The Body in the Attic

Hello and welcome to another episode. Of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast, I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org, and together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Branham and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Well Charles, we have a somewhat sad episode today and as you can tell I'm wearing my funeral polo, my black one. This is a subject that you know

for me it's sad in multiple ways. It's sad because of the way in which the cult had developed, grown, and then could have imploded and then beyond that what happened from there is so far worse in my mind than the events leading up to this point in time and I'm kind of glad that we're getting into this one and talking through that history because I think a lot of people in the at least in the main sect have largely forgotten what happened and how it happened and more than that they have forgotten what the general thoughts were surrounding

William-Branham right before this and there were a lot of people my grandfather included who had to scramble to try to keep things together and I'm excited to get into this one. We do have a really sad episode today John and we're looking at the funeral in the burial of William-Branham and it is always sad when someone passes away and you know regardless of all the people who were heard and injured by William-Branham and the men who he had powered he was still a friend and a father and a grandfather to a lot of people and they were

experiencing real grief and real loss when he died and his funeral was held on December the 29th 1965 it was held at the Brannham Tabernacle here in Jefferson ville and it was a very sad and a very somber day you know as we explored in our past couple episodes the followers of William-Branham had been sitting right on the very edges of their seat hanging on William-Branham Brannum's every word, waiting for him just at any moment to reveal the secret of the thunders or the secret of the rapturing faith, which would allow them to escape the imminent

doomsday. But instead of giving that to them, William Brannum died very unexpectedly and suddenly. And all his followers were left in total shock. I mean, it's hard to overstate just how utterly shocked and confused they were by what happened.

And they were, I think it's quite fair to say that they were in horror some of them. I mean, I think they were an outright horror over his death. And in those moments of time, that's when people began to dream up the idea that William Brannum was going to have to resurrect from the grave in order to bring them the rapturing faith.

And the death of William Brannum is especially sad because, you know, his death effectively closed the trap on the people in his cult of personality. It's the point in time when they became stuck in this never-ending quest to get the rapturing faith, the never-ending quest to find the thunders, the never-ending quest to prepare for the rapture to the end of eternity, you know?

Just whatever this thing, the scenario that they've twisted it into, they're just stuck in this cycle that never ends, you know, each sect has its own jargon to explain it. But since the day he died, every one of them have been chasing whatever this vague thing is they need to have the rapture and it's something else.

And as the people gathered for William Brannum's funeral there on December 29th, the very large percentage of the people in attendance that day fully expected the resurrection of William Brannum and then to be followed imminently by the rapture.

Right. So let's take a moment and just set the stage of what the scene was like at that funeral because, again, by and large, most members of the cult have forgotten what this was like.

And people like me, I wasn't there, you know, I could only hear second hand. So the people who, their minds just kind of reconciled that and they washed it out of their heads, well, their children, the way that the stories were told to their children were different than the reality and then their grandchildren and so on and so forth.

But leading up to this, William Brannum was entering into the climax of his manifested sons of God theology. As we've previously discussed, he was opening the door that his ministry and even himself was the fulfillment of the Luke 1730 passage, which is quoted all through the main sect referring to William Brannum, when the Son of Man is to be revealed.

William Brannum and key figures in the message were starting to proclaim that William Brannum's voice, the quote unquote, voice of God. God or the spoken word, was the fulfillment of that Luke 1730, and William Brannum is most recognized for his 1977 Doomsday, though as we've also examined, he had many different Doomsday scenarios leading up to this, but where the cult has shifted a great deal is that during this time, the cult by and large was not looking at 1977 the year being the end. It was always quote by 1977. They were actually looking for it every day, and so building up to this,

they were thinking that any day, any moment, you know, I'm sure 1966 there were people who were thinking, in fact, I recently got a book from a former cult member who in the book, there's all these different calculations of you can tell what year they were adding the calculations up, this is the year, and this next one might be the year. Well, they were building up to this Doomsday scenario in which William Brannum has the manifested Son of God was proclaiming the message that would bring the church into its rapturing faith and then lift them into heaven, and they believe this

would happen any day, not in the year 1977, as many historians incorrectly document this. So they were thinking that Doomsday is here upon us, William Brannum is the fulfillment of Luke 1730, and just any moment we're going to be raptured. Well, that is the point in which he died, and so everyone began to, you know, suddenly have these thoughts, well, what if he was wrong, and then there were several key figures, my grandfather included, who saw this begin to unravel, and whether they believed it or not, that's a question up for debate, they began to

add new doctrines on top of what William Brannum said that would place William Brannum's death as a event that was insignificant to the overall theology that William Brannum had brought in doing so completely reversing many things that William Brannum said. You're right there, John, because as you come into that time, there was, of course, William Brannum's hardcore followers, but then there were more people on the fence who, you know, they were toying with the idea of his Elijah claims, right? You see that in Joseph Mats and Bosé's Harold of Faith, you know, he's toying with the Elijah

claim. You actually see that in the Voice magazine from Full Gospel Businessmen, they're toying with those ideas, and there's lots of people on the fence, and when this event happens, and he dies, all these people on the fence start to take a step back and realize, hmm, William Brannum, the band who he said he was right otherwise obviously he wouldn't have died and so you're right the hardcore followers they see these this happening among their less brainwashed colleagues up with that way and there there's a reaction of what what to do in order to explain all of this and that

is when these beliefs in William Brown's resurrection develop and it starts right there in the immediate days of his death you know immediate aftermath of his death even before the funeral and I honestly think it is fair to say John that the majority of people in attendance at William Brown's funeral were expecting the resurrection of William Brown I think that is a very fair thing say the majority were and and this may shock people in the message you know the overwhelming majority of William Brown's hardcore followers that went on to produce the sex of the message that

exists today by and large all believed in the resurrection of we're looking for the resurrection of William Brown in those days now Raymond Jackson claimed he didn't believe it but you know if that's true he would have been an outlier because I'm sure just about every other old time preacher I've ever known has believed in the return ministry at least to the very first most of them did I mean I mean Paragreen did leave ailed did Don Ruddled did Roy Borders did Sydney Jackson did he well Frank did Joseph Coleman did Billy Paul did you you can just keep going on and on and on just

about all of the key figures who were the shakers and movers in the message in its earliest days they pretty well all did I mean all the deity people did too we're all really hoping and expecting the resurrection of William Brown and I think Doug Weaver captured it really well here in his book John and I'm just going to read a little excerpt out of his book for our listeners here so this let me read that he says the natural reaction to Branham's death was one of shocking disbelief in the confusion that immediately ensued expectations developed that the prophet would rise from

the dead though the funeral was held December 29th the burial and the delay the burial was delayed indefinitely the press conjectured that the reason was the belief in Branham's imminent resurrection and a rumor circulated that Branham's body was in bomb and refrigerated but in reality the body was being kept in the attic of a Jeffersonville funeral home at a memorial service on January 26th so this would be the full gospel memorial service the sect almost like a second funeral we're in the chat about that too at that memorial service on January 26th Billy Paul Branham

explained the delay in burial saying Mrs. Branham had requested it due to the injuries that she received in her husband's fatal automobile accident more over in the way of the tragedy Mrs. Branham was unable to decide where she was.

she would live, Tucson or Jeffersonville, and she wanted her husband buried near her home. Nevertheless, expectations for Brannum's Resurrection on Easter increased. Much of the Resurrection talk was largely attributed to Perry Green, though he denied the accusations.

Others, even Brannum's son Billy Paul seemed to be hoping for an Easter Resurrection, giving his testimony to a group of message believers on March 27, where he suggested that the months between his father's death and Easter were the time of the purification of the bride.

Furthermore, Billy Paul asserted that Easter week had been set aside in the Providence of God for the believers of the message to listen to some previously unreleased tapes, and he affirmed that his father had declared Easter to be the time of the year for the bride's rapture.

So John, I think that speaks by itself. By and large, the cult was expecting William Brannum to resurrect, and then the rapture to happen in Easter of 1966, and you and I both know that's true, because we know all these people, we know that's what, that's exactly what happened.

You know, the scene, again, was just so fascinating when you think about how this played out, because, like I said, there were many people who realized that the ministry would crumble, and it wasn't a large crowd of people, but it was significant enough that the crowd itself made the local newspapers.

Whenever the throng of people came to see William Brannum thinking that they were going to come watch a burial, it caused traffic jams throughout Jeffersonville, and it estimated 5,000 people had showed up for the funeral and burial, quote unquote, burial of William Brannum, but there was no burial, they, like you said, they kept the body, and you know, there's 5,000 people, they were, the majority of them were likely in the cult, and they were, you know, all of the cult at that time was thinking this is the end, this is whenever we're going to be lifted up into heaven with our great prophet, and then he died.

And what happens whenever people die, people have to, leaders have to scramble to try to keep everything together, because people will quote unquote, lose the faith. So my grandfather was instrumental in bringing this resurrection doctrine, in fact, you can find his name mentioned in this in the newspapers, but it's significant to me to think about the two funeral services.

One where everybody came, 5,000 people approximately came to see William Brannum buried, in which he wasn't buried. And then the body was held from the grave from December until April. It was April 11, I believe it was, whenever the funeral happened, well, the crowd had largely diminished. There were only about 700 people who shut up for the second one, in which the body was actually buried. And so the cult was imploding. And what do you do whenever the cult implodes? If you're making a large amount of money, which a lot of these people were, you have to find ways to keep it together and attract people. But

just based off of what I see in the newspapers, it seems to me that the cult was, it took a big hit. I'll just put it like that. It took a big hit in attendance and numbers of people who believed this thing. I'd say you're definitely right John. There was, there was massive falling off that came when William Brantham died. Just like there was massive falling off when 1977 came and went, there have been events in message history where maybe even half more of the message turned over and quit over it. And William Brantham's death

was one of those events where the majority of people who were following him before he died, exited and did not continue to follow afterwards. And like we've mentioned before, some of them were rather large names in the message up to that point that left. It was some of the, some very important figures left at that point. And John, let me read a quote from the day of the funeral. And this will help people get an idea of what was being said.

So after the funeral, there was a, a dinner for all the preachers. And this was actually said at that dinner from all the preachers. This is a quote from Lee Vale. He said, now William Brantham is dead and shall remain dead. I don't know that he will. I'm confused as any man is confused. I'm afraid we're all a little afraid to express our secret thoughts and feelings because we don't understand this. Some were merely symbols. Some was reality.

We don't know. And so Lee Vale went on very strongly there to hint that he was believing and leaning towards believing in the return ministry actually. And that's when he spoke there on the day of the funeral. And he called, you know, his secret thoughts. And that was, that I think is the way he described it there. I think would, would represent the way the majority of people were talking about it then. It was in hushed homes. It was, it was, I secretly believe it, but I'm afraid to publicly say it kind of that was the belief

that most people had, right? And they realized just how crazy it sounded, right? That's why they were afraid to say it in a plain way because they realized how crazy it sounded. And you know, it's a bit of a legend where I come from because, you know, after that funeral, there was a meal provided for all the ministers who attended. And there was additional men who took, take took turns speaking at that dinner. And the main topic of the dinner after the funeral was the return ministry. That was the main topic discussed at that dinner.

And Raymond Jackson and Lee Vale and Perry Green all supposedly got into a very heated at that dinner over the return ministry. And I think it's worth pointing out John, the duplicity of the message ministers and message leaders here concerning the return ministry, because the truth is almost all of them were indeed hoping for William Branham's resurrection in those days, because it was totally bewildering to them for him to die.

Like it broke, it literally broke everything they were believing about the message when he died. His death totally dashed all of the expectations that William Branham had been setting with them about the third pull.

And it just broke it all. Right. And the way that leave Elf raised that for people who are genuine, open, honest people, they may, they may miss this, but you being a minister, you are around this.

You're a genuine, open, honest person from what I can tell from your personality. I'm the same way. I like to be around people like that. I don't like to be around people that you have to always wonder, what are they really thinking or what are they really saying?

Because I grew up in a world where it wasn't like that. There were among the people in the elite in the message there's a very public face and there's a very private face. We've talked about this before too.

And the way in which these men who are masters of manipulation, the way in which they work, it's called planting a seed. Leave veil can say something like this. Is it, is he rising from the dead?

I don't know. Well, that I don't know opens the door for somebody else to follow up and say, I believe he is brother veil and then that carries on and carries on. And to the average person who's just sitting there unaware of the way in which the cult elite think, act and behave in private, they would think, oh, this is just a normal progression of time and people's thoughts progressive, progressive revelation they call it.

But no, you've been in these meetings, I've been around people talking about it. This is kind of a plan strategy, man. They get together and they talk about, they talk about the overall doctrine as a whole, as it's going to end up and then they gradually introduce little quote unquote nuggets, they call it.

They'll introduce this little thing and what it is it's planting a seed that some other minister is going to water. But the whole doctrine by and large has already been fully thought through, which is likely what happened at this dinner that you're talking about.

So for anybody who has a genuine heart and doesn't think through that strategy, I'll remind them of the secret audio tape of Lee Veil that was sent by William Brannum, where in Brannum starts asking Dr. Veil to begin planting the seeds about William Brannum's seven letters in his names and his, in his alias, I should say.

And Lee Veil is, one of the people who planted that seed so that William Brannum could water it and grow it into this weird claim about seven letters in the name. So this is a man who is familiar with the way in which William Brannum manipulated the people. He says something like this. Now I can't say what was in his head or what his thoughts were, but it looks very, very sinister from what I can tell just from the outside looking in. Right. They were definitely secretly harboring and promoting the belief in the resurrection. And at that immediate outset, John, at the immediate outset of his death,

most everyone was at the very least entertaining the idea of a return ministry. They were all at the very least entertaining that idea. And his time went on as you come into 1966 and then especially into 1967. 1967 was really the strong turning point here, but it became very apparent that William Brannum was not going to resurrect. And a lot of them kind of quietly let go of the return ministry ideas by the time you get into 1967. So you know, over a year after he's died. And at that point, that's when you get people starting to pretend that they never actually had believed it to begin with.

Leave ale and peri green are two good examples of that. They definitely believed in it. And then they definitely changed their mind, right. But you generally would never pick that up catching it. You know, they would, they would just like in that book, but peri green denied it. Peri green, no, they believed in this stuff back then. Absolutely, right. And they're just trying to, you know, after the fact cover it up. And while people tried to walk away from it, though, other people doubled down on the return ministry ideas, John. And as far as I know, the main sect of the message

still promotes the idea that William Brannum is going to resurrect for the return ministry. And one piece of evidence I have here that I could show you. Here's a signed letter I have from Billy Paul. This is from 2004. And in this letter, he says, yes, I personally believe that there is yet a further work for brother Brannum to do. Or that is what I see in this message.

I believe that he will be coming. He will be at here at the coming of the Lord Jesus and will point the bride to the bridegroom and say, behold the Lamb of God. For this is what I understand.

I don't understand it all, but I believe it. And this letter here, I have a signed by Billy Paul Brannum, right? So right here, he's saying William Brannum has a further work to do. This is return ministry stuff. So I believe it is true that the main sect to this day, you know, the William Brannum Evangelistic Association voice of God. As far as I know, they still widely promote the belief in the return ministry, William Brannum. And to be clear, most Christians believe in a resurrection, a resurrection of the saints globally, a resurrection of all the people who have

died who are going into heaven. That's a very common Christian belief, but we need to be very clear that this is different than that because the way in which they present this is that there will be a small resurrection of the quote unquote bride before the main resurrection in which I grew up in the main sect in the return ministry sect. So this is completely different than probably even what you believed, but we believe that there would be this little tiny group of people that would resurrect and wherever they were in the world and it would be a small group. They had to make it back to this alleged

rapture tent in which William Brannum had this little room in the rapture tent where if you were able to make it to the tent and they always said it's going to be very difficult the government will try to stop you. The enemy is surrounding it. There is all of these weird phrases that they would use. Well, if you made it there, then William Brannum would take you into this little room into the tent and he himself, William Brannum, would give you your new heavenly body. And that was before the main global resurrection of the dead that

is most Christians do believe that. So this is a rapture before the rapture. Yeah, what you have is as you come to 67, some people started to spiritualize all of that realizing William Brannum would never come back to give them the literally give them the rapturing faith in the little room in the tent. And they found ways to then spiritually transform it into something else and then the rapturing faith thunders, stuff is going to come some other way. And it's really sad, John. Honestly, I mean, this stuff is just it's really sad how these people's minds were so warped that they felt they had to keep

this thing going when the man died it clearly proved that what he had told them was a lie. Oh, yeah. And it's really difficult because William Brannum, as we've just recently examined he was losing his mind and that's documented even by his own words. He was losing his mind and he came up with all of these weird, extra biblical notions that just logically can't even in the way he presents them logically, they can't happen. But some of them, the men who carried the torch after William Brannum died, some of them came directly from William Brannum, but some were new additions. And so it gets really, the water gets really

muddy as to what did William Brannum say that was wrong and then what was added later that was wrong. Right. So just kind of looking at that Jeffersonville funeral service, like you mentioned, the newspapers report that about 5,000 people signed the guest book at the funeral home. And that does give us a pretty good idea of the number of hardcore message believers from those days. Because The overwhelming majority of the cult made it to that funeral.

Just about everybody who was anybody found a way to get to that funeral home, and they were not just from the US and Canada, but they came from Europe, they came from Africa, they came from South America, everyone who was anyone found a way to get to that funeral.

And many of them, they were treating it like a matter of life and death in order to get there because nobody knew what was going to happen, and these people were desperate. They truly believed the ticket of rapturing faith was with William Brannum, and they did not know what was going to happen next.

These people were really desperate. And so I think that number of 5,000 signatures there, and that of course would include people who were not in the cult that came to visit too, right?

But I think that represents the most accurate figure that we can use to gauge the size of the message there in 1965 in terms of the number of followers. It's not nearly as large as most people imagine.

Everybody knew everybody else, there's old timers you could talk to who could sit down and they could basically list off the names of all the churches that fellowshiped in all of the families, right?

It really was not as big as you might imagine, back then, or people would lead you to believe. And I think, John, certainly the majority of the cult following was at the funeral, so that would put to me somewhere the upper limit of how many followers there was at 10,000 at the most.

But I would say 10,000 who believed William Brownam was Elijah, put it in that way, but it's probably closer to the 5,000 figure, it wouldn't be my guess, because I truly believe the overwhelming majority were at the funeral based on everything I know.

And I'd say 90% of those people would have lived in the United States and Canada. That's where the bulk of the following was in those years. Right, and I want to pause just a minute briefly to point out the significance of that small number.

You have a man who is practicing this faith healing stage act that William Brownam had. Many people ask, how did he do it? How did he know these names, addresses, diseases? How did he know what somebody had, even if they did not put a prayer card in?

Well, I went to a very small school, and when you only have 5,000 people, you know most of the people. Now, of those 5,000, not all of them were sick and afflicted, but there was a small percentage of that that was those 5,000 people went from town to town everywhere.

There was a revival. Many of those same people would attend. And so William Brownam knew many of these people intimately, and they may go through a prayer line. They may have submitted a prayer card in one state, for example, and said, I have stomach trouble, whatever it was, and they weren't able to be entered into the prayer line.

They would follow him to another state, and they may not even submit one, and William Brownam could very easily say, I see you there with a stomach trouble. Well, they had... They had just submitted one in a previous state.

So when you have the small number of people, it's very easy to do the things that he did. Now, did he do that? We have no proof. We have no way to say that that's what he did.

But thinking logically about this whole thing, that this elaborate scheme that we have uncovered with all of the deception that was used to create it, I can, I think I can say it like this safely.

We have enough deception in the rest of it that this looks like a very logical way in which he could have pulled this off. Right. Now, the Jeffersonville funeral was attended by quite a few prominent people, too.

So little David Walker came to the funeral. Gordon Lindsay was there. Tommy Osborne was there. One of the speakers, quite a few others. Oral Roberts was scheduled to attend the funeral, but he fell ill.

So Oral Roberts sent a written statement that they read on his behalf. Dima Shakarian's same thing. He was unable to make there because of circumstances and he sent a written statement which they read from Dima Shakarian.

So just, just notice all of the leading figures here are either attending the funeral or sending personal written statements that were read at the funeral. William Brownham was still a legendary mythical figure to all of these people, right?

He was, he was a hero to all of these people. And the Jeffersonville funeral was actually mostly recorded on tape. People may or may not know that. The, the funeral is recorded. So John, our tape library at our church.

So William Brownham's tapes ended in 1965. Well, our started in 1965. And the first tape in our library is the funeral of William Brownham because our pastor was one of the men who officiated it.

Along with, you know, your grandfather did, Don Ruddle did, right? Brother Neville. So the 1965 funeral is the first tape in our tape library. So yes, the, the funeral is recorded. And yeah, the men who spoke, Norman Neville, Raymond Jackson, Don Ruddle, Willard College, or grandfather, they officiated the funeral.

And T.L. Osborne, Gordon Lindsay, Joseph Metz, and Bozay, these kind of guys are at the funeral, sitting on the platform with, with our, with, with them, John. And so, you know, we, we are not that far removed from all these people, right?

I mean, that's just my point. You know, I know some of the people out in word of faith, land and stuff, you know, find that unbelievable. We are not very far removed from any of these people, okay?

We were, they were right there in this move. They were right, they were all in the brand of tabernacle for goodness sake, John. Joseph Metz and Bozay, all of these guys were there. And as you listen to that funeral tape, it really gives an insight into how William Brandon blue tenants that were handling his death.

And John, brother Neville, brother Ruddle, brother Jackson, they would, they would be people who would come from my sect of the message. We would claim them as part of my sect of the message.

Your grandfather's the only one appreciating the funeral that we would not claim as our sect of the message where I come from. So we would, we would generally say our sect of the message officiated.

William Branham's funeral. And as you listen to the tape, they were openly declaring William Branham as Elijah to everyone. Brother Neville did, brother Ruddle did, Raymond Jackson did, and they were publicly affirming William Branham was Malachi IV at the funeral.

And you hear big loud agreements from the audience. So from that recording, you really get the sense of the overwhelming majority in attendance at that funeral believed William Branham was Elijah. You can get it by the loud audience-wide amends whenever they would say that.

And if you can receive it, this is that a lot. All scripture has their two full fill. And then probably I think the most disturbing thing on that funeral tape to me, John, is when, it's actually your grandfather's story, when he went into that really deep fear mongering at the funeral, and he tells the audience that they are being surrounded by their enemies, and is really scaring all the people at the funeral telling them they're in some sort of imminent danger.

You know, it's the same kind of thing I heard in message churches, my, you know, all life, you know, the belief that just any moment, the government's gonna swoop in and get everybody, and God only knows you do what to them, right?

But he's doing that at the funeral for goodness sakes. And by his death, even the moon and the stars recognized it being that prophet of Malachi for a man.

The enemy had surrounded the camp, and the enemy has a surrounded today.

The enemy surrounded the camp, and there was only one source of help that was left. And that was the little messenger that dove to get through. So he might be able to bring help to rescue those that were surrounded.

Now it's three, four Louisiana. Brother Bradham said the little dove got through. Yeah. He was wounded. His leg was broken. His left side was torn up. His head was bloody. He got through with the messenger.

I took fire into you this morning this evening, that there's help on the way. I had actually not listened to the funeral service until you sent it to me. When we started talking about going through this episode, I'd never heard it.

And I honestly, I'm triggered by a lot of it, so I didn't listen to the whole thing, but I did listen to my grandfather. And what's funny is, to the main sect of people who knew my grandfather, most of them would say, wow, that's quite a bit different than what Brother Collins used to preach.

But it really isn't. If you knew my grandfather privately, This is exactly the kind of things that he would say. There was always this big conspiracy that the government was watching the message and that the FBI had men stationed all around Jeffersonville so that they could peer into what we were doing.

There were people that just went absolutely nuts with this, especially in the inner circle of my grandfather. There, I won't give his name, but I have a family member who honestly truly believes that if he goes to the store and he buys a radio, the government has some equipment that in the speakers of the radio can transmit the audio of the inside the house into vans that he swears are parked outside of his, in his neighborhood outside of his house.

And things like a television, his reason for not owning a television goes beyond what William and Brandon said, he swears up and down that even those old back during the CRT days, those big old glass televisions that they had, he thought that they could be reversed remotely as a video camera and they could see inside your house.

And so he lived in mortal fear that the FBI was watching his every move. And you know, you think, okay, that guy's a nut, but he's not the only one in this area that's like this man.

Oh God, he ever seen no. I think I mentioned this probably in one of the, one of the episodes I'm doing with James, but he believed his computer monitor could do this. And I was in one day and he had his monitor facing the wall and I was like, man, why you have it facing the wall?

Nobody can type like this. You can't see your monitor. And he said the government can watch you through those things. And so when he stepped in the other room, I quickly wrote this little program that at random times throughout the day, it would throw up the blue screen of death.

And it would say you were in violation of code, federal code BR549, the monitor must be in an open and an unabscured area of the room at all times. And I come back and he had it completely duct taped and trash bags over it.

But this is, it's funny and it's a side story, but this is the way in which these people surrounding my grandfather, who was very close to William Brannum, that's the way that they mostly, mostly all of them that I knew believed this kind of weird thing.

And again, William Brannum is losing his mind in the later years. The government is watching. Roy Davis and all of the people who are in the white supremacy group surrounding William Brannum. So it would make sense that William Brannum was in fear of being watched.

He even mentioned, I think we mentioned this in the mental health episode, he was in fear of being shot. So I have to say that there is a strong likelihood that all of that weird fear mongering came from William Brannum's private statements to the cult elite.

Well, you know, the message does have a deep fear of the government. I don't know that it's necessarily universal, but certainly among the people where I come from, very, very strong. Very, very strong in the message community this fear of the government.

I mean, when Ruby Ridge happened, other, well, the government could do something just like that to us, because they don't, you know, when Waco happened, when Gerald Winrodd, or the Gordon Winrodd stuff happened just on and on when all of those things happened.

Our people, our preachers were always telling us this is the kind of thing that the government is going to want to do to us one of these days. And really just crazy, crazy stuff.

And, you know, that really came in strong in the message community. I believe after the Kennedy assassination, I really think that is when that started from what I can tell. And the fact that it comes through at the funeral, I think gives us a pretty strong witness that the fear of the government had already built up very strong among the people all the way back there in 1965.

And that fear of the government has evolved differently in different parts of the message sex over the years. But I know where I come from, there is abject fear of the government. You know, before I left the preachers were telling us the government was going to attack the church.

One man had a dream that the soldiers would come in and abuse the women and shoot people and stuff. And that is, that is actually what my sect of the message believes is going to happen.

You know, with the doomsday race war stuff that the churches are going to be attacked. And they really believe very terrible things are going to happen and the government is going to have parted.

It is really horrific imagery that they put out. And yeah, there is overtones of that right there in the funeral. So back to the mindset of the cult. Again, it is a small number of people, approximately 5,000 of those 5,000.

You have to take away percentage of people who were just in the campaign teams and their men, such as T.L. Osborne, etc. So you have got this small number of people, approximately 4,000-ish, that believe that the rapture is imminent, the leader has just died.

And they all show up at the funeral in December thinking that something big is going to happen. And I remember growing up with stories about this event. And they said that they saw signs in the sky and all of these different things that, you know, we've examined some of this.

There is really no way to prove it. There is no record of any stars aligning or anything of significance during this time. But that was the mindset of the people. They believed that something was happening.

And whether it existed or not, they said that they saw something and little signs like a dove flying, etc. They would say that this was a proof that our prophet is coming back or whatever was their weird extrabiblical theology.

But then they show up, he's not buried and the body's being held. And so now the conspiracy of his return grows even further, why is the body being held? Why are they keeping him upstairs in the funeral home?

So these people return home, thinking that, wow, the cult elite knows something that I don't, I wonder what it is. I wonder why they're doing that. When is he actually going to be buried?

And so the question of what is going to happen with the body takes the mind off of the, oh no, our cult leader just died. I wonder if I'm in a false religion. And what happened, I mean, it's a slight of hand technique rather than allow people to focus on the death and the burial.

Now they focus on the question, what's going to happen? Where, what am I in? What, what do they know that I don't know? And so it excites the people all the more those that didn't fall away to try to think of the different outcomes that can happen because the body didn't go into the, into the ground.

Right. So after the funeral on December 29th, yeah, they did not have a burial. Instead, like I read from Doug Weaver's book or what you can read out of the newspaper articles, William Branham's body was stowed away in the attic of the Coots funeral home in Jeffersonville.

And his body stayed there in the attic of their funeral home, December, January, February, March, April. According to Rebecca Branham and only believe magazine, there was a vault in the attic where they kept the body stored.

But it does not really sound like it was refrigerated or frozen or anything like that. It really does seem like it was just sealed in a vault in the upstairs attic of the funeral home for, for, for, for several months.

And I have to say that is really, really strange to me. It's really hard to imagine that they kept his body in the attic, you know, not frozen. It's almost unbelievable to me. But it does appear to be the truth, right?

And so as shocking as it is, it really does seem to be true that William Branham's body was kept in an attic for four months before they buried him. It's, it's like a Stephen King movie, man.

It's just so, have you seen the Ray Stevens video? If you haven't, you guys have to see it. It's sitting up with the dead and the dead set up too. This whole thing reminds me of this weird mixture of horror and comedy because man, the body should have went into the ground, but they didn't and, How they arrange this, how they actually got the funeral home to keep the body is beyond me.

Who does this? What funeral home would say? Yes, I'm going to keep this body upstairs in the attic for four months for you. What funeral home does this? But it answers another conspiracy theory that I gave some credence to for a little while, not very long.

There are people who look at the photographs of William Brannum's body in the casket, and they say, this looks nothing like William Brannum. There's no way that this is William Brannum. Well, that body died four months prior.

There's no way that it's going to look the same as when it died. So, you know, while there is no way to go prove unless we actually dig up the body, in my opinion, the body is not going to look the same.

The facial features are not going to look the same. For a man whose body was kept in the attic of a funeral home. Right, John. And the truth is, that's actually against the law in the state of Indiana what they did, you can't do that.

So, you know, that's definitely was criminal. You cannot go that long and not bury or, you know, take care of a body that's just against the law. But that is what they did. All right.

How they pulled it off? I don't know, but that's what they did. And so, while William's Brannum's body was still in the attic, okay, the full gospel businessmen went on and held a second memorial service for William Brannum in Phoenix, Arizona on January 26th.

And just like the Jeffersonville funeral service, you know, looking at that's important to see how the message is hardcore followers reacted to his death. The Phoenix Memorial Service is important to see how William Brannum's death was viewed by the guys who were kind of the second tear out from him, who then went on to produce the word of faith in the charismatic movement.

Because all those guys who started the word of faith movement and the charismatic movement, so for they were junior preachers working alongside William Brannum at that time. And William Brannum and the full gospel businessmen were really the vehicle that launched most all of them into popularity.

As again, Dema Shakerian, Kenneth Hagen, dear Prince, Tia Lossborn, or Robert's Tommy Hicks, Tommy Osborne, Paul Cain, keep going. All those guys were right there alongside William Brannum at his big conventions until the very end of his life, right?

William Brannum was still holding joint appearances with Or Robert's, I think, just three months or so before he died, roughly. I mean, this is, like, there was no, this whole, they were all broken apart, things not true.

Okay, that's just not true. They were buddies until the very end. And they all looked up to William Brannum, like a big, mythical, legendary figure. And Or Robert's, in a lot of ways, had already eclipsed William Brannum a little bit before he died.

I'd say as you come into the 60s, Or Robert. says it clips William Brannum in popularity and I would say even financial support from the full gospel businessman, he's ahead of William Brannum and it's worth pointing out again too that Paul Cain totally disappeared right after all this.

No idea what happened, Paul Cain just totally disappeared after all of this. So it's not only William Brannum's position with this group becoming vacant here, Paul Cain's also disappearing and that position becomes vacant here at this same time and that's when you see the junior preachers like Derrick Prince and Kenneth Hagen and so forth, that's when you see them move up into these more prominent roles with the full gospel businessman.

It's right here when this happens and in terms of the full gospel businessman, I think it is fair to say that Kenneth Hagen and Tommy Osborne and Derrick Prince were the big winners when William Brannum died.

They're the men who picked up his mantle in that arena and they ended up with the emerging TV slots with the financial support which had he lived would very likely have went to William Brannum because voice of God or rather voice of healing, rather the full gospel businessman, I'll get it right there because the full gospel businessman was the financial engine behind all of that.

They partnered with Pat Robertson to fund the programs for the CBN Network starting in the 1960s and that was the big breakout for all of these guys on to television and that happened just shortly after William Brannum died by the same man, the same network that William Brannum was leading figure in just before he died.

Yeah and it's just again the body should have been in the ground, it's just so odd. It reminds me of a circus, you've got the event, the funeral event, wherein the body should have been buried and you've got 5,000 people who show up and then the full gospel businessman out in Arizona.

It's like a circus, step right up, step right up, let's see the dying man that should have been buried and isn't, now they didn't have the body on display there, I understand. But they were attracting the same peoples that would have attended the Revival of Brannum gathering these people in Brannum's name and you know you can call it a memorial service if you want because that's what it was.

But from a business standpoint, it was much bigger than that. This was a calling of the people of William Brannum's cult of personality, not the cult following but the following of the stage act.

This was a calling of those people in order to build what came next for them, which this is the point in which everything began to split and splinter. William Brannum's cult, the cult that I grew up in, that's whenever it began to form and then all of this circus act turned into circus act Christianity, I'll call it.

It turned into this weird thing that it was a bigger shift than into the wrong in my opinion. than what it was before. Yeah, so that is very interesting, John, and I think you're right.

That funeral could be looked at as an attempt to buy these guys to siphon off some of William Brown's followers to themselves. I mean, I think that's definitely something that was going on there.

And you're right, it was not free. You don't get into the full gospel businessmen conventions for free. You have to buy tickets. So it was also a money-making process as well. So William Brown himself had been scheduled to preach that full gospel businessmen convention in January.

Like he was the head speaker that was going to be speaking there. And this was their main international convention, which they did every year. And so William Brown was going to actually be their speaker, right?

The keynote speaker too, like not the minor speaker. William Brown was still the keynote speaker for these people back then. But he died. And so they more or less converted his speaking slots into a memorial service is what they did.

And so it's not the Jeffersonville message crowd so much that was at this Phoenix Memorial. But it's the full gospel business guys from around the world. Like they flew in from all over the world to attend this convention.

And so this is really what today we would call the word of faith people and the prosperity preachers. That is who is primarily at this Phoenix Memorial service. It's the people who are the leading figures of the early charismatic movement that's there.

They're the ones who attended the service. So let me read you some excerpts from men who spoke at that service too. And this one is from Roy Borders. Roy Borders was a ladder rain preacher who had been at Sharon Orphanage.

And he was preaching in ladder rain from the very beginning. And he was a message follower as far as I know for the rest of his life. I believe he got it was working at spoke or at the spoken word or voice of God there in his later years.

But I'm just going to read from him what he says to the crowd. He says, who was this man whom we bear witness tonight? What was this great ministry? I would like to personally testify to this man of God, the one who stood in his presence and beheld the works of the Lord.

As the queen of Shiba said to Solomon, I would like to refer you to the word of God. Men have opinions of the word, but the only thing we can really stand on is thus say the Lord.

The word of God foretold that these days would come and I believe it with all my heart Malachi 4.5 says, behold, I'll send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

I'm just going to stop off there. But basically and essentially Roy Borders was very plainly telling everyone in attendance that William Brandham was the Elijah. And he's just flat out saying it in there.

And then he also tells him he's the seventh church aged messenger. And so he's telling us all of these guys. And so you're kind of left wondering as you look over what was said here, wondering what's Kenneth Hagen saying, was Kenneth Hagen saying, hey man, you know when he heard Roy Borders say- this, was Dima Shakerian saying, amen, was a Robert saying, amen, you know, what, what, what was the reaction of all of these guys sitting there, you know, as Roy Borders tells them all, William Brennan was Elijah in the seventh church age messenger, right? Like,

what's, what's the reaction to this? Is this stuff is not, was not hidden from these guys? It was right in front of their faces, right? Right there, they knew that this was happening and they heard it all firsthand at the funeral for sure. And this is not, the funeral is definitely not the first time these guys heard this stuff, right? But the, you know, we have all, we have card evidence that this stuff was preached while all these people were sitting there in attendance, you know, at these memorial services.

And whether you can say that they fully agreed with it or not, you don't find any single one of these men who came to this thing, who denounced it after leaving. So in, in not denouncing it after leaving, they allowed it to continue. I personally, my opinion is that these men were all to some extent in it, because we have heard, in fact, we've had played, played examples of men who were in this thing, who claimed never to have been connected to it, who used the phrase, the message, because this was the latarine message.

Now it's not the same message that I grew up in because after William Brannum died, that split off into what we now call the message cult. But this whole thing was this, this much bigger movement called the latarine message. And these men were all part of it. So by not denouncing it, they allowed the worst thing that came after William Brannum's death.

They allowed the worst thing to develop. Right. And I think in terms of just sheer numbers, it at this stage is as things diverge. I think it's fair to call these guys around the full gospel businessmen at this point, the main trunk of latarine at this point. You know, the message that we come from is starting to diverge here and go a separate course. But at this point, Tommy Osborne, these guys represent the largest trunk of people coming out of the latarine movement, honestly.

And so John, I think the most incredible thing that was said at the Phoenix Memorial Service was said by Tommy Osborne himself. And you can find these transcripts online. The originals are at Oral Roberts University. If you want to go find the originals, you think we're making this stuff up. But let me read some of what Tommy Osborne says here at the William Brannum Memorial Service. Tommy Osborne says, this was the closing generation.

Something had to happen. It couldn't go as past generations had gone. This one is it. Therefore, in God's divine mercy, somehow stepping beyond the bounds of ordinary measure, he had ordained this hour to send again a prophet. Some are going to think I'm sacrilegious or off-doctornaly, and it really doesn't matter. But God can't...

him again in human flesh, and said, apparently I must show them again, I must remind them again, they must see one more time, once again they must know what God is like. And he stepped down and sent a little man, a prophet.

But more than a prophet this time, he was a Jesus man this time. Elijah was not that. That is more than that which we have beheld. Moses was not that for the because of the different dispensation which he lived it couldn't have been what we have seen, more than that, a Jesus man, a man full of God, but sent as a special sign to this generation.

This generation is supernatural sign, an extraordinary measure. Why? It was done before. Why do it again? To arouse this last generation one more time to be the forerunner. And so John, there's Tommy Osborne telling the audience that William Brannum is a manifested son of God, right?

And this is what he's saying here, this is classic manifested sons of God theology from the mainstream of the latter root movement. And that is who William Brannum was believed to be by these guys.

To them, William Brannum was the modern prototype of a manifested son of God. He was the prototype of what it was like to be able to speak things into existence, to have all the powerful gifts of the spirit.

He was the template of someone who had achieved this higher level with the power of the spoken word. And in that way, William Brannum was absolutely foundational to defining what someone could do with the power of the spoken word and what this kind of a person looks like and acts like.

And that's exactly what Tommy Osborne is saying as you come down to the end of his message there at the memorial service. And I know the word of faith, John, would disagree with this, but I think it is very fair to say that without William Brannum, there is no word of faith movement.

You know, he's the middle man who passed these ideas to Dauy and from Dauy and Kenyan and Bosworth. He is the conduit that passed those ideas to Tia Osborne and to Kenneth Haggit. And he himself modeled what they believe that looked like.

And they're basing their beliefs in that stuff on what he modeled as a prototype and what he taught them in conveyance from Dauy and Kenyan and Bosworth. And they were right there at his memorial service, celebrating him as a manifested son of God with the power of the spoken word.

Right. And we have examined previously Jim Jones was a large part of this manifested sons of God movement that William Brannum, even though William Brannum is not credited with it, William Brannum was even more than a conduit because without Brannum, you really don't have this movement grow and flourish like it did.

So you have Tommy Osborne who is well recognized in the televangelist Christian community who's saying these things that... You and I pick up on it, but the casual Christian who did not grow up with the loaded language might miss it.

If you were in the message and you were in a sect that used the phrase, more than a man. Every other Christians think, well, what in the world does that mean? What are you telling me? He's more than a man. No, he's a human being.

Manifestion to go. Well, that's the loaded language. If you're a sect that you escaped from, uses that phrase, more than a man, you are in one of these dangerous, dangerous manifested sons of God sects.

And we've got some of the research on the website. We've talked about it in the podcast. Those manifested sons of God sect, if their leader did not die out, they grew into horrific tragedies.

So this was very, very critical to understand that Tommy Osborne, who literally helped launch TBN and different networks, publications, etc. He was fully adopting the manifested sons of God. And at the funeral, claim that William Brannum was the fulfillment of that son of God doctrine.

When he says there, I know you're going to think this is sacrilegious. Yeah, Tommy Osborne, that was sacrilegious. You really shouldn't have said that, man. Come on. Okay. So William Brannum was not God in the flesh for goodness sakes.

Boy. And so, and again, you're left wondering, was he just playing along to get followers? Did he really believe it? I leaned towards he really believed this stuff back then, you know. At the very least, he was teaching it not just to create William Brannum's followers to follow him.

He was, he also was teaching it outside of this, I hate to say. John, all of those guys had a perfect opportunity to disavow William Brannum right there when he died. Tia Osborne is telling them he's God, Roy Borders is telling them he is Elijah.

Gordon Lindsay was sitting in the Jeffersonville funeral, so was Joseph Matzenboze. They were at the dinner afterwards when everyone talked about the return ministry, you know. And they did not do the first thing to try and stop this call.

They all played along. They all played along. And when all they read all the road ups and their publications, when when Gordon Lindsay and all these different ones wrote their obituaries and the man I knew and stuff, they could have sounded the alarm, right? They could have.

They could have said, hey, Tia Osborne said, William Brannum is God in the flesh run for your life, right? Or they could have said, they think this guy got this guy in an attic thinking he's gonna raise from the dead.

It's a cult run for your life. You know, they could have said those kind of things because they knew that's what was happening. They had the perfect opportunity right here to do that. And not a single one of them did.

There is not not only not a condemnation here, they actually played along. with what happened right and to me that's a big deal and to me well I'm sure some of these are fine nice men to me that I don't really care for another single thing I ever hear say from them right these are bad people in some sense to me right these are people who knew terrible things were going on and they did absolutely nothing because here's the truth while these men were sitting in this funeral in Phoenix or in this memorial in Phoenix Prescott Arizona is just a few

miles from there what's happening there message leaders that William Brannum has appointed is torturing a molesting children not very far from where they're having this memorial service where they're celebrating him as a manifested son of God right and I just I got a huge problem with that at this point like I just don't have a lot of respect for these guys because of this stuff right you know you have to believe from a Christian standpoint if the people understood and it's clear that they did that a subset of Christians were believing that the man who's in the attic dead in a body bag or whatever they kept a man that they believe that

that was God in the flesh from a Christian standpoint you have to believe that this is the most theoretical most purely vile evil that exists in the world and as if you're a Christian you have to stop it so this is the point Charles that you know I can't say that these weren't Christians I'm not the judge of that but I strongly question it because every Christian that I know who is a Christian who is a devout Christian if they knew that a group of people were worshipping a guy in a dead body bag they would immediately try to stop it and most of the people that I know who

devout Christians they don't have a big enough voice to stop it you know they all they can do is just talk among their peers the men that we're talking about had global presence they had the ability to stop it and they didn't some of them joined it like T. L Osborne joined in it that's from a Christian standpoint from a humanitarian standpoint like you said we have the you know the park in Prescott Arizona we have all these numerous things that we've examined in in this cult from a humanitarian standpoint just understanding that people were that manipulated that they could believe

it the right and ethical thing to do is to stop it if you know people are going to ruin the lives of their children if you're if you have any decency in your body you are going to try to stop it for the sake of the children not a single one of these men in attendance to my knowledge ever did now and where's the discernment you know where's the compassion where's the love where is the concern for the body of Christ none of them had that none of them had it Right? None of them did. I mean, and it is

Despicable. I mean, it's despicable, honestly, you know looking back and most all these people are dead now You know, and so there's just nothing to be done about it But it it certainly leaves a very bad impression with me of all of them with all of them And especially with all of those ones that trotted out their prophecies 30 and 40 years later pretending like oh, yeah, we knew he was bad all along Then why did you go along with it all those years, right?

Boy, that's that's not a good that's not a good testimony All right So while all this was going on though, you know at the you know the December funeral the January memorial Most of the message leaders were still holding out hope that William Brownham would be resurrected from the grave on Easter And come April about 700 people gathered to Barry William Brownham at the Eastern Cemetery in Jefferson villain As you mentioned there John notice how the crowd has shrunk. I do think that that gives a solid indication of the

Hemorrhaging to some extent of members that has happened, you know in those years and so now They're having a third memorial service and this is the one where his body is going to be buried now There's no recordings or transcripts of that day that I know of it was entirely outdoors. There are I think newspaper photographs And there's a little captured in newspapers But besides that the only thing I really know about that day is from the testimonies of the eyewitnesses who attended that day And I know quite a number of the people who did attend that day. I mean

Obviously the people who were here in the local churches for the most part all went And it's really from their eyewitness testimonies that I'm generally aware of what happened in Of course To many of their surprise William Brownham did not resurrect they put him in the ground They covered him up with dirt nothing happened And some panic started to set in in the crowd because those people Were desperately trying to make sense of William Brownham's death And as we mentioned back in episode nine and you can go back there if you want all the details of the story

But some men Jack hammered up the cornerstone of the tabernacle there after he died looking for the 1933 prophecies They thought maybe the answers to his death were in the cornerstone, but the cornerstone turned out empty right so it just It's going from bad to worse for these people right and if you go back there in episode nine you can get the details But basically that day was like letting the air out of a balloon for a whole lot of people And from that point a lot of people started to gradually walk back the return ministry ideas and that set the stage for the

first divisions Among William Brownham's followers after his death and it began the cycle of of divisions and splinter groups which we continue to the present day Yeah, and I I mentioned this in the docu series, but We grew up with all of these fascinating stories about how god part of the skies and he looked down upon his beloved prophet being buried. All of the symbolism that we had in the cult from start to finish, if you just take William Brannem's name out of it, you would think that they were talking about Jesus Christ. Whenever the baptismal happened,

God allegedly parted the skies and a voice spoke down and said, this is my beloved prophet, hear ye him. Instead of this is my beloved son, hear ye him. We grew up with all of these stories about this and I remember clearly family talking about how they looked up and they saw the sign in the sky and as the body was going down, I was completely shocked whenever I first saw that it had to be under a tent because it was raining so heavily that the rain was just washed. There's no way that they looked in the sky and saw this thing. They would get water in their eyes if they

did. All of the stories just kind of morphed and grew and progressed and it matches not a single aspect of it, matches what they told us versus what actually happened according to the newspapers.

But worse than that, the theology shifted so significantly. Everything that they believed, like I said earlier in the episode, everything that they believed up to that point had just died with William Brannum and so they had to begin to shift and try to make connections from the doctrine that pre-existed the burial till after the burial and the digging up of the cornerstone was significant to me, learning that this happened because to his death, my grandfather would always talk about how these prophecies were buried in the cornerstone and then to find out that they actually dug it up and found it to be empty, not just one time, but twice, then why the show,

man, if they dug it up and he knew it was empty two times, why did they continue to do this? It really shows for me that the hearts of the men were not centered on truth. It was centered on the legend. And if I were to describe what emerged after the body went into the ground, I would say it was a cult based off of legend, whereas the performer cult was this latering message cult. It was a cult of people around a movement or an idea of, you know, within Pentecostalism, a subset of Pentecostalism. After the burial, it's a cult based off of a legend.

I think that's a nice good way to put it, because as that happened, you know, the William Brannum, the oracle of truth has gone, right? And it's just, it's his teachings, form the legends that become the canon of the message.

And John, another thing that happened there around the burial is that the press picked up that story in a really big way. That the body had been kept in an attic for four months and that they were all expecting him to resurrect.

That actually made news coast to coast in the United States. It's in all kinds of newspapers all over the United States. If you just do a quick search, you'll find dozens and dozens and dozens of newspapers all over the United States were carrying stories that William Bram's followers had kept his body for months on end without burying it and that they were all expecting his resurrection.

So the cult took a really big PR hit right there when all of this happened too. I think that also has somewhat to do with some of the people starting to distance themselves from those ideas of his resurrection right there as well.

So it was a very bad time for the message. And I would say, John, I don't want to venture a percentage or a number, but a large faction of followers of the message fell away and quit believing the message between William Bram was death in 1967.

There was a very large collapse in membership in believing in the message in that year or two of time. I would say that's accurate. The newspaper said that there are 700 people of which 20 came from out of the country.

So if you take that small number of people, especially compared to the 5,000 before, not everyone believed in the resurrection. So of those 700, I would say, there was a percentage that did, but there was probably a larger percentage that did not.

But those that did not during this time, they believed that something was going to happen because the cult leader had just died and everything that he said, everything that he predicted, some of which included him being alive for the prediction, those that remained, they had to try to reconcile this, what happened.

And many of them came to the funeral thinking that there is going to be some great event, whether he rises or not, something big is about to happen because otherwise, why did they keep the body out of the grave?

They could have buried him at that time. So you know, for me, I look back at this group of people and I have to think from a, from a mental standpoint of the 700, you had people who were giving it one last chance before they separated, so the 700 would have diminished even further after the burial and nothing happened.

So the cult is by and large dying out. And from there, where it grows, again, it's a cult of legend, but it's a cult of legend that grows internally. Right. And so with William Branham buried and in the grave, the message started to go through some big evolutions in their ideology.

They experienced a very large turnover in membership. And you know, with cults in general, when they go through events like this where their deeply held beliefs are proved wrong, what happens is the people who are more awake, fully wake up and escape, and what's left is the more radical people stay. Right.

So these cycles actually shift the cult more and more radical over time. Right. Every time there is a prediction, it fails. You know, the lucid people leave and the radical people stay and gradually the balance shifts further and further towards radical people. Right.

And that's what happens here. So William Branham dies and the cult as a whole takes a shift to the radical side of things as the more lucid people wake up and go somewhere else.

And you know, I don't know whether we'll do another episode or not where we examine what happened next with all the different sex of the message, but right here is where the lines start being drawn for the early sex of the message which are going to emerge with William Branham gone.

People started arguing about the return ministry, about the nature of the rapturing faith, about the nature of the seven thunders, about the nature of the Lord descending from heaven in 1963, about the nature of what manifest, what level of a manifest.

It's not a God William Branham had really been. Right. All of these things become very big divisions early on in that period of time. And that is what sets up the lines that start to divide the early sex of the message.

And by the time you get to the end of 1967, those lines were fairly firmly established. Lee Vail and his group were going one way, Raymond Jackson, the groups I come from were going another way, and very gradually group after group peeled away from the main sec that Joseph Coleman and his people peeled away in the 70s somewhat after that.

Ewald Frank and his people started to peel away after that. You kind of continue down to the present day. And they're probably at this point. You know, after the copyright wars happened, right. That's when Perry Green and Ed Biscoll and all those type peeled away. It's just continued to the present day with group after group after group peeling away from the main sec.

And then the sub-sex then starts splitting as time goes on. And by the time you come down to the present day, John, there is I would say there are easily a hundred different sex of the message out there.

There's about 10 large international sex and then dozens of smaller ones out there today. Right. And I think it's also critical to point out that as the sex began to emerge, like you said, said, there's a shift towards radicalization. When you hear that word, it's a scary word because you look at radicalized leaders like Jim Jones that were in this thing. There's danger associated with radicalization. Not all of the sects, however, were dangerous.

Some of them were just deeply heretical. Others were somewhat benign. I've been to some branches of the cult where if you didn't know that William Brannum was the founder of this religion, you'd simply think, oh, this is a Pentecostal group. They're just a Pentecostal group that they give unusual credence to the things by this one minister, which was William Brannum.

Other groups went deeply, deeply heretical. Some to the extent that the legend morphed into he was not a manifestation of God, but he was God. So you've got all of these different groups that are in the message. But the one single thread that kind of binds them all together was the fact that they all believe that in one way or another, William Brannum's words on the recordings were important to the bride of Christ. Right. And as we bring this episode to a close John, in one way, this is the end of the story, but in another way, this is just the

beginning. The message changed and evolved a whole lot after William Brannum died. By the time you get into the late 70s and the early 80s, the message by that time had fully disconnected from Kenneth Hagen and T. L. Osborne and those sort of figures. But there had still been some level of relationship between the message and those up until the up with them up to that period of time.

Then Paul Cain made his comeback in the 80s. He was preaching in the message churches in the 80s. In the 90s, Paul Cain was still coming around message churches. At the exact same time, he was visiting the Kansas City prophets and working with them and kicking off the Third Wave Pentecostalism.

He was on both sides. And the 1970s and 1980s is when the message in its current form really took shape. It was in the middle 1970s that spoken word finally finished creating the transcripts of all of William Brannum's sermons in English anyway. And men like David Mammalis started producing study guides and indexes and concordances in that period of time on William Brannum sermons.

And that was that was the period when William Brannum sermons really started to be treated like scriptural canon, right? You're looking late 60s and into the 70s. And Joseph Coleman, as far as I know, Joseph Coleman is the man who introduced the idea of preaching using Brannum as the basis of his sermons. He started doing that in the early 1970s and that really caught on.

And that's a practice that spread widely in the message preaching from William Brannum quotes. You'll find that very widespread. Joseph Coleman pioneered that. And of course the main branch of the message, they were primarily tape churches. You know, they believe the job of the ministry was to press play on the tape, right, rather than actually preach a sermon. And with them, it was the same thing. It was really the 1970s when playing tapes became the norm. It actually wasn't the norm to play tapes at the Tabernacle in the 60s, John. That came and the, as far

as I know, the mid-70s after Brother Neville left the church. He was more or less pushed out of the Tabernacle. That's when you might say our sect totally lost any influence there at the Tabernacle. But he left there and you know, the people left with him ended up folding into our group. And the message church has really started to make a big missionary outreach in the 1970s and really picked up steam in the 80s. And the message exploded into India and Africa and the Philippines and South America starting in the 80s and especially into the 1990s. And in the 90s, that's when the message started to move into the former

Soviet countries through big message outreach is there. And so there is just so many things we could talk about in all of that, John. I mean, we could do another hundred episodes just on the evolution of the message from 1965 to, you know, the 1990s. There's so many things we could talk about. But I think today we have definitely arrived at the conclusion of what we want to look at, especially as a release of the life, William Brown.

From a person who wasn't involved in this, who's listening and trying to piece together and understand what is this thing, I think the best way to explain it is that, and if you go back in the early episodes of the podcast, you can kind of piece this together. But to summarize, Pentecostalism was birthed as a subset of Christianity off of an event which was largely attributed to Azusa Street. But it was a little bit deeper than that.

There were a few key events that cost Pentecostalism. But Pentecostalism was Christianity as the foundation based off of a specific event and began to deviate slightly from the original. In the Laterane was a second event in 1947. It was the foundation for it was Pentecostalism.

So it was a different foundation slightly, a different subset of Christianity. So it was a subset of a subset. And then it began to deviate. Within that, William Brown's division within this began to deviate even further. But then after he died, the foundation was completely ripped out. No longer, like I was shocked Charles when I learned that this thing was actually based off of the Laterane movement. I had no idea because I grew up in the main sect where the foundation was truly the legend. It wasn't a foundation of Christianity. It wasn't a Foundation of Pentecostalism or Latter-Rain, they'd completely obliterated that foundation

and a new foundation was established that wasn't any of those things. It was literally a foundation of the legend. And from that, grew all of these different splinter groups that, if you look at the way in which they developed and the way in which they fought with each other over time, it looks nothing like a coherent movement. So you can't really even call it a religion.

What do you call it? It's just literally a cult based off of legend. Right, and that's a really interesting way to put it. And that really does get to the very heart of the difference, I think, between the sect of the message I come from in yours is, our sect of the message was keen to hold on to our history coming out of Pentecostalism.

And we were very keen to be able to trace our roots all the way back to Azusa Street through through the Latter-Rain movement and everything. So the history of the whole thing was important to us, I think, maybe in a way that it wasn't in other sects. Because we definitely traced our roots there. And we were always kind of public about all that. And so we always had an awareness that we were descended from the Latter-Rain movement. We always had an awareness that we claimed our roots all the way back to Azusa Street through Bosworth. So it's very interesting just how everything

moved and evolved and how it caused the groups to diverge and to go their different ways after William Brannum died. And it really is a incredible story in one sense, the story of the message, both incredibly interesting and incredibly sad. It is a fascinating, confusing, complicated, intricate history that hopefully the past hundred and something episodes that we've done, even though it skims the surface, hopefully it gives some insight into what this thing was, how it developed, what it grew, what it became, what it grew into. And then we take it to the point of the body goes into the ground. Now, Charles, at least for the main sect, none of that really

applies because they either ignore, they rewrite all of that history. And so what it develops after this is even more fascinating. But if you've enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-brannum.org and www.ChristianGospelChurch.org.

For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.

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