Jesus Left the Mercy Seat: Doomsday Theology of Branham's Inner Circle

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 I'm a little excited to talk about all things perusia which is you know it's it's a word that other Christians use it's not limited to the message but just saying that name makes

me feel icky because in the main sec you had the main sec people and they were largely a large number of Josephites they they many of them worship the Prophet's son William Branham's son but then you had this other group of people that did not and they viewed everybody else from all the other sects as I don't know how to put it they were they were lower in status than us and the perusia people especially because they were out of leaveale sect and just saying this gives people the some sort of inside view into the dynamics of

how these cults work. Once a splinter group emerges they become mortal enemies and they're they're lesser to the you know if you're in a cult they're lesser to the other cult members then even if you've never joined the cult so just saying the name perusia and thinking about leaveale I'm having to deconstruct in my head what that means to as it relates to the cult as it relates to the podcast and there's there's a complex mess there. You're exactly right John you know in in the message and in almost all the sects of the message the lowest of the low is not

you know the pagans and the you know the atheist the lowest of the low is the message apostates that is as low as you can go and they have all kinds of ways they back it up but yeah the people who lead who people who know the message in either a quote unquote perverted or be leave it they get to go to the worst part of hell right and they get to burn the hottest and they get to get to torture the longest you know that that is the worst the worst of the worst is the message

apostates and so most every sect of the message looks at the other sex as message apostates as the worst of the worst of the worst right and you know a lot of the ways some of the ways you'll you'll hear them say it the message is, if you knew better, but you didn't do it, you are gonna get it worse than anybody else because the person who didn't know better, you know, there's a little mercy for them, right?

There's a little something for them, but because you knew better, because you heard the words of the prophet, because you heard this truth, and you didn't do better. Yes, you are definitely gonna go to the very worst part of hell and burn for the longest period of time.

Like, you are really gonna get it. Yes, and so the message groups are very hateful, vicious, vindictive towards each other. And you're correct, as we're talking today about the Peruzia group, Peruzia is a word that's used, you know, out in broader Christianity, somewhat.

It's actually the Greek word for presence, and it's actually a word in the Bible in Greek, speaking about the second coming of Jesus Christ. So, in that sense, it's just a normal, it's just a normal kind of a theological sort of a term, right?

But in the message when people use the term Peruzia, they don't mean the normal Christian theological sort of a term by Peruzia. In the message when people say Peruzia, they are thinking primarily about a doctrine that leaveale presented, which he called the Peruzia.

And because the word Peruzia is associated with this doctrine that leaveale promoted, yes, it's kind of a dirty word in the message. And most people have no idea that it is in the Bible in a normal sort of a way.

You know, they just know, oh, this is leaveale's doctrine. We hate leaveale. Therefore, the word Peruzia is a bad word, you know, and I think that's a pretty honest way to sum up how most people in the message look at it.

And you know, as time passes, John, this is true. As time passes, I bet you, John, today, I bet you the average person in the message does not actually know what leaveale's Peruzia teaching even was, right?

They probably don't even know. They just know, oh, Peruzia, we hate that. But they don't actually know what it is anymore. And that's how it is, I think, with a lot, especially of the more ancient splits in the message back to the early days, like this split with leaveale happened and began in 1977.

We're going to talk about that, you know, quite a bit here today. But that split with leaveale over the Peruzia was, goodness, John, that was pushing 50 years ago now, right? That boy, it's hard to imagine that much time has passed.

But yeah, it's pushing 50 years ago that the split over the Peruzia happened. And there is probably an entire generation of message believers who knows the Peruzia is bad, but actually has no idea why it's bad or what it is or why it even caused the schism to begin with.

Hey, if you're listening today, you're going to find out why. Exactly. And to the average Christian person who has never heard that word, but has read their Bible, this is a word that appears all throughout the Bible.

I just did some, you know, some basic research into the word for this podcast and it occurs four times in the Bible. And the one that most people will be familiar with, it says that this is from, I think it's second, Thessalonians two, we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord should not prevent those, which are asleep.

That's talking about the perusia. It is a complex meaning. The meaning of perusia is specifically the second coming of Christ, but it's also everything that comes with that. You've the judge of the living and the dead, the resurrection of the both the righteous and the unrighteous, and then establishing the kingdom.

So if you think of what happened in Latter-Rain, going through the charismatic movement into the NAR, there were such heavy emphasis placed on parts of this, specifically the kingdom and how that would evolve, and the resurrection and what that was to entail, and the judgment.

They over-emphasize each of those in various different ways, some of which was biblical and some of which was not. In the main sect of the message, we believe that William Brannum would resurrect first, and that would say it was like the resurrection before the resurrection.

Then he would go on this big tour, and he would have this massive tent meeting, and nobody would go into these auditoriums, which are comfortable and have nice seating and air conditioning. Instead, you're going to go sweat in this old tent from the 1950s.

That's what we believed. And then he would have a little room in the tent where he himself, William Brannum, would give people their new bodies. That was what we believed in the main sect.

They call that the Return Ministry sect, I think if you're reading Charles's book. But that evolved into something completely different. In the NAR, they would call that heresy, but each one of those specific meanings of this complex word, Perugia, evolved in a much different way as it went through time into the NAR.

And I think to understand how all of that came to be, this podcast will probably be helpful. When we think about leaveale, as we kind of talked through in our last episode, he was the official explainer of the message.

And that is a role that William Brannum actually personally gave leaveale while William Brannum was still living. Leaveale was the official authorized explainer of the message. And he worked alongside William Brannum as William Brannum developed many of the doctrines of the message.

And when I say developed, I mean, helped him steer him to the right books to read. That's what I mean, okay? He steered him to the right books to read. He helped him figure out how to make things fit together.

And then William Brannum presented them, as part of his divine revelations, that he received from angels, and you know, Trittess and told us what that's where they came from. And really, he was reading them out of his library books.

Books I have on the shelf here behind me. Well, among the many things that William Brannum copied out of was a book by Charles Taze Russell called The Finish Mystery, okay? And Leavale was aware of that.

And in the section where William Brannum copied portions of his teachings on Revelation chapter 10, John, he copied some of those portions out of Charles Taze Russell's book. And the way to read Revelation chapter 10 is very important to the message.

It's just a really critical piece of message thinking is what Revelation chapter 10 means. And Leavale, as the official explainer of the message, is he's going in and given what he thinks with these really technical explanations of how to understand different things in the message.

Is he's explaining the events of Revelation chapter 10 to his audiences. This is when he starts to introduce that word perruche, John. And obviously, in the message, we would fit William Brannum into Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation chapter 10 verse seven was William Brannum, okay, in message thinking. And he would fit perruche into that verse as well and on down there. So what happened is as the years go on, right, in 1977 comes and goes and nothing happens, right?

Obviously, William Brannum predicted 1977 to be the end of the world, 1977 ended up not being the end of the world. It's when you come to 1978, John, that Leavale really starts to teach this peruja stuff, right?

Before 1978, he had taught it here and there, but it hadn't been made into a big to do, a big to deal. But in 1978, Leavale starts leaning into the peruja and he's actually doing that in response somewhat.

I mean, of course, he don't say this out loud, but obviously, in hindsight, he's doing this in response to the failure of the 1977 Doomsday date. And as he does, what he is trying to do is he's trying to explain to the message believers how Christ did indeed already come back and how the rapture is in progress, okay?

Because everyone in the message believed that somehow or another Jesus Christ returned in 1963. In the early message community, for the first from William Brannum, from 1963, William Brannum's death in 1965, right in that period of time, he preached the seals in 1963, he died in 1965, the end of 1965, from that period of time, up until the early and mid-1980s, everyone in the message believed that Jesus Christ returned around 1963.

Everyone in the message believed that. Now, there's people today who don't believe that anymore. There's some people who, beginning in the later 80s and early 90s, they started to walk that back, but it was a universal belief in the message community that in some form or another, Jesus Christ had returned in 1963.

And in the early days. And when Lee Veil introduces this perusia, that's what he's doing. He's not talking about the second coming of... Jesus Christ off into the future. He's talking about the coming of Jesus Christ during the days of William Brandham.

That is what this Perugia stuff is about. And here's the thing, when he preached the Perugia John, that piece was not the controversial element. The controversial element at the time was not that Jesus Christ had returned in 1963 in some vague way.

The controversial element was what we'll explain here in just a minute or two. The controversial element was actually something else contained within his overall Perugia teaching. And as I say that, when I say that the entire message community believe that Jesus Christ returned in 1963 in some way or another, every sect of the message in every group has its own unique terminology or way to explain that.

Like most of them won't say, Jesus Christ came back in 1963. Most of them won't say it like that. They have different euphemistic phrases for it. Like the sect of the message I come from, John, we would say the Lord descended from heaven with a shout in 1963.

Leavale would say the Perugia began in 1963, right? Another common phrase you'll hear a lot in the message is people will say the message is Jesus Christ. And when we receive the message, we receive Jesus Christ.

And they say the message came to us, you know, in the ministry of William Brandham. And the message is the return of Jesus Christ. They all have these different euphemistic ways to explain it.

But somehow or another, Jesus Christ in some spiritual form returned in the life of William Brandham usually in their beliefs around 1963. And he is still here in some form or another spiritually in the church.

That is the generally still the majority belief of most of the message today, although some people have walked it back starting in the late 1980s. And we've talked previously about the significance of this belief that he had returned.

T.L. Osborne, who was really big in the word of faith and the prosperity gospel, who worked closely with Kenneth Hagen at William Brandham's memorial service, claimed that William Brandham was God in the flesh.

He believed that Jesus Christ had came again in the form of William Brandham. That was a widespread belief. And the fact that he said it during the full gospel businessmen's convention, and nobody had this big uprising and condemned him for his heresy, it had to have been a general belief among people that were there.

Because if I were to get up and say that in some Christian convention today, you'd read about me in a magazine somewhere. You'd find me on the internet. Here's this heretic who rose up and said this awful, awful thing during a Christian convention.

Well, T.L. Osborne did this and it was widely accepted and probably adopted. So the fact that he returned in 1963, as it relates to Revelations 10, and what you were talking about, there's a cat, there's a little connection there that many people might miss.

Revelation 10 begins by saying, I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And if you go to any single message church, you're gonna find either in their literature, sometimes hanging on the wall, I have actually seen it behind the pulpit, that 1963 cloud.

And whenever I was in the message, I had one in my wallet, I had one hanging on my wall. Many people, many of my friends had them hanging in their living room, because we believe that Revelation 10, as you read that and read what it's saying, we associated the cloud with that verse, that passage from Revelation 10.

If you go back in the podcast that Charles and I have done, the cloud is fully debunked. At the time that people believed this, it was a mystery, but now that the Vandenberg Air Force Base launch dates are no longer classified, you can go back and you can see when it launched, and there's even some literature where people are sending letters that have been declassified.

But it's no mystery anymore, but back then it was a mystery. They thought the cloud was this great thing from heaven, and William Brannum was the mighty angel that came. So William Brann transcended from human who had an angel in the platform with him in the early years, in one version of a stage persona, to literally becoming that angel that was on the platform with him.

You got it exactly right, John. That's very well put how your sect of the message looked at it. And my sect of the message had a very similar view. And in Revelation chapter 10, how the Lord descends and there's the cloud, right?

And a rainbow was over his head. Well, in that same magazine on the flip age of the cloud is the rainbow. And if you like hold that magazine up to the light, there's the rainbow over the cloud.

And it's like, and they thought that this was, they thought that picture of the cloud was actually Revelation chapter 10. Yes, that is exactly what many of the sects of the message believe, leave ails included.

The thunder as we talked about, believe that as well. My sect had a more nuanced view of it, John. But similarly, we just had a different way of explaining it. We generally just went with the first Thessalonian verses and said that the Lord descended from heaven with a shout in 63.

But yet every sect of the message has its different, unique way of saying that that cloud, something about that cloud was Jesus Christ coming back in some special, vague supernatural sort of a way.

Yes, and that's what they all believe. And when I say that, there is some message of potstates out there today, John, who don't believe that anymore. You know that? There are, and I'm sure we're gonna get this in our comment feeds.

There's going to be some people today, because there are. There are message believers who no longer believe that today. And they tend to be younger ones who were not around back in the old days and didn't know what everybody believed or taught.

Or they're from, you know, they're people who've come in really after the message started to de-emphasize this stuff, which the de-enthuszization began in the late 80s and early 90s. But I'm telling you, this was the universal belief of the message in its first two decades.

It was the universal belief of the message that the Lord descended from heaven with a shout in 1963 and it had something to do with this cloud, right? And if you're in the message today and you don't believe that anymore, it's not because you believe the original form of the message is because you believe in apostate form of the message that has evolved in the decades after William Brown died, okay?

You might not actually believe the message, but I'll go ahead and credit you as a message as a believer if you don't believe it anymore. But I would suggest you may not believe the message if you don't believe this because this is pretty, a pretty core belief of the entire original early message community.

That was one of the things that really hit me as after I left the message that it was January 1, 2012 when we decided to leave. And I left the message, what I thought was the message.

And then it wasn't even three years later. I started having some conversations with other people who had left and they described what it was that they left and they had left the same church that I did.

Well, the version of the message that they left in just three years had shifted so much. I was like, wait a minute, is that the same religion? And then five years go by. I talked to more people and I'm like scratching my head.

Is that the same religion? When you're in it, you're being manipulated so slowly you don't recognize the shifts and changes. But once you leave, that static point stops. And so you remember what it was that you left.

Years later, you talked to other people and you're like, good Lord, man, what happened to those people? For example, in there's some photos and I can throw one up on the screen, but in the 50s and 60s, the women, it was okay for them to cut their bangs in the Pentecost religion.

And even to some extent, some of them were allowed to cut their split ends from the bottom of their hair. That would, that's no more. You're not allowed to do that. You could wear dresses that were above the knees because it's still a dress.

You're wearing a garment that pertains to a woman in the message Pentecostal realm. Well, fast forward to when we left, you could not show the knee or you are a harlot. They would actually chastise you from the pulpit in your seat.

If you were a female and you were showing some knee, the pastor, I guess, would get a little excited and he would preach at you. Well, then by the time it got to right before we left, you could only show right above, like to your cat.

may be right. Well, in today's world, they chastise women if it doesn't go all the way down if they're showing their ankles, like it gets worse and worse and worse with time. But while you're in it, you don't recognize this. You think it's always been this way. That is the same thing, not just for the dress code, but with all of these weird beliefs that we're talking about, people in the message that the younger generation has no idea what it is they're supposed to believe because what they're supposed to believe today isn't what the original message was.

That's very true, John. Very true. You know, as we come back to talking about Levail and the Perugia, so as we dive into this a little more, the Perugia is essentially the way I were using the term here and the way it's used in the message. The Perugia is the term used for Levail's specific explanation of how Jesus Christ came back spiritually in 1963. So that is specifically what it's about. And the reason I've talked about it a little bit, you know, what the other sex belief is, I just want it wasn't the belief that Jesus came back in 63 that was controversial

at that time, right? That was not the controversy. Nobody, nobody really was upset that he had said that. That was not the controversy. The controversy was more into the weeds of what he did. And what he did, as you go into the weeds of what he was preaching, John, Levail taught. And this is how it would be phrased, that Jesus Christ left the mercy seat in 1963, okay? That is how he would phrase it. And in message thinking, okay? And I don't think that this really is reflective of actual mainstream Christian thinking, but in message thinking, Jesus Christ can only perform intercession

for the lost while he is sitting on the mercy seat, okay? So if Jesus Christ leaves the mercy seat, there can be no more intercession for the lost and henceforth no one else can be saved. That is the typical line of thinking in the message, okay? So we're going to use some more loaded language of the message here as we go through here. I'm just going to try and explain all this a little bit.

But so when Levail says Jesus Christ left the mercy seat in 1963, most people in the message community back then hear that as him saying, nobody else can be saved. You better not have any kids because they're going to go to hell. You better not bother making any new converts because it's too late for them. They can't be saved. That's how most people hear what Levail was saying. They heard him saying nobody else can be saved. It's all over ladies and gentlemen. That's how they understood what he was saying about Peruja. That was the majority response to it. And that

is where the controversy lied, okay? Now what Levail did in response to that is I don't really think that was necessarily what he was getting at, John. What Levail- did is he started to actually move away from the intercessory work of Christ to a new concept called the bleeding word. Now in the message, the bleeding word is a concept you'll hear quite a few message preachers preach about. And what they believe is essentially the message as Jesus Christ came back, the message came back. We now have the bleeding word in the message.

And the bleeding word is Jesus Christ. The message is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ come back as the bleeding word which we have. And so when you believe the message, you believe Jesus Christ, you believe the bleeding word, that then confers upon you salvation. So you no longer need the intercessory work of Jesus Christ to be saved on the cross. Intercession is over. He's left the mercy seat. The sacrifice, the atonement is all done. You don't need that anymore. But what you now need to be saved is the bleeding word. You need the message to be saved. And so what leave

ale is doing there is he's not in, if you actually listen through his sermons, he's not completely cutting off salvation is over and people can't get saved anymore. But he's now saying in order to be saved, you must receive the message. Otherwise, you are damned and going to hell. There is no salvation outside of the message. And that's what that bad itself is not too much of a, you know, a lot of people don't believe their salvation outside of the message among message believers. But it's specifically him saying that the intercessory work of Christ was over that Christ had left the

mercy seat in that phraseology. That specifically is what set off the controversy. Not that Jesus Christ had come back in some vague spiritual way in 1963. Oh my gosh, man, you've set off so many triggers in my head. I'm listening to you and it's actually painful to hear some of this.

So growing up, we went from, I mentioned this several times in the podcast. We went from churches living in Arizona to, you know, South Carolina and everywhere in between. And I would visit some of these churches after we got married, we'd travel to. And so I've had this wide variety of message churches. I've heard this mercy seat doctrine from churches that were in the main sect. And here's where it gets weird and the reason I'm bringing this up. So William Brannum dies and you've got all of these people with all these varying ideas trying to make sense of this mess that Brannum created.

And many of them are strongly tied to the message. The ones that I went to were mostly the main sect churches. But what happened was there's some bleed over because some of these churches would invite traveling ministers who would come and they would share pulp hits. And so you'd have one guy from that's been influenced by lead veils doctrine of the mercy seat and you'd have another guy that was influenced in a different direction and third, fourth, fifth, sixth guy. They're all traveling in this like circuit, right? And it may be a message church, it may be a Pentecostal

church, it may just be a lateral rain church. These guys are traveling and they're preaching. And the doctrine spread and they bleed over. So I grew up Hearing this mercy seat doctrine, Jesus Christ has left the mercy seat is their hope left for you children And the children would just start bawling and they would come up at the altar after the service Scared half the death that they're gonna lose their salvation Maybe they've never got it in the first place because they didn't come in before Jesus left the mercy seat I grew up with I read the Bible so I I didn't believe most of that, but I had friends that

Every single Sunday for years and years and years it was just bawling at the altar and they come out and Just be complete. They look like they've been wrong wrong through the mill man. It was awful awful And some of these ministers because they've been influencing many directions They would try to find ways to circumvent this mercy seat thing. We had this one minister. I'll never forget this Because I thought it was absurd back then. I was like 16 years old, but it was in I think it was either January or early February 15 degrees outside this traveling minister comes to the church that we're in and he says

Jesus Christ has left the mercy seat is their hope left and everybody's going, oh my gosh We're all doomed, you know in their head you can see it on their faces and he says Now the Bible says repent and be rebabtized how many of you in this building have been rebabtized And I kid you not it's 15 degrees outside and they had a horse trough Everybody goes out to the horse trough in 15 degrees And he's rebabtizing people whether they needed it or not

My goodness John that is On one hand that is incredibly hilarious on the other hand. Oh my oh my goodness What in the world those poor people? Oh my goodness But yes, ladies and gentlemen, you're describing it very well John this mercy seat deal is a very big business in the message and And leave ale is the originator of this concept that Jesus Christ left the mercy seat and Yes, and and and you now need the bleeding word in order to make it it really is It really was a big deal in the message now my second to the message on totally they rejected all that

Christ left the mercy seat business right and some other sex of the message did But that was the controversy that was the the big fight that happened with leave ale and leave ale described it like this He described it like when he started preaching the peruja that people came after him with torches and pitchforks That's how he explained they turned on him pretty quick And and it's true, right like I can remember John full on sermons, you know dedicated to Taringly veiled shreds preached by the preachers at our church, right and that was always what they went after him on

You know was was that peruja and mercy seat stuff so they did go after leaveale in a scorched earth way when he started to preach this. And like I said, he started this, 1978, was when he began to really lean in and preach this perusia.

Now, what's important though, I think, is it's not really leaveale himself who caused the schism over the perusia, John. You're probably aware of this. The one who really caused the schism over the perusia was Terry Spruel up in Edmonton.

So him and leaveale were close buddies and they were in some ways, I would say Terry Spruel might have been the second most prominent minister in their second of the message after leaveale, certainly in the early years that they split away.

It's really Terry Spruel who forced the division over the perusia. Leaveale was more or less content to kinda just let it go, right? And if people wanna believe it, they can believe it, people don't wanna believe it, they don't wanna believe it.

Hey, he can live with it, right? He's not gonna make a big deal out of it. But Terry Spruel, not so much. Terry Spruel was determined to fight with everybody about it, right? And of course, he's dragging leaveale into it with him.

And so Terry Spruel's real aggressiveness over it, John. More than anything else is what caused, is what caused all the divisions over the perusia stuff. Now, besides that, there are a number of other, of notable churches who went along with the perusia.

One, a very important one was, well, I said Terry Spruel. Their church was in Edmonton, Edmonton, Canada. Jack Bell's church was called Grayson Truth Tabernacle. It's in Beaumont, Texas. That was another fairly important one that went along with him.

Besides that, Ned Iverson had some churches in South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida that had been planted that went along with them. They also had another church out in Saskatoon, which I believe was kind of in Terry Spruel's orbit that ended up with them.

They also had, John. There was a number of other churches kind of in the Midwest. There was a church in Cincinnati, led by a man named Brian. I probably gonna butcher this man's last name, Kuku Rec.

And he is probably leaveale successor today. I think it would be fair to say Kuku Rec. John, you might know how to say it better. I'll let you correct me when I'm back. Brian Kuku Rec.

Brian Kuku Rec. And he's probably leaveale successor today. I think he'd be fairest one to say is the most true honest successor of leaveale. And then there's a church in Columbus. There's a few other churches around in the area.

But leaveale was never, his followers were never one of the major sects of the message in the sense of tens of thousands of followers. But I would say they're the smallest of the major sects.

And a lot of it had to do with just the prominence of leaveale himself. When they first broke away in the 70s, John, I'm estimating there was about 1,200 of them when they first started to break away in the 70s.

But they're certainly... more than that today. They do have associated churches I know in Bolivia, in Columbia, in the Dominican Republic, and they also were doing a fair bit of outreach into the DRC in some of the later years of his life. I think there's certainly a few thousand of his followers out there, but I suspect there's somewhat, there's mate, I would suggest probably there's not more than 5,000, I would say, in the world. There's a church of theirs in Toronto too. They did have a church in the United Kingdom for a while, and I believe that pastor actually moved

over to the church in Toronto, but they don't have much of a following left in Europe right now, but they did back in the early days, and so they're kind of fading to be honest with you. They're kind of fading the overall state of that group. Maybe we'll talk a little bit more about what they look like today, but those were kind of the main centers. And again, I would go back to the most important ones back then was Terry Sprule, Jack Bell, and later Brian Cuckoo Rec, John, but I'll let you say his name the right way. Brian Cuckoo Rec. I have some friends who are

we're in that sect, and they, I've been made aware that Brian Cuckoo Rec has been made aware of the issues of the message, and totally rejected all knowledge and disavowed the whole thing, because he could not reconcile the truth as he heard it with what he was indoctrinated to believe.

And it's really sad, you know, I'm laughing at the name because the pronunciation's a little funny, but the fact that some of these guys were indoctrinated and they themselves are victims is it's a really complex thing to try to understand, because you have normal people with normal ambitions, many of them Christian ambitions, to rise up and to lead people into God's kingdom, but they're indoctrinated with this mess that gets in their head, and they, it starts to change them. They start to evolve into something else, and then when people who are under them escape, they're, they're they, you know, the devil is villain out to get them

because they're in this cult position, this cult leader, but they themselves, some of them had transcended from being just a normal person into a cult leader. 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 Branham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking...

the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

And for a while, you know, they've experienced some growth, but overall, they never really became an explosively large sect of the message like some of the others. But leaveale, John. And part of the explanation for this is, I think, is leaveale himself. So leaveale was, we'll have to, we'll get a clip here to play before this is over for everyone to listen to, so they can hear how leaveale preached. So when we talked about Joseph Coleman in the thunders, I said how Joseph Coleman was probably after William Brannem was the best message preacher of the generation to follow. He could just grab the audiences and hold

him. Well, leaveale's kind of at the exact opposite end of the spectrum. The poor man, he had an terrible sinus condition, John. And in his sinuses ran so much literally every second or third sentence when he preached, he had to cough, he had to clear a throat, he had to sneeze, he, and so he could never, that really hindered his ability to connect with his audiences, okay? Because he couldn't just do this impassioned sort of a preaching style that the more popular message ministers could. He was, and every, every second or third sentence, I kid you not, he had to stop and blow his nose.

Fifth chapter. All right. We'll start at verse 16 reading. Wherefore, henceforth, no we no man after the flesh. Yet though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth, no we him so no more. We don't know him so anymore. That's in the Greek. If you notice in the writing there, if you've got a margins of a scope, if you've babbled, we don't know him so anymore. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold all things to become new. And all things are of God who has reconciled

us to himself by Jesus Christ and have given to us the ministry reconciliation to with that God was in Christ, reconciled in the word unto himself, not infuding their trespass and that's committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now put that all together. The body was raised up and put behind the throne of the mercy seat, but in 1963, in March, he left the mercy seat, went to the Father's throne, took the book of redemption of the father's hand, ripped off the seals, put the book back in the father's hands, the father vacated the throne, and that one climbed upon the throne.

Now, that's what the Bible teaches, according to Brother Brandon. And that's not said to Lord because he vindicated the prophet. All right. And then after that, he saw another angel coming down, not the earthly angel, that had been given the message here, but another mighty angel from heaven, with the rainbow of him.

And said he put on land and seen swerve him to live forever and ever. Time should be no more, see? But before he broke forth on those seven seals to reveal them first, he showed miraculously.

He showed it in the heavens. Now, number one, we're looking at seven mysteries of the entire Bible. And so that really hindered his ability to make that charismatic leaders and emotional connection with his audiences.

Okay. And here's the thing, William Brandon healed Joseph Coleman and those other guys at their sinus condition. Why didn't he heal poorly veil of his sinus condition? John, I mean, poorly veil got the short end of the stick.

William Brandon didn't heal him. And then he was stuck with that terrible sinus condition his whole life, which kind of was a real hindrance to his ministry and building his own massive global cult following.

He had to just settle for a smaller, you know, North American-sized cult following. Because William Brandon had failed to heal his terrible sinus condition. You know, this is the one thing that I will sympathize with leave veil for.

I share the same exact condition. I have severe allergies. That's why, if you notice, I just cleared my throat as I'm doing this. I can't make it that long without clearing my throat. With the podcast, I've got a mute button.

So nobody hears it. And I can edit out some of them. So I share the same problem. I have the same sympathy. But you're right. I get called out for my hacking and coughing and clearing my throat in my comment feeds.

I don't know. You've probably seen it, right? Some of the people who are doing this are cult members. And they, some of them, were even from leave veil attacked. And so they're literally making fun of me for me doing exactly what he did.

But I know. And not stopping to think. Yeah, it's ironic. Not stopping to think of the fact that William Brandon did not heal leave veil of this thing. Leave veil pretty famously. You know, as the years went on, John, leave veil started to tell people a lot of his strength, his concerns about the message.

And I'll give a list of those later on. But among the things leave veil would say is leave veil would say I never witnessed a single miracle. Leave veil said that, John. Leave veil this close associate with William Brandon would tell people that he never witnessed a single miracle.

in all the years that he was with William Branham. That's something he, now, that shocking, isn't it? I mean, if somebody, like, leave a let close to William and says, my entire, oh, I never saw a single miracle.

And when he said that, he said, but there was one. There was one time I did see a miracle. The miracle that I saw was that William Branham, one time while he was preaching, he got the microphone cord wrapped around his leg and God miraculously removed the microphone cord from his leg.

And that was the one miracle that Levail saw in all the years that he followed William Branham. Wow. I've heard some wild stories, but I don't know that I've heard that one before. So there's that, okay.

So Levail just, he had some, you know, it's unfortunate. It's really unfortunate in some ways, because there were, like, all the people in the old message community, there were good qualities about some of these people.

Like, Levail did have some good qualities. Raymond Jackson had some good qualities. Joseph Coleman had some good qualities, but it's not like every single one of these guys is like the absolute, you know, it's all bad all the time.

But Levail was in some ways, he had his weird things going on too. And so let's kind of talk about one of those weird things. There is one thing, in particular, that Levail is infamous for across the entire message community, okay?

Levail was what we would refer to as an ex-rated preacher or a pornographic preacher, okay? Levail had a lot of really strange sexual teachings. Now, ladies and gentlemen, if you have children listening, this is probably the time to turn this one off, but Levail had a lot of really bizarre sexual teachings.

And in his sermons, John, he would give extended graphic descriptions of all manner of deviant acts of perversion and others, the things, okay? I mean, there was nothing was off the table, okay? And maybe I can share a few quotes here on the screen, none of which I will actually read out loud to you, but Levail, in his sermons, would just talk about a lot of really inappropriate stuff, especially when you consider that children were sitting in his congregation, he would give detailed descriptions of inappropriate sexual acts, okay?

I mean, in his sermons with children sitting there. And this was a common feature. This wasn't a once in a while thing. If you go back, and I did this, John, so I have, I have like little over a thousand of Levail's tapes, sermons.

I have over a thousand of his sermons in my possession. And I have transcripts of over a thousand of them in my possession. And if I go back and I just do a search, Levail talked about, homosexuals and homosexual acts in 25% of his sermons and he talked about just in general he talked about sexual acts and sex in over 60% of his sermons. The majority of his sermons contain commentary on sexual relations, John. I have one form or another and the descriptions in some of these is so so amazingly terrible that I mean it just it shocks a person to to hear it

and leave ale was fully aware that he had this perception was fully aware that he was doing it and it really just blows your mind when you understand the sheer breadth and scope to which leave ale was making these graphic sexual descriptions in his sermons. You know that's another thing that I've noticed and some of the people in the support groups have noticed too. When you're in the group thing and you're being manipulated and indoctrinated and it's happening so gradually it can go in you know like a train with no tracks it's going to head in a direction you don't

expect. Some cases it went this direction there were ministers that said horrific things. I've heard some I've sat through some sermons like this and if you weren't a member of that church for the entire shift like some of the churches I visited I only visited a couple times and I would hear some awful awful things being said but I would remember looking at the faces of the people in the crowd in the congregation and it was no big deal that this guy is saying this terrible terrible thing that no minister should ever say in front of the presence of kids and nobody seems to care

because they've been manipulated in that group thing and they don't see it as a problem. It's just become common to them and that dynamic is really difficult for somebody who's never been in any of this and goes to a normal church from the outside looking in. It's really difficult for them to understand how and why. I'm going to read just a few of the gentler ones here just so our audiences can get an idea of Lee Vale's views on this. So here is one from a 1996 question and answers on pastors by Lee Vale. Lee Vale says, my god why don't you read a few books and grow up?

Don't you be afraid of your pornographic books? You'll understand what the Bible speaks of when you understand pornography. I'm not lying to you. I'm not lying to you at all. So Lee Vale actually commanded his audiences to indulge in pornography. This is what I'm it's something is really wrong here. I mean when you see these sort of things. Let me give you another one. This is from a 1968 sermon, John called Resurrection. 1968. Think how far back this is. It's called Resurrection Calvary.

People come back from Africa and say, well, the missionary says they are over there in Africa and they don't get blank when they see a naked woman's body. My Bible says to the young man concerning her blank, blank, blank, be thou ravaged by her continually. That's what God's word says.

Therefore, if a man is not a blank, blank by a naked woman, there's something wrong with him. He is perverted. And he goes on through this to actually go out and say, there is nothing wrong with pornography. Quote, pornography is fine. This is the sort of stuff he is saying in his sermons, John. That's in 1968. William Brownham's dead two and a half years, he's saying that.

Well, and keep in mind, this is William Brownham's publicist. In 1968, this is during the heart of whenever the word of faith, the prosperity gospel movements are being birthed, and they were, you know, they've kind of developed away from Brannemism now. But at that point in time, they were strongly connected to Brannemism. So here's one of the main figures. Probably, I would say he was the most important main figure of the message that was still alive after William Brownham died. This is the most important person saying this at that time.

Here's something our IHOP people might recognize. You know, I've heard the IHOP people talk about how they really love the song of Solomon and how they made analogies out of that to the bride of Christ. Well, that's actually, in some degrees, somewhat common in the message too. They would take that and they would, they would, they would in the message, I've heard quite a few message preachers also kind of analogize that to the bride of Christ. Which again, I'm not, you know, that's, that's an unusual thing. Well, here's an example of leaveale doing that. And I suspect

this is probably more perverted than anyone ever did at IHOP. But here we go. Leaveale says in 1999, the certain sermon is pertinent sea of the sea. He says, in fact, the song of Solomon has been called the pornographic book of the Bible. And when people want to talk about pornography and say it's perfectly legitimate, of course, they refer to that book and they say the Bible is full of pornography. There it is. Right there. Pornography is fine. It's okay. It's no problem.

I got no words, Charles. It is unbelievable. And ladies gentlemen, I am reading you the very tame stuff. Okay. Um, it is the stuff that he said. I mean, it, uh, I, I would, I'd be afraid of what would happen to me if I say some of these things out loud. I mean, it, it's absolutely unbelievable. But like I said, he talked this way, John, in 60 over 60% of his sermons. And he was aware, he was fully aware of what he was doing. And he was aware, he got a lot of criticism from people over this. Other preachers in the message began to refer to him as the x-rated

preacher or the pornographic preacher, John. And he actually made, hey, out of this. He made hay out of it and he would actually play into that in his sermons. But let me, let me read you, this year is from 1991. This is called The Smell of Heaven and the Stench of Hell. That's a great sermon title. In the sermon, he says, there I go with my X-rated pornographic sermons again, but I'll hammer them down your nose until you begin to see the truth because I am not a nice preacher. Oh my gosh, man. Can you imagine some outsider who's

actually a Christian who goes to a normal Christian church and they're driving through town, vacation or something. So let's try this church on the corner out today and they go and hear something like that. What would they do? It is shocking, John. I mean, it is, it is absolutely shocking. And, and so, you know, here's the thing. Where did Lee Veil get all of the strange sexual teachings from? All right, there's a good question, isn't it? Where do you think he said he got them from? I'll give you one guess. Where do you think Lee Veil said he got? I'm going to guess

based off of some of the other things that I've heard from other people. I'm going to guess William Branham. You were exactly right, John. Lee Veil claimed that he got his sexual teachings from William Branham and we actually do have William Branham on tape saying he had pornographic materials that he was going to hand out to the other ministers with him in 1965, right? So I mean, that's actually on record that William Branham was handing out these pamphlets of pornographic information to the ministers around him. And yes, Lee Veil was preaching the pornographic stuff and saying that he got it from William Branham. Yeah, I guess William Branham because I have heard

things that just kind of shock you. William Branham was not the clean, pure person that everybody makes them out to be based off of his stage persona and his recordings. He had an on stage presence and he had an off stage presence. Some of the people who I'm very close with now who were close with others that were with William Branham. So this is layers of disconnection from me. So I can't like I can't historically write this. I can't document it because it's not it's through the mouth of a witness through the mouth mouth of another witness. But William Branham apparently

told people that it was okay if you how did he phrase it? They they told me that men are like raging bulls and bulls like to have relations with the cows and it's okay as long as the cows aren't in the message like you can go outside to the other cows. It's really really weird and awkward the way that it was presented to me. But if you think of William Branham's hillbilly language, the way that they described it.

I can literally hear that voice from the tape saying this kind of thing. And if you understand the implications of it, it's pretty bad. And you know, you've got Lee Vale as one example saying, Brandon was talking about this.

I've got the other people. I can't really prove that he said it to them. But when you consider Lee Vale is one who is in William Brown's inner circle, it kind of fits. It makes sense to me.

You know, Lee Vale is not the only message preacher with strange sexual teachings who claim to have got them directly from William Brown, right? I mean, for example, that's what Leo Mercer was doing out at the park, right?

He claimed that he got all those practices from William Brown. It's really what he claimed. And it's the same with Lee Vale. Now, here's the same. We know we have William Brown on tape saying that he had pornographic books in his possession and that he was going to share them with other people in his audience, John, the other ministers.

And hey, here's the thing. I went to church with the ministers who were in the room when he gave them the material. I can, the same thing. He did give them these pornographic materials, John.

He absolutely did in the meeting and afterwards. And I've heard multiple eyewitness testimonies of things that were said and done in those meetings when he handed that stuff out to them, okay? And when Lee Vale says he got this stuff from William Brown, I have absolutely no reason to doubt that he's telling the truth, you know, about where he learned this stuff.

The same with the same with Leo Mercer. You know, Leo Mercer says, oh, William Brown, I'm as the one who taught me about Ellie Easers, Oath, Abraham, I believe that Leo Mercer is telling the truth.

So I fully believe that William Brown did indeed give these guys the strange, strange perverted sexual teachings that they spread around, which I'm not going to read any of them out loud. I think we might have put a few of them up on the screen here.

Some of the examples of some more extreme ones than what we've read out loud. But as the years went on, John, Lee Vale's sex got more and more extreme, you know? And I think, you know, when you consider the strange sexual teachings, Lee Vale was a pretty aggressive man and so were a lot of the other ministers in his sex.

He's got pretty bizarre and ever increasingly tight leashed on the people over the years. You know, after Lee Vale, and the last year's Lee Vale's life, he developed cancer and eventually passed away. But in the last 10 or so years of Lee Vale's life, he retired from preaching and he stopped preaching.

So we're talking about, you know, late 90s, early 2000s. And when that happened, all of the other preachers in Lee Vale's sex all started to fight with each other over who's in charge now, who's his successor, okay?

And Terry Spruel and Brian Kuhkorek and, you know, and the different ones all have their, you know, all have a fight. Anyways, they, they all split. but pretty badly. They're not so much in fellowship so much with each other anymore because a lot of them ended up basically tearing their sect apart, fighting over who is Leavale's true successor in the last years of his life.

Probably Brian Kukurek is probably the most honestly, probably the most likely successor of Leavale, but and then maybe Terry Spruel's church is probably another decent one that qualifies as a successor to Leavale. But another interesting thing about it all, John, we do know that Leavale continued a lot of the most extreme teachings of the message.

I mean, besides the strange sexual stuff, Leavale also continued teaching the fully racial version of serpent seed that we know, we know there was a lot of bizarre things happening behind the scenes. There's things, I mean, I'm tempted to just kind of completely out it here, but I won't.

But there was a lot of very, very unusual things happening behind the scenes with Leavale and his sect of the message over the years. And for me, the fact that there was such division among the sect leaders and then expand that to the main sect.

You had the main sect of Branemism, which splintered and they fought with each other and then the splinters splintered again, they fought with each other. And then internally as these groups were fighting, you can just see that, you know, the Bible says by the fruit, you're gonna know them.

You can just see that this is not a cohesive unit, this is not a cohesive faith. And so if William Branem was this alleged Malachi four that's bringing the hearts of the children to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers to the children, it did quite the opposite.

I think the last thing I wanna point out about Leavale before we wrap this episode up is, you know, in the later years of his life, Leavale said a lot of things that you know, I think if you're listening with a not a brainwashed message ear, you would hear that he was expressing very serious doubts about the message.

I think that he began to have very serious doubts about the message in the later years of his life. And I'll just read you a few examples of that here in his quotes, but you know, if you think about it, if you believe Jesus Christ came back in 1963 to get people ready for the rapture, right?

And you're looking around you and time's going on and they're all dying and now, hey, you're a 90 year old guy, you're about to die too. Right, if you have any sense in your head, which sadly a lot of these people, they don't.

I hate to say that, but they don't. If you have any sense in your head, you look around and you start to wait a minute, you know, instead of rapture and we're all dying here.

We're all dying of old age. And that happened with leave-ale, I believe. Towards the end of his life, he started to actually have some serious doubts about the message that came through loud. clear in his sermons. And as that happened, John, he also aired out some of the dirty secrets and dirty laundry of the message. And him saying these things out loud is part of him expressing his deep concern that the message, something was seriously wrong with the message. I just want to point those things out to the listeners. That way, they're aware of leaveale saying these

things. And one of them, John, we've talked about this one before in a sermon called reminiscing, leaveale admitted that he had caught William Brannum telling the deity cult that he was Jesus Christ. He was there. He overheard William Brannum flat out claiming to be Jesus Christ to the deity cult. I'll read you a quote. He says, it was in 1958. I ran across the deity cult spirit, which was a Canadian spirit from the people in Saskatchewan. I'm blaming the Canadians now because that's the truth. I think we were there about eight days suddenly I heard brother

Brannum telling everyone in the crowd that he was the Lord Jesus Christ. Leaveale overheard William Brannum telling the deity cult that he was Jesus Christ. That is one of the things that he publicly told in the years that I believe his doubts started to set in. Let me give you another one.

John, when it came out that the cloud story was a hoax. Remember, we all know the cloud was a hoax. Well, that discovery that it was a hoax actually started to become public knowledge.

It started in the late 70s, but it really became, most of the leaders became aware of it in the late 80s. And as that happens, and leaveale's confronted with its Rebecca Brannum, publishes her articles outing that the cloud story was a hoax. Leaveale actually comes out and he admits that he agrees that William Brannum misled everybody about the cloud story. He said, and this is from a sermon called Last Day Thoughts in 2009, he said, brother Brannum was in Houston at that time appearing before a judge pleading for the life of a young man. And he goes on to explain that he was not

under the cloud. And you know, that's got to be, think again, along the list of things, that's got to be a body below, you know, to anybody's belief about the message, just like it is for ours. So leaveale, he knows he's admitting William Brannum told people he was Jesus Christ. He's admitting that yes, he knows William Brannum was not really under the cloud in Arizona.

Then in another sermon, John, this is a sermon called Token. Let me read this to you. Just kind of see how sad this is. Leaveale says, what if the message is wrong? We are ordained to it. We're not fatal. We're simply shoulder shuggers. We're cognizant of the word of truth. And he goes on more or less to take this fatalistic predestination view that if the message is wrong, then they are predestined to damnation, John. That is, it's very, very sad. And he says here, towards the end of that, another part of the quote, he says, I breathe the

message of the hour. He says, I'm sold on it, but I don't know that I'm right in what I teach, but I teach it exactly as William Brannum taught it. I believe I do. I'm convinced I do as much as I can be convinced. But this is where I stand, sink or swim. And when you hear him talk like that, right, doesn't that just drip of doubt, that drips of doubt, these sort of statements? And you'll find lots of statements that he made like that in the closing years of his life. And it is very apparent, you know, if you're not in the cult

and you're listening with an honest ear that leave ale in the last years of his life began to have very serious doubts about the message. And not only did he express them out the doubts just like I read there, he's at the same time telling you, yes, there's something wrong with the cloud. Yes, William Brannum was sleeping in staying having overnight with homosexuals.

Yes, William Brannum was telling people he was Jesus Christ. He's not only expressing his doubts, he's telling his listeners the very serious problems that he was aware of at the same time. And maybe in his own way, John, maybe in his own way in the closing years of his life, he was trying to warn people maybe, you know, and if he was, I can actually respect that. You know, that's one of the saddest aspects of this. I have this conversation often with Bob Scott, but I have difficulty because I feel sorry for many of the people

who ended up in leadership roles. They themselves were programmed in the same way that I was. And many of them, you know, some of these guys started out as good people, not all of them did, but some of them did. And where they ended up, their brain literally like what you just read with Leveil, his brain is literally trying to reconcile with the fact that he has been living a life, his entire life. And he was helped spreading and propagating that lie. And there comes a point in everybody's life whenever they start to reflect on their

life. And I imagine that there's a lot of very, very sad cult leaders as they progress in age, but such a mess that was created. And again, this is William Brandham's publicist. This is the guy that after William Brandham died, when you see all of these NAR videos and documentaries, and when they read literature, they mention them by name, this is the guy that most of them would have went to if they did not go to the main organization itself.

You went to one of two places. And I would say that, you know, after William Brandham died, I would say that he was the more important figure than even William Brandham's son, because this is his publicist.

There's so much more we could say about Leveil and his sect of the message. There is quite a bit, there's actually more in my book, come out of my people volume two, you know, than we're covering with each of these sects as we go through them. But I think we covered the highlights.

Like, that's just kind of been my objective here with you. It was just cover the highlights. You know, there's so much more we could say though. So, but at the end of the day, I think leave-else stories are pretty sad one.

Because, you know, when I, like I said, I'd listen to the sermons of the last years of his life. I hear a lot of doubt and a lot of regrets in his sermons. And in one way, I think it can be a cautionary tale.

You know, I'll be honest. I hear the same thing in Raymond Jackson sermons at the end of his life, you know, is these people reached their 80s and 90s and the rapture hasn't come.

And all of these things they've predicted and said have not come, a reality starts to sink in on them that something is wrong, right? And what's very sad is the younger generation of preachers in some of them, they weren't listening.

They were not listening, right? And I think though, if we would be honest and just listen to the truth of what some of these people told us in the closing years of life, Paragreen even did this, John.

Even Paragreen at the end of his life started to tell the things that he knew that was wrong. If people would listen and actually hear what they say, they could wake up. Because, you know, in some ways, we're not saying anything much more than some of these guys.

I mean, Lievail said the cloud was a hoax. Lievail said that. Lievail said that William Brann, I'm told the deity people, he was Jesus Christ, you know? Lievail said that he knew William Brann to stay in the night with homosexuals, right?

Like, all of these things, we're not in a lot of ways, the most controversial things we're saying are nothing that the senior leaders of the message did not say themselves in the years leading up to their deaths.

And I think people do well to actually take heed because in some ways, in their own ways, I think some of them were indeed trying to warn us and some of us just were unable to hear it.

I agree, you know, I try to believe that there is some good inside of some of these people and inside deep inside, it's bubbling up. You can see that he wanted to tell people, hey, this is a mess, I was wrong.

I don't think he ever did, but hopefully, there are others that will. 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 www.William-brannam.org and www.ChristianGospelChurch.org.

For more about the history of William Brannam and the healing revivals, you can read, come out of her, my people. And for more about the dark side of the NAR, you can read, weaponize religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.