Weaponized Religion: NAR Kingdom Theology Deception Part 2

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, the author of the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician.

And together we're discussing weaponized religion, how Christian identity fused with early Christian fundamentalism and politics to form the foundation for the New Apostolic Reformation. John, it's so good to be back and to continue our discussion on the tricks of the trade.

We get so many comments and questions about the spiritualism mixed into what people today call the New Apostolic Reformation, the NAR. And the stuff I'm doing with Steve McKinnon kind of puts it into a spiritual context, but a lot of people are just interested in the history, how in the world it's such a non-Christian idea get fused with so-called Christianity and form this mess that we have today.

Yeah, John, I'm excited about getting started with this second part of this episode, because it was just too much to cover in part one. And this subject is very exciting, because everybody's attracted to the supernatural.

And I think these leaders that were part of this revival, part of this movement, they all realized how much the supernatural they can exhibit some form of the supernatural in their ministry. They're going to attract people, because as we've heard, the supernatural is always the bait on the hook, but they had a much different hook than the gospel as we know.

And they're after a much different clientele and a much different goal in the end. And so this episode is going to be really a continuation of the first one, and we'll go into a lot more of the details about what could have been the things that were happening behind the scenes.

And I've got several articles to share, I've got many quotes from others, and it's just going to take up the full time, so we'll get right into it. So in 1930, he was talking about Davis being in the revival with Ralph Raider there over in Jeffersonville.

He had come to Louisville, and he was trying to gain a following there, but knowing that the revival was going over there in Jeffersonville, of course, he's going to flock to the nearest crowd, and Raider was attracting quite a few people.

Now Davis obviously convinced Raider. that to lead the singing in his revival. So that's what we see him doing in by October the 6th the revival started a month earlier and by that time Davis was now leading the singing in the revival because Davis was we know a talented singer and he took over a few services actually and actually spoke on divine healing for Ralph Raider in that revival in Jeffersonville one night and as the crowds began to grow as this the supernatural was being brought in there was a paper announcement about that time in October that Davis was now

going to come forth well somebody was going to come forth and show spiritualist tricks the tricks of the spiritualist trade at the time and spiritualism as we know was pretty big especially in Indiana as we'll see there's a camp in Indiana even William Brown was book of a camp he visited most likely it was camp Chesterfield but where he learned some of these spiritualist practices and no doubt with William Brown being a part of the mix there Davis knew nothing of the spiritualist type things because we don't see that anything mentioned in his ministry from the time of the early 1900s all the

way to this time where Davis ever mentioned anything about spiritualism but here all of a sudden after he's met Brownum after he's met George D. Arck who was confirmed as a medium by Brother Brownum as a as a known medium as well as his some of his relatives that were in Davis's church all of a sudden he verse first fourth on the scene as a spiritualist he even called himself a converted spiritualist so it's kind of put two and two together that's that's likely where he learned all this stuff and and so he even offered in a reward on October the 8th

of anyone that could offer a duplication of what or a trick that he could not even duplicate so it could have been like reading of the minds reading of the hearts offering talking to the dead lifting tables out of the air whatever he couldn't do he would give you a thousand dollars back in those days and in today's money that's about eighteen thousand dollars so pretty sizable sum and so Davis had assistance there in the revival with him pretty a sizable sizable sum of money back in those days you know he claimed that their other claims were a lie

that he was going to expose all those practices so that happened on the first night and then six days later they had to move the services i guess they were getting larger but but Davis even claimed that he was doing tricks that were so powerful that the chemicals he was using would tear down the tent or burn to ten up so they had to move it to the nights of pithyus armory there in town which was a solid building so they continued on with that so the supernatural was really attracting the crowds there and we'll see that very much

William Brannum's meetings and one thing about this Ralph Raider you know you know William Brannum mentioned Paul Raider many times in his services as the one who developed or Both the song only believed, which was used in his ministry, but I searched the message and never could find Ralph Raider's name mentioned at all.

And perhaps, maybe, Brannum did not mention Ralph Raider just because of this stigma back to ties to Davis that it would have held. And Ralph Raider being very popular in the Jeffersonville area about this time, but I did find an article in 1936 where Ralph Raider was opened in a new tabernacle.

William Brannum was the keynote speaker to conduct the services, as well as his band members there in 1936. And this, of course, after Davis had already left town. So Brannum and Ralph Raider had a very strong connection, but Brannum never gives him credit or mentions him at all during any of the messages that I could find.

William Brannum, not mentioning Ralph Raider is significant because if you study the history according to the newspapers, it looks very much like William Brannum's first church was literally stolen from Ralph Raider because we have Roy Davis who's working through these events with Ralph Raider and they caused this basically a split in Ralph Raider's church and a large significant portion of that church became Davis's.

And then, as we'll get into later, when Davis gets ran out of town, basically his church becomes William Brannum's church, which is interesting, but even more interesting is just this scene because today, it would be very difficult to understand the complexity of what Davis was doing.

Spiritualism today is kind of faded out and it's talked about, but it's nothing like it was back then. Back then, this was a very very popular movement in the United States. So much so that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle quit writing the Sherlock Holmes books to come over to the United States and he, and if I remember right, I think it was his wife was performing say-onses because there's literally more money in the spiritualism in the United States at that time than there was in writing the books or whatever.

And you had huge crowds of people that would come to see these things and these events. So people believed this stuff and we know for a fact because William Brannum's own words place him in collaboration with Davis prior to this event.

So we know that Brannum was working with Davis in these crowds and another thing you find completely missing or erased from William Brannum's transcripts is the fact that he and Davis were holding faith healing meetings in Jeffersonville, spiritualist meetings in Jeffersonville, and attracting crowds in ways that later he did not want his people to know.

That's right, John. Brannum was very much connected to Pentecostalism and the spiritualist aspect very early on and we even find out that in his life story of course he says he stayed away from the Pentecostal people and the flood came and it went until after the flood of 1937.

that he ever went back to the Pentecostal people. But I've got an article right here in front of me where his church was named Pentecostal Tabernacle, William Brannem was pastor in 1936. So very early on, he was a Pentecostal hardcore from the start even before the 1934 Misha walk of meetings.

I noticed also in these supernatural claims that people have, I mean, you've got other, I won't mention names, but you got many men out there today that claim visitations from angels. Claim they went to heaven, even women claiming they went to heaven.

I know of one that went to heaven and thinks that there's Santa Claus up there. I mean, just outrageous things that are brought forth today. But it all started from this very time, very early on here, and this was the birth of it, of all these outrageous claims.

But if you remember, the people that do know the story of Brannem's visitation of the angel, he said that was the first time he saw him in human form was in 1946, was when he met him in the woods or in a cabin or wherever he met him or in his room.

But here in 1947, early on, I got an article here in June when he first launched out and became famous in the newspapers. He said when he was 14, he was trying to smoke a cigarette and a man with a long white beard and a flowing robe visited him.

He taught him never to smoke or drink. And then he said the call got so insistent, he started healing people. Kind of a strange way to say all that, but it sounds like to me, he was 14 years old when he met a man, probably the angel, he said he knew all his life, that he knew the voice.

But many times he would say always heard the voice and never saw a human form. But we have a contradiction right here that he spoke in the papers. Another interesting thing is how they conducted their healings was very odd.

You know, most people would say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and believe for your healing. I'll pray for you and accept a God to whether he heals you or not. But a lot of times, Brandon was insistent that I'm the one that heals you, even though other times he said Jesus is the one that heals you.

And his whole point about belief, he had to get the people to really have confidence in him, just like he would any other leader. If you're gonna believe what he's saying to you about his stories that were kind of outlandish and whether or not they were true, we don't really know.

They're just his testimony. But here's one article in the paper where he said that when he was gonna pray before he left town, he had just a short time to left to go. And he said, he was gonna pray for him all at one time and he asked them just to hold their hands over the hearts.

He asked them that if you did not have faith, which meant that if you don't believe my stories, what I've been telling you, then don't participate because I don't have time to convince you.

It's kind of odd that he would say that because everybody could have faith in God. But here. He's got to have time to convince you of something. So the whole ministry of William Brannum was made to convince you that he was visited by an angel, that the angel gave him the gift to heal, that it was only his prayer that was going to not stand before the disease and that you had to believe that he had this gift.

That was what had to be done to get you to the point of believing and that his demonstration of some sign or wonder to get you to believe God. It sounds strange that we just couldn't be simple and say, you know, here's an example of Jesus healing in the scriptures and all you need to do is believe Jesus Christ.

Instead, he says, I don't have time to convince you of, you know, to have faith. I don't have time to convince you. So just don't even pray at all. That's what was put in the newspaper.

So what was he telling them to have faith then, just himself instead of God? It's really strange that he would say that. So that's what his whole ministry was built on, you had to believe me because that's what keeps being brought out today.

Get the people to believe you instead of believing in God. It just doesn't seem like the way the scripture would tell you to believe. So strange technique and we find many other strange techniques as we go along here today.

It is odd and the way that this played out, you know, getting the people to believe you and coercing the people to follow this thing that he was creating. As we mentioned in the last episode, there are very, very similar techniques being used by the hypnotists of this era.

And I find it interesting that many of the claims that he has where somebody rises in opposition to him, he'll claim that they're a hypnotist. One of the examples he says, this hypnotist was trying to make me bark like a dog while I was preaching, whether that happened or not, I don't know.

But it's very unlikely that a hypnotist is going to approach a faith healer and try to make him bark like a dog. More than likely, he had visited some sort of a hypnotist show and he had learned that, wow, these hypnotists can make people bark like dogs.

And then he sees the technique that's being used by the hypnotist and then he starts engaging that in his sermons and revivals because that's exactly what the hypnotists do. They take a bunch of people who are literally skeptic of their technique or their ability to hypnotize and they work with them, they talk with them, they coerce them and to be coming into a state where they can be hypnotized.

And then they'll bring somebody on the platform after getting to this point. And we find William Brantum doing this, getting the people to the point. And then I think also in the last episode we mentioned that he would have the little girl who is in this state of a semi-trans, say, can you make the bracelet move?

While he has the rest of the audience turn their backs so that if somebody's not in that hypnotic state and sees, wait a minute, this guy's a fraud, will their backs turn so they can't really call it out?

Yeah, I've got a few more things to say about that. Turning your back on this and in a minute here, but we'll get back to Davis after a while to and the wrap-up of these 1930 meetings but and some of his quotes here. This was in 1950 You know, he's asking to people. You know, what is this and he's talking about referring to discernment He said that's to tell you what's wrong with you Uh, and says what it does it brings a supernatural realization of God working in our midst You know, he thinks he knows it's God. He said he's convinced

But you know most of the ministers of his day that were surrounding him and and he's a brand new Christian here doing all this And most of the ministers surround him didn't think so. They would say, uh, Billy don't you never go to that because that's the devil And then you know, he said he was conflicted about what it was But you know, if he really had some kind of a gift, you know, all the ministers were telling him you know Don't go to that type of technique because they believed it was just not of not of God and he said

Other ministers told him he said a minister friend of mine said Billy that'll run you crazy. That's the devil Don't you fool when nothing like that And that minister was probably halfway right because we know you know, we ran him experience mental breakdowns Even one year or two after being on the field in a big time way He expense to experience the total mental breakdown and had several throughout his life Even on the platform staggering You know under the influence of whatever he was under To where he had to be held up or carried off the platform or collapsing on the platform

I found several articles about in the early days where he would just collapse From just staying on the platform so long So there was something there and you know early on the minister tried to tell him you know, don't go to that But he thought it was a repeat of the apostolic days And he says don't try to class it as fanaticism hypnotism spiritualism or whatever, you know, he was trying to warn to people not to do that Uh They also use fear a lot, you know, I'll find some things here to say about that

But uh, he tended to want to use fear that God was going to strike you with the disease or even strike you dead or paralyze you If you even question the thing and I think that's what many times people in the in the movements today are afraid To even question, you know, what they believe critically just because they're afraid, you know God's going to strike them down if they were even questioning it He says it like this he says be careful what you say about God He said perhaps you could be wrong Well, that brings a lot of uncertainty into Christians that are not solid in their foundation of scripture

So the way to combat that is to be solid in your foundation of scripture And you'll be able to combat this type of thing every time But the most of the people will say on these ranks are not very school or very knowledgeable the scripture They're just believing it the way they've been taught And he even says you could cross the separating line and there's no forgiveness in this world True if if God were really doing a spiritual work You should accept it as God and not criticize it true that That's very true, but, you know, if there's if there's something going on that's not

of God, we have every right to question it. And we have a right to vet things that are going on to make sure that we have God before we would accept them. He used to fear to keep people in line.

Even the phenomena that Baxter said was borderline psychic. And so it was hard for even Baxter to think that this, some of these things that were happening were of God. And Brannam even shows his belief in spiritualism by even saying he knew of one real spiritualist he called her a miserable piper.

He saw that in a reader's digest. He said, now she is a real medium. So you can see he really believed in this stuff. If you look at what Lenora Piper was about, she was a mentalist.

She did cold readings, muscle reading, phishing techniques. But some people just called her a clever charlatan. So that's what a lot of these people are, just clever people that are very gifted. And how they deal with people.

And I think I sent a couple of video clips to you. The mayor may not want to play them at the end if you can for copyright reasons. But there's a mentalist out there today that they can discern names of people in the audience and even secrets that they have in their hearts.

And I put you out one example of that. And they go around doing shows. I got an impeter Antonio's one example. He was on America's Got Talent. But he can actually fish things out of the audience that they, no one else would know.

But him and that person, it's kind of amazing to watch and I don't know how they do it. But these are some of the same techniques. William Brown says on another occasion, he says, I've been in camps where the spiritualist, where they come up piano, where I have to turn, lift it off the floor.

And then they play the tune, shaving a haircut to bits. Well, there's an article that has that same tune where Madam Mimi of the Camp Chesterfield fame used the same type of wrapping tune.

So we know he saw these things going on in these camps back when he was early on a young man. So he said he had to test it himself even. So we know he was very into that type of movement.

Yeah, the people who are indoctrinated under these types of movements are indoctrinated into a very black or white mentality. Either it was all good or it was all false or either he's doing this trick that he's doing with the faith healing and the prayer cards or he's not.

It's always black or white. And when you look at, you know, like the examples you sent to people who are doing cold reading, for example, cold reading is a technique and it's just one of many techniques.

I'll never forget whenever I started examining all of this and somebody said I needed to watch a few magician shows and I was like, well, what for, man, that's not, that's not even related to Christianity.

And so I watched a couple and there were, there were some really good ones out there. I came across. I think my favorite was Chris Angel, and I started watching his techniques, and I began to notice that it wasn't just one trick that he was doing on the people, and so I began researching to find articles of how he's doing it, and some of the things that he and the others were doing were common among all of them.

They all know it, they all know how it works, but to the person who has common contact with that information, say it's the cold reading, and they become aware of cold reading. Well cold reading is just one trick, so the person who is aware of cold reading might also be fooled by this other technique, or this third technique.

Sometimes memorization is key. They will have multiple people in the audience, say the usher is taking a person in, and the usher takes note of something that the person does or says, and says this person with the red shirt and the black tie.

And so I began doing, early in my blog, I started publishing notes about the different ways in which William Brannum described the colors of the clothes that the people wore in the faith healing lines, because it was just odd.

You know, when you're calling somebody up to prayer, you don't really focus in on what color shirt the lady is wearing. You're more thinking about whether you're going to pray for God for her disease or sickness or whatever.

No, he's talking about, she's got the red scarf or she's got the purple shirt or whatever it is. So I started noticing this pattern of techniques, and it really clicked when I read James Randy's book, The Faith Healers, because here's a magician who knows all of the techniques, and he goes into these faith healing meetings, and he finds the people who are using them, and he just blatantly calls them out as frauds, right, they're con artists.

And lo and behold, while I was reading this book, I came on a chapter and here's William Brannum. He had actually been in one of the Brannum campaigns and explained the tricks that Brannum was using on the minds of the people, and it just suddenly started to click.

William Brannum went to these things, he even mentions going to these events. So if he's going there and he's learning these tricks, it's very easy for him to put those tricks and practice in his meetings.

Yeah, he was a master at that. He had had a lot of practice prior to breaking on the national scene, so he was very in tune with it and spent a lot of time thinking on that, I'm sure, and had a lot of practice early on, because we don't have all the recordings and things where he was practicing this thing before a live audience, and I'm sure he made a lot of mistakes in those days.

We do have a few of the testimonies he gave early on from those couple of recordings where he interjected some of those spiritual techniques that he eventually had to stop talking about, because they were very unchristian, and of course I think Baxter warned him, don't say such things, because it doesn't sound a very Christian-like, and many of the techniques were probably from the occult.

areas as Frita Lindsay has made known in her book, in her diary, Secrets, but a lot of ministers, there's several books out there from his meetings in Saskatoon, his meetings in South Africa, trips, and maybe even overseas, but several books written with good accounts of how the results of the healing ministry came out after he left town, because the healing ministry was there for a week or two, and then they would leave town, and then the results kind of spoke for themselves, but as they left town, they would speak about all the thousands of people healed, and of course people in the meetings are going to raise their hand

for healing, and then the evangelists are going to go back and report of the thousands healed, but it's only the after things that happened that people investigate and see what really happened that you really find out how fruitful it really was.

So Alfred Pol was one of those, and this was in the 1940s when it was in Saskatoon. He was the one that was right there beside William Brannum, as he went from a person to person.

He said he would take him by the arm, leading him from room to room, and then after the meetings, you know, Brannum was insistent that he would leave the meeting, go back to his hotel, and for no one to bother him the whole day.

So you wonder, you know, why no contact with him, why no fellowship, why do he want to be alone, was it to study on the next meeting that's coming up, was it to fast and being such tune with the spirits that he was with, so he could be so in tune with that spiritual life to get back and be able to do the things he did, or was it to study the prayer cards he was given to know which 10 of the prayer cards he was going to be calling out that night, so he could know exactly, you know, how to discern their diseases.

You know, who knows what he was doing, but he had no contact with people after he got to the hotel, and a lot of people complained over that, hey, we can't even have fellowship with him.

And then, and then Alfred Paul made this statement, he said, those people that thought they saw miracles and healings, when you were on the inside, you saw that some of those things that were supposed to be miracles, you know, were not miracles at all.

From the outside, you really thought something had happened, but he said, having been right close to Bradham and working right with him, he said, I discovered that a lot of those supposed healings or miracles were not really miracles at all.

He talked about taking the patient's hand and doing vibrations and then saying the vibrations were gone. Well, Alfred Paul being right there and another man being there, as they said, they never saw anything happen to his hand, but he was holding his hand up and asking the audience, do you see the color change of my hand and so forth?

And people, you know, many, many hundreds of feet away would say, yeah, we see it. But you know, how could they see it when they were way out in the audience, you know, you really couldn't tell.

They were just going by what he said and because everybody was at an atmosphere of faith and belief and, you know, they're not going to say, hey, we don't see that. So another interesting thing is he would have to say, you know, just keep trusting your hill Don't lose faith in the Lord. You know, keep your faith and trust in the Lord that you're healed You're going to be sick for a while and and that was quite odd that he would say that because he was talking about the disease being carried out through the bloodstream

So the techniques that he was using if you look at the scriptural Examples of being people being healed you never see descriptions of of Jesus or to disciples ever say and the ones that were actually given Gifts of healing they never they never once that I can find went back and told the patient now go forth your faith It's healed you now you're going to be sick in a few days and don't let that bother you because you're going to be well Paul never mentioned that in his Scriptures about if a person healed of a disease they're going to be sick for a few days and then be healed and therefore don't lose your confession

Don't stop confessing that you're healed because you're going to lose your healing if you do we don't find those techniques and scripture at all When somebody was touched and healed and scripture they stayed healed They didn't have to worry about losing their healing so so these techniques that were used by the healing revival the very questionable I believe not to say some didn't get healed from their great faith and God To be healed and of course God can heal people today and heal them back then But but people to have to use these techniques to stay healed and then get blamed if they're not healed

That was how the the healing revival went they blamed the people if you lose your healing because you doubted Therefore you lost your healing, but that just didn't happen in scripture Alpha Paul said, you know, this went on and some people got sicker and sicker and eventually died and so the evangelist had an out You know from any time nobody wasn't healed. He said practically everyone is our recall Standing beside these various bed size practically everyone was pronounced healed So even the ones that were the pronounced healed many of those died after they were gone and he said it within himself

He says something was wrong about this Because he was kept telling him don't let your faith fail Don't let your your faith fail, but then when they died Obviously, they could say where your faith failed so so it was always the blame was on the person never on the person doing the healing And so let me go through a little bit more here Anyway, his his bottom line Summary of the whole thing was that something wasn't right about this healing revival Because he had to deal with the after math of the healer healing revival when it left his town

So many people came back to him and said, you know my wife died or my husband died after they were pronounced healed what of it Another thing is that he said within himself during these times was that this is a cultism This is spiritualism is he said this is witchcraft. It's not even Christian. He said it can't be Because he wasn't used in the name of Jesus to do the healing. He was having to use his three high words He was given by the angel and he would ask people to turn their heads And don't look at what I'm saying because nobody can read my lips. This is very secret, secret knowledge.

And so he just, Alfred Pol was the one that said, this can't be Christian. He became very suspicious of it. He couldn't even read his lips because he wasn't allowed to look at his mouth when he was talking.

And there's many more testimonies like this, very similar about those high words that he was using. So one thing I want to say I'll skip down to this is there was papers that did happen in the meetings.

There's one example of what they called a paper in the newspaper because they had to bow their heads. But there was one case where Brown said he insisted on the multitude sitting with bowed heads.

And he turned to address the woman he said he pointed out in the audience. He says, you're not bowing your head. You're the one who's making it impossible to heal. If you aren't careful, you'll be a deaf mute before you leave this building.

You know, that's another fear tactic and he's acting like God's going to bring down instant judgment if you even look around and see what I'm doing up here. It doesn't sound too much like that's a Christian way to do that when you're going to threaten them with being a paralyzed person, a deaf mute or whatever before you even leave the building.

If you even question what I'm doing up here, so it was a sign of God's judgment if you didn't even bow your head. So there was an article. This was in 1949. There was a paper in the service and it says three ushers were attempting to block the paper.

And this guy named will be he they fell to do it after 20 minutes. And so they escorted him out of the building. And the mob after the meeting got very angry with says, brandems devotees surrounded him and they also threatened to kill him.

This was in the newspapers as will be got death threats because he would not bow his head would not close his eyes because he wanted to see what was going on. So obviously it was very important for you not to see what was being said, what was being done on the platform.

And that seems very strange because I don't see anywhere in scripture where that was ever the case with Jesus as ministry. In fact, many people were probably looking upon him trying to see what was going on, trying to see Jesus, trying to see if this really is of God or not.

You know, brandems ministry was very adamant. You can't see what I'm doing up here. If you do, your lab will leave the room paralyzed. You're probably leave the building sick. So they were very careful about keeping people away from what was really happening there.

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 Dash Brandham.

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We were running late to one of our new churches post-cult, and so I was walking into the auditorium late, and the prayer had already started, and I'm walking in, and I'm looking at eyes of people who are looking at, it was kind of like a stage seating, so you're walking upward, so you could look up and you could see, as people had their heads bowed, I could see their eyes, and I looked around, oh my gosh, I can see every one of these eyes. Everybody's eyes are open, man. I thought this is hypocrisy, because we were trained in the message, and all of these divine healing cults

are the same, where whenever you're bowing your head praying, you also must close your eyes, and if you open your eyes, the demons will come get you. And it really never clicked until I saw this, because here's a whole churchful of people who are praying with their eyes open. And so I started doing a deep study on where in the Bible does it say to close your eyes while you pray, and it doesn't exist. There is no passage that says to close your eyes. And then I got to thinking about the divine healing cults, and it was about that same time. I was studying from my book,

which later became the critical examination of John Dowey, and Dowey was a con artist, and he got labeled as a con artist by news media. But what was odd about the situation is when he first landed, he had convinced everyone, including the newspapers, that he had this special power. And what happened is over time, he's explaining this power, and people, you know, just like randomism, you claim to be healed, and if you don't confess your healing, you're going to get a worse thing come on you.

So these people are leaving the building, claiming their healed, and the newspapers talk to him, and oh wow, this person just got healed. Well, over time, what happens is the people who remain deathly ill, they either die, or you know, they're very obviously not healed. So over time in the same city, the newspapers began to notice, wait a minute, this guy just conned us. And so by that time, he's moved to the next city, and he's doing the same thing there. Well, his downfall in the West Coast was the fact that all these newspapers were in collaboration with each other. And so they

started talking to each other, and they found out this guy, is pulled a con on us, he'll go to one city and tell everybody they're healed and make them confess their healing to the newspapers, then he goes to the next city and by the time he's gone, you know, it's all over said and done.

So here's Brannum doing the same exact techniques as Dauy, but he's in an age where, you know, news travels much faster during Brannum's time. It's nothing like it is today, but it was much faster.

And so he's got all these spiritualist techniques under his belt. He knows how all these work. Well, whenever you're pulling tricks on the people, if you've got people with critical minds watching you, they're going to see that something's wrong, something's off.

So it was widespread throughout the revivals that when you pray, you must close your eyes. Yeah, that's very interesting because we know the ministers that were there closest to him, even they were told, you know, don't look at what I'm saying, don't read my lips, don't look at what I'm doing.

So it was all trying to be well hidden, you know, and it just seemed strange that they want to hide what they're doing. You know, if it was real and genuine, you know, don't be afraid, hey, look all you want.

You know, I don't mind you investigating, but it seemed like they did not want people investigating what they were doing, the techniques they were using. And that's one thing I liked about James Randy, you know, and people like that is they were willing to believe in the supernatural.

If you could, you know, demonstrate a measurable gift or whatever that you had, you know, why try to hide it under the cover. And he exposed many, but many claim the use of the word of knowledge.

And I would say these could have been the use of prayer cards. I actually found an article this time right before during the last couple of weeks I've been looking at this that'll show some of this.

It's very interesting because I was wondering whether the prayer cards were taken up before the service and how they would have time to study them. And this article alludes to the fact that they actually were or the names were actually taken down prior to the service and then given to the evangelist, I got an article about that.

But so it could have been used to the prayer cards, how people discern things, it also could have been an ability that some people possessed, you know, even William Brownham could have had some of that ability because like I mentioned, at psychic Peter Antonio, he can do a lot of the same stuff.

And like he told this, one woman, she was having twins and no one knew that, you know, but he asked her, can I reveal this? And she said, yeah. And he revealed it to the audience and no one knew that, but him and her.

So how he knew that, you know, how who knows, others that claim that ability, WV Grant, the senior WV Grant did, probably I think I've heard he actually claimed to be a successor of William Brownham.

And that's not the younger WV Grant of the older Paul Cain, of course, and some pretend to have that ability like Peter Pup off, who used a microphone in his ear or earpiece in his ear was wife telling him all the secrets.

And also WV Grant, Jr. we know how he went around the audience and found out people's illnesses before he met them on stage later in the meeting. So there's also people today. There's a pastor out in Africa, Alph, Luke Al, who does a lot of the discernment things in his meetings. So these are things not very uncommon, you know, even in the even in the religious ranks today. Other tricks that could have been used were mnemonics or memorization of prayer cards. And the interesting thing about prayer cards and this is very even in Brown's meetings, even in what he says the instructions he gave

the people is that you had to be in order. Being in order was of utmost importance. You know, don't trade your prayer cards with anyone and don't get out of order. Those were the specific instructions because if you do, you know, God's going to judge you for messing around with your prayer cards.

That was the instructions given. And that's and that's how he had to verify the number on the prayer card with the patient, you know, being are you number one or you number two. And you wonder if he didn't spend all day alone in that hotel room learning and memorizing these 15 that he had to learn for that night. And once he had those down, he's ready to come out to the meeting and perform. So that was very important. There's an article in the Evansville press in 1947.

This girl now this girl is very revealing in this article. Only one I could find about something about how the prayer cards were used. So the article says some 500 persons last

made an advance arrangements to be prayed for. So they had to had to be make advanced arrangements. They suffer from a great variety of physical handicaps from blindness to paulsy. And this is a this girl said most of them have stomach trouble of some kind said the girl in the lobby.

She was the one that took the information down. He said who took their names as they came in. She also assigned them a number. And she said that's the order. He will pray for them. She explained.

So as I came into the meeting, she was taking their names or ailments. And then she said that's the order he has to pray for them. Then she would pass that along, you know, to them. So that was the article I found where they actually took them ahead of time. There's another article about that was about another woman appearing in the woods. Now we talked about the angel earlier about a man with a white beard. Well, in 1947, he was telling people once while on patrol, a woman appeared to him suddenly before him in the woods and told him the exact hour of his birth and advised

him he had been preordained by God to work miracles. And later he said an angel appeared and guided him. So you know, he spoke a couple of times about spiritualists. This is kind of getting off subject, but he did speak about astrologers or astrologers meeting him at a carnival and one time on a bus. But there's a third one about a woman in the woods, you know, meeting him while was on patrol. So believe it or not, he had all kinds of stories going around in those early days.

This was the third story that we find of a woman telling him the exact birth date of his birth and that he was preordained with a gift. Now she was in the woods and suddenly appeared to him.

So you can't really believe these stories. He's telling about his spiritual events because they're all over the place. They're never consistent. So now we'll get back to John to the closing of the meeting. You know, after all these spiritual things that Davis was demonstrating on the platform and attracting the crowds. And I think as you mentioned, after this meeting, you know, Davis ends up stealing at least half of Ralph Raider's congregation and they became his own. And that's really what became the Davis tabernacle in Jeffersonville. He eventually abandons Louisville.

And here's what happened right there in the middle of the meeting on October the 10th. This is right after those meetings and they're at the nights of Pithius Armory where he was revealing more of those tricks. Davis was actually arrested after he finished singing on the platform in October the 10th and 1930. He just in charge of the song service. He finished singing. The police showed up. And then that is the point that he was arrested for carrying that underage girl Allie Lee across state lines to live with and have relations with. He was actually

living in Louisville, Kentucky. So this was the beginning and the end of Davis's Louisville church perhaps because he made the move over to Indiana after all his trial and arrest. And after he had to go through a few days in prison over this trial. But that's what happened right after that.

It's kind of interesting turn of events for Davis. It's crazy interesting. But I want to back up to something you said because I think it's important enough to emphasize so that our audience understands it. I get asked all kinds of questions about the prayer cards because people they're trained into a black or white way of thinking. A prayer card exists or it doesn't exist. It was passed out or it wasn't passed out. It was either the trick that was used or it wasn't the trick. And as I explained earlier, it's just one of many tricks. There are many, many tricks

that were used in this thing. But to the woman who's passing out the prayer cards, when this thing was in full swing and there were tens of thousands of people coming to these things, you had such a large number of people that the tricks had to be different because when you have that massive amount of people, the same tricks that you would use on a small group of people are much, much different. And so there's a woman that's meeting them beforehand. They pass out the, you know, they assign the number to the name, etc. And so before the meeting even started,

the ministry had the names and addresses of the people because they collected all this information. So whenever the quote unquote gift is being used, They know exactly, you know, before the person even comes up on stage, what is the thing?

And I also did a study, which is not worth getting into in here, but one of the techniques used by these guys was fasting. And you can hear William Brannum saying that three days prior to the meeting, I fasted. And to anybody who's ever tried intermittent fasting or just all-out full fasting, you notice that your brain gets more active during those times because you're cleansing your body of the toxins. So these guys doing these tricks would do this fasting so that their memory was better. And whether, you know, he may even have a photographic memory, we don't know.

I know there are cases where he pretended not to remember something that he had just not remembered the meeting before and the meeting before and the meeting before, such as Marilyn Monroe's name. Just go look what he says. What was that name? That Marilyn Monroe, every single time he mentions her, that's pretty much what he does. But the crowds were massive and so the tricks were different.

As the crowds began to diminish and then suddenly he's got a cult of personality. The same groups of people are going meeting to meeting to meeting with the same diseases. I have family who were healed in these meetings, who are claimed to be healed in these meetings, who they went to meeting to meeting to meeting. And they, you know, they'll swear up and down that William Branham knew exactly what I had. Well, of course he knew. You went to all of these meetings and you, you know, people talk about their sickness. That's why they're going. So you've got a small group of

people. The tricks can be much, much different. The people who are part of the campaign team can be listening. Just word of mouth. I mean, some people will pray for all of those who came, sister So-and-so. We know she's, she's tried to see you brother Branham for seven times now in seven different meetings. I sure hope she gets a prayer card. Well, of course he's going to know sister So-and-so and what's wrong with her. So the tricks are different. And I just wanted to focus on that a bit because it's not just one trick. These guys have many, many, many tricks in their hat.

Yeah, that's a very important point to point out there because yeah, you can't just use one method because you're you're in different types of settings. You have different numbers of people. But you can see how very easy it would be if somebody was taking down names and addresses and your sickness at the door when you came in and those were passed along to you. All you need to do is pick out one or two of those and kind of point in the audience and say you're so-and-so in the audience. I see it'd be very easy just to call out a name and say you're, you're from here or from

there and you have this sickness and you're just pointing in a general area and the person stand up. Well, just look, I picked out some of my in the audience with that disease. So very easy to do and you know, that was just one method that was perhaps used in these meetings here to find out- You know to show people that you had some supernatural gifts. So yeah, many techniques were used in these meetings The Davis he was fixed to undergo another trial by fire here You know, he probably thought he had it made I

He had brought this girl across date lines and eventually his girl we find out was his Mistress his his cocky-bind you might say because he was already married But he was his other his second marriage was being dissolved at the time At some point, but he brought this girl along with him brought her out of Chattanooga that family had followed him out of Georgia in the Chattanooga and They had left their dad in Chattanooga and evidently willy-may her mother brought her up to Louisville because she loved Davis so much She was willing to leave her husband and bring her daughter up there and so anyway her daughter ends up living with Davis there and then

Right off the platform Davis gets arrested They were nice enough to let him finish his song and And he gets the rest of off the platform the girl gets put in a detention home and for a time and Funny thing about it. You know, willy-may. She refused to press charges. So the prosecutors Actually had to add two additional charges to keep him and keep him locked up and that was a contributing to delinquency of a minor On October 28th. So that kept him in the jail and Davis eventually demanded a jury trial, you know that it would be granted him. So he got a jury trial

Somehow he was able to be acquitted Because of the jury would not convict him. He must have had some sympathetic jurors and so they ended up with a acquitted trial and and then after this trial the type of man Davis was he wanted to brag about his exploits so he instigated a clause in the court He started clapping a little bit because he was acquitted and then the ladies in the courtroom who were all his support sort of clapping and applauding and then the judge got angry because there was no conviction and then sentenced him to 10 days

For contempt of court. So he did get a small jail sentence out of that But never got convicted of the man act which he probably should have been convicted of But back in those days, I guess juries were reluctant to convict people You know being the type of country we were Trying to keep people out of jail versus in jail But anyway, he got out and he continued on with revival, you know why he was let out for his on bond It's interesting to note later on in the papers. What this is all about Money money was a big part of these revivals. I'm sure in 1930 they kept talking about taking up money

For the different evangelist, but I've got an article here in 1947. This is pretty amazing Where the crowds was taking up at least two thousand dollars for William Brannum and back when little David was touring with William Brannum It says they gave them $2,000 and that's one meeting and that's worth $28,000 in today's money So pretty sizable sum So getting back to Davis it was all about the money The money trails what we need to follow as we get through as we follow Davis across the country You know after he gets out of Jeffersonville we'll find out in the next few episodes how that all takes place

We'll find out that the money trail is a big part of it and Davis You know trying to figure out different schemes to take people's money But on the spiritual side of things you know, you know, Brannum was in known contact with mediums mistress DeArc and her boy George and his brother Ed They were they were definitely mediums He brought in pyramidology in his sermons that was one of the big things in the day is pyramidology and also the zodiac Believe in that those were Bibles actually bringing that in to say they were actual Bibles and and God wrote them in the sky

But only as far as the zodiac, you know I think Brannum last stone to that because you've got Virgo and Ligo so he Lio So he just put them as you know, you've got the being born of the Virgin coming back as the lion So he put them as the first and last signs and which actually if you look at the zodiac they're not really the first and last signs But that's how he brought things in and twisted them to make it appear like you know, he was teaching something scriptural when actually it wasn't So he tended to bring in those things that's only spiritualist use

into his sermons and and ministry and so all through we'll we'll see that if you study that so And summary what I would say is that all these methods that we see being used or the fruits of his ministry But this methods resemble spiritualism and occultism and they're kind of abhorrent doctrines that were brought in such as the zodiac doctrine of pyramidology and Faith in God was not so much as being taught as much as faith in the healer and what the healer I was telling you And the number of healings tend to be very exaggerated

We see many articles and books written about that. So we'll say it's the object of faith was not so much God You know as it was man. It is the converging apostasy and it's all about the money, right?

These guys and the tricks of the trade man you mentioned Little David and little David is known for his wild story of spending five minutes in heaven You got little David who spent time in heaven. You've got you know people at Kenneth Hagen who claim they spent time in hell It's all about the roadshow, right and remember little David This is the boy who claimed to be able to levitate for a Christian purpose, which is nothing more than a magician's trick Everybody at this point knows how the levitation trick works So in today's world it would never fly in a Christian setting, but back then you could tour with

With little David the flying boy and you could make a you could make a room But you mentioned the Zodiac and the Pyramidology, etc. Well, this podcast is about the merging of Christian identity with, you know, politics and fundamentalism, etc.

And in our podcast, we talk about the converging apostasy with Steve Montgomery. So you've got mysticism, you've got spiritualism, politics, Christian identity, British Israelism, all of this converging apostasy. And in the British Israel side of things, they actually taught that the Zodiac was a Bible and that the Pyramid was a Bible that could be read.

It wasn't a Bible like you would say this is the King James Bible, for example. It was a Bible that was a roadmap to the second coming kingdom, I think is the way that you could describe it best.

It's so funny to say, I feel stupid saying it, but in the tunnel that leads to the King Chamber and the Egyptian Pyramid of Giza, they would see these rise and falls of the imperfections of the tunnel.

And they would say that this one is the Great Depression and we can predict that it's coming or we predicted that it's coming, I think, as the way they said it. And then they tied it to the Zodiac and they actually would hold rallies and they would bring astrologers and they would bring pyramidologists.

And these were Christian settings. So you've got all these Christian ministers like Gordon Lindsay. He was part of the British Israel Christian identity, speaking to us, right? So they've got all of this nonsense that is merging together in apostasy and creating a mess that, you know, now we're 50 years after William Brannum's death, longer than that.

When he says things like the Bible, the first Bible was the Zodiac, we have no idea what he's saying, but that came from Christian identity. But anyway, there's so much more to get into and next time we'll have to dig deeper into how all of this began there in Jeffersonville and the explosion of the prophet and the quote unquote prophet, I should say, in his actual ministry, not the one that has been recorded by the life story, and we've got some build up to get there.

So I'm getting excited about that. But anyway, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-brannum.org. For more information about Roy Davis and William Brannum, you can read the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician.

For more information about the dark side of Latter-Rain, you can read Weaponized Religion from Latter-Rain to Colonia Dignidad, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.