We'll Ride This Trail Again - The Rise of Post Branham Cult Splinter Groups

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org, and the author of come out of her, my people. Charles, it's good to be back. I was actually going to make a joke today. I don't have a purple shirt, but this is the closest thing I have to purple. It's like a maroonish thing, but I was going to wear my purple shirt, and I was going to say that

you know the way they twist all of these prophecies, I too could fulfill the female president prophecy because they can twist it to mean anything they want, you know? Oh goodness, John, you know, we're actually going to at least mention the man who had that very famous message dream today, John, about riding the trail again. So today, John, what I know we want to talk about is we want to start going into the post-William-brandham history of the message, you know, in our last episodes we recorded on historical research, which was, I think it was about 18 months ago when we recorded

that. It's been that long since we've been regularly recording, and we did a long message history series starting from really the birth of William Brandham all the way up into his funeral. So we covered decades of message history as we did that, and today we want to start talking about the years that came after William Brandham died, where I have been working on John, you know, a book volume two of message history. Come out of my people volume two, it'll hopefully be out and available by the time we get this episode out. I'm still working on some final, final tweaks to

it to make everything happy for myself, but anyway, once it's out, it's covering the year 1966 to 2005. Those are the years that Ian had John, and so I would love to just kind of dive through some of the stuff that's in there. Now you and I, John, we actually lived through the majority of this period ourselves, didn't we? Right? So we are eyewitnesses to this era of message history, a lot of it.

And I think that's really noteworthy that we're that. And John, you and I, I mean, just to be clear, so in case our listeners, maybe this is their first time listening, who are we, John?

Well, we are from the original message churches. John, your grandfather right was the pastor of Brandham Tabernacle in the years after William Brandham died, the original message Church, and I informally the associate pastor of faith assembly, which was the second message church.

It was planted by the original early message community here in the Jeffersonville area. So we are lifelong members, I think, I'm third, I'm third general, I'm fourth generation message actually, John. My grandparents and my great grandparents converted into the message why William Brennan was still alive.

My parents were born, you know, during tabernacle days, you know, back when William Brennan was still living. And then I was first generation born after, you know, after William Brennan died. I think the same is true for you.

Is that right? Like how does your family line out in the message? Yeah, we, like you said, my grandfather was the pastor at Brennan's, uh, uh, Brennan tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana. And oddly, I still live in Jeffersonville.

I live not far from the tabernacle itself. So as you can imagine, I'm public enemy number one in this town. But yeah, we grew up in the main sect and, um, it's kind of odd because we traveled all over the country.

I went to 13 different schools growing up. My family went to several different message churches and I went to even more than the ones they attended because I would travel with friends and go to their churches.

And then after I got married, we, you know, we visited other churches still. So I visited a lot of message churches. And the irony is I had, so I had friends growing up and I, I was one of the fortunate ones.

I was allowed to go to public school. So I had friends in public school and I never will forget we moved to this town where I thought we were the only brand of mites within miles and miles like there was a church in another state.

You had to cross the state lines and I think it was like 30, 40 minutes away, which for me in this little small town, that was a great distance now that I live here in the Louisville metro area.

It's nothing. But back then it was, it seemed like miles away, you know. But I'm attending this school. There's not a single brand of mit in the high school that I'm in. And suddenly this guy, this friend of mine, I've known him probably three years, four years at this point.

He comes up and starts to witness to me about, quote unquote, Jesus. And I did not know what the word cult meant or the implications of that. But I could tell something was really off with this guy and he was going on and on and on about his church, which wasn't a message or a random connected church.

Then all of a sudden the guy mentions William Brannum and my ears light up. I'm like, wait, how do you know and he starts telling me who Brannum is and how, you know, this great prophet and how he set the stage.

And then suddenly there's his church and I was like, I was shocked. I didn't know what to say and I tried. to witness back to him, but I was just so shocked it really didn't work.

So I knew at that time that Bramham had an impact. I knew that I was probably age 18 at that point. I also, my family would, we were largely a tape home church. We would listen to William Bramham's tapes in our living room, two times on Sunday and Wednesday evening.

We'd all dress up in our Sunday and go to meet and close and sit in our, in our living room and we weren't allowed to speak. We weren't allowed to raise our hands, make any noise, anything like literally sitting there like zombies, listening to these recordings of this old dead guy.

And I'm listening to these things and the reason why we were a tape home church is because my family would go to a try out a different church in whatever city and state that we lived in.

And they would come, as we're driving back, they would just rail the minister and the church and the people and just, you know, very derogatory things which were accurate. Like I agreed with most of them.

And what I didn't realize is what they were describing the things that they had problems with was that they were describing it was a destructive cult. But they didn't use the word cult. I don't think they really knew the implications of that.

But we're literally leaving message cult churches that were splinter groups from the main sect that we tried out. And my family realized that this is a cult. So that's how bad it is. In the main sect, we could tell that the splinter groups were cultish.

What we couldn't realize in the main sect is that the main sect was cultish. And so that's largely why I am so interested to dig deeper. I too, so I released my book, Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, which it's funny because I'm doing the same thing you did with your second book, but in a different direction.

So I'm looking at the things after Brandon and everybody's been asking when is the audio book coming out? And hopefully by the time this podcast is released, I just hit submit yesterday on push publishing the audio book.

I had a voice condition and it literally put it on hold for months. So it's been on hold, but I did submit. Hopefully when this book is released, you can listen to Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

But yeah, that's my backstory. We we were in a cult. We visited cult churches and everything that we're going to talk about in this series is interesting to me because it explains why these churches were such a mess that we attended.

Right, you know, what you described there, how each in the main sect, you could recognize that the other sects were called. Well, in our sect, we recognize that your church was a cult, John.

You know, it's that way every group, every part of the message thinks every other part is the bad part and they're the good part. That's just how it is. So we called in my group, for example, John, we called all the rest of the message, Brannamites, but we were the message. We were the message and everyone else was Brannamites, right? That's how we termed it. And a lot of the groups, they have that sort of terminology. So yeah, it really is amazing. But here's the thing.

There's not a lot of people that have a real good understanding. It seems like of what happened in 1966, 67, 68 up into the early 70s. And so I do think it's important for us to kind of talk through all that and how the message broke down. And a couple of the reasons that people don't know a lot about that era of message history, John, is because one, that era is full of massive embarrassments to the message community that everyone wishes they could forget, right? No one wants to talk about it all, right? So that's number one. Okay. And then number two is, and this is

something that they purposefully hide is the message community was not all that big back then. It was actually pretty small. The message community after Brannam was not all that big. And most all the people who became shakers and movers like, you know, the edbiscals of the world, the pair of greens of the world, they were actually nobody's in the message. More or less when William Brannam died, there were nobody's, right? And they had very little real connection to William Brannam or the central parts of the message. And so they themselves don't even know the history

because they weren't there, right? And so that is another important aspect. And so again, that's why people like me and you, John, we can actually fill in the blanks in a way that they don't, they can't, because not only were they not there, no one in their churches were, they were not even in the message back then, right? Like you take, you take Ed Biscoll. I mean, I, he, he didn't accept, for example, William Brannam's, um, Elijah claims until right at the very end of his life, he didn't have a message church when William Brannam died, right? And he just wasn't really someone

we would call in the message at that point, where you take Perry Green. Perry Green accepted the message according to his own testimony in middle of 1964. A year and a half before William Brannam died, Perry Green joined the message, right? And so you have decades of history where there were all kinds of people, especially here in the Jeffersonville area that were close to William Brannam in his inner circle. This thing had developed a long time before those sort of people showed up.

And like Perry Green's church was open, what, I think the month, the month before William Brannam died, right? I think so, yeah. The message community was not all that big when William Brannam died.

And so I look forward, we'll take a few minutes and chat through that. Yeah, it'll be good. And so our audience has expanded significantly since you and I did that initial run of podcasts. We have people from, we have a large number of people that are coming out of the International House of Prayer because it was basically Brannamism 2.0 created by an By and large, through Paul Cain, who was William Branham's protégé, and I talked to Cain several, not several, but a few times on the telephone, and he thinks he told me, maybe I can mention some of them in this podcast, I still can't mention them all, but for the people

who have never heard of Branhamism, and have never heard the names that we've mentioned, Perry Green at Biscoll, for example, we're going to be going through what that is on this podcast. These are, I call them the pillar churches. Whenever William Branham died, the whole cult was imploding, and if not for these pillars lifting him back up, lifting up the dead guy to worship, it just would have imploded, and you would never have heard the name Branham again.

I think for, by and large, I think the charismatic movement was trying to distance themself from Branham, but because of these pillar churches, they were quite unable to do so, because his name just kept going and going, and as long as his name was going, they couldn't stop it.

I know, and one of the worst things about it, John, I say worst. I mean, worst from some, probably the charismatic perspectives is they wanted to try and rehabilitate William Branham somewhat, you know, keep the baby, right, and throw out the bathwater, you know, is what they wanted to do, but the problem was, John, there was a massive cult.

That was worshiping William Branham, and try as they might, they could never, I mean, you couldn't hide the cult, okay? The cult was here, it wasn't going away, and they were going to fight tooth and nail over all of this stuff, right, and you were never going to convince the cult that William Branham was not a cult leader, right, obviously. No, and the water wasn't quite bathwater.

No, no, no. William Branham was the Elijah of these guys, and I want to throw that out too, because maybe some people wonder how I use my terminology and stuff. To me, when I wrote my book, John, and when I, when I think about what is a message church, a message church is a church that has a pastor who at least believes William Branham was Elijah, okay? If you don't have a pastor who didn't believe William Branham was Elijah, you're not a message church, you're a latter rain church. That is really how, where you cross the line from a latter rain church to a message

church. A message church is basically a latter rain church where the preacher started to believe William Branham was Elijah, and then a whole bunch of other stuff followed after that, but that, that to me is the transition point. The church's pastor started to believe he was Elijah. When William Branham died, there were an upper limit of 5,000 people in the message. 5,000 people, the upper limit that believed he was Elijah. Now, yeah, he preached to tens of thousands of people, but the upper limit was 5,000 who believed he was Elijah. I personally think it was smaller

than that, John, too, and I get that 5,000 number by the attendance at his funeral service. There were 5,000 signatures in the guest book at his funeral, and obviously he it attracted all kinds of people who weren't part of the message to that funeral as well.

But you and I both know John, the old-timers, everybody who was anybody in the message came to that funeral. And so that I think is the most accurate number we can get to the potential size of the message community when he died.

5,000 is the upper limit. And there were approximately 35 message churches, churches that had pastors who believed William Brownham was in Elijah figure when he died. And so let's just kind of start to walk through those.

And again, before I do, I keep saying before I do who I'm not getting to the meat, am I John? Um, I don't like a whole lot talking about living people. And I try to avoid that.

And for the most part, most all of these people are all dead. But there are a few here and there. I think there's maybe two that are still living today of the original, I'd say, lie tenets of William Brownham.

All the rest of them have passed away. Most all the people that we would talk about that were significant figures even up until 2005 are mostly all passed away by now too. But there are a few living ones in here.

And there, you know, there might be some pieces we just emit to be nice to people, but then we'll talk about it after they're dead. But if they don't change their ways, right? So anyways, when William Brownham died, this Jeffersonville was message central, right?

This was the heart of it. This is where the message had arose and the majority, the overwhelming majority of the message community actually lived in Jeffersonville up until he moved Arizona in 1963. I think when he moved, before he moved in 1963, John, there were about 1,000 message believers here in Jeffersonville.

The message had planted five churches here in this area. And this was the hotbed of it. And so the five churches in this area, and I think it's probably worth noting too, John. All the churches we're going to talk about today and all the preachers we're going to talk about today, between the two of us, John, we have probably been to just about every single one of these churches and know every single one of their pastors, okay?

So the churches here in Jeffersonville, of course you had the Brannum Tabernacle. Well, when William Brownham died, that church was still pastored by Orman Neville, okay? And Orman Neville, we're going to talk about what all happened at the Tabernacle and how it led up to your grandfather taking over.

But Orman Neville was the pastor after William Brownham died. Notably though, the church board was controlled by the deity cult, and the deacons were in the deity cult, okay? So this, but Orman Neville was not.

Orman Neville was someone, John, who aligned with the anti-church order faction of message, the anti-tape church faction, okay? So the Brannum Tabernacle set up for a fight, okay? You move up the street, you go over to Clarksville, Indiana, that's where you'd find the church I'm from, John, Faith Assembly Church, which was the second message church.

It was pastored by Raymond Jackson. It's moved locations several times. It was in Clark'sville then. It's on the edge of Jeffersonville now. But that was the second message church, Raymond Jackson's church. It was smaller.

It had, it might have had about 100 people, roughly 75 to 100 people when William Brown had died. Then you move over to full gospel tabernacle, which was also in Jeffersonville. That was Don Ruttles church.

That was a medium-sized church. Another one, maybe 75 people. They were also in the anti-church order faction, okay? You go a little further up the street. You get to Sellersburg. You got a full gospel church there called, I think it's called gospel tabernacle of Sellersburg.

Its pastor was Gerald Metcalfe. It was also another one of the very original messaged churches. It was pretty small back then. I think it might have had 25 people when William Brown had died.

So those are the churches right here in the hub at Jeffersonville. And then you go up into Bloomington, Indiana. There was full gospel church of Bloomington. It was pastored by Willard Crace. It was also one of the very first message churches.

And so that was kind of the local Southern Indiana Jeffersonville message community. You'll find William Brown, I'll talk about all those guys on tape. John, between the two of us, we know them all.

We've been to them all. We know all that pretty well. I wanna go back and focus on something that you said because I think it is significant as it relates to where we're headed.

You said that to be a message church, it was defined as people who believed William Brannum was Elijah the prophet. And if you studied any of the history that I've published, this was a recurring theme in Pentecostalism.

It wasn't limited to Brannum's cult of personality. Yeah, Charles Fox Parham, who claimed to be the Elijah successor to John Alexander Dowey. Dowey claimed to be the Elijah for his age. You also had Frank Sanford, who was a contemporary to this.

All of this is the British Israel framework. He was transitioning into Christian identity around the time that Parham started claiming that he was the next Elijah successor. But this was a recurring theme. I will further define what you said by saying, it is a group of people who believed that their prophet was the messenger for the age.

So in the message they believed that William Brannum was the return of Elijah the prophet and that the prophet was the messenger for the age. And this was not limited to the people who are off on the side in this message called the personality T. L. Osborne, who was a word of faith, prosperity gospel guy, was in Brannum's deity cult and proclaimed himself as such at William Brannum's memorial service.

So this was widespread through Charismatics as they were starting to form and grow and develop into other things that became NAR. But when Brannum died, what the Charismatics tried... to do was shift to the new messenger for the age, and if you listen closely to what T. L. Osborne is saying, he is defining himself as believing Brannum was the voice of the age or whatever, so that he could then start believing in the new voice for the age.

It's very clear what happened. And right after this, months after this, the shepherding movement was formed. He had earned Baxter, and who was part of the Baxter Brannum campaigns, and they created this framework of authoritarian control called the Shepherding movement.

Osborne helped establish that. He was supplying training materials for them. So this is widespread. And where that gets significant, and I do go through this to a limited extent in the book, Bob Jones and Paul Kane, they were setting up Brannumism 2.0, and if you listen closely to what Bob Jones said to Mike Bickel, and then what Paul Kane was reaffirming, they were trying to set up Mike Bickel to be the next messenger for the age.

So in Brannumism 2.0, we don't yet know what, like Brannum was Elijah. We don't know what, you know, it would have come out to be what biblical figure they would have chosen. I think there were a few names thrown out, but essentially they were setting up Mike Bickel to be the new prophet for the age in Brannumism 2.0.

And that's just one of many, many groups that were doing the same thing and have done the same thing since William Brannum died. Exactly. William Brannum was the authority figure of doctrinal everything, you know, in this movement.

He was Pope-like in a lot of ways. And the Elijah stuff started. He started claiming and insinuating the Elijah stuff in 1949, and 1952 and 53 is really, in my view, when the Brannum cult of personality, such as we know it today, started to form.

You don't find anybody who believed William Brannum was Elijah before 1952, like that's the earliest date that I know anybody of these people, any of them, none of them claimed to have believed it before 1952, but from 1952 you start getting people believe in he's Elijah.

And then by 1955 you start to have churches pastored by people who think he's Elijah. And then it's when you get to, I believe 1961, that's when he starts to introduce the idea that he's a seventh church-aged messenger on top of being Elijah.

So, you know, his list of credentials is getting longer, John, as he goes through life. And, you know, of course, at the very end of the deity cult, you know, he adds God to the list of titles.

So, it gets pretty long there by the end, but so, here in the Jeffersonville area, and you mentioned John, T. L. Osborne, Paul Cain, Joseph Matz and Bozay, Gordon Lindsay, well, ladies and gentlemen, they were all coming through all these churches in those years, right?

The churches I mentioned, well, They were at them churches. Paul Cain's been to all those churches, right? And he was there coming through all this stuff back there. So when we talk about this, we're not just, this is the history of the whole thing, ladies and gentlemen, he did all passes through here.

So we'll definitely talk about a lot of that in detail, you know, as we hopefully get to break some of this stuff down. So those are the message churches. And I think it's important to note, too, John, that most of the churches were at least informally part of the independent assemblies of God back then.

For the most part, they were. The early message churches were mostly informally part of independent assemblies of God. That's where a lot of the preachers were ordained out of or their actual ordination papers came from.

And if you remember independent assemblies of God was the main trunk of the ladder rain movement, right? When Sharon Orphanage split up, George, the hot and brothers, Sharon Orphanage was in independent assemblies of God when it broke up itself.

And so the hot and brothers who had started the revival, they stayed in independent assemblies of God and they continued to fellowship and really be what I call message churches themselves up until they died.

So anyways, that's the message community in Indiana. So if we kind of go up over to the East Coast and come down in New York City, we had two message churches. We had the church of Anthony Milano and his head deacon was Pat Tyler.

They were mobsters. They were in the New York mob. That was their church. Then you had Joseph Coleman and Orlando Hunt. They had another church in New York City. And there are two churches eventually merged and Anthony Milano moved Arizona, which again, if you know mob history, John, that's pretty interesting, isn't it?

I mean, because that's where all the mobsters moved at the same time, you know what? Yeah. So anyways, you got Anthony Milano, Joseph Coleman's church is up there in New York City. Those were also there.

And their churches were fairly recent churches. Coleman opened his church in, I believe December 1963. And Anthony Milano's church was a pre-existing church. It was an independent assemblies of God church that converted to the message of pre-existing church.

In their church, there was another minister that was pretty important. His name was Robert Lambert. He's from Connecticut and all these people are passed away. But Robert Lambert fell asleep mostly in Milano and Coleman's church there at the first.

And after William Brannum died, he actually was one of the primary missionaries that planted the message churches in the Caribbean after William Brannum died. But he was there in those churches at the point that William Brannum died.

Then as you kind of come down into Appalachia, you've got several churches. And I'll point out the Coleman church in the Milano church were of the groups that would eventually form the thunders. So, and they were just kind of a different, different breed of church.

We'll do some whole episodes on. am I think. But as you come down into Appalachia, you've got the church, you've got in Chambersburg, Virginia, you have the church of Ernest, Fulcher. In King's Mountain, you have a church of Bill Pederis. And then over in Edmundston, Kentucky, you have the church of J.T. Parnell. And you'll find all these people mentioned a lot. These were the only real churches in Appalachia that were messaged churches when William Brannum died. And all of the other churches in that region are either splits or branches out of their churches. I would say probably Bill Pederis' church was the

largest John. And he had about 50 to 75 people in his church when William Brannum died. Basically, that seeded the entire message community that grew up in Appalachia after William Brannum died, you know, Virginia, that area. They were so Ernest Fulcher's church and Bill Pederis' church were in the anti-church order facts in John. So that's probably, you've probably never heard of them, right? But you probably have heard of J.T. Parnell's, right? He was more aligned with the main sect. And I think it's also worse pointing out, J.T. Parnell was one of the original message polygamists. His was a polygamy church, John. So we'll talk through all that.

And then as you go further down south, you had in Macon, Georgia, you had a church you're probably familiar with there, John. Maybe you mentioned that one a little bit. You had a few down there. I spent a large portion of my childhood in the Macon area. So I'm very familiar with all of the groups there. And you had Jack Palmer who was there when William Brannum died. And another thing I want to mention that a lot of people I don't think realize, you mentioned that by and large, this was the independent assemblies of God that were still connected to

Brannumism. Well, if you remember towards the 1960s when Brannum's mentor Roy Davis, the imperial wizard of the clan, when he was rising up to become imperial wizard, he was connecting back with the main sect of the assemblies of God. So you'll find articles down in Texas where at this point, he is with Laterane. He's been published in the Voice of Healing magazine as this Laterane revivalist. I don't think they used the word Laterane, but that's what it was. And at that time, he's one of the public debaters for the assemblies of God. You can find newspapers stating this,

which was a little surprising to me. I knew it beforehand. However, because my family took our first cruise on the ocean, went from Florida down to, I don't know, one of the little Disney islands, whatever it was, I'm on this cruise, thinking that I had escaped everything message to be, you know, this is only a few years ago we took our first cruise. I thought we had escaped all things message, and I was going to take a little break. And lo and behold, I'm up there wearing my nice shorts out on the sun on the deck and upper deck.

And here comes this woman in a long, thick, hot, jeanskirt and long flowing, she's dressed just like a message lady, right? And I was so curious. I kept going to try to not really eavesdrop, but just try to meet him, say hi, that kind of thing.

And I'm walking up as they're talking and, man, they weren't a message cult. They were assemblies of God, but they were from Indianapolis. And that sparked my curiosity. So I started investigating the main sect of assemblies in the Indiana area, in the Kentucky area, and probably parts of Ohio, by and large, the main sect of the assemblies of God was, I'm not going to say they were Brannamites, where they were message, but they were strongly tied and affiliated to Brannam in so much that I have had people who escaped the assemblies of God, the main sect, recently, who said that their assemblies of God churches actually

had Brannam tapes and sometimes would play them in the church. 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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I think it's important to distinguish independent assemblies of God from assemblies of God, too, because who are independent assemblies of God primarily? They are the churches that assemblies of God threw out over the latter reign stuff.

That's primarily who they are. And so the main body, as you come through the purge into the late fifties, they gradually ran out of their own group, or they exited voluntarily, and it's mostly latter-ranked churches that the main body of assemblies of God pushed out.

Some of them are more hostile takeovers, too, I'll say. Some of them, they actually, we'll talk about some hostile church takeovers in all this, too, John. There's tricks to go in and hostile takeover a church and seize their assets and seize their property and stuff using their, kind of, some tricks in the government structures.

And that's how some of these churches actually got a hold of property and stuff from the pre-existing churches. So yeah, you had Jack Palmer in Macon, Georgia. That was really the only message church in Georgia at the time William Brannum died. And again, all of the other churches grew up in the few years after he died were plants and splits out of these earlier churches.

Jack Palmer had his church. He aligned with the tape church faction in later years. He was pro-church order faction. He was on that side of the early message split, which we're going to talk through.

You get down to Florida. In West Palm Beach, Florida was a church that had been pastored by Lee Vale and Ned Iverson. Vale actually left the church at that time. He was in Ohio at the time that William Brannum died, but I believe, and this is, I'm not 100% sure on this.

I think Ned Iverson was still pastoring that church in West Palm Beach, Florida. And here's a funny story, too, John. So West Palm Beach, Florida is just about the most southerly point in the United States. You can't get much further south than that in the United States, right? Well, when Lee Vale was pastored there, he prophesied a prophet from the north, was going to come and speak to them and he would be what they need.

You want to talk about a safe prophet, right? And William Brannum showed up, okay? Was he to be wearing purple?

So, you know, it's pretty funny stuff, isn't it? I mean, I guess unless they swam out of the ocean, right? They wouldn't have been coming from the south pretty well. So yeah, pretty well, anybody who came from the north was going to fulfill his prophecy. But anyways, he used that as a great sign. He talked about that a lot in his ministry about how he predicted William Brannum was going to come and be this great prophet, the prophet from the north, from Palm Beach, Florida.

Yeah, that's crazy. So you had his church down there. Then you kind of come over into the south in Louisiana. There's actually no message churches in Louisiana when William Brannum died. There's some there today. Jack Moore's church did, Jack Moore did not believe William Brannum was a Elijah. There's lots of churches like that that they were ladder rain churches. They liked William Brannum. They invited him around. He preached a lot. But they did not believe he was the Elijah, right? And they never evolved into message churches. There's the same thing here in Jeffersonville, right? Like, you know, there's a church out in Utica, for example, that fellowship

with William Brannum. But they never accepted him as Elijah, right? And so they never really, they broke, they split from the message in more or less stayed ladder rain oriented. But if you move up into Arkansas, there was a church in Wadal, Arkansas, which was pastored by Earl Martin and his brother, John. They were there when William Brannum died. They were of the church, pro-church order faction. They were, you know, became a tape church. They were kind of deity-minded people as well.

And moving up from there into Thayer, Missouri, you had a church of Paul Brewer. Paul Brewer was another very important. his church wasn't very big. I think he might have had 50 people at the most in his church.

You actually interviewed someone from his church not long ago on the podcast. It was a really good interview. But he was one of the original message pastors. He was actually served as trustee at Voice of God recordings in later years. He was a pretty important figure. And he was there in Thayer, Missouri. And as far as I know, I think he was the only real message church in Missouri, even when William Brannem died. And then you keep going on up around Chicago. There were a lot of people who believe the message in the Chicago area. But there wasn't a message church in the

Chicago area where William Brannem died. They were all part of what you'd call latter rain churches. But some churches did pop up there shortly after he died. Then in Michigan, you have in Ann Arbor, there was the church of Samuel Johnson. We'll probably talk a little bit about him.

Samuel Johnson was a child molester. He ended up in prison. But that was a notable hub of mission, message missionary outreach in the early days. He's their church, along with some of our others, helped sponsor the original missionaries of the message into the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, different places. So we'll kind of talk through that. But he was an important, I'd say, mission center of the message. And so that, I think, John, let me just think through my head. I think that is most of the churches. There was an Ohio leave-ales church.

But that was most of the churches in the Eastern United States at that point that believed the message. Leave-ale, his church was, I'm not 100% sure exactly when he started his church in Ohio.

It's in St. Paris, Ohio. It's called Grace Gospel Church. But I'm not sure if he started that before William Brannem died or just after. But he was definitely in Ohio. And it would have been the only real message church in Ohio at that time. There was another very important message church that opened shortly after William Brannem died. It was Lonnie Jenkins Church up there. I'm sure we'll talk through a little bit about that. But Lonnie Jenkins was a full gospel businessman and some wealthy people helped sponsor him opening a message church shortly after William Brannem

died in Lima, Ohio. So that's, that is the churches of the Eastern half of the United States. In the Western United States, John, there was even less. Now, we know William Brannem moved the end of 1962 is when he moved and he was there all in 1963. When he moved, so there were about a thousand people in Jeffersonville, 500 of them packed up and moved with him, okay? And not only that, but he sent out calls to other churches. There was a message church in San Jose back then, Doug McHugh's church. William Brannem told Doug McHugh's to basically sell everything he had and

moved to Arizona. So Doug Hughes, McHugh's moved to Arizona. Doug McHugh's, he was tape church deity that side of things. As we're frankly most of the people who moved to Arizona back then. I don't think Leavale knew what he or rather Perry Green realized what he was getting into when he moved like he And and he was not a great guy, but he was probably the most sane one in the whole bunch It's saying something. You know what I mean?

So he moved down so all these people are moving out to Arizona and Arizona you got two message churches when William Brown him dies you have the One-month-old Tucson Tabernacle and you have the year and a half-old Message compound of Leo Mercer and Prescott those were the only two message groups really in Arizona when William Brannum died

We'll talk a lot about that But William Brannum basically brought a whole bunch of people and preachers with him to Tucson And he lured a lot of them with the promises that they're gonna get to start the church in Tucson He promised Doug and Q's he would get to start the church in Tucson He promised Perry Green he would get to start the church in Tucson. All right all these people are coming out there and guess what Only one of them is gonna get to be in charge and so they all start fighting and squabbling and we'll talk about all that

But yeah, it was a you know the the early message community was was really crazy and the way that kind of broke down and and that Geographical divide between Arizona and Jeffersonville that set the stage for some of the divisions to come to because it was primarily Brannum almost extracted most of the deity people from Jeffersonville Move them to the desert with him in Arizona and left his more Elijah-minded people here in Jeffersonville

The deity people ended up coming back. We can talk through some of that later But that's what was happening there You know through that move I believe And then let's see going up There wasn't any message churches in Texas really when William Brannum died I mean Perry Green senior lived in Texas But he was more in a ladder rain-minded churches jack Bell started his church after William Brannum died and It was probably the most prominent message church in Texas I would say in the years to come be jack Bell's church most notable one

Then there's really there's not much in the you know across them really the rest of the Midwest or The West if you go into Oregon there was a church in Oregon John. It was Orlando walkers He's the man who had I believe the you know We'll ride this trail again vision, right? So that's Orlando Walker Orlando Walker's son was Gerald Lee Walker, okay, who was Sarah Brannum's lawyer when they sued all the message people their church Ended up going with Kenneth Hagen into the word of faith moving in the 1980s and yeah Kenneth Hagen was coming around all our churches too

I know they all like to pretend none of this stuff happened But Kenneth Hagen he ended up siden with Kenneth Hagen when some of those splits happened in the 80s But we'll talk through that later But um his son Gerald Lee Walker was a trustee of the full gospel businessmen's institute the whole fellowship the international fellowship He was a really notable person his son and orlanda Walker was involved with the full gospel business people quite a bit himself They were an important message church in Oregon.

South of that in Eukaya, John, Eukaya, California was another old message church. It was the, I believe it's called Gospel Tabernacle, was founded by Gordon Engman, and it was started in 1957 after William Brannum held meetings there.

And you and I have talked about that one a fair bit. So that church that was planted in Eukaya in 1957 by William Brannum, well, who was along at that revival when that was planted?

Jim Jones. Jim Jones was there, you know, through all of that stuff. And when Jim Jones, if anyone knows people's temple history, when they all left Indiana, where do they move? Eukaya. Okay? But he had already been in Eukaya with William Brannum, they planted that church out there.

So it's not, it's not even a coincidence I don't think that Jim Jones decided to move his congregation to Eukaya, there is a pre-existing message community there. He had been there with William Brannum personally, so that's all some interesting facts and connections.

But that was it, John. I think, let me think, am I missing anybody? I don't think I'm missing. I believe that is all of the major churches in the United States that believe the message when William Brannum died right there, which isn't that big, really.

It's such a weird mess, man, because you had William Brannum dying. You had Laterane dying with him, you know, it, Laterane truly can't carry on. I know that some, the Laterane revival split off and they, they kind of weren't Brannumites and it, it developed into its own thing, but the original Laterane, as it was, whenever it merged with voice of healing, that mess just continued on into disarray.

And something you said, I'm not going to go too deep with this because for obvious reasons, but you mentioned out on the East Coast, you had the mob tied into the message and I'll never will forget and I'm not going to go too far with this story.

I know everybody's wants me to, I'm not. But Pat Tyler, my grandfather, new Pat Tyler, and Pat Tyler, my grandfather would tell the story all the time. He was an ex Mafia hitman and Pat Tyler would walk up to him in a suit coat and just playing around.

He apparently had a sense of humor. He would ask people such as my grandfather, all right, stand there and pretend like you're drawn a gun. And by the time your arm was about, I don't know, a fourth of the way up, Grandpa said he had reached in his coat pocket, pulled out his actual pistol and pointed it at you.

By the time your hand was up halfway and was pointing at you, he had holstered the gun again and was pointing his finger at you. So he was that fast of a draw and I remember the story is growing up.

I started down the research of publishing the Mafia affiliations, which everybody wants me to... and you, once I started it, the internet kind of went ablaze. Because when William Brandham moved to Tucson, all of the mobsters, like you said, had moved to Tucson.

He had the big crime families from New York City, the banana family was all out in Tucson. Interestingly, Joe Banana disappeared. Shortly before William Brandham died, I think was shortly before, and doesn't reappear until after Brandham's, you know, Brandham's body was held from the grave until Easter.

He doesn't reappear until after this, so that there's some weird histories there. And it developed into, you can go in the internet and type this in, just type in the Tucson bombings. You can see all of the different mob factions that were in Tucson, and they were literally blowing each other up.

The FBI, there's question as to whether the FBI were planting the bombs, to try to eradicate the mafia that was in Tucson. It's this weird big mess. And the reason I mentioned this is, you also, for people who are familiar with the IHOP KC history, I've had numerous people, witnesses tell me that Paul Cain was tied to the mob, and that there was some weirdness going on with the financials.

I'll just, I'll say it like that, and I'll leave it, and the reason I'm addressing this is because in the series of podcasts, we're not going there. There's clearly too much danger. When I started publishing the Pat Bickel, the, not Pat Bickel, the Pat Tyler information, I actually had two different people from two different parts of the country, send me a warning, one of which was an indirect warning from a man that I have watched mob movies about, telling me the ground rules of what I can and cannot say, and I'm going to say very clearly,

we're not going there because we could. There is, there's significant avenues that we could take with this research. We're not going there because I'm adhering to the ground rules that was given to me so that all people are safe.

There's some crazy stuff there to be seen. People want to look into it. So yeah, that, what I've mentioned so far, John, is all of the significant message churches in the United States, and it wasn't a lot.

It wasn't nearly, when you listen to message preachers, you'll get the impression. I mean, a number of the churches I even mentioned came after William Brown died so far. So it wasn't nearly this massive thing that people would lead you to believe.

There were, so I will say this, so besides those churches I mentioned, there were a lot of people who were out and other churches who did believe the message. You take, I'll use, for example, the Mosley brothers.

The Mosley brothers were in James outlaw's church. Well, James outlawed himself, didn't believe William Brownem was a lie. James was a latter reign sort of a preacher, but you had people like that in churches all over the place who did believe William Brownem was a lie to the prophet or, you know, on down to the rest of his teachings, but they were in a latter reign church where the pastors or the...

creatures didn't believe that themselves, okay? And most of those people of that were of that mindset were either in a independent assemblies of God affiliated sort of church or they were in UPC, United Pentecostal churches, okay?

Those were the two main churches that the people holding the views that Branum was this great Elijah. That's where they were at at the time that he died. And the same is true all across Canada.

To the best of my knowledge, John, there was not a true message church in Canada when William Branum died, not a single one. You had out in Western Canada, you had a lot of people, maybe two or three hundred people who believed William Branum to be this Elijah figure who were in independent assemblies of God churches.

Ed Biscoll was one of those people. He was actually an independent assemblies of God preacher. You know, it ended up producing Cloverdale, which I think might be the largest North American message church today possibly, right?

He'd be right there anyway, but they weren't even in the message really back then. They, they, as far as having their own church or anything. He himself seems to have personally accepted it, maybe the year two before William Branum died.

But across Canada, there was no true message churches. So in the West, they were primarily coming out of independent assemblies of God, the early people. You also had in Edmonton, John. Edmonton is like, I don't know.

You know how Leavale explained it. Those evil Canadian spirits, right? So Edmonton was like the mother of cults or something. I don't know. There's a lot of crazy stuff in Edmonton. And so there was a lot of people in Edmonton that believed the message, but didn't have their own church.

Actually, so my great grandparents were Canadians. They actually were introduced to the message through people in Edmonton, right? Then they eventually, my grandfather's were message preachers. They started some of the original message churches in Canada, but there wasn't really a true message church back then.

And so just to be clear, I mean, I have family connections into all the early message community in Canada as well. And so I, I mean, I feel like I can speak pretty authoritatively to what that looked like.

Then in Eastern Canada, John, there were no true message churches. Probably the, if you think in the West, maybe as Ed Biscoll as the man who's gonna rise up and kind of be notable in Western Canada.

Eastern Canada, there's a man named Freddie Bradford. And he's gonna eventually rise up. And he had been to brand of meetings in New England, I think, in 1958. And they were all in the UPC back then, but there was about seven UPC churches in Eastern Canada that had message believers in it that eventually would start their own churches after brand of died.

And so that, that was again, that is the more or less the full extent of the notable message community in the years after right when William Brown had died. It wasn't that big. It was maybe, if, You know, maybe a few thousand people, maybe at the high end, the absolute high end, you got 5,000 people.

There was no, there was mission outreach happening to Mexico. I don't know of any true message churches in Mexico at the time that William Brown had died. There was mission reach happening like into Venezuela also when he died, but I don't know.

There might have been a true one single message church possibly in Venezuela. It'd be right on the border becoming one same in Brazil. There was a missionary, a message missionary in Brazil, Archie Martin, who was working back then, but he had just a small time.

I mean, if there were 25 message believers in Brazil, we're doing good when William Brown had died. Over in Europe, there was a single message church. It was a Ewald Frank's message church. It was started, he started his church.

I believe in 1964 in Crefield. That was the only message church in all of Europe. And in Africa, John, I, again, I don't know that there was a single message church in Africa when William Brown had died.

He had Sidney Jackson doing mission outreach in Africa. And you also had laterane missionaries working through independent assemblies of God like in Kenya, Nigeria, Mombosa, Nairobi, that area. But I don't know that there was actually a true message church.

They were mostly kind of laterane either under the independent assemblies of God umbrella or under the apostolic faith mission umbrella in South Africa. So I don't know if there really any true message churches when William Brown had died in Africa.

And then that's it. You also had, I should throw in, we had Paulusier Lowry. There's the last one. Paulusier Lowry claimed to have, he claimed to have, I put this in quote, he claimed to have about 25 churches in India in 1971.

And he claimed that he started planting those churches in 1964. So there was some message group in India before William Brown had died. Maybe a church or two or three. And I'm not sure we'll talk about Paulusier Lowry down the road.

I don't know how much I believe in, but he might have had 25 churches by the time he get to 1970. So I'm trying to think there's any I'm missing off the top of my head.

I best I need to go back and read my book to refresh myself. But I think that is the full extent of the global message community, more or less, when William Brown had died.

And in the years after his death. I laugh when you said Paulusier Lowry, it would be improper for me to use the word not job for a person on this podcast. So I'm not going to do that.

But there's a reason why I laughed, I'll just leave it at that. And that's, I'm going to have fun with this, if you can't tell, as we go through the series because in the main sect, like I said, we knew that these were cults.

And the irony is, the reason we knew wasn't so much that we could apply Steven has, Dr. Steven has as a bite model and understand that it was a... oritarian control, we were under authoritarian control.

The reason we could recognize it is because of that word that I won't use. Some of these groups were just going insane. They were literally going insane. And I know that we're gonna get all kinds of feedback as we do this because there are numerous groups that say that they were brand of churches way back during the times whenever we say there wasn't a church out there.

They're lying. There was a, the brand of movement, like Christian identity, like the clan, it was all starting to go underground when brand of died because people realized that yeah, brand of was kind of off as rocker, but we believe it anyway.

And so they would have these little disparate groups of, I don't know what you call them. They were tape home churches, some of them met in building. We mentioned Palmer in, in making Georgia, even when I was a kid, everybody gathered together in this small building that was used for the Boy Scouts.

And that was the church. And we all would file in there in our suit and tie and we'd sit in this hard folding chair and we'd listen to a tape recording of a dead guy from the 1947 and 1965.

That was what we called quote unquote church. Oh yeah, a lot of these churches I've mentioned, I call them churches just because, well, they had a supposed pastor and they had a supposed general meeting place, but most of them, it was, it was rented halls.

They were using some of them were in Masonic halls, John. Some of them were in, in Orangeman halls in Canada. It was the, you know, it was the, and some of that is so odd, right John?

I mean, because these were the same halls that the clan had used for all their stuff. So, you know, what do you make of it? It's hard to know just what to make of all that, but yeah, most of them didn't even have formal buildings.

Tucson Tabernacle was just a rented hall back then. And most of these churches, they were all very, very, very small, all of them were small. I mean, there's only three churches, I think, in that whole, everything I said that had more than 100 members.

The brand of Tabernacle, the Prescott, Leo Mercer's Commune, and the Tucson Tabernacle. They were the only groups that had more than 100 members when William Brandham died. All the rest of the churches were small.

The 25, maybe the 75 range, most of them. And then, of course, there was this, that scattering of, of ladder rain individuals just all over the place. You know, maybe a couple thousand, potentially, of those.

So, yeah, I think it's really interesting to know just the full scope of that. And what's important to know about those things is, as I lay all that out, I'm sure anybody listening wherever you're from, in the back of your mind, if you know your church, you can start to maybe connect dots now.

Oh, okay. I see this church. cheer these people here and you can start wherever you are at in the message today, whether you are in Africa, whether you're in India, whether you're in the Philippines, whether you're in any church in the entire world that believes the message was planted or split out of one of the churches that I have mentioned in this episode today, John.

That was it and we knew them all and at that point when William Brannum died, John, we were all still one big happy family, okay? When William Brannum died, it was all, they were all still getting together, there was still single conventions, everybody, you know, get along might be a two-nice of a word for it, but they all got in the same building and didn't kill each other, right?

And there was hierarchy, there was trust for leadership. The message community was fairly united when William Brannum died. In our next few episodes, we'll start to talk through the things that affected the first major schism in the message and caused these people to explode because as we all know today, oh my goodness, there is a thousand different sects of the message who all hate each other.

Maybe we can start to talk about how that started to happen. But yeah, I would say everybody I mentioned, John, probably almost certainly all knew each other, right? Now, Ed Biscoll and some of the later ones probably didn't know everybody, but Gordon Engman, Newly Veil, right?

And Bill Paderas, New Perry Green, right? And Earl Martin, you know, New Fred Bradford and all that, they all knew each other, right? The early message community was small, they all was together quite a bit through those years, and they worked together to plant really what became the message as you and I know it in the years after William Brannum died.

I'm excited to get into this, there's so much there. And you know, like I said at the end of the episode where we're driving around, I'll be happy if I don't mention that name again.

It looks like I'm going to have to do it, unfortunately. But for me, the interesting part lies with the connections into the new Apostolic Reformation. So as you're talking through this in the series, I'm going to be trying to identify key points where people, researchers who are listening can focus in on how the NAR developed from different theologies from each of these desperate groups.

Because remember, the NAR, by and large, they use Brannum as the stepping stone to create what they, this empire that they created. So they can't get rid of Brannum, and what do you do with it?

All of them, by and large, say, well, he went astray at the end of his life. And that's what they do because they are all aware what was created. What they're not telling you is that the reason why that this massive groups existed when Brannum died was because of the theology that they're using as the stepping stone.

If Brannum didn't teach that stuff, that was so far off of the mark and was extra biblical, some of it. I think I'll even go. as far as to say, some of it was anti-biblical.

If random did not preach the anti-biblical things, then these groups would not have existed. And so this mess that was created, they try to push that off to the side and say, well, we believe the core William Brannum that was created in Latter-Rain, he was quote unquote God's general and will continue our ministries that are based off of that nonsense he preached.

So like I said, I'm excited to get into this. There's so many different directions we could go. So thank you for putting all this together. Let me throw in one other less little tidbit pop my head before we close out.

You know, I did mention, you know, these are the 35 or so message churches before William Brannum died. But there were message individual message believers. I would say in the majority half at least of the broader Latter-Rain churches.

So even though there were just these few churches that eventually started to amalgamate all of these people out of the broader Latter-Rain movement, there was, if you went to any average Latter-Rain church, there was pretty good odds.

You're gonna find a person in that congregation who had accepted William Brannum's Elijah claim. So the people were very geographically diverse, but there were very few actual churches at the time that he died.

So all right, I'm looking forward to going through it too, John. Well, it's gonna be good. I also wanted to mention that, you know, we're gonna be sharing a lot of information about churches that many of our former members have escaped, and I can already hear it now.

They're gonna be dying to share information about that church. So I wanted to give you a platform and a voice to do so. If you contact us at William-Brannum.org, just go to the contact page and send us the information and very clearly in the description tell us that you wish to share some information for the podcast that Charles and I are doing.

We will try to incorporate what we can into the podcast and also we may, you know, if you want to share your story in our story series, feel free to also mention in there that you wish to share your story and talk about your time in whatever particular sect you were of the cult, and that includes the Brannum cult or any of the cults that were created as a result of Brannumism all the way into the NAR.

So if you wish to share your story, contact us, and we'll be happy to work through telling your story. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Brannum.org and ChristianGospelChurch.org. For more about the history of William-Brannum and the healing revivals, you can read, come out of her, my people. Now there's a volume two, which is available on Amazon and Kindle, and for more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read, weaponize religion from Christian identity to the NAR.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.