Questions and Answers Part 1

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

Together, we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, this has been quite an adventure going through all of this research with you, and last week we just had the finale.

And I said that I would be very happy if I never mentioned William Brannum's name again. And then now we're doing this to the audience who is unaware. I was fully exhausted. We actually did record this before that. I forgot to hit the record button, so we're doing it again. And I'm having to mention that name again.

But as I mentioned in the finale, there's no way to get around it in the research that I'm doing. William Brannum is a central conduit between all of these different movements. So there will be times in which we have to, but the focus is about to shift. And I'm actually really excited about that shift, which leads us to the first question that I know is on everybody's minds, Charles.

Are you going to be joining me whenever that shift happens later this fall, and we come back to the podcast? Well, time will tell. You stick around. Our viewers will get to find out. So we just have to wait and see. I think I might still have something that I can further contribute.

There is lots of other directions things could go. So I guess I'll just have to leave everyone in suspense. Well, sometimes suspense is good. I'm really excited about the shift because there are histories that we kind of, you know, we lifted up the rock and we saw the spiders flying.

And I was very curious. Some of those rocks that we turned over. I was very curious to look deeper and we... you know, we just skim the surface. So that is, that is very exciting to me. But um, so we promised at the early on in the show, um, you know, it's been a few months now, we promised that we would answer some questions and people have sent us lots of questions.

Well, we actually will not be able to answer them all. Um, we're going to do our best to get the most important ones. And we're going to avoid some of them. A lot of them, you can really tell who was asking. It was either somebody who was really curious about the research from either a historical perspective or if they were in the cult, their questions that they had. And then there were this whole slew of questions that were about my person. And you can tell those were probably from cult members who were trying to, you know, trying to get under my scanner,

whatever. And I just, I don't entertain that type of thing. So we're going to get through the good questions. And um, one of the most interesting for me as, you know, as somebody who hasn't seen any of the hype that came with this, I got into it a little bit. Well, just reading about it.

But we had several people ask us if Bill Gofford and the Institute of the Bible Life Principles were connected to the laterane movement. So Charles, let's kick off the questions and answers with that question. And um, to the audience, this is probably going to go long. So we'll probably split it up in multiple sections. And um, I'm actually going to try to chop it up even further than that to make it easy for people who ask the questions. So let's kick this off, Charles.

Let's talk about Bill Gofford. Yeah. So Bill Gofford might be a name that our audience isn't familiar with. He's not someone I, I don't believe we've mentioned him at any point in our series.

But he is a fairly famous evangelical type leader. He's probably most well known for a set of homeschool programs that he created, which were really very popular among a lot of Christian homeschool groups in the 1990s and into the 2000s. And Bill Gofford developed a really large following around what he called the Institute for Basic Life Principles. And he presented it as something both educational and religious. And the Dugger family on television, they're from that TV show 19 Kids and Counting. Um, they used his home school material. And at a certain point, they joined his movement. Now it doesn't seem like they were always part of his movement. There

was a point in time when the Duggers were more, um, normal Christians. But then at a certain point, it seems like they joined his movement and, um, which I mean, in all honesty is a cult.

So at some point they joined a cult during the middle of their program and so as you look at Bill Gothard's teachings, they bear a striking resemblance to the teachings of the Shepparding movement.

And if you recall, the Shepparding movement is one of the main branches of the latter reign movement. It was started by elders out of Sharon Orphanage in combination with Aaron Baxter, who was one of William Brannum's most important partners during the early years of his campaigning, and they produced the Shepparding movement as you come into the late 60s and 1970s. And from what I have looked at, just the resemblance between the Shepparding movement teachings and Bill Gothard's teachings are very striking, especially in their, basically, their formula for leadership. So the Shepparding movement teaches you that you, you basically

report up to your Sheppard, and then there's all these different layers, and you can only grow and be protected in the Lord if you stay under the subjection of your Sheppard. And then the Sheppard guides your life. And it's not just simply a pastor over whole church, but it's like even within a single church, you have like a pyramid structure within a single church, and then multiple churches pyramid together all the way up to, they had this ring of leaders at the top, which then Shepparded the Sheppards, which Shepparded other Sheppards, which Shepparded other Sheppards,

which ended up Shepparding the individuals. Well, Bill Gothard had a very similar

strategy. He called it um, he called it umbrellas of, um, umbrellas of protection. And you had to stay under your umbrella of protection, and then it's the same thing. Each umbrella has a bigger umbrella over top of it. And so you get all the way up to the top, and you've got your biggest guy at the top, which is Bill Gothard. So it's basically the, it's, it is so remarkably similar to the Shepparding movement, and even the language and terms that are employed, it's almost ripped straight out of the Shepparding movement, some of that stuff. And so I,

I feel very comfortable in saying that Bill Gothard was somewhere along the way deeply influenced by the Shepparding movement. Um, and I've also read that, uh, Bill Gothard was, uh, in contact and worked a bit with both Earn Baxter and Bob Mumford, uh, in the late 60s and early 70s, which were two of the leading members of the Shepparding movement. So I think it's a pretty safe assumption to say that Bill Gothard was at some level influenced by the Shepparding movement.

For me, this question is interesting because it is the equivalent of asking was America influenced by the American Revolution. You've got this movement that literally impacted the the entire world, the lettering movement was a cancer that spread among all American churches. Whether they adopted it or whether they refused it, in my opinion, both sides still were influenced to some extent by this thing. And it really couldn't help to be because there were so many, there's so much hype around it and there were so many people who got in it and were influenced by it, realized it was heresy and then left it and then they

went on to better movements. And some, you know, I'm not saying that they're all cults, but some of them created non-cult Christianity, but still had some of this influence and it lingered. And so it was like this cancer that spread and it, I know this is going to be a non-answer, but we're going to be getting into the broader movement in general whenever I come back to the podcast. And after the break, I'm getting into some of the stones that we did not fully examine when we turn them over. This, for me, in my opinion, this is one of the stones because

the American Christianity was deeply influenced before the Laterane movement. And as a result of that influence, the Laterane movement had a fertile ground that it could easily produce fruit. So we're getting into that history was Bill Gawthard, directly influenced by William Brannum.

I think that is a question that I don't have an answer to. I don't think there is any publication that would suggest that. But this thing that was created that the Laterane movement was built upon influenced several people and Bill Gawthard was one of those people. I recommend the book, Freedom of Mind and Combating Cult Mind Control. I actually start with combating cult mind control. You can get it on Amazon. What you'll find is there's a cult framework that exists. And that cult framework, even though the Bill Gawthard cult looks so similar to the message, you can almost pull up any cult throughout history. And let's say that looks similar to

the message. This also looks similar to the message. Scientology, it looks similar to the message. Well, the framework is exactly the same. And whether devious minds are doing it on purpose, or they just fall into some error and they happen to create the same structure, the cult structure exists. And if you look at combating cult mind control, it fully explains how the cult structure works and how it morphs and cross pollinates. And throughout time, this will continue forever.

So yes, it looks the same because as technically, if you rip off the doctrinal aspects of Bill Gotheridge's teaching, it is the same. It just has different elements of doctrine bolted on top of the cult structure.

Right, and that is something I think a lot of people, when they, especially the message, like when we examine one message group to the next or we examine one lettering, splinter group to the next, they tend to go and look at the doctrines and they say, well, this doctrine is 5% different, this one's 10% different, this one's 30% different, it's not the same movement, but it, that just kind of ignores the reality of how these groups come into existence, right?

Somewhere someone was influenced by somebody and they learned something from them and they took that and they replicated parts of it. They didn't replicate the whole thing, they replicated parts of it. And so you get part of your influence from William Brown, you get part of your influence from Father Divine and your Jim Jones, right?

Like you don't, you don't pull it all from the same place. And so it's the same with Bill Gotheridge, it's definitely true, you know, he's not fully influenced by shepherding movement, there's elements that are, are not from the shepherding movement.

And if you dig far enough, you probably find out where those come from, but you, you can see that it, these people pull together elements of this and that from different areas and produce a movement, but you're right at the very core of it.

You have the same framework, you have a framework that allows all of this to happen. And that framework is almost identical across every single cult, right? And when you're in the cult, the only thing that matters to you is doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, because you're indoctrinated.

But when you're free from indoctrination, then you're able to look at step back and just look how did this thing work? And then when you see the framework of how this thing actually worked to control people and indoctrinate them, that framework is largely the same in every single cult group, right?

Some of them just, they tighten the screws a little more here there, but the basic framework for pulling it off is the same, really, from group to group. And I personally, I would love to know more about Bill Gotheridge.

I think he's a little bit outside of our wheelhouse. He's more into more tight, I think, to classical fundamentalism than the Pentecostal movement. So I would say it's a different branch of the fundamentalist tree than what we come from, John.

But there are definitely some ideological links to him and between him and the shepherding movement. So it takes us to our next question. And I'll let you take a stab at this one, John.

It's where does Charles Peter Wagner fit into all of this? Was he ever part of the latter-ranked movement? You know, I dug into Wagner based on, actually, based on the author of the combating cult mind control book.

He suggested that I dig into Wagner a bit. And you know, whenever I first... examine Wagner and some of the cults that splintered from his branch of this part of American religion. I thought, well, this looks exactly like the message. And then when you peel back the theology, like you said, the theology is different. The framework is the same. But interestingly, the theology wasn't that different. It was very similar. There were just elements of the message morphed into the historical cult message, the legend, the legendary cult. It didn't match any of that because that post-dated Wagner's affiliation. But Wagner is the person who coined the term

the New Apostolic Reformation. And he gets credit for producing the framework, the foundation for the framework of the New Apostolic Reformation. However, as the research is now starting to indicate, he is just the person who coined the term. And he was writing a much bigger wave. He was heavily influential in that wave. But he was writing the wave that not only William Branham, but all of these others that the podcast will get into next season. He's writing this wave that was created by several different parties. And to say, was he in the Lateran movement, was he not? It's difficult because he was a missionary and he was out of the country for

a good part of this. And then he came back and got involved with Fuller and the Fuller Seminary. He was very, very high ranking. He was a direct, I believe, at the Fuller Seminary. Fuller worked, as we'll examine in the future, Fuller worked to some extent with William Branham. And William Branham even mentions working with Fuller and claiming that Fuller did not adopt the Lateran until he met with William Branham. And then they held some revivals together. So there's definitely some Lateran influence in the Fuller Seminary. And we know Wagner was a director in the Fuller

Seminary. So I think it's safe to say that he was either directly influenced by the Lateran or he was one step removed influenced by the Lateran through Charles Fuller. My opinion is, I think he was deeply influenced by Lateran. Wagner is someone who's definitely worth a deeper look.

I've spent some time looking into Wagner and some of the different things that he's published and wrote and taught from what I can tell, what I can gather is he was, he is definitely the guy who termed the phrase New Apostolic Reformation. And he did play an important role in the development of the idea of what New Apostolic Reformation is. But as far as I can tell, he was not part of the Lateran movement in its heyday in the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s.

60s, but coming into the 1970s, we can say for sure that he started to have some influence from people associated with Latter-Rain as you come into the 1970s for sure. Like you mentioned, when he became a professor and eventually director at Fuller Seminary, that started in 1971, and Fuller Seminary is in Los Angeles, and quite a few different Latter-Rain people who had been influenced by Latter-Rain became influential at that seminary.

Charles Fuller himself, like you mentioned, who started that seminary. He actually died in 1968, so three years before Wagner joined the staff there. But Charles Fuller was a man who had worked. Charles Fuller had worked not only with William Brannum, he had also worked directly with Gerald Winrod, the Nazi, and directly with Roy Davis, the clan leader.

Okay, so Charles Fuller was right in there with those really radical-minded people. Now, Charles Fuller himself, I'd not say he was a Nazi or white supremacist, but he was definitely working with Nazis and white supremacists.

And it seems like, just like a lot like Angela's Temple, like we've mentioned, these guys come somehow into orbit of Angela's Temple, a four square of Fuller Seminary there, and there is an element of these Nazi-minded white supremacist clan type figures hanging out in these places and having some level of influence.

And, you know, I think I don't at all think it's that way anymore. I don't think Fuller Seminary has Nazis or clan figures there anymore. But as you go back certainly before the 1950s, yeah, there was bonafide Nazis.

There was bonafide clan figures in those places. And anyways, when Wagner showed up there and became a professor, that was a lot closer to the point in time when those people were still around there.

And here's actually a book that Wagner wrote. He wrote this in the 1970s after he had started working at Fuller. It's called Archind of People. And this book is essentially a polished up, well-wrote, cleverly-worded justification for racial segregation of churches.

That's what this is. It's a case for the racial segregation of churches in the modern era. And so he wrote that after he joined Fuller in the 70s. And so, again, that might give us a clue to what he was being influenced there at that time.

Now, did he hold those views onto the end of the rest of his life? I don't know. I tend to think maybe not, but I don't know.

But then as you come through the 1970s into the 1980s, that's when he comes into contact with John Wimber. So John Wimber is the key man who was behind the vineyard movement. And John Wimber was also working with Kansas City Profits.

And at that moment, Fuller, not Fuller, Wagner- are also intersects with the Kansas City Profits, who are at that point in time launching the third wave of Pentecostalism. And so Wagner was really in connection with the third wave of Pentecostalism from its inception, and he had actually somehow intersected with those guys before the second wave of Pentecostalism had ended.

But anyways, as you come out of the third wave, Wagner becomes an important figure, and he helps produce the new apostolic reformation as you come out of the third wave of Pentecostalism. And so that's interesting stuff.

It really is interesting stuff. Right, it's just hard to know. He went to the Fuller Seminary, and Charles Fuller was the founder. So there had to been, to some extent, an influence from Fuller's historical influence on the school itself.

But when you look at the way the latter rain movement spread, it spread also into South America, and that's where he was a missionary. It's odd to me that he comes back and he gets so deeply involved with the structures of latter rain and the concepts of latter rain, and then builds a new apostolic reformation from it.

So it's hard to say. We don't know what happened in South America, right? So speaking of universities, that leads us into the next question about the Bob Jones University, and specifically Bob Jones himself, and people have asked us a few different times, was Bob Jones connected to William Brannum, or the latter rain movement?

Yeah, that's another great question. And when I was, read that question, I had to go look into it a little bit. Of course, I'd heard of Bob Jones, but I was very surprised to find out there's actually three Bob Joneses.

So I had to look into each one of them to figure out what their connections were. But what I would say is they are generally a different branch of the fundamentalistry. And my assessment would be that William Brannum and the latter rain did not influence Bob Jones, but the other way around, Bob Jones University and Bob Jones Senior were more likely in influencing to the message, those kind of the reverse sort of a situation there.

And so the three Bob Joneses, Bob Jones Senior, he died in 1968. He's the man Bob Jones University was named after. He had some links too, also Gerald Winrod and other fundamentalist preachers of the early 20th century.

And I think there's fair evidence that Bob Jones Senior was at the very least supportive of the KKK while he was living and rubbing shoulders with the clan leaders. But as best I know, he was never supportive of Pentecostalism.

So he was a fundamentalist, but he was not someone I would describe as a fundamental or as a Pentecostal in any way. So he did have interactions with some of the Pentecostal Laterane figures during his life, but it was more, he was much more of an evangelical fundamentalist rather than a Pentecostal fundamentalist.

And his son, Bob Jones, Jr., now him, we can say he was definitely around a lot of laterane people. I don't know of any direct connections to William Brannum, but he was certainly mingling with a lot of laterane preachers up into the 1970s.

But coming into the 1970s, he really turned very hard against them all. In the 1980s, he came out and spoke very strongly against the charismatic movement, especially oral Robertsa. I think oral Roberts was enemy number one in some ways. For Bob Jones, he was Jr., he was definitely not on friendly terms with the charismatic movement from the 1980s, and Bob Jones Jr. died in 1997.

Then you got Bob Jones the third, and he's still living, and I'll be honest, I just don't know very much about him, so I can't really say. But my understanding is that he's a Baptist, and he's a minister in a Baptist church or a Baptist seminary in some way.

I don't think he still heads the Bob Jones University. So all that said, there's definitely people in laterane movement who were in Bob Jones University. There's definitely people from the third wave of Pentecostalism who attended Bob Jones University. But I really don't think laterane influenced Bob Jones or Bob Jones University.

I think the other way around, Bob Jones University, Bob Jones influenced the men and women going into the laterane movement. So that's how I would probably characterize it. I think I would say the same. The laterane movement was the result of cross-pollination of several different ideas and ideologies, and it was an attempt to bring all of these desperate movements together.

And try to, it was literally an attempt to try to reinvent Pentecostalism, and whether it succeeded or failed is up for debate. But it definitely was influenced by outside sources, and I agree with you Bob Jones and several other universities were producing men who would influence the laterane movement.

What's interesting for me is that William Branham's laterane campaign manager, William T. Ferry von Blomberg, was on the board of directors at Bob Jones University. So for me, I could say that it's potential that the influence went both ways through that simply because here's the man who's taking William Branham in his famous overseas missions.

The man who literally took William Branham into Germany and inspired Paul Schaefer who went into colonial dig in the dad. He's on the board of directors at Bob Jones, and like you said, there's some...

to be some white supremacy roots. It wasn't until, what was it? It was like the year 2000, I believe it was, that Bob Jones first allowed a person with black skin to date a person with white skin in the university, the year 2000.

So it's very clear that the racial concepts that was introduced into the latter rain, again, by outside influences into latter rain, was also influencing Bob Jones. It was cross-pollination. There was, you know, there were some Bob Jones influence, there was some, latter rain influence, et cetera.

So I'm with you on that. I think it's, I think it's safe to say that the majority of influence was from Bob Jones into the latter rain movement. What's really interesting is a lot of people who are in the message aren't aware that William Brannum supported Bob Jones University.

Because the latest version of his stage persona as the white supremacy roots grabbed hold of William Brannum's campaign strategies and he was so outspoken against education and seminaries and all of these things, that's how he is remembered.

People will say William Brannum detested seminaries, but he even mentions on recording, he's going to send his son, Billy Paul, to Bob Jones, seminary. And he, you know, throughout his life, there was a period of time in which he was against seminaries when he was deeply embedded into the fundamentalist roots.

Then the stage persona shifted. He was all in favor and he mentioned how he himself wanted to be in a seminary, but hadn't. And then later his son, he says his son's going and then after that shortly before he died, seminaries were inspired by Satan.

So there's this weird shift in time. So a person in the message would say no, Bob Jones was never connected to the message. A person who's in the message cult that exists today, a person who is in the latter-rain message, what became and developed into the message would say, oh, absolutely, his son, Billy Paul, I think he even went, right Charles, Billy Paul?

I think went to Bob Jones. Yes, John, and I was going to mention that too. Your spot on, so Billy Paul did go to seminary according to what William Brannum said on tape. And it was Bob Jones University, that Billy Paul attended.

So the main sect of the message is headed, okay, the main sect of the message cult is headed by Bob Jones alumni. So that is the truth. I'm sure Bob Jones University would fully denounce the message cult if they knew that, but that is actually the reality.

With what William Brannum said on tape, but where he sent his son. to universities, true. Yeah, the message is headed by Bob Jones alumni today, the main sect. Of course, I don't know if we're going to get into that. I don't know who runs the main sect anymore, John. It's hard to say. I would say it's probably him, but I'm just guessing.

I know the younger brother has certainly taken a more prominent role the last, probably the last 20 years, but who's in charge there? I would just be venturing a guest to say which of the two actually runs the show. But definitely, Billy Paul was running the show for the longest time.

So, all righty. So that kind of takes us to our next question. Does the message teach pre-millennial dispensationalism and having left the message do you still believe in that? So Charles, you know as well as many of the people who have talked with me that I strongly avoid talking about theology in the historical podcast and even in my research presentations, because theology is one of those things in my opinion. You have people that are so

beholden to their way of thinking that if you bring an opposite opinion, which is still grounded in biblical theology, both opposite opinions, they start fighting, and I just, I don't like this. I don't enjoy the argument. So I avoid it. There's only one case in which I do, and that's whenever it's blatantly false. If something is blatantly false, in my opinion, if the laterane introduced it, and it's blatantly false, and it's clearly black and white that it's false, I will bring this up because that is historical. And this idea of pre-millennial dispensationalism, the different views on the book of Revelation and the corresponding

chapters of the Bible, there are different views and they're widely adopted by Christian ministers, even in the same denominations of faith will hold opposing views. And you can't really say that one's right or one's wrong because both have formed an opinion and that opinion that they have is based on the Bible. When we first left the cult of personality, I'll never forget this, the church we went to had a plurality of elders. And each one of, I want to say that there were four elders, and I want to say each one did have a different view. It was either that or three of

the four had a different view, but they had different views on pre-millennial dispensationalism, some avoided dispensationalism altogether. You had the preacher, the tribe rapture, and what it really boiled down to is the four different views of the book of Revelation, the futurist view, the preterist view. And I was shocked, man. How can you go to the same church?

and have different views on the Bible, it's supposed to be black or white, my brother. And I realize that's, you know, now having a deep program from this, I realize that is a, it's a very cult and doctorated scheme to be very black or white.

If you don't leave room for the gray, you also don't leave room for the exploration and try to understand, well, why is it gray? What do other people believe? Am I correct in my belief?

If you take this approach that everybody else is wrong and I'm the only one right, you'll never, ever develop. So I entertained the notion of this. And whenever I did, whenever I started studying each of the different conflicting views on dispensationalism, anti-dispensationalism, rapture theology, anti-rapture theology, what I realized is that the way that the message presented it was black and white false.

There was no question. Because even in the parables, Jesus talks about that whenever he's talking about the parable of the wheat and tears, for example, the man comes up and says, let's pull all the weeds.

And Jesus says, no, let's let them both grow up together so that we don't damage the wheat. And then there will be a, you know, there'll be an examination where we'll bring everybody up in the harvest, we'll take the weed out of the, out of the picture, we'll take the tears out of the picture.

Every single passage that I have found that talks about the dispensationalism in the way that William Brannum taught it, William Brannum taught a cult version of dispensationalism that is deemed heresy by every Christian denomination.

And that's that there is a group of Christians and then there is a subset of elite Christians and all other Christians are, they're going to be called with the tears and then the good people, the good guys are going to be taken up before all of this happens.

That's black and white false. There is absolutely not a single scripture that exists in the Bible that mentions this and almost every religious cult that's based on Christianity, almost every one of them teach the same thing that we're the elite Christians, all you other Christians are the false Christians and we're going to escape while you can't because we have this secret knowledge and it all really stems from nosticism, the idea that you have a secret that nobody else knows and you're gonna hold that secret so that the rest of them are doomed to hell.

It's heresy and Irenaeus, the first Christian apologist went through this very thoroughly, examining all of the different groups that had developed in this way. They're very destructive, so this is exists throughout time, very well documented, and I will say that the way that the message teaches pre-millennial dispensationalism, I strongly...

I don't even have to disagree, just open them, I won't read the parables, man. As far as what the church is teach, I'm not going to give my opinion on that, because there are differing views, and that enters into the never-ending debatable theology, and I just avoid that.

I'll repeat the question. Does the message teach pre-millennial dispensationalism and having left the message do you still believe in that? And so the first part of the answer is, yes, the message was a pre-millennial dispensationalist group, but like you say, John, when you subtract William Baranum as the last day end of days, profit, church age messenger piece, when you subtract that, the message is end of days teachings just collapses, it cannot exist without William Baranum.

So yes, there is definitely something deeply wrong with the message's end of days dispensationalist teachings, to be sure, because it cannot exist without William Baranum, and William Baranum was not who he claimed to be.

So yes, there's definitely something seriously wrong there, and I would say what is unique about the message's dispensationalist views is that it is a combination of both millerite ideas and some of the ideas that came from Derby and the brethren.

And I don't know if necessarily everyone realizes that, because dispensationalism from the early 1800s comes in two varieties, and they both developed somewhat independently. The first variety is what came from William Miller, and you get the millerites, and then that evolved into the seven day Adventists, that evolved into the Jehovah Witnesses over time.

So you've got the millerite version of dispensationalism. And then you have the version that came from Derby, which started with United Brethren, and was popularized by men like Dwight Moody, and then that evolved out and was fairly widely accepted among most of the early Pentecostals, most of the lot of Baptists accepted it, and a lot of evangelicals today.

So you've got kind of those two sides of it. You've got the millerite sides, you've got the Derby side, and they've each kind of evolved on their own independent track. Well, the message merges the two, right?

So William Baranum, as we mentioned before, he's mixing and matching from all over the place. William is mixing these two very different systems of dispensationalism to produce what he came up with. And his ideas of church age mess.

his idea of Elijah coming to the church, these sort of things. These are flowing out of the millerite side of things, right? Which you see, again, in 70, Adventism, what you see in

the Jehovah witnesses. So that side of things is definitely totally bunk. That's just junk. And then the more, I would say, the Derby side, which is where you'd find clearance is generally more somewhat widely accepted, I would say. I don't think it's still in any shape or form mainstream today. But just to let you know, there are two sides to it, and William Brenn was mixing it. And I think that's something that a lot of people would find on the outside, who do study dispensationalism in general would find very strange that William Brenn had mixed those two systems in that way. And in short, that's how you end up with a lot of the

contradictions in his interpretations of prophetic symbolism. Sometimes he's using the interpretation out of the millerites for his interpretation of symbolism. And then other times he's going to Derby for his interpretation of symbolism. And so it creates something that's actually very inconsistent. So, you know, definitely we can say something is seriously wrong with William Brenn's dispensationalist teachings. And at the end of the day, once you subtract him and you watch it all fall apart, going back and just peace in which pieces came from where it is a great way to start disentangling all of that and hopefully get back to something that is more sensible

and more in line with something that's kind of not going to make you go crazy, okay? Because that's what the message does, right? It is. You're exactly right, John. And that whole bit about coming up with elite groups, that again is especially common among the millerites, you know.

But then the brethren turned into a pretty nasty cult themselves, right? The exclusive brethren. So all of these groups are cults, right? We're all this stuff originated. The millerites, they're cult. The Jove witnesses, yeah, they're, they're cult. The exclusive brethren with the stuff, the Plymouth Brethren, what Derby came out of, yeah, they're probably the, they're one of the nastiest cults in the world from what I understand. So yeah, all of this stuff did come out of groups that became really ugly cults. So that takes us to our next question. And I will pose this to you, John. Why was William Brandham staying the night with so many homosexuals? Is there more

you know than what you are telling us? Oh boy, here it is. I've been asked this question since probably about 2012. Whenever I began publishing some of the research that strongly suggests that will Imbratum himself could have been homosexual.

Everybody asked me, what do you know, what do you know? And I've taken a lot of heat from, even from the ex-message crowd. Just simply asking the question, makes a lot of people very angry, whether I answered it or not.

What is my opinion? What's really odd about this, Charles, is that there are two courts of judgment, right? In American law, if a person does something, let's say somebody stole your wallet, and you go to the court of law, and there is a film, a camera that recorded somebody stealing the wallet.

That's documented evidence. You can point to the film or the video, and you can say, yes, this person stole the wallet. In that same court of law, if you had a person say, I saw him do it.

Well, that's a witness, and it's really not enough, and you get a second witness, well, I heard somebody say that he stole the wallet. Well, that's hearsay, and then you get 20 people that say, yes, I heard a lot of people were saying that he stole the wallet.

Well, it's still hearsay, and it gets to the point where in American court of law, you cannot be convicted from this. Sometimes, even if it's direct testimony, yes, I saw it. Well, if they can rule out for whatever reason, the witness testimony, they'll try to do this, and they'll get it thrown out, even though there are witnesses that witness the event.

In the Christian court of judgment, it's the mouth of two or three witnesses, was, did this person see it? Yes or no? If you have at least two, where there are two or three witnesses in the Christian court of judgment, that's what you go with, that's enough.

Those are two completely different things. I have chosen purposefully my website research presentations to choose the United States court standard, and that's why you see all the documents that exist on the website. I can point to the document, and if they want to argue with me, that's fine.

I just point them to the document and say, well, your real argument is with the document. It's not with me or my opinion, because here's the document. The document says this. And the problem is, because this is a human nature question.

What they're really trying to get to was William Brandham himself homosexual. They're asking, why did he stay the night? They're trying to ask, was William Brandham homosexual? Well, who's the person who knows what's inside of William Brandham's head?

And he's dead, you can't even ask him. You have to ask people who knew him. And I hate to say, itch, but even if we had a thousand people who said, yes, absolutely, I know William Brannum was this. And you've got all of these witnesses that, according to Christian standards, the mouth of two or three witnesses, most Christians would say, okay, yes, this is probably the case. But if you have a group of people who are indoctrinated to believe that this was the man sent from God, the elite authority, it doesn't matter if you had

a thousand witnesses. They're still going to reject it. So that's why I've chosen the path of what can you document and what can you not. I now know that's a non-answer, but what I will say is this. I have interviewed many witnesses. In fact, you and I interviewed a couple of them who it would meet the Christian standard of a mouth or two or three witnesses.

Had I chosen that route, I probably would have published it. And I still would have got the same backlash either way, right? People are still going to be angry, even if you ask the question, they get angry. So what I'll say is I chose the documented standard and you cannot document what is in a person's head. Is there more that I know than what I'm telling?

Absolutely. There are things that I cannot say. And even if I said them, Charles, people who are indoctrinated in this cult, they're still not going to listen to me. They're just going to say he's lying because I don't have that documented evidence. I know quite a bit.

There are some stories I wish I could tell. I can't. But I know quite a bit. And I'm choosing purposefully to stick with what can I document? What can I prove? Right now. I'll repeat the question. Why was William Brown? I'm staying the night with so many homosexuals. Is there more you know than what you're telling us? And yeah, again, the short answer is yes. There is more that we know. But you know, just like you said, John, we're trying to stick with what we can prove to you by eyewitness testimony and through documentation. And if we do that, if we stick to

what we can prove through eyewitness testimony and photographic evidence, we can prove that one,

there was a significant number of homosexuals in William Brown's inner circle. We can prove two. At least one of those homosexuals was arrested for committing homosexual acts while they're part of William Brown's entourage on one of the strips. We can prove three. William Brown was regularly staying the night and having sleepovers with those men. And we can four prove that William Brown and was sleeping in the same bed as some of those men on those sleepovers. Okay, so those are four things we can prove by eyewitness testimonies, by pictures, photographic evidence, There is no question that those things can be proven by direct eyewitnesses and multiples

of them, including William Brannum's own lips, self-admitting to it, so you've got that. What I would say, John, is that you and I have shown far, far more grace and deference to William Brannum on this topic than the message would show to any other living human being on this topic.

If there was even a half of the evidence against William Brannum, against any other person in the message, that person would be destroyed. That person would be excommunicated. That person would be tarred, feathered, destroyed utterly by the people in the message.

If there was even half the evidence against them, which there is against William Brannum and what you see there is a, that demonstrates a, the utter double standard of people in the message, be the hypocrisy of the leaders and see the utter brainwashing of these people that they will look the other way and pretend like none of those things ever happened or it's not a big deal, right?

Let me repeat again, there is hard documented evidence from eyewitnesses that significant number of people in William Brannum's inner circle homosexuals. At least one of them was arrested for committing homosexual acts while part of his entourage on a trip, that he was regularly staying the night overnight with those people and that he was on occasion sleeping in the same bed as those people.

Those things can all be proven by eyewitness, testimony and photographic evidence. Right, and there's a point D that I'll mention Charles, the fact that the theology is so twisted that the fact that whenever you mention homosexuality, it creates this sudden stir among the people that they think it's an incurable disease and that the person has committed the ultimate sin from which they can never recover.

That's not the way the message, not the way that William Brannum says it in his transcript, but that's the way it has morphed into in his cult of personality. While all other Christians viewed as just those who viewed as sin, they viewed as a sin that let's help the sinner, let's save the sinner, let's support the sinner, let's help them with their sin in the way that we help you with your sin and they help me with my sin, let's help the sinner because we're all sinners saved by grace.

So there's a deeper double standard in that this was a false gospel, it taught a false version of salvation and it was meant to oppress and it was meant to put additional weights on your shoulders that should never have been.

We'll look to William Brannum and his answers on these recordings for their salvation. That's wrong. That's absolutely false. So Charles, the next question is one that's more for you than me, but we have people who are asking this. Could you give another example of William Branham copying conflicting doctrines out of his library books? So I tried to think about a good example to show for this question, and I tried what is probably William Branham's most infamous conflicting statement? And I think his most infamous conflicting statement in the message is whether or not there are seven years or three and a

half years left in the week of Daniel. That is probably, I would say, a very highly disputed dual statement or conflicting statement of William Branham. And so what I did, I just went to his library books, and I'll just show you where these things come from. This is the book, the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation by Euryice Smith. So this is Seven Day Adventists. This is the Millerite version of things. And in this book, for example, which William Branham, we know he had in his library, he talked about reading it. In this book, if you will go to the sections where it talks about these

things, I'll get you some clear pictures. You'll find that they have three and a half years to their week of Daniel left. So that is the Millerite side of things, or the views coming out of William Miller. Here is the book of Daniel by Clarence Larkin. So these teachings are flowing out of John Nelson Derby's view. So this is the Derby views of dispensationalism. And so we also know William Branham had this book. He even said that he read this book on tape when he preached his sermon on the 70th week. He said this was the book he studied actually in the sermon. And if

you open up this book, for example, and you look at it, you'll find that this book goes with the seven years left version of things. Right? So you've got the Derby version of all data Darbyism.

You've got the seven years. You've got the three and a half years coming out of the William Miller and the Miller rights. And William Branham is looking at both. And so what you have is when he preached the version in 1961, I believe he preached the week of Daniel in 61, he was primarily copying from Clarence Larkin's book of Daniel. But then later on, I don't know if he forgot that he copied out of that book or what or maybe he got looking at Uriah Smith's book and started liking the pictures in it. There's a lot nicer pictures in this book. Maybe he liked the pictures

better. I have no idea, right? But for some reason, he then switches over to this book and he's using the symbolism out of this book again. And if you just open these books and look through them, you will find...

that there is so much that he told us that he got from God that he literally just read out of these books. It's incredible, but that's an example of him preaching two contradictory things that caused all kinds of problems in the message, and it just depends on the book. I guess he picked up in his library that day when he went to study the subject before he preached on it, and he just mixed up which book that he used. It's pretty bizarre, and it's really unfortunate and very sad, but if you want to double check William Brandham's sources to figure out which is right for yourself,

well hey, I just told you the two books to go look at. You go figure out which book you think is the right one. Charles, this question was for you. You have the library books. You can see them in the background and the video feeds. I don't have the library books. I know some of what's in them, but the question was for you, but I'm going to answer the actual question because I can tell from this question, this came from a person who was deeply influenced by William Brandham's ministry, and the wrestling with it. The reason I say that, Charles, is because if a man claims to have a

divine inspiration and then gives that divine inspiration, claiming that it came between him and God, and then it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he stole that from somebody else. A person who's never been indoctrinated in this cult of personality or anything similar would just simply say, well, that man is a liar. They're not going to ask another question.

It's not going to matter if you find two. All you have to find is one. If you can find one example of the man claiming to have gotten something from God when he didn't, a normal person who's a quote unquote normal person who has never been in this type of religion, this type of theology, they're just going to run screaming and discredit the whole thing. That man's a liar. He claimed he got something from God and he did not. A better way of saying this here in downtown Louisville, we have the Muhammad Ali Center. Charles, if you and I were to spend some Saturday and go,

maybe we should do this and take our families and spend a Saturday going through the Muhammad Ali museum and we get back on the podcast and suddenly you say, John, last night I had a vision and God spoke to me and said that we all need to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Well, if I've never heard this, I'm going to think, okay, that's pretty weird. But if I know Muhammad Ali and I know that was one of his famous quotes, I'm going to say, no, you saw that in the Muhammad Ali Center and I'm not going to believe another thing that you say if you tell me that you got this from God, right? That's just the way this works.

another example is that the halo we've got you can read through the comment feeds we've got this one person that continually asked the same question we know that so many parts of William Brannem's story are proven false beyond the shadow of a doubt absolutely proven false and a person who's never been involved in this religion if they look at that photograph they're not immediately going to think oh he's got a halo instead doing a thing there's something wrong with that photo either that's capturing a light or somebody has taken a photograph with a faulty camera and we even have evidence of the man

who held the camera the man who snapped that photograph said he believed that his camera was faulty and that it was taken a picture that should not have been there now we've given all of the evidence and you can decide for yourself if you're in this cult you're probably still going to have the question forever but if you weren't you're not going to ask you're not even going to ask this question this is not a question that comes to your mind so in my opinion this this question Charles you could give a thousand exam in fact how many we've

probably given a hundred examples of William Brannem copying plagiarizing stealing lying cheating it's not gonna matter you could give a thousand and if you're of the mindset that this was a man sent from God it's not gonna matter you say well you'll say okay that one was false but he said this other thing and that one was false well he said this other thing and that will just continue until you're able to get that brainwashing out of your head so for me my my non-answer since I don't have the library books is that you know you have to

deprogram first before some of these questions will even make sense which Charles we've we've gone about an hour we we've got so many questions we're probably gonna split this up so I will have you know it's gonna look like we're continuing the podcast you and I will actually record but we'll split this up so that it's digestible to the people who are listening on the audio feeds and then on the video feeds we'll split it up even further to make this more digestible and we'll we'll come back next week and we'll get some get some

additional questions and hopefully we'll answer the deep burning questions that people are sending to us so if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at William-Brandom.org and christian-church.org for an overview of the historical research of William-Brandom and the healing revivals read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William-Brandom in his message available on Amazon Kindle and Audible join us again next week we've got great episode coming.