Branhamism: The CANCER That Infected American Christianity

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org, and the author of Come Out Of Her, My People. Charles, it's good to be back into talk all things post-brandamism. We're entering into the phase, which is kind of a phase of limbo, I guess you'd call it, because the cult should have imploded and didn't. You had all the new splinter groups that

were emerging that came out of Laterane, that many of them thought Brandham was the foretold messenger of the end time, and they started their own movements and different sects, etc. But within the message, it's still continued to grow and evolve, which is fascinating if you stop and think about it. In today's world, if you are a member of the message and you're listening to this, or if you've recently escaped, everything we're going to talk about sounds foreign to you, because the cult has largely gone into isolation. There is no real outreach.

They solely depend on people to birth children in order to grow the cult today, but when Brandham died, that wasn't the case. There was this push to go out and try to bring new members in and grow this thing, which is odd, because if you really studied what were your Brandham said, it was supposed to be this little tiny, inclusive people, and what he basically established was what the cult ended up, an isolationist cult. But now we're entering the phase where it is the opposite of isolationist. I know the message after its big schism 68 and 69

went on a big missionary push, John, and the message actually had lots and lots of outreach in those days, and the message actually continued to have lots of outreach up until the 1980s. Contrary to what Charismatics like to say, they did not turn on the message when William Brandham died. They turned on the message in the 80s, and it was in the 80s that our leaders all decided that darkness had fully set in on the Pentecostals and Charismatics, and there was no point to do any more research, because they were all turned into darkness.

But up until then, yeah, I mean, there was still overlap happening, there was still cross-pollinating happening, if you want to call it that, but more importantly, there was still outreach to go out and convert and recruit people into the message. It was very common up into the 80s.

When we get to the 80s, we're going to talk about that. But today, we're talking about what happened in that first big missionary push. I know we've teased it a little bit. We talked about the big schism after William Brandham died. We've talked about that there was going to have a big missionary push on the other side of it.

So that's where we're finally getting today. And as you think about that, what was the appeal? Maybe before I start to describe it, what was the appeal that the message leaders had when they went out on this missionary push?

Like, what was their basic missionary pitch, their basic missionary spiel? And you can, here's thing, you can go out and get them. Like, they're still recorded, right? You can go get the recordings from Ewald Frank from the 60s when he was doing it.

You can get the recordings from Raymond Jackson in the 60s when they were doing, right? All these guys, a lot of their recordings are around. You can just get them and hear what they were saying back then in their missionary pushes.

And I would, I would boil it down like this, John. I think the one thing that maybe even saved the message, you know, along with all of the fictionalizing of return ministry, there was something big that happened in 1967.

And it was the Six Day War in Israel, okay? We've talked about how British Israelism deeply influenced the end time beliefs of the message. Well, when the Six Day War happened in 1967, that is when Israel conquered Jerusalem, okay? So William Brown on the Elijah who had come to restore everybody just died at the end of 1965, December 1965, they buried him in April, okay?

A year later, the Jewish people recaptured Jerusalem. Oh, this is too much of a coincidence, right? And this features very prominently in the missionary push of what's happening back then. They're going to all the places, all the people that we're going to talk about today. And they are saying, the Elijah has come, the Elijah of Malachi 4 that was foretold has come to return the hearts of the children back to the faith of the fathers.

And look, the end is up on us. Jerusalem has just been returned to Israel. Next week, they're going to start building the temple. And the end is going to come, right? Like this is the pitch.

You know, it is eminent. It is up on us. It is about to happen. The message has believed that the end of the world is six months to a years away for 60 years, ladies and gentlemen.

And this was going on from the very beginning. And so there's this major sense of urgency that they're conveying to their listeners. The Elijah has come, he has died, he has came to give us the perfect to get us ready for the rapture.

And here was this message that you need to get ready for the rapture. and look, the Doomsday scenario is already in progress. Israel has just recaptured the Holy Land and it's all about to come.

And so this sense of urgency builds into it. And what also they're doing, John, is as you come into 1970, I believe it was 69, but I think it was 70, if I'm not right, wrong.

It was either 1969 or 1970, and I think it was 70, more likely. Perry Green pulled the deep call of the deep video out of the full gospel businessmen archives that year, okay? They buried that video in 1954 when Carol Ruth Struebler died.

I'm telling you, nobody had that video back then. But in 1970, outcomes the video of William Brannum fake healing Carol Ruth Struebler. And this serves as part of their missionary draw, right? They're saying the Elijah has come, the Six Day War, the Doomsday scenario is in progress.

And look, here's our evidence that this is the profit. Look, that little girl with leukemia that he healed. Did you see that goiter falling off of that woman in that video? You know, you've heard these things.

I'm sure John. I have. And this is what they're saying to their audiences, and they're drawing them in. They're convincing them this was indeed the Elijah. It is urgent. You must now respond to our call to separate yourselves and prepare for the rapture.

There's so much there to unpack. Now, I received several emails about the Israel focus. Whenever they discover our research, anybody who's looking into whatever NAR group that's out there, and they discover that it's tied to Christian identity.

And like I hop KC, which is Brannemism 2.0, they had a heavy, heavy focus on Israel, but it could be considered pro-Israel. And the thing that people miss is that the message is the same way.

Even though the message was based off of Christian identity, we were pro-Israel. But to understand that fully, you have to understand that any move that Israel makes fits within Christian identity. If they do anything, if there's a war, if there's a new leader, no matter what happens, if it happens, it can fit within that realm because you're looking for Israel as the basis of your faith.

And that's typically what's taught in the message. But the funny part is, you mentioned, and I'm not gonna go too deep. We, you're talking about earlier, you're talking about the 80s and the push there.

I honestly thought that this was an inclusive cult from the day William Brannem died. And it was basically, it was imploding, and it became this isolationist group. I was shocked whenever I found photos of, pretty sure my grandfather was in them, and no Billy Paul was in them, but they had these worldwide missionary endeavors.

I'll throw one of the ads up on the screen for anybody who came from the message cult and is unfamiliar with this. This was a worldwide missionary event. They're holding conventions just like they do in the NAR because...

back then, they were all practically one and the same. They were splitting, but they were all kind of joined together in one unity. That changed my mind. I began to realize that after William Brandham died, something happened, and I started trying to dig and see what happened.

Your research goes much deeper into this than I minded, but I began to realize that many of the groups that I thought were disconnected from Brandham, that had themes that I could easily identify in Brandhamism, I began to realize, that there was this period of time, which it was all just kind of, the water was muddy.

You could see all of the elements starting to grow. They had planted this fertile field. William Brandham had planted this fertile field of false doctrine, and all of these groups began to grow on top of it.

This is going to be an interesting podcast as we get into it so that people can see how this began to unfold. We should do a full episode one day on the message's beliefs around Israel.

I think people would find that interesting. I'm sure that if we did, that the people in the NAR would hear very many similar things. Like I've said before, there is a distinction between these beliefs that evolved out of British Israelism and the beliefs that are more standard dispensationalist fear, that are like in the Nijon-Elson-Darby type systems of dispensationalism.

There is distinctions, and I would love to just take some time maybe and point that out because you can tell which influence they came from by certain distinctions in the beliefs. Anyways, coming back to our topic today for sure, so when William Brandham died, the message was small.

As I've said quite a few times already, there was maybe 35 churches roughly when he died, and today we're going to talk about how it grew, because by the time you get into the early 1970s, it has exploded into hundreds of churches.

35 churches when he died to hundreds of churches by 5, 6, 7 years later. The growth is exponential once you get on the other side of the 1968-1969 schism. And so although there were maybe 1,500 people roughly in those 35 message churches, there was another somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500 people that were just individual message believers that were outside of those 35 churches.

I think it might be the majority, possibly the majority of message believers when William Brandham died, and for those first two or three years, were not in message churches. They were people though that William Brandham had picked up during the years that he was touring around, and they were out in the other churches of the broader later reign movement, and of broader Pentecostalism.

They were in places like Jack Morse Church, or James Outlaw's Church, or up in the Philadelphia Church in Chicago. They were in UPC churches. They were in independent assemblies of God churches. They were in full gospel churches.

They were in apostolic churches. And the start of the mission... outreach is to those people who already were of the message belief set of the message persuasion and they're going to those places where they know those people are and they're influencing them to leave those churches at their end and plant their own new churches. And so that's what you see happening. You see people leaving the Philadelphia church and starting the first message churches in the Chicago area. You see people leaving apostolic churches in western Canada and starting the first message churches there. Same with independent assemblies of God churches. Same in

eastern Canada. You have his followers in the UPC leaving starting the first churches there. And we're just going to kind of walk through some of that today with who did what and how some of that happened. But after that first major schism had rocked the message in 68 and 69 and the message broken to those two competing groups. It's really on the other side of that that this big effort pushes. And I think John, part of the first message missionary reach might have been these two factions fighting to get as many people on their side as possible.

And it's really the fight to get as many people on their other side as possible out in the broader movement that actually kind of kicks off this missionary reach, right? Because people are going to the churches in Canada and to the people in the south and the people out west and they're they're all becoming aware of this feud that started here in Jeffersonville and they're taking sides in it and it's bringing attention to William Brannum and the message and then it gradually just kind of evolves into this. They're actually starting to convince the people to

become more radical to leave their churches and to start and to start message message churches. And I've also mentioned John, we did the episode on the Full Gospel Businessmen, they are the men who are helping finance and push this entire thing as well. As I've mentioned before, one third of the senior upper leadership of the Full Gospel Businessmen was in the message back in these years. And I also went back and I double checked this after our Full Gospel Businessmen episode, John, and I can't confirm every single treasurer of the Full Gospel Businessmen from the day it was founded until 1987 was a member of the message, okay? The treasurer

of the Full Gospel Businessmen was a message follower from the date it was founded to the year 1987. And so you just absorb that, ladies and gentlemen, but the the treasurer, Joel Rose, Carl Williams, Gerald Lee Walker, Henry Carlson, they were all message followers.

And these men were helping to provide the money to the overseas missionary to help sponsor their salaries. They were providing endowments to help plant some of these early message churches, they broke away and, you know, started out. And so their money plays a really big role in financing this effort as it comes fully underway in 69 and 67. So we're going to explain as much of this today. Try to get as far through this as we can. But yeah, just keep in mind, it's the full gospel businessman financing a lot of this, granting endowments. And it is the people from these 35 message churches and

their leaders, especially that are spearheading this big outreach effort that explodes the message in terms of its numbers of followers in 69, 77 you want. One thing that you mentioned that I want to focus in on just a little bit, many of these churches that, you know, I grew up, I considered message churches. Whenever you're in them and visiting them or if you're a member of them, you think they were always message churches. But as you pointed out, there was a period of time in which many of these churches were not. Yet they were connected to Brannemism. And part of the

reason why we've talked about this a few times, no two churches can fellowship with each other because they all have a different interpretation of what William Brannem said. Well, if you think about how this thing grew and spread, these guys were listening to Brannem. They were, they many of them just considered him a prophet. They didn't consider him the anti-messenger, the prophet of the age or anything like this. But they were connected to this thing. And they were largely from apostolic churches, from United Pentecostal churches, some Baptist, but many of them were just, you know, Pentecostal, a lot of oneness, Pentecostal people. I have been working with a former minister

out of the message. We've been doing some research on Richard Blair, for example, from Mount and Home Arkansas. I knew many people who went to that church. I grew up with revivals that we would hold joint revivals where their church would come to ours, et cetera. And we always assume that he was always a message minister when he was connected to Brannemism. The funny part is he was a United Pentecostal church minister. And you can go to my website, you can type in Richard Blair, you can see this research. But he was a United Pentecostal church minister. And he had a

leaning towards Brannemism in his UPC church. And it appears, and based off of the histories that have been told to me verbally, it appears that his church began to sort of lean more heavily towards Brannemism than the UPC wanted. And eventually he broke off and started his own church.

After William Brannem died, probably, I want to say it was like a year later, he went full into Brannemism and transplanted his whole church because of this alleged Los Angeles prophecy that William Brannem had made newspapers all over the United States that Brannem said that when Los Angeles fell, there would be a tidal wave that just...

Defied all logic and physics and would flood Louisiana and part of the United States. It's a weird, weird thing, but the point I'm making is these guys that were in these, you know, apostolic churches, Pentecostal churches, they were deeply affiliated with Brannemism in so much that many of them after Brannem died, they began to listen to the tapes over and over and over again, started to brainwash themselves and then formed their own versions of Brannemism. And that's why no two of these churches can fellowship with one another on doctrine. That's well put, John, and yeah, I mean, for our listeners out there, the importance of the United Pentecostal Church

in this period of time, 68, 68, 970, is hard to understate. A very large faction of the early message converts came out of the UPC and they came out in this period that we're talking about today. Now you remember William Brannem, I should say this, my own family came from the United Pentecostal Church ladies and gentlemen, so I speak from experience. The William Brannem

had been connected to the United Pentecostal Church from day one of the United Pentecostal Church. He was there in St. Louis at the convention when they organized, okay? And he had lined all of their major conventions in St. Louis for years and years and years, okay? The United Pentecostal Church is largely, I would say, more so than any other group is responsible for popularizing William Brannem, okay? It is just how it is. Raymond Hoekstra, who was his first campaign manager, was the pastor of the largest UPC church in the world, okay? And what is still to this day

considered the flagship of the UPC? You can't separate William Brannem from the UPC in the way I know the UPC would certainly like to today. That is totally inappropriate and it's a total denial of the actual history of the things that happened. And it's also a denial of the reality that a very large faction of the early message community came directly from the UPC. Not only did they come from the UPC, John, they were UPC preachers and leaders who came out and started a lot of these early message communities. And as we talk through some of this today and maybe our next episode,

you're going to hear that it was UPC ministers and missionaries spreading the message overseas even, John, that kicked off some of our overseas stuff. So the message was embedded in the UPC. Now, was the UPC the message? The UPC was not the message. Did the UPC endorse the message?

The UPC did not endorse the message. But they were tolerant of William Brannem. They were tolerant of the message and they allowed held the message to flourish within their churches for the entirety of William Brownham's life and beyond.

Okay? And I'm telling you, the UPC did not condemn William Brownham until the 1980s. And anyone who tells you otherwise, ask for the proof. There is no proof. It never happened, right? They'll say, oh, this happened.

They said, where is the proof? Where's the document? Where's the evidence? Like, I wanna see proof. If they condemned William Brownham before the 80s, UPC, please show us the proof, right? And the fact that they didn't is, to me, John, the absolute biggest black mark on the UPC that there could ever be.

The fact that they popularized William Brownham, they're responsible for popularizing him. They are responsible for doing nothing to get him under control. And they never condemned him his entire life or even till the 1980s.

And the fact that they never did that, John, and they allowed people like me to get sucked up into a cult is I would never go to the UPC again for the rest of my life.

God have mercy. What a terrible place would do thing like that to me and my family. What in the world, okay? So anyways, moving on. Keep in mind as we're talking, right? So we're talking about the missionary outreach of the message.

And to a person who's a researcher looking in, they have completely disconnected Brannemism from all of this that exists in history. And in doing so, they have written a false history of the message and the word of faith and the charismatic movement and all of these things.

But back during this time, they were so accepting of Brannemism because they had just been through the latter reign, like you said, the UPC, they're all connected to it. So as we're talking through the missionaries as they're having outreach programs, keep in mind that these guys were welcomed and accepted in many of these UPC apostolic oneness churches, the New Cairns, Matic movement churches, all of this were, you could be a message minister and go into and preach because at that time it was, like I said, the water was a little bit muddy.

Some of them were full out Brannemites, but others were just accepting of Brannem as a prophet. And so you could get accepted into these churches because they weren't a cult, they just believed he was a prophet.

Exactly right. Let's talk about something specific. Let's start getting in specifics. So I have mentioned the name Bill Pederis a few times and I think our listeners have heard about him. He would have been in the anti-church order, anti-return ministry sect on that side of that first schism.

He was the pastor of a church in King's Mountain, North Carolina. And his church was, I would say, either the first or second, most prominent and important message church in Appalachia back then. Maybe the first most important.

It's right there on the line between him and Ernest Vulture's church. Well, he had made contact with the message. community in Eastern Canada. So you've got roughly 150, maybe 200 message believers in Eastern Canada when William Brownum dies. And they are 100% within the United Pentecostal Church, John. 100% of the message community of Eastern Canada was in the United Pentecostal Church when William Brownum died 100%. And they started while still members of the UPC were coming to the International Message Conventions being held at Bill Paderos' Church in King's Mountain with Carolina. And as they came down there, they ended up of course mingling with

Raymond Jackson because he was there as well, you know. And so it ends up that the early message community of Eastern Canada gets entirely absorbed into the sect of the message I come from, John, in 1969 and 1970. So all of the Eastern Canadian churches were in my sect. And let me explain how how just as using them as a little example of how this breakaway would happen. So Raymond Jackson and Homer Brown, who was another pastor alongside Bill Paderos at that church in North Carolina, they traveled together up to Canada. And they held a region-wide Canadian message convention

in Eastern Canada. And as they did, they attracted, you know, all this 150-200-ish message believers out of all these UPC churches up there to hear the message. There's tapes for all these things. And it's basically the sort of thing I explain to you. The Six Day War has happened. It's evidence. The Elijah has come. You have to separate from your churches and you have to prepare for the rapture. And so that's what happens, John. These people are in roughly 12 different UPC churches across Eastern Canada. We're talking New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec. And they hear this sermon and over the next two and three years, all of those people

leave the UPC and they plant roughly a dozen message churches in Eastern Canada. They plant churches in Montreal. They plant churches in across New Brunswick, you know, Moncton and different places in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. They also do some outreach. They convert in some groups up in Newfoundland, right? And so Eastern Canada separates as a result of message preachers from here in Jeffersonville and Bill Paderos' Church traveling up to Canada, right? And encouraging the UPC believers to break away from the UPC and start message churches. And so there in just that two or three years in Eastern Canada, they plant over a dozen message churches. And this is

the sort of thing, John, that's going to repeat over and over in all the different regions of the North America by different message preachers in 1969, 1970, 1970. 21, and they're just planning all kinds of churches primarily at first by drawing out the message people who had known somewhat William Branham heard William Branham through those years.

Now let me talk about Eastern Canada just a little bit more, John. So the preeminent preacher in Eastern Canada back then was a man named Freddie Bradford and they intersected with William Branham at his 1958 conventions or revivals that William Branham held in Bangor, Maine, I think, in Boston, New England.

That's how they got started. And Freddie Bradford, ladies and gentlemen, was another child molester, molested multiple children and multiple message churches over the years in the thunders in my sect, other places. But he went and he's the one who spread the message to all these UPC people.

Let me mention he was a child molester, why was a UPC preacher too? So the UPC's never did nothing about him either. So he basically draws all these people into the message and it's actually through his influence that they end up reaching out and working with Bill Poderis, Faith Sembley and Breaking Away from the message.

You're going to hear a common recurring theme too of child molester preachers. I mean, they rampant in the early message community, John. I mean, you know what I know. So this is happening. They're breaking away.

They're doing that. And let me give you another thing about the same time that expands the message community in Appalachia. So the year this happened is not quite clear to me, John. I think it was probably 1971 or 1972.

I'm going to lean to 72, but I'm not perfectly sure. So Bill Poderis shot his wife with a firearm. And the story around that, you know, the truth of the story, I don't know the truth.

But the story, the rumor was that Bill Poderis got drunk and in his drunkenness, he shot his wife, John. This is the preacher, the pastor of the most prominent message church in Appalachia. Okay.

He shot his wife. Now, she said it was an accident, right? I don't know. Maybe it was, right? However the case, the message community was convinced that he was drunk and shot her while he was drunk.

And his church fell apart, okay? And when his church fell apart, it shattered into a whole bunch of pieces, John. And those pieces are what planted and started a lot of the message churches in Appalachia was the shards of his church.

So you can trace a pretty large faction of the churches in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, the Appalachian region there. You can trace them to the breakup of his church and the people leaving out of their planning new churches.

So this is how, this is how the message is spreading early on, ladies and gentlemen. Gentlemen, child molester preachers, preachershoes is wife. Okay, this is what's happening through this phase of time. I got so many stories like this, John, I could tell stories like this all day long.

All right, but I'll let you say what you think there. 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 Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, 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.

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So Charles, let's talk a little bit about what happened in Canada, because as you know, whenever William Brannum towards the end of his life, as he was establishing his cult, he had two main primary hubs of the message, one in Jeffersonville, one in Tucson, Arizona.

But there's a third one that was closely related to those two and growing quickly. And that's Ed Biskill's church. And for anybody who has been out of the message and you've seen my website and you've seen believe the sign, believe the sign, that entire group that runs that came out of the Ed Biskill side of the equation.

And they were in close partnership with the main sect of the message. There's always, you can find some of the clips that I use at Billy Paul preaching are usually in that church where Ed Biskill was preaching.

And like the other ones that we've mentioned, Ed Biskill, even though he was closely affiliated with Brannum, you know, he was even on Brannum's hunting trips, he was loosely connected to the message and more connected to Pentecostalism as his church was forming.

Exactly right. So as Eastern Canada, all of the message believers came out of the UPC and in the Western Canada, it was a little more of a different story. So the church is aligned with my sect at the very beginning, were like I said, all across Eastern Canada, but some were planted as far out as Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

And then the church is aligned to my sect kind of stopped in Saskatchewan. But then when you get over to Alberta and BC, those were predominantly main sects. planting Recruiting grounds in the early days and so that's you kind of Canada you could almost give an east-west divide at the very first where Western Canada was mainstack eastern Canada was mysec and So out in western Canada the same sort of thing is happening that was happening in eastern Canada John Preachers from the mainsec are going up there and they're going around to the Independent assemblies of God churches and the apostolic churches where willing Brownham had followers

And that's where Edbiscoe was in those days. That's where Terry Sprule was in those days That's where a lot of the different people who are gonna become shakers and movers were There wasn't a true message church in all of Canada when William Brownham died, but in this period of time Dozens of them sprung up pretty quickly So Edbiscoe was an independent assemblies of God preacher that was the you know the denomination of AWS Musin in those guys and The mainsec starts going up there Paragreen Billy Paul different ones reaching out to him and encouraging him and helping sponsor him with I'm pretty sure full gospel businessman money and

They help basically to launch Cloverdale up there John and Cloverdale is I Think today the largest probably the largest message church in North America and it has been the largest message church in North America Probably since I would say perhaps then 80 certainly probably the 90s. I mean it would be right there It was a very large church and of course big churches have big money and can do lots of things and sponsor lots of outreach So it grew into an important center of the message But yeah, so those things are happening in Western Canada just the same and I would say probably the two most important churches

In Western Canada that that actually get started right in this period of time through these outreach efforts through message preachers from the 35 churches Going up there holding meetings convincing people 67 is upon us the you know Israel is getting ready to build the temple and the prophet has come and you must prepare for the rapture The two most important churches that that break out from that is Edbiscoe's which is the most important of the two and then the other is Terry Sprule's church in Edmonton That's another important one and while Terry Sprule's church or rather Edbiscoe's church kind of aligns to the main set Terry Sprule

Ends up aligning with leave ale in the Perugia as they break away and those are the two most important churches and and out of besides that though I would say there's roughly 15 to 20 message churches that got planted in Western Canada in 69 70 71 72 73 right in that area of time all kind of in the orbit of all of this Because William Brannam had spent a lot of time in Western Canada. That was the heart of the latter rain movement I know the church I come from John We we had a group of church that was planted in Saskatchewan near North Battleford and

We actually intersected with the hot and brothers back then, and so did the main sect, and George Houghton spent a lot more time with Yersek, John, the main sect, but his brother Ernest spent a lot more time with my sect, which is unusual, okay? I don't necessarily know that they got along as far as I know, but just for our listeners, in case you are not aware, George Houghton and his brother Ernest were two of the original elders of Sharon Orphanage, and they were the leaders of the latter-rain movement from day one, okay?

And where did they end up? They ended up fellowshiping with my sect, John, and with Yersek, okay? The message has an absolute claim to be the main branch of the latter-rain movement, right? We had the original leaders in our churches, so yeah, and they kind of aligned with us in that period of time, 69, 70, 71, as all of this stuff started to break out. Okay, so the next group I think we should talk about, John, is the South, okay? The American South. We had lots of churches in the South.

I'd say we have more churches in the South than anywhere else, you know, in the US, based on my knowledge. And the same thing that happened in Canada is also happening in the South.

William Brannum had a pretty big following in UPC churches, and by big, I mean several hundred people. In UPC churches in Mississippi, especially Mississippi, but also Arkansas and Louisiana. And the same thing starts to happen as preachers out of the main sack, we're talking Floyd Patterson, we're talking Earl Martin, we're talking Paul Brewer, we're talking even your grandpa did some of this one. They're going down and they're visiting the UPC churches in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. And just like the, you know, the gentleman you mentioned here at the beginning, they're convincing them the same thing that they convinced the UPC people

up in Canada. 1967, the war has happened, the temples about to be rebuilt, the prophet has come. We must separate ourselves for the rapture. And what happens, they break away and they start the message churches in those regions. And we see the majority of the early churches down there in that fate, that point of time came out of the UPC again. And we got dozens more churches in Louisiana and Arkansas, especially Mississippi, especially Mississippi, out of the UPC back then.

And another similar thing is happening in my sect of the message on another part of the South. So there was another denomination that had a lot of interaction with William Brannum called the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ had, they're like a oneness Pentecostal group. They had churches, especially in Alabama, in Georgia, in Mississippi, and Arkansas and Oklahoma, and my sect of the message is going around to those churches, John, and it's the same thing. It's the same story.

The prophet has come to prepare us for the rapture. Look, they just took over Jerusalem. The temple is going to be built. We must separate and prepare for the rapture. And they do. And when this happened, John, we actually had it full... I would say, I mean from the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ side of things, it was a full on schism.

We pulled, I want to say, 25 of their churches roughly left that denomination and they joined the whole message. They came with their churches, their assets, and everything, and they came into the message in those years.

And so we ended up... the churches I come from ended up with a pretty substantial network of friendly churches across the South, especially Georgia, Alabama, somewhat Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, from the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yeah, I was a little surprised when I learned that the Houghton brothers were deeply affiliated with the message long after Laterane imploded. Because I was doing some research and I was gathering information from a person who was there. They knew. And they said, I believe it was them that told me it was the youth meetings that George Houghton was attending and helping out.

And you can go on my research, you can type in on my website, Houghton, and you can see well into the 80s. He's having to apologize for Christian identity themes. He was deeply indoctrinated in teaching Christian identity.

In fact, somewhere we've got a clip, I think you found it, where he's saying some very racist and anti-Semitic things. I'll just leave it at that. And I think YouTube might filter me if I say what he actually said. But I was a little surprised to find that they were so connected. And honestly, that's what made me dig deeper into Laterane.

You knew it, but in the main sec, we did not know that William Brown was so closely tied to Laterane. Because at the end of his life, he started condemning the Laterane movement whenever he's condemning everybody, you know, anybody who he can condemn.

And we had this mental image of Branum as having a consistent doctrine from 1947 to 1965. So we thought, if he condemned Laterane at the end, he must always condemn Laterane. That's how we were indoctrinated.

But I learned that he's tied to the Houghton brothers, the Houghton brothers continued affiliation with the message, not probably to their deaths. I'm guessing they did forever. It was a little surprising to me, and that plays into the picture, because remember, as I said, all of these different various groups are accepting of message people.

The Houghton brothers were tied to Branumism as the charismatic movement is being birthed, and they're teaching Christian identity. So now you're getting the Christian identity threads from the message, from the Houghton. brothers in the original latirane sect, and this turns into a big mass.

I'll just say it like that. Another thing happening right in this period of time is that the full gospel businessmen help sponsor a radio station, John, and a radio lineup in the Midwest. And I believe it was broadcast out of Lima, Ohio, Lima, Lima, Ohio, take it or leave it.

I don't just people say it different ways. I'll say Lima, Lima, you can say it however you like. But I believe the station was based in Lima, or Lima, Ohio. And at any rate, this radio broadcast featured multiple message preachers, John, on their radio program.

And about that time, that was roughly the same time that the full gospel businessmen help plant the major message church there in Lima as well. I don't know that the radio broadcast was controlled by the church itself, where that was maybe another organization or another entity.

But I think there was some affiliation there for sure. Yeah, and so the full gospel businessmen help plant that church there in Lima, Lima. There is a radio broadcast, and that actually attracted quite a few people in the Midwest to the message, John.

And so radio, that broadcast is bringing in random off-the-street people in, in addition to outreach to people that William Brownham had already been connected to. And there's actually several churches across Ohio that end up bringing up in that period of time, as a result of efforts from, we'll say, leave AL, from the full gospel businessmen, and also the fruits of that radio station.

And I believe that's radio station ran for a good 10 years or so growing and bringing people in. Now, out west in the United States, the western United States, similar things are happening, too.

So Perry Green and Floyd Patterson, and the bigger, more prominent preachers out in Arizona, Doug McHughes and so forth, Roy Borders. Roy Borders probably more so than anyone else was doing this. They're going around to all of the churches where William Brownham was popular in the Western United States.

We're to think about the four square churches where William Brownham spent a lot of time and apostolic and type churches out there. And they're doing the same thing that, you know, my sect is doing in the South, in Eastern Canada, and Jeffersonville and stuff is doing.

You know, in Arkansas and down south, they're doing the same thing out there. They're going to these places where William Brownham had traveled. And it's, I'm telling you, it is the same spiel. The Elijah has come to prepare us for the rapture.

We must take his message and prepare. Look, Israel has just recaptured Jerusalem. The temple is about to be built. You have no time to waste. You must respond to our urgent appeal. And that is the, you know, the 30-second sum of the sermon.

They would take, you know, an hour to say that, but, but that was the, uh, it. And, you know, and they play, yeah, look, the deep call of the deep, Carol Rootstrubler. Look at that little girl that was healed of leukemia.

Look at the goiter falling off of this woman. This was our Elijah. That's what they're doing. And they're trying to get the people to separate. And so that successfully, again, plants through those separations, plants, churches up and down California in Washington, in Oregon, they get quite a few churches spring up in our Arizona through that period of time, right?

Like people in James outlaws church come out through that, for example, right? People in Jack Moore's church came out through that sort of stuff in Louisiana. The same thing in Texas churches are getting planted in Texas.

And I think probably the another very important church that's planted in this period of time through these efforts is Jack Bell's church in Texas. I would say Jack Bell's church is probably the most important Texas church.

And Jack Bell ultimately, he's main sect at first, but he ultimately starts to align with Levail and the Perugia as that sort of stuff comes. But Jack Bell's church was an important early church that popped up in this period of time.

But the same thing, there's churches being planted in all of these places that William Brannum frequented. And William Brannum had regular stops in his circuit through all those places. Perry Greene's father, who is also named Perry Greene.

So that can be confusing, okay, because Perry Greene and Perry Greene were two different people. And when you listen to William Brannum talking different stuff, it's not always clear which Perry Greene he's talking about.

And I think some people get confused about that. Perry Greene, the son, did not convert to the message until 1964. Okay, the coordinator of his own testimony. Perry Greene, the father, was following William Brannum for a lot of years, okay.

And his son was tagging along, but his son was, you know, he didn't claim to really start believing the message. William Brannum was this a larger prophet until 1964. So anyways, Perry Greene's senior, he was at a church.

He was a full gospel businessman too. He was at a church in Beaumont, Texas. And I think John that they more or less owned that church is the richest people in the church. And it was, they did what they wanted with it.

That was another church that was kind of important to help spread the message in that area and convince other people to come out and plant their own churches. Yeah, so anyways, this has happened in all over the United States and Canada.

And this is the most fertile recruitment ground because there's all kinds of people who actually already believe the message and they were in all of these other churches. And it's these people from the specialty preachers of the original 35 going to all these places and saying, yep, it's time, ladies and gentlemen, we must exit these wicked, filthy denominations.

The end is a honest, you know, and the six-day war, it's really hard to understate just how important that was in the pitch, right? Because not only had the profit died, now it seems like it seems like something big is really happening the six-day war.

And of course, here we are, what, 50, 60 years later, well, obviously the six-day war didn't have anything to do with the end of days. And they were all lying to you, ladies and gentlemen, when they told you to separate that obviously had absolutely nothing to do with it, okay? And so here we are, all these years later, all these churches were broken up, split up, everything else. And yeah, it started the early message community. And I would say by the time you get to 1970, 71, there are probably 250 message churches in North America. So we went from 35 and 65 to 250,

1971, exponential growth. It was like a virus that was spreading, man, a virus of plague that's hitting Christianity. And for the, you, NAR people who are watching this, NAR researchers, think about this. Like Charles said, this is a little tiny group of core brannemism cult, but it's embedded in this big fertile ground of what was laterane movement and is now turning in evolving into the charismatic movement. And as we said, all along, many of these ministers who were in brannemism, who were also in the laterane, or connected to it loosely, they're welcome in the churches. So whether you're laterane, message, charismatic,

prosperity gospel, all of this is fertile ground for this movement to infiltrate. Yet at the same time, it has brannem's version of doomsday focus. So these ministers from long before William Brannem died, that William Brannem started preaching the heavy doomsday focus. I want to say it was the mid 50s. And he starts saying basically, look at this newspaper into the world might happen Tuesday. We've had that imminent destruction on our minds since the 50s. So William Brannem dies, he's indoctrinated everybody to of that mindset. You must think doomsday focus. So now it's this fertile ground of people who

are accepting of the doomsday focus doctrine. And you have this growing movement quickly growing of ministers who can easily go into these churches and they're accepted. So as the NAR movement is beginning to grow and evolve and form, look at the people who are leaders in the NAR, who came from the apostolic background, like Chris Reed, who went to Morningstar, he's preaching brannem sermons, you know, I've got a few examples on the videos that you can watch. But he's preaching brannemism just straight out of Brannem's playbook. And you think of people like Mike Bickle, who came also from the

apostolic backgrounds, all of these people who came from these backgrounds. or in churches that were either directly tied to loosely affiliated with or heavily influenced by William Brannum. Well said, John. And you're right.

The message is obsessed with Doomsday. In fact, the Doomsday, the Eminent, the Eminent Immediate Coming Doomsday, is the entire justification for the message to exist, okay? You take away an Eminent Doomsday. There's no need for the message.

And as you can see as we've explained, the entire basis on which they convinced all of these people to leave the UPC and to leave For Square and to leave the Apostolic Churches, the entire basis on which this thing broke away was because the Doomsday is getting ready to happen.

And so if you take that away, there is not even a basis for any of this to exist. All right, that's the entire rationale. And that is why they are not simply looking forward to the return of Christ in a way that a normal Christian is.

The leaders especially are desperately in need of the Doomsday in order to salvage their reputations, in order to be right, you know, in order to justify everything they have done. I want you to think about just if you step back and you think about this, everything that has happened since all of these people broke away and did all this in the name of these Doomsday beliefs to the present day was not justified.

Nobody was justified in leaving the UPC over Doomsday. Nobody was justified in leaving For Square over Doomsday. Nobody was just, none of this was justified. The basis on which all of this happened was a scam and a hoax.

And unless the Doomsday hurries up and happens next week, you know what I mean, it's continues to be a scam and a hoax and people with enough sense they can see this. And at what point, at what point has time gone far enough that we can say they were lying to us, they were deceiving us, right?

And for me, John, it was a long, long time ago. The end should have happened a whole long time ago to justify all of the Doomsday madness from 50 or 60 years ago, right?

You tell me the Doomsday's comment and, hey, 95% of the people are all dead and the Doomsday didn't happen, they died of old age. What in the world? Like, how does this make sense?

How does it make sense that we tell all these people the end of the world is coming? You must prepare for the rapture and 95% of them die of old age and the rapture didn't come.

Like, how does this make sense anymore? It doesn't make sense anymore, right? The rapture was not coming for them. You were lying to them when you said that to them. You were lying to them when you manipulated them to leave churches and join a cult.

The end did not come for them. You were, so the whole thing was a deception and it's very hard when you're... are in there to come to terms with these things, but it was a deception.

They deceived all of these people, and the fact that the end did not come yet is the proof that it was the deception. John, we've just got through the mission outreach in North America today.

Do you wanna keep going? I mean, we've still gotta talk about Europe and Africa and the Caribbean and Latin America and what happened in these years and those places. You wanna break it here, you wanna try and get some more.

I guess we'll break it here. You got me thinking, they have harped on this Doomsday. I can remember sermons even as a child. I didn't want Doomsday to come. Man, I was playing with my little cars and GI Joe toys.

I did not want what they were preaching, but I lived in fear that it was going to happen. I lived in fear that I was gonna be ripped out and the things that they described were horrific for a child's mind, the things that they taught.

You know, they're putting these smiling faces as they're preaching, and it looks a lot like a child who's walking through the graveyard at night, right? They're saying very, very scary things with a smile on their face saying, this is good boys and girls.

That's the kind of Doomsday focus I grew up with. And like you said, it is the evidence that this whole thing is false. It is the evidence. But take a step back before that.

Before that, you had the laturine movement come, be healed, bring your loved ones. They too can be healed. All they have to do is name it and profess it and claim it. And yet they weren't healed.

We've given example after example. You've mentioned a few and just in this podcast alone. So while we have the examples of the Doomsday focus as proof that this is a false movement in the laturine, they had the evidence that now these people aren't getting healed.

There are some people that God heals, but by and large, the majority did not get healed. So I could go off on a rant on that and I think we'll hold my tongue. But let's split it here and we'll pick up next time with overseas.

Yeah, I think that's a good place to end, John. That sounds good. And you know you're right. And I'm Christian. I believe Jesus has come in again one day. And it may or may not have something to do with the temple in Jerusalem.

Hey, but what can we say for sure? These guys have absolutely no idea what they're talking about because they have been wrong for 60, 70 years in a row, right? Somewhere along the way, you have to have a track record of being right.

And these guys have a 60, 70 year track record of being wrong. They cannot be trusted as authorities on this topic. And so move on, ladies and gentlemen, from that for sure. 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-Brandon.org and Christian Gospel Church.org. For more about the history of William-Brandon and the healing revivals, read, come out of her, my people. And for more about the dark side of the NAR, read, weaponize religion from Christian identity to the NAR.

are both available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.