Our Stories: An Interview With Daniel Horton

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Daniel Horton, former message believer. Daniel, it's good to have you on here finally and tell your story on the podcast. We've exchanged a few emails and your story was interesting to me, so I know it's going to be very interesting to our listeners and hopefully give them some encouragement of somebody who has escaped and came to the other side, so

good to have you on here. Maybe if you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Well, my name is Daniel Horton, 38 years old. I've left the message. I've went there to a church till I was 13 and then formally renounced believing in it till I would say probably 2019-18. It's left me with a lot of trauma throughout the years, religious and emotional trauma and mental language. Yeah, and I just found your website one day and I said, you know, I'm going to reach out, especially since I've read the deity cult, I may have heard

the deity cult podcast, so here we are. Yeah, the deity cult is so unusual and I, you know, growing up, it's really weird because I would never have called myself a member of any sort of thing like this and I would say we never worship William Branum, but I would have no problem when my grandfather would rattle off things like he was God tabernacled in human flesh. I can't tell you how many times I heard him say that and I'll never forget I was having a conversation with people right after I left. I had a few people for a short time that would talk to me and I was explaining

this and the problem that that, you know, that raises and they didn't believe me. They said, there's no way your grandfather says that. He's not worshipping anything but God and Jesus and then in his resignation speech he said it and you know, you've probably heard it's on the website but people get so trapped in this thing and they get so manipulated in the head that they believe strange things and they don't even realize that they're believing and sometimes openly saying them. I will grow up, you know, you hear things. And then as I grow older, here's the thing is kind of like your experience, but

mine happened way before the past or past or way. Going through church, she liked from when I was a kid to maybe six or seven, it was like playing Jane what you would hear in all things. And then marriage and divorce and polygamy started fishing its way in.

Okay. And then you know later on, which I'll probably touch on later is my church started to pray to Joseph Brannum, not for the Brown, but Joseph. Wow. And your church was not alone in that. That's the other thing. I'm glad that I have you on here to say this because I try not, unless I can find some documentation or somebody who can say it. I try not to put it on the website, but that is widespread. There are a lot of churches and a lot of they call them tape home churches, people that gather in their houses that they

will openly pray to William Brannum's son. And you know, it's kind of underground. The people will do it in these church settings, but then when they're around other believers, they kind of keep it to themselves because they have the special knowledge that's more special than the rest of the cult. Yeah, I've heard that the question I have is I really haven't dug tertiary through your site really that much, but polygamy, is it? It will practice thing while obviously not from the main streamers, but I'm talking about just the underground sex. Well, the question really becomes what is mainstream? Because William Brannum himself didn't continue one single thread

of religion. If you examine his, you know, the years from 1947 and 1953, it's a completely different religion than 63 to 65. And what happened was if you go back, I think Charles and I addressed this in two places, we actually had a podcast that we called Marriage and Divorce and we had another episode that I think is called polygamy. It was widespread. Now, it's kind of like the deity cult, it's kind of gone underground. What happened was William Brannum's son, Billy Paul, he got a divorce and then remarried. And this turned into a big problem for William Brannum because he had created

this fake stage persona wherein he said that it was wrong for somebody to be remarried after they could, after they were married to their first spouse unless that spouse died. And Billy Paul did this and William Brannum later he came on and you know, he started claiming that he annulled it to try to prevent it. And that didn't work and anybody who could have access the courthouse records, can see, no, that was not an annulment. That was an actual divorce.

But what happened was he introduced this doctrine where he said it was okay for the male to remarry, not the female. And he gives all these crazy examples. There's one male doe, there's many female doves. And he goes through like the entire animal kingdom and shows how it's in God's perfect plan for one man to have many, there's many wives. And then he goes through the Bible, you know, King David, et cetera. What happened was everybody who heard that, who had that inclination, which I can't even imagine somebody having, they said, whoopie! Now we can have multiple wives

and that spread like wildfire, especially in some of the African, you know, sects of the message. So it actually wasn't one time widespread. Now I'm told that in parts of Africa, it still is.

And oddly enough, when I published that research, there were actual message ministers sending me information about voice of God recordings that I didn't know, because I was publishing the thing that they had based their doctrine upon. And they realized the voice of God is trying to deny and reject this thing that William Brannum did. So I'll say it like this. I had polygamous sects of the message who still believed William Brannum, who helped me publish my polygamy pages on the website. I see. So is that common in America, of course, you know, due to anti-bigamy laws and

stuff. Is it widespread in America, not just African countries or where that's not necessarily shun, but is there or do you know aware of besides my own church that practices polygamy, both former church, I can't. It's old habits, man, old habits. No.

Charles had a struggle. He kept saying brother Brannum for the first, I don't know how many episodes. He gets stuck in your head. I don't know that I would call it widespread, but again, you've got all of these quote unquote tape home churches. And it can count a family's house as a church. You might say that there's a lot of them, but I have in the work that I've done so far, I've come across, I think for either four or five different churches that were allowed polygamy in multiple states.

So it's not just one church and it's not just one state in the United States. How aware were you, when I emailed you, you didn't seem aware of them of my pastor who was Elwood Gellmore, who was no longer with us. How aware was more, I would say more believers of this guy, I mean of my former minister. I know that my grandfather had news reporters and often ministers calling him to ask about the polygamy.

And in fact, that's one of the things that was shared to me by these ministers from Africa. They said that we confronted your grandfather about this and they actually gave me video footage of them confronting my grandfather about this.

So I don't know if he was aware of your specific minister, but he's definitely was aware that there were polygamous sects in the message. And from the videotape, I can assure you that my grandfather was not the only one.

I got you. I know that pretty much it enters my question on that. So all right, let's have a conversation. Any questions that you have for me? Yeah. So before we had, before we started recording, we were talking about your life in the message and you mentioned, you know, as we started here, you mentioned that you had some traumatic experiences that I think the word you use was it programmed parts of your brain to believe in certain ways.

Just in general, what was it like for you growing up in the message? It was, it was sometimes lonely. Like man, like until I moved closer to my cousins, you know, everybody that was in it.

Like it was being the odd duck in the church, I mean, living in the world when your foot, one foot's in the church and the other foot's, you know, not homeschool because a lot of our kids, the kids that from my former church are homeschooled now.

So that's not a problem. When I was growing up, we couldn't do that. Like we had didn't have the abilities that people do now about homeschooling. So when I went to school, it was, well, I can't do this because it's against the word, or, you know, message.

And I couldn't go, listen to certain types of music I couldn't, you know, do movies, even certain types of, like the game stuff they didn't care about, which was weird to me. But yeah, outside of the church, everybody outside of the church, as far as schoolmates and stuff were looked on suspicion, my god, my mother, God bless her is the only reason that I came out semi sort of not weird.

Yeah, the cult rules, you know, growing up, you're convinced that it's not a rule. You're convinced that it's something that you want to not do, which is really weird if you think about it because there were an awful lot of things that normal children would have wanted to do.

But we convinced ourselves in our minds that no, we don't like television. We don't like this music. At least I did. I know that there were some people that, you know, that tried to listen to it in secret and whatnot, but I could, I could honestly go into a shopping mall where they're playing rock and roll music.

And I would, in my head, I would chant like, only believe in weird songs to try to drown out what was coming in, and I'm a musician. So like I should have liked, I should have wanted to like the music, but I just didn't.

And after I left, I started thinking about that. And there's a, if you go to my website and you just type in cult rules, you'll see, I did a deep dive in trying to understand why the rules.

Because some of the rules were really stupid. If you really stopped and thought about it. And I got to thinking about, you know, I went to churches from Arizona to South Carolina and everywhere in between.

And no two churches had the same rules. And I kept thinking, why is this? And I got to thinking about the sermons that we heard. You know, people after William Brannum died because you're in a religion where you're convinced that you can save yourself by the things that you don't do.

That's essentially what the message is. Well, when he died and they didn't immediately go up in the rapture, all these ministers try to come up with new and exciting ways in which you can punish yourself by not doing other things.

And so they scour through the message. And what happens is when you find William Brannum ranting against something, then a new rule is born. And so I went through some of his rants just at random.

And I found things like, you're not allowed to use a washing machine because he ranted against it. You're women with washing machines. Now you can go out and get a job. You know, this weird thing.

Open-toed shoes, no painted toes. The kicker was no booster bras. If you're a female, you cannot wear the wire frame. It's that kind of thing is an actual rule. If you go back and you apply the rules in the way that these ministers do.

But all it is in the end is just simply robbing people if they're freedom. Docturnally, or I guess we can consider us a sect in the sect, when brother Brannum, well, there you go.

William Brannum spoke about different things. It's either he was speaking as the man. But if it said, does say at the Lord, it was God speaking through him. So there's very different doctrinal rules about what's actually not able to be done and what is just him talking.

So I mean, that's just my experience growing through the message. Yeah. And if you're in the worship Joseph sect, there's a quote out there somewhere. Joseph Brannum says, I believe every word that the prophet said is thus say at the Lord.

And so you have to apply it all, blanket statement. And that was one of the big things that, right before I left, I had a conversation with a family member. And I think he must have just simply, he had recently heard that from.

Joseph Brannum and his family were doing it. Like, no matter what they found on tape, no matter how nonsensical it was, they believed it. And I was like, no, man, you know, he said that it take, what was the exact, I said the example was, William Brannum said on recording that it would take millions of light years for an angel flying at light speed to go from Earth to Mars.

And now we've got a Mars lander, that's actually landed on Mars, right? So there's no way it took a million light years. And I tried to explain this to him, and suddenly I was a sinner because I had doubted this nonsense that the prophet said.

So it really depends on the sect and especially how close they are to the deity cult. Those in the deity cult, they will take everything blanket statement. It was mixed with a mind like the only thing that they felt was like, you know, 100% was Joseph my son.

There are more than a prophet and then they just go with that one. Did they ever say what prophecy he had that made him a prophet? I have no clue. I'll be honest with you.

This is just from what I heard. And like I said, 13 and under. So this is my information as a child to early teenagers. I did make sporadic visits now and then. So near the end, I never really tuned in to see what their doctrine was at this point.

Yeah, so you grew up in this and they had all of the rules and that impacted your life. How does that affect you from your day-to-day life now? Having been in a cult and had this weird thing that we had growing up, all of this end of days theology, doomsday is about to come, that America's gonna be obliterated.

Did that impact you, you know, when you got older? Sometimes even now I have an unhandished hatred for California. I don't know what it is, but that I can certainly say 100% is on message of belief.

The one that bothers me the most and that really made me feel bad is the one time that I chastised my mom or cutting her hair at my own, my first, my first wife's and I's wedding.

I just tore her down and to this day, years later after I've deep programmed enough, it's still something that haunts me. And then the last thing here lately, I've become permanently disabled. The mental thing in the back of my mind is like your wife is working, you're not doing anything.

It puts you in a mental spiral. That's just down and down and down because you're not worth much worth as a man unless you're working or providing and you can't even do that. So that's worth it.

the situation that's most affecting me right now is that whole patriarchal view of men are this and have to be the sole provider. Women aren't supposed to work. That is still something that taps me on the hand and everyone's as well. Yeah, I understand that we, after we left the message, I got to thinking about all of that. I mean, it's just pure nonsense because there were certain tasks around the house that only females should do and men should never do those. And vice versa, depending on the sect of the message, of course. And it's almost like this 1950s leave it to be

for lifestyle, right? And I grew up, I had severe allergies, severe some of the worst allergies that I've known people to have I had. And yet mowing the lawn was the man's job. So even after I got married, I continued to mow the lawn all through the years until we left the message. And even a long time after that because I'm, you know, I'm the man. That's what the men do. They mow the lawns, right?

And my wife kept telling me, just let me do it. And I was too stubborn. And, you know, finally, I gave in and I let her do it. It changed my life so much because I didn't have all of the congestion and the eyes and the coughing and she, once I once I saw that, then I next had to overcome the fear of it wasn't a fear, but it was like this negativity towards medication.

So I was avoiding allergy shots all those years. And once she, once she showed me how much better things could be, I started taking allergy shots. And now, you know, I could go mow the lawn now. I'm fine. But there is this clear separation between the men and the women.

I remember my dad, he, he wasn't the nicest fellow. He'd womanize, drink, be, mom would come back to him because that's, that's what I will believe in, believe or believe. And he got bad. Every single time he'd take her up to get prayed for and eventually, folks know, but they wouldn't say nothing. But after he left her and then she tried to see other people, they would call my mom all types of stuff. This is family now, just due to the indoctrinal beliefs of the message. Like, my mom was called a harlot, an adulterer, and everything else. And

she's, she's a very deviled lady and raised a kid told by herself. But yet, you know, she's the one know that got beat on and everything and talked about. That, that is still a chip on the shoulder. I have not just with that with different members of my family, but also the patriarchal beliefs of the message. Is that things like that don't, believe your mind. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's so sad that I have tried to remove all the chips, but there are certain things that really bug me. And the one for me is that we were taught this weird pseudo gospel, where you also had to believe divine healing as part of your salvation.

And I know that there are people, there are message sex that will argue with that. But if you take everything that William Brannum said about divine healing back to its core, it all leads to you're either believing in this divine healing thing or you're unsaved.

And what that does to a person is if they develop a chronic disease or health problem, then they begin to feel as though they're a sinner, they don't have enough faith. And William Brannum said, sin is unbelief.

And therefore, if you're not getting healed, it's because you have unbelief and therefore you're a sinner if you take it back to its logical conclusion. So I know people who developed severe chronic diseases, who thought it was their fault, thought they were living in sin.

And while the disease was bad enough or the condition was bad enough, it was severely amplified by the fact that they had so much inward condemnation that developed purely because of the religion. So what little bit of happiness they could have had was completely robbed, in my opinion, just because of this false doctrine that William Brannum and FF Bosworth, I think is the one that trained him.

But those two guys took this and they ruined people's lives with it. I remember growing up when I first had developed type one diabetes, like that was when I was like in and out, like after 13, I never went full time.

But I was desperate and I thought, well, maybe this is my golden ticket. And then and I just heard, well, if you just believe you can, you can heal yourself. So I stopped taking my insulin and, well, that didn't end out too well.

And I, yeah, I'm as a type one diabetic. I learned very quickly that you can't go well for very long. Yeah, I have family members who have, I'm not going to get names, but they have type one diabetes.

And there was a period of time they were in a coma from it. So this is not something that you play with. But again, when you're in divine healing cult, you try to, you know, leave off the meds, say that you believe have faith and you can end up dying from that.

That's how bad that is. Has there a lot of mental health issues for people that are from that have been to the message? I know that when I was, my mom, like I said, in my emails, was what people would consider a liberal of the church.

I was taking the doctors. I was allowed to go to certain dances and things as I got older on my grand. father passed away. After my grandfather was gone, my mother really went laissez faire with me a few times out of this forest, different things. I struggle with mental health all my life. I had to tribute to some of that being my dad and some of it, you know, the message and different things. But as I started to take medicine for it, I was looked upon as being mentally well. I was mentally unwell, but literally to the point of being crazy just when I was just dealing

with anxiety and depression. And I believe that I have what's called borderline personality disorder as of right now. I believe that a lot of that situation was stemmed out from the message and living under my dad. And there you go. Part of your argument, I mean what you were saying earlier about people take it to an extreme to where they will stop taking insulin, mental health meds and stuff like that. I was to that point, but I know I stopped taking my mental health meds and realized that I needed to be on them or else I didn't

feel normal or at least baseline. But yeah, I totally get where you're coming from on that one. Yeah, the mental health is something that I'm very passionate about because I've studied it to no end. I have family members that are for the rest of their lives, they'll suffer with severe mental health issues. And I have personally sat down with ministers in the message who said that any person who takes any medication for mental health, they might as well be sent straight to hell because this minister and it's so odd. I'm laughing at the absurdity of it.

He said, I've watched time and time again when people take a mental health medication, they leave the message. So we know the devil is in those pills. And now in hindsight, I'm looking back and know these people, you know, they had the cult craziness and they took something that helped them stabilize and realize, no, wait a minute, I'm in a cult. But I began studying the mental health very, very thoroughly and it becomes almost like this chicken or an egg problem. You had so many people that were so desperate and one way or another, either for

healing or for whatever brought them into the cult. And then once they got into the cult, they were the same people. So if they came with a mental health issue, they still had it. And if they came to be healed of mental health issues, they never were healed. And there's this hereditary factor, right? So if you bring a lot of people in the message who have problems, well, most of the people who who marry each other in the cult are from the same group.

So now you've got mental health people, people with mental health issues marrying also, other people who potentially have it. And it's this cascading problem, right? So I began researching and I actually had some in-depth conversations with Dr. Stephen Hassan.

And he explained that it goes even levels beyond that. There are, there's a growing part of the psychological community that see cult itself as a mental health disease. People who join a cult, the way it impacts your brain, it has every aspect of a disease.

It's a disorder. And so there's this growing notion that it is a cult mental health disorder, something like the second, remember the exact name. And he said, even worse than that, there are people who get diagnosed with bipolar disorder because they have all of the symptoms of bipolar.

And it's because they have not addressed the cult trauma in their life. And I can't remember, I think he gave a TED talk on this. He's either that or he gave a speech at a university, but he had worked with a person who was a cult survivor and basically gave this person therapy for the cult indoctrination and the cult trauma.

And this person was able to come completely off of their bipolar meds because they did not have bipolar disorder. So there's also this aspect that the cult trauma can cause the mental health issues.

So it's a chicken and egg compounded by about 10 different layers. I do have an off question for you. We didn't celebrate Christmas per se. How typical was that with other parts of the message?

It is widespread because you were not supposed to, except for in Jeffersonville, where everybody knew that William Brannum did. And the irony is he mentioned on recording that they were exchanging gifts. In fact, in the Brannum tabernacle, they exchanged Christmas gifts and it's on recording.

But in the South, for example, my grandfather there was strongly against Christmas. He allowed it for the children and a lot of the families would be, that's the way they would do it. They would be against it for the adults and maybe exchange gifts but not be all into it.

But for the kids, here's some presence. But there were also some warped versions of that where the celebration was just so haunted by the message that they fought it off. I never experienced it because my family, they were in the Brannum family's house to see his Christmas tree and they saw the presence afterwards.

So it was so different for me. That's one thing that I've been bugging me for all of it. My life is like, if I told people that the brand I'm did celebrate Christmas, I'd be a heritage.

Like I could take pictures in their house of the Christmas tree and be told, well, don't believe it. I'm like, that's almost like the conversation I have with my mother before I came on here because as much as I wanted to get my story out there, I still respected my mother enough to say, hey, would our relationship be the same if I went on this podcast to do this stuff?

And she said, well, I love you, but I know you're playing with your life. Well, I'm impressed that you have the relationship with your mother that you can do that. There are a lot of people who've left the message and the ties between the cult and the parents are stronger than the ties between the parents and the children.

And so the parent will actually cut off, in many cases, they'll cut off their child if the child decides to leave or especially if the child says anything publicly about the message. So the fact that you have that relationship is actually really good.

Well, she left full time because we moved down from Virginia to South Carolina. Our church was in Virginia if we would have kept in the message. Things might be a very different story, but she still goes up there and still believes that William Random is a prophet.

And for the longest time I said that he was a prophet, but I don't believe that Joseph is God. And that was the first schism between me and what my church believed was that they're sitting over here and praying to a man that came through sex.

And I'm like, God, can't come through sex. This is heresy, no, no, no. So I'm over here praying to Jesus and they're over there plugging the Joseph. And it's like, blaze, Lord Joseph that I'm like, oh, no, no.

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And it's really odd to me, the polygamous sects, their close ties back to William Brannum's son. I'll just say it like that and let that go. But the fact that that human worship is so widespread,

and it goes back to the days where William Brannum was alive. We, you know, you just mentioned you listen to the deity called. There were a large number of people who really believed that William Brannum was God in the flesh.

And T.L. Osborne, who, I'm actually getting communications from all over the world right now about T.L. Osborne. Apparently he created some global move of cultish or cult-like groups around the world. I didn't realize how widespread that was.

I knew him from the, what is it? The Trinity Broadcasting Network or whatever. But he gave the eulogy for William Brannum and said that he said, I don't care if you label me a heretic, but this man was, God had come down in William Brannum, basically, is what he said.

So the fact that they were doing it back in the 60s, worshipping Brannum, and then Brannum died. And then that movement that had gone somewhat underground began to worship the son. And that is just, for me, that's just mind boggling.

I asked my mom, but also it was like, oh, Joseph isn't getting any younger. What happens when he passes away? What are y'all going to do there? Well, we won't have to worry about that.

And I said, well, Brannum's gone. It would go. Joseph is not a young man anymore. Mama, what are you going to do there? And it's just, it's a conversation we don't have. And I know, certainly, my extended family that are still in it, the second they hear that I've done this, that they won't talk to me whatsoever.

They'll bring me as a, yeah. Wow. That's so sad. Yeah. Like I said, the church's disillusioned. It splintered. They're not very, my pastor was the one thing that held that church together. But after it went, people are doing their own, like you said, home-based church and stuff.

But they're not really. They don't have a central figure keeping it together. And I said, give it another two or three generations. And probably by then that most people will not even heard of William Brannum.

And the community I was in, at least people I was related to. But it will take, at least, to messages to get that, I mean, your generation is to get that. out of the system.

Yeah. It's so weird how it works. I'm a game, we talked before this, you're a gamer and I'm a gamer. And on the original legend of Zelda, there was this, like, there's this one enemy that when you placked it with the sword, it split into three bats.

And that's what the message is like. You one pastor dies and then there's all these little groups that come out and they're much weaker or smaller groups. But you mentioned in that hierarchy, and I'm interested to hear from you.

You said, well, your brand, I'm gone and Elwood's gone. And what happens when Joseph died, the way that you gave that progression, it was as though there were, there was a lot of reverence given to Elwood, which I have found to be the case in each of the splinter groups that did practice polygamy.

How would you describe your relationship between the church and the pastor in that group? They thought he didn't know wrong when I said, you know, a pastor is supposed to be like very modest and, you know, somebody that has a church full of people that are barely making ends meet, that, you know, works pump and toilets and factor workers is driving around two of her vehicles and a boat and a house that's paid for, that there's something going on here.

And I did that once on social media, early social media, I think it was called high five and not even two or three seconds later, I might have mom as a phone was ringing off the hook.

Well, look at it. And that's what I mean is like, there was a, I think that if it would have went on long enough, he would have probably pulled a Williams brand up. And mom doesn't believe that.

And my family would say, well, Adam, you know, that's not, yeah, yeah. It eventually probably would have been not Joseph, but, you know, there's revealed a blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I am anointed and something.

But no, it stayed Joseph, but there were hints there that I felt that it was leaning in that direction, even though he was older and aged. Like nobody marries the children and I'll just be blunt if they were children.

I mean, in 93, he, he almost went to jail for it. And then recently, I mean, not recently, but early 2010s, he married the third one, married, like, you don't get away with that stuff.

Complicitly, without somebody worshipping you at least a little bit because nobody finds it stops them and it's like, Hey, why is this, why is this guy marrying 16 year old girls? I mean, like, they use the whole concept of somebody, you know, a priest cannot marry a woman that's not been.

by man. But still, that's the borderline pedophilia. And it gave him time. He probably would have done it again before he died. But then again, you know, I say, I can't because I'm so intertwined with the message and the church and most of the members of that church were related to each other. You can't cast aspersions without, you know, saying something against family.

So I'm all conflicted when I'm saying some of this stuff because I'm in some ways related to it. And he was a dear family friend. It's hard to separate the pastor from the man. And yeah.

Yeah. So as you were talking, it just clicked in my head when who your your minister was, we had the exchange of emails and then the name wasn't bringing a bell. But apparently a long time ago, I actually put a research page up on on your pastor. Apparently my grandfather was contacted specifically about your pastor as was voice of God recordings. And their statements if you if you go to my website and just type in polygamy, you can see their responses to this. And I forgotten that I put it up. But also the videos that I mentioned earlier where my grandfather was

confronted about polygamy. I've got up on that page. But I've researched so many things at this point. I've forgotten half of what I've published. It's a it's quite a bit. It's like a professor after so many years. You're like, well, you know, eventually some spews out of there. Yeah. It's it's so crazy. But to think that, you know, to think this was connected back to the deity cult, bogus your mind. Because the very men that they contacted. So they contacted and they spoke with Billy Paul. And I think they wrote into Joseph, if I remember correctly, I'd have to look that up.

But so the writing into headquarters. And this is basically the headquarters of the deity cult that these people are worshipping now as God. So the irony is just unbelievable. But the polygamy cults, as I understand it, they all go back to that marriage in divorce sermon. That's their proof text, so to speak. And that is the one that enables them to be this way. The irony there is I never experienced any of the polygamy groups growing up. But I did experience men who had failed marriages. I had close friends that they, you know, they're marriage. Those two people should

never have been married in the first place. I'll just say it like that. Well, some of them, not all, but some of the men ended up getting remarried. And they also went back to the marriage and divorce sermon because it allowed the one man who could marry multiple wives. So they actually took the polygamy portion of that sermon to justify being married again. While some of the other men would reference other statements that William Branagh made contradicting this, and they'll, you know, they'll be single for the rest of their lives. But the irony is that both polygamous groups and men who remarried, they go to that

marriage and divorce sermon. I don't know if I could do an email, but my uncle did it. Like, he was actually along with the pastor of practice in polygamous. And I love my uncle very dearly, but that, that, that, that was not a good situation. It caused a lot of issues with my grandmother. My grandmother was not, was not a fan of polygamy, but I, as I recall, an anecdotal situation about my grandmother at one time. She, we had a question to the answers, not, or pick a good, you know, ask her questions, and then we would doctor and only look for answers

in the message. She asks and stands up, well, Brother Branagh once stated that he couldn't do that to upset, you know, Miss Branagh, then why would you all do it to hurt your wives? And then after that, you know, questions and answers, I kind of went away.

Well, the bigger question for me, man, have they not told these men that if you do this, you also get multiple mothers in law. That's, you know, I fortunately, I, I looked out, I've got a really good mother-in-law, but I know some men that if you were to tell them that they would have multiple mothers in law, like the ones they have, there's no way they would take another woman for a wife.

Yeah, did you have doctrinal issues about, you know, you could marry outside of the church, or if they did, they'd have to be required to come? I attended some churches that, I don't know that they openly said it, but it was an unwritten rule. You had to marry someone who was a believer, because I'll say it like this, especially the churches that really preached the Serpentsy doctrine, you had to believe that the people from the bad bloodline are outside of your church, and the people of the good bloodline are in your church.

And so if you marry somebody outside, you're marrying into that bad bloodline. And I have sat through some church services where ministers would elude to that fact. They wouldn't come out and say it, because there may be somebody in the church who had married, but they basically taught it in such a way that you didn't want to marry outside of the church. That's that's usually how it happened. I'll be honest with you, I tried that, but after a while of so many decades of people marrying into one another it's just what you become weird where we only point at this point you look around and all you have is cousins so I'm like well

what am I going to do now yeah well and it goes back to what I was saying about the mental health there's so many complex layers to that chicken in the egg scenario there's only so many times that the humans can reproduce with people of the same family tree without creating mental health issues that's that's one of the one of the consequences of this and some of the smaller churches that I've been to in the south they were pretty close

yeah yeah I don't understand it but I mean if you get to the point where um you you can't marry anybody else I think some rules need to be at least bits

absolutely as far as women's attires it always been long hair long dresses through all the message or is it doctrinal differences like most of them sell you know it's really funny because it has gotten worse over the years now if you go to most message churches especially the ones that are tied back to headquarters you can't even show your ankles because if you show your ankles you're leading a man to sin which is absurd man the ankles are not what really excite most men I'll just say it like that but back when William Brannam was alive I've even got photographs on the website

of his daughters with skirts above their knees and sleeveless tops which that was forbidden when I was in the call you you had to have a sleeve you couldn't show your shoulders and Joseph Brannam wearing shorts which you know half of the deity cult would just roll over in their graves if they knew that Joseph Brannam was wearing shorts got a photo of William Brannam himself wearing shorts so there were rules that weren't weren't really exercised by the family and then there were rules that grew worse especially after he died because again you're in a cult that's trying to save yourself

by what you don't allow yourself to do and so you're going to keep compounding you can't save yourself you can't make yourself be raptured so you're going to keep stacking weights on your shoulder and the end result of all of this is by the time you know most people escape when they do escape they feel so burdened down with all of these weights that suddenly they're they're like wow this feels so much better to escape and not have all these ridiculous rules when Billy Paul passed away and when brother Brannam passed away and for seemingly within the next 10 to 20 years Joseph

might pass away Has there been instances of mass suicide, like a Jim Jones type of thing? If there is, I'm unaware of a mass suicide. There have been a few mass exoduses because with each person like this, there's so much doctrine wrapped up into things that they have to do while they're alive and things that have to happen while they're alive that people just suddenly snap out of it. Oh wait, William Random's dead. He was supposed to be the one to go lead all of the Jews to their salvation in Israel. If he's dead, he can't do this.

So therefore, a lot of people escaped when he died. And then Billy Paul, you know, the California is going to, Los Angeles is going to sink before he's an old man, that kind of thing.

So we've seen a few mass exoduses. I don't know of any mass suicides other than the ones that are mentioned on the website. Does everybody in the message have, you know, an aversion to California? Or is it just my sack? I would say a majority does. Although I went with my family, my wife had never been to Los Angeles. So I took her on a like weekend getaway, her and the boys, and we went to see Los Angeles. And we got to go stand right there at the maze company where this alleged prophecy happened. It's no longer even the maze company, which is also kind of funny.

And while it was out there, I met a former message believer who took me and showed me some places. I got to see the die hard tower there, which was really cool. And then he says, I want to show you this other place. And he takes me to a message church right by L.A. airport. And I'm like, I'm scratching my head. No, man, how can this be? Everybody in the message is believing that Los Angeles is going to sink. And he said, yeah, but this group's different. They don't really hold to that prophecy like the other ones. So apparently there are some that that don't consider William

Branham's prophecy to be valid. Well, that is interesting. I might have to tell my mother about that, but Lord knows how this situation is going once this episode was released. Well, hopefully, hopefully we don't hurt her feelings. I would hate to ruin a relationship that seems to be so solid. I don't think it'll end it. Like even if I happened to be gay, my mother said she'd accept me. She just wouldn't accept certain things in her house. So I do believe my mother would love me regardless of what happens. But I don't know if I'd be welcome

in other people's house at home in Virginia. Well, if it's any comfort, I'm not welcome in most that I grew up in. And I could assume so. I know there's a lot of, you know, allegations and actual events so.

sexual assault in different sex and Christianity. Is it very prevalent in the message because outside of my own I know that it became very pedophilic with a lot of older men trying to marry younger women but has there been any cases of where things were done and were covered up? I know of some I obviously can't talk about it because there's legal issues with this but what the former members who have escaped have confided in me I won't say that it's widespread but I will say that it is covered up and there's a lot of it and I have you know of of the

testimonies that have been given to me and of the things that I actually saw I know that there were spousal abuse there was sexual abuse that ministers knew about and covered up and supported the predator and you know it's it's awful my own grandfather was somebody that was like that and there's good and bad things about my grandfather that's one thing that I struggle with is the fact that he knew of somebody being severely abused and he sided with the abuser rather than the victim and that just bothers me but it is there is a lot of

it that goes to my next question of course you just said spousal abuse and all that I'm like I would figure those would be two of the things that would make people want to stay even if they don't want to stay a lot of times absolutely that happens I'm guessing through your research that you've found a lot of domestic violence and stuff like that as a means of keeping them in line not escaped yeah I won't say that there's a lot you know with any group of people you have people problems I think that's the best way to put it the

difference is this in the cult you were taught that this is the elite to God's people God's chosen few and you can't keep that up when there are people problems that everybody can see and so for example I know of other churches where they have had something happen that was just as severe and they protected the person who was being abused and they warned the entire church that there's a problem I've actually sat in one of these meetings where they said this person has a problem keep your kids out of harm's way that's what happens in a normal church in the cult they not only side with the predator

they will hide it from the people so nobody knows to even protect their children and that for me is problematic a lot of these pop-up churches and you know at home churches Besides them, as far as membership in America, how, what numbers will we look at that with message believers?

Because the only message believers I knew in my whole life before I saw randomly another group in South Carolina was maybe 300, if that, at tops, like nearly and it was closer to about 150 people.

You know, that's the irony, right? Every church that I went to, we were taught God's chosen few and we listened to sermons where William Brandham said one in a million, right? And then right before I left, voice of God recordings that call headquarters, published a page that said there are between two and four million believers in the world that are ordering books and pamphlets of William Brandham.

So I got to, after I left, I started talking with, you know, other people of other groups and apparently around the world, it is very widespread. You go into Africa, especially in there just, you know, there's a lot of these message cult sects and splinter groups and they're all coming from different directions.

You've got big churches that are probably more influential than voice of God recordings that are spreading William Brandham into other countries. So it is widespread. Now in the United States, ironically, it's all kind of dwindling out because people are starting to wake up and they have, now they've got access to information so people can escape.

So you've come a very long way and I'm starting to feel like I'm in a question and answer sermon myself, so I'll bring it back, but no, I'm only joking with you, but if you could go back in time and say something to your former self while you're in this to give yourself some hope and encouragement, what would you say to yourself?

I would have said that everything that you hear isn't necessarily the truth, be observant, keep your eyes open and don't let people that are, people you consider your betters or your elders or somebody that might be older, not necessarily, they don't know everything and that they don't always have your best interest at art.

Awesome. Well, thank you very much for sharing your story. I'm certain that there's a lot of people that will get encouragement, but even more to the point, there are a lot of people who are in the deity cult and they don't even realize that they are, and especially those that are worshiping the sun instead of, you know, it's bad enough that I have to say they were worshiping the Father, but now they're worshiping the sun openly and praying to them.

It just shows how far that this thing has gone away from Christianity. So thank you very much for coming on here and sharing this with us. Oh, it's my pleasure, sir. 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 www.William-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branum in the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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