Branham Lied - and His Top Ministers Knew It

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 acts of the prophet. We've been diving into Perry Green and all things that he has transformed in the message and I think we'll go a little bit deeper with that

today. The message is what it is because of people like Perry Green who were kind of molding it and shaping it in the way that they saw fit which ironically for Perry was the more profitable way and I look at some of the things that we'll get into where he's just molding and shaping the quote-unquote prophet and the things that were quote-unquote prophecy and it's just unbelievable. You know, William Branham went around casually predicting things like I can predict that the chiefs are going to win a football game and if they win not a single

person is going to say John as a prophet. They're going to say well John predicted the football game the outcome and look John was right luckily right. William Branham went around and he just kind of did this and whenever somebody latched on to something that happened and he's randomly spitting out all of these different things people would say well that was a prophecy and then if it failed well it wasn't a prophecy it was a quote personal prediction and as we'll get into it today Perry Green used that to his advantage to help shape all of

this and to what the message became whenever I grew up in it and I was a little surprised to learn that my version of the message was not the same as my parents version and my parents version was not the same as my grandparents and before my grandparents came in it was a totally different message altogether there were different stage personas that came into play and the interesting part of all of this is it appears that the men who were working with Branham shaped the message to what it became far more than Branham himself ever did is

fascinating isn't it John now we have been working our way through the major sex of the message for the past few episodes This is the first sect of the message where we did three episodes.

We'd just been doing two episodes per sect up here, not that we couldn't. I mean, we could do lots of episodes on everyone. But this one is, there's such a crossover here between this sect of the message and the main sect.

And so we, I think three episodes has been fitting here. Now, Perry Green's sect of the message. Eventually, when I look at his sect of the message, I think of him as one of the key leaders of a number in a sect that broke away from the main sect over the copyright wars.

Yeah, and we're kind of moving towards talking about how that happened today in some of the backstory. And you're right. Perry Green was just this incredibly interesting figure in all of this. And before we get started today, too, John, one thing.

We've been getting terrific feedback from all the people in the message community, just helping out with all these series. So I especially want to say to thanks to all the people who've reached out with all of their feedback, you know, one way or the other to help us be able to put the pieces together.

Because you know, message history is so covered up by everybody, right? There's all these different twists and turns. And some people have different versions than other people. And so, you know, putting our history together really has always been a collaborative effort of working with different people.

You know, we, you know, we talked, reached out to some people and asked them, you know, hey, this is what our preachers always told us. Is this true, you know, and then they're saying, no, that's not quite true.

They were lying about us. And then, and then I said, and this is what they told us about you. Is this quite true? And no, that's not quite true. They're all apparently all our leaders in the message were liars, you know?

But, you know, there's the, there's the official narrative, you know, and then there is the reality of what actually happens, right? And so a lot of times we have, we kind of have both, right?

And it, trying to weed through what is true versus what was spun is sometimes a little bit of a challenge with us. And so, you know, I've tried, especially in my book, to footnote back to everybody, you know, where things came from, the different sources for information and stuff.

So, anyways, just to be, to be as helpful as possible. And the same with this with Paragreen, where, you know, we're trying to stick with the stuff that we definitely can document. We're definitely sure, you know, happened.

You know, that was one of the funniest things to hit me early on. I want to say it was maybe within the first few weeks, possibly the first month or two. I started noticing that I was publishing information that you could not question the information.

There are things that William Brantum said and did that were clearly false. And one of the ones that I brought up to my grandfather is, William Brantum predicted the female president for years and years, that they would become a female president.

And he was very, very specific about it. There was a female president. And then, I stumbled on to, because we had the collection of recordings. I stumbled on to William Brantum, changing that to...

Maybe it's a vice president, maybe it's the Catholic Church, and then there's this one statement that hits you like a brick wall. He changed the year from 1933 for his alleged seven prophecies of 1933. He, after having told all of his congregations, I'm saying that plural because he was speaking to multiple, that it was the year 1933 without question. And I had this paper and just like Joseph Smith, I lost it and you people can't see it, but there was a paper written down with all the prophecies, and you'll never see this thing, buried in the cornerstone of my building so you can't

prove whether I said it or not. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, he holds up a paper and says, I want to read something to you. It says right here 1932, and oh, by the way, Leo Mercer and my campaign managers, whatever he called the boys, he said they're going to revise and update my prophecies. But let me read this paper that I've told you was buried under my cornerstone that says 1932, as I was on my way, I was falling into a vision. And then in the course of reading this, he says that it might be the Catholic Church after having prophesied this thing forever

as a female president. And then he goes on to say, now look, we've had all of these things fulfilled. So we know the end is right here now because we see President John F. Kennedy, who has risen into power and he's a Catholic. And therefore the Catholic Church is going to come out of the United States and take over the world and doom, gloom, be scared. You're going to, if you don't come into this message, you're going to die. That's literally what he's doing. And I went to my grandfather and said, well, there's like, wait a minute. It can't be both. You can't for years say that God

told you it was a female president and then flip it on its head up to the Catholic Church. That doesn't work. But that's the way things are in the message. There is no static prophecies.

They're fluid and they change with time. They change with the events. And what happens is you end up instead of a message, which is what they like to tell, you have a educated guess or opinion or something that just fits the narrative. I think educated guess is being generous, John.

So yeah. And it changes. It changes. It changes. It changes. It changes. And this kind of starts to lead us into talking about some of this literature. Okay. So here are three different editions of the acts of the prophet. Okay. This is Perry Green's probably the book he's most well known for.

And what you have with Perry Green is he was doing Message Mission Work. He was one of the very important message missionaries really after William Brannum died and a lot of the spread of the message in Latin America, especially among his Spanish-speaking people, a lot of that was sponsored and spearheaded by Perry Green and the Tucson Tabernacle.

And quite a number of Hispanic message churches were planted through those efforts, not just in the United States, but also throughout Latin America. Besides that, he also did partner with Ewald Frank and toured in Europe and through his mission networks.

He partnered with Sydney Jackson and toured with him through his missionary networks in Africa and Europe and Southeast Asia. He traveled to New Zealand in Australia and partnered with groups over there. So Perry Green was going all over the place and spreading the message.

And he developed this missionary sermon and there's recordings of this sermon out there available. Actually, it's one of those sermons that I referenced quite a bit in my book to kind of source different things that he said.

But the missionary story is basically him recounting the stories of William Brannum's life. And then it leads up to the point that he really meets William Brannum as far as becoming a message believer in joining the message in 1964.

And then he talks a lot about, you know, just how very important Perry Green was to the prophet in 1964 and 1965. And all of these special things that he has supposed to special inside knowledge of, you know, and all the prophet.

And then the prophet dies and, you know, and then that's more or less how the book ends. So it's basically his telling of the legends of the message and then a special deep focus on the year and three quarters or so that he spent basically elbowing his way into the inner circle.

So that is the sum of his book. And so there's the very first version of it, John, was actually printed up by people out of Leo Mercher's commune in Prescott, Arizona. They attended a service where he Perry Green gave this missionary sermon.

Some of them in long hand wrote down the sermon as he preached it. And they came back to the trailer park commune and were able to publish it from there. Now at that commune, we're going to talk more about this when we talk about the main sec and voice of God and so forth.

But back then the commune was the source for message tapes production, right? That is that was the center of message tape production back then and was also really the center for a lot of message literature publication back then those days too, right?

When William Brenham died because they the franchise for all that they were all working in that franchise printed all that stuff. So they had the duplicating equipment, they had the printing equipment and stuff to do that.

And so they produced the first edition of the Acts of the Prophet. Now this is not the first edition, but they produced the first edition of it. And as they did, this is when Perry Green, I guess discovered how lucrative these things were. And he took over publication at the second edition and they started printing these books. And what is so interesting about this, John, is this is an easy way to track how the story changed over the years.

Because Perry Green revised the book whenever he changed the story, okay? And this is, so this is why this is very useful to know. And I'm going to give just one example of this, John. I don't know if you want to refer to any others, but if you go back to the very earliest editions of this book, they will say in that when Billy Paul and William Brannum were in front of the maze company, and I think downtown Los Angeles, William Brannum said to him in a prophecy that you won't be an old man, Billy, before the sharks are swimming where you were standing.

It's a prophecy in all of these books. But then you go to the very last edition and they change it. It becomes William Brannum made a personal prediction. Billy Paul, you will not be an old man before the sharks are swimming where they're standing. And here's the thing, they're the one who invented this prophecy, too, John. Like this was not on tape anywhere. So Perry Green, Billy Paul invented that prophecy before in the late 60s and stuff as they were doing this missionary pitch making these sermons. And then as Billy Paul turned into an old man and it all

turned out to be alive, they revised the books and the story that they had been telling everybody for decades. No, that wasn't a prophecy. No, you guys misunderstood us. No, no, no, no, no.

That was just a personal prediction. And that's how it is in the message and people, they, this is gaslighting, right? We never told you that was a prophecy. Yes, you did. And you're a dirty liar telling me that you didn't. And this is how they rewrite message history, right? And these books, these books are a terrific insight into how message history gets rewrote by the leaders.

And the people say, no, we always believed it that way. We always believed it that way. No, you did not. You changed, right? You lied in the beginning when you said it. You lied again when you changed it. And you lied again now saying that it never happened again, right? And so how can we trust liars? How can we trust people that are just dishonest through their teeth and have such a track record of being wrong? And anyways, that, that is what Perry Green did.

And that is what is very obvious in these books. And it's quite a number of them actually, quite a number of changes like that in these books over time. And I want to pause right here and stress the significance of this. So this is a cult which preaches and teaches Christian fundamentalism far beyond the extremes of other fundamentalist groups.

The Bible is the inspired word of God and every single line that is written is pinned by God and we can't take thought into whenever the Bible, whenever the authors of the Bible use a metaphor, for example.

It's not a metaphor. We have to take that literally and they back it up as the literal word of God pinned by God in such a way that you can't read the genres and the types and the different, the ways that normal Christians read the Bible.

I'll just say it like that and sum it up and that's another podcast for another day. But they're based this on this literalism in the way in which God had the supreme authority of the way in which the Bible was transmitted.

God had control every step of the way. Which most Christians believe this, God has the power to maintain his word and keep it for the ages. But you'll notice in the comment feeds whenever the same group of people with that same ideology tried to defend William Brannum, they say, but no, that man changed it.

That man, even though the entire cult adopted it, whenever the man is written off and everything that he brought with it, they say, no, that man changed it. And we believed it for all these decades because this man led us astray.

And what they've done is they've essentially created a different God than the one that they actually are proclaiming with the very fundamentalist view of the Bible. And it's a weaker God because he can't control the message.

So God brought this message to the world and the message kept changing and transforming and some groups believe that the message that God sent from 1947 to 1963 is fully invalid because the message that God gave William Brannum after 1963 is the only true message of God.

That's how weird this gets. So you have this group of people that can't keep a consistent message and they fight with each other as to what is the valid message that God sent. God sent this confusion that he called the message.

It's confusing and it's contradicting. And we're going to fight with each other to try to make sense of this confusing mess that God gave us. That is what the cult is doing. I know it's something else, isn't it, John?

Maybe just a couple of other things I'll point out real quick is one other really big change that we've mentioned in prior episodes is William Brannum was supposedly standing was out hunting on February 28, 1963 in the desert standing underneath the giant face of Jesus in the sky looking down on him, right?

Which is the cloud, the great message mystery cloud. And the in the earlier editions of this book. William Brown won hunting on February 28th, 1963, and was standing beneath the cloud when the face of Jesus appeared.

Well, after, you know, all the evidence came out that, hey, William Brown made all that up, you know, it was pretty undeniable, they changed it, okay? And in the later editions, William Brown goes out over a week later after the face of Jesus appeared, and somehow has an experience with the remnant of the face of Jesus.

I don't know, right? It stops me. It really stops making sense after you realize he wasn't there on February 28th when the, when the cloud appeared. So they're, they're changing stuff, right? And, and in it, they actually are admitting. If, if you, if we're honest with ourselves, John, if we're honest with the way that they change the things, they are admitting their awareness, yes, we're where William Brown, I'm lied to us.

And now we're changing the story from what William Brown, I'm originally told us to are now understanding of the facts, right? And you can argue, yeah, William Brown probably was out hunting on March 7th, right? He probably was.

But that means his original story is all great big lie, right? You know, you can't have it both ways, right? You can't, you can't be, he was hunting underneath the cloud on February 28th and saw the face of Jesus.

You can't have that be a wrong story and then put him out on the 7th. So the truth is the way they change these things, they actually are admitting to us, their serious, serious, serious errors. And, you know, later in his life, John, just like this is, and this is of all people, John, think of Perry Green doing this later in his life, Perry Green preached this series of sermons called the clarification series.

And you know what that series of sermons was? It was him telling everything he knew was wrong with the message. That's what it was. And you know how many of these old time preachers, John, even Perry Green did it towards the end of his life, John, they did a sermon series and they told all these things they knew was wrong with the message.

And just like Lee Veil is saying, hey guys, I know this and I know that and I know the prophet was sleeping with homosexuals overnight, you know, just like he's saying all this sort of stuff.

Perry Green does the same thing and they're doing it in their own way, right? They're doing it in their own way. Yes, we know this is a problem and we know that's a problem, but here's the way we need to twist and cover it up.

But they all admit all the problem and Perry Green admitted all that stuff. I think his statement was if brother Branum was out under that cloud on February 28th when he was actually in Houston, Texas.

That would be stranger than a cow sitting in a tree, you know, eating the sky, you know, he said something like that. Like he says, if brother Branum's original story is true, that's the weirdest thing I ever heard because that's impossible.

Perry Green said that sort of stuff, you know, and let me give you one other quote from Perry Green. And these are, I think, are so illustrative. This is from a 2002 testimony that Perry Green gave. This is on recording.

He's talking. about the 1933 baptism story here, John, down at the river. He said, I had the privilege to talk to some of those witnesses that were on the bank of the river that day.

And he says, nobody heard the voice. Nobody heard the voice. Which is, if you remember, the same thing that Lee Veil said in his book, nobody heard the voice. It's the same thing I told you that every single witness known to the Jeffersonville message community said, nobody heard the voice speak to William Brannum on the river that day during the baptism.

Everybody was there, not a single witness heard a voice say, as John the Baptist was sent to for run the first coming of Christ. So you too have been sent with a message to for run the second coming.

There is not a single witness that says that happened. It did not happen. Perry Green says it didn't. He there's no witnesses. Lee Veil says there's no witnesses. I'm telling you every single person that I have known in the Jeffersonville message community who is there who's not a lot of them said it never happened.

It never happened, John. It never happened. There is not a single witness to it. And they're admitting things like this to us if we'll listen with our ears. And even Perry Green, I mean of all the people, the tell us the truth about this.

Perry Green even confessed the truth about this stuff at the end of his life, John. You know, that's another thing that hit me that was really odd because I would have gladly died to defend this message whenever I was in it.

I was a cult member. I was brainwashed through and through, yes. But I would have actually stood before a firing squad and never denied it until I found out that the whole thing was false.

Because that's the way that you're brought up. You're brought up in this mindset of the martyrs. You want to become a martyr and it's a glorious, glorious event. If you can die for the message, that's kind of the way it was taught to me.

And then after leaving, and after it became more widespread, the knowledge that many of the things William Brannum said that were fundamental to the cult were completely false. You started watching these ministers who it was kind of funny.

It was like this game to see who could find the most fault with it and yet be a martyr in believing the things that didn't, that quote unquote, didn't have fault. And what I won't mention the name, but there's one minister who is the most, he was labeled by social media as the most racist pastor in America.

He was in the message cult. He gives this one sermon at one point where he's talking about, and I know all of the secrets. I've got a book in my study or notes, I can't remember how he worded it.

But he said basically, he had this whole list of everything that William Brannum taught that was wrong or false or contrad- dictated however he worded it, and his congregation go, wow, the amazing power of this man who knows everything that William Brenham said that is completely false. And yet he stands for this message, my brother.

That's the kind of thing that's going on as I am nearing the point of my exit. I was unaware of all of that. But then after I left, I started noticing one by one, these people, it became this battle to see who could find the most false and yet believe the strongest, which is weird, man. If you have, like I said, if you have a message from God, a message that can't be false, then why are they trying to find fault with it and blaming us for finding fault with it, when they themselves are doing

the same thing, and they're aware that there are significant problems. Some of them aren't trivial Charles, some of the things that they have found, if you take the aspect away, whatever the element is that they have suddenly declared to be false within the message, you take the whole message away, it cannot exist and sustain itself without whatever it is that they found that was false.

I know what you mean. And when you think about things like them saying, nobody at the river heard the voice speak from heaven, like when you think about that, you know, they are kind of glossing over it and they're trying to make an excuse for that when they say those things. Yeah, nobody heard the voice, no big deal, no big deal, but it is a big deal. It's a very big deal because William Brannum said there were in some versions of the story, there were 10,000 witnesses to the voice speaking from heaven, right? And and when when even the most senior top tier

preachers in the message are telling us, no, William Brannum made all that up and lied to you, because that's what they said that when leave L says there was no voice at the river, he's saying, William Brannum lied to us about all of that. When Peregrine says there was no voice at the river, he's telling us, yeah, William Brannum lied to us about all that, that is the implication, although they won't make the next step and say, yeah, William Brannum made all that up. That is exactly what they're implying, they just don't come out and say it. And and all through Peregrine's

and you know, that clarification series he did. And even whether it's Raymond Jackson, whether it's leave L, whether it's all these other guys close, a lot of them towards the end of their lives told all of these things publicly, all these things publicly, if people were just listening, it was all there publicly explained that, yeah, there's some very serious problems with the message. Now, Peregrine, John, as we kind of come back to this literature, Peregrine early on got involved in producing transcripts of message literatures, he got into his own efforts of producing and selling his own tapes and

producing and selling his own version of transcripts. brand of sermons. So he started doing that through the Tucson Tabernacle, roughly in the same period of time the spoken word publications got started. And in fact, the people running spoken word publications at the very beginning were out there in Tucson, attending the Tucson Tabernacle. And so in some ways, the early literature publication efforts of the message community was all merged together there in his church. But as you come up into, I want to say, I have, I think I have the exact years in my book, but the early 80s, it might

have been 81, 82, 83 right in there. The operations of spoken word publications gets moved back here to Jeffersonville, John. So some of the central institution piece moves back here to Jeffersonville. Well, the original stuff that was going on is still there in Tucson. Well, Perry Green keeps all that going, right? Separate from spoken word. And so he's still printing his own transcripts. He's printing his own literature. They're producing their own tapes, right? And spreading their own stuff through his church is one of the major centers, right? If you want to kind of think about the main centers that are

publishing his stuff, you have the central institutions, spoken word recordings, voice of God recording. I'm sorry, spoken word publications, voice of God recordings, central institutions. You have the Tucson Tabernacle. And you have the Crefield Free Mission Center.

Those are the centers where the bulk of the literature and the tapes are all being created as you're coming into the 1980s. So this starts to set up the copyright wars, John, because it's right in that same period of time that Perry Green's lawsuits are hitting, you know, he's getting into lawsuits with the Evans family, for example. He's, he's, he's robbing some people in the Branham family, even back then. Johnny, you know, he's robbing the Branham's, he's robbing the Evans, he's stealing from people that is he can't steal from it, you know, and keep having peaceful relations with the main sect. And, and they respond in

the main sect to that by coming after Perry Green's recording and, um, and, and, and, and literature efforts. And they're saying, hey, you don't have permission, Perry Green to make tapes. You don't have permission to make literature anymore, Perry Green. They're trying, they act, they're absolutely responding to him in some extent to his criminal stuff, right? And so as that's happening, they're, they're using that as leverage on him to try and get him to stop, because they know how profitable that is. They know how much money that is, right? And for them to take that from him is to deny him an important revenue

stream. And so that is how the copyright wars actually start. Okay, it doesn't start. Oh, no, I think the concept of a lot of people is they could start in the late 90s. Now, it really started in the, in the late 80s, as the central institutions are having their falling out with Perry Green. And they're just, he's the only one there after. You'll find him talk about this even on tape some Fred.

Uthman came to him and they forced him to turn over all his master tapes, right? They basically threatened him what, you know, the franchise that became Voice of God Recordings threatened Perry Green with lawsuits, turn over all of your master tapes, cease reducing your own tapes, or recover after you, and Perry Green actually complied in the 80s, John.

He turned over his masters, he ceased his recording stuff, and they started to do similar stuff on the literature too, and at first Perry Green starts to comply with them, right? He starts to kind of work with them, but as things get sour and sour and sour with him and the main sack, Perry Green starts an effort to fight back, like they push him too far, and then he begins rallying people to his side and making the copyright thing into a big deal, which then really leads into the lawsuits.

I think that everyone are more familiar with in the copyright war stuff. 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 Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. And here's where it gets really interesting, Charles, because as I said, these men are starting to say that parts of the things that they have taught for years, for decades, weren't quite true, but yet we know the ones that are true, and we more firmly believe in the things that we know that William Brannum quote unquote, didn't lie about.

So there's this weird claim to fame by showing martyrdom for believing stronger because of the faults and the message, which is pure irony. But if you piece together the timeline, like you're saying, you start to realize that there's more going on behind the scenes.

So you've got this underlying rift between different factions of the message. You've got lawsuits flying to each other. You've got ministers who are going down one pathway of doctrine that conflicts with a different sect or different ministers version of the doctrine.

Each one, as they're taking away things that will Brenham said that they are aware and are teaching that are false. Well, it shifts their doctrine in such a way that if person A takes away some element of what William Brenham taught, it takes him down this pathway.

Well, that pathway may be in direct conflict with the other guy who's admitted, well, William Brenham lied about this other thing. So you've got this big turmoil and conflict growing in the message. And at the same time, the lawsuits are flying.

You have people who are trying to have power plays to become the next supreme leader, because now you can actually take, this is where it gets really funny. You can actually take some of the things that William Brenham said that were false and directly point those at another person because that person may have been proclaiming them for 50 years or longer.

So the false things that William Brenham taught and said and claim as supernatural experiences actually become a weapon in the message. And that weapon becomes very, very powerful as we get into further with Perry Green because entire factions of the message were using that weapon against other factions.

Yeah, it really is amazing, John. Just have all this stuff played out over the years. So you have just kind of recap the timeline. And essentially in the early to mid 80s, Perry Green starts robbing and stealing from people who are important in the main sect of the message.

They start to respond to him, turn on him a little bit. And it's right in that window that they start to confront him over, hey, you can't publish tapes no more. You can't print literature no more.

You know, they start to confront him over that. And Billy Paul's relationship with Perry Green starts to deteriorate in those years. And Billy Paul slowly, especially as you come into the early and mid 90s, Billy Paul starts to elevate Joseph into the leadership role from that point.

Billy Paul was the guy in charge up until certainly the early and mid 90s, like don't think otherwise, right? I mean, I know the main sect probably pretends that's not true. Billy Paul was the guy in charge.

But Joseph, by the mid 90s, Joseph starts rising into power and by the time you get to the early 2000s, Billy Paul kind of moves into a retirement phase and Joseph's run and the whole thing.

Well, as Joseph comes in and takes leadership and voice of God recording in some of these efforts, Perry Green becomes the canary in the coal mine for the copyright wars, OK? Perry Green, at a certain point, he kind of dug in his heels.

It says, no, I am not giving in any further. And that's when the screws start getting turned from the central institutions, John. There is a letter that comes out from Joseph. And in that letter, it circulates round and and and they call it like this. They call, you know, in the message how the all a brand of sermons are in an app called the table and how we've mentioned with Perry with Ewald Frank that, you know, he was the faithful servant to give meat and do season like the sermons of William Brannum are referred to as the food, the mana from heaven, what the life

sustaining bread of life, which the message believers must eat and consume to survive. And and so that's like the that's the euphemism or the the metaphor in the message for the sermons of William Brannum. It is the bread, it is the food. Well, Joseph in the main sect, they start accusing people of eating stolen bread. And so if you got your bread not from the official source, you're eating stolen bread, okay, and you're a thief and you're an accomplice to, you know, is is the implication of it, right? And people start getting labeled bread thieves and food

thieves, right? And so Perry Green though, it when all this starts, Perry Green is the singular target of the focus of all this when it starts. Perry Green is the bread thief, John. He's stealing the food and reselling it. And are you getting your food from an authorized source or are you aiding the bread thief, John? You know, and so that's how it all kind of plays out.

And the main sect of the message, John, they actually organized book burnings. You might be aware of this. They organized book burnings where they they got all the literature they could find that was not published by the central institutions. And they had massive bonfires where they burn all the non central institution literature in the 1990s. And and and at that time, it's primarily, John, it's primarily here in North America. It's the literature that came from Tucson Tabernacle that they're burning, okay? And so in in in in in in in essence, John, they're literally burning the works of Perry Green and the Tucson Tabernacle in the flame. And boy, this Perry Green didn't take

that very well, John, you know, it it the Perry Green took that pretty badly when they started burning all of his literature. But this is how this is how it's ratcheting up and getting more and more and more and more, more and more harsh towards Perry Green. And by the time they get to where they're burning his literature, yeah, Perry Green is like in full on mode that he is going to, you know, fight tooth and nail at that point. And that's when he starts going out organizing the other preachers to file the lawsuits or you know, defend the lawsuits and try to, you know, do copyright

stuff to get to get control of the message literature. It's like an entertainment gospel man. We talked about how you didn't grow up with television and I most of my life I didn't also, but I've seen the mission impossible where the message is sent and it comes in this little recording and it said this message will self-destruct in 60 seconds, whatever it is, and that's what this message was, man.

These guys who were transforming and molding William Brannum's entire stage persona, they're the ones in power, the ones controlling and manipulating what the message became, well, it's self-destructs after so many years because there is so much internal fighting and conflict that whenever one guy rises into power and then they realize, wait, the people just found out that this guy is a scoundrel and he's stealing their money, well, they can't uplift him anymore and whenever he's disavowed, all of the message that he changed is disavowed with him.

So it's like the message becomes this thing where you get it for a period of time and it's this very important message, but it's going to self-destruct in 60 seconds. As Perry Green starts to have his fallen out, you know, late 80s, early 90s is when it really comes to a head with the main sect of the message, John.

He starts flip-flopping on stuff in order to get closer in relationship, I think, to this sect of the message that's going to help, you know, the churches that are going to help him fight in the copyright wars and eventually really break away from the main sect.

And he flip-flops a lot of stuff in those years, John. Like for example, one example of a huge flip-flop of Perry Green is it would be fair to say that Perry Green was one of the chief primary architects of the return ministry beliefs.

Absolutely. He was one of the primary architects of the belief that William Brannum was going to resurrect from the dead and ride this trail again, right? He was one of the main architects of that from the funeral of William Brannum even.

But you come up into the mid and late 80s, right? And he starts changing his tune, John, and why does he change his tune? He changes his tune because he's having a fallen out with the main sect of the message and he's trying to make new friends, right?

He changes his tune and he starts acting like he never had anything to do with that, John. He starts acting like, oh, that was other people. That was other stuff and all that's crazy.

And he even towards the end of his life, John, he would say, if William Brannum's going to race from the dead, if that happens, right? He would start using the word if for that stuff.

And when he was interviewed, John, he was interviewed, Perry Green was interviewed by Doug Weaver. When Doug Weaver wrote his biography of William Brannum, I think came out in 1987. And Doug Weaver asked him point blank about the resurrection beliefs of William Brannum because everybody knew a lot of that to come from Perry Green.

He asked him about that and Perry Green says, no, I never believed that. I never said that. Never had nothing to do with that. And that's in Doug Weaver's book, Perry Green's such a liar, John.

I mean, absolute liar. And it's crazy, you know, just how he flip flopped on this and then gets in with all the other people. And this is what's crazy. This is so, you know, we talk about, I'll say a few names, John, you know, you know, you talk like, well, maybe I won't, maybe I won't say a few names here. But the, there's preachers in the main sector who are all really tight or, you know, they're not main sector anymore, but preachers who are really tight with Perry Green. Really, he's a lot of the key to their, to their ministries, right? And they talk

so highly about him and how much, you know, and all this stuff. But then on the other hand, they'll rip the return ministry to shreds. The pair of greens, the guy who started the whole thing practically, right? I mean, and there's stuff they're doing, it just don't make any sense. Like, they don't, it's like, don't you know what you got into bad with one of the very guys who started the return ministry beliefs? And now your, your ministry is descended from him and you, you know, you know, they just kind of slough it all off like it with somebody else that came up with it all. But John, I'll tell you

for a fact, Perry Green was split in faith assembly churches back in the 70s because they wouldn't believe in return ministry. That was what caused multiples. He skisms churches. If they did not believe in return ministry in the 70s, right? And then you get into the 80s and he starts saying, if, if William Brandham's gonna resurrect, there's all of these massive flip flops. Like, you take this only believe magazine, for example, and you open up in here, this is the point in time where he's starting to transition away from, from return ministry. And in here, he kind of, he kind of plays it down the middle. He talks

about, yeah, I used to hold my head next to brother Brandham's grave and casket waiting to see if I could hear him. But then I started to believe if someone came from the dead, no one would believe it. You know, so he, this is like the transition point where he starts walking back his return ministry beliefs. And then by the time you get later towards the end of his life, you know, it's obvious, William Brandham's not coming back. He transitions completely away from that. But I mean, it just feels so pathetic to me, John, honestly,

that he would even do this and even worse that the people let him get away with it. And what has just hit me about all of this, Charles? All of this mess and confusion has led us to a point in our conversation, you and I, where we're talking in loaded language.

And I'm thinking all of the people who are listening, who weren't in the message, they're warning, what, what is all of this mess that they're talking about? Return ministry, what is that? My family grew up in this weird thing. We believed like Perry Green taught, like my grandfather taught, that William Brandham was coming back again. And the absurdity of this to anybody who wasn't in it, we believe that William Brandham would hold one last tent revival, just like they did in the 1950s. And if you were lucky enough and fortunate enough to make it to that tent, you could go into this little room where William Brandham is giving you your new body

and you're going down. Evan. Now allegedly, William Brandham said this to my grandfather that this is how it was going to be. And my family used to, I'll never forget the hushed tones that they got into.

Now you better make it there, John, because if you don't make it into that tent, you're not going to get your new body and you might not make it into heaven. So your whole transfer into heaven isn't on the life that you lived or whether you even believed in Jesus Christ.

It was literally, can you make it to William Brandham and can you go into his tent? And the absurdity of it, man, you know, in today's day and age, I can see why it was a problem thinking that you might not make it because most people aren't going to go sit and sweat in a hot tent.

But the way they described it, there will be these news media that's showing that there's this one last revival. And outside of the world is chaos because they're teaching this apocalyptic themes. It's really, really weird.

And if you're in the NAR or researching the NAR, it really mimics what they were teaching at IHOP KC, how instead of a tent, they had it in the stadium in Kansas City, right?

They just literally replicated the return ministry chaos that they're describing and put it into the Kansas City Chief Stadium, which is irony. But you've got all of this chaos that they're calling is, this is the message.

This is what, this is what we're teaching. And leaders that are significant, like Perry Green, like my grandfather, as soon as it comes to a point where it's more beneficial to whichever side of the conflict exists, to disavow the other one, they will completely cut off somebody who they may have taught what they taught for 50 years.

But if it's advantageous to step on them and go forward in a different direction, they'll do it because money is flowing in a different way. I know there's all these crazy hair pin turns, U-turns, 360s that happen with message beliefs, right?

And a lot of these flip flops with Perry Green all come as he kind of changes sides from the main sex, from the main sex hiding, he starts falling in with this, I would say rebellious main sex side in the 90s, okay?

So you've got the core, the return ministry, all that stuff, Perry Green kind of falls out of alignment with them and falls into the more rebellious sex section that they don't do tape, they're not tape churches, right?

Like he kind of, I think that's maybe a good way to characterize it. Perry Green falls out with the sect of the message who is defined as tape churches, and he aligns himself strongly with the section that still is...

actually embracing public preaching in the main set. That kind of happens in the 90s. As he gets on the bad side of the copyright stuff with the central institutions. And yeah, I mean, the flip flops that he made in there were huge and dramatic. He went from being a key architect of return ministry to no longer believing in return ministry. He went from saying, William Brandon was under a cloud on February 28th saying, no, that never happened. It was something else. He went from backing up Billy Paul and Joseph and everything they did, like in lockstep with them to turning, you know, being against them and really coming to

loggerheads. And what happens is he goes out and he basically organizes a lot of the key churches in North America of the main sect, which still embraced preaching. He organized them to resist the central institutions efforts to copyright the message literature. And what you have is some of this is a little fuzzy because a little bit of it's, some of it was behind closed doors.

But somehow or another, all this escalates up into a lawsuit where one church in Canada has trademarked the name William Brandon. Joseph and the central institutions are attempting to copyright the literature of the message and trademark different, different message terminology phrases and William Brandon's name. So this is all, you know, going into a legal setting. And so Perry Green is then organizing all these churches to resist those copyrighting efforts and oppose, you know, those attempts to do all that. And this, this gets ugly and it drags on in the courts for a little while with back and forth threats of lawsuits and stuff. And finally, it all comes to a head

in the early 2000s. And eventually, there's a settlement behind the scenes where they all settle the matter out of court, the details of which are not entirely public, but I think we can deduce some of what that settlement was based on some information that went around back then.

But at the end of the day, the whole thing settled out of court. And when it settled, though, there was so much bad blood that had been generated between the main sect churches that were took the side of the central institutions and the main sect churches that were opposed to the central institutions, that the main sect's schism.

Really, I mean, that's how I look at it. I don't know. You might have a different perspective, John. But my view is the main sect's schism in that point. And that's when you see the churches that some people would call them as the brides coming churches. But the churches that a lot of the churches that still embrace preaching rather than playing tapes broke away from the main sect.

And that happened coming through the 90s and into the early 2000s. And so the main sect really almost. divided in two here in North America, and actually the majority of what I would consider main-seq churches broke away through that period of time and formed a new faction.

And in that way, I don't, myself John, I don't think the main-seq is actually the largest sect in North America anymore. I would say the largest sect in North America are the churches that broke away during the copyright wars, of which, you know, Perry Green was one of the key figures in that whole escapade.

Now, the main-seq still is the largest internationally, right? I mean, when you add all of the balances up, they're still the largest sect of the message. But I think in North America, it's very close that they are maybe, at the most, they're maybe tied with first place with this sect that broke away over the copyright wars.

And so, anyways, that is how that all unfolded to lead all of those churches to break away in some way from the central institutions in the main-seq to the message. That's leading up to the point where, in our podcast, it's going to get very interesting, because what you're describing, once it got into the copyright wars, I'll never forget walking into my grandfather's house, and he's holding up this very, very ugly picture of William Brennan's son on the face of a cover of a magazine, and he's sitting there with his stern look on his face, and he's using one of Martin Luther's most famous

statements. Martin Luther's declaration of, here I stand, I can do no other. It was a defining moment leading up to the Protestant Reformation, because Martin Luther standing against the Catholic Church, and the cover of that magazine during the copyright wars, the title was, here I stand. So, in effect, you have William Brennan's son, who's literally declaring by that statement that the entire message called has become like the Catholic Church, at the moment in which they're all fighting with each other, and he's condemning them in that way, yet at the same time he's trying to, from all appearances,

and he's trying to rise up and become the Pope of the message sect. So, there's this internal conflict with what he's saying and the message that he's sending, and everybody's like scratching their head. Even my grandfather, he was unclear where to stand on the here I stand, because he could see this rise to trying to become the central figure, but yet he could see the hypocrisy elsewhere, and where do you go with this? I think my grandfather's exact words were, why are they trying to copyright and limit William Brennan's message whenever it should be free for everyone because it's like the Bible, and if we can

spread it abroad and spread it to as many people, you shouldn't try to put limits on the spread of God's word. He, I'm paraphrasing greatly, but that's essentially what he said, because My grandfather believed that William Brannum was God in the flesh and he believed when William Brannum said it was the spoken word for your age, it was the quote unquote word, the Bible.

So he didn't know what to make of all of this. He thought the whole thing was nonsense and absurd and I don't know where he landed on it actually because there was that kind of a rift in the message.

That is another really important angle that you pointed out there, John, because this copyright war in one in one side of it, it's really just a symptom almost. It's a symptom of people who don't want to submit to the authority of Joseph as he rises into power.

There's that whole angle of it happening too. So it's not simply that they're opposed to copywriting and letting the central institutions control all the distribution of literature and, you know, the literature and recordings, but it's there also, they reject Joseph as this new central figure of the main sect.

There's that aspect to it too. And so what you have through that period of time, kind of a slow moving schism, you have, and I want, you know, in my opinion, Joseph and the central institutions wanted to get rid of the churches who wouldn't submit to him either, right?

They were glad to see him go, right? So both sides are, went to loggerheads, are moving towards a spot where any church that won't submit to Joseph, any church that won't respect him as a prophet, you know, in the shoes and mold the William Brown on him, and anybody who won't submit to his demand that they allow the central institutions to control all the distribution of the literature and recordings, they all end up being pushed off, right?

They're either pushed off on purpose or just the friction of the whole thing turns them off to the central institutions and they break away. The last really big message convention, too, happened in those years, John, I think there was a convention, the Easter meetings right around that time I have the numbers in my book.

The Easter meetings before the copyright wars had something like, I don't want to say it was close to 10,000 people attended those meetings, John. But then the Easter convention on the other side of the copyright wars, attendance crashed by almost half, right?

And I think that those numbers kind of illustrate just how much of the main sect broke away over the copyright wars, right, through the attendance numbers at the Easter convention, you can see that.

So, yeah, the main sects here in North America schismed really badly over all of this stuff. The copyright wars, the rise of Joseph, and we keep teasing, we may or may not get to some episodes on the central institutions, on voice of God or on spoken word and things that happen there.

You know, we're going to have to debate that maybe just a little bit, but I hope... we can't get there and talk about some of those things. And when we do, maybe we'll talk about this just a bit more.

But where we're heading next, John, I mean, we have finished, this is the last major sect of the message that I had besides the main sect itself, which we probably need to do some episodes on the main sect, right?

Besides the main sect itself, this is the last of the major sects of the message that I went through in my book. And if our listeners wonder, I'm just going through my book, come out of my people, volume two, 1966, 2005, history of the message.

And I just dedicated a chapter to every major sect of the message. And what I have next in the book, John, which maybe is worthwhile for us to go through, I have a chapter just dedicated to minor or regional sects of the message, notable sects of the message.

And we might take the next episode or two and go through some of the more minor sects of the message and just talk about some of the more interesting things that happen there or just make people aware of them.

And when I say minor, they're not necessarily a minor in small size of number of people, because some of them are large. Some of the minor sects of the message have 40, 50, 60,000 members even.

But they're at least minor in the sense that they don't do a lot of mission outreach and they're pretty insular. So don't have the same global impact. Basically, every sect we've covered up to this point has had a global impact and has a global network of churches.

And so that's really the criteria I used to decide major versus minor sect of the message are they global or they not global in how they broke away. So anyways, John, I think that's where we're at.

And I look forward to picking up in our next episode and continuing on. Yeah, I'm excited to go there also. And at the same time, I would argue that there is no minor sect of the message because if you understand how this massive, massive occult works, it's the minor sects that come forward with all of these new special revelations of what they think the message is and how to interpret it that transforms the entire cult as a whole.

Later, they're disavowed, they become minor, they become forgotten. But some guys gonna rise up and say, hey, I know this prophecy of William Brannum that you don't know, it's a secret. And it's only to me.

And then he goes around and tours and spreads whatever is the nonsense. People adopted, it becomes part of the message. They get disavowed, forgotten. But whatever was the nonsense that transformed the message as a whole, in many cases Charles hit remains in the message.

And as that progresses on through time, as we have been able to show some to some extent and we'll show through the rest of the podcast, this really transforms how Americanized Christianity, the charismatic movement, it transforms all of it.

So there's so much more to say. We'll save it for the next episode. 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-brannum.org and Christian.

GospelChurch.org. From more about the history of William Brannum and the healing revivals, read Come Out of Her My People. More about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.