Revival to Chaos: How Message Cult Theology Influenced NAR Indoctrination

Music 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-Brandom.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.

And together we're discussing the revival history that happened after William Brandham's death, which ultimately led to the charismatic movement and the NAR and beyond. And so Charles, I had a conversation with Adam yesterday, and I just mentioned some things that I thought was common knowledge, talking about the Pentecostal movement, etc.

And he was a little surprised, he asked me what some of the acronyms were. And I came to the conclusion that even though many of these ministries came directly from this thing that we're talking about today, they have whitewashed it so much that the people have no idea where they came from.

And it's interesting because he was affiliated with some big names. He was in a morning star ministries, he was in Bethel. He was connected to IHOP KC. And he knew some of the names.

When he was at Bethel, they actually had him apparently. He read some of the blue and tan books of William Brandham. He had a few of them. And it was almost required reading. They wanted people to understand how they came to be Bethel, right?

And the way he described it, there's the set of books that was almost the required reading. And then there was this other set in a later date that they said, now don't read those because those are whenever he went astray.

And so today, I wanted to talk a little bit about what it is that the movement largely believed. But more specifically, what did they believe in the message sect? How did it grow and evolve? How did it become the destructive cult that it is today?

And the researchers who are listening to this can kind of piece together the gaps. Because many of the things that we're talking about came directly from this time period that Bethel, Morningstar, all of these ministries say, this is the good stuff.

This is when William Brandham did not go astray. And they have no idea. where this stuff come from. So this will be fun, but more than that, I've had many people who are just not even affiliated with NAR or CARES main here or anything like this.

They're just researchers in general, and they contact me and they say, do you have any video that really describes what the message believes and stands for? I've had multiple, I had one just last week asking me this, and I looked through what we had.

We really didn't have anything that sums it up. So today's a good chance to just kind of sum up what is this mess that's called the message? How does it relate to what became CARES main, the NAR, et cetera, and how does it differ as a destructive cult?

No, John, I'm looking forward to recording the episode today and going through these things with you. So in our past few episodes, we've been dealing with the history of the message after William Brannum died.

We worked through the events leading up to the first major schism in the message. And then on the other side of that first schism, the message launched a huge missionary outreach that ballooned and spread these beliefs to millions of people.

And so before we talk about how those pieces happen in the aftermath, I think it does make a whole lot of sense to just talk through the beliefs themselves and kind of summarize what they were for people.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And what is important, and something I've tried to convey through all of the episodes we have recorded, John, is this ideology of the message, and you can trace it backwards in time, you can trace it forwards in time from the message of how it evolved.

And this is part of a long-running ideology. This ideology is maybe 250 to 300 years old, as hell, well, I can figure out that this ideology is. And this ideology has boom cycles and bust cycles.

It booms and busts. And it booms and busts on this whole last-day revival concept. This is hundreds of years old now, this last revival concept, going all the way back into the early 1800s.

And they're chasing the last-day revival and they're setting it up, and then it never happens, and it turns out the leaders were dirt bags, and it all falls apart, bust. And then some of those disciples repeat, okay?

Okay, we're fine tuning in, and now we're going for the next last-day revival, and it's gonna be the end of days, and we're all gonna be this and that and the other, and then our leaders turned out all to be scumbags, and it busted again.

And then the next round, okay? It's a boom and a bust cycle. This is how it works for the last 250 to 300 years of this ideology, you can trace this boom and bust cycle.

And with every boom and bust, the ideology evolves a little bit, and the people who start the next boom cycle, okay? Try to whitewash the past, and you know, didn't- I a lot of stuff that actually happened and so this, this is like the important thing and it's important to realize that it is the chase the last day revival piece that drives the boom cycle, okay?

But then it is the underlying corruption of the ideology that empowers basically a cult leader to run the thing that then leads into the boom cycle, the bus cycle, okay, to reset it. The, the NAR, the NAR today is entering a bus cycle, okay, all right, their boom has happened and now they're in the bus, okay, just like happened in the message we had the boom, we talked about the bus in our last few episodes, okay, but this is what happened.

The boom and the bus cycle drives this ideology in every cycle, it evolves a little, it evolves a little and detecting those evolutions is really important, one of the things in the message John, I think before maybe we talk about what makes the message distinct, let's just kind of talk about what this entire movement believed just before the message broke away, okay, because the, the NAR, the third wave of Pentecostalism is made up of multiple factions that recombined in the 1980s and 1990s, the present boom cycle was launched by multiple factions from the ladder rain movement that split and had fights and turned

against each other in the 50s and 60s, okay, they recombined, their disciples recombined in the 80s and 90s, I look forward to when we can deep dive chapter 10 in my book John because I go through some of this, they recombined in the 1980s and 1990s and ultimately produced the NAR for another boom cycle, okay, so let's talk about what this thing looked like before it exploded and fell apart in the late 50s and 60s, so one huge belief, which we've talked about a lot, is manifest its sons of God, okay, now the ladder rain movement

did not invent manifest its sons of God, that the essential concepts of that have been in this ideology from the earliest boom and bust cycles, all the way back to the early 1800s, right, there's just different phrasiology for different ways to term it, but it's essentially the belief that the church has to reach this special advanced state, some call it perfection, some call it perfect holiness, some call it whatever, right, there's different ways that it's termed as it evolves, but the church has to reach some advanced elite state and upon entering into that elite advanced state of perfect revelations or perfect holiness

or perfect, you know, great miraculous power, whatever this is, usually it's kind of all three of those together, the church is going to be empowered to enact the last day events and the return of Christ will occur, and the return of Christ will occur in such a way that he returns into the individuals in the church and they will become empowered as Christ on earth, right, which Some would call the manifested sons of God. There's other terminology and prior boom and bus cycles. There's new terminology in the New Wars. Now some people talk about what Joel's army or there's different different phrases that evolve to a

Describe it, but that's the essential concept of it. And so empowered this this race of people with all these powers, they will be able to enact the end of day scenario, right? And usher in the second coming of peace on earth than all of the rest of it. Okay.

That was in the ideology. And the last day revival concepts are what moves the followers, the believers of this ideology into that advanced elite state. Okay. So this is all in manifested sons of God. And when you come into the the aspects of it in the 40s, 50s and 60s, they develop the idea in that period of time that the fivefold ministry was the means to get there. You need the fivefold ministry restored and the fivefold ministry restored is what will lead to this completion perfection of the church. And then it entering into this advanced stage, which will then bring on the end of days. Then beyond that, there are. Again, a lot of this comes out of historic British

isualism. There's these ideas that what is happening in the church is spiritually connected to what is happening in Israel. Okay. So and this goes back to the early days when they believe they were the 10 lost tribes of Israel. So they believe they were Israel, right? Now that piece kind of got dropped in one of the boom and bus cycles, but the the the concepts of the linkage between what's happening in Israel and what's happening in the church remained. And so they look at any development in the land of Israel. That is rolls took more over more of the holy land or Israel is moving towards building the temple or this feast event is

transpiring or all kinds of things like that or more Jewish people are being converted to, you know, Christianity. All of these sort of things happening in Israel are always a sign to them that there that something big is getting ready to happen in the church. And for example, the latter a movement started in 1948, the same year that Israel became a country. And William Brannum died. We're going to talk about this a little bit. He died in 1965 and then the six day war happened in 67. And that's one of the things that saved the message was the six day war happening right after William

Brannum died because that then fueled the fire. Oh, yes, he really was telling the truth. Look, there's great things happen in Israel and the Lord is just about to come. So this this linkage between what's happening in Israel in the church is is huge. And oftentimes it is it comes down to very specific predictions. You know, they'll they'll end up with saying something like this when this specific thing happens in Israel, then it corresponds to this specific thing is going to happen in the church. And, you know, fill in the blank. Whatever That is, they use that formulation and then they set it up and now the church is trying

to make this thing happen in Israel or vice versa in order to have a corresponding spiritual event in Israel versus the church. Okay. So these things, you know, along with all of these deliverance practices where you're casting out demons and devils and spirits and miraculous healings and gifts of the spirit, all of this is in the message while it is still part of the broader latter reign movement and the broader latter reign movement generally believes all of those things.

Now there's new ones, right? And if we go into the weeds, there's new ones in the different factions, some factions believe in a rapture, some factions don't, right? There's nuances like that where you start to get into the weeds and we could say, oh, we're different, we're not the same, but I want to try and focus as we do this, John, on the pieces that are common and what I'm describing today are pieces that are common across all of these groups.

So those are things that were in the movement before the message broke away. And I wanted to get them out of the way before we start to talk about what sets the message apart from the rest of that craziness.

It's so interesting because Adam and I were just having this discussion. We were talking about, as we were going through how all of this mess has been kind of white washed in the current movements, we began talking about the similarities and the framework, the doctrinal framework that was used.

And I made the point that if you examine the doctrines themselves, they'll differ. So if you examine the message of William Brannum and you examine Iop Casey, for example, you would never know that it was Brannumism 2.0.

But if you take all of the elements of what you're describing and you understand that doctrinally they differ, but strategically they match, then you can kind of see how all of this puzzle fits together.

And I was having a conversation also with Steve. I think Steve Montgomery, I think that podcast would probably come out before this one. But I was mentioning this people of Destiny magazine, which has all of the key players, man, it's got John Wimber, it's got C. Peter Wagner.

This is a heavily affiliated with a shepherding movement, which was, as we've discussed, it was birthed basically right after William Brannum died, with ARM Baxter being one of the key figures who was of the Baxter Brannum campaign.

So all these people are connected and tied. And most of the elements that you just mentioned, believe it or not, you'll find it in an article in this magazine. So they're all joining together.

They look nothing like the message. You would look at these people and you'd say, okay, these people are nothing like William Brannum. William Brannum created this isolationist cult and they've gone into destruction. Just like they say at Bethel, in the later years he went astray.

But if you look strategically, they're all doing... same thing. So as we get deeper into this, some of the key terms, like you mentioned, manifest in the sons of God, they play a significant role because you'll see that theme going through, not only the message, it went, as you said, back to the 17, 1800s, and it goes all the way to 2025, which is the current year that we're recording this. So these themes go all the way through, but there's another key element that Adam and I talked about, and that is the fact that what they have done, strategically, you'll find common among all of

these groups, from Branemism to IHOPKC to all of them, they try to paint it such that it requires a human hero of the faith to achieve this end of day's rapture. And so they look for a human, he can't do it. And like you said, some of them turn out to be scumbags. So that guy kind of dissolves, they whitewash it so they don't think about this guy anymore, but they build on the platform that he created, and add a new hero of the faith, is he going to lead us? So they're literally looking for human beings to lead them into heaven, instead of looking to the Holy Spirit,

to Jesus, following the Bible as instructions of how to become a Christian, right? They've abandoned Christianity for hero worship. You know, as I mentioned, the ideology evolves with every boom and bus cycle, and the message, so this, if you just kind of think these things through a little bit, when the message took this ideology, they started to go down a path where the last day revival, it's not forward the whole world anymore, it's just for us the private message believers.

And our sect, we went down the path, the message went down the path, we still believe in a secret rapture at the end of days, where after this happens, we'll leave and everyone else will burn up.

Whereas the groups that were more aligned to the Sharon orphanage side of the early splits, they went down the path no longer believing in a rapture, and believing that these manifested sons of God would actually bring on the end of days and usher in the millennial age in a personal way without a physical, literal second coming of Jesus. And so those are variances in the eschatology, but it's still built upon this base layer of manifested sons of God and the last day revival. That's the piece that's common, but you see that the way that they took

and carried it out to its final conclusion of how the end comes, it puts the message over onto a focus where we become isolationist, and we don't care about the world, we don't care about ourselves. Whereas the other group that's thinking it's going to be this global thing, they stay somewhat more open. And so the way the ideology evolved differently in our groups led us to become somewhat different. And this is where people get, I don't know, I hate to call people, I don't know, I don't like to be rude to people.

But the, the ideology evolves, okay, and not everybody has the capacity to think this complexly, okay, I put it like that, where they understand this is an ideology that is evolving and you have evolved it one way and we evolved it another and we share a common root.

There are people who are, I will say they're so brainwashed on that they're not able to internalize that and realize that is actually how these things work. It is not angels and visions and things common and given this to people, no, they are taken what they learned from someone else and they are slightly adapting it and tweaking it and that's what produces the differences but at the root there's a common root, right?

That is the reality of how this thing moves forward and they are lying to you when they say I had dreams and visions and angels and that's all just a bunch of hoca that is trash they're lying to you, that's not how this happens, right?

Throw all that away and realize the truth, they are taking these ideas from somebody, they learn them from and adapting them slightly, okay, and that and anyways as you think about it through that these ideologies evolve differently.

So when you come to the message John, the first thing that sets the message apart from the rest of that latter-rain movement and we talked about this not too long ago was what the Elijah's stuff, okay?

The Elijah beliefs were part of this broader stream of thought and in the groups that ended up going on to produce the nar and that side of things, they ended up taking these Elijah beliefs and it evolved into a generation of Elijah, a company of Elijah, all those beliefs, whereas we took the same beliefs and they evolved into a singular Elijah figure, okay?

And the singular Elijah figure was actually more in line with the historic belief going back, you know, 250 years. And so again it comes off, it's the same ideology and it just evolves and starts to diverge but you've still got a lot of commonality.

The most distinctive and the most important distinctive doctrine of the message is our belief, was our belief that William Brannum was the Elijah prophesied in Malachi 45 and 6. We didn't believe that was a generation of Elijah's, we didn't believe that was a company Elijah's, we didn't believe any of that stuff in the way that the nar and them evolved it.

We believe that was specifically William Brannum, the Elijah anointing came on him and as such he was Elijah the Restorer. He was the one who had come to the church to restore it to a perfect state, right?

Both of our movements are restorationists, we're trying to get back to the Book of Acts. But we were going to get back to the Book of Acts through William Brannum being the Restorer, being the Malachi 45 and 6.

And so that started to be a belief that developed in the late 40s and certainly by 1952. too, you start to have people believing that about William Brownham. And that is what gives William Brownham his authority to do everything else that follows.

Okay. If William Brownham wasn't this Elijah figure and had set himself up as that in the minds of people, none of the rest could have happened. So that's why we focus, I know I myself focus a lot on the Elijah piece and focus a lot on trying to understand that and look at that because it is absolutely the foundational, significant belief of the message.

You have to believe William Brownham is this Elijah prophet? To then believe he had the authority to do everything else that followed, right? Everything else in the message is predicated on the belief that William Brownham had the authority to do this, starting as that Elijah prophet.

Absolutely. And I had this discussion a few times with a few different people, but they were a little surprised whenever I started mentioning that William Brownham was, had basically indoctrinated his entire following to believe that when you read the passage from the end of the chapter of Malachi that had applied to William Brownham, the biggest shock is because Brownham wasn't Jewish.

And when you read the title line of that scroll, it says to, it says an oracle of the Lord to Israel and not even to the Gentiles. So they're a little bit surprised. However, these are people who have studied the NAR and they understand that Paul Kane was tied to Brannemism and they kind of got the pieces that we're talking about today a little bit, but they didn't understand the generation of Elijah thing because when you view William Brannem in his destructive call, do you say, okay, well this guy was a nut job who claimed that he was Elijah.

So therefore he can't be like the other nut jobs who are doing weird things. But if you understand that the group largely believed that William Brannem was this, in some way shape or form, some of them thought he was literally the Elijah, some thought that he was spiritually the Elijah, some thought that he was, I don't know, sent with the power from Elijah and he could do great signs and wonders because of the power.

However, it manifested, they all kind of believed it and that's why he was so popular. But then when he died, how do you reconcile this? So what the movement did by and large was over time they gradually introduced the idea like you said of the generation of Elijah.

So now each one of these ministries does not have to have an Elijah figure leading them. And so we see other names used, I was talking to some guy recently on the phone and he said that his cult, they started claiming that the guy was David.

And he started talking about his doctrines, well, it's manifested sons of God. But they have reinterpreted it now, they're following a David instead of a Elijah. However, the movement by and large has decided that now we have the generation of Elijah is now we need a new human figure to step forward and lead us into the end of day's revival. So the concept is the same. The doctrine has changed. It's still the same foundation and that's really the key concept to understand when you think about how this movement is kind of dispersed into a bigger mess. It is a universal belief in the message. In fact, I would say if you

don't believe this, you don't believe the message. It is a universal belief in the message that William Brannum is the Elijah of Malachi chapter four. That is a universal belief in the message. And it is the foundational distinct belief of the message. And that happened after, you know, and don't let people tell you this was the end of his life. Don't be silly. This happened, okay.

This was going on. This was from the days that he met Gordon Lindsay. Okay, Gordon Lindsay is the one who gave him this idea for goodness sakes. Okay, this was from the beginning ladies and gentlemen of his popularity. Okay, that he was doing this Elijah stick. Don't let people fool you into thinking that all this craziness started at the end. It did not. Everything I'm talking about so far was happening from very early on. So William Brannum was pushing himself as the Elijah, the most key distinct belief of the message. And as he established that authority in the minds of

his followers that he was this restore figure who is going to take them back to the book of Acts, they started to accept just any wild thing that he would say because he was sent from God to restore. And most people in the message believe that he was vindicated to be that through a variety of different things, you know, a voice spoke at the river, a light shined over his head, the halo in San Houston, Coliseum, signs wonders miracles. There's a lot of different things that they believe validate William Brannum to be this Elijah figure. And through the historical research podcast, John,

I think we had bombed literally every last one of those things. Okay, it's all a hoax ladies and gentlemen. It's an end to end hoax. Okay, he wasn't the Elijah and all of the vindications of that are all scams. Every last one of them is a fake made up story. Okay, or a highly exaggerated story.

So that's that's the first piece that started to establish his authority. But then a few years later, he does another thing that raises the bar on his authority. Okay, so it's it's 1949. He starts insinuating he is Elijah. But in 1960 in 1961, that is when he starts to introduce the idea that he's also a seventh church age messenger. Okay, and he he basically teaches that there were seven ages of church history, right, which is a common dispensational belief.

and that, but what he does uniquely, and he borrows us from the Jehovah Witnesses, he says that each of these seven ages had a special messenger, and essentially that messenger set the formula for salvation for that age.

You had to accept his message for that age to be saved, okay? And with each age, it tweaked, it changed. And so with that piece, now he has given himself the authority to change the formula for salvation for the seventh age.

You now must believe him. And so now, as you come to 62, he is both in the minds of his followers, Elijah the Prophet, the Restorer, and he is the seventh church-aged figure who is the most senior leader of the church in the last days, okay?

So those are the two, I would say, most foundational things to establish the authority of William Branham. And in the minds of his followers, it is his status, not as just a generic prophet, but it's his status as the Elijah of Malachi 4, and this supposed seventh church-aged messenger that gives him the authority to do everything else that followed and to introduce every other doctrine and practice that followed.

And to the people who are in the message, keep in mind that this was all a stage act. And if you look at the different stage personas that were used, it gets really interesting, because the concept that we're talking about, the manifests in the sons of God, the Malachi 4 prophecy, this pre-existed Branham.

You can go back and you can see Charles Fox Parham, who is claiming to be the Elijah's successor to John Alexander Dowey. Dowey was another Elijah figure, and these Elijah figures seem to be very common back in the old days.

And then whenever William Branham started his ministry, obviously he connected with FF Bosworth, who was in the Dowey's cult, Bosworth was trained under the notion that we must have this Elijah. However, William Branham, while working with Roy Davis in the early years, we see that there is some hints that it was an Elijah slash Moses thing happening.

Remember, he said, as Moses was given two signs, so am I, William Branham given two signs. He was taking on the persona of a Moses figure instead of an Elijah figure, which makes you wonder, and its speculation will never know the answer because we don't have recordings of Davis.

But it makes you wonder if Davis presented himself Roy Davis as the Elijah from Revelation coming to be one of the two witnesses, and Branham was the Moses. He'll never know, but why did Branham choose Moses and then change over to Elijah?

We'll never answer that question. But keep in mind, as you're thinking through this, that it was all a stage act for him. He very easily switched from Moses to Elijah with no ex... explanation as to why he switched right and it's important to know, you know, since we're trying to talk about the kind of the common beliefs of the message within the message nobody ever thinks or says anything about Roy Davis, okay, Roy Davis is never mentioned at all right, it's basically everything starts with William Brown, although we know Roy Davis was indeed a mentor who

influenced William Brandham, but to the message itself, you know, Roy Davis is not a figure who's ever mentioned or ever talked about, but the truth is that indeed where William Brandham got a lot of his ideas have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter rain charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation you can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-brandham.org on the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen 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-brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support another really major belief of the message which predates its separation from the latter rain movement

is the belief that I'll just call it anti-denominationalism the belief that denominations are Babylon and the Mark of the Beast and being in a denomination means you're going to not survive the end of days you're going to get the wrath of God on you for being in a denomination that belief also predates the message separating from the latter rain movement a large faction of the broader latter rain movement already believed that before the message exited okay and so when the message left it took those beliefs with it and William-brandham continued to parent those beliefs and the message is deeply deeply deeply anti-denominational

I don't know if you're in the message, John, I mean is there a worse insult than calling someone a denominational Christian I mean that is you don't get much worse than saying I mean and if you label something denominational it becomes anathema, right?

it is anathema what's funny is if you look at the message by definition it is a denomination of faith by definition but if you say this to anybody who's in it they're like oh no we're not brother because William-brandham said denominations are evil and it's just a category of people, right? It's a category within religion. It is a denomination.

When the message opposes denominationalism, they don't use the dictionary definition of the word denomination, okay? In their minds and the message, a denomination is essentially, you could boil it down to this. If you have created a statement of faith and you have organized a formal incorporated fellowship sort of a structure, you're a denomination. Those are really the two things. A statement of faith and a formal organized fellowship structure. So long as you don't have those two things, you're not a denomination, okay? In their eyes. Now, of course, in the dictionary definition, it don't matter whether you have that or not. You're still a denomination. You know,

that don't have anything to do with it. But in their minds, that's what they're, when they think of denomination, they're thinking of a church hierarchy with a standardized set of beliefs, right? And if you have a hierarchy that enforces a standardized set of beliefs, you're a denomination in their eyes. And so, in practical terms, other than the word itself denomination, being a dirty word, the practical effect is, message churches, you would have to, you know, you could burn them at the stake and they would not write a statement of faith, okay? You could burn them at the

stake and they will not create a formal organized fellowship, okay? Because that is a denomination. But otherwise, I mean, yeah, they do everything else denomination, a regular normal denomination does. There's really no other difference. And in their minds, it's because words mean different things, right? Words just mean different things. Denomination don't mean denomination to them.

Denomination means statement of faith, formal organization. And what's funny is it is, it was his own downfall by creating this strategy. Initially, what this meant by saying denomination, essentially, we don't want you to go to a normal church. We want you to join our movement because we're starting a movement. And if you come out of your church, now we have more people in our movement. That's essentially what he was saying.

He said, you're in cold form, or religions come out of those, all of the denominations come join us and become part of our cult. That's how it started. But the problem is with no structure, as you can imagine, as multiple leaders get into it with multiple ideas, well, there is without a statement of faith, you can't organize the people into a common mindset. And this spun out of control by the end of his life. So he started doing things like the preaching the conduct order doctrine sermons, where he's telling people, okay, this is how we will run our church. This is basically our

creed. And he doesn't come out and give a statement of faith, but he essentially says, this is what we believe in several sermons. So he's essentially creating a statement of faith without creed- eating one. So by the end of his life, he has everything that everything that he has told people was evil. He has in his own sect. But because he also said, don't do these things, every person who had a differing idea would rise up and create a different faction. And that really led to why we're having this conversation because all these factions begin

to grow. Everything that a typical denomination has, the message has, they just give it a different name, a different phrase, or it takes a different form. The message is a denomination in every single respect of the word, the dictionary definition of denomination. Now, if you think though about what they eliminate, the pieces that they eliminate are the pieces that we would call are the checks and balances in a normal religious Christian group. If you have a child molester preacher in the Methodist church, you have a higher authority you can go to and hold them accountable, right? Not so in the message. If you have a message preacher that

goes rogue, there is no structures to hold him accountable and stop him from going rogue. This is just going to happen. And so the practical effect of eliminating these structures is to eliminate the checks and balances, which I think are biblical structures, honestly, that normal churches have to hold people accountable and to oversee things and make sure a dictator don't take over. And so a lot of that is the practical outflow of eliminating the denominational structures. And so in the message, of course, they all think it's holy. It's good. It's wonderful.

It's divine for us to eliminate these structures. They don't look at it from the aspect of, yes, it's holy. It's divine. It's wonderful. But it's also the checks and balances, which keep us from getting abused. They don't see that side of it, right? Like they don't see the value in those things. And so they just become victims whenever a rogue leader takes over as a result of getting rid of all those structures. And more specifically to the point, many of the leaders are aware that some of the other leaders are predators. I mean, even William

Branham's own camp, we've talked about what was happening at the park with Jean and Leo. William Branham's scribes, basically, I guess you'd call them. So many of the leaders are aware of this is going on. And like you said, there's no provision to stop it outside of going to the law. And as you are aware, Charles, they also, they don't come out and say it behind a pulpit because they're getting all kinds of trouble. But they hint at the fact that if you do go to the law, there's going to be consequences because you're going outside of the religion for a matter that

they say involves the church and they've convinced the people that whenever there is a crime that's being committed, it involves the church, not the law. So there's this huge problem that develops and, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there's all these patterns that emerge and they follow all throughout Karrismania into the NAR and you look at what's happening at IHOP and you look at some of the other things that we've, some of the other people we've looked at that are quote unquote heroes of the faith.

It's the same exact thing, it's the same strategy and though the doctrines are different, the people respond much the same because they've been conditioned in the same way. The message is a doomsday cult and naturally teaching about the end times is the main bread and butter of the message, okay?

End time beliefs, I would say John are 80 to 90% of the topic that is covered in message churches. I'd say 80 to 90% of the sermons are certainly where I come from are end of days subjects and it's, it's, it's, each sect of the message has nuance differences in how the end of the days is going to unfold based on the conflicting things that William Brown said.

But in a basic general sense that most, I think most everyone in the message would agree, they're following a more or less standard dispensationalist framework, right? And then they modify it, they believe William Brown came to restore the church to the perfect and either through the fiefold ministry that he restored or through listening to his taped recordings, they will eventually achieve this higher level of manifested sons of God as being empowered as Christ on earth as, you know, having the fullness of whatever this last day revival is, which is going to be a private revival just for the message

believers. And when that ends, they will rapture and escape the earth. They believe that generally prior to that, there's going to be, you know, terrible cataclysm that's already starting to unfold in the world.

Some of us believed in a last day race war. Most of us believed in some sort of a communist uprising to overthrow the United States and that the United States would become a ruin country.

Generally, and I'll say universally, they believe that the Pope will rise to power through a secret alliance with the Jews to seize control of the world. And historically, communist played a role in there, that's less so in recent years.

But the Pope, as the ruler of Europe through a secret alliance with the Jews, will rise to world power and he, the Pope, will be the Antichrist. he will enact a Holocaust, he will commit genocides, he will attempt to exterminate the Jews after he made the secret alliance with them, bring on the end of days, and then Christ will come at the end of, you know, they'll be the whole, depending on which sector in you've got a three and a half year week of Daniel, or you got a seven year week of Daniel.

At the end of that period, Christ returns, sets up the heavenly kingdom, and we all get to live in the millennium. The millennium looks different depending on which sector in, some, the, you've got a cube shaped heaven, others, you've got a pyramid shaped heaven, it varies depending on which group you're in.

But then you're in the end of days, and everybody gets to live in the perfect state, where heaven is always this tiered hierarchy, where the bride of Christ, so in the message we call ourselves the bride of Christ, the message believer, the elite Christians were the bride of Christ category.

They'd have the bride of Christ was the elite category, then you'd have lower categories of people, Jewish believers were a lower category of people. What we might call nominal Christians, people who just were justified by faith, you know, but didn't have all the advanced great stuff we did, people who just had justification, you know, they're down in a lower tier, people who rejected the message, they probably went to hell, but there's a chance they could end up in a lower tier.

And then all the way down at the bottom, we believed that even the pagans and the unbelievers of the world, if they were good people, they could somehow still survive into that age and be the servants and slaves at the very bottom wrong of the latter, okay?

And that, so that's basically the view of the millennial kingdom, yeah, yeah. And I think that generally describes what the average message believer believes about that. There's minor variations here, there, depending on which sect, but that is a generally widely held belief.

And the key phrase in that, all of that is that the Doomsday focus cannot be overstated. There is such a Doomsday focus in this religion that you're constantly thinking about it throughout your entire day, you're thinking about the world ending.

I remember stories growing up of family members who they said as a child, as they're waiting to get on the bus, they were actually crying and wanting to run back in the house because what if the world ends while they're in school?

It's so focused that the children are afraid, that's how bad this is, yet at the same time, as I mentioned with the patterns, Doomsday is the moneymaker, because if you can convince all of the people that the world is soon to end, you can also convince them that they don't need the money.

And if you can convince them of those two things and pass a basket, you can make a lot of money. And it's not just the message that does this, you can, in the research that I've published, you can go back and you can see the history leading up to the message call.

And you can see the history leading up to the message call. the key figures who were doing the same exact things. Preaching doomsday, passing a basket, and making a heck of a lot of money.

Yeah, the overwhelming majority of sermons in the message are doomsday sermons. You know, like I said, 80 to 90% of messes sermons are doomsday sermons. And I divide the doomsday sermons up into two different genres, John, okay?

You have John Rowan of doomsday sermon, is where the preacher is going through all of the elaborate scenario that's going to unfold. And this will happen in Israel. And then this will happen in the church.

And then that will happen in Israel. And then this political thing will happen. And then that political thing will happen. And then this great outpouring will have, you know, they're going through blow by blow through, you know, the scenario that leads up to the end of times.

And then the Pope will do this. And then the Jews will do the, you know, that. There's that genre, okay? And there's a lot of that. Then the other genre is, is the, you know, where they're saying, okay, the end is upon us and we need to make it.

Now here's what you need to do to make it. You need to do X. You need to do Y. You need to get rid of the blue suede shoes. You need to, you know, they're going down the list.

And if you don't do this, my brother, you're going to be left behind. If you don't have perfect unity, you're going to be left behind. If you don't understand this message 100%, you are going to be left behind.

And it's going to be worse for you than anybody else because you knew and you didn't do better, right? There's that genre of Doomsday sermons. And so those are the two Doomsday sermon genres that I would, I would put in the message, the blow-by-blow accounts.

And then the fear monger, this is what you've got to do. And you're going to be left behind if you don't obey sermons. Yeah. I remember sitting through sermons back in the, gosh, it was late 80s, early 90s.

And the minister comes out to the platform and I'm in the cult and I'm still learning. So I'm thinking that this is normal for preachers, but in hindsight, this is so weird. The guy comes out and he says, thank you for coming and he does his cordial introductions.

And then he holds up this newspaper and says, and then Israel, we have just seen a red heifer calf. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking that we're going to hear a sermon about Jesus, but no, we're talking about this calf.

And he started talking about how the implications of this was that the world would end before the year was out. And that's how weird this gets. Yeah, because they need the red heifer to open up the new temple that they're going to rebuild in Jerusalem, which is going to bring on the end.

Yes, this is exactly what we believed, John. Absolutely, yeah. Because again, and where does all this come? This comes out of this was in this ideology before we broke away from Latter-Rain. It comes all the way back to the British Israel stuff that got imported to early Pentecostalism, right?

Then into the Latter-Rain, then transitioning to the message and also into Naur and all the... these other groups, it's, this is the origin of that stuff. And this is not like, and I know when we talk about this, this is not like the typical, say John Nelson Derby dispensationalism here.

No, this is not what that is. This is different. John Nelson Derby didn't have these those sort of views, right? There is a distinction here, okay? There's a really big distinction here, and I don't have time to walk through all that.

It's in my books, if you wanna know. This is not the standard sort of a dispensational beliefs about Israel, the prosionist kind of beliefs that you'd find in a Baptist church, right? Or, you know, more the reformed groups.

This is not that. This is, this is different. The impetus of these things that came from British Israel roots have a different focus, a different flavor, and a different, a whole different spin than the pieces that came out of the, you know, the John Nelson Derby system, which I'm not saying the John Nelson Derby system's good either, but I'm just saying they are distinct.

They're not the same thing, okay? So yes, John, I mean, there's so much we could talk about. The next really major distinct belief of the message, and again, I say distinct in that the message universally believes it, this belief though was also in the latter-rain movement before the message split away, and it was also in British Israelism, you know, so many of these beliefs follow this same path, and this belief is serpent seed.

Serpent seed is a critical belief of the message. It is really important. And again, it follows that same path through British Israelism, through the British Israelites and early Pentecostalism, into the latter-rain movement, William Brannum, and then on down.

And there's almost also absolute certain evidence that this is a core belief of the Ku Klux Klan through Christian identity, and William Brannum reported learning it in a church that had been planted by the national leader of the Ku Klux Klan, okay?

So it's racist, it's definitely racist. William Brannum definitely said he learned it from racists, and so there's just no way around it. And the belief is essentially that Eve had relations with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Kane was the child of that perverted sexual union, and he is literally a child of the serpent, and he gave, he fathered a race of people who are predestined to damnation. And anyone in that line of dissent is predestined to damnation.

And less commonly, I'll just say privately among the leaders, it's always said that that is a particular race of people, you can guess who? And that is the descendants of Kane. They trace it most of the people who take keep the racial view, which is not the majority.

The average rank and file don't take the racial view in the message, but the ones who do, they will trace it through Noah's Ark, through either ham or ham, was a wife, one or the other, hammer-hams-wife, it comes through and then hams offspring carry that line forward and then they'll look at the curse of Canaan, okay? The curse of Canaan, which they often will call the curse of ham, which there's no such thing as the curse of ham in the Bible, but William Branham called it the curse of ham, so they call it the curse of ham, but it's

really the curse of Canaan in the Bible, and then they, you know, apply that to a particular race of people to say that they're cursed for all eternity to be servants to everyone else because they are descended from the servant. And keep in mind, Gordon Lindsay, who was also the founder of Christ for the nation's institute, was in the Christian identity movement from which most of these thoughts were birth. The British Israel combined with the racism in America when those two merged, it became Christian identity, and this was one of the key concepts in Christian identity was the fact that there is this evil bloodline

among the people. And you mentioned the point that I want to draw out just a little bit. There are two classifications of people in the message. There are those who believe that it is a literal bloodline that exists in the world today, which is Christian identity 101. You have to, like you said, you can use your mind to focus where you think that this bloodline lies, what race it lies in. But then there's this other weird people. So in the message, William Brandham said, in no uncertain terms, that it was a physical bloodline that was created whenever the serpent and Eve made it,

and then that bloodline entered the earth. But I have actually set through specific preachers, I'm not going to mention their names, and they said that this was a literal bloodline until the flood, and then after the flood, it became a spiritual bloodline. They never really explain how this comes to be, how does it jump from a human bloodline to a spirit? They never explain this.

But you're faced with this weird thing, right? Because if you look at the flood story, and you look at the sons of Noah and their daughters, well, this bloodline would have existed, right? There's no way it would not have existed. So after the flood, you're faced with this weird concept. Well, so it's a spiritual thing, but what happened to the bloodline? And so I've been in these sects, and I've been growing up with a questioning mind. I wanted to know how all things work.

I struggled with this, man. What do you do with that? What do you do with the physical bloodline that was a problem? And how does it become spiritual? And I've come to the conclusion that the men who do this are fully aware that this is a racist doctrine. And yet, through cognitive dissonance, they can't discount William Brannum for being a racist. So what they'll say is, well, he taught the non-racist version of this and it became a spiritual bloodline. That's how they've reconciled it and they're leaving out the fact that William Brandeum is working directly with the key figures in the Christian

identity and in the white supremacy movements. So you can't whitewash this. There's no way to whitewash it. It was a purely racist doctrine. Yep, and it is certainly still a racist belief among many people here in the United States, but not everybody. We're not, I won't say everybody, but certainly a lot of people in leadership are fully aware that the thing is racial.

My, my, my. So the next thing I'll mention, John, is the Godhead. How does the message view the Godhead? Now, most people on the outside, I think, have the perception of the message as being oneness or modalist in the way that the United Pentecostal Church is. And that is true of the majority of the message. The, the majority of the message, I'll say two-thirds of the message is modalist in a way that is pretty similar to what the United Pentecostal Church or Oneness Pentecostalism does. So that's two-thirds. However, William Brandeum taught multiple versions of the Godhead,

and as a result, the sex of the message have multiple versions of the Godhead too. About maybe close to a third, hold an Aryan view of the Godhead, like the Jehovah Witnesses. So you've got, and that's actually exactly where William Brandeum got it too. So he taught, you know, the oneness kind of a UPC sort of a version of the Godhead, but he also taught an Aryan Jehovah Witness style version of the Godhead. And so you have both. So and the modalist view is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, are all one single, indivisible being,

and God just switches offices or modes. He basically changes his title depending on what he's doing. The Aryan view is that Jesus is not God, but he was indwelt by the Holy Spirit, by God, and then that the Holy Spirit and God the Father are a single, indivisible God, right? So basically have God the Father, who is the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, his human, perfect human son, and whom he indwell. That is, I would describe it as a neo-Aryan view of the Godhead, and is, I would say about one third of the message follows that version. Another thing that you will find, though, among people in

the message, more in the oneness camp, you'll find that if you were to describe the Trinitarian view of the Godhead without using the word Trinity, they'll probably accept everything you say, okay? Because it is more the word.

Trinity that they object to, then The actual meaning of that word because William Branham told everybody and everybody believes that Trinity is the belief in three independent gods That's what the message believes the message believes that if you're a Trinitarian you believe in three independent gods And so they reject Trinitarianism on that basis But if you would just explain the Trinitarian view of the godhead Without using the word Trinity Most of the people in the oneness faction would probably find no Problem with the way that you explain the godhead. I just want to throw that out there to people because I

It's I think it's important to realize. It's just that word Trinity. That's a tends to be a trigger word Rather than the necessarily the underlying definition of what that word is and the irony is that William Branham preached every single Version or flavor of the godhead in one church. He's preaching that everything in God is a Trinity Everything in God is a Trinity and another one he says the word Trinity is not even the Bible You ministers using Trinity you're you've got the mark of the beast And another one he says that Jesus is God the Father is the same as God the Son where he's preaching the one the stocker and then another one he is

saying Thank you for sending the Holy Spirit the third person in the Trinity So he's preaching every single flavor every single version of it And what's funny is the fact that when you look at many of the biographies or the critical studies of William Branham's doctrines Almost every historian will say that he was motorist They will never mention the fact that he wavered from one side to the other sometimes He would go to one city and he would be trainitarian and he go to another city and be oneness And then a next city he would be trainitarian again

So they never mentioned this this kind of flip flop and he I've come to the conclusion that he was probably an atheist because he had no convictions And you can't really I mean this is a central a core Doctrine of your faith you cannot waver on this you either pick one or the other If you do pick one you change your mind and you stick with it He doesn't do this. It's all a stage act So I've come to the conclusion that he was likely an atheist Yeah, you know William Branham was teaching Trinitarian style beliefs all the way to the year of his death right there's even quotes in 1965 of him

Is spousing a trainitarian view of the godhead using the word Trinity, you know, so I mean it's It it it's something he did throughout in your right he went back and forth And he didn't do just oneness or trainitarian as I said He also taught the Aryan Jehovah Witness style too So he's got three different godhead views depending on The crowd he's speaking to maybe the book that he read before or he went to bed the last night, I don't know exactly always what caused him to change back and forth.

Some of it does seem to be he's catering to the crowd in front of him, right? I think that is definitely part of it. But yeah, you're right, John. He wavered back and forth, and that's what he ended up producing the variation within the message.

So it's important to, if you do interface with the message people to realize they're not uniform in these beliefs. And depending on, you know, which route you go, it's going to be a different sort of a conversation.

So the next thing I want to point out, John, is how message believers view the message itself. So William Branham, a lot of the way that he advanced his ideology was through how he interpreted symbols in the Bible.

A whole whole whole whole lot of the unique beliefs of the message are not based on the plain reading of the Bible, but what we believed symbols in the Bible meant. So William Branham would say, this symbol here means this thing.

And then we accept, yes, this symbol means this thing. And because of that, then we get, you know, it leads us down to interpretation. But there's nothing in the Bible that actually says this symbol is this thing.

It's all based on us thinking, William Branham was this Elijah and the seventh church, a messenger who had this authority to tell that to us. And so the importance of the message itself derives from those sort of interpretations of symbols.

So for example, we believe the message was the midnight cry in Matthew 25, okay? And the midnight cry, you must have the, here the midnight cry in order to escape the wrath to come, the doomsday.

So it sets the message up as this thing, you must have to escape. We also believe that the message was the shout in 1 Thessalonians chapter four, the Lord descends from heaven with a shout.

We believe that the message was the shout in that. And then of course, somehow the Lord descended in 1963 or thereabouts in, you know, and gave us the message through his humble prophet, William Branham.

And then we also believed that the message was essentially the voice in Revelation 10 chapter seven. So in that chapter you have in the days of the voice, the mystery of God shall be finished.

So we believe that voice was William Branham preaching us the message. And then the mystery, William Branham saying mysteries plural, although it's mystery singular in the scripture, we believe that William Branham was the voice who gave us the perfect understanding of the mysteries of the Bible.

And that is the message. And so we would put the message in scripture. And then when we would read passages like those I'm describing, we would read the message into the Bible. And we'd say, yeah, the message is in the Bible.

And yes, look, of course this is what we're doing. William Branham was the Elijah, he gave us the voice, he gave us the shout, he gave us the midnight cry, we're obeying the Bible, right?

And so, but all of that, is predicated on William Brannum actually being who he said he was because the only reason we believe the message was the shout and the midnight cry and the voice was because William Brannum said so.

There's nothing in the Bible to lead you to that belief naturally except that William Brannum said so. And that's really the crux Charles. Once you understand that William Brannum was using stage personas and that he wasn't who he said he was, every doctrine that is built on top of that foundation it all just comes apart. And I think that's why we're seeing such an exodus from the message movement now because people are beginning to understand thankfully because the cult headquarters released this search thing where you can type in and search what the man said and you can search how he said the opposite of what he said in many cases they're beginning

to understand he was not who he claimed to be. You know you can you can go down and you can get in the weeds with message people and you can argue over the messages the shout or the messages the midnight like but you're you're down in the weeds there right and if you think about it just from a you know if you're examined where is the weak link in the chain the weak link is William Brannum claiming to be who he what you know if William Brannum was not who he said he was all the beliefs

fall apart because they're all predicated on William Brannum being who he said he was and having the authority to tell us all of these things and so yes you could argue with somebody over what the midnight cry is you know in Matthew 25 or what the shout is in 1st Thessalonians 4 right you could you could get into those sort of things but strategically you are better to show that William Brannum was not who he said he was and because he wasn't who he said he was therefore all the rest becomes irrelevant right because it's all based on him being who he said he was so that is in my

view you know the best arguments for undermining the message system of thought is just proving William Brannum was not who he said he was now the very last thing I think I want to throw in today John before we end this episode is again a belief we've talked about a few times which is another I believe a very important belief of the message which is again universally held and so that's what we're trying to focus on universal or dominantly held beliefs today that you can find anywhere in the message and that is the belief that unbelief is the root of all sin that is a universal belief

of the message and it is a important critical belief of the message because you know as I've explained before that is what keeps people from allowing their minds to question anything because to question anything and William Brannum system is unbelief and if you unbelieve you are committing the unpardonable root of all sins and so unbelief as the root of all sin is another distinct universal belief of the message which you know conjured with historic mainstream Christianity, which, I mean, the church, the Christian church from the early days, John, the earliest writings of the church fathers would say that pride

is the root of all sin. Pride is the root of all sin. It was pride that led Eve to sin. It was pride that led, you know, to the original sin. It was pride that led Satan to sin, right?

They would say pride is the root of all sin, not unbelief. And so that is a big distinction between, you know, normal Christianity and the message and another important distinct belief of the message. And that ironically was the subject matter from the podcast that I was mentioned with Adam that kind of tied all of this together because he was beginning to understand that there are key concepts used in the NAR that are used solely for the purpose of manipulating the minds. And what they have developed is very similar to this concept, sin as unbelief.

In other words, there's a battle raging in your mind. And if you give in, if you let your mind to critically thank to question, to ask questions, to view leadership as human beings that can potentially be predators, and you must watch out for them. Or whenever somebody who has committed a grigious crime is reinstated and reaffirmed by the ministry, if your mind allows you to critically thank and ask, well, wait a minute, should this predator be a preacher again? Should he, after he's been caught and he's been doing this thing, should we allow him to be a big leader of, you know,

evangelist or preacher, pastor, et cetera? The problem is, William Bramley, this foundation that sin and unbelief were both joined completely together and your mind cannot ask questions, your mind must not show signs of disbelief. And it wreaks havoc on your mind and your head.

You're right, John. And that is a belief that it is worth debating a message believer over. Because if you can get them to stop believing that unbelief is the root of all sin, then guess what you have done. You have opened their mind up to have the capacity to think critically about the message. And you can do that without disparaging their profit or any of those sort of things, right? And you can open them up to start to think critically. Unbelief is not the root of all sin. That is silly. That is just somebody who don't want you to think about things.

Let's tell in you that, okay? Why would they be telling you that? Why would they be telling you that and accept they don't want you to ask any questions? Yeah, exactly. I mean, look at the believers in Berea. What did they do? They had questions. They questioned it. And they went and they sought out the answers. And if you don't allow for unbelief, you don't have, you don't allow yourself the process that reaffirms your faith. And in doing so, secures your faith. You really have to go through that process, especially if you have an analytical mind, but so very excited that this about this podcast, this

has been incredibly fun. I think the next one we have to talk about the culture that comes along with all of these doctrines because you've got this pure mess that was created in William Branneman his following and all of these key figures that reference this ministry as their stepping stone to cares Mania to the NAR. The referencing this mess that we've talked about today, but combined with the mess came the culture and the culture is really what blossomed into the C. Peter Wagner calls it in this magazine that I was holding up.

He calls it, it's the new third wave and William Branneman called it the third pool. So there's these concepts that yes, they're different. They have different foundations, but the themes are so close and so similarly aligned that it created a culture and that culture began to blossom. So very excited to get into the next one. 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-Branem.org and christiangospelchurch.org. For more about the history of William Brannem and the healing revivals, read, come out of her, my people, available on Amazon and

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