The Contender Chronicles - Faith Fraud and Fanaticism

Hello and welcome to another episode have the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org and the author of come out of her my people. Charles it's good to be back and to talk all things spread of Brandhamism and today it's a little bit interesting for me because this is a subject that just really fascinates me and that is the religious propaganda. I

first came across the notion of propaganda as it relates to the message and Pentecostalism in general when I was researching Brandhamism and I was publishing a few things and somebody sent me an old old issue of John Alexander Dauy's newsletter which was called Leaves of Healing I think it was and the person didn't give me any information with it just the newsletter so I didn't know what to do with it but I read it and suddenly I'm like oh my gosh this guy he's like another Brandham what year is this and I look at the top and I knew

nothing about John Alexander Dauy but I found out that he was one of he was basically the prototype for the faith in healing revivals and so he's that newsletter believe it or not sparked my interest in curiosity in him and that's part of the reason why I wrote this militant Christian extremism a critical examination of John Alexander Dauy and just researching the man found out that he was just one of the greatest con artists that has ever lived man he made millions of in today's money it's probably billions of dollars and what he did was ingenious because through that newsletter people

would read it and no matter what he put in it because it was a quote unquote Christian newsletter people believed it they shut off critical thinking they read it and if he published that he was the greatest healer known to mankind there were people who flocked all over to come see him so he set the stage for what was to come and then you know in latter rain you had the voice of healing publication you actually had a few different publications which that in itself isn't so bad it's the fact that they're unchecked there is no whatever

the publisher says that they're doing that's what they're doing and then prior to this I found it newsletter article, newspaper article, and Jeffersonville, Indiana, Roy Davis, William Brandham's mentor, also had a newsletter and he was publishing it from his printing presses in Jeffersonville. And he was doing the same thing, but he took it a step further.

He was taking notes and he was passing it to newspaper reporters and say, hey, this happened in my church. I just raised the dead or healed the sick, whatever it was. And he was wanting to force the newspapers to print his miracles, come to find out that, you know, they also were unchecked and the newspaper reporters just shut him down and said, look, man, we have to have some evidence of these things that you're saying. So that brings us to today, we're going to get into some of the, we were talking about faith assembly last

week, but we're going to get into some of the propaganda that spreading through the contender. And I'm sure that's going to be a hot topic for you in your sect. It is really fascinating, isn't it, John? How this stuff works. You know, you mentioned John Alexander Dowey there. You know, if, if you think about the ideology kind of like I've mentioned in the past as a boom and a bust cycle, John Alexander Dowey would be five cycles ago, this ideology, if you count backwards from the NAR. And you're right with every, with iteration of this ideology, there are certain evolutions of the ideology. There are certain

concepts or practices that get introduced. And one of the things that John Alexander Dowey did, right, he introduced this literature, John. He introduced creating these magazines, these newsletter type things that he would spread to the ends of the world through his cult, because he had, even though he was mostly centered here in Zion, he concentrated a lot of his followers in Zion. You know, starting in the 1880s, 1890s, he had actually a whole network of followers and churches all around the English-speaking world. And it is actually even through that newsletter that he announced that he was building Zion and encouraged them all to move design

where they could all live under his reign of horrors and stuff that ensued up there. Yeah, I mean, the newsletter, the propaganda piece, that's a very interesting thing. And you're correct. You see that then repeated in every cycle that comes afterwards. They were all having these religious-type newsletters that are going around that are spreading the ideology, the movement, and I guess what you would say is pushing the party line. Yeah, and you get like the voice of healing, you get on down, spoken word. And one of the things I did want to talk about leading in today, John, was the publication that came out of my sect of the message. I got a copy.

This is the very first edition of the contender, John. Wow. Volume one. They came out. They were they were like a newspaper in style and you could you know, usually multiple pages. They were long enough that you could fit. There were enough space in here for three full transcripts of three full sermons of, you know, whoever, you know, they were publishing or what have you. So, um, and you're correct. I mean, and it's very important. And I think one thing I want to draw some attention to is the importance of the literature in all of this. When you look at the, the sex of the message that had the

biggest success early on growing, it really seems it's more the ones that had good literature, John. And by good literature, I mean, effective, well-wrote, um, easily communicated, easily accessible, a large library of it, um, that were successful. If you go back to the very early days of the movement, John, William Brownham's transcripts that were not all available when he died, not, not by any means.

There was actually just a very few of his sermons, maybe 30 of his sermons were available in print when he died. Um, and when you think about the mission outreach, um, overseas to other countries, well, if you think about Africa and South America and India and all that back then, well, they didn't have tape players, John. I mean, they were impoverished. You know, it'd be a year salary for them to buy tape players. Tapes was not an option. Um, and you had to have literature in order to convey the beliefs back then, because you couldn't pass out tapes like you can now or

give people tablets like they do now. You had to have literature. And it was the groups that had the really good literature that were able to get the forefront of the ability to push the message.

Ewald Frank, for example, we'll talk some episodes about his sect. His sect actually made all the original foreign language translations besides Spanish. Every other, you know, up through the 80s, 90s, it would be really the mid and late 90s by the time voice of gods actually cut up with them in terms of translations. So he had more or less the monopoly on all of the foreign language translations. And the English stuff, the English literature was really down to my sect, John, and the sect you come from. And it spoke in word publications in the early days. And

we're just full episodes on leave, ale, too. But there was some decisions made early on to print all of William Brannum's sermons in English verbatim. And when you have William Brannum sermons, they're in little booklets like this. Nowadays, they've changed colors. I've got some older ones on the shelf I could pull off. But these sermons are verbatim transcripts of William Brannum.

And whenever he coughs, whenever he sneezes, whenever he misspeaks, you know, and all of his unique hillbilly grammar, I guess you'd call it, is all in there, right? And the truth is, to a lot of people outside of the United States who speak English even, his sermons...

are unintelligible. You know, like the way they printed them, it is very, very challenging for people to read. If people who are non-native English speakers find him very challenging. And what happened in the early days, John? The early message missionaries would actually pass out copies of the contender along with copies of the spoken word. And they were sort of like a guide to help deal, you know, a summary form of what, you know, William Prandtom taught, but without all the broken language, it was, you know, edited, it was clean, it was easy to read. And Ewald Frank would distribute those, for example, alongside

in the churches he planted, the English-speaking people. Others did the same thing. And so that gave, that is really what gave our sect of the message a strong entrance in some of the missionary pushes, because our literature was going alongside some of the spoken word literature and stuff, especially in the early days when there just wasn't as much English literature coming out of spoken word. And even afterwards, when everything was just wrote verbatim of William Prandtom, and it was very challenging for the non-English speakers to read it. His voice to God themselves didn't have any really non-English content. They

started to develop some Spanish stuff, you know, later on. But other than that, they didn't really have anything else to share. And so that, that, I think, helped explain a little bit of how my sect of the message was able to be effective through some of the mission stuff. It was through the publication of our literature.

And again, publication of literature is not unique, especially, you know, you can go back and as early as there is a way to print information, there are people who are distributing information, that's just how it works. In fact, early Pentecostalism, there's somewhat of a scandal that I read about. I assume it's true, but whenever the Azusa street revival was happening, and whenever William Joseph Seymour was out, you know, leading the masses as Pentecostalism, modern Pentecostalism, abstract that all over. And you know, printing information and distributing it is nothing new. You can go back as far as history records,

because history has recorded. We have information and people are distributing it. In fact, early Pentecostalism, there were newsletters and newsletters subscriptions. And whenever William Joseph Seymour was out in Los Angeles during the Azusa street revival, there's a scandal that apparently broke out. I read about this. I don't know if it's true or not, but I'm assuming it is. It was a reputable source, but he had one of the most powerful things that he had during the Azusa street revivals was the names and addresses of people, and that was his distribution.

list. And I'm told that Lucy Farrow ended up stealing that list from him. So he lost a lot of the power and the power just kind of spread. Now again, I don't know if that I've not been able to confirm it other than the one source that I found. So take that with a grain of salt. But there's power in the newsletter list because the people who subscribe to it are essentially your assets. And as you're growing and birthing any business, you have customers, right? So whenever you have these newsletters, you have customers. When the concept of a cult and a cult's

propaganda, these are your number one potential converts. Many true converts have taken it. But this is the means by which you can distribute the information that your cult wants to share in a way that you can control that information so that it sounds more believable.

And that's the key to all of this is making the information of the cult sound more believable, which is essentially propaganda. The contender from Faith Assembly John. So in case our listeners don't know, I mean, I've said this several times. I'm formerly the associate pastor of the second oldest message church in the world, which printed this document and before I left among the many, many posts and positions I held in the movement, I was the editor of all of our literature as well, John. So I know a lot about the circulation and everything of all of this stuff in the history of it. So the literature started, we started publishing this

in the 1960s. And to the best of my knowledge, this is the second oldest set of message literature. Like this is the second oldest message publication. And it's been in continuous printing since the 60s, John, shortly after William Browne's death. The original editor of the contender was a man named Homer Browne. Homer Browne was the associate pastor of Bill Paderis in King's Mountain North Carolina. And after, you know, I've mentioned how his church imploded, you know, after the, you know, the event with his wife, Homer Browne ended up moving to Jeffersonville and along with Raymond

Jackson, they started to publish, you know, the magazine with Homer Browne's editor. And as they did that, John, the contender just has grown into one of the most comprehensive sets of systematized beliefs of the message out there. It's basically based on every topic of the message dealt within a systematic fashion. And it really is kind of unique in that way. Leave ale done something similar through some of his sermons. But I would say it's one of the most unique things out there in the message as far as a fully comprehensive system of, you know, You could almost say it's an attempted systematic theology

for the message is probably the best way to describe what's attempted to be done with it. And as it went out in circulation, John, the high point it had 30,000 subscribers in circulation.

It was a very widely distributed publication. And that's part of one of the ways that I, in my book, for example, I tried to measure some of the size of my sect of the message.

I think the high end would be the subscription rate on the literature. And so, yeah, at the high point, 30,000 people, John, were subscribing to the contender in the 1980s, 1990s. Yeah, it was pretty widely distributed.

And lots of other sects of the message, though, subscribe to it as well, right? Lots of people and other sects. Not everybody getting it was in my sect of the message. Now, one thing I do want to say about the contender, too, John, is Homer Brown.

So the editor, he started in the 1970s, about 1976, I want to say 75, 76, Homer Brown decided that he wanted to publish material in there from preachers besides Raymond Jackson, OK? So in the early days, it was just all Raymond Jackson's teachings in there, right?

His version of the message. But in 75, 76, Homer Brown decides to start putting other preachers, sermons, and content in the magazine as well. OK, that did not go over well with Raymond Jackson, OK?

He was not willing to share the pages with anybody. And that is actually the basis behind what ended up leading him to push Homer Brown out of the church. Now, of course, they concocted, you know, crazy ideas to say Homer Brown was a bad guy.

But the truth is, Homer Brown had started to put preachers in there besides Raymond Jackson and Raymond Jackson ended up looking for pretense to get rid of Homer Brown in order to continue to be the only one in the magazine.

And among the people, I will say, John, that Homer Brown published in the contender in that period of time was Freddie Bradford to the Canadian child molester, OK? He's among the other ministers that Homer Brown decided to put in there in those years.

So anyways, all that happened. And Homer Brown ended up leaving out. And he went and he stepped up, planted a new church in Florida where he remained as a pastor until he died with a version of our sect of the messages, teachings.

But yeah, we touched. There were so many topics we put in the contender, John. I'll get you some screenshots. Maybe you can put it out for people. But we printed the latter rain by name.

We printed manifestant sons of God by name. The terminology changed over the years, but it was still by name. In the earlier years, we were publishing that. We published multi-series articles on the life of William Branagh.

and how our sect of the message viewed him. You know, we tackled all the major topics of the message, the son of man teaching, you know, the return ministry stuff was tackled in there.

You know, all the beliefs, the church ages, had full spreads, the seals, you know, every topic that mattered to the message was in there. In addition to some of the unique topics of faith assembly.

And one of the unique beliefs of faith assembly, I know we've mentioned this a few times, John, the fan is in his hand, okay? And, you know, anybody listen and just hear in that phrase, like what in the world could that possibly mean?

The fan is in his hand. But in our sect of the message that's a teaching that basically meant William Brannum taught things wrong on purpose to deceive the people who were not elect and confuse them.

And the fan is in his hand. And so it's basically the get out of jail free card for basically William Brannum could say and do anything wrong or bad or teach or say or do anything wrong or bad.

And we say the fan is in his hand. And that was just to deceive the non-elect and we have the true version of the message here. So that was our mental gymnastics for not believing in elements of what William Brannum taught and then continuing on with our stuff that's in there.

There's so much stuff, John. I mean, it's just a mountain of literature. It's been published for, you know, over 50 years now. And there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of editions. I mean, the total length of the thing is longer than two or three Bibles at this stage all the content.

So it is quite an undertaking. But again, I really wanted to point that out because it's very important to the early spread of the message. And because we were kind of at the cutting edge of having a lot of literature in English that could go out with the mission areas and the mission work that was happening in the early days of the message.

It's just really unbelievable when you think about it. And what you're describing is I'm trying not to laugh because the whole scenario is kind of funny. The same thing happened with William Brannum during the early years of Laterane as he's publishing the Voice of Healing magazine.

This publication began as his tool together assets. And remember, his one gimmick that he's still famous for today, they still talk about it today, is that he could guess the names and addresses and that was his stage act.

So he'd go up for healing and he would say, you, you live at certain certain address and therefore be healed. Well, he's got a subscription man. Subscription service gives you names and addresses, which is interesting.

I know there's a lot more to it than that. And that's another topic for another discussion. But what happened was kind of funny. It began as his publication to advertise his ministry. And he and Gordon Lindsay and others realized how powerful this was.

And they could create sort of a pyramid scheme with it. So they started inviting other ministers to advertise. their ministries in it. And I can't say this for certain, but knowing how these guys think, probably there was some sort of a subscription tier.

If you got your name in the, if you got published, you were bound to get a huge audience. So I'm certain that to get your name in the newspaper, they had to get a little bit of kickback.

But that's my opinion, that's a guess. I don't know how it worked. But what happened is once they started doing this, other ministers started claiming angels and demons and special visitations and all kinds of gifts that are just absurd when you read through some of those early letters, right?

Those early additions. And what essentially started happening is the focus started shifting away from William Brannum and he got really, really upset about it. And there was a early parting of ways. I'm not certain how all that came to be.

I know there were some mental health issues with Brannum, but I have to believe that some of the early fights that they had were probably based on the fact that, no man, these other guys are getting all my attention.

And I want the soul attention. This was a newsletter supposed to be advertising my ministry. Now it's all these other guys. Wow, yeah. So I know in our last episode, we talked, I think we more or less talk through some of the major events of my sector, the message up to the 1980s.

The contender, the start of the contender was one of them. We didn't, I wanted to make sure we noted. That kind of picking back up in the 80s, John, we went through, our churches went through a series of schisms in those years.

We started actually have some of the figures that we looked at as a puzzle started to break away, Richard Gann broke away, Ben Howard broke away. I kind of mentioned those already. But besides those things happens, we also had a number of other just significant schisms in those years.

We had a man by the name of Brad Burgess, I'm sure you probably know, John, who's the pastor of a notable message church here in the Jeffersonville area. They broke away from our sector of the message in the 1980s.

And another fairly notable thing that happened in the early 90s was another prominent minister. His name was Rockwell Lance. He was probably among the most prominent of our ministers in India broke away with some of the Indian churches and also part of the following here in North America and South Africa as well.

So we were having schisms through all that period of time over weird stuff too, over really weird stuff. Like the schism with Brad Burgess was over, a faith assembly women were allowed to trim their hair, but at Brad Burgess's church, they were not.

The schism ensued, John. Okay. The, that one was a knockdown dragout too, John. It devolved into a massive shouting match. That one of the international conventions, of course, where it always started at. I just had a conversation about that last evening.

whenever I was with some people who had just left the message and they were talking about the cutting of hair thing and William Brannum said in the questions and answers that it's okay for women to trim their bangs. So what your sect had was actually doing what William Brannum said and take take that a step further the the daughters of William Brannum you look at their photographs they're wearing skirts above their knees they've got their hair trimmed and Raymond Jackson knew them he knew that my family knew them they knew that the Brannum daughters were like this

and it was okay in the Brannum household but what happened is he would preach so hard against women cutting their hair that nobody else anybody who had not seen his family and not knew that this is how the Brannum family lived they would they were just very hard core against cutting of hair of any kind so you all these schisms emerge because people have learned the doctrine from the stage act rather and the recordings of the stage act the propaganda and they've not actually seen the guy and the way he lived in the lifestyle so the two are completely separate that that

schism that happened let me just talk about that schism just a little bit John because I think if I describe how that one unfolded it can help our listeners understand how schisms work in the message especially in my sect of the message so basically you know you're at the international convention um Brad Bird just stands up and basically rips Raymond Jackson up one side and down the other for an hour straight okay Raymond Jackson sitting there the whole time okay that's how it works it just rips tears into him you know and and so when it's all done you could hear a pin drop

I mean it is dead silence and as as Brad Bird just sits back down um it's just absolute silence and nobody wants to go up to the podium after like nobody will get up and this is happening in Raymond Jackson's church John okay and and Raymond Jackson don't even get up to the platform he just kind of sits there sits there sits there and finally John uh one of the ministers from uh rather one of the deacons that that faith assembly stands up and says um I support Raymond Jackson 100% and I I just don't think that this was right and then he goes and sits back down

and then a preacher a preacher from Canada get up and they and one by one everybody gets up I support Raymond Jackson 100% and this was and by the time you get to the 30th person doing that right the crowd is starting to get angry and riled and and uh Brad Burgess is eventually very forcibly expelled from the church it's just like it builds and and that's how it would work at at our at our church and Raymond and and it's really it's all I would say it's almost with that event with Brad Burgess when it started this

it faith assembly where whenever anything the slightest bit bad happen, the pastor, Raymond Jackson or his successor would sit back and it would be the job of all the other people in the church to be flying monkeys to descend upon whoever was the offender, right?

And disparage them. And over the years it evolved, John. It evolved into sometimes two or three service long episodes where everybody would say everything bad they ever knew about the person who was on the receiving end of it and just scorch earth, they're person, right?

Every bad thing they ever did, basically they're possessed by the devil. They're going to hell and let's not just throw them out, let's find everyone who was in their family and throw them out too because they're related to them and they probably sympathize with them even though we don't know anything about it.

But that's when it started, this kind of thing started in the 80s in our secular message John. And it was so ugly and over the years there were so many people schismed and thrown out this way and it got incredibly hostile and I laugh, you know, I can kind of laugh about it now, but you know, back then it was it was frightening stuff when your kid grown up in this stuff.

I remember one service, John, something along this line happened. There was a particular woman in the church that was going to be thrown out. This was also in the 80s and Raymond Jackson stands up at the platform and he says, everybody looks straight ahead, nobody look left, nobody look right, look straight ahead, I'm going to deal with this.

And he just rips into this woman, John, rips her up one side down the other, she's weeping and crying has her throat out of the church right and everybody sitting there like this. As he said, look straight ahead, don't look left or right.

Sounds like something straight out of Nazi Germany, man. I'm telling you, John, I mean, it was it was crazy. So a lot of crazy stuff happened. Maybe one day I should give you like a just a just talk about crazy things that happened in our churches, John.

I mean, we could talk for hours, hours, and hours, and hours, just about the crazy things that happened in the churches I come from. But yeah, that sort of thing set up then and that's how schisms and in these things were unfold as people, people got expelled.

Yes, it's really hard to believe the way that some of the ministers behave in a normal world, normal people don't act like this, but it's, well, I take that back. If you're like five years old, maybe you act like that if you're a bully, but some of these ministers, man, they just, they really don't care about the people.

And I'm laughing because it's absurd, but it's really sad. The people are so programmed and so manipulated and largely due to all of this propaganda that's being spread, there's under such fear of the minister.

They think he's got some, basically, he's got supernatural powers. He's the, their direct channel to God in some cases. And they sit. there in fear and they let him verbally abuse them. I've been in services where this has happened.

My own grandfather verbally abused a woman. She had just got up and sang a special and he didn't like, he called it a scandal skirt and we have a commenter on the feeds that just thought this was the funniest thing ever.

You can see it in the comment feeds on YouTube but he said she's wearing a scandal skirt because she had this little tiny slit. I want to say it was no bigger than four inches, right?

In the back of her skirt. You couldn't even see the calves of her ankles. That's how long her skirt was. But as she's walking back because she had that slit, he railed her the whole time until I was watching her walk and she started just bawling about halfway and she left and I'm not certain that she ever came back.

So these ministers are really driving people away from Christianity altogether in some cases but at minimum they're driving people out of the church and it's sad the way they abuse the people. 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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And some of the people that go through that are cracked in such a way that they never recover. I've seen that in quite a few cases. And I've also seen quite a number of cases where they go home and commit suicide after as well.

I mean, that's not uncommon, John. And I mean, there's multiple graves in Eastern Cemetery of people who went home and killed themselves, right? That out of fear of what the message preacher was going to do to them.

Yeah, it's very, very unfortunate stuff. Yeah, so that was happening in the 80s. We also had one other really notable thing I want to talk about that happened. It started in the 80s, late 80s, and kind of went, continued on into the early 90s.

And I'm just going to kind of mention it in passing here, John, because down the road, we're going to do a full, more full episode on maybe the disappearance of Sarah Brannum when we talk about the main sect.

But in the 1980s, Sarah Brannum started... had her, I don't know just what to call it, a crusade against the central institutions of the message. I think that's how I'll phrase it. Sarah Brownebs crusade against the central institutions of the message.

And she had went around basically trying to get the senior leaders of the major message sex on her side, right? She had started with Joseph Coleman, who took her side. She went to Ewald Frank, who took her side.

She came to Raymond Jackson, who took her side. As she went through those different things, she ended up choosing Raymond Jackson probably because he was here in Jeffersonville to more or less be her mediator with the central institutions and with Billy Paul and Joseph, Billy Paul more so than anything else.

And Raymond Jackson kind of rose to that occasion, John, because as Sarah Bramham came, she came with this massive stack of documents that earned her lawyers had compiled, which again, Raymond Jackson loved to collect the dirt.

It had all of the criminal activity, a Perry Green in it, John. It had all kinds of criminal stuff going on in the other, in the main sect of the message, you know, with the Evans family, with the Bramham family, with Perry Green, go on down Roy Borders, all kinds of stuff is in there that they were all involved in all this, you know, terrible stuff.

Several of them had went to prison even, I mean, yeah, I think you know, several of them went to prison. And anyways, it was really bad, it was all really bad stuff. And Raymond Jackson, when he got a hold of this, like it was like someone had made his day, John.

I'm telling you, he, his day was made and here comes Sarah. So this is his chant. This is Faith Assembly's chance to finally, you know, the main sect has knifed them in the back so many times.

This is Raymond Jackson's chance to, to pull one big one back on the main sect. And let me tell you, that's exactly what he was doing, John. And so he wrote, you know, this really nasty letter to Billy Paul, you actually have it on your website.

I think he calls Billy Paul a dog in that letter, and it's, it is incredibly nasty. And he's doing all this on Sarah's behalf, right? And he basically inserts himself and becomes Sarah's mediator to the rest of the brand of family.

And Faith Assembly, we set up a trust in those years, collected money to help sponsor and take care of Sarah, you know, all that stuff happened. And I think it was, Raymond, in Raymond Jackson's mind, it was his, it was going to be his, it's going to be his attempt to win people out of the main sect to our sect.

And, and so he did that, John. And I'll back up just a little bit too earlier in the 90s when Ewald Frank had a sex scandal. Raymond Jackson had did a very similar thing when he found out about that.

Faith assembly ministers went around all the basically followed e-walled Frank around Africa They would tail him to churches and then they would expose his his Fair right on the tail end so he would leave and then they'd come in and expose as a fair He'd leave then they come and expose as fair and the same thing peel off some of e-walled Frank's people in Africa So Amy Jackson had there was a pattern of doing this by the time Sarah Brannum comes around And so when Sarah Brannum comes around. Yeah, I mean he goes whole hog John and he had private meetings with George Smith

About it with Rebecca Smith with Billy Paul about it. I don't know that he ever actually met Joseph about any of it because I think Joseph was still Something we won't say right here, but he he was not available to be up to we'll leave it at that and And but he had Raymond Jackson had private meetings with the rest of them and and He recorded all those John. I don't know if any of them know he did, but he did record all those meetings and so And again, I Was set up to be Raymond Jackson's successor ladies and gentlemen. I have everything. I have every I have every last thing that was in that man's possession

so at any rate That was going on in the late 80s and Eventually, of course, you know what happens the whole thing kind of ended mysteriously and Sarah disappeared but That was a really big thing happening in the late 80s and early 90s in the faith assembly fellowship There were multiple closed meetings about that private church services where Raymond Jackson will keep everybody updated and things like that was going on But it was it was a huge deal What was happening with Sarah in those years?

And I know it was it was especially a huge deal for our churches because Raymond Jackson was being the mediator But I think it was a pretty big deal throughout most of the message community back then John especially in North America in Europe because Sarah was directly Interacting with a lot of the people and riling a lot of that up. Yeah, and my family. I've got one family member that was in contact with Sarah during all of this and The stories that could be told man It's it's unbelievable You know and Sarah's hands weren't entirely clean

She was the victim if you read her letter and understand what's happening her brothers were not treating her fairly and She was I can confirm to family members that she was destitute and her children did not have food while her rich brothers were Purposely cutting her off from that wouldn't help her at all. I'll just say it like that. You can read the letter I think it's called take take it with you or something like this you can find it on the website But she was Very much in need. I'll say it like that But she knew how to play all the sides

She knew that all of these ministers in the cult acted like bullies and if you can put a bully against a bully You're gonna have a fight and so that's exactly what she did and she knew that the of the message would compete to win her. She was apprised to be won. Yes, exactly.

And she knew that the leaders of the different sex would go above and beyond in order to win a member of the Brownham family, one of William Brownham's children to their church. And that's exactly what was happening, John. The sex of the message were competing to win Sarah to their sect of the message. And that went on a while. We'll talk about some of that in detail, John, when we get to the main sect and maybe talk into that a little bit more. But yeah, I mean, fascinating, fascinating stuff to look back. Back then, John, I didn't fully grasp what was

happening in those years. Like, I remember I was there when all those stuff happened, but it didn't really sink in precisely what was happening as far as, you know, because you're indoctrinated, right? And you've, oh, the prophet's daughter is being mistreated by her evil brothers who have been subsumed by the deity cult. We must help her. You know, you don't see all the other aspects of it, right? Where, yeah, they are in the deity cult and all that stuff, but this is a power play by our leaders. And in a lot of ways, Sarah kind of turned into a pawn

through that, right? As well, not only were they competing over, she kind of got turned into a pawn through that whole ordeal. And then, then the disappearance happens, which, next said, we'll talk about that later. You know, and for the NAR people who are listening and they're curious to learn more about who is this foundation from which all of the NAR has been built.

And did he really go straight at the end or was he always somewhat of a character? You can look at William Bram, you can look at what he established, you can look at the cult that was created. And just look at the way the people behave in this and ask yourself the question, was the Holy Spirit involved in this movement or was this something else? Was there some other kind of spirit? And I think of this, Charles, we've said it a few times, but in any city that has a concentration of message believers, you're bound to have more than one church. I know that

there are some studies that have one church, but by and large, you've either got one multiple main churches or at minimum a church and a bunch of people who are gathering in their homes because they start fighting and they can't agree with each other. So they split, they separate, the home church grows into a church with a physical building. There is nothing but confusion, separation, anger. And I just have to believe that the Holy Spirit was not involved in this movement at all. You know, John, when you come into the early 1990s, right? Right as the

Sarah Brannum stuff kind of fizzles out. Right? But almost at the same time that it hit its pinnacle, something happened in our Fellowship of Churches, John. And it's something that we would refer to as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our churches.

Now, I think, you know, if you're from Pentecostalism, you kind of know what that means, okay? And so it's an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the terminology of this religion. And it starts out, John, in, I believe it began in 1993.

It started just before the Toronto blessing, actually. Just before the Toronto blessing happened, about a year, year and a half before the Toronto blessing began, this started in our churches. And it's characterized by extreme, ecstatic worship, okay?

Getting tongues, running, jumping, shouting, dancing, you know, rolling around on the floor, slaying in the spirit, all this sort of stuff, John. And I'm not talking about just like it's happened into one or two people.

I mean, hundreds of people are engaging in this at the same time simultaneously in the church services, okay? It's a, it is, it's something, you just almost have to be in it even to fully grasp it.

Just what this is. If you look at the Toronto blessing, it was exactly the same sort of thing you see there, except this was happening actually a few years before that in our churches.

And so this started a new phase in our churches. Our churches had always been ecstatic in the worship and embracing the gifts of the Spirit. But like, this like started a new level, John.

You know in the message, just like the NAR people were chasing the last day revival, right? And this great outpouring is going to happen and everyone's going to be empowered with all the gifts of the Spirit in this great mighty way and the end of days will come.

Well, this, when this happened, of course, that's naturally what our leaders told us was happening. It was the end of day revival occurring, okay? Yeah. And, and as that happened, that started, I want to say it was like 93, 94.

Right in that same window of time, the Sarah Brannum stuff happened. It looked like the main sect was finally getting what they deserved, you know? And also, John, Raymond Jackson in that time introduced what I think, what I think is his chief legacy.

It's called The Countdown Is On. Here's a copy of the very first time he ever preached this. It was from, we'll get you some better views of this, but September 5th, 1993. Coming through Windows of Prophecy Part 2, Raymond Jackson began to introduce a concept.

He used of scriptures in Jose as six, too, and he made all kinds of elaborate. This is just a little one that was shipped out with the tape when he first preached it and in this Calculation John the the long and the short of it is Raymond Jackson is saying the week of Daniel is going to start somewhere By the year 2005. Okay, this is what this is what he's saying the week of Daniel the final doomsday scenario We'll begin by 2005 and Jesus Christ will end up coming again. There'll be the rapture all that and

And you know by all his calculations, we should be living in the millennial age right now and The end of the world should have already happened. Okay, so he sets that up John in 1993 and he's got a pretty good runway there Right, I mean he's still he's about 10 12 years away from his date, right?

So there's lots of years for this thing to go on and So year after year after year John this revival keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter and These dates that you know the the two days and two two thousand four and a half the week of Daniel is going to start get emphasized over and over and over and over and over and over again and Faith assembly I Feel like faith assembly got worse with time and it really took its turn into its really bad doomsday madness when this stuff started Happening in the early 90s and

I'm telling you John all kinds of terrible stuff happened, you know as a result of this, you know People quit going to school people quit saving for retirement people didn't get education You know and everybody living through this if you're growing up in this period of time They're saying oh well, we'll never finish high school. Oh, we'll never get our we'll never get our license We'll never get you know, it's the same stuff with 77 right same stuff's going on all the way through the message all along and And What happens though John of course as you and I well know it is

2025 and we're still here aren't we so? As you start to get close to the year 2000 Raymond Jackson starts to figure out This thing ain't gonna work out. He starts to figure it out now. He don't notice. He tell that to anybody No, he does not say that to anybody But he knows this thing is not gonna get to work out and what he does is he starts

Anybody who was not fully on board with his prediction anyone who had not publicly came out and been on board 100% agreement with his prediction right He won by one started to target them for purging Okay, because when we get to the other side of it they had to be gone otherwise they would have been you know They they could make him look bad right he only wanted people left that had agreed with him that way They could all be wrong together on the other side of it looking back. That's how I interpret what happened

And so he started purging people John and And he always he never he was never really upfront about what he was doing He would find something else wrong with them that he didn't like about him. He didn't come out and say, you didn't agree with my 2004 and a half prediction, you got to go.

He found something else. Oh, you're stealing money. You know, they'd make stuff up even, you know, to get rid of them. And he did that, John, too. He even did that to the man in our churches who probably would have been looked at like our second from the top, our second highest ranking apostle.

He did that to him. And he was a minister from Europe. His name is Ralph Stroman. And as he did that to him, it started a massive schism, John, that crossed literally every church in our sect of the message.

And schism, them all, I mean, we lost about half the fellowship through that schism. And a lot of them, some of them ended up going with Ralph Stroman. A lot of them, I think, ended up just ended up in some other sects of the message.

But it kept getting worse, you know, it kept getting worse. He kept schism and schism and we had another big schism with some of the local churches here over it. And by the time you get to 2004, John, okay, Raymond Jackson died in December of 2004.

He died six months before his prediction date, John, six months before. And basically that's kind of where I lend off my book. I took my book up to 2005, come out of where my people's, I looked at the history of all these things.

And there's way more details in the book, ladies and gentlemen, if you want to look in there, come out of where my people volume to. But basically the Faith Assembly Fellowship collapsed after that.

When Raymond Jackson died, there was a power struggle, a man named James Allen ended up taking over. He was kind of an incompetent man and everything more or less fell apart at that point.

And there's the Faith Assembly Fellowship has multiple sub-sex, I mean, the churches and people, a lot of them are still there. But the whole thing really fell apart as a unified group at that point and most of them turned on each other.

And yeah, John broke up hundreds of homes, hundreds of families, divorces, you know, when those things happen in our churches, you have to divorce your wife, you have to divorce your husband, you can't even see your kids again if they, you know, go on the other side.

It was very, very ugly, John. And I lost most of my family actually through the early 2000s, through a lot of that stuff. And then it just got worse and worse with time. Yeah, like I said, it's just really sad to think these, these were bullies, these ministers leading the charge were bullies.

And they were put into their positions, many of them, by William Brannum, if, if not put into the position by him, Brannum supported many of these guys. And you just look at the way they act, look at the way that they treat their congregation.

And the ministers are supposed to be shepherds of the sheep. And instead, they're just brutally beating the sheep verbally. And I, again, I just have to go back and say, was God even in this?

Was the Holy Spirit there? Because the Holy Spirit doesn't make men act like this. According to the Bible... Bible, it gives you meekness and love and gentleness and peace. And these guys have quite the opposite.

And again, we go back to the propaganda of this, the printing propaganda, they're getting people to come into the church so that they can treat them horrifically. And I just, I'm almost at a loss for words at the things that have gone on in the call, especially hearing some of the stories that you've talked about.

Yeah, you know, as I look at my sect of the message, you know, Raymond Jackson's a kind of a complicated figure to the people who supported him. He was actually a super great guy, right?

Like I mean, he was, you know, top notch kind of a person to the people who accepted his teachings, right? But to the people who did not accept his teachings, John, he definitely took a scorched earth approach.

I can think of people that he didn't like, like he labeled them as witches, right? And did horrible, horrible, horrible things to some of these people publicly just destroyed people, John. He even personally drove a number of people to suicide that I'm aware of, you know, looking back as well.

So it's like a mix, right? Like on one side of it, yeah, he was really nice, really kind to all the people who were on his side, but he was, you know, the definitely garnered to his enemies.

So it's, you know, you got to balance all of that out. And yeah, and there's so much I could say, John, about all his predictions about the end of days, but basically every last stitch of it fell through, all of it fell through, right?

And there ended up being, and at this stage in time, you know, where we're at and the way the world is, it is absolutely impossible that what he taught can possibly even come to pass the way that he taught it.

Like it, it's just the world has changed too much, things have changed too much, his scenarios don't work anymore. It's just, it's just totally wrong, obviously, at this stage. And, but people go along with it, people have carried it on down to the present day.

I mean, I was doing it myself here before, not all that long ago. And the one last thing, John, I think I will, I will mention before we end this off. And like I said, again, if you all want even more details, like there's probably more details than I'm going to talk about as we go through each of these sex in the books, and believe it is, yeah, here it is.

Come out of my people, volume two, you know, there's lots of more details in here if you guys want them. But the last thing I want to point out about my sect of the message is shortly after Raymond Jackson died, I'll also put out there, I was a trustee on the board, or seeing the finances of the institution as well, John, I was, I was at the very top of this thing, okay ladies gentlemen, I just got to tell the truth, I was at the top of this thing.

And Raymond Jackson, I mentioned Homer Brown, who was the editor of the contender earlier on, right? Who came from Bill Poderra, so search, well he was also... the original treasurer back in those days as well.

And when Raymond Jackson and him had his falling out, Raymond Jackson took over managing the treasury from Homer Brown in the late 70s. Somewhere between there in the time that he died, Raymond Jackson began an embezzlement scheme, John, where he was paying, basically he channeled a percentage of the revenue coming in.

A lot of it was the overseas tithe money coming from other churches. And then some of the local money as well into an account that he never disclosed to the church board. And then out of that account, he would, I don't know if you want you to call it, would you use maybe a slush fund as the right account?

He would use that money to pay salaries to most members of his family. He used that account to just do whatever he felt like he needed for ministry. But he never disclosed any of it to the church board.

And the church board actually started to discover what he was doing in 1997, John. 1997, a leak of it got out. And the church board had a private meeting without him to just discuss if they should do anything.

He found out they had a private meeting without him, okay? And the very next Sunday, like before they could even do anything, before he even knew what happened in the meeting, he dismissed the entire church board.

He had a service where he basically hung them out and dried them and destroyed the reputation of every member of the church board. He just nailed them to a cross, John, bright in church and told everybody, you know, you got to believe me.

These guys are, they had been a thorn in my side and he said things like this in that sermon. You never heard the apostles given a financial statement. You know, he said things like that.

And looking back now, what a lot of red flags were in that sermon, John. But of course, sitting there back then, we're like, oh, these terrible deacons, how dare they be a thorn in his side.

That's right, the apostles never gave financial statements. What are these people doing? And so he replaced the entire church board at that point, John, and he was able then to carry that on up until after he died.

Then after he died, the church ran out of money because I told you about all those schisms that happen, right? Well, as all those schisms happen, well guess what? A lot of the international money all dried up of all the other churches tithing back to faith assembly.

And the people continued the embezzlement scheme after he died, OK? And the church ran dry. It had ran out of money. And it was a very ugly situation without a lot of details going into it, John.

Actually, if people want on my website, John, I actually have a full video where I talk through a lot of this in detail, if people want more details. But at the end of the day, it turned out that Raymond Jackson had been directing a multi-decade embezzlement scheme, most likely behind the scenes as well.

In addition to all the schisms, in addition to all the duves, a date, an addition to all this other stuff, you know, and it's just, you know, it's so challenging coming from this to know just exactly what to do all those pieces, but there you go, John, the history of faith assembly.

It's unbelievable, man. And so like you said, there's so many puzzle pieces to this. I mean, faith assembly, remember, it's just one component of the mess that William Random created, and you, any are people who are watching or listening, think of that.

I mean, think of just, and this is the oldest one, right? What was the year that the faith assembly branch was split? Do you remember? So we split away in 1967, 1968, and, but the churches, like I said, this was the second message church.

The church was planted in the 50s, yeah, right along with some of the other oldest message churches. And this was one of the very first churches that was started by the people who believed William Random was Elijah.

Yeah. So early 50s, they said, according to the NAR, I just had this conversation with another person who's researching into Brannum, and they said, most of the NAR believed that it was like 1964, 65, he started whatever they call it in God's generals.

He went astray or whatever, but no, man, in the 1950s, he's creating these sects that look, they resemble Christianity, not at all. They resemble the other side of the evils in the world. I'll just say it like that in a nice way, but what they've created was not Christian at all.

And these are from the early years of William, Brannum's ministry, and keep in mind, some of these sects went into isolationism, kind of like the, you know, junior jacks and faith assembly. There's went on to build pillars that eventually grew into the NAR.

So this is a big, big mass that we're going through, and we've, we've just covered one, one pillar that grew into this mass. So I'm looking forward to getting into some of the other pillars.

For sure. You know, when I mentioned how we had that outpouring of the Holy Spirit in, you know, starting at 93, 94, just before the Toronto blessing happened. When the Toronto blessing happened, John, we sent spies, right?

We were taught, we were believing this is the false, anointed ones that, that William Brannum told us about. So we knew, I mean, we knew from the beginning of, of really the big, the things that kicked off the NAR that they were descended from the message.

We knew Paul Kane was involved in this. We knew Gordon Lindsay's people were involved in that from the very beginning. And we had in our belief set, based on William Brannum Sherman's false, anointed ones at the end time, we had the belief that at the end of days, when the true revival came to the, came to the message, a false revival would also start among the false, anointed ones.

And so when the Toronto blessing happened, right? after a John, that was too much of a coincidence for us. And yeah, Raymond Jackson sent spies into some of these places to bring back reports about what was going on.

And we have, I have a whole sermon recordings where they went through what the spies came back with, you know, and the reports and stuff. And basically the end of it is Raymond Jackson coming down to the conclusion, yes, I can confirm to you, this is the false and noided ones at the end time that are here with the false message.

And that is what we labeled that from the very beginning in our churches, John. And yeah, I mean, Paul Cain, I could bring up recordings through that, Paul Cain ended up getting ripped, left and right, him and leave ale had their falling out right in that time.

Perry Greens, at the end of the day, Perry Green was the last one to keep being friends with Paul Cain because everybody else was basically outraged that Paul Cain was involved with this false version of the message, you know.

And the main thing is, I know these people in the NAR maybe, the main thing was they A did not accept William Brannem as the Elijah and they B rejected the holiness standards, right?

So you've got these people who believe 80% of the message, but they've rejected William Brannem as Elijah and they not follow in the holiness standards. And it is just like a nathma, right? It's almost like, and looking at it on this side, I know it, the people in the NAR, it's kind of like cultural appropriation, you know what I mean?

Our churches had lived this from the early days, they had poured in with their hearts and souls to slave after all of these rules and work so hard to get this rapturing faith. And then to see like, these people kind of come and culturally appropriate the things of the message and steal and take these things and not give any credit back to the places that they come from.

Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit offensive to say even back then, and that's part of why we labeled it. Like, look, they've just got a portion of the message, they're doing the thing they're doing, but obviously this is the false revival to damn them all to hell, and we've got the real one here and we're gonna go to heaven, they're gonna stay behind and burn up.

And that is exactly how it was preached in our churches, John. Well, Charles, I don't usually do this because I have strong disagreements with many of these guys, but I have to say that in the case of Raymond Jackson and his false and noinid ones at the end time, I think he actually got that right.

He just wasn't telling the whole story. I agree, I think there was more than them, and I think a lot of them might have been in our camp, John.

Well, anyway, this has been fun. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and 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 episode. Historic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.