Weird Doctrines: Afraid of No Ghosts

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, James Goad.

And together we're 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, today is another one of those fun episodes.

As you know in the cult and its very splinter groups, we had a very unusual way of thinking about some of the dead, not all of the dead, but some of the dead. And growing up I heard these stories, and honestly if we were sitting around a campfire instead of sitting in a church pew, and the minister starts talking about a ghost, then maybe it's okay to campfire, but as a kid you're sitting there in the church, and they're talking about actual literal ghosts in the church.

And not just one minister, I've heard this in different churches and in different, like men's gatherings and weird, weird things, man. And they were, you know, the ones in the church, it's kind of funny because I'm trying to picture, you know, the church here in Jeffersonville, the Brannum Tabernacle.

We had ministers who, not often, but every once in a while, usually on Easter somebody would come speak. He may or may not tell a ghost story, I don't know, but sometimes these ministers would tell these ghost stories and trying to picture what would happen if while visiting the Brannum Tabernacle, they decided, hey, we're going to go visit the Baptist church or the Methodist church and tell a ghost story.

People would think in there, you know, they probably run the guy out, but we were, you know, we grew up, and this was a quote unquote normal thing to hear a ghost story. And these guys, you know, I guess in the context of a church, I guess it's a holy ghost story, so it's probably okay, but I'm trying to picture what would happen.

And, you know, this coming from the church that, as we've mentioned before, at one time had the pentagram above its door. These guys are going around telling. ghost stories yeah it's insane i i mean i grew up hearing all sorts of weird things coming across the pulpit and stuff as a kid growing up in a message church but yeah you hear all these weird ghost stories and then more often than not ministers are quoting branham when they're trying to build the legitimacy of why they're telling ghost stories in church because branham has had a story about a ghost and somehow it relates into religion and there's

all these weird things that come about because of all the things that branham injects into Christianity through all his different for all his various different reasons and what he's doing and stuff like that but but yeah so it's just yeah it's one of those things where we got to sit down and talking about some of the different stories that we'd heard and we're like man let's do an episode on ghosts because it's just it just it seems like a perfect thing to just go into in this series of things that we're doing but yeah it's it is it's it's it's quite

crazy when you start digging through and seeing what ministers are saying about ghosts and and one of the things that is interesting and we'll get into this a little later in the show is like how it also tips into the realm of demonology too and and how they sort of weave these things together to create this sort of crazy concoction that can instill fear and control on people because they're afraid of stepping out of line because the demons or the ghosts might get them yeah exactly and you know it's just like everything else that we've talked through it's it's a set of double

standards man because these same ministers who are literally behind the pulpit's preaching about ghosts they will tell the kids that they're not allowed to go to Halloween because there might be a ghost or a goblin or you know they've got different spins on why Halloween is evil but in the end it's because it's familiar spirits and things that you know by Christian standards are anti-biblical however these guys are taking the anti-biblical thing and making them whole themes in their sermons and like you said William Brannum a lot of people don't catch it you have to

understand the history of spiritualism and what spiritualism is and also the relationship of spiritualism to the latter rain here healing revival and even William Brannum's own ministry deft understand all of that to really understand where this came from and there are phrases that William Brannum said and those propagated through the latter rain healing revivalism if you didn't understand that phrase it would just completely slip over your head and you might think this guy is actually talking about Christianity one of the things is and there's several I won't go into all of them but one of the things is there was this theme introduced

into the latter rain healing Revivals that humans are made up of quote, light meters and it's just so insane man. So William Brannum introduced this light meters theology and he said that our bodies emit this light that can be captured and he says that x-rays is absolute proof that our bodies are made up of light and the x-rays capture them.

And you know I'm trying to picture there were actually there were some really smart people who were in this movement. Many of them had to know that that's not the way x-rays work man.

Yeah, yeah, there's so many things swirling around in my head right now when you mention stuff like that because there are so many things I remember hearing growing up that we're all based on stuff that Brannum said and just like the example of the light rays and stuff and making up humans it's it's one of those things where in the message Brannum is the central figure he has all the authority he has the authority by God to bring things and this is according to the message bring things that are not in the Bible and things

that God hasn't revealed yet he's revealing them to his prophets and then bringing them to the people and because the prophet said it he has much more authority than your local pastor and the message.

So therefore if he says it it trumps anything your pastor says and your pastor just goes along with it and you by extension are supposed to go along with it. So yeah when these crazy things come across and ministers just weave them right into sermons just like they're normal you know and then you just have to be like okay yeah that's normal and then anywhere you go through school or anything like that and you actually learn about real facts about how the world really works and how it's how it's formed and stuff like that and you're like but I was told this about light rays but you're like nope you

got to go and put the prophet said you got to say what you got to say on the exam to get past your school grade but you really know you really know the truth because it's hidden from the wise and prudent because the prophets said this thing about light rays yeah and then that and just so many other things that just get said because Brandon said it and so therefore we believe it.

Yeah you know I should probably qualify what I said because there are people in the message who you know education was taboo so there are people that actually don't know how an x-ray works but it's an electromagnetic thing that's why when you take an x-ray you have to put the big you know shield thing around you because these electromagnetic magnetic rays are going through your body and it's it's an image that's a digital image produced from the electromagnetic beams not from your body itself but if you're thinking in terms of a ghost it makes perfect sense if your body's emitting light rays or light meters how

we call them but you know like you said as a child you know some of these things but on the other hand There are, there's a perception of this that the world in general has progressed so far beyond, you know, we were like, I hate to say it, we were like this weird Stephen King town, where we're stuck in the forties and fifties, and our minds didn't progress beyond that because we were brainwashed with these recordings and tapes, and then the splinter groups formed, and there's this pseudo stuck in the fifties, you know, it's, it's

really, really weird, but spiritualism itself was such a craze in the United States in, you know, leading up to about the 20s, it was widely, widely popular in the United States. It actually began to spread around the world, but the United States had the biggest concentration of spiritualists, well the reason why it fizzled out is because a number of magicians and, you know, other people were coming into these seances and these gatherings, these camp meetings that they had for spiritualism, and they were proving that these guys are a bunch of frauds, right? And so, not only were they frauds, but some of them were just plain wacky, like they were insane people that were much like the Latterine Healing Revile, was there some really, really whacked out people who were leading this thing, and it just got exposed, and people in general came to realize, wait a minute, this,

doesn't make sense, but where it gets really interesting, and as we'll get into it today, is the concepts and themes that was used in spiritualism, such as the ghosts, which we're going to talk about today, it got embedded into the Latterine Movement, and the Latterine Movement, almost widely adopted the spiritualist themes, and they used those because they could attract the crowds that were the fallout from the spiritualist, you know, craze that hit America, and they capitalized on catching the wandering souls from spiritualism, because it was actually a very compatible message, if you will, that these people were bringing.

Yeah, and it's so funny, because we've mentioned this before in other podcasts about the itching years, and the ghost stories are a really great way of grabbing people, because like you said, you know, we all know of a time where we've been around a campfire, or so late at night, and we start telling ghost stories, and it's like, ooh spooky, and it's like it's real, there's something captivating about that, and when you mix it in with religion, there's an extra captivating layer, because it's not only just a ghost story, but you've got this religious supernatural layer that's added onto it, and then it really helps grip you even more, because it's not just a ghost story that's maybe scarier entertaining, there's more to it, there's something edifying to your soul about this ghost story, right?

So, it just... Yeah, it gives, it gives ministers such an interesting playground to play in and it, it really, it goes back to a theme I've harped on many times in this, in this show, it's like, you know, it's at the end of the day, is this doing anything to help me as a person?

And you know, the ghosts, the ghost stories, and how they relate to the religious stuff, it's like, no, it's just, it's just extra pseudo-biblical stuff put on top, as like a sugar coating to sort of make it more palatable to audiences.

So James, let's do this. Let's break this down a bit for people who are listening, who were impacted by this thing because I, you know, in working with support groups, I know a lot of people who are very scared of horror movies and I myself, it took years before I could even watch one and I don't really enjoy them because of it. But there are people who were taught such a very realistic version of fantasy in regards to things that are horror, themes for horror movies, right?

And the whole rest of the world, who hears what we're about to talk about in this episode, the rest of the Christian world is going to say, oh, that's spiritualism 101, these guys are worshiping Satan, right? But let's break it down for the people who were in it because I think it's, it's a bit complicated to understand and to do that, you know, I'm not a minister, so I'm not going to go deep into theology, but there is a theme throughout the Old Testament of the evils of communicating with the dead. It was actually something that was an offense punishable

by death according to the Old Covenant Law. If you are communicating with the dead, you're not the good guys, you are the bad guys, but William Brannum specifically introduced this into the latarine healing revivals. You've heard the story as I've heard them growing up, how whenever a faith healing failed and somebody died, the way that he got around it was, he would pretend to speak with the person who died on the other side and come back and tell the family, oh, they're more, they're happier over there than they were here. So it's okay that my faith healing

failed you. And there's this theme that is woven all through the ministries for that effect, where he can communicate with the dead. And not just one time, I'm, you know, there are specific examples if you go look into the transcripts of his recordings, but then off of the record, you've got all of these ministers who were with William Brannum, who were talking about stories of how their family members, William Brannum spoke to them on the other side. And so he's got He's got this weird thing that is not Christianity, and was punishable by death, according to the old covenant.

But he has convinced the people that this, which is, again, spiritualism 101, communicating with the dead is one of the fundamental tiers of spiritualism. He has convinced the people of his cult of personality that it is okay that he can communicate with the dead, while the rest of the world can't, because it's punishable by death, because he claims to be a prophet.

However, you know, I know every minister who's hearing this, everybody who's even read the Bible knows that that is demonic. Yeah, and it's so interesting how these things, from a man who positions himself as to be a faith healer, and a man of God, and someone who studies the Bible in the Word, and he's preaching the gospel, and then he's introducing these concepts into his meetings and stuff that are so, like you said, in the Bible, it's like, we don't do this stuff.

This is for the other guys, they do it that, and they're the others, you know, they're not godly for doing this stuff, but because it's the prophet messenger, and I'm going to say in that quote, the prophet messenger, you know, he gets away with a lot of stuff like that, because he's introducing things, and it's okay for him to do it.

But, you know, one of the things that ministers do is today that are in the message and stuff is though, they'll repeat the different stories that he, that he talked about over the pulpit, and they'll pull out the either spiritual meaning he was trying to inject, or they'll pull out their own spiritual meaning out of it to fit their purposes and whatever way they're trying to use them in a sermon.

But we were looking into this one particular story of Brannum, where a woman and Tucson, I believe it is, supposedly hits a man with a car, and he flies up in the air, and then, you know, then they go to find the camp, find his body, and then supposedly it's, you know, it's a ghost, because maybe it's a man died on that spot some years earlier, and so therefore it's a ghost and all this interaction, and then, and then of course you have the minister leading it on and trying to tie it into larger topics.

But let's take a look and see what he says here, and let's dig in a bit further.

He went up in the air and his coat, overcoat, turning, so they run back to find out, they couldn't find the man anywhere, they called the police force, the police came out. To examine the place, there was nobody there.

Well, each one of them testified. The car chugged, hit the man. He went up in the air and everybody saw it. But can't find the evidence. Witnesses. We've seen the revelation of the word.

It's been identified to us. When we tell to other people, they can't see it. What are you looking at? I don't see what you see. That message called me an eagle. Same person says, well, that one called me a buzzard.

Same message. It couldn't see it. This man was hit. It couldn't see him. Testified witnesses. And two or three of the carloads of them. They've seen it happen. Come to find out five years ago.

There was an old man with an overcoat on. Hit and killed on the same spot. When you leave here, you're not dead. So that's pretty weird, James. Again, I'm trying to picture a world where a minister from this cult of personality goes to a normal church and says something like this.

What are the people going to say? I mean, I'm certain that several of the kids would stand up and say, hey, I read that in a Stephen King book. You stole that from Stephen King.

Right. Yeah. You know, it's in the story that this guy's referencing. This actually came from William Brannum. Brannum told it often. He claimed that he read it in a newspaper. How somebody was driving and hit a body and saw him fly up into the air and stopped and got out.

There's nobody there. So they called the police and come to find out after they went through a quote-unquote thorough investigation that years ago somebody died on that same spot. And, you know, again, it's great for a Stephen King book.

It is something that you're not going to hear any Christian minister say. Even if they read it in the newspaper, this isn't subject matter for a sermon, right? But, again, back to the double standards.

Where this gets so crazy weird is that I personally know multiple people. I even have family members who were readers. They did like Stephen King. And one person in particular that comes to mind had every one of Stephen King's books.

And whenever something happened, they had to change to another home. And the new message family, as they saw them moving in with... this whole collection of Stephen King books, they went berserk and destroyed all of them, right?

And in the irony, right? I mean, these books contain the same kind of stories. It's spiritualism, and it was popular, and Stephen King has made an entire empire over the same kind of stories that this minister just preached in his bind as Bobit. Yeah, it's crazy.

And even looking into what this minister is saying here in this clip, you know, talking about how starts going into the the theophony and all these things and even talking about how Brannum in his theophony right now, if he wanted to, he could walk down the aisles of this church. It's that sort of stuff that where where they take the ghost story, they use the ghost story to set up the idea, you know, the ghosts. And then they start linking it back into the larger message movement and the things that they're trying to to bring across

here. And it's it sets up this this weird sort of pseudo Christianity. And it's like, you know, you better watch out, you better not pout because Brannum's watching and he could come down the aisle if he wanted to. Yeah. And earlier you mentioned the itching years. And ironically, the history behind what is happening here is embedded in the itching years. In the during the second great awakening in the 1840s, I believe it was there were there were all of these religious revivals in New York.

And it blossomed into this great thing, which was part of the second great awakening. But then after this, it kind of fizzled out. And so you had all of these people who were once religious and weren't really of the same religious mindset. I'll just put it like that to the extent that it became known as the burned over district of New York. Because all of these religious movements kind of consumed the area and then just fizzled out. Well, spiritualism sort of developed in this area. It developed in many ways, but it's most recognized for this because you had all of these

people who were kind of burned out with the religious fervor of the revivals and spiritualism just came in and sucked in everybody who was part of this that had the itching years. But it wasn't until the you know, around 1920s that this thing became so widely popular, you know, in the United States.

But it had deeper roots than this. It was about the 1700s, I want to say. There were two men that are largely responsible for its popularity, Emanuel Swedenberg and Franz Mesmer. The term Mesmerizing, right, it came from this Franz Mesmer.

They invented this mystical, I don't know what you call it, it's not theology, but a mystical experience that you could have and they, sort of like the laterane revivalist, you could go and you could come gather with other people to be healed with these guys, you could come gather together and be mesmerized in the term that we call it now, but very similar to how the laterane revivalist worked. These guys came saying that they had mystical experiences and they were somewhat biblical because they had dreams and visions and, you know, that's biblical, right? But they were coming to the people claiming that they had

been called by God to reform Christianity and create a new church, so they were creating their own religion, office spiritualism. And again, it's not Christianity what these guys were doing and as it, as it developed and as you go further into it, you realize that not only is it not compatible, many of them began to denounce Christianity, but Franz Mesmer particularly, he, he did not really have much of a religious belief system, but what he brought to the table was a form of hypnotism. And he, it was claimed that he could induce transes and he could cause people to report that they had contact with

the supernatural beings and, I mean, he's literally just hypnotizing the people, but it, it developed into what became known as mesmerism, named after him. And he would mesmerize the people into believing things that weren't quite true because they were in this hypnotic state. And, you know, when we think of hypnotism, we think of the guy swinging the, the watch, you know, and here jump bark like a dog or, you know, France around like a chicken. Well, sometimes it's very subtle. Sometimes you could be somewhat in your normal state, but just be in slightly altered. And they would be mesmerized. And what is so fascinating about

this is whenever the, the magicians started realizing that these mesmerizers are impeding on the business of the magicians, they began to expose it as, as a fraud in the United States. And, um, famous magicians like Harry Houdini devoted his life to exposing the stang as a fraud. And he would, he would go to these things to see what these people were doing and figure out their gimmick or their trick because he's doing the same thing in his magicians, you know, in his stage act. So he's exposing this thing as a fraud. And many of those same people began to

expose the faith. healing movement. You had James Randy, who is also a magician, and he noticed that in the faith healing movement, the faith healing revivals, there were many men who were doing the same thing as the spiritualists.

Right. And it's one of those things, because one of the biggest things about the message is the faith healing aspect. I mean, that's one of the things that people really hold on to and say, this is why it's vindicated is because of the faith healing. And when you really look and it's one of those things, go back and study mentalism and like you said, spiritualism and look into the cold readers and all these things and look at the things that they're doing and all the stuff that they're employing to get what they're doing.

And then go back and examine the faith healing movement and examine what's going on as some of these things. And there will be a lot of things where you're like, huh, that's an interesting coincidence. And it's like, it's just one of those things where sometimes you can't fully debunk everything, but it's like one of those things where it's like if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and it's so crazy because you look, like you said, like the guy using the watch to hypnotize people. And you examine the healing revivals and you look at what's going on and the preparation they do on the person to get them in a state of

mind to be suggestive. They take them through a thing where they have to get their prayer card, but to get your prayer card, you have to go through and be taught how to receive your healing.

And then you're instructed, you're prepared and then you go through the healing line and you have to go in a specific order. And then as this is going on, there's all these stuff being said, all the different healings like, oh, there's, you know, I'm feeling a vibration or this or that, or I see, I see a demon moving across the audience over in this direction, and then the ooh, and on, they capture the imagination of the people. And there's all these things that are going on to like, it's like a programmer writing a bit of code to get the effect that they're

wanting. They're pushing the buttons and they're doing these things and this and that, you know, to reprogram, to rebrap your mind, to be suggestive, to what they're trying to get you to receive in that moment. And like you said, when the healing eventually fails, there's all these excuses, well, I contacted the dead later and they said they're fine or, you know, hey, they turned away from God, they were healed in that moment, but they turned away from God later and then, you know, they lost their healing all together. And so there's all these excuses for why it failed. But when

you look and see exactly the tricks and the things that are being employed in some of these meetings, and it looks exactly like some of this other stuff that is not religious at all.

Exactly. It, you know, it is religious. It's just not Christian religious. Really to understand this, you have to understand how spiritualism works. And there are a lot of people especially in the cults of personality that grew from this thing that they have no idea what a spiritualism and they have no idea that what they're being taught in spiritualism, in pseudo-Christianity, is anti-biblical.

Spiritualism, there are two main features really with the spiritualism. The first is that there is not a single heaven or a single hell, but instead there are a series of higher planes and lower planes that you can that you go to after you die, basically, and the ones that are closest to this earth are the ones that you can communicate with and spiritualism develop this idea that after you die, you still continue to progress and you can progress to a higher or a lower plane.

But in the realms that are close to this earth, you can communicate with these people before they go to their higher or lower place. It's a really, really Stephen King weirdish thing that I'm honestly shocked that this actually took off in the United States.

But people who hear this, who were infected by the spiritualism of the Latter-Ein movements, would say, yeah, we don't believe that. That's not right. You know, that's demonic. But they use different keywords in the Latter-Ein movements and that, you know, when these revivals formed and William Brannum was one of the two catalysts of the Latter-Ein movement, the theology that he introduced, which we'll get into it in a minute, it included spiritualism, he instead chose the word dimension instead of heavens. He would say, there are different dimensions. And I'm watching the expression on your face. I'm certain that you've heard that term

in the summit in the call, right? Well, that's one of the primary precepts of spiritualism is understanding that there are different, I'll just use the word dimensions for the cult of personality who are listening, but there are intermediate places that you can go. And the way that these ministers who bastardize spiritualism to form this new breed of Pentecostal faith, which is, it's weird in itself how it happened.

This was basically, it was loosely based on a passage from 2 Corinthians 12, I think 2 through 4. When Paul, the Apostle Paul talks about being caught up into the 3rd heaven, because the way in which the King James Version had that phrase in our English, it sounds like, there's 3 heavens. And the whole rest of the book doesn't have 3 heavens, but because that one phrase has 3 heavens and people did not take the time to understand what that phrase actually meant in the Bible. These predators could say, yes, there are three heavens, and you go to the first and

the second and the third. And in doing so, they took the primary precept of spiritualism and embedded it into Christianity. And this became widely adopted. They're not just in the latirane sect, but this kind of spread throughout America in general. You have ministers who are saying, there's seventh heaven. People talk about the seventh heaven. And it's just so weird, man. Yeah, it's one of those things where all these extra things are added in. And because, once again, because the prophet said it, then it's true. And then when I'm growing up, I hear these things like, you know, you know, all the different things about hell. And there's nothing

too. Brandon would say one thing over here, always in front of one group of people. And then he's saying another thing over here. So it's like, okay, when your preacher is trying to figure out what's the truth of how many levels of hell there are or how many levels of heaven or all these different things are. If there's one hell or if there's only that, do you, or do you perish? Do you have eternal hell or do you not have eternal hell? All these different questions that come about and all these things. And so the minister is trying to see. So you have, so you have one minister,

maybe your pastor, say one thing. And then you have a visiting minister come through. That's also in the message. And then he says another thing because he has another quote to back that up.

And then it's just all these things add all these layers of confusion to what's actually going on. And you're just getting further and further away from what's supposed to be the whole point of going to church in the first place is to, is to sit and hear the gospel. And I'm not hearing the gospel in any of this. Yeah, you're hearing ghost stories, man. You know, I pulled the group before I had this episode to see how many in the support groups were familiar with ghost stories in their sermons. And one person in particular, I'm going to read, I'll take out the names for the

safety of the people. But I'm going to read this because I felt this, this, this is a problem. One of the, so we mentioned the first precept of spiritualism, the higher heavens, the lower hells. Well, the second obviously is that there are spirits that you can communicate with after they die. And they become sort of this intermediator between God and human. It's direct conflict with the Bible where it says there's one mediator between God and man. And that's Jesus Christ.

Spiritualism teaches you that you can communicate with the dead. And they can show you, maybe they're not talking directly to God, but they can talk about heaven or they can talk about where they are.

And it's just so freaky weird, man. It's like a Stephen King book. Well, to an adult who hears this thing, honestly, I think most of the adults just kind of tune it out because it's so stupid. But the children.

In particular, their minds are being molded with this stuff. These are people who are proclaiming to be Christian Ministers, who are sharing ghost stories, man. And the children who grew up hearing ghost stories, it is very...

I mean, these people, many of them have to go through therapy. It's that bad. I grew up with this thing. I know what they're going through, and these people in the support groups, this person in particular said, I used to be scared of ghosts because of these stories.

And they mentioned the Tucson car rack that, you know, I mentioned earlier, that was in William Brannem sermons, but there were other stories about clothes moving by themselves. And I grew up with the same kind of stories, man.

People would talk about how they would, you know, be in some weird state of mind, and then suddenly these objects would dance around them. And it's just, it's so problematic because to a kid, you kind of believe this thing, and you're scared because, oh my gosh, there's ghosts.

What if the ghost comes out from under my bed and tries to get me while I'm sleeping? And the person said that there was, you know, one story where this person tried to go pick up a woman late at night, and go there and find out that there was nothing but a roadside memorial where she had died.

I grew up with the same kind of stories, and it's not just one person in the support groups. There were many people who were talking about ghost stories and how these unnatural things were happening, which supernatural things.

And again, it's great for a Stephen King book. I don't know why they do not permit you to read Stephen King book, because if this is Christianity, then Stephen King is preaching the gospel.

Yeah, and the crazy thing about it is, you know, as I'm leading into this next clip here, one of the things you see that's going on with all these ghost stories, and the things that they do to try to create this pseudo spiritual, spiritualness about it and all this different things is that it usually ends up tying back into very...

Let's just say sometimes it ties back into money. Absolutely. So let's take a look at this clip and see what we think about it. He said, you go away, and he said, you're sold, you'd leave it away, and then you do what you want to do.

But once in a while your soul will come back to you, and it'll haunt you. He said, well, I don't leave, I don't believe in ghost, or real. And this girl had came to the spot to where she grieved her soul away, and now she's coming to die.

Brother Ram lived long enough to watch this phase take place, and now she's coming to die. to die, and she's dying such a vicious death until the freckles became out like huge moles on her face, and she's screaming, and her preachers trying to tell her, this woman has had several different men in her life, and now she's come to die.

And the doctors are giving her one hypo after another, that's what Brother Bam called it, tried to numb her conscience, and there's given her one after another, and Brother Bam was making his way, but he didn't get there in time, and they told him, said, Brother Bam, she has been calling for you, and Brother Bam said, her soul came back to griever. There's nurses in this building that know when people are not right with God, you don't die in peace, but you can't die in peace unless you live in peace.

Can I give you, can I go another minute? When that offering plate passes you, don't be a thief. Don't be a thief. You're talking about the smashing grab society that we got people running in stores, and just blatantly stealing stuff, and walking out, to many people do that in church. And I'm not a money preacher, but let me say this to you, when you come down to the judgment hall, don't let that, listen, you're smart enough to know what 10% is, I'm not going to get your paycheck, you're smart enough to know. That's between you and God. Well, you're just needing my

money. I don't need your money to be really honest with you. I got a very successful business.

It's all about the money, James. It's always about the money, right? Yeah, every time these guys, you know, so I mentioned that I would tie it back to the history of how this entered into the laterane revival. Charles and I have actually talked to this sum. If you go back to the historical podcast, way, way back in the early years of it, spiritualism, as I said, was so widely popular. But then after the 1920s, it began to fizzle out, and similar to how it began with the fallout from the great awakenings, then what happened is you had all the spiritualists

who were now disgruntled with spiritualism, because they realized I've just been duped. And so there was this wave of, I don't know what you call it, these men who were picking up the fallout who were just as big of scoundrels as the spiritualists, and they were claiming that they were once spiritualists, and they were formed, and they became reformed Christians who were once spiritualists, and then they started doing the same exact things.

Well, one of the people who did this was the minister who ordained William Brannum in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Roy Davis, who we've talked about extensively in the other podcast because he was the second and command of the Ku Klux Klan, well of his many wide rays of nonsense that he introduced into the world.

One of them was he came to Jeffersonville running from prosecution for sex with an underage girl. He goes across the river into Jeffersonville and claims to be a reformed spiritualist so he could attract this massive crowd, and then it would be more difficult for the authorities to come and arrest him, he thought.

And so he claimed he was a reformed spiritualist, he knew how it all worked, and he was arrested off the platform right in front of, you know, William Brannum was right there, so it's just, it's so weird. Well, he somehow evades prosecution that time.

He later gets caught for something else, but he comes and he plants the church that was eventually became my grandfather's church, the Brannum Tabernacle. And he apparently went with William Brannum to, there are a series of spiritualist camps that formed in sort of a thematic style of the old camp meetings in Christianity.

So whenever the spiritualist picked up the fallout from the Christians, they created camp meetings and thousands of people would come to these camp meetings. One of the places was camp Chesterfield in Indiana, and there was a spiritualist named Madame Mimi, who had this gimmick that she claimed she could communicate with the spirits, and they would lift this piano up into the air, and it would, of all tunes.

It would play the shave in a haircut two bits that's like the Beverly Hillbillies. Well, you could come and go to camp Chesterfield and you could see this levitating piano. And William Brannum, at one point in time, he lets it slip even though he tries to cover up what it was he saw.

He set up into the camps of witch doctors, and I saw the, I heard this tune in shave in a haircut two bits. So he's definitely been there. He knows either he's been there or he knows what they're doing because this was a gimmick in camp Chesterfield.

field. Well, these men capitalized on the fallout from the spiritualists after the 1920s, and many of them turned into revivalists who were just going through from town to town collecting the fallout, but they were introducing things that would appease the crowds and some of those included communication with the dead. It's difficult because we don't have their sermon, so we can't tell are they talking about the dimensions of heaven, but we do know that they were at minimum collecting the fallout from the spiritualist movement as it was dying.

Yeah, and it's so crazy because you look at all these things, all these different movements, all these extrabiblical or biblical movements that pray upon people by using these things. And every time you dig in, every time you see, it's about money. You look at all these different people, they're collecting massive amounts of money from people. I can help you, I can help you commune with your dead husband or your dead cat. Whatever you want to commune with, I can help you commune with it. You just got to pay me first. And it's like, you know, you hear about all the

stories from Branham, you know, and all the people who wrote stories, like, you know, news articles and stuff like that and talking about all the money that was collected in these meetings. And you have, you know, Alfred Pol where he talks about why he left the tongues movement, you know, because all the money that was collected and these people didn't get better, you know, people were given their life savings because they thought it would might help get their loved one to be healed, and all these things, the ghost stories and everything else goes to create this large mind control

thing that's going on that gets you suggestible to these things. You're like, oh, he's seeing ghosts or he's communicating with this and that. So why couldn't he be able to be in contact with God to to heal my needs or heal my cancer or whatever, you know, but then you come down to it, you know, and even like when we find out from, you know, with the Sarah Branham files, like, how much money that was left over after Branham passed away and then, you know, and then you have, you know, and then you look at that, what is that in today's money? And then you go back and look, okay,

that's just what was left over when it was all said and done. How much money was flowing through as it was going on? There's just so much money going and flowing and you're just like, it always comes down to the money every time. So when a minister says it's not about the money, but you're going to hell if you don't pay your ties. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules. That's just the way it is.

It's always about the money, man. And the spiritualism crazed. It was widely popular. It was widely profitable. And there were a lot of very dastardly people. making money off of it, it entered into the healing revivals. The same kind of gimmicks were used.

It was rebranded as Christianity, but the people who were infected by the spiritualist movement, I don't know a better way to put that. It's an infection. It's a cancer that spread to America. Well, these people kind of knew that this was a bit off, and so if these ministers were just pure and simple spiritualism, many of them would have rejected it, but they had to introduce a theme that caused fear that made them accept it even further. And so what this movement did, this laddering movement, it introduced the notion that it wasn't just the dead people that

you could communicate from the other side. Also, the demons were coming ever present, and they were getting closer and closer and closer to this world. And they impressed upon the listeners, the fear that it wouldn't be long until the demons would break through into our world.

And it was a, I mean, it was such a widely selling feature because we talked about the story of Ali Oop, where he said, he sees the comic book demon, right? Well, this was such a thing because people if you can scare them, and especially during a think of the time period, they've entered into the Cold War. It looks very much like Russia is going to blast the United States to smithereens with a thermonuclear device. And so they've got all of this mounting fear off to the side.

They come into the religious realm, and suddenly the ministers are talking about the demons are about to break through into our world. And it just, it gets into this place where you're so bound by the fear that it's no longer Christianity, it's no longer spiritualism, it's basically you're, you're in a demonic state. And the ministers who are preaching to you are preaching the doctrines of demons. Yeah. And it's one of those things. This clip, it really stood out to me when I found it here because this is the kind of stuff that I grew up hearing constantly

in the messages. A little kid and this stuff really sticks, like when you start hearing about demons and all this kind of stuff, when you're really little like five and six years old, this stuff sticks in your head because, you know, everything else is going on, but he said, a demon demons are scary. That sounds like a ghost. Oh, it's scary. So it sticks in your head, but these ministers like to, like to talk about how they're standing in between you and the demons, and how they're, when they're praying and doing all this stuff, the demons

are just they're just chomping at the bit to go either infect somebody else or or cause havoc in the demonic realm and whether that's like tack your soul or whatever. But so this minister here is is is talking about how in the aftermath of of a meeting that they attended and how they were praying for a whole bunch of people and how they cast out so many demons cast out so many demons that had the demons were just running rampant just running around and how even when they were back at their hotel room that the demons

were even there causing all sorts of trouble and then the minister says I'm telling you to go jump in the river because I don't want you infecting any of these people that are still at this meeting tomorrow and it's just it's all these things but it just but yeah let's play the clip. We were in Louisiana last week Saturday night about one thirty we went to bed. Four o'clock in the morning we had cast out demons one demon that came out had a head of a head of a wolf and had eyes about that big and he came out. If you

brother on these things ain't real. That girl had been molested at eight years old and it left a demon but in that parlour that demon was exposed and it woke up and those demons were in the room. That same wolf with those same eyes and it was like a gang of teenage boys dressed up and those demons were running running all over my room and I woke up I could feel them brushing my body. Now you better know who you are when that's going on. I woke up and I said in the name of Jesus Christ. Leave now. Go to the river. Jump in the river. I gave

them specific constructions. I didn't want them to go to another person. I didn't want them just roaming throughout the campground. You go to the river. Who do you think you are brother the same Jesus. The same Jesus lives inside of us. This is just one of those things that you know you see it when you're in it it feels so real but when you come out of the mind control that these movements put on you it really helps you see these some of these things.

what they are. But one of the things that's interesting about this in particular, you know, outside of the whole demonology aspect is the fact where he talks about how the demons are tormenting him in his hotel room at four o'clock in the morning. And I was looking into this a little bit and I was actually kind of curious about the different things that Brandon said about this and one of the things that I thought was quite interesting here and I'll read this quote. He says, I went to the hotel that night. My brother Donnie and

my little son, Billy, they went into the hotel. It was about two o'clock in the morning. I was lying down sleeping. I had just went to sleep, which I don't sleep very much at night.

Always in prayer, nighttime, when all the demon power shuts down towards the morning, when they're not roaming, that's the time that the Holy Spirit moves in and talks to me. Go early if you want to pray. Rise up early. Most all the workers is gone. Demons, demons, places are closing up. That causes strange things. You know what I mean by that. And so, Brandon is saying that the demons are not roaming at this time in the morning and then this minister is saying that the demons are in his hotel room tormenting him at four o'clock

in the morning. So is God, are the demons asleep and is God able to speak to the prophet? Or is the demons awake and they're tormenting this man in the hotel room after the meaning?

I mean, it's like, I don't know. It gets confusing. Well, since we're preaching the gospel of Stephen King, the demons only come out at night.

It's so weird, man. You know, these men that capitalize on the fear, this guy is trying to parallel the ministry of Jesus and casting Legion into the pigs, right? So it's just so weird. The theme that was introduced into this revival, as I said, was the notion that the demons are getting closer and closer and closer to our earth. And eventually, they're going to break through and there's going to be this war between us and the demons. That's that's the weird Stephen King-ish religion that we were in. And interestingly, during the revivals, there was another key figure named A.A. Allen, who was part of the voice of healing

crowd until he and Brannum had this massive fight. About the same time, Jim Jones ditched Brannum. You had A.A. Allen who also ditched Brannum. Well, interestingly, A.A. Allen was under federal investigation. The FBI's legal attaché in London was communicating back to the states because A.A. Allen was deemed to be a fraud. They were trying to. He was actually, his name was brought before Parliament in London because he had scammed a bunch of people with this faith-healing gimmick that he had.

And so they wrote back to the FBI and an FBI informant who was in one of Allen's early meetings said that Allen would have these people who would hobble up to the stage and pretend to be invalid and Allen would heal him and they'd rise up and suddenly they're healed.

And FBI informant is telling them this. Well where it gets really interesting is in the later years, again, Allen is doing the same thing that William Brannum is doing, all of these guys are doing the same thing.

The demons are out to get us, they're almost ready to break through this realm. And so one of the breaking through that you could visually see was the sudden emergence of Anton Lovay and the Church of Satan.

And so Allen had this all out war with the Church of Satan and it's actually made it into the FBI documents because they were curious how this thing was all playing out. And interestingly, the FBI document did not have any information on Lovay as a fraud.

They did have on Allen as a fraud. But at the time, Allen was collecting money so that he could verbally attack the Church of Satan. He was making money off of this human demon that the Church was against.

And this was all about money, it was always all about money. And I don't care where you stand in Christianity, whether you believe that there are Christians who believe that the demons are real and they're ever present around us.

There are other people that believe that the humans, their actions are representations of the demons. However, you believe this weird thing that I can't explain because there's no way to prove it. One way or another, however you believe it, the version that was presented in these meetings wherein the person on the stage could suddenly go into a trance and communicate with the person who's in the other realm or the second one or the third one or the fourth one, whatever dimension they're in.

That version is a Stephen King religion version. It is not the version that you read about in the Bibles. Oh man, it's so crazy because he looked at all these ministers that were running around with the brand at the time.

And I know I've said this before in other podcasts, but it was such a big point that was drilled into my brain, growing up in the message was that they were the frauds and the brand was the real deal.

He was the real article. They were all frauds and I would hear a minister say, well you hear one say good thing about brand and every once in a while, but see they didn't have the gift like he had.

He had the healing gift, he had the discernment gift, they were just all frauds and they tried to go on and build their own. empires and that's why because they would openly point out well this guy's a fraud and that guy's a fraud he's just in it for the money but our profit our profit was holy and our profit was in it to save your soul he didn't care about the money and it's just one of those things that you know when you see it what's going on and you really dissect looking to all the history and it really doesn't look like brand names any different from

all these other guys he's just I just grew up in his movement not their movement yeah exactly as I mentioned before I'm not a big fan of horror movies and books but I do enjoy there are certain Stephen King books that I do enjoy I really did enjoy the shining and I honestly recommend if you were in this movement and you were trapped in it and you believed that these ghost stories that they were scaring you with for the sole purpose of stealing your money that's my opinion that they're their sole purposes to get to your money in my opinion if you were infected with

this type of religion I highly recommend that you actually read a Stephen King book go read the shining because a it's not real the thing that they're presenting a lot of money has been made over its but it is not real be it's not Christianity and if you're reading Stephen King thinking you're reading a book of the devil you're reading entertainment you're reading a person who is making up a story very similar to I like Scooby-Doo I prefer Scooby-Doo over the horrors what Scooby-Doo also has spooky ghosts but usually they pull the mask off and it's a person right

right well Stephen King he's writing the books and it's fiction it is fiction it is not it is not an anti-bible well if when you read it the reason I recommend it is after you read it knowing that it is fiction suddenly your eyes kind of open up because you begin to think oh I remember this preacher telling me this story did he read the Stephen King book and I've read a few books I've not read them all but I can read a book and I can go tell you this particular minister might have read this book because he's using the same exact theme

that Stephen King used in whatever book it was whether it's the shining or fire starter or carry I've read a few I actually didn't finish carry it was too spooky for me but but these guys are doing the same exact thing they're what they have done is they have found a way to scare you and in doing so they have taken the old covenant practice of tithe which is not it doesn't exist we're not under the covenant law as a Christian, they've found a way to reinforce it. You must give your 10 percent, many of them tell you, you must give 10 percent off of what you make before taxes. So you're actually

giving more than 10 percent, right? And they're not telling you that the tithing system was more more like a banking system. You gave your minister not money, but you gave them sometimes livestock or grains. I can guarantee you that not a single minister in any of these movements is going to accept it if you bring him a goat. He is enforcing the old covenant tithe wherein people brought goats, right? So if you're in the message and you are being taught this fear of ghosts and while the minister is telling you to be scared of the ghost, boo, I scared you. And you must give me tithe,

like this guy is doing. Bring him a goat and see what happens. Yeah. I guess a little fun challenge would be to anyone who who is a little curious whether whether what we're saying is true.

Yeah. Don't give your minister. Don't give your church cash. Don't give them a check. Don't don't do any of that. Give him grain. Give him steak. Give him give him a goat. Give him a dog.

Whatever. Tithing unto the Lord, you know, and then see if they accept that on large mass because minister can't buy a Cadillac when they'll go.

If you have weird doctrines that you'd like for us to discuss on the show, contact us on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branum in the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Branum in his message available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.