's a huge part of the core sect that believes that

when we go into heaven, it's going to be this weird pyramid thing. And there are each room when it talks about, you know, the mansions in heaven in the Bible, they believe that it's these weird rooms within a pyramid structure. And David Berg, in one of, there's an entire, like this little weird comic book he created about the heavenly city. And he said, it's a huge pyramid, 1500 miles wide. And when I saw that quote, Charles, I was watching a documentary and I heard him say, now, I'm like, what on earth? There's no way that that that's what he said. And I go look it up

and sure enough, not only did he say it. He made this comic book with this pyramid drawing over the top of the New Jerusalem, the Holy City, right? And it's unbelievable. Whenever you look at the theology that surrounds that from David Berg, he quotes heavily from William Brannum's 1964 sermon, the future home of the heavenly bridegroom. That's the sermon that you and I just examined that William Brannum stole from Clarence Larkin. And the fact that David Berg is not only quoting Clarence Larkin, but also quoting William Brannum's strange descriptions of what Clarence Larkin was saying tells, and this is 1964, William Brannum preached this, right? This sermon had

such a huge impact on David Berg's cult that would form, that it looks very much like when David Berg pulled out of everything else, he was actually pulling closer into the message. William Brannum says in future home that it's a, he describes the city and he says it's 1500 miles wide and square. And you know, I was, I was reading to this, it was actually my wife that caught this. In the sermon, future home of the heavenly bridegroom, William Brannum says, it don't run straight up like this. And he would have been holding his, you know, moving his

hand up and down. He says it slants off like the pyramid. So what he's describing is this 1500 mile square pyramid structure. And that's what's in heaven. That's, that's like the subject matter for half of David Berg's end of days moving into heaven theology is this pyramid. And he's basically describing Brannum's heaven. So he is attracting all of these hippies to come have sex with each other. And they called them the happy hookers, you know, happy hookers for Jesus, the flirty fishy. They would have sex with other people to attract them to come into William

Brannum's heaven. You know, at first David Berg and his mother were teaching a very typical Pentecostal style morality to the hippies. But from what the sources say and David Berg's transcripts too, David Berg started believing in polygamy in about 1965. And just after his mother died in 1968, David Berg started to introduce the children of God to polygamy started to teach polygamy. And then very gradually, those polygamy teachings evolved into the free love stuff that they are famous for. And he got there by the early 70s. And of course, what's so interesting, to me about that is that we know that William Brannum basically authorized polygamy in his 1965

sermon. marriage and divorce. There's there's a lot of message believers who believe that anyway because they practice polygamy and they cite that sermon. And that was roughly the exact same time that David Berg accepted polygamy too. And John, you and I both know in those years there were quite a few people on the messages who adopted polygamy. I mean, I think Sydney Jackson is probably the most famous message polygamous, but he was hardly the only one. There is a significant number of people in the Jeffersonville area and around the United States that began practicing polygamy

after William Brannum more or less endorsed it in his 1965 sermon. And again, I mean, I know a number of message polygamous, I'm sure you do too. So it's very suspicious to me that David Berg, who we know was quoting William Brannum all through his sermons quite regularly, who we know based on the transcripts was very well versed in William Brannum's teachings.

It's very suspicious to me that he introduced polygamy at roughly the same time it was being introduced in other message sects. And if you read David Berg's justifications for his polygamy teachings, it is remarkably similar to exactly what William Brannum said on the topic. And so I don't think it's unreasonable for us to suspect that William Brannum's polygamy teachings played some role in influencing David Berg's view on this topic too.

I do know some people who were involved in the polygamy and I've actually been contacted, Charles, by message believers in Africa who are, you know, their, I rate that the main sect of the message has not supported them in their polygamy because, and they refer to that same sermon in 1965, marriage and divorce. And you're right, this is the same exact time that David Berg is starting to transition his cult into polygamy. So again, I take a step back and every major milestone of doctrine that I can find in David Berg's writings, I find this transition where it's literally

following the trail of Brannum. Now does that mean he was in the main sect of the message absolutely not. I think the main sect would have probably pushed him out. But, you know, towards around 1963 ish, they're started to spring up all of these different groups that would eventually form their own splinter groups of the message because William Brannum's theology became very, very, very weird in 1963. So I'm starting to see the similarity and this pattern between the different splinter groups of the message and what David Berg has emerged from. And what's interesting is, you and I have examined some of these splinter groups. They all kind of go in their own direction

and they morph into something that, Charles, in many ways, it doesn't really resemble the core that they came from, even though it has the same foundation. But David Berg, when his theology transitioned, it's still the core message, add sex.

Yeah, it's unusual. So the polygamy and the free love ideas started to lead to problems for the children of God. And in 1971, there was a very big falling out and the broader Jesus movement expelled the children of God right there.

The broader movement was not supportive of the free love polygamy sort of ideas that David Berg was introducing. So from 1971, David Berg and his cult were expelled and separated from the broader Jesus movement.

So they're off on their own. And so if you'll remember and keep in mind, David Berg and Chuck Smith and some of the other figures, they were all instrumental in kicking off the Jesus movement.

So that movement had an element of ladder rain influence from its very beginning, right? The Jesus movement had a certain flavor of Pentecostal ladder rain teaching and concepts from the moment, really, that they kicked off.

But what David Berg specifically was preaching to the children of God and hippie movement, which you mentioned, it is incredible. And it blows my mind to read the transcripts of David Berg's sermons, because David Berg was straight up preaching ladder rain message doomsday stuff to the hippies.

Like David Berg was literally quoting William Brannum to the hippies, hot through his messages. And the hippies were buying into it. They were buying into the imminent doomsday end of the world ideas that David Berg picked up in the ladder rain movement.

And the ladder rain movement that's influence was strongest in conservative Pentecostal Christianity, right? And I think everyone would generally look at the ladder rains outcroppings as being part of conservative Christianity. But people like Jim Jones and people like David Berg, there were actually a conduit for moving certain ladder rain ideas into what today we would consider the Christian left.

So these ideas did not stay simply in conservative Christianity, a flavor and element of these ideas also moved into the Christian left as well. You know, when you think about how it transitioned and what it became Charles, it's just so weird.

Because again, he is teaching William Brannum's message, mixed with sex. I mean, there's no two ways about it. That's what this weird thing is. And it's just really odd for me because I grew up in the main sect of the message and we didn't have a lot of this weirdness.

We considered ourselves kind of like you did in your sect. Everybody else was the weird ones. We weren't the weird ones. And within each splinter group of the message, they all hold to this notion that all...

of the others are the false message and ours is the true one. And when you look at what David Berg has created and he's out there with the hippies and he is preaching the same thing. He's basically saying that the whole rest of this laterane thing is doing it the wrong way. You must have sex with each other. But he's still holding to the core beliefs and that's what's really odd about this because number one, these people accepted it. And for me, that's the most mind-boggling thing because you take this doomsday weirdness. I mean, if I were to go right now downtown in Louisville, Kentucky and just start on the street saying

the end of the world is coming, we're all going to be obliterated by an atomic bomb. Come join me as I follow Christ. Everybody's going to think I'm a freak and they're not going to listen to me. Well, David Berg, he goes into LA and he says the end of the world is coming, the atomic bombs are going to obliterate the United States. Come with me and let's all have sex. And they did it. It's just so weird when you think about it. If you kind of imagine it, it would be similar to, you know, me or you going and doing this to the homeless community in this, you know,

nearby. Because this is essentially what David Berg was doing. The hippies were as a homeless people. I mean, they had no jobs, they had no food, they had no money. So he's basically going to the homeless community of Southern California and offering them free food while he preaches them doomsday theology. And if you listen to this stuff long enough, it radicalizes you. It just does, right? It's going to, and this is exactly what happened, right? If you listen to this stuff long enough, it's going to brainwash you because the message has hypnotic brainwashing stuff in it,

right? And if you do it and go out of the way that that William Brandham did, you're going to brainwash people. And eventually some of these hippies over the course of a couple years, they end up brainwashed. And then gradually David Berg gets worse and worse and worse and worse, you know, by year five, they're in polygamy and by year 10, they're in incest. I mean, it just gets worse and worse and worse, right? The children of God was already being called a cult by the early 1970s.

And I, I mentioned how a lot of the hippies were miners and young kids who had run away from home. Well, a lot of their parents were trying to get their kids back. And they were accusing David Berg of brainwashing their children and holding their children captive. And if you look through the children of God literature, it's pretty obvious. David Berg was using the exact same kind of language and techniques that was used in the message to hold on to the minds and hearts and souls of his followers. David Berg kept his followers scared that the end of the world was about to

happen that everyone on the outside was evil and out to destroy them, fear of the government. telling the people they had to be willing to forsake their families for the sake of the truth, right?

And if they didn't have his special message, they'd all be lost, right? That's what David Berg was saying to them. The exact same kind of message that's employed by message preachers. Let me give you a quote here, John, and just some examples maybe of the Doomsday stuff David Berg was preaching, scaring his laterane followers, his hippie followers that if they leave his message, they'll miss the rapture.

But here's one. This is from Moletter 1066. David Berg says, that reminds me a lot of what William Brannem once said. I saw in a vision that Americans would be the most popular and desirable slaves in the whole world.

After this next war, when the Antichrist takes over, there's going to be some Americans left. I mean, the war is not going to kill them all. They estimate at least 10 million Americans are going to be killed.

And I have a feeling it's probably going to be more than that. And I think that's a very optimistic conservative estimate. It seems to me that more likely, more than half of them could be killed, but I could be wrong.

So here's a quote of David Berg doing the exact same sort of, if you miss the rapture, you're going to be cannon fodder and the tribulation stuff. And you'll Americans, you'll be one of the finest slaves in the world, right?

So this is an example of David Berg using honestly, William Brannem quotes to scare the people and to, to keep them from leaving his message. Charles, for me, that was the one quote that really made me pause.

Because as we discussed in the show, there's all of these different splinter groups of the message. And they all kind of believe slightly different variations on the same thing. Yet they all have the framework, the foundation of William Brannem.

Without William Brannem, none of these, none of these splinter groups would have any sort of cohesion. Brannem is what holds them all together. Brannem is what holds all of this together with David Berg.

But this one particular quote that you just brought up when I saw this, I had to pause because in the sect of the message that I was in, we believe this, but there was actually added theology to this.

This was the, I was raised from birth to believe that the Russians were going to storm the nation. The women would be raped and ravished in the streets. And basically what happened if you read Fox Book of Martyrs, we were taught that that was happening again in my future.

And that if we weren't fortunate enough to escape in the rapture, Charles, this is horrific, but this is what I was told as a child, that we would be tied between two elephants and our bodies just ripped apart.

That's how bad this was. And when you read into what David Berg is saying here, he's talking about what happens leading up. up to that leading up to the martyr martyrdom and he is saying the things that I heard in the main sect of the message this is not from a splinter group.

The main core sect of the message was teaching this stuff. And for me, that's just mind boggling because I can kind of see, you know, maybe David Berg got radicalized by Leo Mercer and Gene Goad because he's in Arizona there in Arizona.

That's what radicalized him. No, this quote tells me that this was a radicalization directly from the main core sect of the message. Let me read another example. So David Berg died in 1994, but up to the very end, I mean, this he was quoting William Branham his entire life through all these things. This is from Mo letter 2810.

David Berg says, it seems like Hillary Clinton is the power behind Bill Clinton. William Branham saw a vision of a woman as US president and described her as beautiful and cruel. Maybe that'll be Hillary. If Clinton wins and she rules over him, she'll be as good as president or as bad. John, I mean, I heard that exact same thing from my message preachers, you know, all through the 90s, you know, I was in five different churches that said that exact same thing. I mean, David Berg is just this is this is message 101.

Let me read another one. Here's another example. This is from Mo letter 1876. He says, remember the photo of William Branham with the halo over his head? Well, they don't always look just like coups necessarily or rings. But what else is circular that I've told you is the appearance of certain beings, which are with us. You might say in their transportation or energy form, flying saucers. And I told you before what I think those are. In fact, I'm convinced of what they are angels. All right, you could have finished that quote, John, without me even if you had never even seen that, right? I mean, if you're in the

message and you get halfway through this, you know exactly where this is going. This is message. This is message stuff. So John, all the classic message stuff, I mean, is in here. David, you know, the fingerprints of William Branham are just all over David Berg's prophecies, the exact same sort of things you hear in message churches, UFOs or angels here for the last days. I heard my message preacher might, I mean, I've heard Mike, the current pastor, the old pastor, William Branham said this and this is where it comes from.

William Branham taught that flying saucers were angel angelic appearances, heralding the end of days. The one that's the one that stands out to me, Charles, is that's just really funny. We've discussed this before, but William Branham had different varying stage personas having different angels and his description of the angel and where it took place, it changed depending on...

the telling of the story, right? And, you know, in some cases, William Brannum says his angel had a turbine and had a beard or didn't have a beard. I mean, it varies. This, this event which would be unforgettable varies with William Brannum from telling to telling. Well, David Berg chose one of them and he used it for his cult. He said, this is David Berg in 1983. He said, some angels hares not blonde, although when I saw my guardian angels at that time and it's funny, I can only remember one head and face really. He was blonde, but they're not all blonde.

Dear William Brannum said that his angel was dark skinned, dark haired, and looked like an Indian from India. So I think his brown hair is okay. Oh, man, the, the amount of quotes in these sermons is crazy. I mean, David Berg quotes William Brannum hundreds of times in his sermon transcripts, right? And so far, I mean, we're just given a few examples here, but David Berg quoted William Brannum in a way that is not unlike the average message preachers method of quoting William Brannum when they preach their sermons. And the way David Berg was quoting William Brannum and the

subjects he does it on, it's very clear that somewhere David Berg had access to a lot of the message tapes or a lot of the message books, right? I mean, there's no other way David Berg could know some of this stuff he was saying. I mean, you, you had had to have been in William Brannum's cult following to know some of these things that William Brannum that David Berg clearly knew and was clearly quoting. So somehow David Berg had been closely following William Brannum's teachings at some point in the past. I mean, there's just no way you get this stuff that he's saying without

that in. One thing I find really curious about David Berg is that he was called Moses by his followers or Moe for short. And he was presenting himself as a Moses figure to them. And of course, William Brannum presented himself as an Elijah figure in his later years. And so I just wonder was David Berg setting himself up to be Moses to William Brannum's Elijah? And that's a curiosity of mine because we see the same thing happen with other splinter groups and sex of the message where a new central figure sets himself up as a successor to William Brannum in some way. And the

two, the two witness model, it would be natural to expect the Moses to follow the Elijah, right? And so it's interesting, isn't it? It's an interesting question or thought. It is. And I can understand why history has not linked these two men together. Because a lot of the things that you and I have been saying, you know, if you go search for Brannum, you're not going to find too many instances of the name Brannum in the sermons. But if you read the sermons, the books, the most...

letters, what material we have from David Berg. If you were in the message and you knew this theology, which you do, I do, you re-brand them all through it. Even if brand names name is not mentioned. And, you know, like you mentioned the two witnesses to the average Christian historian, they're going to say, okay, that's just revelation to witnesses. Remember, William had a prophecy that before he died, so the prophecy failed, that he would be converting all of Israel to his cult of personality. And we were taught that the two witnesses were going.

And, you know, I'm certain that the people before he died believed that he was the Elijah, and there would rise another Moses figure, and they would be the two witnesses that would go to Israel and convert them like William Brandeum said. So it kind of puts his Moses figure in a position to be that. But then, since William Brandeum's dead, it turns into this weird thing that unless you know William Brandeum's theology and know how the cult has progressed after his death, you would just, you would totally miss it, right? But even some of the

main topics, like one of them that stood out to me, when talking about the Trinity, he said, now you know the Catholics in some are strong on the so-called Trinity, but I don't even believe in the Trinity. You can't find that word in the Bible. So why should I believe it? I believe in the Father, and I believe in the Son, and I believe in Jesus, and I believe in the Holy Ghost.

Remember, William Brandeum was also linking Trinitarianism to Catholicism, which was a clan agenda, and it was largely popular among Pentecostals. But Brandeum went specifically to because the word Trinity wasn't in the Bible, that's the reason he didn't believe it.

Brandeum said, find me the word Trinity. Anywhere in the pages of God's Bible, it's a man-made scheme, an old, dirty church rag wrapped around to take the place of the sap line of God's Holy Spirit.

No such a thing. So even right down to the way William Brandeum is making arguments to support his theology, David Berg is copying those same arguments from William Brandeum. It's something else, the overlap in the way that they would talk. I'm going to read you a quote, and I'm not, when I read this, I'm not going to tell you at first who this quotes from. And if you're not in the message, this probably don't mean anything to you, but if you're from the message, I want you to think seriously, who is giving this quote that I'm going to read right here? Here we go.

The quote is, God always begins at the top with a man, a voice. Somebody he can work through, a messenger. He will always look for a man to turn the hearts of the people, a man who will call them back up onto the wall of his work. Throughout all time, God has always required his people to follow and obey his chosen mouthpiece, his prophet.

his man of God, his chosen leader, Shepard or King. God always has men of power for the hour. His anointed one. Without them, God's work can't go on. God has seen fit and chosen for you a voice and a man through whom he will speak to give you the message, which I give you through visions to create faith and give you courage to take initiative.

I didn't choose to be your leader. God chose me and I merely obeyed. Now, who do you think gave that quote? I mean, who does that sound like? Don't that, I mean, that is word for word, the kind of stuff William Brannum would say.

And I think anybody in the message would clearly recognize all of that, that that is the exact kind of loaded language. I mean, there must have been a dozen loaded language message phrases in that quote, right?

And when I read that every, if I don't tell you who that is, everything in there fires, I'm talking about William Brannum. I'm talking about William Brannum. I'm talking about William Brannum. That's a David Berg quote.

David Berg said that, not William Brannum. And remember, according to what we found in these transcripts, David Berg believed that William Brannum was a messenger, like every other message called splinter group, he just believed that he was the new messenger.

That's the way it works. That's the way it worked in your sack. That's the way it worked in all of these splinter groups that we've examined where the leader has gone radicalized and places himself in a new spiritual authority.

David Berg said, this is 1996 Charles. David Berg said, communicating with heavenly messengers, William Brannum used to symbolize it by saying, these spiritual experiences I have, these visions, these revelations, they're sort of like when I was a little boy and I'd go to a ballgame and couldn't afford to pay my way in.

So I'd climb the fence and peek in. That's sort of how the Lord does with me. That's David Berg talking about William Brannum's authority as a messenger of God. Let me read a couple of quotes out of an article I thought was really enlightening that maybe could help give our listeners some further idea of what children of God was like.

Maybe this is the first time they ever heard of it. This was an article in Rolling Stone. I'm just going to read three paragraphs here. It says, benevolent as he seemed, Berg ruled as a dictator, decentralizing all decisions, rather centralizing all decision, making power at the top.

And he had a blowtorch temper fueled by alcoholism. Mo often addressed the membership grunk. Berg convinced himself and us that he was the greatest man who ever lived, second to none but Jesus, says Sam, as your main, an early recruit.

You did things his way or you were out. No other opinions were allowed. Mem- members separated themselves from society, what they derisitively called the system. Outsiders were called systemites. By setting up Spartan communal homes, abandoning their past lives and possessions and taking biblical names such as Ezekiel and Jeremiah, disillusioned with fame, Jeremy Spencer, a slide guitarist with the original Fleetwood Mac band, left the band abruptly in 1971 to join the children of God called shaving his head and answering to the name Jonathan.

The late River Phoenix grew up in the group as did actress Rose McGowan. Sekt Life was rigidly structured. Mornings began with Bible study, a home leader then announced God's orders for the day, such as sweeping the floors or cooking.

Leaving the home for any reason required formal permission, Berg's goal was simple. Absolute control. He ordered them to die at to change their hair, their clothing, on Berg's command, some parents live separately from their own children.

So as you can see, David Berg was really controlling all these people. What they could wear, where they could go, who they could have relationships with, fear of the outside world, obedience to leadership, harsh discipline on anyone who didn't conform.

What am I describing? I'm describing classic literary framework, aren't I? Obviously, David Berg just pushed the authoritarian control to its limits, and kind of like Jim Jones did, because there's really nothing that can be done here to stop a leader from pushing the ladder rain frameworks to its limits when you're in these sort of groups.

When you're in these groups, the rank and file are just like sheep and you are at the mercy of your leader and how bad it gets, it goes just to the level of insanity of your leader, or the non-insanity of the leader, right?

There's really no guardrails. You're really at the mercy of how the man at the top is going to take you. Yeah, and the people who are in the main sect of the message, and even some of the splencher groups, remember, this is a group that has grown and spread kind of underground.

There are some main churches that do have some outreach, but by and large, you have this ministry that started from what's called tape home churches. These people will go, they'll play a tape, they'll radicalize themselves.

More people will come, that will turn into a church, and then it just kind of sprouts up out of nowhere. You find varying levels of control. You will find people in the main sect of the message, or even in your splencher group, which is one step away from this, they'll say, no, we never had this level of control.

Our pastor didn't control our lives. We were in normal, you would think we're in normal Pentecostal church. I've heard that time and time again, and I've actually been to message cult churches that if you were to take away the fact that they mentioned Branum about 3,000 times per men. If you were to take that away, you would just be a normal Pentecostal church, right?

But I have also been to churches in the main sect of the message that the minister controlled who they married, who they could not marry. They had to ask before they buy a car. I mean, this is very, very controlling stuff, right? Our family moved into an area where one of these churches was, and the church had kind of imploded because that minister also, I think, got caught into some sexual misconduct, and the church kind of imploded, and all of the scattered sheeple were, they didn't know what to do, because who's going to tell them how they can buy a car,

how they can get married, because this guy is no longer our leader from God. That's in the main sect of the message, Charles. So you've got all of these varying levels of control. Some of them are eerily close to what David Berg was doing. Yes, John. I mean, if you're in the message, and I know every sect not as extreme as the sect that I came out of, John, but if you're from my sects of the message, and you don't think you are controlled, and our leaders were this way, I mean, you're out of your mind. I mean, you just, you have been there so long, you don't even realize

it. I mean, and I'll give you, I'll give you something, okay? Everybody's going to get older eventually, okay? So you wait till you get about, oh, 50, and you get some gray hairs, then I want you to go and dye your hair back to its original color and go to church.

You know what will happen in my church is the preacher will come off the platform. He will point you out. He will shame you. He will humiliate you. He will preach sermon after sermon after sermon at you until your hair goes back to being gray. I mean, that is what happens in the churches.

I mean, the control is terrible. And if you don't change, you know, it'll happen. They'll keep it up until they run you out of the church, basically. I've seen things like this happen. I mean, you obey, you follow the rules, you do as you're told, and you just think about that with the little thing like dyeing your hair so it's not gray. That is a small thing. It goes all the way up to the biggest things. I mean, the level of control in these groups is something else. I mean, it's just through the roof. And if you're in there and you don't realize it, it's because you

have kind of been in a pot that has slowly been brought to a boil and you never realize a temperature is changing. But you are completely under the control of these people. You are completely under their control. You just can't overstate how much control these people have. The leaders have over the people. Let me give you an example, John. It's even accidental control.

Even accidental control. I preached a mess. I'm going to tell something on myself here, John. So while I was in the message, I was preaching. And one time I said something about it. We should come to church, clean, shaved. And I wasn't even- I had something in mind, but the next church service, everyone with a mustache shaved their mustache off, John.

I didn't, I wasn't even trying to get him to shave their mustache. Just a little thing, I say, something about clean shaving, everybody comes and shaves their mustache as often as, what in the world, right? And that, when that happened, that's when I realized, oh my goodness.

These people do not think for themselves, they will do anything without even thinking about it, you know, and I have this control over these people it is just crazy as a message preacher. And I felt bad about that for, for a long time, because, you know, that was the last thing I had in mind when I, when I said that, but the people are so controlled that whatever you say, they're going to literally carry that into action.

One thing we haven't really talked about, Charles, on this podcast about this sex cult is the recruiting strategy. And you go watch any documentary, the first thing they're going to bring up is the flirty fishes.

There's all of this material, this propaganda that was being spread about how to attract people to the cult. They, they sent women out to lure men to the cult through sex. And they even published comic books of how to do this. It was really, really, really sick and twisted.

As that progressed, as you mentioned earlier, it transitioned into, they had child pornography and they were showing children with adults having sex in these comic books, but they were, it was called the flirty fishes.

And they were loosely basing it on this passage. I'll make you fishers of men from the Bible. And so these prostitutes would go out, they would lure men into the cult by sex. And this went, I think it was the late 70s and went up into, you know, mid to late 80s.

They said that it stopped because of the AIDS virus, but, you know, to be honest, this was, this was prostitution and it was illegal. So they were running into all kinds of trouble with the law and entire countries were kicking them out.

It was, it was really, really, really weird. But keep in mind, that was the recruiting strategy. And when you look at any documentary about this cult, they're going to say, that's how they recruited.

But Charles, you and I found that that's not the only way that this cult recruited. They also had tracks. This one from 1983. So this is while the flirty fishes was going on in the cult.

1983, David Berg published this tract and in it, it's called the New Heaven and the New Earth. I remember William Brannum, a famous prophet of God that I met in the US many years ago, relating a dream the Lord gave him about heaven.

He had just came through a personal tragedy as he and his wife were caught in a big flood and he got lost from her. He finally found her at the hospital. but she died shortly after from exposure and shock.

William Brannum also got very sick, with tuberculosis and exposure from the cold and wandering around in the wet and the weather. And he nearly died too. In fact, I think he wanted to die because he'd lost his wife and child in the flood.

But while he was so sick and in the hospital and telling the Lord that he wanted to die, he dreamed that he was walking across these big, beautiful, flowery fields surrounded by wooded heels.

And there was this big, beautiful cottage. Charles, I don't know how it was for you, but in my sect of the message, my grandfather, this is the way he recruited. He had a recording of William Brannum's life story and he would hand it out to the people.

And that was his way of flirty fishing. He would hand him a tape and then just see what happened. Maybe they came to hear sermon, maybe they listened to it and walked away, but that was his way of fishing for men.

He would hand him the life story of William Brannum, which we've proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is largely fiction. And that is what David Berg is doing, 1983. While the flirty fishes are going on, while they're luring men in with sex, once they get them there, they were using William Brannum's life story as the means to recruit them into his sect of the message, which was called the Children of God.

It's something else, John, there's so many quotes from William Brannum that are all through David Berg's transcripts. It's hard to deny that William Brannum and the laterane message deeply, deeply influenced the ideology of children of God.

Obviously, William Brannum did not teach free love. Obviously, a number of these things that he did are from other influences beside William Brannum. But then again, there are a lot of message people who do practice polygamy, too, John.

I mean, certainly not the majority, but there is a friend of message people who live in a lifestyle not terribly dissimilar to this. And the Children of God's Doomsday beliefs, though, I mean, are most certainly shaped by William Brannum.

I mean, his fingerprints is just all over their Doomsday beliefs. And it's impossible to read through all of these mo letters and just to not see that. And so as I looked at the Children of God and the Jesus movement in a number of different religious encyclopedias, it actually seems to be a fairly well-known fact that those movements and those people were influenced by laterane teachings.

I mean, it's just a lot of the key early figures in that came out of laterane. And I feel safe to say David Berg is just one more really disreputable guy who already had a track record of doing terrible misconduct before he ever met William Brannum.

And just like Jim Jones and just like Paul Schaefer and just like Leo Mercer, just like Gene Goat and on and on and on, just like all these other guys. David Berg. never should have been put into a leadership position. He should have been sent, he should have been reported to the police and put in jail. I mean, that is what should have happened, but instead they put him, they endorse him, they help him go to seminary, he climbed up the ranks of the leaders, and for a man like William Branham, who was supposed to have the greatest gift

of discernment there ever was, I mean, it's unbelievable that he endorsed these people after they were already this kind of a person and and and helps them out in that way. And I don't want to overstate anything, but I do think it's very safe to say David Berg is a guy who took elements of William Branham's teachings, and he evolved it into something even worse, and he's not the only person who did that. You know, these, these same sort of people that are out there that take William Branham's framework, they put their own unique spin on it, and their movement becomes

just as destructive as their leader wants it to be. And it's possible for them to do that because the latter reign framework for this is a very easily repeatable framework where this stuff can happen. And there's no, they've completely abandoned the biblical models of church government, of church governance, of church discipline, and they've got no framework to stop or control guys like David Berg from getting a foothold. And very sadly, that's what scares me about the message today because the same thing is true today. There is nothing to stop somebody, a message preacher from turning his sect into another David Berg and to another Jim Jones and to another whatever.

There's no there is no mechanism to stop this from happening or prevent it from happening. And there are a number of sex out there, John, who are sex sex today. Look at did Robert Martin Gumbura. I mean, that was just a few years ago. There's not really any significant difference between what he was doing and what children of God were doing, right? And he was a message sect.

Like these things are in the message today in various sects and various ways, and there is no way to control it, to stop it, to in any way deal with this sort of thing within the message.

And it's designed in such a way that you can't. And it was designed that way on purpose by men, like William Brannum, who did not want to be controlled by the groups he was working with.

This is a direct result of them leaving the denominations after the splits in the 50s and building a structure where nobody could control them. We've investigated some of the more horrific instances of leaders of message cult splinter groups that were radicalized and went into sex. We cannot go through every single instance of this all throughout the United States, because number one, we'd be sued. So there are sects within the message that are following the same exact pattern. There's one in Colorado, I know, where they were swamped.

wives. I mean, it's horrific what goes on. We can't really talk about it. We usually wait until whatever is the sect leader has either died or is in prison and can't touch us. It is horrific what is going on in these sects. And again, I mentioned it earlier, we're going to get called out. They're going to say, when you're talking about the Judas, but Charles, we keep seeing a pattern of Judas after Judas after Judas after Judas. And there comes a point when you've got this whole army of these Judas that we get called out for,

you've got to start looking up at the top of this. If, you know, during the Bible days, if Judas had not committed suicide and he went on to found a church of Judas and started producing missionaries and evangelists for the Church of Judas, we would see the same exact thing.

So you have to step back and ask yourself, well, who's the real Judas? What is creating the foundation and the framework that can create all of these Judas as worldwide throughout time? And for me, it's this simple. Look at how each one of these sects were radicalized. What were they using? What were they doing? And how does that compare with normal biblical Christianity? Take away all of the elements, examine a splinter group and take away all of the elements of the Bible and find out what they're saying that you're not going to find in the Bible. What's the extra stuff?

And within that extra stuff, you're going to find that most of these that we examine, it came directly from William Brannum and they added something to it. In this case, you know, with David Berg, he took the message of the theology and he added to it free sex, free love. That's all it is.

It's the message called with free love. But like you said, we could go on and on. We could go doctrine after doctrine after doctrine to compare this. But yeah, I'm going to tell our listeners, go to xfamily.org, search it out for yourself. If you know the doctrines, you understand how it works. All you've got to do is go and look, you're going to see the same things that we're finding.

So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-brannum.org and Christian-cospalchurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum in the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.

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