Our Stories: An Interview With John McKinnon

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guest, John McKinnon, researcher, author, former message believer, and for about five years believe it or not a very critical component to William Branham Historical Research.

John, we've we've tried to do this for a while now and I feel like I keep repeating that phrase. We've tried to do this for a while now. I've just had so much on my plate but I've wanted to get you on here because you were very critical in some very key elements of my research into William Branham's connection to white supremacy, specifically in the areas of Roy E. Davis. There was one fact which is already widely known at this point but you had identified Dr. Caleb Ridley and the collaboration between you, myself, and Charles, we discovered that Roy Davis was working

with the Imperial Club which is the supreme religious chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan and the timeline of that that you identified puts William Branham in that same circle of friends but they're actually circle of villains in this case but you have no idea the doors that you unlock for us in that research. So I'm very excited to have you and maybe if you could tell a little bit about yourself and you were a little bit about your journey out of the message. Sure, John. I really appreciate you having me here today and I've been looking forward to this broadcast and to be able to do this

and I want to say that your research was key and you know me coming out of the message eventually. I think it all wound up came to a head when you were producing the videos and I was started watching the history and I loved your videos and how you related to message believers because you were one yourself and when you got to the point of how the connection between Upshall, Davis, and Branham came together that's really the key of what where I saw the the reasons why this thing should have just fell apart from me and then an avalanche of information just came on top of

that. As my bank goal was to research behind you. When I started out on this, I started getting subscriptions to newspapers.com and I wanted to do this research myself. It's funny because further back in 1995, I've always been intrigued and going to the library and looking up stuff.

Me and my wife took a trip to Jeffersonville in April to the Eastern meetings in 1995. I made a point to go to the library and look at the microfilm as you did. What I was looking for specifically was to June, Mystic Halo or a light that came down out of heaven. I found those newspapers. I looked at the Louisville, Harold, the career journal and all I found was that one little few Senate lines about the 10th ministry and 14 conversions. That's all I was able to find. I didn't have time to stay there and research and spend more time. I guess if I had to come

across anything about Davis and all that, things that were going on in Jeffersonville in 1930, that would have opened up a door a long time ago. I'm sorry that it didn't, but I just didn't have time to research either. I just came home and forgot about it and just didn't find the right papers because there's some papers out there somewhere. Then about year 2000 or 1998, back when Rebecca published her Only Believe magazine and talked about the cloud,

realizing that William Brownham wasn't under that cloud that I'd always thought he was or and actually thought he was taken up into heaven the way it was written and the way he spoke about it.

He was just swept off his feet with the angels and taken up into heaven and finding out he really wasn't there. That really didn't stumble me too bad. At the time, I was actually producing a video of trying to convince others to come into the message of the historical thing from start to finish and actually all I was really using was some outside testimonies that I had and then most of William Brownham's own statements. That's where people go wrong, I think, when they're in the message is that all they rely on is one man's statements. They don't go out and research other

documents or evidence to try to back up what he's saying. That's all I did. I produced this big long video from start to finish about all the wonderful things that happened in the great helings and I didn't go out and research other sources. That's a big mistake when you're researching for anybody researching. It was really as I became, I stayed in from 2000 to 19 more years, but around 2010, I was asked to minister if I would be willing to minister some in the church and basically to help the pastor when he had to leave. I was agreeable with that and so I started out

doing that. And a few years into that, I started really seeing how, because I really felt a burden to study the word in depth and to try to present as much to the congregation and truth as I could.

And now I started realizing some things that were said by Brother Bram or William Bram, at that time did not correspond with scripture. My thoughts was the Bible was the absolute truth and the gold standard that we should go by.

And then I started realizing, well, he's saying some things is contrary. Some examples was, you know, salvation has always been important to me understanding that process. And so it's funny when I came into the message out of the, say, the Pentecostal charismatic ranks that I've gotten into, I was really ripe for the message, but I was trying to follow what Brother Bram taught about salvation.

You know, you had to go through a three-stage approach, justification, sanctification, followed by the baptism of the Spirit. So I was trying to make my experience match what he was teaching. Not a very easy thing to do, since it's not too scriptural.

It is not very scriptural in the end, as I realize now. So that being so important to me, when I hear a statement that he made, like you can have the baptism of the Spirit and still go to hell, that really throws you for a loop.

So I, you know, I try to explain things like that way by saying, well, maybe he just met, you could be anointed with the Spirit, you know, or filled with the Spirit for a temporary work, and then you really are not saved in any way.

And yeah, that might could occur. But to really come out and say, you've got the baptism of the Spirit and go to hell, that just totally, I even presented that to my pastor at the time, and we never really discussed it.

And that was around 2015. So I still stayed with it. But I would find other things too. But really, it was only, after I went to some conference, some expositional preaching, and I was still wholly fully in the message at that time.

But I wanted this book. It was then, it was by R.C. Spruel, called All We Together, because that was big time, you know, we've got to bash the Catholics, because, you know, they're after us, they're gonna put us in prison, but I read this book, and that really, I said, well, if they are, if they have the right perspective on the Catholic church, you know, as maybe as we have, then there might be something to what they're preaching as well.

So that's what kind of got me into looking at the reformed preaching, and staying with the scripture, and that was what was so important to me, was staying with the scripture. So as I got into that, you know, it came across men like John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Stephen Lawson, R.C. Spruel, and that really opened my eyes to a lot, and a whole lot of what, you know, way in Brandt, I was saying.

that was very contrary to Scriptures. And that's what basically led to these books I've written. But to get back to what you were saying at the beginning, my whole goal was to really find out if what you were saying was really true.

Because I really wasn't certain. You know what I was saying was, Roy Davis cannot be everywhere. You've said he's been, how does he come from Texas, to Georgia, to South Carolina, to Florida, Tennessee, wind up in Jeffersonville, to California.

So I had to verify that all myself. I said, there's got to be more than one Roy Davis here. Yeah. And then he winds up back in Florida and unbasks himself. I mean, that was all wild.

I mean, story is still wild to this day. And I'm like you, he's like very much like the music man, you know, that went from town to town and kind of ripped people off.

That's really what he did. You know, he was, you know, making as much money as he could through religion. At the same time, pushing his organization of the KKK and using religion to do it.

And somehow, Providence, whatever, you know, William Brown, we got caught up in the middle of that, which was probably the best thing that ever happened for us to discover, you know, the issues with the message.

But yeah, my first thing I did was all this research. I guess you can see the pages. Oh wow. Every single page of a newspaper article that you researched yourself and that I could find.

And like you said, I was able to find, not realizing what I'd really found, but I found the trail of Caleb Ridley up in Nashville where he invited him up there to preach. And that was right about the time that probably you said William Brown was there.

They were conducting revivals together right there in Nashville. And here you had the Imperial Club, you know, there with him. You know, the Imperial Club article that you found, it was so, there were so many rabbit holes of research that I could go down.

And for me, it was overwhelming because we took a brief weekend getaway to Nashville. And a friend of mine told me I had to go see the Nashville Parthenon and I did not know what this was.

So we went, spent a, you know, just a weekend family vacation and I went, I'm a semi redneck fan of the South. And I watched the dukes of Hazard on my grandmother's TV when I was a kid during the summers.

So I went to the dukes of Hazard Museum and I got to see, you know, the General Lee, the Orange Car. And one of the things that we did was we went to see the Nashville Parthenon and it means nothing to most people other than, wow, this is an incredible structure.

But when I got up to it and I started noticing, wait a minute, I know this place. I listened to these recordings of, William Brown, I'm talking about this place. Only he said it was in Memphis. So I, you know, I had that in my mind whenever I saw your article about Caleb Ridley. And so I took a trip to Memphis. And I was looking to find, is there the same thing in Memphis? Maybe, maybe there two of these things. And maybe Memphis has one. And he was actually, but no, he was talking about Nashville, Tennessee. And then combine that knowledge with your article. Well, that puts William

Brown in this in the late 1920s before he's even supposed to be involved with these guys. And so for me, it opened the door of, well, why is he involved with these guys? And what were these guys doing? Like you, I wanted to know, how did Roy Davis, how is he in every newspaper, in every location across the nation? Who does this? No minister, no evangelist is that widespread.

But I started noticing the key political figures that he's tied to. And started noticing that this was a, this was a political operation that was using religion as a weapon for the political op. And so I could go down, I could talk for the next five hours about all of the many things that were open, the doors that were open when you gave me that article. But I have to say that was a fundamental pivot point in my research. Yeah, John, I would agree that that's so, so many trails you could take on that. And actually the first time when I thought about writing a book on all the

research that I did that kind of backed up what you, what you were saying and all the research you did, I called it on the trail of Roy Davis because I'm like you, how could this man be in so many places back when cars were just coming online? No one had cars like we had today. So maybe it was to train the rails that he would take and go from town to town because how could he just do this?

So yeah, and I had listened to tapes, but probably never listened to tapes to the extent that you had. And so to see those quotes about Roy Davis drinking sulfuric acid

and seeing the key where you saw the Parthenon in the message, described. And it truly is when he talks about the art gallery, the statues, and the things and they were in Tennessee doing revivals. Yeah, I mean, there's a connection there. And it's so great that those recordings weren't scrubbed of those kind of quotes and they're hidden in the message and most message believers will never find them because you have to really scour the message through and through because you can take any quote and just think I need to go back and find that quote and

it's very difficult sometimes to find because you have to have the right words to type in in search bar. So you know, difficult that can be sometimes. But yeah, to find things like that, I mean that's just amazing because it's, it really connects a lot of things together. But I firmly believe that a lot of the recordings have been scrubbed of information that since it has blank spots on tapes that really shouldn't be there, there's probably a lot more of being said and I know you know that as well.

But those those few statements that we do have really open up a world of trails to follow

and and something I also will say that I know you've probably wished they could do is publish the recordings that were made in all of 1947 and even before. I would love to hear what he had to say then because I'm sure there's a lot said then that would be probably incriminating or whatever absolutely. They have to just leave out all together. So yeah, we'll probably never.

Yeah, I think you know the people who are in charge of editing the recordings, they have no idea. They know what they're scrubbing apparently because they you can tell he leads into this phrase that now that we know the history if you combine it with the timeline, you know exactly what it is they're scrubbing but they like you said it's difficult to find because of his broken English and so they can't find them all. Number one, the number two, I don't think they have any idea of how deep this goes to the political aspects and they made one mistake. See, I'm a musician, you're a musician

and you know from the recordings whenever you record into digital, you get this waveform and this waveform is consistent up and down and up and down and had they when they did the edits more recently had they instead of cutting it digitally if they had cut it through the analog feed, you'd still have a pure waveform. On my original website, they got taken down by the cult. I had an example of I was listening to this clip and it did make sense what he said because it was a you know how William Brandham had this flow of words that would just come out like

bullets and suddenly the flow changed mid-sentence and I'm like no that can't be. So I go look it up and you can see the waveform and then it was broken and then it stopped again and so digitally you could see the trail of where they were editing these things digitally. So the path that my mind took was with they're editing it digitally now they are aware of things that they missed back then and if they missed it back then well how far does that go how many recordings were there and somewhere on my website you can find it but I have this list that I was calling the

loss 1947 sermons because the very first statement It makes us, we're getting new gadgets for recording and I wanted to know, well, why? What do they do with the old gadgets? So I started looking and I can see this clear trail of him speaking, William Brown speaking in multiple places when he did have, we know he had the audio equipment.

Even the newspaper said he came with this massive electronic equipment and those are missing from the recordings. So not only did they snip words out, they removed entire recordings from the library. And again, I can point it back to that article you found, but once you realize what they were doing and the motive and intentions behind this, it becomes very sinister.

Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that, John. It does become sinister and I haven't researched the weaponization of religion as you have, but yeah, I would agree it was being used politically because when you've got congressmen involved and they're all promoting the same thing, they're trying to lead a group of people into the same thing.

And I guess it was for the control of the nation, control of people and they saw that as an opportunity. It was probably, everything came together at once and this, I guess the old timers of the nation wanted to keep what they once had and the nation was changing, you know, needed to change.

Yeah. And, you know, with the civil rights movement and things, those things needed to change because you just can't oppress people. I mean, that's just wrong. And that's what was happening. And I think this whole thing was put together to keep oppressing people, you know, and to this day, they do it differently now.

The people are still oppressed, you know, in this religion and they don't even know it. They're kept bound by, you know, man-made rules, by things that are unscriptural. And then you get, the groups can't even stay together because they're fighting over.

Well, he said this about Christmas here and he said this about Christmas there. So they won't even fellowship with each other because they can't decide what's Christmas all about, you know, it's, yeah. And many of the opposite of Christmas cheer, it is.

But yeah, there's so many things like that you could go into and, but a lot of these standards of dress and conduct or man-made rules as I've found in researching what true modesty really is.

And it really, it really is, you know, sad, is sad that they are going to continue with that. But I understand why. Yeah. But getting back, say to what brought me out of when I was following upshall and doing the newspaper research that you had done and other sources and found them out in California together, you know, working together under a business to create this orphanage.

And then upshall is right there with him. So, so they obviously knew each other and I'm sure. that they knew each other in Jeffersonville because Upshaw visited Jeffersonville in 32, running for president. And there's no way that I could ever see that William Brownham ever did not know who Upshaw was.

But here it was in 1951 when Upshaw claimed he got healed and got off his crutches at that time. Brother Brown said he never knew him. Never knew who he was and he had to see all this by vision and there's just no way that could be so because your videos basically is what I saw.

And he had visited Jeffersonville or Louisville and there's just no way he would not be well-known and published in the papers that time because he was so against prohibition and William Brownham's family was in alcohol production.

So there's just no way he wouldn't have known him. And so also I found newspaper articles and I put this in the book that I finally wrote there was one time a newspaper reporter confronted Upshaw.

I think it was his name was Coat, but he C-H-O-A-T-E. He confronted Upshaw about his crutches, his use of crutches, he says, I think you are a faker and he's threatened to publish him in the paper as a faker.

Yeah. Now Upshaw got so mad at that he swung at him and I think he either hit him or swung and missed and he rare back was gonna hit him again and his other fellow congressman pulled him back because he was for something like that to upset a man that was called a faker there's something to that.

To me, seeing your articles you found where he was running up and down the aisles of Congress barely touching his crutches to the ground. You know, there was something about him not needing his crutches, I think very clear that if you really, people that knew him closely probably knew he really didn't rely on those as much as he said he did.

And then when 1951 came and he was supposedly healed and not using his crutches, it just, that's where it all fell apart from me. I said, this was a fake healing and for William Brown to describe it as he did and said, you know, he was finally healed and out of his wheelchair or crutches, to me that was just totally faked.

And so when you've got a man doing that, there's a lot more under the surface than that you really got to look at. And so that's really what the key of what brought me to the point is saying, this is wrong.

You know, I can't continue to follow, you know, a man that's gonna be dishonest. And then you, and then the avalanche came of the information more and more lies you discover, more and more ways he was untrue about his life story.

And things just, you know, fell into place for me and finally I just said, you know, I even went to my pastor about it and said, you know, we've got to bring this to the congregation.

We got to make them aware of this. And that might have been the best mistake or worst mistake I ever did, but I don't know what, but it set me off. on a different journey, and it has been a whole journey of deconstructing everything I once knew. I think for the first, and I can get into how I felt those first few days after the church, not the church, but maybe my pastor kind of turning me out, making me not a part of the church anymore, until I've straightened up, I guess, but I just couldn't

ignore the things I was seeing and the research that I was doing at that time. But the other first few days, I felt like, you know, the world's upside down to you. I really, literally felt like I was licking up at the world I used to be in, and I was on a different world, a different planet almost. It was just surreal. And so it took a while to get over to that emotional thing. It's something that you go through physical, you know, emotional things.

Oh, yeah. Almost to the point of hyperventilating. You just, because you don't really know what you're doing. You're an uncharted territory at that time. And so it's a scary thing to leave. It's a scary thing to think that your soul's in jeopardy. I know that's what many people think. If you think one word against the prophet, then your soul's in jeopardy. So that's what goes through your mind. And it takes a while to get through that. But I think my biggest thing you can rely on is the word of God. If you're if you're a Christian, you go right

back to the word of God and said, well, here's what the word says. And if they're not saying what the word says, then I can stand on that. And that's what carries you through. Of course, if you need counseling or some other method to get you through, you need to pursue that.

And I say I have spoken to a counselor once, but not in the early days. It's only been in the last year, just to just to talk about it. But that helps. So so anything you can do to help you through that, your your support network, which you've created, John, and your organization there. And the other ministers that have come out and that's that's a big help to, you know, they provide a support network for you. So you can't you're not free falling. You're not by yourself in this. But it will it will cause a lot of, you know,

you know, a lot of emotional things to happen to you as you come out. But eventually you get over that and you're, you know, if you're if you're serving God and that's where you're your pursuit, you're going to continue to serve God. And if you're not, then you know, you're doing your own thing the other way. So that's, that's, you know, everybody's different.

So my focus is I wanted to continue to serve God. I didn't I didn't get into the message to not serve God. And I didn't get out of the message to stop serving God. And that's where a lot of people think they lump everybody in the same category, say, when you got out because you didn't want to live the life or whatever that might be, that's not that's not true. Um, I still feel.

same way about living a life worthy of the gospel as I did before, and staying in a constant state of wanting to please the Lord, so that's the whole thing. So as that key thing came together with Upshall and Davis and Bramham came together, my idea was to write a book too, and basically to follow your research and anything new that I found that would throw in there, and to try to make it kind of entertaining.

So I did write this book here, and I just followed your research. So there's nothing really new in here. I did put some of the things I did find. One interesting thing I did find, which it was so shocking to know what Davis did with Ali Lee, you know, to get him accused of the man act, I never had any knowledge of that and what that was about, but that was an interesting find that you had.

Oh my, there's a whole story behind that, but when you realize what a, I guess you could call Davis kind of evil, because he left his first wife and three kids, he brought a woman to Georgia, had a child by her name, Catherine.

He ended up leaving her at some point at his journey up to Louisville, and then this girl and his family that he found out in Georgia, the garrison's, her mother and her daughter went up with him to Louisville.

That's where they wound up that. And then when he brought Ali Lee over, I guess she was living with him. That's when the police got involved in, in 1930, took him off the platform after he sang his specials or went singing for that revival with Raider, Ralph Raider, I guess, right off the platform, but I knew William Brannum was out there watching the whole thing.

Oh yeah. Because they were connected by that time. So he was watching the whole thing. He was back from his Western journey from Arizona, wherever he winded up in the West in 1929 to come back.

So I know at that time William Brannum was looking at the bridge being finished that he said he prophesied, but you know, he never said, when I came back from Arizona, I told everybody about this bridge and I prophesied.

He never said anything about what I took place and how wonderful that would have been. He only started talking about a bridge that he prophesied maybe in the fifties or something. I thought that was peculiar too.

So it only adds to the evidence that this bridge thing was really, I made up fabrication of the vision because he never mentioned him, you know, telling the people of the town there, hey, I prophesied this bridge, they just got completed.

I saw all the 16 men, you know, all that never came up. So, yeah. But anyway, with Ali Lee, you know, she was the younger owner of teens and here Roy Davis is proud.

40 years old by that time and he took her and so I really originally initially thought well maybe he was just taking her under his care because he did call her his daughter. They traveled as a singing group as Jack and Granny out west because she went with him when he left Jeffersonville and he called her his daughter at that time.

But by the time they got to California I guess he was calling her his wife because in my book I put that picture of the certificate of their marriage and it's funny because when they got out to California he was 54 years old that was a 1943 and Ali Lee was 29 and when they started living together as husband and wife and they were telling her by they were married I guess everybody around them probably won and why wouldn't they were married.

So the next thing in 43 in January they took off to Mexico and got married. Long their marriage license they put on their he was 47 she was 24 so they lied about their ages which is not in common with what we've seen on documents you know like William Brown's marriage license he didn't tell the truth about his age either but they definitely had to back date their ages on that marriage license so that they when they went back to California they say well we've been married you know seven years because he backed at his age seven years and so it would be a maybe a semi-true statement you know we've

been married seven years and so it would make it all right because if they say hey we just got married well that would be very suspicious for a minister to be carrying them to be an unmarried and being together absolutely yeah very weird.

You know I envy you in a way because I went through the same journey of research there were things that you found that I didn't obviously but I went through the same journey of research after leaving the message and so I knew that all of this was a lie and whenever I found you know some of the critical things that you've mentioned for me it didn't come as a shock that they were lying but I can't imagine somebody who either had either was still in the message mindset or had just recently came out going through that journey for me

you know you mentioned William Brannum could not have known upshaw there's no way and he said he didn't know upshaw but there's no way that he couldn't have known upshaw because of the dates.

For me I had a lot of things just happened by happenstance and one of the things was my son was in homeschooling and the Southern Baptist seminary offered a room for homeschoolers and so we were taking our son to the Southern Baptist seminary which is you know it's like 10 minutes from our house and Louisville Kentucky so I'm going in there And I can't remember how it came about, but it might have been a picture on the wall or something.

Tipped me off that Congressman Upshaw was at 1927, the vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And remember at that time, I was still of the mindset that William Brannum was a Baptist, because he claimed he was a Baptist minister.

It wasn't until years later that I found that he was actually a Pentecostal, and he was the bishop of a new Pentecostal sect called the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God sect. And so I discovered this and I'm like, well wait a minute, that doesn't fit.

How does he not know Upshaw? If Upshaw is the vice president of this thing. And so I started, a lot of people don't know this. I go to extremes in the things that I research.

I started having lunch almost daily and coffees daily with a round table of tea professors and students in the seminary. I would just camp out in their break room all day long. And I'm talking, when I say all day, I mean like, I was getting there at 6.30 or 7 a.m., and I would stay until school let out for my son.

And I would overhear conversations, listen to them. And what I was doing was I was picking up their main theological points so that I could re-evaluate the very, very earliest sermons where William Brannum was apparently newly Pentecostal, he claimed, you know, from 1947 forward.

When I started comparing those two, no man, there is no way this man was a Baptist, no way at all, and hold that book up. So your book, which is the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician, that is an amazing book for somebody who is newly coming out of the message or somebody who is still in it, because it's written from that perspective.

It, for somebody like me now who has been out for years, it would feel very sympathetic to William Brannum. But remember, there's a gradual progression of unraveling the stuff that's programmed in your head, the brainwashing.

So for somebody who is newly escaped the message or who is thinking about leaving, highly recommend this book to you. It is basically, like you said, it's in parallel with my research and you are giving me some of this.

So in my research, if you read my book, which is very highly critical and even describes itself as that, your book is not so highly critical of William Brannum, but it's saying the same information, which in the end, the result is the same, because this was not a good man William Brannum was worth.

I'll keep it, I'll keep it to a G rating and say that. Yeah, I would agree, when I, when I, when I, this book, I wanted it to be such that message believers could read it and not be so highly offended, but they would see the truth. They would, it would lead them to the conclusions that I came to, but not, not everybody is going to come to the same conclusions or have the same trigger point that's going to bring them out.

Mon was the upshall Davis-Branum connection. Some others people might be, you know, his lion on his birth certificate or his marriage license or him being a Pentecostal very early on and then saying he never was a Pentecostal or him telling, maybe he wasn't under the cloud, maybe that was one of the key. I know that was the key for James Manuel, well, to come out, was the cloud. So everybody's trigger point is different. So I wanted to write about my trigger point in this and not be, because at that time, I guess this was in

2020, see when this was, 2022. So that's been two years ago when I've published this. I was three years out and I've always been intrigued about this so-called gift that, you know, we on Bramham had, because on tape it seems like it's absolutely the truth. It seems like he's doing nothing underhanded, like using the prayer cards. And then you hear certain things when he goes back into people's lives and he sees, maybe them sitting at the doctor's office and what the doctor said. You know, it's just, it's so amazing. That's what locks a lot of people

in to this is once you get to that. And I want to say more about that in a little bit, but a lot of times the gift is what locks people in. So I was willing to concede when I wrote this book that, well, he may have had a gift, you know, he may have had a gift of discernment or whatever.

He may have been able to read people's thoughts. But I also see that's, that's not unique. And the ministry is because you see it, you see men like WV Grant doing it. You see other people that profess to do it and have demonstrated that they're possibly able to do it. I've even seen psychics on the internet now. Yeah, you see them. And they can read, they can call out people's names in the audience. And they don't know these people. Now, how do they do that? I don't know.

And there's people like Paul Cain. Paul Cain had, he was so close to what brother Brannum was doing that Gord Lindsey called him in the newspapers another Brannum. Right. And he could, he could take right on in the services and discern people's lives as much as as William Brannum could. So, so this thing about the gift, you know, I, I really haven't come to a full conclusion about what it all is. I just say that I don't have that. And it doesn't matter what it is. Even if it's supernatural, that gives does not vindicate him as a prophet. The scriptures are very clear what vindicates prophets, and that's

if they're speaking in the name of the Lord, it has to come to pass. And when you look at, and I solid believe the sign, their final conclusions is that, you know, we can't find any any prophecy spoken before the fact that actually came to pass. If you look at all that he said and prophecy wise, you know, that's, that's really the truth. You can't, you can't really pin down anything he said before the fact that came to pass. Everything he said was after the fact, just like the bridge, and he even got the details of that wrong. I mean, if you're going to prophesy about a bridge,

you know, collapsing and people dying, at least get the number of people that died correct. And you were out there with it. He came back in 1929 when the bridge was completed. So he should have at least had a little research and known how many people died and not made up 16 people.

You know, in these divine healing cults and there were, there are many. When you're in this thing, you think William Brannum was the only one. But if you just even go back and look at what Gordon Lindsey did, we're talking hundreds of evangelists that he was generating new new prophets and new ministries, new healers. That's why it was called the voice of healing. And you know, like you said, a lot of people who are in this, who are in that mindset, they look at these quote unquote miracles, whether they happen or whether they don't. For me, that's like you said,

it's irrelevant. But they look at this as the vindication of William Brannum. And some people go different directions. Some people say that Brannum had a demon. Some people said that he did have a gift, but it doesn't make him a prophet. When we began to discover that Gordon Lindsey and others like him were doing the same exact thing with many others, even when William Brannum stepped down from voice of healing, you find William Freeman steps up as the new prophet for the aging.

I can't remember how they phrased it. But for me, this book, which a one of my new friends who has left the message gave me this unbelievable stack of books, some of which included some of the things that they don't want you to see from the ministries gone by such as this. This is a 1945 tract. It was written, you know, his alleged gift was supposed to come. The very day Israel became a nation. And he said it was 1947, which is actually 1948. But this describes a ministry dating back. If you run the timeline chronologically, I think it's in 1936,

is when he says that he first began his healing ministry. And this particular tract, it uses the date 1945 in describing... a huge healing campaign, but the most interesting part of this, it says, in the title, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, the summary of this tract is that he was given a vision by God, which gave him his gift of divine healing, and then he had this massive campaign in which many people were healed. And again, the date that he gives, as he says, the massive campaign, the current massive campaign was 1945. So this was probably written

before, you know, or slightly after 1945, but it all was the result of a vision. And Charles and I were still collaborating on the research, and we discovered that there is an article where William Brannum is caught by the newspapers in Canada, healing the same girl multiple times in the healing lines, and they're like, wait a minute, that girl was just healed in this other city, and you're doing it again. Well, in that, the interview Gordon Lindsay and Lindsay refers to this tract, which was apparently for sale in those revivals, and he says a couple

years ago, which that would be 1945, he said a couple years ago, Brannum was given a vision to heal the sick. Now, everybody knows that in the later years, William Brannum was promoted by Gordon Lindsay, as this, you know, they call it, how an angel came to me series of sermons, right?

Lindsay knew that that story was fake 100%. So if you're looking at a gift and you're looking at something to point to, well, these guys, they knew that it was fake. And what they were doing was they were recreating the stage persona to make it more widely appealing. So if this version with a vision wasn't as successful, well, let's introduce an angel and let's see if it was. And if it is, if that becomes more popular, well, what elements are popular? What elements are, let's remove the elements that aren't, and let's make it even more popular. And that's how they built this

up to the, the massive thing that it became. You know, if with all the angels that appear from the 1950s on and is even doing today, you would think heaven is just open and all the angels are afraid to come down the earth because everybody has a visit from an angel, right? I mean, they do.

And so, yeah, that's, that's so, and, and, and you know, that's not true. I mean, I don't, yes, some people can be visited by angels, but, but the massive amount for these ministries, they're, they're making it up. So yeah, yeah, very much so. There's a lot you said there. I want to want to comment on, but for the first thing that tracked, I've heard of the message before I came out, of course, about his, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. I heard that about him saying, I wrote that track. And you know, I never could find

that track. And I always wanted to find it to read it. Because he mentioned it. Yeah. But if you listen to some early tapes, you'll hear and refer to it. They do not want you to have this. They don't want you to have it. And I know why now, and some of the details in there, if you follow the timeline, yeah, it puts his ministry going back to 1936, even, and how he describes it in there is that, you know, I had the gift of healing, and I didn't go to the, maybe he didn't go to the

Pentecostals or whoever, kind of like his life story goes, but he says, God took the gift away from me for five years. Right. And now he's given me a double portion of it. And here it is 1945. Now, I've got to give him a double portion of healing in 1945. Why does the angel have to come in 46, say, and I've given you the gift of healing again, or, you know, this, you can tell it's, he's recreating himself again and again. And something I want to say that I thought about many times is that, you know, William Brown, I'm starting preaching around

1930 to 1933. By 1945, he'd been preaching 12 years, maybe or more. He was very skilled at that time. And I think William Brown's gift was definitely very, he was a very personal person. He could win you over as far as a friendship, because I think everybody I've ever heard talk about him. They loved him. And, you know, he became a friend very easily. And he, he must have loved people. But he had been so experienced. He was very keen on what was going on those tapes. So he was very careful about what he said, for the most part, a lot

of times he got loose on his tongue, some, which helps, helps us. And even, even earn backser said, he would say some things in public. I told him not to, don't say those things. He says that, it says, as long as he refrain from doing that, I was okay working with him. But finally, I just couldn't take it anymore. And I had to leave. And that was only six years after he started working with him. Yeah. So, so for the most part, he was pretty keen on what he was saying on those tapes. He knew that his tapes would go out. And

that's what the impression people would get of him and his ministry. But, but yeah, they were only recreating themselves over and over again. And they would hide the past in a way that, you know, you wouldn't be able to find it. And so glad you got that track, because it does open up a lot more, you know, there. And the part about the angel coming, I did write a second book. I'll show, sit here, which, you know, this one, you know, say, defending the truth. And I would say, as I was, this one was published last year. But these are just a

compilation of things that I came across as I was minister. and finding things that he was saying that really wasn't lining up with the word, the scripture. And I wanted to point out those things.

And they're not critical of, I didn't name the book, a critical examination just to comparison. And so if people would read that and compare with what the word, the Bible says with what he said, they would see very clearly its opposite.

Because what he did with the scripture basically was, I will use the word twist or, you know, he wanted the scripture to conform around his ministry. So really, every scripture talking about, you know, the prophet coming, Revelation 10, 7, Luke 17, 29, 30, Son of man being revealed, all that centered around him.

So he pulled all these scriptures together and he had to make them fit around his ministry. And I know where he's going now. I know what his basic thought was, thought process was. And I know this is going off on some new tangent.

But it's something else I'm focusing on because it's how he saw the world. How he saw the Christian life or the Christianity in general and what his ministry was about, which was total, you know, deception.

But he twisted those scriptures because it fit what his ministry was about and what he was trying to accomplish, you know, and gathering everybody under his wing, you know, and in his message. So, but it all centered around what the who he felt the bride was, who he felt Jesus was, and God himself, you know, being one God.

You know, that's what it all centers around. I won't go into detail about it. You might want to cut some of this out. But my next book will focus on the Godhead because he actually believed the bride's end to Godhead, you know, is what he believed.

I believe that we were a part of the Godhead because we were in a thought. And he downplayed Jesus Christ because he believed Jesus was also a thought of God that came out from God.

I don't know if you've heard some of the message leave Hill. You know, preached about the Godhead, but he got into that. So, that second book that you mentioned, that one gets more into the doctrine, like you said.

And I think that's very critical for people who are trying to examine William Brannum. We, most of this particular podcast we've talked about the history and Brannum's connection to these very sinister forces, which you covered in your first book.

But why don't we do this? Let's split this into two parts. And next week, let's dive a little bit deeper into the doctrinal things that you've discovered. Because while my website does try to avoid going deep into doctrine, there's some things that you identified that I think are very critical to understanding what this was, what it became, and how it...

different it is from Christianity in general. So if you could hold up that first book again and tell the listeners how they can find it in the name of the book, the one about Roy Davis.

So the books that I have, I'd put them on Amazon and my first batch that ordered is just about exhausted. So if I get a lot of orders, I could, you know, place a new order for some more.

But the book is called Persuasive Preacher, the gifted prophet and the noble politician. And that was the book that, well, basically follows Davis's trail and the intersection of Davis and Upshall and Brannum and how all that plays out and how their lives play out. And so it points out some key things to understanding the issues that's in the message. The questions such as, why would William Brannum even want to work with a man like Davis at all, did his life, his lifestyle. The second book came a year later and it's just a compilation of things that I've discovered and I thought were key in knowing how the message is not

corresponding with the Bible. And that's called Defending the Truth. And that's subtitled comparing William Brannum's doctrine with scripture. And it's basically just to point out how William Brannum's ministry, what it was focused on and how he was drawing these scriptures to himself and how he was basically twisting the scripture so it would play along with his ministry. And it's very, it's very deceiving. And if you only listen to him and you don't study the scripture yourself, you'll probably miss the subtleties there. I do have a third book that I put out which I haven't shown but it's called The Desperate Profit. And I say that a little sarcastically

but I do that to kind of get your attention. But that's, I said William Brannum's use of the Lusory Truth Effect to support false prophecy. I put this in my book, my first book and I want to make a booklet out of this to focus on the 1952 vision of India, Africa and to really focus on that.

And John, you did a good job in your Africa India Shuffle video. It was real funny to watch. I thought that was hilarious. But it shows the back and forth nature of what he said. He was just back and forth on his account of Indian Africa. Yeah. But I wanted to point out specifically how key this vision was to his ministry. It was at a point he was kind of trailing back down and needed to boost himself back up with some great show such as South Africa trip that he had a year prior. So he even publicly

he had a it was seeking God for a vision and then all of a sudden two months later he comes out while I've had the vision and if you know was ever studied what that vision was about it was pretty spectacular it involved two angels including the angel that was always with him and and that's what we'll get into my book about do angels really lie you know people give random a pass for lying but we need to look in the fact do angels lie right and that's a that's a big thing to swallow there and if you really look at this vision your conclusion may be that what is it about this angel

is he is he true or not and it may help some people you know the discovery of what this is all about so absolutely and I'm you can see it on my face I'm chopping at the bits I want to get into that conversation because I people know this about me I avoid the doctrinal issues but there's a part of me that really wants to get into it and strategically I don't because doctrine can be very dividing and if you're trapped in the message and you hear somebody who has opposing doctrine the way that the brainwashing and the cult and indoctrination works is if you hear opposing doctrine it

raises your defenses and so you shut off all critical thought so what I try to do is I counter this by I approach it in a way that doesn't allow them to disable critical thought if they're in the message and then for the people who aren't in the message who is you know it's actually my target audience they're more interested in history but there's a part of me that wants to get into the doctrine so deeply so I'm chopping at the bits I'm excited for next week and let's let's come back again let's do this again next week and let's dive deeper into the doctrinal issues if you've

enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at www.William-brandom.org for an overview of the historical research of William Brandom in the healing revivals you can read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Brandom in his message available on amazon kindle and audible