Neurotic Messiahs and the Rise of Spiritual Narcissism

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 and friend, Laura Lynn Tyler Thompson, the co-host of Laura Lynn Live. Laura it's good to be back and to talk about all things charismatic and past history in our religions and you and I were just chatting briefly last night about the subject matter for today and it got me to thinking of my first visit to a church outside of the cult. We went to a new

church we were there for not long and they had this little book that they handed you and the book was what is the gospel and he says if you're going to attend here you probably need to go through this we're giving a little class and we can talk through it and my first reaction was why I know the gospel. I've read the Bible, I've heard the gospel years and years and so he convinced me I went and just from day one of being in that class I realized that I had never ever in my 37 years of being in the cult had never heard the gospel and it was

a very works-centered religion the way that the way the religion was framed they would often quote what is it Ephesians 2 I think it is for grace you've been saved through faith you know the passage but they would leave off that next verse which says not by works so that no man could boast you would never hear that spoken in any of the churches but what happened was we had a religion that was supposedly centered on Jesus but in order to achieve what was called rapturing faith we had to mature ourselves and perfect ourselves and before we

could be raptured we had to be a perfect church and that's not that uncommon it spread throughout latar rain that was a that was one of the core doctrines but as you're asking these questions I was thinking through my past history and I'm certain we're going to collide on some of the histories and some of the weird doctrines that we had yeah you know when I was thinking about how similar some of the things that you went through and I went through it's been a lot to process can I tell you that since I've aired you know my interview with

you you came on my show and then we've done you know a subsequent interview on your podcast people are contacting me And so far, no one's upset or angry. They're going, oh, yeah, I have my own story.

Like this isn't such is what happened. And I think this is why I want to be upfront and honest about it because a lot of people went through really difficult things, such as you've described in detail and have been so courageous to come out with.

But as we talk about it, first of all, there can be healing and healing is so important. We can't heal when we have big secrets that fester underneath like a cancer inside. And I went to a conference this last weekend and so many people have experienced spiritual abuse in their past.

And the part that we need to get to is where we can get healing. But in order to do that, there needs to be exposure, much like a wound that's in our body. We have to get the, you know, the pus out of there.

So to speak, we have to get all this, the impurities, they have to be exposed. And I think that's what you're doing. And I thank God for that. John, I thank God for your life.

And I know that you take hits for it. And I mean, I was just so shocked at the, the the Brannum liaisons with really bad people. The other thing was that the some people in his immediate group were homosexuals.

That part, it answered a lot of things because in our church, which was, you know, they had relationship with William Brannum, there was a problem with that. And so all of this coming out is just, it's so very timely.

And I'm concerned about the deception that took place because people do idolize William Brannum to this day. I know it's, it's so difficult. Whenever you've been in one of these groups that is spiritually abusing you and basically they're lowering your level of self-esteem down so that they can become an authority over you, that's the way the religion was set up.

I'm working with several counselors and psychologists. I have a cousin who is a psychotherapist who will from time to time come on the podcast and talk through ways of going through healing. One of the ways in which people find healing is after you have healed enough to give your, give your testimony or give your story to somebody else, just mentioning your story creates a dividing line between you and that past that you are experiencing.

So one of the reasons why I have every Friday, I'll allow people to tell their story. And by sharing their story, people can find healing. So that door is open to anybody who, you mentioned people who might want to find healing or might want to share their story.

That door is open for them. But you write the deception. For me, that was the big thing. I just couldn't believe it. Whenever I learned that it wasn't just one thing. thing that was false. There were so many things, false. And, you know, like you mentioned, this was a religion that taught so strongly against homosexuality. And then you find out that among the leadership, it was almost open. They all, not all, but many of them knew that there were people who were homosexual in the camp. And while they're speaking and denouncing people who are in the congregation, well, the guy standing next to him or sitting

next to him might be. And it flows all the way up to William Brannum was the leader of the post-World War II healing revival. One or more of his campaign managers were openly homosexual among the inner crowd. And his two scribes, the men who carried his prophecies and who would write them down in books or, you know, produce the tapes, etc., they were homosexual men. So as Brannum is condemning all of these homosexuals, well, in his campaign are these homosexual men. Why was it like that? Like, that's crazy. It's unbelievable.

I'm just, I'm perplexed. So what is behind that, John? This deception, you know, my our pastor was a lesbian. I mean, we didn't know, but it sounds like a few people had a guess.

I was only like 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. And I didn't, I didn't know much about like signs of it or, you know, I, I wasn't in the inner circle. I was a teenager. But so when it comes out that she is being removed and all they could say was according to, I think they said to Romans one. They couldn't say the words. They couldn't be clear. It left us wondering which verse they meant. But she was just being removed and we just never saw her again. So she's, she's a lesbian. Her brothers, a pervert guy who's now in jail. And he's molesting kids and

anyone who maybe would come out with that gets ousted from the church. So homosexuality then begins to be a real problem in our, you know, in our church. And there, there was other instances as well. But all the while, like you say, very strong preaching for morality and purity and God forbid, you know, that some young person gets in trouble, then all holy hell breaks out on them. That's for sure, you know, like a public apologies for, you know, a maybe getting pregnant or something like that, you know. So and there's great place for repentance. I don't know how all that

goes. Sometimes it's really wounding and shaming and painful when you can say sorry, you know, and be sorrowful that you've made a mistake. But these people were complete hypocrites. Absolutely, and I think in my opinion, which is only an opinion, I can't really answer all the questions because there will never be an answer to them all, but I believe that the structure of the rules is what allowed the deception because the way that the rules come to be, and we can talk about this deeper as we go into the podcast, they're presented in such a way that initially they

aren't really a hard set rule. But over time, they get adopted as rules. They get adopted as ways in which people can perfect themselves for this quote-unquote rapturing faith. But what happens is, in many cases, the leadership never intended for it to be a rule. The congregation adopts it as a rule, so the leadership may be breaking the rules in private, and whenever they finally discover that, wait a minute, this is now an established rule because I brought it up. There's this clear separation between them and the rule. And over time, as this keeps happening, you find leadership

that have the rules for me, but not for the et cetera. And that separation causes something logically to break and fall apart with regards to the way that they uphold the standards for whatever is their community. So if you're in a group that has all of these rules, and your congregation is participating in those rules, and you're not, eventually you become disconnected from it.

And where do you draw that line? It might be something huge, such as we've examined in the podcast, there's a lot of sexual abuse that goes on with children in these groups. And what happens is, because the leadership is kind of immune to the rules, they instantly get restored back into their positions where they can become a predator again, because they have no clear set of standards for the same set of rules that they're applying to their congregations. That sounds exactly it.

And do you know what concerns me, John? Like, at the heart of it, I have to say, this is a heart of evil that would create a system to hide evil. This is pure evil. This is so bad. And we were actually authentic kids that wanted to be, we wanted to tell the truth, we wanted to live good lives. We were being told what we should be doing. And these folks at the top somewhere is truly purely evil. One thing I would say is that, Regel, I would say, he wasn't, I don't think he was evil. He was kind of a strong, ogre type of man. But I think he wanted in his heart, he

wanted the presence of God. He wanted worship and praise to be a part of glad tidings. for instance, when he brought that back, he wanted it so strongly that he was even able, you know, to separate from the Pentecostals. But then, of course, there was strange fire, as I would call it, weird things that would happen. But ultimately, it seemed like the things in the background is what was the most surprising. It wasn't what we saw up front. Like you say, it's a system created in the background, so people can sin.

I would agree. And the way that that background came to be, historically, it's really difficult because there are so many converging histories of ideologies that came into religion as this thing was formed. You had the prohibition movement, which was entering into religion. It became a religious belief that if you're to be Christian, you have to separate from alcohol, which may not necessarily even be a bad thing. But the way that it was presented to the people was, this is a hard set rule in stone. And if you violate this rule, you're violating God's law, and therefore you are condemned. And at the same time that that's emerging, you had the evolution,

the fundamentalist debate versus the liberal debate. What happened is, it's a little bit unusual, but the Ku Klux Klan was adopting both of those ideologies at the same time that the Klan was being dismantled. And it all came back together in Indiana and my home state.

After the 1915 Klan dispersed, in Indiana, they tried to take over the Indianapolis government, and almost succeeded in taking over the national government from Indiana. All of these ideologies were converging at the same time that William Brannum's mentor, Roy Davis, is setting up his base of operations and training Brannum on all of these different set in stone rules that must be adopted for Christianity. So not necessarily saying that any of them are bad, but the way that it would have been presented to Brannum is such that this is a religion of rules. We are adopting these rules and we're trying to enforce these rules.

With the militant aspect of the Klan, we will be very forceful in the way that we enforce these rules. So he's being mentored by this type of personality. And at the same time, all of that is going on. The very desperate groups of Pentecostalism are starting to come together and form what would eventually be the United Pentecostal Church. Davis and Brannum tried to get their Pentecostal sect, which was new, embedded into this so that they could have some sway in the UPCI.

And that's what led to many of the things that we see here. Many of these ideas Theologies were creeping into Pentecostalism as well as many of the other fundamentalist religions. So I created this, basically this fertile ground for this rules-type religion to be developed and built upon.

That reminds me when you talk about alcohol, John, is, you know, that was like, wow, next to the, you know, the worst sin ever, was having some alcohol. And I remember growing up and then I left glad tidings when I was about 21 years old.

And I had to kind of think, like, am I leaving God's favor? Am I going into other cults? Obviously, glad tidings is the only one that doesn't have a cult. Even though we're so messed up, I really have to leave now.

But then you find out that all of these other Christians are, they have a glass of wine for their stomach. Or casual, like, they're all doing it. They're not getting drunk. Then you have the excess people.

Now, the nar movement, that seems to have been riddled with drunkenness. So there's this extreme thing happening. Well, and take it a step further. Among the leadership that were in Branham's inner circle as all of this is developing, they were struggling with drunkenness themselves.

Some of them were being publicly outed. They're working with one of the most famous defenders of prohibition named William D. Upshaw. He was the congressman from Georgia. He was part of this, this movement.

And he was actually very big in the Branham campaigns. So they've got these rules that are for the leadership to present to the people. And then the leadership is not even obeying them. Last night, we were talking about just briefly talking about, did we have a rules-based religion?

If you go to my website, and anybody listening can do this, there's a search bar at the top. And if you type in rules, I have a list of just crazy things, everything from, you're not allowed to look at comic books.

That was one of the rules that I had. Alcohol. We were so trained not to drink alcohol that I literally thought, if you drink just a little sip, you might get drunk because that's how we were.

We just condemned anybody that had it. It's an evil spirit if you drink this stuff. And I had, this is part of my testimony I've given elsewhere, but I had severe depression while I was in the cult, and especially coming to the point of leaving it, and was on depression medication.

And after a long story, I won't get into how it came to be. But after I learned that I can drink just a small glass of wine once per week, it completely eliminated my depression.

And I had some stomach issues, totally get rid of my stomach issues. And people, people who were in my inner circle who would condemn me for this, I would just go back to what the Bible says, drink a little wine.

and for your stomach, it's like a medicine. Exactly, it even says that, you know? Like, it's right there. So, isn't it interesting that they could just, first of all, behind the scenes, they're getting drunk and drinking.

And I mean, this has come out recently with, you know, Rick Joyner and the gang there having, you know, and even with the people that I've run with in British Columbia and Art Lucia being in trouble right now because of allegations, of sexual abuse, but when we were in a behind closed doors meeting, basically, they were saying, you know, we really, we've really got to, you know, we're all really thinking that we need to stop drinking.

I didn't understand that whole conversation. I remember looking around the room and going, do we have a drinking problem? I guess I wasn't invited. I was not invited to the drinking parties that the pastors in Canada have been doing.

And they, so now I've got some people, you know, whistleblowers that tell me that it's quite a problem. Pastors are getting drunk. They're saying inappropriate sexual things. Like, people are really alarmed by the behavior of these pastors in Canada.

And I'm like, you know, I didn't know because I didn't get to go. I think they might have thought she's not gonna participate because I wouldn't. Even though I enjoy a glass of wine here or there, especially with people that are comfortable with it, that are not drunkards.

And so I did not understand this. So this is a nar extension. These are Brannemites, I would say, is that what you'd call someone who's, you know, loyal to William Brannem, they hold him in high regard, like that he raised people from the dead, that he was, you know, a miracle worker.

And the thing about things too, I'd like to say John, is that sometimes God is so faithful to the faithful. So to those who are faithful to him, he is a healing God. We believe in the power of miracles and that God is able to do things.

I've seen it. I had pain leave my body and be completely healed when I was 18, pain going up and down my legs. It was very painful. But these guys, they worship William Brannem still.

I would agree. Somebody sent me a video and somewhere I've got a link to it, but Paul Cain, right before he died, Paul Cain, who was very big in setting up the Kansas City Fellowship and International House of Prayer.

Cain, before he died, was telling Chris Reed that we need to show the people who William Brannem really was. And not many people know that Cain was a devout Brannemite till his death. And he was basically trying to pass his mantle on to Reed.

And what these people have done, they have taken what William Brannem called his message. And that's what, when you refer to the Brana mites, you usually call them, they're the people who are in the cult that is called the message.

That's how they call themselves. William Brana's message was such that he was preaching the last dying message to a lost and dying world, and then the rapture would come. That was his theology. And he would often refer to this great event, which I've overturned in the archives of the newspapers.

He said this light shone down from heaven, and this voice from heaven said, this, basically, this is my beloved prophet here, you hear him. He twisted the words of that passage from, you know, from the gospels and said, this, this is my prophet.

I'm sending you and he will have the last, he will have the last message as John the Baptist had the message before the first coming of Jesus Christ. So he's coming with this end of day's message.

And people try to determine what was that message because if you listen to the sermons, it's just a bunch of insane ramblings. And Brana himself was hospitalized several times for his mental health issues.

So people try to, they try to take these sermons and they try to make sense of them and turn them into something, not knowing that they're so riddled with contradictions that one guy will go off this way, another guy will go this way, an entire movements, entire splinter groups and cults have developed from this.

And what they're, what they're doing in essence, Brana's message was that we need to come and perfect the bride. And if we perfect the bride, we will bring in the end of day's rapture.

Well, when he died, that's no longer possible. So over time that shifted into from end of day's rapture to end of day's revival, and we need an end of day's army for that revival.

And that army must be perfected, that army must be brought into a condition where they are the spiritually elite. And that, the rest of that's history, you know what that developed into. John, I'm just, I'm so in shock, like, how come no one's talking about this except you, this is staggering.

So he was actually hospitalized for his mental health issues. And you're right. Like I've heard this before that, that his sermons sometimes were like ramblings. What, how does this propagate into these listering lies about who this man is?

And so that even pastors, apostles, prophets today think this was our predecessor leader. You know, and then I guess I don't know if they actually called it Joel's army back in those days, but he was hospitalized for his mental health conditions.

Do you know more about that, John? Like, what, what would they say was wrong with him? Brandon himself talks about it. You can go to Anybody can go to the Colt headquarters. They have a application. You can go to table.branam.org and you can do these searches.

He uses the word neurotic. Instead we would say today he's psychotic or he has a mental health issue. He used the word neurotic and he said that every seven years his issue hit him and then he tried to frame it such that this was a godly thing.

He said even the apostles of the Bible they were all labeled as neurotics. He would say things like this. And I was doing some just piecing together a timeline when I wrote my book Preacher Behind the White Heads and I was just trying to line up what I knew from history and what was the actual history. And there came this point of time where I'm reading through the Jeffersonville evening news and there's this article where it's William Branham. What happened to him?

And I'm reading through it. I'm looking through the timeline. Well this period doesn't exist in our recordings. They have a completely erased an entire version of Branham's history. But then there's this version where he goes off the field and disappears and all of these newspapers from all over writing in. Where is he? And the newspapers contacted a family and apparently he's okay.

I am told by men who were in the leadership that was close to him that that was his first time of being whisked out of the country into Mexico for having a complete nervous breakdown. Then he comes back and he this is about 1948.

This happens. He comes back the laterane revivals and it's height and then he even mentions being hospitalized another time over this. But he says every seven years this repeats every seven years I have he's essentially describing a nervous breakdown. But without having a patient to examine and without having his medical history we don't know what that was. That is fascinating. I mean this is not discussed in my circles or people that bring up you know how much they admire William Branham. Oh I they want to be like him raising people from the dead and doing all of this stuff you know but is I mean people are flawed.

So you can you can give people room to be human you know like we're all flawed we all have difficulties. But the problem is is that William Branham has been so idolized that to this day these true things about him are not truly understood or spoken and and it would be out in our fallacies lies

organization riddled with sexual abuse even child abuse as you describe these things would go on in these places. And like all of it if unless we understand our history how do we know what's real and I think that's the depression that I'm getting in the emails that I've been getting John like I think that's the depression that I'm getting in the emails that I'm getting in the emails that I'm getting in the Oh, I read email after email, and they're telling me that they're so sad, they don't know what to believe anymore.

That's because what we thought was real was actually so like a little leaven, leavens the whole loaf. So we've had a whole lot of leavening going on. And what I think that we need to get back to is that there's a real God, he's awesome, he is powerful.

He has rules and regulations that are in the Word of God, and he wants you to be as righteous as you can. But ultimately, we're all big failures. And our hearts are wicked and evil, but he came to redeem us, you know?

And that's the basic gospel. And what you were saying, you weren't even taught that. It was so full of idolizing, why did they idolize William Brownham so much? Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brownham Historical Research's website William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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Brownham claimed that he was elected by God to be this in-time messenger. And widely adopted throughout the movement, he's saying these things. He's saying that God told me as John the Baptist was sent to for run the first command of Christ, you were sent to for run the second, and that he had an angel from God that was with him on the platforms.

Those two things were adopted by almost everyone in the latter reign movement. That's how he became the foremost leader. So if you accept those things, you have to accept that what he's teaching is what Brownham called the spoken word.

You have to accept that this spoken word is truly coming from God, and it is a continuation of the Bible for today. When they use the phrase the spoken word, they were actually taking the word and making it equal to the written word or the Bible.

And what happened is, Brownham is, he's saying all of these things that are in complete contradiction to each other, but he gets famous specifically for his alleged seven prophecies of 1933. And you can go to Charisma Magazine or pretty much any charismatic institution that adopts Branemism and they mention his seven prophecies of 1933.

If you go to my website and just type in 1933 prophecies, you'll see that there are such contradictions in them, there's a minimum of 18 prophecies of 1933. They were supposed to have been buried in the cornerstone of my grandfather's church in the year 1933.

So as I'm going through all this history and these archives, one of the things I did was I started going into the courthouse and I made really good friends with the administrator of the records in the courthouse.

To the extent he would just let me walk in and he would say hi John, help yourself and I'd walk right into the record archives and I was opening up documents, taking pictures, they're all on my website.

And then I found the deed to the church, which was dated 1936. So he could not have even buried these things in the cornerstone for the building for land that he had not yet purchased to be my grandfather's church.

But the story goes, I was as we were building this church and their photographs of this thing, this event, he says, as we're building this church, I buried these 1933 prophecies in here so that later all would know that God had spoken the truth.

Well when he died and these prophecies had not been fulfilled even though he was supposed to be alive whenever parts of them did, some guy who was a little bit nutty came while they were off to Barry Brannum and the grave which is walking to his like two blocks away.

He comes with a jackhammer and he busts the thing up and they find the cornerstone, they bring it out and it's completely empty. Nothing was buried in it. And the point I'm driving at comes next.

They sealed it back and they put this plaque that said, or they put this concrete inset that said dedicated in 1933 on the side of that building. So they post dated the outside of the building to match what he said rather than the court record.

Well years later some car hits this thing and some guy tells my grandfather, well this part of the building is exposed, we need to dig down and see what's in that cornerstone, we need to see those prophecies.

And my grandfather pretended that it had not been exhumed the first time and he said, yes that's a good idea and they dug it up a second time and it was empty two times.

So you can find a testimony actually on YouTube, this man saying I was there when they dug it up the second time and the angels of God come down. They would not let anybody see those prophecies.

And my question at the time was, well if you put them there, you put them there to preserve so we could see that what he said was true, why would the angels take it away? But that's the mentality that swept through the entire movement. Through cognitive dissonance, if he says these seven things and they don't match these other seven things, you'll read an article by Charisma or one of these magazines that's trying to prove a point, will they choose which of the 18 that they want for their seven and say this is our point? Wow, and a pattern to today. This is still happening. Different organizations

will do crazy stuff like Bethel or whatever and then they want to change it that, oh no and you know, oh we're taking it out of the book but they don't really take it out of the book what they've said. You know just switch bait and switch nonstop and AI is not going to help us moving forward. We have to actually land some truth in all of this.

So those prophecies, those 1933 prophecies, John are those the ones where he claims who he is, he's the end time prophet or were they something different? Here's the funny part. It wasn't until Brandon started working with Jim Jones that the notion of seven prophecies was ever invented. His previous stage persona did not have seven prophecies in it. The very first mention that we have of this is around a year. I've got it on the website. I think it's 1952 or 53 and this is right as he's starting to pair up with Jim Jones and Jones is being

appointed to be leadership in this movement. Prior to this, it was basically the notion that his life story was enough to convince the masses that they needed to turn back to God and get this rapturing faith. In the years leading up to the shift in politics, after Franklin, Delano Roosevelt was president. Most of the white supremacists were strongly in the Republican party. After Franklin, Delano Roosevelt, they began to shift and they started to change into becoming Democrat. The reason for this, they believe that the United States had been invaded by so-called false Jews. We're in Christian identity. We're the seed of Abraham. We're the descendents

of the 12 tribe, the lost 10 tribes of Israel. Well, the false Jews have now invaded. They're bringing in evolution. They're bringing in liquor. They've invaded our White House. They've taken over the government and they started to proclaim that we as a nation were fallen because of this.

They started bringing in these rules. We need to be very hard-nosed and drive this thing out. That's part of the shift that created the rules. During this time, there was what's called the Great Sedition Trial of 1944. During this trial, the notion was that certain individuals and organizations were shifting the

Shifting the mindset of the people such that it was creating an almost imminent sedition by all of the parties involved William Brannum mentions that he was almost arrested from the platform for speaking on preaching against Mussolini and that was part of this Sedition theory that was happening. They were saying Mussolini and Rome were starting to invade That's coming into the United States well Brannum when he says this he says that he had prophesied against Mussolini and It was never intended to be such a thing as seven prophecies. It was just this common thing that was being said

Well over time to dodge the question surrounding the great sedition trial He started to introduce the idea that it wasn't just that there were seven things and he invents seven alleged prophecies that happened But what happens is he can't remember what it was that he invented so in another version in another stage persona in another city He starts saying well, I had these seven prophecies and he gives a different seven well over time this began to evolve and change based on the politics whenever it was It was believed that John F. Kennedy was going to rise to become president

Brannum wanted to shift and change politics against Kennedy and It was widely thought that the women's vote would push it towards Kennedy because he was attractive So Brannum started saying and they will allow women's a vote. That was one of my 1933 prophecies So he's introducing new prophecies based on politics so In the end what happened with all of this you have all of these strange conflicting histories but you have men who were appointed in leadership positions that knew Brannum was changing it But they also knew why they was changing it and he was He was changing it for an agenda and they supported his agenda

So mentally they have taken a break from what is true versus what we need to do to control the people and That mindset of control has evolved into what we see today Wow That explains a lot and and that's how a lot of leeway is given to those who are You know involved in politics and Christianity and Politics never gonna you know solve everything But yes, we want to vote as godly as we can but I Mean who knows what is going on right now with all the Epstein stuff and all of that you know

I mean like we're just going the world's got crazy, you know, it's not crazy But it it all it all started You know back with all of this and the thing about this NAR movement that I relate to what William Brannum did is he's quite egotistical, who are the, what kind of personality does it take to actually go around prophesying that you're the one when you are clearly not? Like in the end, all of this is not true.

And there was a lot of, you know, the latter day rain was about the imminent rapture. I think I told you already about like some thoughts about maybe it's 1982, because of the alignment of the stars. So and all of this, we would just sit there going, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Oh, but, but you know what, by 1984, didn't make sense anymore. But we're okay, because after all, this is, you know, God's anointed or whatever, right? You just look past it. And by then, by 1984, actually she, marine glory was gone. So, but these, the similarity, John, that I'm seeing is narcissism

on steroids with apostles or prophets or people that want to kind of proclaim that they they're special. And, and now this whole gnar movement has set up this special apostolic anointing, this office of the apostle, which is every pastor needs an apostle to tell you what to do. So you can tell the people what to do. And the people are now saying, and I've seen some excellent comments after the interview that we did. And the people are saying, we are fed right up.

You are not going to tell us what to do. We're going to the word and the word alone. That's maybe the best part and thing that's coming out of this. You know, and what's interesting? I've done studies with like Dr. Stephen Hassan on cults and narcissism and almost every leader who becomes a cult leader has distanced, has tendencies of narcissism. But when you look at brannemism and all the splinter groups that evolved, some of the leadership, I don't believe we're narcissists to begin with. But what they realized is if we can present the people this idea that we have the divine word

of God or some angels on the platform with us, or we were sent for some divine purpose, that elevates us in status above the rank and fall members. And then we can control what they do.

It's not so much that they believe it or they're a narcissist to begin with, but over time as they continue this idea, eventually the brain starts to catch on that I need to display these narcissistic tendencies and they evolve into a narcissist. Wow, that makes so much sense. Like you, you are like the one that you hang out with and you get goodies from that.

Wow, look at all the accolades we're getting because people think we have angels up here and they're they might be on the side going, well, I really love God, but I don't see angels, but boy, it kind of gives us a leg up if people think that we have angels and we're special.

Look at all the things that are, the good things that are coming our way, so I'm just going to go along with it and you begin saying these things. But it's this leader. And you said, you said William Brannum working with Jim Jones, like did they actually like associate at all or how did that work?

I've been working with the Jones Town Institute for several years. When I found out that Jones was a member of Brannum's cult and I found it by accident, because I'm reading through the Jones Town death tapes.

I don't know if you've seen this. It's a terrible, it's horrific. You're reading through the last words of people as they're about to drink the suicide in Jones Town, Guyana. And there was a phrase that Jones mentioned off the top of my head, I can't remember it.

But when I read that phrase, I thought, well, that sounds an awful lot like William Brannum, that's Brannumism. And I started studying his recordings and his sermons, which you can find on the Jones Town Institute website.

And I found this prayer line where this lady is coming up to him and saying, he says something to the effect, do you believe me to be Elijah or the lady said, you're Elijah the prophet.

And I thought, well, that's Brannumism. Again, what am I finding here? We have gone so far. We have identified the letters from Joseph Matson-Bose, who was deeply connected to Brannumism, who was a Brannum promoter from Chicago.

Bose and a letter to Brannum introducing Jones and making the connection, Joseph Matson-Bose who held Brannum's big Chicago campaigns, one of the only videos of Brannum preaching that's available. He ordained Jones into the independent assemblies of God, which was a Brannumite slash Laterane organization.

And they started forming these, I think they called them the Brotherhood Crusades, where William Brannum was the headline speaker, Jones was the host pastor organizing them, and they did this in multiple states. So they were basically, as Brannum was replacing Gordon Lindsay from Christ for the Nations as his campaign manager, it looks very much like they were grooming Jim Jones to be his replacement, which is really weird when you think about it.

He's stayed with Brannum long enough to discover that Brannum was teaching the racist version of the Serpent Seed doctrine, and once he discovered this, and he has a church filled with black people, he says, no, I'm done with you, and he leaves the whole thing.

Oh, wow. So when you say that Brannum was teaching the racist version, so to someone a novice, a novice like me learning, what does that mean? Well, and it's multifaceted. It's very deceptive what Brannum did.

Christian identity, which we have strongly linked Brannum to, believed that the British Isles and the Americas were... or descendants from the lost ten tribes of Israel, and that there was this notion of a false Jew, which I mentioned earlier, that all developed from the idea that Eve in the Garden of Eden made it with the serpent and produced Cain, and then the serpent and Eve's lineage developed into these false Jews.

And the way that they did it, they believed that during the Great Flood, whenever in the entire world was washed away, and Noah and his children were in the ark, that through the lineage of ham descended this race of people, and they started to claim that they were like mud people.

They weren't real humans. They were subhumans. That was Christian identity, and that was widespread, and it was very racist. So in 19, I want to say the year was 1957, there was an incident in Little Rock, Arkansas, William Brannum's mentor, Roy Davis, the one who planted my grandfather's church, was organizing all of the protests against the Little Rock Nine, which were nine black children who wanted to go to public school.

And they were strongly condemning the school system for allowing black people. It was at that point Brannum introduced his, he called it Serpent Seed, but basically it was the Christian identity doctrine. Now what Brannum did was he took away the words black and Jew from his doctrine, and he got it to be widely accepted.

Then later he followed up with this doctrine called the Hybreeding Doctrine, wherein two races can't mix, and if they do, their offspring can't enter into the kingdom of heaven for 15 generations. So the combination of those two was the racist version.

I mean, I'm second, like this is the backstory. This is who Brannum was. I guess a racist.

This is the reality. He was a fraud, he had mental health issues, clearly. I mean, you know, you do hope that if you're a great worldwide leader, I can understand burnout. People go too hard and they don't take care of themselves.

That's a human trait. JT and I have to work on that, like making sure that we're having fun. I just got back from a week of fun, so that I can, you know, and healing, just, you know, like letting it all go, what we have to go through to be in this spiritual war that we're in.

But the fact that that Brannum was a deceptive, like literally deceptive,

and all of these things and struggling, and this is what I think you're bringing to light, and I just want to thank you so much. John, because if you weren't willing to do this, the fallacy continues and then I would say the seed of deception is able to continue. What we're all waking up to is that no, we're not down with special apostles and people who think they're end time saviors. We've seen that happen and no, we're actually, we believe that Jesus alone is our advocate to the Father. We believe that the word of God is what we will rely on, not man's prophetic words. You know, this is shifting our

culture. You're actually part of that, John. People love you. On my podcast, they are really loving the information you're giving. It is foundational to understanding how we've, we've been misled. This is serious. And it's a lot to take in. Like I, so I grew up in this for 37 years, I was a racist, but I had no idea that I was and I had black friends because I didn't know that I was supposed to be a racist, but to my black friends, I would, you know, I would openly tell them that they can't marry a white person, which is a racist idea, but that's what we were told. So I grew up with this

ideology implanted and I've come to learn after all of this, after all of the research that I've done so far, this was actually a political cult. And I strongly disagree with the idea that Brannum had any concern for religion whatsoever. It was more about the politics. He was trying, you said, it was shocking to find out he's a racist. Well, he's working with the second and command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan. That is the man who planted my grandfather's church.

Whenever GT Haywood, who was a Pentecostal leader from Indiana, published the book Victim of the Flaming Sword, which became widely popular throughout Pentecostalism. GT Haywood being a black Pentecostal minister in Indiana, he started, he made a change that started to impact the Pentecostal movement. Brannum's mentor Roy Davis and the founder of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan in response formed another organization that not many people have heard of, which is called the Nights of the Flaming Sword. And they were a more militant version of the clan than the original clan.

They came into Indiana, GT Haywood's home state, and basically tried to rewrite the DNA of Pentecostalism with more militants, more racially charged rhetoric in the movement. So this began to spread and people did not realize until it was too late that this was a racist ideology that was being presented. That's shocking. So John, how is that different from the NAR movement being so involved with the Seven Mountains? Is that where this is kind of coming in? Because they're very involved I think about, you know, someone I've really, you know, I would kind of laugh and enjoy

some of his entertaining rants was a guy named Lance Walnell, but he had this seven mountain doctrine that he would present wherever he went. And is it tied in somehow? I think that's our next podcast.

We'll talk about the seven mountains. Okay. A brief overview for people who want to wet their appetites with this, Brannem's mentor Roy Davis and other leadership of the clan created this organization which was short lived called the supreme kingdom.

And again, all these ideologies are starting to converge and they need a militant force to stop it, but they're wanting to do it through religion. And so they create this entity called the supreme kingdom and they're wanting to reclaim the government, they're wanting to reclaim the family, they're wanting to reclaim the entertainment industry and even start producing movies that are played in churches that are spreading ideology from the clan.

Every single mountain of the seven mountain mandate was in this as the prototype. Whenever that dissolved, what happened was Davis started spreading it throughout his states and his campaign trail and it got deeply embedded in Brannemism and Brannemism spread it through the entire world through the latter reign.

So what was created by the clan actually became Brannemism and evolved into the seven mountains. Oh my word, my head's exploding right now. Okay. Well, John, that does need to be the topic and to kind of dissect it down to how we've gotten here and this big mishmosh that's happening and also the continuing saga of sin in the church, even with these people that teach such things, it's all a cycle.

And I guess the devil doesn't change his spots is what it looks like. Well and you have to understand as a political cult and not a religious cult, this had nothing to do with God.

So for me, I no longer even ask the question, was it a demon, was it a sinful thing? The agenda was never really to be Christian or to convert converts to Christ. That's why the gospel wasn't preached in this for 37 years of my life.

This was something else, this was an entirely different thing. And one of the phrases that I always go back to, almost every podcast, you can tell the tree by the fruit that it bears.

If you look at what descended from Brannemism all the way up to the NAR, you can see the mess that was created and it starts with the tree from Brannemism flourished all of these different branches and...

look how they're in politics today and look how they were with branimism with the clan. They are basically repeating every single thing that they did with the clan, but they're modernizing it so that people aren't aware that this was a very racist ideology to begin with and that their intent was to overthrow the government.

And I've, you know, in the last couple years, I've heard the nuggets of that with different people that I know literally about overthrowing the government, like how, you know. And I guess there will be a lot to talk about because Jesus never came as a political movement.

He came as the son of God to live, to die, to be raised from the dead for our sins. And this divergent thing, maybe that is just a, that can be a real trap.

And Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. So if you're trying to reestablish the kingdom, that doesn't really work. Right. Well, thank you so much for doing this. There's so much more we could talk about and I guess we'll save it for the next one.

It's amazing. John, I appreciate all that you're doing. Please keep doing it. Don't be discouraged by some of the things that you face and attacks because we're bringing an awareness and it's troubling, but it's awakening.

And so I love it. Thank you, John. Well, thank you. All right, our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and lorelin.tv.

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

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.