NAR Grave Soaking Exposed: The Deity Cult Tombstones

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 together, we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Branham and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, it's good to be back and continue our talk on the deity cult, which I kind of had to embarrass myself a little bit last week or last time I recorded to explain what I was in and how I didn't realize what I was in.

I was born and raised in it. I know some what embarrassing, I'm not going to lie, but now we go a step further with the embarrassing because people outside of Jeffersonville really need to know this.

If you live in Jeffersonville, you know, you've been there and you know, you've seen it. Run into them. It's just, yeah, you not only do you meet them in the restaurants or, you know, a post office or, you know, wherever you go.

Although I will say that now that they're building a communal city, that's another story for another day, but it is getting somewhat different. But communal city aside, now when you go to Jeffersonville, everybody who lives here that's in the message, they've all been to the cemetery, they've all seen the pyramid grave, and they've all seen the things that are written on those other ones.

I know, John, it's something else. We, I know after we recorded our last episode, we mentioned something along the line, you could tell people are in the deity cult just by scrolling through Eastern Cemetery.

And then we kind of got to thinking like, well, our average listener probably doesn't have the opportunity like you and I to just drive over to Eastern Cemetery and see that for themselves. So that might be a good idea to just go over to Eastern Cemetery.

Take a picture just a few of the gravestones. And show the people what Eastern Cemetery actually looks like, this is the great message cemetery. And there's so many interesting ones. It was hard to just narrow down.

I don't know if you do include in the episode today, but I think we've got a few to maybe just kind of demonstrate some stuff and on the other side, I think it might also be interesting for our people coming out of the new Apostolic Reformation to see where these crazy men are coming to Gravesokat.

I mean, this is a crazy place to come Gravesokat. It is, and you'll see that as we go along. Yeah, it's just so odd, man. You know, now that I'm out of it and I've fully deprogrammed at this point, although there's, as with everybody who's left to call for the rest of your lives, you'll fight with little things, but for the most part, I'm deprogrammed, and I look at this, and for me, it's not the Graves with the tombstones that are ridiculous that bother me.

It's all the other ones, because you know that every single family that is not in the cult, that take their families and say, hey, everybody from out of town, let's come in, because grandpa's died, let's go barium, and then you see all of these normal Christians that go in the cemetery, and what in the world are they thinking when they see this stuff, man?

It's like, it is the worst form of idolatry, and they're thinking, you guys gotta get out of this town. It really is something else, my goodness. So the first ones, I think I'll show here, John.

So some of these are, it's very obvious what they're saying. Some of them, it's a little less obvious. So we're gonna just kind of kind of have to clue in a little bit on some of the message-loaded language as we come through this.

Now, there's this very first one that we're gonna look at. If you look at it, it just says Hebrews 13.8 on the front of it. And of course, you know, we might think that don't mean a whole lot.

What's Hebrews 13.8 is Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever, right? Hey, that sounds like a really innocuous thing, right? Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. And as you look through Eastern Cemetery, you'll find that this marks a significant number of the graves of the Deedy cult.

For example, the second image I got here, this is one of the Roberson's graves. You'll find Hebrews 13.8 up at the top of it, for example. These are people who were in the Deedy cult.

You know, we have them on tape saying, William, Brian, I'm his God. I've got here the third one. This is Fred Sofman's grave, same thing. You can find him on video, explaining how William Brannum was God in the flesh, how William Brannum brought him into that belief set by different things that he shared him.

And same thing, you see Hebrews 13.8 really big across the top of his grave. And again, it may not be incredibly obvious what this means to these people. But you will find a few graves, for example, here's our fourth one, which tells us what this verse of scripture means to them.

So, if you look here at this fourth one, this is the backside of one of the graves, and this is Hebrews 13-8. He said, I received the prophet as Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And so, when you see Hebrews 13-8 on these graves, they believed William Brannum was Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that is what that means to them. I received the... I mean, if you just look at the back of this grave, it says, I received the prophet as Jesus Christ.

It's unbelievable. And it is so obvious when you just take the time to look through here what these people are saying with these beliefs. And some of these graves, not all of them, but some of them, you know, this is a cemetery that's been putting bodies under the ground for decades, you know.

Some of these graves happened, the people died before William Brannum did. So the fact that they're openly worshipping William Brannum is just unbelievable. Now the worst of them obviously came after his death because number one, they were looking for him to rise at Easter.

And then number two, when he didn't, there was a sub-sector of people, especially in Jeffersonville, that for years and years to come, probably still today, they believed that one Easter, he's going to rise like Jesus Christ and roll the... tumble the pyramid away, not roll the stone away, tumble the pyramid away, and it's just so wrong, man.

The idolatry is unbelievable. And like you said, all of these grave soakers, these guys know that it's idolatry. When you enter into the cemetery, you're going to see it. You're going to see rows and rows of these people that are just... it's ridiculous what's written on the tombstone.

So these guys know that this was a... the worst form of heresy that exists. It's not much better than the prophets of Baal, right? Because they're worshipping a false god. Yet they'll come take their videos with a gravestoking because they can claim some sort of quote-unquote mantle that's going to make them a lot of money.

One other thing I think we have to point out here, John, in... we pointed this out at prior times in the... in the podcast, Hebrews 13-8 was also the motto of the Ku Klux Klan and why Roy Davis was running it.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. And again, you're just left wondering, right? You're just left wondering. That's really strange coincidence, isn't it? That these people are in a church that was started really by Roy Davis, the National Leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

While he is National Leader, Hebrews 13-8, yesterday, today, and forever, is the motto of the Klan, and they're all putting that on their gravestone. Um, boy, that's too much... that's a really big coincidence, isn't it?

Yeah. And it's awful, too, because it's an actually... it's a really good verse in the Bible. But the fact that the clan hijacked it and you know once I once I discovered that I'll never forget finding that article and a series of articles in Shreveport and then you find it was like If I remember correctly, they even painted it on the sides of buildings and if you're in the message You know the significance of Shreveport. That's where one of William Brannum's first original headquarters was was in Shreveport, Louisiana The voice of healing started there and you know big big things happen Christ for the nations for example came out of the

Movement that was there in Shreveport. This is a big big thing and when William Brannum went into these cities And he's dropping the name Roy Davis left and right. They know the name Roy Davis He's all over the news. He's in the newspapers television radio They have painted signs on the side of the building with like a horse white knight on a horse and You know yesterday today and forever they all know that so when William Brannum drops the name Davis They know what he's talking about when he drops the phrase from the Bible. They know exactly what he's talking about

And then now I have to think as a kid. I'm growing up and that was one of my favorite verses because it so often repeated in the message Today and probably for the rest of my life when I hear that verse I'm going to be haunted by it because That was associated with white supremacy and one of the most vile forms of evil You know there's certain things there were we're just left wondering you know

What exactly was the connection and all of this and there's there's obviously something more under the rug there that we just don't quite know about And you know maybe one day we'll find out more but for now I mean it it's it's enough to just be really disturbing To realize those connections exist Now Maybe moving on to the next little bit of a said and we might have to blur out some of these names because I know some of the people on these tombstones Are still living so it's kind of odd to have a tombstone for someone who's still living yet

But that is the case. There are people on these tombstones are actually still alive I think they pre-bought their tombstone or something like that. So maybe we blur their names out But the next couple here are to demonstrate something That you'll see on another fair number of the tombstones there This this first one are here fifth one is if you look there under the praying hands it says under the token under the token And I got another example of this one you know our our sixth one here the same thing if you look at the bottom of his grave

It says the token was applied the token was applied And if you recall back through our series you remember the token that phrase that's a loaded language term in the message The token is the message formula for salvation Um, you know, I think we've described this how William Brennan pre to sermon multiple times called the token.

And in that he explains how you are saved in the message. And in his teachings, he taught that each messenger that came to the church, he had seven, more or less had the authority to modify the plan of salvation for their age.

And you needed his message in his specific age, what he taught in order to be saved. So as each one modified that plan, as he preached the token, that was him modifying the requirements for salvation for the final seventh age, which he was the messenger to.

And in his token sermons, he explained that the token was essentially him in his message. You had to accept him and his message. And if the message and the messenger are one, and if you accepted that, then the token was applied.

And he said, if the token is not applied, then you are still under the wrath of God. So everyone in the message believe you have to accept William Brannum and the message, or you will experience the wrath of God.

And so when they put on here, the token was applied, or under the token, they're saying, they are covered, instead of saying we're covered by the blood of Jesus, they're saying we're covered by the message of William Brannum.

And in that respect, William Brannum is elevated into the role of a savior. And it's not just even the deity cult that believes this. The overwhelming majority of the message communities and sects all believe William Brannum's message is required for salvation.

And the overwhelming majority of the sects, they may not all use that same phrase the token. But they believe that without the message of William Brannum, and William, and believing William Brannum as the prophet to this age, as they would say it, you are going to burn up and suffer the wrath of God.

Yeah. I grew up, I don't know if they did in your church, but in the vast majority of the main sect, and especially down south, there was a song called the token, and it was saying everywhere, like pretty much every month in one of those churches you're going to hear the song, the token.

And I knew the family that it was written by, and it was a man and his wife, and they would travel around singing it. And we've talked about the mental health issues in the cult, and it's sad.

So I'm not bringing it up to, you know, not to bring any negative light on mental health because that is a problem. But this family got so caught up in this thing, and the cult, and who knows what not.

But they, it ended up in a murderous suicide. Not a lot of people realize that, but the person who wrote the song that they're singing in the vast majority of these churches, and around the globe, man, you hear the song, you can go find sermons overseas where they're singing that song, the token, and the family, you know, it's one of the consequences, maybe not directly because of the cult, but in part because of the...

cult and the effects of a cult on your mind. It really is unfortunate, you know, not every grave here in Eastern Cemetery or people who died of natural causes either. I mean, there are some of these people in here, and we're not showing, obviously, anywhere near all the graves.

Some of these people are suicide cases, and we're driven to suicide by the message. You know, it's very sad what the message has done to the lives of a lot of people. Another thing you might have noticed here on a few of these that we've looked at too is there's symbolism of grain.

There's like wheat with the wheat at the top and the stock at the bottom. That's another very big symbol in the message. The message is there, the wheat, there, the final product, the grain that has been produced and you find that across a lot of that.

I think there's another one down here a little bit where maybe we'll talk about that some more, but maybe moving on here to the seventh one that we got. This one says, he had wrote on his grave, he that received a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward.

And of course, that's a versescripture by, you know, Jesus spoke that. But when you see quotes like this, it's very clear, right, that these people, their hopes are all wrapped up in the person of William Branum, right?

He didn't put on his grave, I believed in Jesus, I'm going to make it. His hope is that he believed in a prophet, right? He that received the prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward.

They pin it, a lot of them pin their hopes. They literally pin their hopes of salvation, of making it is all pinned on William Branum being who he said he was. And if you think about this, he that received a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward.

Well, what if you've received a false prophet? Oh boy, you know, it's not, you know, you really, you took a big gamble there and it might not pay off, right? And so when I look at things like this, you know, compared to true Christianity, John, I mean, good gracious.

I mean, wouldn't they be much better putting their hope in Jesus than into, uh, into, into obviously someone who was tricking them with all of the stuff he was doing? Yeah, for me, it's even worse than that because even that example is not quite telling the whole story.

William Branum claimed to be another return of Elijah the Old Testament prophet, just like John Alexander, Dow he did, like Frank Sanford did, like Charles Parham did, because there's a lot of money in it.

And that's a really sad thing to say, but I've come to terms with it. Because there's a lot of money in claiming to be Elijah and convincing people that it's a con game, you con them out of their money.

Well, William Branum made this claim and what he is, What this claim essentially is is that whenever the Bible says that John the Baptist was the Elias that was to come, the Elijah that's to come, they try to divide the third and fourth chapter of Malachi, even though it was one single scroll that was written to Israel, not to the Gentiles.

The very first line of the book of Malachi says to Israel. So they try to divide it up and say that John the Baptist was before the first coming of Jesus Christ, and then William Brannum or whoever is the cult leader con artist is the one to come before the second coming of Jesus Christ.

So when William Brannum tells us his great story about how as he's baptizing people, the heavens parted, and the voice from God spoke, essentially he's saying, here's my beloved prophet, here ye ham. When the Bible, here's my beloved son, here ye ham.

And then when you get to these verses like you're talking about here, what they're doing is they're essentially taking the focus. You know, he who receives a prophet, get the prophets reward, they're taking the focus and shifting it to Brannum, it would be more the equivalent of Jesus saying whoever receives John the Baptist gets a reward.

But Jesus is not saying to look backwards to John the Baptist, he has arrived, he's the one you're looking to. Well, in the message, they're not really looking to the second coming of Jesus.

As you can see with these tombstones, they're looking backwards to the dead prophet. Precisely, and you know, you'd never find throughout scripture where a prophet incorporates himself into the plan of salvation. That does not happen, right?

And so when Jesus said, you know, he who receives a prophet receives a prophet has nothing to do with that. You know, John the Baptist, they came to John the Baptist and they said, who are you, right?

You know, and that was the perfect opportunity for John the Baptist to pull the William Brannum, right? Well, I'm the greatest prophet there ever was and you need me to make, you know, but that's not what John the Baptist did.

John the Baptist said, I'm nobody, I'm just pointing you to the Savior, right? And that's what the, you know, when Jesus said he who receives a prophet, well the prophet's message is really ultimately to point you towards the Savior.

But that's not what we see with William Brannum. William Brannum says, you must receive me personally, you must receive my person, you must receive my teachings, which are not in the Bible. And without that, you're going to burn up in the wrath because you don't have the token.

So it's really, it's really twisted what they do, yet they hijack all these Bible verses to try and give it a semblance of, you know, someone who's maybe not super well versed or spent their entire life in it.

It can confuse them to think, yeah, this really isn't the Bible. This really is right. But the truth is they just hijacked a few verses, they've taken things out of context and the majority people in the men So just spent their whole life in there, they never heard otherwise.

And they just don't, they don't know they're being tricked. And you know, another thing that I noticed too, John, as I was walking through the cemetery taking these photos like this, this most recent one we show you, COVID took a seriously heavy toll on the elder generation of the message.

I noticed that walking through. I mean, the number of new graves that popped up during the COVID virus, I mean, it was actually fairly surprising. And I know the same is true where I come from.

The elder generation was highly hit by COVID because a lot of the churches refused to follow the protocols for keeping the church is safe and devastated the elder generation of the message. Yeah, it did.

And that's, you know, that's not limited to the message. By no means there's a lot of, a lot of people who died because of COVID. I lost several friends because of COVID. But it's different when you're in a divine healing cult.

So to the people who are listening who are interested in research on William Brannum and how this morphed into the NAR, you have to realize that part of your salvation is tied to the divine healing.

That was something that was taught clearly by John Alexander Dowey, Bosworth, who was in a leader in the Dowey cult. He taught this. They linked salvation and healing together. And then he trained William Brannum in some of the doctrine.

And that was one of the things carried forward. So your doctrine of salvation is deeply tied to the divine healing. And it's also one of the boundaries that's used to keep you mentally trapped in the cult.

Because the first thing that happens when, and I've talked to countless people at this point, the first thing that happens when you try to leave, whenever somebody tries to get you not to leave the cult, they don't go to, well, Jesus is in this cult or William Brannum or whatever.

Instead, it's, well, think about the healing. You're gonna get cancer, you're gonna die. And though they'll put a hex on you. A lot of them, I've got, I don't know how many hexes I've got at this point, Charles.

But whenever you leave, they try to hack you with, you're gonna get sick because we have the healing. We alone have the exclusive rights to Jesus and his healing. That's what the cult essentially, that's what it boils down to.

And then something like COVID happens and it's an eye opener because everybody starts to see, wait a minute, we're not protected. And in fact, the people in the message churches I come from died at a far higher rate and received, got the COVID at a far higher rate than the general population because they didn't follow the rules.

I was still in the message through COVID, John. And the church I come from, the churches I come from, we had one preacher in particular, who told us he preached sermon. And he said, pretty well a direct quote, the bride of Christ cannot get COVID because God will protect them.

And we had all of the COVID restrictions in place at that point, you know, where people were spaced out and all that. And after that, well, the sick people came to church. And in one service, within one week him doing that, 168 people got COVID in the church, I was in, John.

There were multiple fatalities. And as that was going on, the preacher who did that actually announced, so his elderly parents had, that they're refusing medical treatment and his parents, his mother died. I mean, that was actually one of the major catalysts that ultimately made me exit.

The message was just the deaths that ensoof as a result of these divine healing sort of beliefs that they have. So first they believe we can't get it and then they get it. And then we're going to faith heal our way out of it and then they die, right?

I mean, it's unbelievable. It is unbelievable and somehow that doesn't wake a lot of people up. That's really, really hard to wrap your mind around that. So moving on here to the next grave, John.

I think this is the eighth one we're going to look at.

This one is another one. It's kind of a, this looks kind of weird when you just look at it if you're just an average person. So he's got first Thessalonians 4.16 wrote on his grave, which says, for the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with the shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the Trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

And then we see he's got Malachi 4.5 and 6 on one side, Revelation 10.7 on the other. Hey, you know that, to the average person that just looks like, well, that's an odd thing to put on a grave, but it's a Bible verse.

But when we see this, John, you and I understand all the significance of this, right? To the message believer, the word shout in that verse is the message. So when they see shout, we shall descend from heaven with shout.

That's the message. And for the deity cult, when they say the Lord himself they're talking about William Branum, William Branum descended with the message. That is basically how the deity cult would read this verse.

And then they would say the voice of the archangel, well, they'd say that's him in Revelation 10.7 and they'd say he's also Revelation 10.7. And with the Trump of God, but look, it says, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

And the great irony, John, is this is wrote on a tombstone of a dead person who believes the message. What in the world? Well, and I think that's the point, right? So I grew up in the deity cult, not knowing that it was, number one, not knowing it was a cult, but not knowing that we were a subset of elitists in the cult that was better than the rest of the cult, or thought that we were better, but that's the way it is when you are believing...

that William Brandham is going to rise up out of this pyramid tombstone, and you go back to the Bible, the dead and Christ will rise first. Well, if you're in that elitist group, you want to be associated with that because you're going to, you're one of the ones that's going to pop out of the grave with him. And, you know, a lot of Christians believe in the resurrection. That's fine, but the order of events in this deity cult is, again, they're replacing Jesus with William Brandham. So the order of events, whenever William Brandham is coming to lead the people back

home, he is having a subset of a resurrection before the Christian resurrection. And there is nowhere in the Bible that supports this, Charles. No, you're, you're right, John. And, and you know what? I think you're spot on, right? That this person, this is their hope of resurrection right here. And this is why they buried themselves as close to that Lord as possible. Because they believe their hope of resurrection is actually vested in William Brandham, right? They believe, and so it's, it's at the end of the day, John, it is really so sad. It is so sad. This person's

hopes of being resurrected at the second coming is that they're buried next to William Brandham. And that they believed his message and that he was the shout that they heard, which is going to raise them from the dead. That's really, I think, where they're going with this is I heard the shout from the Lord that descended from heaven. And I am going to raise from the dead is, is what they're trying to say here. And one other thing that's kind of absurd when you think about it, they all want to be real close to the body. In other words, we have such a limited,

powerless God that if we're farther away from the body, like if we're in a, if we're in a cemetery somewhere else, we might get missed. So we want to be right here by the prophet with the stuff. Absolutely. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

looking at the people who are buried here are from thousands and thousands of miles away from Jeffersonville, and there are thousands and thousands away from their hometown to be buried. So they can be close to the Prophet. It's crazy, John. It's crazy. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's so sad at the end of the day to think that your hope of resurrection or your hope of life beyond the grave is vested in a man who it turned out was just tricking us all. It's so sad to think about that. Just very sad.

It is really sad. And again, this is an embarrassing podcast because I probably would not have gone so far as to put something on my tombstone, but that doesn't mean that my family wouldn't have. You know, I would have, even in the cult, I looked at some of this and I was like, you know, I've read my Bible. I don't, even though I, and this is hard to explain, even though I unknowingly worshiped this prophet, this dead false prophet guy, I also believe that it was wrong to worship somebody besides Jesus Christ. If there's any way I can make

sense of that, I haven't found it yet. But that's the way I was. And I would have never wanted something like this on my tombstone. But that doesn't mean that when I died, my family wouldn't have put it on there because the whole, the family units are trapped in this thing. And usually it's a family unit where somebody knew William Brannum directly.

They had some sort of connection to William Brannum. And that's really what formed the nucleus of this, this deity called. Maybe moving on to the next one. I think this is the ninth one we're going to look at. You see on this, this family's tombstone, it says, they believe Brother Brannum and it was accounted to them for righteousness. Okay. Now, now, of course, if you think of the Bible verse, the Bible verse says, they believed on Jesus and it was accounted to them for righteousness, right? Okay. So it's very, this is one that's very, very obvious that they are saying William Brannum is Jesus, right? They believe, because

this is a verse about Abraham, right? Abraham, I think the Apostle Paul says he can't, he believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. So they're really no bones about it, no way about it. There's no way around it. They are putting William Brannum into the role of God. And they're saying that their faith in him is the righteousness on which they are hoping to have made it to heaven. Things like that for me are just, I have to scratch my head and wonder what in the world were they thinking, because even in the

deity cult, that would have been considered wrong. In the deity cult, Charles, there was this thing where you said things like this in private, but you would never say it in public. And so here's for the rest of, you know, Oh, the rest of the time while there is people living on Earth that visit the tombstone or visit the cemetery, they're going to see this tombstone.

And there is no secret about this. They are openly declaring that Jesus Christ came down in the form of William Brannum. And that was the return of Christ. It's unbelievable, John. And you just feel so sad for people like this. And what's really sad is there's still a lot of people in the Jeffersonville area.

They absolutely believe this way. I mean, they do to this day, right? Some of them will be public about it. Some of them are private about it, but they believe Brother Brannum. And they believe that is their righteousness, which, again, this is, of course, obviously the absolute opposite of the Bible, right?

This is the definition of putting your hope of salvation in a man. This is the definition of making William Brannum your savior. This is the definition of making William Brannum your God. Yeah. And in terms of true Christianity, I mean, there's just no hope in something like this. And it is so, so sad, so, so sad.

It is sad. And I'll keep repeating this through the whole show, but it's also embarrassing Charles. I know, you know, and again, for all of the new apostolic reformation, folks, this is where the graves sockets happen. I mean, come on, what, what in the world here?

And here's the thing, John, these people are all, I mean, you cannot walk past William Brannum's grave without seeing all these other graves around it. And this next one I'm about to show, John, is immediately adjacent. So what is behind this grave that you can't see is William Brannum's giant pyramid?

John is so massive. And it's not obvious that it's massive in the picture, but this is a massive, massive stone. This is as big as William Brannum's grave itself, which it's big enough to block it behind it.

But we've talked about Ben Bryant before in our podcast, who was a World War II veteran who received an injury in the war. He had some mental issues, but he was a fairly prominent member of the early tabernacle community. Well, this is his wife.

And I've heard stories actually about this grave. Apparently, you know, I, can I say this is true? I don't know, but this is, this is a story from Doc Brannum, William Brannum's brother. He claimed that this was his grave site and Ben Bryant somehow stole it from him and buried his wife in it so he could be closer to the prophet.

Okay. And so, and so this is Ben Bryant's wife in perhaps Doc Brannum's stolen grave site right next to William Brannum. The story is about this them, particularly John, or some of the famous message stories.

I've heard some of the Doc Brannum stories and, you know, some of them are true, so I'm not going to say that it's not. The Doc Brannum is buried near William Brannum and he don't have any crazy deed quotes on his, on his tombstone.

but I think he knew the truth about who his brother was, but here she is, and it says, a believer in Malachi 4.5 and 6, Luke 17.30, Revelation 10 and 7, and her beloved prophet, brother William M. Brannum, and it again goes on to say, she kept his saying and believed his word, and by the shining smile she left behind, we were assured that she had not seen death or looking at her tombstone, had not seen death. Thus was the promise made to all mankind, and there's so much, so much a person could say about that, but so many times I have been to

these funerals where people, the way that's wrote John, this lady had a healing, she had a healing promise on her, right? She had a promise that she would live to the rapture, right? And so this phrase is explaining away the promise on her that she was supposed to live to the rapture and see the second coming. Well, she didn't really die. She didn't really die. That's what this is trying to paper over for us. It is like positive confession on hyperdrive, man. Not only, you know, many people, they're sick, and they're obviously sick, and they will tell you that I'm not sick,

because this false prophet guy told me that I'm not sick, and therefore I'm not, and I'll be healed because I continue to tell you that I'm not sick. Well, then they die, and well, I have not died, because he said I was healed, and I never got healed. It is the positive confession of a false prophet. Precisely. And what, what, in this case, specifically with this family, again, is it true? Is it not true? It's hard to say, but according to Ben Bryant, William Brannum had given him and his wife personal prophecies that they would live to see the second coming.

And so, again, they're trying to somehow say she didn't die in order to get along with William Brannum prophecy. Now, on the backside of her grave, there's a whole long epitaph here, and I'll read it. It's a really lovely poem. There's a lot of nice poets in the message.

I bet I guess who wrote this one, but it says the prophet William Brannum. One day, I heard of a prophet. This is her testimony. One day, I heard of a prophet whose message went straight to the word. Back to the Bible, he took us with his, thus say, of the Lord.

I thought that those days were over, and all of God's prophets were dead, but God gave his vindication a pillar of fire over his head, which nobody saw, right? And he preached predestination and baptism in Jesus' name, divine healing, the seed of the serpent. The serpent seed made this grave, John, and that God is forever the same, the sick and the blind and the cripple, the possessed, the death and the loss came by the thousands to see him while he preached.

the word at any cost. So he sacrificed his ministry for this basically there. Malachi 4 told us he was coming and God's word will never fail. As he left us, he gave us a promise once more I will ride this trail. So who is this? This is return ministry. She's telling us here her belief that she believes in the resurrection of William Brownham to finish up his ministry. I don't know what's fixing to happen for God's way we can't understand. But we'll stand on his word till he calls us with the bride to that heavenly land. So again, it's William Brownham they're expecting to raise

up out of the grave and take him to heaven. And you're going to get this really clear here in this last part. A tent and a complete transformation in a vision our prophet did see. Though he's gone, it will be completed. It's a promise and though shall it be the shall it be it's thus say at the Lord. So this lady is saying the tent vision is thus say at the Lord William Brownham's coming back from the grave. He's going to ride the trail again. We're going to have a tent meeting. Hey, I'm going to be resurrected. I'm not really dead. And prophets kind of take us to heaven. That is what this all

means in the loaded language of the cult. There's so many emotions man because I believe I believe every single aspect of that. And I find out just not just how wrong, but how horrific some of that is. Like I don't know if you've noticed this, but after it was about the time that Todd Bentley, once he was exposed for the manifested sons of God and all of this weird thing that was coming out whenever the Southern poverty law center tied the manifested sons of God theology from Todd Bentley, Paul Kane and others directly to Christian identity and white supremacy. The whole thing

just kind of went underground. Like I don't know if it was the same for you, but there were churches in the main sect of the message that they if they taught serpent seed, they didn't really openly discuss what it was. They would just casually mention serpent seed, but it kind of went underground, right? So I don't know the dates. I'd have to I'd have to go back and look at that photograph, but I'm wondering did she die before it was exposed or after would she have put that on her grave if she knew that this was tied to domestic terrorism? I don't know, but it's kind of weird man.

I would say given the timing and that they are one of the oldest message families, I would say it's pretty impossible that they did not know what serpent seed was all about. I find it pretty hard that they that this family in particular could not have known what it was. And you're right, it did go underground. It kind of I would say it was mid 80s certainly, certainly by then maybe maybe the early 80s. There was very little mention of the publicly the racial elements of serpent seed after that. It was entirely all shared privately.

after that. But all of the recordings where it was preached publicly in a racial way, I would say are before the mid 80s, after that it's private. It's still there, you know, it's still there just below the surface and you just got to connect the dots. But yeah, back in this time and the age of this family and how far they go back, I would find it hard to believe they did not understand what serpent seed was. And the fact that even the tent vision made it on on this lady's tombstone it just goes to show the way that these things were believed. And you got to remember too,

these people knew William Brown personally. Their expectations on this tan and all this are because William Brown upset them personally, right? This family William Brown said, when I get my tent, this is going to be your jobs in my new tent. And they carried these promises with them, right? And so when they have a very personal connection to all these things, they're not someone far off, distant just reading into things. Now, William Brown told these things to them personally, privately, private interviews, different things. And that's where they got these these beliefs from. Yeah. And my grandfather, you know, I grew up hearing about this tent vision

thing for anybody who is unfamiliar with when we say this phrase, tent vision, we assume everybody's from the message. But to the people who are outside of the brand and call looking in, William Brannum began to claim once he went completely off his rocker, that the way in which your

your swift ticket to heaven would happen is that suddenly there would be there was this end of day's race war that was coming. He he talked about this. I think only one time on tape, but I'm certain all the leadership knew about it. But regardless, all of the tent, tent ministry people, they call them, they all believe there was a sudden end of day's conflict.

And it would be very, very difficult for you to physically reach William Brannum. So when I made the comment earlier about people who were buried in the proximity, it's because of the tent vision thing. It was very it would be very difficult to get to William Brannum. And if you did, and you made it into this tent, then you had to make it a second step into this little room in the tent, where William Brannum himself, not Jesus, want to give you your new body. And then you would pass through to the other side. And so he's he at that point, even though you're not

going to find many references, at least not the full explanation of that on recording, because they've they're all been cut out. They've cut it all out. But my grandfather and many of the people who were there with William Brannum that were in my grandfather's inner circle, they all through the mouth of, I don't know how many, 20 witnesses, they all claim that that's what William Brannum told them all in private. And I believe that William Brannum even said it sometimes in the tabernacle.

A lot of people don't know this, either Charles, but he had this button on the pulpit where he could pause the recording while he was saying some of the more absurd things and then let it up.

And to the listener, you would never catch it. You can go back and you can see the waveform kind of go and stop and then start up again. So if you know how to work with a wave file, you can see some of these things.

But he would pause it. And I think he cut it out of all of the recordings except for just a couple of places. But all of these people believe that you had to be right here, 10Vision was going to happen.

William Brandham would give you your new body. And then in the end, I don't think that there was an actual return of Jesus. William Brandham was the return of Jesus to those people. You hit the nail on the head, John.

I mean, you're spot on with the beliefs of the early message community in that way. And I believe we covered the 10Vision specifically in a prior episode in the podcast. I think it was the one death taxes and swimming pools was the title of the episode where we walked through all the 10Vision.

So hey, if you're listening and you want a deep dive into what that was all about, death taxes and swimming pools was the title of the episode where we talked all about the 10Vision and what all that meant.

So kind of, I guess going to the next one, this might be the last one we look at. I'm not sure here how much more time we got. So this one is the grave of Roy Borders.

Roy Borders was one of the senior leaders in the message community. And just a quick, a few little links for this guy. This man was working with George Hodden in the late 1940. So the man who's the key come, he was connected to the very heart of Laterane from the very beginning.

This man was on the platform and eulogized William Brandham at the Full Gospel Convention with the Full Gospel businessman. Next to T. L. Osborne who was saying William Brandham was God in the flesh, okay?

He was right there. This is who this man is. He's very important figure in the message community. He ends up running spoken word publications, which eventually merged into voice of God. And he was a full-fledged member of the deity cult, okay?

And so this is who this man is. Anyways, you see on his tombstone, just all kinds of loaded language. And I'll just point out one of them, the first one here on the left is, says the spoken word is the original seed.

And then on the other side, it says, but in the days of the voice. And so those are two really interesting loaded languages that are on this guy's tombstone. And the spoken word is the original seed is one of William Brandham's sermons.

And there is so much in this sermon, John, that is, I mean, that sermon is the blueprint for word of faith. It is the blueprint for little gods. It's all, that sermon is basic, the core beliefs of all kinds of people, right?

And it originates in the message, and I think not a lot of people realize that, but when he says the spoken word, he's talking about the word of faith, the spoken word, the word spoken by the power of faith, you know, the spoken word, he says, is the original seed, that's saying it has the power to bring forth to create, you know?

When you speak, it's like planning the seed that will grow into what you have spoken. That's the basic concept of it, but it's, yeah, it's, this is word, a word of faith phrase in message terminology.

And there was also part of the advertising and marketing. You can find all sorts of books and sermons with that, you know, with that phraseology. And, you know, we've often made the comparison about how word of faith had so many ties back to William Brannum and the message.

And every time we make that statement, we get all of these people who are in the word of faith cult, and they'll say, they reject it. And they say, no, there's no ties. But if you take everything that William Brannum said about this back, you're going to find that number one, most of it came from FF Bosworth and number two, most of what Bosworth had came directly from Dowie.

And in the end, what you have is, they're somewhat correct, it didn't originate with William Brannum, but this was a thing that was growing from nasty cult systems before it developed into the word of faith.

You're exactly right. So not only was Kenneth Hagen and T.L. Osborne in the early leaders of word of faith working directly with William Brannum while he was still living on the platform, Roy Borders continued to work with a lot of them after William Brannum died, right?

And William Brannum, Borders was still working with T.L. Osborne after William Brannum died. Where Borders was still connected to Kenneth Hagen after William Brannum died, these connections went on. And if you look, for example, that sermon, the original, the spoken word is the original seed, those are the positive confession word of faith ideas.

It's all about the Rayma and the logos and all of these things, the power to create. You know, that's all invested. And it's all in these things. And yeah, Roy Borders was still working with these people.

These links went on after William Brannum died. And William Brannum didn't create any of these beliefs, right? But he is the person and his ministry is what introduced these beliefs to the Kenneth Hagen's of the world, to the T.L. Osborne's of the world.

And you can actually go back and analyze their sayings. I mean, for the most part, they're pretty honest about where they learned the stuff, right? And they'll say, yeah, it's EW Kenyan stuff, but you'll find places where they made its EW Kenyan stuff that we learned at the Brannum campaigns.

Okay, he was the middleman and where did EW Kenyan get? He was up there with Zion and Dowie and all of the crates. It's just, it's the same stream of thought. It, you know, continued on forward.

So again, just, just odd stuff. And then on the other side, it says, but in the days of the voice, in the days of the voice, so that's Revelation 10, 7, in the days of...

the voice of the seventh angel, and he shall begin to sound the mystery of God should be finished. So they're saying William Brandham was that voice, finishing the mystery of God. And so they're proclaiming this on his tombstone. And yeah, it's just, it's so odd. And I think that the odd people, people walking through these cemeteries, they've got to look at this and say, what in the world is this? I mean, what? Who puts this on a tombstone? This is an odd thing to put on a tombstone. And you look at this, where there's nothing about Jesus on here at all. What in the

world? Yeah, I mean, it's like a horror movie, man. Your family member dies and they get buried next to this. And forever, when these people come to visit, you know, the tombstone and life flowers or whatever, forever, they have to look at these things. And Charles, it's an eye sore. So the very last grave, I think maybe we'll point out before we wrap this one up, is I took a picture of Billy Paul's grave, John, just in case nobody has seen it. It's probably the newest addition to the Eastern Cemetery, it's right near his father's grave. And what I want to point

out to you about Billy Paul's grave is that Billy Paul don't believe the message. There is not a single, there is not a single crazy message quote on his grave. Do you think that's interesting, that there's not a, so all of these other message graves all around have everything all over them, right? They have, you know, the Hebrews 3 13 8, they have Malachi 4 5 and say, Billy Paul didn't put it on his grave. What in the world? Billy Paul didn't believe the message.

Give me a break. He never believed this thing. I mean, and I think, I think John, you would probably agree with me. I mean, he was a put on his entire life. He never believed this. He knew this thing was a joke. He was in on it. He saw behind the scenes. He played along his entire life. And just like all of these other people are declaring to us with their tombstones, what they believed. So is Billy Paul declaring does what he did not believe with his tombstone. Thank you, Billy Paul, at least in death for confirming to us what we always knew. Yeah, in the irony, Charles,

I'm going to throw one other tombstone in here with you is the tombstone of my grandfather. For anybody who is unaware, my grandfather was the pastor of the Brannum Tabernacle for 50 something years until I started publishing the tax records. And there was this big outcry.

A lot of people don't know this. In fact, Charles, I don't know if I fully mentioned all of this on when we did the series. But when I started publishing the tax records and people saw the sheer volume of money flowing through this thing. And how I'll just use the word unethical.

We'll leave it at that. And you can draw your own conclusions of what I actually wanted to say. There were deacons who were in the Brannum Tabernacle who fully were aware that I was publishing all of this research about William Brannum and was one of the very loudest outspoken persons against the cult who started contacting and working with me to understand where all the money was going.

I've never told this, but they were working with me and I was telling them how to go into the courthouse, what room, you know I was giving them full directions and drawing maps. You go here, you look in this table and back then all of those records were in the Clark County courthouse and you just walk in and take a snapshot with your phone or pay for a copy.

And so they found out that things were not as they seemed and while that massive amount of money was coming in, we're talking I think is hundreds of millions of dollars and that was just in one single thread of the money, that wasn't the whole thing, that one single thread of the money was a hundred million dollars.

Well, at the same time they have this much money in assets, they're saying that they have no money and they're having all the children, my children participated in this, we're having penny jar drives for Jesus, so we can collect your pennies and what they're doing is they're indoctrinating the children to give them money, really it's all it was.

But people, especially deacons, they search crashing, why are they asking for pennies when they've got millions, maybe billions of dollars and so they, there was an outcry in my grandfather and, you know, the whole deacon board resigned, my grandfather resigned, you can go to my website, you can type in resignation, you can listen to their speeches where they're talking about what one deacon said, I just got to ask where is the money and it's, it's sad, but anyway, here's my grandfather's tombstone and he, he believed that William Brannum, well, he may have believed, he at least proclaimed that William Brannum was going to come and rise up

out of that grave before he died while he was still pastor of the Brannum Tabernacle and there were numerous of private prophecies about when William Brannum rose up out of this tombstone to visit my grandmother and my grandfather and to visit my aunt and my uncle. Those are prophecies that you're not going to find on recording, but in the mouth of two or three witnesses, this was a thing. So he had on his, his tombstone him standing in front of the Brannum Tabernacle and this tombstone was made before he resigned and long story short, it looks very much like the voice

of God kicked him out, you know, you can't be saying these things, you can't be investigating in our money. I don't know what happened that led to this. but my assumption based off of everything that I know is they couldn't stop the questions about money and so they had to put a stop to my grandfather. So here on his tombstone is him standing in front of the church that he wasn't preaching at when he died. Billy Paul was doing an appropriate financial maneuvering from the moment William Brownham died and I've actually been working on some documentation

around that for the next volume of my next book, John. One day, maybe we can record a full episode on that and kind of walk through how Billy Paul did a lot of the things that he did.

But you're right. I mean, it's just a money racket for certain people and they made a lot of money out of it. And so, you know, as you think about all these graves here in eastern cemetery, you know, if you're in the message and you're just cringing, right? All the people who pretend there is no deity cult, I bet you're cringing. You know, hey, I mean, we didn't mean you didn't invent all these tombstones that we'd done. I mean, the deity cult is real. It is alive. It is well. It is thriving today in the Jeffersonville area and there will continue to be more graves

like this. And for all the people who are elderly, hey, save your kids some embarrassment and don't put these weird things on your graves down when you go, you know, come on, please. Just let, let, don't do that. No more. Come on. And then as far, John, as all these NAR people, new apostolic reformation people come in here, what in the world are you soaking up in this cemetery?

But gracious. Even half the message knows you don't go. I mean, we didn't go to these, my sect of the message would not come to these places. This is like a spookhouse to us because the deity cult has so what in the world? What in the world? Well, not just to the graves, man. So these people, these NAR leaders, and I'm talking some pretty big name people. They visit the Brannems. They visit this place. They see the deity worship. And then the Brannem family, I'm not going to name names, but you will find YouTube videos of these guys out there who the

Brannems are giving private tours. They're that connected to the Brannem organization, even still today. I mean, we talked about back when we were talking about Kenneth Hagen and T.L. Osborne and that series of podcasts. They were financially connected. They were business organizations established wherein the voice of God recordings, which is the Brannem deity cult headquarters. And the Kenneth Hagen organization were both in the same business financial papers. And same thing with T.L. Osborne, who T.L. Osborne said that William Brannem was God in the flesh at his eulogy. So these guys know the deity cult exists. And for some reason, the NAR wants to be part of it. That's the

part for me, Charles, that it just boggles my mind. You cannot embrace William Brannem without embracing this part of his ministry. Right? Malim Brandham declared himself to be God on tape, okay, it's on tape.

He had a whole inner circle of loyal people who worshipped him as God is the flesh for close to a decade, at least a decade of his life. And he's the one who, and he gave all of them the power over all the message institutions before he died.

And so you cannot, I mean, for all of the stuff a person might do, you cannot separate that from what William Brandham did. And that colors his whole ministry. I mean, you see that's how he ended up.

He could not have possibly started good, like you don't accidentally stumble into telling everybody your God, you know, and letting people worship you as God. You don't accidentally get there, right? I mean, that is, and people don't accidentally get themselves there either.

They have to be led into that. It's, it's so sad. It is just so sad, John. Yeah, so, hey, I hope everyone enjoyed our stroll through Eastern Cemetery today, looking at some, some tombstones, it, it, it, it's really sad to see all the stuff on it.

But hey, you've, you've got a little glimpse. There's so many, there's so many more we could have did. But I think this is enough to get the point across. There is a deity called absolutely.

The point has been made. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org and ChristianGospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.