Faith Assembly Sect: The Fractured World of Branhamite Cults

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 Christian Gospel Church and the author of Come Out of Her My People. Charles it's good to be back and take on this massive project that we're about to start. I think I was thinking through it this morning and I don't believe that there is a single video out there that covers what we're

about to try to take on. I know that it's in your book and it's you know there's some other sources online that you can access books to read about some of this but what we're about to start is a journey looking into the different sects of the message that were created after William Brandham died and examine those sects and I just have to say this is a massive undertaking and it quite frankly may be the most difficult research that I've tried to begin to do because they're so vastly different and our perspectives because I was in the main sect and I

look at some of these others. We were conditioned, indoctrinated, manipulated, and trained to view every other sect as though they were the complete apostates. They were less to us than other Christians and other Christians were less to us than we were in the whatever sect we were in. So they were the despised of the despised and so now we're trying to you and I are trying to detangle that mess in our head and examine these different groups and I got to say from a research standpoint it's really difficult because there's nothing that exists but from a

personal growth standpoint it's incredibly hard because I have to look past all of that programming in my head to view these other groups and critically examine them without all of the trained responses flowing through my head against them. I know just what you mean John because in the message you think your sect, your group is the only true branch of the message and everyone else is some sort of an evil apostate version of the message right? I mean that's how it is and maybe they're foolish virgins and they'll just have to burn up for you know and then they'll get

to somehow be a slave in heaven but maybe you know maybe but more more often than not no they're just all going to hell right? I mean that's... That's generally the way the other sex of the message outside of your own sex is looked at.

And you're right, it is hard from the aspect. There is absolutely nothing wrote on this anywhere at all. So certainly, absolutely what we're doing is groundbreaking. There's nothing that details how the post-brandom years of the message happened, right?

That was, and part of it, John, I mean, you and I lived through the majority of the times since William Brandham died, right? I mean, we have been alive the most of that time ourselves where I witnessed this to a large part of it.

Our families were in it from before William Brandham died. And so we also grew up here at the very hard in Jeffersonville. And so I mean, we just knew a lot of stuff. And if you're in the message from that far back, your family is in it from that far back, then your family has also went through all the schisms, right?

So I have family, John, and all kinds of sex of the message. And so just from those family connections then, even you can pick up, oh, this happened in the thunders. And oh, this happened there, and this happened there.

So you can pick some of those things up there. And so the same with me, I have some general awareness even just through family relationships and stuff of what even went on in the other sex of the message.

And so being able to just sit down and write a rough history of the whole thing wasn't too hard, but the challenge was, and what took me so long, John, I spent over a year at this.

I went through all the tape archives that I have to try and get quotes from the preachers to put footnotes in the book. That way people could know where to go look for primary sources to try and establish some of this.

I mean, some of this mean you were perfectly capable of being the primary sources because we were there, right? But then there's other stuff where it's good to have a quote or something from somebody else.

And so if you do happen to get the books, come out of where my people volume two is, we're specifically going to be talking about chapter three today. But there are footnotes with quotes where you can go back and get some of the primary sources, sermons or archives of different preachers where you can get quotes to establish some of the stuff we're going to talk about today.

But you're right, John. I mean, the history of these years is complicated and not well understood, even within, I would say outside of Jeffersonville, John, I don't think many people really understand have any sort of a comprehensive picture of 1966, 67, 68, 69.

And if our listeners have been with us over the past few episodes, we took our time and we walked through pretty carefully the things that caused the first major schism of the message. There had been those, I think we did about four episodes on it, just focusing on each item.

And as you get up into 1968, 1969, the first major schism happens and the first sect of the message, first independent sect of the message, breaks away. And that sect of the message is actually the sect I come from, John.

I would call it in my book, The Faith Assembly Fellowship, it would be fair also to call it the antichrist. for shorter faction of the early message community, and that grew up into one of the largest international sex of the message.

Now, overall, there are about eight large international sex of the message, and then there are dozens of smaller, what I would describe as regional sex of the message. And I think I'm hoping, John, that we can just try to walk through each one of those.

Some of them, you know, we might be able to do an episode or two on the major sex, and maybe put some of the minor sex into some smaller episodes. But yeah, I mean, it is a lot to walk through.

And the way I tackled it in my book is I, I wrote a chapter on each of the major sex, starting, I did them in chronological order, in the order they broke away from the main sect.

And so hopefully we can kind of tackle them that way here, if you want, and if we go and go that route, then the very first sect of the message of the broke away is the Faith Assembly Fellowship, John.

They broke away in 1968 and 1969. And yeah, pretty interesting stuff. What do you think? I think you're playing favorites, man. You're looking at your sect for, now I'm joking. I'll never forget. I've mentioned it probably three times now in the course of all the podcasts we've done, but I'll never forget walking into the blue board restaurant, and I was with my grandfather, and he looked over and saw Raymond Jackson, and Raymond looked up and saw him, he said, hello, Willard.

And my grandfather looked at back and said, hello, Raymond. And then they stared each other, glared at each other, and walked on. And that's a memory that's burned in me forever. That tells the story of how the two sects viewed each other just in their reaction to see each other.

But I think it's also worth noting, some of these sects will do anything to attack the other. And I'm going to tell a little bit of a story to summarize that would represent how much these two groups can attack each other and other groups attack each other as well.

When I first began publishing the negative research, I was a little bit angry, and I really didn't understand all of it. I just knew that some things were wrong. But as I began to understand it, and I began to publish the really darker secrets that the message contained.

I had another group who hated the main sect. They hated the main sect. They hated my grandfather, they hated Billy Paul, Joseph, all of these people. Absolutely hated them. They contacted me and they started supplying me dirt on Billy Paul, Joseph, Grandpa, the main sect.

Pretty much everything about the main sect. They were feeding me all kinds of stuff, even giving me media, like video footage, some audio clips, et cetera. And I didn't know what to do with this man, because they still believe the message of what...

in Brannum, they believed that according to their sect, they hated the main sect, enough that they were giving me dirt on the message itself to attack the main sect. And I'm like, what is this, man?

How do you do this? But to this day, I'm not gonna tell who it is because I would give away who gave me this information, but on my website today, some of the information exists because of the sects attacking each other.

And I'll just start up like that. These groups do not like each other. They will do anything, including undermining the message itself to attack one another. You're exactly right, John. And as we look at the sect of the message I come from, and I'm just gonna refer to it as the faith assembly fellowship as we go through chatting about it.

But from the perspective of that sect of the message, they of course consider themselves to be the actual true senior branch of the message, John. So if I was stepping back and I'm on this side of things, looking at things, honestly, I think the main sect is probably the true senior branch of the message.

But obviously the faith assembly branch believes themselves to be the senior branch of the message. And they would claim that, John, because the majority of the people who officiated William Brown as funeral besides your grandfather was my sect of the message.

So my sect of the message would claim that they officiated William Brown as funeral. My sect of the message controlled all the ministry posts of the Brannum tabernacle when he died before Billy Paul overthrew them.

They were also the, for the most part, the oldest and longest time followers of William Brownum. They were there before Perry Green. They were there before Lee Veil. They were there before you name it.

They were there from the very earliest days of this. And so they made up some of the original tabernacle deacons from the forties and stuff. And so they have a whole lot of claim to be the most senior branch of the message.

And so they played that up to very great effect in the years after William Brownum died. And that is part of why they were able to attract the loyalty of a lot of different people from different areas who knew William Brownum because they really did have a very strong legitimate claim to be the true successors of William Brownum in that respect.

And so that's something I know a lot of other sects of the message may be don't recognize or see, but that was one of the main things that allowed them to have a big appeal when they went because they weren't going like some of the preachers.

Who yes, I went on a hunting trip one time with William Brownum and I saw him for the period of eight days. That's what some people, that's their whole call connection to William Brownum as they went on a hunt trip with him once, right?

The people from my sect of the message worked alongside William Brownum for some of them for decades, John. And all back to the summer, really, to the earliest days. People in our church were at the Milltown meetings, right?

When the Georgia Carter stuff happened, right? That... far back. And I am unaware of any other branch of the message that has that depth of witness or that far back. So anyways, I think that is notable. So anyways, as the message community broke into there in 1968, 1969, when you get to 1970, the sect of the message icon from John, it consisted of the majority of the Jeffersonville message community, the majority of message churches in Indiana overall, about half the churches in the message that were in Appalachia at that time, and then most all message believers of Eastern Canada. So that was my sect of the message

there as you come into 1970. As you get into 1971, through Levi Larson, they also brought in the majority of message believers in Scandinavia as well. And so it was pretty large international from the very beginning, from the initial break away from the main sect. But there was a rival region. There was fight from the very beginning, okay? And Perry Green and Raymond Jackson were arch rivals. You think it was bad between your grandfather and Raymond Jackson? Well, let me tell you, Perry Green and Raymond Jackson's relationship took the cake. They were arch rivals. And what happened?

And a lot of it goes back to the fact, like I mentioned, Perry Green pretty well had no connection to the Jeffersonville message community at all until 1964. 1964 is the first time Perry Green even came to Jeffersonville. And as we talk through the stuff with Perry Green, and when we do his episodes, Perry Green more or less forced his way in and tried to take over a lot of stuff, when William Brown, really in the last year William Brown's life, and especially after he died, and as Perry Green started to discover that all these churches that Faith Assembly had planted,

he started to reach out and make his own tours, John. Perry Green went to Eastern Canada, for example, in 1971, and he caused a major schism in all the message churches in Eastern Canada.

And so at that point, you end up with a church in Ontario and some churches and new brunswick that split off and go back to the main sect, okay? In 1972, he does the same thing in Scandinavia, Perry Green goes to Scandinavia, he visits the churches that Levi Larson had planted, and we're in the Faith Assembly Fellowship, again, causes a major schism and draws in quite a number of churches back to the main sect. And so this is what's happening through those years. There is an ongoing, I mean, straight up, in your face battle happening between my sect of the message and the main

sect of the message, Perry Green being the lead guy on the main sect of the message doing the attack. Literally schisming church after church after church in order to establish main sect presence in Eastern Canada, and it's very...

Very aggressive. What happened in those years, John? Very aggressive. Like I said, this is going to be a difficult episode for me because man, we were just so programmed. So our sect was against Perry Green also. And remember Perry Green is the one who's leading the church.

There are two pillar churches that the message was established from. There was the Jeffersonville church, my grandfather led. There was the Tucson church, the Perry Green led. We did not like Perry Green either. And the things that I grew up hearing about him, scoundrel thief, swindler, I mean, every name that you can think of that is vile.

You can apply it to Perry Green. And that's what we what we thought. But the interesting part is whenever there was a push and I guess it was the late 80 ironically, I think it was shortly after Sarah Brennan sent her letter and was starting to cause all the schisms to further separate.

After Sarah Brennan's letter, there was this push to try to reunite all of these different groups. And how do you do it, right? They hate each other. They absolutely hate each other. Well, there was there was this push to unite them. And if I understood how they did it properly, I'm not going to say the names of the men who tried to do this. But it seemed like they were using Perry Green as the common ground. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And so I started trying to bring people together and saying Perry Green is the bad guy.

And everybody started to unite around this. Well, what happened was it almost tried to merge. The groups started to come together and realized, no, man, we are so far different from these other people that these people are nuts. And even though, you know, I would say some of the groups are really, really crazy. The crazies saw the crazy in the other crazies and they splintered even further. A couple really interesting things happened in my sect of the message in those very early years, you know, 69, 70, 71, 72. One of them was, John, you know, I mentioned how we, my

sect of the message had at the very start all the churches in eastern Canada. And the most senior minister back then was a man named Freddie Bradford in eastern Canada. He is actually the one responsible for spreading and planting most of the early message community up there. He had attended William Brannum's revival meetings in New England in 1958. I believe they were held in Boston and there maybe were some in Bangor, Maine that year. I believe it's 1958. He attended those. And he came back, he was a UPC minister, came back, spread the message around some of the UPC churches. And

he was ultimately involved in establishing a large part of the eastern Canadian message community. Now, the eastern Canadian message community has entirely wrote him out of history because he was a child molester. He molested children, John, in the UPC. He actually was the pastor of my grandfather actually inherited his church at a certain point. So that's part of how I know a lot of these things, okay? My grandfather actually succeeded him as pastor in message church in Eastern Canada. And so after he joined the message, he continued his child molesting ways. And he molested some boys at a church in New Brunswick, Canada.

One of the boys, later on, actually committed suicide after being molested, very, very ugly situation, which was entirely covered up by the Eastern Canadian message community, absolutely covered up. He was never reported to police, nothing was ever done to him. That all came out in about 1971, 1972, and he ended up exiting our sect of the message and went and started a new message church in Montreal at that point in time, where he actually ended up doing the same thing. He molested more kids there. But he had joined the thunders movement with Joseph Coleman by that point. So we'll talk more about him when we get to talk about

the thunders. But you know, this is what's, there's no clean sect of the message here. I mean, this all is all ugly, John. So that's how things got started up there in Eastern Canada.

Then down in the South in Appalachia, I mentioned before, there was a man named Bill Paderis, and he had really the anchor church down there at that time. It was in King's Mountain North Carolina. It was where his church was. But somewhere again, I believe the year was, it was, I think, 1970, 1971. I have the exact dates in my book. Something happened where he shot his wife with a firearm, John. He shot his wife. And the story was always told that he had gotten drunk and in his drunkenness, he tried to murder her. That was the story

that went around. Now, is that true? Or is that not true? I don't know if it's true or not. But it is absolutely the story went around what everyone believed. They believed that Bill Paderis got drunk, tried to murder his wife. Now, she testified, she survived. She survived her wounds. She testified it was an accident, right? And so that, that's that side of the story.

But whatever the case, when he did that, their church just split up. It exploded, John. And some of the people in their church actually ended up moving to Jeffersonville. Our church actually picked up its assistant pastor, Homer Brown, who had been Bill Paderis' assistant pastor at that point in time. And they started the contender, which maybe we'll talk a little bit about. But that happened. And then the shattered shards of his church actually ended up planting quite a few churches across the Appalachia, John. The refugees from his church started a number of churches. And you can actually trace a lot of the message community in that part of

the country to the breakup of his church in the 70s. And his church actually had been the initial church that made connection to the church. with Freddie Bradford and with the churches in Eastern Canada.

And so there's always been a bit of a connection to the Canadian churches there as well. So anyways, those are just a few things, John, but it's that way in every sector of the message, isn't it?

I mean, there's not, like on one hand, we talk about Perry Green and what a dirt bag he probably was, right? But we were no cleaner, right? I mean, the whole thing is just so ugly.

It's just so dirty when you actually peel back the covers and look at it. I said it in either the last episode of the one before, but it's a pattern, man. You keep seeing the same pattern recur and recur and recur.

And after you and I mentioned it in whatever is the first podcast we mentioned, I even got feedback from some of the NAR researchers. They're like, wait a minute, we're seeing the same pattern in the NAR is this where it came from.

And you know, however you decide to look at this, if you are a Christian and you're a spiritual person, and you see the demonic forces that are, you know, leading and guiding this movement and watching it splinter and grow into the demonic forces leading and guiding others, or if you're just simply a critic who's looking at, you know, these movements weren't created for good.

They were created for the purpose of evil. And they were evil men leading them, but good people got sucked into it. One of the two ways you look at this, no matter how you look at it, this is wrong.

This thing that created this thing that happened, these splinter groups, it's wrong. And I know people, I grew up with people who had come out of the Appalachian groups. In fact, I think, if I remember correctly, one of the testimonies, there was a gentleman who also had come out of these groups.

And he, you know, he was telling his stories, horrific some of the things that these people went through. But the movement started, the group splintered and grew. And because evil minds were behind each group, they're not growing in a Christian way.

They're not developing in a way that promotes personal growth. That really is the underlying issue for all of this. You have bad people leading sometimes good people, sometimes a mixture of good and bad.

But they're not focused on personal growth so much as they are focused on covering up their past sins. And interestingly, I know some of the people that you're talking about and there are others just like them.

Sometimes the ones who preached the heaviest against a specific sin are the ones who are secretly participating in that sin. So you hear the most unusual sermons when you visit these groups. I'll never forget growing up and hearing this man just blasting and blasting, blasting this one particular sin.

And then years later, the whole thing was exposed and his group kind of imploded because of it. But it is a pattern, it's a theme, and it goes far beyond the message. This created the prototype for what eventually developed as we'll talk through later into the charismatic and to the NAR movements.

It's almost like a guilty conscience, right? They're preaching their sermon. Her conscience feels guilty and they end up preaching against their sins. It is a common thing, isn't it, John? You know, we had a preacher side note.

We had a preacher in our church who, so sports, of course, was absolutely of the devil in our sector of the message. You're going to go to hell playing sports, John. But we had a preacher who loved the IU basketball game, and he preached against sports harder than anyone else.

I don't know what it is. It's like a guilty conscience. He knows he loves the IU basketball team, so he would preach against sports the hardest of all. It really is something else. It's kind of pathetic at the end of the day.

Another thing that is notable about my sector of the message, John, you know, I've mentioned we kept one foot in the ladder rain all the way through. We had affiliated groups in Saskatchewan, right?

Not far from North Battleford with, you know, original ladder rain people in it. An Ernest Houghton, one of the original elders of Sharon Orphanage, and the brother of George Houghton, who was arguably the leader of Sharon Orphanage, was fellowshiped quite extensively with my sector of the message and actually ordained a number of our apostles.

And so our sector of the message was very, very intensely focused on fivefold ministry in a way that is more so than any other sector of the message. Most of the sex of the message were accepting a fivefold ministry, but faith assembly was very unique and actually full on implementing that thing.

They ended up building an international network of apostles, John. As time went on, we had apostles in Europe. We had apostles in the United States, in Canada. We had apostles in Southeast Asia, in Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, right?

We had Hispanic apostles over the Hispanics. We had apostles, John. And we actually set up more or less a global fivefold ministry network. So that was a very important thing that was going on in my sector, the message.

And from very early on, what happened was, especially after Orman Neville died.

To the best of my understanding, Orman Neville is actually the one who originated some of these concepts, but Orman Neville had more or less had the concept that this fivefold ministry as a whole was the Joshua to William Brown was Moses, okay?

So William Brown had become as the Moses to restore the hearts of the children. And now this fivefold ministry was established, which was the Joshua to his Moses, okay? And so this was the initial step out of the message to transition it into the fivefold ministry.

So we went from our our blessed prophet who was succeeded by this new global fivefold ministry that was growing and so as as all of that got going John that actually again became a point of conflict with the main sect. Raymond Jackson tried to maintain peaceful relationships somewhat with the main sect. He tried a number of times to mend relations with the main sect and one of those attempts happened shortly after Orman Neville died. So Orman Neville was more or less the leader, I would say, until Raymond Jackson died, until his health failed anyways. But it's his

health failed. Raymond Jackson really kind of rose up to be the next most senior guy. And as you think about that, John, he almost got that by default because the other two senior ministers here in the Jeffersonville area. So there were five message churches right here in the immediate Jeffersonville area. Orman Neville passed away. The others actually all had sex candles, John.

And all had to resign. And Raymond Jackson was the one left standing. Okay. So this is how he rises to the top. Okay. Don Ruddle, etc. Yes, sex it. So Don Ruddle had an affair with a member of his congregation, John. That that's a woman in broke up a marriage. And that's what happened to Don Ruddle. Similar things with the other preachers of the other early message churches here in Jeffersonville. And so as far as I know, John, Raymond Jackson and your grandfather, the only two message ministers here in the early community that didn't succumb to a sex scandal. So I mean,

I'll let you talk about your grandfather, but I don't know, but I don't know any of them. Raymond Jackson. So anyway, I'm not going to talk about my grandfather's sex scandal, man. I never heard of it. So I do want to go back and focus on one thing that you said because this is significant. And I think more people need to understand this. So in the main sect, we believed in what was called the Elijah ministry. William Brannum was the Elijah that is to come that came directly from Christian identity. John Alexander Dowey did it, Charles Fox,

Parham did it, Frank Sanford did it. You can go on down the line and you can see all of these men who claimed, I'm Elijah. I am Malachi four. I'm coming to restore the hearts of the children to the father. Well, towards the end of William Brannum's ministry, he started promoting himself as the same. And people today, you can go by books called Elijah, William Brannum. And there's just weirdness that comes with this. But it wasn't always that way. In the beginning of his ministry, you and I talk about this in our revival history series. In the beginning of the ministry,

William Brannum promoted himself as the Moses figure, not the Elijah figure. Because what was he doing? He was going to the laterane people. He was saying, separate yourself, come out of her, my people, the title of your book. He was trying to stage in Exodus from mainstream religion. That was his sole purpose and intent was to create a cult and he did so by calling every denomination apostate and he said their cold formal churches and so he went around saying that an quote unquote angel came to him and said as Moses was given two signs so shall you be given two signs and interestingly there are what three signs of Moses so

the whole thing was just complete nonsense but he started with the Moses ministry and some of the splinter groups focus on the Moses because that is what he said other groups focus on Elijah because that is also what he said and then they start fighting each other and it makes sense that the groups that focus on the Moses stuff are the oldest groups right the his longest followers because they were there in Moses years okay like if all of this makes sense when you actually line it out and you understand what happened and you're absolutely right he was doing the Moses

stick before the Elijah stick and here's the thing like if you listen to Fred Sothman for example explain it Fred Sothman will acknowledge the Moses stick and then he will acknowledge the Elijah stick and then he'll a lot of knowledge the the Messiah stick okay and William Brannum apparently told the deity cult that he was all three William Brannum told the deity cult I am Moses I am Elijah and I am the Messiah he he presented this privately to the deity cult as an evolution right in a way that like he was building up like he was first the Moses witness then he

was the Elijah witness and now he's like he was transforming becoming higher level of manifestation of Son of God is basically what he was doing John I mean that that's that's the best way I would explain it right he was he was basically Moses stage one then he got some extra powers and he graduated to the Elijah stage and then he got some extra advanced powers and then he graduated to the Messiah stage right he was becoming a manifested son of God and he was increasing in level with each manifestation and that that really is how he presented it I believe to the

deity cult on the background and you can pretty well Fred Sothman says that pretty directly you know that he had those conversations with William Brannum so faith assembly John they were very focused on the fivefold ministry and they had that whole being the Joshua to his Elijah to his Moses and so after Orman Neville died the other senior leaders had their sex scandal Bill Paderra shot his wife right I mean Raymond Jackson is basically left as the only immediate successor of William Brannum in our group right like everybody else who had had direct succession from William

Brannum all sex scandaled out or died or whatever you know something happened within that five-year space of time that basically left Raymond Jackson as the last man standing in the group, okay, and as that happened and he kind of rose to the top by default as much as anything else, right?

Like he didn't necessarily claw his way to the top, but by default he ended up in control. People started to refer to him as the Joshua to Brannum's Millow. So it started to transition from this whole fivefold ministry was the Joshua to he was the Joshua, okay?

You follow, okay, and this, this then became his chance maybe to get back in with the main sect, okay? So back then, John, the Brannum family actually came to my church just as much as they did to the Brannum tabernacle, okay?

Like Mita came to our church. She brought the kids to our church when she was in Jeffersonville. She didn't go to the tabernacle all that much back then. William Brannum's brothers and nieces and nephews came to our church.

We had more of the Brannum family in our church in those years, I think, than the tabernacle did, John, right? So again, this is something I think the other side of the message, don't grasp, okay?

Okay, so anyways, as these years are going on, John, Billy Paul confronts Raymond Jackson over this Joshua stuff. And Raymond Jackson more or less faints ignorance. Oh, I didn't, I've never claimed to be the Joshua, you know?

It's the fivefold ministry is the Joshua, and Billy Paul, and Billy Paul more or less sets the trap. Well, why don't you renounce all the Joshua stuff? And maybe we can all get back together and be friends again, right, okay?

And so, so Raymond Jackson takes the bait. And Raymond Jackson goes and he, in a one of our international conventions, and I believe the year is probably 1960, 1971, 1971. He publicly renounces the Elijah stuff or the Joshua stuff, okay?

Publicly renounces all the Joshua stuff, trying to get back in with Billy Paul, okay? And so he does that, and guess what happens the very next month? Paragreen goes to Canada and schisms all the churches, John.

It was like a trap that Billy Paul laid, and then Paragreen comes around behind after and schisms everything. And this is what is going on, John, 670, 71, 72, 73. 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. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum

Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, while you're talking, my mind goes weird places. I'm fully open to admit this. But as you begin talking and you're explaining how all of this came to be, it's like a berated comedy movie, man. It's absolutely nuts. I'm picturing in my mind, I'm picturing Jim Carrey and Steve Martin, some of the other comedians just fighting with each other, creating different messes and there's no cohesion.

There's nothing but confusion. And the Bible says God is not the author of confusion. But the further you go, that's like being, I don't know, it's like insulting to Jim Carrey, then my mind goes to, well, it's more like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. I don't know if you remember the Daffy Duck where you went around painting moustaches on everybody. This is so crazy. It's loony tunes to think how this came to be. But when you're in it, they've covered up all of this past.

You don't know that most of this came from sexual predators, people who were insane, people who had mental health issues, including William Brannum. You don't know the mess that created this. So you get in it and you're in one particular sector and other. You get indoctrinated and your head is just warped to think like whatever is the group that you're in. But what happens is because of what you just described, each sect is fighting with each other, trying to steal each other's people from this sect because there's more money in it if you steal them, right? So as they're

fighting, they pull people out of it. Well, when the people come into a different sect, they've stepped into a different culture, a different world. They think differently. So it's like, you know, Bugs Bunny meets, I don't know, Scooby Doo. Your mix was such a mess of cartoon fiction with each group that growing up in it, if you go from group to group to group, which I did some, not to a large extent, mostly main sect. But I started to notice patterns of insanity as I'm going from sect to sect. And I began to realize that there's some people out there

that are just nuts. But the people who were raised in it and knew nothing else, they thought this was normal. So you're thinking that your culture is normal and then two worlds collide when you come from one group to another. After Raymond Jackson renounced the Joshua stuff, okay? I really think he thought that it was going to fix things up and we were all going to get together again and, you know, heal all the past wounds.

Ormeneville had died, you know, and I really think that he thought that everybody could get back together at that point But instead of getting back together, yeah, they launched a full court assault on our the churches of our sector of the message in Canada and in Europe and split, John. I swear they split almost every church through that almost every church schism in 71-72 as a result of and here's the thing You know, there's certain things I don't know. Was it a orchestrated Plot probably wasn't orchestrated plot right Billy Paul and Perry Green were almost certainly working together

I would say but orchestrated plot and and so Raymond Jackson more or less felt stabbed in the back of that point would be my take on the whole thing And from there faith assemblies going it alone right there, and this is when the hello Willard Stuff would have started, okay, because You know, it was like they all of branch was extended, you know, and instead they got a knife in the back Okay, so anyways, so from their faith assembly starts to go it alone In the aftermath of of that whole Joshua debacle So large portion of my childhood was spent in the south my grandparents were in Georgia and

No matter where we lived from the east coast to the west coast Between every summer Multiple times a year sometimes in the winter sometimes fall. I was at my grandfather's house visiting my grandfather's church in churches So there were multiple churches in the area Some of them were main sect. In fact, I think they were all main sect, but in Gosh, it was like I want to say 15 miles apart The two churches didn't really fellowship with one another which was weird to me So I'm a I'm a child. I'm going and I've got friends in both churches because I spent my childhood there

I didn't recognize the differences at that time between the two churches and why they never fellowshiped, but they just didn't and then As I got older and started attending other churches of Of this did various different places even after we got married and began to realize that they're all of the splinter groups had created such a confusion And then there's this weird crossbreeding, right?

That's another thing that I think we have to mention as these Scoundrels are trying to steal people from each other's sects They're bringing in other people with different ideas different ideologies and They create this mixture of culture. So now you've got a preacher who's preaching heavily against a sect where a person came from The person who came from there was indoctrinated with that sect's ideology and It's weird man because they they fully shut off critical thinking about the message obviously because they're still in the cult But then they also have to shut off critical thinking about everything that they were previously indoctrinated

with. And what you end up with is, I hate to say it, but it's like one step away from a zombie. They've just shut off everything. They just, they're sheep and whatever you give them, they will accept and they will take and be indoctrinated with it willingly. So it turns into this weird mess. Did, did your sect have any influence in the south? Yes. So at, at the very first, the only thing we had down south was, we had, we had some churches in Appalachia. But somehow, and I'm not 100% sure how this connection began, but somehow there was an evangelist in the Apostolic Church of

the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is a larger oneness, penicostal denomination here in the United States, with especially heavy presence in the south. Somehow through our churches in Appalachia, we made contact with this evangelist. And his name was Roy Mims. And he was a fairly popular evangelist in this Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in nomination. And through his influence, he had actually been to some of Brannum's revivals. So he had, you know, he had been aware of William Brannum and what had happened. But he didn't believe, he didn't accept the message.

But as you come into the early 70s, he start, he accepts the message and he starts spreading the message in the Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so then faith assembly ministers start getting invited to come do presentations and speak on the message stuff to Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ churches. And what happens, John, is through the early to mid 70s,

we schism the whole Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in nomination. All kinds of their churches actually broke away enjoying to my sect of the message in Georgia, in Alabama, in North Carolina, South Carolina, in Oklahoma, in Louisiana, in Arkansas, a very large faction.

I mean, they probably doubled the size of my sect of the message when they broke away. It was a pretty massive exodus from their church. And so we ended up with a lot of Apostolic Church of the Lord Jesus Christ churches, fellowshiping with us. And Peregrin never got any of them. I'll tell you that because by then they had realized the game and like it was like do not talk or speak to the other sects of the mess, because after the Joshua debacle, the wall went up and there was never any more like they weren't going to tell anything, right? Because obviously, I mean, it was a

they didn't want them coming around and doing that to the rest of the churches. So from that point on, they locked that stuff down. So yeah, a lot of the churches spun up in the south, John, and a lot of those become very important. One of the ministers that actually got picked up in that expansion was a man named Ben Howard. He was from Georgia, and we had quite a few churches in Georgia. And John, I'm going to throw this out here too.

I informally know that a lot of the people in Georgia were clansmen, okay? I'm just gonna throw it right out there. A lot of the people in Georgia in our sector of the message were in the Ku Klux Klan, okay? I'm just, and now was that, did that have anything to do with it all? I have, I do not know if that's true or not. I don't know if that's true or not. But nevertheless, it is absolutely the truth. Anyways, Ben Howard from Georgia joins our sector of the message. And he ends up getting an

apostle position, John. He's really probably the second apostle in the United States at that point in our sector of the message. And he starts doing outreach stuff. The apostles were, did lots and lots of stuff. He ends up going to the Philippines. Now, here's another interesting story, John. So over in the Philippines, the initial message community in the Philippines had been planted by a missionary named Gary Hart. Gary Hart was sponsored out of Samuel Johnson's church with full gospel businessmen money to plant the message community in the Philippines. He had started that in 1771, something like that. Something

happened. And there had been a child molestation, something or another had happened in the early message community over there. I do not know exactly who is involved or the details, but that's the story that comes down. Some sort of a child molestation thing happened. And we know Samuel Johnson, who was sponsoring the missionaries into there, was himself a convicted child molester. He went to prison for it. But I don't know that he was connected directly to what, you know, that stuff when it happened in the Philippines. But as that happens, the the primary figure in the Philippines is a man named Rudy Villaganza. And Rudy Villaganza was

working with Gary Hart. And when whatever this thing happens, Rudy Villaganza ends up breaking away from Gary Hart. And he invites other sex of the message into the Philippines. And the other sex of the message kind of car end up carving up the Philippines, each getting their own loyal group. Well, this happened shortly before Ben Howard joined our sect of the message. And it ends up with Ben Howard going to the Philippines to more or less spearhead the effort of the faith assembly churches in the Philippines. Okay. Well, in the Philippines, Ben Howard begins preaching that he and Raymond Jackson are the two witnesses of

revelation. And in his in his scenario, John, he is going to be the he Ben Howard is going to be the witness that's going to go preach to the Gentiles and Raymond Jackson is the one who's going to go and convert the Jews. This is there. This is his formula. Okay.

And he spreads this are all around the Philippines. And and a lot of the sect of the message of our sect of the message, they start believe that. Oh, yes. William Raymond Jackson and Ben Howard are the two witnesses of revelation. And hey, we've got the one to the Gentiles. Good for us. And Raymond Jackson is going to go take care of the Jews. So that happens. And and finally, it comes to Raymond Jackson's attention.

Again, once again, Raymond Jackson claimed to have no awareness of this, and he goes to the Philippines and he repudiates the whole thing, and guess what, Paragreen found out. Guess what happened? Paragreen followed up over the Philippines, same thing, John gobbled up, ended up taking a whole lot of people out of our sector of the message in the Philippines.

That's actually how the main sect got established in the Philippines, more than anything, John, was through that blow-up that Ben Howard self-inflicted loon or whatever. It's just, it is an interesting story though, isn't it?

Where the carcasses, the eagles will gather, man. It's a scavenger hunt, man. These people, they don't understand the gravity of that bird. They don't understand what that bird means, because of what Bram taught.

But they do it, and that's the interesting part. They do it. They believe that if there's any rift or division, which is going to be in this type of cult, because that's how it grows and expands, the vultures come in, they gather the people, and then they further blend this mess, and the more blended it gets, the more like drones the people are in it.

To the extent, I don't know how to say this in a polite way, there's probably not, but whenever I, whenever I started publishing the really, really serious things about William Bram, the things that undeniably show that he was a false prophet with bad intent, I started getting people from the Philippines contacting me, and you can go, you can go on the Facebook feed and you can go back and you can see some of this, but they're contacting me.

They're very encouraging and supportive of the things that I found against William Bram. And I mistakenly assume they've left the message and come to find out, no, they haven't, but they fully agree with the things that I'm saying that fully condemned William Bram.

So this mess has been created where a William Bram is believed by them to be a prophet, he, they're aware that William Bram was a complete scoundrel and he had false prophecies. See, they don't care because they have new errands and Moses' and allysias and whatever it is that their sect leader has claimed, and he's the one to basically to correct the mess that came after William Bram made such a disaster of Christianity.

Their new sect leader is the one to fix it. And so they're fully supportive of me, yet they're still in the cult. Wow. So in those same years, you know, 73, 74, 75, a man named Richard Gan comes into contact with my sect of the message.

That's a name you might be familiar with, John, I don't know. So Richard Gan is from Singapore, Southeast Asia, and he is a message. preacher. He's ladder rain influenced at that point. He actually had been introduced to the ladder rain through missionaries from the global missions. I had actually directly out of Sharon orphanage, John. That's who had converted him into ladder rain ideology.

And he ends up circling in with my sect of the message. He comes and visits our church and he actually gets a commission as an apostle, John. So he is our first apostle in Southeast Asia.

So he comes over. He gets commissioned by Raymond Jackson as an apostle and almost liked to confirm it. After that, he went out to Stockton, California. He met Ernest Houghton and Ernest Houghton prophesied apostolic blessings on him too, right? This is there was a full on ladder rain style commissioning of apostles that kind of happened back then.

And then he goes back to Southeast Asia and he is more or less the most senior figure at that point for our sect of the message in that area. And he more or less starts to get the emphasis after Ben Howard's to witness debacle over there for us. So he actually becomes incredibly influential. He ended up planning quite a few churches, getting quite a bit of a following in that part of the world and also in Africa. And he remained in our sect of the message up into the 1980s. I'll probably talk a few through a few schisms with you, but one schism that

happened that was one of the strangest of all the schisms in my sect of the message, John, was in about I think of the year as 1986. Richard Gann started to preach that Noah was a serpent seed.

No, no, no, no, Noah was a pure seed. That's what it was. He says Noah was a pure seed in Raymond Jackson preach that Noah was a serpent seed. And so there's this fight, okay? Raymond Jackson says Noah was a serpent seed. Richard Gann says he is not a serpent seed, okay? That's it. And this broke out into, we've talked about how all the schisms happened at the conventions, right? Well, of course, naturally it started at the convention. So at the convention, they preach against each other whether or not Noah is a serpent seed. And I kid you not, John, I mean the whole,

there was a massive schism over it, you know, series of sermons attacking each other. And anyways, and he, you know, ended up breaking away and taking the churches with him that way. And that's how our schisms unfolded when the apostles would leave, same with like when Ben Howard left, when they would leave, they all of the churches that were kind of under their sway would break away with them. And in that way, faith assembly sect actually, you know, birthed subsex, a number of subsex as our, as different apostles had disagreements with Raymond Jackson and break away with all

their followers. And so there are a number of, I would say, John, I mean, you know, the, as the main branch of the message has dozens of subsex, faith assembly also has easily 25 subsex over the years.

as the apostles break away and take people in churches with them. So you mentioned Richard Gann. And I want to pause here and I'm going to say something that's probably going to surprise everybody because I have respect for Richard Gann.

And I know that coming from a person who's exposing the whole cult and he was a leader in the cult, he was, you know, in the minds of a Christian, he's no better than my grandfather, a period greener, any of these other guys that we're mentioning, that he helped create a mess and helped spread the mess.

But I have respect for him. And I have come to look at it like this, Charles. There are levels of bad, right? There's, if you're a Christian and you're serving Christ and believing in the gospel, you're here, well then you introduce William Brannum, you introduce the sex, you go down, down further until man, you're like one foot in hell and one foot on earth, that's how bad this is.

And then what happens is when the splinter groups splinter and you have different leaders, some of them are worse than they drive you further down, some of them, you know, they're not Christian, I don't know that I could label it as Christian because they believe in a different Jesus than the ones in the Bible, but they try to raise it up a level, right?

They try to be better. And whenever I left the message and I'm publishing all of this stuff, Richard Gann is the only message cult leader out of all of them around the entire globe, that contacted me in a very plight, respectful way and tried to convince me to come to a better understanding of William Brannum, he wasn't insulting, he was being very kind, I was very shaken, I was very upset, I was angry that they had done this to my head.

So my response is probably weren't as good to him as they should have been, but his responses were polite and respectful. And he's the only one, I'm living in this area, my own grandfather didn't treat me with respect, he cut me off immediately.

Billy Paul insulted me to my face and restaurant in front of my family. Joseph has never contacted one way or another, he has not gonna say too much, but he has sent messages through individuals to me, which are interesting in of themselves, but they weren't polite by no means.

And nobody did, but Richard Gann did. And somewhere, if I still have him, I may go back and read through them, he was trying to be a good guy. I realized that what he taught was wrong, I'm not gonna say that he was a Christian by no means, but in the scale of bad, he tried to push at a level higher towards Christianity.

I would agree with you, right? There's elements of the message that are, I'll say, factions of the message that are less bad than others, right? And there are factions of the message who in some way still could perhaps be authentic Christians, okay, right?

Like, I still think, There's people in the message who can be genuine Christians even, right? They're just very confused Christians. And so, all right, like, so not everybody we're talking about is necessarily an absolute dirtback.

Now, the very first generation of them and the ones who did the initial spread, yeah, they're pretty bad. But as you get further removed, not so much, it's like it almost softens a little bit, right?

Because there's a generation that kind of comes after them that raises up that is not as bad in some ways as the early. You still have the scoundrels all along, but there are ways in which some of it does ease up.

One last thing I'll mention, John, before we wrap our episode up today, we're still just kind of into the maybe the 70s and maybe early 80s with my second of the message, just talking through some highlights.

Apostleship was very racial in my second of the message, John. Raymond Jackson had a doctrine more or less that one race could not rule over the other race, except unless it was him more or less.

And so there was, you know, Richard Gan could be an apostle to his people. You know what I mean? But he couldn't be an apostle to the white people. And the same with our with our apostles everywhere, right?

We had a Hispanic apostle who could be an apostle to his people. The same with in Africa, we had some apostles in Africa who could be apostles to their people. We had an Indian fellow who could be an apostle to his people and so forth, right?

Everyone could be an apostle to their people. But they were not allowed to be apostles, not to their people. And so that was a very big thing in faith assembly. And that was also part of why while we did have an array, like if you looked at our convention, yeah, we had Hispanic preachers and apostles, you know, at African apostles and preachers.

We had Indian and South Asian and Philip. You know, we had the whole bit, but it was always entirely racial and everybody knew that it was racial. And we would even have like some of the when they would come from overseas.

I think I mentioned this story before. We had a minister, you know, from from Southeast Asia who apologized. Like he apologized to us for being brown. He tests and then he apologized for being brown.

We would have those sort of, you know, things happening in our churches. So there was always a very unusual racial twist and hierarchy in our churches to these things, right? And so, you know, when you think of Klansman going out and being missionaries to foreign countries, this is what you get like these gentlemen.

And absolutely some of these missionaries from our sect of the message going out to other parts of the world were absolutely Klansman. And I know that it's hard maybe for people to think, why would a white supremacist do mission work to a non-white country?

Like that kind of, if you're not in this mindset in this world, that don't make sense, does it? But if you're in this world, or it does make sense, because yes, we still want their souls to be saved.

Yes, the Klansmen wants to save the souls of the non-white people, so they can go to heaven and be servants in heaven, right? I mean, that is absolutely what's going on in some of their minds.

And it's kind of twisted, John, but that is part of this ideology that helps that spread into those parts of the world. That is absolutely what's going on in some of their minds. It is.

And it goes back to my point earlier. This is such a big mess. It's like a bad comedy of errors. And each error is creating a movement. And so when movements spit off of these movements that were created in error, if you go back to the foundation, you're just really sickened by what you see.

And there's so much more that we could talk about. I'm a little surprised that we got through this one as well as we did. This is a huge undertaking, trying to talk through these different movements and splinter groups and sex.

And how do you, how do you detangle that? They're all mixed together and merged. But hopefully we did it justice and hopefully people can understand that, yeah, this movement wasn't a movement from God and what was created afterwards is even worse than what was initially created.

So thank you for doing this. Yeah, come back next time, ladies and gentlemen. We will pick up and continue on with this sect of the message that we're talking about. And I think we at least got one more episode to wrap this one up.

And yeah, I think it'll be good. We'll talk about how all of this crashed and burned at a certain point in time. It's going to be fun. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.Williamdashbrandom.org and www.ChristianGospelChurch.org. For more about the history of William Brandom and the healing revivals, you can read come out of her, my people. And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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