Mysteries Never Revealed: Inside the Seven Thunders Cult

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 to talk all things seven thunders. It's a little bit odd for me when we were talking through the last episode we did together. In the main sect, we had our own version of what was the divine mysteries that William

Brandham really intended to give us, but never actually gave us. And we would have people, I've heard ministers debate it, I've even been in like small gatherings of men's groups where they're trying to give what they think was what he really meant by that, my brother. And we always focused on what was the mystery behind the seven seals, and it's odd to think about these different sects as they're spinning off of this, because the whole thing was basically a mystery religion, like the ancient mystery cults. There's this divine mystery, and if you can just figure it

out, you've got it, my brother, you're going to make it into heaven. And because the leader never really comes out and says, what is the mystery, everybody has to try to figure it out. And so while we were in the main sect, we're scrambling to figure out what was that mystery behind the seven seals. And he said that he revealed it to us, but he never really revealed anything. What was it?

They're doing the same thing in the thunders groups. So it's really odd when you think about how these mystery cults develop and spread and grow and turn into things that never were intended to be in the first place. Oh, I know what you mean, John. And every branch of the message is this way. We all just developed over the years slightly different terminology to talk about it, but it's all the exact same concept. William Branham convinced everybody that the secret for escaping the doomsday and going in the rapture was in his seven seal sermons somewhere, somehow

the rapturing faith was in there. And when he preached the seventh seal, he preached in passing, he talked about the seven thunders. And I know the sect of the message I come from quite a few out there, as well as the group that we're continuing to talk about today, the group of the message called the thunders. They believe the rapturing faith was specifically in the seven thunders of the the Seal, and but will you, Brannum, never gave a clear explanation of what that was, never once.

And he left his, like I said before, he left his audiences on the edge of his their seats, that any minute he was going to tell them the secret of the thunders, the secret of the rapturing faith, you know, the secret of the mystery, the seven seals, the final great mystery that was going to let them escape the pent coming doomsday and, you know, enraptured glad of the world and glorified bodies.

And everybody had that expectation, and he even started to say at different points towards the end of his life that he had, in fact, gave them the thunders. And then other times he said, no, it's going to come in the future.

And then he's, no, I've already give it to you. He kind of whiffed, whiffled back and forth. And so when he died, a lot of people were convinced that he had actually given them the thunders, because he had said he gave them the thunders actually went, especially in that question and answer series that he did towards the end of his life.

He said, yeah, they asked him, was the thunders revealed? He said it was revealed in the sermon on the seven seals. So Joseph Coleman, though, that's what we're talking about today, the thunders Joseph Coleman, he developed the unique idea, John, that the seven thunders were the seven virtues that William Brennan preached in this sermon, the stature of a perfect man.

And across the message, the stature of a perfect man's sermon is one of another one of William Brennan's most famous, most precious of message sermons, John. I'll say personally, and I don't know about you, but when I was in the message, William Brennan's stature of a perfect man's sermon was my favorite sermon, John.

I think maybe everybody had a first sermon favorite. That was my favorite message sermon, actually. And I know that one. I mean, of all of the sermons, I know that one backwards and forwards, John.

And every sect of the message, you know, believe what William Brennan said in that sermon, but only the thunders sect believed it was the seven thunders. Nobody else believed that that is a unique belief of their sect of the message.

And the reason, John, as I started to mention in our last episode, when we started talking about the thunders, one of the reasons is, is just counting them. This is one of the reasons a lot of the sects of the message rejected it.

And when William Brennan preached his sermon on the seven thunders, he drew this diagram up in the church. This is William Brennan's famous pyramid diagram. We could spend a long time talking about this diagram, but I'm not going to dissect this entire thing or what it all means.

So what I want to point out to you is that as you come up the middle layer of this pyramid, there is the seven virtues of first Peter, chapter one, or rather second Peter, chapter one.

And you can count them faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness. Uh oh. It's got love at the top. John, it's not seven. It's eight. And this is the, this is like the problem, John. How can this be, you know, most of the people in the message, when Joseph Coleman come out of this, they're saying, it's not seven. It's eight. So how do you turn the eight virtues into the seven thunders? It just doesn't quite add up for, for the other sex of the message. And so while they absolutely love William Brenn of sermon, they're saying, no, this can't be the seven thunders. This

is the eight virtues. And they, you know, they, it just doesn't, they don't believe that this is one of this, this is the seven thunders. And so, but anyways, this is what Joseph Coleman doubled down on. And this is what led to a lot of his alienation was his absolute insistence that this, that these seven, these eight virtues were the seven thunders. And as that went on, over time, it really evolved. It did evolve. Like his idea of what the thunders was was sort of this ever-changing idea. At a certain point in time, and I believe it was not long after, you know,

within a year or two that he came up with the idea that the virtues were the thunders, he also began to come up with the idea that the thunders were echoes. And as I mentioned in our past episode, Joseph Coleman was the father of quotes preaching. He started the practice of quotes preaching, and a lot of people copied him. And one of the ways that people got, got to the place where they were copying him was his sermons on that the thunders were echoes. So not only were the thunders these virtues, the thunders were also seven echoes. And the seven echoes were seven people echoing

the words of the prophet, John. And so when they would quote preach, they were being an echo of the thunders. And then when they, when they quoted the things that William Brannum said about the seven plus one virtues, they were fulfilling the scriptures on the thunders by echoing what the prophet said about the virtues. Okay. And so this is, this is how the whole thing starts really rolling.

And it starts to draw lots and lots and lots of people in the message in over time, several thousand people back, you know, in the in the early 70s end up getting absorbed and drawn into this because 1977 is approaching, right? William Brannum has said the doomsday of 77. Everybody back then in the message pretty well is saying 1977 is it, ladies and gentlemen. And Joseph Coleman is really the only one back at that time who's offering this sort of a concrete set of steps, you know, follow these steps. You can have the rapturing faith and you can escape with me in 1977.

And that was what Joseph Coleman really was honing into in 1974 when he started teaching the stature of a perfect man and drawing in a large segment of the early message community into that belief with him. And you researchers, who are watching and not listening to the audio only, and noticing that image that Charles held up of the stature of the perfect man, you'll be familiar with it because Chris Reed at Morningstar preached almost an entire sermon that was, I'm not gonna say that he pledgerized random, but it was eerily close.

I'll just say it like that. And I don't, I don't remember him mentioning that he had largely taken the entire sum of that sermon from random statements, but in the background as he's preaching the stature of a perfect man, he's got that same image hanging in the background.

And it, again, he doesn't say where it comes from or anything, and to the audience member who's just sitting there listening, oh my gosh, Chris Reed has this divine revelation. But to us from the brand-of-religion who's seen it before, well, that's William brand-of-stature of a perfect man, like you Charles, I grew up and that was one of my favorite sermons because we were instructed we had to have rapturing faith or we would be doomed like the rest of the world.

And how do you get there? You have to have the stature of a perfect man. That's it exactly, John. I mean, this is for most sex of the message in all of the early sex of the message.

The stature, this was the carrot everybody was chasing. Now, not everybody used the pyramid diagram, okay? Like my sect of the message basically erase the pyramid lines, yeah, we did the rest of it.

Raymond Jackson didn't believe in the pyramid, okay? He dropped that belief. But all the rest of it, yeah, I mean, we absolutely believed it. And William Brandham, we could spend so long talking about this chart.

He merged all of this into pyramidology in a really bizarre way. And Joseph Coleman, you know, honed in on all of the pyramidology stuff and he kept all of that going. And probably one of the most defining features of a thunderous church is they will have this pyramid diagram very prominently displayed in their church.

Joseph Coleman's church, for example, there was a diagram, I bet you, John, that diagram was 20 feet wide by 20 feet tall in his church. It was massive this diagram at his church. I mean, I think we can get a picture with him standing in front of it.

But all of the, all of their churches have this. Bruce Dalton's church, for example, the one down in Trinidad, he has a pyramid like this, John, attached to the top of his church when you walk into the church.

You're walking under the giant pyramid. You know, the message churches of this persuasion worship this pyramid diagram in a really odd way. And it is, it is always featured very prominently. It's always a pretty good giveaway that you're in a thunderous church if you see this diagram really prominently featured.

And not that the other sects don't use it as well here and there, but they don't pay that same level of attention. into it as the Thunder's Churches do. Yeah, like you said, it's everywhere in the brand.

It's one of the distinct marks of Brannemism, but they do seem to enjoy it a lot more than we did in the main sect at least Thunder's Churches. It's weird when you think of the relics.

I was actually working on a research article and I'm going through some of the relics that we had, not just in Brannemism, but this was widespread laterane, some of these relics because he's teaching these things.

Brannemism is in the laterane movements. And so things like the Halo photograph. I don't know if you caught it, but in my discussions with Chenle Ross, he was coming from the hypercarismatic movement. And he believed that the Halo photograph was a real photograph of something supernatural.

And he came to the conclusion that what the man was preaching was not of God. So even if it was supernatural, he totally rejected the photograph as anything holy. But in the churches, in Brannemism, they have, often they have the Halo photograph on one side of the pulpit and the cloud, the 1963 mystery cloud and on the other side.

That's today in today's world, but think back in laterane whenever everybody in the movement is thinking that this is truly God manifesting himself in the leader of the laterane movement, William Brannem. And he's giving these things.

Well, one of the things he gives is this stature of the perfect man sermon. So I have no doubt that you're going to find this all throughout Pentecostalism, probably even in some of the charismatic movements.

We definitely have it in the NAR with Chris Reed. So there's no telling how far and wide that this thing has spread. So we've mentioned a few times in episodes leading up to this one, a man named Bob Lambert.

And Bob Robert Lambert was a man who was living in Connecticut. He's actually from the Jeffersonville area here, John. He had moved to New York City for a period of time before landing in Connecticut.

And he was in attendance at Anthony Milano's church in New York City. And then later on, he would attend a Joseph Coleman's church in New York City. And he also had started his own small church in Connecticut.

In addition to that, he was doing a lot of the mission work, the early mission work into the Caribbean, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, that area. And he really is responsible for establishing the earliest message churches in the Caribbean.

And so Bob Lambert is working out of that church with Joseph Coleman and Anthony Milano. And something strange happens, John, and I don't fully understand this. Probably some of the people who were in the thunders in the very early days could give us more information than I am able to share and know about this.

But something happened, Anthony Milano, he ended up moving to Arizona with the deity cult and all those people. And whether he was in the deity cult himself, I'm not sure. But he ended up moving to Arizona.

And before, after that, there was some sort of a power struggle that unfolded there in the message community in New York. And Joseph Coleman and Bob Lambert really struggled for power from what I can, from what I understand.

And it ends up with Joseph Coleman and Bob Lambert kind of having a falling out. And some of this stuff about the thunders was starting to develop before they had their falling out. And some people actually credit Bob Lambert with coming up with the seven thunders with their idea about it being the statue of a perfect man.

I don't know if that's true or not, but that some people will credit Bob Lambert with actually coming up with this concept rather than Joseph Coleman that we've talked about. But as that all unfolds, something really unusual happens, John.

And in 1973, I believe it was in August or or July, Bob Lambert was murdered. And we can share the newspaper reports about it, but they never caught the man who murdered him. Whoever it was, they think it was, they obviously, they pushed him off a cliff is what happened.

Like, whack them in a head and shoved him off the side of a cliff, John. And his wallet was missing. So, you know, maybe he was mug. People actually got a bit of a glimpse of the person who did it.

His wife was not was was not too very far away from him when it happened. And but they never caught the man who murdered Bob Lambert. And you know, I'll say it was rumored, John.

It was rumored that that had something to do with his falling out with Joseph Coleman that was going on then and things in that church. And remember, I mean, Bob Lambert was in bed with criminals, okay?

They were former members of the New York mob in that church. They were Joseph Coleman. We know in later years, his family was arrested for Ponzi scheme and all that, which we'll talk through all that.

These people were all hard and criminals that Bob Lambert was working with. You know, and I don't know exactly what happened here. At the end of the day, somebody murdered Bob Lambert. And when that happened, Joseph Coleman then rose to prominence.

And he is that's the point at which he really became the preeminent leader of those churches. I would argue before that Bob Lambert was the leader, John. I would say. And it was actually with his death that Joseph Coleman took over and ended up, you know, kind of the preeminent guy over these churches in North America where they had a small following and then in the Caribbean and it grew from there.

But that is, that's really interesting. And of course, I'm not saying that, you know, Joseph Coleman and any of them murdered Bob Lambert. I don't know. But it was with his murder that that Bob Lambert left, obviously, and Joseph Coleman is now the undisputed leader with the exit of an- Anthony Milano, the undisputed leader of the Thunders.

I think the only thing that I'll comment on that is that there is a large sum of money flowing through these organizations, and there's a reason why I don't go too deep with some subjects.

I agree. No, and I just, I don't go too far with this myself. So he died. He was murdered. And so his ball, as Joseph Coleman then, in 1974, kind of rises up to the top, he then is now going directly to some of these churches that Bob Lambert had planted.

He's preaching the Thunders message. And there's a bit of a schism where some people remain loyal to Bob Lambert in his version of the Thunders, and they break away, and they're actually another small sect of the message.

That's where Bruce Dalton's church comes from. We've talked about in Trinidad with the exposition of damnable heresies. Bob Lambert's church, I believe his church in Connecticut is still there, and I believe it might be his son that actually pastors that church today in Connecticut.

And they're separated from the Thunders now. But as Joseph Coleman grows, he's using some of that same, that same initial work that Bob Lambert had helped build up with his initial overseas churches. Here in the United States, there was only really, I believe, three churches that joined the Thunders in North America.

There was a church in Montreal. And that church in Montreal, let me talk about that one first. It actually was led by Freddie Bradford, the man who I mentioned had been in the faith assembly sect originally, but had molested children and one of them killed himself.

Well he ended up moving to Montreal after some of his child molestation ways got discovered. He moved to Montreal, started another message church, and joined the Thunders. And so he brought that church into the Thunders, John.

And let me tell you a story about this too. So just so people, again, I think some of these stories are illustrative. So Joseph Coleman went to Montreal, you know, is coming up and becoming friends with Freddie Bradford.

And in 1978, Joseph Coleman holds a convention in Montreal at Freddie Bradford's church. And Joseph Coleman, basically in the middle of a sermon, John, he says, the Lord has revealed to me, you are a child molester.

And you were molesting such and such boy in this church. And then they grab, you know, they drag him to the front of the church. And Joseph Coleman makes a huge, massive look at me.

I have the power of discernment out of this. Of course, Joseph Coleman didn't tell him, oh, he's been molesting kids for years. He's already been thrown out of all these other churches for. So, and he makes this big to do out of it and Freddie Bradford gets out of the thunders more or less as well.

But again, no one ever turned him into the police, like nothing like that ever had. But that was a really big thing that Joseph Coleman did that kind of grabbed a lot of those people up there And actually he ended up with a fairly sizable following in Canada after that He ended up with another church in New Brunswick the fellowship with him Besides that in the United States, there's really only two really notable churches that took the thunders with him Tommy Diller's church in Fort Wayne, which was a you know, what's a good-sized church?

And then he had another church he planted in around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania And so those were his churches here in North America, but the bulk of the thunders following was overseas in Europe I had mentioned before how there was a UPC missionary that accidentally planted message churches in Europe. Well, Tommy Diller introduced Joseph Coleman to those churches and Joseph Coleman starts traveling to Europe In visiting those message churches in vice versa. They start visiting him And you have a sizable portion of the European message community joins the thunders There was a number of of small and medium-sized churches. Maybe about 25 all together

And they all joined that and probably the The anchor church over there in Europe was a man named Donant Jean-Carrie I believe they were in Bruges, Belgium That was kind of the anchor church of the thunders community in Europe But they were in port a very important fundraising ground for Joseph Coleman a lot of his fundraising came from the European message community And then besides that The the largest segment overall of thunders people was in Africa John like the main sect of the message and One man in particular in Africa rose to the forefront John and it is the very famous

Message Apostle Roscoe the Apostle Roscoe John is a well-known message apostle in the thunders And the Apostle Roscoe I'm telling you John have you I don't know if you've ever heard the Apostle Roscoe preach Now Joseph Coleman was a fantastic preacher really. I mean, I think that as far as a preacher with the style to draw people in in the message Joseph Coleman is probably second only to William Branham with his preaching talent I'll just you know to draw people in and hypnotize them and everything I'm telling you the Apostle Roscoe was scary John And I mean you just want to run for your life from this guy

But he is got a massive following in Africa thousands of people follow him in Africa He's got a large community there and in a lot of ways today The Apostle Roscoe is probably Joseph Coleman's truest successor leading the largest branch of the thunders today But anyways, yeah the Apostle Roscoe rose up the ranks in this period of time, you know It was in a possible along with Joseph Coleman in the In the thunders, but those are kind of the main centers of the thunders religion All I can think about when I hear the Apostle Roscoe is Roscoe P. Coltrane who interestingly enough hails from

where Charles is from, the Gordon Indiana, not many people know that, that dukes of hazard history, but what's really even funnier is if you think about how the message spread and it spread very heavily in Africa, I'm told by former members of the message called that in parts of Africa you'll find huge stadiums filled with brandamites, rivaling what William Brandham himself had during the laterane years in America.

And probably, I would say much larger than he had whenever he was actually in Africa. And to think that, I can't say that all sec, I can't say one sec is better than another in the message, but some of them, like the Thunder's Movement, are far more extremist.

So you have these extremist sects that are going into these developing nations and sometimes into parts of Africa that are fully developed, spreading the worst breed of brandamism possible into these places. And that's what it is producing in these other countries.

Oh yeah, James Best is right from here in Harrison County. That's correct, John. I actually have a painting of his. Do you know he became a famous painter and later years in New York?

Oh yeah. Brought to go to England. Yeah. Anyways, you know, yeah, so you're right. I mean, what is over in Africa is every branch of the message has a presence there, but a lot of the, they've evolved a lot of them in ways that no longer really match the core of the message here in Jeffersonville and, you know, in some of the original message centers.

Some of them are quite different over there. And you are very right in saying that the Thunder's is one of the most radical sects of the message. They are very radical. And one of the things that I think is another defining characteristic of the Thunder's sect is they are very ecstatic in their worship.

You know, I think we have played a clip of Joseph Coleman in our last episode, but the entire sermon, the people are having ecstatic worship, right, the whole time he's preaching, it's ecstatic worship all the way through the sermon.

And when he preaches, you'll hear him say, like every three minutes, you may be seated. You may be seated. You may be, he's saying that because, you know, he'll say two or three sentences and then the people will have a massive ecstatic outburst.

And then that'll cool down and he's, you may be seated, you know, he's letting them, you know, cool back down after at it. But it's just like that. You know, I had talked to like witnesses, one of the people that I interviewed, John, when I wrote my book, come out of my people volume two.

He described to me how he remembered when the Apostle Roscoe first came to Germany and how they were teaching the German churches, how to have ecstatic experiences. And just it's something else. A lot of that influence to have ecstatic experience came from Roscoe actually.

I believe in in some of the groups. I don't know a whole lot about Roscoe's background, what he was before he joined the message, but he was in the message before he joined the thunders.

And my guess is he was probably recruited in through Sydney Jackson's efforts in the early 70s, and then he had joined up with Joseph Coleman by 1976, for sure. I don't know precisely what date he came into contact, but he was definitely there by 1976.

And Joseph Coleman back then, they were really big into the 1977 Doomsday date. I mean, the whole, most all the message was, my sect was a little less so I think than the others, but most was into the 77 being the end of the world, John, and they had the huge rash of weddings in 1976 in 1977 in order for people to meet the Doomsday.

There was all kinds of people that got married in December 1977. They're only gonna be married for 30 days, John, but they were trying to get in under the radar, and here we are all these years later, and we're still here, and they're still married, and there was a whole lot of that stuff happening.

And when that fell through, when 1977 fell through, Joseph Coleman, that's the point time he started, to start to come up with his own timeline, his own mechanism for predicting the end. The main sect started to go with Billy Paul, won't be an old man.

And my sect of the message, they started to develop their two day stuff, and each sect of the message started to do its own Doomsday ideas, unique new Doomsday ideas after, after set 1977, came and went, well, what Joseph Coleman did, John, was very, I think to outsiders, this is gonna sound very unusual, but he's actually got a method to the madness, and I wanna just explain what he did, and then explain the method to the madness.

Well, what he did, when 1977 went, he went into the book of Leviticus chapter 25, okay? And he started to come up with the idea that Leviticus chapter 25 is the pattern for determining the end of the world, John, okay?

And if you read through that chapter, there's like this, it's talking about the Jubilee's, and these so many years, and then you rest, anyways, what he did there, is he said 1974 was the start of the thunder's ministry, okay?

And then he says this chapter calls for a six years of planting and a seventh year of rest. So when he gets to 1980, he says, the six years are fulfilled, and now we're going into the year of rest.

And again, he's using this to start basically typing or patterning the way his movement is going in. So the implication is 1981 is the new year for the rapture, right? And so he starts doing this sort of thing.

And of course, 1980, one comes and goes and nothing happens either right and so then he finds a way to extend the pattern again okay now we're going into this phase and then we're going into that phase and when you get to when you get to I think the year was 1991 anyways your 17 years pass 1974 when you get 17 years after that I think it was 1991 just the math in my head real quick then he says oh we're still here and then he goes to start looking at Joseph in the book of Genesis

and he says Joseph got his code of many colors in his 17th year this is the 17th year after the revelation of the thunders therefore we are now entering into the fullness of the of the message and we're all going to get on our coat that's going to lead us out in the rapture in you but this is the pattern right you go in the Old Testament you find a number somewhere that you can tie to something and bring you up to something right and say and this is what we're doing right now this is the program we're like Joseph in our 17th year we're like the Jubilee we're in the sixth year

and now it's the seventh year this is what Joseph Coleman did year in and year out from 1977 really up until the year he died and he just kept moving the goalpost moving the goalpost moving the goalpost and using these patterns from the Old Testament to constantly update his forecast now as I described that you know it sounds very arbitrary and very bizarre doesn't it to do that it sounds very arbitrary and bizarre to do that and Joseph Coleman did it in a way that was somewhat more extreme than the other groups of the message did it but what I want to point out is

that method that he followed is actually a ladder rain method and that method itself actually goes back to British Israelism this is what had been happening in this ideology all the way back to John Alexander Dowian before into the early days of British Israelism and this is one of the defining features of an ideology that has evolved from the British Israel influence they just go into the Old Testament they pick any random series of events in the Old Testament and they say yes this is talking about right now yes Joseph's code of many colors and the 17 years is talking

about us and now 17 years later here we are and thus it means it's the end of days right they would do this with all kinds of random things and use this to just come up with all kinds you know whatever bizarre idea you could come up with John you can go back and you could fit it into these patterns in the Old Testament and you pick it Gideon's army or you could go you know to Jeb the you could go about Samuel David and the Goliath to fill anything like that you can go back there

I've heard preachers go you know David and Jonathan and pull stuff out of that for all through the Old Testament just anywhere there's numbers anywhere there's a story they'll use to make it projection, say, this is going to happen. And it almost always is tied to when we get to the other side of this, this thing's going to happen in the church.

And here's the thing we need to do to get there. And this other thing going to be happened in Israel at the same time. And they, they bundled it all up together and they make this incredibly bizarre arbitrary prediction out of it. But then they'll say, but it's all in the Bible. See, Joseph got his coat of any colors at year 17.

And, and that sort of a pattern is is happens across this ideology, John, just in varying ways. And you see the same sort of thing happening in the NAR or the present day. A lot of them do the same thing.

It's exact same methodology. They're just some of it sounds more plausible than others is all it is. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter rain, 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, 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.

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Whenever people today who are in these movements hear that somebody's giving a date of the end or putting together timelines, if the leader who's doing it is not in their sect, they look at it and cry foul.

This is, no, that's not right. You can't do that. The Bible says, no man knows the day or the hour. But while it's happening within the sect, it turns into this supernatural thing where the guy has been divinely inspired and, oh, he's a man of God, my brother.

And this pattern is not limited to the message. As far back as I can study, and I've went back a long ways, you find key figures who were in what developed into the Pentecostal Charismatic movement.

Doing the exact same thing. Frank Sanford was giving dates and there's one episode where he newspapers talk about he and his entire followers went up to the rooftops on a certain minute of the day.

Because that was the minute when the rapture was supposed to happen and they didn't want their bodies to be torn as they went through the roofs. You go to John Alexander, Dauy Sack, he's the same thing. And Charles Fox Parum, who founded, you know, who not founded, but he was probably considered to be the father.

of modern Pentecostalism, visited both of those places, then he started doing it. And as you know, you can go forward, you can go backwards, they're all doing this thing. And in the end, what purpose does it serve?

They could be right, they could be wrong. Whenever their predictions fail, it's just dismissed and forgotten. As though, well, that wasn't spiritual. That must have been from the man. He was just a human.

But no, they keep doing it over and over again. And again, if it's a leader within your specific sect, you view it as godly and God inspired. But when it's outside of your sect, like this Coleman thing, we in the main sect would have called him just a hypocrite for doing this while we had people in the main sect that were doing the same thing.

Correct, John. And you know, what do all those people you mentioned, heaven, common, Frank Sanford, John Alexander Dowey, Charles Fox Parham, what do all they have in common? They were all British Israelites. That is the common linkage.

And that is where this method comes from, that they followed. And the reason they could do that, they could take the types and stuff about Israel and apply to themselves, because they thought they were Israel.

And this is where it comes from, and this has happened in this ideology for generations now. You can trace this all the way back to the early British Israelite prophets of the late 1700s and early 1800s doing the same thing.

And they just kind of this arbitrary thing where, yes, Joseph, Joseph, God has coded many colors in 17, and we need a 17 years old and just using that as an example. And now we're in the 17th year, therefore it means we're about to get our great rapturing coats.

You know, you can find this sort of a thing happening all the way back to the very beginning of this ideology. And the people while on the outside looking in, this seems incredibly arbitrary for people to do this within the ideology, it's not.

This is what they've been prone to do. They are prone to the history of this ideology is someone saying, the Holy Spirit came to me. An angel came to me. I had a vision.

And in my vision, it was revealed to me that this type in Exodus chapter 21, is there an Exodus chapter 21, right? Exodus chapter 21 applies to the last days and it means this, this, this, and this.

That's how it happens. They're all saying that this supernatural thing happened and revealed to them the hidden understanding of this pattern in the Old Testament applies to them and their followers in the last day.

And that has been the pattern of this movement for generations. And just each one, their angel, quote, unquote, angel, vision, whatever, give them a little bit of a different idea. And a lot of times, if you actually start digging, you'll find, oh, wait, no, they're copying this from someone who came before them and you can trace a lot of it, you know, back to the very early days of this ideology and they're just continuing it for it.

And what I want to point out to you too, John, is you don't find people in the, for example, the Derby system of dispensationalism doing it. this. This is not a feature of the Darby system. This is not a feature of more a typical dispensationalism that you would find in Baptist Church or Presbyterian or places like that.

Even mainstream Pentecostalism doesn't do that anymore, John. Where you find that is the churches that are really descended in some way or another from this British Israel influence that then came into the latter reign. That's what they were doing when the latter reign started, John. It was George Warnock, right? What did he do? He went to the Old Testament and he says, oh, hey, the Feast of Tabernacles is talking about the manifestant sons of God at the end of days.

It's this great revelation. It's the same thing. This is exactly what they've been doing all along and the people who have lived their whole lives in this ideology, they just naturally expect this is the way it's supposed to work. Yeah, God is supposed to reveal to our leader that something in the Old Testament has this hidden pattern that's going to tell them about the end of days.

And yeah, this is just carried on for a year after year. So I think that's a really important thing to point out here. And I think talking about how Joseph Coleman did it is just very illustrative of how it even carried on after William Brannum was gone. Yeah, I agree. These tactics are nothing new.

And if you study any of the people who I've mentioned from Dauy to Sanford to you know, you can go back to Jane Leade who I think we've mentioned quite a few times on the converging apostasy. Everybody's doing the same thing. If you can bind the modern events to the Old Testament in some vague way, you can basically take the Old Testament and make it seem to come alive to the people. And by doing so, you're rewriting the narrative of the Old Testament. They're taking modern events and they're combining it with biblical scripture and they're trying to say that the

what we're seeing in modern times was actually written in this in mystery in these Old Testament verses. And so that's why I say this is a mystery cult that they have created. But again, the rewriting the narrative of the Old Testament. And in the end, what happens when you do that, you end up with a different Bible. Here exactly right. And Jane Leade seems to be the oldest, farthest back that I know I have been able to find the origins of some of these concepts.

She does appear to be her the Philadelphia Society appears to be where the initial concepts for some of this came from. You know, the the idea that a rapturing faith was in seven thunders and the seven seals that comes from Jane Leade in the early 1700s all the way back to the very early days of this ideology. I mean, this has been in this ideology from the beginning these concepts.

And yeah, you know, patterning something in Israel and pulling it forward. Jane Leade's ideology got absorbed into early British Israelism all the way back in the very early days of this ideology, Richard Brothers and some of the early British Israelite prophets absorbed her teachings into it.

It just passed down in the ideology. um, to the present day. And it just goes through these iterations where another profit says, Oh, this was my revelation. And then, you know, that all falls apart and the next profit says, Oh, wait, no, it's my revelation. And then it goes down in the next profit says, No, wait, it's my revelation. And they never, you know, who's on first?

No, it wasn't. You guys are just recycling and evolving what the prior guy taught you. And if you keep going farther, you keep finding the guy before you that you, you know, turned out to be dirtbag. And there's a reason you didn't tell us you got it from him, right? That's the truth. That really is the truth of how it works. It reminds you of a bunch of kids and kindergarten man. They're all fighting with each other. And the teachers just standing back looking, I can't believe these kids are acting like this.

I know, right? So Joseph Coleman got crazier and crazier with time, John. By the time you come up to 2001, Joseph Coleman is basically telling his followers that he is a manifested son of God that God is veiled in his flesh. Okay. Let me read you a quote. This is from Joseph Coleman's 2001 sermon, September the 16th, the title of it is the New York City Ministry explained. Joseph Coleman says, get this prophecy to the recorder about Joseph. He's talking about himself. He will be 45 years behind my word by a revelation of who I am. If you

do the math, that takes you back to when he first met William Brandon 45 years from 2001. I will be 45. He will be 45 years behind my word by a revelation of who I am. I will be veiled in his skin and known to none, but to whom I reveal myself. And then Joseph Coleman says, that is why I am here. Okay. So Joseph Coleman is basically, you know, going into full on blasphemy at the end of his ministry. He's claiming to be God veiled in human flesh. You know, he's going down the same route that really that William Brandon went down at the very end of

his life. And things started to go really crazy for for their church. There's a lot more in my book about them than I, you know, we're going to talk about in this podcast, but in a nutshell, things started to go into decline for Joseph Coleman. As they got crazier and crazier, some of the people broke away like Tommy Dillard kind of backed away and started to come back more towards the main sec. A number of the group started to back away as he got increasingly crazy. But he held on a lot to his European following. He held on a lot to his

African and his care being following. And as you come to the end of his life, John, this is a really interesting story. So Joseph Coleman started to get paranoid. And there was a man named Frank Cronkite. And that's actually a relation of mine. And Frank Cronkite was, for a lot of years, a very prominent preacher in the thunders, along with, you know, Joseph Coleman, Orlando Hunt, the Apostle Roscoe, Tommy Dillard, Dona, These were all prominent ministers in the thunders.

Well, Frank Cronk or Joseph Coleman gets the idea that Frank Cronk writes trying to overthrow him basically. And Frank Cronkite is, he was the pastor of a church in New Brunswick. And he ends up more or less pastoring the most important church in the fellowship in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania after Coleman's church.

And Coleman gets paranoid and he goes to Harrisburg to throw him out of the church, John. And so Joseph Coleman travels to Harrisburg, he has his big meetings. And as Frank Cronkite is there, he just, you know, you know, how it is the message.

You know, you get ripped up one side and down the other. Well, in the middle of this, Joseph Coleman has a stroke in the platform, John. He strokes out right in the middle of his sermon.

And of course, you know, that everyone rushed to his defense, you know, and how terrible, you know, Frank Cronkite had been to cause his stroke. Obviously, it was his fault, huh? Anyway, from there, things just went downhill for Joseph Coleman.

His health failed a whole lot. He gradually stopped preaching from 2009. He more or less stopped preaching up until he died. I believe he died in 2012. And he, he just stroke after stroke left him debilitated.

He got, I believe he had some sort of mental illness that really started to hit hard in the last years of his life. And in those years, a minister came from Montreal. And he came down to his church and started to basically make his way in to take over as pastor at the church there in New York City.

And the reason he was able to take over so easy was because prior to that, Joseph's, Joseph Coleman's family and some of the senior leaders there had all been arrested and put in prison for the Ponzi scheme, okay?

They had been, you know, if everybody, you know, if you don't know about that, you can look into it. But essentially, Joseph Coleman's family was running a company called Jades Capital, which was soliciting to get people's retirement savings and they would invest it and make everybody rich.

And it turned out they were just stealing all their money. And of course, they all got, you know, they ended up, some of them arrested went to jail. So there's this huge turmoil unfolding in the last years of Joseph Coleman's life.

And this new preacher comes to town from Montreal and they let him, more or less, start taking over the church while Joseph Coleman's health is deteriorating, kind of as his lieutenant while Joseph Coleman is sick.

And he just, things start to go crazy in the thunders, John, at that point. You know, I've talked to some different people that were there through when all that stuff happened. But this guy started to, he started to stop the people from eating.

If Joseph Coleman was sick and couldn't eat, he'd tell the people, you may not eat. You must pray for Joseph Coleman. If Joseph Coleman was sick and couldn't sleep, he'd tell, you can't sleep tonight.

You've got to pray for Joseph Coleman. and he kept this stuff going John and as he did all this Joseph Coleman

health is getting worse and worse and worse and he goes to Joseph Coleman's house he convinces Joseph Coleman to basically if you want to be healed Joseph Coleman you've got to quit taking all your medicine of course we know what that's going to do to arise I kill it and so he convinces Joseph Coleman he must quit taking all of his medication and he has this big prophecy that on a certain day Joseph Coleman is going to be gloriously restored and he'll come to church on that day fully healed and give everybody their glorified bodies and they will all leave in the rapture okay this is what

this guy sets up and they're all you know convinced that this is going to happen and what actually ends up happening John is somehow the health the doctor comes to check on Joseph Coleman and finds out he's been taken off all his medication and they call the authorities okay and the authorities come and and take Joseph Coleman to the hospital and while they do this guy who's taken over the church basically gets in a fight with the paramedics and everything trying to stop him from taking Joseph Coleman to the hospital and it's all just as massive ugly unfold and I mean John

I mean it's burning down around him right and it's really sad though too because I mean people were people were very badly harmed through all this throughout the thunders John I mean the thunders people have had it harder just about then most of the rest of the sex they're right up there and having it among the worst of the sex of the message with the things that have happened to those poor people but as as that happens they end up throwing this man out of the church and they found out he was a cocaine addict and apparently they do it all along they tear the church

over to cocaine addict John wow I mean and then Joseph Coleman eventually you know dies in 2012 I mean it it just between that and upon this scheme and everything else the the heart of the thunders collapses and fell fell apart you know in the early 2000s and there you have the mess of the message you know in the main sacked we would discount all of this and say well they went into error because they went astray from William Brannum's true teachings and yet the whole cult exists the whole sacked exists because the teachings were so off of the bible and so extra

biblical that they were trying they literally were trying to figure out what was William Brannum's mystery because he said he told it to us and so they were doing in some ways I would say that they were probably more true of a Brannumite than the main sacked because they were trying to figure out well he told us what it what it was now we've got to figure out what it is so they were a more true Brannum follower I would say than the main sacked and all of it is an error if you start with an error

anything that is produced from that error will also be an error. And in this case, in some other cases, it will be a greater error than it began than it started with. I know that the funders is, is one of the most unique sex of the message out there.

And they're very, very dedicated to their beliefs. I mean, they're very dedicated. A lot of people was able to leave the message in, you know, in the years around Joseph Coleman's death because the turmoil and the chaos was enough to wake quite a few people up.

But a lot of them ended up just going to other sex of the message while some of them did manage to escape. You know, as, as a lot of it imploded, you end up with Joseph Coleman's followers kind of shattering into several different groups.

But the most, the most dominant faction of his followers, I would say that today,

the Apostle Roscoe is the kind of the preeminent leader of the dominant faction of his followers. And they're probably the truest branch of the funder's message out there today. One last thing I will mention too.

So they refer to themselves as the funder's inspiration. And the reason they called themselves that was they believe that like all most other branches of the message that Jesus Christ had come back in some vague way in 1963.

And they believe that they had received that whatever coming of Christ, you know, in them. I think Joseph Coleman by the end more or less thought it was him. And they believe that gave them a special ability to have an inspiration of the Holy Spirit and a special inspiration for divine revelation because they alone really understood what the funders were, right?

Quote, I'm quote, understood what the funders were. And so the funder's inspiration was more or less the way that they indicated that their leaders alone had the divine inspiration, the divine power to reveal these mysteries and to take people into the rapture.

And so at the end of the day, that is what all of this was pointing to John. All this was chased. They were all chasing this mysterious rapturing faith to take them into into the rapture at the end of days.

And unfortunately, like so many message groups, Joseph Coleman's group was just the first one to do this. This pattern of coming up with this crazy idea of whatever this rapturing faith is, whatever these thunders are, and then going down a path and doing a whole bunch of crazy bizarre things, this is repeated over and over and over and over and all kinds of sex of the message.

Most of them aren't as big or as popular as Joseph Coleman's became, but this is a common thing that's happened across all kinds of sex of the message. And it all goes back to William Brandham leaving this unfinished explanation of what the seven thunders were.

When he died, it's such a mess. I think that's I was sitting here trying to think, well, what do I say to this? There's nothing else to say. This is a mass. This is a big mass.

And like I said earlier, this is a mass that was produced from the air that was created from the beginning. And I, you know, as we've mentioned, briefly, and hinted at, that mass didn't start with William Brannum. It started long before him. Like you, I think the earliest I have seen the mass is Jane Leade.

But I can assure you, based on the patterns that I see as it progresses through time from her, she didn't get it new and fresh. She probably developed it from people before her. And quite honestly, you can take a lot of this and trace it all the way back to the Nostics.

The Nostics were taking the mystery cults of old, combining it with Christianity and creating something new that wasn't Christian, but use the name Christian with it. And that's essentially what this was, from the thunders group to the main sect to your sect to the ladder rain, everything that was produced from this was produced from error.

So anyway, we can, we can say a lot more about this and I think we'll just wrap this up. But thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, John, I mean, there's so much interesting stuff there.

I mean, and you can, you can, you're right, you can talk for hours and hours and hours about this. You know, like Jane Leade, for example, like I am, I am unaware of anyone before Jane Leade who had the idea that the rapturing faith, seven thunders contained the mystery to go in, like, and I'm pretty well versed in Nosticism. I don't believe that concepts in Nosticism either.

But the underlying premises, which could have got her there, you know, certainly were. And, you know, I'm always very cautious until I can actually lay my fingers on sources and see, I'm kind of cautious to, you know, to say just where stuff come from, but certainly you can connect the dots person to person all the way back to Jane Leade.

I'm not aware of how to connect it any further back than her though at this time. And some stuff might come out again in the future that might help us to do that a little bit better.

But yeah, I mean, it's so sad with the thunders. The thunders is one of the, you know, really a tragedy tale in the message. If you look at what happened with them and really the great harm and fallout.

I mean, so many people were harmed by these people. There were all kinds of families that were absolutely robbed blind. I mean, absolutely robbed blind, their life savings stolen from them by these guys.

They're people who are dead killed by this movement of thunders. There's child molesters on the loose that they never turned in that they knew stuff about. You know, on and on and on, it goes.

And lots of people gave the best years of their life to the thunders movement only to be thrown away like trash by Joseph Coleman and other people in the movement. It's just so sad and unfortunate the things that happened with them.

And so yeah, one last thing too, before we go, John, I know there are, I interviewed a fair number of thunders people before I wrote that chapter of the book. And I would love just see more interviews from thunders people on the podcast.

So I just throw out there. If anyone out there on the thunders wants to interview and maybe share, I'm sure. they have could give a more detailed and even better explanation of things than you are I can since they came from the movement themselves.

Yeah, I mean reach out. I'm sure John would love to do an interview with you and just share more information about the goings on inside the Thunder's movement. Absolutely. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or you want to share your story with us, you can check us out on the web.

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