Weird Doctrines: Picture Shows, Television, and Demonic Forces

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. 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 we have an episode that is by far the most requested topic that I have gotten on my website, it's like 2012. Everybody wants to note this, the answer to this question.

Why is it like this? Especially among the younger crowd, this is the most pressing question. Why are they doing this to us? The topic is about movies and television, and it's forbidden, at least in the cult that I grew up, it was forbidden to watch movies or television, among some people, not everyone, and those that weren't allowed, they're like, why are they doing this to us? What's wrong with my Scooby-Doo and my Iron Man? The irony is that this was a political cult, it was not a religious cult, and we're going to get into some of the politics of why this is like this, but many of the

same ministers that will, on any given Sunday, at least, again, when I was growing up in the cult, they would tell you that if you watch the movies or if you go in the theaters, a demon's going to come out of the screen and grab you. And if you have a television in your house, just having the television was the demon box, and the demon box would send a demon and get you, and many of those same ministers are in strong support of gun rights, and they would say, what's not the gun? It's how you use the gun. And this creates this weird irony. So when you're a child and you're growing

up in the cult, especially when you get in your teenage years, you're like, wait a minute. If the gun's not the problem, it's the humans and how they use it. Well, what about the television?

It's how you use the thing, right? And there's some history behind why this is such a thing that is so fascinating that I still, to this day, I continue to research it because there's so many angles of research that this goes down that I find all kinds of new things every single time I look and it's just incredible.

The focus in the message on taking away people's entertainment is something that I'm like you, that's something I researched as I was coming out because it is, it's quite strange because you have so much entertainment out there that can be just completely harmless.

You're taught that even if you let some of the harmless stuff in, some of the bad stuff can be attached to it through an advertisement before you watch a movie or something like that.

You might as well just throw it all out because you don't want to take the chance that devil is going to worm his way into your soul through some Scooby-Doo episode or something. It's quite silly, but there's a couple of clips here that we wanted to take a look at.

This first one in particular, the minister is talking about the picture shows and why they're wrong and using random quotes to back it all up and then further goes on to talk about why you shouldn't question, you should just go along, but let's let the minister speak for himself and let's go from there.

It used to be wrong to go to picture shows. You holiness people, see those bad plays, this is 1958, but the devil beat you to it. He put it on television and set it right in your house and no wonder he said that police officers being shot at and stabbed and everything is standing under corner with two guns.

They see the stuff. They're raised into it. Here's the solution. You ready? It's time for the church to get out there and campaign and get in the government. That's not what he says. It's time for the church to take its position and come out of the things of the world because an opportunity does not imply the will of God.

Do you understand what I'm saying? That Satan made an opportunity for you to be able to watch a picture show at home by having a TV in your house. That does not subvert God's word.

Yes. James, this is interesting and just the phrase is interesting, picture shows. I mean, as a child, I don't know how it was for you, but when I was hearing this doctrine, I'd hear picture shows and I said, man, this is ancient.

Today would say movies or at least film, film industry theater. My picture shows and we were taught in many of the message groups that I attended and then even in some of the splencher groups, we're taught that William Brannum is the head of all of this elaborate mess that was created.

That William Brannum brought this as one of the truths. The divine truth. Don't watch the television and movies because the demon might actually die. and it'll get you. And as a pseudo Christian organization, it creates this weird thing where your God is kind of powerless to protect you.

If you're gonna go to a picture show, the God can't protect you from the demon coming out of the screen, right? Right. But the word picture shows is where it gets really interesting because in even the era that William Brannam was speaking, it was called a motion picture.

And some of the old timers did call it picture shows still, but William Brannam, regardless of the fictional life story, he grew up in the booming town of Jeffersonville, Indiana. And there's some history in Jeffersonville, but there's some broader history that made his circles of religion use the word picture shows because again, you're going to a theater to watch a motion picture or you're watching a film.

In the early 1890s, I think it was Thomas Edison introduced a moving picture. And it was, these things were only like 30 seconds to a minute long and they would be several different images that would flip and he proved that your mind or your vision doesn't pick up the change in pictures.

And so he created this little animation. And there were these picture show parlors and people would go and it's very similar related to our bowling episode where they had like a bowling building that they would go to.

And the Christians are like, oh my gosh, they're going to a building that's not a church and they're gathering and they're doing stuff, right? Well, they're going to see these little animations and oh my gosh, they're doing stuff, right?

And some of these things that were created were, you know, in today's standards, you'd look at them and you'd kind of laugh. It'd be like the old Mickey Mouse black and white cartoons. I don't know if you've seen the oldest ones.

But back then, these people, I mean, this was very, very real things and he would show things like one of them was water flowing over Niagara Falls and crashing into the ocean and people were like, wow, it's Niagara Falls.

But one of them was like, it was two trains colliding into each other and people actually ran screaming from the building when they saw these things. To the extent that people thought that, oh my gosh, it's demonic these things, this mess that's created in this building that's a picture show building and it's not a church and, you know, the religious crowd just went wild with it.

But this was such a thing that it spread throughout the nation and created, I think they're called cereals. They created these little five to 10 minute clips and you could go and you could watch as a kid, you'd watch, you know, these little, they're called cereals.

I used to watch, they were these Batman cereals because I'm a big bat. man fan and I don't know if you've seen this thing but it's it's kind of funny if you go back and watch it the original Batman cereal look nothing like the Batman of today or even the comic books it was just some guy in a car and two guys in a car Robin was with him but they had in Jefferson ville Indiana they had a theater that was called La Rose and you would line up as you go into the theater and right next to the theater it was all in a row of casinos ironically right next to

the theater was a building called Shemps candy store where you could pick up your smoking hot red hots and go into the theater well this just you know stuck in the mind of William Brannum and today Shemps candy store is worldwide famous in all of the message Colton it's various splinter groups they make a fortune off of message people buying the little candies that William got William Brannum got when he went into the theater to watch his Saturday morning cereals yeah and the thing about those candies they are actually great candies I've had them before but it is actually it's actually

very weird in the message context because they are considered so so part of message canon and it's almost like you're you're you're walking in the foot pints of the prophet as you're as you're eating these candies just like the prophet did you know it's it's it's quite strange but yeah um you know you do you look at um some of the early entertainment and you know compared to some of the entertainment we have today everything back then would seem just so benign and um like you know it it almost doesn't even hold a candle to what we have today as far as technology and

even like the types of stories that are being told um because back then you you didn't really have the technology wasn't there they couldn't really do some of the things they can do now but saying you look back and and the fear that was kind of around some of that stuff and and it's like oh don't even don't even partake in these picture shows and you know it's it's like and and to see it just carry on to today nothing's changed it's the same they're still pointing out they're using old sources that were attacking the stuff back then

and saying well see it was bad back then so it still should be bad today because gods the same yesterday today forever have got hated it back then he hates it today um you know and it's like you're not pulling that from the Bible they're pulling that from their own sources that they like to pull from um but yeah it's it's quite um it's quite troubling to see these sorts of things keep on being perpetrated um and uh and and there's no source checking at all it's just the guy that I said the guy that I agree with the guy that I like said the thing that I want to promote

so therefore I'm going to promote it and say it it's in just as the same as of god said it exactly and you know when you really take a step back and you look at the broader picture It's not even so much that they're opposed to the motion pictures or the moving picture shows.

It's more about the change, by and large, the ministers and the movement in general, and it's not limited to the message. Fundamentalist Christianity in general is so opposed to change that anything that's familiar is okay, but anything new and changing.

It's like it's taboo, it's really, really odd. William Brannum as the head of this movement, my family grew up in the Brannum home. I wasn't there, but I grew up with all of these stories that we talked about, and William Brannum himself went to the picture shows while he's openly condemning them from the platform.

My family went with the Brannum children, with William Brannum taking them into a movie theater, watching all kinds of things that other ministers in the cult would call pornography. It was Marilyn Monroe showing her busty outfits, and I have aunts and uncles that went with the Brannum family to see these things.

All of the Brannum family they have and still do have televisions in the home. Not if you go into the first room of their house, but you got to go further. You get to the television shows, and they're the big fans of watching the Indiana Kentucky basketball.

If you ever want to go see the Brannum family and there's a basketball game on, you're not going to get them. It's just so weird because many of the ministers and leaders of this movement, they all watch it.

But the people who, just the common people, for years they used to hide them in the closets. They would still watch it, but if you had friends or family come over, well we don't have a television.

By the way, it's tucked in the closet. This is a story from your dad that I'll tell, and he'll probably kill me. I went over to his house one day, and I grew up like this.

All of these people, I knew who had the television hidden in the closet and who didn't. Going to dad's house, and he's got this big 50-inch way back before many people had. I'm sorry, brother. I can't hide mine in my closet.

Yeah, it gets pretty hard when it's that big. Yeah, it's pretty hard, but they're more opposed to change because my grandfather, for instance, my grandfather preached so heavily against television that many people would actually out other people if they had them hidden in the closet.

They'd come to a grandpa, and my grandfather, I have been in his house and watched old black and white blackface television. shows with my grandfather and he had set up somebody had bought him a television that apparently had the antenna stuff taken out of it or monitor something but he had this old VCR and he would play blackface television shows and comedies, he had cartoons and I've sat in his home and watched these things and left his home with him in the car to church where he blasted people that had these things.

It's just this weird, weird irony but people in the message in it, splinter groups are not aware that this was not limited to William Brannum and the Laterane Revivals and all of it's subsidiaries even in the UPCI televisions are outlawed because they don't like the change.

If you like my grandfather the old blackface shows that he was watching these people are very comfortable watching something that they saw as a children as children but whenever something new comes out it's taboo until it gets adopted and it gets familiar.

Same way with the music they grew up with a certain style of music whether it was jazz or whatever they'll play the old jazz but then when the new stuff comes out you can't listen to that because there's a demon in that it's new and unfamiliar. It's unfamiliar demon.

Oh yeah the unfamiliar demon is something that you see consistently when you try to break down how because there's no logical consistency to a lot of this stuff so yeah it's the demon I'm familiar with but your generation's demon is completely different. It's mind's okay. I'm used to it. It's old had at this point and there's nothing wrong with that. That's just how we were back then but yeah now the I kind of my generation missed the the monitor craze in the message where you didn't have a television you had a monitor so the monitor wasn't a TV because it couldn't get

television on it maybe it was you know it was just a computer monitor and then you'd see the transition later on into you know that's you know where computers and stuff more kind of snuck their way in and stuff and then when things started becoming accessible on the computer you could get television on the computer then but it was already in the homes for a lot of people and it was already kind of accepted in most ways so in one way the whole monitor scapegoat has helped a lot of people get entertainment and normal things into their house subverting the cult in a way

because the cult there's so far in now that they can't undo this that this is a thing that they've just have to accept at this point they can preach against the kinds of things that you per take on these devices but they can't tell you to get rid of your cell phone they can't tell you to get rid of your computer some might try depending on the group I know there's some groups that are a lot more controlling over your home and things like that you have in it but some of the groups I'm familiar with they

just sort of accept some of these things as this is normal now, but they will. They'll still try to say, well, you know, you can still get these things on your device. So therefore, you should not partake of those things on your device.

You might have to have it for business, but you don't have to have it to watch movies. Yeah. What's interesting is while there is this objection to change that they tied to religion in a weird way, there is a pseudo religious aspect to this that spread through the nation in the early 20s.

And remember, if you go back and you listen to our historical version of the podcast, William Brannum started working with many of the men that were about to describe in the 20s. So his formation of his original theology was based off of a 1920s version during a time in which they used the word picture shows.

So it's very, again, that word that phrase picture shows is very identifying as to where this came from. And they were, I mean, they were so violently opposed to this because of what will get into what happened.

They started claiming that there were demonic forces at play in all of these moot and this film industry that was, was birthing. And there was a period of time in which they, the groups of fundamentalists, Christianity opposed to the film industry in Hollywood started producing their own version of motion pictures that they were playing in churches because they were trying to convince people that the demonic forces at play on the nation could be countered by our own production of our own movies and theaters that we're going to play in the churches.

It's so crazy to even try to put it all together in your head sometimes. But yeah, it's, so when you look at that and you see it play forward and then you see the brand of influence and how he picked up on some of these things and regurgitated them and then message preachers of today or regurgitating these same things because the Prophet said it.

And so you end up with situations like this one here from, from this minister where the very, just stepping into the movie theater itself is such a scary thing in the message because, you know, there's demons all around and, you know, you got to be on the watch out because you can't see them, but they're there.

And, you know, the very fact of stepping foot in one of these places will soil your soul to the point that you might bring one, you know, with you out of the movie theaters.

It's quite, it's quite crazy. But let's, let's, let's jump into it and let's, let's see what he has to say for himself. Now this will sound a little blunt. I'm sorry, but the revelation of the message in the late 70s and the early 80s was you will do this and you will do this and you will not do this.

And if you don't do what your pastor says and if you don't, this, and he If you don't do this, hmm, some of us, me as a teenager, I thought I was in prison.

I wanted to go to the movie theater, but I was going to hell if I went to the movie theater, and that's probably correct. But the problem was, they made it a rule, not a relationship, and the message, the word of God, has went from rules of doing don't, has went to the relationship, or you say, I want to please you, Lord.

The prophet said that those movie theaters had demons hanging everywhere, Lord, I don't want to be around those demons. I don't want to do that. I might accidentally drag one of those things to the house of God.

No, I don't do that. Yeah, so the demon aspect for me, James, honestly, this is what made me dive into this research head first, because you know I know everybody who's ever done anything creative knows that there's no demon going to come out and get you.

I'm an artist, before I was a musician, and I did all this music, I was an artist, I could draw something scary, and I could assure you that a demon wasn't going to come out because I drew something scary.

I could draw something that is holy, and you know, crosses or churches or whatever, and I can assure you that nobody's going to be converted to Jesus Christ because I drew a picture of a church, but the argument was made that these demonic forces could come out because some human has produced something that has a picture, that's in a picture show.

And again, we go back to the history of how all of this started, and William Bram was mentored by the number two person in command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan. His name was Roy E. Davis.

We've talked about him in the show, you can go back and learn that history, but Davis was the number two person in charge, second under William Joseph Simmons. Whenever they formed the 1915 version of the clan, Davis helped Simmons write the by-laws in the strategy, and it was created as a quote-unquote Christian organization.

This organization was birthed as a response to a film called Birth of the Nation by producer D.W. Griffith. D.W. Griffith changed the film industry significantly. It was the first, his film, Birth of the Nation was the first successful, foot-length feature film that back then it cost $100,000 to make.

That's a lot of money in today's world, right? It is. It brought in $18 million in revenue, however, and because it was so successful, and you think about, I mean, the sheer number... We're talking billions of dollars in today's money for one film.

It significantly changed the industry. However, this film was very, very, very controversial.

It portrayed basically the slavery before the Civil War and it made a very painted, a very negative view of the freed black slaves after the war. And the villain in the movie was the black guys and specifically a quote, unquote, mulatto, which was the result of a black person who was the villain of the show made it with a white person and they produced this hybrid and quote, unquote, hybrid.

That's how William Branden would call it. Well, the hybrid person, the mulatto, was the villain. In today's world, the correct term, as you know, is this interracial person because the Bible, there is no male nor female, black nor white, June or Gentile, we're all one.

But back then they were trying to produce the notion in this film that the bad guys were the blacks and the blacks were going to take over the nation and they had actually taken over certain government systems in this movie.

Everybody's like, oh my gosh, the blacks are rising, right? And this is what birthed the, you know, the popularity of the clan exploded exponentially because of this movie and it became controversial and we'll get into the history some more as it goes on.

But what happened was people realized that this is not right with this movie is done and the power of persuasion that it did, that it created this scenario where now we have to filter what we put through the movie industry because we can influence an entire nation and it created this scenario where now politics has entered into the control of the film industry which sets up the story that we're about to get into.

The politics side of the message that your research and stuff has brought out has been quite interesting to sort of examine because so many, politics is so woven throughout message churches and in different ways and different factors, you've got some who are more left wing and some who are more right wing and it's so funny because they'll say that Branum had nothing to do with politics but then you'll see all these political organizations that he's affiliated with and you got KKK who's got their political stuff going on and they use all their different methods to achieve this stuff and he even said

he couldn't say anything negative about him and that's just, you know, I think of a million negative things to say about the KKK but, you know, but yeah, and you know... All this stuff keeps perpetrating on and then you see all these adoptions of all these different talking points from all these different groups, these political groups and religious groups.

And it's one of the things where when you're trying to sift through what's actually going on in these movements, that's why it's so important to get all the way back through the history because there's so many things that trickle through to influence all these people and what they say because someone like Brandon would say, well, this is an original revelation.

The angel brought this to me, but when you get down to it, you're like, no, Roy Davis brought this to you because he's saying this before you even said it. Yeah. Well, and it's just so odd, man.

I'm sure you've seen the conspiracy theories that still exist today. I mean, even people who aren't even affiliated with this message thing, they'll tell you that the Jews have invaded Hollywood and Jews control the world's money.

So all of that is so closely tied to what we're talking about. You know, DW Griffith's film was, it came out, I think it was 1915. Shortly before this, Charlie Chaplin, who was, you know, in the silent film era, 1913, he was only making $130 a week.

But when all of this movie pictures or picture show industry exploded within one year, he was making $10,000 per week, that's like $500,000 a year. And well, I mean, it's unbelievable the amount of money.

Charlie Chaplin was one of the people who was accused of being half Jewish. So you've got this whole nation of poor people, right? And then suddenly there's this guy that we suspect him of being a Milado or a hybrid Jew, who's suddenly making all of this massive fortune.

It just really gets weird because you've got Charlie Chaplin suddenly making money. Now there's a question of the Jews. Now they're introducing the idea, which is the early formation of the Christian identity movement into Hollywood, DW Griffith, which excited all of the white supremacists.

And then everybody realized, wait a minute, this is really, really bad. What we've just done. And so the government started talking regulation of the film industry. And as early, I think it's in the 1920s, I came across, the film industry tried to head off the government regulation by introducing a self-censorship program.

And basically this was the, this is what led to our rating system of the R and the PG-13, et cetera. And they, they did collaborate with some external rating system, but they wanted to self-regulate so that the government didn't come in and just fully take over.

for the whole thing. And I think it was like the 1930s that this whole thing was fully established. But in response to all of the government's talk of regulating this thing, well, they've also taken away the white supremacy from a majority of the films.

And so while all the white supremacists were very excited that DW Griffith is now producing our stuff, well, suddenly our stuff, our meaning there is not mine. It stopped being produced. And the clan were like, oh no, the government is stopping us.

And this was during a time British israelism was a widespread common belief, the notion that the white people of the British Isles were the descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel and the Jews that we see today are false Jews and they're taking over the nation.

Well, this fueled the hate in the clan, right? So in response to this, they started producing clan-produced movies and these clan-produced movies were all through, especially in the state of Indiana. They're all through the churches.

They would go to church and they would play these clan propaganda basically, but they would play it in the churches. It's so troubling to see how a lot of these organizations have latched themselves on to religious places and movements to try to perpetrate their messages because you need a vehicle to move the message.

And so a church is a great place to do that in. If you can get a group of people who are sympathetic to you or you've got a minister that you can tap and get him to push it because the people are a tentative to that person.

And then you've got a gateway into the people of that assembly through the pastor or whoever is leading that group. So yeah, it's so troubling to see that sort of stuff moving in. And if all we had in movies was white supremacist stuff going through the movie system, I could understand why people would be upset with the movies.

But today, that's not even the slightest majority of what we have going on today, so. Yeah. And people have no idea. I mean, when you're in a church service and you're hearing this guy saying, don't watch picture shows.

I mean, it doesn't even fit in today's world. That phrase is talking about something from the early like 1910 or so. It's talking about before there was even a motion picture industry, it's talking about the picture shows.

The ones from Thomas Edison, right? So you hear this guy talking and you're like, what world is he living in, right? It's so silly because, you know, I've, I, experienced this growing up too, and even different formats like I remember a growing up as a kid. One of the things that I was coming out was the Harry Potter books and they were all throughout my school. You'd get all these these book fairs come through and the Harry Potter books would be all over display and they'd everybody be like, you got to get these Harry Potter books, you know, give your parents to give you some money

to buy a Harry Potter book or whatever. I remember getting one from the library, taking a home and I hit it for my mother because I knew she was going to be, she was not going to be, she wasn't going to think it was great that I had Harry Potter book because I'd witchcraft in it. But so and then she found out and I had to take it back and I was really sad. I only got through the first chapter but you know it was really sad. But also at the time I also remember hearing, you know, Christian radio was something that played

a lot in the cars where we were going to different places. And I remember the talking heads on the Christian radio were very against Harry Potter. And it was always like, it's going to teach your kids to be rebellious. It's going to instill all these things in them.

It's going to subvert your own teachings in the household and turn your kids into rebellious rebellious kids that you're not even going to be able to control. It's going to run got out of the household. And it's so funny that you watch how it's gone through society and now that the movies are out and people have seen all the movies and it's become so more normalized that those same people, you'll see them at a Harry Potter convention, those same people in the radio who were bashing Harry Potter are letting their kids watch Harry Potter and all this stuff. So yeah, it's, it does change and go through. But it's

just an example that comes to mind as I think of how the media is treated early on when it's something new or something like, oh, don't mess with that. And then later on it becomes the guy's just whatever. It's just Harry Potter. We all watch Harry Potter now.

Yeah, no. You know, I've had the opportunity to tour to some of the ancient sites of Chichen Itza in Mexico and a few different ones in the United States. And you go and you visit and you see the ancient deities. And you know, while you're hearing all of these weird fantasy world sermons talking about how the demons are going to get you through a television box. And you go actually see an ancient religion that is very demonic. And you see what it is that worshipping you're like, wait a minute, that's just a stone carving that somebody took a hammer and a chisel and made a demon guy. And I'm going to be honest,

I don't think that thing is real, right? Well, this version of Christianity, the irony in all of this, the biggest irony of this episode is that while these ministers are claiming that the demons going to come out of the box and get you and boo, but you scared you in your seats, right? They have turned the church itself and the religion itself into a fantasy world that is very, very similar to the movie in history that they're condemning.

Even in the Bible, they talk about the idols made of stone. And if you go back and you read what's being said, they don't believe that that stone thing is actually a God. They don't believe that the demon's gonna come out of this thing that a guy made with a hammer and a chisel and come out and get you.

But if you go sit in these sermons, like they'll, whoever hears this from the message or any of it splinter groups, they will blast that statement that I just made. They'll say, no, that hammer and that chisel created the television box of the ancient world and the demon came out of the television box of the ancient world and got them because they have empowered the inanimate objects, the objects that have no demons in them.

And they're making this fantasy world that isn't real and they're claiming that objects made by man can be a demon. And they're in making the people themselves, the creators of demons. The whole thing is just so freaky weird.

I remember the Harry Potter fiasco that you're talking about. It wasn't just the message widespread through, I had, they weren't even fundamentalist Christians, their parents were talking to their children as we were talking about Harry Potter, you're not allowed to watch that because that's witchcraft.

And I'm sitting there thinking at the time, man, if I had the power, if I had a stick that I could point at another stick and make it fly so I could ride in it, I don't care what they told me, I was gonna make that stick fly.

And the thing about you talked about the inanimate objects, that this is something that I've heard in message churches before. And I'm sure I could dig a clip up if I needed to. If somebody wanted proof of this, I could dig this up.

But I've heard message preachers talk about how the TV set is a portal to like the fourth or fifth dimension or whatever. That's where the demons are. And they're gonna come out. They're gonna come out of the TV set.

And that's how they're able to go directly into the eyes and the eyes are a portal to the soul. And then you have, there's no filter in there because it gets directly to you.

It's just garbage and nonsense. It's all this hocus, pocus, getting you all afraid of all this stuff. And the thing about it is is that when these things

are allowed to be said and unchallenged and you're in an environment where you are being told that this is the truth and this is exactly how things are. You don't question it and you're told not to question it.

And even though it's just completely, it's just completely bonkers. There's nothing that's being said in those examples of those statements that are even close to reality but they're being said and it creates this fear and the fear.

If the fear can get instilled in a person, then there's a hook there and that hook can be used in the various ways Depending on the group that you're in and it can get you to it can lead you around to be like, oh be afraid of Harry Potter Be afraid of this be afraid of that, you know Because they've already got the hook in there about the movies and once they've got that there They can they can move it any way they want Yeah, and it's man. It's just a religion of conspiracy theories. You can actually go 100 percent

You can find all this stuff. You want to go look it up. It's not even not even limited to the message But they claim this weird stuff like the CBS logo is the all-seeing eye because it's got to Around the pupil and they they claim that the NBC logo is actually the phoenix and it's demonic But it's a no man. It's a peacock. It's a phoenix Well the irony is again this whole thing was tied so heavily to British Israelism And we just talked about British Israelism in the pyramidology Well They're trying to make the claim that the movie movie industry is tied to the ancient eye of raw in Egyptology

And yet many of these people actually worship the pyramid man Which is so weird because the pyramid was a structure that was pointing to the sun Which was the eye of raw and so These same ministers who are saying don't watch these picture shows that are again Picture shows from the 1910s man Don't watch these picture shows because the demons gonna come out and get you and the eye of raw But instead look to the capstone of the pyramid that's in my church as my pulpit I know it's it's so crazy and and that's again it goes back to

Your you're not checking your history. You're told not to check. You're told just to believe obey The words been the word has already been open to us. There's no need. You don't need to do anything We just got to get more in line with this word We got to just dive in deeper the the lords already prepared a feast for us. We just got to eat You know, we don't even got to think about it you know and You got to go back to the sources and you you got to go through and see where do these things come from because when you see where the half of these things came from most of the time

You're like wait a minute Is this a prank? Yeah So I did get a chance to watch the Indiana Jones movie and they were claiming it would be the blockbuster I actually liked it, but I have a lot of friends who did not and It's probably not going to be a quote-unquote blockbuster But the word blockbuster interestingly James ties to our overall story of why churches are against these picture shows The golden age of motion pictures was from 1928 to 1948. And this is the era in which they had self-regulated, they had removed all of the controversial, you know, white supremacy, nastiness from the motion

picture age. And this is where all your stars are born. It still was not without controversy, however, because now all the fundamentalists saw yet another change, and change is bad, change is evil. And they began to proclaim that the nation was being more influenced by these films, the film industry, they called it motion pictures, not picture shows, the picture shows were those old things. The motion pictures were influencing a nation, even though they had this rating system. And now you enter into the world of marketing. Back then, people, it was a monopoly. People who had these movie theaters, these motion picture theaters, they called them,

they had to purchase the movies and a block of movies. And it was blind selling. A lot of times they did not know the whole composition of what's in the block. So films were sold in blocks, and those who were playing these things in a motion picture theater, they had to take the entire block or leave it. So you, you really had no bargaining power as to what block of films you got or what was in it. And the, there's a term that was, it was actually coined from the war.

Blockbuster refers to a bomb that's big enough to blow up an entire block. Well, now you got a block of movies. Well, blockbuster is the fitting word to blow apart an entire block and make it this explosive money maker. And that's where the term blockbuster came from. But what happened is you've got all of these religious fanatics who are opposed to change, who are claiming that the film industry, the motion picture on industry is influenced in nation faster than our ministers can influence them. And they're going in the wrong way because they're Jews. And they're, you know, all this weird conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo. And they were

claiming that what was happening was they put this together because they put in the block, they'll put a good wholesome movie. And now they're slipping in something where, oh my gosh, the woman might kiss a man or do, you know, whatever it was, they were against. They would say Oh, the horror. Oh, the horror. They kissed somebody. You know, it's, and it's so weird because they again have taken the power away from the God, the actual God who has the power to protect you from all of this. They're saying now these men can create these idols made of

blocks of movies and these idols made of blocks of movies can have a demon in it and the demon can come out and grab your kids and our God is powerless to save our kids from this so we must protest it.

That's something that really when I really started looking into some of this stuff and really started deprogramming, it's like you really start to realize how these fundamentalist groups and especially the message in particular, they make God so small and so weak, you know, and it's like if you can't even walk outside your door without, you know, the worst thing happened to your soul or going to a movie or, you know, reading a book that could be about whatever I don't know, you know, but God is so small that he can't even, that that's just going to completely enraptured you and completely just run away with you.

You go beyond all your thinking faculties and, you know, it's so silly and so retarded that, you know, when you get away from it, you're just like, man, that is just silly. Yeah. You know, and it causes PTSD.

I grew up in this cult nonsense and even though we were in a category different than the rest of the cult, I was, I was cult royalty. We, I have a friend I recently connected to who he actually went to Hollywood and became a movie, semi-movie star, he's been in some actually pretty big films and he moved back to Kentucky and we connected again and I was telling him how I'd escape the sting that I was in whenever I knew him in my high school years and now I can watch television and all these things that I couldn't do while I was with him.

He's like, wait a minute, John, you watch television and I had to actually pause and think, okay, my dad flipped on to no television and he went to television again to no television to, you know, back and forth and back and forth and this is very common in these cults because mentally our parents knew that this was ridiculous theology, ridiculous theology.

And so they would get a television and then over and over and over and over, they're being told that you might get an accidental demon from the television box. So then they go out and they shoot it up with Bucksha, I remember taking a television with my dad to the dump and just totally demolishing it so that that demon could not get out of the television into somebody else who might stumble upon it in the dumpster.

It's that weird and you're living in this world of fear that you can get an accidental demon. It's like, you know, and they teach the women, if you dress inappropriately, you might get an accidental rape.

No, man, that's not the way the world works. I can assure you that's not how the world works. You're being taught this and so you get into a place where now you're scared of everything.

You might lose your eternal salvation accidentally. And so you end up in this fear, this constant world of fear, which leads to very, very traumatic stress. When you escape it, you still have some of that PTSD from it.

And these ministers, while some of them, and I use the word loosely some, some of them might actually have good intentions. There are many, many ministers proclaiming this nonsense that I personally have been in their house, James.

I have seen their television. I've seen the ones that are open, where everybody can see it. I've seen the ones that are in the closet, that nobody knows about except for the elite. And I've seen the ones that aren't really a television, but if you flip a few switches and you do a few things, you can make it become a television.

I've seen all of this. I can assure you that those men are being deceptive, they're not honest, and they are toying with your minds. And what they don't realize is, they're causing people to suffer mentally and many of those people when they escape the cult, they have to go through therapy because these people have bastardized their heads.

They've taken this nonsense and they've put it in their head, they've caused PTSD and people suffer from their ridiculous nonsense. Right, and you mentioned the fear, and one of the things about the fear is that, in a lot of these message churches that I grew up in, you were taught that you needed the pastor to bring you the word because you couldn't handle it on your own, and so without the pastor, you can't make sense of it.

So when you're brought into something like this and the fear starts to take you on something like movies, and you don't understand it because it is strange, and like you said, it doesn't make sense why these things are wrong, but at the same time, if you don't understand something, you need to rely on the pastor to really help you understand these things.

And if it doesn't make sense, then maybe you should just put it on the shelf. And then later on, God will give you the revelation when you get further in and you're more in line with the word.

And so like you said, that PTSD, it kicks in because you're not able to fully, you're not taught how to reason these things out because the pastor's supposed to do that for you. So yeah, it creates a lot of traumatic situations for people because they're in bondage in a lot of these things, and they don't know why it's wrong, but they're, it doesn't seem wrong, but they're being told it is wrong, and they're being told they could lose their eternal salvation if they get out of line and get out of step.

So, so yeah, it's really, like you said, it can be taken and used by nefarious people. people to do really dark and horrible things to people's minds with this sort of thing. Yeah. And I can assure you, James, you're not going to get a demon accidentally watching a television show.

It's just not the way it works, man. This is not the God of the Bible. This is so weird. I had some friends who have recently escaped, some younger people that recently escaped the Colton.

They told me that they had escaped and they watched the Walking Dead television show. And James, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was like, oh no, you watched zombies because that's the way we grew up, man.

Even still, I mean, this was towards the end of last year. So this was 2022. I had escaped the Colton 2012, January 1st, 2012, is when we finally broke away. As late as 2022, I was still scared to watch a zombie show.

Believe it or not, I watched all of these sci-fi shows. I love the Marvel. My favorite, I actually prefer to watch a cartoon over a show with real people. And I get made fun of often because I'll sit and watch Scooby Doo.

I don't, you can have your television show with people. I want to watch Scooby Doo. But so they came over and they talked to me about watching The Walking Dead. And I realized I have not yet matured from escaping from the Colton.

I'm still in bondage from this. James, I forced myself. I actually did not like the show, mostly because of the way I was brought up. I forced myself to watch every single episode of this to force myself to deprogram from the false notion that there's a demon going to come out of a zombie and grab me and accidentally destroy my salvation.

And the end result of what happened, James, is a demon did come out and it grabbed me. No, I'm joking. The end result of what happened was, number one, I really didn't enjoy it.

There's too much blood, guts, I'm not a big fan of that, mostly because of my upbringing. The story had a great adventure, I actually did like some of the, you know, you put yourself into this world that is all fictional and you say, okay, could I survive in this world?

And then after a while, it was the same thing over and over. They needed food, they had to get it and they had to go to a bunch of zombies to get it and somebody died.

Then they needed more food to zombies and it became so repetitive and mundane that over time it's like, man, this is work. It's work to watch it, it's work what they're doing. And in the end, this is the creation of a human being for the purposes of entertainment.

It really wasn't towards the end. so that it really wasn't to me that entertaining, although it did kind of pick up at the very, very end. But not a single demon came into my house and my kids are safe, and we can thank God that I was protected from the demon of this television show.

Yeah, I'm sorry you had to go through that because it really does fall off after season two. I don't even think I finished it. I think I made it like halfway through the prison arc and I'm like, I haven't even finished past that.

But yeah, no, I mean, it's, you know, when you look at, like you said, talking about the deprogramming and continual deprogramming from this stuff and I was talking to somebody, I have a friend of mine who's an archeologist and I actually showed him our pyramid episode because I was wanting to just say, hey man, you know this stuff from a factual point of view.

Listen to how crazy this stuff can get when it gets mixed into religion, you know, and one of the things that I was explaining to him is that as you're deprogramming from this, these cults is that you'll be going and you'll have so many things, you'll deprogramming it.

You'll think, man, I'm doing quite well and all of a sudden something like that will sneak up and just catch you off guard. You'll be like, dang it, I've got more work to do.

Yeah, and that's a symptom of PTSD. We had PTSD from this and if uncorrected, people struggle for this the rest of their lives. Highly recommend if you have PTSD and it's crippling you or if it's affecting you in a way that you can't successfully live your life.

Go get therapy. It's not that hard. I've been to therapy myself for PTSD. It's not that hard and they actually help you and the way it usually works is they have you talk through it and after you talk through it, you're kind of like, wait a minute, that's not so bad.

Demon didn't come out of the television and get me. So I've got James, I've probably got 50 more notes of research for this one particular topic and we could probably go another five hours and for me it would be just as fun as exciting but we've got to end it here.

If you have questions and you want to have them talked about on the show, send them into us. You can contact us at William-Branum.org and for an overview of the historical research of William Branum and the Healing Revivals read preacher behind the White Hoods a critical examination of William Branum in his message available on Amazon, Kindle and Audible.

Special thanks to Takahar Chim Viking You