The Seven Thunders: Secret Origins of Quote-Preaching

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org and the author of Come Out of Her My People. Charles it's good to be back and in the irony of all things message related we today we're going to be talking about the seven thunders and and as my fate would have it and your fate too because you're not far from me a

massive thunderstorm has just passed by and I think I heard seven thunders. So in the way in which we were raised to believe this is a sign man. Oh my goodness the wrath of God apparently is being poured out on Jeffersonville. Did you see the size of that hail too? My goodness. It's unbelievable. It is this big around yeah.

Yeah pretty crazy. There must be something wicked in Jeffersonville. Maybe it's the message I don't know. It could be. I'm sure the Jeffersonville Mafia or the Jeffersonville message would think that I'm the evil person and I'm the cause of this. Who knows man? So in light of all of this I'm going to do something a little unusual that I never do and I think we have to do it. So I'm going to open our podcast by reading of scripture and if you go to Revelation chapter five there's a passage that says but who and have no one in

heaven or under earth could open the scroll and look at it and I wept and wept because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look inside. Then one of the elders said to me do not weep see the lion of the tribe of Judah the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and it's seven seals and what we're talking about today is a cascade of errors and even though that's slightly unrelated to what we're talking about with the something with the thunders what happened in message history is a cascade of

errors because William Brannum claimed that he opened the seven seals in direct rejection of that verse that no human male is able to open but he claimed and he manipulated his followers to believe that he opened the seven seals and if you read the passages from Revelation and understand the timeline of events that's being described Once you reach the seven thunders, you're right at the end time, if you're of the mindsets that this is Doomsday is imminent, and that's the way that he was teaching his people. So here Doomsday is imminent We have to know what is the secret of the seven thunders. We have to know because the seals have already been opened

So he set this stage and that one error where he blatantly rejected that passage from the book of Revelation that one error caused a massive set of splinter groups to emerge and we're going to be talking today about those splinter groups. Oh my John. Yes, you know one of the main Objectives as the message. I mean William Brannum. I would say taught that this was the ultimate The ultimate climax of his ministry was to deliver the rapturing faith to the church Yeah, and having delivered that rapturing faith the church could then go in the rapture

So and he was going to bring the rapturing faith. Well the rapturing faith in his teachings was contained in the seven thunders Whatever these seven thunders are and he said that lots of times And he kept his audience in the last years of his life right on the edge of their seats At any minute he is going to unveil the secret mystery of the seven thunders the secret mystery of the rapturing faith and Here's the thing when he preached the seventh seal sermon in 1963. Yeah, he did talk of Briefly I'll just say in passing about the seven thunders and

Then a few months later, you know, he's got some questions and questions and answers He mentions him just had here there, but then he starts saying more or less. I already preached the thunders I preached that I gave it to you. He's more or less saying he already preached it and Then he dies and everyone Was left on the edge of their seat. What in the world just happened?

Where's the rapturing faith? What is the rapturing faith? Did he preach it? Did he not preach it? Was it in the thunders? Do we have the thunders and so I'm telling you when he died This was like a life and death issue to the average message believer trying to figure out what in the world to do about these seven thunders and And No, none of the early groups are exempt none. I mean every last group had to come up with some Explanation for this John I know the sect of the message I come from we came up with the explanation that well

He didn't actually preach it and it's off in the future and somewhere now this new five-fold ministry is gonna Bring our seven thunders to us. That's what my sect of the message did. We just more or less postponed it all I think the sect of the message you come from John. They largely Came along and said, oh, yes, he did preach it And one preacher said it and it's these seven things and another preacher says and it's that seven things Third preacher says it's those seven things and nobody agrees what the seven things All right, that's kind of the sect of the message you come from as as the best now a few things are common all like marriage

And divorce always makes the list to serpent seed always makes the list But it's not now nobody wants nobody is really consistent about what it is Well, the group we're gonna start talking about today is a group within the message called we call them in the message the Thunders because they came up with a unique Explanation for this within the message community Which we're gonna explore a little bit today and they ended up branching out an entire Different sect of the message John and just before we get started talking about him There was one last thing I want to show you here. This is in my book

And I think I've showed this to you before this is just a little charge on and It shows the different major sects of the message and a few minor ones and and basically the year in which they split away From the main sect and if in terms of schisms The thunders was the second major schism to affect the message community So my sect the anti-church order people they left in six with 68 and 69 You had minor schisms in 70 70 172, you know and still kind of an ongoing schism between my sect and your sect

But as you get this 1974 you get the second major schism that gives you a third major group of message believers And it's the breakaway of the seven thunders and their leader is a man named Joseph Coleman Yeah, and that's what we're gonna start talking about today He brought back so many memories because as a child I was doomed to have an analytical mind and when I say doomed I mean literally I'm in a cult that wants you to defy all logic whatsoever and There are things that just didn't add up and I believed it fully

I I was up until I was age probably 36. I fully believed it and Then we made our escape from the message not long after but things like this that you know I heard time and time again He he told us the mystery that was behind those seals and he knew the seven thunders and like you said these guys would get up and preach and they would just very adamantly Declare that he did these things and One guy would say one set of things that he thought was what was meant None of which William Brannum said and then another guy would be preaching because we went it from church to church

We saw many ministers each person had their own idea of what these things were none of which he really said because he never said And the fact that he never said it and they continued to say that he did Simply because later in life he did claim that he knew the mysteries Well, what do you do with this man? If you have an analytical mind you just can't proceed And so I it was one of the things that I just fully Decided okay, I'm not meant to understand this and I don't understand why these guys can't get along but none of them agree with each other and I

don't want any part of that mess. There is so much that can be said, John. So much that can be said about the thunders now. You and I were not in the thunders personally, and I'm sure you've had lots of interviews.

I think you've interviewed some people that came from the thunders. The thunders call themselves generally the thunders inspiration. We'll explain why as we go through here, but they usually heard of themselves as the thunders inspiration.

And everybody else more or less just call them the thunders. And I'm sure people who come from those groups can give deeper and better explanation than what we're going to give today. Some of my family was in the thunders.

That's where a fair bit of my awareness of it comes from. There's also some good interviews out there from other people who've escaped the thunders that give a pretty good idea of what's going on in their group.

So anyways, as we start to talk about it, John, I think we first got to begin by talking about Joseph Coleman himself and how Joseph Coleman met William Brown. And there's some unusual things here.

I want to point out to our listeners about Joseph Coleman just to make sure that they catch it, that there's some weird things right on the front end, even before the thunders get launched.

And the first of those things, John, is when Joseph Coleman first converted to the message, he did so by visiting another message church that was already in New York City. So there was a church in New York City.

The pastor's name was Anthony Milano. And a deacon in that church was a man named Pat Tyler. Their church was affiliated with the independent assemblies of God, and they had accepted William Baranum as Elijah.

They were one of the very first message churches. And in 1961, Joseph Coleman and his close friend Orlando Hunt, which were two African-American men from Harlem, or the Bronx, I think they were actually from Harlem back then, and they ended up in the Bronx.

They went to Anthony Milano's church. And I kid you not. You can go back, you can listen to Joseph Coleman's testimony. What do you think this preacher happened to preach that Sunday when they went to his church?

He preached Serpent Seed Tool. Wow. Now, John, if you're a black person, and you walk into a white church, and the preacher starts preaching Serpent Seed at you, wouldn't that be a good sign that they're trying to get rid of you?

I don't. I don't mean to be, I mean, but that is apparently, like he didn't clue, I'm thinking he didn't clue in, John. I really think that he didn't clue in. You know, we've been told that this was a non-racist doctrine that William Brandham had, because he removed carefully the words black and Jew from his doctrine.

But think of the era in which all of this is being presented. Everybody who is in this religion, and all of it's very splinter groups, everybody knew that the white supremacists were saying this thing.

So whenever the message comes along, saying the same exact thing that the white supremacists are doing, and everybody's familiar that with this doctrine, they're doing it, they know it's a racist doctrine. like you, I'm shocked how on earth did they come into this? Anybody who's black should run screaming, but they don't. So when Joseph Coleman, you know, first encounter of that church, he actually says serpent seed that attracted him, John. And very strangely, he goes that same service. He says, he goes and he talks to Anthony Milano and he talks to Pat Tyler, who remembers of the New York

Mob, ladies and gentlemen, you know, that's a fairly well known message. In fact, even William Branves had that on tape. And they tell Joseph Coleman and Orlando Hunt, if you would like to see a real profit, you need to go to Jeffersonville. And so that's what they do, John. They pack up and they come to Jeffersonville and they come into the Bramham Tabernacle, a church which had been planted by the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, okay, from a church that originally, you know, he has attracted preaching serpent seed. And while I don't know Anthony Milano, and I can't say,

you know, what was going on there as far as racism or anything, but let me tell you, the Bramham Tabernacle was absolutely racist, okay, when he arrived there. And we have, like I have, for example, and I put the quotes in my book from the preachers talking about it when Joseph Coleman and Orlando Hunt showed up at the church. These were the first African-American preachers in the message, and they were the only African-American preachers throughout the entirety of William Brown's life.

And when Raymond Jackson would share the story with us, John, of how Coleman and Hunt attended the Bramham Tabernacle, he would go like this. He would say, one particular morning, that black family came into the Bramham Tabernacle. That's a direct quote, John. That's how he called, he would refer to them as that black family. You can go to Lee Vale's tapes. You know what Lee Vale called them? He called them the Thunder's Boys, John. That's what Lee Vale called. I'm telling you, they walked into the Tabernacle, and I suspect that everyone gasped when they walked in the door.

And that service, Orman Neville prophesied over Joseph Coleman, and he told him, go preach the message to thy people, you know, and get the out of here. You know, is the implication, you know what I mean? And there's records of that prophecy. Joseph Coleman tells that prophecy, Raymond Jackson tells that from everything I can tell, John, they were trying to get rid of them. That is my opinion of all the facts and all the old timers that I know. When they first showed up, they were trying to get rid of them. And it's like Joseph Coleman and them didn't quite take a hint.

And so they just keep coming back and coming back and coming back. And I guess eventually, the message community start to warm up to them because they could not be perturbed, right? Or with something else strange going on, I don't know. It's all very, very unusual, isn't it?

You know, there's so many problems here that it's unbelievable. So the Lee Vale thing, Lee Vale is calling them boys. You have to remember the era in which talking about. There are several racial slurs that have been lost to time and we don't hear them today's world because they're so bad. What happened was so bad that history has just kind of lost it and people don't realize. But whenever he says those boys, back during the era that William Brannum and the white supremacists were rising up, you did not honor a person with black skin, whether he's black or Jew or whatever, with being a man, he had to be a boy and you would

say those boys. So it's a derogatory term that they're using. Just widespread. I've got a list of them. I think you'd be type a racial profiling on my website. You can see it's all throughout the message and everybody who's in the era knows that that's the way this is. But you mentioned, so you mentioned a funny thing and I should probably put a little disclaimer. You talked about the mob being involved with this church and William Brannum openly admitting, right? I'll never forget publishing that whenever I first started my website and I had just switched from a blog to

actually publishing research articles, I published William Brannum's statement about Pat Tyler being a ex-Mofia. I think he said Hitman and it wasn't long after I started receiving warning phone calls. So by the time we're at the end of this episode, if you see me disappear shortly after, you'll know that it's because we talked about this thing. You mean it won't be the rapture? It won't be the rapture now. Oh my goodness, John. So Joseph Coleman and then came to the tabernacle. That was 1961 was the year they first started coming to the tabernacle, 1961. I want our listeners to be

very clear. They started attending the Brannum tabernacle off and on in 1961. They were known to the message community of Jeffersonville from 1961, okay? Now after that, Joseph Coleman assisted William Brannum in performing multiple discernment hoaxes at his revival meetings. And I think that I want to point this out to people that way. Maybe they can get an idea of how how listening to William Brannum on tape was actually, you know, you listen to him do the discernment and you don't know the backstory of what's going on. It can look like he's given this really amazing discernment, but the

whole thing is actually a hoax. And I want to give you two examples of that with Joseph Coleman. Because again, Joseph Coleman was known to the message community in Jeffersonville, William Brannum's church. And he came when William Brannum was there a number of times before these discernment hoaxes happened. Now in 1962, John, April the 22nd, William Brannum preached a sermon called Restoration of the Bride Tree. By this point in time, William Brannum had been acquainted with Joseph Coleman for...

over a year. He had been coming to the brand of tabernacle off and on for over a year. Let me read to you a quote from that sermon. William Brandham said, it's a colored man setting right back here looking at me. It's his. He's got someone that's sick. That's right. As Matic and Sinus, that's right. You touched him. You're not from here, sir. You're from the East, the Northeast. This way, you come from New York. Yes, sir. That's right.

You're Mr. Hunt. You believe me now? All right, sir. That's good. That's your friend setting by you. Prang. You believe me, sir? You believe me to be God's prophet? Brother Coleman answers affirmatively. You come here with him. Your name is Coleman. Yes. Hallelujah.

And you're praying for your father? Yes. That's got a stroke. That's the say of the Lord. Hallelujah. Believe. Go believing. Now, it'll leave you. Now, John, William Brandham New Joseph Coleman for over a year before that quote, yet in that sermon, he pretends like he didn't know him, right? So as, as you can see, William Brandham pretended like he didn't know people that he did and he pretended that he didn't know things that he very well almost certainly knew. And to the average person sitting in his audience, hearing him do this, would believe that he just had a miraculous discernment. When, in fact,

he was telling somebody who had been coming to his church over here that he knew about his sick father. I mean, I think the average person going to church knows about their other person in the bench is sick fathers. Okay. That's not an amazing feat. That was 1962, John, in April. I want to give you a second one. This is a year later now. Let's go to 1963, the month of July, this, the seventh day. This is a sermon called the indictment.

So this is a year after the first discernment that's on tape, John. I'll never forget my surprise whenever I started examining what we called discernment and the shock to find out that some of it was just like you said, he already knew some of these things, but it was presented in such a way that if you were in the audience, you believe that he had the power of God and he knew these things through divine inspiration, but there were logical reasons why he knew some of the things that he knew. I was also a little surprised because

what we call discernment in no way, shape, or form matches what biblical discernment is. And I was 36 years. I read the Bible continuously during my time in the message. I should have known, but I just had no idea that they've taken the biblical meaning of discernment and it got completely lost. The irony of which is if you had biblical discernment, you would have left it long ago. There are a number of these sort of cases that were aware of, that I'm aware of, John, maybe someday down the road, we should do an episode where we go

through all of the discernments of William Brannum that we know are hoaxes, right, like this one. And just point out, yeah, William Brannum knew these people for years and he He almost certainly knew what was wrong before this ever happened.

And here's the thing, Joseph Coleman for years would talk about this as part of his great testimony. I sat in the revival and the prophet called out and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then he failed to say, but I have been going to his church for a year prior to that and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like he left, he left out all those critical details, you know, for people to know, you know.

And so unless you kind of very closely listen and watch what they say, you would not know that William, that Joseph Coleman had been coming off and onto the brand of tabernacle for over a year before William Brandham made this discernment, right?

And so it is entirely possible. And likely that this is just another, this is a hoax discernment. I mean, there's nothing breathtaking about it at all. And here what he's got over a sinus problem.

This guy got healed of a cold for goodness sakes. Praise the Lord. He got healed from a sinus cold. Praise God, John. I mean, it's, it's nothing. It's nothing. And to make this into something, it's just absolutely ridiculous.

And all the while we're being raised in a religion that is based off of this as the central figure who's doing these things that are very obvious fakes, right? And while we're listening to these sermons, I can remember countless sermons like this.

They would point to all of the other people in the healing revival and they would say, now they had a fake gift and they were doing stage tricks, but our profit was different than that.

I'm glad Joseph Coleman sinus has got healed. So I guess moving on, this went on and William Brandham actually commissioned Joseph Coleman in Orlando Hunt as ministers in about a year after that 1963.

That's all on recording. And the same thing, William Brandham basically privately told them to go establish a church as far away from Jeffersonville as possible and he sent them back to New York City and that's when they opened local Christian church, John.

And I want you to think about this, John, just between you and me, are you aware of any other people that moved to Jeffersonville and tried to start attending the tabernacle regularly and William Brandham said, no, please go to a church as far away, go start a church far away from here and don't stay?

Are you aware of anybody besides Joseph Coleman in Orlando Hunt, they did that too. It's so rude, man. So again, I really think the evidence bears out that they were trying to get rid of them.

Everybody else, he's like, no, come on, let's go with me to Arizona, man. No, I mean, it's like, no, please go back to New York City. On the other side of the country. It doesn't add up, John.

So I really do think that the evidence bears out that the local message people were trying to get rid of Joseph Coleman in Orlando Hunt, every time they showed up. Yeah, and even William Brandham and Orman Neville were involved in trying to get rid of them.

That's my take and that's what a lot of the old timers I talk to who are around back there when it happened were telling me. These guys were never accepted as anything by the mainstream of the message communities men who could maybe be missionaries to black people.

That's the only basis on which they were accepted why William Brownham was alive. And I know that's kind of, that's really sad and unfortunate to say that. And I'm sure people in the thunders would be, would never believe that to be true at all.

But I'm telling you, they were never accepted by the main branch of the message, by the sect I come from, by the sect you come from, is anything more than possibly missionaries to black people when they joined the message.

And that's exactly what the prophecies that were given to them at the brand of tabernacle were about. My family, the people we know were there would all this happen. And that's, that's the, that's their side of the story.

So there is never any chance that Joseph Coleman would ever have been accepted as any sort of a senior leader or senior figure in the message community. That was never, ever in the realm of possibility.

And so when 1974 rolled around John and some of the stuff with the thunder started happening, there was no chance the mainstream of the message was going to follow him in what happened. Indeed, because of the racism and you, you'll actually find Joseph Coleman talked about the racism quite a bit directly.

He had, there's some quotes I could share with you. He actually had a spat over the racism with multiple different message preachers. And oh, Perry Green came to New York City and tried to convince Joseph Coleman and Orlando Hunt on the cursa ham, John, for goodness sakes.

And he had it out with Perry Green over the cursa ham. I mean, they were aware from very early on that they were, had joined a racist community of people. And they're flat out, you know, arguing over the racist doctrines from the 60s with the people.

That stuff was brewing, brewing all along and Joseph Coleman actually outed all kinds of racist people. But something about him never seemed to grasp, but they were just teaching what William Brannum had taught them, right?

I don't think it's like he never, I don't know if he didn't connect the dots or he was, I don't understand it myself personally. How, how that he didn't realize that William Brannum was the guy who taught them all this stuff that was racist.

You know, it's really odd, Charles, this whole movement that was created reminds me of the Dave Chappelle skit where he's, you know, Dave Chappelle is a black man and he has a skit where he's blind and he's a clansman and he doesn't know that he's black, the clansman that doesn't know he's black.

That's really what I think of whenever I think of this sect that spun off. And like you said, they had to have known everybody who's in the era and understands the racial slurs that are in the message and that are being spewed by the message leaders they have to know.

So I have no doubt that they knew, but what's really odd is that this grew to such a large following in this plunger group after all of these things started to, after the era began to shift and change whenever...

Well, these racial slurs were lost to time. There are many people I've like you said I've interviewed some on the podcast. I've got lots of friends who were from that sect They have no idea Whenever they were in it that this was tied to white supremacy It wasn't until after they escaped and started researching that they're like, oh my gosh I can't believe this and yet the whole sect was started by a black, you know black couple of men Well, the odd thing about it is once you're faced with that What do you do with it? How do you how do you reconcile that a black man created a sect in a white supremacy cult and

I've been actually asked that by some news media too because there are you know large parts of South Africa and and Be out all throughout the African continent where this is really flourishing these ideas and They the people just have no clue that it's a very racial doctrine that started all of this I Would agree with you. I think somehow They're oblivious to it, you know, they don't want to believe it I don't want I mean it but I mean it was definitely definitely what it was. I mean It can be all established to even the quotes of William Brandeum on tape without even going to all the stuff

He said privately Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism Transition through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation You can learn this and more on William Brandeum Historical Research's website William-Brandeum.org On the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley Steven 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-Brandeum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support Joseph Coleman did one made one very important innovation to the message Community before he broke away into his own sect John and let me talk about that just a minute. So As the sect of the message I come from Was you know launching off and to go and you know full in five-fold ministry and continuing on without the profit

The sect you come from was doubling down into the tape church model, right? That was what was taken off Joseph Coleman starts to pioneer a sort of a middle ground Between those two factions like he chooses a position that both sides can kind of live with And what Joseph Coleman does John is he becomes the father of quotes preaching. Okay? He is everyone, I believe everyone I've ever known agrees this to be true. He is the man who originated the practice of quotes preaching.

And what is quotes preaching? Okay, so quotes preaching in the message is you preach your sermon primarily by using quotes of William Prandom. Instead of quoting the Bible and the Bible said this and the Bible said that and the Apostle Paul said this and the Jesus said that you instead preach your sermons by saying and the prophet said this and William Prandom said that and the prophet said this and and it's basically a compilation of quotes out of William Prandom sermons. Instead of going and studying the Bible as your primary source for a sermon, you study the spoken word literature as your

primary source for a sermon and your sermon is about what the prophet preached. That is quotes preaching and quotes preachers come in two varieties John the way that I consider it. You've got hard quotes preachers where that is their whole sermon, their entire sermon and everything they say the whole program is just reading out the spoken word books and quoting William Prandom.

Then you've got the softer quotes preachers who it's kind of a mix. Some of their sermons come in from the Bible and some of their sermons coming from the the spoken word book. So it's kind of a softer version of quotes preachers. Joseph Coleman was a hard card quotes preacher. It was it was all quotes from Prandom all the time and as he did that John that actually caught on and lots of other preachers started to pick up that practice and style because it it was a good middle ground position between the tape faction John and in the faction

who still wanted live preaching. We still have live preaching but we're just saying what the tapes say. You get it? So you can see how that was able to appeal and kind of thread a needle between the two extremes of those early sex.

So that's what Joseph Coleman did and I think that is an incredibly important innovation because today John I believe almost all of the preaching in most sex of the message is quotes preaching and it's on a model to what basically Joseph Coleman pioneered and spread from other preachers in his church. In the 36 years that I was in the message I can't think of one single sermon that was not quote preaching. What these guys would do and it's really odd when you think about it. Some some ministers wanted to preach from the Bible and they would get up and they would reference the passages they may be

Ephesians for. Today we're going to be preaching from the book of Ephesians chapter four and what they would do is they would find all of the quotes that William Brandham said about the passage whatever it was and they would repeat those rather than going directly to the text and in some cases what William Brandham said about the passage from the Bible was no way shape or form Related to what was in the Bible. So you're hearing the sermon and what they're doing is it's overloading the language in the text So after I left and I began to realize this and I'm reading the Bible just for what it says and not for what has been programmed in my head

In many cases what I would find is just reading it for itself reading the Bible for itself Was polar opposite from what was being preached from behind the pulpit as you think about quotes preaching just a little bit You realize in order to quote William Brannum you obviously have to have access to a lot of his literature or tapes and in order to compile a sermon You really need to start getting his sermons indexed right and Concordances and stuff so you can examine all of it right right right so quotes preaching John is what Begat the need for all of the message

Concordances and indexes and stuff right because the preachers needed these things in order to Develop their sermons and as that happens John It's actually the advent of quote preaching more than anything else that begins the process of generating all these message Concordances and message indexes because they need easy ways to look up through William Brannum sermons and And as that begins to happen The message begins to compile indexes and it's a lot of time just the sermon It's the ministers doing the quotes preaching that are starting to compile the indexes as their own personal aides

And then some of them start to get sold out, you know as Literature to their followers or you know eventually get absorbed up into some of their central institutions Well, this is the very first Index of William Brannum sermons that was ever made John wow this was made by David Mammalus and He actually goes by the Apostle David Mammalus when you you know look in his stuff This was published in 1969. I think this is actually a second edition of this book But he made the very original indexes and look here they if you notice here the naming on the tapes

You know the inventions of the numbering systems for Brannum tapes This is all when all this stuff is coming together John Because you know you got to have an indexing system for all of this and so This is developing right alongside the development of all this quote preaching and by the time you get into You know the early 70s they start to have quite a quite a start of set of these together So you see these are small John these are they're not enough to start really doing it and quotes preaching didn't take off Huge until the late 70s John because it took that long to make a lot of the good literature

To do that when you're in the early 70s Quotes preaching was a lot worse You could only do it if you had listened to lots of tapes and had a good memory, okay? That's how the early tape guys the early guys had to do it But it's time went on and more and more literature like this started to come together and they started to actually build big, thick, concordances where you could, it's like the old school style of keyword searches, right? It was what the old, big, thick, concordances was, you could look through and you could begin to put sermons together out of keywords and

William Brenn sermons. And so those were all generally available starting by the mid and late 70s. And that really saw the explosion of quote preaching. I would say from the 1980s forward quote preaching is normal in the average message church, but it was kind of a gradual, a gradual introduction starting in the very late 60s with Joseph Coleman. And then the popularization of that practice and then the creation of the material to enable it to prolifer, proliferate.

So while the vast majority of Christians who do actual study before they're preparing their sermons, use like the strong concordance or some of these websites that have an index of the Bible, the message ministers, I can't think of any that need to do it because you're not preaching from the Bible, you're preaching from random. So they use this instead of like the strong concordance.

Yeah, very true, very true. So that's a little inside baseball on how the quote preaching started and got going. And I think that's really important to point that out to people because quote preaching is a very important method of preaching in the Bible, right? If you think in the in the message, there's kind of three ways that sermons get delivered. There's the tape church model. There is the what I would call more the standard fivefold ministry model, where there's still more or less doing Bible preaching with maybe some very soft quote pre quotes in there. And then there's the just the full on quotes

preachers. Those are kind of the three ways sermons get delivered in the message. Now that that was going on. Now as as you come up to the year 1974, John, that is what leads to the creation of the thunder's inspiration sect of the message. In that year, Joseph Coleman was actually down in Trinidad. He was visiting a church that Bob Lambert had planted in Trinidad. If you remember, I think we've mentioned Bob Lambert before. He was a man from Connecticut.

He was a missionary whose home base was Joseph Coleman's church in New York before that. It had been Anthony Milano's church. And he is planting message churches in and around the Caribbean. He's plant churches in Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Jamaica, you know, all through that area. And Joseph Coleman is a natural fit department with him. And that's what a lot of what Joseph Coleman was doing in the early years, John. He was actually working with Bob Lambert on those mission outreach, right? Because they were non-white people that Bob Lambert was going to throughout the Caribbean. So Joseph

Coleman could could go there and, you know, and partake a stuff. Joseph Coleman did not do very much preaching to the, you know, I think there was a couple times he maybe preach to the white community in Jeffersonville, but he never preached at any of our churches ever that I know of. I mean, he came, like he was allowed to come, but they never let him preach that I ever remember, ever heard of, right? Even at the tabernacle, I don't know. Did Joseph Coleman ever preach at the tabernacle? I mean, not that I know of, right? If he did, I'd never

heard him. Exactly. And he maybe preached at the Tucson tabernacle once, but you know, he was never even when he was still in fellowship with the main sect in our sect. He wasn't really a allowed to preach to our people. Again, and that was a racial, there was racial reasons behind that back then. So anyways, he's mainly working with the mission stuff in the Caribbean in the years after William Brandham dies and to African people in the United States. And he actually played a fairly significant role in recruiting a lot of the early African message community, African-American

message community. And so if you want to kind of think about what he, his niche is, his niche is in the early message community, his niche is a senior minister who was ordained by William Brandham, who was doing what Orman Neville had prophesied to him to do, preaching the message to his people.

And so he's carving out a niche of, you know, non-white message believers where he has a really big sweat. What's really odd, Charles, is that William Brandham did go into other countries and he did plant some small communities. But mostly what I saw emerging with when William Brandham was alive was lateral rain type communities. They weren't, many of them I wouldn't say our message followers.

They're just lateral rain followers, right? And William Brandham was a key figure in that. But then after he died, people like Coleman started spreading the message abroad. And that's whenever you really see it begins to explode into what it became today. So I can't say Coleman created all of it, but men like Coleman after William Brandham's death started spreading this around. And many of them like Coleman had such extreme weird doctrines that the core sect of the message kind of disavowed many of these guys, right? They didn't go off into the, we would call it the

thunders nonsense. So it's those types of groups that are spreading into other countries. Now look at today what we have in the other countries. I've shared some posts and videos and different images of the people there. It's a completely different religion. It's not even similar to Christianity. So the thunders is a very unique sect of the message. And we're definitely going to talk through all, you know, it's unique features. Joseph Coleman, one thing I will say about Joseph Coleman is he was a very passionate preacher. And he had a really good, strong, you know, base kind of a voice. He captivated his audiences. He pulled them in. He was a very talented speaker.

In fact, I think John personally of all the message preachers back then, He might have been the best speaker, actually, of all message preachers. If you go back and listen to his tape, he had a way to draw his audience's in and hold their attention.

It was very dramatic stuff. Maybe we can get a little clip of him preaching that we could show the listeners, but he's a very dramatic, very, very effective communicator in preacher in that way.

And I think that personal persona was a big draw to him. And you're right. He's drawing a pretty substantial following among overseas people in the years before he splits way into his own sect and then among African-American and Latino people in the United States.

Glory to God. Hallelujah. Yes, sir. See that the end may be seated, that the end of the Pentecostal age, when this message comes, then he automatically turns it into a brown age, a seed age, seed time, and when that's in all the life, that's in that shock, leaves that shock, then it becomes seed time.

And that's what your pastor was doing last summer, the seed, the seed, and good ground, and good ground. That's what I was doing, praise God. Hallelujah. You may be seated. Okay, here we go.

Everybody's ready here. Seven Sealed Book, page 128, and at the end of the Pentecostal age, we are supposed to receive a cordon to the Word as God helped me tonight to show you through here that we are to receive a messenger that will take all these loose ends out there and reveal the whole secret of God for the rapture of the church.

I told you what from between now and June 30th, what I'm doing in his pulpit, I'm trying to bring to you the reality of the presence of Jesus Christ, that you might be healed, you might be sealed, you might be delivered.

That's what I'm here for, nothing less. Hallelujah. You can break up. I'm trying to bring to you the reality of the presence of Jesus Christ, that you might be healed, you might be sealed, you might be delivered.

That's what I'm here for, nothing less. Hallelujah. You can break out of your skins right now. You can break into the spirit of the living God. Hallelujah. Maybe seated. Then there's coming for seven mysterious thunders that are not even written at all.

That's right. Amen. We have 37th thunders will be revealed in the last days in order to get the bride together for rapture and three. Because what we got right now, we wouldn't be able to do it.

He said it in 1963, and here it is, 1991, and they still don't have it. They're missing all, but it is dead. That's how I know the 7th thunders. has got the thunder. That's why I know it's got to give rapture faith. That's how I know it's a gather of people together.

It's a show of how to prepare to get out of here. It's the brassy five of praise God. That's how I know it's got to utter. It's got to utter. After you have learned your ABCs.

Hallelujah. Let's talk about the thunder's doctrine and just exactly when that came about and what happened. That led to the schism. As I mentioned, it started in 1974. Joseph Coleman was at that time working in Trinidad, holding some special meetings there. I'm sorry, Puerto Rico.

He was in Puerto Rico holding some special meetings there with Bob Lambert. If you remember, Bob Lambert was the main message missionary in the Caribbean in those years. Joseph Coleman gets the revelation that the seven thunders is the seven virtues in second Peter chapter two, or rather second Peter chapter one, which William Brandon preached in his sermon, the stature of a perfect man.

So William Brandon preached his sermon, stature of a perfect man, and in that sermon, William Brandon basically gave a step a ladder of steps you climb to become a perfect human being, perfect person, right?

And so what Joseph Coleman did is he said that sermon was the revelation of the seven thunders and the seven thunders were the seven virtues in that set of scriptures and that sermon. And so as he does that, he begins to really make a lot of headway and it starts to it really starts to capture a lot of people's intentions, inventions, the textures their mind because everybody, even in those years, is still desperate to figure out what is this rapturing faith, right?

1977 is common ladies and gentlemen. We've got to get this rapturing faith, right? And so Joseph Coleman is the first person that really comes out with a what seems like a concrete set of steps the person can follow to get the rapturing faith. And he says it's William Brandon sermon, the statue of a perfect man. Now, I want to read you the seven virtues in that in that sermon and that passage of scripture and just just demonstrate to you John the problem that most of the early message community had. So if you go to the second Peter chapter one and you

read the seven virtues, the seven thunders, they are, and I'll read them in order, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, love. It's eight. It's not seven. And it's not seven, John. And so what do you do with that? Okay, so this is at a very basic level. It's not even seven. It's eight. And so, and then you have the conflicting statements on tape where William Brannum said that the seven thunders was other things. There's a spot on tape where he said the thunders was serpent seed and marriage into force. So you've got these conflicting things, right? And, and then you've got, you know, what he said when

he preached the seal. So anyways, naturally everybody is like, Joseph Coleman, you are, crazy. You know, it's not seven. It's eight. And no, and like the main sec doesn't want nothing to do with it, John, the sec to the message, I come from doesn't want nothing to do with it. And, um, and now, of course, everyone in the message believes the stature of a perfect man. And, and the basic concept that he was preaching, you need, you must follow the stature of perfect man steps to be perfect. Well, everybody in the message believes that. Like that was not the least bit controversial. What was controversial was him saying, this

is the seven thunders. That was really the whole controversy around it. And of course, he doubled down on that. And, and it grew and become more expansive as the years go on. But as that happens, John, in 1974, you know, things start to go sideways and his sec begins to split off onto its own path. Um, and we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about that a little bit, um, in our next episode. So, but that I think sets the stage very well. We've talked about who, how Joseph Coleman came into this, how he became

important, what he was doing that was so dramatic, how he was drawing all these people. And now we set the stage, he has now got the revelation of what the seven thunders are, how to obtain the rapturing faith. And it's to get the seven plus one virtues of second Peter, chapter one, which William Brennan preached in the sermon, the stature of a perfect man.

It's so unbelievable, man. And it goes back to my point, once you start quotes preaching, you really don't know what's in the Bible, because you're preaching what William Brennan said was in the Bible, which in many cases was not what was actually there.

I know it is amazing. I look forward to continuing this journey with the thunders in our next episode. And again, I, I would love to invite, and John, you to have more interviews from people from the thunders sect that maybe can give more insight than we can into the goings on in the thunders. And I'm certainly offering the things that I know. And then from the vantage point of, of our sex of the message, absolutely. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or if you want to reach out and contact us on the web so

that you can share your story, you can find us at William-Brandom.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org. For more about the history of William, Brandon, and the healing revivals, read, come out of her, my people. And for more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read, weaponize religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.