Weird Doctrines: Snoopy Is the Devil

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, James Goad. And together we're discussing the very weird things that preachers say, why they say them, and how they relate back to the latter-rain healing revivals of the late 1940s through 1960s. James, you've put me on one of the most unusual research projects today, and I have my shirt on for the event for the research that we're about to get into

and, you know, people in the internet worlds, I don't think has ever even seen me in a t-shirt other than the couple of jokes that I put on with another guy for the Kansas City Chiefs, which you're also a fan, but I have my Marvel University shirt on for the world to see, and we're going to dive into some very, very, very weird research today. Yeah, so one of the things that we wanted to take a look on because we've been doing the sort of these dives into sort of entertainment and how they're sort of abused and misused and misrepresented

in, you know, you know, the brand of movements and other religious fundamentalist movements and things like that. So yeah, we wanted to take a look and see what's being said, what the reality is, and kind of how these things sort of went on through time and how the story sort of changed and morphed as it went. You know, for me, this is a very weird doctrine. I'm not gonna lie because I was in this weird category of the cult elite and we had special privileges that not everybody else had. Ironically, this is one of them that I apparently didn't have

that other people had, but the funny part is I did not know that this was a privilege that I didn't have. My maternal grandparents was not aware that there was a doctrine that said you cannot look at comic books and I spent a large portion of my childhood with my maternal grandparents and I'll go down and you know, my favorite thing on Sunday was to open up the Sunday newspaper and there's this whole big section of nothing but comics and there was so funny and I never really thought about them being the devil, like I was supposed to be trained to believe because they didn't know it was supposed

to be this way, right? And I never will forget, I got my first comic book, whenever I was pretty sure I was staying with them and it was Superman meets the quick bunny. And you know, it's the quick bunny, man, it's, it's making chocolate milk, right?

I truly saw nothing evil about Superman and the quick bunny trying to save the world. And I just, I thought it was really neat. I was not really big into it, obviously, but I got this one and I think they may have gotten me one other one, but I went back home and I learned very quickly, whenever I got around my father's side of the family that, no, no, no, you're not supposed to do this because the devil is going to come out in the quick bunny and get your soul.

Yeah, that's a, that's a story that I think a lot of us that have grown up around the message in particular can, can relate to if it's not comic books, it's something else. But yeah, the, there, there's quite a few quotes that ministers try to latch onto in the message to demonize things like comic books and, and, and there's also a lot of stuff just in the culture, in the zeitgeist that were around the time of Brannum that, you know, there was a lot of panic around comic books and how it was influencing the minds

of the nation and the children and what was it doing and these things, you know, get picked up by, you know, your religious leaders and they're trying to say, well, God's not in these comic books and he's, you know, there's, they're filling your mind with all this stuff and they'll, they'll pick out the worst examples of any sort of story and try to use it to, um, draw out and say, well, what if your kids are reading this and it's like, well, if your kids are reading, let's say a horror comic book, for instance, maybe you was the parent

should be, should be monitoring what your kids are reading and say, well, maybe you're not old enough for that. Maybe, maybe you can pick up that horror comic book when you're a little older, but, you know, it's, it's this moral panic that sort of influences the society and this fear that sort of latches hold and it's even in, and then the fear itself, whether it's in, you know, the political realm or, you know, any sort of normal realm that you're in and then he also infiltrates into the religious realm into your religious leaders telling you that, you know, God's

on in these things and, you know, the devil is all throughout these sorts of materials. Exactly. And, you know, again, I grew up, I didn't know I was supposed to hate this thing and they're my taste and comic books weren't even like the horror stuff, like you're talking about.

And ironically, the cult in general, it's not just simply the, you know, the things that have or scary elements to it that they're condemning. It's literally everything. I mean, one of my favorites growing up, there was a stack of comic books that weren't mine that they gave to me.

And they, I mean, they're good comics, man. This is the Jetsons from 1963. I loved the Jetsons. And even still today, I watched the cartoons and people get mad at me because I'd rather watch a show with cartoons than I'll show with people in it.

But this is a wholesome comic. This, there are morals in the story. There are funny things. I mean, there's nothing, nothing demonic about the Jetsons. I can assure you that. Anybody who knows the Jetsons knows this is a thing.

But there's, we'll get into it more in the show, but there's a history of good that actually birth comic books. And what's interesting is that while comic books are trying to do this very, very good thing for the nation at a time that the nation needed it most, you had these men rising up and saying, no, this thing that you're doing, entertaining our kids and giving them peace of mind during this troubling time, that's the devil.

So yeah, like you said, there's some more things we want to get into as we go on here. But one of the things to kick this off, let's just examine this clip here from this minister that has a very interesting take on comic books and some of these sorts of entertainment, what it's actually doing to young men.

Yeah, let's listen to his take and go from there. How do you think the devil's got all these boys, 20 years old Watson video games, sterilizing them? That way he can destroy their inheritance.

I was, it was so interesting yesterday, we had such a nice time. When I was a kid, we had comic books. I never had a comic book in my life. My neighbor had one.

He opened up a comic book, had a comic strip. That comic strip was just a strip of, you know, they were those pictures. There was Snoopy, the Red Baron, some of them. And then you could, or I apparently you could order these things on a rotational basis to take and read these comics, you know.

But this thing, and you wonder why Brother Brandon saw when he talked about those comics. But this thing, you take that comic book, give it the power of the internet, give it the power of design, give it the power of animation, and you can make a billion dollar industry, and you can take and steal time from the 100,000 boys around the world, sterilize them.

So James, of all of the quotes that you have found for me on comic books, and the ministers condemning comic books, for me this is the most interesting one, because it is actually telling the bigger story here.

Because remember World War I, nearly devastated the parts and minds of the world. There were... ministers proclaiming that the end of days is now. World War One, all of the world has gone together in war and you're going to die. Boo, I scared you. And then nobody, you know, the end of the world did not happen. So what happened after this is everybody started fearing that there would be another big one, which obviously there was. But during that fear and unrest, it was one of the most trying times in the United States. And so these, this became very popular,

these comic books, because people needed something to take their mind off of this fear and specifically the children. I mean, imagine being a child in a world that there's a chance on any given day that you could have bombers fly over your house and just destroy everything that you know and love possibly kill you and your family. This was a very, very troubling time, especially for the children. And so the very first true comic book appeared in 1934. And it was just, it was like the Sunday papers that I used to grow up reading in the, you know, in the Sunday newspaper. It was just

a collection of little newspaper strip reprints. And people saw that, wait a minute, this really helps. There are children who enjoy this and it'll take their mind off of it and they'll sit and read these things, right? And it wasn't long after that, the 1938 Superman comic launched the golden age of comic books. And it was so widely popular. And during World War II, this was, I mean, it was a platform for helping the children cope with the fact that their fathers are all fighting and will likely die. There were many, many World War II themes and, you know, even after the wars, this continued

because children lost their parents. I mean, this was a very horrific time. And this is a very good thing. And you hear this minister condemning Snoopy of all of the comic books that he could have shown. I mean, there's Thor, right? Thor is a god. Yeah. They chose Snoopy. Well, Snoopy is the one that had the Red Baron and it was a World War II theme. You know, this whole thing that he's doing is just so, so wrong. One of the things that, you know, if you study the effects that, you know, I mean, comic books and, you know, just, you know, general entertainment can have, they can't have

positive effects. I mean, you'll hear stories from people, you know, you can go from, you know, someone saying, losing a parent or a loved one at a young age to like cancer or something like that.

And, you know, one thing they find relief is these comic books, these heroes that, you know, go up against insurmountable odds and they overcome. And these stories help can help give people, you know, you know, just, just, They can help them get through, because they can sort of live vicariously through this hero that they're not, who has these powers or these things that they can't do.

And there can be good things that come of it, you know, and the thing that is so sad is when you see the effects that, you know, the religious movements and the political movements of the time had on some of these things sort of tried to ostracize people who read comic books and in the sorts of entertainment and made them into a way to where people who, you know, it's just an innocent entertainment and they're just reading a superman, a snoopy or whatever. And it's like, well, you to read those comic books, those are for kids.

And you isolate people and you ostracize people and then you create the very thing. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You create the comic book nerd who is a very good and society doesn't, you know, doesn't know how to interact with people because society itself ostracizes the person creates and them the outcast and then they become the outcast themselves. And it's, yeah, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that, you know, and these things are perpetrated by the religious movements and the political moves of the time, trying to demonize these things and trying to say that one, they're for kids only and they're either that

or they're harmful. And it's just sad to see those sorts of things have a deleterious effect on the nation moving forward and how it's just sort of come through today. And we're creating a more healthy outlook on some of these things today as we've gotten away from all the satanic panics of the past with all the sort of like everything's got the devil inside of it, you know, and as people have been able to interface with these things like, you know, like you even mentioned earlier with the Marvel comics and the movies and things like that and people say, okay, Thor and all these things, they're not, they're not

something to be scared of. It may be not for you, it may be as childish to you, but it's not the devil. Yeah, James. So I'm going to go all out nerd if you haven't already been able to tell this. This is so much fun for me because I research all this religious stuff and I very seldom get to research the fun stuff like this. And interestingly, the fun stuff in this case ties back to the religious stuff and tell me that's not weird. So weird. It's so weird, man. So what's interesting is this man he's talking about the devil Snoopy. And he

says that you something to the fact you need to value, if you value yourself, you value your time and you need to accomplish something. If you don't value yourself, you won't value your time. If you don't value your time, you'll do nothing with it. Before you know it, you'll be my age and will have accomplished nothing. And that is one of the tools that cults use to manipulate you. They do not want you to have entertainment because Entertainment takes your mind off of the cult thing and when your mind is off of the cult thing

well the door just opened for critical thought and while you're not thinking about the cult stuff you might suddenly have critical thoughts about the cult so they want to keep you engaged mentally and it causes mental burnout you know over time this is a horrific thing that they are doing to your heads do not have fun that is a cult theme do not have fun well during this horrific time you know before during and after the war there were so many different good tools not like this minister who's taking away the fun for the children the the loony tunes were introduced you know I think

it was slightly before world war two and and then during the war became highly popular and they made loony tune comic books I have I think this is probably one of the real newer ones but I love the loony tunes if you can't tell already it's one of my favorites and I can assure you James the devil is not going to come out of this book and get you even though it's not snoopy but daffy duck's devil it's not going to get you but what's really where it gets really interesting is that they realized that this was helping the children to cope you know again this was

before during and after the war after the war we had massive loss of life that now people had to come back and cope those who were there had PTSD from the war if they even made it back some of them had severed limbs some their lives would never ever ever be the same and their children were growing up in homes that were just devastated from the war it was a very bad thing and they started introducing comics that were more geared for the adult and I inherited I was given a few of these things but they made comics for the adults that are the outlaw comics and man I used to love these

as a kid because my my other true love was cowboys but they they made these you know cowboy themed comics for the adults well I knew men in the cult and again I had no idea that comic that snoopy was the devil but I knew men in the cult who loved westerns and we talked about it before they had televisions but they would hide it in the closet and when nobody's looking these men respectable men in the cult many of some of the preachers they would take the television out of their closet and they would watch an old western well while they're watching an old western this was a highly

popular comic back during its era and they were saying that you can't read these Western comics, you kids, because that's the devil. That's the Snoopy devil in the raw hide kid or whatever. You can't watch that, but oh, by the way, while you're not looking, I'm going to sneak into my closet and I'm going to watch my television and watch the same dang thing on the television.

Yeah, it's hilarious how you look at just the double standards in so many of these situations where you've got all these people around the message to. It depends on the thing that they are interested in, so if it's the Westerns, then they carve out a little excuse for the Westerns, versus if it's their type of music.

They carve out a little bit of a section for their movement, but the comic books, those were for the kids, and so there wasn't really an exception drawn out for the comic books because the ministers didn't have the connection to the comic books that the kids coming up did.

You don't see these sorts of exceptions all the way, but you did see, you know, the comics through the newspaper, the comic strips. Those were the things that the adult generation in that time were more familiar with, so they would be like, that's where some of the exceptions would be carved out every once in a while, just depending on what movement you were in and who was your pastor and things like that.

One of the things that is quite interesting when you look at the demonization of comic books and stuff like that at the time, and one of the things that comic book companies were doing was that they were doing a lot of war stories because a lot of comic books, believe it or not, were going overseas to the troops overseas to as entertainment, and they were consuming it.

The things that you'd see, especially you saw this in Looney Tunes cartoons, was a lot of World War II imagery in those things as far as like, you know, making a cartoonish version of Hitler and taking out Hitler and all the store stuff and making a buffoon.

But you also saw a lot of World War II imagery creeping up in comic books, even in your superhero comic books, where you'd have stuff like that, and one of the things that I came across, because I was looking for an example that was sort of out of sort of everyone's wheelhouse here.

No one really knows about this. And this was new to me. But you have this character in 1941 that crops up, and the name of the comic is Lady Satan. And right away, you can imagine if this gets picked up by any sort of religious script, oh, Lady Satan.

Ooh, obviously the devil's in that. But think about it is, is when you look into the background of this character, and she was a, she wasn't used a lot, it was, you know, sort of some one-offs here there.

I do know that the character to get reused later on and sort of morphed into some other things, added some different things to her character. But the thing about it is, is that her and her fiancé were on a ship that's...

dunk because of a German bombing. So this is the origin of her character in the story. So what she does, she survives the shipwreck, but her husband doesn't. So she dedicates her life to going after the Nazis and she uses her womanly charms and all these things to be a vigilante spy and to go after and she's taking out the Nazis. And so it's all harmless sort of look at just sort of someone taking and turning their life to go after the Nazis that we would consider a good thing. But one of the things that I wanted to pick

up on this is the title of the character, Lady Satan. Now this is something I saw used all the time in message churches when demonizing comic books, movies, video games, whatever. You can just even just books. They would pick the name and say, okay, this is, you know, Lady Satan for example. But the problem that it is is like it's just like Batman. Batman isn't an actual Batman. He's using the name that the criminals would give him because it's it draws fear upon them. So he's using that. And it's sort of a reverse psychology to take on the mantle of the thing that they're afraid of. And so one of the things you

see is that satire, parody, hyper hyperbole irony and all these things are lost on fundamentalist ministers. And they they they're looking for demonic influences around every corner. And they look at the title of the name and say, okay, and they take it literally. But when it an art and an entertainment, you can't always take everything literally. Sometimes the name is used to evoke a certain imagery or this or that. But it's being used to flip it on its head.

And so those are things that I saw all the time when I was in you know, it's interfacing with things like this as I was growing up and seeing these sorts of things twisted and used in ways that were completely outside of the actual intent of the naming of the of the property.

Yeah, it's it's really funny because these ministers have lost so much touch with reality that in today's world, most of the kids they know about Batman. They know about Superman. All their friends are talking about it. Even the cults that try to contain the children and keep them out of schools and forbid them from all of these different Snoopy villain Snoopy devils.

There are children that by nature, they're going to talk to other children if they encounter them. And other kids are playing Batman or Superman. They understand what this thing is. So it's ironic to me that the minister who's claiming to have all of this knowledge about the subject and talking about the devil Snoopy, the children know more about it than what the minister is saying.

And they know that there is no you know, the Batman is is a mask that he puts on and his his number one job is to take out the crime, which is a good thing.

Now, Granite Batman has his vigilante justice, which is not so much a good thing. But again, I grew up with comic books that did not have all of that. I had Uncle Scrooge's adventures.

I mean, I can assure you that there's no devil in Donald Duck whenever he comes out and he's helping them find the part of gold or whatever. But you're right. They've just lost so much touch with reality.

And they're living in this cult fantasy world like we've talked about in the past. And while they're talking about magic swords to the kids, they're telling the kids you can't watch Snoopy. I know.

It's so crazy. And the thing about it is is that one of the things you start to realize when you start taking into some of this stuff is that all the crazy doctrines and things that Branham brought, sort of all these ministers have to try to make sense of it.

And so some will go off and all these weird directions. And this next clip that we have is a perfect example of how he starts out talking about comic books and then tries to morph it into the things that are being, the certain things that are being perpetrated in the message.

And you sort of end up with all these weird thoughts. And when you draw much larger co-conclusion, you're like, this is just insanity what's going on here. But yeah, let's look at the clip here.

And it's a doozy. You and I are the aliens that the Earth has been looking for. Have you ever thought about that? We're supposed to be aliens, right? You know what the Bible says?

We're supposed to be aliens. We're not supposed to be Dr. Whirl. You see all these people have this superhuman race comes to Earth. Become Superman, Batman, Batman, all these other people. Women too, Wonder Woman, all that stuff.

This is a superhero sitting here. And it's not a comic book. And it's not something you got to put on except Christ. Uniform won't save you, Captain America, right? They all had a flaw though, remember?

But man has took that idea and said, oh, there's a superhuman race. Hitler wasn't far off. So what's interesting about this clip, James, is that Charles and I just recorded the segment that we're doing in the historical podcast about the rise of the third wave of the Ku Klux Klan.

And whether or not this minister realizes that he's just done it, this doctrine that he's bringing forth about the superhuman race and Hitler wasn't far off, this is actually tied to the Klan's propaganda against comic books, which is super fascinating for me.

Because again, I really don't think that this minister knows that he's regurgitating white supremacy. But there was a period of time whenever people had even fundamentalist religion. They'd kind of come to terms with the fact that, no, we can't stop the kids from seeing comic books.

They're going to see little comic strips everywhere from the newspapers to to go to the stores or wherever you go. You're going to see these things and kids love them. So it started to be somewhat adopted.

And there was a period of time in which Archie comic books became one of probably the number one most popular. And, you know, again, there's no devil in Archie as he's trying to get the girl.

Although I'm certain that, you know, in him fighting this tug of war with Reggie over Betty and Veronica, I'm sure that they would come up with something that was demonic in his doing that.

But in the end, there's not a lot of moral content that I've seen from this. Like a Superman story usually has a moral to the story. And you as a kid, you're actually growing from some of the things.

The Archie comic books is usually Archie did something stupid or Jughead did something stupid and it's funny. And kind of like these ministers, they're saying something stupid and it's funny. Not going to lie.

But when he gets to talking about the superhuman race, for me, James, this becomes very problematic because there was a white supremacy doctrine that there was a superhuman race being created. And the white, the people with white skin needed to rise up against it.

And it was the Christian identity doctrine, which we've covered in some of our multiple of our podcasts. But it was the notion that Eve made it with a serpent and they produced this bloodline that was evil.

And the evil was rising up and it was going to invade, it had already invaded the United States, according to this philosophy. But it was, it wasn't just black people, it was black people and Jews.

And they began talking about we need to eventually come into a super race and they became the super race theology. And so it was the good versus the evil, I mean, much like the comic books, the Joker versus Batman, right?

It was a good versus evil fictional world that the white supremacists were creating. But it was all about the super race that was coming and Hitler, the fact that he mentions Hitler in this statement tells me that he is understanding that the concept of the super race that is being formed and the racism that was in this era, he's understanding that this ties to the comic books, which is very problematic because, and I wish I had a copy of this, but in 1946, after all All, after Archie comic books was somewhat adopted and even in some of the more fundamentalist houses,

you'd find little comic strips that they deemed to be okay for their kids and because kids need something fun. Kind of like kids need a toy. Well, after that had been adopted, 1946, Superman published an issue called Superman Smashes the Clan.

It was Superman and the KKK. And this, as you can imagine, caused all of the white supremacists, especially the religious white supremacists, to suddenly again rise up against the comic books. Comic books are evil because Superman has just taken out our clan.

I mean, and here's this man who's talking about the super race, which is a theme that has woven all through the clan. He's talking about the Superman. And if you, I mean, go look at William Brandham Sermons.

You'll find he's not talking about Batman. He's not talking about Wonder Woman or any of the others. Thor, who's a god for, he's talking about Superman because Superman, for a white supremacist preacher, was public enemy number one.

Yeah, it's so crazy because when you dig down and you examine a lot of these weird doctrines and where they come from, just like we've said, multiple episodes up to this point, you find that a lot of the origins for a lot of these, the issues that they have with these particular things, for those comic books or whatever, is the origins of those protests are problematic.

And when you look at the situation where Superman is going after the clan and then you've got clan ministers speaking out against Superman, you're just like, okay, we've got problems here. Is it the content or is it your ideology that's escaped here?

Of all things to fight. They fought Superman. Well, they didn't win. Superman by this time was way too popular. And every kid who knows a comic book knows Superman. And again, it's a case where the ministers are so out of touch with reality while they're condemning the champion of good guys.

You know, the guy who every Superman comic has a moral to it. I don't think I've read one that you didn't learn some moral to the story. Well, the children are aware that no preacher, my Superman is a good guy.

And if you're talking about my good guy being a bad guy, well, you're probably a bad guy. So, but what happened is, in 1956, I believe it was, after the funny silly comics like Archie began to cause a decline of superhero.

When 1956, you had the resurgence of interest in superheroes because, again, in the World War two days, you had all of these superheroes that were taking the children's mind off of the fears of the war, or after the war, they were taking their minds off of the pain and suffering from the war.

Well, in the 50s, you had suddenly the Cold War is spreading fear throughout the United States. Now there's commies everywhere, and oh my gosh, is the guy in office and public office says he a communist, are we going to die?

You had people building these bunkers where you could buy an underground bunker for your backyard. Well, this led to the comic books suddenly, again, rising in popularity for the superheroes, and the non-superhero sales began to decline.

That's when Marvel Comics introduced all of the very popular superheroes that we see in the Marvel universe of the movie world today. Another interesting thing that happened around this time was in the 1950s, because you had this growing sort of, there was all these growing sorts of fears around comic books and what it was doing to the minds of the children.

And you had all these sorts of, yeah, you had more things than just your arches and your things like that. You had comic books dealing with more adult themes that were more geared towards an adult audience.

They weren't geared towards kids. You had the horror comic books and things like that that were spooky and scary stories, but these things weren't generally geared towards children. They were geared towards, like I said, an adult themed audience.

Well, there was this moral panic that was really creeping up and getting a very fervent sort of, like, really, it was coming to a head. And this kind of culminated in the Senate Judiciary Committee on juvenile delinquency investigation into comic books in the 1950s.

And one of the key figures that sort of became to prominence, and he earlier than this, he was going against organized crime and things like that. And one of the things, one of the key figures was Estes Keyfauver.

Estes Keyfauver was going off of the work of Frederick Wortham. And Frederick Wortham was an American psychiatrist, and he had been doing work with mental needs and stuff like that, and trying to, especially around the work of, like, if someone was mentally challenged, then there's a crime involved.

And they really be, you know, fully, you know, can they fully take on the full penalty of this, if there's a mental thing involved in this that's keeping them from, you know, being judged the same way as someone who doesn't have this particular thing.

And so one of the things that later on in his career that he did is he took a stance on comic books. because he was trying to link juvenile delinquency with comic books and kids reading comic books, which nowadays we would look at that and say, well, that's completely unfounded, but one of the things that this Senate committee and, you know, Estes Keifover really keyed in on that and it was like, okay, we were going to use the work of the psychiatrists and we're really going to hone in on this. But so one of the things that they were really attacking the comic book producers about

this and saying, okay, you cannot, you know, these things are getting into the way of children. If you've got a horror comic book, it's going in front of children and it's going to corrupt their minds and they're seeing all these things they shouldn't see. If there's like blood or gore in this comic and keep in mind, these things were geared towards an adult audience. They weren't geared towards children, but they were trying to house it all like some of these ministers do. They're trying to say, this is kids' material and they're trying to influence the minds of children.

And so it just like to, I mean, read a book, not every book out there is for kids. Some books are geared just towards an adult audience, so it's the same thing. But one of the things that the comic book companies came up with was that they came up with this compromise that like we will create our own sort of rating system approved by the comics authorities. I don't know if that's really coming through very well in the camera, but so that little stamp of approval started going out and that was how they were saying, okay, this is actually approved by the government. And one of the things that came about

in all this was that it really hampered like the horror comics and things like the things that they deemed as demonic and things that were influencing the minds of the children in ways that you know, just were unseemly and unsightly. And you know, this was a constant battle throughout all this and and eventually you get years later and eventually these things start as people started losing up and lightning up to the contents and these things. It, you know, the badges for, you know, approved by the comics code get smaller and smaller in the comic books and eventually they

just stop using them all together by the time we get to the early 2000s. Right. And what's, you know, complicated about the issue is that the, while the adults have the adult themed comic books and you know, they're obviously not for children. There are some very scary things that the younger children should not see. Once the children enter into their teenage years, they're they're going to be exposed to a lot of this anyway, just being out in the world. It's it's part of our world. You're going to come in contact with bad things, but also it's additionally

complicated because in art, which is, you know, comic books is art. In art, there is a philosophy that not everything evil has an evil intent. In other words, I can paint a picture of the devil. It doesn't mean I'm worshiping the devil. And I can, music is how I use my examples. There are songs that have themes about bad things.

things, and they may even sound like they're supporting the bad things, but in the end, it's art. It's talking about there's this category of people that are doing these bad things, and it's not so much that it's portraying it as something that you want to achieve, it's portraying it as something that exists, and in doing so, it ironically paints it as something that you may not want to achieve, and by explaining the whole thing, it actually is helping you.

One of the examples that I use is not a song I like, but the song Highway to Hell. Every Christian fundamentalist, like even the fact that I mentioned it on this show, I'm going to get hate mail from it, right?

This is Highway to Hell. This is the bad place. You don't want to go to the bad place. As art, if you take a step back at what this is saying, this is saying that, and it even starts out this way, live an easy, loving, free, and I'm on the Highway to Hell.

In other words, take the reverse of what the lyrics are saying, if you live easy, and you're free loving with all of the women or whatever, you're on a highway to Hell, you're on a road that's taking you to destruction.

There's two ways to look at the music. Now, granted, there are a lot of people that like this song that they're not religious at all, and they think, yes, I'm on the Highway to Hell, yes, and I want to be this way.

But not everyone who likes that song is like that. I remember the first time I ever met a Christian that was telling me that they liked the song, and I was like, I wrestled with this man because this was something that I just, I grew up in this world where everything is condemned, everything was condemned.

And I'm like, now, how does that work? So you're a Christian, you want to go to heaven. How do you like the song, Highway to Hell, and he was explaining that, you know, it's art and it's talking about a place you don't want to go.

And the way he explained it to me, it made perfect sense, but take a movie. You've got a movie, and you've got this overall theme where somebody is getting into trouble that they should not get into, and they have, you know, there's movies where there's a good moral to the story, but they go through the main character, goes through the slump.

And while they're in the slump, they're in the depths of the worst possible place in their life. And then at the end of the movie, they're suddenly lifted up and redeemed, and a good thing happens.

Well, to portray them going down into the slump, this is one of the songs that you just used. They're going down into the pits of, it's a hell and back, basically, in the movie.

But it's music that is portraying something... bad is happening. They're on the highway to hell. And again, I'm going to get hate male. That's all right. I'll deal with it. But it's art. In the end, it's art. You know, I can assure you that not everybody who likes the art that's in the comic books is looking at two face. And they're thinking, well, this looks like a demon. And so therefore I like demons. Right. And you know, the thing about it is is that I see that I've seen this all over the place when I'm examining ministers in my time in and my time out

of, you know, the messages that, you know, like I said earlier, satire, parody, all these things are lost on these people because they're taking everything at its face value. And some of the some of the value and what's going on, even in some of these songs is like, you know, say like a song is talking about a really dark time in a person's life. Well, they're speaking in a voice, using poetic license to describe sort of maybe their state of mind at the time. And maybe that state of mind can be really dark. But the point isn't

to worship a lot of times the state of mind that the artist was in is to examine that state of mind into and to show a story going on here and a progression. But a lot of times they'll they'll hear on like, oh, look at this dark thing that they're singing about right here. And it's like, well, what's the larger contact? What's going on here? What's the meaning that's actually trying to be betrayed? You know, are they talking about feeling feeling like a devil or something like that in the song? Does that mean that they're actually

glorifying in the state of feeling like a devil or in or at the time, you know, with all the other things? Because a lot of times these artists are affected by fundamentalist religious groups and things like that. And some of this trauma that they're actually working out through this music and things like that and even artists and comic books. So a lot of times they're working through, you know, the internal voice that everybody struggles with. And sometimes there's there's multiple conflicting things going on here. So the artist is is literally drawing all, you know, running these things through in the music, in the in the comic, whatever

they're doing to literally illustrate a story, whether that's through progression or whether that's through, hey, you know, I got through this dark time or whatever. But so many times you see ministers, they don't want to understand the material. They just want to condemn it.

Right. And we've talked about it. I think in the historical podcast, but there's this weird problem that exists where the thing that ministers condemned the most are things that they struggled with, the most. You know how it is, there are several men that just really, really harp on the women in their church. And you find out later that they're in adultery or, you know, there's some sexual misconduct going on. We've examined that quite a bit. There were ministers who were preaching against homosexual sex.

and you find out later, wait a minute, these guys, they're homosexuals, right? Right. Well, in the comic books, you know, I mentioned two face and for the audience who grew up in the Colton are unaware who this is.

This is an attorney who he, you know, part of his face got burned off and so he's got one side that looks deformed and the other side looks like this debonair attorney. But the visual part of his face is representing the two sides of him and he's even got a coin that he flips that has a scarred side and a non-scarred side.

And what is being shown visually is a visual representation of the mental health problem that exists in the man. He's got a sort of a split personality disorder and he flips a coin and decides which one of his personalities, the good guy or the bad guy is gonna take over.

And it's talking about a mental health problem. And, you know, while I'm hearing these ministers condemning the children for reading their snoopy comic books, while they're, you know, some of these guys, James, they're doing things that is so far beyond worse than reading a snoopy book.

They have a mental health issue like this and I'm not saying this guy does. I don't know him personally, but there are men who struggle with this kind of thing and they will tell the children, you can't read this thing because you're gonna find out this thing that I have, this problem that I have.

Every villain, like Batman, Batman has the Joker and the Joker is an egotistical, maniac, he's, you know, narcissism. There's all kind of these personality disorders. Well, children who read these things, they begin to understand that this problem exists.

There are real villains in the real world, not just in the comic books, that have mental health disorders. And those disorders can cause very, very bad things. And they need a Batman to rise up and help them, although, you know, the vigilante justice is a thing we probably shouldn't have.

But take, you know, any cult, the central figure of a cult, has many of the same attributes of mental health problems that I've just mentioned. And when you're in a cult and you assume the, the identity of the cult leader, you often assume some of those attributes.

And that's why we see there are ministers that, I mean, even listen to these guys that we're talking about, these guys sound like egotistical maniacs, whether they are or not. I mean, this is a man who is condemning children for reading Snoopy.

Ha, ha, ha. Right, and one of the things that really sticks out when you really examine a lot of the stuff in the message, when you start talking about mental health, and I'm gonna go back on your two-face analogy there, because yeah, there is a mental health cautionary tale in there and what's going on with this character and one of the things you find in a lot of message churches and I can't say all because I haven't examined all but a lot of message churches treat mental health as though it's a demon and you've got a demon because you probably did something wrong and

because you did something wrong you have to get this sin out of your life where the demon won't leave you it's going to torment you for the rest of your life and the thing about it is there so many people who have been hurt by this sort of um by this sort of theology because there's actual help that you can get by and sometimes people just need to talk to somebody to work through trauma they've been through in their life or whatever it is and these ministers are are being people are going to them and saying okay you're a man of God God's gonna God speaks to you maybe you can help

me work through this thing that I'm trying to struggle with and then they get such bad advice from some of these people because they're said it's a demon don't talk to your doctor don't talk to anybody to help you with any of this mental stuff to work through these things and there's so much damage that happens to people because of this and it also brings into play this next clip that we wanted to get into here where ministers talking about a story that Branum you know spoke over the pulpit about a demon visiting him in the middle of the night and it looked like a comic book character

and it's one of the things that we wanted to break down and I think it'll it'll it'll draw us into this these these next few topics we want to get into here but let's take a look at this and dissect it a little bit brother bannum was uh he was not a newspaper reader much but this where he refers to aliyub the the comic book strip and he says about two or three months ago I was standing in the room and I heard a voice in the corner and I tried to wake my wife up to look

and there was a hideous thing standing at the bed and it was accusing me like the mamba snake did and I screamed out what can I do and he said you've been given power to bind him be of good courage I spoke to him and his tail went up in the air and world around and he choked himself to death blue smoke flew out of him and the next morning I woke up and I said I'd better get up and take the children to school and I looked and there was this hideous thing in the newspaper he said I look

and there was this hideous thing the thing that he saw come after him it looked like it was aliyub in the funny paper great big black horns sticking out of it and he was going sounded like a hen cackling and I looked at it this was aliyub that he was looking at there's a cartoon character back in that day so James this this is one of the funny ones for me because Charles and I were not there yet were about to record this and it'll come out much later than this podcast because we're recording quite a bit ahead but towards the end of his life William

Branham the leader of the post-World War II healing revival, William Brannum lost his mind. And not many people are aware of this. In fact, I'm getting ready to watch the shock on your face because we've not yet told the secret.

I don't want to tell it all because I want to leave some surprises. But William Brannum mentions on recording a key phrase that if you caught it, you realize that he just admitted A, that he has severe, uncurable mental health disorders.

And B, he went to one of the big clinics in the United States trying to cure his mental health disorder. And C, they told him that it was incurable and he would suffer with it for the rest of his life.

And D, he admits that he had a demon. And the demon progressively got worse. Well, this, this weird clip you found is referencing this as though that's a good thing. And we're going to get into it in a little bit more detail in the historical podcast.

What's interesting is while all of these people are condemning the comic books, and I'm going to throw it up on the video slide. So if you're watching the video presentation, you can see it.

We usually don't show the minister's face, but this guy actually put the comic strip as a slide in his church. So here's a church who's preaching against comic books. You're not allowed to have these kids, but oh, I know what they are.

And I'm going to put them on the screen behind your head so you can see them. It's just so ironic. But, you know, as a kid, when you hear these things, here's a guy who's got this suddenly, this alley-oop comic book demon.

And, you know, to a kid, that's a very scary thing. That's not a good thing. And in no way, shape or form, should this have been in a religious context where there were children in the room?

I mean, say this thing was actually real, which absolutely it was not. We're going to go into a deep dive on this particular subject. But say it was real. Say that William Branham actually was struggling with his demon that looked like alley-oop from the comic books.

That's scary to a kid, man. Keep your kids away from this thing. And it's interesting because I had not heard that clip in its entirety. You told me what it was, but I just now, as we played it, I listened to it.

And I had not shared with you all of my research material, which is just literally the fun stuff. But the comic book that I wanted to end on, this of all of the things that I own in the comic book world, this is my favorite cover.

And I'm going to hold it up for the screen. I'll probably do a, you know, for the video. I'll do this other one. But if you look... at the screen, you've got, here's the flash, who's, for those of you who don't know comic books, because you were in a cult that Snoopy was evil.

Flash is this character that can run really fast. And, oh my gosh, that's demonic because this guy can run fast, right? Well, he is protecting a child from war. There's a helicopter behind him shooting up and there's a rest in peace below it.

So he's in a graveyard protecting a child who's about to be shot up by a helicopter. This, for me, represents the reason why these comic books are a necessary thing for children. And why these men who are saying Snoopy is evil, why it's so wrong in the cult.

Because every child who grew up like I did in this horrific thing, it's a doomsday religion where they're constantly grilling into your head. There's going to be death, destruction, torment. The world around you is evil.

All of these demonic forces, that look like all you are trying to attack you. The women in the world, they're possessed with a devil and they're created by the devil to try to lure you in the sex and rip your soul out.

I mean, they're just, the children are in fear. And they need somebody like this to come and take them in their arms, like Flash is doing. And hold the kids and protect them. Now, in the Christian world, it doesn't need to be Flash.

Obviously, it should be Jesus Christ and Christ should protect you. But think of the children in this thing. They need something to take their mind off of the horrific things that are said in the sermons.

I mean, this guy here, while he's telling the kids, don't read your comic books and he's putting comics, right? They're on the screen in the church. Think of what's doing to the children's mind.

He's just tormenting their minds. And in doing so, this man is more like the demon that he's talking about, than the demon himself, which is a comic book.

Right. And like you said, you and Charles are beginning into this even a little deeper as far as the mental health side. But one of the quotes I did want to highlight here was Branham, this is from 1965, November 28th, from the Sermon on a Wings of a Snow White Dove.

And it's kind of become kind of quite famous now, but he says, I've been an erotic all my life. As a little boy, there was something that would strike me. It'd scare me. About every seven years, it would happen to me.

Brother Jack remembers when I first started, had to come off the field for a year. Something just happened. And the thing about it is that mental health issues are a serious thing. And it's something that, as society has gone on, we have horrible things that had happened in the past where they think they could just shock somebody with it.

with the electric shock to remove them of their demons or something like that, but we've progressed and medicine has progressed, and we can actually identify some of these things. Now, people can actually get treatment for some of these things.

Now, I don't particularly know what was going on with Brannum or even half of the things he said were even true, but just taking him on his word here, and if he actually was suffering from this, that, you know, people in these situations need help.

You know, if you've got a loved one or something like that, telling them they've got a demon and discouraging from seeing a doctor is not the thing that's going to make them well. You know, people need to be treated and people need to be treated properly.

And when you look at the things he's talking about, seeing demons and communicating with all these things, and you look at quotes like this and you start to see a picture of some mental instability there. And then to have ministers just to repeat this stuff as though it's the gospel, you know, as though it's a prophet spoke it, so therefore this definitely happened.

And then, you know, we need to, you know, without examining these things for the truth or the fact or whatever, they just go on and treat it and put this fear, these fear tactics back into their congregation that, oh, this demon came to the prophet, and he looked like Ali Upe, and then you look into Ali Upe, and Ali Upe is such a harmless character. He's a caveman from prehistoric times that, you know, has all these funny little stories gone about, and even one that I looked just as I was researching this, I mean, the story is as simple as he's riding his dinosaur around.

That's the equivalent of his car in the story, and eventually he wants to get a new one, because it keeps running into things. The dinosaur is getting old, and so he's running into trees all the time. And so when he goes and gets a new younger dinosaur, and then his old dinosaur gets sold off and he used dinosaur a lot, and the person who gets a hold of him isn't treating him nice.

It's beating him over the head with the club because he's being stupid, and he's running into a tree and all this stuff. And so Ali Upe sees this, and he feels ashamed. He's like, this is this dinosaur has been my companion for so long, and I just went off with the new model, and he comes back, and he gets the dinosaur back, and he apologizes to him. He says, I'll never do this to you again.

And then the fact that Brannum uses Ali Upe, as it says this demon that appeared to him, looked exactly like Ali Upe, and then these ministers, you know, create all this fear around, oh, if the demon looked like Ali Upe, it must be because the Ali Upe is, you know, there must be something about these comic books, and it's just, it's complete nonsense, and it's just this stuff that keeps beating perpetrated, and a lot of this stuff possibly came from a mental illness, and it needs to be examined from that point of view, instead of just treating everything like

it's spiritual, and this stuff actually happened. These stuff needs to be investigated and look through that lens, to be properly identified and examined. You know, we need real men and women to stand up, and and say that this thing you're doing to our children is wrong.

I mean, it's really, really wrong. These guys are living in a reality that is more fantasy than the comic books that I hold up in the screen. I mean, what they're talking about in most cases, it would be rejected by a comic book because it's so ridiculous.

And that these children, you know, these children are pumped, their heads full of this stuff every Sunday, two times on Sunday, Wednesday night, and it's a fantasy world. It's a good versus evil. They want their comic book.

They're 45 minutes to hour and a half speech of a comic book to be planted in the kid's heads instead of kids just enjoying themselves. Having fun, there's no different than a kid playing a toy, right?

The only difference is with a toy they just push it around or whatever, but a comic book in a lot of cases has very good moral to the story. It's got to have something of interest or it won't hold the kid's interest.

And a lot of times you'll find that there is a moral. What's really interesting about the Alley Oop story is that Alley Oop is more of a hero than any single one of these ministers who are condemning the children, who are be raiding these children for playing, for reading Snoopy.

These are the villains in today's world. In my opinion, there is no greater villain than a man who will attack a child. And what these guys are doing, they are attacking children. Alley Oop is a hero.

Alley Oop is one of the greatest heroes, not so much the character. He's just a little caveman, like you said, but the creator of Alley Oop was a World War I veteran. And he wanted to fight for his country and protect his country in World War II, but he was too old.

So they told him that he was too old to fight and it discouraged him, you know, because he really wanted to help the troops. And so he started promoting the military in using his art and created these themes that were fully designed to help the military.

And he would visit the six soldiers and he would help them, these guys are struggling with some of them severed limbs or some of them disease or whatever, and he would help them, you know, with their storylines to help promote the military.

And he became somewhat famous in the military. There was the 92nd bomb group adopted Alley Oop as the mascot and Hamlin went and he assisted him by helping paint Alley Oop onto the noses of the dive bombers.

So this guy became a big hero. And, you know, I compared the two. Here's a man who is truly trying to do something good in the world and he does it through art. He does it through comic book.

It's a harm. a pretty historic man that rides a dinosaur. No different than Snoopy who sits on top of his doghouse and pretends that he's dive bombing World War II or whatever it is, you know, the red down, right?

These guys are heroes, these guys are the good guys. These guys in the comic book world, these are your Superman, these are your Batman, whatever it is that you like. And the villains, the the ego-tistical maniacs, the two faces are the men who are standing up pretending to be of God, pretending to be Christian and just wreaking havoc in the children's minds.

So I really don't know how to wrap this up because this is so silly. The fact that we even have to have an episode on comic books, James. The fact that we have to have an episode on comic books tells you how weird that this weird religion is, man.

It doesn't get any weirder than that. Yeah, and just one more thing that I wanted to sort of hit on just, you know, because examined the mental health stuff and everything that was going on, you know, and how these things keep going forward.

I remember, and this is something I didn't make a connection two thousand years later, but I remember a minister as I was growing up talking about telling the church, and that was really young when I heard this story, and it literally scared me as in the church, because, you know, I was like, he was talking about seeing a demon in the middle of the night, and he literally said that he woke up in the middle of the night and saw a demon at the foot of his bed with red eyes and really demonic look on its face,

and he said it was a cartoon character, and I believe, and I apologize if I'm getting the cartoon character wrong, but I believe it was goofy from the Disney cartoons. And just, it's demonic, and talking about, and trying to talk about how demonic influences are coming out of cartoons and stuff like that, and you look back, and when you start examining what's going on in the message, and you see a random story about the alley-oop thing, and you're like, I know where this is coming from, and then you know that the alley-oop thing is just garbage and baloney, and then everything else,

and you're like, and there's so many ministers out there that try to copy random in all of his forms, and so you end up with these weird stories, and it's like, you know, and, you know, if this minister really did see this, I would really question, I would have a lot more questions these days about what was really going on if this actually did happen.

But, you know, it's, yeah, it's just one of those things, you start to see these correlations, and, you know, when you're young and impressionable, and you hear these things, and they just, they draw so much fear in your mind, you know, and it's just like, you know, around these things that are just innocuous, and not even an issue until these men just completely just take them out of context and use them for their own nefarious purposes.

I've got a stack, you should see, I brought my research material, which is all comic books. I've got a stack over here. I have a story behind every one of them, and we literally James could go for the next 12 hours, and I can, walk you through my comic collection, all of my thoughts.

But, you know, what you said is correct. The mental health, it's such a problem. And I'm not gonna divulge his name because you probably know this guy. He actually went to your church, but growing up, there was a man who told me a similar story.

He had seen a demon and it looked like a spider and it crawled up the wall and the ceiling and scared him in the bed. And he's trying to spook me into this good versus evil, Christian, pseudo-Christian world, right?

And I'm in my teens. And again, I grew up not knowing that it was wrong to have comic books. I knew mental health disorders. I read books about mental health disorder as a kid, man.

I could see that this man had a problem. This guy had a problem. And had I not read this? I don't know, maybe I still would have known, but I can assure you that I can't say every one of them, but I can assure you that there are some ministers in this wacko religion that do not want children to read about the mental health villains because they are fully aware that they have a problem.

I'm just gonna leave it at that because we could go on for the next 15 to 20 hours, man. We'll end it here. If you have weird doctrines that you'd like for us to discuss, if you have the Snoopy devil that you want us to discuss, you can contact us at www.William-Brandom.org and for an overview of the historical research of William Brandom and the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the White Hoods, a critical examination of William Brandom and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible, and without Snoopy.

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