Trapped in the 50s: An Inside Look at Message Culture

Hello and welcome to another episode. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at www.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. Charles, it's good to be back and to talk all things message culture. This is going to be a strange and unusual podcast as somebody who wasn't in this thing, I think. But yet at the same time, all eyes are going to be on it because they all want to know what's on the inside. Every time I get around a group of people

who are Christians and understand that the message is occult, I become a guinea pig. They always asked all of these questions and it's funny because it's so weird and odd being in the message, they don't know what questions to ask and so they're all superficial questions like you'd get maybe if you watch a documentary about the, you know, Jehovah's Witnesses or some other group that's similar to the message called. They don't know how to go deep because they don't know what questions to ask and because I'm the guinea pig, I usually don't lead them there. So for all of you

who have done this to me, this is your chance to see what is on the inside. Yeah, John, I know it's so interesting. Today we decided we're going to try and talk a little bit about message culture. Our last episode we talked about the commonly held beliefs of the message and we're kind of setting these two episodes up because we're right in our historical research podcast, we're between the first big schism and then the big missionary push that's going to take the message to the ends of the world. And so, you know, it's a good idea to just kind of talk about

the culture and the doctrines of the message right here. That way people can kind of get an idea of what's being, what is being spread and these missionary outreach stuff that's all about to happen that we're going to get into before too much longer. And yeah, the, the culture of the message is, is an interesting thing. And you know, when I wrote my book, I really just have a small section, you know, maybe four or five sections on this, but this was probably the hardest part of the book to write, John, because, you know, how do you, how do you describe some of this stuff? How do you

put it into terms that people outside can really understand what you're saying? I found it to be the, definitely the hardest part of the book that I wrote was, was to describe these things in.

There are elements of message culture that are reflective of normal Christianity, you know, or Pentecostal Christianity. There's other aspects of message culture that's, you know, typical 1950s Americana, right? It's the, it's like a time trap, you're trapped in a time bubble, you know, within it.

So, and in that way, if you are somebody out there that has familiarity with 1950s Americana, 1950s Pentecostalism, what that looks like, that is kind of the base layer of the message. And then it evolved from there, you know, into something a bit more unique.

And so, yeah, I think that's a great starting point and way to describe how it got started out. You know, when you talk about culture, it gets a little bit weird because from the outside, things look very similar to other fundamentalist and Pentecostal groups.

And even some of the beliefs are shared. I'll never forget whenever I first came out of the message and I was, I began my research. It wasn't long after that, the trial of Warren Jeffs happened.

And I'm watching all of these people in this polygamous sect behave very similarly to the people who were in the message after I left. And even though their leader was definitely guilty of all of the stuff that they condemned him for, and he went to prison for.

The responses were quite the same. They would attack anybody who had any negative thoughts or had anything critical to say about Warren Jeffs. And at the same time, they would, you know, uplift him in their speeches and basically he had become a deity to the group.

But they would not come out and say that this is our deity. They would just give him far more reverence than they did other humans in the sect. At that time, I knew that there were some polygamous sects in the message.

I just didn't know how widespread that was. And so I was thinking, yeah, this, this is a completely different cult, but it is interesting to me. The more and more I watched the news unfold and watched, there's a few documentaries that have come out since.

I began to realize that they're almost saying the same things, acting the same way, behaving the same way, the women are dressed the same way. I mean, it's widespread the culture. And that's, you know, this was, what was that 2000, if I remember right, it was like 2013 or 12, I can't remember the exact year.

So this is so far in the future, well, if you walk backwards in time and you're able to look in a time capsule of history, you begin to realize that back during the communist scare, as the message was really coming into the cultish status, as laterane was becoming more discouraged and disparaged and attacked by different groups, it began to isolate itself.

off. And it's isolating at the same time that the communism scares just spreading all throughout the United States. So with the isolationist and with the Doomsday focus, now you've got the communism, which is common among several of the religious groups I've studied from that era. So it gets even stranger because if we were to have had this conversation back in the 60s, people would, you know, people would think, well, you're just talking about the average pinocostal group, right?

But it goes deeper than that when you think about the culture because our culture was different. Right. You know, when you, the closer you get back to the late 40s and 50s, the more the message culture was more similar or more in line with more mainstream culture, right? Like that, that's really the point where we, we started to isolate and we kind of take, took what the world looked like then and then that kind of became our ideal. And you know, when we, we stuck within that. And you're right. Back then, the fear of communism, the fear of

nuclear war. And then from back then, the all of the concerns that was in penicostalism and other influences against fear of Catholics was all kind of encapsulated from back then. And then along with our, our dress code, our dress style and everything, right? Like if you, if you go back to those days, the way that are, the way that people in the message dress is still reflective of the, you know, the mainstream way that penicostals dress back then. Now, penicostals don't generally dress that way so much anymore. Now, one is penicostals, too. But, you know, the majority,

you know, when I think of mainstream penicostalism today, I think of assemblies of God, right? There are, I think the assemblies of God is one third of all charismatic and penicostals in the world, right? They're like that group. And they are, you know, they don't look like a message believer anymore, right? If you, if you put an assemblies of God person next to a message believer, you're going to know right away, hey, one of these things doesn't look like the other, right? You know, there's, they have, they have diverged. But the message people look more like what the assemblies of God people looked like in the, you know, in the

50s and 40s. So they just kind of stopped in time with, with all of that. And the same also in their beliefs, you know, which, which we talked about someone in our last episode, because William Branham, more or less codified the religion is the perfect has come. And here it is. And it is what I have taught you in the 50s and 60s. And so everybody, they just got stuck there. And so so much of everything that turns in it is what it looked like. And, you know, I have a paragraph.

I'm just going to read you a paragraph, two out of my book, John. One thing I wrote, I thought, this was maybe one of the better paragraphs in the sections. I wrote this, the average message believer is very devout, expecting the imminent rapture of the church concerned about the threat of communism, wary of Catholics, financially poor, and most uneducated. By the 1990s, most children had transitioned to receiving private education, mostly in home schools, but a few in church-managed private schools. Perhaps one-third of a message children remained in public schools during the 1990s. Children who received public

education were far more likely to exit the message upon reaching adulthood, a phenomenon that had been noted by the message leaders at a time and pointed out in their sermons, combined with fears over the school shootings that began to occur in the early 1990s, this also served to accelerate the move to private education. I think that's another piece that's important to understand in the isolationism that came. You know, the message is gradually becoming more communal as the years progress. And the change in how they educated their children was one of the important aspects that did that. And I would say, John, and you can

tell me your opinion, I would say by the 90s, the majority of children were no longer in public education. You know, it was a gradual transition. And I think the tipping point was probably in the 80s and certainly by the 90s when all the school shooting stuff happened, that caused a big acceleration, a big surge of people to further transition over into homeschooling. And so you've got the overwhelming majority today of homeschool of of message children are not in public schools.

And that again, first that that basically cuts off an avenue of of of the broader culture continuing the influence of the message. And the message just continues to remain in this reinforced walled off cultural island from the 50s. It does. And the funny part is after you first leave and before you've really had time to process what they did to your head, you don't really think about that until you start talking to other people. Once you get into a group of people that were never in it and they like I said, they want to use your your head as a guinea pig. They

want to learn more about what's on the inside. They're all thinking it. They're all thinking these people look like they're stuck in the 50s. And even the style of preaching for somebody who visits outside of the church and they hear the screaming blasting voice that sounds a lot like Hitler coming from those recordings of William Branham. They're thinking, man, this this sounds like something from another, you know, one of the Cold War villains, right? It's not it's not what you would hear from a Christian minister who's giving encouragement. This is a person who is very,

very angry. And every aspect of the culture, once you stop to think about what what they're doing and why. And then compare that to what was going on back in the 60s. It fits perfectly like a glove.

But to the outsider looking in, as they're looking in, this is 2025 when we're recording this, it doesn't fit. And so they're all looking in trying to trying to see how why why is it like this?

Why have they not really progressed over time? And it's like they're in this isolated box where the world around has just kind of gone on without them. Mentally, they are trapped in the 50s and 60s.

Physically, they're in a world that is no longer in the 50s and 60s. And sometimes this creates a lot of problems, especially for people who are, you know, the younger generation who are starting to recognize the world that they live in isn't the world that's being portrayed by the message called.

So when they go out into the outside world and they meet new friends, though suddenly two worlds begin to collide, I think is the best way to put it. When that happens, and they start to see what recognize that we're in this world that's completely different than the real world around us, one of two things happen.

Some of the children recognize the difference and want the real world. And so they start to mentally distance themselves and you'll see them acting and behaving like the world. The other ones, like myself, we became more isolated in our minds.

We would mentally block the outside world. So for example, whenever I was 16 years old and I had my car started driving around going to the mall, I would mentally chant music in my head to block all of the music that's going through the mall, right?

Because I can't listen to that. That's the devil's music. And the people walking, especially the women, every single aspect of the women's clothing did not match the 60s, did not match the Pentecostal rules.

And so I would mentally try to block it all out and focus my mind on thinking about what I called, quote unquote, heavenly things, which generally meant, I'm thinking about one of the sermons of William Branham.

So I isolated myself and I basically, I started brainwashing myself by listening to these recordings of Branham over and over and over. And I'm living the perfect message life, but in doing so, I'm creating a culture that is a fantasy culture, it does not really exist.

The outside world is different, I'm different, but yet at the same time, we were coerced to believe that the difference was holy. Another I think notable thing, that this is kind of an interesting thing, John, too, just an observation is, through the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, the message is a very anti-technology, right?

I mean, very, very anti-technology. You know, they're opposed to television, they're opposed to, honestly, there are a lot of them are opposed to any sort of thing that's going on or coming on. And, but that begins to shift as you come into the 1990s and the rise of computers.

And, in a way, this is, I think, a blessing because William Brannum died before computers were really a thing. So he never had an opportunity. to preach a sermon against computers. So therefore, the cult didn't have a prohibition against computers, and you find this as the technology that was dominant in the 60s and 50s, 60s, as that begins to fade out, the prohibitions of against those technology is still there, but the newer technology, there's not the same prohibitions against it, right?

And so you find, as computer, personal computers came and the internet came, people began to use those, and you would have people, John, you mentioned it like your grandfather, and I can say the exact same thing through a lot of members of my family, people we knew, you were not allowed to have a TV, but it was okay to have a personal computer.

As you come into the 90s, and those sort of things start coming into availability, that's when the message in some way starts to reconnect in some ways with broader culture, and that actually started to open up some doors.

But yeah, I mean, you went through a period, I would say the 90s, the 90s and early 2000s, where computer technology was more or less generally tolerated, but it's not until you get started into the air of social media that then the preachers come around and, you know, they start turning on the internet because they realize it's a door, it though, oh no, we left this window to the world open. Now, quick, shut it. That's kind of like that. So you had that window of time where people got some access to the outside world. And I know, like in the churches I come from,

John, like we called Facebook the devil book, right? And you, we, you know, strongly forbidden. Social media was of the devil, right? I mean, that was how it was. Yet ironically, at the end, they started using YouTube, social media to broadcast church services.

You know, it's like there's, they're very inconsistent, but nevertheless, yeah, I mean, it's kind of strange, but you kind of see how it relaxed a little bit. Like, the message culture wasn't static. In the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, into the 80s, you were going to hell if you had a television in your house. But as you come into the 90s and people start getting computers, then things start to relax and people start to get televisions, John, I mean, and television becomes somewhat more tolerated in the 90s. And they start opening up the technology in that period of time in a way they had not previously. What's really odd about it, Charles,

is after you've left, say, I left before you. So there's this period of time that's different between the two of us. After you leave the group and you're no longer in this isolationist cult mentality, the culture changes and you can watch it change and evolve while you're outside of it. And the rules, some of them get more restrictive, some of them are less restrictive, but you watch the change and you're wondering why does it change? While you're in it, because As you're in that group think mindset, you don't notice the changes, and you think this

is the way it's always been, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. The rules for us were the same as for our forefathers. But you mentioned the internet. So back in the 50s and 60s, a large number of the fundamentalists and Pentecostals were strongly against television, especially in the Christian identity sects.

As you had television was portraying people like the I Love Lucy show had two races in an interracial marriage, and this was widely discouraged, especially by the Christian identity sects, because now you've got the two bloodlines mixing the serpent seed has made it with the non-surpent seed, that kind of thing.

And you had, you know, just the moral values on television, which even today you're going to find people who say television has an awful moral, moralistic code, which it probably does in some cases, but not all cases.

You, the viewer, get to choose whether you watch those or whether you watch something that is something, you know, entertaining and yet healthy. But back then they were trying to block it because they saw it as a shift in the culture.

With the rise of the internet, now you had Netflix and YouTube and other avenues to get your media. I started watching, after I left, I started watching people shift towards this, people who would have just condemned me to hell had they seen the TV in my house are now watching the same exact shows that I watch.

I love the cartoons, so they're watching cartoons too, some of them on Netflix or Disney channel or whatever it is now. The shift is just ironic because they're looking more towards the letter of the law than they are the actual rule.

The actual rule was you can't watch this media because the media portrays other values that don't match the call. So the conundrum exists and where I'm heading with all of this is it got really weird after leaving because now a group that was largely against television started entertaining Netflix and Disney and all this other stuff.

And once they did, then it shifted again. Many of them now allow televisions and they think nothing of it while I was in it, you were scorned to hell if you had a television.

But they've shifted the rules because the culture has shifted. The people in there seem to not realize that it changes because the way everything is presented to us in the messages, we have the capital T truth and everything we do is the perfect way to do it, right?

Perfect is always perfect. You know what I mean? It cannot change. And so there is this mantra that it's always the same. And like I said, when you're in there, you actually believe that, but it's not true.

No, they do change and they do evolve. And just like with technology. how things got looser and more relaxed. Well, just the same, other things got tighter and more restrictive. Like you look at things around personal dress codes and so forth.

Like if you go back to the 40s, 50s, 60s, when this thing kicked off, the dress code was actually much more relaxed overall than it became. You know, the message is obsessed with personal perfection and the way that tends to manifest is, I know when the churches I come from, by the time I was leaving, John, just about every week the preacher made a new rule.

So every week you get a new rule. And of course, over the years, these new rules pile up and pile up and pile up. And gradually it becomes more and more and more restrictive, right?

We had one preacher in our churches. We called him Kevin Crazy. He basically went down this route every week. It was the beef of the week or it was the rule of the week.

And you know, you'd get these basically three things in every sermon and one of the things you always got was a new rule being made up. And so you get, and a lot of the groups are this way, but you go back in time and you look at what message believers dress like and look like in the pictures from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

And then you compare it to modern day, you'll find that a lot of the things that are condemned in message groups today as sinful, adulterous, you know, harlotry, you know, all of this stuff, you know, that's just absolutely awful.

You'll see it that they actually are describing the average message believer of the 50s and 60s, right? Because they're all were wearing scandal skirts back then. You know, they were almost all the girls.

You could almost always see their knees, John. God had mercy back in the 50s and 60s. And, you know, and William Brannum had, God forbid, William Brannum had a beard, John, in some pictures, you know.

And, but so all of these things that today are just absolutely prohibited. You are gonna go to hell. You can't go in the rapture. You're gonna burn up for all this stuff. Now, it was much more common back then.

So, just like we mentioned, you know, some things got more relaxed. Other things got far more restrictive. And, you know, it just goes on and on and on that way. I think another thing that's worth pointing out too, John.

And, I think that maybe our, this is something our new Apostolic Reformation folks might be able to relate to is music, music. You know, music is such an important thing in the message. It's really, it's part of the lifeblood of the message.

And, and part of the way it works, John. I mean, every, most every message church has a really strong musical tradition. The message started to develop its own songs, its own music not long after it broke away from the broader movement.

We have a book I had to get it off my shelf. John. The very first message song book was called Songs of the Profit. Have you ever seen that one, John? Songs of the Profit? And it actually came. It came with a recording because someone went through all of the tapes and they copied out William Brannum singing on tape. And so you've got this, and William Brannum, I got to say kind of sang like a goat, didn't he, John? But you've got this tape of William Brannum singing all of these holy, blessed songs of the Profit and then the first

sort of a message himminal comes out of this. But and then before long people are starting to write songs, they're writing songs about William Brannum, they're writing songs about the Profit. And anyways, all of these songs and music is a really big deal to the message. And most of the message are really dedicated to having good music and good singers and all of this piece of stuff.

And I think, John, that, you know, and how I have looked at, like combating cult mind control, for example, from from Stephen Hathson or there's some other good books by Rick Allen or Ross out there and others that I've read, thought blocking is incredibly important to cults, thought blocking, being able to stop your mind from critically thinking. And there's different things that you can do to stop your mind from critically thinking. And one common thing is to sing a song or hum a song, think a song, right? That is a terrific way to stop your mind from thinking.

And it's not necessarily, you know, that there's nothing wrong with singing songs, right? I mean, everybody lives a good song, but it just as a matter of fact, it is a good way to stop your mind from thinking, right? You think whistling through the graveyard, right? It's like that. You can, you can hum a song, think a song, and distract yourself from what's going on. And John, that is rampant in the message, isn't it? I mean, that is one of the main things we would use our songs for in day to day life is to distract ourselves from whatever we shouldn't be looking at

and think about our religion, our faith. And so from that respect, music is incredibly important to a cult, not because you know, music is inherently bad, right? But it is, and I think a lot of people don't recognize this or realize this, but it is a terrific way to distract yourself from thinking critically about anything, right? Oh, the devil's attacking me. I'm having an evil thought. Let me hum only believe only believe, right? Like you, you, that's how it works, John, right? And from that, quality good music is important because the better the music, the better you can distract yourself,

right? Yeah, absolutely. And the music is one thing, sound musician, so I've studied all things with the music because there's a lot of a lot of issues with me growing up in in the style of music I play. I had this conversation recently with another person on a podcast interview, but will Branum apparently told my grandfather that any stringed instrument was used for the devil's purpose and he said this to my grandfather.

My grandfather and his wife and children had a little band that they went around. My uncle played the dobro and my grandmother played the accordion and there was guitars, there's all the stuff. So he went around basically in competition with Branum now that I'm thinking about it.

At a much, much lesser level, he went, grandfather was not popular as popular as William Branum but whenever he came in contact with Branum, Branum knew that he was doing the staying with this music and it was entertaining people and so he says you gotta stop that, you can't do that anymore.

And then to the day of his death, my grandfather would say the stringed instruments are of the devil and I never really thought about it because I was manipulated in that mindset. At the same time, I knew that stringed instruments were not of the devil, you read about the instrument's David played, there's no way that David is playing the devil's instrument, right?

But it got even funnier because I know what's inside of a piano and my grandfather's church had a piano. It's basically a big harp that's laid down and the keys strike the strings of a harp, it's a stringed instrument.

And so I just kind of put it aside off to the shelf but here's where it gets odd. Once I studied the history, I could see that even that culture had changed and William Branum though he had this horrific singing voice on the recordings.

He was part of the band that traveled around and they won competitions in the early church with Roy Davis. So at the end of his life, after all of these churches have just started cutting William Branum off and they're sanctioning him, he's preaching against the churches that have the big choirs and all of this stuff because he's angry at those churches.

And so I grew up in a world where stringed instruments were of the devil allegedly, choirs were wrong, having a band in your church was wrong. And I knew it wasn't wrong because I'm a musician, I've read the Bible, but I also did not know that William Branum who set those things did those things in the early years.

So when I discovered the traveling music band that he went around and he even had this, I don't know what you'd call him when he's hockey-talk bands that would come in the church, the broy family had a hockey-talk band.

So they go in all of these bars and casinos and whatnot and then they'd come on Sunday and sing in the church which William Branum condemned at the end of his life. That culture shifted so significantly that it went from fully wrong to do so to fully okay to do it and then back again to some churches think it's wrong, some churches don't.

was always this conundrum you never knew what the church was going to believe regarding the music until you visited and watched whether they condemned you for it or they praised you for it yeah it's very fair to say that each church had its own unique rules around the message and you know as I as I think about you know everything you just said isn't it so sad how William Brandon robbed your grandfather or something he really loved and enjoyed I mean that's obviously and that is how so much of this is in the message and and I know you

know if you weren't in the in the churches you come from you probably hate your grandfather but people on our side that let's just step back and look at the reality of that William Brandon found something that your grandfather really loved and gave his life meaning and took it away from him and that is what is so common across the message right and then people have made great sacrifices because they believe William Brandon and then they they carry that on right I know it's it's the same thing in the churches I come from you know I

talked about you know the the preacher who has his new rule the week it's the same thing right they're trying to find what does someone really love because this thing they really love must be distracting them from God let's take it away from them okay and now we focus that attention on God and you know there's not really any consideration or thought that you know God made everybody unique and different with different qualities and talents and God they can glorify God in their stringed instruments or in whatever this thing I'm trying to take away from them yes you know there's no it's just it's all backwards it's just so

wrong what they do anyway that that's part of how they kill individuality in the message and more or less force everyone into a mold but the churches you come from John you know they were the most restricted of all churches because they were the churches most under William Brandon's thumb that most most strongly enforced all of the rules that he'd come up with and in that way the tape churches are not like the average message church you know the the average message church is farmer musical they do have full bands and all kinds of you know elaborate music and musical composition going on in them you know

it's common in our services where the you know let me describe a message church service you'll have you'll have 45 minutes to an hour of singing I know in most all the churches I come from right and that'll be non-stop you know they'll be and they'll all the different talented singers and musicians from the church will take turns and you'll have that a 45 minutes to an hour or more of singing at the start of the service and then at the end of the service you'll generally have another 15 minutes to a half hour of singing like literally

half the service and usually like that could be an hour and a half of just singing and music in the typical service message services are very very long compared to what a normal typical Christian out there would would understand I would say you know the churches I come from it is at least two hours between two and three is what is normal, you know, it kind of depends on how things go.

And you would do that at least three times a week, at least three times a week. So yeah, music was just was very important to the message community and it still is today, still is today. And the truth is, John, I mean a lot of the music is pretty good, isn't it? I mean, I don't know about you. I mean, I love that the music. Like that is one of the things that you were, you know, you almost, you kind of, I don't know, the music was really good music as far as clever tunes and melodies, excellent for distracting yourself from critical thought even. But it's really,

really good music in a lot of the message. I think that's one of the aspects of it that, I don't know, I always enjoyed was, was message music and it's not, you know, when you, when you think about all those rules, right, and then you compare it to like the other groups that came after us, you know, you think of the gnar and all that. You're right. Like even the groups I come from, which were very musical, we would look at the music from Bethel, for example, and we'd say that is all music, that is from the pit of hell, from Bethel. Look at that worldly,

trashy style of those Bethel devils, right? Look at how he holds that guitar, look at him beating that drum. Oh, that is from the pit of hell, those Bethel-like devils, you know, that's the sort of stuff we would say about, you know, those churches, you know, Hillsong, don't, and we would even have our preachers get up in the platform and say things like this, don't you dare ever sing a song in this church that came from these worldly devils at Bethel and Hillsong, right? We would, that would be point blank in our churches, and then we would sing our music instead. But, you know, it's very,

music was very big, but the rules around what you could do to compose it and play it and sing it, were pretty, pretty big. Let me talk about our church services a little more. So, John, from my perspective, and you can tell me what you think about this, from my perspective,

the church service was the center of message life. Everything in the entire community and everything in the entire culture of the message, the impetus of the drive, it all revolved around the church service. It was, it was what drove everything else that, that two to half three hour long church service that you'd go to, you know, three times a week at the minimum. Everybody lived for that.

They built their days around it, they built their world around it, they organized their jobs around it, their lives, everything was organized around getting them to the church, for the church service, making the church service a success, and then being available to execute whatever role they had in it, whether it was singing, whether it was musical instrument, whether it was, you know, in recording or broadcasting, or whether they were just the bench warmers, right? You were there warming, that bench pew, like a good person, if that was your calling, right? That was in our church

is there was an official calling for bench warmers basically, you know. So anyway, everybody had a role to play and you get there and you play that role, even if it's to keep the bench warm. But the whole everything revolved around coming to church and being in church and then the experience of the church service because that is where you were going to get the different, you know, some churches called the rapturing faith. We called it. We generally called what most people in the message called the rapturing faith. We usually just called it the thunders in my churches. That's where you're going to be to get the rapturing

faith. That's where you're going to be to get the thunders. You know, you've got to be there. You're going to miss the thunders. You're going to miss the rapturing faith. And everything was always a big deal to be in that service. You lived and died to get to the church for that service.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? 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.

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On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, Charles, I'm actually having trouble in this episode, which is proof positive of what we're talking about, because the culture I had was so different than the culture you had. And also, I left before you did. So the culture shifted. And what's odd is when you leave after the culture has shifted, your memory usually goes back to the state in which the cult was when you left. So you always remember the cult as it was when you left. That's why when people go through the process of leaving and they get so burned

by watching every friend that they have cut them off and scorn them and insult them, well, when they leave, that's the way the cult always was to them. But it wasn't the case. The cult was different through different periods of time. But you mentioned the difference between the tape churches and other churches, how restrictive it was. This is for me the most fascinating aspect of everything we've talked about because the tape churches were listening to the cult leader from the 50s and 40s, 50s and 60s, mostly the 50s and 60s.

So the rules that we followed were the rules that the quote unquote. prophet gave us. And we saw all other churches as failures because they weren't following the rules that God sent the messenger to the last age to give us. And because of the structure of the theology, you had to adhere to those rules to achieve rapturing faith. If you didn't adhere to those rules, you were the foolish virgin. So we would have considered all other churches like yours, the foolish virgin churches. So we're in this weird state where your experience is different than mine. But think about that. So now we're in 2025. All of these splinter

groups have emerged. Even the main sect itself has splintered from itself and became a main sect splinter group of the main sect. That's how weird this is. None of them follow all of the rules that William Brandham gave because the leaders of each sect had things that they disagreed with William Brandham about the rules. Yet Brandham was still their messenger. So in effect, there isn't a single one of the heads of these splinter groups that exist today, not one, that believes everything that the prophet said. Yet at the same time, you have people like William

Brandham's son saying, every single word, the prophet spoke, was thus sayeth the Lord, that kind of weird stuff. And then he doesn't adhere to the rules. I mean, widespread throughout the main sect today, you'll find televisions and they're having pool parties and things that were strongly condemned on those recordings. So not a single one of the sect leaders today believes the message that the last church age messenger sent to prepare the bride to have rapturing faith, not one of them believes it. So in effect, the cult has shifted into a completely new cult because the culture is actually against the original culture of the cult. You're exactly right. I mean,

as far as what's been happening the last, I'll say 10 to 15 years, especially in the message, is the older generation that were the shakers and movers after William Brandham's death, most of them have died. I believe there is only a single one of William Brandham's original lieutenants left living. And especially after the last two or three years, so many died, there is just one left.

I believe Earl Martin is the only living lieutenant of William Brandham. I believe every other one is passed away. And with them leaving, right, the anchor that held the people in that mindset is gone and they're shifting to new leaders. And the new leaders have obviously a different take because it is absolutely apparent, even though message people are not allowed to say it out loud, it's absolutely apparent that what they were telling us all of those decades was wrong. And how do we know that they were...

wrong, we're still here. There is just no way around it. They were dead wrong, okay? And so if they were wrong, something has to be done to patch all of those holes, right? And again, they can't say out loud that there's holes, right? Because then they're unbelievers.

So they have to somehow only believe that there were never really any holes and only believe that what they have now was right all along and only believe that everybody in the past was, you know, they just only believe as them. They're way through it, right? And don't critically think, hey, let's only believe some more, you know, let's not think about this and trust our leaders to reinvent the past, whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's a cult, ladies and gentlemen. It's a cult. But, but yes, John, yes. And let me, let me point out just another, just a distinction for our listeners is, you know, when you look at the message like

a rainbow, like a spectrum of groups, which it is going back to the very earliest schism, John, the groups you come from are on one extreme and the groups I come from are on another extreme within the message. We are from opposite spectrums of the message. You are from the most hard line, random follower spectrum spectrum, I would say, and rule following spectrum of side. And my side was from the spectrum that stayed most aligned to the original teachings of the latter rain. Okay. And that you, if you think about me and you where we come from,

that's the difference, right? My church is, when that original schism came, we kept one foot in the latter rain, right? Whereas the churches you come from said, heck no, we don't want no more latter rain. Get out here. We're following the prophet for everything, you know, he was Jesus. So you have that, that's, that's the difference. And so it, we end up with a lot of differences that way. I think if, if a, you know, if someone from the New Apostolic Reformation went to the brand of tabernacle, and then they came to like my churches, churches

we come from, I think they would recognize our churches are far more like them. We had fivefold ministry, right? Instead of doubling down on the prophet was it. And now we have the perfect, we set up a global fivefold ministry structure. We restored the apostles of prophets in the 50s and 60s and 70s. You know our people. I don't know what in the world you think you're doing. But anyway, they're just copied us. I mean, I, I have to hate to say it. But anyway, that, that's all beside the point. We'll get there. We'll do full episode on all that stuff. But anyway, kind of coming back to the churches, church

services, everything revolved around church service. And, and people, everybody I knew, you planned your vacations around meetings, right? Like, you didn't take a vacation to go, you know, to go tour Italy or something. Are you crazy? You know, you plan your vacation to go to the international message conventions, right? Like, that's how everything was. And every year, you know, we would have an international convention. I'm sure every sect of the message had a similar sort of...

thing. You have an international convention where all of the big leaders from your sector of the message would all come together and we would do marathon meetings. John, our services when this happened, we would have 10 days of services, morning, afternoon and evening services, each one multiple hours long, for 10 days in a row, you didn't sleep. And by the end of it, by the end of it, oh, there's massive outbreaks of ecstatic experiences. People are speaking in tongues and roll on the floor and everything else by the end of it. Why? Well, I mean, naturally,

if you don't sleep very much for 10 days in a row by the end of it, you start getting wonky. And that's exactly what would happen. But we would think the Holy Spirit's fallen on us, right?

And yeah, I mean, people would step till midnight every night and they'd be up early the next day and just go, go, go. And that was very common. So that was our international one. But we did that multiple times a year in our churches. We would have the big and international someone. But then we'd have regionals. And it was all of the same thing. And so everybody from the regional communities would come to the regionals, the internationals to the internationals. And that was just a huge thing in the churches that we come from. And I know it's a pretty big thing and a lot of the other

sex of the message too. Yeah, for me, the conventions were somewhat unusual and eye opening in many ways because we had the conventions in the main sect, but no two churches in the main sect believe the same things were taught the same things. Even though it was the main sect. So we'd have these conventions and we'd have some guest speaker from some other church, maybe Canada or Africa or who knows where. And they'd start speaking. And they're speaking doctrine that is condemning the doctrine of the church that we're sitting in, which was really funny. In fact, one of the in the

convention that was the last one I went to, the one where I began to wake up and see that this whole thing was a sham. We had a minister from Canada who started speaking in the church. And granted this church, it wasn't in Jeffersonville, but he knew, as well as I knew, a large number of people from Jeffersonville came down to Georgia for this convention. So we're in a church that's filled with people from the congregation of Georgia, a large number of people from Jeffersonville. Billy Paul usually was in that same convention. I don't know if he was, I can't remember if he was in

this way or not. But this minister walks out and starts blasting the Brannum Tabernacle for legalism. And the Brannum Tabernacle blasted all the other churches because they're not legalist, but they didn't use the term legalist. They said, we're grace filled, but they were grace filled if you had the legalism, which was irony, right? So this guy comes out and he's blasting all of this left and right. It was at that convention that I went downstairs to my, my child was, you know, we're sitting through this long, long service. And I refused to beat my children like the other people did when you sat in these long services and the children squirmed.

So I took my kid downstairs to the, they had a room for the men, which was also unusual. So I go down to the room for the men. They've got a big screen TV in there, they've got a leather couch, they've got this play pin, Legos galore, like I was stepping on Legos trying to get to the chair.

And I turn on the TV and I'm watching it and I'm watching this guy who's condemning the random tabernacle in the main sect. I'm watching the other speakers who were condemning some of the doctrines and they don't even, I don't think they knew that they were doing it, but they're preaching doctrines that were in complete conflict. And then they started praying upon the people's emotions. That's the one thread I think that is common among every single sect in the message and it's embedded in the culture. You must manipulate the emotions of the people. But while you're not in the group, so I was not in the group think, I was in this

little room, I'm watching it on TV and suddenly it struck me, man, this guy is manipulating their heads. What is wrong with him? And I stopped and thought, but wait a minute, every service I go to, it's the same thing. They're toying with the people's emotions. And I realized that this was no different than any of the televangelists that, you know, they're manipulating people's emotions for usually for money. So the run the little ads, give me your money and I'm going to toy with your heads and more. Well, this guy was manipulating the heads for control. And when that hit me,

suddenly the whole culture came undone. I was not going to let this man manipulate my head so that he can control it. When I was in the message, John, I don't think hardly a single year passed without a schism. Okay, well, I was trying to thank schism. I mean, almost every year there was a schism. I mean, that's just, and the schisms almost always started at the conventions because, like you said, some bozo from somewhere would get up and preach the opposite of what some other church believed. Yeah. And the schism would ensue. It was natural, right? Always natural. And,

I mean, it's hard to put your, you know, it is hard to describe the atmosphere, but the tension, you could cut the air with a knife, the tension, when these things happened. Like you've got, so you've got, oh my goodness, John, we're going to talk through some schisms. So, I mean, some real knockdown dragout schisms before we get done with this series. But I mean, you could, things would come literally to blows at time. There was, there was more than once that these things broke out in violence. The schisms, when, you know, one preacher would be preaching one

thing different than the other. But yeah, you'll get some person come from out of town, from overseas, who is probably from another sect of the message. This is how we always looked at it. Oh, they're from another sect and they snuck in here. How'd they get up on...

platform, you know, and which who knows, did they really, were they being genuine? And they just had no idea that we didn't believe any of that stuff. You know, you never know, honestly. Yeah, we'd get them, they'd come in and they'd preach some, some wackadoodle thing, you know. And yeah, schism, and then they'd be thrown out. And we would, you know, there would just be the whole purge thing that would happen. Oh, man, yeah, schisms is another very important feature of message culture. And it's pretty hard to, you know, it's hard to think of the right way to put it into terms as to how this impacted things.

I know that as time went on, we became more and more weary of new preachers, right? Like you almost didn't want to let a new preacher in, right? Because what? Because it's almost inevitable. I mean, that it's going to go ugly, right? If you let a new new person in or a new person preacher, whatever, it's almost always going to go ugly because the sex are so loggerheads against each other and so obsessed with with doctrine and everything being 100% right. It was almost never, ever going to go okay, right? I mean, by the time

you get into the 80s and 90s for sure, it's just, it's nothing but schisms, nonstop schisms with, with these preachers, but something else, crazy stuff, crazy stuff. And I can't imagine in the main sec, John, because I know they were, our churches were pretty locked down with a, this is your cult mold and you fit in it and we had lots of other churches in that mold, right? And it was really the evolution of that mold that eventually led to our big breakups. But the main sec, not so much. I mean, it was a scatter shot. You

had all kinds of stuff in there, right? Like that's, and we wouldn't touch none of that with a 10 foot hole in our churches. We want them in the building. Well, we had, so we had something else that's part of the message culture, which I think is very important to note, but we had it more because of the main sec. Like you said, we had people come in and no two main sec churches were the same so that, that preach and all kinds of weirdness. I, I've actually, I'm close friends with a minister who left

the message, who pre, his last sermon, he preached in the Brannum Tabernacle and got scorned, left and right because he was preaching from the Bible, which is, that, that was his eye opener. He preached straight from the Bible and it conflicted with William Brannum and he got ridiculed, ridiculed for it and was, if I remember right, he may have been asked never to come back. I can't remember how it all played out, but anyway, what happens afterwards is also part of the culture and also very, very noteworthy. After one of these conventions and after all of the people speak, then you hear it's sermon.

content for weeks because you'll hear the minister preaching sermons against the preachers that he just invited to his pulpit. And so you'll hear all these sermons and you're being taught through this exercise to also scorn the other churches, which is why no two churches can agree on anything.

They'll invite them and they'll, you know, you're welcome, we're friends, we're family, we're all, we're in synergy until you leave. And after you leave, you know you're going to get scorned. Man, and it's, it is scorched earth when the schism happens, right?

I mean, it is scorched earth. And if the other people die, hey, we'd be happy for that, right? I mean, it's really that bad. I mean, we had schisms, and you're describing it exactly right.

I mean, this would become a sermon series for the preacher sometimes for months on and sometimes, sometimes they couldn't go, we had it a schism, John in 2008 in the churches I come from, and I tell you what, our preacher, sometimes I wonder if he was cracked inside or I don't know, but every service, John, I kid you not every service for five years in a row, he brought that schism, I kid you not, well, he could not move on.

Like, it's like, and he preached this sermon, and he got up to like, it was, the title of the sermon was like, you've magnified your word above your name, part 379, and I kid you not, John.

I mean, it is, it is, it is bizarre. Wow. Yeah. So basically, I've been trying to think, how do we wrap this episode up, Charles, because we can talk about culture for days, but I think in a nutshell, the culture was just chaos.

That's really, while you're in it, you think it's harmony. That's the weird part. While you're in the group, think you think it's harmony, and you think everybody's in the message because they're part of the quote, little bride.

And then when you step out and realize, wait, this number one, it's not little. There are millions of people in this. Number two, none of them are in harmony or in sync. This is pure chaos.

And always go back to the scripture, God is not the author of confusion. To anybody who's not in the group, think who visits one of the churches during one of these conventions, they're going to see pure chaos, especially if they continue to visit after they've left, and they see that it is confusion.

So in effect, the churches are preaching confusion, and they act out the confusion. They enjoy the confusion because it gives them sermon content, but it is confusion. And after you leave, you're less confused.

I think that's the best way I could put it. Describing message culture, let me just get back to it. This was the hardest thing I put in the book, John. Because, you know, it is an even today, we have not even scratched the surface, ladies and gentlemen.

I mean, it is, it is so challenging to describe this in all of its facets and, and then the way that it impacts people. I mean, it is very challenging because you, you know, you put yourself in this environment, you end up with, there are, I don't know, John, hey, this, a vast segment of the message, I'm not going to say the majority, but a large part of the message is shell-shocked from this stuff, right?

Like, they, they, they're shell-shocked, you can't get them to talk about what they believe. You can't get them to talk about, be committed on anything because of the, the trauma and shell-shock of all of the schisms and all of the fights and all of the blow-ups, right?

Because they know if they say anything, the slight bit wrong, guess what? It's going to happen to them, and they're exactly right. It will happen to them, so they're better to sit there and shut up.

Yeah, and you've got vast numbers of people who sit there and have learned that lesson and they're, they zip the lip, right? And go along with it. Then you've got people who are on the opposite side of that, they're the potsters, and they thrive on the witch hunt for the unbeliever among us, who only believes 99% of the truth, you know, because his 1% is going to hold us back from the rapturing faith. We must find him. We must purge him.

He must go for the good of the body of Christ, and they'll use like, you know, back in the Old Testament, there's the guy who had the Babylonian garment buried in his tent. I don't know how many times I've heard this one. Someone here has the Babylonian garment buried in their tent.

We must find who this person is, you know? And they're always after the unbeliever among us, you know? And there's that aspect of it. And there's, and then there's the whole, we can't admit out loud that our beliefs are evolving.

Like, we can't admit that we believe this, and then we switch to that, and then we switch to this, and then we switch to that, because we've always believed the truth all along. So I must believe, you know, they're internalizing the lies, they're believing the lies.

They know in some ways that they're doing it. You know, you got all that. And then you've got the beautiful message music. Oh my, one of the saving great. I mean, one of the wonderful things about the mess, you've got, at least you have this beautiful music to thought block yourself with, you know, to survive the whole thing, right?

Oh, maybe, you've got the lovely music of the message to thought block your way through it all. And, and hey, you know, it's, it's something else. I mean, it's just something else, John, and it's so, you've got the wonderful high walls of, you know, hey, we're not going to public schools. We've got our, our more or less private message communities.

We've keeping away from the world and, and we've got the internet now, right? Hey, hey, we've got the internet now. Look how we've liberalized. So, you know, that's the message. That's the message. Like, you know, it's such a message is the message age. But yeah, like I said, we could go.

for hours and talk about the culture. And the problem is the deeper we go, the more like fools we are, because people who've never been in this, if we were to describe everything that we believe, thought, felt, acted upon, and the consequences of that, nobody would want to listen to us anymore.

So we'll stop it here Charles. It is just crazy. You're right. And ladies and gentlemen, if you want a little bit more of this craziness, hey, get our books. It's in the books. Yeah, it's in the book. And hopefully, Charles will be soon writing, come out of her culture, my people. 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-Brandom.org and Christian-GospelChurch.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, volume one and volume two. And for more about the dark side of the NAR, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.