Our Stories: Christ Gospel Church - An Interview with Gail Batke

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 Gail Batke, the author for the sake of the children, the message.

Gail, we've tried to do this for a very long time and it's all been me. I've been so busy and so many things as you know have come up. But we, actually the timing of it is really good because at the time I first wanted to connect with you and talk about the splinter group of the message that you were in, I really didn't know enough about the background to understand it.

So it has actually worked out better for the better that we're doing it now instead of then. But to the audience, I'll let you introduce yourself, but I'll just say that here in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where the Brannum Tabernacle is, there's not just one massive cult.

There are actually two cult groups and both of them unbeknownst to most of the community in Jeffersonville and the surrounding area. Both of them are actually connected and one is a splinter group of the other. And with that, here is Gail Batke.

Hi, John, and yes, thankfully we finally got together. I'm Gail, and I did write the book for the sake of the children many years after I left the cult, which of course is under the name of Christ, Gospel, Church, International Incorporated.

As you said, we have in this little town of ours two major cults that reach all the way around the world. There are. And you know, also since we have attempted to do this the first time, I have spoken with many people who were around during the years that I was not even alive.

One of them is a big name that most of our audience, the researchers in our audience know, which is Paul Cain, had some conversations with Paul Cain, who was part of the Kansas City prophets, and you know, a weirder mess than what we were in, I think, maybe not.

But he mentioned that William Brannum at one point in time had a female minister that was assisting him in the in the tabernacle in the brand. Tabernacle, which goes against every single thing that I knew and believed growing up and you know, I'm certain that if there are people who are in the message who are in the the Brannum side of the message who are listening to this, they're going to just deny it.

No, there's no way this happened. There's no way a female was was a minister in this because the later versions of William Brannum's stage persona were strongly against female preachers. Yet here's this conundrum, right? Here is a here's a lady who was a minister who was, you know, she assisted to some level in the Brannum Tabernacle. According to Paul Kane, she was very, very integral to the Brannum Tabernacle. But you know, whatever it was that she was doing, at a minimum, she was out of the complete scope of what was allowed with in the cult when I grew up.

And she started the spin-off church that you were a part of. Absolutely. Absolutely. My parents joined the organization when I was 10 and so that would be in 1964. I think they joined like in 1963, but we actually moved to the Jeffersonville area for the first time in 1964. My knowledge of the Brannums was very much limited to what I heard from Reverend Hicks from the pulpit. And fortunately, I had the experience of doing hair, all the updoos. I used to do all those. And I had several ladies from the Brannum Tabernacle.

In fact, Mabel Brannum was one of my wonderful customers who was, was that his brother doc, was his, she called them doc. And I did her hair for many years. We had wonderful conversations and fellowship. And that was when I discovered a flip side of what I had always heard from the pulpit about William Brannum. Because we were told, my memory is being told that his untimely premature death was because he turned against her. He turned against Bernie Sixth, so therefore God took him out prematurely. And what I do know, she was, she did play the organ for him.

And supposedly she had a sunny school class. And again, the other thing that was a common thing that was said very often in my growing up years was how that he was jealous of her because quote her, set a school class became bigger than his congregation there.

You know, there's just so much of the story that is completely different than what you and I were told. I have also since I've, you know, had this conversation with you about doing this, I've dug into the Brannum brothers and the Brannum family.

I was trying to piece together the timeline because William Brannum wasn't quite honest about his birth year. And it's significant because the later versions of his stage persona, he actually tied his birth year to a significant prophecy of sorts.

And so he had multiple versions of himself. So I started digging into his brothers and one of his brothers, and I'll try to remember to throw up a photograph of him, but one of his brothers that toured with him wasn't Doc, it was the other brother.

And Howard had, he owned a bar back home and he did not live the lifestyle of who you'd picture touring with these guys. But it wasn't such a problem back then because the version of them back then isn't what we were told at all.

It was not problematic at all. Even the fact that these ladies are going to a hairdresser. I mean, I know some women in the cult do, but there is a vast majority of people in the cult that even that's not allowed.

You can't let your women fix them up to be pretty. Yeah, yeah. And I had a privilege also later in my 20s doing a lady's hair that actually her name was Barbara and her and a lady that I also knew named Lilimae.

They actually were in a trio with Bernie six while they were at the tabernacle. And yeah, and she told me stories. Of course, she would, they would have been like 10 years younger than Bernie's.

But she told me stories and you're right. It's very, they could have never gotten away with what they got away with in today's technology. I can just promise that because, oh my goodness, things that I heard, stories that I heard were just unfathomable, except that I knew that she was not lying because she was just telling it like the story's laughing.

You know, about, oh no, we blah, blah, this and we blah, blah, that. And I'm standing there doing her hair and thinking, wow, whoa. Yeah, the life that I had to live, having been a child and my dad was a minister and a pastor of her, some of her churches.

And so we were ruled by, we were bowed by the rules, you know. And my dad, of course, was a little prior to coming there. And he had been married before. Before meeting my mother and The denominations back then would not when he got the call to preach they would not ordain him and that's how She sucked him into the organization was because she said he she would ordain him Yeah, you know, I'm glad that you said it like that because so growing up for me I I was in the cult elite. I was my grandfather ran the head church, right?

So I got to the side of people that most of the other people did not see and You know, it's in some cases it was night and day difference not every case There are some people who weren't genuine But in some cases the you would never picture these people you'd never call them spiritual I'll just say it like that and and leave it at that But so I I have actually read your book for this and I'm opening it up Multiple times. I read it the first time that you gave it to me. I can't even remember when that was it was probably two years ago or

About that and then yeah, and then I've actually read it a second time whenever I began digging into the manifested sons of God theology which is Significant and I at the time I still didn't understand it and so I'm actually going through it a third time To kind of piece together the histories, but for the audience gale is one of the super heroes in helping people escape destructive groups that I Can't even describe how evil they are true very true They're evil. They are

grossly negligent about their children's Knees and and they're upbringing it's And that's reason I named my book for the sake of the children because I am Be 70 years old next year And I'm a great grandmother and I still see Some of the things some of the building blocks that I should have had in my life just as a normal American girl and And they just float in the most Weird ways that you you would never think that being raised in a cult could linger that long through so many so many much of the fabric of your being and

But when I left I didn't leave like so many people leave I didn't leave because I wanted to cut my hair Or because I got mad at somebody or any of those reasons my reason for leaving was sadly that My pastor lied to me in a meeting for four hours in her basement and the reason we were at her house is because my former husband and all this is detailed in the book pretty good.

He found out that this message, and we too called our stuff the message, the bride's message. And we thought we were so unique. I had no idea. Even though I did Mabel's hair in different ones from the tabernacle, I had no idea they called their stuff the message.

In fact, they probably never once said that in front of me, because we were just like friends and not religious stuff. We didn't talk religious stuff. We talked hair. And but anyway, yeah, so it was very awakening when he found.

He said his life just wasn't measuring up. He was from South Africa, very proud South African man. And he said his life was measuring up. And so he and a friend took a trip over to the Jewish Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

And started some research and was just blown away at the plagiarism that was in her sermons and her notes and her books and came home and delivered that information to me, which of course, being the good little girl I was, told him that he had the demons on him and he needed to pray and shake that stuff out off of him.

Because Bernice was real smart to tell us that there was truth in everything. But they had threads of truth. So she could take a thread and then sometimes she didn't even read a Bible verse, John, in her sermons or she would read a Bible verse.

And what she said from their own links for the next hour had nothing to do with that Bible verse. But again, when your brain washed, you're waiting and you think for sure there's gonna be scripture and you're just listening for this wonderful revelation she's gonna give you.

And so you don't put that together. But his life just wasn't adding up the way he thought of Christian's life. And fortunately, that's how I found out too, that most of her sermons that we heard were not original at all.

Yeah, there's so much, I mean, even the phrase, the message, the label that you named yourself by is what we call ourselves in. And you were a smile for the book. I'd go first.

Well, and I'm learning, that's part of the reason I'm glad that this has postponed because I'm learning that first I learned that the message that I grew up in, there were many different versions of that.

But prior to that, it was the latarane message. And that was from the prophecy of the book of Joel and the Old Testament. There's the former in the latarane. Well, the Pentecostals of the 1907, and Azusa Street Revival.

They saw themselves as the latter reign to the former reign of the Day of Pentecost. Well then, in 1947, there was a reinvention of this and they saw themselves as the latter reign to the other Pentecost and it just kind of went on and on.

But I'm learning that prior to even that, there was the British Israel message. And I'm starting to see advertisements of ministers holding sermons saying, we preach the British Israel message. And the reason I'm glad that this post-poned is because as you know and I'm watching your face light up, she, Bernice Hicks, taught so deeply the theology that she was the rebirth of Israel and there's so many signs and iconography and similar alignment.

And we'll see, this was nothing new to her because this was no revelation of hers. She got it from Brannum. But then take it a step further than that. This was no revelation to Brannum.

He got it from his mentors and they got it from British Israelism. As I'm going through these different trails of history, one of the things that is most interesting to me as it relates to all of this, the groups that were adherents to the British Israel theology, they, there's a passage in the Bible and I'm drawing a blank on where it comes from, you might know, but it talks about, these things were a shadow of the things to come.

Right, right. And the way and, yeah, exactly. Well, the way in which British Israelism was able to do what they did is they said, if you read the Old Testament, it's a shadow of us today.

And therefore bits and pieces of bits and pieces of those passages apply specifically to the 20th and now the 21st century, right? So what they were able to do is they could take a passage completely out of context, make it mean nothing like the book even said.

And then preach a whole sermon and the whole audience is sitting there thinking, wow, that must be of God. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. And we had, in our organization, we had phenomenal music, you know, because she had supposedly, you know, once you leave there, you question everything you were ever told, the how much is even true, but supposedly she had all girls dancing to orchestra.

And so she supposedly played an upright bass guitar. And so music was very much a part of her world. She played beautiful piano. And so she drew upon musicians. In fact, that was one way that she got my family because I was this little girl with this big deep.

voice that I've got and I sing and you know it's just a little short thing and bold as a lion and daddy would get his guitar and so I was a little drawing card for her and boy she latched onto me and just you know all kinds of accolades every convention about a little girl this and all this stuff and so she used music to really draw people in too so on on that side and then she used the intellect that you're talking about on for the other types of people to appeal to their ego of learning and our most common phrase is where you know where are you going to go in this world

to find this kind of truth and you know she could retire tomorrow she would because the load is so heavy and I used to question that because when I was older I actually was a substitute hairdresser and so when her dresser was out hairdresser was out of town or whatever I'd go do her hair and of course she always lived in big mansions and I don't care if anybody lives in a mansion if you work or you you never mentioned that nothing wrong with that but in my opinion but

I watched her lifestyle and oh my goodness her food was brought to her on a platter and if it wasn't just perfect it got sent back and I saw these behaviors that I'm like wait a minute our big thing our big thing was we were called the crucified way the message of the crucified and I'm like boy she ain't crucifying her flesh very good today and I learned later that wow I saw nothing compared to what other people saw out of her behavior yeah so I really want to get into deeper of the cult system that you were in and this was a splinter group of William Brannum's

message cult right in the same city which is really funny if you think about it but before that I have had multiple people tell me and I can't confirm this so I'm going to just throw this out there that I cannot confirm it this may be here say but multiple people have told me that it was the music that drew Bernice Hicks into the tabernacle which does fit with my research and the reason why I mentioned that because that is the way in which the original church was planted and the way it developed and grew Roy E. Davis who was the so Roy E. Davis was the second

in command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan he eventually rose up to become the imperial wizard of the clan he was also the director of the fundamentalist league of america i'm drawn a blank on the exact name of that organization. But it was the most significant fundamentalist organization in the United States.

He came to Jeffersonville and held a big revival and attracted people to it with music. And I've been told that that's how he grew his church, Davis did. Then William Brannum, when Davis had this problem with women.

He liked women way too much and the underaged variety. I'll just leave it at that.

He ended up going out to, he got extradited and went to prison after Jeffersonville. And after he left, William Brannum took over his church. It became the Billy Brannum Pentecostal Tabernacle. And during this time, Brannum took the same pattern. He was attracting people to the church with the music. And one of the things that he did, and I've been told this from two different sources.

So again, you can take it with a grain of salt. I actually have a photograph of the group and I'll throw that up. But apparently, William Brannum went to what they called the honky-tonks and he found a group of people who would come play in a band in the Tabernacle.

I've got a photograph. I'll throw it up on the video. But they would go play at the honky-tonk and they would come play at the Tabernacle. And they really, they ended up eventually attending services I'm told. But after they sobered up, because when they were doing this, they were, you know, the drinking and wild women and all kinds of stuff in the honky-tonks, right?

So that's what brought all the people together. And I'm told, now again, I have a research site that it's, I document what is proven history, but multiple sources who don't know each other have told me this, both of these things. But I'm told that that attracted Hicks to this movement. And it kind of makes sense because she did play, she was big and deeply involved with the music.

And then there was a period of time in which there was a strong division in the church itself. And this is documented by William Brannum himself. He pretends to have this vision of how his home church, how did he phrase it? He said the, the people won't, will no longer eat my bread, I think is the way he, he phrased this. Yeah, so always spiritualized, right? Well, this was in a pamphlet that was describing a 1938 ministry from William Brannum, written by himself.

And he gives the timeline, and he is writing this talking about his very popular 1945 healing revival. So where I'm headed with all of this is, in 1947 he reinvented himself and erased the whole history.

We were told that he did not get his alleged gift of healing until the very day Israel became a nation, which happened actually in 1948, but we were told that was 1947. So what I'm driving at is, it appears to me, if I'm understanding the history correctly, something happened in 1945 that caused a massive church split in the Brannum Tabernacle.

And the Brannum Tabernacle itself did not receive its name until 1945. Before that, it was the Billy Brannum, Pentecostal Tabernacle. So in 1945, there was a split, William Brannum started his Pentecostal, he erased his Pentecostal backstory.

He was the bishop of a Pentecostal denomination called the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God. In 1945, he became a Baptist and started claiming that I've always been a Baptist. I was ordained a Baptist.

So something there happened, and I've been trying to piece together the date in which Hicks started her church, but if I could guess, and it is just a guess, I would guess it was around that same time when the church split, and then she became, you know, whatever it was that led her on the path to become the central figure of a massive destructive cult.

You're right. I could find out. I actually don't know the date that she started. Now, I do know how she did get started though. How she got started was that there was a couple named Leroy and Ethel Bady, and they had a mission on, oh, what's it called, Chesna and Graham, they're in Jeffersonville, and she came back from California, and she created her own little niche by what she called the Holy Ghost Witness.

And so she sold this group of believers on her revelation of the, I don't know how you say it, we always call it the um, and the comment, or something like that, the comment, the breastplate of the tabernacle, and then they went in to look for the mind of God, and if they were supposed to do this, it would light up, and if it didn't, it wouldn't light up.

So she created her, what she did was she came back, and she got with this little group, and just beautiful people, the Reverend Leroy Bady, he was a street preacher and just... an absolute saint, but she literally stole their mission by this unique private interpretation of what those lights were and here's how she did it. She is the word witness which is either I think that's the thumb I'm not sure I forgot some of my little class lessons and one was the spirit witness so you have you have to have the spirit witness and the word witness she was the word

witness and she's the only person on the planet with it and that's because she has set the feet of Jesus and given up everything just to be just to be his bride and so she created this this thing and so it was called a witness room and and so you would go in there you'd say should I get married, should I buy a house, should I buy a dog I mean we used to have to take everything before this and as a group as a group got larger she couldn't quite handle it also she had

little spirit witness groups but you still couldn't do it and so she came by her she read it and said yes or no now this is problematic today John because she died a few years ago but I have a letter that she that she put out before she died and it's hilarious because beings that she's the only word witness on the planet and you had to have the word witness in order to be in the bride what do you do now but she had the answer to it and I'm privileged to someone that I'm connected with got the actual letter where she's explaining

all this stuff that they they'll still have they'll still have the spirit witness but with this with this unique revelation that she had this is how she controlled people and having been a musician also a musician and and we're very spiritual you know we're very fluid people and and you know our emotions are are pretty out there so she knew that about and she also knew how hard it was to be famous and so she really played on that and I think one of her first people's name was Dave Rich and he was RCA recordings star and she

got her hooks in on him and he would became one of her main main people that drew that built her company built her business of Christ's Gospel Church if you want to call it that absolutely you know after having left this whole weird thing that we were in I don't know what to call it it reminds you of if Stephen King were to have written a book about religion And that's what this was, right?

Yes, that's so messed up. It would have been good. Yeah. But, you know, these cults, after having left and going to a, you know, a normal, quote unquote, normal Christian church, and I've been to a few different ones, just to experience what is it like to try a new one, right?

Absolutely. The focus is on Jesus and the New Testament and the gospel and the gospel that saves. But every one of these cults that I've examined that spun off of this British Israel thing, remember, they're trying to keep you in the Old Testament under the law, under the burden of the law, which there's so many passages in the New Testament that just really tell you how evil that is, right?

I even know. Well, they said, I mean, black and white, how do we not see? Well, they set themselves up so that you believe the law, so that you are in this weird mindset.

And then they start running these themes and their sermons of paralyzed, of themselves to the high priest. And so in the end, what happens is the people in their heads, they get this conclusion, oh, this is our high priest.

And that's why you see coast to coast, I mean, you can look at any of the comment threads on my videos, you'll find these people that say, well, if he's not the prophet, who is, who's the neck, who is the one that we're supposed to follow?

They're looking for one and it has to be a human and it's not Jesus because it's the high priest. And what is interesting of all of that is that you had the witness and this, she claimed this was her divine revelation that she's this thing, right?

Well, William Brandling had what was called the private interviews where people could go meet the high priest in private and he would tell you the very secrets of your heart, directly from God. And even after leaving, I still kind of thought, well, maybe he was a prophet, maybe he had a channel to God.

And he was just flawed and he was human and he went astray or whatever. But then I started noticing things like the Jim Jones research. If you go back and you look at the sermons where Brannum and Jones are both joining together in this big convention, 1956, Brannum is talking about meeting with private interviews to, as a fortune teller, really, if you think about it.

But he's meeting with the people's temple members and in private, he's giving them his quote-unquote futures from God. Well, this was Jim Jones and the people's temple, they went to the Jones town massacre.

If it was God, why did the God not warn them that, hey, every one of you stand a great chance of dying in the Jones town massacre? So for me, I started realizing that, No, there was no going astray and these people weren't good people to begin with.

These were very, very bad people who purposefully tried to insinuate that they were the high priest so that they could set themselves up to be the central figure and control the people. And there's different reasons why people do this, either sex, money, power, or all three.

Oh, sorry. When you look at this, you've got Roy Davis and the sex, you've got billions of dollars flowing through, billions of dollars flowing through this. There's just no end to the horrors that they can bring on the people so they can set themselves up and get money, power, and sex.

That's exactly right. That is right collates totally with Bernie Six and Christ's Gospel Church as international. I can tell you firsthand as a young girl being told that in this witness room, like I said, you had to ask if you could date and then she told me, she told my parents first of all that my boyfriend I needed to get married or we were going to have premarital sex.

Well, it's not fortunately, but I said to my parents, because I was accused of being all over each other at an outing out at Dean's Lane, and when my parents confronted me, because she told my parents this, and because it's all about dividing conquer, you know. And I'd never talked back to my parents, but that day I did. And I said, we didn't even hold hands. What are you talking about?

Well, yes, you did. And I said, I said, take me to the witness. I absolutely did not. Well, my dad, I don't think he was ever a, I know he was, and he was never a 100% or a belief in her, because he didn't walk by the witness fully at all. And several times in his ministry, he went against what she said, the witness said, but he just laughed. And then they tossed it aside, but she still got it around and told me then that we needed to get married.

Now, mind you, my boyfriend was just graduating from high school. I was only 17 years old. And so, but the witness said to get married. And so we did. I was 17. He was 19. We also weren't allowed to use birth control. So I was pregnant like the second month I was married and had my baby before my 18th birthday. I have no regrets for my children. I have no regrets that I lost out on anything I did, knowledge-wise. And my kids would have probably been better off if I'd known a little bit more than I did.

But I have no regrets there, so that's all okay for me personally. But she put me looking back. She put me in some of the most compromising positions. I know I am convinced within my own thinking that she wanted me to fall into some adulterous trap so that then she could control me because I found out, well, I know several people personally when I was still a leader within the church that had had affairs.

And the way she handled it was, well, you can play the piano right, well, instead of dealing with the married man and the girl that they did the big thing with, the witness would say for her to go to one of these little churches, they'd call the church, somebody had 20 people, and play the piano.

And that was the answer to that sin. And so she got her control like that. And this is what happened with Dave Rich. He's passed now. I'm very close to his son, and it breaks my heart now as a grown woman actually several years ago when I looked at one of his first Christian albums and saw how young he was.

My heart broke because I was affected by that man's sin later in life as our vice president of the organization. He fell into adultery many times. And I was personally affected by the ramifications of one of his such affairs.

And so I just really didn't have any likes for him at all. Until one day, when I was probably in my 40s, I saw that. And I looked at him and he was had to be in his early 20s.

And I'm like, oh my goodness, God forgive me. That poor guy was totally brainwashed and sucked into that vortex of Bernie's Hicks, just leading him around. He was this hungry soul. And she drew him and told him that she could make, I'm sure she told him she can make him a bigger star because I so remember clearly.

When we first moved here, we lived in New Albany and we were sent home with a stack of little cards that we were supposed to fill out requesting the radio stations to play his music.

And that would have only been to promote him. And they weren't Christian songs either as a little tin-year-old kid. I'm like, why are we doing this? That's not Christian. You know the level of control.

The Bible says, you know the tree by the fruit of bears. Well growing up, I knew nothing about Bernie's Hicks or her connection to the message. I just knew there was this other church there that looked a lot.

a lot like ours, but I spent a great deal of time in other states growing up, and one of the states, there was a message, a William Brannum message cult that had imploded, and the people were so oppressed, they, I'm sure that they were exaggerating, and one of the people said that they could not even buy hairspray without them getting the pastors approval, but what they were trying to say is, I can totally believe that.

Yeah, what they were trying to say, I mean, who got married, who got which children could marry which children, which cars they could buy, if they could buy a car, houses, I mean it, it was unreal, right?

And I remember thinking, well, our profit would never have been like that. These guys just went astray. And then in last year we interviewed Deborah Tibado, if you haven't seen it, it might be, it's heart wrenching to watch it.

But she was in a splinter group that was, it was created by the two men who worked most closely with William Brannum, they, Brannum called him his tape boys, but they were apparently homosexual men who started a compound, and they had that level of control.

They were telling people, similar to you, I mean, it was, they would call people out, and they would say, you're about to have sex, or you did have sex, whether they did or not.

And they were doing the same thing, they, they had set themselves up as the high priest, and they would have these private consultations. And apparently this guy had lost his mental faculties, and he was having it in his bathroom, which was really disgusting, but Deborah, Deborah tells her story, well, I started to piece together, because I, even still, I discounted this, I thought, there's no way William Brannum did this.

But after hearing all of these stories and looking at the Bible passage, by the, by the fruit, you will know the tree, I got to thinking of my grandfather, you see in my background, I've got all these instruments growing, growing up, this was not allowed.

Apparently, William Brannum had control over my grandfather, such that my grandfather had a traveling preaching ministry, and it was filled with music. They were playing dobro's, and my grandmother played the accordion, they had guitars, all kinds of stringed instruments, they're from Kentucky, that's what people do.

And apparently William Brannum, even though he had the honky-talk band in his tabernacle, he tells my grandfather, you're not allowed to play those, because if you play those instruments, you're going to go astray.

And so from that day until, you know, my grandfather took over the Brannum tabernacle, during the 50 years my grandfather ran that church, you were... not allowed to have a stringed instrument in the church.

I was, it was really weird. I was forbidden to play, but my maternal grandparents actually gave me my first guitar, and then that turned into a battle in my house. But it was a big deal, right?

And all of that came from William Branham having such control in the same way you had the witness and these other guys had the bathroom thrown. This was all from the same tree, and the park that I'm still wrestling with is nothing of William Branham, nothing he taught was new, nothing Bernice hits.

Everything I've examined so far, I can find her stuff in Branham or in British Israel as a nothing is new. So where do these guys get it from? And I'm starting to realize, Branham was mentored by one of the most dastardly individuals you've ever heard of.

And I'm starting to realize that a lot of that probably came from him before he went to prison. Yeah, that's, you're probably right. I know for a fact things that went on within Bernice Hicks' ministry and her teachings, and she would, like I said earlier, she, as you know, probably that the very sign, their sign is a star of David with a cross in the middle.

And she taught, and it's again, she could have never got away with this in today's world, but she taught and I believed it that the Jews rejected the cross, originally the cross was there.

Well, if any adult at that time would have just thought, what are you talking about the cross was there? There wouldn't not have been a cross there when David just first had the star, I mean, seriously, and just dumb stuff like that that you think, how did the, I left when I was 30?

And I just feel like you're really not an adult to your 30 anyway. And I had tons of questions, but we also use the terminology, plead the blood, because she totally took us back to the Old Testament, and you'll also see, and I don't know if you've seen that church, surely you have, and they hang in every Christ's gospel church.

And it's a cross, it's like a window, old fashioned window shade that has been painted, and there's a cross just a background white, and it's got the pieces of furniture of a mosaic tabernacle and then you see a crucified Jesus with thorns and everything behind the furniture, showing that, and she talked that the Bible was laid out in the form of a cross and all kinds of stuff.

But I... and never realized so recently, when one time when we were talking, that, oh my goodness, the brand of tabernacle and Hicks based our whole stuff on the tabernacle. And I'm like, oh my goodness, but the big, big, big, big thing talked about plagiarism that really, really did get me.

And this is how I ended up leaving the cult. There was a private group that Hicks had put together called Purple Pearls. I've since learned that there was another one called Black Pearls after that.

Because all the Purple Pearls left her message. They thought that she was a hoax because one of the members started saying her name was Carolyn, and she started saying something's just not right because she was one of her private secretaries.

And she says to me, something's just not right. And so she began searching. And there was, because Hicks had given them this set of notes, the bright side of the Song of Solomon. And she had a book out, the Song of Solomon, called The Song of Love.

And then she was going to write another one because now they were on the bright side of the message. And Carolyn found that book in a bookstore I believe in New York by Carlos Ceres.

And it's verbatim. Her notes that she handed out, it was verbatim. And I was presented those notes in a group at a dinner that they were going to try to convince me. And I looked at everyone of them.

And my ex-husband, I was the only person standing for the message. And I looked at them all. And most of them all were my elders who had previously had been ministers with, and high ranking ministers in that organization.

And I looked at every one of them and I said, don't mess with me. I won't bow down to you people. I said, I will take this. And I will come back and I will confront every one of you.

Y'all are the, y'all are liars. And I'm going to prove it. And wow John. Wasn't a you that also showed me where Bernice Hicks was pledgerizing Clarence Larkin in the same way that Brandon did.

Yes, yes. The other chart that actually, excuse me, but the other chart that hangs in every one of her churches is the threefold nature of man where you see the circles and hers is almost identical.

She tweaked it just a little bit, but just in proportion. The teaching is the same. Yeah. So I'm learning as I'm studying this and I'm still skimming the surface. There's so much more to dig into.

Clarence Larkin's works were all a result of British's release. You really can't have any of those things without British Israelism, because normal Christians have the gospel. They don't need this stuff. They're not going back to the old feasts.

That's it. Temple. Don't need the stuff you got Jesus. It's the gospel and it's simplicity. Jesus saved, and all you have to do is believe in Jesus. So, British Israelism, because of that, you had Clarence Larkins works, and very similar, like Bernice Hicks and William Brannum, weren't the only ones that plagiarized and did this.

In fact, just last week I had another cult. Send me these photographs, and they said, where did this come from? I pulled up Clarence Larkins works, and I sent it to them. They're like, oh wow, I can't believe they plagiarized this.

Well, all the way down to, you mentioned the church that looked like the Star of David, and the British Israel sects were fascinated with the Pyramid of Giza, and they believe that the Pyramid of Giza was written as a end of days Bible, and that the passageway to the tomb where the dead Pharaoh was, the length of it, was a measurement through time.

And as soon as time hit the King's Chamber, which was drawn a blank on the date, but it was an 1890-ish, they thought that was the end of the world. And then when that didn't happen, they pushed it back, and they continued to push it back.

But all of this would not have existed, and all of these people, these devious minds that created their cults, their destructive cult followings. They all based it off of this British Israel movement, but then they started plagiarizing each other when one would splinter off, as you noticed, Bernice Hicks splintered off from Branum when she copied all of this.

Well, anyway, let me just go to another thing about the Clarence Larkins book. I was first introduced to that. Now, to show you the control that she had over our lives, so I'm supposed to get married at 17, I do.

And then back then, they had the draft. Well, so we got sent out to a little church on Dawson Springs, Kentucky. And the first thing she did was tell us the spirit witness that we were supposed to go there to help in this little church, I was supposed to do the music.

And so we get there and we're supposed to live in this trailer with the pastor. Now, the pastor was probably 25, maybe probably not even that old, and his wife and their two little toddlers in a two bedroom trailer, which means the room that men my husband had is literally had a bed in it.

We had to put one foot in the room and then crawl onto the bed, just crazy. I found out later, and this is one of the places that she planted me, thinking that I could be seduced, because unfortunately, again, the young man that was the pastor had major sexual problems.

But fortunately, I didn't know about all that stuff, and I was in love with my little high school sweetheart, and I wasn't given to promiscuated it anyway. That's just not who I ever was.

And if somebody would have floored with me, I'd probably decked him, and if they did, and I probably didn't even know it. But this man, I know for a fact, because after he left, he did some confessing, and God rest his soul.

He's passed, so I'm not going to call his name. But he was there, and then would come back here to Jeffersonville and had orgies. Can you imagine? And he sold insurance, and his wife was going to school to be a nurse, and I kept their babies, and I remember he would come in for lunch, all the way back to where we were out in the sticks.

I forget the little town that we were outside Dawson Springs. Looking back, I know what she did. I know exactly why she did that for me. Okay, so fast forward, that's where I got pregnant.

We moved back to Jeffersonville, and then the witness said that we were to go again, and help it a little church in popular bluff. So we moved our, you know, me and my ex-husband and my baby.

And at this little church in popular bluff, the pastor there, we were at his house one time, and he was looking at some book, and I'm like, what is that? And he goes, well, come here, I want to show you this.

And he showed me the clearance lock-ins book. And so I'm like, oh my God. Well, when was this written? You know, I think I'm thinking he's showing me because they're gonna sue this man who took this from our leader.

And he goes, oh no, no, no, no, well, this was written way back, and I think 1800 or something. And I said, but Brother Miller, that's our, that's our Daniels thing, and that's our three-fold nature, and that's our tam and echo, and oh my goodness, and that looks a lot like our this, and he goes, yeah, I don't know what to say.

And but somehow he chose to stay, and you know, because he was a full grown adult, I was only, you know, 18 years old. And so I knew about it, I saw that, but like I said earlier, she told us that there were threads of truth there, but she's the one with the real message.

And this is what you find with every one of these fake gods there. They set them up, and John, when I read the verse in the Bible that said the word, but God is of no private interpretation.

I'm like, where was that verse all my life? Yeah. When you meet someone who says they have a unique revelation, they're a liar and they're pants are on fire. William Brannum quoted that passage from the Bible hundreds of times and he would say the Bible of nope.

But what he would do is he would twist its meaning. He would say the Bible is of no interpretation, which means you can't understand it. It's a real private. So it's just so worked and they load this language in your head so you can't.

You really can't understand it because they're just bastardizing the information in your head. It's probably. You mentioned the Daniel 70 weeks, which is in Larkin's drawings. That's a big theme through the Brannum message cult.

But as I'm finding in British israelism, that was a significant theme. That's how they that's how they linked this pyramid doomsday theology back to the Old Testament. And there were charts and diagrams of Daniel 70 weeks for days.

Maybe you go back and you look. Larkins just became, I guess he was maybe he was one of the more popular ones or maybe Brannum, maybe Brannum popularize it. I don't know, but Larkin is the one.

I had a minister who left the message, the Brannum message and he told me in the message he also came across it and he was like, well, that's really weird. This is exactly what Brannum said was divine revelation.

And it was written long time before. Yeah, exactly. And you know, that's what they do. What you just said, they change the meanings of the word. Hicks, you know, bragged constantly how she knows Rebonic Hebrew and in fact there was a time that she told us and this is documented in notes and I've got those notes.

And she said that you've got to learn Hebrew or I can't take you further in this message. And when she said that, I said to my husband, then I'm never gonna go further in this message because I have no interest in learning Hebrew.

Well, yeah. And of course I repented. I know what I was gonna say a while ago. We used the terminology, I plead the blood. And I mean, it was almost every time I was in church when she was preaching, she would do something or say something and I don't know now it was the spirit of truth, you know, trying to stand up against what she was doing and saying.

And I would say, oh Lord, put the blood over my mind so I don't doubt my leader. Devil, get away from me. I'll rebuke you Satan and you do all these gymnastics because she's telling you.

that the devil is going to come against your mind because the devil, the enemy doesn't want her to give you this message tonight because you can't make it in these last days if you don't have this message. That's a phrase I heard over and over and you cannot be saved without the message.

We don't care that Jesus died to save you. You cannot be saved without this phrase that we call the message and all of its loaded language. We have our own language when you're in cult.

You really do. Now I'm married to a man that had nothing to do. This is my third marriage but this is the first marriage that I chose and it's lasted the longest and I'm sure it's still death to us part. It's such a different life when you marry the person that you choose to marry.

That's not against the two men. Bless their hearts. They were victims also and I've learned forgiveness in all those situations because when you get your eyes open and you realize how brainwashed and how manipulated you are. Another thing, John, when you talk to someone like all these memories come back. One of the things that messed up my second marriage was

she decided we had to have midnight prayer meetings and if you were going to be in the bride, you had to go to a midnight prayer meeting. Well, we had a business. We both had other jobs.

You know, I had my hair hair salon and he had a regular job plus we were doing an nutritional business and we had church Wednesday Friday and Sunday and Sunday night and so now we're and we're supposed to go to a midnight prayer meeting and then he went to jail service on Sunday afternoon. How can you have a family and a marriage with that kind of schedule? Then everything was a sin. I mean, we didn't even drink coffee. And Dr. Steven Hasen's book, Combating Mind Control, he talks about that very thing. You do it and you don't realize what they're doing to your head

but what they're what these call leaders do. Well, not just that. They also want to break you down and one of the easiest ways to break somebody down is to get them tired. So that's why when you're in a cult, you're going to find it's Sunday morning service and it's very lengthy Sunday morning service Sunday afternoon. So I went to one service that started at like 2 p.m. and it went to 7 30 or 8 o'clock one Sunday and it's like, well, these guys are and then they've got Wednesday night service, sometimes Friday night service and they're breaking you're breaking you down and I'll never

forget when I left this and I went to a normal church and they have a service on Sunday. I'm like, wait a minute. Where's the other one? What's wrong with you people?

Y'all aren't committed. You're not committed. I'm so glad we did this. For the audience, I'm going to say it out. I'm going to thank you personally. On behalf of all of the people from Christ Gospel Church that have escaped and that have contacted me, I've been working with Gail for how long have I known you, Gail? It's been years. It has been a few years now. Yeah, a few years ago. Go fast, yes. Gail's book, if you were in this cult and you want to get out, or if you were in it in the past and you want to learn more about just how bad it is,

this is a heart-wrenching book. It's a very sad book, but it tells you the story. There's and there's some happy things in here too, but this really describes, the title is chosen well for the sake of the children of the message. It's just so wrong what they do to children, and this is something I try not to break down and cry, but towards the end of my time and the brand of message, just seeing a child on the side of the road holding the parents' hands, I would actually break down and cry because there's just something true and genuine about that

on the street, and yet I was told that they were the, the we called them can't in water. Those are the evil people. No, man, that's just a child. The child hasn't even grown up and made a choice of what they're going to be. There's not an evil person, and I'm told that I have to believe that these are can in water, and it's okay that they die. It's just so different than the gospel of Jesus Christ where you say, hey, did you know Jesus died to save you and you too can be saved, and you can go to one service on Sunday, not not a hundred of them. And then you can go

to Saturday night if you want. Exactly. And the choice of which Sunday you go. Yeah, it's just so it's so different. In the loaded language, I know I saw your eyes do it, and Dr. Hassan mentions that in his book, Combat and Cult Mind Control. You can see it in the eyes.

When somebody gets that programmed trigger, it's again, it's like a Stephen King book, but one of the problems that many, many people have when they leave these destructive cults is they'll go to a new church, and everything's fine, everything's normal, and then the minister says one phrase, not knowing that it's loaded language for the cult they came, and their whole head explodes inside. I still to this day, I've been, what is January 1st, 2012, I left, still to this day, I have that happen to me. It's awful, and you have to kind of rewire it in your head, but

Anyway, if you were in this cult or if you've left it and you want to know more, you have to read Gail's book. Gail has been one of the biggest heavy hitters and saving people from this awful destructive cult and Gail, I'll let you tell people where you can get this book, but I also want to say if you are in it and you want help and you want to contact Gail, I work with Gail for a few years now and you can contact me on the website, www.Williamdashbrandom.org slash contact.

I'm in direct contact with Gail, I will forward the message and Gail, if you could tell people how to get your book. Sure, those of you who want to contact John, I can, I keep a few on hand, I'll be glad to send one out to cover the postage and all to you and also you can get it on Amazon.

It's available on Kindle or you can get a hardbacker or soft fuck back on Amazon. Just a testimony two weeks ago, I got a private message and then you can also go to my Facebook page, Gail Batkey and you know private message me there and we can talk.

But anyway, I was blessed and I get these on a regular basis and it keeps me going, a lady who left the cult several years ago, like 10 years ago, just now was strong enough to ask me for a copy and I was going to send her a gift copy but she wouldn't have anything to do if she wanted to pay and I said, well thank you, I appreciate it and and she, John, she told me, she just, I mean, she messaged me several times and she said, oh Gail, I wish I would have had this one I left.

Now, I don't know, you know, I wrote it and it was years after I left that I wrote it and I rewrote it many times because I wanted to, there to be no anger and there are people who were ready to kill me when I wrote it and when they were, their eyes were open, John, they came back and they read my book and then they were mad that I made it so nice.

You were too nice in that book and I'm like, well, I didn't, I didn't, you know, I wanted God to purge me because none of it's for any other reason before the sake of the children and we're all God's children so no matter what your age is, I promise you, you will, you will personally benefit from the book and I guarantee you there's someone that's connected to someone in your world that can use it also because it's conducive to any cult, you'll see that pattern in there.

Yeah, I wasn't even in this movement and I... Like I said, I've read this book multiple times. It's it's a good book and it's it's really weird because Your loaded language was different than our loaded language, so there are things that you say that I've got to stop and think okay What's you talking about there? But to somebody who's in it you would get it where it helped me was Where helped me was we had our own loaded language so I started the way that I read it is I started plugging in our loaded language

Instead of yours, and then I'm like, oh, that's what that So and then to find it's so true. Yeah, and then to find it's the same route. I mean both of them because she was a spawn of Almost almost set a spawn of something else, but she was a spawn of William Brattum So yeah, it's there's just so much here so get if you're in the cult get this book if you're still in the cult You get this book 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-Branum.org

For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum and the healing revivals You can read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Brannum and his message Available on Amazon Kindle and Audible and for Gales book for the sake of the children the message Written by BG Moody you can find it on Amazon and that is my birth name in case anybody wants to know

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