EXPOSED! William Branham's GHOSTWRITER: "Doctor" Lee Vayle

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org and the author of Come Out of Her My People. Charles, it's good to be back and to talk all things the message and today leave ale. I've been wanting to get into this quite a bit. We've had a lot of people who are just slightly curious and I have at least one

person who has escaped the leave ale sect of the message who's feeding me all kinds of stuff and I don't think people realize the significant critical role that he played in bringing the message into what it is today and you know even though when you look at his ministry and you look at you know even his sect it's just I think it's like a little converted house out in the middle nowhere but it seems so small but yet he had such a big impact because of who he was to William-Branham. Yeah John I'm looking forward to talking about leave ale

today. Leave ale is actually very very important and you're correct he is one of the smaller sects of the message but it is nonetheless a very important sect of the message. I would definitely put it in there with the major sects overall. If our listeners remember we're working our way through the sects of the message kind of in the chronological order that they broke away and I might point you back to the diagram again that I've shared a few times and if you look the leave ale sect was the third major sect break away from the

message. The Faith Assembly Fellowship broke way 1968, the Thunder's Joseph Coleman broke away 1974 and leave ale and his sect of the message is often referred to as the Perugia people. They broke away in 1977 that's when that began and so we're going to walk through that today. We'll explain what the whole Perugia deal was and the other people who were some of the other prominent people that were in his sect of the message but yeah leave ale is a very interesting guy. Leave ale is in fact a Canadian John. I don't know maybe not

everyone realizes that but leave ale was a Canadian. He was actually in Western Canada. He was kind of an itinerant traveling evangelist you know on a small scale back in the late 1940s. He first and countered William Brannum in 1947, he was actually at some of William Brannum's revivals in Western Canada. He didn't actually get an introduction to William Brannum then, but that was his first time seeing him in a revival. You know, message legends actually put Lee Vail at the Sharon orphanage, John, at the very early days of the Laterane movement. He was supposedly connected

to Laterane from the very earliest days. Now, just how true that is, I'm not actually sure. I'm not really sure if there's any truth to the legend, but it is nonetheless, you know, a notable legend. I've not been able to verify if it's true. But, you know, that was going on.

In 1953, Lee Vail got invited to serve as a pastor of a church in West Palm Beach, Florida. He came from Canada, he moved to Florida, and the associate pastor he had there was a man named Ned Iverson. You'll find William Brannum talking about Ned Iverson quite a bit too. And the two of them pastored the church down there for a few years. Well, somewhere along that period of time, I believe it was, you know, 1954 or 55, Lee Vail has a prophecy. So he's, you know, independent Catholicism. He gives his congregation there in West Palm Beach prophecy, and he says,

behold, a prophet from the north shall come to tell us the truth, okay? And as I have pointed out before, West Palm Beach is very close to the most southerly point in the United States, okay?

That's what I was thinking. How big of a prophecy is this? Everything's worth it. I know exactly. So you don't get pretty well any preacher that's going to come to them is going to almost, you know, 99.9% of preachers are going to come from the north. So lo and behold, just shortly after that, William Brannum comes to tail and holds a revival series. And Lee Vail through that revival series actually meets William Brannum face to face for the first time. And that begins their relationship.

And of course, naturally he thinks, this is the fulfillment to my prophecy. We have found our prophet. It's so odd thinking back about how we used to view prophets in this movement. And it wasn't limited to just the message. I have had conversations with Pentecostal people, with Charisma. I have a lot of Pentecostal and Charismatic friends. They still kind of believe this. And they have really taken away and distracted from what the word prophet really means. And in fact, I just had a conversation with David Fish that will soon be coming out probably before this. But we were talking about

how the emphasis on the gifts and the way that it is presented has distracted from the true meaning of a prophet. And yet at the same time, you have ministers like this that are just throwing out random loose things that I mean anything, anything north of Florida can be presented who's claiming as a prophet. Anybody who's coming can be this. But the way that the message has Set the standards for charismatic movement. I think it's the significant part because William Brannum Kind of established this in that he and Gordon Lensy were creating this pyramid scheme of

Prophets and ministries and so everybody coming into this can very easily become one. It is all very odd, isn't it? You know leave ale After he met William Brannum and I believe already before he was associating with the independent assemblies of God But through the independent assemblies of God after he met William Brannum He ended up moving to Ohio where he became pastor of of another church in Ohio and Leave ale claimed his background was Baptist, but There are elements in his testimony that he was believed in speaking in tongues from 18 years old So he was if he was a Baptist, Johnny was a bit of a coastal Baptist

Because you know, he had some really unusual Baptist practices, right? So Anyways, he he claimed to be a Baptist, but you know, obviously a tongue-speaking Baptist and He claimed to be back, you know claimed to be Pastoring a quote-unquote Baptist church in Ohio after he moved there and about 1950, you know, in 1957 58 roughly so Once he was there though and he started working around William Brannum quite a bit and with the independent assemblies of God If you listen to his testimonies, it's about the year 1958 when leave ale starts to accept William Brannum's Elijah claims

Okay, so while he didn't had met William Brannum a bit 1958 when he really started to accept what we would describe as the message Started to accept that William Brannum was Elijah and of course by that point There's already a fairly well-established community especially in Jeffersonville who already believes William Brannum is Elijah So he's he's joining himself to a larger a larger cult of personality that already existed at that point in time so When William Brannum died You know, and as those first schisms unfolded that we've talked about leave ale actually aligned with the main set

He stayed on the side of church order and leave ale himself was actually among the most conservative of all of the preachers when it came to the gifts of the spirit and and What would what leave ale told his audiences?

He leave ale told his audiences that he had a private conversation with William Brannum in about 1959 and in about 1959 William Brannum told him that the gifts of the spirit were ceasing right then and That there would be no more gifts of the spirit after that and leave ale actually became a Sensationist after William Brannum died. He no longer believed in the gifts of the spirit He didn't even have private gift rooms So he he went down this path where

His followers are I would say you know arguably the most closest thing in the message There is to Sensationist and it all ceased with William Brannum And you'll find some of the other main sec churches are not too terribly far from that but Leavale is definitely a huge father and promoter of that idea that the gifts of the spirit ceased with William Brown.

It's funny you say that because among my Pentecostal and charismatic friends we often the gifts come up in discussion, right? Because they really want to probe my head and see what it is, but I believe and I'm very cautious not to try to sway people either way.

So I usually don't give that up, but in the message the gifts were this weird taboo thing because William Brannum, like Bosworth, tried to separate Pentecostalism, the majority of Pentecostals believed that speaking in tongues was evidence of the Holy Spirit, and they tried to draw this dividing line in the sand and say, no it's not, it's the healing.

And so there was this big rift that came. Well then somewhere in the middle of this William Brannum claimed that he himself could speak in tongues and I've got a video up, but he basically fakes it before the entire audience that he's speaking to, he mentions going to, can't remember the country Jamaica or something.

Finland, I think. Yeah, and he hears this phrase humel and raha and he comes back and he's speaking in an audience and he says, and I heard the most wonderful phrase humel and raha it was great and it means this, I can't remember what it means, but he's telling everything I think something like this right and he tells everybody that he heard it and that was that was wonderful to him.

Well then a few maybe weeks, maybe months later he's speaking to a crowd and he says and humel and raha wait what did I say God just spoke through me and so he fakes the whole thing right and so you're you're kind of in this weird place if you understand his ministry, he really denounces people who emphasize speaking in tongues and then here he is faking it.

You know when we talk through the church church order episodes there was a point in time when the brand of tabernacle and the entirety of the message community was you know ramp it with the gifts of the spirit I mean prophecy speaking in tongues they would dance shout the roll around on the floor you know fall with the mouth slain in the spirit the whole bit all through the church services right and so yeah William brand of change that and so within the message you have kind of a rainbow of opinions on the gifts of the spirit which is maybe unusual for people on the outside especially I think for the NAR people who say William Brannum is this example that we all must be like and it's kind of shocking that his that maybe a large section of his cult of personality doesn't believe that and like he was this note to the cult of personality a lot of them he was this one singular coming of this figure and he left and they don't really a lot of them like said it more or less.

Secessionist they don't believe it's going to happen and it's actually based according to leave ale and William Brannum himself personally. and then also in his sermons really discouraging it. So, Leavale's sect of the message is very much in that vein of thought.

So, I think that's something important to point out. Now, before Leavale fell out, he was very important to the main sect of the message and to William Brenham. Leavale, you know, as William Brenham's campaign team fell apart, we've talked about that in a revival history series.

You know, as William Brenham had his following out with the voice of healing and he started to lose his earned backstours and FF Bosworth died and all these other things happened, William Brenham starts needing to import and get new people, new talent on his team.

Well, Leavale is one of those guys that after he loses a lot of his initial campaign team, he gets offered positions on Brenham's team to replace people who are leaving. And among the many things that Leavale did on maybe about four of William Brenham's revival tours, Leavale went along as kind of an opening act, a supporting evangelist who kind of did the earned backstour bit where he would do some Bible teaching and then introduce William Brenham.

So, Leavale had a little bit of that activity. It was a minor role, like since there's only about four of his revival series that he did that. But through that, he still, he started to get a relationship with William Brenham where he was more or less like a sounding board for William Brenham and William Brenham would like bounce ideas off of him.

This is how, you know, Leavale described it. And even though he only did about four revival series with him, he continued to be the sounding board for William Brenham really for the rest of his life.

And William Brenham would bounce ideas off of him like, what do you think about, hey, the seven thunders of Revelation Leavale? Here's what I think, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Leavale, oh yeah, that sounds nice.

And here's what I think, you know, and they would have these exchanges which William Brenham would use to help develop some of his ideas. And so Leavale played probably more so than any other preacher.

He played a fairly important role as a sounding board in helping William Brenham develop some of his, some of his various ideas that he came up with and preached. And William Brenham even alluded to some of this on tape quite a bit because he would say concerning Leavale.

If you have any questions about the things that I preached, the person you need to go ask is brother Leavale, Dr. Leavale who's here on this tour with me. And so Leavale traveled along with him and was almost presented as a sort of a, I mean, straight up presented as a theologian, a doctor of divinity, a PhD is what William Brenham presented him as on the tours and that the people that they had any questions about what he preached or thought or believe they could go to Leavale and Leavale was the official explainer of the message in these things to the people.

on the tours. So there's a very important role that leave ale held in that way. And one of the interesting things to think through as you're doing this is the cross-pollination, because when you have a main speaker who's on stage and he's the big showmanship act, right?

And you have these people who come before him, often the main speaker listens to the people who are speaking before. And so as William Brannum is there and he's going to be preaching and doing his faith healing gig, he's listening to leave ale. And what's interesting is the cross pollination there, because the things that leave ale says doctrinally can sometimes flow over into what William Brannum says doctrinally. And vice versa, because leave ale being a cult member, he can, you know, feed off of William Brannum and William Brannum can feed off of him.

So if you look at it like that, leave ale could possibly potentially have been a part in just evolving William Brannum himself to who he was. And considering the fact that we have the, you know, the secret audio letter from William Brannum to leave ale where they're kind of, if you read it and understand what William Brannum is saying, he's telling leave ale to manipulate the crowds. You plant this seed and I'm going to follow it up with my ministry and grow it into this deity thing, right? So he and leave ale are kind of collaborating in a indoctrination manipulation

scheme according to this recording. Well, this went far back before prior to the recording because they're kind of working together on stage. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think it's very fair to credit leave ale with influencing William Brannum's views on a lot of things, honestly.

I mean, people have the idea, of course, in the message that, you know, angels and the Holy Spirit and all this stuff came to William Brannum and gave him all of this divine revelation.

No, that never happened. William Brannum tricked us on every stitch of that. The truth is, every stitch of it he was reading out of his library books, you know, and in that process of getting all these ideas out of his library books, leave ale is one of the people. We know of others besides leave ale, but leave ale was one of the key figures that he was sounding this information to getting feedback from leave ale using his opinions to then tweak his views a little bit, you know, maybe to pre-address some certain criticisms in it. And then he'd

preach it. He'd deliver it, right? And leave ale would help him set it up. You're exactly right, John. And leave ale played a, I think calling it a collaborative role in developing some of the core beliefs of the message. Leave ale was absolutely involved in that. Another person was absolutely involved in that, John, was Bankswood's wife. You're right. I had a person contact me who was feeding me all kinds of inside information. In fact, a large part of my website exists because of the information that this person was giving me. And this person informed me

the, not just the, the way in which she was feeding William Brandt of information to the extent I'm told that she was helping, you know, prepare the sermon notes. So he would go out and some of the doctrines were, it was Jehovah's Witness doctrine. She was preparing in his sermon notes.

And then he wouldn't prepare his own sermons. He would go speak from what she had prepared. That's exactly right. And let me describe just a little bit how that works. So banks, woods and his wife were William Brandt's next-door neighbors. Okay, walk out his back door, walk across the property line. He said, banks, what's else? Okay, banks would, um, wasn't put in charge of the literature publishing efforts of the early message community. And so what turned into spoken words, publications, bankwoods was the original leader of that. Okay. And in 1962, William Brandt um, asked, leave ale to become the editor of all of his public, all of his sermons within that,

within that franchise to produce literature, which banks would's head. So, banks woods was in charge of. So leave ale was at bankswood's house with him and his wife working on the literature publishing endeavors. And so when William Brandt would come over and use leave ale as a sounding board, banks woods wife was there with leave ale helping out in all the endeavors. So he was, he was sounding off both of them at the same time. Okay. This is, this is how it worked. And some of it, they, he would do by tape or by phone call, but yeah, they were banks woods wife in a sense acted

as a secretary to banks woods and leave ale through that period. And that's how she, that's how she was in the position to help him write his sermon notes and do all of those sort of thing. It was, it was as part of the franchise that turned into spoken word publications, right? So you think of what Helen Borders does for Mr. Joseph today. That's what she was doing all those years ago, banks woods wife. So we can talk more about Miss Helen Borders at a later date, but anyway, as we, as we, as we kind of move along there, um, that's what leave ale was doing. He got invited to

be the publisher of literature, uh, the editor of the literature that William Brownham was writing. And let me explain to why that was necessary. So as William Brownham kept having falling out with voice of healing and, and, and the voice of healing people, before leave ale, the editor of William Brown's literature was Anna Jean Moore, who was Jack Moore's daughter. Well, Anna Jean Moore got to the point where she said, these sermons are in coherent. I can't edit these anymore.

He got that bad. And he's like, I can't, this doesn't make sense to me. I can't edit these anymore. You really need somebody who's closer to you and train. apples with you that can, you know, that can ask you what did you mean here and what did you mean there because it's nonsensical to her.

And she, she more or less bows out from editing all of the literature. So and voice the healing, you know, had the big printing presses and everything. All the literature was still published at voice the healing back then.

But she bows out as editor and so leave ale comes in and takes over as editor to backfill heart and energy and more's position in that in that group. So energy more of a student before leave ale and leave ale actually credits Joseph Matson Bosé for coming up with the idea and recommending him to replace energy and more.

So that kind of just kind of give you an idea of what's going on behind the scenes with all these people back then. It also gives you a special inside view of what it would have been like to be working with William Brannum.

Keep in mind voice of healing evolved into Christ for the nation's institute, which is significant in the charismatic and now the NAR movements. These people knew that the sermons were incoherent. And if you read between the lines of what she's saying there, she's really saying docternally you're like a ping pong ball.

I think that's an accurate statement, John. We can put up here on the screen an interview, Anagene actually did an interview with, I don't know who it was, somebody from oral Robert University and the archives of her interview about her no longer being able to do the editing is actually in the archives of oral Robert University.

So all of this is recorded out there actually for people to just you can read it, you can read what Anagene more said herself and compare that to what William Brannum said and you'll find that somebody was spinning a bunch of stuff to us in the message about how all of this unfolded right is there that it doesn't actually match what actually happened.

So anyways, Levail takes over as editor and one of the very first things, John, that Levail put together for William Brannum was this book right here called 20th century profit. This is the very first, what I would call the very first message biography of William Brannum.

Okay, before this, there's other biographies that have been published, but I would think of them more of his laterane biography. They were produced by people who weren't necessarily in his cult of personality. This is the first biography of William Brannum published by and through his cult of personality and Levail was the editor of this book.

Now I want to point out, as you're looking at the book, if you're listening and don't have the video feed, I'm going to point it out, but on the cover is what looks like an ancient Bible scroll and that is to signify William Brannum as the profit.

The interesting thing is the contradiction in that image because there wasn't a single prophecy that was written down on a scroll as the Old Testament prophets did. While William Brannon presented himself to be an Old Testament prophet, every single prophecy, the only thing that you can do to identify one of his prophecies is to hear him say it after the fact, versus the ancient Hebrew prophets, whenever they prophesied, they wrote it down so that afterwards their prophecies could be evaluated to see if it was a prophecy from God or not.

So the significance of that image is astounding to me. This biography was wrote before William Brannon died, like the text of it and everything, and William Brannon personally approved this biography to be printed.

This was one of the very first publications of what became spoken word publications, John. And so if you want to know what William Brannon believed about himself at the end of his life, this book is what he believed about himself.

This, the transcripts of all this was created before he died, and leave ale edited it. So it's right here. I don't think maybe not a lot of people realize this, but this was actually initially wrote before he died, and it came out just after he died to the message community.

There's some interesting stuff in here, John. One thing I will point out to you, which is on page 37, but again, I don't think a lot of people notice, leave ale wrote that the only person who heard the voice at the river in 1933 that said, as John the Baptist was sent to for run my first coming.

So you've been sent with a message to for run my second coming. Leave ale very clearly says on page 37 that the only person who heard that voice speak at the river that day was William Brannon.

So I think that this is, there's things here that were known, and I think it's just important to point that out to people. Leave ale admits in here that there is not a single known witness when he wrote this book in the 60s that cooperates William Brannon's story of what happened at the 1933 baptism.

And again, I just want to really point that out here in this book. You're right, and it is significant to understand the mentality of William Brannon before he died, especially in the later years, because as we have discussed often, his mental faculties were really failing towards the end of his life, which is going to also be interesting the deeper we go with the leave ale doctrine, because the years in which he was mentally unstable were the years in which everybody believed that he had the divine word of God.

And some people take it to the opposite extreme and say that the years from 1947 up until 63 when William Brannon was in the height of his fame, they say that that was uninspired.

So this whole thing, the book that you have, the view into his head is significant. Let me read you just the... here since we probably won't put pictures up here because voice of God has all this copyrighted because it's their literature. The quote is on page 37. As many ran in fear and others knelt in prayer, a voice spoke out of the pillar of fire and said to him, William Branagh.

As John the Baptist was the forerunner of the first coming of Christ, so your message is the forerunner of the second coming of Christ. Of course, he alone heard the word and it goes on to describe what other people may or may not have actually witnessed, which we talked a little bit about in some prior episodes when we did the 1933 stuff. So, you know, other people claim that there was some sort of a loud explosion when that happened like a sonic boom or a dynamite blast or something of that nature, but nobody heard, nobody heard or saw what William Branagh heard or

saw. And leaveale is pretty open about that in that book. So leaveale ends up editor of the publications and that one comes out first. The the one though, John, that really is I would say super, super important is I have another one here, the exposition of the seven church ages.

This is the this is the really, really important one. When leaveale came on in 1961 to the team, it was actually the church ages that he was brought on most specifically to work on.

And that is specifically what Anna Jean had turned down. Believe it or not, when William Branagh died, there were not a lot of his sermons in print. Only I would say maybe 30 of his sermons were actually in print when he died. It wasn't actually all that a lot. Most of the ones that had been put in print had been basically wrote up typed up as a bridged versions and had been ran and hurled of faith. That's where most of them were. There wasn't spoken word magazines before he died, like where they printed out full transcripts. That didn't exist before he died. That

all came after. But before he died, there were a bridge sermons where they basically about one third of his sermon would get summarized up and put into ran and hurled faith magazine or occasionally, there would be one invoice magazine or there was also occasional times where there would be one invoice healing, you know, just the bridge versions of his sermons. And that really was the only thing that was in print. And that's why Anna Jean Moore had got started because she was, she was basically abridging them, summarizing them so they could fit, you know, on, you know,

maybe five to six pages in a magazine instead of, you know, the whole sermon and spoken word publication. So anyways, leave ale is to publish the seven church ages. And this is William Branagh's first really big, you know, big series to be published. And in that sermon, I mean, I, if our listeners don't know, roughly William Branagh is preaching that the history of the church since Jesus Christ is broken into seven ages, symbolized by the seven churches of Asia. And there's a messenger to every age. And he is the messenger to age number seven.

And that's that's kind of the summary in the end of the world's going to happen now because he's here and it's age number seven. Well, leave ale, um, it actually started, John, after after, um, after anaging more said she couldn't do it, William Brannum first went to JT Parnell.

So we've talked about JT Parnell a few times. JT Parnell was a message polygamist. He started being a polygamist in 1965. After William Brannum preached marriage into force and William Brannum actually had one of JT Parnell's polygamist wives type up the original manuscript, John, for the seven church ages before.

And one of JT Parnell's polygamist wives who typed up that manuscript provided it to leave ale as the basis to start editing it. And then having got that William, or leave ale starts working with William Brannum to go through all the text of the pages and everything and turn it into the book that we have today.

I want to talk some more about that though. 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 Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

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It's really funny when you think about it because whenever I first published the information that William Brannum openly supported polygamy, I got a lot of backlash from message preachers. They're saying, no, he didn't. You know his words because he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. You can find some sermons where he condemns it, but you find other sermons where he praises it.

And the point that all of them seem to miss is William Brannum worked closely with multiple polygamists and he simply didn't care that they were polygamists. So if he were this outspoken prophet trying to true the bride up for the last days and polygamy and his view would have been wrong, he would have openly condemned it and not supported these guys, but he worked with polygamists.

Oh, absolutely. William Brannum worked with all kinds of dirty scoundrels and he knew they were dirty scoundrels when he worked with them. Absolutely. And yeah. the exposition of seven churches, this beloved message book, wasn't part the product of message polygamist, ladies and gentlemen, that is the truth. Just as a very large faction of the message community globally was recruited by polygamist, especially in Africa. You know, Sydney Jackson was a polygamist, the man who spearheaded message outreach efforts in Africa after William Brandham died. In JT Part Nell, we might do a full episode on him. He launched a polygamist sect of the

message after William Brandham died. Yeah, so at any rate, it's kind of around the writing of the seven church ages where leaveale starts to get into trouble and have disagreements with the rest of the message community. So when leaveale wrote this book, you know, I'm sure you have been in the message your whole life. This is actually a fairly controversial book in the message, isn't it?

Yeah. And this book in the message is controversial, not because of William Brandham preached, the sermons on the seven seals, but because leaveale edited the book. And when I say he edited the book like he on one level, he did two different things. On one level, he cleaned up William Brandham's grammar. There's like, if you go back and you listen to the original sermons William Brandham preached and compare it to here, leaveale subtracted roughly 20% of what William Brandham said.

And if you go through and kind of compare it out, you'll find out the 20% that leaveale subtracted was, you know, it was junk. It was meaningless. It had no, it was not substantive to the topic. It was William Brandham going out in left field and chasing a squirrel.

It was William Brandham misspeaking. It was William Brandham sneezing and coughing and hemming. It's that sort of stuff that leaveale cut out. But John, to the main sect of the message, especially the deity cult and especially a lot of the people who were starting to treat William Brandham's sermons as scripture, it was like he was deleting verses out of the Bible because he deleted William Brandham's coughs. You know, it was that bad, John. And so one side of the message is outrage that leaveale has deleted roughly 20% of William Brandham's sermons when he published the book. Is it possible, John, that leaveale edited

out the rapturing faith? Oh my goodness, like we just can't take that risk. So that was like one side of the furor that started against leaveale. There's so much I could say there and I don't know how trim it down to because it's a side story of this podcast. But the pinnacle of movement, by and large, was trained through British Israelism to take specific verses and emphasize the power of each individual verse. And they do that with the Bible. Well then the message comes along and William Brandham presents the idea of the spoken word, which eventually evolved into

word of faith, etc. and they had the same philosophy, but they applied it to William Brown's words. So to remove one single sentence of this is blasphemy. And the significance of this particular book is crazy because in the, I guess it was the previous episode, we mentioned Chris Reed and Morningstar, stature of a perfect man.

The image of the pyramid that he's showing is the church ages and Reed, Reed who is influential in IHOP KC. All of these groups that are looking to Morningstar and connected with them through the NER, Apostolic Networks, he's feeding William Brown's seven church ages into them, right?

And he very cautiously changes. I don't know if you caught it Charles, but he changed in his version of the diagram where all of the message cults has the word Branum for the Leodicean church age.

He simply, he took the word out and replaced it with another word. So he's preaching Branumism, he takes Branum's name out of it. And yet he's preaching this, the seven church ages. It is one of the most significant and controversial doctrines in the message.

I know John, and it's a really big deal to the main sect of people who are adopting quote preaching, the people who are implementing tape churches, it's a really big deal that Leavale subtracted portions of William Branum's sermons out.

They are, it's outrageous to them. Well, well, the other sect of the message, the sect I come from, John, they were upset for the exact opposite reason, okay? It wasn't what Leavale took out, but it was what he added that outrage the sect of the message I come from.

And there is actually quite a lot of stuff in here that William Branum did not actually preach when he preached the seals, or when he preached the church ages. And what Leavale did is he sort of integrated some of William Branum's sermon on the seven seals with his sermon on the church ages.

And so you end up with a bit of a synthesis where Leavale is merging some sermons in here that weren't really part of when William Branum originally preached it. And so it basically comes out, this book is a good 30 to 40% different than the original sermons that William Branum preached on this topic.

And to the stuff he cut out, well, the people are outraged that he cut out, but maybe he cut out rapturing faith for goodness' sake. You know? And then to the stuff that he added, he is like, he is inserting his words in the place of the prophet.

It's like he's adding to the Bible. So it's, people are, they get in common and going on this, John. And Leavale, Leavale is kind of blindsided by this. And the truth is this was published like the year after William Branum died.

But here's the thing that people didn't, I don't think they realized, William Branum proofread this thing. William Branum blessed the whole thing. William Branum, And Lee Vail has the tapes to prove it, don't he?

So William Brown have actually indeed did go page by page through this book with Lee Vail and say yes, keep that, keep that, no, take that out, take that out, yes, keep that. William Brown literally did that page by page for this book.

And maybe we can put a little bit of the recording up here, John, of when he did that, but yeah. And Lee Vail, after all of the outrage, he had kept. William Brown told him to destroy all the evidence because Lee Vail had recorded it.

But Lee Vail published all the tapes of all of his time with William Brown, I'm going through, yes, this page, that page, and basically proved that William Brown did indeed go through this book with him, page by page, and it is indeed what William Brown wanted it to be, regardless of what anyone else in the message has said about it.

This is William Brown's work. Brother Lee, in step and forward, you're on post, yeah. Thank you. Folks doing, and number four. Don't you think it would be a good thing right there where this thing, you're thinking about Abraham, that the job himself being a regime, what's there, what's sent to him, and it's kept behind, behind him, that it would be good if there's a place to spit to that, read it's found in Hebrews the 412 for the 12th verse, the word of God is sharper than it seems, so it undesires the thoughts of the heart,

showing that this was the word of God's methods, and that we're told in, right? That's Lee's words, the word, method, and he's taught himself, he is the word, and if it's the word that deserves the thought that's in the heart, and that's how Jesus being under the guise of God, and God's words, the word makes the thought of the heart to call it, and he sees the word.

Get it out, and then the whole word, it flies to this day, which is the prophet also, will know the thoughts of the heart to call it, will be the word made manifest in a man that can know the thoughts that's in the heart.

Thank you for this. On point, I'll put that nothing off about it. That is right, 411, 411, and this is number five on the side. Very beautiful, if you're reading the letters, and I'll write all of it, and this is ringing out, standing here, when Moses is speaking here about raising up the Lord to raise him up a prophet, he's right, it's up to him, himself, out of the fire upon the mountains, and he promises near that he will not do that anymore, but you know, always seek to them through a prophet.

So you need the Lord to go up to read the thoughts of the prophets, and you might only provide that a little bit. see the God promise and hear it, that from next forth when he speaks he will be true Prophet. Not the moon, he got orbit, but he dawned by it to find so forth like that, but he will be true Prophet. Thank you both there.

It's nonsensical, man. And the argument, the controversy itself, is proof positive that the people have replaced the Bible with the words of William Branham. That argument that fight, you know, to keep it exactly as it is, verse five. I laugh using the word verse because it's not a verse. He was he was speaking and he was speaking like a ping-pong ball. But they take each single sentence that he said and they've turned it into a verse.

And remember, as I just said, the Chris Read and Morningstar, not only Chris Read, but many, many of these NAR guys are trying to promote Branham as the, you know, more than more than a prophet. They like to take this philosophy that he's part of the coming, you know, Joe's army manifestation, et cetera. He's the one who laid the ground war, which by and large, he did. But if you understand that his words were like a ping-pong ball and other people were manipulating, combining his words and the movement by and large viewed his verse, his words as a Bible, you really really understand how, I don't know what the

word, it's, it's heretical. You really understand how heretical this is. I know it, it, it's, if you're not inside the message, it is maybe hard to wrap your mind around just how big of a deal this was when this all happened. But this was life and death issues to the message community, you know, whether he was adding to or taking away from this was life and death issue when this happened in the early message community.

And what happens, John, is basically the uproar and the furor and the backlash when this comes out. And this is the first major publication from spoken word publications right here. When the backlash of all that happens, the reaction of the group is essentially that they're going to publish all the William Brownem's sermons verbatim moving forward. So it was actually the furor and backlash to this book, which led to all of the spoken word transcripts to be published verbatim. This came out, I want to say in 66, 67, I have the exact dates in my in my book, but that came out right really a spoken word was starting off spoken

word was name spoken word in 1967. If you remember back a few episodes ago, so ago we talked about how Banks Woods resigned more or less in protest from all of his positions when Billy Paul over through the Brownem tabernacle. Well, he was still the head of what turned into spoken word publications when he resigned. And following his resignation, they put Roy Borders in charge. So Banks Woods was a charge of spoken word publications before Roy Borders. Roy Borders took over and that's when it was name spoken word publications.

And this was the first. Really the first literature that came out of spoken word publications this biography and this 20th century profit book these were the original publications out of there and after Roy Borders took over and You know in that transition point of time after William Brannum died and so as that happened John Roy Borders in leave-ale kind of have a little bit of a falling out leave-ale resigns as chief editor and Roy Borders makes a decision from here on out everything will be published verbatim and that is what they started to do It's essentially the message version of the book of Mormon you

You literally take the words of William Brannum which is the new Bible right and it's combined with the old Bible It is exactly what the Mormons do and I've heard sermon after sermon about you know the Mormons and how they're occult and how they have added to or taken away from the word of God Well, they're doing the same thing in the message. It's quite something else isn't it So after after leave-ale Resigns more less stops being the chief editor of all of the literature for spoken word publications and the franchise doing all the message literature

He starts really to lean into his role as the authorized explainer of the message that really is Where he kind of takes his lead in his his big focus after that. He feels like it's his job to go around and help people understand the complexities of the message that that are hard to understand and let me give you a quote from William Brannum William Brannum endorsed leave-ale very very highly This is from a sermon Jesus Christ the same yesterday to day forever from 1958 William Brannum said If there's anything you lack of understanding Something that you do not understand

My associate brother Vail here is available at all times to explain anything that seems mysterious to you ministering brethren Or wherever you are or any lay member or anything So William Brannum made quotes like that about leave-ale a lot and that endorsement from the prophet of God John basically gave leave-ale Supreme authority to interpret the message After William Brannum was gone and leave-ale played that up to great effect William Brannum did indeed Make leave-ale the authorized explainer of the message and so that is what leave-ale undertook to do for the rest of his life And he took that very very seriously and another thing that is is quite notable is you know

All throughout the healing revivals wherever they went or whatever William Brannum introduced leave-ale to kind of back up leave-ale and make it look like he Was this great authority? He would always call him dr. Lee Vail right and he would always emphasize there's times he point blank said Leavale had a PhD. He'd say things like this. But, but come to find out, Leavale never went to college. Leavale was not a doctor. Leavale did not have a PhD. None of that was true. William Brannum made it all up and Leavale went along with him. All of those years allowing him to say he

was a doctor and allowing him to say he was this great theologian. And it was all just an act, all along John. The whole thing was a hope. It was a scam. Yeah. And you know, I've had people tell me that's not significant. That doesn't matter. And I'm like, it doesn't matter that he was lying.

And when they throw on this word vindication, he's the vindicated prophet of God referring to William Brannum. Well, when you have a person who's self, he himself is making the vindication by saying, here's Dr. Leavale and he supports me. He's a very educated man and he supports what I say.

You're making your own vindication. Well, let me, let me turn it around the other way, John. Wouldn't it be it failed discernment? I mean, if he's the serving, Dr. Veil to be a doctor, I mean, isn't that evidence that William Brannum doesn't really have a gifted discernment? I mean, isn't that evidence that William Brannum? So obviously, William Brannum is just lying and knows it's not true. But I mean, if he's this great prophet, obviously, William Brannum has no gifted discernment. Obviously, William Brannum is unable to know these things, right? Because he's incorrectly discerning someone to be a doctor when they're not, okay? So I go down that road with

it. I mean, it just, all this stuff blows up William Brannum. He's dishonest. He has no gift like he really pretends. It just blows him up. And he's like faking this guy as an authority. Yes, this great authority agrees with me, but he's not really an authority. Yeah. And even what you said right there, I want to pause because for the listeners who weren't in the message call, that statement would be a little bit hard to understand. But in the message, which included the latter rain, the by and large, the latter rain movement accepted this version of a prophet.

And all knowing, all seeing omniscient omnipotent God, basically, is what a prophet is. Get a peer into your soul. A peer into your soul can hold your hand and look in your eyes and see everything that you've done. Basically, they were creating a sorcerer. This is a sorcerer, not a prophet, versus a biblical prophet is a person who can't control it. Whenever God speaks through him, God just happens to speak through him. It's not, it's not this, I don't know, it's not not this flowing river that flows through his mouth with an on-off switch. It's literally God

chooses whenever it's going to happen. And it happens. But they have turned it into the prophet is the sorcerer he can peer into your very soul. And so, I mean, obviously, we know this throws William Brannum into question that he did that. But who else does it also throw into question?

Yet throws into question, leave ale who went along with it for all the people. right? So, leaveale himself obviously just through that interchange proves, leaveale will lie on William Brown's behalf, that is, you know, and I pointed that out with a lot of these, you know, with people as we went through, they lie knowingly on William Brown's behalf, like leaveale lied on William Brown's behalf a lot.

And so there's a reason we can't really trust any of their testimonies, right? Because there is a proven track record of them lying to support William Brown, and this whole going along with being a doctor of divinity thing was leaveale lying to support William Brown.

I mean, it's very, it destroys their credibility is what really makes it so important. It proves to us we can't really trust what they say to us, especially about William Brown, because they have a track record of dishonesty on that subject.

Absolutely. I mean, this is not something that you see in normal Christian circles, I'll say it like that. If you're in the message, this kind of, you know, you're so used to people lying to, you don't care, you kind of turn it off.

But if you were to go to a reputable church with a reputable preacher who has went through his studies and he has actually got a doctor of divinity, and knows the work involved and the study involved to get that, they're actually offended by this.

Why is this man lying? This guy doesn't have a doctor of divinity. He doesn't have a clue about scripture, because he's never been trained. And therein lies the problem in the message, in the laterane movement, by and large.

They teach you and indoctrinate you to believe that the study of the Bible and the discourse of study for centuries, for, you know, millennia, having gone through that and understanding what it is you're preaching about is heretical.

They actually teach that it's heresy to go through and get your doctor of divinity. So now think about that. You have a movement that condemns every single person with a degree in, in religion whatsoever, and they, they call the seminaries, they call them cemeteries.

But yet here's the person who's instigating all of that, giving the title to leave ale, who's his assistant. Leave ale through, through these years, you know, while he was still, you know, popular before all the perusias stuff happened, he became, he traveled quite widely.

He traveled to Europe, he worked alongside evil Frank, toured churches in Europe, he did the same across North America, Canada, the United States, Mexico. I believe he even made some trips into the Caribbean and Central America as well.

But leave ale traveled a lot and went to a lot of different churches. And as he did that, he developed a group of churches that were loyal to his version of the message and were highly respecting of his role as the authorized explainer of the message.

As if you have any question. You can ask Dr. Lee Vail, right? They really gave a lot of credence to that endorsement from William Brownham. And that group of people form the sect of the message and basically separate from the main sect with Lee Vail when the peruseous stuff happens.

And I just want to kind of walk through who some of those were. The most notable one is a man named Terry Spruel. And Terry Spruel had a church in Edmonton, Edmonton, Alberta. And a church was called Word of Life Tabernacle.

Lee Vail's own church was called Grace Gospel Church. It was in St. Peter, Ohio. So Terry Spruel's church is of the Lee Vail persuasion, John. And it's probably one of his most, really his most important supporters.

And together they were, in some ways, you could almost think of him as a team back in the early days. They travel a lot, they support each other a lot. And they work together to kind of develop the network.

Another really important church that was in Lee Vail's network was a church called, it was called Grace and Truth Tabernacle in Beaumont, Texas. And that was Jack Bell's church, John. Jack Bell's church, you've probably heard of Jack Bell.

And so those three churches really form the anchors of Lee Vail's sect of the message. Besides that, Ned Iverson remained more or less in agreement with Lee Vail for his entire life. And Ned Iverson, like I said, he took over the church in Florida after Lee Vail left.

And Ned Iverson also planted several churches in North Carolina and South Carolina who ended up in that affiliation with Lee Vail's sect of the message. So all together, John, I mean, I would say, based on what I know, there were probably around 1200 people in Lee Vail's sect of the message across all of those churches,

you know, in the mid 70s and up into the 80s. So it was, I would definitely call it a major sect of the message. They had an outsized influence is because of who Lee Vail was.

They were never one of the large sects of the message with tens of thousands of people, but they were a pretty notable sect of the message. Besides that, they did end up doing some because Lee Vail had traveled internationally somewhat.

They had international contacts. And as they broke away, they did do submission work and they do have, there are some few churches of Lee Vail's persuasion in Africa and in Central America. So they do have a small overseas presence as well.

So kind of wrapping that up, let's talk about the perusia, John. Let's actually talk about the thing that caused the schism today. And we're starting to run out of time, so we might just get to talk about it a little bit.

So the perusia, what is that? I mean, that's really, it's an interesting word perusia, right? So let me kind of describe this to our listeners. So most of the message. John with the exclusion of Ewald Frank, with the exclusion of Ewald Frank, every significant message preacher and every significant secten part of the message believed that Jesus Christ returned in some vague way in 1963 when William Brennan preached the sermon on the seals. You know with the cloud and all of that that happened in 1963. So every sect of the message believed that.

And as time went on there there there kind of started to be a converse is you know how do we how could how could Jesus in this vague way have came back spiritually in 1963. And now it's 1977 you know all of these years have went by how's come nothing has happened like what how do we explain all this away right like like there was an awareness in a lot of people that this thing has went on a whole lot longer than it should have right. And now we're starting to question did Jesus really come back in 1963. I mean what's going on here because it's a weird thing right because

they thought Jesus was coming back in 1963 that the rapture was basically in progress and they were all going to leave back up with with Jesus. So like Jesus he made his trip down to pick up the bride in 63 and then in a minute he was going to take them they were all going to go back to heaven.

Well, Levail Sermon's on the perusia was his way as the official explainer of the message to try and rectify all of this and and to put it into context for everybody. And what he did is questions of that rose up. Levail actually went back to the original source material that William Brannum copied his Sermon's out of when he preached a job and William Brannum when he preached Revelation chapter 10 he copied that out of the works of Charles Tase Russell the Jehovah Witnesses and William and Levail knew it because he was there with Bank's Woods wife and everything when they they know when they came up with it all collaboratively

with William Brannum. Levail knew it came out of the Jehovah Witness stuff. So he went back to Charles Tase Russell's books where the original stuff was on all this and guess what Charles Tase Russell called all this in his book job he called it the perusia okay and so he pulls it out and he basically gave Charles Tase Russell's explanation of the perusia to try and help the people in the message make sense of what had happened and and the and the short of it is is he basically breaks the coming the second coming of Jesus into two phases. There's phase one where Jesus returns spiritually

but not bodily and that spiritual return which precedes the bodily return is called the perusia. So the spiritual return comes first the perusia in 1963 and then somewhere down the road the bodily return will come okay and so that's what Levail was doing with the perusia he is showing people how to break Revelation chapter 10 and the second coming of Jesus into two phases, the perusia being the spiritual phase.

And he's saying, since 1963, we have been in the perusia. We've been in the spiritual phase, waiting for the bodily return of Christ. And so that is essentially what perusia means. But here's the thing, John, that is not controversial in the message, is it?

I mean, other than evil, fregs, groups, everyone in the message believes this. And I would go so far as to say, not everyone believes it today, but you go back 20 years ago, 30 years ago, yeah, everybody believe this.

And there's some message apostates out there, John, who say, no, we never believe that, because they're more recent converts in. I would say, if you don't believe this, you might not believe the message, actually, because unless the Lord descended from heaven with a shout, there is no message, right?

I mean, using the loaded language of the message there, people might not entirely grasp what I mean, but in message parlance, if the Lord did not descend from heaven with a shout in 1963, there is no message, as the message is the shout.

And so at any rate, that particular piece was not controversial. The piece that caused the controversy, John, that led to everyone coming after him, was what I'm gonna describe next. And Lee Vail described it like this in his sermons.

He said, after he preached this, the peachal people in the message came after him with pitches, with torches and pitchforks, like it was a terrible reaction when he added this next part. So Lee Vail basically claimed that in 1963,

and it was 1977, roughly, when he really started to hone in on this, that in 1963, Jesus Christ quote unquote left the mercy seat, and that upon leaving the mercy seat in 1963, the intercessory work of Christ had ended.

Therefore, there was no more intercessory work of Jesus Christ. And naturally, most of the people in the message community with their understanding, this is going really deep into message, message theology, message thinking. But the sum of it is, the people in the message more or less interpreted what Lee Vail was saying as no one else could be saved.

Like Lee Vail was closing the doors. No more children could be saved, no new converts could be saved. No one knew could be saved and make it because Christ had left the mercy seat.

That's how the overwhelming majority took what Lee Vail was saying. Now, I don't really think that's what Lee Vail meant. I think if you go back and you listen to his sermons on it, that's not entirely what he was saying.

He was actually trying to switch over to the concept of, boy, we're going deep into message, loaded language, John here. The bleeding word, okay? He was transitioning from Christ's intercessory work, being the means to salvation.

He was transitioning from that to the bleeding word, being the intercessory work for Christ and to be saved. And so in message thinking, William Brandt, when he delivered his special revelations. Those revelations were the bleeding word.

The quote unquote bleeding word. In the same way that Jesus was the word made flesh, William Brown's revelations was the bleeding word. And so if you took the bleeding word, William Brown's revelations, you were covered by the blood, the bleeding word.

And so you no longer needed the intercessory work of Christ on the cross because you have the bleeding word. Anyway, this is very deep into message thinking and can be very confusing, I think, to people who are not familiar with this ideology.

But at the end of the day, the people in the message could not wrap their minds around the fact that Jesus Christ would leave the mercy seat and people could still be saved. They didn't want to fully go over to the bleeding word, fully replaces the intercessory work of Christ.

And so that is what then sets up the schism, John. Everyone is turning on, leave out. And it's not because he preached that Christ secretly came back in a spiritual way in 1963. It's because he preached that Christ left the mercy seat and the intercessory work of Christ ended in 1963.

That is what caused the explosion. And to the people who weren't in the message who are studying the NAR and its history who are listening, we just dropped an atomic bomb of heresy right at the end and didn't give enough explanation of it to really understand it.

So I think we're gonna probably have to do another episode. And just fully dive deeper into this. But to, so for both sides who are unfamiliar with this word, Perugia, it is a common theological term.

It just simply means the second coming of Christ. Every Christian believe this. You're looking for the second coming of Christ. However, when you take the manifested sons of God, Joel's army theology, what developed strongly in High Hop KC and Morningstar, who's preaching randomism, all of these movements that are really basing off of this theology.

What's interesting is there's, and it's more than I can really say in this two-minute segment, but what's interesting is these are the same people that say William Brannum went astray during his latter years.

They're really referring to, when they say that, they're really referring to it from 1963-ish to 1965 because they see the formation of this deity cult emerging and they don't wanna be associated with it.

They know it's going destructive. So they say, we cut it off right here. But Leavale, as you mentioned, was working, he came in contact with William Brannum around 1947, something like this. He started preaching randomism heavily in, what was it?

It was the mid-50s, I think. And all of this is developing during the years that these NAR guys say that William Brannum was not gone astray. So as these doctrines are progressing, they're talking about the good, they've divided William Brannum into two, the good guy and the bad guy.

the good guy that they're saying is teaching everything that is in this heretical bombshell that we're that we just dropped so let's let's table it let's come back and let's dive a little bit deeper into the word peruja and leave ale and all of this are you okay with that Charles that sounds great because you're right there's so much there to untangle and besides that I want to talk about what happened in leave ale sucked to the message after he broke away too yeah I think we can easily go through another episode and try to

unpack some of that language a bit more but yeah I think we've set a good table here so this sector of the message is often referred to as the peruja the peruja people and leave ale lunch the sector of the message in 1977 after all of the backlash to his specifically Christ coming off the mercy seat in 1963 awesome well let's come back and let's do it so if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at William-Brandom.org and Christian Gospel Church.org for more about the

history of William Brandom and the healing revivals you can read come out of her my people and for more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon Kindle in Ormell

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