Deity Cult: Secret Worship of William Branham

Music 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, minister, and friend, Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org, and the author of come out of her, my people.

And Charles, today we're discussing one of the most embarrassing things from my past. That would be the deity cult. Yeah, John, I'm kind of excited to talk about the deity cult. It is, I think when we last recorded, I mentioned I had put some details there in the book that I didn't have when we did our deity cult episode in the podcast series, so you know we thought it might be good to come back and go over just a few of those details to share with everybody, because obviously not everybody can get the book or what have you.

And so they're useful details to know, and so it's good to share with everybody. But maybe just to, maybe recap a little bit. Maybe let's assume someone's listening in here, and they don't even know what the deity cult is.

Well, if you'd listen to our podcast series, we, you know, that we did, but back over about a year ago, towards the end, one of our episodes was on the deity cult. And I believe it was titled The Brews to Serpent.

And the deity cult is a group of people in William Brownham's inner circle that worshiped him as God. They prayed in his name, they baptized in his name, they worshiped him as God incarnate.

And he empowered them with control over all of the key institutions of the message before he died. And so when we talk about the deity cult, that is who we're talking about. But it's almost a cult within a cult.

It's a sect within the main sect almost, is the way that I have always looked at it. I don't know, John, if that's your perspective as well. How do you see them kind of lining out with the broader message community?

Well, see, that's the interesting part, because I was in it. I was manipulated in it. And while you're in it, you were manipulated to believe that you actually don't see yourself as any different than in the common message believer.

And while believing that William Brownham was God in the flesh, which the deity cult by and large, well, that's why they're called the deity cult. While believing that William Brownham was God in the flesh, you're also manipulated to believe that you do not believe that he was God in the flesh.

the flesh. So you would, for example, my grandfather would say things like William Brannum was God tabernacled in human flesh. And out of the same mouth, maybe in a different sermon, he would talk about those who worship William Brannum as though they were apostate. And so in your mind, you're trying to separate the two. Well, how can he be God in the flesh? And how can we not worship him? And what it really boils down to you? They truly believe that God came down and used William Brannum as a human vessel just as they just as it is recorded in the

New Testament about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was under the manifested sons of God theology was the manifested son of God, the the first great manifested son of God. And you are to believe that William Brannum is the second manifested son of God. And when they say we do not worship William Brannum, they're very careful and cautious to clarify that with we don't worship the man, we worship the God in the man. And so your brain is trying to reconcile, wait a minute, that's really not that much different than Jesus Christ. And so the whole thing for me,

after I left, I number one, I couldn't believe that that's what we believed. But number two, you're manipulated so that it's cloudy in your mind. You don't really recognize that that is exactly what you believe. You're right. And the people in the deity cult, they don't call themselves a deity cult, right? They call themselves the message, right? Like the people in the deity cult don't, don't they view themselves as the true believers of the message. So the deity cult is a pejorative term that the other sex of the message label them, right? As the other sex label,

see they are on a kind of align even further than the average message group in their idolization of William Brannum. And the way William Brannum set it up personally is he had the son of man teachings. And I won't walk through it all here in elaborate detail. But I think I did cover that somewhat in the book and we did in our prior podcast series. But William Brannum set up that he was a son of man. He was a son of man. And he made a real big point. I am a son of man. I am not

the son of man. I am a son of man. And in his parlance, that meant that there were these lesser manifestations of God in the flesh, maybe maybe a little lesser than Jesus Christ. And he was one of those. And he would go back, he would look, like Ezekiel the prophet was one of these manifested sons of God. Moses was one of these manifested sons of God. And he comes down through all these different figures who are these manifest. They are God in the flesh. Melchizedek was another big one that he picked on.

These were Son of Man. Of course, Melchizedek had neither mother or father, right? So how could he be a son of man? But anyways, he has these really weird things where they're all these are sons of man, right? And they are manifestations of God in the flesh, and now William Brownem is here in that same pattern. He would say this malachi for Elijah was one of these son of man in that pattern. And then and naturally, a lot of people clue into what he's saying. He's comparing himself. He really is comparing himself to Jesus all through it. And what's the difference between him and a son of

man or the son of man? It's, you know what I mean? People who, you know, their cognitive processes work properly realize, hey, there's not really any distinction there. Yeah. And they started worshipping William Brownem as God. They started praying to him directly in his name. They started baptizing in his name. They started the people that joined into the cult, got little medallions.

That sick that said, William Brownem is my God and baptizing the name William Brownem. Like they had little secret symbols that they were in the cult. All of this was happening while William Brownem was alive. He encouraged it. He played along with it. He enabled it. And he kept it under the rug. And it started in the 1950s. And it went on all through his death. And so that's my view of it. And I thought maybe we could walk through just a little bit more about that today, John.

Yeah. I'm excited and afraid both. There are things that I have process after leaving. And the fact that they convinced me that William Brownem was a vessel for God to come down on earth.

I just simply cannot believe that I was influenced that way. And I look back, I feel really stupid. But we believe some stupid things. And I'm very cautiously, do I ever use the word stupid? But we believe the guy had a magical sword. I mean, there are certain things that they put into our heads that quite honestly it's just fantasy. And this was one of the fantasies that God chose this guy who's a con artist to be a human vessel. So yeah, I'm excited to get into it. And just for some, you know, general history I've mentioned this before. But for if this is your first time

listening to the podcast, most people would deny that and they'd say, I knew your grandfather. In fact, I've had somebody tell me this. I knew your grandfather. He did not believe. He did not worship William Brownem. He did not believe like this. We have to understand that these guys also like they say in the old cowboy movies, they also speak with forked tongues. Because yes, he will tell you or he did tell you before he died that he did not worship William Brownem. But in his resignation speech, which will probably play somewhere in this episode, he said, now William

Brownem was God, Tavernack. in human flesh. Nothing short of it. And then it goes into details about how that God had superpowers. So he definitely worshiped the man. He worshiped the vessel. However, he tried to twist it. It was still human worship. That's what this ends up to be. Absolutely no different than Jesus Christ. It would be similar to if the disciple said, we don't worship the human Jesus. We worship the God in the Jesus vessel. That's when you really take it all back to its roots with this manifest that sons of God theology, that is exactly what they're saying. That's well said. And while there

are some people where you could debate, you know, did they didn't they where they may be only three quarters of the way there, right? There's people that maybe they were just three quarters of the way there. But then there are others. And specifically, the figures who were the held the positions of authority on the boards of the institutions, unquestionably, they were all deity people. I think when we did the brew serpent episode, we read quotes from a number of them. They flat outside.

William Brownham was God. I mean, it's it's there's no there's not even a question. They're even on tape. They're on video. There's not even a question that the the key figures who controlled the institutions of the message really up until recently, just to be honest with you. And now their successors are controlling the institutions. We're absolutely members of the William Brownham deity cult who worshipped William Brownham as God in the flesh. Now the the movement and we covered this a little bit before, but it's a bit of a secret that not a lot of people realize. And I think it's part in

part because not a lot of the people in the message were around back then. There's really although a lot of people like to maybe exaggerate their importance in the message community or how far they go back. Most message churches and most message believers and most of their families came into the message after the 70s after William Brownham died. The overwhelming majority of the message community. I want to say 98% of what is there today came after William Brownham died, right?

And it's really just a very small sliver that was there before. There was as I went through my book, I just basically traced out every single message church and I found there was maybe about 35 churches when William Brownham died. Almost all of those original 35 are now defunct. There's very few the original 35 still around. And of those 35, the oldest, of course, is the Brownham tabernacle, the church you come from. And then the church I come from was the second oldest of the churches.

And our churches were sister churches. And when the deity cult came to Jeffersonville and ended up getting control of the message factions, a large part of the original tabernacle knackle congregation and that crowd exited because they didn't want to go along with the deity cult and they came to my church.

That's how my church has a fairly substantial awareness of all of this is because our families, my family lived through it all, right? My family was there when the deity cult took over and my family left because of the deity cult taken over.

And mine was family wasn't the only one, quite a number were. And we knew where they came from, we knew what they were about, we knew what they were doing. Our families were actively attempted to be recruited into it by them, right?

So we have firsthand knowledge of everything. And it's not just me and my family, it is a substantial number of other of the old time message families. And we even have recordings of the people on tape.

Maybe hey, maybe we need to throw some in here, but maybe I can read a few quotes as we go along. But the message, the deity cult started in Canada. It started with people associated with the latter reign movement.

And there was supposedly prophecies from very early on in the latter reign movement. We're talking about North Battleford, you know, the Cherenor finish, that William Brannum was a manifested son of God. And the rumors were, and again, we don't have this on tape, I've not been able to determine if this rumor is true, but one of the rumors is that Lee Veil was actually one of the figures there in the late 40s prophesying that William Brannum was a manifested son of God.

And so the manifested son of God and William Brannum being one of these figures dates to very early in the latter reign movement. And it was a fringe idea, but a few people latched onto it.

And somewhere in time, it's not precisely clear where, somewhere in time, they began to actually worship William Brannum as God. For sure, we can be absolutely certain they were doing it by 1958. By 1958, there are already people baptizing praying and worshiping William Brannum as God.

But precisely the point at which that started is unclear. I think it's probably true that we could say it started by 1955, but for sure, we can be certain by 1958. And the other common myth by people who aren't from this area, or don't spend much time in this area, is that that was a phase that was stamped out by William Brannum himself, because William Brannum mentions and admits that there are people who worship him.

And if you listen to the cult's version of that story, they'll say that William Brannum himself stamped it out, and that just fizzled out, but that's not the case. If you move to Jeffersonville, you're gonna find that there's a lot of people that are like that.

Now, if you visit Jeffersonville, you're not going to find out because they keep it a secret. But, you know, when my family moved around, I went from churches from Arizona to South Carolina, and everywhere in between.

And we... moved here not long not not soon before my wedding and when we moved here I was unaware that this existed I knew my grandfather said the things but I did not know how open it was I thought that was the Collins family secret knowledge that he was God in the flesh but it wasn't until we lived here probably for about a year before I started noticing these people are saying some really weird things and you know honestly that's the first time that I can say that I really felt the the difference between what it is to be your authentic self and

the mind control because there was this problem in my head when my grandfather said he was God Tabernacle then human flesh I accepted I believed it because he's a he's an authority figure but whenever one of my friends would say something similar it's like you know that sounds pretty sacrilegious man that sounds like you're diving into heresy and not recognizing that they're both saying the same exact things it's just the younger version of my grandfather's influence was not as respected so whenever the common folk said these things and he he was more than a man my brother I would listen to that and was

saying man there's something wrong with these people that's not what my Bible says but you're so manipulated and trained that you just totally mess it I'm gonna read you a quote this is from leave ale it's from a sermon he preached called reminiscing and this is just a few quotes out of it leave ale says it was in 1958 I ran across the deity cult spirit which was a Canadian spirit those Canadians are so evil those Canadian spirits of evil right this is how the message is everything's a spirit right it's a spirit that kind of yeah that's

something else but anyway so he's he's blaming the deity cult he's talking about the people in north it's Sharon orphanages who he's talking about John it was 1958 I ran across the deity cult spirit which was a Canadian spirit I'm blaming the Canadians now because this is the truth I think we were there for about eight days suddenly I heard brother Branum catch this suddenly I heard brother Branum telling everyone in the crowd he was the Lord Jesus Christ leave ale heard William Branum he's not the only person heard William Branum telling the deity cult he was the Lord Jesus Christ when the people say

William Branum told us he was Jesus they're telling the truth and there are witnesses outside of the deity cult who heard William Branum say it he says I heard brother Branum telling everyone in the crowd that he was the Lord Jesus Christ and I said oh God what have I got into this man is telling everyone he's the Lord Jesus Christ after service we get in the car and we go out to eat Next night, I say, oh, God, what have I got into it?

What is this guy? He told everyone he's the Lord Jesus Christ. Just before that meeting, I said, Brother Brantum, do you know that these guys here are making you to be the Lord Jesus Christ?

He said, yes, Brother Vail, I know that. And furthermore, I know that they have or will strike a medal. And on that medal, they will print these words. William Brantum is the Lord Jesus Christ and they'll baptize in my name.

I said, Brother Brantum, I love you. You're a fine brother, but you are not the Lord Jesus Christ. You did not bleed and die from me. You are not my savior. But you're a good brother.

He said, Brother Vail, that's exactly right. And from that time on, that spirit didn't bother me and I could hear Brother Brantum say that Jesus was the Lord and not William Brantum. And I want you to catch that quote there from Leavale.

That is how so many people somehow reconcile this thing. They know and we knew and it's on tape that William Brantum told these people he was Jesus Christ. And somehow they are able to have this duality in them where yes, we acknowledge and see that William Brantum tricked these people to believe he was Jesus.

But somehow we still accept him as a prophet of servant of God. And it's so weird, isn't it, John, that they can do that, that they can see, have seen what their eyes heard with their ears that William Brantum did this.

And somehow compartmentalize that away into something that, yeah, that's okay, not a big deal. We can somehow put that under the rug. I go back and forth because every person that I know whose leadership in the deity cult sacked, they tend to have a lot more money than the people who aren't.

So I don't know if they recognize that there's a lot of money to be made whenever you're influencing people to believe that you have direct access to the little known event of Jesus Christ coming to Earth a second time.

But there are some people in it who have made a lot of money off of it. Let me read you another quote. This is from Raymond Jackson. So here we're an entirely different sect of the message.

This is the sect of the message I come from. Let me read you a quote from him. He says, it slowly began to get circulated. Fred Sothman, the Simpsons and the Maguire's all from Canada.

They began to pull up stakes and move into the Jeffersonville area. But it became very evident wherever these individuals of money and nature that could afford to leave out of one place and move to another, became important man in William Brannem's life.

These were some of the first ones that began to make their visible appearance here in Clark County in the Jeffersonville area. I've had men of them to testify to me. And we'd be at one brother's house.

He's talking about Fred Sothman's house. We'd be at one brother's house. And he'd mention something or another about how they didn't believe that brother Brannem was the Messiah. And that man, Fred Sothman, the occupant of that home would shake his fists.

And he would say, I will have you know. Oh, he was God incarnate. He was Jesus Christ. He was the Word. And so there, Raymond Jackson is kind of summarizing what I've said before.

They packed up from the Canadian Canada and they moved here to Jeffersonville in the late 50s. I believe it was 1959 when the first batch of the Deedie cult arrived here. And very quickly, they recruited into their ranks and became the dominant figures, honestly, in the tabernacle community.

And a lot of the non-deedie people, or the people who didn't want to be around that, they left the tabernacle. Why William Brownham was still living? They still believe William Brownham as Elijah, but they moved to the other messaged churches here in the Jeffersonville area, which at that point there was, I believe, five other messaged churches here in the Jeffersonville area.

This was message central. And so the messaged community started to kind of divide along Deedie and Elijah lines, right? But why William Brownham was still alive? You know, that's exactly right. And not many people who are in the cult are aware of this history.

But if you did live in Jeffersonville and you did see the Deedie cult, there were certain people that were key figures in it. And one of them was Fred Sothman. And Fred Sothman, if you're in the Brownham cult, this is a name you recognize because he was, he was a leading member of this thing.

In fact, he was one of the people that was given the franchise rights to the audio recordings. And think of this, the audio recordings that Jean and Leo, we've talked about them in the park and all of the bad things that happen there.

Jean and Leo were producing the tapes. Fred Sothman was given the franchise rights. And then later this develops into a corporation that was literally called the voice of God recordings. That's the name of their organization.

So when you think of the message called by and large, even the organization bears the name that we worship William Brownham. This was the voice of God, not the voice of Brownham. That's exactly right.

So as the Deedie cult moved to Jeffersonville and things sort of started to break up along those lines where the message community started to separate into the Elijah section and the Deedie section, okay?

Something happened in 1961. And I'm not exactly sure how it happened. I believe it happened after William Brown had made a trip to Canada and had been doing some stuff with the independent assemblies of God up there.

And I'll say Ed Biscoll and Cloverdale, they were not a church back then, but Ed Biscoll was one of the ministers in that independent assemblies of God group that William Brownham was fellowshiping with up there at that time.

So he would have been probably a direct witness to some of this stuff. But something happened up there. there where the deity cult got exposed while he was in Western Canada in 1961 and at the exact same time that same group whoever it was that got out the deity cult stuff also made homosexual allegations against William Brannum for the first time. Something happened up there and this stuff broke out. It was no longer a secret. So William Brannum, after he's back in Jeffersonville, he came straight back from Canada after that happened. Whatever it was was so big. He cut his

trip short. He came back to Indiana from from his trip to Canada in 1961 and he gets starts getting phone calls. Joseph Matsumboze calls him on the phone from Chicago and at that point the independent assemblies of God is the only group that is really still welcoming William Brannum and you got to remember the independent assemblies of God is the mainstream in the latter reign. The Sharon orphanage self had joined independent assemblies of God. This is the mainstream of the latter reign and he's getting a call from Joseph Matsumboze, the superintendent of independent assemblies of God

and they're all asking him, do you think that you are God? Are you telling people you are Jesus and William Brannum is faced with the total collapse, the removal of support of his last big sponsor.

He's faced with, oh my goodness, this has got out. I'm going to lose everything now. And so what does he do? He preaches the bruise serpent, okay? He didn't do this. He did not, William Brannum did not preach the bruise serpent because he was concerned about the deed he called because even when he preached that sermon, he admitted, I have been aware of this for years. I have done nothing about this for years. I have known their baptizing and praying in my name for years. But today, this week I got phone calls and if threatened everything, so I'm going to throw them all under the bus.

That is what the bruise serpent sermon was, okay? And so that's what he did. He preached that sermon, he threw the deed he called under the bus, backed up over him a couple times and peeled out the parking lot. But here's the thing. Here is the thing. He never met a single word of what he said in that sermon. I really don't believe it. And there's a couple ways we can know that's true. One is every single person he was talking about in that sermon is being in the deed he called.

He did absolutely nothing to them. And within a year, their ring leaders were all made trustees over all the institutions of the message, okay? So not only did he do absolutely nothing to them, but Fred Soffman has made a trustee of the brand of tabernacle after the bruise serpent sermon.

He's made a trustee of the William Brannum Evangelistic Association after the bruise serpent sermon is preached, okay? And so all of this happens after he has preached the bruise serpent, after he's already been confronted that these people know he's God. It's after that that he gives them all their power. What can you call that except just pure deception, right? And and that frankly is what it was.

He would be the equivalent of if John the Baptist were to have been possessed by some evil spirit and created a cult around him and said that I am the return of Elijah as prophesied by Malachi 4 and therefore worship me. And then all of the Jews say, no, this is heresy, you can't do this.

And so he says, no, I denounce it. But then all of the disciples who thought that he was God, he empowered them and they distracted all of the ancient world away from looking to the actual Jesus. I mean, literally that's what happened in the 20th century. They were distracting people from looking towards Christ to instead look at William Brannum and say, this is the manifestation of God. This is the second coming in the form of our manifested sons of God, Heresy.

That's exactly what happened. And you're right. The William Brannum made key figures who were in the deity cult into leadership in this. They held stake in it. They maybe not all of them held pastor positions, but they all held some stake in this. And they're all used as examples.

If you go back and you look at some of the testimonies that they have on voice of God recordings, for example, you're going to find people who are in the deity cult that they're referencing to talk about William Brannum. And for a Christian organization to take somebody who has that level of Heresy and use them to support their notion that William Brannum was the prophet for the end of the age, we have to consider there are taking people who are in a deity cult that are worshipping a human instead of God. And that is their example. You're right, John. And like I said, we have

direct quotes. I have, I think I put most of them in the book here. And I think we went through a lot of them when we did our Bruce Serpent episode. We have direct quotes. Some of it on tape and video I'll insert in their magazines and other things of every leading figure in the central institutions of the message saying William Brannum was God, every single one of them. All right, it's every one of them. It's not like it's just what it was every single one of them that that was why William Brannum was living on up until, like I say, certainly until not too long ago. And here in the Jefferson

ville area, the code word for the deity cult is usually the Bruce Serpent. That's like the code word. When you say the Bruce Serpent, you know we're talking about the deity cult. And that comes from actually from William Brannum himself. William Brannum had this dream. And I don't think this dreams on tape anywhere, John. I don't think it is. There's lots of things that we know because it was handed down to us orally. Our families were there. William Brannum would tell things off tape.

But William Brannum had a dream. And he had this after he confronted the deity cult. And in the dream, he is hunting and a snake tries to bite him.

And I'm sure William Branagh fabricated this whole dream. I'm sure it's not a real dream, but the snake tried to bite him. And so he takes a pop shot at the snake with his gun and he wounds it.

And the snake then slithers off into the water. And he hears a voice say, finish it off, kill it. And he doesn't do it. He says, no, it's wounded, it'll go off and die.

Okay, William Branagh shared this dream and he interpreted the dream to mean his Bruce Serpent sermon had wounded the deity cult and it would go off and it would die. Right? Is that a failed prophecy?

Yeah. So, no, it's just a... All that is, it was an excuse for him to not actually do anything to punish them. He used that as his justification to not do anything to the people that were baptizing and praying in his name.

I preached the Bruce Serpent sermon. And it's all gonna die. And now I'm gonna make them give them even more power over the message institutions. But so whenever the message people talk about the Bruce Serpent, they're actually referring specifically to that dream that he had that justified letting them all off.

And so what happened is right after he preached that sermon, that later that same afternoon, they had a meeting at William Branagh's house. And I know personally the figures that were in that meeting, okay?

And I've heard eyewitness testimonies of everything that went on there. And basically everything was just kind of patched over with the leading figures of the deity cult and they were all allowed to keep their positions.

And Fred Sothman, Fred Sothman I think is even on tape explaining this, Fred Sothman says, William Branagh preached the Bruce Serpent to stop people from thinking he was God. And he said he asked William Branagh about this personally.

And he said, William Branagh told him, yes, the thinkers stopped thinking, but the knowers never stopped knowing. Okay, this was what William Branagh told Fred Sothman concerning his Bruce Serpent sermon. Yes, it was to stop people from thinking he was God, the thinkers stopped thinking, but the knowers never stopped knowing.

And Fred Sothman also explained that when he was coming back home from the meetings in Shreveport, the meetings where William Branagh said, the Elijah of the Stays, the Lord Jesus Christ, that while they were coming back from those meetings, they were with William Branagh personally.

And William Branagh personally told him in other figures of the deity cult, he said, I am Elijah, I am Moses and I am the Messiah that William Branagh plainly said that to them after he preached that sermon in Shreveport.

So again, he was totally leading them to believe that he was the Messiah in private. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

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You know, Charles, this ties back to our study on the mental illness that we talked about. The deity claims that William Brannum said behind the pulpit were very, very obscure in the early years.

You could tell that they were there, but they weren't so out in the open. At least the parts that haven't been cut. We don't know what he said behind those, but of what we do have access to see, he was very cautious of how he considered his indwelling of the spirit or his manifestation of the Son of God.

It seemed to me, in my opinion, and you know, I'm still forming my opinion, but in the early years, it seemed that the manifested sons of God, Heresy, was instead a broad encompassing thing, join in our revival, and you too can be a part of the manifestation of the Son of God.

But what happened was after he started getting some fierce competition, because this created a whole slew of ministers who said, yes, I too, and the manifested Son of God, I think the mental illness played a role in the fact that when people have started being primary competition, he got very angry, and we have shown examples of this where he will just, like A.A.

Allen, he just blast the guy from behind the pulpit, and he gets obsessed with blasting the guy. That's the point in which you start to see this really come out. When he gets really angry, he starts to pull the deity card.

I'm angry at you, and oh, do you know I am God? And he says things like, this is on recording, I am a voice of God to you. In fact, that's how the name of the organization came to me.

I am the voice of God to you, he says, the further you go in his ministry, leading towards his death, the more clear and evident the struggle with mental health becomes, if you truly examine the recordings, and at the same time, the mental health is getting worse And worse, you find the duty claims getting greater and greater.

Something you see happen in 1963, and this is just a little bit of a speculation on my part. So it's going to be clear. I'm just speculating a little bit with this part. When William Brannum moved to Arizona in 1963, a lot of people moved with him.

And I know that a lot of people through the private interviews and different things asked William Brannum, should we move to Arizona? Should we not move to Arizona? And the majority of people who moved or stayed did so based on William Brannum saying stay or go.

Right? He was... William Brannum sorted the people out, you might say, in that movement. He sorted. You go to Arizona, you stay in Jeffersonville. And when you look through how that broke down, I think it's possible William Brannum was attempting to sort his Elijah people from his Deity people.

And it was primarily all Deity people who followed him to Arizona, right? And it was primarily Elijah people who stayed in Jeffersonville, okay? That's how it broke down. It was Deity or Deity friendly people who went on with him to Arizona.

And I think part of the reason he might have did that is because it was causing contentions here in the Jeffersonville area, having the Deity people and the Elijah people together. It was causing problems in the community.

And it also obviously got back to Joseph, Matt, and Bosé, right? People were tattletailing on Brannum back to Joseph, Matt, and Bosé and the other prominent figures in the broader movement. And I think that his moved Arizona in 63 may have been part of an effort to sort these two people out and find a way to hide the Deity cult in the desert, so to speak.

And I think that might have been something going on there. And then another odd thing, Fred Sothman and these figures in the Deity cult were typically the people on the hunting trips, right? It was Fred Sothman who watched William Brannum speak squirrels into existence, right?

I really think William Brannum might have been playing tricks on a mentally ill man. I don't think you can listen to videos and tapes of Fred Sothman, especially in his later life, and not conclude, this man is mentally ill, right?

To me, I think Fred Sothman had a undiagnosed mental illness, I would say. And I think William Brannum was playing on these people. Some of them who had money, like Fred Sothman, and abusing their mental illness, in fact, I mean, so I don't even entirely blame Fred Sothman.

I somewhat blame William Brannum for playing tricks on a mentally ill man, right? That's part of how I look at it. Yeah, it's difficult. You know, I was born and raised in it. And so this twisted thing that I believed, I believe, from birth.

And that's entirely different from somebody who grew up in a Christian home or came to Christianity. Suddenly was asked to accept that this person you see before you is God in the flesh. Unless you have some sort of mental illness, it's really difficult to make that leap.

So I would say you're right. And I never really thought about the Arizona thing, but as you were talking, I'm going through my head of the people I know that moved out there. And every single one of them that I can think of were in the deity cult.

My grandfather and my aunts and uncles and father moved to Arizona about that time. And they were all in the deity cult. So I think it was a way to separate the wheat from the shock, whatever it is.

But he was, you know, you're right. He was taking those people and he was grooming them to be his elite cult. And if you think of how narcissism works, what you're describing literally will you and brand them praying upon the mind of a mentally ill person.

Even though William Brannum himself struggled with mental illness, well, combine the mental illness with a narcissistic personality disorder. And you have somebody who is praying upon their, the people who are supporting them the most.

That's how narcissism works. So it's very evident that that that was going on. What's interesting is that from all appearances, it seems that after the weeding out of the two, the ones who were in the deity cult are the ones who actually rose into power of this cult.

The ones who didn't, because they were weeded out, they became unaware that the deity cult was in power. You know, like I said, I've lived in several different cities. I've lived in cities where they had no clue there was a deity cult.

And if you were to say that the message breeds people who think that William Brannum was God in the flesh, they would just laugh at you. That's not even biblical, because they are so separate from it.

And I think, I think you're right, by isolating the deity cult as his elite inner circle, William Brannum could contain the outfall from that. One last thing I think I want to point out about the deity cult that I got in the book.

And again, in the book, there's footnotes, references to the quotes and the tapes where you can find all of the lots of this stuff, but maybe we can insert some of the audio here.

But the last thing I want to point out is that the deity cult, by and large, have views that are more compatible with the radical fringe of the lateral ring, actually. Their views are more compatible with Sharon Orphanage.

They are a millennial dominionist type views. They don't believe in a rapture, right? And in their belief system, Jesus Christ returned in 1963 in the person of William Brannum. And there's no rapture, there's no the perfect age started after Jesus returned, right?

And so in their minds and in their belief system, this is the millennial age. right now. They're living in it. Okay? Jesus Christ has already came back, right? The manifestation has happened. So their belief system, and this is not all the deity cult, but the most radical figures in it. Gene and Leo's commune, they, this is how they taught. Gene and Leo believed this way, Fred Sothman believed this way, the really deep people in there believed this way. And so they're living in the perfect golden millennial age. And this view developed somewhat after William Brannum died. It didn't start when he died, but after he died, they arrived at these conclusions.

And part of the way I know this again, we have some of them on tape saying it, but after the park shut down in the 70s, late 70s, Gene Goad came to my church, okay?

And was in my sect of the message. And so yes, we're well aware of what they believed, okay?

That's probably pretty shocking in it, John. But yes, I'm well aware of what they believed, okay? And they believe that the millennial age started in 63, right? And that we've been, there's no rapture, right? And we're just all in the perfect age. But the point of this that really matters is that they believe that now there is no sin. Nothing is sin, right? Things that we would consider vices or immorality or all this. It's not sin anymore because we're in the perfect age. You can't, basically, they don't believe, they believe you could not commit sin anymore.

And I'm sure John, you have encountered this personally with Fred Sothman. I mean, he was an incredibly vulgar man, filthy vulgar man with things that would come out of his man. Even in public, Gene and Leo were not much better. And I believe that translates into some of what we see that came out of them, right? They use that as a justification for a lot of the really horrendous things that happened. And the one last thing I'll tack on there is I don't think it is a coincidence that the homosexual allegations against William Brannum were made at the exact same time that the

deity call was outed. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it happened together. I think it was the same people. I really do believe the same people in the deity call were also the people involved in the homosexuality and the homosexual allegations that occurred at the exact same time.

And I know that's a little bit of speculation, but I think it's a very logical deduction from all of the facts. Yeah. And I avoid speculation in hearsay for the most part. But, you know, I grew up with stories that I think my frame of reference is not worthy, even though these stories are unbelievable. And at the time I'm honestly, I, until there were so many of them, I didn't believe them, but I kept hearing similar stories and one story that I heard, there were people in, well, very close in William Brandham's inner circle.

If I were to mention the name of the person that this allegedly happened to, everybody would just, their jaw would drop because this is a name that you hear on several of the recordings, and he apparently had a problem sleeping around and committing adultery with his wife, and he went to William Brandham, you know, Brandham held these private meetings where he would give you private insight into basically like a crystal ball.

If you look into my crystal ball, I can see that you are doing such and such and you need to do this other thing. So he goes to William Brandham and the response from Brandham was something to the effect that we see this even in the animal kingdom brother so and so.

The ball has many cows and essentially the response was not at all what I would have expected. He said, instead of telling the man, you need to stop doing this, he says, just make sure you don't do this with our precious sisters in the message.

In other words, you can sleep around all you want, just not with, not with people who are in the cult. And again, that's here say it's one of many stories, I'm not going to give all of them because, you know, people would say I'm spreading, spreading things that I can't prove, which would be true.

I'm not going to go there, but I was in line at one of the post offices. I think I may have mentioned this with you Charles. And this guy who was a well respected, well-known person in the cult in Jeffersonville said, hey, you're John Collins, you're the guy that, and I had just started my blog like I want to say I didn't even have enough of a year yet.

He says, I see you're talking about William Brownham. And because I knew who he was, I thought he was going to just come at me. And he says, well, that's an interesting thing to do since we're living in the millennium.

And I'm like, what are you talking about, man? He said, yeah, you know, I don't care if you're doing that thing. It really doesn't matter what you do because I was there in Shreveport when I saw Jesus Christ come down to earth.

And then he returned into glory. And I'm scratching my head, thinking, are you the same guy that I know? And he says, it doesn't matter. You could, John, you could go sleep with a prostitute if you wanted to.

It really doesn't matter because Christ has came and gone. We can do whatever we want. And I just looked at him and, you know, I didn't know what to say to that. I just kind of like, okay, have a good day and went on my way.

But that is what you're describing, Charles. That is a common thing here in Jeffersonville. And I'm not going to say that every message believer in Jeffersonville is like this because they're not. But the ones who have recently moved here are unaware that that exists.

The ones who have lived here. for a long time, they know it exists and they keep silent about it. And in my opinion, if you let a heresy like that spread and don't talk about it and stop it, then you are part of that heresy.

Right, and a lot of the deity people after William Brownham died, left Arizona and they came back to Jeffersonville, right? They came back to Jeffersonville. And that's how they ended up in a lot of the spots that they are today.

Now, most of the first generation is passed away and gone. You can actually go look at their gravestones in eastern cemetery. They all make sure they're buried as close to William Brownham as possible.

And they have the most unusual, deity-type quotes all over their tombstones too, right? So it's all very odd. And yeah, so that, John, is the, I guess, the guts

of what I have in my book about the deity cult. And yeah, I've come out of her, my people, by Charles Paisley, it's available on Amazon. I have a lot of good stuff in there, John, but that's something I felt like, yeah, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to, like, make people pay to learn this stuff.

So I've tried to make the book as bad as cheap as that thick of a book can be on Amazon. So, and then the e-versions are pretty cheap too. But yeah, this is, there's a lot of truth in this.

There's a little speculation, but there's a lot of truth in this too, in facts. And something, you know, at the end of the day, I just arrived back at the conclusion that William Brownham knew about the deity cult for years.

He did absolutely nothing about it. He only preached that sermon against them because he was faced with the total collapse of everything when the secret got out. And then after he preached the sermon and condemned them, he did absolutely nothing to them.

He, in fact, actually gave them even more power and then decided all to move off into the desert in which he took most of them with him, probably to try and hide them. And then, of course, he died shortly thereafter.

That, I think, is how the deity cult breaks down and they continue to have power over all the message institutions, of the main sect, of the main body of the message, after William Brownham died, and carried on that way until the present day.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. For my standpoint, you know, we went minimally into the speculation, but the things that Charles just mentioned, they're right there before you. You can find that if you want.

And you can also go back if you want to, you can go to table.branham.org and you can search as transcripts. If you search as transcripts, you're gonna find where he plants the seeds that grow the deity cult.

If you know what you're looking for, anytime that he's talking about God manifesting himself, you can find that all throughout. That developed into the manifested sons of God, theology. You can also search for Elijah, because in the very beginning, he's talking about Elijah coming as a spirit to the church. In other words, a blanket spirit.

Everybody gets to be Elijah. But then you can find where he gets angry whenever everybody's rising up against him and you can find that transition into, no, it's not everybody. It's me. I'm the Elijah. You're, you can't be this. This is not for you. It's for me. And then it transitions even further end of his life. He says, the Elijah of this day, who I have convinced you that I am, William Brannum, the Elijah for this day is the Lord Jesus Christ. So you can see the full progression of how a deed he cult was planted, how it was watered, how it grew, and how it turned into a false

God to the people. And again, I just have a hard time believing it, but there are many, many people in the cult who actually worship the false God knowingly, they knowingly worship William Brannum.

There's another subset of people who do it because they were manipulated and don't realize they're worshiping William Brannum. And then both of those groups keep it secret from the rest. So the whole rest of the cult, you can go to, you got these little churches in Missouri or Arkansas and you're going to find people who are really good Christian people. They're just in a really bad system and they have no idea what they're in. And to quote Lee Vail, watch out for that Canadian spirit.

Yeah, I can't trust those Canadians. I think that's so funny. Yeah, it's some of that stuff, John, Canadian spirit.

Well, 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-brannum.org and ChristianGospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William-brannum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. You can also read, come out of her, my people, by Charles Paisley, also available on Amazon.