Conduct Order Doctrine: Why the NAR Believes William Branham Went Astray

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org, and the author of Come Out Of Her, My People.

And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William Branham and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, it's kind of funny because today we're doing an episode on the unreasonable rules that were established for having church. And if you really think about it, if you go back to the way the early church was and the way that people gathered together and it was a community and I picture all of these happy new worshipers of Jesus gathering together and they're excited to be with each other and they're dining together. Some of the churches

now have what they call small groups or group worship where they break out into the homes. It was that kind of thing. And then you compare that to the structure that William Branham established. And the irony, Charles, is that he solidly and firmly condemned the quote-unquote apostate church because they were becoming more rigid and more, he used all kinds of different words. But basically he was attacking the Catholic church and he was saying that they had this certain way of worship and it was wrong to put people in that kind of a box. Well then he created

a box that was exactly the same but had different rules and in doing so just totally overturned Christianity in such a way that I look back at the way things were in the church then and compare it to the non-cult churches and oh my gosh man it's like we had the Pope, his name was William Branham and the rules that he established for his church were far worse than even the Catholic church.

I know man John, what we're going to talk about today is something we didn't really cover when we went through the main part of the historical research podcast and it's something that in the message is generally called church order.

which generally called it church order. And it's, in some ways I would call it a unique feature to the message, it's the closest thing the message has to a constitution, I would say. You know, the message don't have a statement of faith, it don't have a formal constitution, it don't have anything like that.

This would, this would sit in the place where a typical church would have a constitution document. And church order, I have the books right here. Look at this, the volume one and volume two.

You know, they've got the beautiful eagle on the back. You know, of them. And the books themselves are called conduct, order, and doctrine of the church, but we generally just call this church order.

Right, church order is what I always just heard it generally called. And if you look, I mean, this is thicker than the Bible itself. But that is essentially what would function as the constitution of the message that determined how leadership was structured, how the church was more or less organized to function, how you'd have deacons and trustees, and how the pastor would fit into it, how you'd have, it was not called a bishop in his systems, called an overseer, but with effectively in the position of a bishop.

But basically the whole outline of church governments in the brand-um system and the message system is in these books, along with how to conduct your church services, how all kinds of stuff, just beginning to end, how the church would be managed and function is in these books.

And we'd call it church order. Now, we wouldn't say we're an organization, right? Although we have these books that tell us how to organize ourselves. But most every, most every sect of the message follows some or all of what's in these books.

And they're very, it's an important thing in the message. I would say it's a little bit of a unique feature of the message, the way that we pretend we don't have an organization, yet we are an organization, but otherwise it's not typically too different from how any other church would structure just having a constitution or organizing documents.

So yeah, that's what we want to chat about today. And, you know, John, William Brandham first introduced these things, he began to introduce them in 1958. So after the, you know, I'd say the earliest stages of the message had happened and he had actually started to draw together his early cult following.

And a lot of people were starting to flock to Jeffersonville, the tabernacle had grown to several hundred people by this point. That is when he introduced this church order idea and it started in 1958.

It was such an integral part of the church, man, especially, you know, I've been to different flavors of the message and the larger churches, especially the ones who were led by ministers who knew William Brandham.

Those are the most rigid, the most hardcore fundamentalist as as it concerns to this constitution, as you call it, of the message. When you go to those churches, some of the people who were outside of Jeffersonville, for example, they would come to the brand of tabernacle.

And the joke was made that it was like visiting a museum of wax figures because everybody acted the same, looked the same, you walk in, nobody's. Nobody is gathering and talking and greeting each other, like you would in a normal church. It's like you walk in suddenly there's this wax museum, everybody sitting there and they look at you as you walk in.

Now I've been to some of the smaller churches, especially in rural areas by ministers who were assimilated into the cult and they came from normal churches themselves and had no idea that they were supposed to be a wax museum.

And you'd go into those churches and the people would greet each other, they were happy and it felt somewhat normal. So I have seen both sides of this, I've seen the normal ones and the really, really not normal.

But the thing to understand here is that the ones that everyone ridicules who are in the cult, that's the way that William Brandham actually established it. So when they're making fun of the church of wax museum, wax figures, well they're actually making fun of William Brandham's doctrine of how a church can be established.

You're exactly right John, and I look forward in this episode to explaining how the church has got different in this way, how some observed more of it than others. But if you think about it, the message came out of the ladder rain movement, right?

The message came out of a crazy hyper charismatic kind of revival, right? At ladder rain, I mean people were rolling around on the floor, they were, you know, falling at the mouth, they were running and jumping and shouting and dancing and screaming and being slain in the spirit and speaking in tongues and prophesying and, you know, I don't know if our average listener has been in church services like that, I have many, many, many times, I know exactly what I'm describing.

That is what this whole thing was like at the beginning, John. The tabernacle used to be this way itself. At the beginning, it was like this. Everybody, it was a free-for-all, ecstatic worship service beginning to end.

And as you come up to about 1958, that church order is what actually starts to shift away from that, right? So William Brandham slowly starts turning the screws of church order. And if you follow his church order sermons, he preaches, I believe it three or four times and each time he preaches it, he's tightening the screws a little more, a little more, he's adding a little more structure to everything.

And when he first introduces church order, it's primarily focused at the function of how church leadership... should be laid out. And when you talk about that a little bit more later, but as he comes into the 60s, that is when he starts to introduce the rules that basically ban, I would say completely ban all forms of ecstatic worship, right? You're no longer allowed to do anything in church except sit on the pew. And I think John the thing that I think the thing that really I think the quintessential image of this is the picture of William Brown, I'm standing under the giant banner that

says, stand still and know that I am God. You know that I think if you wanted to sum up church order in one phrase, it is that banner, be still and know that I am God. You went to church, you be still. And you know that you are in the presence of God, don't you make a peep where you're going to get thrown out of this place. And so they went from this extreme ecstatic scream and shouting, jumping, yelling, rolling around on the floor to be still and know that I am God.

This is the transition that happened through church order. It's crazy, man. And not just be still and know that I am God, be still and know that God will smite you dead if you disobey. I mean, he's, you know, we've looked at like the man from Windsor and things like that. He was more projecting the image of a sorcerer than he was either a prophet or apostle, which is kind of odd. But so I've been working on the manuscript of my new book and I actually recently finished it. I don't know, it may, the book may actually come out before this gets released. I don't know the schedule off top of my

head, but I've been studying the revivals. And when we started way back, studying the Pentecostal Azusa Street Revival. And I went through the the various ones. You know, you've got the Toronto blessing and whatnot. And people who have immortalized these things as this holy experience, they don't tell you things like the women were laying on the floor, kicking their legs in the air and giving the men more of a display than the strip clubs did in 1907. And that the police had to come in or that they had the holy barking. I mean, when you hear of Azusa Street Charles, do you think of

barking? It's not, it's not natural, man. They spoke with the tongue of men and angels and dogs. Dog. Well, I was looking at, I think it might be the, is it the Toronto blessing or the events leading up to it. And I think it was John Wimber, but I'd have to go back and look. But anyway, this significant religious figure who is in the development of the NAR, when he got his experience, it was the holy laughter. And you know, that started long back. They had holy laughter back. It was at AB Simpson or one of the guys, you know, before even Azusa Street was introducing holy laughter.

And the quote. the quote directly from the guy was and then I was laughing in the spirit and the guy next to me, two people next to me were having holy oinking like a pig and I'm like, what in the world is this mess?

So in Branham's defense, this thing was getting out of hand. So you had this wild and crazy movement that again, the NAR immortalizes as a movement by God and you've got people in it that are oinking like pigs.

That's how weird this is. So William Branham comes in and he realizes that this is ridiculous and so he wants to establish an established set of rules. But what he did Charles, if you compare it to parents who are parenting their children and the children get a little unruly, rather than telling them calm down, act normal, act right because we're in a church setting, it's as though he poured concrete around the kids where they can't move.

They can't do anything. So he took it from one extreme, you know, oinking like a pig to let's become wax figures and let's not do anything. I know and it is something else, John, this church order business, the way you're describing it there's pretty good.

The stories that come down from the old timers about this is that there was a whole lot of personal prophecy going on in all of this, John. Now I think there's another angle of this we got to consider too.

There was a whole lot of personal prophecy also happening at the Branham Tabernacle, right? So when William Branham was out of town doing the revival stick, well, guess what? There was other preachers at the Branham Tabernacle having services still, right?

They were still given prophecies to people. They were still practicing all of this stuff while William Branham wasn't there. I don't wonder a little bit if William Branham wasn't a little bit jealous, John, that he wasn't the only one given these people prophecies anymore, right?

And Orman Neville, who became his assistant pastor, was a prolific prophesier for everything I've ever heard. He was always given people prophecies, right? And people would come from prophecies. And I think William Branham might have been a little jealous because he was the dispenser of private interview, right?

He's the dispenser of prophecies. And now these people are going to other people while he's out of town, you know, he can't be having that. I think that is a possible angle to this, John.

And I don't know if you know this or not. And I actually have some of this document in my book with quotes from the different people involved. Right about that same time, William Branham privately confronted Orman Neville and told him he was not allowed to give people prophecies anymore at the church.

So it's not, I think, simply that he is just shutting down ecstatic worship, but he's also shutting down. on anybody else from competing with him with his cult on the inside. That's also part of what's happening, I think, because when he comes back to the brand of tabernacle, guess what?

You can have prophecies when he's there, right? He's doing it, right? When he's there, you can do it. When he's not there, you can't do it. That's how it kind of, a lot of it shook out, because he kind of just went across the board and just shut all of this stuff down.

And the way he did it is, and part of the rationale, I'll say this part of the rationale when they did it is, they said there was this craziness going on. There was, there was people roaming around on the floors and running and shouting and jumping and screaming, and they were doing it, and they were even doing it during the church services while the preacher was preaching, right?

And that is what he used to lock it down, right? It's like, well, you guys are doing this during the sermons, so I'm gonna have to lock it down because you guys can't stop doing this during the sermons.

Now, from what I understand, John, is that was all a bit exaggerated. And there was really only a couple of people that were doing it during the sermons, right? But rather than deal with a couple of people who were doing it during the sermons, William Brannum, roach our daughter.

It was a massive thing because of two people who like to speak in tongues while the preacher was preaching. So that was his rationale for this, but he did so much more than just lock that stuff down.

This is, John, I would say, the initial foray into the behavioral controls of the cult right here. This is when the framework of behavioral control began in the cult, and it's something, it's important, I think, maybe to understand cult dynamics a little bit to know how this stuff works, which we'll talk a little bit more about.

It's also brilliant. You know, the lettering movement in Brannum has been immortalized. If you go listen to these NIR guys, they're saying that he had the most flawless ministry, he was the most powerful prophet known to the United States.

I mean, there's all these quotes. I've got a lot written in the book, but they've immortalized it. And the way that they project the image of Brannum and those like him is that he had such a powerful prophetic ministry that when you're around him, it was spawning off new prophets and new prophecies.

And these people were prophesying and people were getting filled with the spirit and whatnot, and that all sounds good, but a biblical prophet wrote down the prophecy. So after the event happened, people could go back and see what the original prophecy was and sure enough, God had spoken through this person.

And if it didn't happen like the prophets, then they had it written down and they could compare and say, that person was just full of it. I mean, in the ancient biblical language, it was different than full of it, but they have immortalized it.

And what William Brannum did, right here by introducing this, just halting it. It created this atmosphere where people were curious to know what was happening, but they would go into the services and there weren't people prophesying.

So those who were curious and who might otherwise be skeptical, they had no evidence that this thing was ridiculous. And that has been the case. If you look at all of these revivals that are in the NAR history, you go to the Toronto blessing.

You'll find all of these books saying it was this great wonderful thing and people were prophesying, well, what are their prophecies, man? And what's really interesting, Azusa Street was different because it was the first really documented chaos.

News reporters were so curious what was happening to the people that they were attending the revival and they were writing it down, well, they were actually writing down the prophecies. And so when you read God's generals or any of these great histories, they say, and the spirit came down in Azusa Street and people were prophesying.

And that sounds great, but what are the prophecies? Well, if you go back in the news and you find that the people were prophesying things that they really didn't understand, none of it was true.

They were prophesying things like the railroad would one day, the rails would be twisted and just twist and crumble and the trains couldn't barrel down the tracks. That was one of the prophecies that came in Azusa Street.

They were saying things like these tall structures that were seeing being erected in 1900s, all of these skyscrapers that were being built, et cetera. Their structures would twist and just crumble. Well, that didn't happen, man, none of this happened and they were saying things like the automobile engines which were newly being developed.

They would suddenly stop the power that ran them and suddenly cease to exist because they didn't understand the gasoline engine. Those were actual prophecies of Azusa Street. And so when you read all of these documents and they're saying people were prophesying, well, yeah, that's great, but their prophecies, they were just full of junk.

They were junk. They were junk. None of it made any sense, man. So William Brannum comes in, he sees all the chaos, he doesn't want the critics who were getting, by the 60s, people were really, really critical of his ministry.

So he doesn't want people coming into his meetings to investigate this ridiculous thing that's going on and find people oinking like pigs or saying that automobile engines, the unknown, mysterious power that was running them would suddenly cease or the skyscrapers would just crumble across the United States.

No, he put a stop to it. You're not allowed to do this. I'm the one who can give the prophecies. And then what he did, if you look at his prophecies, they're so incredibly vague.

And they shift over time, so he has, full control of whether or not people can judge him by his prophecies because he's rewriting him and he's paying Jean and Leo to rewrite his prophecies.

I think you're exactly right, John. And I think part of it too is William Brownham knew it was going on. It was all a con, I think, for him in a lot of ways. And these other people thought it was real and were looking like fools because they didn't know how to manipulate it in quite the same way that he did, right? And that I think set a lot of it up.

And so as William Brownham did that, as he limited the thing down, this is how he did it. And I'd be interested to hear if this was still happening when you were at the tabernacle, John.

He basically set aside a room in the back of the church and he said, anybody who wants to have an ecstatic experience, anybody who wants to speak in tongues, anyone who wants to prophesy any of this sort of stuff, you can come to church 45 minutes early and you can go in this private room and you can do that. And then you can come out and be still and know that I'm God. But he set this thing up where you could come to church 45 minutes early, you go in this private room, you could do all that. And if there was anything prophetic or whatever, you could

write it down on a piece of paper, take it to the deacons. And if the deacons thought it was anything useful, they could give it to the pastor. And if the pastor thought it was anything useful, he could read it to the church during the church service, right? So that's what he set up. So he didn't totally kill it. But he put it in a room where him and his lieutenants could effectively silence it if they wanted to, right? And what what tended to happen here, John, is everything crazy, everything wild. Guess what? Those pieces of paper just got crumpled up and put in the

trash, right? But the ones that serve the purpose, right? The ones that make the leader look good, the ones that they want to use for their propaganda, whatever, those ones come out. And you'll hear about that occasionally in these churches. Oh, so-and-so had this experience in the back room. And this prophecy came forth and it proves that, yes, I'm God servant to you, you know, you'll hear it like that, right? But that's generally all it's used for in the churches that observe this practice. They will basically cherry pick. They can kind of repackage and tweak whatever is said.

And then the preacher can use it to help set up whatever he's trying to set up at the moment. You know, Chino Ross and I have been going through the similarities between the Brannum Colton examining the full history of Hobart Freeman. Because Hobart Freeman was, if you look at his ministry, he was almost a direct clone of William Brannum's message and also cloning Dauy, who was really the framework for all of this. And we came to- This sudden conclusion during, I can't remember, is either the last episode we recorded or the one before it, but we came to the conclusion that what happened

in this movement was a real irony because it started touting that there would be this return of the fivefold ministry. You'd have apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and evangelists that would rise on the scene because we're in the end of days and God's going to pull out a new book of Acts on the earth.

And then what happened was after all of the men started claiming these wonderful offices and became authoritarian controllers of whatever was their sect, they all got mad at each other and they all wanted to be the one because the fivefold ministry, let's face it, it is an authoritarian structure and the way it was presented in Latter-Rain and it was designed so that a narcissist could control in a pyramid structure with the apostles at the top and the prophet.

And then once everybody started doing this and they realized, wait a minute, I have lost control, my authoritarian control of this, you guys aren't allowed to do this. So if you really think about what's happening with this conduct order doctrine or we called it church order, what William Brannum is trying to do is undermine the fivefold ministry and then it gets even more curious because after he dies, not a single church Charles, not one adopts this fivefold ministry structure.

In fact, if a person claims to be a prophet, they're chastised in the message and most of its, most of its splinter groups until you get into the NAR because the prophets, by example, the ones who become this, they usually go off and create their own cult and they become so excessively extreme that the ones who are in the main sect or the message think they're all just ridiculous crazy nuts.

And so they don't want any prophets, they certainly don't want any apostles because William Brannum has to be the apostle. So they've undermined the apostle, they've limited the prophet and then are you left with or evangelists and teachers and the pyramid structure that was created, they've shifted it back to Brannum and this whole structure that was created and came after Brannum died as a result of this book which fully undermines the fivefold ministry.

So what you're describing there is so interesting, John. I want to dive more into that because when William Brannum died, the only church that was observing church order in the message was the tabernacle.

There were about 35 churches at that point. The tabernacle was the only church that actually observed church order. The other 34-ish plus did not and there was actually an attempt in the other churches to establish fivefold ministry and they were still doing all of these ecstatic worship styles and everything at the time.

William Brandham died, and this is actually one of the main divisions that happened in the early message community was over this stuff. And what you have happened is that when William Brandham originally preaches all these conduct order doctrine stuff, he tells everybody, this is for the tabernacle only.

This is for the tabernacle only. You don't got to do it in any of your other churches. So that's such a situation where the other ministers can still kind of accept it. Because you got to remember this, that whole restoration of the gifts of the spirit that establishing a fivefold ministry, those ecstatic experiences.

That was central to the laterane movement, right? And he could not say, hey, everybody, you got to stop all this everywhere. They would have kicked him out, right? They would have ran him in the ground.

So he just says, it's for my church only. And I'm telling you, he spun it. The way he spun it to the other preachers is I'm doing this to correct an over, an over hyper people at my own church.

That's how he spun it. Like that's how he told it to Raymond Jackson. That's how he told it to the other ministers. I'm just doing this just for my church. And so that's what he did.

And all of the other churches of the early message community continued fivefold ministry and continued hyper charismatic practices. And this actually, he got some pushback even from the people in the tabernacle congregation. So the people who didn't like it when he put this in, guess where they started coming to church, John?

They started coming to my church of the street. So the people who still wanted to practice all of this charismatic hyper charismatic type stuff, still wanted the fivefold ministry, all of that, they stayed in the message and they just moved to the nearest message church that still allowed them to do all of those things.

That's actually how my church picked up a lot of the early tabernacle congregation, John, is when William Brown did this. So and the more he tightened the screws, you know, the more that happened.

And so as, as, as this is taken shape in the early message community, you have two factions that exist that are after William Brown and dies is going to end up creating their first two sex of the message.

And church order here is one of the big dividing lines between the early two sex of the message. So you've got the one sect, which is farm, stays far more ladder rain oriented, fivefold ministry, lots of ecstatic experience, lots of prophecy and speaking in tongues and gifts of the spirit and the tabernacle, which the truth is what William Brown does when he introduces this is he sets up the main sect of the message to essentially become cessationist when he leaves, right?

That's the truth. So the message, the central part of the message, the main sect of the message, are almost cessationists in one sense of the word, right? But not like a traditional cessationist that says, well, it'll all stop with the No, they say, no, it all stopped with William Brown.

Right, because when William Brown came and he had all of the stuff that he did, right? There's no more prophecies here. You know, there's no more, all of this stuff now is subdued. We don't know no more apostles.

We don't need no more prophets. The perfect has came, right? That's what they'll say. We have the perfect message. We no longer need more. And so the central sect of the message is, I would say, a semi-saccessionist group, but not that it stopped with the apostles, it stopped with William Brown.

Their cessation stops at William Brown. And what you had happened, John, is after William Brown, him died, you had a number of ministers, Earl Martin. I'm sure you've probably heard of Earl Martin, the Martin brothers.

They kind of spearheaded an effort to expand church order to all the other message churches. And after William Brown, him died, they picked it up, it got picked up by Perry Green. A lot of the churches in the south picked it up.

And you basically see this split where half the churches in the early message community adopt church order. And the other half say, no, William Brown says, that's only for the tabernacle. We don't want church order.

And this is one of the parts of the fissures that divides the early message community into two halves after William Brown dies. It's fascinating, isn't it? 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-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

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It is fascinating and here's where it gets interesting. You and I have gone through the complete and entire history of William Brandham, so what I'm about to say, I'm not going to go into great details if you're curious to learn more, go back and listen to the other podcast that Charles and I did.

In today's world, like I said, William Brandham is totally revered as the next thing to God. Actually, Tommy Osborne, who was deeply embedded into the word of faith movement, the prosperity gospel. He said that he was God in the flesh. William Brandham was God in the flesh. And he openly said this in the full gospel businessman's convention right after William Brandham died. So he was speaking to groups of people who didn't care that he said this. Think of that and let that sink in. You've got all of these names that I'm sure you know who would have been in it in 1965 and all the ministries that emerge from

these guys who were there. They're all sitting there listening to Tommy Osborne say William Brandham was God in the flesh. But if you listen to any of the NAR today, you've got all of these in their clips out there. You can find them on YouTube. You've got Benny Hinn saying that William Brandham was literally, if you take what he's saying out to its logical conclusion, he was also saying that William Brandham was God in the flesh. But with a caveat, in the last years, William Brandham went astray. You've got Paul Kane, you've got Bob Jones, Mike Pickle, you've got Bill

Johnson and all of these guys. Listen to what they say. Take it out to its logical conclusion. They're literally saying that God was manifested in human flesh and William Brandham and gave him the most powerful prophetic ministry because that was God embodied in that flesh. They don't come out and say it in a deity way. They stop before it goes there. But take it out to its logical conclusion.

But with a caveat that he went astray. Now think of the timeline that you and I have fully established in the podcast, Charles, starting in the 50s, Brandham made this boisterous claim that back in the 30s and maybe even earlier, depending on which version of the timeline you listen to, 20 years ago or greater, I had the series of seven or 12 or 14 or I think the last count I found 18 variations of the so-called seven prophecies. 20 years ago, these men were there. They heard the boisterous claim. They were there as he revised the claim. They were there when William Brandham would

take one of the seven out and replace it with a different one of the seven. They knew it. We've played the clips where Billy Paul is approaching William Brandham. While Brandham's got everybody, you had to bow your head and close your eyes. You can't look at the healer on the stage and you got his son, Billy Paul, walking up and whispering in his ear during the prayers during the healing lines or slipping in pieces of paper. We've got videos of this. These men sat there on the platform.

They watched the scam. They knew the scam that was going on. They watched as his prophecies failed. They watched as he admitted. William Brandham admitted that his prophecy failed. All of this happened before this book, Conject Order Doctor.

was published. I've come to the conclusion that when these men say that he went astray, in the end, it's not because he was misogynistic or white supremacy. It's because of this book. He was limiting their power to become an apostle or prophet, and that's what they say was the reason he went astray. That's my opinion.

I think you're exactly right, John. And you know what? I think that is because while he was still living, like my pastor Raymond Jackson formerly rejected church order, William Brown was still living when my church rejected this stuff, right? And my church continued to have a lot of affiliation with these people. You know, this, this sermon, the way William Brown justified this to everybody else was by saying, this is only for my tabernacle congregation, the rest of you don't have to follow it. And if he had rigidly done that, the rebellion would have been so big against him because that, that was the main thrust of everything,

right? I mean, you tell people they can't have ecstatic experiences anymore or prophesy in all of this. I mean, you can just shut the ladder rain down, right? I mean, that was the ladder rain movement with, you know, so what he did here was on one hand, extremely radical, right? Within this movement. This was very radical move to start to put the caboch on this stuff. And the fact, and you think about this, the fact that there is people in this movement who went along with him doing that. So basically a night and day shift, that kind of speaks to the level of control he already starts to have over

these people, right? The fact that he can go to this group that's following him and take away this thing that has been a central part of their religious experience. Take it away from them and say, you can't do that anymore, guys. The fact that he could do that demonstrates the level of control he already has over the minds of these people, right? It's really unbelievable because he's taking the power of all of the other men who wanted to create their own authoritarian structures. And he's saying, no, my authoritarian structure is the only one because, you know, in the late 1964, he was saying because there is only one manifestation

of the Elijah, this manifested sons of God theme. And the Elijah today is Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, God in the form of a prophet. Let that sink in. So he, because of the Christian identity themes that were embedded into Laterane, that developed into the manifested sons of God theology, what, you know, what they call joe's army. Well, think of that. You've got the international house of prayer, Paul Cain, Bob Jones, introducing the manifested sons of God.

And they're saying that Brannum was 100 sent by God to send us the in-time message and then he went astray. Well, what they're saying is he brought manifested sons of God because that came before conduct order doctrine. But then whenever they develop it into what became IHOP, they developed it in such a way that they totally ignored the original version of this where William Brandham was introducing the authoritarian structure for himself. But what they did was they ripped out conduct order doctrine, the part from which he went astray, so that they could create individual pyramid structures of authoritarian

control. And in effect, that's what put Mike Bickle at the top of the IHOP cult. Now, as you think about this, you know, when people in the message think of church order, we tend to think about all of the rules that come with it. And we think that's the big features, all of the rules that come with it. But I would suggest, John, there's actually something far more important about church order than just all of these rules. So William Brandham's made all these rules, the things you cannot do. But what's more important is the enforcement structure that he

created on these rules, right? He didn't just make rules with all of this. He created in these sermons the structure to have these rules enforced on the people. And so to do that, he had to empower people to enforce the rules, right? And so we'll talk about exactly what that structure is. But when you came to church, John, and you probably know that I have heard so many stories about these things. If you came into the Brandham Power Neckel or any of these other churches that observed this, and you did not be still and know that he was God, you know, if the children wiggle

too much in the seats, if somebody whispered to somebody else, if somebody, God forbid, open a piece of candy, John. God, have mercy. The deacons came and got you right there in the middle of the church service. You would be ejected from the building in a public, you know, humiliating spectacle.

You know, you were singled out, you were told, get that child under control. You know, things like that. And you are ejected from the building, right? In a very humiliating way. And when William Brandham was alive, it was even more severe, John. I would have, so again, my family came from the Tabernacle. We were there in all those days, John. My family was there.

I've heard all these stories directly from all kinds of the families that were there. The deacons, right? If it got really bad, they would, the deacons would lock the bathrooms and shut off the water fountain to punish the people. The deacons would lock out the bathrooms and shut off the water fountain, right? Because the people weren't being qua- it enough for whatever. And that even got to the point one time where Doc Brannum was like, he had to go to the bathroom, right? Brother Brannum's brother.

And he says, I'm going to call the health department on you guys and they, you know, but, but this kind of stuff was going on. They were getting like that. And, you know, and if kids were kids were not sitting in their seat wiggling a little bit or turning around and see the kids had to be taken out and whipped, you know, punished, it got very, very, very harsh. I mean, the way that they did it and not necessarily always in physical punishment, but just imagine you're sitting surrounded by hundreds of people and the deacon or the preacher who ever points at you and says,

hey you, stop that. And everybody's head turns and looks at you and you're the center of attention singled out and then they kick you out of the church until the next service because, you know, God forbid, you pulled a piece of candy out of your pocket, right? But that is what was going on. And this is how they enforced that.

And it didn't, and it wasn't just that. I mean, if one of the funniest stories I heard one time, John, is there was one fella at the tabernacle. And whenever William and I would say, amen, you're allowed to say amen. So if he said amen, you're amen, amen. Amen. But if you said amen when he did not solicit an amen, he would all, so that one church service is a story I heard from multiple people.

One church service, William Brannum is preaching and someone says, amen. And out of order, right? And the whole church turns and looks at him. And he's like, but this is how it was. They'd use this peer pressure.

More or less, you said, amen, at the wrong time, you fool. You know, and you feel the pressure. And this is what's happening in the atmosphere of the service that's forcing these people into, into conforming.

It's crazy, man. You know, and so I wasn't there when William Brannum was there. And I have heard similar stories and I won't go into them. I think you've covered it pretty well. But think of what this would be like to a person who is never in the cult.

You know, when I was in it, I never really thought about how silly it was and, and just how ridiculous it was. But so picture this, Charles, you're a person who's never experienced a cult.

You don't know that it's a cult. And you walk into the Brannum Tabernacle back whenever I went. And the first thing you hear when you walk through the doors, you're going to hear to your right.

You're going to hear some woman that has beaten the tar out of their child. To the point where the child is screaming bloody murder, no mom, stop. No mom, stop. That was a frequent occurrence.

Every time I got up to the bathroom, there's some kid that's being beaten. Because the kid might have wiggled too much in church. Whatever was the conduct order doctrine rules and you can read it yourself.

Any single thing, like you mentioned, the candy wrapper. You know, when I was growing up, We weren't allowed to even bring it in our pockets, man. No gum, no candy. But picture some person who's outside, never experienced a cold.

And they walk in and hear the kid being beaten next door and thinking, oh my gosh, should I call the police? And then they go in and maybe it's a female. And the deacon suddenly swarm her and give her these cold stairs because William Brantum set up the deacons where the Gestapo of the church.

He called them God's policemen. And for those who've never experienced a cold, you know, a deacon is a servant. He's the one who helps the pastor care for the poor and needy or sick and afflicted.

Who goes and, you know, maybe their house is breaking down. They need some help or something to help the community or whatever. The word literally means servant, waiter, helper. It's that kind of phrase.

But no, in the Brantum Tabernacle, they're the Gestapo. So family enters and you've got a woman who's never experienced a cold with her children and her husband, but she's wearing pants or slacks. Suddenly the deacons put their hand on her shoulder and start escorting her out of the building.

No lady, you're not allowed to come into this building because you're wearing slacks and carry her out. And the husband and the children are like, what just happened to us? I've seen this happen, Charles, or some person who gets a little excited in the worship and get, you know, claps or hands or as the tape, for me, it was a recording of William Brantum in this ridiculous nonsense, but they're listening to the tape and the person gets a little excited and praises God out loud.

Gestapo comes, grabs a man, takes him outside, forcibly ejects him from the building. I have seen this happen too. It's so ridiculous. And when you think about, this was supposed to be God's place of worship.

Well, the person who is sitting there is actually trying to worship God, not William Brantum, but because it has shifted to Brantum worship, if they interrupt the voice of Brantum, they're interrupting the voice of God for which the organization was named, or the spoken word for which the other organization was named.

And what it is, this is a deity called pure plain and simple. So for that, I will say that in some ways, the NAR had it right, he did go astray, they just put the date at the wrong side of it.

He went astray back in the 40s, not in the 60s. You're right, John, and my church, so every church implemented some element of church order, John. So our churches, which didn't ban ecstatic worship and so forth, we didn't take those rules, but guess what we did implement, John?

We implemented the deacons and all of this other stuff and all this power. Oh yeah, we definitely did. Right? So, you know, every message church implemented, at least implemented those aspects of church order.

The aspects that give this incredible power to the leaders in this really dramatic way. And I don't want to talk about that some more too. But I have the same thing. Sit in church service.

John, now here's the thing. I would, at my church, I tended to get there like an hour before church started. I was a minister for a lot of years in it. But even before that, I mean, I helped set everything up for church.

But for most of my life, probably the last 20, 25 years, I would get there at least an hour before church started. And that's when you go to witness these things, right? And I saw quite a number of times where someone would come in that the deacons didn't want there.

And guess what? They are pitched out, right? They're ejected from the church. And even if they sneak in and they somehow get in the congregation because, you know, our church hundreds of people, somehow they've snuck in and they kind of notice them.

Uh-oh, somehow they got past us, right? They'll go to them in the benches. And yeah, and they'll, hey, you got to go up escort, you're not dressed right or this that or the other.

And you got to go or you're someone we vex communicated in the past, you got to get out of here. I've seen that happen lots of times. And I've even in the middle of church services, John.

They stop the church service and say, hey, you stand up. What are you doing here? You know, get out of here. I think they will do this in the church services, John. I mean, it's unbeatable, you know, you look back, but when you're in there, you're like, yeah, get rid of them.

They deserve it. Like everybody's like, yeah, how dare they come to church that, how dare this happen? You know, how dare they disobey the pastor? You know, you're in there. You're like, all for it, but oh my goodness, John, looking back now, like what in the world were we doing?

What were we thinking, John? I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. You know, I don't think that with his wonderful imagination that Stephen King could even come up with the church designed like this, where the people are so demon possessed that they eject people out of the church for wearing slacks or for praising God.

I don't think Stephen King could even come up with this in his mind, but that's what we had. We had the church from hell. I mean, pure plain and simple. It was the church from hell.

I know. So this is, this is the start. You know, if you want to put on the bite model, John, this is the start of the enforcement mechanisms on behavioral control and the message when William Brannum made these things, which is why in my book, I got a whole big section on these because this is such an important thing.

This is when William Brannum created the enforcement mechanisms on behavioral control in the cult, pay in the message cult. And so what he did, I want to just talk about that structure a little bit, John, because He didn't just introduce all these rules, but he created a structure to enforce it.

And at the same time that he's creating this structure to enforce it, this is the same time that he's unrolling the man from Windsor story. He's unrolling all of these stories that if you question the authority, you are gonna be cursed with cancer.

You are gonna be cursed with paralysis. You might drop dead before you get out of the church. How dare you not listen to the preacher? God is gonna curse you with the most horrendous things you can imagine.

This is when those stories start rolling out. They are rolling out alongside of these enforcement mechanisms and everything that's happening as he creates church order, right? And these things are not the coincidence, right?

He's doing all of this together. And so the first thing he does, John, and I think this is incredibly clever. So, and this is, I think this might be a little bit unique to the message.

I'm not really aware of any other church, John, that is structured the way the message churches are. I have not encountered it. I have not saw it anywhere else in anything I look. William Brownum basically broke everything up so you have these independent factions.

So he took the deacons and he made the deacons more or less this independent police force that reported directly to him. They don't report to the assistant pastor. They didn't report to Orman Neville.

They don't report to the trustees. They report to no, but they report directly to him. Okay? And in his, and in this, as we go through it, William Brownum is not really putting himself into the pastor position in here.

What he does is he creates a bishop position that he calls the overseer and he puts himself into the overseer position. Hey, do you remember anyone else in there that was called an overseer, John?

Wasn't that the title Roy Davis went by? Overseer. Absolutely. I don't wonder if this is not where he got all this from as he got this from Roy Davis. So he puts himself into the overseer position.

The deacons report directly to him and they are the policemen. They're the enforcers. And it's their job to, if he's not in town, it's their job to ignore the pastor and to ignore the trustee and to enforce the rules at any cost.

Yeah, that history, which we covered again, back in the other podcast that we have done. But this was a cult that was generated from the second and command of the Ku Klux Klan. Pure plain and simple.

William Brannum was appointed as a bishop, Roy Davis, the general overseer. And we have, I can't remember the date, Charles, but it's like 1951-ish. William Brannum is still admitting that he's holding revivals. It's advertised in the newspaper, actually, as holding revivals as the Pentecostal Baptist sect.

So I think you're right. I think all of this probably came from Roy Davis. So he sets the deacons up as this independent group that reports directly to him to enforce everything. He then sets up the trustee.

is just being over the finances. So the trustees have oversight of the finances and these are the ones that are legally responsible to the state, the trustees. So the deacons don't have control of the money.

They just have control of enforcing all of his rules. The trustees have control of the money, but they don't have any enforcement power, okay? And he sets himself up as the treasurer, all right?

So he's actually the one with the control of all of the money. And you can miss this if you don't listen to his sermons carefully, but William Brannum was the treasurer. He was the treasurer of the church.

So the trustees had oversight of the money and they were supposed to have these certain responsibilities towards the treasurer, but William Brannum was himself the treasurer. And you see this in most all of these groups, the preacher himself, the overseer, he tends to also be the treasurer or someone like his wife or his son or his daughter, right, is the treasurer.

So they always keep, they're the head that the deacons are reporting to and then they keep all of the money very close to them. So that's really important to catch that he did that too.

The other thing that he did, is that he basically totally disempowered the real pastor of the church. So at this point in time, William Brannum was not actually the pastor of the Brannum tabernacle.

The pastor, what this point in 1958 was at Warman Neville. Warman Neville was actually the official pastor of the church and William Brannum had left for some years as he was doing all of his revival stuff.

And what he did, though, is as he created this structure, he basically made the position of pastor at the tabernacle, which really more like assistant pastor, a totally powerless position. They had no power.

They couldn't control the deacons. They couldn't control the trustees. The trustees and the deacons reported directly to him as the overseer, right? And now you've got this pastor who really his only job is to get in there and preach on Sunday, right?

And that's it. But no real control in the church in any other way. And that basically allowed him to control everything, even though he was no longer the pastor of Brannum tabernacle. And what he does is he actually personally owns all the property of the church, right?

And he is still the position, the one in a position of power over all of this thing, even though he's kind of set up Orman Neville as a figurehead at this stage. And he also does this other thing, John, where they have elections, I think, roughly every year at the tabernacle, to elect all the people into their positions, right?

This is another important thing to catch. So it appears on the surface that William Brannum implements this congregationalist model, where the congregation is electing the deacons and electing the pastor and electing the trustees, right?

That's what it looks like, but not really. Because... You don't, the slate of candidates, your options to choose from are picked by Brannum, right? Brannum gets to pick the people you get to vote for in this thing, right?

It's like somebody just can't come say, hey, I want to be pastor, I want to be trustee. Now they have to get Brannum's blessing and they have to get his permission to be an election candidate, you put it like that.

And so he's basically puts himself in the position of total control and he gives it this veneer, this appearance, that it's a congregational, that it's kind of democratic, that you're kind of electing your people, but really it's all the people that he chose and gave you an option to vote for, right?

It's kind of a fraud mock election, right? To get all these people into their positions. And ultimately everyone serves at his pleasure. He also sets it up so that he can dismiss any person at any time in his position, right?

Everybody holds their position at his pleasure and his pleasure. So anybody can go at any time, you got your position as he lets you stand for election. The deacons report directly to him, the trustees report directly to him and the minister doing the preaching, it really has no power.

This is the structure that he created. And the thing that's not said in any of these books, I know this, because my family is at the top of this, not everybody's vote counted Charles.

You had people who, if there was some sort of a weird rule that William Brannum established, if they were not considered in regular attendance, quote unquote, regular attendance, then their vote wouldn't be counted, but they didn't stop it when the person was submitting their vote.

They just silently removed it from the basket. So he had the power of going even further than this. If they felt like this person wasn't going to vote in favor of whoever he chose, he could pull their vote out and say, well, you weren't in regular attendance.

And the whole thing from start to finish is just a scam so that the scam artists can continue scamming the people. If you think about this structure that William Brannum created, where you have a powerless pastor, the deacons report straight to the overseer, the trustees report straight to the overseer, William Brannum created a framework which would allow him to make as many churches as he wanted with a powerless figurehead pastor where he is the overseer actually held all the power in the church.

And John, I think that's exactly what he was creating, right? And it wasn't until you get into 1962 or three that he really, really finally takes this full form that I'm describing. You gotta go through all the church order sermons and you can see how he evolves it over time.

But by the time you get to that stage of his death, he's created this framework where you have these powerless figurehead preachers who are actually the church, but the churches are really controlled by the deacons and the trustees, that's really what he set up.

And the deacons and trustees reported to him, knocked to the pastor of the church. And what happened after he died is most of the churches that implemented this, guess what? William Brannum is dead. Right? And the pastors put themselves into what William Brannum called the overseer position. Okay? So they take the overseer position, right? And they tend to call that the pastor now. And then the position that he created that was this powerless figurehead is more like your assistant pastor. And so this is what William Brannum set up. And most of the people are putting themselves into his bishop overseer pastor today in the message

in the pastor. They're putting themselves into that position. And then they have control of the deacons and they have control of the trustees in that way. And this John is the very widely implemented structure of message governance. Almost every message church I have ever known or heard of is governed in this way. The power, the leader at the top of the preacher at the top is absolutely authoritarian every position in the church serves at his pleasure. They got their position because he more or less let them have it. And he can get rid of him anytime they do something he don't like. And he has this power to enforce whatever

he wants on anyone in the congregation at any time he wants, right? This is the mechanism of control that message preachers have and use. And it all derives from William Brannum's church order service. It's crazy when you think about it, Charles. So to sum this episode up, William Brannum created and helped create the framework for establishing authoritarian cults. And when men and women began to use that structure and created their own authoritarian cults, William Brannum wanted to reel back and say, no, I have the only authoritarian cult. You will submit to my leadership. And then touted himself as this quote unquote

in time messenger, the one who's bringing the church back to the truth, the hearts of the fathers, hearts of the children to the fathers, et cetera. And what he essentially did was he took all of the bad aspects that Martin Luther left the Catholic church for.

You had men who were predators against children. You had men who were worshipping William Brannum and women who were worshipping William Brannum as God in the flesh. You had all of these things that Martin Luther, when he started the Protestant Reformation, he knew that the Catholic church was evil. And there were a set of criteria you can go look them up that he judged the Catholic church by William Brannum comes along, has created the structure.

And then what happens is it evolves back and becomes worse than the Catholic church that Martin Luther left, all while William Brannum is condemning the Catholic church. So the whole thing is so absurd. I said it before, the NAR did get it right. William Brannum did go astray.

They just totally missed the date. But this that he created this order, conduct order doctrine. It is pretty bad. I'm not going to give the NAR that. It is pretty bad. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org and www.ChristianGospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brannum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brannum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible, and read Charles's book, Come Out of Her, My People, also available on Amazon and Kindle.

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