The Deity Cult Takeover: How Extremism Became Orthodoxy

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 www.William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of christiangospelchurch.org and the author of come out of her my people. Charles it's good to be back and to talk about all things message related and William Branham and Branhamism and we're getting into the interesting part for me the main sect. We've in past few episodes we've been examining all of the extremists and I know we're going to catch some heat in the comment feeds and already in

my email about you guys are picking the most extreme cases this is not a good representation of what the message stands for but I'm always going to go back to Jesus said you can tell the tree by the fruit that it bears and that is the fruit of the message whether you like it or not and I'm also going to point to dr. Stephen Hassan's book combating cult mind control if you understand how the mind control works when you're indoctrinated in a cult that is training people that you must have a central figure we always get the question if not William Branham who is our supreme leader when

you've been indoctrinated in that mindset and the leader dies you're going to have people stepping up and claiming that they are the next thing closest to God that's just how it works in a mind control cult so even though the main sect may not you know propagate the same ideas as the extremist what it does it births new people who can become extremists later so we're talking about the extremists that we've witnessed up to this point in time there will be new extremists and after that there will be more new extremists because it always goes back to if the tree looks like this and

continues to bear the same fruit it will always bear the same fruit according to biblical scripture studies and according to even cult psychology studies that's how this works but now we're going to go and examine the trunk of this tree I look forward to that John yeah we're getting into some interesting stuff and you know I I have maybe a little bit of a different perspective you know having looked at all this a little bit and you know people in the main sect John are are really always keen to say that's not us we didn't have anything to do with that

that was these crazy people over here, right? But the truth is, every single group that we've talked about up to this stage with like two very minor exceptions are directly branched out of the main sect of the message.

Every single one of them, okay? All branched out the polygamous, the celibates, the crazies, every branch of it came out of the main sect. And it is dishonest, it's wicked, it's corrupt and deceitful for them to pretend that they have no connection or relationship. In fact, the truth is they are uniquely responsible for holding them all accountable, for doing stuff about it.

And to me, it is incredibly telling, right, that the reaction of people in the main sect is always wasn't us, wasn't us, wasn't us, right? No, not only was it, wasn't them, breakaways from them, they were uniquely responsible for holding those people accountable and bringing those situations under control. And they failed, they failed in their biblical responsibilities, they failed in their leadership abilities. I mean, it's absolutely all failures of the main sect that every one of these other splinter groups exists to begin with. And so contrary to what they want to say, they are absolutely fully, wholly and completely accountable for everything that has branched out

of them. And it was their failure to have controls in place in the begin with to let it all happen. And so I have a very accountable view towards the main sect of the message. And then so forth, the others, for everything that's split out of them. Yeah. But you're right, John, we're going into the, we're going into the main sect of the message itself, okay? And I'm really looking forward to chatting about that. There's so much there. There's so much there for us to talk about, John.

And I know you're from the main sect itself. And just for our listener's sake, in case maybe today's the first time they're joining us, you're from the main sect. I'm from, I'm from probably what is the first splinter group out of the main sect, which broke away in the 60s right after William Brandham died. And so we're, we're kind of exploring the sects of the message. And we're made it all our way finally to the granddaddy of them all, the main sect of the message.

And it's such a mess. I mean, there's so much to talk about. The thing I want to point out to further emphasize what you just said, yes, a lot of the extremists came out of the main sect.

And you know, I grew up in the main sect. So I watched this happen. And I'm, unfortunately, getting older and year. So I have seen things happen that many of the younger generation have not. But if you examine some of the more extreme leaders, those who were involved in financial scandals or those who went crazy with sexual stuff, there was a point in time in which they were well respected in the message among the leadership. And there were times when, you know, I've been a, all kinds of different churches. I have seen numerous people.

who were traveling evangelists, who would travel a circuit within the main sect, and you'd go visit discharge that we used to go to in one of the cities and states that I lived in, and then they would go to this other one, and then this other one. So they're traveling the circuit, preaching, and they're lifted up as though they're this great spiritual figure because they're doing God's work.

But then whenever they go extreme, which continues to be the case, some of them are just outright lambasted by the same people that invited them to the pulpit. That's the funny part. So there's this air of spiritual significance in the early part of their ministry whenever everybody's getting along, and then suddenly there were doctrines of demons coming out of them. But what's interesting about that is while they're on the inn with the crowd, some of those doctrines of demons, as they call it, become integrated into message canon. Because the way that these people preach, if you're on

the outside of this looking inn, it's hard to understand this. When you think about preaching, you think about some man standing behind a pulpit, and he's opening his Bible, and let's talk about this passage from the book of John, and then you start making the Bible come alive to your listeners, well that's not the way it is in the main sect of the message. What it is, instead of the Bible, they will open up the Bible, and they may read one verse or two. But I have seen countless ministers who after they do this, they open up a message of William Branham in one of those little blue books,

and they set it either beside or on top of the Bible, and I've heard the claim that it's like looking down the sites of a gun. You peer down the sites and the hindsight that we have right here is the Bible, but you really need William Branham on that other site, so the message, the spoken word, is the other site to hit your target. And so what they do, they open up the Bible, and it becomes secondary, then they open up William Branham's sermons, and instead of making the Bible come alive, they try to make William Branham's sermons come alive, and they tell allegories and stories,

and their own supernatural experiences, and their own experiences with William Branham, many of which aren't on any documentation anywhere else, but then those become part of the canon, and so those statements that they've made, which may or may not even be true, become accepted as part of the main-sex theology. I know just what you mean, John. I know just what you mean. And when you think about the main-sex too, and I'll go so far as even to throw in most of the other sex with this, John. There's a lot of people say all this bad stuff happened

and you're correct. There are a lot of people who will blast their enemies from the platform, right? But are you aware, John? I'm just, are you aware of a single time when any message leader in the main sect or the others?

ever turn someone into the police or their thefts or their rates or their less station did right and so while we can say right and while yes or you all can say yeah we blasted some of these guys from our platforms what a absolute failure of a response that is not the appropriate way to respond to these things right no you should have called the police on these people you should have turned them in right over and over and over right and so again message leaders and especially message leaders in the main sex some of whom we're going to talk about

absolutely failed in their responsibilities right as just even decent moral human beings in a lot of cases for failing to turn in some of the stuff that happened right um jt partners should have been called in on the police right you go on down the list all these guys the stuff a lot of them should have been called and turned into the police for what they were doing right um because there was a lot of really horrendous stuff that happened over the years as just one example Jean and Leo right you can just go on down the list

somebody should have called the police on these people and they should have been locked up for what they were doing now um as we as we kind of break over and start talking about these guys John um as we look at the main sector the message maybe i'll just start by recapping just a little bit of some of the stuff we've covered um through this period of time so basically what i've been doing John i'm walking through my book come out of where my people volume two and it goes all the way from 1966 to 2005 and i'm kind of just been tracing the

history of of each of the major sex of the message through that period and what you have is William Branham dies we walked through how there was a basically a hostile takeover of the message by Billy Paul shortly after William Branham died um Billy Paul was somebody when William Branham died he had a very poor reputation in the community he was um recently divorced and remarried and that just brought a just a terrible repercussions with it the way people looked at him besides that you had a period green who had just kind of really kind of showed up out of nowhere in the last year and a half before

William Branham died and it was kind of elbow in his way in and the two of them together John um the perspective of my sector of the message is they overthrew everybody else they overthrew the tabernacle board they overthrew the community out in Arizona through Perry Green and basically set up shop over probably roughly half of the message at that point maybe a little more than half and as that happens um we what we talked through how the tape church is started to to rise up in that period and as the as the as the fight started to happen through that you had a period of time

where the preaching ministers in Jeffersonville tried to resist the takeover with the Wormen Neville and Raymond Jackson, different ones here, that all failed. And basically, the tape churches got implemented, starting here in Jeffersonville, as a way to more or less, the way again, my sect of the message, look at it to silence the preachers who are resisting Billy Paul, and that main sect takeover.

And as your grandfather comes back here to Jeffersonville, and the tape church more or less becomes set in stone at the Brannum Tabernacle, you start to see the come together, this accumulation of a number of other churches that start adopting the tape church model.

And they form kind of the nucleus, and an important faction of the main sect of the message early on. Other really notable churches of that group were like Paul Brewer's church in Missouri, Earl and John Martin's church in Arkansas, Jack Palmer's church in Georgia.

And you see a faction of churches come together that are very intent on playing tapes as the main part of their service. And what happens is this time goes on as the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and all of these schisms that we've been talking about, you know, Estil Beeler breaks away.

The Faith Assembly Fellowship breaks away. J.T. Parnell breaks away. The Paulusier Lowry's break away. The Parnell's break away. The Joseph Coleman breaks away with all their groups. Leavale breaks away with his groups.

He will Frank breaks away with his groups. You just keep on going down that list. As all of that is happening, the percentage of churches in the main sect that have live preaching is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

And the tape churches are becoming more and more the majority, because it's mainly the preaching churches that are leaving. And it's through this period of time that the control of message, literature, and control of all the recordings becomes very important to the central institutions.

And as you come up into the 90s, late 80s and 90s, as the copyright wars unfold and as that last major schism really rocks the main sect of the message, you come out to the other side of that, probably by the mid to late 90s, where the tape churches are the majority of the main sect of the message.

And so the first thing I wanted to point out, was just that kind of that demographic shift that happens in the main sect over the decades. The natural result of a lot of the schisms is the tape churches rise to become the majority in the most influential portion in the main sect of the message.

I would agree with that. Most of the main sect churches that I visited, they either solely preach by playing the recordings of William Brannum from 1947 to 1965, or they did this weird combination where they might preach on...

in Sunday morning, sometimes, and then Sunday evening, Wednesday night, and often services in between. They would be listening to these recordings and brainwashing the crowd. So I grew up like this. When you entered into the Brannum Tabernacle, anybody who visited was a little shocked because they were all dressed up in their fancy clothes and they come and sat down and my grandfather would introduce the recording of William Brannum and then say, hey, brother, so and so back in the tape room, press play on that tape and they would press play and everybody would just sit there and calmly, quietly,

try to make it look like they were having some sort of spiritual excitement in the service, but they're sitting there and you can tell it on the kids' minds, man, they're bored out of their minds.

They're my grandfather and the associate pastor were sitting on these big, large chairs on the platform, watching everybody listen to a tape. That's how that sermon went down, man. And as a kid, you're counting the number of holes and the ceiling tiles and as some of the, I've talked to some adults who, some of them are still in the message, but they said that it's just really hard in the Brannum Tabernacle you sit there and you're bored out of your mind because you've already listened to these recordings over and over in your own home and then you go sit there

and try to pretend like it's exciting and I'm thinking about what restaurant are we going to after the service? That's a paraphrased actual quote from a guy who I think he's still in the message, but that's wrong, that's the way that they're doing it and it's wrong because not only are they trying to say that the statements made in the 40s, 50s and 60s are good enough for today and therefore we can listen to them, but people come to church looking for spiritual guidance and the things happening during that era don't even closely resemble what is happening today.

So all of the problems that people face today, they're left to face them alone. So when they enter these churches, they're just zero spiritual guidance and if they try to get counsel from the ministers after the service or meeting in the homes or whatever, often the ministers in the main sec will point to the recordings and say things like, well, if it was good enough for back then, it's good enough for today.

So just immerse yourself in the recordings, you'll get your answer and they bypass the spiritual counsel altogether. So when you join one of these churches, you're basically in a spiritual sense, you're in the spiritual desert.

There is nothing for you. There's some great observations, John. And I think that that's very true, very true. I know in the churches I come from, and most of the other sects of the message, the fact that the main sect plays tapes rather than has...

as consistent live preaching, is generally a massive point of contention today between the main sect. And it's always been a, it's really always been a contention, really from day one when they started doing it.

I know a lot of the preachers in the other sects of the message, they view the pressure to establish a tape church or convert to a tape church. They view that as a more or less an attempt by the main sect to shut them up, basically.

And that, I have to say, in my opinion, that probably did play a major role. I really think that is a substantial part of the leadership of the main sect. I think that's absolutely in their thinking is, it's not, you know, press play.

It's shut up and press play. Like I think you could add the word shut up in front of the press play and you would be getting the, getting the emphasis probably just as accurate from what the leaders in the main sect want.

We don't want to hear what you have to say, shut up, press play, right? And that is how a lot of the rather sects of the message, they hear the word shut up before press play from the main sect.

But I think the viewpoint in the main sect, though, to be fair is different. I think the average rank and file don't look at it that way. I think the average rank and file looks at it as, and I believe I've heard this articulated more or less directly, William Brannon brought the perfect revelation.

The perfect has come. Why do we need a middleman? Let's just press play and get, you know, get the perfect from the source. And that is, I believe, the official rationales to why tapes are played.

I don't know, John, did you ever, was it ever explained why we play tapes as opposed to, you know, have a preacher, preach a sermon? Like what's the, do you know an official explanation for that?

Well, there, it depends on who you talk to and where you were at the time. I remember that there was this guy who wasn't even a parishioner of the Brannum Tabernacle, but he would often frequently come to the Tabernacle.

And he would get forcibly ejected from the meetings. And he would, I'm told, I wasn't there to witness this, but I'm told by multiple family members and multiple deacons that in some times, it actually broke out into a fist fight.

The guy was, he had a temper, he, the funny part is he was a really close friend of the family. I wish I could say who he was, but anyway, this guy was a fighter.

And the reason he was forcibly ejected is because the Brannum Tabernacle was already a tape church. You came dressed in your Sunday school clothes and you sat down and set board for, these tapes aren't short.

They're sometimes two and a half hours long. So you're sitting there. Well, you're sitting three-one hours. You know, some of the three, I mean, this is, it is torture. It is torture to do this, right?

And this guy screaming like a Nazi through these recordings. People have, people on the outside of this message cult have no... idea what this is like. But anyway, this guy came to these services. My grandfather would, I'm using the word loosely, preach Sunday school, which usually consisted of him telling stories of his wonderful experiences with William Brannum. And he would always, he would open with a Bible verse. And I think most times, if I recall correctly, we would as a congregation read a Psalm together. But then he would tell these spiritual experiences, which are me and

brother Brannum, we're going down the road one day and we saw a coffee shop and we stopped and he told me the most wonderful thing. That's how my grandfather would do. And it would always point back to the Bible verse to it was like the sermon wasn't even about the Bible.

It was about this thing that happened to him and he saw how it connected to the Bible. That's probably the easiest and best way I can say it. Well, this guy would come in and he would hear my grandfather doing this and he wanted nothing but the recordings. He thought it was complete heresy for anybody who is a minister to preach because by William Brannum's own words, the message and the messenger are one and the same. If you add another person to this mix, you have a different messenger. He was actually more closely aligned to the message than the

message cult itself. And he wanted my grandfather to shut up. So the shut up phrase that you're using, that's what he did. Well, he would create such a ruckus. They would have to forcibly eject him and he would come to fist fights. So if you ask him, the reason why people play tapes is solely because of what William Brannum said. The message and the messenger are one and the same. You can't have another messenger. Otherwise, look at the extremists that we have. Their message has become one and the same with them and they're isolated from the other group. So in this guy's mind,

my grandfather was trying to rise up to be another replacement of William Brannum by speaking. So in his eyes, that's what it was. On the flip side, you had all of these people who who the spiritual counsel, I can't stress that enough. The way in which they wanted you to find any comfort for whatever it is. If you have sin in your life, you go to the recordings. If you're seeking healing, you go to the recordings. No matter what it is in your life, you go to the recordings. I have, and this is common. I don't think anybody who is out there would object to this.

If I were to be diagnosed with some, I don't know, kidney disease. And suddenly, by happenstance, magically listened to a recording and catch that somebody in a prayer line had that same kidney disease. Well, William Brannum wasn't speaking just to them. He's also speaking to me, even though that recording was 19.

50s, whatever it is. And they accept their healing based on William Brannum, claiming to have healed another person, not knowing that that person may have died of that same disease. But that's how it works in the main sect.

So some people you ask, it's because they're, you know, the message and the messenger are the same. Other people, it's because that is where you go for everything that you need spiritually speaking. That is really fascinating, John.

Very interesting. Very interesting. You know, the main sect of the message, listen to the tape, like, I can understand their rationale, you know, in some extent, because, you know, the things that William Brannum said, the, the, the sects of the message like that I come from or, you know, that are similar, they are more lateral reign oriented in their, in their model where they're more interested in the fivefold ministry stuff still too, right?

And, and they take the lateral reign versus that you need the, what they would call the fivefold ministry for the perfecting of the saints. And so they fit, they fit this, they fit a continuation of preaching and a continuation of preachers into the necessity to reach manifested sons of God.

And so, you have to think all of these sects are obsessed with manifested sons of God, right? And so, I think in part what we're talking about here is a different of opinion about how to get there.

You know, the main sect thinks we're going to get there through the tapes because we've got the perfect, but the other sects that still embrace preaching, you know, they take the fivefold ministry, the fivefold ministry versus and say, well, we also still need a preaching ministry to get to the perfecting of the saints for it.

So you have this, at a doctrinal level in the teachings, you have this fight between the two sects, right? And it comes back to their different interpretations of the message as well. Once I perhaps being a little still a little bit more leaning towards the original lateral reign teachings, it's fascinating, isn't it, John?

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the lateral 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.

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So I'm gonna open up and I'm gonna tell a story that I've never told on here. All of the parties involved are dead, so I can tell it now, I withhold things because I don't want to, they're family, I don't want to mess things up.

But there is a common problem among message leadership of seared consciences. They have no conscious whatsoever when they speak. If I'm speaking in a podcast to you, Charles, and I say something that I, after I say it, you're in the heat of the moment and you make mistakes.

After I say it, if I realize that I said something wrong, it bothers me. Like I will immediately, people don't know this listening to the podcast, we'll go back sometimes and correct some of the statements that we make.

That's how it is because in the back of my head, I can't sit still if I've done something wrong. I want people to know I've done something wrong, and so I want to correct it before it gets out.

But message leadership, it's not that way. They see, there's a nostic view of lies for the sake of a holy end, and I think they go down that pathway a lot. But anyway, I had this experience with a family member, and it was edging very, very close to voodoo and witch doctors kind of thing, which sounds funny if you're thinking in the context of Christianity.

Here's the scene where you go into some tribe in the middle of nowhere in Africa, and somebody has just become severely injured and may die, and you walk into the hut, and there's all of this incense floating around in the air, and they're chanting and doing all kinds of things, rituals that, you know, from our perspective in the modern world, we look at this and we think, well, that chanting is not going to heal this person who's dying or whatever it is.

That's what's happening in these camps in the middle of nowhere, right, in these developing nations. Well, I walked into a hospital room, and the same exact thing was happening. I have a family member who made national news when he blew up his meth lab in his house, and nearly took out a fireman with him.

His house exploded, he was burned over 50% of his body was burned, his flesh on his arms and legs had become tourniquets, and when I walked into the hospital room, they had actually flayed his arms and legs to make it where he wasn't going to lose his limbs.

That's how bad it was, and I walk in, and it was the most disgusting, horrific thing I've ever seen. He was, you know, he usually was tanned, but he was as black as he looked like he pulled a log out of the fireplace.

That's how he looked. My grandfather from behind the pulpit said, now, won't you to pray for, and I'm not going to give the relationship, I want you to pray for brother so and so, he got in a motorcycle rack, and so everybody's praying for this motorcycle rack that didn't happen.

I go to the hospital and I had, he was registered on There are some weird names like Tom Jones or something that wasn't his name. And I walk into the hospital room and the way that they were administering healing because they did not trust that the hospital could heal him was they were playing the recordings of William Branham 24-7.

They were sitting watch with him when the tape would stop. There was somebody in the room to flip the tapes because they thought that he would receive his healing by listening to those recordings.

He was an enchantment of sorts. And you can picture what the nurses and doctors thought they're walking in and here's this guy screaming like a Nazi and the speakers of this tape player that they brought in.

Well, whether it worked or not, my family would say it worked because he did recover and blew up his meth lab house a second time. And in the second instance, my grandfather got behind the pulpit and he said something to the effect of, please pray for brother so and so.

He was messing with gasoline and he had a serious accident. But his meth lab exploded because back in the hospital, they did the same exact thing. Now my family will argue that this second attempt at voodoo worked because he did recover again later to die of something else.

So that's how this works if you think about these recordings. It is such a weird, weird mask that isn't, it doesn't even resemble Christianity whatsoever. Wow, John, that's an awful story. And it is illustrative of just how message leaders will bend the facts and the truth and really just be outright dishonest in order to kind of present a false narrative.

And it's also really illustrative of how the mainstack views the tapes with these magical healing powers and the words of the prophet. That's very interesting, John. Very interesting. Now I think the next thing to point out about the main sect is the leadership of it.

You know, I mentioned how already how when William Brannum died, Billy Paul basically overthrew the Brannum tabernacle and put himself into power. He did that with help from Perry Green and people coming back from the Tucson message community.

So they brought a bunch of people back from Tucson. They had a more or less secret election at the tabernacle and impromptu service where he brought a bunch of people from D.D. Colt, especially back, and voted him in his pastor in general overseer, really of the Brannum tabernacle.

That all preceded your grandfather coming back. He was out in Arizona still at that time as well. And the reason that he was able to get away with that, John, over the protests of the majority of the Jeffersonville message community, was that the D.D. Colt controlled the majority of the trustee positions on the boards.

of the central institutions of the message and in our next episode i hope we're going to start actually talking about the central institutions themselves and the board members and just the history of some of that how that all came together and evolved but basically before William Branham died he put the deede cult in control of the central institutions of the message and now the message has four central institutions john and what i consider central institutions and and those central institutions john that's really how i define the main sector of the message you know other people might define it you might even have a little different definition than me

but the way that i define the main sector of the message is the main sector of the message is the four central institutions and all of the people who are loyal and cooperate with those institutions and if you think of the central institutions of the message like a pyramid the top of the pyramid is the William Branham Evangelistic Association that's how that's the top of the pyramid it back in the early days it controlled all of the intellectual property it owned the copyrights it was the controlling institution it was established in 1965 it was actually established in November

or December 1965 under somewhat mysterious circumstances we'll discuss in our next episode but it was established billy paul was was on that board along with two members of the deede cult Fred softman Roy roberson they were the founding members of the William Branham Evangelistic Association later on Fred softman got on the board as well and they are basically the guys who control the top so it's billy paul and two or three guys who think he is the son of god that is who that is who controlled the William Branham Evangelistic Association the same down with the Branham tabernacle the majority of the board there was all deede cult all put in place by

William Branham and the same thing when billy paul had the corrupt election and got himself put in his general overseer there the board was controlled by the deede cult they did not want to dislodge him and so he was allowed to continue in that position and he essentially is who appointed your grandfather in as a pastor and Vernon man and the others that came along through before so billy paul was always kind of the the secret power in all of these things besides that there's two other central institutions so I said the wba and the William and the Branham tabernacle well the

Branham tabernacle controls all the assets of the local Jeffersonville message community or at least they did until somebody stole it all from people talk about that too later and so you had that and then you had the other two central institutions one of them is you'll hear me call it the franchise that turned into voice aguard recordings and the franchise that turned into spoken word publications I phrase it like that because they were not always called voice of God and spoken word. They started out and things changed over the years, but they're most commonly and fondly remembered as spoken word and voice of God. So the franchise

that became spoken word, the franchise that became voice God, those were the other two central institutions. And those were kind of like mission, mission arms of the message. Spoken word publications was creating print literature that franchise which pre-existed and continued on after. And then the franchise which became voice of God recordings was the franchise creating all of the actual recordings. And in our next episode, we'll just talk through the evolution of who was involved and all that and just connect up the dots for everybody because I do think it's going to help people just to understand how all that evolved over the years.

But in a nutshell, Fred Soffman, who is also on the WBA, he is the director of the franchise that becomes voice of God recordings. And Roy Borders is the director of the franchise that becomes spoken word publications. And so all of these guys, basically all of the directors and board members are shared across all these groups is what I'm getting at. It's the same leadership team, more or less, across all the groups with different levels of say. And so those are the central institutions, those are the key guys. And my chief point here is one, they're really all

controlled by the same group of friends. Besides Billy Paul, they were all in the D.D. Colt when all of the stuff started out. They were all D.D. Colt members. Joseph was not involved in this when he was back then. Joseph was a child still, minor when his father was father passed away. So Joseph what didn't get involved into this two years later. But it was all the D.D. Colt and it was Billy Paul really in the controlling position through the years. And Billy Paul kind of managed it. I'm going to say he managed it all with mostly with soft power.

I think that'd be a fair way to put it wouldn't it be John. And I think that Billy Paul,

I don't know maybe that he necessarily knew this from the start, but certainly he came to realize this very quickly after the hostile takeover the brand of tabernacle and all the pushback he came.

His hold on power was always somewhat fragile and holding the whole central the main sec together, it was always a it was always a fragile thing right because everybody is ready to jump on each other and call each other a heretic and schism at any second over anything okay. And Billy Paul in one sense he's trying to they're trying to hold it together right. And so Billy Paul is besides the initial hostile takeover he kind of transitions into this gentle leadership style.

I think that's a nice way to put it. And he only used the hard power when it was a a matter of not loot you know if the if something happened and he was threatened then the clause had to come out. But so long as you know the soft power worked right.

you would not have necessarily realized Billy Paul is the cult leader of the main sect of the message. He was just kind of this passive, let everybody else do everything. And so long as I am in the general overseer chair, and long as I'm in the chairman chair, and as long as I am in the treasurer chair, okay, everybody else, you do what you want, and I'm going to be gentle and kind and nice, but don't get on my bad side or threaten my position because then the clause will come out. That's how that was Billy Paul's leadership style.

I have another term for it. You know, Charles, we're going to have to come up with our own set of terms because we're edging very close to the point where some of the people are still alive and have mountains of money to issue lawsuits. So I think what I'm going to do, people who are in the message will understand this term, and people on the outside may not get it, but it sort of puts up a legal barrier between us, but I'm going to start using the term profit junior for some of the things that we're going to say in these upcoming episodes.

If you're from the message, you know exactly who profit junior is, but I have a different term than you used. I consider this to be more of a pen and teller show. If you understand the comedian act of pen and teller, there's this boisterous guy. He's a very tall, big, hefty guy, very boisterous personality, and he is the face of the comedy act. He's the one doing all the speaking. His partner has a, he's almost mute. I don't know that he ever speaks, but he just sits there and he smiles and makes faces and expressions while the boisterous guy

is making all the jokes, but it's the silent guy who's actually the brains behind the act. So it's a pen and teller show. If you look at Billy Paul, like you said, he was this friendly, timid guy that would never do many of the things that profit junior and some of the others are doing, but the pen and teller act is it's all throughout the message. If you were on the inside and you understood the dynamics of how this worked, there was a brains behind the operation and there was a face behind the operation.

That's very true. And they weren't the same person. And so definitely the way I characterize it is beyond a shadow of a doubt, Billy Paul was the man with his hands on all the levers of power across the main sect of the message. He was in control of all of the central institutions.

No questions asked. But the people running it were the faces, okay? Fred Sothman was the face. Boy, what a silly face to choose. But Fred Sothman was one face, right? Roy Borders was another face, right? Your grandfather was a face. And Roy Roberson even, to some extent, was a face.

So Billy Paul has these other guys who are out front, right? And he's more or less in the back room making the decisions and giving, you know, instructions. and stuff. And so long as the money is flowing, so long it's, that's my take, so long as the money's flowing, so long as everything's moving on. Billy Paul really don't care too much, right? And for me, John, you know, this is another just opinion. This just goes back to me. This goes back to me. I just, I don't think Billy Paul ever believed the message, right? Because

the lack of passion, the lack of getting into all of the fights and all of the schisms, John, are you aware of any single real message believer that doesn't have incredibly strong opinions that they would fight to the death over? Are you aware of such a message believer is that? None. There is no way, man. So the fact that somebody could be in the message, all of those years, and never have a serious conviction enough that they would get into a fight on a schism over is a pretty good sign that they don't really believe the message. Because

for the average message believer, these things are life and death struggles. You know, go to the firing squad to fight over this. You know, you will do anything to be on the right side and win and make it in the rapture. William Brandon would say, if there's only one person in Jefferson ville going to make it, it's going to be me. And that's the, you ever heard people in the message, say that, John? And that is the attitude of a lot of people. If anybody here's going to make it, you better believe it's going to beat me. And they will, whatever it takes to make sure they are

the one person that makes it. And the fact that Billy Paul never got into any of that to me is very telling that he was aware of what it all was, right? And he was just happy to collect the check in the back room while everyone else was crazy. Well, and the funny part about all of that is there were, there were people who knew Billy Paul growing up and knew the way that he acted, the things that he did while while William Brandon was preaching some of the things that he did outside the building. And they would argue that he, yeah, he never believed it because he never

lived it. He didn't have the lifestyle. And what's funny, many of those same people would say that even while it was in the message. And they didn't know the lifestyle of Prophet Junior. And so they thought that they were two different people with two different personalities, both of which believe the message. My family, even while before any of this happened, before any of my research, they weren't fully sold on the idea that one or two or both of the brothers truly believed the message at all because they just didn't, they didn't act like other message believers.

Prophet Junior is an interesting case. And his rise into power, John, really comes very close to the end of my book. So, so we might not have to say a whole lot about that. But, but yes, there's just a very interesting contrast between the way Billy Paul and his success.

us or manage things. I think Billy Paul had an understanding of the fragility of the situation and he also had a more honest understanding of just how this whole thing works and how it's held together, right?

And you lost that during the transition in leadership and that then you, you know, you have somebody with someone who's not up to the task in some sense. Okay. There's someone who's maybe not quite up to the task of holding a such a diverse, complex thing together and ends up causing the major schism, some of them that happened in the 90s and early 2000s, okay?

So yeah, I mean, I think just that difference in leadership style explains a lot of what, a lot of what transpired as Billy Paul went into retirement. So, but for the main, to the main portion of my book, Billy Paul is the guy running the main sect of the message and a lot of what we're going to talk about, you know, to the next few episodes is the period of time where Billy Paul is in charge.

What happens is as you come into the early to mid 90s, Billy Paul does start grooming his successor and in the early 2000s, Billy Paul starts to go into semi-retirement and turn things over to his, to his successor and we might talk about a successor some more down the road, but, but definitely for the point in period, the recovering, it's really important to know the churches of the main sect are gradually becoming increasingly tape churches, less and less preaching churches.

The central institutions are controlled by Billy Paul and the deity cult. And if we haven't said again who the deity cult is, again, maybe this is someone's first time joining us, the deity cult is the section of the main sect, which worships William Branham as God incarnate.

They baptize, they pray in his name, they say he is God in the flesh, okay? The deity cult, they are the ones in charge and John, that is so important to point out to people.

It is so absolutely important for all of the people in the message and outside the message to know the central institutions of the message are controlled and have been censored inception by the members of the Branham deity cult.

They are the deity cult and what's important, even more than knowing that they're controlled by the deity cult is important to know, William Branham is the one who put the deity cult in power, okay?

William Branham very famously, we did a full episode on the Bruce Serpent, if you want to look it up through the past, the Bruce Serpent episode, William Branham preached a sermon called the Bruce Serpent, where he, on tape, he condemned the deity cult, he condemned the people who worshipped and praying his name, he says, you can't do that anymore, no, that's bad.

And then less than a year later, he takes those same people and he makes them trustees and directors and senior leaders over the key institutions of the message, okay? That is absolute. lootly what happened. And the way that I interpreted John is that he was, he was just doing damage control with the brew serpent sermon. That was just a damage control sermon because the deity cult had got caught and he had to confront them in order to save himself at that point. And then after things quieted down a little bit, he took the deity cult and he moved with them to Arizona. He put them in charge

of all the central institutions of the message. And they still worshipped him as God and baptized in his name. And he knew at the whole time he knew when he moved out. There's all kinds of records that he knew that they were the deity cult that they were worshipping him. And he chose to put them in control of the central institutions. And so throughout this entire period, while the rank and file person in the main sect does not believe William Brand was God incarnate, absolutely not.

The leaders of the main sect and its central institutions were absolutely members of the deity cult. Absolutely. I would agree with that. And the funny part is not many people who are even in the main sect realize this. You and I have, even before this one, we had some discussions about what was true and what was not concerning the leadership of the Brannum Tabernacle and its main sect establishments. Key figures who were truly believers that William Brand was God in the flesh were appointed to very critical positions of leadership. And I had no idea that these men were

on even legal documents. Some of the legal documents have them in it because we saw them as nut jobs. Fred Sothman, that guy was crazy, man. Anybody who knew him knew that he was crazy.

There's this video that I think we played a few clips from where he's talking about how William Brand was greater than Jesus. And Jesus could never do the same miracles that William Brand him did. He was so much greater and more powerful. And the backstory behind that people would go visit Fred Sothman because he would say the craziest things. And if you could get him on recording, it made a good laugh. I don't know if that was one of them. Maybe the people believe what he was saying. I don't know. But anybody of any sound mind listening to it to realize that that guy

has lost his mental faculties. And no, William Brand was not God in the flesh. But the fact that he and many, many others were put in leadership positions solely because they believe that William Brand was God is very telling you are correct. And you can go down the list of every trustee of the central institutions. And every last one of them is on recording somewhere saying, William Brand him is God in the flesh. Every last one of them. And I document those in the book if people want some footnotes and stuff to chase all those down. The first and second volume

of message history. But every last one of them, right? And so it's not even in dispute that that is what they believe. That is absolutely what they believe. And, and so this thing is always this weird abomination from day one, John.

I mean, it is, from the moment William Brannum dies, I mean, it, it, it, it just becomes an increasingly worse abomination. You know, you've got Billy Paul, who probably doesn't believe the message, running the central institutions, which were led by people who think that William Brannum was God incarnate.

And they are the ones propagating all of the tapes and all of the literature and going on, you know, and, and it's just, um, you know, what do you do with that? It is so, it's so strange on one hand.

But then on the other hand, it's just so ugly, there's a, you know, it's just abominable the whole thing, John, abominable, and lots of people did know it. There's a lot of people that did know it, like the people in my sect, they, a lot of them left over it, you know, back in the day when it all started.

But there's been lots of people that, that know those things, but, but where can you go, John? You think me and you are doing this here in the year, 2025, right? And, and we record these a few weeks in advance.

So, you know, this will come out later this year, but where, where can we go? This thing, the whole world of all the mess, where can we go and find anyone in the message, saying, hey guys, Fred Soffman and these guys are all in the city called, where, where is anybody warning people?

Where is the, where is anybody out there for all the message history, putting this out there for people to hear? It's not really there, is it? It's not really there. You know, if you were in the circles of leadership here in Jeffersonville, you probably know about it.

If, um, if you came to my church and we're there when Raymond Jackson preached about it a few times and gave out everybody's names and played some, like you would know about it. Very little, very little awareness outside of the core leaders of the message that this is even a reality.

Well, there's so much to talk about, we're, uh, I think if we start another subject, some of the subjects that we have are so big, it would probably require an entire podcast. So, maybe we'll cut off here, but getting into some of the other things that we have spoken about, Jean and Leo and their torture compound and Prescott Arizona, many of the things like this are a direct result of the main sect of the message.

So you can't have a extremist who's praying upon others, I'll say it lightly so that YouTube doesn't block us. You can't have that without a main sect from the tree produces the fruit. That's how this works.

If you, if you know the Bible, you know that what I'm saying is biblically accurate. You examine the tree by its fruit. So the further we go in this tree, you'll understand that even while the main sect would say that the tree trunk, the main...

is holy, and that all of these extremists that blossomed from that tree, they're just rogue agents for Satan. They're working their way into heresy. And William Bram never condoned that. You're going to find that William Bram actually established his main sect from that structure. He wanted the extremists. He wanted the people that believed that he was God. And then after he died, and the the leadership that already was somewhat this weird mass of deity cult, they wanted more people of extreme nature. So they bring in more messed up people to help lead this thing. And that is what

grew the tree that blossomed into all of this fruit that we see. So so much more I can say, but maybe next time we'll get into some of the deeper darker secrets of the main sect.

I'm looking forward to it, John. We have got to walk through the history of the central institutions. And there are some things in there that I just don't think people have connected the dots. And I'm going to connect the dots for you, ladies and gentlemen, you come back next time and we will show you some interesting stuff. Well, 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-Branum.org and Christian Gospel Church.org. For more about William Bram and the healing revivals, you can read come out of

her, my people. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Both available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.