Weaponized Religion: Secret America First History of the NAR

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Brannem.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, 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 today is a, it's going to be a great day when the podcast release, but as you and I discussed before we even started this, I was diving deep into the theme of weaponized religion as it relates to the NAR, with the purpose of the research that was going into this podcast would be going into the book. And as of last weekend I finished the final chapter and we began editing.

And I think the timing is such that it will come out slightly before this podcast release, but now the book, which is called weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR, that will be available with many of the things that we've explored in this podcast, but some, some other things as well as it relates to the current day and age.

So that book will be out soon and we, the focus today, we're getting into Wesley Swift, you can't mention Christian identity without mentioning Wesley Swift. He is the one that shaped it into what we even call Christian identity today. It existed in various forms but much differently back then.

So the book takes what Wesley Swift and others working with him created and then ties it to the modern day to the New Apostolic Reformation and how it entered into the New Apostolic Reformation through all of the various apostolic networks that comprise this NAR movement.

So I'm excited for today. We've got way too much to explore that we could possibly pack into one episode, but if we miss something that's interesting, you can get it in the book. Yeah, John, I'm excited about your book coming out. I think reading a little bit of the draft, first draft you've got there. There's going to be a lot of stuff packing that book, a lot of things, everything is cited, everything is research.

well researched, so it will be a great book. So I'm really looking forward to that. But yeah, we're gonna get into these two figures that were pretty powerful in their day and they lived through a time and gathered a lot of people under their wing.

One was on more of the political side and the other one was more on the religious side. And we saw that same combination in Davis and Brannum. Davis was political religious and Brannum stayed in the religious side.

But it was a key time, you know, an American religious and secular political history. You know, the World War II was just ending up. The healing revival was just kicking off. Times were getting better.

The depression was nearly over and financially everybody was doing much better and nations were becoming better off financially overall. You know, maybe the debt was much lower than it is today. And so this first wave of the Pentecostal revival, you know, had just been cooling off.

And the leaders of that movement were dying and people were looking to the next wave. So we're gonna get into these next wave here and what really took place and how they brought people under their wing and how they spread these doctrines.

Absolutely. Before we get into it, you know, a lot of people are unaware of this history and I have a lot of it published in the website and, you know, on the book. But there is a significant history that happened in Los Angeles.

We have, through the course of this podcast, talked about the events leading up to the, what I call the epicenter of all of this in the 1940s. But there's a little bit of history that I have to give dating back to the 20s before we get into talking about Wesley Swift because it is significant.

Not many people realize how deeply embedded the Pentecostal movement was with Christian identity. And we're going to focus briefly, I'll focus briefly on the connection between the Angeles Temple. That's Amy Simple McPherson's four-square gospel church.

And the background leading up into the creation of Wesley Swift and, you know, Christian identity. We had previously talked about Gerald Burton-Winrod who was also a significant Christian identity figure who was spreading the protocols of the learned elders of Zion throughout the United States.

But in 1922, McPherson addressed an assembled delegation of clan members in a town hall. And that was significant, you know. McPherson, if you study her history, she pretends that she is distancing herself from the clan.

And she has this very, very obviously staged event where these numerous clan members enter into her church. And they say, praise God, I've got Jesus and they unmasked themselves. Very clearly a staged event.

But in... 1926, when McPherson was facing felony charges, she turned to the clan for help, and she began saying that she was the target of a Roman Catholic plot, which tied deeply to this Jewish conspiracy that was being raised, and she began appealing to the Ku Klux Klan for assistance.

And in the 30s, which was just not long after that, just a few years after that, Swift converted to Pentecostalism. So who we consider today to be, you can't really call them the father because he didn't birth it, but he is probably the most notorious, significant figure in Christian identity.

Wesley A. Swift, he was a Pentecostal. And in the early 30s, he enrolled at Life Bible College in Angeles Temple. And from the 1930s through the 1940s, Swift was a minister at Angeles Temple.

And you know, when I talk about the epicenter in the 1940s, well now we're entering into approximately 1940. I think it was 1938, was the year where Gerald Burton-Winrod spoke just days after the night of broken glass, whenever all of the Jews were being, when the real persecution started for the Jews.

So in the 30s to 40s, you've got Gordon Lindsay, who was a leader in the four-square church. You've got Wesley Swift, who was a minister at Angeles Temple in the four-square church. You've got Frida Lindsay, who was a, she was enrolled at Life Bible College, the same college that Swift got his ministerial training in.

And in 1940, Lindsay was appointed to become, I think it was called Field Extension Work for four-square. Basically, it was growing the denomination. So Lindsay's a key figure in Angeles Temple in the four-square gospel denomination.

Swift is right there at the headquarters church. Frida Lindsay's involved and you've got Winrod, who is another Christian identity leader, connected to this church. And if you study the background of Swift, Swift was indoctrinated into Christian identity through Gerald Burton Winrod, who was the American Nazi.

So you've got all of this history coming together. And when we, in our last episode, we brought Davis and William Upshaw into the scene there in Los Angeles, San Bernardino area. Swift is the one who launched the clan, which we'll get into in this, in this episode.

He rebursed the clan in California. So we've got a lot to cover, but the background to Swift is that he was a Pentecostal. He was tied to the Pentecostal movement. He was connected to key figures in the Laterane movement.

And he is central. He's the central hub from which all... all of this Christian identity started to spread throughout the United States, and it spread in Pentecostalism more than other denominations because of Swift.

Yeah, it sure did, and you know, it's a unique time in history, because I think during this time in the 40s, there were people already being groomed for the last 15 to 20 years.

You know, you had Davis grooming in Brannum. You had these doctrines that were in place from the people we talked about back in the 1800s that were just sitting there and you got people like Swift that embraced those.

And they were very popular people, amongst the people they were able to speak and be very dominant in what they said enough so that people called on and listened. They had a voice, a talent for speaking and people heard them, and that's what caused this thing to spread a lot, and it was just a prejudice embedded in the people of America at the time, and it just came at that juncture and just caused people to embrace it.

But there were many that took up the banner there and carried that torch and caused many to believe the doctrines, things that we've been discussing like the Serpent Sea, Christian identity, Kingdom and Dominion theology.

And now that generation there has died out in our day, you know, and all the charismatic renewals that came along, it's funny that the new philosophies born out which takes bits and pieces of all that, the latter ring teaching, sometimes bits and pieces of the identity doctrine, replacement theology of the Jews and others, and they didn't form a single group this time, but they've got no single headquarters, but they've managed to have a network with a common purpose and it's spread around the world now as we've seen through the NAR.

And they have their apostles and prophets as the way they've set their network up and they actually hear from God, direct the church. So you've got just a very few men that really are the ones supposedly hearing from God and giving people a lot of direction.

So there's a big group of people under that as well, and it's all because of everything coming together. You've got gifted men that are gifted for speaking and you've got them trying to display some gifts and people were just caught up into that, thinking it's a move of God.

But our two main players today, Gerald Smith and Will Wesley Swift, you know, they were able to gather following two and promote their doctrines. They're destructive to the nation, but they still exist today.

You know, Swift's doctrines went to the aberrant far right, and that's where all these far right groups basically came out of was what was started by Swift. And he was the more militant form of Pentecostalism and especially with the extremist white supremacy.

But these men were just two examples of the era that represented the abundance of those strong orators that were able to gather a following. We've seen that in the way what we came out of.

But they were out of World War II, and I think people were looking to ease the pain of the war, and they were looking for the next thing to come along to give them some comfort.

And the religious healing revival came at that time, and it gave the population something to hold on to, but you also had all these other factors working with them at the same time. So, intertwined with that, healing revival was that push for political power and the teachings of the Christian identity and the white dominated society really was the arm of pushing political power along with your religious power at the same time.

And those men rose up, and they gained a following based on those prejudices. And, you know, people just seemed to be more gullible back then, or either more trusting of others and they were easily convinced in those times of limited information.

You know, we have the internet today. We can look up a person's background pretty quickly if they're popular, and they've got some information out there, and we can find out who they are. The back of the end, you just didn't have that. So, a person with a strong, convincing voice was just able to sway a large segment of people, and that's what they did.

They swayed a large segment of the Christian population on any topic, and long as they mixed it with Scripture enough, and which they did, and they tried to prove their Christian identity was from Scripture, that, you know, the white people were God's real chosen people, not the Jews.

And then they gave the people an enemy to focus on, and that's usually how this happens is once you give people an enemy, then they can have something to unite or under. And so, the common enemy, of course, was Jews, immigrants, Catholics, and people of color. So, that gave them the common enemy, and it was just natural at the time for people to fall into that with the way the nation was structured at the time.

It was, and this was a time, remember, the clan had gone largely underground. After they were exposed in the 20s for, you know, domestic terrorism, all of the bad things that were associated with the 1915 clan.

They largely went underground. They emerged very briefly in Indiana, William Brandham's home state, until that fizzled out because DC Stevenson fell, which we talked about in the podcast, but in the 40s, it was being rebranded, and it almost, you know, from all the pieces of the puzzle that we have, and will never ever have them all.

It really looks like Davis decided to try on the West Coast, what he and Simmons had tried on the East Coast, with different groups of people, different style, different branding, different strategies. Davis is connected to the Los Angeles elite, and here you've got, you know, Hollywood, you know, all of the film industries that was developing, it was the early film industry.

You've got all of this coming together, and Swift was instrumental in bringing all of that together. He was the president of the Anglo-Saxon Christian society. And we've explored, I think briefly, we've mentioned it, but up in Canada, you've got Clim Dav- who was working in the Anglo-Saxon Christian world, I think it was. He was a recruiter for the clan from his church. He was a very, very popular guy up in Canada. The Kardashian family, let me say that again, the Kardashian family sponsored Clem Davies to come down into LA not long after this epicenter began. And Clem Davies was, you know, he was widely

known as a Christian identity guy. He believed that the same things that Wesley Swift and Gerald Winrod were spreading. Clem Davies was spreading in Canada. So the Kardashians bring him down, and I won't go deep into it into this episode. We'll probably cover this a bit later. But the nephew of the Kardashian patriarch was the founder of the Full Gospel Businessman's Fellowship International. So this brought the entertainment industry into it. It brought entertainment, intertwined with Christian identity. You've got, you know, these people who migrated to the United States in the Los Angeles and the Palm Springs area, they were the business

the business elite, they had all the vineyards, et cetera, very, very rich, very wealthy people connected to all of this. So from that route, you can easily make the leap between the Kardashian family and the entertainment style that would make its way into what we see in the NAR today. But before we go there, we really need to understand the history of Gerald L. Case Smith, because his role in Christian identity when it combined with the role of Wesley Swift and brought Smith's politics into Swift's Christian identity, that's where this really began to transition into

something that was far more sinister. Yeah, and you mentioned earlier about Amy Simple Book Ferris, and she was all about entertainment. I mean, more than a gospel church, and the more spectacular she could make her services, you know, the more people loved her. So yeah, she was a start of entertainment gospel, and she did, can you imagine all those hooded clansmen coming into her church? I mean, that was probably a spectacular show, and people put up with that. I don't know how they did, but it was just all for show, and she was a master at that. But Gerald Smith,

he was very important in developing, you know, Christian identity, as far as the political side of it, for what would become the political orientation of that movement. He was a very important person, and he espoused a right-wing populism and anti-communism that became a very central component of the early.

Christian identity groups. And it was about 1929. He was a pastor at a church in Louisiana, Shreveport, Louisiana, of all places. And then he kind of broke away from his family. And he was alleged to be a member of the Cluclitz clan.

So probably likely he was a minister in the clan when he was in Indiana, when it was in the 1920s, when the clan did have a stronghold there. And about 1933, he said he wrote to a returning visitor from Germany, he says, I am anxious to get in touch with his honor, Adolf Hitler, but knowing that you are recently removed from Germany before doing so, I desire your opinion of the conditions in the country.

They look good to me. So already you see an affection or a fascination with what Hitler was doing in Germany and how he was promoting the Aryan race and so forth. I mean, they were probably picking up on that and they were embracing more a form of Hitlerism and you'll find that in all Christian identity groups that they will have the Nazi flag.

And in fact, these people we're talking about today or kind of are actually Nazis, but they would carry that flag right on today in these small little groups that are still out there. But in the early 30s, that's when he really began to express his anti-Semitic views and his fascist sentiments.

And we talked about the silver shirts by William Dudley-Pelley last time. It was a pro-Nazi group. And he was considered joining them, but we mentioned that and the Pelley's silver shirts were a home for Smith after he left his parish in Louisiana because he actually quit his church.

After he kind of sort of embraced in these ideologies, his church actually wanted to throw him out, but he quit before they could throw him out. And he gave lectures for that group and he said someday 100 million Americans will hide behind the silver shirt for protection.

So already they were looking at some type of conflict where they were going to be the saviors of the good people. And while the bad people were being put out, there was going to be some type of conflict, but that was not very short.

I was very short-lived for Smith. I was very small, but he actually joined with Huey Long, which they call the Kingfish. Huey Long was a very progressive senator. He was a very, he was a future senator.

I believe he might have been governor of the state of Louisiana, but he helped. He was actually a lawyer when he met Smith and he actually prevented the foreclosure of some of the homes that Smith's congregation had back in the early days.

I guess through the depression. So through his office, he was able to help prevent that. So they became bonded over that and he was very influenced by Long, but Long was pretty much a liberal.

And that was when Smith resigned from his church and he started embracing all that liberal theology. And Long's platform was share our wealth. He... He had a movement to confiscate people's fortunes and, you know, distributed them to the poor He also embraced things and his platform in 1936 where his candidacy for president He actually made a bid for president that Smith was on board on that at the time He he and Smith spoke on behalf of Longf for those organizations, but it was a new society to Distribute the wealth and make sure there's no one making under you know what the average salary is they can make up

To maybe one third the government would give them money to make sure they could buy their food live in their house By their clothes that the basic necessities of life and so that's what who he long was all about and he was His slogan was every man a king and they even composed a song by Hillman Castro Carazzo they formed a song in 1935 and they would sing it you know as part of their campaign slogan And it was a share of wealth society. So he was Making a lot of a headway there, but eventually

He was assassinated. He was actually shot to death and and he was murdered so after longs this murder You know Smith just had no political allies in Louisiana and he was he had briefly joined a white supremacist who actually embraced Adolf Hitler's book But that alliance soon crumbled and he was trying to find his cause what he was gonna, you know go into and And he went in with Francis Townsend as a retired physician who tried to provide pensions to older people and so Smith and Townsend eventually joined father Cofflin so we can really probably mention father Cofflin here in the minute

But that was around 1936, you know after longs assassination Right and Gerald O.K. Smith Significance in the development of what became the NAR cannot be understated. You've got You know, he worked very closely with Wesley Swift, which I mentioned previously These two were hand in hand in the West Coast basically and Smith you can find the influence leading from from Gerald O.K. Smith into the latter rain right in the so-called 1933 prophecies of William Branham in 1937 which was just a few years prior to The development of what we what we're calling the epicenter the explosion of all of these things

Smith organized what was called a committee of one million against communism or any other Ism that threatens to overthrow the United States government So like very much like we see today they were claiming that the United States government was being attacked and infiltrated by According to them by the false Jews, you know today. It's it's the false Democrats or whatever But it was the same exact scenario. They they were preaching through religion. They were preaching politics claiming that who's in office now we've got to kick them out. We got to throw overthrow this government. And that was Gerald LK Smith that started this. And William

Brannum in the mid 1950s, I can't remember the exact year, but he began claiming that years prior, something like 20 years prior to his actual statement, he said that back then, I prophesied about the so-called isms. Well, when he says this, he's appealing to every single person who's sympathetic to Gerald LK Smith, because that was the party, there was the committee against the isms, one million people against the isms. So Brannum appeals directly to the Christian identity crowd for his initial version, which it altered much, you know, went through several different versions later, but his very initial version

of the 1933 prophecies was nothing more than an appeal to Gerald LK Smith's movement. Yes, so as I mentioned in 1936, LK Smith and Townsend and Charles Coughlin, who was a Roman Catholic priest, they teamed up together. They were initially who father Coughlin, the Roman Catholic priest, he was siding with Franklin Roosevelt. But after Roosevelt was siding with the bankers, then Coughlin, you know, felt like that was a big business. The bankers, they were more or less taken to the wealth of the people. So he turned against Franklin Roosevelt. And so they teamed up and they were going to promote William Lemp case union

party for president. And interesting, you know, Charles Coughlin, he was a great orator too. You know, we talk about these great orators, but he had a listenership of 30 million people and his weekly broadcast at one time on the radio. And they actually, if the R was able to get him off the air for a time by requiring licenses, that's when they first started requiring licenses to be on the radio after he had gathered such a following. And they didn't want him to be too influential. So once they did that, then for a time, he had

to get off the air. And he was prevented from speaking, but he was convinced by his publisher radio to focus on politics. And that's what he began focusing on and came very politically influential with the people. And so he encouraged him to do that. Then he started broadcasting very vehement, angry broadcasts attacking the banking system, the Jews. And so that was picked up in 1930 for the national broadcast. And that's how he did. He was a very, very influential speaker and would speak on these platforms as they were promoting William Lemke for president. And Smith

said he was proud to speak not only for Lemke, but also for the Constitution, the American flag, and the Bible. So it sounds like very political, religious, combining together. And it sounds like very American.

And at the time, you know, it sat on the surface like it was a good thing. So Lemke was a progressive populist and support of the new deal, actually, and champion the calls of family farmers and legislation to protect farmers during the Great Depression.

So that's how he gains some popularity. But it was, he had a union party who nominated him and you'll see these parties even nowadays, you know, you've got the populist party, the libertarian party and they don't, they're not the majority so they don't receive a lot of votes.

So he received almost a million votes, two percent nationwide. And so he gained no electoral vote. So he did not win that election, did not even, was not even figured in it. So that, that Smith Townsend Cofflin, you know, collaboration after that candidacy failed, it sort of dissolved.

And after, after that, 1936 election though actually Cofflin expressed sympathy for fascist governments of Hitler and Mussolini as the combat of, to combat communism. So it's amazing that these men were embracing what Hitler and Mussolini were just to combat communism.

And he will also believe Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution and backing the, he backed the Jewish Bolshevism, Bolshevism conspiracy theory. But you can see that back when we talked about Fords and Cameron's, when they put out the, the Jew, the international Jew pamphlet, you know, how much influence this was having, you know, in the nation.

And this is just another part of it. And he began to support far right organizations called the Christian Front. And he claimed that he was an inspiration to it. He urged the formation of a national Christian movement to violently rebel against the US government.

And he personally selected John Cassidy to lead it. So then there you have an organization to be informed, try to overthrow the government. And that's where, you know, this is really intertwined with everything we're talking about.

Christian Front was anti-Semitic. It was a political association. Active till about 1940. And it was all started from Coffland's, you know, radio broadcasts, you know, the things he was promoting. So you can see why the nation didn't want those things, you know, promoted.

But by the end of 1940, it was no longer active. And in fact, FBI had begun to investigate this. So that's for plotting to overthrow the government, you know, and it was, but Coffland was able to quietly sneak out of it.

It was revealed that he was never officially a member. So somehow these people that seem to promote these things can somehow wiggle out of it and come clear. It's kind of like with Upshall.

He was, he was right there in bed with Davis, but he got out of it. So his reputation remained intact, you know, so somehow they're, they always have to have an out. And they generally prepare themselves an out in case their organization fails.

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On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. It's crazy, man. When you think of all this history and how it came to be, I mean, there's not one single aspect of this that you can focus on to understand it.

You literally have to understand so many complicated, complex histories. I was reading history just last night in preparation for this, and there are actually significant questions as to whether Gerald LK Smith was even a believer in the Christian identity doctrines.

He embraced it, I think, because his political party was fizzling out. I think he saw the power in the Christian identity movement, and he just shifted his politics towards that. But you mentioned the Christian nation movement that was being developed.

When you hear the term Christian nationalist today, it's because this army that Smith was creating, he called it the Christian nationalists, and they were militant from their inception. Whenever Smith was building his organizations, he would send out what was called the Confidential Admission Card, and he had to fill out your information into it, and these, it was supposed to be, he called it, for executive discussions of plans and purposes.

But they ask questions like, what is your religious affiliation and what is your military service? So he was targeting a specific denomination of faith or group of denominations of faith, and he wanted to find the people who had been in the military because they were arming themselves.

And like you said, this movement just kind of fizzled out too. But if you think of it in the long-term timeline of history, he's building this movement that is called the Christian nationalists. He's building it on the platform that they're taking over our government.

We're losing true Americanism. You've got Upshaw and Davis, who are coming into Los Angeles and Burdeno area. You've got Upshaw, who's, he's... spreading this theme across LA and across the whole region of Southern California that we need to bring back true Americanism. That was this theme. And when Smith starts working with Wesley Swift, when the clan is actually birth, Wesley Swift says true Americanism is here to stay. And he's quoting, I mean, he's directly quoting from the theme that came from Upshaw.

And to think that one of the founders, the person who wrote the bylaws and constitution of the 1915 clan is there with another key figure, probably one of the men who birthed the 1915 clan, worry Davis and William Upshaw. They're right there in San Bernardino and in this, you know, the area spanning from LA to San Bernardino. And then right north of San Bernardino is where the clan was rebirced in California with the same themes that they use connected to all of these figures of Pentecostalism. Davis was the head of a of a Pentecostal sect, the Pentecostal

Baptist Church of God sect, all of this. You can't you will never find all the answers. There's too many pieces to the puzzle. But when you put the puzzle pieces that we have together, all of this looks pretty bad. Yeah, I would agree. You wonder how all these different people can kind of come together with the same type of goal. And it's almost like they conspired together secretly, then came out and spread this throughout the nation. So yeah. So Smith was rough to, you know, Limpke didn't have any chance of winning the presidency against Roosevelt. You know, he began that

new organization, a national organization called the Committee of One Million. I thank you mentioned, and they soon declared a nationalist goal of union busting. And Smith toured the country. Smith was a great speaker toured the country, denouncing the unions, the CIO and helping to break strikes, you know, that were going on. And he actually inherited Coflin's radio network after that priest was silenced because of the licensing rules. And he continued those crusades against the internationalist Roosevelt. And then he eventually moved his operation to Detroit 1939.

And that's where Henry Ford comes in. And Smith claimed it was Ford who introduced him to anti-Semitism through the pamphlet, the International Jews, I mentioned. And Smith made friends in Congress. There was a few persons in Congress. And one was Robert Rice Reynolds. Reynolds wanted to build a wall around the country to keep out immigrants kind of like what we're doing today building the wall. But I do agree that, you know, people that are just poured into the country are not, that's not a good thing. But back then, people just didn't pour into the country. They were more

more sympathetic or obeyed the laws more or less. And they came legally versus the way they poured into David. But yeah, they one to build a wall. And Hoffman was another person, Claire Hoffman, he was part of it too, and Hoffman reassured Americans.

Many of us doubt that Germany, Germany wants more than has been asked through the ages by every people by every nation, which has found itself with territory too small. He said, Hitler and Mussolini have a date with destiny is foolish to oppose them, so why not play ball with them?

Because they know they were very sympathetic to those fascist governments, you know, for some reason. And I do not understand, you know, why in the world with all the evil that, you know, came out of Hitler's government, why they would even be sympathetic to it.

But Smith began publishing a paper here we have the Cross and the Flag, which espoused a vision of Christian nationalism in 1942, and he founded his own political party, America first, and opposed America's involvement in World War II.

And he would rebrand his party as the Christian nationalist crusade in 1947, so now we're coming into the age of what we were talking about. So yeah, he was very much a Christian nationalist and he was promoting these organizations trying to, you know, declare that America was a Christian nation and then we need to, you know, get everything out this un-Christian and have it as only the, maybe the white Christian Protestant people as the rulers of this nation.

And that's really the key, trying to make it a white Christian nation. That was the theme that was being spread by the clan. And so there are significant questions as to whether or not Gerald L. K. Smith was in the clan.

We find no evidence of it except for when he was working with Wesley Swift, they asked Swift in the newspapers whenever the clan was being rebirth. They asked him, well, who is the leader of this group?

And Swift denied it, even though it's very clear that Swift was one of the key organizers. He didn't name Roy Davis or William Upshaw, but there was one quote where he said that Gerald L. K. Smith is leading the group or leading the charge.

I can't remember his exact phrase. He didn't come out and say that, you know, Gerald L. K. Smith was the grand dragon or the supreme religious, the supreme wizard of the clan, but he did name him as, as a person who was instigating the movement.

And when I first read that, I thought, okay, well, that means that Smith is probably the imperial wizard and that his right hand man is Wesley Swift. But when I started putting all of the pieces of the timeline together, when you got Roy Davis out there, William Upshaw out there, right as the clan is being rebirth, you've got Wesley Swift, who is the head of the, he was one of the presidents, I think it was, of the Anglo-Saxon Federation.

And he brought the Anglo-Saxon... Federation down into Los Angeles right before this was birth. So there's all of these different pieces of the puzzle that are moving together. It's really hard to say, but I'm starting to form the opinion that likely it wasn't one single central figure, and that's why Swift didn't directly answer.

There were probably multiple figures that were either competing for leadership, or maybe they wanted it to be a joint collaboration of leaders, where it would be slightly different than the original clan before. And if the government were to attack it, well, who do you attack?

Which leader is the leader of the group? And that's literally what happened here, because as Swift is naming who's the leader, he can't answer. There's really no answer. And so I think it was probably a strategy, and that's why we'll never know if Davis was directly involved or indirectly involved in creating it.

All we know is that Davis was there, right as the clan was created, upshadows there, right as the clan was created. And it wasn't long after this that the connection between William Brannum and the elite in the LA Palm Springs area, it wasn't long after that until he was brought in.

And he was this no name minister from Indiana. Like how was he even connected? How did he even know his name? And it was because of this connection, this collaboration between politics, religion, Christian identity, Christian nationalism, and most importantly, Pentecostalism.

Yeah, and getting back to Smith there, he was all about Christian nationalism. So around 1942, he actually tried to run for office, which a lot of these men did try to get into office to gain political power, but maybe for the good Smith never was successful and gaining an office that put him in power.

He had a lot of power himself just by speaking around the country with the people, but definitely didn't get into office so he could, you know, affect changes in government. But he ran for the Michigan Senate seat as a Republican in 1942, and the opposition really wanted to oppose him because they didn't want him to be in office.

So they ran a judge, Homer Ferguson, the challenger, and his Smiths run, ended in failure, Ferguson won the primary by two to one, but about 100,000 people voted for Smith. And then right after that, he launched that American First Party and attempt to recapture the success of the isolationist American First Committee.

So American First Committee was all about keeping America within its own bounds and not getting engaged with foreign countries and, you know, it's all about America first. Their platform was fighting communism, deporting immigrants to create jobs for America, raising tariffs, ending all immigration, just protecting the interest of white Americans.

for the members of that party, even indoor sterilizing and deporting all Jews. I mean, so there was some pretty aberrant thoughts back in those days. And so it was during the 40s, after these runs for the Senator and Senate seat and all that, that Smith became very openly racist and anti-submitted.

People in these ideologies, they eventually get radicalized and they eventually get their brain just seems to go overdrive to make up stuff, to maybe reinforce their own beliefs. But they just began to dream up things that are just very untrue.

He began spreading conspiracy theories at Roosevelt and Truman were secretly Jews.

He also railed against racial mongalization, you know, as to high breeding doctrine. Of course, William Brannum also embraced that he didn't want people high breeding themselves. And he continued to have some influence in the nation's capital, despite all this bad rhetoric that he was spouting.

But eventually, he never found any success at the ballot box. But his efforts really helped establish those political parameters that was starting to Christian identity movement. So that's when Swift was coming into play here, you know, Smith's first efforts and that first wave there, what Smith was doing was actually creating those political parameters for what was to become that Christian identity movement and what they embraced as far as the government side of it.

So, you know, after the war, you know, in 1946 or so, Smith formed that Christian nationalist crusade and that was a federation of 60 right-wing organization, all with the purpose of fighting communism and upholding Christian Americanism.

And he was made national director of that Christian nationalist crusade, which was headquartered in Detroit. In 1947, he moved the operation to St. Louis. And then he decided to live in Tulsa. So he continued to found several other organizations that fought communism, labor, and Jews.

We talked about those. So, in 1956, Smith met his last bid for the White House on the Christian nationalist party. So he was trying to, from the 40s to the 50s, trying to build his support again.

But his support basically shrunk all the to that far right. And that's what we see today. Everybody that's in these movements are on the far, far right of the fringe. And unfortunately, that's who's embracing the candidacy today.

You see them come out of the woodwork because they think they're going to gain some political power today, you know, perhaps out of it all. But, hey, Smith basically had no success there. And so he basically retreated in his later part of his life.

He came to live in Arkansas, about 1964. And he bought a pen castle, which was a Victorian mansion, in Eureka Springs. And that's at the ozone. Mark Mountains. It had lapsed in the economic stagnation during that time, so he remodeled it, turned it into a retirement home, and then he built two projects, which were to his legacy. One was a statue, much like in Rio de Janeiro of Jesus. It's not as large as the one in that country, but called Christ of the Ozarks. And he also created a passion play. Now, the purpose of that passion play, which the people going there probably wouldn't

realize, he wanted to be sure that the hatred of the Jews was interjected into that passion play to make sure that the people that went to that play knew that it was the Jews that killed Christ. So it was his legacy. But I've even visited that area just by accident when we were out there visiting Missouri one time. And I didn't realize who this man was even and this thought it was a great thing that he did. But it's amazing. You can go around the country visiting places, but I think I learned a lesson there, places where you see

people's names. Yeah, growing up, I went to churches that had been to that exact location that you're talking about. I've seen the statue. It's crazy. When you're driving down the interstate, you're not expecting suddenly there to be this massive Jesus standing out there. But when you drive in through that area and Missouri, you're going to see this massive statue of Jesus. And he started this passion play, which is showing, you know, it's a play on the Passion of Christ. And I don't think many people realized that that was connected directly to white supremacy and Christian nationalism. In the random churches

that I attended in the Midwest, everyone went to that passion play, man. I mean, they all flocked there. And now I'm looking back at this and I'm thinking to myself, oh, that's very odd. I wonder who started the first journey because every year they would go. And I'm wondering, well, was were they Christian nationalists in the message cult? And that's why they went or did they just go because it's a, I don't, I couldn't say that it's a really even that popular of an event. It's just an event. How did they find out about it? You know,

because I lived in, I lived in Kansas at the time. And people were driving hours to go see this passion play. But to think that was connected, it's just, it's mind boggling. And like you said, the connection between Gerald O.K. Smith and Wesley Swift, which I've been mentioning, it's such a strong connection. There is no denial that Gerald O.K. Smith, who was building his platform of politics and Christian nationalism at the same time, found a receptive, receptive partner in Wesley Swift and Pentecostalism and merged those two together. So upon that merging, which happened in, you know, I think it was 1946, I believe whenever the clan was birthed

in California, you've got, Pentecostalism at the at the center of it in the forefront. He was a Pentecostal minister. Now he did leave the the four-square church before starting his own Pentecostal sect which was basically a more militarized version of it but many of the themes that he preached such as the UFOs. There were doctrines of the UFOs that was spread all throughout bladder rain. In fact, Brandham said that UFOs are gods investigating angels and he started talking about how we have a our bodies, our human vessel was made of light. Brandham called it light meters and we had a our soul or was in another galaxy. I can't remember Brandham's exact

words. Well, that's directly copied from Wesley Swift's theology. So he he created the theology that spread all throughout Christian nationalism. And like I said, there's just so many pieces of the puzzle. It's hard to know would he have been successful as successful without Gerald Ok Smith. Even though Smith wasn't popular and didn't win, you know, the presidency, though he lost by a large margin. His ideology got merged into the movement and through the work of Wesley Swift, it spread across the nation in ways that honestly had he even became president. I don't think he would have been as successful as whenever he created that union with Wesley Swift.

That's true, you know, Wesley Swift, you know, taking the political side from Smith and then Swift took the religious side and they blended them together. So so that combination is became very powerful and Swift was really the one that was ultimately responsible for getting that spread throughout. So every group you see today, the origin of that was Wesley Swift, every every group that's embracing Christian identity, it came out of what Swift developed and Swift was the one that really developed the actual doctrines. But you know, the two-seed doctrine had been around for a long time, but he actually, you know, developed the doctrines. He was the most important

proponent of the Christian identity in that post-World War II era. He founded the Christian defense league. That was his own and his own Anglo-Saxon Christian church, which became the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. And the reason he called it the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, because that was to distinguish in histiology that from Jesus to be Jewish, he didn't believe Jesus was actually Jewish, because how could, you know, the white people be the chosen people and Jesus be a Jew. So he had to, that's why he called his church that just to distinguish it and say

that we don't believe that Jesus was Jewish. But Swift had been to the Kingdom Bible College, I believe, that was founded by Philip E.J. Monson in the 1930s. And Monson stressed, I mean, that's where he learned the basic teachings of Christianity, because Monson's stressed the knee- salvation through the blood atonement, baptism of the Holy Spirit, return of Jesus in the millennium.

So you can see, even though these men embrace Christian doctrines and they sound Christian on the surface underneath, they have all this other doctrine they bring along with it. And that's exactly what I find, you know, in message churches today, you've got a mixture going on.

You've got a lot of truths of scripture, but you've also this other side of all these doctrines that are just very anti-scriptural blended together. So on the surface, it may sound very convincing and scriptural, but if you dig deep, you know, and dig into what the scripture's saying, you'll find this very opposite of scripture.

But that's how people get captured by this because the sincere people that want to follow scripture, they'll hear it and embrace it because, you know, maybe on the message side, it was because of a gifting or appearance of a gift that was there in some supernatural elements and cause people to say, well, that was of God.

And on the other side, it was to people's prejudices, it caused them to embrace the white Christian identity side. But Swift's brand of religion was based on the idea that whites were the only race that could achieve salvation ultimately.

And that sounds a lot like, you know, what we hear, you know, there's only the bride can achieve really the true salvation being in the elect group. So, you know, I don't know what he believed about other people, you know, even being saved, but the message will put the bride as being the ultimate on the throne with God and everybody else has to live underneath them and be ruled and reigned by them.

So instead of all of us being Christians together, there's there's stages of Christianity and there's elitism, you know, within that, just like there was elitism in the white people and it was race based theological, you know, perspective.

So he founded a Christian identity church and he was an active member of the Clucleus clan, you know, Wesley Swift was. He became a legal, which was a recruiter for the clan. And he also advocated for removal of Jewish influence, even on the biblical history, you know, taken it all out.

So he grounded his movement, theologically, with the goal of just fine Hitler's brand of Nazism, you know, along with the tradition of American ideas and prejudices. And he convinced his followers that his racist church was ordained by God.

So eventually they have enough scripture in the way they've interpreted scripture along with the things that are true that they're teaching, you know, blend it together. It just convinces people, you know, what they're teaching is truth.

And so you eventually embrace it. So if you're hearing Christian identity and you're a white person, eventually you have to, you have to separate that out of your mind, you know, so that, you know, you could discern what is true and what is not, because that's what captures you think, well, maybe it is true because I've got some of these scriptures that seem to align with it.

And so you really have to study it and see what the root of it is. And there's a lot of hatred enveloped in it. in that route and the way people talk, they're very exclusionary and you know there's no room for anybody else but it's only room for the white people.

So the anti-Semitism of Christianity was really an integral aspect to portray the white supremacy legitimized and commanded by the Bible even. And they wanted to supplant the true lineage from the Bible, the Jewish people and discredit Judaism, Jewish people altogether so they could be the chosen people.

So that was the whole idea and that's what the two-seat doctrine is really trying to do. So really this two-seat doctrine has found its way into the message, you know, its roots are trying to, you know, create an exclusive people, an elect people that shows us all by race, you know, it's not by a spiritual, you know, act of God, it's all based on your skin color.

And that's so opposite to what God is who created all people. And so Christian identity organized, you know, through the Nazis and the KKK and that Kingdom Bible Institute was another thing that was formed.

And so just a lot of these groups were forming to promote it. And so there was another guy that was mentioned John Lovell. He was proponent of the British, British Israel doctrine. He was director of Kingdom Track Society.

So he sent his tracks throughout the United States. There were many people promoting this ideology, but Lovell was a close associate of Gerald Smith and a religious teacher to Wesley Swift. And they shared many of the same viewpoints.

And Lovell organized conferences, you know, for the Canadian and American British Israelites in the 1940s in California. So you can see it helped spur that transition along the way to Christian identity, which was promoted by Swift.

Yeah, I think those transitions are key to understand because whenever people who are listening to the podcast from the NAR, hear the 2C doctrine of Christian identity, for example, they think, well, this is unrelated to me.

We didn't teach that in our churches. But if you look at the trail of history, the NAR exists because it came through this history. And when you look from the opposite end, you look at the Christian nationalism that Gerald OK Smith was bringing.

And then you look at the very racist sermons that were preached by Wesley Swift. You don't see an exact apples to apples comparison there either, but you can see the political themes from Gerald OK Smith going into Wesley Swift.

And if you follow this trail, what you find is that men who have an agenda will take certain aspects of what they hear from their collaborating partners. And then they'll build upon it in their own way.

So whenever Wesley Swift brings his racist, anti-Semitic, you know. Oh, his, his Christian identity doctrines to mainstream Christianity through Pentecostalism and Christian fundamentalism. He's injecting the political themes that came from Gerald O. K. Smith.

When Branum brings this into Latter-Rain, he doesn't use the words Jew and Black when he introduces the what he called Serpent Seed, quote unquote, revelation. But what he did was he took the exact trail of lineage that Wesley Swift was using through the seed of ham because Christian identity by and large believed that the children of ham created the Black races in Africa.

That was a common belief back then. And so he is actually saying the same exact thing, but he's watered it down. So if a person who is unfamiliar with that Christian identity loaded language, he worked to hear Branum sermon.

They said, well, that's not a racist sermon, yet he's teaching the same thing the racist are teaching. And then you carried that forward into the NAR. Well, they've wiped all of the racism, the two seed, et cetera, completely out.

But they maintained the good Christians and bad Christians theme that Branum had developed by taking the racism out. So you see this clear progression that goes directly from Christian nationalism through Christian identity, through Pentecostalism, into Latter-Rain, Carismania, and then into the NAR.

Yeah, so it's just like that. It was like the influence of Smith and Swift that we see today, came, started all this. Everything you're seeing today is just a manifestation of the influence of those two people.

It all started through their ideas and then promoting these ideas. And then after they died off, many others came and picked up the torch and carried it on. And they started churches and organizations.

And so we see, and most of them are on the far, far right. But the danger of these extreme doctrines and exclusive doctrines, we've seen that in not only the political side, but the religious side, you get men raised up, you've got apostles' prophets or you got men that claim to be, they're speaking for God and they carry their followers off into death.

But there's a danger in that. And these exclusive doctrines, some take it to the very extreme end. And some people are very prone to be radicalized and they act on their own. So in a way, these organizations begin, but it causes some to act on their own, like the recent shooter we saw that tried to take out one of the candidates, Trump.

And that's what, those ideologies really divide the nation. So they're really not united the nation. They're really dividing the nation. And they're very destructive to the nation's existence, even. So it's good that we're talking about this, but I think America is a divided country currently and it's hard to estimate how many are on either side, maybe right now.

and how many are things that promote the free country's unity. But I do hope common sense will prevail in the end. I hope these podcasts will be helpful to get people to thinking and discussing these issues because I think they're very important to us.

I agree. They're extremely important and we're only scratching the surface of the history that we could give with this one episode. These two figures are so complex and they remained influential well into the 60s. So it's not like there's this epicenter in the 40s and then that history dies out. They were continuing to influence Laterane through the rest of their lives, which we'll get into as we get deeper into this episode. But Magno mistake Christian identity had a strong influence over Pentecostalism and Laterane and the militant themes, even though you know, Wesley Swift was very militant in the way that he preached and that's why he created

the extremism. Even though they're not talking about weapons and such in the NAR, they are talking about dominionism and the kingdom theology. And I think the most important thing that you just said is that the statements made during sermons when people are sitting in your congregations and they've shut off all critical thought, your words have consequences. So whenever you make a statement that can be taken by a person who's mentally unstable to lead them into extremism, it will. That's what happens whenever you make a statement that has negative consequences.

So if you get nothing else from this episode, realize that the background of why these ministers in the NAR are saying these things is a very, very sinister background, a sinister history which we're scratching the surface and we'll get into in the next episode even more. So if you enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For more information about Roy Davis and William Branum, you can read the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician. And for more information

about the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.