Weaponized Religion: CFNI From Identity to NAR

Hello and welcome to another episode how 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 and friend, John McKinnon, the author of the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician. And together we're discussing weaponized religion, how Christian identity fused with early Christian fundamentalism and politics to form the foundation for the new apostolic reformation. John today's episode is critical whenever you think about the NAR and its creation. It's a name that when people think of the NAR

they don't really think of this guy but he really was the spine of the body that was created in the new apostolic reformation. And we talked about we've been building up to what I call the epicenter of all of this which was in the 40s, 1940s. And this guy was critical to the formation of what was coming out of Los Angeles. We're talking about Gordon Lindsay which Charles and I covered to some degree. And we talked Charles and I talked about his connection to British Israelism. But I was unaware and Charles was also at the time that Gordon

Lindsay had joined into the Christian identity movement and was speaking as they had the chief speaker at some of the conventions and it was at the time in which the Christian identity movement became very anti-Semitic and was developing racist themes. Not to say that Gordon Lindsay was racist or anti-Semitic, we don't know other than what little bit we can gleam from his publications during this period of time. Interestingly which have all been removed. You can't find a lot of this stuff that he's teaching back then because they deny all evidence and at least in the communications I have had

with Christ for the nations indirectly through other people. So Gordon Lindsay founded Christ for the nations but before that he was the leader of the voice of healing revivals and this was the revival that spearheaded William Branham and launched, Branham actually launched the voice of healing publication and some way or another handed over the management of that to Gordon Lindsay.

Brannum was the original publisher, and Lindsey became the publisher, and that change occurred right about the time that Laterane just became so incredibly large and fast-moving throughout the United States and Canada. Likely what happened is that Brannum was just simply too busy, he was on the road all the time.

But anyway, I'm excited for today because we're going to revisit Gordon Lindsey, the founder of Christ for the Nations, the backbone for what developed many charismatic movements and eventually the NAR. And we're going to evaluate it from the Christian identity standpoint.

Yeah, John. This podcast is going to be really good today. It's going to be fun to do. I did hear your podcast with Charles on Gordon Lindsey, and I think you'll cover it a good bit of ground there.

Yeah, Gordon Lindsey is a good character to focus on, because like you said, he's probably the start of this movement, he had a lot to do with it. He was very integrated within the movement that eventually became the NAR, and what's become of that.

But his organization eventually became a training ground to produce ministries. And he was the big promoter of all these ministries back in the 40s, and so he was doing what he did best. He organized these training grounds and had teaching them how to do the prophetic or gifts of healing and to develop their ministries of the supernatural.

And so that's what they did. He had the big names there. He had William Brownham there, maybe Paul Cain, and others who were the big names in the healing revival, and they were probably the best teachers of what they were doing.

So he would have those. He was very cornerstone from what they do today, even out on the West Coast teaching prophetic gifts and things to people in having these training sessions is going on today.

But Gordon was the start of all that, or he was one of the ones that did start that type of ministry to train people, but he believes some very strange doctrines will find that he was early on.

He was associated with groups that were less than accepted nowadays, thank goodness. But he believes some very strange doctrines about UFOs and aliens and maybe the pyramids, but that's just what came out of the Christian identity groups.

And his organization really looks to maybe scrub that early history because they're probably embarrassed by it, of course, and they don't want it to be made public. So you have to really dig deep to find things, but you can find it in the, of course, the newspapers published it and they showed where he was speaker at these events and organized these events.

And so the history is there, but it's probably not going to be found within his own organization's history. you looking at their revolved archives, sitting away. But I'm looking forward to today's podcast. We got a lot to cover, focus on Gordon Lindsay and his ministry, early associations with the British Israel and Christian identity groups, and even the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America.

And that, as I was looking at that organization, it was very widespread all over the United States. And I even think it's still an existence today, not in the force that it was back then in the 40s in the 1930s.

But we're going to learn a lot about Gordon today, and I think his history is going to be interesting to our listeners. Absolutely. And Gordon Lindsay's wife, Frida Lindsay, she is key in all of this as well.

She was trained in what is it called the Life Bible College, I think it is of the Angulous Temple. And Gordon Lindsay and Frida both were ministers in the four-square gospel church, the group of Amy Simple McPherson.

And the reason that it's tied to this epicenter, we talked previously about Gerald Burton Winrod, who is one of the most infamous people in the Christian identity movement. Winrod was working later with Charles Fuller and Paul Raider, various fundamentalist groups during the spread of the Christian identity movement.

He was key in spreading the very anti-Semitic protocols of the learned elders of Zion, which we've mentioned, and it was literally, it was his platform. He believed that the Jews were taking over, they were invading America, they were mixing with communism to plot to overturn world governments for global domination.

And many men of that era believed it, men and women, I should say. And honestly, looking back, there's no historical evidence that Gordon Lindsay fell into that camp. However, we have a series of events that suggests that this happened.

Because Gerald Burton Winrod, as we mentioned, spoke in the Angulous Temple and heavily influenced Wesley Swift, that's documented pretty well. Swift became one of the key figures in the Christian identity movement, and that influence came at the time in which Gordon Lindsay was very, very high up in that organization.

He eventually started his own church with Frieda, and they, I think he became something called field manager or something. So he was the head of a district up north, very close to adjacent to the North Battleford district, where the Sharon Orphanage would host what became the Laterane Revival and Launch Laterane Movement.

He was in that group, and the heads of the Sharon Orphanage were out of the four-square church. And I started it, so there's deep connections and deep ties to all of this. But it looks very much if you line everything up chronologically.

It looks very much like whatever Gerald Burton-Winrod brought to the Angeles Temple started a strategy of sorts because not long after this, we start seeing all of the figures come out of the Angeles Temple and they're starting new organizations, but they're still tied to the same type of framework doctrinally and they're deeply tied to the Christian identity organizations.

And as I mentioned, we've got Gordon Lindsay who's speaking at conferences for the Christian identity movement, the Anglo-Saxon Federation and others. So it's all tied, it all comes back to this epicenter that's happening for whatever reason when the clan is re-bursed in California and you've got the Christian identity movement that's gaining a strong foothold in California.

All of this ties together and we don't have all of the pieces of the puzzle, but we have enough to see that it did impact Gordon Lindsay's life and I think we can very solidly say that.

Yeah, and I think that we'll realize when we study Gordon Lindsay, he was very easy to influence. I think he could get under the spell of one doctrine and another pretty easily. Because I think he was really searching for truth.

I think he was sincere in his search for what is truth. And I'm sure he rubbed shoulders with those people that you mentioned like Wesley Swift because Wesley Swift was very popular out there in the time and probably studied the Christian identity doctrine very closely what he was hearing.

And in the early days, as he was developing his views and beliefs that evolved over time, I think we'll see an evolution over time of Gordon Lindsay. But he obviously sided with those groups at one time when they were popular because he was right up there in the West Coast and those areas in Oregon where they were promoting all that doctrine up there.

But Lindsay to start with, you know, he was literally born out of the and grew up in the atmosphere of the supernatural ministries because he was born in John Dalley's commune there and he actually came across Charles Parham and a ministry actually one he was saved in while Charles Parham was preaching.

And early Pentecostals, you know, he was with them. So he experienced a lot of that early on and that's where he developed a lot of his beliefs. And then when he became a minister, he minister among Christian identity groups for a long period of time.

So it's clear why he ministered with them but I believe over time he migrated away from them as he realized they were not gonna be in the mainstream and so he probably migrated away from them as we'll see.

But he still had that influence. He still had that background. So it's no surprise that he was captivated by William Brown's ministry when it came along because he... was pastoring a church at the time, and then when William Brannum was starting to be known in the United States, he was able to see him or hear about him and saw him for himself.

And so he left everything after he saw that supernatural ministry, or what he thought was supernatural, and he left everything just to support that, as we'll see. But Lindsay probably saw his ministry as his ticket to security, financially, and his fame, because here he was a minister of pastoring a church, and he just left the people pretty much high.

I'm sure he turned it over to another minister, or they had to select a minister. But he was truly more of a promoter. He was more of after the supernatural than he was really pastoring a group of people.

But he eventually migrated away from Brannum, as well, and began openly associating and preaching, after preaching Christian identity, because Brannum, of course, preached doctrines that were very heavily into Christian identity. So he was born in 1906, about the time of the Zuzestreet Revival, and he was a Revivalist preacher himself.

That's how he got his early start, even with a tent. And of course, I said, born in John Alexander's commune there. But shortly before Dowie's death, that city went bankrupt, and his family moved to Dale Idaho, where his father took a teaching job at a local high school.

And then after that, they moved near Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Beaver Town, high school, he enjoyed debate teams, science, and math. So there's one thing about Gordon. He was very much interested in science, and astronomy, and math, and so the analytical mind that he had.

That's probably why he latched on to the UFO phenomena, and things like that, trying to explain it. He also put things in his publications in Voice of Helan, showing the people how he figured out the dates.

So he can see with his mathematical mind, he was very much interested in date setting, and the weird things that were going on at the time of the phenomenon that people couldn't explain. He thought he had an explanation for him.

But he wasn't interested in church at the time, but he really loved engineering, and astronomy, math, and science. So that's what he started out with. He was asked to attend a revival at the Church of John G. Lake, and we know John G.

Lake came out of Dauy's organization as well. And then Charles Fox Parham was the one that was preaching when he became a Christian, and he saw many supernatural things at those meetings, and that's his first start as a Christian.

And not long after that, he enters the ministry, and he actually gets, it was 18 years old, one year after his conversion, he did feel the call to preach. But we'll go into that in a few minutes about how he got started preaching.

Right. And the figures that you're mentioning, John Alexander Dauy, John Lake, the different cults that he's involved with plays a key role, I believe, in what was created. Because if you look at the timeline, as he is...

is learning to become a minister. He's being trained by some outright scoundrels. I mean, I think we've fully covered John G. Lake and his antics at this point. But John G. Lake was a paramite in the camp of Dauy.

As Dauy was losing his mental faculties, Parham tried to take over Dauy's multi-million dollar empire by claiming to be another Elijah prophet. And we've covered the series of events that happen there pretty well.

The murders, the paramite murders that are called. And so Gordon Lindsay's parents were in the Parhamite sect, they're in Zion City. And whenever all of this happened and everything just kind of dissolved, they moved away.

Well, Gordon Lindsay connects again with John G. Lake. He was very, very young, I think, in Zion City, as I understand the timeline. But he connects with these paramite guys. He's connecting directly to Charles Fox Parham.

He's holding revivals with John G. Lake. And whenever he gets connected to Angela's temple, many of these characters are still connected to the Pentecostal circles through Amy Simple-Makpherson's Church. So if you look at the way the NAR network works today, where you've got all of these apostolic groups that are all connected through the NAR network, it seems as though the Angela's temple was an early prototype for all of this.

She was, her group was connecting to all of these different various movements. And interestingly, was connected directly to the Christian identity through leaders, such as Gerald Burton, Winrod, and others. And if you look at the timeline, the CFNI in exchange of emails that I've had with CFNI and others, they deny the British Israelism and the Christian identity connections to Gordon Lindsay.

But if you go to the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, this group, it's a Pentecostal group archive, if you will, that they store records of Pentecostalism. And they're very open and transparent. I've had a lot of huge discoveries out of this place.

And if you pull up their page on the records of author by Gordon Lindsay, you're going to find that he published a, he authored a series of articles, not just one, but multiple for the Christian identity, Anglo-Saxon Christian world movement.

And they've got them listed right here on their, you know, on their Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center page. But this is in 1940. And that's approximately the time, maybe a little bit shortly after the time in which...

He is speaking at Christian identity conferences, and 1940 was just two years after Gerald Winrod came to Angela's Temple. So again, you see the trail of events, Gerald Burton Winrod comes to Angela's in 1938.

Two years later, you've got Gordon Lindsay, who's publishing in Christian identity newsletters, and some of the articles. They have it listed, I think, as British Israel, if you do keyword searches, or Anglo-Israelism, I think they call it.

But the groups in which he's publishing for at this period of time, according to their timelines, has shifted into Christian identity, the more anti-Semitic version. So you've got the leader of anti-Semitism in the United States, Gerald Burton Winrod, who's coming to Angela's, and then two years later, Gordon Lindsay, it looks very much like he became a disciple of Gerald Burton Winrod in the same way that Wesley Swift became a disciple.

So out of all of that is birthed eventually, the Laterane movement, CFNI, which literally that was the backbone of what created the charismatic movement. So you've got all of these trails that come back to this epicenter in time, where Gerald Burton Winrod is the key to unlocking all of these doors.

Yeah, I think you said that very well. You see all the trails that come back to that, and Gordon came out of that, and so that was said very well. And Gordon, he got his start in ministry, he bought a tent from John G. Lake, and a couple of his friends that he had, they went on the gospel trail, carrying their tent around, place to place.

But he was conducting meetings in the assembly of God's churches and British Israelite churches in other Pentecostal groups. And eventually, he became sick, he had a tomeign poisoning, and at that time, he stayed in Lake's home, John G. Lake's home at the time, and he studied his sermons, he tried to read the Bible and all to help his faith for his healing.

So he just said if he could just believe, if he would dare to accept it, he would have the scriptures in Mark 11, 22, what things you desire when you pray, believe you receive them.

He hung on to that scripture and really believed for his healing. But he got over that in 1932, by that time he had to conduct at 150 meetings or more. And in one meeting during that time, he had only one convert in one of the meetings he conducted, and it was a girl named Frida.

So that was where he met his wife, she was one of the converts of his meeting. Five years later, they were married and moved to California. So there he is, right there in California, in San Fernando, California, right near Los Angeles and, you know, Amy Simple, Farrison's Temple and Barton-Winrod, so you know, he was influenced by that because he was already preaching in British Israel churches.

And then he began to promote British Israelism. Christian identity. In 1938, he was appointed for Field Extension work for Amy Simple McFarrison and Gerald Burton-Winrod and had also been given the pulpit of McFarrison at the time because she was absent for a period of time. And he also has connections to George Holton and Wesley Swift, as we said. But the Anglo-Saxon Christian World Federation was organized in 1938. In 1940, his involvement there, they organized a large convention in 1940 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he was responsible for that. And the speakers in that time included

Clem Davies, whom we mentioned that tour with Avak Hagopia in the while back. And Clem Davies was a KKK recruiter, promoter of the early version of Christian identity. And then when World War 2 broke out, Lindsay accepted the call to become a pastor in early 1940. So, the history of that British Israel doctrine and United States in the movements that came along with that, they're a lot different than the UK because it became very racist in America.

Whereas the UK just, they didn't focus on racism so much, but it was a racist doctrine. So, beneath the Christian identity umbrella there, you've got the Lord's Covenant Church that was formed in Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, Aryan Nations, the Phineas priesthood, Church of Jesus Christ Christian, and Anglo-Saxon Federation was one of the longest lived one. And as we might not have mentioned yet, but Howard Rand was the one that was responsible for starting that.

And we mentioned that how Rand was associated with Cameron, with the Dearborn Independent, and Protocols of Zion, and so forth. But Aryan Nations was established later on in 1970. So, these groups kept continuing to be formed out of this one organization here in 1940.

Swift was the one that popularized the two-seat theory, and that was eventually picked up by Brandon. So, I know Gordon was very much, and he was knowledgeable of all these doctrines that Brandon eventually preached, and when he eventually joined him. So, it was widespread.

Anglo-Saxon Federation was widespread all over America. They were having meetings from coast to coast, and they were actually sympathetic to Hitler, and they actually made the Bible fit their theory of the white people being the 10 lost tribes, fulfillment of Bible prophecy. So, that was what they were all about. But Gordon Lindsay spoke on the US and Britain in prophecy, and was during those Christian identity meetings, he was involved with the Forest Squares Church and preached within those circles. And Forest Square, of course, was sympathetic to Christian identity and the Klan in the 1920s and 30s also. But there's many things to be said about that.

We'll skip over some of that, but all this British activity, British Israel activity was occuring in Oregon. At the time, Gordon Lindsay was coming of his own in his own ministry. So that's that's where he became easily influenced. And the Christian identity was starting to be developed and introduced at Serpent Seed Doctrine. But Lindsay, over time, I think he, because I don't think he would totally believe what Brian was preaching in 1958, was Serpent Seed Doctrine. You never see him latch on to that. Over time, I think he evolved out of that and maybe distance himself from it because it was very unpopular, of course, in the

Pentecostal circles. You know, everything that you've just said has wasted so many hours of of my time trying to research and find the answers. And I don't think you'll ever find them. That's the hard part of this. Because if you, all the names that you've mentioned, you know, Clim Davies and these others, they're all starting what looks to be the rebirth of the California Ku Klux Klan. But there's no clear evidence of it. The only evidence that we see very clearly is that Wesley Swift was spearheading the revival of the Klan. Not long after Roy Davis goes out to,

you know, his orphanage scheme that he had out there. When all of this epicenter is happening, there is not long after this the rebirth of the California Klan, which is interesting. But Clim Davies, obviously a Klan guy, obviously a Christian identity guy. He's speaking in the same conferences as Gordon Lindsay. And we've seen, I think we've covered it in this one. It's either this podcast or the one I do with Charles that Amy Simple McPherson, her church, after her big kidnapping scandal, it looks very much like the Klan came to her aid and she was, she met with

the leaders of the Klan not not long before the, you know, the Klan starts helping her escape, her criminal suit, et cetera. So there's all these ties, but the problem is at that point in time, there is no clear connection between any of them and the Klan other than what we see in the newspapers, such as McPherson meeting with them, et cetera. But even Roy Davis, when he goes out and he sets up his orphanage scheme, there's no clear evidence from any of the newspapers or public records that he is rebirthing the Klan. And we know he is because he later becomes the Imperial Wizard.

At that point in time, the Klan had largely gone underground. And you have a few key figures, like Clim Davies, who is openly broadcasting the fact that he's in the Klan. But for the most part in California, that's not the case. They've gone underground and you don't really know which organizations are Klan and which are not, unless you look at the key figures in them. And yet, they all seem to come back to connections to the Angela's Temple, which is very interesting for me.

So I see, like you said, I see Gordon Lindsay heavily influenced by all of this, He's working with the same people. At minimum, he did not denounce them in part ways. So if these people are anti-Semitic and they're preaching to seed racist doctrines, which they were, and Gordon Lindsay is still speaking in their conferences, I have to believe that he was aligned with them or he would not have spoke in their conferences.

But then, like you said, you get closer to the 1950s and 1958. There is a clear separation of ways. And so, when I initially come across this, I thought, well, Gordon Lindsay must, he must have just denounced it like the rest of them.

But I came to understand, and this is my opinion, he's not here to ask him, he's dead. But my opinion is that he was, he separated more for an opportunist standpoint than anything. Because there is clear evidence that he and Brannum were having difficulty working with each other well back into the, you know, like 1953, long before the Serpent Seed.

So there was something, before William Brannum went public with his Serpent Seed, there was something else causing a division between these two guys. And Charles and I did cover this pretty well. There's multiple times in which Gordon Lindsay snubs Brannum and, you know, you've got the battle between Gordon Lindsay and the voice of healing and Joseph Matson-Bose, the hero of the faith.

And then it builds up into this other weird epicenter. You've got Jim Jones, as soon as Gordon Lindsay is parting ways or on his way out, Jim Jones is stepping up to be a leader in Brannum's sect of the message through Joseph Matson-Bose and others.

And not long after this rift between, Brannum says it was 300 ministers. I don't know the actual number, but they all came, rose up against him over the Serpent Seed doctrine. Brannum preaches Serpent Seed.

Everybody starts sending death prophecies against Brannum. And it looked like the movement largely wanted to disconnect from Brannum. And that's the point in time in which Gordon Lindsay does. And so Gordon Lindsay, in 1958, I think it's March, it may be slightly before, but this is immediately after the death curses are placed on Brannum, voice of healing changes its name to worldwide revival.

So if you think of the NAR and the worldwide revival themes that are in the NAR, this was the birth of it. And he was spawning off new ministers that many of them were what developed into the charismatic movement.

But the name was changed and it didn't do very well because Brannum's name wasn't in it. So it later changed back to the voice of healing. So we see this weird parting of ways, but then he comes back and Brannum comes back and towards the end...

of his life, I think Charles and I covered this recently, but you've got Gordon Lindsay publishing the Elijah doctrines right at Branham's death. It looks like it was an opportunist separation to me more than something having to do with Christian identity.

I don't know that Gordon Lindsay fully separated in his mind how wrong that doctrine was versus how much money could be made off of not having 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?

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On behalf of William-Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I think there's underlying all of this ministry. There's probably still that in the back of his mind, and he probably never let go of it totally once he was exposed to it.

That's very likely they just didn't, they weren't very public about it, but it's like you said there, they must have some unwritten rule amongst themselves or they must have some gentleman's agreement to never denounce each other or other ministries publicly.

Even though they bitterly disagree with them, they never will state that or either there's secretly still siding with them like Gordon may have, because they never denounce each other. Just like Brannham and Davis, no matter what Davis did from the pulpit, Brannham never said, well, I don't associate with Davis anymore because of this with Hat.

It was always a very positive thing all the way up to the end. But after the mid-1950s, it appears like Gordon wasn't actively involved in the calls of Christian identity to make his priority, of course, and he eventually shifted and became totally interested in the miracles, the healing, the sick, and ministry because I guess he knew that's where the money was.

He was always flowing to where the most money could be made there. He was exposed to a lot of things in the circles of British-Israelism, Christian identity, that he eventually carried over into this in his later ministry, which was a secret pyramids, astrology, and he was very interested in those things, but he was, and this may have been why he lashed on the ideas, more weird stuff like focus on UFOs and men from other worlds, numerology and pyramidism. Leaders within those groups, thought they knew how to decode the pyramid. There's even been books written on how they could use the pyramid

to decode the times by means of the numerology and the steps in the pyramid and the different chambers and what it all meant. And so Gordon published a lot of that in his voice of healing publications. You know, Brandon also was in on that, he believed in what British Israelism and Christian identity believed about the pyramids. And he went so far as to say the pyramids was one Bible that God wrote through man, by man building it, he wrote a Bible. And he was emphatic about that all his life. That was one of the Bibles as well

as astrology, how the planets are lining up. So if true, if that's true, then I can see why the men were trying to decode the secrets, if they really believe that. And I'm surprised we didn't hear more about that from from Brandon's ministry. But you know, a strange, even though here, Brandon was supposed to be the prophet and saying, well, the stars is a Bible and the and the pyramids of Bible, I don't see many ministers of the message today trying to decode the pyramid. Obviously, they must not believe or they must not think that it's really a Bible,

because I think if they did, they would be trying to teach their flock, why wouldn't they be trying to teach their flock about the pyramids? So it looks like they don't believe a lot of that nowadays. And there's not much study on the subject of astrology and so forth. And not much has mentioned about that. But but, but Brandon was very vocal about that many, many times. I don't know how many times he mentioned it, but it was over and over. So Gordon tried to integrate those strange belief, the esoteric into what God was doing in this revival and preparing people

for the end of days. That's why it's always spun is where at the end of days and all these things mean something from the pyramids to the UFOs. And his interest interest in science and astronomy probably carried over in the ministry. Why was doing all that? He actually thought he had found the divine pattern at one time on the times of wars and British and Israel's history. So in 1940, and this was the time he was very connected with those circles, he wrote a book called Blue Prince of God. And that was an interpretation of scriptures and a chord with mathematical science.

So there he is again writing from his background in his interest in science. But the writers of the newspaper articles were supportive of Lindsay in this effort and even said he was highly accurate in his predictions. And it's just a promotion for his book. But this is an example of a man's predictions of prophetic events can be woven into the present time. I mean, he was obviously wrong because a book written back then just kind of faded out of history. Nobody's saying that's that's a very true book today. But it just goes to show you can do just about anything.

you want and weave it into the, you can make a prophetic announcement and weave it into the fabric of what's happening today, just like in Brannum's case, he said he made all these prophecies back in 1933. And now today we're even weaving those into the election cycle we see, you know, the end of the world. We're still hanging on to those prophecies and interpreting the world through those prophecies when they may not have been even prophecies at all because we see how they changed so much over time. It's the same way here. We get this view of the world and then we have

cognitive, cognitive, cognitive, dissonance kicks in and then we just begin to modify our beliefs as things happen and evolve. And it's done over and over again, you know, you take all the prophecies that were supposed to come to pass. If they don't come to pass, people will find an explanation and just roll with it and they won't wake up and realize that what's been spoken is not, this is very false. It's very similar to nostradomuses, writings and others, you know, people take the quantrains that he wrote and try to weave them into all that's happened in history. And you can do

that if you allow yourself to do it, you can take anything just about it and weave it into a story that fits, you know, your worldview. So you have to be very careful with those things, you know, you know, especially when a prophet's proven to speak false prophecy, you don't want to be taking what he said as the gospel truth and try to weave it into your worldview because you're definitely going to come out wrong. And I think that's what's happening, definitely what's happening today over and over again and say in the NAR with people being prophesied over and and we see the

ministries has been prophesied over and then they begin to fall apart, you know, it's just, it's just what happens. So the Christians and the nation were becoming aware of the end times, we've had two world wars happen here and that short span of time won't war one and two and then eventually the Korean War. So they were very interested in what was happening in Israel, you know, 1948 was approaching and Israel was becoming a nation then. So that's about the time that Lindsay and Brandon connected. So we'll we'll begin to see what happened through their ministries here

shortly. Yeah, and you mentioned the UFO doctrines that Gordon Lindsay had. For me, that's key to understanding and unlocking the Christian identity themes are flowing to the ministry because again, Gordon Lindsay came out of Angela's temple influenced by Gerald Burton-Winrod. He's preaching UFO doctrines. You've got Wesley Swift, came out of Angela's temple, heavily influenced by a Winrod. He's preaching UFO doctrines. And Steve Montgomery and I have covered this pretty well in our converging apostasy podcast. But the esoteric themes that Steve calls the converging apostasy, where you've got all of these mysticism and gnosticism and all of these things.

that aren't Christian, that are embedding itself into the Christian religion, some of these came in through the Christian identity movement, and the UFO is one of the more significant ones, because the Christian identity movement had this doctrine in which you had your physical bodies here on earth, but you had a spiritual component that was out and outer space.

As time got closer to the end, the heavenly bodies were supposed to be coming back in alignment with the earthly bodies. It's a weird doctrine, and not something that I can even sum up in a paragraph. There's a lot of complexity to it, because it was intended to confuse the people such that they could never understand it. But Brannum teaches this, Lindsey teaches this, and if you go to the CFNI website, which I just did right now to make sure that it wasn't that they haven't changed it, but you can go to books by Gordon Lindsey, and you're

not going to find any of his Christian identity or UFO doctrine books on their website, completely erased from his history. But if you go to northwest.edu, you can find books such as the 1966 book, The Mystery of the Flying Saucers, and he's making the argument that these signs that you see, he calls them signs in the sky, these flying saucers, they're not something that can be tangibly explained, and so therefore he ties it to exactly like Swift does. The angelic beings like from the book of Ena, he ties it to this kind of thing. So he is preaching

Wesley Swift's doctrine in 1966. This is the year after William Brannum died, and he's carrying the torch forward, because Brannum taught very similar things to what you find in this book. But again, you go to the CFNI website, you're not going to find any reference to this stuff. They have completely whitewashed it. And whenever I see this kind of thing happening, whenever groups are not transparent and they deny their own history, it is one of the strong marks towards a destructive cult, because that is what a destructive cult does. It erases its history and pretends it never happened. And like I said, in the correspondence

that I have been involved with through other people talking to CFNI, they outright deny that it happened. And yet we've got the archives, and you can go even online, you can just do online searches, and you can find that what they're saying isn't quite true.

Yeah, John, I agree with you. Definitely on those points there. So by the time Lindsay and Brannum connected together, he ran into Brannum's ministry through the efforts of Jack Moore, Jack Moore introduced William Brannum to Lindsay in 1947.

Gordon Lindsay was well groomed for what he was going to encounter here and what he was going to get into and he was going to go big time in the nation and just be right there in the midst of all that was going on with the healing revivals.

But William Brannum was the start and you know more invited you know more had heard of Brannum's meetings in Arkansas inviting to minister in Shreveport and then Jack contacted Lindsay to introduce him to Brannum at that time and Lindsay took a leave of absence from his church and a tour with Brannum and soon resigned from his own ministry as we mentioned before and they established voice of healing in 1948 and Lindsay gradually took it over fully because you know Brannum left the field for a time but Lindsay just had all these ministers ministries flooding into his organization and he was the big promoter of all of them

and just popularized many ministries at the time you know like Orr Roberts, A.A. Allen and just dozens of others you know well you can look at them look them up. But Gordon's and his wife just left all they had built up and their ministry to that point and put all their efforts into one person and the voice of healing magazine talks about the meetings going on for three years so in 1949 the magazine mentions that so that would put it at about 1946 even way back then but after that heavy load and you know Brannum

will stay there hours and hours trying to pray for everybody he get overworked and left the field and you know I'm really glad for Freda's candid statements in her diary because that's where you find some of the inside information about what happened there and I'm glad we have those comments because she said he basically left him high and dry and just said it's your your ministry you know you started it and it's your baby now so that's kind of how she put it is that they didn't know what to do and they were you know seeking

God for what's their next thing but they eventually survived it because they put all their eggs in one basket but they eventually survived it fortunately because of all the other ministries that were being formed mostly mostly taking inspiration for how Brannum was conducting his ministry and they believe they could do the same and obviously they did many very much like what Brannum was doing and they were all successful in promoting the healing you know message so the revival of that time Gordon just latched on to him and began to promote him and there was no shortage back in those days William Freeman was

one he was holding just small meetings and small churches and Lindsay visited one of his campaigns and just felt it was a will of God to team up with him so he teamed up with different ministers he would he would key in on one minister basically and work with him if he was going to work with a particular ministry so he worked with Freeman and there's others throughout the years you'll see in the newspapers you know that he actually would focus in on and just work with them exclusively whilst still promoting everything in his voice of healing magazine.

But it's interesting in 1949, you know, this was five years after Upshall and Davis's disaster in California and the Usher Davis Foundation. And Upshall was still in the picture. He made his way into the voice of healing, writing a couple of articles, and you know, Gordon actually allowed it.

And I'm sure Gordon knew the history there, and I'm sure Gordon knew Roy Davis, and knew of Upshall and his involvement and scandal out there. But that's just a very short time after that.

Davis has given a large space to writing in his article in 1950, even. We make an exam of that very closely. It's what was said in that sometime in the future. But Davis is back in Texas by this time in his work and Lindsay's inclusion of that.

And what Davis said in that article says that he was still associating with the British Israel Christian identity circles because that was heavily what Davis was involved with. So he was still allowing that in his publication.

So he still has some connections there. The voice of healing in 1949 had grown nearly 30,000 subscriptions per month. And it was clearly the voice of the healing movement. It was definitely spreading the message that they were preaching there.

So they did promote Brannum heavily in the early days, but then they began promoting other ministries as well. FF Bosworth was in the picture. Raymond Richie, O'ill Jaggers, Kale Jackson, just many, many of those famous ministers back in those days.

The following year, there was the convention that they had met in Kansas City. And every revivalist in the nation was there. William Brannum was not, and Oral Roberts was not. That was kind of interesting, but Lindsey exposed several points of danger and tension in the movement that was gathering and then proposed, proposed guidelines for the future.

So already by 1949, and so when they organized that convention, they were having tensions building in the movement. Part of it was over doctrine. And they said, we're just going to promote unity among the brethren.

We're not going to be promoting doctrine. And so that was partly the reasons for some of the divisions that were occurring. Probably some of the other things was maybe the Christian identity circles was creeping in and becoming a part of the broader movement.

And maybe they wanted to stay out, you know, not that be the dominant theme. So he was trying his best to deal with those issues. And in an article announced, the purpose plan and policy of voice and healing, he denounced the freelancers who violently and indiscriminately attacked the organization in general, he heard of urged avoidance of novel, prophetic interpretations, so dogmatic doctrinal assertion, sectarian pre-delections and theological hair splitting.

So already they were having a little trouble, you know, some cells and trying to agree with one another as this movement made headway, then the voice of healing convention was just a loose association in 1950 of all the healing revivalists and officially they held a voice of healing and what they call family meetings at the convention at the same time.

They wanted to prove the world that those associated with the voice of healing had no intention to organize another movement, they just wanted to remain a loosely associated convention. Through the decade, the conventions were showcasing healing, revivalism, and there were workshops.

This is what began, I think Lindsay starred in his habitual formation of Christ for the Nations and the trainings sessions that he had because they had workshops on the problems of healing evangelists, typical topics like prayer and fasting, preparation for a campaign, the follow-up work that's necessary after the campaign, the system of prayer cards, for the prayer tent and the healing line, and delicate issue of finances.

That began to grow from those seeds that he was teaching them how to run your program basically, and then the association grew in importance in the 1950s and was headed by all Roberts or Brandham through those years, and every new revivalist that came on the scene wanted to learn from this because that was the start of it, they wanted to learn the techniques they needed to be successful on the field, so that's how he got his early start there and forming these training sessions which became his organization Christ for the Nation eventually.

Right, and those training sessions and everything that you've discussed is key to understanding how this evolved into the charismatic movement and eventually the NAR. A lot of people do not give Gordon Lindsay the proper credit for the creation of the NAR because he, from the surface, it looks like he is separated from extremism, but you go back to some of the more extremist doctrines that were coming out of leaders that were being chastised.

You've got William Brandham and he's teaching the openly the Christian identity to see doctrine and you have others with the manifest suds of God, etc. And they develop into some very extremist cults and Gordon Lindsay has separated himself from them and you can clearly tell by reading through his magazine, the voice of healing, that he's making a shift away from the extremists.

However, at the same time, the core doctrines by the extremists seem to have remained in his ministry, which is odd when you think about it. In our podcast that we do on William Freeman, Chino Ross and I talk a good bit about the man-child doctrine, which was basically, it was a rebranding of the manifested suds of God.

doctrine. And we've also discussed this in the podcast that I'm doing with Steve McCummary, the converging apostasy, how the esoteric themes entered into the revival as the manchild doctrine. And this began the birth of the early form of spiritual warfare that the NAR has adopted.

When 1961, here's another book, and I searched it also on the website just now, make sure that CFNI isn't publishing this, but I could not find their reference to Gordon Lindsey publishing the book, The Sun Closed Woman and the Manchild, which is essentially his rebranding of the manifest sons of God doctrine. This is the notorious Christian identity doctrine that entered into the latter reigns, the latter reign revivals. And William Brannum took this to far extremes. I think I've covered it very thoroughly that this is what really radicalized Jim Jones. The manifested sons of God doctrine was not only heretical, but very dangerous in

the wrong hands, and we see what happened with Jones. Gordon Lindsey is still working with all these revivalists. And like you just said, he's holding these seminars where he is training revivalists. So he is bringing Christian identity themes into the training. And Gordon Lindsey continues to train these guys even after William Brannum's death. Why CFNI races this history? I don't know, but I can see it looks very dirty what they have done in removing this because Gordon Lindsey's part in this appears to be a lot more, a lot deeper involved in what it appears from the white

washed version that they're giving CFNI. Yeah, and Lindsey, as his ministry grew, and as he went through the 1950s, that was the heyday of the healing revival. He was really one comment by one author said Lindsey was more than an advisor during the first decade of the healing revival. He was much likely director of an unruly orchestra. And they tried to tell people to go slow, don't try to be the Hollywood showman, you know, make sure on a solid ground before you get started. That was his caution. But so through the 1950s, by 1958, which we've mentioned a couple of times, many of the

revivalists just believe that his work was over. But that was about the time he was starting to form his new organization. But many of the revivalists probably thought that the healing revival had cooled off by that time. So they thought his work was over. But it's interesting when going back to 1947, that was the year that he took his first trip to Israel. So so Lindsey was become the worldwide even early on, but he went to Israel and worked to spread the gospel in Israel. Now, this was early on when he was working with Brandon. So I find it very odd that

But, you know, the Brannum had said when he was taking his trips overseas that the Holy Spirit specifically said, do not go to Israel, because they're not ready for this gospel yet. And it's not their time, but that's, you know, for one thing that's totally contrary to Scripture, because Paul said, you know, I would that my brother would be saved.

They need the gospel. And Gordon Lindsay recognized that even above what Brannum did. So he wasn't told to stay out of Israel. So he took, he took it to Israel. But I'm thinking that, you know, maybe, maybe, William Brannum was a little bit afraid to go to Israel because if he took his ministry before the true Jew, they might have figured him out, you know, and said, hey, you're not really a true prophet at all.

But Lindsay established a Jerusalem center and out became a chapel on the Mount of Olives and his daughter actually traveled to Israel many times. And later married a man with Jewish descent and she eventually immigrated to Israel.

His daughter and husband have an Israel ministry now in Tel Aviv so that continues to this day. So I thought that was an interesting tidbit. So I think by the 1960s, you know, Lindsay's focus really changed because the healing revival was almost gone as far as what it was doing.

And he was no longer promoting all these new evangelists coming on the scene. So in 1961, he launched what's called the native church program to help native churches complete construction on their church buildings.

And to date, he had helped, he's helped over 12,000 or his organization has helped over 12,000 churches worldwide. So I think that's where his redemption came out of all of this, out of all his ministry focus in the early days, which, you know, he may have still held a lot of those views.

But if you can say he had any redeeming quality out of it all, you know, he formed an organization that sought to help other churches. And these were indigenous peoples. These were not just focused on Christian identity circles.

This was actually other Christian churches throughout the world and focused on spreading the gospel. So it was less on the esoteric and the pyramids and the ephodes by that time. And it was more on focusing on the gospel.

So I think we can say, you know, he had a point of redemption there. And he still held and promoted the Pentecostal message though, but he left his focus on all that deliverance evangelism.

And that was probably out of necessity because it was just cooling off by that time. He had long held his long held associations with white supremacists that he associated with 1940s. Eventually, didn't live to see the end of what was coming for his organization, which I think was as close to redemption as he could get.

His ministry lived on and was carried on by his family. So that's where I see the evolution occurring, you know, in his ministry. He was willing to search out matters to find out if he was right or wrong due to his analytical mind.

You know, so I think he may eventually, you know, he may have it. changed some of his views, but we don't know that. There's no evidence of any of that, but in 1967, the name was changed from voice of healing and finally to Christ for the nations, and he remained in the organization, he renamed it Christ for the nations to reflect the growing missionary focus of the organization, and he led that organization until his death. Eventually, he evangelized other countries. He started in Mexico with this, and one of the meetings that he was also in was

William Brown himself Africa trip in 1951, as he was branching out, but his books have been translated in the 80 languages over time. He even started a radio station in Central America to promote the gospel. Many, many churches built, but that's just what Gordon Lindsay was all about, I think, in the end, but he died prematurely. He died in 73, I believe, right there while they were conducting a service, so probably premature, and it was probably sad for the organization because he was just getting started really in what he was doing there with Christ for the nations.

Right. From all signs, it looks like Gordon Lindsay had a significant shift in his theology and ministry. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when that happened because, like the books I've mentioned, it's before and after William Brown's death. There's clear evidence that he still holds on to those beliefs, but it did shift over time, and so one could look at that and say that there is some some redemption for his ministry. For me, it's nothing is black and white. For me, it's more complicated than just a yes, he reformed or no, he didn't reform. For me, it's more like

a birthday cake. You make a birthday cake, it looks good, some of it may taste good, but drop just a drop of poison in that, and you really want to eat it. Maybe you can eat it and not get sick, but there's a drop of poison in it. And what I see from all of these books that he's published, I see a clear sign of the Christian identity from start to finish throughout his ministry, at least as late as 1961 maybe later. And then suddenly, after JFK was assassinated, all of the white supremacy and many of the Christian identity groups went underground. And so they

didn't openly say the things that they thought, because otherwise they might accidentally find themselves under federal investigation. So not just Gordon Lindsay, but many others have the appearance of redemption in their ministries. Can I say that that's the case with Gordon Lindsay? No, but I don't know what happened with him. I see that about the same time that everything else went underground. Gordon Lindsay has a significant shift in his ministry, Christ.

for the nation's birth, and he has, like you said, a global, significant influence in the formation of what eventually would lead to the birth of the NAR. So we've identified the, you know, the manifest sons of God, doctrine that is taught in the NAR.

We see Gordon Lindsay teaching it, the spiritual warfare, we see him teaching that, and then there's the shift and it becomes the NAR. So very clear ties back to it, whether or not that was the due to the Christian identity in his later years, I don't know.

It does like you say look like there is a shift in his ministry and he's redeemed. So a lot to cover, we've only skinned the surface of this. You can dig into Gordon Lindsay and you can, you know, all of the voice of healing magazines, you can go read them, they're all out there on the internet and they're all, I believe they're all in the public domain.

So you can even reference them, but it is the backbone for the NAR and a lot of people miss the impact that Gordon Lindsay had. So so much more we could cover John, but we've got so many more trails that are leading back to this epicenter and I'm excited for next week whenever we explore deeper some of these connections.

You know, John, you mentioned with Gordon one thing that came up in my research here and your research too, as you mentioned JFK and all that about going on at the time in the early 60s when the Christian identity basically went underground and that was right about the time the Gordon's organization was formed, but Gordon was a Dallas man.

He was, you know, in that area and we know that Roy Davis was very much in Dallas

and Davis lived in Oak Cliff in Dallas and also the newspaper articles when Gordon died. He let mention that last rights for the Reverend Gordon Lindsay founder and president of Christ for the nations in Oak Cliffed.

So Oak Cliffed has an interesting history with white supremacy and there's some strange coincidence here I'll mention. Of course, we know as a location of Roy Davis's activities with the White Citizens Council. It was a location of theater where Lee Oswald was found after the assassination of Kennedy and in FBI records it says, I read this, a man named Jack Davis says he saw Oswald at the theater.

Now we know Jack Davis was one of the aliases of Roy Davis. I don't know if there's a connection there for that, but I know Oak Cliffed has a very strong history with white supremacy.

So, you know, Gordon Lindsay was still right in the middle of all that. Yeah, I know that's, for me that's the reason why I say that it's hard for me to go fully towards redemption even though like I said, it looks like he did but he's sitting right there.

Roy Davis is the head of the White Citizens Council in Oak Cliff and the printing presses that were publishing the wanted for treason, they were Roy Davis's printing presses, it looks like. like from the FBI documents.

There's so much that happened there in Oakcliff and we're not talking about a big place. This is a plot of land, it's a neighborhood. It's about the size of, I think it's like two miles by four miles wide in Dallas.

This is a tiny place where everybody, back then, everybody knew everybody. So it's hard for me to believe that Roy Davis, who's working closely with Brannum, who's living in Gordon Lindsay's neighborhood, was not in some way connected to Gordon Lindsay.

Gordon Lindsay published Davis's articles in the voice of healing. He's publishing the second in command of the original clan, the highest ranking member of the original Knights of the Ku Klux clan. He's publishing the clan guy in his voice of healing newsletter and he's living in the neighborhood next to him.

So there's so much here, like I said, we're skimming the surface. There is so much more we could go into with Gordon Lindsay and is it definitive proof that he was in the clan or remaining Christian identity after Brannum died?

Now, we can't find definitive proof because all of these groups are underground. They all concealed their history and the sect that Davis was in, all the records were burned. Shortly, after the Kennedy assassination, they burned everything.

So you're not gonna even find records, they've all burned. But anyway, we skim the surface, there's so much more, you can go dig if you want. You can go on the internet. We're finding the same things just by searching the FBI government documents and the other sources that are out there, you can find a lot on these men that were connected to Gordon Lindsay and William Brannum.

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

For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.