Secrets and Schisms: Divided Factions After Latter Rain

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org and the author of come out of her my people. Charles is good to be back and I'm excited to get into this journey of talking about the message splintering into many different factions because I think honestly that's what people are interested. I get so many comments, you've probably seen them in the YouTube feed and emails asking

me for the early years of the message after William Branham died. What happened? And there are ironically there's a number of people who blame my grandfather for the early stages of what happened which he may have been responsible partly but I think his part I want to say came in around 1968 or so. He was he was one of the deity people who worship William Branham who moved out to Tucson, Arizona and my grandfather said that William Branham was God tabernacled in human flesh. So that was that was for me that was a wake-up called

that something's not right man. These people are not worshiping the same God that I do and so anyway I'm excited to get into this. Me too John this is some interesting stuff. I mean if you are from the message there is so much about the whole message world that turns on what happened in the four and five years after William Branham died. You're right John it's kind of a secret. You know when you go when you listen to message preachers you know they'll all they use all the buzzwords. Oh the two souls people. Oh the return ministry people. Oh

those anti-characterial toward people. Oh this and oh that right. But they most of the people who talk that way don't actually know who those people are. Yeah they just heard those buzzwords and phrases so long and they repeat them they don't have they really know what they're talking about but hey guess what in Jefferson ville we do because they all broke away from us okay so we can we can walk you through who who some of those are and so today I think we want to start talking about who we want to start talking about how the message broke up into it's

very earliest schism after William. and Brandon died. Now the first big message schism, John, happened in 1968 and 1969, you're right. 1968, 1968 was really the last year that the message operated as a single unified group.

So, and then would you come in in 1969, things have broken a sunder. So, but we're gonna talk through what led up to that first schism, and there were four major issues that fed into that first schism.

And as we, in our next few episodes, walk through what those four things are, I think our listeners in the message are going to realize that just about every major branch of the message is a product in some way or another of these four things that happened in the very early message community.

But before we dive into, dive into the point where the schisms actually happen, we've gotta start talking about a church order again, John, because before William Brownham died, the message community was actually already divided into two factions.

There were two message factions before William Brownham died. And those factions were created, starting in 1963, 64, 65. And those two factions eventually coalesced into the first two sex of the message. And church order, church order is actually the event, which started the process to create the first two factions of the message.

Now, if our listeners remember, we recorded episode 178 a few months ago, and we actually did a kind of a deep dive into church order, what it was, how it worked, how important it was to the message.

And so if you want, you know, the full examination of church order, hey, go back, check out episode 178. But I'll just give a quick summary maybe before we start diving into how this caused the issues in the message again.

Church order is, these books are church order. The books themselves are entitled Conduct Order Doctrine. But in the message, we always just called this church order. And this is basically a series of sermons, William Brownham preached church order.

I want to say five or so times he preached church order. And every time he preached church order, he tightened the screws, tighten the screws. Every time he preached it, it got a little tighter, a little tighter, a little tighter.

And this is actually a full compilation of all of his sermons on church order, basically in chronological orders, what they are. And church order is, in a nutshell, it is what I would describe as the Constitution of the message.

None of this really has a single thing to do much with the Bible. And as you can see, it is thicker than the Bible itself. This is really all about, a lot of it is about the authority that trustees have over the finances, how deacons conduct their business as policemen, the power of the pastor, how franchises are set up to control tapes.

literature. It is the rules that need to be observed during a church service. It's all of this sort of stuff. It's like the the the rules that define how the message community should be organized into a higher structure and all the rules and the roles that everybody play. That is what church order is. And in that shell. And like I said, William Brannum, I think it was the, I think 58 was about the very first time he started preaching church order. It might have been 56, 56, 58 is the first time he preached it. It started out not

real strong. It started out he was just focused mainly on how pastors and the overseer. So William Brannum was in the overseer bishops sort of a position. In his system, the overseer is higher than the pastor. The overseer is the top level. It's like the pope. There's no check on this overseer's authority at all. William Brannum was the overseer in the system. And then under him, you've got there's pastors, which you could have obviously multiple pastors in multiple churches. And then there's deacons. The deacons actually report directly to the overseer, not the pastor. The pastor

reports to the overseer. And the trustees in the board also reported the overseer. So he lined all of this out. And that was mainly his original focus was just that structure to put himself into an overseer position. But then his time progressed, you know, and you get to his third and fourth sermon on it, he starts tightening those screws down. And what actually led to the creation of the faction, which you'll talk about in a minute, was what happened when he preached his 1963 version of church order. And a few things that I want to point out here because we're talking about

the years, you know, right up to his death and then after. But historically, if you look back at the Pentecostal movement and all of the movements that, you know, helped create Pentecostalism, modern Pentecostalism, it was a result of growing and splintering and growing and splintering and more growing and more splintering. And what happened was they would create this divisional doctrinal line in the sand. And you're either on site A or site B. And what happens is those would evolve over time through largely through groupthink, but some through people with doctrinal study and, and ideas that grew their, grew each side of the split. And they would be, they would

become more and more different than each other purposefully so so that if you were with group A, you would not identify with group B and you could easily see the two apart. Well, then those would grow, become too big and then they would splinter. And then you had ABCD and so on and so forth.

Well, the message was just like this. But to somebody who has been indoctrinated and let's just face it, for somebody who has brainwashed in the message, cults of William Brannum and its various splinter groups, at any of the varying stages from even prior to 1947, which is the oldest sermon we have, acts this to here, all the way up until today, what happens is the groups grow and splinter and become so different that no two churches in any city will fellowship with each other.

And I've visited many, I just released, I think it was this Friday, I released a podcast that interviewed a guy who was like me. He traveled from many different churches and he said the same thing.

There are no two message churches that will fellowship. They will pretend sometimes and put on their bright smiley faces and then preach against the other side on Sunday. It's so, so really weird. But when you're brainwashed in this call, you're brainwashed to believe that William Brenham had one message and that message was static from the tapes that we have access to here in 1947 and 1965.

It was one message, you're indoctrinated, brainwashed to believe this. However, in the beginning, he would make statements like, if somebody draws you out of their circle, draw a bigger circle and draw them back in, everybody's welcome.

And while doing this, he was preaching strongly against any denomination and especially the Catholic church because of their structure and governance. He called it cold, formal religion, which was common among all laterane. What happened was, as they grew and split, grew and split, each time there was a faction that emerged from laterane, Brenham would suck his group into a different state of mind and state of being where they could identify much different than the other groups.

They looked different, they act different, they believe different. And what happened toward the end, you went literally from everybody's welcome, we don't like organization and structure and governance, all the way to, we've got these two massive rule books of how we are going to govern and structure our church into a denomination.

So in effect, while his entire ministry, he's preaching against denominations so that he can start a cult and suck people out of denominations, he then formed one with rule books which they call church order.

Very well said, John, very well said. You mentioned how penicostalism has splits and factions and when you come into the message, a lot of the same sorts of issues exist. And in the message and laterane groups, from which the message descended, it takes, especially the early laterane groups.

It takes it even more dramatic step to becoming prone to schism. So the message and most of the broader laterane movement back then was chasing perfection. Everything had to be perfect. You had to be perfect.

I had to be perfect. Our beliefs had to be perfect and we needed to be... in perfect unity with one another, right? So it was like, they get you coming and going, right? You had to do every step of your life, perfect, John.

And I mean, when you think about the way that the perfect unity worked in the message, you and I could not have a different opinion on a subject, right? You know, if you thought, I don't know, if you thought, hey, I'll go back to example, if you thought Cain was descended from Noah, but I thought Cain was not descended from Noah, John.

Guess what? We're not in unity. We're not in perfect unity. And so one of us is right. One of us is wrong. And the one that's wrong is going to keep the other one of us from getting rapturing faith.

So we got to destroy the one who is wrong and throw them out, right? So you can't, the way the message is set up, anybody who does not perfectly match everyone around them must be eliminated.

Because not only it's not simply that they believe something wrong, but the fact that they believe something wrong is going to prevent me who sits in the same building as them from getting the rapturing faith, from hearing the revelation of the thunders, from being perfected, from going in the rapture, right?

And so anybody who deviated had to be purged. And so it sets up this storm where anything at all would cause a schism, right? Anything that is deemed the least bit important causes a schism in practice and doctrine and lifestyle, any difference at all causes it.

And there's very little room compared to other Christian groups for variance, you know? If you look within Methodists or Pentecostals or whatever, you know, they have a, there's an area where there's liberty, right?

Where you have freedom to make a difference with liberty, right? Where you have freedom to make up your own mind on things. And in most Christian groups, you know, the size of that can be bigger or smaller, obviously.

But in the message, it is minuscule. It's minuscule compared to other Christian groups that the area where you have liberty to make up your own mind and have an opinion that varies from someone else in the group is very small compared to the broader community.

But within that tiny area that the message permits, you are allowed to have your own opinion, variants of thought. But within the other 99% of choices, decisions, doctrines, beliefs, practices, you must align or you will be purged.

Absolutely. And that was one of the biggest shocks to me after leaving the message, because our first church, we went, I think I've mentioned this a few times, there were a plurality of elders, which was so foreign to me because of the higher article structure we had in the cult.

But we had different ministers who were working together in collaboration under one church. And you might hear from one on one Sunday and another on another Sunday. Sunday and they were all involved and I had just escaped and I had escaped a doomsday cult with heavy, heavy focus on the book of Revelation and so one of the most important aspects of church to me was understanding what they believed on Revelation and I go to one guy and he tells me what he believes and I was like oh well that sounds very much like William Branham did and and he was a little surprised but he was very focused on it's it's

soon it's impending it's near it's now and I talked to another guy and he said oh yeah most of that happened in 70 AD and I was like what and then talk to the other two and I think they were similar but slightly different but suddenly I realized wait a minute these guys aren't in unity is how do they how does this church even work how do they grow how do they and and it was a it was somewhat of a healthy church so I was a little surprised and so I you know I just

started asking them and expressing how surprised I was and they said well John nobody has all the answers and we we don't look at things like that as our primary focus the gospel is our primary focus and it took me while to understand that that's really the way it should have been all along but in the cult no and you know according to William Branham you're either right or wrong and what he meant by that is you either agree with every single thing that I have and hold as my opinion or you have you're going to start your own faction because you're not one of us and so he would

draw that line in the sand just like as we as we discussed Pentecostalism does once the line was drawn and somebody stepped across well then there's another faction and then after he died what's funny is all of these factions kind of existed already before he was before he died but they weren't really lines in the sand there were just people that had different opinions well once he died the men now stepped up into authority as governing figures of their sects and once they did now you've got factions that are polar opposite of each other you're either with

us or you're against us because that's what we were trained to believe and I agree and one this Pentecostalism in general is is very much like you know that way the one this Pentecostalism is very schism-proned as well for a lot of the same reasons now mainstream Pentecostalism you know assemblies of god type they're not so they're more they're more there's a lot more variety of thought permitted in you know in mainstream Pentecostalism then and say the message or onus Pentecostalism but yeah I mean it it does it breaks everything up quite a bit the way that they go with things

what other thing you mentioned too is you mentioned how some people blame your grandfather for

for causing the early schism. But I'll tell you who is actually to blame for the early schisms. His name is William Brannell. He is, the truth is, the only person that we can singularly blame for all of this is William Brannell.

I think, you know, he's, I blame him the most. But you are right, as we get through one of these things, yeah, it was like your grandfather and our pastor Norman Neville all had it out and that's what started to cause it.

But it is just terrible, though, because really all of this was set up by William Brannell, right? Here's the truth. William Brannell told your grandpa certain things, which was the exact opposite of what he told Raymond Jackson, which was the exact opposite of what he told Norman Neville.

And then when William Brannell dies, well, guess what? They're all said, but William Brannell told me this. And so they all end up fighting each other. And William Brannell is the one responsible, really, for setting up everything that bad that happened after he died, right?

As long as he was alive, he could maybe personally hold it together because he could keep up the charade, you know, of keeping some people in the desert and some people in Jeffersonville and, you know, some people in the Canadian wilderness and what have you.

And he could feed them all a different line. But once he's gone, there's nobody here to keep performing the dance anymore, right? And people are gonna start to figure, you know, they're gonna start all these issues are gonna rise up to the front.

And that's what happened with the church order issue that we're talking about today. So when William Brannell implemented church order and then gradually tightened it down, when 1963 came, he tightened it down, basically the operation of gifts of the spirit.

You could no longer speak in tongues, you could no longer prophesy, you could no longer have ecstatic experiences. There could be no open use of the gifts of the spirit in a church service.

He basically took all of that and he said, you cannot do that in church anymore. What we will do though, if you still wanna do those things, we're gonna have a room in the back, you can come to church early, you can do those things in this room in the back of the church.

And if anything interesting happens, hey, write it down and give it to the deacons. If the deacons think it's interesting, then they can give it to the pastor. And then if the pastor thinks it's interesting, he could read it to the church.

He basically took all of the gifts of the spirit, ecstatic experience, so forth, and he locked it into a private room in the church. Now, that is just one aspect of church order. Besides that, most all the other aspects of church order were accepted and fully implemented, but that piece that he created in 1963 to lock all the gifts and ecstatic experiences in a back room, that was highly, highly controversial when he did that.

Because that is what the entire broader later reign movement was all about that. I mean, that was one of the central tenants of... the latter reign movement was to get everybody speaking into tongues and everybody having gifts of the spirit and everybody having all of this stuff, right? That was one of the main thrusts of the broader movement. And when he took it and he locked it away in the back room, every single church around the message at that time and in the broader latter reign movement wanted nothing to do with that. Like that was way out of bounds. And so what William

Brandham did though is he would tell everybody, this is just for my church, this is just for the Brandham Tabernacle. Your churches can still do it. Their churches should still do it. But my Brandham Tabernacle, we have some crazy nut people that I'm trying to control. And that is why we're doing it here. But you don't have to do it in your churches. And so what happened is the rest of the churches in the message and in broader latter reign, they never implemented this private room thing, right? They continue to have open displays of the gifts

of the spirit in the church service. But as time went on after he did this in 1963, the people in the deity cult, the people most aligned to the deity cult, friendly to the deity cult, they start wanting to put it into other churches in the message. And it's only message churches that are interested in it at first. And what happens is you start to get a faction of people, you get a faction of people who they want to, if it's good enough for William Brandham, it's good enough for me, right? And they want to do it in their church. Okay? And then you get

the other side of people that are saying, no, he said this is only for the Brandham Tabernacle. And we're all about restoring the gifts of the spirit. No, we are not doing that here, right? And so you have, and by the time William Brandham dies, there's the really, it's really only the Brandham Tabernacle that has church order really strongly enforced in that way. But when he dies, this is when it all hits the fan, right? Everybody, everybody, the clause come out. And what happens is you have Earl Martin. So Earl Martin and his brother John Martin were independent assemblies of God

preachers. They had a church in Wadal, Missouri. They started to believe that church order should be implemented everywhere. And they started a campaign to have it implemented everywhere. They started raising the issue at all of the meetings and all the conventions. Church order should be everywhere. And what happened is they implemented in their church. Perry Green implemented at his church. It was implemented in Leo Mercer's Park in the commune. JT Parnell implemented in his church. Of course, the Tabernacle already had it from William Brandham. And so you end up with the side a faction of the message that has it. But then you have a whole other faction of the

message that has it. doesn't have it. Faith assembly doesn't have it. Don Roddle's gospel tabernacle doesn't have it. Full gospel, up in cell in Bloomington doesn't have it. Down in the south, the King's Mountain Church doesn't have it. Bill Paderis's Church, Fultures Church don't have it. And then you also have some people who are in the middle, right? Like Joseph Coleman, their church up in New York City, and Anthony Milano, they don't implement it either. That piece. And so you have this, this almost a 50-50 split where half have implemented church order and the other half have it. And this is

actually already started before William Brown died. So I want to read you a couple quotes, John. And William Brown actually talks about this on church because this was, this was causing division before he died. Here's a quote from 1964, questions and answers. Number two, William Brownem says, now also here I might bring this out. I see I don't think my brother's here tonight, but somebody made fun of somebody leaving the tabernacle and went down to brother junior Jackson's for church said they went down among the dead birds. He says, aren't you ashamed that you made a remark

like that ever who you are? If you're my kids here in Christ, I'm ashamed of you. Don't do a thing like that. Junior Jackson is my brother. This is my church, okay? Duncan Rottle is my brother.

Well, the reason of it, because when I set church order here in a certain order, when I come back to see if I could get manifestations of the gifts, half of them pulled away from it. So you notice he's half the tabernacle actually left over this, John, and started coming to my church. And this is exactly what he's talking about. Because when you would start to speak your preach or something, it got to such a place that you could hardly preach without someone speaking in tongues or somebody interpreting. And anyways, he goes on there. When he introduced church order over the first year that

he cut down these gifts to the spirit, John, half of the early tabernacle congregation left the church and moved to Don Rottle's church or Raymond Jackson's church so they could continue those practices, right? The tabernacle that existed like when you were in it was not primarily descended from the original tabernacle families, okay? It was not the original tabernacle families primarily left over this stuff and then other things were going to split. So when people, the tabernacle almost not fully, but I'll say 80% turned over its congregation in these years, okay? And so the people with the longest history with William Branham is not actually the branch of tabernacle or

even the people with Joseph today. The people with the longest history with William Branham was actually my sect of the message. My sect of the message was the original tabernacle congregation. So anyways, that's something I tried to point out. I know other people in the message hated, but I like pointing that out. But anyway, this started to happen before he died. They already had kind of split into two.

And I think we mentioned on the last podcast series we did, I have this memory that's burnt in my head of going to, what was it called, the Boars Nest or Boars Head? Always think of the dukes of hazard, the blue boar.

Always think of the dukes of hazard, restaurant at Boss Hall going, but went to the blue boar and we're walking in and my grandfather saw Raymond Jackson said, hello, Raymond. Raymond said, hello, Willard.

And remind me the, now it reminds me the Seinfeld episode, you know, it's so, so funny to think of the factions and how, just how anti-Christian they are. I mean, there's no, there is no unity.

While they're preaching unity, there is no unity and that's the funny part. And, you know, the problem continued to grow. I have been contacted, I'm not gonna give the names, but I've been contacted by key figures of the new Apostolic Reformation and they mentioned visiting and talking with my grandfather because William Brannem is a key figure and all of the NAR really use Brannem as their stepping stone.

And so they talked about how harmonious, I can't remember their exact words, but they're talking about the church as though the Brannem tabernacles this holy place. And no, man, whenever I left the tabernacle, there were three sections.

There was the left, the middle, and the right. And the ones on the right clearly would not fellowship with the ones on the left. In fact, they went out to different doors of the building and would not talk to each other.

That's how weird this was. And then there's people in the middle. And so I came to conclude, after only being, we moved back here whenever I had graduated high school, I was out of high school for about one year and we moved back, we'd moved all over.

I came to the conclusion within three months that there was one group that worshiped Joseph Brannem as their God. There was another group that was strongly devoted to my grandfather. They believed that those Joseph people were freaks.

And then there's another group of people who worship William Brannem as God. So those were the three factions. And then within that were several other factions. And so when you hear, when I heard these NAR people talking about this holy place, Jeffersonville, they have no idea, man, or maybe they do.

Maybe they just simply don't care. But it's such a mass, man. When they talk to your grandfather, did they talk inside the tapernacle or were they in the parking lot? I'm curious. Because you're not allowed to talk in the church, right?

Like that is totally against the rules. So we think we're talking your grandfather in the church. I mean, I would be shocked. Yeah. So I'm sure it did look peaceful and harmonious on the inside because you're not allowed to talk on the inside.

You can't have a fight when you're in the church. You got to wait till you get in the parking lot. Some of the churches that we went to when we moved around, they would refer to my grandfather's churches the Wax Museum.

Because you go in there and it was like Wax figures, man. They weren't allowed to do anything inside that building. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

So William Brannum here, you see in this quote, William Brannum is meeting half the tabernacle congregation left when he banned the gifts of the spear, right? He admits that on tape. Your grandfather didn't have nothing to do with that, right?

Your grandfather was living in Arizona when that happened. William Brannum did this, like this was like William Brannum making this happen. And your grandfather inherited William Brannum's mistakes, so that's how I look at it now.

I don't hate your grandfather anymore, I say anymore. We were so terrible in the message, weren't we the way we all hated each other and talked bad about each other? But William Brannum is the man who did this.

He's the one who basically created the rules, and then your grandfather, you know, years after he's gone, comes in. Basically just enforcing the rules that William Brannum made. And William Brannum, so here is the story on this, I know from our sect of the message, is that William Brannum told the people in our church, and some of this is on tape, I'll read you another quote from William Brannum.

He told us that church order was only for the tabernacle, that none of the other churches needed to observe it, that it was specifically just for the brand of tabernacle. He told that to quite a few people, and he said there's nothing wrong with the gifts of the spirit and any of the other churches that want to do it.

And this is how it was, he's so duplicitous, right? But what happened when he was supposedly, this is just the story, is it true or not, who knows? He was supposedly going to rescind that part of church order, the year that he died, right?

Supposedly, in 1966, he was going to rescind church order, and he died before he could do it. And part of the reason was, this really was a huge... issue in the message. I would say at the time he died, 80% of the followers of the message were totally unwilling to go along with banning the gifts of the spirit like he was, right?

And so I think that he recognized at a certain point that he had overstepped, and I do think that he was perhaps on the way towards rescinding that piece of church order. But whatever the case, obviously he never did, he died, it remained in place. And so he dies with this pre-existing issue in the community, still there, right? Unresolved. You have the majority who are opposed to implementing that part of church order, and you have the minority who are in favor of implementing it. And over time, as we'll talk through the next episodes, that minority ends up getting their hands on all the levers of power,

and ends up driving a schism. Let me read you another quote here real quick. William Brandham says in this one, this is from also 1964, the month of August. This is a week after the last quote I just read. He says, someone wrote a question up the other day, was up here, said about, said something about brother Junior Jackson. Somebody went down there and they said, you're going down to the dead beans or something like that. Brother Jackson, because brother Jackson's congregation, they let them speak with tongues just in the church. Whenever they feel the spirit and want to speak in tongues, they go ahead and do

it. He says, well, that's brother Jackson's church. That's perfectly all right. I haven't got nothing against that. Not a thing. Junior Jackson is one of my best friends. So, as you can see, this total double standard, right? You cannot do that. He's even publicly admitting that he said, this is okay in the other churches. So, you've got William Brandham preached conflicting everything, right? So, here in these books, basically, he has forbid the exact same thing. He just said, is all right in that quote I just read. So, which is it? Is it all right or is it forbidden? Okay. And naturally, this is one of the many,

many, many conflicting statements that he made that eventually causes a problem. But this in particular created the first two factions of the message over this issue that after he dies and some additional conflicting statements get examined are going to break away into the first two factions of the message. And at this point in time when William Brandham dies, the majority of the early message community are in the anti-church order faction. I'd say 80%. It shifts. It shifts. By the time you get to 1968 when the schism finally actually happens, it's really 50-50. Half of the message is in the anti-church order faction. Half is

in the pro-church order faction. And so, that's how this piece is going to break down this time that he was going to rescind church order and no, man, I disagree. I know. He has, William Brannum has every single sign.

You can go online and you can look what are the characteristics of a narcissistic person, a person who has narcissistic personality disorder. And William Brannum meets every single criteria and far exceeds them. So this was a narcissist running a cult.

A narcissist do not rescind. What they do is they like to create divisions under them. Because if they can create a division under the people they're leading where they fight amongst themselves, they don't see that he's a narcissist.

And it's just typical. You can go, you can read studies on this. So what? By rescinding, he would probably, in my opinion, he would have gone to one group and said, you're allowed to do this.

And then you go to the other group and he would say, it's really wrong if you do the thing that the other group that I just told was doing. So they'd fight amongst themselves.

And that's just, that's how it works. And then narcissists will step out and become the hero to the divisions because they feel empowered by doing this. But no, man, he was not going to rescind this.

I am still on the fence. And so if our listeners don't understand, John, you and I were on opposite sides of the schism and the mess. So you got all of the pro-church order in indoctrination.

I got all the anti-church order in indoctrination. I don't know. So here's, I think, John. I think that from a control perspective, I look back now and I think he probably implemented church order because he wanted to have the spotlight for the gifts of the spirit himself.

And he didn't want to share it. That's what I think. I think he wanted to be the only one given prophecies. I think he's the only one who wanted to be, you know, practice and gifts of the spirit.

So I think he wanted to take it away from everybody else and he wanted to be the sole dispenser of those things. That's why I think he did it. And so from that aspect, I think he did want to keep it and he probably, it was his wish to keep it.

However, the revolt was so strong against him when he did that. That's the only caveat. Would he, I think there might have been a sense of pragmatism in him that he realized, okay, if I really want to hold all this thing together, maybe I got to resend a little bit or I got to give some.

And so I don't think he would have resended it from any goodness of his heart. But for pure pragmatism, perhaps, to hold the thing together. And if you think about it, you know, he's trying, his audiences that he's drawing everybody in from, they all lived in that.

They, that was everything to them. And so for him to continue to appeal to them, you know, it's hard to remain appealing to them when you've taken away, you know, the shiny thing that they're most interested in.

So. I think from a pragmatic approach, maybe he would, but who knows, right? He died, so who would ever know? Let me read you a couple more quotes, too, because I think you're right.

I think there's evidence that he was absolutely setting this thing up to never happen again. Here's a quote from Lee Vale, John, and I'm opening up the book here where I've got it. Lee Vale is, if you think of this church-order debate as a rainbow from one extreme to the other, on one side, I would say you have the churches that still want full-on, open, operation of the gifts after William Brandem dies, then you've got the middle ground, the people who they're willing to have the private room in the back where people can still do it,

and then you've got the other opposite extreme, people that go full cessationist, right? And they insist William Brandem was actually going to full cessationism and the gifts of the spirit ceased with William Brandem.

That's the far extreme of it, and so you've got that rainbow, Lee Vale is over on the cessationist wing of this thing, okay? Let me read you a quote from Lee Vale. This is from a 1986 sermon by Lee Vale.

He said, at the same time, the gifts were sort of going down the drain. And I said, brother Brandem, is this the hour that the age of the gifts are over? And he said, yes, it is.

So wow. Lee Vale claimed that William Brandem privately told him that the gifts were to cease, and Lee Vale effectively became a cessationist, you know, at the time that this church-order stuff was introduced.

So, on one side, William Brandem is telling people, it's time for the gifts to cease. We're putting it in a back room until it dies, right? And then on the other side, he's telling Raymond Jackson, oh, it's all right, if you guys want to speak in tongues, good, yeah, that's wonderful.

So you've got this, and then in the middle, then publicly, officially, he's saying, put it in a room in the back. So you've got these three, frankly, contradictory things, right? It's not like he just has a black or white.

He's got three. There's a rainbow here. He's to Lee Vale, he's going cessationist, okay? In church order, he's saying, it's okay, but it needs to be in the back room before church. And to our churches, he's saying, oh, yeah, just continue on like always, you know?

And so it's natural that these people are all, when the referee William Brandem dies, and there's no one to referee, I mean, yeah, Lee Vale knows William Brandem said, go be cessationist. Yeah, your grandfather says, knows he said, go put it in the back room.

Yeah, Raymond Jackson said, knows he said, yeah, keep on like always. They all know he says all these conflicting things. They all know he's right. And naturally, it's going to cause a fight. Nobody wants to actually step back.

Here's the thing, nobody wants to step back. Your grandfather don't want to step back. Raymond Jackson don't want to step back. We veiled don't want to step back. And they don't want to say, wait a minute.

William Brown is tricking us all. He's telling us different things. He's lying to us. Like what in the world? Like none of them are willing to do that. Like they all want to fight over their position rather than actually the right thing to do is to step back and say, wait a minute.

William Brown is out of his gore. He's telling us all different things. It's such a mess, man. You remember, I'm sure, but we have one interview that we cannot yet play. Hopefully we will soon.

But the guy was talking about how in the Pentecostal circles, they were upset with William Brannum because he would, on one Sunday, he would go baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And then on another Sunday, he would baptize in Jesus' name and denounce anybody who had baptized like this. And so they had this falling out with Brannum. I'm certain that they would have just flipped out if they heard that he told somebody that the gifts of the Spirit had ceased, man, because it defies the whole Pentecostal religion itself.

And that's the man that is being lifted up by so many Pentecostal movements and in this apostolic network. It's just really hard to believe that they chose him as God's general because you know, as well as I know, that the leaders in this had knowledge that he was contradicting himself.

And the people who are indoctrinated to think it's one single static message with no divisions, they're really surprised whenever they read the transcript searches and they come across something where no, he said this thing here, which is polar opposite from this other thing here.

But that's how it is, man. The leaders know because they had one job, Charles, one job, and that was to study it while they preached it. And so they would come across it and they would just not tell a single soul in their church that William Brannum preached both sides of every single argument.

Our average listener may not be aware. If you're in the message, you're probably aware, but William Brannum preached multiple conflicting versions of every single topic. There is not a single notable significant topic that he taught consistently.

He taught multiple formulas of salvation. He taught multiple formulas of baptism. He taught multiple formulas of the Godhead. He taught, as you can see, multiple positions on the gifts of the Spirit. He taught, you go on down.

He taught multiple conflicting interpretations of the parables of Jesus. He taught multiple conflicting interpretations of the symbolism of prophecy, like revelation and so forth. He taught, I mean, every topic, he taught multiple conflicting versions of predestination.

He taught, I mean, you name it, you name it. He taught multiple conflicting versions of it. Now, and the different sex of the message have different ways to reconcile it, to decide which version they're gonna belong to.

leave, right? Hey, my, my sect of the message, John, we went with the anti-church order, William Branham. You know, I think I believe a lot of the, probably the majority of the message in North America went with the keep it private in the back room sect of the belief, right? And then another minority went with the, hey, we're not going to have the gifts of the spirit at all version of William Branham. So it, it, it just, William Branham is the one responsible for setting up all of these factions that created after he died. He's

ultimately the one that we have to say is accountable for all of this first and foremost. He's the one who laid the foundation for all the splits to happen. And then our message for fathers, John, they're the ones who took it and then actually enacted all of the schisms after he died that he, he, he basically set up to happen. So, so that's church order in a nutshell. And, and how these factions existed. Now, here's the thing, John. These factions existed before William Branham died, but guess what? They were all still getting together. They were all still having meetings together. There were still the message, you

know, the message conventions. You know, Earl Martin and Raymond Jackson, although they had different views on this, they were still having joint conventions into 1968, right? So even though this existed, this was not enough to cause a schism in the early message community. It was just a fight. And you can see how it's, you know, some people are calling my church the black, the dead birds, right? We had names for the other churches too, right?

But the, the bad feelings are already growing before William Branham dies. And let me, let me just kind of talk through though, what it looked like in the tabernacle, John, at this point too. So the tabernacle itself, Orman Neville, the pastor of the tabernacle, John, was actually in the anti-church order faction, okay? He was actually on, you know, the Raymond Jackson, the Don Ruddle, you know, that side of things. So although the church order was at the tabernacle, the pastor, Orman Neville, was actually opposed to church order. And that's one of the things that after William Branham died, he was even in favor of trying

to rescind it. And so the tabernacle itself was, was divided over what to do with this. And so that would set up a fight after William Branham died. Now, now, I guess everybody listening now,

you kind of start to understand why there's such a variety of worship styles and stuff in the message, right? If you go to Joseph Coleman's church, back in the day, I mean, they basically scream and shout and run and jump and speak in tongues and everything else, nonstop, beginning to end, right? That's the church service there, right? Then you then you get to other churches like the tabernacle, it's the wax figure museum, John. Then you then you go to other churches, well, they have the price.

the back room you can go do it in right then you've got other maybe more moderate churches where um it is it is open in the get in the service but it's not you know loud screaming nonstop you know end to end so the message ends up as a result of this with a just a big variety of expression during their worship services during their church services depending on where these things where they landed on these issues and for a lot of churches um the the position that they take dates back to whether they were planted or diverged from the anti church order faction of the early message

community or the pro church order faction of the early message community right and and that is where you can trace back the the variance in uh the style of service um in a message church you mentioned the next split that happened in 1968 and i mentioned that my grandfather his part came 1968 it was actually 1969 i believe that because he came about a year after that as whenever he was made pastor of the uh random tabernacle and he held that for 50 years but you're right the factions are so vastly different that whenever you hear the term message you think

it's just one group of people from all over the world who are in unity who worship William Branham is their god in some varying level or worship what he said is god i should say because they they call it the spoken word but no man there is no unity whatsoever among all of these factions and remember this was happening all of these factions were really getting really getting against each other in a in a harsh way about the same time that the shepherding movement was coming in so here you had uh earned backster who was working with Branham as the the backster Branham campaigns

during the early years backster was one of his managers he sees all of this fall out so it was the perfect opportunity for something like this because people would have recognized him as part of this thing and then they see all of these divisions that are happening among the message it was the perfect opportunity to catch some of the fallout now i'm certain it was much bigger than this they they didn't only do it because of this however it was the perfect opportunity and i'm certain that they would have caught some of the fallout yeah i look forward to kind of talking

about how these beliefs moved among the groups outside and we're definitely going to do some full episodes on this john i've got so many uh thoughts about episodes we can do over the stuff on this we can do an episode on the shepherding movement we need to do an episode on message unity we need to do an episode on message perfection we've got um you know we need to do a whole episode on Derek Prince we there's so much stuff that we we can talk about that is related to all of this um and and it is vast

really is vast. You know, I think one last point that I would like to make, maybe before we wrap this thing up, is that the message is certainly not monolithic in their viewpoints on all this, just like you pointed out, John. And it's hard, I think, for outsiders to understand how the message could have such a vast variety of, you know, sub-beliefs and sub-factions. And it's definitely worth pointing out that it does all come back to all of these different conflicting teachings that William Brown was teaching to the same people. And as William Brown him died, this church order stuff already had resulted in the creation of two pre-existing

factions within the early message community. And if you think about it in terms of churches, in terms of churches, it was about half of the churches ended up with church order shortly after he died and half did not. But the majority of the message community when William Brown him died, the majority of the message community was not in message churches, right? When he died, there were about 35 message churches. There were about 1500 people in those 35 message churches.

There was another 2000 to 3000 message people, you know, also in the message world. And that actually, they were the larger percentage of the overall community at that time. And they, at that point, were still in other churches of the latter-lane movement. They were individuals that were in Jack Morse Church. They were individuals that were in UPC churches. They were individuals that were in various other, they were in James Outlaw's Church. They were in all of these different latter-lane churches where they as an individual accepted the message in William Brown him as Elijah. But they themselves did not, their preacher didn't, and their church did,

right? And in all of those churches, well, guess what? They all were in to a church. We're all continuing all of the ecstatic worship, all of the speaking and tongues, all that, right? And all the people from those churches, right? Guess what? They missed this whole schism that happened among the true message churches that existed at that time, right? This happened before they had ever came out of those churches and established their own message churches and really came into true fellowship with the message. So this schism and these issues only really impacted the true early message churches. And the average message believer in 1965 was not in a message church. They

were in a latter-lane church, right? And so when they start to come out and they start to build some of their own churches, and that's going to happen in 1967, 1968, 1968, not in the early 1970s, they are being established after this schism has already, you know, these factional stuff has already came out and been settled. And- A lot of them it Depends on which side of the message ended up recruiting them out to start their own church as to which side of this that they fall on

Because like I said most of the people who Most of the churches that really became big driver churches in the years after William Bram died were not their own churches when all this stuff happened at Biscoll did not have a message church when all this started Lonnie Jenkins did not have a message church when all this stuff started right you can go on down the list most all of the People that today we would think of the shakers and movers in the message did not have their own churches A lot of them didn't even believe the message back then and those that did were in other ladder rain churches

Where they would have been firmly on the anti-church order of action side of things, you know had they Had the awareness to even been involved in these things back then. So I mean, I think that's where I'll end it today John and Hopefully over the next few episodes we can talk through the next pieces That started to pile on that created the final break In these two early factions of the message Yeah, I'm excited to get into this as well because part of this for me it's therapeutic to go back and understand how this big mess was created

And you know like I said like I mentioned earlier in the podcast There were the three factions in within the random tabernacle itself all while my grandfather's the head pastor And there's so much secrecy around it. I mentioned that there was the group that worship Joseph the group that worship Brannum and then those devoted to my grandfather Well those devoted to my grandfather had no idea that my grandfather believed that William Brannum was god tabernacle than human flesh until his retirement speech And that's a statement you know in private he would say things like that all the time and I just grew up

I assumed that he was out in the open about it, but when I moved here after you know after high school I realized that no there was there's this weird thing where the ministers really withheld from the people everything that they truly believed And they also withheld all of the secrets that were happening around the development of the cult Because if you're in one of these factions you had no idea that the other factions really came from the same route and Were really following William Brannum's teaching and it was contradicting But I can assure you my grandfather knew all of the contradictions

He'd listen to the recordings over and over and over like I did I was developing an understanding of some of the contradictions on my own just listening casually to recording so The ministers kept it a secret they for some reason wanted to keep the cult going even though the central figure had died And I suspect Charles as we get into this we'll probably talk about it some more But I suspect that some of those ministers wanted really really to become the central figure themselves of whatever is their group and some of them in fact did. So we'll get into that, which is another big mess for another day. So if you've enjoyed

our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Brandom.org and www.ChristianGospelChurch.org. For more about the history of William Brandom and the healing revivals, read, come out of her, my people, available on Amazon and Kindle.

For more about the dark side of the NAR, read, weaponize religion, from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle and Automore.

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