Weird Doctrines: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Healing

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 the 1960s. James, today we have an episode that I'll be honest, it is literally at the core of everything that we do. This is such a weird thing for me because

if you were raised and mentally molded into this ideology, this sounds normal. And in fact, we have a lot of people who are watching the YouTube videos or listening to the podcast that are still either sympathetic to the cult that we escaped or who are actually still in it, which is another funny story for another day. But they'll hear all of this and they'll think that we're just anti-biblical heathens because we're calling it out. But we have this entirely different crowd of people who are... or never in this, who are interested to learn more about it

and historians, psychologists, different people. And they look at it and they think, man, this is really, really weird. So you've got this weird balance of people, right? And because we were raised in it, it molds us a little bit. We think even still slightly different than people who weren't.

And I think some of that's going to come out in this episode. But I'm interested to get into this one because it's going to show a little bit of our character and our upbringing and get into what makes us who we are. And honestly, like I said earlier, that's the heart of this podcast and the heart of everything that I do. Right. And opinions aside for a second on what the implications of some of this stuff is, it allows us to... This is all process, even for me and for you, as we go through and we're digging through these things and we're...

You know, looking under all the rocks that we were told not to look under when we were we were in this stuff. And sometimes that process alone brings its own healing, you know, let alone with what you actually find, you know, because you're allowing your brain to do this stuff that you were told you couldn't do because you would be damned to hell for even attempting to do this because you're becoming an agent of the devil.

And you know, this, this subject of faith healing and, you know, some of the things that were taught inside the message and things that we all believed and heard growing up, you know, some of the implications it has and the things that it's done to people's lives is horrible.

There has been horrible things that have happened as a result of some of these, these doctrines that have been propagated throughout, you know, even today that are still going on. And it's so sad because, you know, there's people, I remember when I was, when I was in and I was taught these things were real and that everything that Brandon said was, was thus say at the Lord and if it wasn't, then, you know, he just got something wrong to fool some people, you know, and, and, you know, you were taught the healings and the prayer lines and everything was, was completely a hundred percent God.

And that was, you know, even if Brandon was off on something, when the healing ministry was going on, that's when God was moving, that, that, that was God 100 percent. And you know, it's, it's so, it's so crazy and, and that's why, you know, this, this will be a very interesting one for us to dig in and look at and just kind of, just kind of see where it takes us.

Yeah. I agree. And I'll profess this show with the clear understanding that we're not attacking people who believe that God can heal. That's the first thing. I'm already, I'm already countering this because that's the first comment we're going to get you guys are attacking people because you don't believe in faith healing. It's, it's different than that. You have to separate what is fantasy and what is biblical. And I'm going to take a middle ground in between even that because you have to separate what is not only what's fantasy or biblical, but you also have to fast to separate what's logical and what was

the scheme of a con artist. You know, anybody, anybody who believes that God can heal, that's a good thing. I'm not going to say that's a bad thing. But what about the person who had an accident and their leg was severed off? You don't find too many faith healers bringing those people through the line. You know what I mean? They're going to find people, oh, you have a stomach trouble. Just pray and be well. Well, you know, I have stomach trouble and I don't go to this big fancy faith healing thing. And my stomach gets better. I know I have friends who

have had cancer. and their cancers, some of them had to go through extensive treatment for their cancers and they got better. Others, you know, not every cancer is life-threatening. I'll just say it like that.

Not every disease is one and the same, but a lot of these con artists, what they try to do is they try to claim that it's a mind-over-matter thing. If you can mentally put it out of your mind that you have this thing, then they'll promise you healing, but they never promise you healing on the things that they know will not get better. Well, like if your leg is severed off, you're not going to find too many men who are doing this, right? And I can assure you if you go to church and one of these faith-healing churches and you're missing an arm, I can assure you,

if you go to the platform, you're not going to find the minister say, I command that arm to grow back. And in three weeks, you just watch, it's going to grow back. You're not going to find this.

They realized that God does heal and they mentally, whether they are a con artist or whether they're just a minister who actually is fooled themselves, there is a deep understanding that God does heal and the way in which God heals is God has given our bodies the power in some cases to heal itself.

In other cases, there are times where simply this is a burden that you're going to have to bear in this life and they realize that too because they're not praying for the people who lost an arm.

Right, and I've even seen instances where you have somebody with a lifelong illness and they're around these movements and you know, the movement itself was birthed off of this this core of divine faith healing. And the people today that are still around it, you know, they're like, well, if anything, the anointing should be greater because we're that much closer to the end.

You know, God's pouring out, you know, his blessings and everything upon this, this movement, which in this case would be the message. And so people work themselves up and then frenzy because they're like, we should be able to do, you know, we are the manifested sons of God. We should be able to take this on into its logical conclusion here and we should be able to cast out the demons and regrow the arms and all these things. And so you see some movements where, you know, it's not just the ministers, but they're getting the congregation, the people who have the faith to

to help get involved in these prayer, you know, lines and things. And actually, you know, you actually get the buy-in of the people when that's going on. And that creates another interesting psychological phenomenon as well. But, you know, it's sad when you see some of these things where people have, they've got these lifelong illnesses and they're in the message or other movements.

And then They have to keep up appearances, and they have to keep trying to heal this person, even though the person is not getting better, and then they keep saying, well, God's gonna have this movement, it's gonna be wonderful, it's gonna be a miracle, and God's gonna have all the glory for this.

And then when the person eventually passes away, which is a very sad thing, and very sad for all the family members involved and all that, but the ministers then turn it into, God did get the final glory because they got the ultimate healing, and the ultimate healing is death, and they no longer have to suffer and toil with us in this mortal coil, and it's not that they didn't have the faith in this instance, they may have had all the faith, but God chose to allow them not to be healed to strengthen your faith.

I don't know, it's just sad because we've seen all the examples throughout your research and others, and what was going on in a lot of these meetings that people have built this fantasy on in some situations, and it's sad to see this still controlling people's minds, and in some instances, people don't even seek proper medical help, because the minister says it's about your faith, you gotta have the right kind of faith, and some people get hurt because of this, and it's sad, and like you said, it's sobering to look at this in a way to where you strip away some of the fantasy and say, okay, I'm not saying

that God can't heal, I'm not saying, I'm not putting God in the box and saying God can't do whatever, but at the same time, we have to be on the lookout for charlatans who are trying to get into our pocketbooks, and by saying they can heal or give us access to some divine entity that is going to give us the results that we desperately want.

Absolutely. So let's get into this, James, let's take a look at some of the things that these ministers are saying, and again, this is not to pick on the minister or the belief system, I understand I was part of this, so I understand the mentality of these people, but this podcast, I'm going to preface with the fact that this is intended for people who are never in this, and we're gonna try to explain what this weird thing is a bit for the people who are never in it.

So if you're in it and you're getting offended, just turn it off, it's that simple. So let's get into it, James. One of the things that we're familiar with when we look at it from a message context is that a carryover from the faith healing days is that healing is directly tied to faith, and that's the way it's presented.

It's like, it's not that the healer was a charlatan, it's not that they just wanted your money, it's not any of this stuff, but it's that your faith wasn't in the right place, and this is something you see a lot when you look at all the different.

the different faith healers in the past, look at the tracks and different things they put out, including Brannum, and you see this tie of like, there's always a little bit of an out in here.

It's like, if the cancer isn't gone or the stomach trouble isn't gone, it's not because I don't actually have a gift or the gift didn't work or whatever, it's that you didn't have the right kind of faith.

And so we actually see that going on today and we see ministers still propagating these things because this is the way they were taught and this is the way they were raised. And in some of these cases, this is honestly what these ministers believe.

And it's, but yeah, let's take a look at an example here and dive into it further. And remember, we can emphasize divine healing and we wanna see that principle of the word of God working within the church, working within believers' lives, but what it stands for is a new body, right?

That's what it's an earnest of. It's an earnest of the body change. So if we don't have enough faith for a toothache, right, don't have enough faith for divine healing, then we need to, we need to be challenged on whether or not our faith is actually maturing and growing to have faith to change our bodies.

So if you don't have enough faith to heal a toothache, then there's no chance for you, James. That's essentially what this guy's saying. God is powerless unless your faith is powerful enough for a toothache.

And back to what I said earlier about the severed arm, there are levels of toothache, right? If you just have a pain in your mouth, and this guy's saying you have a pain in your mouth, I'm gonna heal you from it or whatever, well, what about the person who has severe tooth decay and the tooth is rotting and rot in, is the tooth gonna rebuild itself?

And more to the point, why would somebody from behind a pulpit even do this in the first place? Because we do have a dentist. These people can go to a dentist and get a filling.

The problem that I have with this, and again, not to condemn the minister because he's probably fooled into this thing like the rest of them. But the problem is this is a man who has an influence over several people.

And because of this, this man is a predator. And whether he knows it or not, whether he is, whether he himself is duped or not, he is spiritually abusing the people because there are people who are so devout sitting in the congregations that they're gonna hear this man say this with tooth decay.

And they're gonna think, oh my gosh, I better not go to the dentist because what if that means I don't have enough faith and all by the way, in this religion, you have to have enough faith to have rapturing faith.

So if your faith is not even good enough for a toothache, ultimately, if you follow all ends to their logical conclusion, this man is saying that you do not have enough faith to be caught up into the rapture.

and make it into heaven. So therefore you're doomed to hell because you have a toothache.

Right. And, you know, even in this context and a message context, that faith also extends into your belief in the actual movement. So if you don't believe in random, if you don't believe in the message, then that's also hindering your actual faith. And then that's also another reason why maybe you, maybe you listen to a podcast somewhere and maybe there's a little bit of questions going on and maybe that's why your healing isn't coming through properly. You know, there's all sorts of things that I've seen instances of minister say. And it's, you know, it's sad because, you know,

like you said, it puts God in such a small box and it makes God so weak that God can't do anything or won't as a punishment for your faith not being right. And it's such a, it's such a, it's such a, it's so sad to see people look at God in this way because it really does run counter to the gospel. And, and, you know, I mean, the New Testament is really essentially built on the, on the ideal of whosoever will, you know, and it's like, why would healing be any different?

You know, whosoever will call in the name of the Lord. I mean, it's just like, why are we, why are we doing this to people? You know, it seems kind of sad and counterproductive, honestly.

But, you know, it's not like the minister is just coming up with this on his own either, because in this case, in a, in a message context, you know, the minister is just, is just quoting Brannum. Yeah. And, you know, I, I have this quote here from, you know, Brannum in 1947, faith is substance, faith, faith is the substance. And he says here, now some many people come through the line and they say, oh, I have the faith to be healed. And friends, they, they pass by, I know they haven't enough faith to cure a toothache. That's right. And some of them, they're coming through

with cancer and say, I have faith to be healed. They do not have faith. My scripture lesson tonight is faith is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. See, it's a substance. It's something direct, something that you really have, not something that you imagine, something that you think you have, but it's direct, positive act that you have. See what I mean? And what's sad about this is, is, is when you really look into the prayer cards and the, the prayer lines themselves and, and even other quotes for Brannum says, you have to come,

you have to come beforehand to be taught to know how to receive your healing. You had to go to this little, this little instruction thing to literally tell you, because just going through the prayer line, just believing in God wasn't enough. You actually had to go through and they had to teach you, you know, and, and there are implications of what these things mean and what they're actually doing here. And it's, it's sad that you, I didn't hear this stuff growing up, you know, I may have heard of a prayer line, but I never heard of a prayer card. I never heard that you had

to go through a meeting beforehand to know how to receive your healing. And it's, it, when you, when you see this stuff, And you're like, I begin to see why some of these things are just forgotten in the annals of history because people don't want you to know about some of these things.

Oh, yeah. And, you know, for me, that's the biggest problem. They, they have largely forgotten the history. If they knew the history behind this, everybody who's in this thing would run screaming, I mean, to be honest, there are, you mentioned brand, but this is deeper than brand, this actually, even though we were taught this falsely in the message that this kind of thing originated from Brannum.

And he was the, the true faith healer of all these other guys, all of the thousands of others who he supported, backed, promoted, praised and said was, quote, he said, knew the Bible better than him.

You know, even though there are all these other men who are doing the same stage, trick, stage gimmicks, we were falsely taught that he was the only one. We weren't told the history behind it.

And sadly, if you examine just the Pentecostal movement in general, there's a whole lot of people, there are a whole lot of people who are unaware that it all did begin with a con artist.

Again, God can heal. I'm not saying that at all, but the way in which this is done was the strategy of a con artist. And we've talked about him before briefly, but in approximately 1890, John Alexander Dauy, who was the prototype for all of this, came to the United States.

And he was the king of the faith healers. He was a man who, he would go into a town and he had this satchel and he would pull out these testimonies and he would hold a meeting in a building and attract all these crowds of people, bring your sick, bring your afflicted.

And he would pull out a paper that he said was a written testimony of somebody he had healed in another city and then would hold this whole meeting where he's talking about the testimonies of the healing.

And everybody's in the meeting thinking, Oh, wow, that's a testimony. He must have really killed him. And there was never, there was never a testimony from that city. And then he would, it was under the auspices of everybody's welcome.

It's free, but oh, by the way, we're going to take a little bit of offering. If you can help us and support our ministry, well, he would take the money and he'd run, he'd go to the next city.

Well, in the next city, he would tell them that he healed all these people in this town that he just came from and he didn't. And he would pull out papers saying that they were healed and they weren't.

And eventually the newspapers caught on to this scheme and he was exposed out west and he moved to Chicago and the rest of the Dauy cult as history from there. But this idea, this faith healing gimmick that he had was such that the power to was placed on the faith of the person, not on the God, but if you have enough faith to believe, you can be healed, and God was literally taken out of the equation. It was just him as the conduit between God and man, the mediator between God and man, and the individual who wanted healing,

and then the problem is almost nobody was healed. There were some people who had slight illnesses and afflictions who they did get better, but they would have got better without this guy. The vast majority of people were, it was fraudulent healings, and all of that was fully exposed.

What this minister, and practically everyone that I've heard, whenever I was in the message, what they don't tell you and what you don't know is that FF Bosworth, who was one of William Brannum's first campaign managers, was in the Dauy cult. He was doing exactly, he was part of this thing. He was an elder in the cult, and he is the one who mentored Brannum during William Brannum's early healing revivals that led to the latter reign, the broader post-World War II healing revival.

Right. It's one of those things where, like you said, not saying that no one was ever healed in any way, shape or form, because God is God, and God can do what God can do what He pleases.

But it's one of those things where I had this conversation with my brother not too long ago, and it's funny, because even he said, if the world ended tomorrow, it wouldn't be because Brannum said the world was going to end. The world would have just ended. It's the same thing with the healings. It's not that these men do or don't have a gift. It's that God can do what He chooses, and a con man up there saying that you can be healed. There's no implication of whether you're going to get healed or not. It's the fact that you got something from God. This guy has nothing to

do with anything. This fictional guy that I'm bringing up here, this that I'm used for this example, is just there to take your money. But you can contact God on your own, because this guy has nothing to do with getting in between you and God. If that's the way you want to look at it.

It's one of those things that, like you said, you look at the history and see where these people come from, and Brannum's influences, and the people who are actually involved in his campaigns, and they go all the way back to these things that we know that Dauy was a fraud.

And the thing about it is, is that I never heard of Dauy until I came in contact with some of your research. And then now I've heard message ministers, and they talk about Dauy as though he was a guy that God used. He just got off, because this is the thing I like to do, Oh, he just got off, but then, you know, because Brandon talks about taking on Dauy's mantle, and so message ministers have to find a way of Saying, well, Dauy wasn't always bad. He just kind of got off the word and then God had to take him off the scene because whatever, you know, and it's just all these things to protect the core because there's so much

And this is the thing and a lot of these movements is that that are centered around the faith healing The faith healing is a massive portion of how the myth keeps spreading because it's the it's a thing that I mean if you've got some Life-threatening disease that doctors don't know what to do and you've been to every doctor you can think of What does it hurt to try a man who says that he's got some sort of special contact with God that says he can do something for you and then some people And then you get into these meetings and they're like, okay

Your faith has to be right and then you get caught up into that and then they're saying, okay, you're healed even if you don't see the if you If you don't see the evidence, you're healed Now you have to make sure your faith is right or you'll lose it, you know, because God's doing a work on you, but you'll lose it If your faith, if your faith gets below this certain level, you know, and man, it's so sad because there's people that desperately need Something in their life to to you know whether it's whether it's a disease or something that they're desperately battling and they need some hope

You know, and sometimes people get to the end of their rope and they're willing, they're willing to latch on to anything And that's when people are vulnerable and you've seen so many people who have been in their most vulnerable state Been taken advantage of by some of these people and it's so sad, it's so sad Yeah, it's horrific and you know, I know I'll get called out for using the word predator over a man who's talking about a toothache But if you really think about what they're doing to the minds of the people, they are giving them false hope in many situations

I understand God can heal, again, don't get me wrong on that But it's not the, it's none of the business of the minister to even get involved with that It's between the person and God, if you, you know, if you want to pray to God for your healing, that's fine The minister can't help you get healed better because he is the one who helped you pray to God And that was the whole problem with this whole faith healing movement They created all of these stage personas that each had these fictional life stories and over glorified personal quote-unquote experiences

You know, all of this weird mess and they presented themselves such that they were the mediator between God and man And that if you showed up to these revivals, your chances of healing was going to be far greater than if you got in your closet and prayed to God for your healing Well, that's just, that's not even biblical, that in fact that's anti-biblical And what happened was, you know, Dauy, I know that I've seen it too, they praised this guy This was a Christian mob boss, plain and simple. I've got a book, it's called militant Christian extremism, critical

examination of John Alexander Dowey, where I examined some of the unknown history that most people, you know, even the people who praise him, they're not aware that this went on, but they were very selective of who was able to come into these healing homes. They called them Divine Healing Homes in Chicago, and they actually looked at your finances. If you had a large amount of money, your chances of getting into the healing home was just far greater. If you were amazing at that works. Yeah, amazing at that works, right? And oh, by the way, when you went into these things, you had to forfeit either large sums of money

or everything, all of your life's possessions, to get into these things, these healing homes, and it was a pest house. You got in, and there were all kinds of diseases that were, you know, there were contagious diseases that were spreading in these pest houses, and this guy is pretending that he's healing them. Well, at night, under the cover of darkness, the curse was slipping the bodies away as people were dying in this thing. And while they're dying, Dowie is, and his henchmen are telling all the people that know they're being healed, come give me your money so that you can get involved with this thing. This was nothing but a criminal

racket. And anybody who praises this criminal racket and tries to mold their religious system off of it, they're part of the problem, in my opinion, their predators in the same way Dowie was a predator. And if you look at the conduit of progression of this thing that Dowie created, as a Christian mob boss, Dowie created the scheme, and it was a massively profitable, we're talking millions, millions of dollars, 10 million, I think it was, back in that day, which is like half a billion in today's money, it was extremely profitable. And by, I think it was

by eight years later, you had Frank Sanford pop up in Maine, and he's doing the same thing. You had Charles Fox Parham, who's going to both Sanford's commune to Dowie's, and he actually tries to take over Dowie's commune while Dowie's still alive to get access to the money. Well, let's turn into this money making scheme. And it was nothing but Christian organized crime.

That's all it was pure and simple. Yeah, and it's crazy, because you know, and like you said, some of these ministers are just, they believe this stuff wholeheartedly. And you know, some of them know what they're doing, and some of them are, you know, like you said, the predator. But in any way, it doesn't, it's one of those things where, you know, like you said, it's the content of this is what we're looking at. You know, we're looking at what's being said and the effects that it's having on people because these things, like you said, all from Dauy all the way down, they keep getting regurgitated back to people

and presented as truth and people, people live their lives based on what these ministers are saying. And I think this is another one, this next one is another good example of that. And we have a minister talking about healing and your faith and the things you've got to do to receive your healing and even when things don't look right, how to react to make sure that you keep your healing.

And let's take a look at this one and see what we think about it. Amen. You know, I've often said, I can take anybody, any child, anybody, and I can put my finger on a wart and command that wart to leave.

And with two or three weeks, you know, it'll be gone. I remember, I think it was, you know, one time when she was a young girl, you know, she had one of those on her finger, had a ward on her finger.

And I said, wait a minute, let me just put my finger on that thing. I said, I curse it in the name of the Lord. About three weeks later, she told me, she said, that and that thing is still here.

I said, I'm going to, I'm going to tell you one more time. I curse that thing in the Lord. Now, don't you look at it. Don't you worry about it. You don't pay it.

No attention. And in three weeks, it'll be gone. Three weeks later, the thing was gone. Now listen, that is a life that builds a little tumor or little swelling. Little body for you to live in.

Now, medically, you would go and take an acid or something or get them to burn it off. You know, with that. So James, the only word that comes to mind here for me is Hogwarts.

This is, I think we mentioned it before, the sword and the stone cartoon where there's zap in each other and, you know, it reminds me of this is sorcery. It's pure and simple. Here's a man who's claiming that he can touch a word and heal it.

And again, that's putting the power of the healing in him as the healer, not in the God. That's a problem. That is, that is a man who is spiritually abusing the people. And sadly, this man is spiritually abusing his daughter and, you know, if you really think about what's going on here, depending on how bad this condition was, it could be also considered physical abuse.

This is, this is horrific what this man is doing. This is a bad thing. Back to Dali. When Dali was first doing this gimmick and... You know how it is. You've seen it. I'm certain if you've spent any time in this movement is somebody will come for healing and they'll say, oh, you're healed and go by faith believing it.

Well, they go home and they still have the condition and sometimes it's a very obvious condition. Sometimes it's, you know, people who are arthritic and stooped over or whatever it is. You'll talk to them and say, oh, I'm healed. Well, you can look at them. You can clearly see that these people aren't healed.

And they're practicing what's called positive confession. And the reason they do this is because the foundational teaching of this weird doctrine is that if you confess it, you can be healed from it. And you have to go home believing you're not immediately healed because God is a powerless God. God can't, God can't heal you like he did back in the biblical days.

It takes some time, brother and sister for you to get your healing. Well, when Dowie started this gimmick, he had this boy who was blind, partially blind. And the boy had been through some, you know, through some treatments with doctors. Nothing was working and the column on the stage and Dowie said, you're healed, go home believe.

Well, the same boy was used as a prop in another city because he claimed that he could be healed. So Dowie got him on stage and he held up a dollar bill and asked the boy to describe it and the boy said, that's a quarter.

And Dowie said, oh, well, Georgia here is only a quarter healed. And you know, it's just it's so problematic because these people are confessing he's they're making them into liars. That's essentially all positive confession is turning somebody into a liar. You're lying that you're healed when you're clearly not everybody around you knows that you're lying.

And if you're in this belief system, it's okay to lie as long as it's surrounding faith healing. Well, it's okay to lie. That's what they're teaching you. And that spiritual abuse because some of these people have conditions. In fact, I examine this in the Dowie book. There are many people who died because Dowie trained them to this positive confession religion for diseases that they could have simply went to the hospital and been cured.

Some of them were curable diseases and they died. And there is no greater evil than a man who will kill your children because he is a con man who's trying to trick you out of your money.

And that is the foundation that all of this was built upon. We're talking William Brannum's ministry was built on it. He was trained from Bosworth. We're talking Pentecostalism in general to some extent was built on top of this.

This is problematic for me. This is really really really bad. Right, and it's still going on today. I mean, I mean, we have, we have large movements today that are still doing these same things and have large parts of their ministry are all about healing and prayer. And, and it's, it's troubling to see because a lot of these things, when you dig in and you go, the roots all the way back, go back to these same people and influences. And, you know, it's, it's the, the lie just keeps perpetrating itself. And, and the con, it gets more deceptive because as technology grows

and people have access to more information, the, the con has to get smarter and it has to be, it has to go a little different way to, to keep working. But it's the same thing.

It's just, it's just got a little different face on it. You know, and it's sad because, you know, the positive confession thing, I know a lot of people use the examples of positive confession to even keep building up brand of credibility. And they say, well, there were actual healings. And I'm not saying that there was nobody in any of those meetings that had, had a positive outcome. I'm not saying that. But I know of stories of people, and, and these come from reliable sources. And, and that they know of people who were in those meetings, who had, who had to, you know, things that they dealt with through the rest of their

life. And they told they were healed. And they would even tell people, I'm healed. And they died years later, you know, in, in their old age, with the very thing that they kept proclaiming and saying, I'm healed of, brand of me healed me of this in this campaign, because they're instructed, no, you're healed. Even if you don't see it four days, four weeks, four years afterwards, you're healed. You just got to wait for God to actually fully heal the, the sickness inside your body. But if you stop claiming it, if you stop having the faith, then you're going to lose it all together. It's on you at that point. I did

the work as the faith healer. I prayed over you. I called on the name of the Lord. I applied these people, say they're applying scripture. And, you know, it's on you at that point.

You've got to keep your faith because, you know, if you go smoke a cigarette and we've got quotes of Brian, I'm saying this man smoked a cigarette. And that's why he lost his healing.

You know, and it's, it's so sad because there's people who would, there's people who will forego further treatment and further instruction from doctors because a minister says you're healed. And in a message context, that means that anything negative that you hear or feed on can affect your faith. That could be the doctor saying, Oh, by the way, you still have cancer. Oh, that could be a negative word that you're getting from the doctor, which is in turn hurting your faith. And therefore, that could be the reason because you heard that message from the doctor that God doesn't even heal you completely. And it's so sad and so damaging that people

it's like, Okay, I'm at, I'm at, I'm desperate. I need healing for this. I go and get prayed for. And then I get told, Oh, by the way, God healed you. They're all powerful God that we believe and healed you. But now it's on you to keep your healing.

It's so sad to see people being manipulated in this way. Yeah, it really is. And Bosworth, through Dauy, the concept developed that this was a gospel of divine healing. They were very clear and open with the people.

This is a different gospel that they're proclaiming. It was the gospel of divine healing. And the problem is, gradually over time, what happened is that this new and exciting gospel that tickled the itching years of the people.

It became slightly different in that they took the healing and the faith in the healing and they bound it to salvation. So if you didn't have enough faith to heal your toothache, it was also bound to your salvation, then you did not have enough faith to be saved and go into heaven.

This is hugely problematic. This spiritual abuse at its core, that's really all this was, well, as that gospel of divine healing began to spread and these men adopted it and it spread all throughout the latarane movement.

That was, I said at the beginning of the show, this is the core to everything that we research is this false gospel. It's not Christianity. It is a false gospel. To somebody who has never been in this false gospel, you're looking at it and you're thinking, well, this is just really weird.

Why would you believe this? Just go to a doctor, but it's not that simple. It's deeply embedded into your core being and you really think that you're not going to be saved if you don't have this faith to heal toothaches or this Hogwarts power to touch a word and make it disappear.

It's anti-biblical. This is an anti-biblical, heretical, horrific thing that they're doing, but more to the point, it was a false gospel, but think of the communities that were built around this false gospel. I've been to normal churches now that were never part of this thing and they believe that God can heal the sick.

They're taught in these cult message things that everybody who's in a denomination doesn't believe in it. That's not quite true. That's actually a lie. They do believe this, but they don't focus on the minister as the one as the mediator between God and man to heal the person.

The way it works in a normal church and I'm preaching to the choir for everybody who's listening who has never been in this, but if somebody's sick, they bring him forward and they pray for them.

Some of them will anoint them with oil, as is biblical, they're talking about different ways in which the Bible talks about healing the sick and they adhere to all of this. They want the person to be healed.

They would love it if God heals them, but they also accept it if God chooses not to. In these cult, weird, different gospel things, they don't allow for the case whenever God doesn't heal a person.

You know, they want to put the power in their hands to make the decision for God, which is problematic. But more to the point, there are some cases like, again, the severed arm, well, that's a different case altogether, brother and sister.

That person's probably not going to have enough faith. Well, you're making, you're rendering God powerless, right? And it would be a great thing if God could grow the arm back, but I can guarantee you that's highly improbable.

But the communities that are built around this thing, whenever, when you go to a normal church and you see what happens, they pray for the sick, they all want the person to get better, but they're not given a false gospel.

And so they realize that some people do not, and they build a support system around it. So if the person has cancer, we're going to create a meal train. We're going to bring food. We're going to help you moe your lawn. I'm going to help you do your laundry.

There's this community that comes together around the sick and afflicted that is beautiful. If you've ever been trapped in this kind of cult and you experience real Christianity, not this evil thing that we escaped, you experience what it is to be in a good community, a good healthy church.

You're going to look back on this. You're going to think, this is the lowest form of evil, these men or predators. They're praying on the sick and afflicted. They're taking the ones who need help the most.

And those are the ones that they're praying upon. And it's so wrong, James. It angers me. It really angers me what they're doing. Yeah, it's hard to be calm sometimes when you look at the effect this has on people.

And sometimes it's people close to you, people you know. So sometimes we have real world stories that we can pull off for some of this stuff. And it makes it real. It really does.

And one thing that I've looked at some is I've tried to understand how we're able to be caught up in stuff like this. And one thing that stuck out to me is I've studied a little bit on ancient cultures and ancient, even like the Aztecs and the Incas and stuff like that, where human sacrifice was something that these cultures did.

And something like that seems so barbaric. How could we even do something like this to our own people? I won't say which culture it was because there's so many down there in South America that I'd probably get confused if I said which particular one practiced this particular thing.

But I know that there is one particular culture down there that in ancient times they would sacrifice not... not the worst, not the criminal, they sacrificed the best of themselves, the most beautiful girl in the village, the most strongest warrior, they would sacrifice them to the gods.

And the reason why they sacrificed them was because to keep the world in balance, to keep nature in balance, and to keep the gods happy, because if they grew to, if they grew to out of balance with nature in the world around them, then the gods would strike them with the calamity.

They would strike them with a flood, a tsunami, a volcano, a comet from space, whatever. There's these things that would happen, and so they would, they created these ritualistic things that they did to appease their gods, and there's probably more complicated reasons about how these things actually come into practice, you know, and you probably have a central figure, a king, you know, whatever, a religious movement, or whatever that helps get the people in this mindset that this is what we need to do.

But without having some of the history, it's really hard to really fully know exactly how some of this stuff comes into play. We can just see, you know, we can see through archaeology, we can see the ramifications of what some of these things led to.

But I think that there's something in, in us as humans, that allows us to be susceptible to these kinds of things, where the fear of being out of sync or out of favor with God will allow us to get caught up in things like this, you know, because we see it all throughout history, that people have done worse and similar things in trying to get in favor with God, and just the fact of your faith needing to be on the right level to receive your healing, you know, it's, it's not that far-fetched for what people have done throughout

history to stay in favor with God, and it also makes me worry sometimes about what some of these movements are capable of doing when the whole thing is your faith has to be to this certain level.

If your faith is not here, you know, we should be seeing, you know, and you hear this in the message where the ministers are talking about, we should be seeing miracles on a daily basis.

We are close to the end, the end is nigh, you know, we should be seeing people walk out of, you know, legs healed and all this stuff, you know, we need to, our faith needs to be getting to the right level as a collective, and when those sorts of pressures, you've got the end time, you've got the healing, you've got the faith, it's like, where can these things go?

What can this lead to? And I think we've got a ton of bad examples of where these things can go, and I don't want to see any of this stuff get that far. Absolutely.

I mean, what you're really describing is, if you've ever studied narcissism, you find all these weird cults that died out because they thought it was the end, and they tried to accelerate the end coming because they got into this hype, that's really what happened.

And the nostics were basically a blend of the ancient mythologies and Christianity forming some new and exciting and... pleasing to itching ears gospel very similar to what this is, I was just thinking as you're talking we could almost take any of the ancient cultures and we could do spin off episodes of the I think the minds is the one that you're talking about it from remembering correctly but we could take we could take all of the mythology around the mind culture and how they lived and you can find trace elements of that in this religion because this is not a religion based on the gospel it is

an anti gospel religion and it might be good I did it to examine some of those because I think people are largely unaware the people who are listening to our podcast who've never been in this thing they are aware you know they many of them have actually made that comment to me one even recently but I will say this people who weren't in it and who watched these things I've noticed there's this tendency to turn it into the spiritual warfare where you're you're spiritually fighting trying to convince the people that no you're in a false gospel and if you're sick you need you need to get out of there and get to a doctor which is good I'm not going to say that's bad but there's a better way to go about this you know when you're in this mindset you're literally trained that it is a life or death situation that these people who are trying to help you go to a doctor and escape this thing you're taught that that's the demon spirit

and so you don't want any you don't want you don't want to listen to the demon spirit right if instead if these people who wanted to help members who are trapped in this type of cult and saw somebody who's in the situation sick afflicted elderly whatever it is instead just start helping them bring them food bring them you know help them mother lawn help them do the things that your church normally does as a community and I've been to some I've actually my children have gone on with other children they take the children out and they mode the lawns break the leaves they they help the poor and afflicted and then the people who are needy they they have these food drives and different things they help the people who are in need that's something I can I can say that out of every cult church that I have been in from all parts of the nation I've never seen that in any of them in fact

here locally we had a tornado a few years back and in fact I have family who lost their house nearly died in this tornado it's a very severe tornado they fortunately they were had the foresight to get into the bathtub and the whole house just kind of twisted off of the bathtub so save save their life but the community of churches in this area they all came together in the helping all of the you know the people there are a lot of people lost their houses so the community of church get together. Well, I was watching the difference because I had just escaped the cult and the cult,

they actually put it, I think it was on their website, they said, and praise God, not a single believer was injured. Well, there were people who lost their lives who were Christian. But they're, yeah, they're trying to turn it into this thing where it's only our group. We don't care about the whole rest of the people. And in fact, they're, you know, I'm not, I'll get angry if I go too far with this. But while I'm watching all of these other churches in the community help all of the people who are suffering, I'm watching this elitist Christian group who's literally insulting

every other Christian who lost their house. They're helping only largely the majority of them were only helping people who were in the cult. It's mind boggling that they did this. So what I'm saying in all of this is, if you've never been in this and you want to help somebody escape, the best way is be a good example. Go, go help the needy who's in the cult. Go, you know, bring some food, bring, help mode the lawn, help do the things that they're struggling with. And that's my advice if you're listening to this, be a good Christian. And beating somebody over the head with theology,

I can, I can attest from being in this. It's not going to work. Live a good example and show your example to the people. Being a good neighbor is something that not a lot of people experience from, you know, their fellow man. And it's amazing how much just being that kind of person to somebody, how many doors that can open with people. And it, it cuts beyond all of the nonsense because people, there's so many people out there that are desperate for a real connection with other people. And like John said, not, not something with some arterial motive or whatever, just

genuinely, I want to be a good person. I care about you as another human being. It's amazing how much that can do to heal and to help other people around you. And it's so important and it's so sad that, that these movements that we examine, that's not what they, that's not what they preach so much at the time. It's, it's our chosen elect. We have a special message. We have a special power. We have a special gift. And we have a special responsibility. And our responsibility is to have this special knowledge to live among the cannon fodder who will be destroyed at the end of

time. And we will rule and reign in heaven with Jesus while they maybe can live outside the city because maybe they were nice to us in, in some way, shape or form. And it's such a backwards messed up upside down pyramid scheme of a racket that can only be conjured in the mind of a con man.

And it's so sad to see people who are genuinely good and and want the best for other people, but when they get caught up in this, it has a way of having us work against our own natures.

And we don't even treat people the way we normally would when we're caught up in some of these things. Yeah, well, James, I could keep going. I get angered whenever I see people being mistreated.

You know, I'm glad we escape that. And I'm glad that there are communities out there that have the right intent. And you can just clearly see an anti-gospel church and a gospel church and the differences.

I don't even have to rant. I can, everybody who's never been in this, you know what I'm talking about. 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. And for an overview of the historical research of William-Branum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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