Weaponized Religion: Christian Identity Origins of the NAR

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of WilliamBranham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, author of the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician. And together we're discussing weaponized religion, how Christian identity fused with early Christian fundamentalism and politics to form the foundation for the new apostolic reformation. John, I am so excited about doing this today for the audience that can see me. I'm kind of bubbling over at this point. I have been

wanting to start this and I actually have started to lay the foundation for a few times, but it's such a complicated story that is going to unfold that I couldn't think of a way until you and I had our discussion a few weeks back of how to do it in such a way that it was content that the listeners could actually digest because there's so many moving parts and moving pieces. And what you and I have put together is just it's simply amazing the the way that we have structured this and moving forward as we get into the weaponized religion

theme. I think it's something that not only can the listeners digest and understand, but it's so highly entertaining. The stories that we have and the things that you and I have uncovered over the years. And you know, when you take my weaponized religion research, which surrounds, you know, the same time period that your research covers and then merge it with your research. We have this timeline that fits like a zipper. And one of the for me, one of the biggest thrills of this, I've mentioned this a few times. I'm wanting to kind of gradually, you know, shift away from having to mention Brannum. I'm so tired of

mentioning that name. But in what we're going what we're about to do, this journey we're about to embark upon, Brannum just becomes this side story to the bigger picture. And now we're getting into the underbelly of the criminal political mess that Brannum was a part of. And you know, even though he's the side story and we'll have to mention it from time to time, he was just one of Hundreds thousands of people they got involved with this mess and To the listeners who are excited to get into this. I will give you this warning before we start this journey

Because it is showing what he brand name was a part of the brand of cult will like in the past They'll try to stop this and you know who knows what happens You know the YouTube type site may go down, but we're on so many other sites and At this point the brand name cult is just like this annoying flee that keeps hopping on my back And it's it's really irrelevant if it does happen you can go to William-brandam.org and you can find there's a video page Everything goes up there even if one site goes down another one just pops up

It's like it's like my technological whack-a-mole that I created or you can go to the you know the Spotify or Apple and get the Audio versions, but John I'm so excited to do this and Excited to have you as the co-host as we start down this pathway Thank you John. It's good to be back and it's good to explore some more avenues on this subject Uh, I really think it's an important subject just because Is so widespread it was Comes from some very deep roots and I know we're gonna take some time to explore the roots of this thing

But it's an I said ideology that so many unsuspecting Christians have embraced And that started from the early days of Pentecostalism Even with some names that we're very familiar with that you've touched on that you've talked about is Charles Fox Parham Frank Sanford and as you found Gerald Winrod and all those cast of characters that eventually led to Davis and eventually Caught Brannum up into that movement Uh, and like you said, he's just uh probably us Uh, it's a very small part of this big puzzle, but it's it's gonna be a great uh journey I think as we delve into these things, but I think it's like I said before I believe it's very important

Uh, most people don't know the backstory of all these things and the things that you begin to uncover You just unpacked so much that um That that people are not familiar with they see it they've seen it in the news. They've seen the groups that uh What the fruits of this ideology produce Uh, which will go into the weaponized portion of this uh religion But it does produce bad fruit Uh, I can just go back to what earned backster said of uh William Brannum's teaching ministry It said the fruits of his teaching ministry are not good and you know, it's perhaps maybe that's some of what he's referring to

Because I don't I don't believe earned backster embraced uh these these types of things But that's possibly possibly some of the reasons why his popularity declined You know in the fifties as once uh, you know say more uh moderate Christians that weren't embracing this type of ideology found out about it. They've pushed him to the side. But yeah, I'm really excited about looking into all these things. It's even new material that I've not studied in the past. But very many years ago, I was always interested in, when I was young and impressionable, I guess I could say, interested in the conspiracy theories. Who's running America? What's all

this about? Because we're not taught very much in school about the history of America. But this is really digging into what's really happened in America in the religious front and what we see working today, even. So yeah, I'm very excited about this, John.

You mentioned conspiracy theory. That's going to be a funny topic as we get into this because we are going to have the people who are part of these, their ministries exist because of this thing we're discussing. They're going to throw that red flag. It's a conspiracy theory. But what has happened is this is a history that used to be mainstream history.

And these guys have covered it up. So as we dive deeper into this, we're going to be literally discussing what everybody used to know. And today, not many, not very many people know this history. I recently, just yesterday, had a conversation with Andre Gagne and he, he, he studies the NAR and I can't remember his phraseology, but basically he's studying weaponized religion of today. And every once in a while, he has to go back into the histories. He's one of the first guys that I heard link, Brannum, very strongly to the letter rain before I even knew that was even possible. So I scoured his videos years

back. And anyway, we're talking about conspiracy theory. How do you avoid being labeled as a conspiracy theorist? And what we're going to do at this podcast and what I explain to him is we're not giving theory, we're giving history. And much of that history, even though it can lead to the fruits we see today, and there's a clear lineage of history that leads to those. We're not really focusing on the histories and, you know, the people that attack of whatever movement was built on top of this. We're just talking about what happened. And let the listener come to their own conclusion, you know, we may tell you, yes, this political

movement, this religious movement, whatever exists because of this history we're talking about. It doesn't mean that that is a bad political movement or bad religious movement. It's just simply history. This exists because of this thing that was created, you know, long back.

And we'll just go, you know, as we go through this, we'll put the facts out. I'm working on a manuscript for the next book, which literally is the topic that we're discussing in this podcast.

And when that comes out, you You'll have all the footnotes and the direct quotes, but it isn't theory that we're discussing. We're discussing history. And so, yes, we'll be attacked. Yes, they'll say it's conspiracy theory, but as time goes on and we start bringing awareness to the facts, the facts speak for themselves.

And it doesn't matter who the fact comes from, if it's truth, it stands alone by itself. So I'm just, like I said, I'm so excited to get into this and spread awareness on why we see these problems today.

And I think by knowing the history, we can understand why these problems exist. Yeah, John, I think that word conspiracy tends to scare people away and it tends to label you, or somebody talking about something, even mentioning the word tends to label you a certain way.

But yeah, like you said, we're just discussing real history. I think years ago, these groups actually that embrace these types of ideologies are the biggest conspiracy theorist out there. They say there's a conspiracy, but to me, it's just the workings of history.

It's just what people do. It's just human nature, what's happening and things work themselves out. It's not necessarily some kind of conspiring of men together at the very top to run things. So it's just different people's political ideologies that manifest themselves.

So yeah, I'd kind of drop the conspiracy idea years ago, many years ago, and this is probably the first time I've really gone back in to looking at any of this in the last, just the 90s, things that kind of play into their hands as we may mention periodically as the way, because they're ideas, the governments after them.

And most of these people, the very end of what all this has come to, most of these people are good American people. They're very, you know, probably moral people. They believe in the Constitution.

They believe in very sound principles. And I think they believe it's their mission, some of them to get America back to whatever the original Foundings were. And so they see everything coming against that is conspiracy, such as maybe we'll go into the teaching of evolution in schools was a big thing, or taking away the golden silver out of the money and giving us paper currency.

And just different things the government has done over the years, they see it as a big conspiracy to destroy what they believe they're about. And so a lot of times it does turn to violence among them, or they believe they're going to one day fight the government and whatever they plan to do.

And so we see these things play out, such as, I guess you could mention, you know, say Waco texts years ago or back when any time there's a hostage. situation with people trying to stand their ground and the government comes in to try to put a stop to it. I mean, the red flag goes up for them. So yeah, I'll be getting into all that data, but it's just real history. And it's amazing how many, you know, Christian people really embrace this ideology and not really knowing the full depth of it, you know, which we'll get into. And so hopefully it'll help help people understand where they are,

because I can see more clearly today, you know, where I stand versus, you know, being blind and being in the movement I was in for so many years and not really knowing what I was in, but I think this is going to bring light to what people are in these movements and what they need to be aware of.

Absolutely. And one of the things we've discussed about how to avoid this is we want to lay the clear understanding that one person who has a really, who ends up really badly. It doesn't mean that they're always that way. They have their own history and their own milestones of what made them into what they became. But some of those men were with other men who are connected to this. And there's a lot of cross pollination that happened. It isn't that one guy or the other came up with this, you know, hey, let's, let's go bomb

the Oklahoma building or whatever. It's not that it's not that one guy influenced directly and caused this thing. But there was cross pollination where somebody who had a different set of life experiences turned out really badly, but they were at one time part of this bigger picture. And this idea of cross pollination, I'll never forget one of the people who escaped the random call from out in Arizona. They were mentioning that, you know, there's these random tours where you go up to the mountain and you go to these various places. There's one spot where you can find all these little pyramid rocks. And I know a funny story

of why those rocks are there, which I won't tell right now. But they, these people take these journeys. And one person was on the journey and just happened to meet David Kuresh's, as either his brother is cousin, I think it was his cousin, who was taking the same pilgrim edge, right? And, and this guy was like, oh my gosh, was, was David Kuresh in the message of William Brannum. And until you understand the bigger picture of, you know, it's not just one group and it's not even just one message. This cult had many different versions

and flavors. And it's not even so much that David Kuresh might have been in one of those flavors. But there, there's a lot of cross pollination. These guys may have been in the same circles of friends or same meetings. When we mention, you know, Gerald Winrod as a guy, we'll mention.

A lot in this episode in this podcast, but his son Gordon was in one of the big showdowns as you know and What state was that right above? It was an Arkansas. I think it was Missouri. Missouri. It was in Missouri Yeah, you're right. Well, right it was right across the border from one of the largest Gatherings of message people. I mean this this was a place that I knew several people that went to this message Church man, and there was there's a lot of them around that area They're all concentrated in that same area. Does it mean that Gordon-Winrod was affiliated with the message?

Not necessarily could be not necessarily, but they're all in there on the same communities and You know when you think of how cross-pollination works you and I might be discussing something and I might say something Casually not even thinking about it, but it resonates with you and so you start thinking about it and then you start talking Why it resonated with you back to me and then I might come up with you know some bright idea that makes that even more emphatic and it builds into a bigger thing than it really started out as and so when all of these people are in the same

Communities and especially political arenas There's this cross-pollination that happens and and these ideas just develop one of the big things which we will mention I have been Part of the reason why I want to do this podcast. I have been studying the epicenter of how the British Israel movement exploded into Christian identity Because Christian identity was the framework for William Branham's message Plain and simple we there is no there's no question. That's how it happened at this point based on the research and finding that Gordon Lindsay was involved with the the Anglo-Saxon Federation and these British Israel groups

At the time in which those groups had transitioned from British Israelism into what was becoming Christian identity Places him in the Christian identity circles and then his doctrines, you know He's got the books on the UFOs and he's got I think there's even some British Israel books that they have removed from his library You can't buy them anymore But these things exist because he was part of that movement and does it mean that Gordon Lindsay Is responsible directly for what happened in the standoffs and the shootings and you know the area nations and all this

Not necessarily But he's in these meetings where there's this cross-pollination happening and he's part of a bigger picture So this podcast examines that bigger picture Yeah, that's uh exactly What you were saying there, you know these things cross-pollinate These movements touch one another in ways of common and going, but the whole ideology coming from Britain, Britain was the British Israel became Christian identity here in America. But British Israelism was very widespread in Britain. And even King George VI, I just read that just this week, King George VI, the man that, you know, William Brownham claimed to have healed, which he didn't, but he claimed

to have healed. He was, he believed in the British Israel doctrine, you know, he actually believed it. So they had a, a, a sense of destiny among them that they were the true Israelites.

And that ideology came to America. And we'll talk about that as we go forward. But it just spread like wildfire here in America, because America was, you know, mostly settled by Europeans. So it fit the times of America fit, fit the way the times of America was going, having just come out of the, you know, the 1800s. And, and now we're, you know, looking to get America back on track and, and America lost some of its, some of the peoples of America lost the, the fight for slavery and so forth. And so this ideology that came

to America, really, they embraced. And, and it became so many hate groups and things that came out of it. But as we'll talk about, you know, Roy Davis embraced his very early own out in Texas, brought it over through Georgia and spread it all over America. But, you know, Brandon was caught up into that and, and, and embraced as well. And, and him coming out with, say, the Serpent Seed doctrine in 1958, saying it was a new revelation from God.

With that revelation, it'd been going on probably since the 1700s. And even before, because as, as you know, Irenaeus, one of the church-h, messenger, so-called, had condemned it way, way back. So, it's funny how these ideologies just, uh, warmed her way through, through time.

And they resurfaced, you know, they don't ever go away. Uh, you know, the men die out, but the idea stays there. And, and this, this idea resurrected back, way back in the 1700s. And just spread through Britain, spread through America. And it's, it's going to be about what we talk about here, about all the castor characters that it, it touched on. And these men work together at times, say, you know, like you said, Gordon Lindsay, uh, he embraced the ideology and, you know, a lot of them were very closeted about it. Probably they didn't come out and just say it openly. And, you know, even, even Brandon, uh, you know, masked it,

some, he toned it down. He wasn't as blatantly, uh, open about the teaching, but, but he believed it was a physical seed. You know, so when you're dividing people up based on, uh, physicality and seed lines and things, then you, that, that's when you start down that road, uh, of, of what we see. The history of how these things came to be for me is just fascinating. Like, I, I don't care if you're not even religious just, I, I don't care if you're not even religious, just, I, understanding how religion came to be is mind-boggling, right?

We, so in this podcast, the structure that we're doing, we're following the timeline of Roy Davis and that, that is the central focus of our timeline, you know, and the characters involved with him upshall and, you know, William Joseph Simmons. Branham is just off to the side. He's a side story.

But as we're doing this, there are events happening in the religious and political arenas that Davis is affiliated with that have histories that we'll have to build up on. And, right, before this show started recording, you and I were talking about how far back would that be?

I mentioned maybe 1700s, but there, some of that history goes way back, like the British Israelism. The oldest known declaration of independence was written in 1320 for the independence of Scotland, you know, through back whenever Robert the Bruce was the name, right? And these, there's several people that signed it on behalf of Robert the Bruce that were defending his ex-communication from the Catholic Church. And the way that it was written and structured, they just casually mentioned and alleged that the children of Israel had landed in the, you know, in this area where the Scots were and they, what they were trying to do is just portray, hey, we're the good guys too,

don't be fighting us, Catholic Church. And that single simple phrase, because this was their declaration of independence, it became a, like a political theme after they wrote it. It wasn't even a religious doctrine and that progressed into what became British Israelism over time, but it wasn't really embedded so much in the religion as it was in the, in the royalty and these people prided themselves as being, you know, part of, part of the Anglo-Saxon race or whatever.

So it developed over time and we'll go back into some of those histories because it's just fascinating, but following the timeline of Davis puts it into American history and American politics and Christianity. And one of the things that, you know, we have to wait carefully is how do you discuss politics without making everybody angry because they're so polarized. But we're going to be talking about the history of politics and there'll be names that we'll casually mention like the America First Party, which sounds like we're talking about today's day and age, but Gerald L. K. Smith, who is a name we're also going to be introducing into this podcast, he was, he started

the first America First Party and it turned, what's, it's what turned into Christian national. It became the Christian Nationalist Party and so on and so forth, and that history, he is in the circles of men that you know, it's the same circles of men that developed into William Brownham's message, but that's through Roy Davis.

So following all of the Davis timeline and the circles of men that Davis is affiliated with, and some of that history has been kind of covered up in covert, such as the clan history, but we will talk about the times in which Davis was working with men that would have been working with LK Smith and so on and so forth. So bringing this out into a, you know, into a timeline puts it into a way that people can digest.

And I think for me that's the most exciting part. Yeah, it's true that, you know, when this ideology came to America, you know, I say Davis, the timeline of Davis will be very important to us to explore, because Davis was really right in the middle of the whole thing. And in fact, he was a big leader in the whole movement. And there were many branches.

This is a, this is a huge tree we're talking about with its roots here. Now in America, I guess where it started from, it just migrated and ended up in America. But there's a lot of branches on this thing. And so it was a lot of places we can explore and call out these names that lived in the past and all that they did to influence it.

And how they influenced the message and how Davis was a vital part of that. There's, you know, even folks that helped spread the ideology. And I had a couple of these books. It was a book written by Questler Questler.

This is his name. It was called 13th Tribe. You know, it was to document in some way, using some kind of pseudo science or whatever to show that how Israel migrated and where those lost tribes are.

And there's another one, Judas Scepter and Joseph birth birthright. I think you can download that one now right off the internet. And that one was written to show how Israel migrated to Britain. And that they deserve the right to hold the Scepter because the Bible says the Scepter shall never depart out of your house.

And so they believe they're have the divide. That's where the divide right of kings may have come from is they believe they have the right to rule. And so anyway, that came to America and all these movements that started like the America First Party and Christian nationalism and so forth.

You're beginning to blend church and state together in a way that can can become dangerous, depending on what the who the leader is that gets elected. If they're not very clear that, you know, everyone can worship and have their own freedom to worship as they as their conscience dictates.

to them versus, you know, persecuting groups that they don't agree with. So the way the climate is today, it's kind of a topic we're talking about now that kind of relates to the political climate today because we're very divided in America and we're coming up on an election and we see how the ones on the right with that side with Trump and his supporters have that led to maybe the January 6th incident and unfortunately a lot of the people that do embrace this type of ideology side with that and so they put a real stain on the whole

massive people that, you know, want good things for America and they tend to, you know, act out, act out what they believe in their heart and they just don't, they're not, sometimes they resort to the outburst of anger and violence and that's just what we've seen in these movements and that's why we're doing, that's the important part of why we're talking about this is to show the militant side of this is that these things that people believe and act out is very much like what we see in the Islamic world, what they believe they're acting out in a way that's very violent

and so hopefully this will help people wake up, you know, to what they've been taught and reevaluate and be able to critically analyze everything they've come across and what they're really believing because that's what we fell to do in the groups we were in is we were just told to believe only believe and you never were critically able to analyze and even and when you started doing that that's when you were ousted so it shows there's problems, you know, and when religion stops you from critically analyzing things on your own and using your own mind that God gave you to

reason and come to conclusions that's that's the dangerous part of this and this ideology captures people and once you get to believe in it once you get convinced of certain little pieces in there that you think is true, you know, your whole heart embraces kind of like how you come into the message once you have seen the gift operate or whatever what you believe is a gift then you're captured and once you get captured in your mind that's where we've talked about many times the brainwashing occurs and that's really what happens you get totally absorbed and your whole

being just gets absorbed into this and you you really can't get free until podcasts like this start showing you know you know the backstory and what it's all about by doing all this critical analysis of the people involved and the fruits of it you know once you see the fruit of it then you then you can really see clearly you know what it produces and if it doesn't produce good fruits you know you should get away from it.

Absolutely. And I think that's the biggest key to this, right? It's, it's a group think. It's, you know, when you're in a religion, you can be in any church and you can have to some degree a level of group think where everybody is thinking alike and so they build upon each other's ideas and if they're building in one direction and then suddenly one of those members of the church goes to another church, well, they're in a different group and that group may be progressing a different way. That's why you see, for example, the Baptist church, a lot of them are independently structured. They, they don't really take orders from

headquarters. So you've got each church's own entity basically. And what happens is when, when one person transplants from one church to another, sometimes it's like a totally different religion in some cases, right? Well, that happens in politics. People progress into a group think it's just on a much, much broader scale. And like you said, the bad actors are the fruits that we're talking about. I get labeled sometimes when I talk about the bad actors because if the bad actors are in a, you know, in the democratic convention, then I've got all these Democrats who will just blast me and say, you're anti-democrat

or especially with Trumpism, you know, if I mention something bad that happened with a bad actor that is affiliated with Trump, they'll say I'm anti-Trump. And I'm embarrassed to say it. I'll say it right now just to clear the water. I actually voted for Trump. I'm embarrassed to say it because had I known what I know today, I would not have, but I did vote for the guy, right? So I can, of all people, I can say this, you know, I can, I can talk about the bad actors. I voted for the idea that he presented, which he didn't bring

to fruition. I voted for that idea. I didn't like him, but I liked him better than the guy than the lady that was running against him. I'll just say it like that. But what happened is there were some bad actors. And once I, you know, at the same time, I'm going through this research, I start understanding why these bad actors exist. And some of the names, like David Duke, I can tie directly back to what we're going to talk about in this podcast.

And so these ideologies that are the dirt that swept under the rugs, we're bringing it out from under the rugs. And yes, we're going to be talking about things that may have led to current events. But it's not that I'm Democrat, Democrat, Republican, honestly. I'm of the opinion that they need to just throw both parties out, come up with a new party that is actually focused on helping people and take those idiots out of Washington. And I think they're all on both sides of the fence. Many of them should not be there in the first

place. That's that's my political opinion. But we're going to avoid the politics of today as much as possible, so don't fear that we're going to try to influence you against one party, the other. That's not what we're doing. We're just simply showing the history of it.

Yeah. I also, back when the election happened between Trump's first election, I didn't vote. It was by accident, I guess. I was actually out in Texas for a project with my company at the time, and I didn't do an absentee ballot because I didn't, this thing didn't come up until it was too late, and so I didn't vote at all, but I went to bed that night, you know, thinking one candidate was going to win. I woke up the next morning just totally shocked of who did win. It was really crazy, a crazy time, because at that time I was fully

in the message and fully expected, you know, the woman candidate to win as being the one to rise on the scene. So, you know, it just really shocked me that the other person won.

But of course, you know, I'm all for what's best for America. I guess I'm more, I don't lean either way, but I won't, I won't what's best for America and the people, and the best policies that will promote the good for the people is what I want.

Well, yeah, you were talking about even the politicians that are in the political arena today that we hear about the David Dukes, you know, I don't know how they even remain in politics with the beliefs they have because they certainly wouldn't be for the good of all people. And I would think that's what any politician or elected official should be for is for the good of all, but you know, him or those like that hold that type of ideology, you know, they certainly would be favored, favored towards one person, one group of people over another. And so it amazes me that they're still around, but they very much are, I guess,

and you know, we may never see if they don't reveal, you know, what they stand for. And most of them are very quiet about it until they get an office and then it's too late. And you have to put up with their agenda for the next four to six years or whatever. But, yeah, this is going to be an exciting journey here to carry on and to learn more about.

Earlier in this episode, you mentioned the Scopes trial and evolution and all of that. We're also going to touch on things that are very heated debates among Christianity today. We have to mention them because while it seems like this is a new thing, many of these things date back, you know, long before the history that we even started with in the last version of the podcast or last season of the podcast, the Scopes trial for instance, William Jennings Bryan is the key political figure involved with.

this. And he was, you know, like many fundamentalist Christians of the era, he was trying to fight the policy of believing in evolution and especially at being taught in schools. And he went through tour in the south, tying it to religion. So he was, like you said, he was mixing politics and religion where the two should never mix. But he said, basically, we in this platform are the defenders of the Christian faith. That slogan or that phrase that was used for his political schemes was taken by Gerald Winnrod and he created the entity, the business

entity called the defenders of the Christian faith, which is something that we'll be definitely talking about in this episode. But we're all binds together and why we both decided to take Roy Davis's timeline. There was one single article that blew my mind whenever we found it. And that was the 1943 out in California right about the same time that Gerald LK Smith was building the California clan he and Wesley Ace with. Davis was the MC for basically what would have, what later became the National Cortec Convention. All of these courtats gathering in, you know, in California. And Davis, he claimed that he was part of the, quote, original stamps

quartet, which is what caught my eye because I love the stamps quartet. I had records and CDs and, you know, what not. And JD Sumner and the stamps, right? Well, he claimed to be part of the original and there were four names mentioned. And those four were significant, but I did not realize how significant at the time. The four names that were mentioned were Roy Davis, which we know William D. Upshaw, which is the congressman that you referenced in your book, Caleb Ridley was mentioned in this. Caleb Ridley was the, you know, the imperial club, the supreme religious chaplain of the

clan. And he is the guy that we've mentioned this before a few times. But when we pieced together the timeline of William Brannum's ministry, he is the guy who's in holding campaigns in Nashville, Tennessee with Roy Davis, which William Brannum mentions being there in a, in a elder capacity during these meetings that he presents it in such a way that he was preaching. And that would have been the 1920s. Roy Davis, William Upshaw, Caleb Ridley are mentioned, but the fourth name given, which makes a quartet, or William Jennings Bryan. And at the time I read that, I'll be honest,

my memory for names. I wasn't a fan of history when I was in school. I just put it like that. I didn't realize the significance of that name, but once Charles's eyes lit up and he said, oh my gosh, that's William Jennings Brian's, you know the scopes trial, John.

And then suddenly, you know, the memory came back, but I started to realize that, wait a minute, these guys were connected and they're connected to movements that literally built the platform for many religious denominations of faith that exist today.

And Davis is involved, as you know, with the, he created the sect called the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God sect, because he was ousted from the Pentecostals, he was ousted from the Baptists, he was ousted from the Church of God.

So he's in all of these different groups, which we can, you know, claim. But now you bring William Jennings Brian into this, this is a much broader scale. In fact, it encompasses a large majority of the southern states were fans of William Jennings Brian.

And up Shaw, I think, even spoke at William Jennings Brian's funeral, which they held a memorial service at the Cato Tabernacle where it was the clan headquarters in Indianapolis where William Brannum launched Jim Jones's career, for example.

So there's all these weird connections, which we're going to explore in this podcast. But it was this one article that made me realize that we need to take a step back. Let's look at the bigger picture that created Brannum, put Brannum off to the side.

And let's just explore this movement that was growing and why was it growing in America? Why did all of these people find this appealing? Because these are very bad people. It's just that at the time that it was appealing, they weren't yet so bad.

So yeah, John, these these cast of characters are a very widespread and you mentioned Gerald Winrod. And of course, he was the founder of the defenders of the Christian faith. And he was a big name into this.

He influenced him and Fox parham, Charles Fox parham of the founder of the Pentecostal movement influenced Wesley Swift. But interesting about Gerald Winrod back in those days, he was in Kansas and that's where a lot of the headquarters, I guess, was when you mentioned, they had a lot of conventions say in Kansas and a lot of their start came from there.

But it's interesting. I thought back when Brannum was traveling back from the West and came back for his brother's funeral, what's mentioned in the newspaper is that he's actually from Kansas. So it makes me wonder if he had some connection on his way back, maybe even in Arizona.

And maybe coming back as he was coming into his ministry because he came into ministry just right after that, he was with those groups in Kansas. It makes me wonder, what would he be doing in Kansas when his purpose was to be in Arizona?

So there's not much history. about any more documentation on that, but yet it is a very, it puts a connection there for sure. So I also, Gerald Winrod, that character there, he was heavily influenced by the, it's called the Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion.

I was reading, that's something else we might can get into, but it just recently that document, that he was so influenced by, it's turned out to be a fake or a, you know, a farce, it's not, it's not really a true document, but that, when he read that document, it actually turned, it's where he got his conspiracy ideas that the Jews were controlling everything from the top and, you know, controlling the banking systems, you name it just anything, media banking, you know, government, and they were infiltrated everywhere, and they were to put, the true is relights,

which was the, you know, Christian Identity Group down and try to destroy them. So he was heavily influenced by that, and that's what drove his, his movement, but he was operating off a false document to begin with, so it's a shame that, that, that, that, that to him.

Another thing I was thinking of, when you talk about the Indianapolis meetings, yeah, Kadel Tabernacle was used, and I got to think about it in those days, without the internet, without television, you had radio, but, you know, without all the media that we have today to spread, you know, information, you know, how, how would those men think, what's the best way to spread, you know, information?

And, and the two biggest ways to do it, which Davis used churches, Davis, the Baptist churches were the most widespread, so he, he likely chose them, because we see Davis didn't care. He was a Baptist, Pentecostal Church of God, Church of Christ, it didn't matter what church, he was in, he just used religion as a vehicle to spread his message, to spread his doctrine, that he wanted to capture the minds of the people of America to follow, that he embraced very early on out in Texas, but he just used, his way of spreading the message

was churches. Another way they used was conventions, so you see they, they would have conventions at the Kadel Tabernacle, conventions here or there, and that was one way that people back in those days would attend conventions, because, as you've mentioned before, it's kind of a form of entertainment, they wanna come and hear what the message is all about, what, what's the, fire all about down here, so they're, they have these conventions, so that was a good way to spread their doctrine back in those days, now, in these days, it would probably be by internet, podcasting,

YouTubes, whatever, but it's amazing how effective they were at getting this message spread throughout America, because it just totally infected America, you know, in the Christian right side of things. Absolutely. And I think that's the key point that we're going to focus on. We're going to have to mention names like Parham because he's connected to the Christian identity side of things. Parham, if you read even some of his early writings, he's clearly a racist.

He is not in favor of what the Pentecostal movement was becoming. And he was tied to British Israelism through both Dauy and from Frank Sanford, which we're going to touch in that history a bit. We did in the past, but we're going to emphasize it a lot more in this series.

But Gerald LK Smith, you mentioned Cadel Tabernacle and spreading through religion, which is that was how things worked back then. It's born to us today, but that's how it worked. Gerald LK Smith was in Indianapolis at the time in which Indiana had the largest Ku Klux Klan presence in the United States. In fact, that's a large reason why Davis came to Indiana because there was there was a void in Klan leadership with the fall of DC Stevenson.

And anyway, Gerald LK Smith was in Indianapolis during the early 1920s and up to the mid 1920s, where it gets really interesting is from there, he went to Shreveport, Louisiana, which as you know was one of the earliest headquarters for William Brannum's campaigns.

And he became a preacher at the King's Highway Christian Church in Shreveport, which was, you know, we talk about cross pollination and the circle of friends. This was tied to the Shreveport ministerial association of which Jack Moore's father-in-law was part of.

He was used as a spy for people in the ministerial association and that ministerial association was tied to OK Smith's politics. So it gets really, really messy and interesting. The point I'm driving to with this is that Gerald LK Smith was a disciples of Christ minister. He was not a Pentecostal.

But GC Lout, who was Jack Moore's father-in-law, he was the most well-respected, well-known Pentecostal name in not just Shreveport, but through most of Louisiana. He was planting churches and, you know, Jack Moore's church probably wouldn't have existed without this guy.

So when we talk about cross pollination, we're not focusing on a specific denomination of faith. What we're talking about is the theme that brought all of these people together. And for me, that's even more interesting than, you know, you could take the Pentecostal movement exam and all of the weird stuff that happened with it.

But to understand that in the other churches, there were just as weird things. They just weren't these boisterous supernatural claims, which could never be proven or disproven. we can prove that there were some very bad actors who were spreading propaganda throughout all of the churches and we want to explore that a bit in this podcast. Yeah, John, it makes me think of the scripture. I'll mention one scripture where Paul said, you know, certain men have crept in unawares and I can't name the chapter in verse right now, but that's, you know, you know, evil men will creep into the church and that's really what happened in this movement

and it amazes me that it makes you want to question even the whole Pentecostal movement when you see a character like Charles Parham that you mentioned who has had the belief that he had and he was basically the founder of it. So for him to be the founder of a movement that is now worldwide, you know, maybe it was God was in it, but it makes you wonder if these, if there were evil men, we've seen that evil men were in this thing from the beginning and I believe over the years that the movement has basically maybe weeded out some of these and they realize they

don't it's wrong to embrace the ideologies they held, you know, but over time, I think the movement has, you know, been able to discern between the right and the wrong and move these people out of position because they know it's wrong to favor one group of people over another, you know, Christ died for all. So, you know, for the, for these evil men that crept in, you know, us doing this podcast is helping to expose that and so I, I hope it'll wake a lot of people up and I hope this podcast to be very helpful, you know, and waking people up to, to, to who these people were

so they can actually identify them today, you know, because all those people we're talking about are dead and gone, but there are people probably in the movement today that they need to be discerning about, you know, and and and that and this podcast will definitely help people be more discerning, be more critically minded and and not to be suspicious of everybody, but just, just to use common sense and be discerning and and and use the descriptors as your guide and make sure that what you're involved with and in is is has a lot of good foundations and not

these shaky foundations that that we're talking about. Well, I'm so excited to get into this with you, John. There's so many different avenues that we could take with this. My, my mind is just spinning with all of these different ideas as you're talking of things that I want to discuss, and it's such a complicated history that to present it properly, we're instead of going every week like we did during the last season with Charles planned to release biweekly and you know, I've got other podcasts that I'm doing that will release on those Mondays that we're not doing this.

But that gives us time to piece it together properly and to lay it out in such a way that the listeners can easily digest it. So I think that's probably the most effective way.

And next week, when we kick this thing off, the plan is we're going to start right in the heart of where all of this started for what became the brand of Colt, what you and I were in, the epicenter for the birth of the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan from Georgia.

And we're going to explore the political landscape from which this was birth. Why was it birth? How was Davis involved? What was some of Davis's history leading up to this? And Davis himself, I mean, that story itself is just so fascinating.

I think you can make a whole series of movies on just Davis. But understanding why Davis was able to do this, that for me was even more fascinating than Davis because for him to pull this off, the people had to have been distracted by something else.

And I kept going back, how did he do this? Why did he do this? How was he able to fool all of these people in multiple states? And even more than that, how is he able to be an influencer in multiple states way back in in 1915, right?

So understanding that political landscape and that religious landscape and starting at the epicenter when the Klan was born, I think gives us a pretty good roadmap of a starting point where we can lay out the roadmap for what became today, we call it the new apostolic reformation.

But the foundation that was laid by men like Roy Davis, like Gerald O. K. Smith and like Gordon Winrod, his father Gerald Winrod, all of these figures, they may not be directly responsible for the NAR, but each one of them played a part.

And like you said, not everybody is a bad actor. Even Pentecostalism, I'm personally not a fan, I'm not a person who could ever do that again. But I have studied it and there are some very, very good people who were involved in Pentecostalism.

You go to Indianapolis and you've got GT Haywood, right? He's a black man who's in the heart of the worst part of the Klan for his era. And he's a really good guy. I've not yet found anything that I can say negative about GT Haywood, he's a really, really good guy.

He's a black guy. His voice was, they tried to suppress it and thankfully over time, you know, the Pentecostal movement recognizes him as a great hero of the faith. This was a good person from what I can tell.

So it's not that we're labeling any denomination bad or, you know, they all have the weirdness is the pinnacle still in my opinion, just has more weirdness is, but understanding the religious landscape gives us the ability to present how Davis pulled this off in the different areas in which he had influence and why he had this influence over multiple denominations of faith. For me, it's fascinating. So next next time we record next time we put this out, we're going to dive into what was it, 1915, whenever all of this began to come to fruition.

Yeah, I really look forward to going into that and get into the details that I know our listeners want to hear. And Davis is a central figure and all this and how he spread this throughout the United States. He didn't stay in one place. He was mostly on the run from the law most of the time, but he never stopped. He never even up to the time he was in his 60s, 70s whenever he got old back in the Texas. He never stopped promoting this ideology. So it's going to be his trail is a very interesting one to follow, but it's a trail that leads you into all the other trails that you

can jump on to discover the whole workings of this organization and the way you've seen it, migrate into the new apostolic reformation and so forth. And Davis's ideas that began in the early 1900s is what eventually became what these Christian identity groups embrace, what the remnants of the clan is around today is because of what Davis did with his people that was around him.

And all the other groups that are out there that embrace various ideologies, even the LDS fundamentalist LDS church embraces some of this as we'll see too. So it's roots go deep and it's branches spread throughout. So this is really going to be helpful. I'm really looking forward to it. It was a cancer, not pure plain and simple. It was it was a cancer that spread throughout religion, throughout politics and interestingly, it's still spreading today, which is for me just fascinating. It's hard to believe that in 2024 we're seeing the fruits still being manifested from things that we're going to go back to 1915 and talk about. So very, very excited to get into

this with you, John. And I'm sure our listeners are just as excited. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For more information about the dark side of Laterane, read Weaponized Religion from Laterane to Colonia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.