Weaponized Religion: The Supreme Kingdom Theology

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 co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, the 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 of the New Apostolic Reformation.

John, I'm so excited today. I get to announce this to the audience today, although the actual event will have happened long before this podcast actually airs. But I just got in my hands today, a copy of Charles's book, come out of her, my people. And you can see it's a really thick book.

A complete history of William-Branham, basically everything that we talked about in our podcast, but in book form, whenever Charles and I went through the revival history from William-Branham's early beginnings and slightly before through his death, leading all the way up to the creation of what is called the deity cult and the message cult following. And he gets into the deity cult and there's some funny things in here. When you think about the men who were involved and I didn't know any of this existed when I was in the cult, but after working with Charles and

started putting all together, I would say maybe not all, but there was a majority of the leadership in the message that even though they wouldn't have said that they worship William-Branham, they had very clear aspects of the deity cult in such a way that to an outsider who's watching them give this undue reverence to a human, they'd say, no, you're pretty well worshiping that guy as a false god, but recommend this book. I have added this book and your book and Steve Montgomery's books, I've added it to the books page on the website. So if you go to William-Branham.org and

click on the books in the menu, you can get right, get right to it, you can see all my books, your books, and more will be added. I'm still kind of going through what to add there, but I at least have the one mentioned in the introduction in this, but very excited also to get into today's episode. This is for me, it's fascinating because I don't want to give away too many secrets here, but there was a religious cult that was forming in the early night 1920s, and it was forming through heads of key figures in the white supremacy and the

British Israel Christian identity movement. And it was short lived. If you read any history about it, you read that this didn't last very long, it just kind of imploded and disappeared. But as we're going to find out through the course of this podcast, it didn't really disappear.

It was just renamed, and you're going to find that William Bratum and some of the others were actually creating a movement that was this thing that has allegedly disappeared. But it's just under a different name.

So we're going to retrace the history leading up from Roy Davis in Atlanta all the way through his move into Louisville again, but from a different perspective. Because I feel this is one of the most important fundamental milestones in history, not just for William Bratum, but think of all of the cults that emerged because of this.

And they have no idea that they are in a movement that was started by all of these clan guys long ago, the movements dissolve, but it was rebranded under a different name. So I'm very excited to get into this one.

Yeah, John, I'm really excited about this episode. And I really appreciate the work you and Charles have done to expose what's been going on. And I'm certainly going to get my copy of that book, the first chance I get that Charles has put out.

So this episode is really exciting. I believe it's a key episode, as they all are, but this is even more key because we're really diving into the 1920s to the 1930s where these cults really began to form.

Davis being his first Pentecostal Baptist church, that's going to come up in this episode. Him actually starting to work with Bratum and Bratum strip out west and where he comes back. I think there's an article in the newspaper that ties them together with Winrod that I found.

But and also Bratum living in Kansas, it seems to make sense. But this is a very exciting subject and I'm just glad we're focusing on it because it's basically ties in how British Israelism morphed into Christian identity and how it just came to this nation and then how the Clucleus clam was formed at the time and really influenced all of that together and winds up kind of moving into a lot of the Pentecostal ranks with these cults and then white Protestant Christianity in general.

And that's eventually the racial part of it has died out and moved into the NAR Christian nationalism of today and you don't see a lot of the racial components. This episode is going to be very informative entertaining and I hope we can get through all the material because there's just so many so many pages to go through here.

We're going to trace the paths of these men back back in the 1920s and 30s. how they promoted the clan and pushed that agenda forward. And it was really a money-making scheme. I think the central part of this was they were out to make a good bit of money.

And that's what I've read about the clan in the 19, from 1915 onward. That was really a lot of the reasons they started it because they saw it as a money-making scheme and they were able to capture the minds of a lot of the white Protestant people at the time.

So we're not only continuing to focus on Davis, Brannum and upshadows in the picture, but there's some others that are connected that we're going to introduce. And one of his name is Caleb A. Ridley.

Ridley was born probably 15 years before Davis was, but they eventually worked together in the late 1920s as Caleb was winding down his ministry. But we'll focus on how these movements, that they started in the 20s, the fragments are left today and they're migrated into the different movements we see today in various aberrant Christian groups and so forth.

And these groups have been called, you know, the Christian right, Christian nationalist, dominion theology, the Seven Mountains theology and even the NAR. It goes by many names, but the framework of blending all these politics and religion together, very similar and it all came out of these routes we're talking about.

But I believe the topic is relevant, you know, even right now because we're going through the liberal media is really currently focusing on what they believe is happening with regard to Christian nationalism and this year's election because they always pointed back to the election of Trump is promoting and bringing this out of the closet again and bringing people back to the forefront that are highly racist so called and just trying to demonize that group of people.

You know, the media tries to lump everybody into one group as much as possible. So then they can, you know, focus on them and they're making, you know, Christianity, white middle Christianity more about race and for anyone voting for Trump.

So if they can demonize that group of people, you'll be ashamed of vote maybe for a conservative candidate and you might vote the opposite way and on the left. And I think that's their strategy really.

But I think it's incorrect to put everybody in a group because of religion or race or their political leanings, but they have a reason behind it. And I think the election strategy is sort of reason behind it.

The left has used the events of January 6th even, you know, and saying it was an attempt to take over the government or democracy and they just want to accuse that group of people and it was a small group of people maybe that did that but that by far doesn't represent the majority of the people that support, you know, him.

So I think the very things we're discussing today really relate to all that and they're very relevant. So and they would be particularly relevant today if we were living back in the 30s and 40s but we've come a long way since then and I don't think they're...

what they're focused on today is very relevant to the people of today. I think we're much different. So the fragments of this movement here is still exist in some pockets. You see it in the pockets of the clan that still exist out there, those fragments. And most of those Christians there, they're very militant in their beliefs. They're mostly white male Christians, of course.

And those are the people that have embraced the serpent seed doctrine that we focused on early on. They embraced Christian identity. They even believe God's going to fight for them if they go to war against the so-called enemy, which they believe is the government that they don't believe is the true government of America and so forth. And then there are Christians on the other side that focus on much of what America is supposed to stand for by protecting the liberties and rights of every person in America. And that's why it's bad to lump those into those other militant people.

I don't think the militant group is in a very large part of the conservative side. I think they're a very small part. But they need to be washed and monitored, of course, I believe. But the media is just trying to, I believe they're trying to lump all the people to stir up people's emotions and to get them to pay attention to things that they don't need to be. And I believe that they will quit focusing on that. Of course, we would be better off as Americans. And we'd all get along very much better. Exactly. You know, it's kind of funny, because anytime I mention

the politician, the candidate who has a name that starts with T, his last name, I get all of this hate mail. You hate this guy. You're a flaming Democrat. And I'm not. And if I mention the guys who's named with B, everybody's rallying behind me, you must really be on the good side because you mentioned something critical about the guy whose last name is B. And little to people know, I think they're both, I think they should throw them both out. I think they should just wipe the slate clean, get rid of all the trash that's in Washington and start with a clean slate that

doesn't have people who are paid by this seven mountain mandate mess. But I will say that the one thing that is harmful, I think, to the people who are sending me this mail is the fact that whenever the liberals put all this information out about the Christian identity and whatnot, the real crux of the issue is that the side that they are attacking has so much covered up their history, such as what we've exposed with William Branham. He's connected right directly to the Imperial Wizard of the Clan. And not just that, he's touring with men who are going to mention today,

Caleb Ridley, who was the supreme religious chaplain of the clan. They're all holding revivals together. And some of the researchers and the liberal news and liberal media are aware of many of these connections. While on the flip side, the people who are against them, they've tried to cover up all those connections, and it's really doing harm to the good people who are not a part of that, who are in the Republican side.

I'm not going to say pro-Recon, you know, liberal-democratic or Republican. My political opinion is clean them all out, they're all buffoons, but the problem is history as we're telling it is actually, unfortunately, it's in favor of some of the things, not all, but some of the things that are being said by the liberal Democrats, and until the people who are in those parties will be honest about their heritage and say, yes, we did some very bad things, yes, we connected to some very bad people, yes, our movement exists because of this man who was working directly with the imperial wizard of the clan.

But now we've changed, until somebody steps up and says that they've made a positive change, the liberals are going to continue to do this because they know the history, and unfortunately, they've blinded many of the people who are in these movements, so they're unaware, but today we're talking about it, and like I said, I'm excited to get into this one because there's so much fascinating information when we get into this, so John, let's take it back to what do you want to go, a 1920-ish and talk about what was happening in the clan, and your book covers it pretty well, which you can find on the website, I've got

a link in there if people want it, so take it off, let's start from back from the 1920s. John, I mentioned Caleb Ridley in my book, and little did I know how much of an impact he really had, but I just researched probably briefly a little bit of his story, but before this episode, I did a lot more research on Caleb Ridley and his background, he was born in 1873, so he was about 28 years old in 1901, and that's as far back as I can find a newspaper article, mentioned in his ministry, he was actually a minister then, Monticello, Georgia was where he

was based out of, and Caleb was born in North Carolina, he was a North Carolina native, but he was pastor in 1904 in equipment, Georgia, and he was of the first Baptist church, and then we find him, you can find him probably through the papers, I just skipped a 1915, he was conducting revivals in Arcadia, Florida, he went to Colorado right after that, and then in Rockdale, Texas, in June of 1915, and here's an interesting thing, in 1915 in July, he is connected to William D. Upshaw of all people, he's president of the Western Carolina Bible College, and William D. Upshaw

was attending a conference there, so they were definitely connected then as far as back is 1915 and as we know in November of 1915 the clan was begun so a very interesting connection there and we know upshall was a member you know of the clan as we found out in the congressional inquiry so he continues to preach in 1917 Ridley's noted as a strong evangelist and a former pastor in Texas he was speaking in Texas at the time and then in 1917 about August he was chosen as pastor of Atlanta's central Baptist church and they mentioned he was pastor for the last three years in Byron

Texas or Brian Texas excuse me and then he was traveling around still in 1918 he was all the way in West Virginia officiating a wedding in 1919 he was working in the Baptist church in Devoro, Georgia touted at that time as the best evangelist pastor in the south and and Caleb uh this is kind of a humorous story but he was called speeding while pastor of Atlanta's central Baptist church he had seven passengers in the car with him and they were singing and I guess while they were singing he might have got a little bit weaver on the highway there and the judge asked the officer

they checked the car for liquor at the time and then it was spoken in the papers that Caleb ran out of the courtroom because of the roar of laughter that followed so that's just one part where I think we could start seeing the slide of Caleb now that that may have been totally innocent but eventually he starts to slide but and that's what these as he met upshall and davis and summons uh started working with them and began working with the clan you know he began to start sliding uh and he ended up running his run in his ministry really uh in 1920 he wasn't washed in

DC accompanied by William D. Upshaw at the time in the pulpit uh both both appeared before the secretary of war in DC and it was said to help Atlanta relieve the housing problem with campsites now I don't I didn't research that into further so I'm not sure what he's talking about with the campsites uh there maybe it was you know from the war or something but I I'm not sure but he was working again with Upshaw now in 1921 this is very uh interesting this is in January he was actually arrested for uh disorderly conduct uh he was trying to hug a woman you know at the time so I wanted

to uh mention a news the newspaper article talking about the scandal of cant Caleb Ridley or it's called chaplain Ridley I think he was and with the KKK by this time yeah uh he was the imperial chaplain of the water he he was right band assistant of miser's Tyler you know Tyler was the uh promotional aspect of the clan that really got it going and the membership exploding

so he was arrested on a complaint of the husband of miser's jb hamilton he lives on coupe street Atlanta and I a great distance from the central Baptist church where he preaches and he was very good friends with the court recorder and him with the court so much that they really dismissed the case against him.

But Mr. Hamilton testified at the time that he was walking by our house, he used to walk by our house quite a bit and she was sitting on the porch and he would smile at her.

And one day without being invited and no encouragement from her, she said he walked up on the porch and sat next to her on the swing and chatted with her about church questions and she was not a member.

Then he placed his arm around her, tried to embrace her and said something that she thought was not proper. One witness testified that he's seen him go on the porch and sit on the swing.

But his flock of people supported him so he was the charges were dismissed. But that's just an example of how his character was starting to slide just a little bit there. And then he was speaking at Millageville, Georgia in February for the clan.

So then he's full blown in the clan by 1921 and we'll see still a pastor at that time in Atlanta. So what I wanted to say here is the clan agenda and doctrines started infiltrating white Protestant and pedicostal America.

As you can see Caleb joined ranks with him and especially it entered the ranks of the message of William Brownham as he began working with Davis. So Brownham was more or less a promoter of and an extension of Davis's church really.

And the popularity of the clan may have gone away in the 1920s, but these groups certainly didn't. You know, the name clan went away, but their doctrines, their beliefs, their message basically went into their religious aspect of it.

As these groups became vigilante and the clan died out, it just took a few years to disintegrate over the money issue, the prejudice, inner fighting within the groups who was in charge and so forth, the internal strife.

So you've mentioned also John, I think early Pentecostals could be said to be a lot of racist folks within that group of people. I think many believed in the seat of the serpent, put their own spin on the doctrine.

You know, Brownham certainly did when he brought it out to those who were racist, you know, the serpent seat doctrine meant that people of other races were not white to the message folks like us.

It was basically the same thing, but a spin that the serpent seat was not the bride. And all who follows, you know, Brownham's teaching were of God and those who didn't were probably of the serpent.

But even though Brownham tried to make it appear that the angel gave him that revelation, we've shown clearly, you know, from the very, even in the 1800s and way way back, this doctrine has been around for ages, you know, it's nothing, nothing different.

But you know, the money train was the big factor that everybody was trying to capitalize on, have their own group. We even have, I think, Brownham's former associate in the late 50s with Jim Jones and there was a conversation he had where...

I think Brano mentioned that the religion was the best gravy train that he'd ever been on. So that's that's kind of where we are. And we see as Davis's doctrine, his groups and these groups start to capture more good ministers. These good ministers begin to fall.

And I think we'll see Brano's popularity with the mainstream. Luckily, the mainstream didn't embrace it. And their popularity eventually died off, but they managed to keep maybe a core group of people together. And that was really all the rafters, you know, we'll have enough money to, you know, extend this thing, but we're going to have a core group of people that are centered around us.

It was an ego trip kind of thing. Yeah, I think you and I are the investigators of gravy trains at this point. There are so many that are in here. But you're right. These are very comical stories.

And Caleb Ridley, if you study him, he's kind of a comical character. You really wonder how he got appointed as the supreme religious chaplain. But he had a, like many people who were high ranking leadership in the clan, they had histories of drunkenness. And Ridley, that wasn't the only instance where he was accused. And I think he even was convicted with some alcohol-related crimes, if I remember correctly. But he was connected to a network of people. And if you read any of the books examining the new apostolic reformation, that's one of the real problems is that you can't

really, it's like Wackemoll trying to stop one of these groups because they're all networking and connected. And ideas are just merging and meshing. And you can't even trace the source of an idea. It, it seems like it's just natural, but it's really not. It's men who are concocting these ideas by working together. Well, Caleb Ridley is one of these guys. And, you know, obviously he's connected to Davis through the Ku Klux Klan. But when you think of their network, you have this broad scope of people that we've examined. And some of them include the Pentecostals,

you know, through the work Davis was doing in the mid to later 20s. But deeper than that, you've got the British Israel movement, you've got the fundamentalist movement, you've got all these movements that Davis has his hand in. And also many of the people he's connected to, we mentioned Caleb Ridley will get into later, probably John Roach Straighten. You've got Gerald Wenrod and these guys are connected to FF Bosworth of the Pentecostals, one of the founders of the assemblies of God. You've got all of these different, you know, connections of people.

Not all of them were racist, but in the South, they large majority were because face it during that time, a lot of people would just simply were. That's how it was. But the problem is this is the point at which it's starting to transition from British's realism into Christian identity. So things like Serpent Seed get to be popularized long before Brannum introduced it.

obviously. And you mentioned the campsites, which is kind of funny. I hit that as I was going through this book, Laterane to Colonia, Dignidad, Weaponized Religion. One of the eye-opening things, whenever Pentecostalism was spreading, they were spreading through these camp meetings. You even have the songs about the old camp meeting times, right?

Well there were lots of religious camp meetings, and it was difficult to separate the good from the bad, because everybody's joining into these things. And one of the eye-opening things is the formation of the Cadel Tabernacle, which became the Indiana Ku Klux Klan headquarters.

There were some very strange events that happened leading up to that, and it was all touted as this quote-unquote religious thing, because it was a church, too, right? E Howard Cadel formed it. Well, in the aftermath of lots of lawsuits that happened after it was discovered that the Klan had used that building as their headquarters to try, actually, to overthrow the Indianapolis government and then try to take over Washington. Well, it was found that the whole project was funded by the Holiness Association and all their camp meetings.

So they weren't even supposed to be connected to this thing if you read any of their histories. So the problem is there's this big vast network, and you can't say, well, the camp, you know, the Holiness Association funded it, so therefore they must be Klan, not necessarily, but it was an ideology. And it, that ideology included Christian identity. It included basic Christianity, included politics, fundamentalism, all of these things. And people were supporting the cause, and they saw this as a good cause, much like we see today with evangelical Christians taking one side or another in politics. They were doing it back then. But the point I'm

trying to make and lead up to is the faces of the people who are connected to Davis were part of a larger strategy and that strategy unfolds over time. And I think that's why researchers have so far missed the mark. They've totally overlooked it because Davis's strategy actually worked. And interestingly, he wasn't the, he wasn't the head of it, but what he created and what he helped push his agenda, it actually was effective. And it came through various other people. Yeah, I would say back in the 20s, you know, Caleb was already a minister for at least 20 years when he got captivated by Klan ideals and ideas and got brought

into that organization. But that was, you know, the time that Americans, it resonated with the people of America because they kept, they used people like Caleb and Davis to go around the country, stumping for the clan and just trying to make it appear on the surface like it was harmless.

We're just a group of people that care about America. We want to, you know, let everybody have their rights, but keep everybody separate and support, you know, white supremacy. And that seemed to resonate with a lot of folks at the time. And at the time, they were building an empire that eventually crumbled, and most governments sought through it, and the vigilanteism that it created, and the terrible things that they did. It actually calls it to crumble, which was a good thing.

But they were actually woven within government at the time, and it became pretty large, and a lot of people supported it. Because, you know, they basically wanted a strong America, and they supported things that were good for America, but underneath all that was a sinister aspect of it. So, the tactic they tended to use was create villains, you know, enemies that they could fight against, you know, prior to, you know, that there was nobody cared about, maybe immigrants come into America, Jewish people, Catholics, Black people, but the clan used it as a vehicle to villainize a certain group of people, and it caused other groups of

people to come together and fight against that one group, you know, and make them targets. And it's throughout the newspapers, there's a lot of discussion about that. I mean, several groups of people, they basically targeted, and combine that with the Serpentsy, British Visualism, and Christian Identity, and then you got a co-mingle group there of what's far from Christianity. It's not even true Christianity. And I've got a quote later I'd like to read from John MacArthur that just recently came up, somebody asked about Christian nationalism.

Very interesting. I think he has a nail on the head with that. So it's basically far from Christianity. And the dangers of these groups, as they sweep, you know, good Christian leaders and good ministers. I know of many good ministers, even in the message, and they're very good men solid, as you could ever be, but they've embraced an ideology as far from Christianity, and that's a shame. But that's what happens, and it's so deceptive, you know, it even appears biblical, you know, in nature. But these groups are very high demand, their anti-social sectarian, and it ends up being a trap. It's an example of taking good men and causing them to go bad,

you know, Caleb, Caleb really was an example of that. And so we find Caleb in 1921. He's fully embraced the clan by this time. He's speaking everywhere in Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma. He spoke before 5,000 people in August of 1921 in Dalton, Texas. All about the clan, it was basically to show what the purposes, the aims, objectives were all from a very benign perspective. You know, it wasn't about violence, it wasn't about, you know, putting people in prison camps or anything.

It wasn't about that, it was about vigilante justice. So it was all about keeping America strong and they touted the positive aspects of what they were promoting. So you got a mixture there. But so it calls us men to do that.

And Caleb was even in Austin, Texas. It's kind of ironic too. And in Austin, Texas, the House of Representatives they actually voted to not let them use their venue. So the government was starting to pick up the aberrant nature of this group.

And governments were actually starting to come against the clan because even in Georgia, they were denied the use of a hall and Albany, Georgia at one time. So the clan was, you know, getting out of popularity in a lot of ways.

While speaking in Texas though, his character was attacked. The Simmons was quickly able to come back and support and show that his character was, you know, very top notch.

Caleb was also stopped in Beaumont, Texas because he had 65 mass clan members on stage with him during his talk. Now the masking of people at the time was not legal. We find people were masked in church services on stage.

But he had 65 mass clan members with him on stage in Texas and that was not legal. So he was actually stopped by police at that time. Caleb was in Louisville, Kentucky after that and later in September.

And the meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, was canceled by the mayor because he was opposed to it. But guess where they went right after that? They went straight over the river to Jeffersonville. So the mayor in Jeffersonville was very supportive of the clan and that's where we see Brannum at as in Jeffersonville.

And it's another thing we'll get into probably in a later episode. But the very place they actually did their meeting was the ninth of Pithius Armory. And if we remember back in the revival of 1930, which is pretty famous in getting Davis, not well-known, Ralph Raider, well-known, and Brannum even into the picture way by that time.

They also had the meeting move to the ninths, nights of Pithius Armory to continue the revival. The city police in Jeffersonville was only four officers at the time so they could, by no means, withstand that large group of clan members.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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In 1922, in January, Upshal was speaking at a Caleb Ridley's church in Atlanta. He spoke well of Upshal at the time, so we know Upshal was a member of the clan. Later on in March, Caleb went back to Texas to speak at a Baptist church.

And even in Atlanta, back in May of 1922, this is kind of interesting. An Oklahoma man actually dedicated his life to Christ after the clan meeting. He became a member of the clan, was inducted and also said, I want to serve the Lord and dedicate my life to Christ.

And that was a big, big news in the paper at the time. And it was just a way for Ridley to say, see there, this is a Christian organization. People are coming to Christ through it.

And when, in fact, it was just anti-Christian, just so happens, anytime you talk about Christ, preach to gospel, people will come to Christ. The Caleb was in Indiana, you know, speaking to 500 people about the clan in June of 1922.

Now, here's Davis was speaking in August of 1922, Vidalia, Georgia, trying to sell the clan to the public, speaking in City Hall in October of 1922, Caleb spoke to 300 about the clan from a courthouse in Lafayette, Georgia, while it was still pasture.

And then, of course, Davis was also, I got places Davis was. He was in November. He was in Thomasville, Georgia in November. And actually they did an open air ceremony. The first open air ceremony in Thomasville, Georgia was done in November, where they had 40 inductees and a cross was burned, also, Davis is in Blakely, Georgia in December of 1922.

And in January of 1923, that's where the clan was denied the use of the hall in Albany, Georgia. And that was kind of a turning point there in 1923 in January, because things start to happen pretty quickly.

As we know, as 1923 wore on, you know, Davis was ousted from the Farmer's June. He actually became the president of the Farmer's June and April, was ousted in June or July, because his life came out, his dual life came out.

So in May, in Valdosta, Georgia, of course, the clan had an all-night meeting to try to stand for solidarity, because the town was trying to drive the clan out of that town. There were shots fired that night.

And then by June of 1923, this is where Kalei... Ridley was accused by the Baptist ministerial Association of trying to hurt the cause of Christ because he was supporting the clan and And a Caleb did this multiple times. He said he would repent and say he would stop, you know, supporting the clan stop and go back to only Be a pastor and support Pastoring only But then he would just shrug him off and start going right back to supporting the clan So it was very insincere repentance, but he only did that the postpone You know, he's eventual, you know, ouster of the Baptist Association

they eventually voted him out in later part of June for a conduct unbecoming a minister and His congregation still supported him though, but he was voted out of the ministerial Association kind of interesting about this same time my mix Georgia, you know Davis was sued for liable Then the nationwide story broke out about Davis about him having a dual life and then his his basic All right, it's clan membership at that time basically expired and that's where we see Davis kind of going out of the picture and Going up to Oklahoma about that time and Davis leaves Georgia about this time and begins to work in Tennessee

in the 1920s also Chattanooga Nashville Knoxville in the 1920s holding revivals and This is about the time about the mid-20s and I'll get into this maybe later, but this is about the time I believe Brandham starts working with Davis While they were holding revivals in Tennessee because this is the only time I find newspaper articles about the big revivals in Tennessee and those three major cities And we know Brandham talks about staying with Davis holding revivals in Tennessee also in his sermons he's mentioned that so by the mid-1920s I believe Brandham and Davis were pretty much getting connected

As we'll see later in a newspaper article that I think connects, you know, Brandham with Winrod and Davis And an interesting thing about Caleb Ridley-Bock, October of 1923. He was arrested for DUI, you know, John You mentioned it. He was getting he had a problem with alcohol by this time and and you can imagine his struggles You know, be an outsider from the church and but he he was arrested for drug driving. He had alcohol in the vehicle I tried to try to get out of it and now he was issued an ultimatum that he actually resigned from ministry

He answers his accusers Higher mevans and Clark and Tyler were trying to reinstate Simmons now is head of the clan and by December You know Caleb defends Simmons Clark and Tyler denies any allegations that they were trying to Conspire against higher mevans who was now head of the clan to get you know Simmons back as head Those were some of the things that were going on about that time And then interestingly in January of 1924 or Caleb analysis, he was leaving the clan altogether.

But this is about the same time that Davis was trying to start the flaming sword. Him and Simmons were being ousted from the clan and they were trying to start the flaming sword. So Caleb backs away from the clan as well.

And then the ministerial association takes him back into membership because he renounced the clan and so forth. And but many papers are reporting in early 1924 that he not be recommended back to ministry because of his conduct.

So there's a lot of things happening about that time. Yeah, Caleb Ridley's arrest is critical to understanding the deception was used in all of this. Because again, these men are connected to various people.

But it's not so much that they believe the ideologies. It's more to the point that there was power in being connected to those people. And we have people like William D. Upshaw. He led Georgia to become the first dry state in the union.

And he led the prohibitionist party. They were strongly anti-alcohol. Well, long before that even happened, he's already connected to Caleb Ridley. Ridley was involved with him in the Western Carolina Bible Conference. And Ridley was a member of the prohibition movement that was led by Upshaw.

So here's this guy who's drinking, who is also telling people you're not allowed to drink. And we as Christian ministers do not believe in drinking, yet I'm a drunkard. And when you examine the clan figures, it's largely the case.

We've talked about DC Stevenson and his alcoholism and Davis and more. Well, Upshaw, the leader of the prohibition party, after several failed attempts at Washington and whatnot, he starts selling this magic elixir. I think it's called Sargon, which is basically alcohol in a bottle.

And so these guys are, they really don't believe what it is they're preaching. But there's power in connecting to those people to preach that. And the fall of Ridley is important and critical because after he's ousted from the clan, he starts connecting with other people who were former clansmen and they start creating this religious movement, which is called the Supreme Kingdom.

And anybody who's familiar with the NAR and you think dominionism and you think kingdom theology, you can trace the roots back in various ways back to this. And interestingly, if you look at the key figures who were involved and their connection to the leader of the Laterane Revival, William Brannum, it looks very much like the Supreme Kingdom just morphed and changed over time and emerged as what became the Laterane movement.

The Supreme Kingdom being filled with Christian identity and British Israelism and fundamentalism. All of the key elements of what we saw laterane drawing their proverbial lines in the sand that's what their supreme kingdom stood for and you've got all of these various connections to that, but like John said, it was very difficult for Caleb Ridley because he was ousted after having been called out as a drunkard and so other men had to carry the torch.

And it was largely, I think, due to his drunken stupors that this movement itself with the name supreme kingdom, it just kind of fizzled out because here's this guy who you can't believe what he says, he's speaking prohibition and he's drinking and being arrested for drinking.

But it starts to go underground after this and it's really hard to connect the dots, but if you take the time and you look at the trail of Roy Davis and the men he is connected to, who are also connected to Ridley, and then come to realize that Roy Davis and Caleb Ridley and William Brannum are holding revivals in Nashville, Tennessee towards the end of the trail, which we'll get to later in this episode.

You're starting to see the picture where all of this is coming together, the same men with the same ideologies are still moving, even though the supreme kingdom is dying out, that movement is still alive and well.

And like I said, it just later comes out as the latter rain movement. You know, by the mid 1920s, you know, we find Ridley just going from place to place, he was pastored in Texas 1925.

And then he came back and was pastored another church. Let's see, in 1924, excuse me, he became pastor of third Baptist church Atlanta. He had been ousted from the central Baptist church. And then in 1925, a year later, he became pastor at Sauer Lake, Texas.

In 1926, we find a minister in Oklahoma. And also in August of 1926, he's speaking for the clan again of Joe Wood, Madison, Georgia. So all through that time, he was a blend between ministry and stopping for the clan again.

But I think we've shown that all these men are connected. You've got Brannum being connected to Davis, to connect to Ridley, to connect to Simmons. And all this ideology now begins to go underground, as you said.

It starts becoming just a religious movement. And so by the mid 1920s, I say we go to 1927. This is after, and we covered this in our last episode about how Davis went and tried to form the flaming sword with Simmons.

And that fizzled out. So now he moves into religion. He's embedded in Tennessee. His home is in Chattanooga. He also is working out a Nashville. And in Nashville, he starts to hold with some revivals.

And else? So in Knoxville as well in 27, he's held debates in the Church of God in March of 1928 and he's fully engaged in the Pentecostal faith by this time. Around August of 1927, Caleb really actually tried to organize what's known as the Kingdom of the Mystic Shrine, and he actually got opposed by the Masons, the Shriners because he was used in the name Shrine at the time.

So I don't know if that ever became anything, but because he used the name Shrine, they actually opposed him because they had the capital on the name Shrine or Shriners. So in June of 1928, in Nashville, Tennessee, Davis was holding debates and also run and publishing a paper called Banner of Truth.

And he gets into trouble again by a woman in the town as he did with the brick bat years earlier. She sued him for liable, claimed she had loaned him some money to start an orphanage, and we'll find throughout Davis's life, he actually tried to take money to start orphanages, and actually almost became successful at it in California later on, but that didn't work out as well.

He's mentioned Davis, I believe this is about the time Davis starts his first Pentecostal Baptist Church because that's mentioned in September 1928 in Knoxville that he's the pastor, and the churches, he was trying to gather a revival and set all the churches were supporting this revival, but the churches actually opposed him, and they knew about his background, and one pastor even made mention of it in the papers that they were kind of feuding amongst themselves, and he said, well, I haven't been arrested.

If you'll study a little bit about Davis's background, you'll find he's been arrested a few times, but so they were rejecting Davis's claim that they were all united in revival. By January of 1929, Davis is holding another debate in Nashville, and in 1929, Davis was accused of causing havoc and a marriage, and a man took out a warrant for him because of that, because his wife now wanted a divorce, because of Davis, Davis was holding revivals in Park City, Tennessee, and this is where in July, I believe this is where Caleb Ridley joins him through the

1920s, you know, Davis holding these revivals, but it was 1929, where he was issued a warrant for trying to break up a marriage, and then Reed Davis issues a peace warrant for the husband, because he felt the husband was threatening him as well. But in June of 1929, this is where Ridley comes to Nashville to help Davis in the revival. It was a tent revival. Davis was also starting a Hoover Club at the time, and this is because of these warrants that I think were issued previously, and Davis's record, he lays low and just mentions the name of Caleb Ridley coming to town,

and of course Caleb was well known throughout the neighborhood. I think by this time, but his ministry was on the Wayne, but he still probably had some popularity. So his name is Mitchan, and they had a pretty successful revival, and then a month later Davis comes out saying, he was the pastor of the first Pentecostal Baptist church, and since the revival was somewhat of success, you know, Davis didn't mind Mitchan in his name, getting it out in the public about a month later.

So that's where Davis and really worked together in 1929. And I'm almost certain that, you know, Brannum was working with Davis at this time, because we get some of that in his sermons when he was working with him.

And the reason I think this is because it was an article in the paper, which we'll probably post on the screen. It mentions, uh, Winrod being the founder of the Defender of the Christian faith in Kansas, I guess, Wichita Kansas, and also Ralph Raider being connected with Winrod.

And if you remember, Ralph Raider, just a year later here, is connected with Davis, and Raider had revivals in Jeffersonville in the 1930s, and so that was very, very prominent in Jeffersonville at the time, and Brannum was connected, Davis was connected, and Ralph Raider was connected.

So I think this Kansas article connects Winrod with Ralph Raider, connects it with Davis, and also what's mentioned in that article is the McPherson College. And we know that Davis was mentioning through the 1920s in Tennessee that he was going to move the headquarters of what he called the Davis McPherson College to Nashville.

And that's kind of interesting, Davis would use that, and Davis eventually mentions himself in the paper as president of the Davis McPherson College, which probably never was an entity, but it's kind of a connection there, I believe, from Kansas having an actual McPherson College, a Christian college, and Davis mentioning that he was going to start one in Georgia, as well as Tennessee.

So I think that shows a connection there, but they were holding this article that I had that shows us a connection, they were holding their fifth annual convention for the defenders of the Christian faith, and another interesting aspect of this, they call it inter-denominational.

Now, if you knew, when Brannum started up his ministry, he was very particular to say, this is inter-denominational, we're not inter-denominational. So we see how this sect came together, and we see how it was promoted through this ministry of Davis, and Brannum and actually became a movement, inter-denominational movements, that way they didn't have sectarianism going on.

So I believe we can show the connection there through these revivals, through these newspaper articles. So we're talking about the time frame in 1927 to 1929. Right, and this is where the explosion of connections begins to happen, because we mentioned the prohibition party and how all of those various connections happen.

Well, the other name that came up, which sort of... tied all this together for me as I was reading the advertisements for Davis and he would advertise himself as a champion for the fundamentalist leagues and he would often use the name John Roach Straighten as a selling point for whatever was his lecturer, his debate and he would say he worked with John Roach Straighten and because Davis kept using that name over and over and over, it led me down this path of research that finally began to connect all the pieces together.

And John Roach Straighten was a Evansville Indiana native. So if you think Indiana Clan and you think about DC Stevenson and the ties back to Evansville, you've got also a tie to Straighten. Straighten was the head of the Calvary Baptist Church in New York and he was a member of the Supreme Kingdom movement which we mentioned earlier. So he's a fundamentalist, he's working with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan to start spreading this new religious movement which did physical out. He's also tied to the National Fundamentalist League. He and Davis, Roy Davis, worked together at the National Fundamentalist League when Davis was one of the national directors

for it. I believe Straighten was also a director if I remember correctly but it had to look that up. But that is where the leap happens to Winrod and Gerald Winrod is the Lynchpin that ties all of this together. From Christian identity, British Israelism, Naziism, Pentecostalism, fundamentalism, all of these movements, you connect them all. You can connect every single dot through Gerald Burton Winrod and he worked with Paul Raider, the person who wrote the only belief song that William Brannum used as his theme song and he was a relative, maybe even a brother, there's some question there but at least a relative of the Ralph Raider that you mentioned.

So you've got all of those connections binding it all together. Well, after it was about 1927, the date that you mentioned, that Straighten was demanded by the Calvary Baptist Church to describe why he's working with the Supreme Kingdom and they were, they basically gave him an ultimatum. You tell us what you're doing with these white supremacists or you're out and even though, you know, I don't know that they, I don't know that they caught it or not but Davis, Roy Davis had held three years worth of conventions, Bible conferences with John Roach Straighten.

They didn't mention that so much as they did the Supreme Kingdom which lead you to believe. Davis was part of that as well, otherwise they would have said, why are you working with the second and command of the Ku Klux Klan? So likely Davis was but we don't have a roster, we don't know who was in, who was out. We just know Davis was working with every single person who is involved with the Supreme Kingdom. So he has the Supreme Kingdom, theology. At minimum, he's networked with the guys that are spreading the Supreme Kingdom theology. In 1927 is again, as you're bringing William Brannum into the

picture, all signs point to the fact that Brannum was working with these guys probably in 1927, at least by 1929. But this is the part where the Supreme Kingdom is suddenly being exposed. And now they need to go underground. And they need to create something new that isn't called the Supreme Kingdom, but also furthers the same weaponized religious agenda. Yeah, John, thank you for hitting on something pretty spectacular there. You know, this thing went underground. They really had to change the name, but it really was the same organization, but it just under a different name. So, and the windrod, John Road Stratton

connection. You know, I hadn't studied very much on John Road Stratton, but that's very interesting. What you brought out there and also Gerald Burton, windrod. But one thing I didn't mention that was mentioned in an article when Brannum came back from the West, it was mentioned that he was from Kansas. So with this article I found about windrod being in Kansas with the MacPherson College, with the Fifth Annual Defenders of the Christian Faith Convention.

I almost believe that when Brannum went out to Arizona, of course, he wanted to be a rider, wanted to be a rancher. And you know, if you mentioned, remembering his sermons, the first time he saw somebody out there get bucked off a Bronco, he said, you know, I'm not a rider.

Somebody came and asked him, he said, no, no, I'm not a rider. And that was around 1926, because we know he took a 1926 Model T Ford out there, brand new, where he got the money from.

One of the funny things too, if you really think about his play on words, we've already proven that his father was a convicted felon, and he should have been convicted. He changed his age. So he was, by all intents, he was running from the law, you know. So he's out there running from the law. Well, think of the play on words when he talks about the Bucking Bronco. He said it was the Kansas outlaw, but then said he was in Phoenix. So was it a play on words? Or was there really this blow named the Kansas outlaw? I tend to believe that he was just

poking fun at an old memory. Yeah, that might have been a fraud in slip for all we know. But yeah, because I believe I don't think he stayed out in Arizona all that long, because if he was connected in Kansas some way, why would the paper say it was from Kansas? If he hadn't lived in Kansas, where'd that name come out? So maybe by 1927, maybe a year later, whenever when he decided ranch, ranching was not for me. I can't ride Broncos. I'm coming back to some highway ended up in Kansas with all the connections he already had, you know, with a clam, of course, because the clam paid his

hospital bill. So he had some connection there. And so he may have wound up. There's no proof of but he may have wound up with these people, but we know eventually he did wind up with these people.

So I'm thinking maybe sometime in Kansas he might have got wound up. And I also know that you pointed out years ago in your documentaries that he may have gone to school because some of the pictures there around that period of time looked like he was in school, wearing very nice clothes, certainly not a rancher, more like a school person, school child.

But I can believe, I believe we can say that William Brannum fit the mold for these type of ministers that embrace these ideals because he did try to build his ministry from the 30s all the way through the 40s and finally broke out him high popularity in 1947, showing these gifts and things and the supernatural.

So and Lindsey Gordon Lindsey, we know supported him by exclusive support, probably to about 1950 until that article came out that Davis put in voice of healing, you know kind of contradicting his life story.

But we see, even in 1953, it was just a few years, the mainstream really stopped supporting, you know, Brannum by that time. You know, that's that's the year that Urm Baxter said he can no longer tolerate, you know, the doctrine, the way he would speak from the pulpit, the things he warned him not to say.

He just became intolerable for him. So, so we see that even a trip, I think he took from December all the way from Florida to Chicago. He was actually there at the convention and they told everyone that he was not there, not going to speak when he was actually on the docket to actually speak.

So that shows you what the mainstream was doing to ministries like Brannum when they find out he was connected to white supremacy, when he was connected to all the false doctrines that were out there.

So we just see it was another example of the minister called up with the wrong group, probably. But even that, you know, I don't think you ever let go of it. So what we're seeing today, I believe it's the fruit, you know, the results of these events that just happened 50 years or more ago.

I saw some recent guests on an NBC network and these people were trying to accuse and tear down, accusing the Christian conservatives say of trying to tear down the wall of church and state separation.

And they're basically trying to accuse the broader Christianity today, the Christian conservatives that are good people are trying to accuse them of trying to form a Christian nation. And I do believe there's an element in probably maybe the government that we know as the family as some of these groups that, of course, Davis was involved in early on.

Yeah, they were trying to promote a Christian nation trying to take over the government, but they're by far not the mainstream because they believe that, of course, we know from Christian identity and all that other doctrines that America had a biblical history that God was in America, you know, pushing it with a manifest destiny of sorts.

But they removed the over-racism. in the movements today, of course, but the underlying theme is still that dominion theology. So they made statements in these guests of NBC that we're not really correct, that that the Christians were adherents of Christian nationalism. They don't want to allow freedom of religion, which I totally contrary to what any Christian would be. We're not Christians are not out to deny people their freedom to worship, the God they choose to worship, but they just want to paint everybody in that same mold. They want to state that they want to Christ to be in the center of our government, but that's not the purpose of Christianity,

is to make Christ the center of any government, because Christ said our government's not of this world, but their having this discussion, saying that Christianity was a threat to democracy. So I think it's just the way the media is trying to portray Christians of today is trying to say, you know, basically a threat to democracy. There were several guests on the show at the time, and one was a former administrator of three Republican U.S. presidents called, his name was Peter Wainer, W-A-H-N-E-R. He called the movement malicious and dangerous, a threat to democracy, and a desecration of the Christian fate. And probably so, if you take

that aberrant group of Christians, what we're talking about, the sect of Christianity, that moved into these movements, yeah, I would say it was definitely a threat to the Christian fate. He called it an ideology of aggression, militancy, it's unforgiveness, unforgiving, it has a brutality to it. It has also came from the fear of white evangelicals losing power in the government, and the host there pointed out it was all about white power, but like I say, I don't believe you can paint all those groups in the same picture like the media is trying to do.

There was another journalist on there called Catherine Stewart when I was watching this episode. She identified the group as one that has been over the last 50 years trying to gain more power and has gained more political power. They're in the form. She called them various think tanks, legal advocacy groups like the Christian right, maybe the moral majority back in Jerry Fallowel Wednesday, and they're all trying to have an influence in government. And she's probably right for the most part about those groups. There was another guest on there called Enthea Butler. She was a professor, religion and chair of the University of Pennsylvania,

and she said, this kind of interesting, what she said was what we see today was called Americanism in the 1950s. And this goes along, this this whole interview that I saw was exactly what we're trying to say here, John, that we're trying to show what these groups did, how they originated, and how they infiltrated Christianity. And so there's a certain segment of people within Christianity that are promoting this, but she said what we see today is called Americanism of the 1950s.

And we know that that William Brannum, Mitchan Americanism, and his sermons throughout the 50s, we know that Upshall, Mitchan Americanism, Davis, so that's what it was called back in the 50s, and source courses, good and bad points in these liberal media interviews, but they Mitchan, a few other things that won't go into.

You know, you're right, and people don't really grasp the severity of this because you can take all of these fringe NAR groups today that the media are blasting because they know the pure evil, they just don't understand it.

But you can take every one of those, and you can trace them all the way back through the historical lineage back to this thing we're talking about today. And not just through one pathway, it's a whole network of pathways of history, and you can trace it through multiple pathways back to this.

We get to go through some of that Steve Montgomery, and I were tracing it from a theological standpoint, but from a historical standpoint too, it's the same, and it goes all the way back to this supreme kingdom.

And if you look at kingdom theology, which is a grandchild of this, and you look at the Seven Mountain Mandate, well, this thing was established for the Seven Mountain Mandate of the early 1920s.

They were seeking to drive, and this is a quote, proponents of evolution, atheism, and revolution from the school system, and one of the mandates was family, and they got into politics, they got into religion.

They, every single pathway of the Seven Mountain Mandate, every single mandate, these people were doing in the supreme kingdom until it fizzled out, then it went underground, and then suddenly it pops up as the laterane movement, and you find all of these people who are supporting the Seven Mountain Mandate praising the laterane movement, in effect, they're praising the supreme kingdom movement, they just don't realize that that's what it is.

So if you trace it all through this, you're suddenly starting to realize that Christian identity is the core of what this thing is and became, without Christian identity, none of this exists. You take that element out, many of the pathways that went through Christian identity just suddenly disappear.

So in effect, you can say that the NAR is a grandchild of Christian identity. Yeah, that's a very good connection there that you made. You know, I think this is, I like what you mentioned to me before, you know, we're actually bringing out history that's not been brought out about these groups and how they formed.

So I think this is very, very interesting for us to bring this out now at this point, because I think it's very relevant, and to show how relevant it is, there was a question posed to in John McArthur's congregation, you know, he has a congregation out in California, and I really like listening to him, but one of the audience members asked a question in their session saying, you know, since the theological conclusion of the Greek, mission is victory of the Messiah. How should we consider a biblical Christian nationalism?

And I'll interject there, he means the old Americanism of the 1950s and 40s. He said, how should we consider Christian nationalism, theonomy, and hopeful eschatology? So what he means are how are we to fit in in this world as Christians as far as being a nationalistic and mindset. And John said, yes, a pretty big question. So he said, let's just pick off Christian nationalism. And it's the very thing we're talking about. He says, I'll give you a simple answer. He said, there's no such thing. There's no such thing as Christian nationalism. And the reason he says that is said, but the kingdom of God is not of

this world. Jesus said that he said, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom of or of this world, my service would fight. His kingdom is not of this world. The kingdom of this world is a separate world. They're not linked together. So what we've seen is these movements, they try to link Christianity and these movements together, but he said, they're not linked together. He said, let me say it another way. Nothing that happens in any nation, whether it's communist, Muslim or a quasi-Christian nation or an atheistic nation, nothing in that nation politically, socially has anything to do with the advancement

of the kingdom of God. He said that because the kingdom of God is separate from that system. So the idea that you should link up some political effort, some political process, some social process to gain of power or influence in a culture as part of the advance of Christianity is totally alien to Christianity. You never have our Lord approaching anything like that nor the apostles and particularly the Apostle Paul. He sought to gain no favor with the Roman Empire for that matter or for any other rulers that he ran to during his life. He said the responsibility of the church is not to advance the kingdom of this world. That's

a faulty viewpoint. Christian nationalism is usually tied to what we call post-millennial ism and that is the view that the church somehow by influencing culture can bring about the kingdom of Christ. In other words, it's not the idea that Christ returns and sets up his kingdom, but that the church establishes his kingdom and then hands the kingdom to him.

Now I've heard that many times in my own circles of influence in the charismatic world when I was in college, I actually heard that the church is going to take dominion and then Christ is going to return to a glorious kingdom on earth and that ties right into the manifest sense of God theology, which the latter reign embraced, which the message promotes, which people the message may not realize it, but they're called up into that same movement. They're called up into it, believing they're becoming the bride of Christ, becoming manifest sons to be able to speak things

into existence and probably speak their enemies. You know, they've out of existence on, you know, of that. And that's really the crux of it, right? You've got Jesus saying, the kingdom's not up this world, you've got the latarine and the NAR saying, we're going to form dominionism over the kingdom of this world. So which can it be so much more when you get into John, but let's save it for next time. 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 Roy Davis

and William-Branum, read the persuasive preacher, the gifted profit, and the noble politician. For more information about the dark side of latarine, read Weaponized Religion from Latarine to Cologneia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.