Weird Doctrines: You Will Be Assimilated

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, 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 latter-rain healing revivals. James, today, I don't know if you can hear it in the background, but I've got thunderstorms all around me, and we're going to test the power of the filtering software

that I use on the podcast. It's pretty loud, and sometimes for the people who don't realize this in the video audience, sometimes my mouth moves very close to the mic, and that's because I can get louder volume and filter out the rest of the room, so I may be getting close when it gets really, really loud. But my windows are shaking, and the walls are shaking, and it's a very shaky time this time we're in. But I'm kind of excited about today's episode. We've talked about it many times. I'm a big science fiction fan, and you

pitched this idea to me, something that you'd found some quotes on, and it's kind of related to some of the ones that we've had in the past, where it's like subliminal messaging, and different things like this. And it all goes hand in hand, but this one is going a bit deeper than we have in the past, and we are talking about the power of assimilation.

Yeah, so in this clip here, we're sort of getting into this thought here that's being brought in this particular section here, but the minister is drawing a distinction between how important it is to be assimilated into the movement, and it draws, later on, it kind of draws into some interesting things that we wanted to examine. But yeah, let's take a look clip. I want to speak to you tonight by the help of the Lord on the power of assimilation.

Listen to the word now, what it means to assimilate. To take in, and in court, operate as one's own, to absorb, to bring into conformity with the customs and attitudes of others. And it also means to cause to resemble.

So assimilation is something that we do every day. And it is something that we have to be so careful about because the music you listen to, the entertainment that you allow yourself to become involved in.

The people that you are around, that you fellowship with, that you spend time with, we will assimilate from them certain things. That's what makes us what we are. Our parents, our family, our neighbors, and those that we are around, and we pick up this and that and the other, and we are able to assimilate from them.

We pull it into our mannerisms, and there are many of these things that are actually stored in our subconscious. We don't even realize it. And many times we want things so bad that we try to reach for it in our conscious level, and we pull it from the subconscious and the soul, and then we set up a great battle going on where most of the time inside of our mind.

So James, when I hear this quote, and I'm sure your mind goes down the same path as mine, as we've mentioned, I'm a big science fiction fan, and when I hear the word assimilation, my mind immediately goes to Star Trek's board.

You will be assimilated. So ironically, I am in direct contact. In fact, I'll be having a conversation with him, I think, this week. I'm in contact with the person who created the concept for the Star Trek board.

He is a mind control cult expert. He understands the dynamics of a cult from the central figure, which he created this representation, the board queen is a central figure, and how all of the, you know, the rank and file members, they get all of their orders from headquarters in the board hive mind.

And it's a big collective mind. And apparently, I don't believe I'm permitted to say who, but one of the people who is deeply involved with the Star Trek next generation television show, one of them, they're wife was in a Jehovah's Witness cult.

And what he experienced in trying to work with this, you know, the people trying to help his wife out of this cult, and after leaving help, deprogram her mind from this, he saw this as the worst evil, most destructive thing he'd ever encountered in his life.

And um, he... asked for a mind control expert to come and create an entity that would be the villain of the the nemesis of the Star Trek show and it is by far the most powerful enemy of the Star Trek show and it was modeled after the Jehovah's Witness call but you know when it comes down to its dynamic structure the Borg represents not just Jehovah's Witness called but it represents practically every cult they all use the same patterns right you've got right the pyramid structure the rank and file members at the bottom going up to the enforcers going up to the

central figure and you know there whenever they attack for people who aren't Star Trek fans like I am the Borg comes to a person who's an unsuspecting you know they don't know that they're about to be assimilated and they they inject these nanobytes or whatever and they take over the mind of the person who is who's the person that they quote unquote recruit into the Borg and it's very much the way that it happens mentally whenever a person is recruited into a mind control cult like the message they are assimilated and parts of their old self we even have

these songs James I'm sure you had them you put off the old man and you put on the new and you know from a Christian concept that can be taken both ways but in a mind control cult it's entirely different because you are basically taking all of the extra biblical things with it when you put off the old self and so you are fully and wholly assimilated into a cult right and you know when you when you look at it from the destructive side of things you know because like you said some of these things in a healthy group you know some of these things

may not take on such darker connotations but when you look at a destructive group and a destructive cult you know the the assimilation can can get to where you're you have to cut off ties with family and you have to cut off ties with normal people and the whole goal is to get you to further rely on the group or the central figure for your for your sustenance for your for your protection for your state of mind and things like that and it allows in in destructive groups it allows the controlling members to essentially have their way with your mind

because they they spend so much time trying to pull you further and further into the point where you are so reliant upon them that you lose even your individual self because you because the whole point in some of these groups is to completely eradicate your individual self to such an extent that you take on the either identity or the mannerisms or whatever of the essential figure of the group and whatever. And, you know, and that's how a lot of times family members who are like, who have members, family members who are in some of these groups

like that, they see, well, they're not even the same person anymore. You don't even act like yourself. And so it creates a lot of pressure on some of these people because they're like, you're not even, you're not even acting right. And so they see this from the outside, but when you're inside, you can't even see it because you've been so normalized to it that it just, nothing seems weird. This seems like if anything, this seems like the right course of action. Exactly. And, you know, you have to take into full context, you know, I'm not going to play the entire sermon here, James, but you have to take into, into your

understanding of what's going on. You have to consider that it's not just assimilation, but there is also at the same time de assimilation. There are all of the things that, when you join a mind control cult, there are things that you have to, like the song says, put off your old self, you have to distance yourself from it. And at the end of this particular clip, he talks about, you know, the parents and the family, we pick up things from them. And, you know, to the casual person who's just heard this clip on our show, it's not necessarily a bad

thing, right? You know, it's good to learn from your family. And we hope you have a healthy circle of friends that you can learn from. But understanding the cult context of this is critical because that, that plays both, that goes both ways. Sometimes we have family members who aren't in the cult. And I personally have set through a sermon where actually multiple, but one in particular that sticks in my mind, where the minister said, people in my family ask me why I never have anything to do with them. And I tell them, it's because you don't believe our prophet.

If you believed our prophet, I would be around you, but I'm not going to be around you. And he's drawing that line in the sand, which is, you know, if you read closely into what this minister is saying, we pick up things around the people who are in our, you know, in our circles. And we can be assimilated by this. So we need to, what he's saying is we need to separate ourselves from those who aren't in this cult mentality. And James, I've, you know, I spent 37 years in this coast to coast, you know, growing up in all of these churches, then I visited several churches.

They all have the same theme. If you are hanging out with people who aren't in the cult, you're going to pick up things from them. And oh my gosh, you might leave the cult. Right. And You know, and like we were talking about a second ago, it's not let sometimes distancing from other people isn't always a bad thing.

Like if you've got a loved one or something and they're hanging around say a drug addicts or things like that and you're like, I don't want you to be around that cause I don't want you to get involved in that and get in a downward spiral something like that.

You're talking about a situation where someone's getting into an unhealthy environment and that environment affecting them in such a way that it pulls them down. Well, destructive cults, take that and turn that example and make it to where everything that's outside of the group is something that can do that to you and the goal isn't necessarily to keep you healthy.

It's to not pull you out of the group because the idea is to keep you in. And a lot of times they do this by encouraging and like this thing is like talking about assimilation.

And one of the things that really troubles me about that is that in some of these movements, you see a very hyper focus on getting away from individualism

and robbing you of your own thought processes and things like that and to rely not on your own thinking and your own understanding, but the group's understanding or the wisdom that the group has imparted upon you.

And these things help to de-quip you in a way to where you can't handle outside pressures because you're not approaching this with a rational mind. And so when someone approaches you and says, hey, this is unhealthy, this is destructive, I'm worried about you.

There's a sort of fear that starts building up in you because you're rational mind isn't what's engaging in these processes. And so when you start to do programming from it and you reflect on these sorts of things, you realize what's going on is your mind is sort of protecting you in a way because it knows it can't engage with these sorts of conversations because it doesn't know why it believes what it believes.

It just knows you've been told to believe this because this is just what we believe. We've assimilated into this. We don't understand it, we just assimilate. Exactly. And putting aside the irony that this particular clip is talking about being assimilated by outside influences while there are people being assimilated in the church, literally.

There is some irony in historical context for this, which we've covered in the historical episodes of the podcast quite thoroughly, but to sum up the last, what is it, 54 or 56 episodes,

there were ministers before this even became the message. Back in the early days before this exploded into what it became, the latter-rained message and then eventually, William Brannum's message called the personality. This whole entire movement began with William Brannum as a...

It's the leader of the healing revival, and he, along with thousands of other, quote-unquote healing evangelists, they joined into this big movement. All of them were, just like this says, they were all assimilated into this, and many of them were unaware of the very sinister background of William Brannum and some of the men working with him, which again, we've explored very thoroughly in the, in the, you know, the historical podcast that we do.

But before William Brannum was a laterane revivalist and actually several different conflicting stage personas prior, William Brannum was working with Roy Davis, who was the second in command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan.

Davis had came to Jeffersonville, Indiana and planted the church, which became eventually the Brannum Tabernacle. It was a time whenever the Indiana clan had full and complete control of Indiana. And like this minister is saying here, there was this common theme among the white supremacy versions of Christianity within Indiana that the Catholic Church had invaded Indiana, actually invaded the nation, and they were assimilating the nation through the school children.

And so there was this big initiative to try to separate children from the Catholic influence in the schools, and they began playing clan-produced videos inside of churches. I mean, it's, it's this really, really weird history.

But the irony is that before this became the message called to personality and before William Brannum became the leader of this, he was also involved in making the same exact statements with regards to white supremacy, working with very, very high ranking members of the Ku Klux Klan.

There's not a lot of exact smoking guns sometimes that you can point to specifics, but there's so much smoke that there's, there's, there's, there's fire, there's somewhere. And you know, and even like Brannum talking about how, you know, he couldn't say anything against the clan because they paid his medical bills and then, you know, it's like, this is something that today we, we see as such an evil organization, the views that they hold are so evil and repugnant that to think of that your spiritual leader, the man who brought a revelation of the hour to your generation is saying that he could never say anything wrong

against them. It's in, and then everything else, you know, and it, but it further goes into the assimilation factor that we're talking about here because the ministers are saying, okay, don't look at things like that, that, that, that you can't understand it.

It's maybe just man's error, whatever. And so they say, but just get deeper into this group, you know, a simple. late deeper turn off your thinking and it'll all make sense in the end when at the same time you're looking okay this man literally will not say anything bad about the clan and we're like the clan is bad. It's like it's like those two things can't like they're in conflict in your mind. Yeah well and you know directly to the point that this minister is making the statement is true that he's made and you know very few times do we agree with

the ministers in the clip that we've been playing but there is a lot of truth in what this is saying here it's just the context is flipped upside down which I want to fully explore but even William Brasm said this you know you can tell the type of person you're dealing with by the company that they keep that's essentially what this minister saying and that's not necessarily a bad thing right but what he's not saying is we're in a religion and look at the company that was kept by the central figure of our cult religion right and he was assimilated very fully you can tell that he by the

things that he said the doctrines that were introduced we've explored it on the historical podcast like I said but there was this Christian identity theme and it was the notion that Eve had sex with the serpent and it produced a literal bloodline and that bloodline kind of disappeared through time and it led to the great flood god had to wipe all of the evil off of the earth but it came in through ham ham's lineage after the flood in the Christian identity version of this theme of this you know this doctrine that is anti-biblical they because ham is widely

believed to be the father of the nations of Africa the people with black skin this Christian identity doctrine said that basically anyone with black skin is the evil bloodline William Brasm who's working with the number two person in the 1915 clan he introduces this doctrine and he pulls the racist component out of it and he calls it his serpent seed doctrine and when he does this he in effect is assimilating people because he's getting in front of them and he's he's basically he's fooled them to believe that this is a real doctrine and it's not racist

and so these people get assimilated into this once they do he injects them with what's called the high breeding doctrine wherein there are two bloodlines and these two bloodlines and he says specifically if you're a black person and you marry a white person you produce what he called a mongrel or malato person and they can't even enter the kingdom of heaven yeah and it's it's crazy to think that I grew up listening to some of this stuff and, you know, I was taught to believe every word of it.

And then you step back and you de-program and you see the influences and the origins and the things where some of these things came from. And it just appalls you because you're just like, how in the world was I duped to believe that in the first place?

And because when you start to see the larger context around these things and the veil of the supernatural is dropped from something like the message because that veil of supernatural is what kind of helps sugarcoat it a little bit because it is so supernatural.

So some things that would seem a little strange, it's just there to hide the true diamond in the rough from the wise and prudent so that they would turn away because they'll see the clan connection and they'll turn away because like, how could that be?

But you stayed with it and you really got to the truth behind it all because you stuck with it. You know, but when you see all these connections and all these things going on and it's woven through all these different doctrines inside the message, man, it really does generate so many problems.

And like I said, it just, it really, sometimes I really struggle with the idea that how in the world did I ever even believe that was the case? And you look at the assimilation aspect of it and you see what's going on in some of these churches where they're, like I said, you're not taught to think.

You're not taught to reason things out at all. It's just believe and obey is really what's being said at the core where they won't say the obey part because they'll be like, well, it's a relationship with God.

You want to submit. You want to, the further you get in the more you get like God, the more you want to submit to this. It's not that we're trying to control you or make you believe something that you, you shouldn't believe.

It's that you, the desire comes from within you and that's where the implantation of the idea is, is they're trying to get it so in behind your consciousness that you start to believe that it's your desire to want to act and believe these things.

James, there's a good way to measure the level of assimilation that's happening. Stephen, Dr. Stephen Hassan calls it the bite model, but every, every psychologist, every cult expert, every person who's familiar with this thing, they have different ways of interpreting it and there are ways in which you can measure it.

With Dr. Stephen Hassan, it's called the bite model and bite stands for behavioral control, information control and limiting information from getting to the person who's being assimilated, not control, thought manipulation and emotional control, emotional manipulation and there's some historical irony in this.

You know, this minister doesn't realize what he's doing. I'm sure that he's, you know, he's assimilated himself, so he's struggling to understand that the irony of what is being said in his own sermon.

But whenever the Catholic Church was spreading and growing dominance during the time that the clan was rising in fierce opposition to it, the people who were involved with white supremacy, they saw the Catholic Church as a cult.

And many people today, they have the same opinion. I'm not going to go into the pros and cons of that opinion. But the irony is where I want to focus. The Catholic Church was, according to these white supremacists, limiting the information that people who were recruited into the Catholic Church had access to.

They were talking about all of the evils and the horrors that existed in the Catholic Church. Why don't you tell the people about this before you get them into your Catholic Church? They were talking about the way that they controlled their behavior.

There are certain things that the Catholic Church did not allow people to do. They were talking about the way that it manipulated their thoughts and their music was different than our music. So they're manipulating the emotions.

Basically, the bite model was being applied to the Catholic Church. And again, that's up to you if you agree with that or not. But in the context of the white supremacy history, that was just one element.

The white supremacists of the era were strongly against the Catholic Church. They were strongly against interracial marriage. And it's not that they hated the blacks. It's that they, many of them felt very sorry for the blacks that they were of the evil bloodline.

And they just did not want the impure bloodline to mix with the pure bloodline. That was their philosophy, right? And in doing all of this, in applying this level of destructive cult measurements to the Catholic Church, what's interesting is what developed from this was the same exact thing.

Once they started spreading this and people started joining into these clan-supported churches, nobody really told the people who were being recruited into the clan churches that there was this pure evil underneath these clan churches.

And that ironically developed into what was called the Latter-Rain message. And William Brannum was the leader of that. Hundreds of other leaders we've covered in the historical podcast. Once they cut Brannum off, that developed the Latter-Rain message transition.

to just simply the message. And then from there to simply William Brannum's cult of personality called the message. And these ministers that we're examining are in the cult of personality. So the irony in all of this is that from the historical context where there are calling out the Catholic Church for being a cult, for practicing the bite model on their new recruits, these people who are assimilating people into the message are doing the exact same thing that their forefathers were condemning the Catholic Church for.

This is one of the biggest problems that I came up against when I was deep programming was looking at how you're so discouraged from looking at the history of things, especially when it's about your group. Because the thing about it is the history of your group is so important to determining whether it's got anything real and legit to it or not. And what's the famous saying, like if you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it.

And it's one of those things when you see the ministers and some of these groups are they're discouraging people from digging into the history. I mean, just as far as like, you know, even if it was something like just going online and looking what people are saying about your the spiritual leader or whatever, it's like, well, those are just facts. And, you know, we've got revelation. And, you know, the revelation supersedes your facts. And it's like, it's like, it's like, no, no, the facts are facts. It's like, if the facts are nefarious to your movement,

then there's probably a deep problem with your movement. Yeah, exactly. For me, it's like the balance scale of truth, right? Again, this particular clip that you found, even though it uses the word assimilation and it's crazy fascinating and interesting, I'm actually looking up at my little figurines of John Luke Picard and data down as I'm talking about the blog here, right? It's so crazy and interesting because I'm in full agreement with what this man is saying. I'm not saying anything negative about it. He's actually being truthful.

It's just that the irony of the context, it's flipped upside down. And, you know, take what he's saying and let's turn it into a good, healthy, non-cult sermon, James. Because this is a statement that you could go to a normal, non-cult church and you could hear a minister actually saying the same exact thing. They would tell you that number one, the people that you're around can influence you. And if you get around the wrong people, you might get into drugs or alcohol or whatever it is crime, right? And you could get into in the religious context, you could...

You know, go to a new church and maybe that church is influencing you and maybe they're not telling you everything like this one is not the irony like you said. Yeah, the irony, but let's turn it into a good thing, right?

So if this were a non-cult church and somebody said this and they were being wide out in the open and honest with the people and they were aware that there were critical facts, but they were standing in truth.

Again, this is a balanced scale of truth. They would say things instead of what they said during the course of the rest of this sermon. We are aware that there are people who are critical against the things that we believe.

But we believe them anyway because we are, you know, everybody's welcome to believe whatever they want in America. And we stand in truth. So they would present this balanced scale during the course of the sermon.

The critics say there are certain things that are false with this message and they give some pretty strong evidence and they would go through the evidence and an honest person would say yes, there are clear cases where William Branham and others working with him were dishonest.

And here are, in this balanced scale of truth, here are the things that are very, very dishonest. Here are the things that we know are false because I can assure you James, even though this man is probably assimilated into the message himself, he also is aware that there are things that are false as a minister they have to know.

But if there were truth to go with it in the balanced scale, he would present the scale and say these are the things we know are false and we don't know why there was deception in this movement.

But here is the truth that we're standing on and they would present enough truth where the balanced scale tilted and then there's more truth. The problem that I see, not just with this particular minister and I've looked at some of the things he said, but you know, everyone that you've shared with me, which we've not even got into the good stuff yet, but everyone that you've shared with me, if it were to be put into a true balanced scale, the negative, the critical information that is the facts against it, so far outweigh whatever is, if there is any truth, it's so far

outweighs it that they can't put it in the scale, everybody would run screaming. Yeah, and I know that there are ministers out there who, I know of a few in particular, who had like folders full of problems with the message prior to some of these things becoming so widely known and only a few people in the inner circle got to see some of these things and know that, you know, the such such compilations existed. But yeah, so there are ministers out there. Like you said, there are some who are who are just who believe it hookline sinker who are just honestly just

trying to preach it from their heart, even though that some of these things are actually hurting people, but they just can't see it because they're they're they're assimilated just like the people they're preaching to. And then there are others who know that there are problems and they're perpetrating it even though they've known this stuff for a long time. And it really makes you think sometimes what some of these motivations might be. Exactly. I'm a big fan. You probably don't know this.

A lot of people don't, but I'm a big fan of the Christian non-Christian debates. And I've you know not a lot of time, but I spent some time watching some of them. And you get this person who is a very knowledgeable Christian, and he's coming up against some theme that is either from an atheist or an agnostic. And the ones that I enjoy there are healthy discussion. They they're not argumentative. One person presents here are the facts that I'm going to put into the scale of truth.

And then the other person who's on the other side of the aisle says here are the facts that I'm going to present that are in the scale of truth. And the scale of truth, you know, kind of balances and people can make their own decision as to which side it is, has more in the balance scale of truth. And I actually, I really enjoy this because it's a new freedom for me. We in the cult were not allowed to have any critical thought or critical information. And for me, this is fascinating, man. It's a freedom that I had never had 37 years of my life. I did not have it. Well,

what is really, really interesting is that while those of us who grew up in this very fundamentalist mindset would see that whole scenario of even having this discussion or debate as pure evil from the pits of hell, there are churches that entertain this thing because again, they are very open, very honest with their listeners, with their congregations. And they want their congregations to know that there is a balance scale of truth. And they assure their congregations that in the balance scale of truth, we stand on more truth than those who are against us. That's the whole

reason why you will find these debates held actually in churches. Some of them aren't, but you will find some that are held in a church because they want to be open and honest. They do not want to be cult-like. They don't want people to think that they're being assimilated.

Yeah. And the thing about it is, is if your God is afraid of questions, if your God is afraid of being tested, then your God isn't very powerful. And, you know, and like you, you talk about debate. That's something that, you know, I've encountered a lot more, like you said, some of these things online, these videos and lectures and stuff. And I too, you know, you can find debates where you've got people who are just trying to win. And those aren't very constructive because you got people just beating each other up and maybe you got one

guy that's got more knowledge, but it's sort of like a blood sport and sort of sense, and those things don't really, I don't really find much help in those. But like you said, I do like the situations where you've got two people approaching a topic honestly and in good faith. And you've got someone taking one side, another person taking another side. And at the fact is, it's not about beating the other person or winning against the other person. It's about striving towards truth. And in the pursuit of this exercise, you can actually, if both people are

pursuing it from a position of good faith, both people can learn from this. Even the guy who maybe has more truth in the situation, maybe the other guy said something. And instead of it being like, well, I'm against you. So therefore, everything you've got to be as silly. I can't even, I can't even concede to you in this, in this, in this forum. You know, everything you say has to be wrong. But yeah, in these, in these healthier situations, it's like, yeah, no, we're, we're both pursuing the, the healthiest outcome towards truth possible. You know, and that's just something

that's, that was completely foreign to me from growing up in these groups because, you know, the focus is on, we have the truth. There's no debate. The debate is, what do we got to do to line up more with this truth that we already know is the truth? There's so many presuppositions already in line to, to hear your thinking towards that, that goal. And if, if you're in a youth group, per se, or you're, or whatever, and you have a genuine thought that maybe is a little heretical in some of these destructive groups. Instead of people approaching it from like, oh,

let's really, let's really examine this. It's like, no, this goes against the core tenant of the group. And therefore, your heretical, we don't even need to think about it. And you're either shunned or, or whatnot. And, you know, and, and like those things further go to point to unhealthy groups because a healthy group should be able to entertain ideas within reason that, if you get people that are coming in good faith, looking for the closest version of truth possible that they can find. That's exactly right. You know, I too don't enjoy the ones that turn into a

verbal fist fight. They're just, they're no fun. But even the Bible says iron sharpens iron. And if you know and understand what that means, it means that if you bring two conflicting opinions and people put their heads together, they can figure out from the conflicts, well, what's the truth?

That's in its pure simplicity. That's what it means. I enjoy the ones that are a friendly bait. The ones where you take a person who is on fire for Jesus and you take a person who has lost all faith in Jesus whatsoever, they get together, they shake hands, that you know, they're not going to call it each other brother, like they do in the cold. Each one presents their information in a way that is very courteous and respectful. And then at the end, you'll even find some of them hugging each other. Like it is the Christian way.

The cult way would be to condemn him, blast him. You know, what's interesting is I have seen some debates where the person on the Christian side wasn't as knowledgeable as he should have been to enter into the debate in the first place. And what's interesting is that whenever that happens and the person who is against them detects it, they will put them into a corner that they can't get out of. And rather than just admitting either, A, I don't know, or B, yeah, maybe you're, maybe you're right. I don't know. What they, what they will do is they'll get

angry at the person and they'll start insulting them. They will start, you know, they'll get angry and they themselves look like a fool, but they think they're on a fool, they're a fool on fire for God, which is ironically like some of the clips that we played in the past. But I enjoy the ones where it isn't that where there are two very knowledgeable people. And I've learned that no matter where you stand on pretty much any issue, if you take two knowledgeable people, you're going to learn something from both sides. The cult, however, they take a much different approach.

They do not want you to know that A, there is critical information out there. They want to assimilate you by keeping you from that critical information. And I'm sure you're aware, a lot of our listeners who are, who escaped the message, they're all aware that the by and large, this cult is very strongly against education. And it's against it for this very reason. They do not want you to know that there are critical facts. But more than that, if you ever come in contact with those critical facts, they want you dumbed down so that you don't even understand

those critical facts. Right. And that kind of leads us right up into this next clip that we wanted to take a look at here. We got a minister here talking about the intellectual age that we're in and how how unimportant intellect is and we should be striving more for revelation and not intellect. And so let's take a look at this one and we can dive in a bit further.

would make us understand that our God is not a God of intellect. He's a God of revelation. Our God, amen. Send us a message and men intellectually right now are trying to prove this message wrong by their intellect. Amen. But God never used intellect to believe the word to start with. It has to be a revelation to believe it and we see tonight by the grace of God. Revelation has struck our lives. Yes, so this one, James, it has a few different interesting historical contacts that much they're much bigger than this show. So I won't get into them

fully. But most of the anti-education theology that spread all through the latter reign came during the height of the civil rights battle in which William Brannum's mentor, Roy E. Davis and several others. It wasn't just Brannum and Davis, but they were so strongly against the racial integration of the public school system. The premise behind it was they did not want black children to enter a school with white children where they may fall in love, may get married and may produce a what William Brannum would call a malato or a mongrel. This was very common terminology among the white supremacists. And so you will find

sermon after sermon after sermon during, especially during the 60s, where they are so strongly against education that if you don't know the historical context of what's happening all around this and you hear, you know, a sermon from William Brannum or any of the peers who were in this voice of healing, laterane revival, you'll hear this and you'll mistakenly think that they're against education, but they're actually against the racial integration of the education system. So whenever you hear all of this, you'll find these ministers who are saying that it's very good to be uneducated and that's kind of

the theme. I think for the people who escaped the message, though here this quote that you just played and though, the fully understand all of the loaded language in the context behind it, to the people who've never come in contact with this that's like, what in the heck are they talking about?

Yeah, you know, and one of the things that, you know, when it gets into the education side of it, you know, because you've got the, you know, you've got like the school education stuff is very, you know, it depends on which group you're in and how would extend some of these ministers go to, because you've got some ministers who are more educated and have more of an educational background. So they're not as, they'll still say revelation Trump's education, but they're, they might might encourage you a little bit more to go to school, but then others are very, you know, maybe they've got more of a

backwards background. And so they're, they really dig into the anti-education stuff. But the thing about this one is, is when he talks about how you know, the intellect, you know, not needing the intellect and how, you know, revelation supersedes intellect. Well, the problem with this is when you start looking in the Bible, for instance, I mean, if you're examining this from a scriptural point of view, you know, you've got, you know, the passages about the Bereans in Acts 17, you know, where it says when Paul and Silas was literally bringing them to the gospel. And the Bereans didn't say,

oh, well, thank you for this brand new revelation. We sat around and we prayed for a revelation of this new thing that you're bringing to us. There's like, no, they literally went to the scriptures, the scrolls, and they searched them to see if what they were bringing them was true. And this is completely the exact opposite of what you're taught to do in a group like the message. You're taught like, no, revelation supersedes, you know, because if Brandon brought something that is even contrary to the Bible, then it's a further revelation. And it does line up with the Bible some way somehow. We've

just got to find some way to aim it properly to where we can actually see the truth where it all lines up. And it gets you into so much, so much error because you're trying to force the message, which is completely anti-biblical with all the extra stuff that Brandon threw in on top. And then you're trying to make it all fit with the Bible. It just creates so many problems. But you can, you're get out of jail free card is we're about revelation. We're not about intellect.

Exactly. We explored this and I think it's the birth of the latter reign episode of the podcast, but there was this theme that flowed through latter reign that intellect. And you know, again, this kind of sprung from the anti-catholic church position that all of this developed from.

But there was this theme that intellect was getting in the way of true worship in the early latter reign movement. And it was it dominated the movement. They brought in what's called the fivefold ministry. And they believe that God was in the last days restoring the apostles' prophets, teachers, et cetera. And what happened was the prophet in this movement was the most powerful figure.

And so everybody wanted to migrate to the prophet's side. You found very few who they some did, but their ministry's kind of fizzled out that they were the teachers or whatever. But everybody wanted to be the prophet guy because he had, you know, in every group like this, it's always about money power and sex and or any combination of the three. Well, the prophet guy got to have all of that. So not all of them were that way, but you know what I'm saying, right? So what happened was you had all of these prophets spring up. And Charles and I just, I think it was actually this week,

we recorded and it will come out in a few weeks. But we're talking about the problem that this created was now you had all of these people who were having tug of war, which with each other, who thought that they were the true prophet, as this developed into from the latter-rain movement into the destructive cults that were created because of the latter-rain movement.

And many of them, like you said, were highly uneducated, but more than that, many of them, in my opinion, some of them actually had never read the Bible. There's no way that they could have read it and said some of the things that they said.

So you had all these ministers who had no understanding of theology, many of them were uneducated, and because of that, you can't have a person who's saying something about the Bible that is completely false and have people in your congregation who aren't calling you out.

So you want to keep them all dumbed down, and so there's this theme that developed against theology and against seminaries. Typically, I use the example of a school teacher, if you wanted to send your kids to learn, I don't know, algebra, and you sent them to school, but you told the school, now I don't want a single person teaching my child who's ever been to college to understand what is algebra.

I want the people who've never heard of it, and they learn algebra by revelation. That's what this movement did. One of the things that you notice in some of these groups is that they present things in such a black and white way.

Everything that they present, it's like we have an answer, or we either know this is true, or we know this is wrong. You sort of sort to see a pattern here with maybe why they want to get away from seminary and things like that, because when you get into some of these schools and you start to examine, you've got all these different people throughout time who have, even like for the Bible and instance, there's so much debate going on around certain scriptures and things like that, and the histories and different things, trying to figure out the context and

different things, and sometimes there's just a little bit of gray in there, and gray creates a problem sometimes because it leaves open room for interpretation, and if your group has a black and white view of history, or a black and white view of this or that, then gray just completely destroys all that, because yeah, it gives people room to sort of say, well, maybe you don't have it quite right, there's a little bit left here to interpret, so to say.

Yeah, and this movement, because again, there's so many people who are uneducated and Bible literate that, for example, one of the things that was introduced, once all of these prophets begin to spring up, and they all started their own cults of personality, started fighting with each other, one of the themes that was introduced, which is crazy interesting, William Brannum introduced the fact.

That's it. Well, the pseudo fact that he said there was only one major profit per age. And he said, we're living in the last age. And if you really understand the context of what he's saying is, I'm the only one. You guys aren't it. And the way in which, you know, his Bible, illiterate and historical illiterate context entered into his sermons. And this spread all through the latter reign. There are many people who did not know their Bible. They started saying this. And I, as I began to understand that what we were in was false. I was reading the Bible over

and over and over again, trying to wash this out of my head. I got interested in the historical context of just King Darius. Who was King Darius? Because I read the name of the Bible and that sounds interesting. So I go look it up, right? What became interesting there was that with King Darius, if you just do a search in the Bible for King Darius, you're going to find multiple prophets who prophesied at that same time. They were alive during that same time. Most of them, especially during the Babylonian rule of Jerusalem, Babylonian occupation of Jerusalem,

that of all of these prophets who were prophesying at the same time. And it's just a completely false theology that was only introduced in ignorance and in error. And it further shows that whenever you say, there are people that will say, well, that's a revelation. Well, it's not. It's just purely false, right? But I started doing the study and that led me into another study of, well, what's a major prophet? Because in the warped cult mindset that we had, because we had Bible illiterate ministers and a central figure who had no, I doubt he's ever read it. I really

doubt that he read it. There was this notion that a major prophet was like the, I don't know, the Soron, the major sorcerer, right? He's the all-powerful prophet. And the minor prophets, they had some power, but it's just a little bit. But if you actually understand what is a major prophet and what is a minor prophet, major prophet means that we have a large portion of their prophecies in the Bible, minor prophet, we don't have as much, but they probably had just as many or sometimes more than the other prophets. We just don't have their prophecies that lost a time. And understanding

that was, let me even further to understanding, a prophet was nothing more than a mouthpiece. There was nothing special about the human. It was literally a person who could put themselves out of the way in God speaking through them if you understand a biblical prophet.

the exact polar opposite of what was presented by the laddering cults. And unfortunately, many people who were Bible illiterate, they did not understand this. And ironically, they were assimilated into this mindset. And once they got there, it's very much like the Borg.

It was very difficult to get out of it. Yeah, and it sort of draws something in my mind here as I'm thinking about it. You know, and this is something that you and Charles have done a good job recently of breaking down is all the reading material that Brannum had in his library.

And all the different commentaries and all the different things from all these people. And you're like, okay, if you got this major profit to an age, that's supposed to be getting the word straight from God or the angel, however you ever you want to say it.

And then he's got all these things that he's, that he's, he's riffing on in his library. It's like, what is, what is a man of God of that stature need with all those commentaries that he proceeds to riff on, you know, all these minor people and he's the major profit.

You know, it's, yeah, it, there's so many problems there. And it further goes into the intellect thing. It's like, why does this major profit? If it's all about revelation, if it's all about the spirit is coming into the room and the wee hours of the morning and bringing him the message of the day, why does he need all this material anyways?

Yeah. And it further solidifies the point of being assimilated, right? Because if you were to allow a person to go to seminary, seminary is in these groups when you're trained as a kid, it's, it's like this evil place and it's scary and you're thinking, oh my gosh, it's seminary.

It's against the word of God. But no, it's like a school for teachers of the Bible and for ministers of the Bible. It's learning the culture, the historical information of the church, the theology, the, all of it.

It's, it's a college for a minister. It's something that is a good thing, not a bad thing. And you know, what's interesting is it is not a cult. And if you go to a seminary, you're going to find classes on, we believe these things are right.

And here are some very critical things that we believe are wrong. And included in those critical things would be many of these books that William Brannum had in his library because they came from other cult leaders.

He had Charles Stase Russell's works and it was, Brannum largely plagiarized that. The ministers in the lettering movement who were also illiterate and had not attended seminaries were unaware that this was cult theology from another cult.

And so they joined this cult. They were assimilated into it. Then they created their own cults from it and they assimilated others into those cults. So in the grand scheme of things, if you go back to, that original clip you played. I agree with what the minister is saying. It's exactly true, but he does not know that he himself has been assimilated and does not understand that the things that he is saying to his church, he is assimilating them, he's doing the very thing that he is speaking against. Yeah, and it's just further goes to illustrate the problem when you look at all

these other other heretical things that Brannum was pulling from to create some of his doctrines. And it further goes to show the importance of knowing your history, of knowing where these things come from. And what's the context of the things that the people are saying these things from?

Because when you know that stuff, when you know, you know, Larkin and all these other people and you know, all the larger context around all this stuff, it demystifies so much of this stuff that has brought to you and presented as though it's new and fresh revelation. And you can really get down and say, well, this is wrong or this is just some guy's opinion and this and that. But then when it was presented to me, it was presented as though it was the revelation of the day. And so yeah, it really, when you know your history

and you know the facts about these stuff, it really demystifies this stuff and it makes it harder for people to trick you into some of this stuff because you're like, well, I know that that's wrong.

So I know that you're just talking out, you know, I know this isn't right. So I can just ignore this. Yeah. Simply put, after you've been assimilated, you don't realize it. But once you are breaking free from that and you've kind of washed it out of your head, it becomes very, very weird doctrines.

So if you have questions that you want us to answer on the show, you can send them in, you can send them to www.William-Branum.org. And for an overview of the historical research of William Branum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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