Questions and Answers Part 2

Hello, 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 2 healing revivals. Charles, last week we went through a lot of questions and we still have a stack of questions. We're recording all of this in one big segment but we're splitting it up so that people have a easier time digesting it and we're hopefully right now you and I are taking a nice vacation from all of this while everybody else is thinking through the questions and I'm certain that there are people who are seeing the questions they want to send us more but hey we're

on vacation right? That's funny John, yeah what it's the end of August so it will probably be the end of October and November before some of these episodes come out that we recorded were so far ahead with some of this stuff so yeah so we've got a our first exciting question today and I'm really glad to have the opportunity to ask the questions because we have we've had lots of people send in questions throughout the series and a lot of them we've answered privately or direct them to episodes where we've already answered the questions but some of these ones that are

unique or maybe clarifying questions I'm glad to touch on and the first question we have here today is are there any books in William Brownham's library which say Eve was designed by the devil?

Yeah Charles that is definitely a question for you you're the one with the library I'm the one that has guitars in my background so definitely one for you but to give some background on the question itself this comes from the marriage and divorce sermon that we previously examined William Brownham gives this very evil statement that Satan and Jesus were co-equal he used the word co-equal and he said that during the creation William Brownham's twisted version of the creation story was that Eve was Zined by the devil, purposefully to deceive the man, and you have the book, so I'll let

you answer the actual question, but there is one interesting tidbit that I'll give, that thoroughly shocked me whenever I first began to deprogram and get into actual Bible study. And it's learning the phrasalogy of the King's, the King James version of the Bible, learning how words change their meaning over time.

It's not that it's right or wrong, it's that the time it was written, the language was slightly different, and you can look these up, you know, words that have shifted over time, especially from the date in which the King James version was written, but one of the words that has slightly changed is the word rib.

The Bible says that male and female created he, God, them, Adam and Eve, and they were created as one, and then in the King James version it said God took the rib and created Eve.

The common unstudied version of this in Christianity, which wasn't centralized to William Brannum, but to Christians in general was that it was God reaching in and grabbing an actual bone and from that bone created the woman.

And that's where William Brannum got this false notion that she was the lesser creature because it was just, it was the bone, right? But the Bible says bone of my bone flesh of my flesh.

The word rib meant the same thing as side. And you can find this if you go back and read some of the old books where it's talking about the side of a hill, for example, it would say the rib of a hill and it's talking about a side of something.

And if you understand what it truly is saying in the ancient languages, it means that there was a single being that split into two beings and that was Adam and Eve. And from there, there's different schools of theology on the status of women, which I'm not going to get into that at all.

But from its inception, God designed Adam and Eve and it said male and female created he, God created he, them, this being. And then they split into two. And from there, I'll let you pick up because where William Brannum went with it is so anti-biblical that there's not a word that describes how evil this was.

Right. It is so strange what William Brannum did with this, but yeah, basically he taught in that sermon that women were designed by the devil. And that was a thus say at the Lord's sermon that he said he got in a supernatural experience when he was up in a mountain shortly before he preached it.

And so, of course, some people believe that was, you know, some great new revelation. So, the question here is, was the head in one of William Brandt's library books, or was this really some great revelation that he received from God?

Which, of course, all you got to do is go read the accountant Genesis, and realize Eve was not designed by the devil, and that just tears all that to part. But as far as where it could have came from, so there are, in William Brandt's possession, were several of the books of the apocrypha.

We know, for sure, William Brandt did have access to that, because he actually read direct quotes out of some of those books of the apocrypha at times in Assermin. So, I think the most obvious one is that he read it times out of the book of Enoch, for example.

And so, he made multiple times he would quote out of the book of Enoch in Assermin. So, we know, for sure, he did have the books of the apocrypha. And one of the books of the apocrypha is called The Origin of the World.

And in that book, Eve was created by evil forces. And that basic premise that Eve was created by evil forces can be found in a number of different gnostic writing. And of course, that is all heresy.

All right, gnosticism was the very first heresy in the church, and it was condemned by the Apostle John in the Bible itself. And so, for William Brandt to incorporate ideas that had been debunked by the Apostle John, and by, you know, Aaron As in the first generation of church fathers is really problematic.

But yeah, it's possible he got those ideas out of the gnostic apocrypha, or at least the general concept of it. And we know that William Brandt also is descended from British Israel ideology as well, right?

And we know that some of the early British Israelite prophetesses, and some of the early British Israelite leaders going back to the late 1700s, and into the early 1800s, they themselves actually were directly incorporating gnosticism purposefully. They had got a hold of some of these books of apocrypha, and were directly incorporating gnostic ideas into some of their British Israel ideas.

And so, you actually have a stream of gnosticism that comes into British Israelism through that route directly through the apocrypha, through those prophetesses. And it's possible that William Brandt picked some of this up through, you know, just the other people who believe some of this stuff among the British Israel crowd.

And may have not even realized it was not, you know, gnostic apocrypha, because of course none of them are saying, hey, I'm teaching you gnosticism. They're saying, hey, I'm teaching you this great revelation, which someone secretly copied out of a gnostic book, you know, 100 years ago.

So it's really unfortunate. stuff. Yeah, it's, it's an interesting study and for anybody who's able to do this, not everybody is able, but for those who are able, I highly recommend reading earnaices against heresies and not just reading the book because it's a very challenging read. But as you read the book, also read and understand the cultures that he's talking about, the time periods that he's talking about, the religious belief systems that he's talking about, and not just for William Bran was message call, but for many similar cults that developed from the laterane movement, you're going to find that against heresies identifies almost every

secret knowledge, secret mystery that they bring you because that's, that's what it was. It was heresy, it was introduced into the church, and these men, whether they read it and they're copying directly or they heard it from other sources that were copying, they're basically just regurgitating nosticism and they're putting it into new and twisted different ideas that match today's time. And if Irenaeus were to stand up today and write another book, you know, would identify all of these cults and say, that's a heresy, that's a heresy, that's a heresy, and it matches this book of heresy that I wrote back in the ancient world,

right? So it's a fascinating study. Not everybody can do it because it is very time-consuming. I did it as a, as a means to try to understand what, what I was in in the framework of how it created and morphed into the cult that existed. I started this like 2013 and it took a long time to go through it. So I highly recommend that. The next one, the next question kind of goes with this, it's a, for me, understanding the culture is not only fascinating, I love documentaries, I could sit and watch National Geographical day long, but understanding the cultures as it relates

to how false these movements are, I think is very critical. And that's, this question for me is probably out of all of them, it's my favorite question, which I'll ask you and let you start.

Why does the message teach against wearing earrings? Well, John, so the message like the rest of Pentecostalism is descended from the higher life movement. And the higher life movement is the basic framework of the holiness and sanctification ideas that was held in early Pentecostalism and then into the message. But if you actually step back to that movement and you look at how it looked at those things, there wasn't really a specific ban on earrings, there was a ban on jewelry in general.

So it's a little bit, it's a little bit odd, the way that they would use logic to ban earrings is the same scriptural that they would use to ban all jewelry. So is there a verse in the Bible that says, don't wear earrings, but do wear wedding rings, right? It's not there, right? The verses you would really have to use to ration out your way into banning, that sort of thing would ultimately lead you to the banning of all jewelry, which is what the higher life movement did. And so anyways, where does that idea come from? It's a holdover from the messages ideas that it imported from

Pentecostalism, which imported from the higher life movement that came before. Now, I think one very interesting thing, John, on this topic, which I think is probably worth pointing out here, is that the message teaches us that we believe the holiness and sanctification teachings of John Wesley. That's not true. The message does not teach the Wesley and the classical Wesley inversion of holiness and sanctification. The message teaches the higher life version of sanctification and holiness. And that is such a thing that when I figured this out, it just blew my mind. And I'm sure if you're in the messages as blow in your mind too, if you're in the message today, you

do not believe the Wesley inversion of sanctification and holiness. You believe the higher life version of sanctification and holiness, okay? And here I have complete volumes of all of John Wesley sermons. I think I have read literally every sermon John Wesley ever preached. I know exactly what John Wesley taught on holiness and sanctification. And I'm telling you, the message does not teach the Wesley inversion of holiness and sanctification. It teaches the higher life version. And what happened is, you know, in the roughly the century after John Wesley died, you have the, you know, 50, 75

years after he's gone. The higher life movement grows out of Wesley and teachings. But the higher life movement changed several significant features of John Wesley's teachings. John Wesley would actually condemn the higher life version of holiness and sanctification. What you find is some of the significant things that the higher life version, higher life movement changed is one, they changed from progressive sanctification to instant sanctification. So John Wesley taught, you know, you progressively become more sanctified over time. And then, you know, at by the end of your life, you are, you know, as sanctified as you can be, whereas the higher life movement moves into this idea

that you're instantly and immediately fully and totally sanctified. And you live in instant sinless perfection the rest of your life from the moment you're saved, right? That is the higher life idea. That is not a teaching of classical Wesleyanism. The other significant thing that they changed is this, the very definition of what holiness itself is. So John Wesley taught what you'd call outward holiness and inward holiness. And John Wesley taught thought that inward holiness is the real true holiness, and then outward holiness is not actually real holiness. That is just a good faith effort to emulate on the outside the true

genuine holiness, which is on the inside. And then that's when he developed his methods, which is Methodist, right? He developed his methods in order to how to show outward holiness, you know, based on your true genuine inward holiness. And those methods are largely based on cultural norms. And so over time, those methods can change because those methods are not really based in scripture. They're just based on practical implementation of these things. And so, but what you get with the higher life movement is they actually switch it up so that the outward holiness is just as critical to genuine holiness is inward holiness,

which again, we're down a rabbit hole on this thing. But the point being, the message does not teach classical, Wesleyan sanctification or holiness, John Wesley actually would condemn the message version of sanctification and holiness were here today. The message teaches the higher life version of sanctification and holiness.

I avoid theology unless it's blatantly false. It was blatantly false. And the message or something similar has taught it, I'll bring it up just simply because it's blatantly false. And I avoid the ones that can be argued to no end. I avoid those. But this about earrings is blatantly false. In the message, I'm sure you heard it in your sect as well as mine. But we were told that those were the quote unquote devil's stirrups. If a woman had that, they had her ear bored with an all if she got the little piercing. And my wife,

I remember when she got her ears pierced, this was a big deal. It took a long, long time years before she broke free from that bondage that and it's false doctrine blatantly false doctrine that earrings was the devil's stirrups and you're going to hell if you do it. What's fascinating for this about this for me is that understanding the culture is part of the freedom. If you're indoctrinated with something that's blatantly false and then you understand the culture, well, then you understand why it's blatantly false and understanding the why is what's key to freeing yourself from the bondage that these men have placed you

under. We did a similar study on the hair, right? The message taught that if you cut your hair, some message sex believe that you're doomed to hell. That's it. As soon as you cut the hair, even if you accidentally cut your hair, there are girls that live in mortal fear that somebody is going to accidentally cut their hair and they'll go to hell, because that's how bad these men have manipulated the doctrine.

And they're not telling you that in the ancient culture, the women among the children of Israel for mourning would shave their heads. That's actually mentioned in the Bible. You shaved your head as a means to mourn.

Well, I can assure you that your head's completely shaved. You're still going to have short hair. It's the same as cutting, but it's completely shaved. And that was part of the customs. Now earrings, it falls into a different category of holiness.

Like you said, it's more, it's not so much about the earrings where William Brannum heard it. It's about the jewelry itself. And that's not limited to the message that's not limited to Pentecostalism. That's limited to people who were poor studies of the Bible who got into positions of limited power in the sects of Christianity that they created.

And I say that because had they understood the culture and all of the passages about modesty. And I mentioned this also in a previous question about how some of the words and verbage has changed over time from the King James English.

But the word modesty for its era, whenever these new doctrines of Christian modesty were being reintroduced, modesty at that point in time meant showing flesh. If you were im modest, you were showing your flesh, but it was much broader than this.

The doctrine of the jewelry fell into the godliness, your im modest because you were showing too much of your wealth, your flaunting it basically. And so then that turned into, let's not show any jewelry.

Your women are not allowed to have jewelry. And it's another question for another day about how some of these doctrines are literally designed to control the women specifically because you don't have too many men wearing a lot of jewelry.

For me, this whole thing is undone whenever you understand the difference between the gospel and what is taught in these cults, which is a variation of the law. And Galatians, it says, if you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law and it talks about, it's Corinthians, it talks about the letter of the law leads to the death of the soul.

These men who don't understand the Bible itself, they had to have read this. I'm a little shocked that this developed into a devil, stirrups doctrine. If any man who taught that has actually read the Bible, they know that in Ezekiel 16 Whenever God is referring to Jerusalem as his bride, it talks about how God adorned his bride to make the bride beautiful.

And it says specifically, I put an embroidered dress, so a fancy dress, and sandals on you, and fine leather, so expensive dress. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments, so very expensive.

I adorned you with jewelry, and it goes on to say I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck. So lots of jewelry, and it says I put a ring in your nose, in earrings on your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head.

You adorned with gold and silver, your clothes were a fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth, and it goes on and on to say it's talking about anointing with food and honey and oils, and all of the ancient custom.

The ancient custom at that time, if you were among the very wealthy, it included makeup, and included eye shadows, etc. In the ancient world, there were the sellers of purple. This was a purple dye that they could put on their face.

I can't remember who it was. Someone in the New Testament actually was a seller of purple, and that was a dye that they put that they used for makeup. So you've got this fascinating study, but to bring it back in, why does the message teach against wearing earrings?

It's because they've taken the modesty doctrines that had transitioned to such that you could not wear jewelry, and then because it's an elitist cult, they want to do, say that they're better than the other Christians, so they have a better version of modesty.

And that better version included no wearing earrings, and they ridicule heavily ridicule women for wearing them. I've heard it in multiple sermons and multiple churches in the message cult. And yet God put expensive jewelry with a nose ring, Charles, and earrings on the bride, which is symbolically referring to Jerusalem.

I can guarantee you that if a girl were to show up with a nose ring and any one of the churches that I grew up in, she would be ran out of the church.

That's how God dressed up the bride. Yeah, we might be able to give a shout out here, John. There is a group out there called Berean Holiness. They've got a website out there where they actually deep dive quite a few of these topics in a very thoughtful way that I think might be helpful to people exiting the message.

So you know, you might go check that out. out and find some really good detailed analysis of these topics. So obviously it's more than we can go in here in any sort of a in depth or deep way to look at that.

But yeah, in a nutshell, the message inherited is teachings from the higher life movement, which there's a lot of other movements that also inherited those teachings from there as well. And so yeah, that is the answer to that question.

So I can move us on to the next one. And the next question is, we would like to know more about me to Brannum. Was she really this person who stayed in the background?

What was her life like after William Brannum died? And what did she do and where did she live and when did she die? You know, my family was very close to the Brannum family.

And my aunts and uncles spent a great deal of time in the Brannum home in Jeffersonville, and then also the Brannum home in Tucson. And you know, this question is from a, I'm certain this was from my person who was in the message and they're more curious about did she believe in the same way that the message believes today?

That's really, I'm trying to read this question and read the heart of it. Because how do you answer a question? We would like to know, I'd like to know more about you Charles. Where do you begin, right?

You could go on for five hours and talk about Charles. So for me to Brannum, you know, I can say that and it's evident from the pictures, you can tell that she wasn't as invested in how the cult progressed into a cult.

She was a different person, I think, than what the cult has presented her as. And I can say that was some certainty because of the way in which my family described her. Can that be documented?

None of it can. I mean, this whole question can't be documented. So I'm kind of stringing into the hearsay category which I do avoid, but what can be documented if you read Sarah Brannum's letter?

It gives you some insight into the way me to thought about the cult in general. And how she tried to distance herself from it. The cult had different versions as we've examined in this podcast.

It was a lettering message that after William Brannum died, it transitioned into a legacy cult, a legacy message. I don't see her, at least from what I know about her. I don't see her as joining into the legacy cult.

She was more about, you know, when he was alive. That version of the message, the, probably not even the last version of a stage persona, but shortly before that, before he appears to have completely lost her mind.

I think she was more. vested in that, as I understand her, then her whole world was shattered. When William Brannum was diagnosed and he mentions this on recording about being diagnosed with an incurable mental health disorder, her world was shattered.

I mean, his life began to change, the cult began to change, it all became more destructive, and she's caught in the middle of this mess. That's how I see her as being. But there's no real way to answer this question other than, you know, I've heard these things and that's really all I can share.

Right John, and it's the same for me, you know, there's not a lot of documentation out there on Mita because obviously everything in the cult is around her husband, William Brannum. So there's just not a lot on her.

Now we do have video over, right, in the 20th century profit video. We have a little bit here and there, but for the most part, you know, everything we would know or say about her is just things that have been repeated to it.

Now she passed away in 1981, right? So you know, there's not a whole lot of overlap, you know, with her lifetime and ours, be able to give too much information, but she, you know, I've heard quite a bit about her from people who didn't know her.

I would say she was William Billy Paul's babysitter back in the, you know, the early days after Hope died. She became Billy Paul's babysitter is the story. And she would be depending on which of William Brannum's birthdays is the right one.

She would be between 10 and 13 years younger than William Brannum. And if you look at the pictures, I'll say she looks significantly younger than that in some of the pictures. She looks a good bit younger than him, but when they got married, William Brannum would have been in his 30s.

She would have been, I think, 22. And so, you know, they had a significant age difference between them anyway. You know, through the years that he traveled a lot, I never, I never heard, I really haven't heard a single bad thing about Sister Brannum.

I heard only positive things. I heard her nerves were somewhat afraid. She was a bit of a nervous condition, right? So, which kind of comes with living in a, maybe a high-pressure environment. I've also, you know, noticed from, you know, the photographs and the pictures of her.

You see that she is a, a well-dressed woman. She, she is, she's definitely cutting her hair. I'll say that from the pictures, right? You can tell from the pictures she is not certainly living the extreme end of the message, holiness rules.

You could say it that way. And then, from, from what I know after, after William Brannum died, yes, she was not happy with the state of the message. all the way for the rest of her life.

She was not happy with what was going on at the Brannem Tabernacle by a long shot. She and the Faction River family actually fell a ship quite a bit with our church. And as long as she was living, there was still somewhat peace between our church and our sect and the main sect there in the Brannem Tabernacle.

But after she died, that's when the claws really came out between Raymond Jackson and your grandfather, John. But she was in one sense, I feel like she was the reason that peace was maintained as long as it was.

So, you know, there's that aspect. And again, some of this is just my opinion based on things I've heard. So, you know, you might have a different opinion, someone else out there. I would also say, John, based on everything I know with how unhappy she was supposed to be about the state of the message in the final years of her life, I think it's very fair to say that if Sister Brannem was still living today, she would probably be with Sarah Brannem, wherever Sarah Brannem is.

And she would not be, she would not be absolutely not around the main sect or any sect. I can't, I just can't see that myself. If she was, I mean, she'd be given Joseph a spanking probably.

But yeah, that would be my thoughts, John, on Sister Brannem. Yeah. And again, I try to avoid hearsay and opinion. It's evident from the photographs that the life that the family lived was not the same as the life that the stage persona presented.

You know, if you, there's one photograph in particular, and I'll try to put it up on the video feed, but these people were dressing with the latest fashions. While William Brannem is heavily blasting anyone who's dressing with the latest fashions.

Like you said, the hair appears to have been a lot shorter than it should have been. And you know, the knees are uncovered. The women are wearing dresses that are edging very closely towards a mini skirt.

In our, our sect of the message, Charles, if you showed your knees, the minister would actually rail you right in front of everyone who's in the audience and talk about how you were such a scandal of a woman.

It was beyond a scandal skirt. A scandal skirt in my sect of the message, if you had a little slit in the back, even if you're not even showing the calves of your leg.

It had to be a skirt that went down and the calves of your leg could not even be displayed because modesty, they were trying to make this connection between skin, but that's not the way me to Brannem and William Brannem's daughters live.

They wore skirts that actually showed the knees. They had sleeveless tops. And in my sect of the message, if you showed your, your... shoulders. You are a harlot. You are a prostitute. And I'm not going to go too far into that because I don't want to create any sort of conflict. But I will say that a lot of the doctrines that exist today come from the male side of that family. And they know they grew up with their sisters. They grew up with their mother. They know how it was. But they have found a means

to manipulate and to control. And the way that you do this is the more weights of burden that you can stack upon the Christians and just create an overbearing religion that is legalism, hyper-legalism. That's what these men create. That's not the way that they lived.

Next question. Charles William Brownham, this is a question for you, more than me, because this is probably going to get more into the books. But William Brownham said that believers were divided into three categories, true believers, make believers, and unbelievers.

Can you tell us where William Brownham got that? John, that is actually just a fairly common saying among evangelical Christianity back at the turn of the century, coming out of the 1800s and the 1900s. It's just a fairly widespread term. And you just make a quick survey of religious or Christian literature from that period. You'll find that term scattered throughout. I mean, for example, I can, here's an example I can show you where that language was used in Sunday School lessons from the Sunday School book in 1911. So this language existed before William Brownham was born. It is just kind of common language that was out there among Christians.

Now, somewhere along the way, where did William Brownham get that from? Did he read it out of one of these books? I don't know. I think more likely he just picked it up, listening to other preachers and other people out in Christianity. As he grew up or as his ministry progress, he heard someone else say it and he liked it and he repeated it. But, point being, it's just, it's a fairly common phrase. It's not unique or special to the message in any way. And it predates the message. Right. And I'll go a step further because, like you said,

it predates the message and it's somewhat widespread. Not everybody who does this has an evil mind. But I will say this. We see this in politics. And I'm going to avoid names of politicians because we'll get backlash. But if you have a politician who has a very narcissistic personality, one of the tools of manipulation that narcissists use is they will take groups of people.

who are supposed to be their supporters, their devotees. And they'll try to say that there is unbelief among you. Some of you are true believers of me. Some of you are not. And what it does to the crowd of people, it makes them want to be even more zealous towards whatever is the agenda.

They say, oh, I hope it's not me. I hope I'm not the middle category. I don't want to be that. I want to be a true believer. I don't want to be an unbeliever.

In the end, there aren't three. There are really only two. You either believe or you don't. An unbeliever is a make believer and a make believer is an unbeliever there. There's only two categories.

But if you want to drive a wedge into the crowd and say, I want you to be hyper vigilant. That's what you do. That's the way you do this. That's the way that they manipulate you.

They try to put this fear in your heart that you might be the one who's unbeliever. And so, or a make believer, they want to make you feel like you're not doing good enough.

And that's the tool of manipulation that was used here. You know, the way William Brandham sets that up, you know, that you have this category of make believers. I know where I come from.

This sets up all kinds of witch hunts, John, because you're always trying to find to make believer among you, right? We had the belief in our sect of the message that we had to purge out all the make believers, slash tears, slash, you know, lower class Christians before the end of days could happen.

And so, there's just a constant desire to discover the make believers among you and mercilessly crush them and run them out of the church. And so, there's just endless witch hunts against people. And you know, that is so, it's so messed up, you know, what the way William Brandham introduced this stuff.

And all of the people, I mean, it's just that it's heard and damaged, right? I mean, and I'm not talking about, you know, make believer, you know, they're obviously living a very immoral lifestyle or something, but make believer in the sense of you secretly disagree with some obscure doctrine of the message.

You are a make believer. We must find you and destroy you, right? Like, it's like that. And it's so bizarre. It is so bizarre how the message does that and just destroys people's homes and lives, you know, on these make believer purge quests.

I don't know if you had that where you come from, but purging the make believers, that's the phrase I'm using here. It was a common theme and feature of our sect of the message.

Absolutely. All right, John, so that takes us to the next question. It is some people talk about the permissive will of God and the perfect will of God. Can you tell me where that comes from?

I have all the questions in here, Charles. This is, to me, this is the funniest one. Because being in the cult royalty and seeing how things work, I'm certain that you know this as well as me.

So I'm glad I get to answer it first so that I can call it out. But to somebody who is seeing the perfect will and the quote unquote permissive will of God from this type of religion, the permissive will is whenever you want to do something that violates all cult rules.

I'm in the permissive will of God. God gave me this permissive will so I can watch television so that I can see the news and preach it to you. I saw it in a hotel room.

I mean, there's no end to how you can abuse the permissive will of God. If you're a minister, it is your get out of jail free card. That's all this is. And you know, there are some biblical examples of the permissive will of God.

I'm not talking about that. You theologians who you're watching or listening. I know that you'll come back and you say, but there are things that exist. I'm talking specifically about the way the cult abuses this phrase so that they can do whatever it is that they want if you are the cult elite.

Yeah, so I would say the basis of where those things come from is really lies in the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism, right? So I think Calvinism would tell you there is no such thing as the permissive will of God.

There's only the perfect will of God. And then the Arminian would say, you know, you have both. You have the perfect and permissive. So this really comes back to the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism.

And what is so bizarre, John, I'm not gonna analyze what's right or what's wrong there, but what I'll point out to you is that the message believes in both. Very bizarrely, because William Brown top both.

The message is both Calvinist and Arminian at the same time. Okay, I'm sure we just exploded the heads of every rational listener out there. The message is Calvinist and Arminian at the same time.

The message believes in conditional election and unconditional election at the same time. The message believes in predestination, you know, total full predestination and total full free will at the same time, right? And so you're, and they believe, and John, this is really cognitive dissonance.

They believe they have reconciled all of that. When the truth is, they have just cognitive dissonantly make, think they have reconciled it all, right? They have not. They are, I mean, it's, so William Brown top both.

And what you really end up with is this massive circle of a loop where your Calvinist and then you come, oh, now I'm Arminian and I'm Calvinist and you just end up in this loop that never ends with any solid conclusion.

and it's just pure circular stuff. And the message does not really teach or have concepts any way that I ever heard taught, or I don't really think even William Brown taught that much on, like the sovereignty of God or even free will.

Like these are topics that are not dealt with in depth in any sort of way in the message. It's very shallow what the message teaches, and that's how they get away with being both Calvinist and Armenian at the exact same time.

And what you end up with, you even have some preachers who air on the side of Calvinism, you have some of the air on the side of Armenianism, and you get these really bizarre, contradictory stuff that happens in the message.

Anyway, so back to the permissive and perfect will of God. Yeah, so obviously the idea of permissive will of God leans on the Armenian side of things.

So within the message you'll have people who will believe that, yes, there is a perfect and permissive will of God. And then at the same time they'll believe, no, there's not a perfect and permissive will of God.

So you get this really weird, sometimes they'll use different terminology to work their way around those words, but where does it come from? It comes from Calvinism and Armenianism. That's where that stuff comes from.

And there's one other point that I'll make. It's also a good means for a minister in this type of religion to get out of apologizing. An example of this, I don't know, it was the same in your sect, but in the main sect, whenever Bill Clinton was president, there was this wide movement saying that he was being controlled and manipulated by Hillary.

And therefore, Hillary was the fulfillment of William Brannum's female president prophecy, which is completely absurd, but that was the theology that was spewing forth out of the platforms that in the message when I grew up.

And then afterwards, there was this sudden lol where there's nothing that even resembles a female president. Well, there was the way in which some of these men will backtrack is they'll say, well, we as a nation are now entering the permissive will of God.

God is permitting us to continue. Even though we should have been raptured then, the world should have been burned. The nation is under the permissive will of God. And they'll spin it in a way in which they can say that, I was wrong, but I'm not going to say I'm wrong.

So the next question, Charles, we were taught that there were different classes of Christians, the bride of Christ, the wise virgins, the foolish virgins, the 144,000. the sheep, the goats, and so on. Where did these ideas come from? And are they part of historic Christianity?

Well, John, most of historic Christianity is kind of what we talked about with the different classes of believers. There's really only believers and unbelievers. There's really only save and unsaved in historic Christianity. The idea of a class system in Christianity is not part of the historic teachings of the church. No. Now, I think most Christianity does believe that there is differences in rewards in heaven. So, you know, some people maybe get a bigger reward for whatever reasons in heaven than other people, but as far as that amounting to a heavenly class system, no, nobody believed in that ever. No, I mean, as far as historic Christianity, where does that

idea come from? Where does that stuff come from? Well, that actually evolved actually during the days of British Israel. That is where that came from. You had people who, you know, especially as it moved into the United States. We're using this ideology to justify the maintenance of a class system, a class hierarchy, you know, where you had an elite or ruling class, you had a working class, you had a slave class. And so, in order to justify their class system here on earth, they went in the Bible and they invented a heavenly class system, right? Where, you know, people

would be servants for all eternity or your reward in heaven would get to be someone else's slave, like, you know, they came up with stuff like that. And so, it was really just to justify the, you know, an earthly class system, they invented the heavenly class system. Now, here's the thing, you know, you go to the Bible, for example, Paul says, you know, there's neither, there's neither June or Greek, there's neither male nor female, there's neither bond nor free. So, you really get the picture in scripture that there is no sort of a class system within the confines of Christianity.

And then, you know, the last party says there, Paul, there's neither bond nor free. There's no hierarchy in heaven. There's no bond or free. There's no, there's no higher ups that you report up to, right? That just does not exist in that way. There's not going to be a heavenly class system in heaven where you're reporting up a tree, you know, up a pyramid structure and the people at the bottom are the slaves, the people on top. And so, that, like I said, evolved in British Israelism originally as part of justifications for, you know, a class system, which was, you know,

the British Empire was very heavily class-based at the time. And then it went into overdrive with the Christian identity. the Christian identity movement took it and made it not just simply class but racial in a lot of ways.

And so the messages teachings on those things do not really come from, like it don't come from Job witnesses, it don't come from Adventism, it don't come from Baptists, or don't really come from any of those things, where those ideas come from, the place that you found that they were pioneered and developed was within British Israelism and the Christian identity movement.

And that is exactly where the message imported those ideas from. I think understanding how deeply British Israelism influenced Pentecostalism and fundamentalist Christianity back in the early 1900s, I think that's key to understanding all of this because whenever you mention the 144,000 and try to say that this is in any way shape or form applying to Christians, men who understand the covenants, usually who have been trained under schools of theology, but men who understand the covenants just simply reading the book of Hebrews will tell you there's a old covenant, there's a new covenant, and the old covenant had failed and now we've entered into a new covenant,

that there's this separation, there is a clear separation between the old covenant law and the new covenant of grace, men who tried to adopt this British Israelism idea, they did so by taking specific passages out of the old covenant that applied to the Jews, that applied to the children of Israel, and they tried to take each one of those passages and then point it to something in the 20th century.

And by doing so, they ripped it out of context, a good example of this, William Branham did this too, he said that in, he was driving through Chicago, and he had this vision of Nahum, Nahum was talking about Chicago when he talked about the chariots running to and fro.

Well, no, that's not true, if you read the book of Nahum, it clearly identifies Nineveh as the target of that prophecy, but Pentecostalism had this very bad idea, and I can say that with full assurance, it was a bad idea that you could take a word or phrase, and you could build a theology on top of it without considering the context of the verses before and the verses after.

Because by doing so, you could take any book, and you could make the book say anything that you wanted. I could say that Charles was the president last year, if I were to take a book that's talking about the president and has the word Charles in it, and just read one single sentence, you know, you can make a book say anything that you want if you rip it out of context.

context. And at its core, this question, the different classes of Christians, what it's referring to specifically is different passages with different phrases that were applied to different genres of biblical text, some were prophecy, some were law, some were poetry.

I mean, there's different classes of text. And what they have done is these men tried to apply that to the 20th century. And then along comes William Bratham, who is picking and choosing different doctrines from different men, many of which were manipulated to believe British's realism, and then claiming it as divine prophecy or divine inspired doctrine.

And it was just plagiarizing all of this. And at its core, it was false. And so what I'm trying to say is he was building upon false theology to introduce additional false theology. And that's really the core of what this is.

Right. And at the end of the day, this is the root of where all of the elitism ideas of the message come from. We're the bride, or we're the wise virgins, or we're this that or the other. That's really what it serves in the message is to feed in to the idea that there is an elite class of Christians, rather than what Paul says, there's neither free nor bond. They introduce this sort of a hierarchy. So very, very strange, really, what they do with this to some extent. And I think the majority of Christianity would find it to be rather

bizarre. And the truth is, the only other group of people out there that you're really going to find like that is other groups that have also been influenced by British israelism. Do you have witnesses have it to a degree? You'll find it in Christian identity theology.

You'll find it among some of the other British israel groups out there, Herbert Armstrong's groups, for example. These are the only groups out there that have these ideas really of a heavenly class system. So moving on to the next question. It is, could you talk about all the people who claim to be Elijah before William Branham, and where they got that idea from?

The Elijah study, it's actually related to the previous question, Charles. Without British israelism, you can't have this Elijah notion. You have to take the passages of biblical texts that applied to the Jews and you have to twist it into the 20th century. And so everything that we said in the last question really is the same as this question because it's ripped out of context and there were other people.

One of the first studies that I began was in this book, Jim Jones, The Malachi 4 Elijah Prophecy. I was just curious for myself how many other people claimed to be Elijah, and I was a little shocked when I learned how many there were, but then the question began to form how many of those were in direct succession leading up to William Brannum, and obviously John Alexander Dowie is the biggest one.

He was the most famous Elijah that I'll probably say has ever existed since the original Elijah, and he might have been more famous than the original Elijah. John Alexander Dowie was the American Elijah.

He was the prototype. When he began to lose control of his, he had to annex an entire city for his cult of personality, and when he lost control of that city. There were millions of dollars flowing through this, so you had this sudden swarm of other men who wanted to, quote, unquote, claim the mantle of Elijah, and they didn't call it that back then, but that's essentially what it was.

One of the men who came was Charles Fox Parum, and he actually seized control of Zion's city, at least part of it for a period of time, before they ran him out. But there's this clear succession of Elijah men.

Jim Jones, he was in this message, called, he learned from Brannum, and then he, you can find some, it's mentioned in the book, I don't have it in front of me, you can find some quotes where people in his divine healing lines are talking to him as Elijah.

So there is a succession of men, there were many people, this was not anything new. And there's this, there's this one newspaper article that I'll pull up for the video. It's titled The Religious Graphitor, and it reads, of all the grafters, the religious grafter, or the self-appointed Messiah, or Elijah, or Daniel, or Israel, or Adam, is the meanest.

The religious graft is also one of the most profitable, and hitherto has been comparatively safe con games to play. From the time immoral, smooth, tongueed, consciouslessness individual has been able to gather about him a lot of weak-minded people who were prepared to accept as gospel truth, all that he said and was willing to do all that he commanded, them to do even to discarding clothing and living as the savages lived.

So this was a problem that was so widespread, men claiming to be Elijah and these other This was such a problem that in 1911, this article is dated 1911, as early as 1911, there had been so many that at least this journalist said, we've had enough.

There are so many con men out there, when are you people going to wake up and realize that when somebody makes this claim, they're probably out to get you. And Charles, I can assure you, if you were to suddenly claim to be Elijah and go into a church service somewhere and stand up and say, God spoke through me and said, I am in the Elijah the Prophet, follow me.

Most people are not going to follow you. They have to be first manipulated to believe you, then brainwashed, then they follow you. Right. That's what will your brand of did himself, right? He didn't come on saying, hey, I'm Elijah, guys, come follow me.

He spent decades and years out doing his stuff and then kind of introduced that publicly, you know, and his time went by. Yeah, the idea, you know, that this Elijah is going to come back and all the people that claim, but that is a really big topic, more than we can, you know, fully digest right here, but I'll try to give just a quick overview too.

You know, the idea that Elijah would return has been around for a really long time. I mean, it goes back to Judaism itself. Judaism itself expects the return of Elijah before the end of days.

So, you know, that idea preexists even Christianity. So it's a really old idea. It's how the book, that's how the Old Testament ends, right? Basically, Elijah's coming back. That's how the Jewish Old Testament ends.

So it's a really old idea. And if you're tracing, you know, tracing how it came into the message, you've got to go back to the 1700s. John Darby took that Malachi 4 prophecy and he began applying it to one of the two witnesses of Revelation, believing that Elijah would come back, you know, at the end of days.

And he taught that he would be coming back to Israel, to the national Israel, to the Jewish people, but not to the church, because obviously the Malachi 4 prophecy is too Israel not to the church.

So no matter what you do, it's kind of hard to twist it and apply it to the Gentiles. So he broke it up into the two days, you know, there's the great dreadful day and then the dreadful day is the second coming, the great is the first, very similar to the message, except he applied to the second one to the two witnesses of Revelation.

Well, British Israelism picked up some of Darby's ideas, right? British Israelite preachers began incorporating some of that as you come through the 1800s. And of course, they thought they were Israel, right? And so now Elijah's not coming to the Jewish people, now Elijah's coming to them.

And this is how you get in the frame of mind that an Elijah's going to come to the church. It's at the point time that British Israelites think that they are Israel and they are the church.

And so, is that happens? That's when you start getting all this glut of Elijah's showing up. The Alexander Dauy is the first one that I know of starting in the 1870s. He's a big British-Ears Relight. He's been influenced by this stuff.

And he starts presenting himself as Elijah around the turn of the century. John Sanford started doing the same thing. He started presenting himself as Elijah. He was also British-Ears Relight. Then the next one I know of that was prominent was Charles Parham, early the founder of Pentecostalism, honestly.

He claimed to be the Elijah after Dauy died. Then after Parham died, John Lake claimed to be Elijah, which John Lake was also British-Ears Relight. All these guys are British-Ears Relight. And the British-Ears Relight framework that allowed for the idea of an Elijah returning to a church which was made up of Israelites. Okay?

Now the message eventually lost and Pentecostalism itself ultimately rejected the idea that they were the 10 lost tribes of Israel, but they keep some of these prophecies hanging around, right? That are left over from the influence of British-Ears Relism.

And the influence of British-Ears Relism on the message especially is hard to overstate. I would say this is one of the biggest kept secrets. It's just how influential this British-Ears Relight ideology has been.

And honestly, the corrupting influence it had on the teachings of the message. Because obviously they were not Israel, therefore they misinterpreted that prophecy one way or the other. So you've got that. And so besides those British-Ears Relight guys, there were other guys who were also famous that went on and really influenced the Christian identity movement, who also insinuated or claimed to be Elijah. Howard Rand, Arnold Leiths, John Smith Pego, their moderately famous British-Ears Relights, who insinuated that. And like I said, those guys were fairly influential in the formation of Christian identity theology. And so if you added up all of the guys I know of, there were somewhere around 15 different British-Ears Relight

guys who claimed to be Elijah between 1870 and 1950, William Brannum being in a direct line of succession from those people. And I think the most concerning part of what you just said is how deeply this has been covered up, which is one of the reasons why I want to dig deeper with these stones that we've kind of lifted up to see what spiders are underneath. This for me, this is one of the biggest ones. We had in our Gordon Lindsay episode, we had this person who really heavily attacked me and started out simply by sending emails saying, you're wrong, Gordon Lindsay did not

accept or teach or get involved with the British Israel doctrine. Even though in the documentary itself, I'm showing newspaper ads where he's headline speaker at a British Israel conference, right? He's going to the headquarters where the British Israel notion like the man who's organizing the whole movement in the United States.

Gordon Lindsay's there with him, right? And it was so covered up that he wrote into Christ for the nations and their official PR response was no. Gordon Lindsay was never involved with this thing. And my response was a question, well, what about the books that he publish, about about British Israelism? Do you sell those anymore? And obviously they don't sell those anymore. You won't find those for sale at Christ for the nations because that whole history has fully been whitewashed and erased, which for me, you know how my mind works, Charles? That's part of the reason I'm diving into a little bit deeper into the next series of episodes.

If something has been erased and covered up, I want to know why. I want to dig deeper and I want to know why. Yeah, we covered a lot of that in the Gordon Lindsay episode. You know, my opinion is that most of Pentecostalism had rejected British Israelism. And then generally people as they dropped it are embarrassed that they ever believed in it. And I think that shaman embarrassment of having ever believed in it played a big role into why a lot of that stuff was destroyed. But they all were all of the prominent figures leading up to William Brown and

were British Israelites. FF Bosworth was a British Israelite. They were all in this mindset that they were part of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, right? And that they were Israel. That's how they applied prophecies like Malachi forward of themselves. It's odd. And, you know, I understand. Like, if Gordon Lindsay quit believing in that, well, I forgive Gordon Lindsay, that's no big deal, right? I can let that go. But hey, let's just tell the truth about it, right? This happened, and these were the fallouts from it. And Gordon Lindsay woke up one day and did better. Why,

why can't we just be truth about it instead of pretend like it never happened at all, right? So that's my thoughts on it. Yeah. If you make a mistake, that's fine. If you cover up your mistake and you erase the history of it, how are you going to learn from your mistake?

And how are the people who are learning from you years later? How are they going to learn from that mistake? You have to leave it out there in the open, right? But there are so many questions, Charles. I think we're going to split this again. And we're going to have a third after the after the finale episode of the questions that are being recorded. So I'll cut this up and I'll break it up so that it is in digestible chunks for the listeners. If you've enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branum.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William-Branum in the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William-Branum in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.