Bruised Serpent: The Branham Deity Cult

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org.

And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War 2 healing revivals. Charles, today we have one of those episodes that I'm just going to get it out on the open right now. It is an embarrassment to me. And you can make as much fun of me as you want during the course of this episode. We are talking about a subject that, you know, not many people in the worldwide message cult and all of its various splinter groups. Not many people are aware.

There are some, but those who make the journey to Mecca, to William Brannum's hometown of Jeffersonville, some of them get a sense of it. Now I live from Arizona to South Carolina and everywhere in between and growing up as a child. I really never caught on to it. So I feel kind of duped. And then when I moved here, I realized that, you know, something's a little bit off here. And people who come to Jeffersonville and they spend, you know, even a, I don't know, a few months time here, they start to sense that something's a little bit different here than it is in other places. And it's, I mean,

it's really weird it's like being in a Stephen King book, you know, where the whole town knows this deep dark secret. And then everybody, you know, the unsuspecting person comes into town and everybody's just kind of really nice and welcoming. And then as they discover the secret, everybody kind of changes. Well, that's how it was for me because we're, we're talking about today, the deity cult. Well, even my grandfather fully, openly denied it from behind the platform.

And even sometimes in private, not always, but sometimes in private, he would talk about those people who believe that William Brennan was God. And he would kind of poke fun of Adam as though he wasn't one of them. But it was, you know, in my mind, it's playing tug of war because he also was saying things that clearly identified himself in that same category.

while trying to distance himself from that category. And it's just so odd, man. You come to this town and there are groups of people that isolate themselves and talk about the deity of William Brannum.

And to people who are outside, they don't see it. And then when they move here, they're like that movie old brother who are out there. This town is a geographical oddity. Oh my goodness, John.

Yeah, in today's episode, I've personally been looking forward to this topic for quite a while. And I'm glad we're finally getting to it. Because while the deity cult was developing down the street, my church was collecting dirt on them for 60 years.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Wow. Oh, boy. Yeah, so we're going to examine the William Brannum deity cult today and how it got started, how William Brannum reacted to it, and how the deity cult took over the central institutions of the message while William Brownham was still living.

And if we have time, we can also share some of the things we know about William Brownham's mental health deterioration through those years, and how some of that correlates to this thing. But, and so going into this, John, I think it is very important for us both to say that neither you or I were ever part of the deity cult.

Never. Right. We never believed William Brownham was God incarnate. I don't know about you, John. I mean, in my group, I mean, I would have, and we would have definitely said God was manifested in William Brownham's ministry.

We would have turned it like that. Yes. But we would never say he was God incarnate. We would never have said something. In hindsight, I really wish Grandpa would have been more fully open and honest about this, because even as a young adult had, he come out and said that, yes, I believe that William Brownham was God, tabernackled in human flesh, like he said, like he said at the end of his life, had he said that in my early years, I would have run screaming.

Yeah. Hi. We would say, where I come, we would say God was in William Brownham, but we would not say William Brownham was God. So, and I think that's where the line exists between the average message believer and the deity cult.

I'd say that's where the line is drawn. The deity cult believes William Brownham was God incarnate as the second coming to Jesus Christ, whereas the more typical message belief is that God was in William Brownham, more in a manifested sons of God kind of a way, and William Brownham was like just one of many manifested sons of God.

And in message thinking, there is an important distinction there. So, when I talk about the deity cult, I'm talking about people who believe William Brownham was God incarnate, right? They, to the extent that they baptized and even prayed in his name.

Oh, yeah. And there were times, I mean, I've had many witnesses go, there were times that there would be prayer in William Brownham's name. and at the Brannum Tabernacle even, we'd had people come from there in their prayer services on Wednesday nights.

They would usually, that's when it would usually happen. Anyway, they truly believe that William Brannum was the second coming of Jesus Christ, a surprising number of them believe that way. And it's a global thing.

There are people in other countries that they have entire churches of William Brannum. And there are some in the United States, there's a lot of them in Africa, but you can go around globally and you can see these things where they've created this weird cult.

It's like the third cult of Zeus or Poseidon, right? They're worshiping this human being. Well, sometimes whenever I was at the Brannum Tabernacle, these people would come. And now grandfather until the last years of his life, whenever his filter was fully removed as he aged, he never openly said it in the church.

He, anytime he spoke about William Brannum's deity, he spoke about it in private. And if you really didn't stop and think about what he said, it probably slipped right over your head. I caught it because I listened to everything as a kid.

But these people would come from out of town to come visit Mecca and they would visit the church and every once in a while Grandpa would have one of them pray. And I think he probably didn't know that they were gonna do it, but they would pray and they would, oh, bless it, brother Brannum, and they'd mention his name and the prayer.

And I'd just, you know, I'd be bowing my head and then I'm in this weird place, right? I'm bowing my head to pray. And I think I'm praying to Jesus, but they're praying to William Brannum.

So what do I do? You know, you weren't supposed to open your eyes and the prayer, what do I do? Do I lift my head and open my eyes and reject it? Or do I keep bowed as a child?

This was this weird conundrum and going on on my head. Wow. I can't just hardly imagine what that had to be like. Yeah, you're all praying and then halfway through, you realize you're praying to William Brannum rather than to God.

Wow, yeah, that's incredible, John. So I think we should start probably by explaining the origins of the deity call because where and how the deity cult arose, I think is actually a pretty well kept secret.

Oh, yeah. I don't think a lot of people really know the true story and if our listeners recall, I am formerly assistant pastor of the second oldest continuously operating message church in the world and my church is largely descended from the old timers who left the tabernacle in the days that the deity cult took it over.

And we had people in our church who knew William Brannum all the way back to the 1930s before he was married, before he had children and I've had access to many lifelong witnesses of William Brannum and so what I'm getting at is the people at my church were there before the deity cult existed and it's fairly well known among our people how the deity cult began.

And I have some of their testimonies even on tape that they recorded back in the 90s just kind of cataloging all that John. I could share the tapes with you with this video. Yeah, so I have videotapes where they're telling the history of all this stuff. I have so much stuff, John. I mean, it's unbelievable, but so the D. D. Colt Actually did not start here in Jeffersonville. The D. D. Colt did not arise among the old-time followers of William Brannum from the early days of his ministry The D. D. Colt actually started in Canada in

Saskatchewan, and it started among people who were affiliated with the Sharon Orphanage right at the very heart of the latter-rain movement, and I think that is something very few people know and realize the D. D. Colt was born at the heart of the latter-rain movement. It is not native to Jeffersonville.

It started taking form about 1955-1956 right in the peak years of the Healing Revival, and it began among Canadians living in Saskatchewan who were affiliated with the Sharon Orphanage. Yeah, and if you really take a step back and think about it, I know that you separated them in two categories, but the manifested sons of God doctrine, which we should explain again for anybody who missed it in the previous episodes.

Manifested sons of God doctrine was this widespread belief. I mean, it wasn't today they tried to minimalize it, but it was a widespread belief that William Brannum kind of introduced that in the last days God would be manifesting himself in the form of a prophet and that the five-fold ministry would be showing, you know, the basically would return the church back to the Old Testament days with the power of the Old Testament descriptions of the church, and instead of God returning in the form of a human being, God was returning in all of the human beings in the church

immediately before the catching away of the church, the rapture of the church, and so the return of Jesus Christ took a completely different form in the manifested sons of God's sect. This began in the early years in Laterane, and though other people have, you know, became credited for starting this doctrine, it originated with William Brannum, and you can go back and you can read the testimony. I think Scott Haas has it up on his website of William Brannum coming in and showing people that he has the power to move bracelets and move objects around the room.

I actually had another person just this week Charles contacted me and they remember William Brannum performing these parlor tricks, I call them, but they, um, you know, people who believe it, they say that William Brannum had a demon and he was practicing metaphysics and all of the stuff.

No, in my opinion, he was pulling some pretty good bar tricks, and his brother worked in a bar by the way. So this, this whole thing is kind of weird, but this was centralized in the Laterane movement in like you said in Saskatchewan, and it, it, it's kind of weird because it was widespread, yet as people began to realize This not only is this extra biblical, this is highly unbiblical.

Some very deceptive people tried to take the doctrine underground. And so they would preach a sermon that was kind of against it in public, but then behind the scenes, they're all talking about it.

And it's this big, it's like the old gnostics. We have the secret mysteries and we can't talk about this to the rest of the church. This is for our little group only, the mystery of God manifesting himself in all of these Latter-day prophets.

Yeah, I think that's a great analysis, John. I mean, you hit the nail on the head because the Latter-Rain movement did develop the idea that Jesus Christ would return to the church in the last days and that when it happened, it would bring about the manifested sons of God.

Now, the Sharon orphanage itself and their faction of the Latter-Rain, they ended up becoming a millennial and they actually stopped believing in the rapture and they believed that the manifestation of the sons of God was it and then the millennium would ensued more or less directly.

So they stopped believing in a rapture but the main branch of the Latter-Rain movement still believed in the rapture, right? And so what you're describing is the main branch of the Latter-Rain movement some ideology.

And in the main branch, we believe that the manifestation of the sons of God would come as a prelude to the rapture. So there are nuances among the different factions of Latter-Rain but all of them were still expecting the imminent return of Jesus into the church.

You can find that in the Feast of Tabernacles book from 1951, right, for example. So they had this expectation that Christ was gonna return into the church and somewhere along the way, some of the people around Sharon orphanage got the idea that William Brownham was one of these manifested sons of God they had been looking for.

And they started privately spreading that idea among Latter-Rain people in Western Canada in orbit around the Sharon orphanage. Now the, the deity cult has always been fringe, right? They by no means represent the mainstream of anything to be sure.

The deity cult is very, very fringe but I think it is really important to know that the deity cult was born at the heart of the Latter-Rain movement and their ideas were born directly out of the manifested sons of God, theology, okay?

And there in Canada in the mid and late 1950s they introduced the practice of baptizing and praying in the name of William Brownham. And again, there's hard evidence they were already doing this in the 50s.

And as their numbers grew, some of them who were more well to do financially joined William Brownham's entourage and they started traveling with him. Fred Softman was one of those men. James McGuire was another Tom Simpson was a third.

And on the sidelines of William Brownham's revival meetings, they were proselyt... tiesing people and converting the people to their deity beliefs, okay? It's something they were doing under the radar low key on the sidelines of William Brannum's tours and they would secretly secretly baptize their new recruits in the name of William Brannum when these things happened and as this is happening on the sidelines of the revival it's being carried out by men in William Brannum's entourage and as they recruited more and more people, some of them started moving here to Jeffersonville to be closer to William

Brannum because these men I've so far mentioned are all Canadians from that area and gradually the people started to move to Jeffersonville and as they did after a few years they actually came to out number the original followers of William Brannum who were the locals here to Jeffersonville and that is more or less how the deity cult moved into the Jeffersonville area.

Yeah and I think it's very important to point out because people who research this kind of thing, they're looking for a single source of the problem and there wasn't a one source of the problem.

The way that this, all of this doctrine, this weird mess of theology, the way that it developed over time is you had one person over here who's introducing this idea that's kind of extra biblical and you have this other person over here that runs with it and then he adds his own extra biblical stuff and they're cross pollinating and they're basically, you've got this fertile ground that's growing fruit and they're just mixing all kinds of pagan fruits and among this movement that they call Christian.

You mentioned Feast of Tabernacles for example, George Warnock who wrote that, he was, he's credited with the one who founded the manifest sons of God theology but it wasn't him. Now he's the one who organized it into a format that people could read and they could understand but he's just one voice among many, William Brannum, one of the primary voices among them and it's also key to point out that Warnock was a personal secretary for Ernst Baxter and Warnock joined the Laterane Revivals as we've mentioned, I think it was like 1948 right during its inception so you've got Ernst Baxter and his secretary who are deeply, deeply involved

with this thing. In its earliest form I don't believe that they were proclaiming it in the same way that it ended up but what happens is one person brings this idea that's false theology, that's extra biblical, another person grows it and over time it just kind of morphed into God is coming in a human and then that opened the door for the message cult of, William Brannum's message cult of personality took all of those various pieces and it's like this weird mess of a puzzle. They put together this hodgepodge of doctrine that said, William Brannum is God.

Yeah. That's well said. And we did, I think we did three or four episodes where we talked about the birth of the ladder rain, the development of manifested sons of God theology and all, you know, all of this component. So if you want a deep dive in that, you can go back and listen to those episodes. They were, I think they were pretty good episodes were recorded. And then we also went through the fracturing of the ladder rain. How all these guys started to break up into their different sections and sex. But so there, we've definitely got a lot of good stuff on them. But

John, as you come to 1961, okay, William Brownham preached what is quite probably the most infamous sermon in the entire history of the message. Yes. It's the sermon where he confronts the deity cult. And most everyone I ever knew called it the bruised serpent. Yeah. It is a legendary message sermon. So much, it's even got a special name, right? Like a secret name.

Yeah. In the official tape library, it's called Revelation chapter five part one. If you want to look it up. But yeah, and we all everybody I ever knew always called it the bruised serpent.

I have no idea this is a thing, right? And you're outside of Jeffersonville. You just have no idea. And Grandpa is the way that it worked in the Brannum Tabernacle. They listened to the recordings.

They were a tape only church, as we mentioned. And Grandpa would get up in his fancy suit and say, now today we've got a message from William Brownham and he would give his tie to whatever it was, whether he was there, whether he heard it later, whatever is the personal relationship to the recording from the fifties. And then ask brother so and so in the back to press play on the tape player. Well, when he introduced this, he would get real quiet. Now this, we called this the bru serpent. And I was like, why not give the title to the tape, man?

I'm surprised that he would play it even. That surprises me. I'm sure like this sermon was triggering for deity people because William Brownham kind of had it a little bit. Yeah, it's just so odd and it's really hard to explain in a way that people who weren't under the same mind control can even understand because there are many things. This is one of them.

There are many things that I found out that people believe strongly for and strongly against at the same time. Very publicly, my grandfather would condemn the deity cult. I mean, he was not very nice to them. And in hindsight, it's kind of odd. In hindsight, I look back at the Brannum Tabernacle. I always set in, there's three sections, three columns of people in the church and I always set in the middle one. And it's really odd because the left and the right side was very clearly in hindsight. One side had all the deity people and the other side had all the non-deity

people. And then in the middle where I'm guessing was the undecided people or just the people who didn't know. I didn't know and I didn't like I didn't choose that on purpose. I just that's where I wanted to sit.

But in hindsight, there's this clear separation in the building itself. And Grandpa would say things now that I'm understanding how the dynamics of this church worked. He was ridiculing the deity cult just saying some awful things about him from behind the pulpit. But then in private, he was saying things that Charles, I even early in in my before I started my research, but early in my years of understanding what it was we were in, he was very much in a his own version of the deity cult. But he would condemn those who were the other people. And I think it was more

honestly in this area, the people in the deity cult generally tend to be more of those who are I hate to use the word, but it is a cult of personality. They've got a cult of personality of William Brannum sons in this area. Those people are in that cult of personality versus the others, the other deity cult. They were in the personality cult of William Brannum and you had that weird dynamic. We had for example, we had a person who every Easter, he would come put these big signs and billboards that said, and I won't give the son's name, but one of William Brannum's sons

is God right there. And everybody in church had no idea this was going on, but the deacons had to scramble to try to cover up because this guy would pull up like a big trailer and then unhitch it. And you know, you can't just pull the trailer away. So they would have to go find like, I don't know, 100 trash bags and duct tape and try to duct tape the whole side of it. It was really comical when you knew what was going on, but the vast majority of people in the building had no idea that any of this was going on behind the scenes. Well, okay, so that actually makes

some sense to me because that would explain the division. So it's the people who had decided that the son of God was the son of God that caused the that word the different faction among the people. Okay, so there's I could see how the deity cult could have factions in it that way too.

That's interesting. It's blanchored just like every other cult. It is a cult and it's blanchored into new cults. So I want to point out a few things William Brannum said in that sermon. Let me read part of it to you. William Brannum said here, reading a quote, he says, I heard of it a few years ago, I thought it was a joke. And I met a couple brethren, which I don't see neither one of them in the meeting this morning. Two or three of them, one time on a fishing trip, they approached me by the subject saying, brother Brannum, aren't you the anointed Messiah, the Christ? And I put my

arms around the neck of both brethren or all of them. And I said, brethren, as much as I've tried to be a true servant of Christ, I would not that you should say. such a thing as that. And if it would ever be said of me, then I will leave the field with a clear conscience. And you who do that will be responsible for every soul that I would have saved during that time. See, partaking me from the field. And I thought that ended it. And then I heard about it a few more times, but it wasn't so. So, so William Brannum,

that's kind of weird saying. So William Brannum is telling us he was aware of the existence of the deity cult for several years before 1961. That's really the only thing you take away from that cult. From that quote. And he said there, he's heard it not just once.

He said he's heard this thing multiple numbers of times that that the deity cult existed. And this thing, notice how he says this thing also happened where on a fishing trip, right? Just think about that. William Brannum only took his inner circle on his hunting fishing trips, right? And as he preached the sermon, he's looking around, right? Said, I don't see them sitting here this morning, right? He's in Jeffersonville. So again, very clearly here, William Brannum is describing man in his inner circle as being in this deity cult.

So make sure you catch that from the sermon. And again, to be clear, John, William Brannum and that sermon was talking about Fred Sothman, James McGuire and Tom Simpson, okay? Those are the three men William Brannum is referring to coming to him on that fishing trip. And again, I know this because our people were there when all of this happened. I have known the eyewitnesses even of the people. So these people all went to William Brannum's house afterwards. And I know eyewitnesses that were at that meeting too. So anyways, Fred Sothman, James McGuire and Tom Simpson were the ring leaders there in the early deity cult coming out of the 1950s.

But there were quite a few more besides them in the deity cult who had all been baptized in the name of William Brannum. Yeah. And I have to laugh now that I know everything that was going on whenever I hear that quote because William Brannum is openly, publicly condemning anybody who believes that he is God. And he's aware that he's surrounded by a bunch of people who believe he's God. And he has insinuated for several years.

He's not come out and said it, but he has insinuated. And if you follow his logical conclusions, you can only logical conclude that he is the God manifested in the form of William Brannum.

That's what he wanted you to believe. But then he would say things like this. And there's a reason why remember we've talked about how everybody has kind of pulled away from William Brannum and they're saying that he's starting his own cult of personality and he's following the error of Dowie has how they put it. So and those people are buying these recordings.

So this is not a statement being made for the people that he is speaking to. This is a statement being made to all of his opposition who are aware that he is starting a cult of personality. So when they get the tape, they're going to say, Oh, Well, he's rejecting it.

He's affirming this. Maybe we can have him back in our church. That's why it's happening. I never will forget, and I won't give his name, but you may or may not have mentioned him already.

I met this person one time, and they told me that no matter what I did, whether I was against William Branham, for William Branham, they talked to me, and they explained to me that really doesn't matter because God has already came and left.

And we're now living in the new millennium because God has walked the face of this earth, and it's all over. And I'm like, what? And he said, yeah, you can do whatever. You can go be a drunkard and go have sex.

I can't remember how he put it, but it was shocking to me that I'm like, this was a conversation that you would usually hear from. So you can do anything and it's okay now.

Yeah, that's what he said. It was the most shocking thing I ever heard, right? I don't really talk that crude, but this person did. And they said, I was there in Shreveport, whenever I saw God on the platform in that man.

And William Branham is saying this on recording again for his opposition, not for the people that's actually in the building. And then in Shreveport, we've mentioned it before that he says this, but after convincing his cult of personality that he's Elijah in Shreveport, he says, but the Elijah of this day, in Charles, we all know, who he's talking about when he says the Elijah of this day, the Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he goes on to say, not a man, but God, in the form of a prophet. So in Shreveport to these people in this building where his opposition must not have cared whether or not they got this recording, because he is saying, I am God.

Another thing I think we've got to point out is that William Branham put the members of the deity cult in charge of all of the key institutions of the message. Okay? Yes. He did that while he was alive.

And when you're in the message, you might be blind to this, okay, I mean, I know I was. We basically believe they took over and overthrew it after he died, but that's not true, right?

And this is a really obvious thing. William Branham knew these men thought he was God, right? And then he chose to put them in positions of power. So why did he do that? And why did he do that?

Why in the world would he keep all these deity people? There's more than those three I mentioned in his inner circle, why in the world did he take them with him everywhere he went?

Why did he give them their power? Why didn't he ex-communicate them? I mean, that's it. I mean, there's no worse blasphemy than these guys were doing, right? I mean, there's no worse blasphemy than this.

William Branham says to the Catholic. church come out over my people. The Pope thinks he speaks from God, right? But he knowingly entertains people who thinks he is God himself and lets them fill up seats in his own church.

I mean, how does this make any sort of sense? How can he preach so hard against denominations for harboring false doctrines and being run by corrupt people? When he has been tolerating for years, people who think he's God in his inner circle and putting people who think he's God into the key positions of power in the message, right? I mean, is there any worse false doctrine than believing in a false God, right? So how can William Brownham claim any sort of moral high ground, right? Come join my group, which is better than that group. But we've got

worse heretics over here than the group you're coming out of, right? I mean, it just makes no sense that William Brownham had these utterly apostate men, right? With their hands on the levels of power in his own group, and he would say, my group's better than that group.

I'd have say no. I mean, the Baptist is better than this. The Baptists don't worship a false God, right? But the message, there's a lot of mess people who literally do. Yeah. You know, it's ironic, too, because they said that he is following the error of Dauy, of John Alexander Dauy. Well, Dauy did the same thing. They started proclaiming that Dauy was God in the flesh. And the people who said this the most were the ones that Dauy kept closely in his inner circle and gave them positions of power, because if you think about the control,

the authoritarian control of a cult, you've got, it's like a pyramid scheme. You've got the central figure at the top, and then you've got all of these enforcers, and then the rank and file members.

Well, if you get enforcers who think your God, there is no greater authority over them. They believe you are God. And I've come to the conclusion, Charles, that there are in both Dauy situation and Brannams, there were men in power who actually did believe this. I think there were also men who were very deceptive, and they realized the control, the level of control they could have, and they didn't believe it. But there were people who actually did believe that William Brannam was God, who Brannam put in positions of power for that purpose. You're absolutely right. And

maybe we could play just a little excerpt of one of the many times that Fred Sothman explained how William Brannam was God here. And as you listen to Fred Sothman, I mean, you just got to ask yourself the question, why did William Brannam make that man the trustee of the Brannam Cabernacle and the trustee of the William Brannam Evangelistic Association? Why did William Brannam do that? Because he was already saying those sort of things before William Brannam made him that.

Well, you know, I tell you, it was really what happened. That was the second coming of the Lord, but nobody caught it. You know, John introduced him when he come down to the wall.

They're introduced to men was the Messiah, didn't they? And that's the purifier come down there, and there he was baptized and all that people. But listen to what he said about the tabernacle. He said, well John the Baptist was baptizing, now everybody thought Brother Adam was John the Baptist.

So John the Baptist, into Jesus Christ, and that's it, and Brother Adam was the one hey parents like me, that introduced him, but he was God, nothing short of it. Fred Sothman's the guy who headed the organization that became voice of God recordings.

And John from everything I've ever heard, Fred Sothman is the man who named voice of God recorded. I mean the very name of their organization is blasphemy, okay? William Brannum gave that man's soul rights to reproduce his sermon recordings.

So why did William Brannum do that? It just blows your mind, right? Because there's only a bad answer to that question. Right. There's only bad answers to that question. If William Brannum gave the deity people control knowingly, then he is just as guilty as they are, okay?

And that is actually what happened. William Brannum knowing full well who those people were and what they believed gave them total control over the key institutions of the message while he was still living.

Yeah. Even after the deed, even after the brew sermon serpent, the brew serpent sermon, he gave them even more power. And even if you look at the other people that William Brannum put into control, you've got Leo Mercer and Gene Goad who we covered pretty thoroughly in the homosexual episode that we had on the podcast.

These men, Leo Mercer in the latter years of his life, he clearly did not believe the message. He's involved with drugs and alcohol and sex. And you know, this is not a good man by any means.

And William Brannum gave him full control of the tape library. He was the one of the two scribes for the message, right? And they were homosexual together and we're not going to go into it on this episode, but there have been questions asked to me about Fred Sothman and you can come to your own conclusion, just go look at the pictures.

But these people that William Brannum chose for the elite members of his cult of personality, these people had serious, serious flaws. Yeah, Gene and Leo were involved in the deity stuff too. And you know, if you listen to the testimony of people in the deity cult, you can get their perspective, okay?

And the people in the deity cult say it was William Brannum who led them to believe... Eve. He was God, right? It's like they didn't just wake up some day with the revelation that William Brannum was God, but they will say that William Brannum actively led them to believe he was God. And let me read you a quote. This one is from Roy Roberson from Only Believe magazine. He was on these hunting trips with William Brannum, just like the other D80 guys. And again, so Roy Roberson is local to this area, but he was recruited

into the DD cult somewhere in the late 1950s. And let me read to you how he describes it here in Only Believe magazine. He says, once brother Brannum asked me, brother Roberson, do you really know who Moses was? When he put it like that, I had to say no, I don't.

He said he was God to those children of Israel. He could speak into existence fleas and all kinds of things like squirrels. And when he said squirrels, then I knew he was our Moses. He was God to the people of this generation. So there's a real simple example, but if you'll take time to listen and read through the recorded testimonies of the DD people, they will to a man tell you that William Brannum was actively leading them to believe he was God when he was in private with them. And when you pair that with the things being

set on tape about William Brannum claiming to be God, it is no surprise that some people ended up believing William Brannum was God because that's exactly what William Brannum was leading them to believe.

Coming home, being brother Tom Simpson, were coming together home, brother Brannum told us, I am Moses, I am Elijah, and I am Lamassaya. And it's not something, it's not something I could see when I was in the message, but it is the truth. It was William Brannum leading these people to believe he was God to God, both publicly and privately encouraging their beliefs, especially privately. And Roy Roberson also part of the DD call, this is the man who ran spoken more publications. Another trustee of the Brannum tabernacle, another member of the DD call, okay? These guys had power over all of the key institutions of the message

and William Brannum gave them that power. You mentioned something there that I want to focus in on just a bit more. You mentioned you could not see it while you were in the message. This is something that is so fascinating to me, but it's very troubling. The people who escape the message, they all tell you the same thing. I couldn't see this while I was in it. And then they step away and they start to see all of the issues with the message and they wake up and they start their process of deprogramming. And a lot of the very obvious things, then they can start to see it.

The things that William Brannum said that is clearly provably false. They will say, yes, I've understood this, but sometimes it takes Charles many. years before they start to wake up and realize the very strategic things that William Brenham did.

There are people who are aware that William Brenham was promoting himself as a God to his people and largely reject a message for this because they can examine the latter years and statements like that that I just showed you.

They're aware that William Brenham was doing this. Those same people who weren't in it aren't really aware that this did not start after William Brenham started having the mental health issues in his later years.

This began as a very strategic thing during his early years and all through his ministry. He is planting seeds that are growing, seeds of theology that are growing that he will follow up with another sermon and then he will build upon that seed of theology injecting himself in the story and unless you're aware that this story goes with this previous story.

You'll hear the second story and not realize, wait a minute, he is setting himself up to be a God to the people because you totally missed it. You did not know that that earlier sermon was a seed planted for what he's following up.

In basketball, we call it the alley-oop. Somebody throws up the ball and another person runs and throws it through the hoop. William Brenham was his own alley-oop show, he would throw the ball up and then he would slam Duckett with I Am God.

As you get into the 1960s, William Brenham gave the deity people pretty well total control over the institutions of the message they had control of the tapes. They had control of the spoken work transcripts, they had control over what would turn into voice of God recordings, they had control over the tabernacle church board.

They were given control of the William Brenham Evangelistic Association so all of the key institutions of the message were turned over to these people by William Brenham. When William Brenham knew, he absolutely knew that these people thought he was God.

It is a matter of fact that it is William Brenham who is the person responsible for putting the deity called into power. Of all of the people, William Brenham could have promoted his trustees as men to head up the message institutions, he chose the deity people, John.

Like you said, there's a whole three sections in the tabernacle, right? Did he choose only the people out of the deity section, right? Like why? It doesn't make sense, right? And I'm reiterating all this because this is not what they told us where I came from.

And I want everyone to know that the deity people did not overthrow the message institutions after William Brenham died. They were already empowered by William Brenham actually long before he died. And I think that's really an important thing to realize because that actually says something about William Brenham is what that does.

That says something about William Brenham. Yeah. And James and I just recently did this episode. I think it will come out before this one of drinking... the tape water, referring to listening to William Brannum's sermons as the life-giving water, basically.

And if you look at how this deity cult grew and splintered, that same split within the Brannum tabernacle will win the church split. All of the elders denounced the sons of William Brannum, and my grandfather basically said, his words were, if you can get to the children, you can get to the parents, and if you can get to the parents, you can get to their money.

And everybody's sitting there knew that my grandfather was talking directly to William Brannum's sons while he's saying this. The people who sided with the deity cult of William Brannum, they split off into their own church, and the people who followed the deity cult of the sons, they split out into their own church, and the son's church is the ones that have this doctrine about drinking tape water.

So going back to 1961 John, I mean, that's just unbelievable. The 1961 sermon on the Bruce Serpent, it seems like the reason William Brannum preached that sermon, you mentioned already, was because the deity cult got caught.

Let me read another quote here from the Bruce Serpent sermon, William Brannum said, and the other day in Canada, a brother showed me a little ticket of a thing he was packing in his pocket, said, William Brannum is our Lord, baptizing in the name of William Brannum.

So John, I've had these things described to me by multiple eyewitnesses. The deity cult created these little round metallic medallions about the size of a 50 cent piece, and Tom Simpson, he's a man who had a lot of money, he's the one who made those, and he would hand those out to the people that they baptized in William Brannum's name.

Okay? And that's what William Brannum is talking about. He came into contact, he saw these medallions with his own eyes. And he goes on to say here, and a precious, darling brother came up to me to confess his sins and wrongs, and say his faith was in me as being Jesus Christ.

And I've got letters at home and calls from Chicago in different places asking me if I believe that dogma. And I got all kinds of letters that's come to me in just the last few days, and calls from different places saying that I was Christ.

Okay? So very clearly, this is what forced William Brannum to confront the deity cult, and preach the Bruce Serpent. And he mentions there the phone calls from Chicago, that's Joseph Metz and Bozay, okay?

So this is even a step too far for Joseph Metz and Bozay, baptizing in the name of William Brannum, confessing William Brannum is Lord, okay? This is off the deep end for almost everyone in Latter-Rain, okay?

Outside of William Brannum's most inner, most cult people, right? Even for Joseph Metz and Bozay, who had stuck with him through all of those splits, this is too much, okay? And it puts William Brannum in a bind, okay?

He forces him to publicly denounce the deity cult. And I think it is reasonable to characterize the brew serpent sermon that way because William Brannum very clearly knew, just by the things he said in that sermon, that the deity cult had existed for years at that point.

He knew they were praying in his name, he knew they were baptizing in his name, and he knew it for years by his own admission, right? But it's only after these phone calls come to him, especially the one from Joseph Matson of those ancient Chicago that prompts him to finally take action.

And for me, this reflects very poorly on William Brannum. You know, the fact that it took all of this pressure coming to him, to compel him to actually denounce the deity cult, that says something very bad about William Brannum, I got to say, he should have denounced and excommunicated these people the very first time he heard they were baptizing in his name.

He thought they were joking or not in Christianity, that is not something you joke about, okay? You would just be just, you should be excommunicated even for joking about that, you know, in by Bible, you know?

So they should have been excommunicated immediately, not years later, when people finally pressured him to do something about them. Yeah. And ignoring the fact that William Brannum called this person a precious, darling brother, actually, no, actually, no, I'm not going to ignore that Charles, I want you to go to work on Monday, and I want you to find somebody who's one of your co-workers who you're aware is a Christian friend of yours.

I want you to go in front of everybody else in the room and put your arm around and say, this is my precious, darling brother. My wife and I had this conversation with somebody recently, we had ways of talking about other people in the call that aren't normal, not by any means.

I can only imagine what would happen if I were to do this. Now, in today's world, you know, there are levels of politically correctness that you have to adhere by, and everybody would say, oh, that's fine, if you two do this.

But back in the time in which William Brannum is saying this, this is a further red flag for everybody who is in fundamentalist Christianity, William Brannum. He's calling this person a precious, darling brother.

But Charles, here's where it gets really, really, really scary. Whenever a cult starts to feel that the walls are closing in around them, especially the deranged narcissistic cult leader who's living in visions of grandiose delusions, whenever they feel that the walls are closing in upon them, there is a tendency, historically, to start to deify oneself and to make everybody Further, you're subordinate. In other words, you had you already had an authoritarian level of control over them but now because the walls are closing in you can't lose anybody. You have to have even more control, more power, more

you know forceful control over their lives and so with Jim Jones as we've reviewed in the past He took this level of deity upon himself and then he was he had the power over the people to condense them to commit mass suicide well during the last years of William Branham's life Again, Branham has placed these seeds all of his life. He he is basically created a backdoor from which he can now exit Now towards the end of his life as the walls of You know his peers are all they're all closing in on them. They realize that this is a very very very destructive cult

That's when he starts openly declaring this deity doctrine And Charles for me, this is extremely scary So after William Branham finished preaching the bruised serpent, okay later that same Sunday All of the people in the deity cult got together and they went over to William Branham's house And if you remember Banks Woods was William Branham's next-door neighbor and he went into the meeting It was an eyewitness to the whole thing and Banks Woods was very close to my sector the message on that's how I know some of these things And what happened is that the deity people smooth things over with William Branham in the private meeting after the sermon on the bruised serpent

Okay, they they agreed more or less we won't promote you as Jesus Christ anymore And William Branham forgave them all and they all reconciled there later that same evening John after the bruised serpent And there was zero zero discipline. They all kept all of their positions and they just moved on As everything had always been, okay, and John I again, I got to say this is another example of how the message Totally abandoned the biblical pattern for church discipline, okay The Bible spells out very very clearly how you should treat people who teach another Jesus, right, which is exactly what they're doing

And William Branham and the leaders of the message directly disobeyed the Bible in the way they handled the situation, right What happened here with the deity cult in 1961 was not okay. It was not okay by a mile And William Branham is not exempt from The scriptures are the Bible, right? William Branham didn't have some special grace where he could make up his own rules For how to handle this situation These people according to the Bible should have been publicly named And publicly expelled from the church, right? That is the pattern for something as serious

As this because in terms of heresy and blasphemy it does not get any worse than what these men have done Okay, and instead though so instead of it stripping all of these people of their power next communicating them William Brownam very shortly after this actually announces his move to Arizona and most all the deity people pack up and they follow him to Arizona and they become even closer buddies and he ends up giving them even more power, okay?

And that is so remarkable and it's really hard on this side of things looking back to make any sense out of that that redeems, you know, William Brownam, right? If William Brownam knew who those guys were, he knew they were baptizing in his name.

He knew they were praying in his name. He knew they thought he was God. Why did he give them every single control of all the message institutions? Why did he take them with them and leave them in his inner circle, right?

Why did he do that? How do you make sense out of that? And I think no matter how you evaluate it, you've got to come to the conclusion that there is something very seriously wrong here, I mean, something is very, very wrong.

Even within the message itself. The message has countless splinter groups and then splinter groups of those splinter groups. Even within the message themselves, they realize that this is a very heretical doctrine. This is the purest evil of heresy.

From a spiritual level, I don't even think we have to say how bad this is. All of our listeners are aware that this is the lowest form of evil that exists in the world today and the world ever.

This is the lowest form of evil. Take the spiritual stuff away for a second and just set it off to the side, though. And think of the implications that it has upon the children.

I was part of this, Charles, and I didn't know that I was part of this. I have many friends now, some of whom have escaped from this. They were in this thing too and they have escaped for a child who grows up in this thing, where openly in private, these people are declaring William Brannum's deity.

They're all joining together. I mean, I can remember times in which we would be in somebody's house and there's this gathering of people and they're praising William Brannum as though he was God in the flesh.

I remember it clearly and they get into this rhythm of saying, William Brannum said this and William Brannum said this and William Brannum's name has mentioned like 5,000 times within within a dinner time.

And it's the craziest thing you've ever seen. I grew up in that was the way in which we lived, but then those same exact people would get out in public and they would deny all of it.

And so there was this private side of life and there was this public side of life. And for a child, this reeks havoc on the child's mind. People who experience this have severe mental health issues that they have to work through after they leave the cult and it is a big difficult and tedious job to work through those issues, you have to address them or they will build up into bigger issues if you don't address them.

And we, you know, I've mentioned this before with you and we have the podcast with Jesse. I strongly recommend if you're dealing with those issues to find counseling, get somebody who can help you because if you let this go untreated, the evil that these men have produced, especially to their children, is purely the worst form of destruction that can happen.

Charles, there are people who commit suicide, who were in this thing. I know people, I have family, who committed suicide, who were in this deity cult. This is a very, very destructive theology. Definitely get help if you need it.

William Brownham was not God, he was not Jesus Christ, not by a long shot. And John, you and I are proof that you're not going to have a lightning bolt strike you for saying that, okay?

That's the truth, you know, and God is actually going to love you when you turn around and throw that thing in the trash and start worshiping the true God. I mean, I'll just, there's a, there's my preacher hat for saying that.

Anyway, so now that we're outside of the message looking back, John, you know, I can see that William Brownham gradually introduced the idea that he was God in his sermons. He did it gradually.

And, and if you want to see, you know, if you want to go listen to some sermons and see how this evolved over time, I would suggest maybe looking at the sermons, we would see Jesus, or Sirs, we would see Jesus, okay?

William Brownham preached that subject over 30 times over the course of a few years, and very gradually, through the sermons by that title, he slowly is building up to the idea that he was Jesus Christ, okay?

He's very gradually building up there. If first is just in you window, right? You go back to the earlier messages by that title, but as time goes on, it becomes planar and planar that he's claiming to be a manifested son of God.

And in 1963, when the rocket cloud appears, okay, in Arizona, about 18 months after the Bruce Serpent sermon, the deed he called then receives a new breath of life when William Brownham takes the manifested sons of God teachings to the next level.

And then by the time you get to 1964, that's when William Brownham preached a sermons on the unveiling of God, the unveiling of God, I think in the unveiling of the mighty God. So it's like the unveiling of God, and then the next one is the unveiling of the mighty God.

So it's like it's increasing in being coming dramatic, very strategic titling. Yes. And in those sermons, he moves beyond in you window, and he's basically starts outright saying he was Jesus returned in the form of a prophet, right?

That gets very unmist, you know, it's very clear, very clear. that he was claiming to be a manifested son of God. And the last two years of his life, I mean, William Brannum was unmistakably claiming to be God.

Yeah, and back to the people who are in his opposition, who are aware that he is progressing in the way of Dauy. They see these tape titles, right? And there's a point in time in which William Brannum denies it publicly, but there's also a point in time in which he's like full force in your face.

Those titles weren't intended for his message cult following. Those were in your face rejection of those who opposed him. Everybody who is in opposition to William Brannum, these other ministers who are aware he's created a cult of personality.

They can scan through the tape titles and, oh my gosh, look what he's done, this guy. And Brannum doesn't care at this point. There was a, like I mentioned, there's a point in time in which the whole deity cult runs underground and it's secret and it's this nostic thing, but there's also a point in time in which it's in your face.

There just ends up sermon after sermon after sermon where he's saying he's God, like the sermon, who is this Melchizedek? You know, that sermon is basically, you know, Melchizedek is a Theophany of God and William Brannum is a Theophany of God.

I mean, that's the point of the sermon, right? Like, there's sermon after sermon and you can just, just look at the titles where he's, you can tell by the titles even, something is up here, right?

And he gets obsessed with this, you know, as you come to the last years. Let me read a quote from the 1965 sermon, does God change his mind? William Brannum said, now Jesus came in three names, son of man, which is prophet, son of God, which went through the church age, then son of David.

But between son of God and son of David, according to his own word and according to Malachi four in many scriptures, he's to return back to his church in physical form in the people, in a human beings, in the way of being a prophet, see?

Okay, so I gotta say, you know, there's really just only one way to take what William Brannum is saying here and he didn't say that, William Brannum said that dozens of times, okay? He's saying Jesus is gonna come back as prophet.

Very clearly he says it's the Malachi for prophet, right? You know, there's just no other way to take these things that he's saying. And that's 1965. And he says that in 1965, knowing there are people sitting in his church thinking, he's God, this is three years after the Bruce Serpent.

And for him to make a statement like that, when he knows that there's people there, you know, challenged with the thought that he could be God, and for him to say a thing like that, I mean, there's no excuse for that.

And John, I just gotta say, I mean, this is heresy, right? Jesus isn't coming back as a prophet. That's heresy. There's nothing in the Bible that says that Malachi for does not say that Jesus...

this is coming back as a profit. I mean, I don't even know where William Brannum is getting this stuff. And it's not, I mean, I know where he's getting it, but it's not based in the Bible reality, right? I mean, it's just not based in scripture. I mean, this is just, this is just a corruption of these laterane teachings.

Yeah, it's just so heretical. And, you know, I know at the beginning of the show, we kind of separated in two categories. You got the people who believe outright that William Brannum was God in the flesh. And then you've got these other people that believe that the movement was God or, you know, God was working through William Brannum. In my opinion, whenever you take into consideration that a large number of people in William Brannum's cult of personality used the later years, like from 1963 to 1965 as the basis for most of their theology. They do listen to some of the early ones, but the majority of their theological foundations come

from those years. And those were the years where William Brannum starts to introduce this thing. So these people quote it, these people preach about it. They have their own notions and their own doctrines that they build on that foundation. And a year early out of the cult, so you haven't probably experienced this yet. But there comes a point in time after your escape, in which you are comfortable enough to start being around some of this again.

And you never, you never want to go back, but you're at least comfortable with being around people who are in it and are sad to say brainwashed. And you start to understand that the level of programming was deeper than even you realized when you escaped. For me, I came in contact with this one year when my grandmother down south was nearly, I thought she was going to die.

She was in the hospital. It was a very bad situation. I went down there and I would have never considered my maternal grandfather to be in the deity cult. In fact, when we talk about the two splits of the church in the Brannum Tabernacle, those who thought William Brannum as God, those who thought the sons were, my grandfather was in a category all by himself.

He would have just completely condemned the whole thing. Had he known, I don't think he knew that it was like this. When I went to visit the family and I had been, I can't remember how many years distant from the message, I wasn't in it. I sat down and I talked to him and he was very nice to me while nobody else in the cult was because of what I do. And he just had casual conversations. It wasn't that he wasn't preachy to me. It was as though I was a friend and he was talking to me as a friend, as his grandson. But William Brannum...

Tom's name was mentioned at least 5,000 times there in the hospital in the waiting room while my grandmother was back in, I can't remember the surgery if what was going on. But we're in front of all these other people who aren't aware that the lady in the room there is an occult.

And my grandfather, I don't think he is aware of the sheer number of times that he said brother-branum. And I had escaped the cult, so I'm like embarrassed because you hear that brother-branum, brother-branum, brother-branum.

And there comes a point in which after the thousandth time you start to get embarrassed and you're looking all around the room, who's seeing me talking to this man, who's saying brother-branum, brother-branum. Well, it's like a broken record of the brother-branum, this brother-branum, that he himself has deified William-branum, even though he's not saying that he's God, he's not God, you know, the manifested sons of God theology.

That was not my grandfather, my maternal grandfather. But he has deified William-branum because nobody else gives that respect and that reverence to a human being. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it, John.

And I think that by and large, everyone in the message has deified William-branum. To some degree, he is on par with God at some level in every part of the message, right? You know, he's the voice of God, his words carry the authority of God.

Everyone has moved him into a position of basically allowing him to usurp the role of the Holy Spirit or usurp the role of Jesus Christ or God the Father in different ways. Like every group has some facet where William-branum has usurped some of the role of God.

The deity cult, as I think of it, are the people who have gone all the way to the point of baptizing and praying in his name. Like they've gone whole hog and they're just, they're more or less halfway open about it.

But you're right. I mean, the whole cult is somewhere along the spectrum of getting to that spot where they're not all the way to baptize, pray in his name and right out, right, say he's God, but they're just a step or two behind.

And there are other roles that belong to God that they've definitely surfed and give to William-branum. And that is so problematic. And it's hard to see that when you're in there because even where I come from, John, I would have never believed that we believed in any of the deity stuff.

But as I was leaving, I started to recognize, oh my goodness, there are elements of the deity thoughts even here where we're at. And one very simple way in which you can tell that people harbor some deity beliefs is the fact that they accuse us of blasphemy for saying something bad about William-branum, right?

Yeah. you can only blaspheme God. More specifically, blaspheming the Holy Ghost. That's the exact accusation. You have blaspheme the Holy Ghost by saying something critical about William Brannum. Right, so how can we commit blasphemy against William Brannum?

You can't blaspheme profit. You can only blaspheme God, okay? So they very clearly in their minds at some level are equating William Brannum to God, right? Somewhere they have crossed the line into deity and so William Brannum, he just kept getting bolder and bolder and saying he was Jesus Christ.

And by the time you get to the end of 1965, John, he made his most famous deity quote of all, which you've already read, I'll read it again. He said, the Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ. He's coming according to Luke 1730, is the son of man to reveal himself among his people. Not God, not a man, God. But it will come through a profit.

I mean, so that is an unbelievable quote to me. The Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ because it's absolutely unmistakable what William Brannum is saying there. And when I was in the message, John, I honestly had no idea William Brannum said that, okay?

Our preachers Raymond Jackson on down, they absolutely lied to us about all of this. They told us, William Brannum never claimed to be God, that they never claimed to be Jesus Christ. They always blame the deity people for inventing all those ideas, but that is just not right.

William Brannum absolutely taught the people that he was Jesus Christ. He claimed to be God incarnate very plainly in his sermons. You don't have to read into what he's saying. He's saying this plainly.

And there's absolutely no other reasonable way to interpret what he said, right? He said, the Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ,

not a man, God. I mean, how can, hey, there's only one way to take that, John. There's just only one way to take that. Yeah. And if you're in the message and you're wondering, is my church part of the deity group that you mentioned Luke 1730 when you're reading that quote, that's one of the loaded language keywords in the message call.

If they're saying Luke 1730 over and over and over again, this is a deity group. Again, I've been from coast to coast. I know the churches. If you go into a church and some of them, it's even in their literature, they will proudly proclaim this loaded keyword, Luke 1730.

And what's interesting, remember, there's a point of time in which William Branham is planning all the seeds and that he's himself is going to water. Then there's a point. of time in which he takes those and he does the alley-oop, just go to the table, which is William Brannum's recorded index and type in Luke, space, 17, space, 30.

And do a search and see whenever this doctrine was introduced. You're going to find one single quote from 1962, and it is not a deity quote. It is talking about, you know, the return of the Son of Man and then he goes into, there are three classes of people, which is another interesting thing.

But that's 1962, but the vast majority start from February 1964 and then it just goes through to the end of his life. So he has planted the seeds that he's going to come back later in water, planted the seeds of this deity notion.

And then later 1964, he comes back and all of those seeds that have been planted, now he can come and jacked himself as the deity for his cult of personality. Yes, so Luke 1730, John, you're right.

And that's the scripture that says, you know, as it was in the days of Noah's social of being in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. And so the deity influenced people, take that scripture and they say, William Brannum was the Son of Man being revealed, right?

Which is clearly those verses are talking about the second coming of Christ. That's how a lot of sex take it. There are other sex that take that verse and they say, the Son of Man was revealed, but it wasn't William Brannum.

It was William Brannum's revelation of the Godhead or the revelation of who Jesus was. So every, all the sex have different ways to explain it. But the deity people, yeah, they take it and say, William Brannum was Luke 1730.

No, he wasn't. But that's what they're doing. So there's another thing I want to point out here, John, which the timing of this is really, really suspicious to me, okay? So this is changing gears just ever so slightly.

So Sunday, June 11th, William Brannum preached the bruised serpent, okay, confront of the deity cult. He'd got the calls from Joseph Matson Bosé, okay? One week after he preaches the bruised serpent on the deity cult, the people in his inner circle, one week later, the Sunday immediately after he preached the bruised serpent.

That's the Sunday that William Brannum talks about the homosexual rumors on tape for the first time. Okay. Wow. So I think that that is notable, right? And I think it is reasonable for us to suspect that William Brannum was confronted with the deity cult rumors and the homosexual rumors at the exact same time, okay, because just the way it fell, that's too much of a coincidence for me.

And I think that that makes perfect sense. It's because we know that a number of these deity people were also homosexual. The first time I seen Bruno Brando was 1947 and I knew that that was God.

And the first time he did it, it was in 1946, it was in 1947 and he knew that it was God himself. And I came to his place in 1955 and I talked to him for 20 minutes and he said, you sleep on your bed tonight.

I spoke to him about 20 minutes and he said, you sleep on your bed tonight. He said, he slept on your bed for 20 minutes and he said, you sleep on your bed tonight.

He said, you sleep on your bed tonight. If you can get your mind out of message thinking and just think about these things clearly, write in a clear headed way and just read William Brando's words with the message glasses off.

It's pretty clear in those two sermons that William Brando is admitting that some of the people in his inner circle think he is God and that at least two of them are homosexuals. And that's a very simple analysis of his words and those two back-to-back sermons in 1961.

And so just think about how damaging this has to be to William Brando. I mean this, it don't get much worse than this, right? I mean for a Christian preacher and obviously this thing is so bad that back-to-back sermons he had to deal with the deity cult and then the next Sunday with the homosexual rumors publicly and back-to-back sermons. So this situation is really, really bad.

It is much, much, much worse than we ever realized when we were in the message, okay? And John, I think we can definitively say this is the blow from which William Brando never recovered.

Yeah. And in today's world, it looks entirely different, but remember back then, homosexuality was a crime. And I think William Brando even mentions that there were people who arrested for homosexuality in his inner circle, right?

Yeah, that's exactly what he says in the next sermon after the Bruce Serpent. He admits that someone in his inner circle had been arrested for homosexual acts on a hunting trip in Canada. Again, it's, wow, right? So it's very hard for me to see a way to say, well, that's not connected. There's some connection there obviously for him to him, for him, the way he talked about it that way. And so John, let me also point out that Paul Cain and T.L. Osborne and Kenneth Hagen and Derek Prince, they all stayed connected to William Brownham through this, okay? We're going through the craziest,

the D.D. Colt, we're going through the homosexual rumors coming out, right? These guys are all still holding joint appearances with William Brownham to the very end of his life through this, okay? They knew about this kind of stuff. And Paul Cain, I'll be honest, I think Paul Cain was in the D.D. Colt himself personally. T.L. Osborne? Yeah, T.L. Osborne, we know he said William Brownham was God incarnate at his own funeral. I mean, so what do you do with that?

What do you do with that? And men like Kenneth Hagen and Derek Prince, I mean, I know the man who was personally given Kenneth Hagen message tapes in those years, okay? Kenneth Hagen had the tapes of all of this. I know that, you know, I know the man who gave him the tapes, okay?

These guys knew this stuff and they played along with William Brownham to the very end of his life knowing all of this stuff, right? This is probably the time that they might have wrote down their prophecies and stowed them away in some drawer, right? But they never said anything.

They never did anything, right? And here in Jeffersonville, you know, nearly every single old-timer knows a whole lot of intimate details about the Bruce serpent. I mean, everyone knows about what we're talking about here in the Jeffersonville area among the old-timers. They know the names, they know the people, they know what they did. So I just want to point that out.

This is not a secret among the old-timers in this area. When you take a step back and you really think about what the fruits are. You can all, the Bible says, you can examine the tree by the fruits that it bears. The fruits of this movement were that William Brownham would become deified as a false god. No, no two ways about it. That is clearly what happened and there is no denying it. You can go on the internet and you can search William Brownham God and you can find, you'll find these churches who are openly declaring that William Brownham

is god, openly. You cannot deny that that is the fruit that was bore from this. And then if you take a snapshot in time from 1947, whenever this lettering thing started to his death and beyond, like you said, T. L. Osborne right there in the funeral. He's saying that he's taking the stance that my grandfather did. He was god, tabernacled and human flesh and William Brownham. This is a deity statement. Normal people do not say this kind of thing and preachers who are Christians who would have been there during the funeral. If they were not part of this

message, they would hear this and they would say, that's blasphemy. No two ways about it. That is blasphemy. And like you said, this was a movement that kind of evolved into something else and it splintered off into these various...

group some of which did believe that God was in human form. But in my opinion, they're all one in the same. They came from the same tree. And if you examine the fruits of that tree, you can see exactly what this thing was. What I am not sure about personally in all of this is I am I'm not sure if William Brownham was really trying to say he was the literal second coming of Jesus.

Or if he was trying to stick within the more standard, laterane manifested sons of God teachings, where he was just one of many people manifesting Christ, right? I am genuinely not sure what exactly he was driving at there, right? Because obviously in the message, we all have different takes on this, right? John, because we come from different places. And so I still kind of lean towards, you know, him trying to say he was one of many manifested sons of God. And he was one one manifested son of God manifesting Christ. And you know, I think to people outside of the

cult, this is probably a distinction that don't even matter. It's all here in any way, right? But in the cult, this is big, right? This is a point that of distinction that matters deeply to people inside the cult. But I kind of lean towards William Brownham claiming he was one of many manifested sons of God rather than claiming to be the singular return of Jesus Christ, right? Like classic manifested sons of God theology as Christ is returning in the church and then the whole church manifests Christ. So it's Christ coming in the church corporate rather than in a single

individual. And I personally still tend to think William Brownham was aiming at the return to the church corporate rather than him singular, but the church corporate with him in charge. Yeah. I think you take us quotes either way. Yeah. I've ended up in a different place. And there's this weird thing, this weird dynamic between you and I. I've been escaped from this since January 1st, 2012. And like you, I'm a studyer. I like to know what's under the hood of this car, this gelopy that we were in. One of my favorite movies is the Batman with Michael Keaton,

the first one. The ones after it with Michael Keaton. I don't, I'm not a big fan. But that first one was really good. And Jack Nicholson has this scheme to take over Gotham and people can't figure out what's going on. All these people are turning into Joker face, right? And Michael Keaton, Batman, Bruce Wayne, puts together the fact that it's it's this chemical compound. And if you get the lipstick, it's not going to hurt you. But if you get the lipstick and the hairspray, whatever combination you get, when you mix those chemicals together, it, it just,

earned you into this Joker laughing face and that's how Joker's trying to take over Gotham City. Well, we have examined many cases in which William Brannum is doing exactly what he's the Joker, man.

He's doing exactly the same thing. Christian identity. If you take the serpent seed doctrine and you mix it with the high breeding doctrine, put those together, you've not got Brand X. Like Joker said, you've got the Christian identity doctrine, the full and complete Christian identity doctrine.

At the time in which William Brannum says, not a man but God, he'll come in the form of a prophet. That is, during the same exact time period in which William Brannum is claiming falsely, God only sends one prophet per age.

Those two doctrines put them together and you've got the chemical compound of, I William Brannum am God among you. I was a little shocked. I was reading the Bible and I was trying to piece together a timeline of the Bible one day and I did a search, you can do it too for King Darius.

Do a search for Darius in the Bible and you're going to find all of these prophets who are prophesying during the time of King Darius and there are other kings that you can do this with, but you'll find major prophets, minor prophets, they're all prophesying about the same time, especially during the Babylonian occupation of Jerusalem.

All of these prophets are together at the same time and William Brannum brought this false theology that there is no two prophets on the earth at the same time ever. He says this and he is specifically saying that because he is trying to introduce the notion that there's only one prophet per age who, oh, by the way, is me, William Brannum, and one prophet in the last days is God who, oh, by the way, also me, William Brannum, like the Joker, put them two together and you've got, I William Brannum, I'm declaring that I am God.

It's something else, John. It is something else. And there's so much more we could say about the deity called, honestly, I mean in one sense, we barely scratched the surface. But I think we've given our audience as a pretty good idea of what was happening in the deity cult in the 50s and 60s and William Brannum's relationship and reaction to it.

And I think we're out of time to talk about William Brannum's mental illness, unfortunately, in this episode. I wanted a full episode of that anyway. I hate to leave our listeners in suspense, but we're going to have to wait on that till next time.

But let me read just one quote and I'll tease that just a little bit here, John, or maybe you come back next time, we'll delve into this little deeper. But just two sentences, this is from the 1961 sermon, The Brewster, William Brannum said, my place is up for sale.

I just can't stand it. If I stay around, I'll go completely stark mad and I ask you to pray for me. With that quote, we have a pretty clear indication in William Brandham's term is that he was suffering some sort of a mental break as these homosexual, deity cult allegations were coming to the surface there in 1961.

And so yeah, come back next time. He will explore the full lifespan of William Brandham's mental health issues. I hated on Netflix when you're watching these shows and then they end with this big teaser.

And you're like, no, I've got to have the next one. But Charles and I, we're about to have some fun. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branham.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brandham and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brandham and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.