Joel’s Army: How Fear, War, and Mysticism Forged a Youth Christian Militia

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction.

Today I'm diving deep into the Joel's Army, the manifest sons of God. There's different names that these doctrinal frameworks use to describe it, but the theme is Joel's Army. And before I start, I'll preface with this.

There are themes that I grew up with that I really didn't recognize whenever I was a kid. And you know, when you're in a church setting and you're sending your children off to Sunday school and they're marching and they're singing songs about marching in an army, and I'm not going to name the songs because these are common songs among some of the Pentecostal groups.

But some of these songs take a whole different meaning when you consider the fact that this Christian identity movement was mixed into the doctrine and some of the Christian identity themes were actually quite militant.

It takes a different meaning. It seems harmless and we never use the phrase Joel's Army growing up. So I grew up like this. I marched to these songs. We sang about marching. I may never march in the infantry.

Again, I won't go too deep with the song names, but the fact is that people who are in this type of movement, they don't really, it doesn't really register in their heads that it is supposed to be even more militant than they're singing.

And again, when you consider Christian identity as in the mix and you consider some of the really sinister history behind the movement, you begin to understand that the leadership was trying to create a frame of mind that was militant and they were trying to create a form of religion that while from the surface might be viewed as somewhat harmless or benign, it actually was a militant religion and the themes of the sermons would provoke sort of a pride that they were militant.

They're militant in their doctrine is what they would say. So again, I grew up like this. I know many other people who did and now that I've left this and I understand what was behind it.

starting to talk with different people from different groups that kind of emerge from this tree that was Branemism, Laterane, whatever you want to call this mess. There are many others like me in different movements who also were taught Joel's army, but some of them not by name.

Some of them were by name and they would refer to it very militant, but others it was kind of covert. And why was it covert? I talk to people who have escaped IHOP KC, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. They had part of this Joel's army theme as their doctrine, they call it their prophetic history, but basically it's the background to their specific cult. And Paul Cane, who was William Branem's protege, and William Branem's proxy in the countries where he wasn't allowed to go, such as Germany, Paul Cane had this vision that he claimed Joel's army and

training was going to be broadcast over the Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium and these sons and daughters would rise up and become Joel's army. So they started this training center and you know the history this turns into a mess. So with all of this background, I wanted to study this and I have actually studied it from different angles and I'm continuing to study it from different angles because this seems to be the core epicenter of what turned Pentecostal, charismatic, William Branem's flavor of Christian identity, all of these themes kind of exploded into the New Apostolic Reformation and this Joel's army seems to be the hinge pin. So I want to know

why it's like this. Why was this the turning point and what is the doctrine? So I've been examining with different co-hosts and we've talked about this often on for several years now, but most recently with Bob Scott, we got into a little bit and I'll be diving into it more with a co-host, but before we go too far, I want to kind of sum up where I am in this research with Joel's army right now because it is a crazy, fascinating history and for those who are unfamiliar with this, it's very important to understand if you want to understand why the New Apostolic

Reformation is what it is today. Why has it became this very militant, very politically activated group? So before we go there, I think it would be good for people who've never heard of this concept to understand Joel's army as it relates to the manifested sons of God, theology. And there's many different ways that you can approach this. You can go historically and you can look at different people who have taught this, but it's nothing new. It is kind of a new rebranding and Christian identity mixed with Pentecostalism.

and now Charismatic and New Apostolic Reformation, but the theme that this sudden rise of these superhuman spiritual beings, et cetera, you can go back to Helena Belvatsky. Steve Montgomery and I talk about this often in our converging apostasy series, Helena Belvatsky, who was a precursor, one of the precursors to the manifest sons of God theme, taught that humans could evolve into a higher ascended being.

And there were different concepts that were used to teach this, but basically what Belvatsky was describing was this spiritual evolution, and it wasn't a Christian spiritual evolution that was being described. Earth would enter this cosmic age, which ironically, if you came from Brannemism or any of the Christian identity cults, that theme that cosmic age kind of has a weird reference.

But Belvatsky is teaching this, and the mind science movements of the 1800s to the 1930s, they taught something similar, which probably descended from Belvatsky's doctrine or teaching, whatever you call this, but they taught that the divine nature existed in every person, and New Thought brought this concept that spoken words manifested into spiritual reality.

And that's really key to understand, because as William Brannem's spoken word, he actually used the phrase spoken word, as his theology created the bedding for this movement to start growing, he is basically teaching that the spoken word will manifest into different ways and shapes and forms, but also that Jesus himself was a spoken word made manifest.

That's one of his core doctrines. So this emerged into the movement, and when you think of all of the doctrines on like the year little gods that doctrine, well Brannem kind of taught this, but he taught it such that you could speak it into happening.

You could declare it and it would happen. This spun off into the word of faith movement and other ideas, but it wasn't new to Brannem. This was basically a New Thought concept. The other thing to consider is the metaphysical attributes of this so-called Joel's army.

If you go back to John Alexander Dowey and look at his group, John Alexander Dowey taught that perfected faith could even remove death. So if you had a faith that was unwavering, and you had reached this higher spiritual plane through your belief by excluding all eliminating all unbelief, then you could actually conquer.

death. That's one of the themes that came out of John Alexander Dowie's Zion City cult. FF Bosworth, who was a leader in John Alexander Dowie's Zion cult, was a mentor to William Brannum in the Healing Revivals. Bosworth himself being a divine healer, a faith healer.

So he's mentoring Brannum in this concept that, Brannum's teaching the spoken word, now he's mixing in this concept that you must have a perfected faith to achieve this supernatural manifestation. In other words, you must be an overcomer as a phrase that is often used.

It's very close to the immortal overcomers that, you know, these different spiritualist groups are talking about. And then another theme that mixes in with this is early spiritualism. You had these different groups across the United States that believed that they were communicating with spirits. One of the spiritualist camps was actually in Indiana, not far from where I live. And there's evidence that suggests that William Brannum attended this camp. It was called Camp Chesterfield. And you can go on the website. You can type in, I think Madam Mimi, but you'll see the reasons why it seems it does appear that William Brannum was at that camp. But prior to that,

whenever William Brannum's the person who ordained William Brannum in the Pentecostal faith and the second in command of the 1915 clan, Roy Davis, when he came to Jeffersonville running from the law, he claimed to have, he claimed to expose spiritualism. And I think it was Davis that claimed that he was a converted spiritualist and he was going to tell all. And so by telling all, I guess they went to this camp and they figured out it worked. But anyway, early spiritualism taught that you could communicate with spirits, that you could progress to higher spiritual states,

and that the more that the earth manifested these spiritual beings, the more the earth improved. Again, that spiritualism, it is not Christianity, but this is mixing in with the themes that are starting to create the bedrock for what would eventually develop into the Laterane and all the way down to the New Apostolic Reformation. At the same time, you had British Israelism mixing in. So British Israelism was this concept that the United States and Canada were the descendants of the lost 10 tribes of Israel. And there was this theme that began to emerge as it was starting to turn into Christian identity that earth would be transformed by the true Israel

and that what we see in Israel was the false Israel. And so you had this, I don't know what you call it. You had this militant position against people who were the so-called false Jews in Christian identity.

In British Israelism, it had not yet turned that racist, and British Israelism is what would come into the early, laterane movement. When you understand how it works and why the way in which Scripture is taken out of context, then you begin to understand how all of this unfolds.

I'll come back to the British Israelism, but there were also other influences, which are probably worth mentioning. There is different types of universalist strands that came in, the holiness strands that came in 1800s, and they're teaching things like the entire sanctification as a God-like nature.

In other words, you must be fully sanctified to overcome, and if you get into the extremes of this, and I can't recall any of the names at the moment, but some of the leaders in this movement began to claim that immortality was achievable if you were to fully cleanse yourself, I guess, is how they would say it.

There are some direct transmissions of all of these things into the Pentecostal groups that developed into what would become laterane. To sum all this up, you had the Helena Bovatsky influence, you had the new thought, the mind-science movements, the metaphysical healing cults, the early spiritualism, British Israelism, Christian identity, holiness sex, universalist sex, all of these things were kind of creating this bedrock, so to speak, and it was creating a atmosphere where, when a revivalist would come into the United States and start going through the United States holding these tent revivals, it was appealing to teach these themes, and so people began to associate these themes with

Christian theology, while the Christian theologians were just in a state of shock, why are they doing this? This is not Christianity. So that's kind of the background to this. So the other thing you have to understand, again, is the manifest sons of God.

And to understand that, if you've never encountered this, you go to Romans 8, and if you take this chapter out of context and specific verses within the chapter, then you can make it say whatever you want, because you've taken it out of context, but specifically you can say that people are going to achieve a supernatural, spiritual Superman, if you want to call it this. So what these people did?

Again, go back to British Israelism, the idea that we and the United States and Canada and the UK are the descendants of the lost 10 tribes of Israel. And when you read the Bible under this context, you begin to see this idea where I'm reading a passage, and wow, that passage looks similarly familiar to what we're seeing today, even though it's written to the ancients. And so these prophetic statements in the Old Testament and some of the more obscure statements in the New Testament could be applied to both the Old ancient situations that it's describing and the New situations. An example of this that often

uses Brannum claimed that Nehum was prophesying about ancient Nineveh, but also about Chicago. And he said when he saw the lights going to and fro, he was describing outer drive in Chicago, which is absurd. And you can only do this if you believe this British Israel concept. We're going to take a verse out of its context and we're going to apply that single verse to today. So in reading Romans 8, there is a somewhat obscure passage if you read it in the English language. It's Romans 8 verse 19 in the King James version, it says, for the earnest expectation of the creature,

waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. And I read King James' version because it uses the phrase manifestation of the sons of God. When you hear that word and you've come from this movement, you are immediately triggered with this loaded language of the manifestation or manifested sons of God theology. Your mind goes directly to that word manifestation because that is one of the key words, one of the loaded language of the cult. If you read in a modern translation like Romans 8 in the ESB, it says for example, for creation, waiteth for the

eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. And interestingly, if you grew up in this cult mindset where you're using the loaded language of manifest, manifestation, manifesting, the whole verse, the whole chapter takes a different meaning. It does for me, even when I read this, if I'm reading King James, this whole chapter just means something different. When you read it in modern translations because the loaded language isn't embedded into the text, the loaded language doesn't fire off all of these triggers. So when I hear revealing of the sons of God and I'm reading

it in context, the chapter actually makes sense and it doesn't really talk about anything metaphysical or spiritualist or anything like this. It's literally talking about the Summary, basically the climax of what Paul is describing in this chapter.

So not to dive too deeply into theology, but this was a letter. This was written by Paul to a group of men. If you understand that this was a letter, it can be read.

The men who read it did not need spiritual lens or filters or loaded language to understand the letter that they received from Paul. They just simply read it. The same way I would read a letter if somebody sent me a letter in the mail.

And it's very clear what it's saying. If you just follow the flow logically, understand what Paul is saying, again, it's apparent. In verse 14, he says, believers are now the sons of God. So this isn't some future thing that's coming.

This is Paul writing in the ancient world, believers are now the son of God. In verse 14 through 16, he says, the spirit testifies of our present adoption, but it's not yet visible to the world.

And he goes on to say, as God's children, we are heirs, but we must suffer now before receiving the glory. So we're sons of God, we are heirs, but we're in this present condition, essentially, is what he's saying.

Verse 18, he goes on to say the glory that's revealed is our future. It's not currently seen. And then he gets to that one passage that's been ripped out of context, creation waits for the revealing of these sons of God, something creation has not yet seen.

So follow down through the rest of the letter or this segment in the letter, he said, creation still in corruption and will only be set free when these believers are glorified. So this part of the statement is a future statement.

And creation is groaning now like childbirth, anticipating for this transformation. But here's where it gets to be the key phrase to understand. Even believers who have the spirit who groan inwardly, this is verse 23, they're waiting for the redemption of our bodies.

In other words, the resurrection, the future. And 24 through 25 goes on to say that we have hope for these things, which we don't see, that we wait with patience. So if you read that whole context of that section of this letter, it's talking about we are now the sons of God.

This is not a future thing that's going to come in the 20th century. We are waiting in anticipation for our new bodies. We are waiting on the resurrection. And literally this is what every Christian that I know of believes, this is what this is just simply one of Paul's letters.

So if you understand the Christian version of this, which is simply not even my words, just read the passage and read it without the context of this loaded language, it's nothing really new. But what the people were trying to do with the merging of all of these Steve calls it the converging apostasy, all of these different apostacies into this movement, it's trying to say that this passage isn't something that was for Paul's day in Paul's age.

This is something that is going to come in our future and we must prepare for it. We must become militant, we must become super righteous, supernatural, we must start presenting all of these supernatural signs.

And essentially we must summon God if you follow it down to its logical conclusion, which is essentially the basic concepts of spiritualism, mysticism. So now when you consider all of these themes that I've mentioned from the Lovatsky influence to the New Thought, the New Science, Mind Science movements, the metaphysical healing cults, early spiritualism, British Israelism, all of these concepts as they're coming in and creating this fertile soil for these believers, now consider the fact that World War II has ended and while there was for a moment there was a sense of peace that the war to end all wars had actually ended the wars and were in this exciting new era of peace,

well that quickly subsided and they started to have fears of World War III. And the religious leaders who are understanding all of these concepts that I just mentioned started to fear that World War III was what would actually bring upon the end of days, the Armageddon scenario.

So you had all of these themes of spiritualism and the fears of war and the coming impending destruction of the world basically. All of this created this scenario where people started to take these religious ideas and these religious concepts and started to apply them in a end of days sense.

So they're taking all of the passages, the apocalyptic passages from the Bible, from book of revelations etc and they're trying to take those verses out of context, use the same type of loaded language and apply them to world events that they're seeing currently.

So now when you add the fear aspect to all of this cross-pollination of ideas and understand that the fear was that there was going to be another World War, the religious leaders started to prepare for war by claiming we need our own army.

This is going to not be a war that is just simply a battle between nations. This is a battle between good versus evil. We must have the army that is going to combat the evil and that's where Joel's army begins to enter into the picture.

On the heels of World War II, there is the series of very strange events that would suddenly explode. in 1947. You had the Kardashian family who is working with a Christian identity leader named Clim Davies who also is working with and sponsoring the Ministry of Avoc Hagopian and Iranian Faith Healer. Hagopian tours throughout the United States and he basically brings this mob of people to Palm Springs and the number was like 10,000 or so people. There was more people than there were hotels in Palm Springs. So many of the mansions and houses were taking in people

from across the nation who were coming to see the Faith Healer. Well, they saw these masses and they began to realize, wait a minute, there's some money in this. So they started sponsoring William Brannum. Brannum goes to the West Coast and in the Church of Harry Morse who we've talked about in previous podcasts, but he was a sexual predator, one has been a coastal leader. Part of what would become the United Pentecostal Church and it's early phases, I believe his church joined, but at minimum he's working with Brannum. He and several others in the Church prophesied over Brannum

and essentially it was the prophecy that the spirit of Smith Wigglesworth would rest on Brannum and his ministry. So in today's term, it was the passing of a mantle. Back then it was just literally spiritualism. You're going to get the spirit of Smith Wigglesworth. Brannum kind of describes this later in his ministry. So with the spirit of Smith Wigglesworth, Brannum starts touring. The Kardashian family is apparently sponsoring him too, according to Brannum's words. He said, the people who sponsored Avoc Hagopian also sponsored my ministry and he starts touring with Raymond Hoekstra who did become a United Pentecostal Church leader. Hoekstra purchased, literally purchased a

boy named Little David Walker. If you read through the newspapers, this is a wild rabbit trail, but he essentially owned this boy and the family had to fight to get him back. Brannum and the little boy would tour Brannum preaching and praying for the sick, but the boy claiming that he had spent so many minutes in heaven and he was telling the story of what he saw in heaven. So they're touring they're they're bringing this weird stage act and suddenly the boy starts to as part of the stage act. He started levitating in the ministry. So people are filled with spiritualism, themes and

the bedrock of their their theology and now here's a boy who can suddenly levitate. Is this not the manifestation of the sons of God? So all of this began to explode. Brannum became instantly overnight famous.

and he started touring through the United States and Canada. Well, in Canada, in North Battleford, there was an orphanage called the Sharon orphanage, which there are many, many connections back to Brannemism, but this is really where the Joel's Army starts to take its shape is at the Sharon orphanage. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the Laterane charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannem Historical Research's website, William-Brannem.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. For someone to understand Joe's army, they must first understand the Sharon orphanage. But before you can fully understand the Sharon orphanage, you must also understand the history.

And understand the culture, the mindset, what were the religious leaders thinking in the United States and Canada? How did that relate to the world politics, the global war? The Sharon orphanage was being built during the last phases of the war. And the mindset of the Christians at that time was a mindset of fear. They were fearing that this was going to be the end of days. And what the Sharon orphanage represented, I think a lot of people miss when they write the histories. And it was being built not only as a religious institution or an orphanage just simply for the youth.

This was an ideological training center for the youth. The timeline of the Hitler youth is actually significant. The Hitler youth program was actually established in 1933, the same year that Hitler came into power. And American newspapers started covering it almost immediately, describing it as a curious or impressive national youth movement. It wasn't anything to be really alarmed of whenever at first the news first broke out. It was just curious. Why are they doing this?

The alarm actually came from around 1936 to 1938 when it became obvious that the Hitler youth was becoming militarized. By the 1936 Berlin Olympics, there were foreign journalists and diplomats that could see the militarization in the Hitler youth programs.

You had the uniforms, the drills, the loyalty oaths, the Nazi salutes. This was obviously an indoctrination scheme for militarizing children and creating a nationalist mindset of the children. The full realization came around 1939 and began to develop in the United States from approximately 1939 through 1945.

The same years that the Sharon Orphanage actually began development, and if you look through some of the early photos of the orphanage, it seems a little bit odd because it looks more like a military operation than actually an orphanage.

But also interestingly, William Brannum's mentor Roy Davis at the same time the Sharon Orphanage was being developed was developing his own orphanage, which also had a component that was an ideological training center. Davis had worked with Congressman William D. Upshaw in the clan.

During his years, I think it was the early 20s, they reunited on the West Coast and Congressman Upshaw led the Department of Americanization, he called it, which is basically, it's an ideological concept to train the youth that they need to be nationalists.

All of this, both the Sharon Orphanage, both Davis's orphanage, and from what I have read several other ideological training centers by various groups, were being built. And all of this with the full intent to indoctrinate children of an ideology.

So the orphanage itself, like I said, was being developed before the war had ended. But after the war had ended, there are a series of events that took place that really are the background for what drove the initiative for this Joel's army theme.

That theme, as it was nearing the laterane revival, was a theme of fear because of the atomic bomb. In 1939, Einstein sent a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, warning that Hitler could develop a uranium bomb.

The scientists began to flee Europe because they feared the Nazi nuclear science programs and the United States at the same time began to build up their uranium research to try to figure out how to build the bomb first and avoid the German supremacy in the war.

The main fear was if we don't build it first, Hitler will. 1942 through 1945, you had the Manhattan Project, which was a concern that we must build this, we must build this bomb quickly.

Still, all of this was limited to a fear that remained classified. There was an internal fear in the government, but the general public was largely unaware that any of this... was going on. It wasn't until the atomic bomb was dropped that the entire public began to see that this nuclear war is a real thing. It can destroy entire cities. It can destroy entire nations. By the late 1940s, there was widespread public fear that the atomic threat was not only real, but that it would be used in World War III this time on the shores of North America. Religious leaders began to capitalize on that fear, telling people

that they must quickly turn to Christianity because all would soon be ending. The end of days was near. To understand the mindset of the spiritual leaders of the Sharon Orphanage, the ones who are involved with the religious aspects, but also the ideological training for the youth. You have to understand some of the core concepts of modern Pentecostalism.

Modern Pentecostalism, which was birthed at Azusa Street in the year 1906. The Azusa Street revival broke out and whenever people began to see dreams prophesied, speak in tongues, the movement declared that we are seeing the fulfillment of Joel 2. There's a passage in Joel 2 that says, It shall come to pass that I will pour my spirit out upon all flesh.

Your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your old man shall dream dreams. Your young man shall see visions. You can continue reading the passage and you can see how it sounds similar to what a Pentecostal would believe during this time. So there are two verses from that passage in Joel 2 that you have to really understand to understand Joel's army and how it was birthed. The first is the verse 30, when it talks about, I will show great signs in heaven and earth and blood and fire, pillars of smoke. Whenever the atomic bomb was dropped and

there was this sudden pillar of smoke, there were Pentecostal leaders and fundamentalist leaders that were saying that this could be the verse that's describing our time. And under the British Israel theology, you could take a passage that was written to the ancient world and you could multipurpose that passage. So yes, this applied to the ancient world that Joel was prophesying to, but also it applies to us and this might be the atomic bomb.

So people combined that with verse 31, the sun shall be turned to darkness, the moon to blood. They were starting to believe that this atomic bomb could cause a scenario that would look exactly like this chapter is describing. But the verse really to focus on for Joel's army is back to verse 28. I will pour my spirit out upon all flesh. The next phrase is your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

In other words, the youth, we need to focus on the youth, and that is exactly the mission of this orphanage. So while the orphanage initially began as somewhat of an ideological training center, a youth Christian training center, it began to shift at this time towards trying to find a way to build an army that can be prepared for the end of days. And the leaders of the orphanage began working with other people who were bringing in unusual spiritual tactics. I can't think of a better word for the spiritual tactics to train the youth into how to achieve a superhuman,

supernatural state. One of those people was the Reverend Franklin Hall. Hall had recently published a book on the atomic power of God through fasting and prayer, and capitalized on the atomic bomb verbiage. Because that's the ideology that was coming into the religious leaders of this time.

We're seeing the atomic bomb, the end of days is coming. We need to fight this. We need to we need to ready the troops, so to speak, the spiritual troops. And this was really, if you understand the spiritual warfare of the New Apostolic Reformation, this was really the breeding ground for what would develop into this this ideology. And that's truly what it is. It is an ideology.

So they brought in Franklin Hall, his fasting and prayer, the men began fasting and praying, and trying to summon God. They were going back to the roots of very mystic ideas that if they, if they really pour themselves into it, they can do better than they did before. Better than your average Christian who's just praying and trusting and believing in God. We can do better because we're supercharged. We're militant in our position in trying to summon the spirit, so to speak. The other person that was brought in was the theology of William Brannum, and eventually Brannum himself. I don't know that he visited the orphanage itself,

but as he was touring through Canada, the leaders of the orphanage began to take the students into the revival meetings that Brannum held, and they began to see Brannum's work in action. Brannum's style was unusual at that time. There were many faith healers who had done all kinds of gimmicks and tricks from John Alexander Dowey to, there's a newspaper that I read that said we're seeing David's and Moses's, and when are people going to wake up and realize that these people aren't the spiritual leaders that they claim? Brannum's gimmick was that he had a vibrating

hand, and he would hold it over and shake his hand, and he would say this is how he was detecting the diseases. He also had another gimmick that was, from everything that I have read, it was a trick that was done by placing a rock or a stone under your underarm and squeezing tight, cutting off the circulation and your hand changes color.

He would go into these revival meetings, the per line would happen, they would go up to the platform, and if his hand began to change color, that's how he was diagnosing diseases. And people unfamiliar with the gimmick would look at his hand and say, oh my gosh, his hand is changing color, is not the spirit of God with him.

Word began to spread of all of this weirdness, and he was asked to go to several churches throughout the United States and Canada. But it is the Canadian trip that really attracted, I believe, the Sharon orphanage.

So as he's touring through Canada, he's claiming to have raised the dead back in his hometown of Jeffersonville, which was proven to be false, but the people who were traveling with him, the students of the Sharon orphanage, would have never known that it was a false claim.

There were also apparently people planted in these revivals who were healed of the same diseases in multiple cities, obviously they were not healed if they were having to be healed again in the very next city.

And it all cries out that this was a staged, staged thing that was happening. But again, the people of the Sharon orphanage, the students and the leaders of the orphanage, would have never known that there were any parlor tricks happening in these revivals.

And what happened was the fame of William Brannum's ministry began to spread so quickly and rapidly, especially after claiming that he had raised the dead, that the negative news, the critical news, could not come into the movement as fast as the boisterous claims of healings and people who, there were people who actually went to the meetings and were actually healed, not by the man on the platform, by, they were healed by God, if they're Christian believers.

But you're starting to see this thing, this engine start turning and the leaders of the Sharon orphanage, as they see this, they want to know how it works. How is this doctrine, how is this doctrine happening and how is this power that he has?

We need to harness this power and we need to put this power into our students because this is the army that we are building. So here is where from a Christian historian standpoint, it gets really weird.

As I mentioned earlier, Roy Davis came into Jeffersonville. He was the second and command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan. He had started multiple white supremacy organizations, some of them very militant. When he came into Jeffersonville, as I said, he was posing as a person who...

who was going to overturn and expose spiritualism. He claimed that he was bringing people in who had claimed to be spiritualists who converted to Christianity. And it appears that he, based off of the things that William Brannum said in his revivals, it appears that he and Brannum had gone to the camp Chesterfield spiritualist camp in Indiana, which was a somewhat famous spiritualist camp.

William Brannum describes going into these camps of these witches, I think he calls it. And he says that this piano would float up into the air and the keys would play the Shavena haircut two bits, which if you're familiar with Beverly Hillbillies, it's the tant-tan and tant-tan.

So this weird gimmick, which it sounds eerily like a old carnival, William Brannum would use this as a reference in his ministry of what it was like to encounter spiritualists. And so he is visiting spiritualist camps, he's understanding how it works.

And he apparently comes into the Sharon Orphanage in contact with the Sharon Orphanage leadership and he is teaching them what we would now call metaphysics. If you go to the very first recording that William Brannum has available to the public, there are prior recordings to this, but on the website, table.brannum.org, you can search through his sermons.

The very first sermon he is talking about using your mind, using your faith to move bracelets in the air. And there are articles on the web of people who their father was the central figure of different cults that spun off of this brannumism, weird mess.

And they declare that Brannum did come into the movement and was teaching them how to move objects with their mind. One person said that it was really scary and you could actually see the objects moving.

Whether I believe that or not, I don't know. I have seen how some of these tricks work. I don't truly believe it, but there are people who do believe that he was doing it.

Those who are Christian and understand that that's not a Christian thing to do believe that he was empowered by some demon. And interestingly, Brannum always claimed to have an angel on the platform with him and he would pray to the angel, which is not something a Christian would ever do.

So there, if you believe in evil spirits, you believe that he was empowered by an evil spirit. Me, I don't know that I believe all of this because I have seen how some of these parlor trick work, much like placing the rock under the underarm and squeezing, making your circulation, I know how to make my hand change color.

I knew that as a kid. So some of these things could... easily be proven. Some of them we don't know, but at a minimum he is coming into contact with leadership and he is teaching what we would now call metaphysics. So you have a group of children who are in an ideological training center who are believing that they are in a Christian training center which is now teaching them how to try and achieve a spiritual Superman status. So the spiritual warfare that they are about to engage in, they need to be the elite soldiers of their spiritual

army. And that is where the background to the Joel's army comes into place. This truly is if they are following this passage from Joel. These are the young men that are going to see the visions and these are the young women who are going to prophesy. These are the young children mentioned in the book of Joel, Joel chapter 2. So combined with all of this weird ideology that is coming into this group of students who are trying to become the army that they believe is mentioned in the book of Joel. There is also another thing that you have to understand that is coming into this which makes it

really sinister. And if you are a Christian and you understand Christian theology and you understand the gospels, just simply the basics of the gospels, you have to understand that this is an anti-Christian ideology that is coming into this. This is coming in through William Brannum. According to Brannum's theology, there is the concept of the spoken word. This is the same type of thing that if you listen to Kenneth Hagen, he's talking about the ramah. There are different, in the word of faith movement, there's different ways that they say this. I've mentioned recently that there are others

who are in today's world still using the phrase spoken word. Brannum taught that Jesus Christ was the result of a thought that was expressed by God. And according to the theology, Jesus was just a human. Actually, if you take all of his statements out to their logical conclusion, Jesus was less than a human because he claimed that Mary was nothing but an incubator. He had no mother.

There was no earthly mother, which is actually in disagreement with a few passages of scripture. But Jesus was less than a human because he didn't have a mother. And God thought and this thought was expressed, the word became flesh in the beginning was the word, the word became flesh and was manifest among us. He would use that passage to say that God thought Jesus. And therefore, the thought became expressed when it was spoken. And the spoken word became flesh. And then Jesus.

Jesus was filled with a spirit, and he would say things like, Jesus was powerless to heal people. He had to see a vision first from the Father. And if you combine this with this thought of Joel 2, the young man shall see visions, what they're doing is they're trying to say that Jesus was a manifestation, a manifestation of the spoken word. And we too will see manifestations of our thoughts expressed in these young men and women. That's literally how the theology began to develop. Much like a witch's brew, there were several passages that were developed by the movement, by taking a verse from one chapter, taking it out of its original

context, mixing it or combining it with another verse from another chapter, taking it out of its context, and developing a doctrine from the combination of these verses. One of them that was used for the Joel's army came from Romans 8, the passage that is talking about the expectation of the manifested sons of God. When you read verse 18, it says, the current sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us.

The movement began to see all of the suffering that was happening because of the war and the impending threats of World War III. They saw this as a relevant passage for the era. And then they continued to verse 19 about the manifested sons of God.

They began to develop this doctrine that came largely from what Brannum was teaching. If Jesus Christ was a thought expressed and that spoken word could develop a manifestation of God himself in Jesus Christ, then cannot we do the same thing and are we not supposed to be the manifestation of the sons of God. So in these weird ideological youth programs, the movement began to say that these will become manifestations of God. We have to develop routines and strategies to enhance their spiritual abilities. And some of those were just simply trying to boost their faith to a level that they could achieve things that were just impossible.

And William Brannum preached an array of sermons on how to do this. It never really came to fruition because we did not see any of the students moving mountains or anything like this. And only the faith healer apparently has the power to heal in these movements.

But that manifested sons of God theology as it was combined with the Joel's army theology, this birth, the combination of something that became very, very militant and very, very heretical. Because again, their teeth that Jesus Christ was just simply a thought that was expressed and that he was a human that was powerless less than a human because he had no mother.

That is how this doctrine began to develop among the movement. And while many people say that William Brannum went astray in his later years, many people within the New Apostolic Reformation, these would be the years that they would say that he was actually on the mark.

And interestingly, to a Christian who understands what he's actually teaching on the mark is an anti-biblical theology. So you have to understand that from its inception, it was not a Christian movement. It was an ideological movement.

And even the doctrines themselves, many of them are so anti-biblical that you can't even really say that it is a Christian ideology that's being taught here. What you can say is that the movement was trying to do things like metaphysics.

There were many different schemes to try to elevate their faith to almost a mind over matter type ideology. So it became more like Christian science than it was even Christianity. And yet the irony in the reason that I laugh at this is because the movement as it was holding the revivals, they would preach heavily against Christian science.

And yet they're doing the same type of thing just in different ways. As you look through history from the present going backwards to this weird movement that's developing from all kinds of different ideologies that aren't quite Christian, you start to see patterns that emerge.

And you can see clear milestones in time where this ideology is trying to resurface again through people who were trained in the same ideology. Paul Cain, who is William Branham's mentor, has I've mentioned, was trying to establish this exact same concept with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.

They were trying to take a bunch of youth into a movement. They were trying to supercharge their faith through 24-7 prayer and singing this worship, this kind of thing. They were trying to build a Joel's army.

And even the prophecy that Paul Cain used was that he had seen a vision of Joel's army in training in this vision. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to recreate what William Branham and others were establishing.

Basically, they're trying to recreate the Sharon Orphanage. And this concept of Joel's army, the theology, did reemerge with International House of Prayer in Kansas City. But the concept, it seems to repeat itself. You can go back to the days of the Jesus movement.

As the revivals were breaking out and the youth were getting involved, they didn't have the same type of theology, and many of them had never... even heard the name William Brannum, but some of the leaders who were there, such as Chuck Smith, were in the lettering movement. So they knew Brannum, they knew the theology, they knew the ideology, but more than that, they knew the mission. And the mission was to indoctrinate children of a mindset and try to sway that mindset towards the national ideology that they agreed with and try to force out any other ideologies that they disagreed with. This could be a good thing, this could

be a bad thing, but the way that they're doing it, for me, it's a little bit sketchy because if you're having to indoctrinate people to a belief set and trying to dissuade them from critically thinking about that belief set, what you're essentially doing is you're practicing mind control. These are the basic elements of mind control. You can learn more about the mind control from Dr. Stephen Hassan's book, Combatting Cult Mind Control. What he's describing in that book, the framework for establishing mind control and a victim, these people were doing in the youth. And for me, this is problematic. So hopefully to somebody who's on the outside

looking in, this helps to understand what is Joel's army. Because from the outside looking in, I have spoken with people who were never part of this movement, who some of them have actually studied theology. And they look at this and they say, what is this? This doesn't really seem Christian, but yet they're using the word Jesus Christ. It seems more like a political movement, but yet they're not really preaching politics. They're preaching ideology. And what is this?

What is this movement? You have to understand that yes, it is politics. Yes, it is an ideology. Yes, it is a pseudo type of Christianity, but it is many other things. It is spiritualism, it is metaphysics. You can go down the list of things that you would just run screaming if you thought that your pastor and your church was teaching. That is what this movement was trying to do.

And they were trying to do it with the mindset that we must create warriors. We must create warriors. The Hitler youth, Hitler youth had done this thing that we need to combat. And there became a, I guess an idea that the end justifies the means. So we're going to do guerrilla warfare.

We're going to use the enemy's tactics against them. Some of those tactics are using spiritualism, metaphysics, all kinds of mysticism and other things. So that's why it doesn't look like a Christian movement. It really wasn't intended to be a Christian movement. But the irony is that there were Christian leaders trying to establish the youth program that was literally the creation of Joe's army. So Hopefully this helps, and if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. 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.

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