Weird Doctrines: The Gospel of Ma'at - Beatings From God

Music Hello, 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-rained healing revivals of the late 1940s through the 1960s. James, I have to say, today I am very excited to have a good beaten.

This is one of the things that, even whenever I was in this weird thing that we were in, I never really understood because I can clearly recall, especially whenever I went down to the southern states and the churches down there, I can clearly recall sermons where, you know, I was young, and a lot of it just flew right over my head.

Like, I didn't know they were doing this, but I would walk out, and I would hear men standing around afterwards with big, fake smiles on their face saying, boy, we sure got a good beating today, didn't we, brother?

And, you know, it's just looking back, it's so weird because after you've experienced a normal church and, you know, it's uplifting, it's meant and intended to inspire you to do good for other people and do good for yourself.

I mean, the biggest thing is, whenever you heal yourself and you support yourself, you can support other people. You can do good for the community. So they try to inspire and uplift you, and it's just so polar opposite because in these weird, weird movements, they're not wanting to encourage you, they're really wanting to just suppress all of your emotions and thoughts and ambitions.

Yeah, it's, this is the doorway to a lot of weird things that happen in some of these movements. And just just the idea of going to church and getting beat is something that you're normalized to.

And, you know, in some churches, that becomes an actual real thing, like in the physical sense. And, you know, in some of these ministers use the same sorts of logic to get there. And, you know, some of these ministers that we're looking at today and some of the things.

Okay, well, some of the things. They're saying, it doesn't necessarily go to the physical, but the spiritual and the mental side of things is just as damaging when abused and misused in this way.

Oh, yeah. And it's a topic not for here, obviously, but whenever somebody has endured this kind of mental mess and grown up in it, it really affects their psyche and there are a lot of people, and you know, as well as I do in our support groups who have to see therapist.

And I think in a G-rated fashion, I'll say it like this, it makes a lot of people have tendencies to enjoy getting beaten, which is another subject for another day that we're not gonna touch.

But it is, I've noticed, it is actually a common problem. I've had people who tell me this and they're people who injure themselves, there are people who attempt suicide. It's very, very sad. And if you have these tendencies, go get help immediately.

This podcast is not your help. Go to a therapist, get help. If you have suicidal tendencies, but there are people who don't and they harm themselves, they'll cut themselves and they'll do weird things.

And you know, I can't really say that this is limited to the flattering ministers and the quote unquote flattering message that developed into William Branham's message called a personality, but it is widespread in William Branham's cults.

And the groups that William Branham's cult developed from, there appears to be a framework that supported this, which we'll get into later in the show. Yeah, it's amazing how, you know, growing up in churches that preach similar things to this.

It's amazing and the normalization of being beat and the view of God is so warped and that it's all about, you know, control beating you into submission, you know, because the beating is love.

And if God didn't love you, he wouldn't beat you. And by extension, the minister is God's tool to beat you into submission. And things get so strange and out of whack. And like you said, once you get into a normal environment, it even becomes more strange because you start to have something normal to compare it to.

But yeah, let's take a look at this first clip that we have here and kind of see where that takes us. Now, this God takes His Holy Spirit, takes the Christian, the church and beats it with the gospel.

So let me tell you this today, if you're a visitor, you go to a church where they're not beating you, you better change.

I brought that out, I've been for years and years. They don't never whip me. You're setting under a false prophet.

Don't want to hurt your fans. I don't want to say the truth. A preacher that ain't beaten you, don't love you. The only beings in this building today that don't need to be beaten are the babies that don't understand yet and the angels of God that are here. All of us need that car beat out of us.

Beating you for the gospel, man. This is, you know, this is some weird things. I'm not going to lie. I came across this type of doctrine many times of what this man is saying. I have heard in many several different cult churches, right? He's not saying anything unusual, even though I know to our listeners who were never involved with this, the thing, you know, my gosh, get this man out from behind the pulpit. He doesn't need the bear. But he has been indoctrinated and I can assure he really can't even help what he's saying. This, not even from the cult theology. My understanding

of this minister is he actually came from a background which was very similar to this anyway. And that background which, as we'll get into, was had a lot of the same frameworks. And what's really sad about this, James, is this is one of the key characteristics of spiritual abuse.

If you go to church and you're willingly being beaten, and not even physically, but mentally, what it is suggesting is that you are willingly being told that the inward thoughts that you have are evil and anything that you can do to, you know, want to desire to be different. You're going to get a scolding for. And my maternal grandparents used to call this a tongue lashing. We'd go to church and we'd get a tongue lashing, right? Well, that's exactly what they're doing. And what's interesting about this is there, this doctrine, even though it is a verbal beating,

there are some very physical ties to this and the Pentecostal movement in general. And one of the key figures that I'll mention in this episode is Smith Wigglesworth, who some listeners may be familiar with or some may not. I, in going through the historical timelines with Charles, as we're tracing the lineage of the message through all the various different denominations of Pentecostalism and how they merged and joined and split and all of this weirdness, I came across this defense of Smith, Smith Wigglesworth. And Wigglesworth was sort of infamous in Pentecostal circles because he, like every other minister in this healing

revival, was a faith healer. But his particular method of faith healing was if you came, came up to see him and you said, please. Pray for me, dear Smith Wigglesworth. I have a stomach condition.

And the doctors don't know what it is, but my stomach's really upset. Well, this man would actually punch you in the gut.

He would, he is most infamous, though I can't find a direct source for. He's most infamous for kicking babies. He would, wow, whenever they would bring a baby up to the, through the healing lines up to Smith Wigglesworth, he's known for kicking the baby, though I cannot find a direct source for this.

It's just a widely common known, either legend or true, who knows, but he is well recognized for hitting, punching, slapping. This was a violent man. And if you take a step back, if you were never in this thing and you have actually heard the gospel, and you know that this is not the gospel, right?

You're thinking, well, this man's just probably insane. This is not a normal thing that normal people do. But what happened was there, you know, I came across this guy through a defense of his ministry.

And this guy is going through, in the defense, he's going through so many mental gymnastics, trying to say, well, I can find this one passage in the Old Testament where they kicked or slapped.

I don't know what it is that he said. I can't remember. But he was actually defending the guy who's punching people on the gut for healing. Right. And the thing that, you know, I've seen in, you know, if I take this back into a message context, I've seen ministers, you know, you'll have some ministers who say, any of the faith killers other than Brannum, were complete frauds, and you have some will say that, you know, maybe they were in spiritual air and some of their doctrine, but they still, God was still using them.

They still had a gift. And you'll find instances where people take, people like this in message, in the message, out of the message, different things, and try to say, well, God was still using them and try to think of them as someone to replicate.

And it's so crazy because, you know, this guy is punching people. I've never, like, could you imagine if Jesus returning sight to a blind man, poked him in the eyeballs and say, now you can see, it's so ridiculous.

But then you'll have ministers who try to follow in this way, and they'll be like, well, we gotta beat people because this is how God wants to heal you. Or this is how God wants to shake you free of your sin.

It's so ridiculous to see that this type of stuff went on, and to some lesser extent still goes on today in different shapes and forms. Yeah. You know, I've been accused of attacking Pentecostalism in general, and it isn't so much that, but I will attack the weirdness, and I will say that this is pretty weird, man.

And you really can't deny that this man was Pentecostal and that he was... people influential in the Pentecostal movement. This was an assemblies of God minister and he was widely, widely popular. What I find really odd whenever I compare what happens in modern Pentecostalism and the cults is that rather than apply critical thought towards something like this, a man who's punching people in the gut, rather than critically think, okay, that's probably wrong.

The first response from a Pentecostal person who's familiar with Smith Wigglesworth, like the article that I read, is, well, I'm gonna try to defend it first and see, can I find any defense for it?

And I'm gonna choose that over my critical thought. Now, human nature is to try to help other humans, try to love and inspire and help other humans, not to punch them in the gut or defend people who are doing so.

And so, if it could be an attack on Pentecostalism, which it's not, it's an attack on the weirdness in Pentecostalism, I would say that Pentecostalism has a lot of cultish tendencies to support weirdness that should not be supported, such as punching people in the gut.

Yeah, you know, you kind of touched on something there that I can definitely relate to, and especially seeing attacks on my belief system when I was in the message, you know, and it's like, you know, I would say that I would just dig further in, and be like, no, no, no, this is the truth.

I know this is true. These people, they're not trying to help me. They're just trying to attack what I believe in their centers and, you know, they've got the wrong motives, you know, and so I can kind of sympathize with that point of view to say, oh, well, he's just attacking, you know, Pentecostalism, but the thing about it is, if there are, you know, cousins to your movement that have weird things, the best thing to do is to not embrace them and say that, well, we want to, you know, in fear of tearing down our larger movement as a whole,

no, you got to excommunicate the bad and distance yourself from it to prove that, okay, we're a healthy group. You know, we don't want this nonsense going on. We don't want people punching babies in our group, you know, it's a sign of a healthy group is when they'll excommunicate things that are, that the nonsense that goes on and creeps up, like if, like, you know, back in the day for a random, for instance, you know, it's like, the quicker you excommunicate somebody like that proves that you want nothing to do with that kind of nonsense.

So I'm going to surprise even you a bit here, James, I think. So, and I'll surprise all of our listeners who are in the message because I do not believe that, out of all of my peers, I don't believe a single one of them knew this, but this was not a cousin to or a distant relative of the message and its splencher groups.

Smith-Woeil's worth was... actually a grandfather whose mantle, William Branham, claimed to have carried forward to ignite the laterane movement and that developed into the laterane message, which later after Branham's death, transitioned into something completely different, which we're about to get into in the historical podcast. But the minister who is claiming that he's beating people with the gospel is actually a direct descendant of a man who's beating people for the gospel.

Oh man, it's insane. You know, with all the mantles that Branham was carrying, he sure had some broad, strong shoulders. I tell you what, man, it's, I mean, Dauy, Wigglesworth, I mean, you just keep naming them off. I mean, Branham had all the weight of the world on his shoulders. It's, you know, it's it's a wonder he was able to keep it all together, man.

Well, it's funny because you know, in today's world, you hear all of these people who are making fun of these ministers who claimed, I got the mantle of so and so, and there's these grave soakers who come and soak Branham, Branham's grave, just try to get his mantle and all this weirdness, right? Well, Branham had so many different versions of stage persona that he couldn't decide which mantle it was he wanted to carry forward. We talked about, he claimed, he actually changed his birth year to change his identity.

He changed his birth year and his name to change his identity and for various reasons, which we talked about earlier in the podcast, but one of the things that he did was he said, the late Dr. Dauy, he said, Dr. Dauy died on one day, and I was born the next. And if you look at that timeline, that's putting his birth year, changing his birth year from 1909, which is the modern claim, which I believe is incorrect, to 1907, which actually does appear to be correct. But he claimed, he's saying this because he's trying to convince his listeners that

there's a spiritual move and a transition, the breath of doubt, the breath of life left Dauy, and it came into me basically is what he's saying. Well, let me read to you this quote, and Branham is talking about key figures in the Pentecostal movement when he says this, he says, I can remember those joyful days with you here in Oakland, and I believe the brethren that sponsored the meeting sitting back here, is that right, brother Morse, he says, I'm so happy for your brother, I'll never forget the days in in your Bible school there, you and brother kid, and all of us talked about the

Bible and the grace of God. And I'll pause there because many people also are unaware that they're Branham went to different Bible schools. But he says, he's uneducated. John, what are you talking about? Exactly, right? And he says, and how that doctor price and prophesied of a great move coming, he's talking about Charles Price, who's a key figure in the, you know, in the Pentecostal circles, and he says, and doctor price moved off of the earth one day, and Wigglesworth moved off one night, Dr. Price the next morning, and then the next day I was visited by the angel of the Lord to go out. So

what he's saying is that that breath of the Spirit went from price to Wigglesworth into him, and he's essentially saying here in the terms of Yesteryear that he has taken the mantle of Smith Wigglesworth.

Oh, man, it's insane. It's really what it is when you get down to it. It's one thing, you know, back in the day when people didn't have access to every single recording and every single sermon this man preached. But when you really get them all together and you study everything he said, like he's got the mantle of Dauy's, got the mantle of Wigglesworth, you know, and it's like, and then people just hear the name, like they may not know who it is, and then they're like, oh, well, that's sounds like a fine thing. And then you look into who

these people are, and you're like, wait a minute, what sort of a mantle are you trying to take on, and every one of these people have dark things going on. I mean, you look Dauy's got dark stuff going on, and Wigglesworth, and you're like, what are you really trying to claim here, because supposedly you're the Elijah of this day. You already have the largest mantle that you could possibly claim. So what do you need with all this other stuff? It, when you really start looking at it that way, it really starts to get even more questionable when you frame it just from

Bram's perspective. Oh, yeah. And we had our Ghost Busters episode, which is probably my favorite one that we've done, right? Talking to the ghosts and all this weirdness. Well, that actually developed because of Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth made this claim that after his wife Polly died, that he went and spoke to the ghost of his wife Polly. And she informed him that she did not want to come back to life on the earth. And you know, we've, I had this conversation recently with another person, whenever the spouse of a faith healer dies, it's their kryptonite man.

Because yeah, you explain this away. So Wigglesworth, his, his way to get out of this thing, where his wife just died, as he said, well, I went to the other side and I spoke to the ghost of Polly. Well, you know, and Bram's got his own similar story with his own wife and his first wife, you know, and it's, there's, there's all these weird similarities you see with all these guys using the same parlor tricks to, yeah, to keep their movements going and keep their, you know, as Bram's, you know, restarting his, his sort of thing going on and he's got to have an excuse

for why his first wife is dead, you know, and, you know, it's a sad thing. It's a sad thing to lose somebody you care about it. And I would hope that Bram actually really did care about this person.

But, you know, it's a sad thing, but to, to use the person's name in death in a way to further your your ministry of healing that has all these trap doors in it to get out of excuses for why people didn't get healed in the first place.

And oh, by the way, I have a first wife that died, it's like, okay, there's a lot of problems here, buddy. Oh, yeah. And, you know, there are a lot of people who are in the message who just show up and they, I called them Pew Wormers, they show up and they just kind of, it's a good place to sleep if you want to take a mental nap, they turn everything off, they have no idea what's being said.

And I know, I can tell you for a fact, in fact, I'll get it in the comment feeds, people will stop listening at the point where I just said that and I'll say, will you brand them never supported that?

He never taught this, he never taught, you know, talking to the ghosts of the dead wife or supporting it. Well, he actually does. Let's compare this story from one of Smith's biographies to one that William Brannum gives in his own healing revivals.

He knew that she was with her beloved Lord as she had so long to be, but standing before her now, he just could not bear the separation. In the name of Jesus, death give her up.

Paulie's eyes opened and looks straight into his. Paulie, I need you, she answered. Smith, the Lord wants me. Not only is he talking to the ghost of Paulie, he's actually talking to the zombie.

Paulie, I'm not bad. Oh, man, you know, and this is something I've seen as I've had the chance to go and examine message ministers as more of the history has been made known and has been, you know, especially somebody like Dowie, there's been so much work through your channel and others to really expose who these people are and what they were about.

And I've seen ministers just because Brannum spoke about Dowie in a reverent way, they have to then also speak about Dowie in a reverent way. Now sometimes they were also say, well, he got into error towards the end, but God, the gift was still there and God was still using him.

And then, you know, that maybe that's the reason why God took him off the scene because he was an heir and then the mantle moved on to Brannum. So you'll have all these mental gymnastics that some of these ministers do to try to keep the canon of the message alive and all these different things that Brannum said.

And then you'll just look at Wigglesworth as another example of, you know, you've got the punching babies and then speaking to the wife and then, you know, message ministers will love that because of, you know, Brannum's own history with speaking to dead people.

And, you know, you have to, and if you question too many things, if you pull too many threads, the entire thing unravels. So ministers are very careful on which ones they pull on and which ones they leave alone.

Right. And to the people who are the Pew Wormers, who are unaware of this weird, weird history exists. Let me read a quote from Branham where, you know, he had the same scenario. He was a faith healer.

He actually tried to move the start date of his alleged commission to heal the sick from the early or from the late 1930s. He moved it all the way up to 1947 or 48.

And so people aren't aware that this happened, but William Branham was a faith healer when his first wife Hope died. And like Smith Wigglesworth, he talked to the ghost of his wife. He says, and I turned and looked and there was great big palaces and the glory of God coming around them.

And I heard an angelic choir singing, my home, sweet home. And I started up the long steps, running just as hard as I could. And when I went to the door, there she stood, a white garment on that black hair, long hair flowing down her back.

He goes on and talks about the meeting with her and he says, she said to me, now Bill, stop worrying about me and Sharon, I said, honey, I can't help it. She said, now Sharon and I are better off than you.

So he's talking to the ghost of his wife, right? People have no idea that this is a thing, this happened. And you know, back to the Pentecostal experience thing, you know, again, I get condemned a lot for attacking Pentecostalism, but this is weird stuff.

And I know for a fact that in those condemnations, there are people who are in the Pentecostal movement who say, we're different than this. We don't do this. But we're talking about Smith Wigglesworth, he was an assemblies of God minister.

You know, this was the assemblies and his connections to all of this. You know, Brannum was a, not even a cousin, Brannum was a son. So he was, he was like a sister church, right?

Or a brother, you know, brothers and sisters in the movement, FF Bosworth, who was William Brannum's mentor in the Revivals, was one of the founding members of the assemblies of God. And he held Revivals with Smith Wigglesworth.

So you've got this deep connection between all of these men. Yeah. And, you know, the situations around, you know, the getting a beating when you come to church and all the things that that sets up in your mind, it lays the groundwork for so many other things and from continued spiritual abuse and multiple different forms to physical abuse.

And, you know, and we've heard and we've seen multiple variations of all those stories when they go, when they go bad. You know, and one of the things you see is the targeting of members in the congregation at times, you know, and it's one of those things that it's so sad to see when you should be creating a healthy environment where people are learning and growing together and living in a harmony, and the church should be a safe place for everyone to go, but then you're sitting in the pew, and then all of a sudden you're getting targeted, and you're being

told that this is great, because this beating that you're getting, it's for your edification of your soul. It's not me, the minister. I'm not doing it out of my own personal vendetta or anything.

It's just, you know, you deserve it, and because you deserve it, if you'll just accept the beating, God will give you the glory in the end, because you'll be right where God wants you to be.

So let's roll on into this next clip and dig in a little further. You can sing all you want to, you can raise your hands all you want to, you can clap for me while I'm singing, and sit on me while I'm preaching.

But it'll never come to life unless you've been with the Papa God. You can get mad at the pastor all you want to, because he preaches on you, and you can go around Pountain and stick in a big fat lip of yours out there.

He preaches, don't be poo. And you watch. I was told right here on this platform, goats enjoy, gov'in. Hallelujah, but you watch, you watch, you watch people get so mad, he, he called, he just bell called my name from the whole church.

I am so embarrassed, everybody knows that was me, because you put it all over Facebook. He'll go to Pountain and stick in that lip of mine, he preaches on me, but you watch a real jeans hit of God, and the pastor goes to preaching on him, they say thank you, Jesus, he's getting me raptured at it.

So James, this clip for me is actually sad, I know we've been laughing and we've been talking about some very funny things, but it's really sad because of the overall topic that we're talking about is literally it is spiritual abuse, plain and simple, it is spiritual abuse.

If you're a listener of this show and you're involved in one of these churches, or even if you're not, but you're in a church that is doing the same thing, because this is widespread, just do a Google search on the attributes or the characteristics of spiritual abuse, and you're going to find exactly what, what these ministers that we're playing these clips of are doing, it is spiritual abuse, plain and simple.

What these guys are trying to do is to break you down, not build you up, and I'll stop again and I'll point out the difference between this and the gospel. The gospel is intended to build you up.

The gospel is intended to build you up, and I'll stop again and I'll stop again and I'll is intended not to break you down, but to make disciples of men and women. Remember Jesus sent them out too by too. It was to build them up so that you lead by making new leaders. That's how any organization, I don't care if it's Christianity or it's the job that you work at day-to-day, you lead by creating leaders. You don't lead by beating people over the head, but these people have been manipulated into thinking that I'm going to go to church and I'm going to be beaten in the

head. That's really what it is. Yeah, and what's so sad is that in a lot of these abusive relationships in church between the minister and the congregation, it's a one-way glass. The minister is looking into the lives of the people and he's berating them and all this stuff, but the people don't have a view into the minister's life. We've seen multiple examples of where the ministers are just doing horrible things to their congregation, whether it's spiritual abuse or physical abuse, and then you look into their own lives and they have many demons in their own closet. But it's nice that they get to keep all those things hidden and God gets to work

on them in secret. But the people in the congregation, they get it in the middle of everybody else. That's all in public view when they're getting their beating. It's sad to see these things to take into this way. And so many people feel like it's normal. And so they continue on in some of these relationships in these churches because they're like, yeah, this is what God wants. God wants to skin my hide and make me feel the flames of hell every time I walk into this church.

And it's so sad because there's so many great things that could be going on in healthy church environments that could be created. But we're so focused on skinning the hide off of people that we don't, we completely miss the point altogether. Exactly. And so here's the second piece of homework. If you're in a church that's doing this spiritual abuse, just type in, go into Google and type in the attributes of a healthy, healthy church. And you're going to find what it is to be a healthy church, which is polar opposite from this. Again, it's to build you up. It's to make

new leaders, leaders upon leaders and not to be in an authoritarian structure. And I think that's the key here because what these ministers are describing is I am your spiritual authority. You are to come every Sunday, two times on Sunday, Wednesday night and everywhere in between in some of these churches. And I'm going to mentally whip you. That's plain and simple. That's what they're saying.

And I am your authority. That's the key. I am your spiritual authority. But that is not the bib local model for the church. God did not establish a system wherein you are to go be beaten every Sunday, but it's still lift you up. It's to make you a better person, not a slave, which is what these guys would like to have, right? But take the biblical instructions for establishing a church. In Titus, for example, it says that whenever you establish a church, you appoint elders in every town, plural, elders. There is a plurality of leadership, and when the church

is established like this, there is not a possibility for one single person to become an authoritarian figure. There's a balance of power, and if one person goes off the rails, like these ministers clearly have, then another person can step up and say, hey, man, you've gone off the rails.

You're mentally beating the church instead of giving them the gospel of Jesus Christ. So it does not in any way match the biblical model for a church, and I'll say it again, I've said it before, it is spiritual abuse, plain and simple. Yeah, and it's a further example of the pyramid scheme that Brandham set up. You have God, then you have the major prophet, then you have the minor prophets, and then you have the local pastors, and you know, goes down and forth. And so nobody in this pyramid scheme can step up above the other.

And so when you've got a local pastor, he is the sole authority in the church. And I've even seen examples of message churches in particular where they talk about they don't even vote on the pastor. It is the pastor chooses what happens in that church, and what they try to say is that's just politics, and we don't play politics in this church because politics is of the devil.

You know, and they'll have all these rationales and reasonings for why they don't do it, but you have, you know, it'd be, you know, I could see some crazy utopian example of you have some utopian pastor who's just really great and loving and kind, and he's just the sole voice in the thing, and maybe it is great, but most of the time it doesn't work out that way. You get a singular authority over a group of people, and things tend to go bad, you know, but yeah, like you said, you have elders in a church in a normal environment where there's checks and balances to the power structure,

and I don't even like to call it the power structure because I think that's even a warped way of looking at it to begin with because the minister, the ministerial body in a church, they're servants of the congregation. This whole thing of like, I'm the authority God speaking through me to completely whip you and burn your hide, I think is a complete inversion to begin with, you know, it's so sad to see so many people think that, you know, I'm, you know, it takes them out of their personal walk and their personal journey to be like, I gotta come to church

so that the Lord can speak through the minister who's been ordained to skin my hide. Oh, yeah. And, you know, what you're describing, what they're wanting to establish is a monarchy. They want to be the king, right? They want to be the king over you. And if they can mentally break you down into submission where their doctrine or their teaching is authoritative, there's no real chance for them to be voted out. So votes, even though many of these churches do take a vote, the vote is essentially useless because they've already beat you into submission. And, well, yeah, I'm submitting to the leader. I'm going to vote for the leader.

There's almost no, there's almost no choice, right? My grandfather, I'll tell a little secret. My grandfather got around this. He did have doctrines that here in here in Mecca and Jeffersonville, there's a, there's a disconnect between all of the people because it's like the melting pot of all of these different splinter groups. So you have all these people at odds and not all of them were in agreement with my grandfather. And he was unable to whip them into spiritual authority, like some of the others. So his, he came up with a great solution. He, those who got disgusted with

his preaching and did not show up every Sunday, he secretly got together with the elders of the church and they voted that anybody who was not quote unquote a regular attendee, even if they voted, their vote got pulled out. So it, in effect, it was a spiritual authority. Not many people know this. I, the decans are aware and, you know, there's a few people in the inner circle that are aware, but by and large, the majority of the Brannum tabernacle is fully unaware that when they voted, it never got counted. And that's just the way it was. And again, you know,

I've, I've talked about the Pentecostal likeness of what we're talking about here. There are Pentecostal assemblies that are, that do have plurality. They have bishops and, you know, they have bishops, so and so agrees with the other bishops, so and so. And so there is a collaboration.

And thus say this wasn't, this is not the way we are. But from its inception, what Brannum is actually more closely matching what was going on in Pentecostalism in the formation of it. Because in the early years, Charles Fox Parham, who is, we've talked about briefly before, but he is considered to be the father of modern Pentecostalism. He's the, the projector of the apostolic faith is how they correctly label him. Well, Parham, before he established what became modern Pentecostalism, he began visiting different communes where they just like these men that we're talking about, mentally beat the people into submission. He went to John Alexander

Dauy, which we've talked about. about. But interestingly, he went to this other figure who was named Frank Sanford. And I'll just read you an article here about Frank Sanford. And it's quite a large article talking about the spiritual abuse that went on in Shiloh, which was the commune for Sanford. And the title of this section is called People in Hell. It means, among the worst, was putting people in hell. Until their minds were nearly broken, nearly all of the practices were of the same nature. That is, of breaking the will of the people. And take a step back from all of this,

right? Ignore the fact that Brannum was a direct descendant of the guy who's kicking people in the stomach, punching them in the gut. Ignore all of that. Just take a step back and think about the spiritual submission that it would take that you have to be under to allow yourself to be punched in the gut, to allow yourself to go to this church where these ministers are saying, for the glory of God, I'm going to beat you into submission verbally. You really have to be under a deep level of mind control because the normal response of somebody punches me in the gut

James, I'm probably going to punch him back. I'm not going to be able to help it. I'm just going to punch him back. And if you are going, say you go to a ball game and you sit down next to a guy and the next guy leans over you and says, you know, I like baseball. And I'm going to beat you into submission verbally while we play this baseball game. You're probably going to move to another seat, but these people will go to the church where this man is saying, I'm going to beat you into

submission verbally. And they go do it again next Sunday, man. Yeah, it's amazing when you're in a movement that convinces you that this is the truth. There is no other truth in this world. Everything beyond this, this movement is utter darkness. Your soul is forfeit if you leave the bounds of this, of this movement. And it's amazing the things that your mind can be okay with when those are the stakes. And that's something that you see when you really start breaking a lot of this down is, is all these things in isolation seem like how in the world

do you get there? And it's like, well, it's really easy when you put it all together. You mix the concoction, you mix the brew, and all of a sudden your witchcraft is doing all sorts of things to these people that you would think that how in the world are they putting up with it? But you know, it's I know from my time sitting in a message pew. There's things that I look back on now that I'm horrified that I ever allowed myself to be to listen to and let alone think that this was the, this was what God wanted for me, you know, to sit here and listen to a minister sit here and

try to berate me. and try to tell me that the people around me were cannon fodder and that the only thing that was saving my souls that I was in this message, that God allowed a prophet in our day to come down and speak these magic words that we were privileged to believe.

But in the meantime, you got to get beat while we're getting ready for a rapture. It's insane. You know, of all the clips that you found, James, that are beating people verbally into submission, punching them in the gut for the glory of God.

This one that you found here, it really sums it up for me, what these people are trying to do, and it really sums up the difference between going to one of these cult churches and hearing this thing that they're preaching that you really don't even know what it is, and going to another church that actually preaches the gospel, because this is not a, it's not even the same God. You know, the God who loved the whole world, loved even the sinner, enough to give his only son to save them, that's the God that Christian church has preached, the God of the gospel,

right? Well, this is a vigilante God, man, this is the Batman God. He's coming to punch the gut of the people who disagree with them, and you know, you cannot make somebody conform to your ideology or your way of thinking by beating them. Eventually, they're going to take enough beating and they're just going to walk away, but these men are preaching the vigilante God.

So this clip that you found here, which I'll play here in a second, it really sums it up for me because it shows very clearly that these churches are actually serving a completely different God.

He's a God of vengeance, and he's a God of order! You may not believe this, but that was an act of mercy in that temple that day, because he could have left him and they're seeing him.

And that's what people don't understand about preaching. They think a man's mad at him, and he thinks he says that they hurt their feelings, but if you ain't living right, just saying right, come on, you're manning acting like a man, and a woman acting like a woman, it's not judgment, it's mercy! That God will love you so much, he'll correct you in your wrong!

Yeah, I mean, being told that the beating that I'm taking is not because the minister wants to, it's mercy. It's mercy upon my soul that God wants the minister to rip the flesh off my hide, to get me ready for a rapture so that none who shall be saved will be lost.

It's just, it's so crazy and to think that, you know, I used to, I used to hang around churches like this and hear these same things. And in that cult mindset, I thought that this, this is great. This is wonderful. I was so happy. Like you said at the beginning, I was so happy to be beat by the minister because this is, this, I would exactly where God wants me.

And it's, it's so sad, you know, get out of this stuff. You get into a normal environment. And you're like, oh my God, I'm horrified. What in the world was I being, was I being put under, you know, this is insane.

Yeah. So my third piece of homework, if you were in one of these churches, go study the ancient mythologies and the people that worship the ancient deities. And I'm not talking about the good deities. I'm talking about, you know, South American, Egyptian, Greek, these men, these men who were bringing these ancient deities and pagan beliefs to a people.

And doing so to enslave the people, the people were literal slaves. Like the members of these churches, they went to be spiritually abused and completely broken down to the extent that they were slaves, many of which in the ancient world were so controlled under the authoritarian control of the leader, that they were willingly sacrificing their children to the deity.

The man had actually convinced them, man or men had actually convinced them that in order to provide for the people of the nation, we need to give to the grounds back some of our offspring to give to the ancient gods or whatever it is.

And by the blood of your children soaking into the earth, the earth will become more bountiful and it will feed the rest of us. The people were broken down to that level. In ancient Egypt, for example, you had the Egyptian god Mott, which was the goddess of justice, truth and balance.

I mean, this is what this minister is talking about, the god of justice, right? You also had the god of vengeance, which was pet pee. It was the god of revenge. And I mean to thank James that there are actually ministers proclaiming to be Christian who are telling literally telling their congregations that they're coming to serve the god of revenge.

In what world is that even resembling Christianity? This podcast has already ripped the messes from shred to shred. And we know that this thing doesn't even begin to resemble Christianity. The only thing they say is god. And that's the only thing that, and in some sense, it's some some versions of the cult that actually means random.

So sometimes you don't even know if any of it has anything to do with Christianity. Yeah, it's insane. The hoops. these ministers jump through sometimes to justify the ways that they act to their congregation.

And, you know, I grew up in churches where the minister would snarl and spit and yell and scream. And, you know, and I used to think that that was just normal, you know, and, you know, it's, and it's so crazy to think. And at the same time, they're talking about being beat and they sound so angry. And it's like, you know, it's like they claim to be channeling the righteous indignation of God in that moment. And it's just like, come on, really? You know, and that kind of also plays into another topic that we're thinking about too. You know, and just the authority

that ministers have that sometimes just goes way into the realm of almost creating a God like minister, it's, it is insane to see how this stuff builds into some of these larger problems. You know, and you even look at, you know, a lot of these ministers talk to their congregation and they'll use terms like little children and when they talk to them and they talk to them in some of these things. And you also look at situations like Jim Jones is like, how did these people call him father? It's like, he's not their father. He's just a minister supposedly. But then you

look at some of these larger things and it's like, you can see how people get there to looking up to their minister in such a way that takes him way in beyond into some other universe of power that he should never have in a normal church. And you know, the vast majority of people in it have no idea that Jim Jones was a leader in this movement. Or, you know, I've even encountered some who have no clue that who Jim Jones was. And you know, I have to explain to them that there were over 900 people that committed mass suicide through drinking cyanide lace cool aid. The term

drinking the cool aid comes from literally comes from the message that's Jim Jones was a leader in this thing, right? But for me, James, it's this simple. We've talked before about how many leaders in this cult will tell you that the great pyramid of Giza in Egypt was a literal Bible.

And oddly, there are there are many people in it who are the pure warmers who have no idea that they are supposed to believe that this Egyptian pyramid is a Bible. And here we have a minister who is proclaiming the God of Mott and the God of Petby from ancient Egypt. I mean, he's literally read the Egyptian Bible. There's this is not the Christian God by no means. My advice to people who are in this is number one, just critically examine what you're in. Whenever the minister says something that you think, huh, that sounds a little weird. Look it up because it's right.

Probably weird. Yeah, it's amazing. You know, and I do. I have a lot of sympathy for people who are still in and people who, and even if it's not the message, other movements that do similar things and try to control and snare people's minds because, you know, it's a tough thing to get out of.

You know, it's tough to find your way when you're surrounded by all these elements of fear and you've got the vengeful God and, you know, all these things that, you know, it's fire in Bremstone and your soul will be eternally damned and just the question because it's the truth.

You know, God granted you the ability to see the truth and if you turn away, there's just no saving your soul. And so, yeah, it's a tough hill to climb, but it's worth starting.

Yeah, it definitely is worth starting, but also worth completing. I mean, you've got to examine what you're in, man. Whenever you hear the Egyptian gods being proclaimed in a Christian church, you have to just take a step back and what is this thing I'm in, right?

More to the point, if you're in a religion that is teaching you that everything is a devil and the battle is being waged in your head and you have to play these mental gymnastics to fight the demons in your head, there's probably something going on because that's not a normal thing.

That's not what normal people do. In a Christian church, not everything is a devil. There are things that you can overcome yourself to be a better person and they give you good, healthy encouragement to just simply become a better person.

You know, and that is Christ-like. Whenever you're doing good for other people, not serving the God of vengeance and justice, you're actually doing the instruction of the gospel. Love your neighbor as yourself and love God above all else.

That's the key, right? So if you have weird doctrines that you'd like for us to discuss on the show, you can contact us on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research of William-Branum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.