The Pentecostal Puzzle: Race, Doctrine, and Revivalism

Hello and welcome to another episode of The William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at www.William-brannum.org and with me I have my very special guest, Caleb Sopdalene. Caleb it's good to have you on and I am a little bit excited for this because I am one of the few people left in the world who enjoys conversations where people can have differences of opinion and still come together to agreement and I don't even know how many we have in difference but you are a person who is going to explain

something that I've tried to convey so in this we're probably in alignment. My family grew up traveling and moving from coast to coast and I went to this wide array of different churches that was within the Brannum religion obviously but each church was somewhat different and you would find some that actually looking back I don't have many bad things to say about the churches and then you go to other ones and they were so far into heresy that you look back and you think what was that that wasn't even Christianity and had some conversations with you and email and some before this podcast but I'm interested

to hear your take on the Pentecostal faith and you as a person who's interested in history and me as a person who's interested in history hopefully we can have some conversation that I think people might enjoy sounds good to me so maybe you could start by just telling everybody a little bit about yourself I was a history major in college I have a bachelor's degree in history and along with that I developed a love for a church history and I was raised in the Pentecostal church in rural eastern Ohio about 60 miles west of Pittsburgh and

I found some of the earlier discussions you've had on various podcasts about the UPCI kind of interesting and so that's why I reached out to you because my experience is apparently a little bit different than Andy De LaRosa's but to each his own we each have our own experiences right you know I told you I was I was raised in the UPCI church and I would say when I was a child let's say 10 and under I would consider it a fairly conservative in regard to some of the holding the standards that Mr. De LaRosa

Rosa talked about, but when I was a teenager, I would say it moderated somewhat, and I don't really know the reasons for that, but I want to make a confession here that my freshman year of college, I went to the University of Nevada, Reno, and I heard that call that said, go west, young man.

And I went out there, and I attended a UPC church in Sparks, Nevada. And like I said, to each his own, but I suffered from culture shock, because in hindsight, I was going from a moderate UPC church to what I would consider ultra conservative or far right, similar to the categorization you could have for their modern day Republican party.

And they believed in things that I had never even heard of before. That's why I suffered from culture shock. Now I said to each his own, I mean, you can have your own belief on some of these holiness standards and such, but I'll give you some examples, John.

They didn't believe in Christmas trees. They believed if you went on a date, you had to have a shop around. They believed that if you were a man, you couldn't wear short sleeve shirts in public.

That's, of course, they didn't believe in TVs either, but I don't ever remember any UPC church I've ever attended, and I've lived in 13 different states in my life, and I've traveled and visited 44 states.

I don't remember any UPC church ever preaching that you're going to hell because you have a TV. Now as I explained to you before, in my understanding, these holiness standards are meant to separate you from the world or separate you from being close to the proverbial fence, so that you don't fall on the other side of the fence and sin as it were.

But yeah, I suffered from culture shock, and so that was just my best example right there. But in all the churches I've attended regularly and or visited over the years, I would say the lion's share of them are pretty much moderate to conservative.

But without one in Nevada being on the far right, you know, and my personal observation today is that most of the churches, the UPC or Apostolic Pentecostal churches that I've attended, they don't harp a lot on these holiness standards.

I think most of their focus is on winning souls and living a holy life and walking with a Messiah, but I think where where you come to meet the holiness standards more often is in the quote unquote platform ministries.

In other words, if you want to be used on the platform, they have certain standards you You know, it's kind of funny because growing up I had friends who were also outside of the Brandham cult and they were Pentecostals. There was this weird relationship that happens.

I don't know if you've experienced this or not, but when you're in a holiness type religion, especially during the years when the Pentecostals did have the holiness dress code, when you'd see other people who were sharing that same dress code, you had this instant bond with them. And I remember this family that was, they lived down the street from one of the families that I used to go stay with. And that family because the girls were wearing long dresses, the women wearing long dresses, there's this instant bond and I became close to them.

What's interesting is I hear you say that there was a point of time whenever you were a teenager it began to shift. Well, I remember that same shift in them and we thought in the Brandham cult, it was very much holiness or hell. So we saw the shift and we're like, well, these people might be doomed, man. And it's something that does differ from church to church. The television thing, that's another thing. I have been in services where the minister from behind what you rightfully called a platform ministry would just preach and yell at the television saying,

that's a hell box. That's how the devil enters into your house. And then I've been into other churches where, well, even some of the ministers had them, but they would preach that it's not so much that it is Satan's window to your house like some of them taught. But it's more of what you watch on it. And then there was this wide variety in between. Some of the churches would actually go so far as to say, yeah, it's not going to send you into hell. But if you're watching it, Satan has invaded Hollywood and therefore he has access to your soul. So you had this wide variety

of different viewpoints. And I'm talking about the Brandham cult religion. So I can assume that it is the same in Pentecostalism. I would tend to agree with you on that. I'm sure there's probably even still some UPC churches today. My personal thought is they're mainly anchored in the south and in the west, the western district. Nevada was in the western district with California.

When I attended that church in Nevada, but yeah, I believe it's a lot of it has to do with the pastor. Some of it's regional. I recently moved in North Carolina and I've seen a lot of the women here do wear those really, really long dresses, you know, down to their ankles. But I've been a lot of churches in a lot of other states that the women will wear a skirt or dress down to their knee or just below their knee, something like that. That's what I was raised with, you know. Women wear dresses down to...

somewhere around their knee, but, you know, I don't, there's probably some UPC folks that would say they would consider a salvation issue, but I've never really, in the churches that I've attended, I don't really think I've ever heard that explicitly stated.

Some people might believe that, but you know, I had some other comments and thoughts about some of the stuff that you had on your podcast that I wanted to dig into a little bit later, but, in any way, let's see what your train of thought goes.

Well, my train of thought is usually in the history, and since we share this, it's something that I'm probably going to tap into a bit. I am fascinated by the history of Pentecostalism. As much as I talk about some of the negative aspects of it, there were good things, too, but it is the, you know, the scoundrels that were in the mix that you just have to take a step back and what was this mess and why.

One of the things that I've been trying to dig into, and probably, I'm assuming that you don't have this information, but when William Brannum began his ministry, it was a restart of a past ministry.

In other words, if you go to the Brannum called headquarters and you start looking through the sermon transcripts, the very first one that you have access to here, he's actually in the very first sentence saying that he had other recordings, and we don't have access to them.

So I began digging into this, and I learned that he and his mentor, who was Roy Davis, the leader of the clan, if you've watched any of my podcast, you probably heard that name, they were trying to establish a new Pentecostal sect during the time of the formation of what eventually would develop into the UPCI.

So they were trying to build this group, they were trying to do it here in Jefferson ville, Indiana, and there were satellite churches. So this was a network of churches. Davis was kicked out of the Baptist church for bigamy and child abandonment.

He was kicked out of the church of God and several other different things for a wide of criminal acts. So he named his sect the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, because he kicked out of all of those, and I'm just going to target all of these groups.

Where it gets interesting is as they're trying to embed themselves in Pentecostalism, they make some very important connections. One of Brannum's early campaign managers was the head, one of the heads of the PCI, and the PCI connected him out west to, what's the guy's name, Harry Morse, I think.

And Morse, basically in his church, this group of men gathered around Brannum and they prophesied. that Brannum was going to carry, they didn't use the word mantle, but essentially they were saying, in this prophecy, Brannum is going to carry the mantle of Smith-Wigglesworth.

So when you consider all of these different groups of Pentecostalism, some of them led by good guys who I have no doubt were good Christian men trying to do the right thing, some of them by complete scoundrels. When you look at this mess, how do you piece all of this together, and what's your opinion on how, when Pentecostalism began to form, what's your opinion on how all of these different groups and their varieties of different belief sets? How did that come together in a healthy way? Well, obviously I wasn't around in the early 20th century when you had

Topeka outpouring in the Azusa street outpouring, but as a student of history, I've learned that it seems that somebody can come along and correct me later, or you can, but it seems that they kind of segregated to a certain extent at the very beginning. You had the Apostolic assembly of the faith in Christ Jesus, which is largely hispanic on this Pentecostal group, which I associated with heavily for 10 years when I lived in Arizona. They talked about their strong roots coming out of Azusa street, and I know that the Pentecostal assemblies of the world today tends to be primarily black

Pentecostal, and I know that previous guests you had on your website, is it Bernie Wade? He had talked about some of the white segregationists, if you will, in the accused of UPC of being part of that. I obviously wasn't around them, but what I can say today is that it's my experience that the UPC is, the UPC eye is very integrated. A lot of the cities will have multi-ethnicities, whether it be Asian, Hispanic, Black, White, just whatever. I'm not sure if that, I know the Apostolic assembly is still primarily Hispanic, although some of their services are in English,

some of them are more in Spanish, some of them are bilingual. I've experienced the Apostolic assembly, like I said, I attended their churches for 10 years in Arizona, but as far as the PAW, from what I've heard, it's primarily Black organization, although I didn't meet a PAW guy from Wyoming, who apparently the whole church was white, but again we're talking about Wyoming.

I tend to think that it's matured as it's gone, as the movement has gone along. I'd like I think that it has. I did as a curiosity. I bumped into, you mentioned the long dresses and such.

I remember when I was in Arizona, I met a lady who was dressed very conservatively. I don't remember what I was doing. I've been a newspaper reporter for 25 years or so, but I bumped into this lady in Prescott, Bali, Arizona, and she was dressed very conservatively, and I only have maybe three examples of my life that I know of where the person was literally glowing as I would describe it with the Holy Spirit.

And this lady was glowing. And I just started talking to her, and I found out she was, I know they don't like to use this term, but she was a Brannemite, and I talked to her about that.

I think I heard a little bit about William Brannem at that time, not a lot, and because I was born in 1970, I'm probably about the same age as you, but she told me they'd listen to William Brannem's recordings and their services, you know.

And then years later, I was in Elton, Virginia, and I attended off and on for about a year or so, a full gospel white house tabernacle, and they have some certified preachers in their congregation.

You know, they don't listen to Brannem's taste, you know? And I'm not someone who's going to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. I don't necessarily, I'm not going to say that all these Brannemites are going to hell.

I don't necessarily believe that. I believe some of them have a true relationship with Jesus Christ, the righteous, you know?

It's not exactly, it's not dependent in my opinion on what you believe necessarily, because throughout history of the Christianity, no matter, dependent on, let's just say, depending on what nation or what time you were born into, you're probably going to have a little bit different beliefs about God and about Christ.

But to me, the most important thing is your personal walk, your personal relationship with Messiah. So I can't throw them all out like the baby with the bathwater, but I do find it extremely interesting, some of these historical connections that I'm learning about by watching some of your podcasts.

I've watched six or seven of them so far. Yeah, the history is just, it's unbelievable. And so you mentioned Prescott, my ears perked up. It has to, because I've got to mention this. I'm certain that you haven't come across this research yet, or likely, the conversation might have taken a different shift, but in Prescott, it was one of the most horrific scenes of Brannemism that existed.

It is the one that the cult has covered up for decades. My grandfather was part of the cover up. He knew that this was going on, but they were torturing and molesting children in Prescott in the message community.

is the only message community there in Prescott, Arizona. It actually turned into a Supreme Court trial in California because one of the victims, they were, it's a long story as to how this happened and what they did to his head.

But one of the victims went on a killing spree and all of this came out. They were torturing, abusing, it's a horrific story. Things that are so bad that I actually can't say them on YouTube or this video can't go out, it's that bad.

So when you say the glowing with the Holy Spirit, here's what comes to mind for me. The people, and I hate to use the term shiny happy people because of the, you know, the different videos and what the show and what not.

But the people themselves are good people. And once you're in that system and you're taught to control your emotions and have a full dedication on Jesus and the Bible, you build yourself up into this hype that you believe everything is good and fine and okay.

The lady, I'm certain new that these things were happening because they used to bring all of the members of the community into a room where they were doing public punishments and the men would take boards and beat the children until their arms tired and then they would pass the board to the next children, beat and it would just go around the group of men torturing the children.

So this would have been a lady who saw the torture. This was in Prescott, Arizona. But the point I'm trying to make is the people themselves are good people, they're trapped in bad systems and the leaders are not always good leaders.

The, I've been to Brannamite churches that I can say truly, they wanted to serve Jesus the best that they knew. They, they might have been off in their doctrines but they truly believed Jesus.

They were just confused as to who Jesus was. But then you go out to Prescott. This person glowing, that is, for me, it's a train wreck. There's a book that you can read called The Serpent's Tale and one of the escapees was, one of the escapees was basically brave enough to start telling her story, but it was so harsh of a tale that she had to do it on a poetic style.

So when you read it, it's more of a poetic style book. All of the others that I'm familiar with, they had to go through counseling, many of them are really messed up because this, this torturous place really ruined the lives of several people.

So the glowing of the Holy Spirit, I question, was it the Holy Spirit maybe? The members, I can say, there are really good members who are trapped in a bad system. And I think, if I remember the words that Andrew Delarosa was trying to convey, it was kind of the same thing.

He did not see the people as the problem. It was some of the leadership that ended up to be the problem. Well, building off of that, I would say that this is just me personally, this is just my opinion. It's not the gospel or anything.

I have my own personal convictions, my own personal standards, if you want to call them all in the standards, whatever, I get that. I don't necessarily agree with the pastor imposing his own personal standards on the congregation.

Maybe that's what Mr. Delarose was talking about. To me, it just has to be crystal clear in scripture. There's scriptures about modesty. There's scriptures, the Paul talks about having long hair. There's even a scripture from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, where it talks about during a cleansing ceremony, where the priest would unbind the woman's body.

The woman's hair, which implies that it was long. Women having long hair, I do believe, is a tenant because of the separation of the sexes and they're trying to blur the sexes right now.

I don't really think it's of God, but let me make a clarification though. I probably interact with this lady around the year, somewhere between 2000 and 2005. Reading, not reading, but looking at your podcast and doing a little bit of reading after that, I did learn about the park.

And that was around, correct me if I'm wrong, please, 1965 or so. And it went on for, I don't know how long maybe you could tell me how many years it went on for before the, you know what, hit the fan and closed it down.

I don't know if she was around at that point. Now, I'm not saying she didn't know, you know, what, 35, 40 years later about it, she probably knew some about it because she was Presky Valley and Prescott aren't that far away from each other, right?

Yeah, I would agree. I think if I remember right, it was the 80s or so, which interesting, in the 80s, there was another shift in Pentecostalism too, which I'll go there in a minute.

You're right. I don't know if she would have known about it or not. I will say that when the park imploded and the people started going out, they went into other churches and some of them started telling their story, not very openly, and not to the extent that has been published and identified now, but there are many people who are starting to come to realize.

So if she's in that area, there's without question, she knew that this something had happened, maybe not to the extent, but I agree that, you know, you can't judge a group by the leadership, the leadership can be flawed.

And that's part of the reason why I do what I do because some of this movement has turned into hero worship and the ministers themselves become heroes that are untouchable and some of the things that, like this, some of the things that they do are just horrific.

Um, you may. Chimburni Wade, here's the funny part. So Bernie Wade, I had him on, much like I had you on because I was digging deep into the history and I wanted somebody to counterbalance that, somebody that viewed the history favorably.

Honestly, I didn't know where he would take it. I knew some of his thoughts on the racism because we'd had conversations but I did not know to the extent he was gonna talk about it.

And here's the funny part that I've not mentioned this yet. I don't even know if I've mentioned this to him. After the podcast with him, I was shell shocked because I did not know so much of that race's history existed.

And here, the funny part is I didn't believe him. So after we had the conversation, I started digging into the history and I'm looking back at the names he mentioned, Howard Goss, different big names that I had come across in my research and I never made that link until it wasn't until I wanna say recently, I can't remember when, I came across the history of the AOG and started to understand why and how all of this was conceived and you're right.

In the Southern States, it was very segregated in the Northern States, not always segregated. You had Indianapolis, you had definitely a black leader of the Pentecostal movement there in Indianapolis. You had this wide variety of people, but the leadership started fighting with each other over the racism and separated the assemblies of God when it formed, it was mostly a white organization.

The thing that tipped me off and made me start to believe him and digging deeper was, I came across, what year was that? I think it was 1989 or so, was the first time that the AOG denounced the racism in their history before that they had tried to somewhat either deny it or just avoid it.

And it was the article that I read that talked about through that history and the separation that I began to realize, Bernie was right, I should have believed him, it actually supported what I was digging into, like the things he said, they actually backed some of what I said, so I should have just agreed with him.

But the questioning mind that I have, I wanted to prove it before I believed it. So I started digging into it and oh my gosh. I don't deny some of the things that you've learned, Mr. Paisley and yourself, that you've learned over the years by digging into historical documents.

I've done some of that myself as a history major and a newspaper reporter, you can go to newspapers.com and you could find out some old advertisements for some of the brand of meetings.

And I found one somewhere in Indianapolis. I somehow, I found it after one of your podcasts about the link to Jim Jones and I told you that the, well, I think I told you that the church I grew up in was integrated and I would say 10% of our congregation was black.

This is rural, eastern Ohio. This is foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and we had a, you know, white pastor and white ministers pretty much, but we had a sister who would come and minister on several occasions.

I remember this as a boy. Her name was sister Willie Johnson and she was a black lady and I found this, she wore a red cape. I think she played the piano sang and preached or did a combination, but I saw an ad.

I guess it was put out by Jim Jones when he first, kind of like when he first started out in Indianapolis like 1955. And he, he noted that or the church noted that William Brannum was going to speak and sister Willie Johnson was going to speak and we've had good results from her attendance previously.

So apparently there was a little connection there, right? So I can see even back in 1955, they had invited a black lady of all people into their midst. I understand this was probably a Jim Jones church situation, but I kind of, I kind of found that interesting when I found I saw that, saw her name on that old newspaper ad.

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You mentioned Willie Johnson and my mind started to just turn, where have I heard that name? Where have I heard that name? And then you said the Jim Jones ad. So here's the other part of that story that not many people realize.

There's a large number of people that don't realize that Jim Jones was very big into supporting the poor and needy and the black communities in Indianapolis. He actually got quite famous for them. In fact, before he grew to the big fame that he did within an enapolis, he was recognized even publicly for his work with the poor communities.

In working with them and in working, he had several black people attending his churches. He made connections and apparently one of the connections must have been with the newspaper because the article you're referring to was a mostly black, lead, printed, edited, and read newspaper.

It was the black newspaper for Indianapolis. So the funny part of all of this is I'm looking at, here is a black newspaper. Here's Jim Jones advertising William Brannum. Jones is, he cannot be aware that Brannum is mentored by working with all of the things tied to the second in command of the Ku Klux Klan.

There's no way Jones could have known this. And here he is advertising it to the black community and the irony in that is just unbelievable. Now here's the other part that's a little bit, I don't know how to, I don't even know how to frame this.

In my grandfather's church, which was the Brannum Tabernacle, there were black families. It was an integrated church. My grandfather would often call to have the closing prayer by a elderly black man who was up front, which if you're in the Pentecostal circles or the Brannum circles, you realize what a honor that is to have the closing prayer, that's a big deal.

So on the outside looking in, you would not consider this to have its races passed. You would even not consider the family to be racist. And although I have to say this carefully because I do respect my grandfather and my grandmother, but the racism was so thick, my grandmother would vomit in her mouth if in a restaurant the waitress was black.

And I hate saying that because I feel evil and guilty, but that's how it was, yet they're in this atmosphere where they're openly giving the presence that it's not racist. And I have other family members, they won't rent to a black person, they have rental houses, will not rent to a black person for the life of them.

So the racism is widespread. The public view of the racism doesn't exist. So if I go back and look at Jim Jones and I also go through the recordings of Brannum, it would have had the appearance that he was an integrated person, definitely not working with the clan.

At that point in time, he had not even introduced the Christian identity serpent seed doctrine. I think that was, if I remember right, it was 1957. He finally publicly admitted that he believed the racist doctrine.

So Jones would have had no idea that this existed and look at the devastation that was caused by Jones and look at the deception that was there to... begin with. I can't say I know a whole lot about Jim Jones.

I was just a boy in 1976. I was six years old when I think that's when Jones town occurred. And I vaguely remember that like my older sister talking about it. She was in high school at that time.

And in a matter of fact, I remember Mr. Dela Rosa talked about not having televisions. I think it was 1976 when I was 76 or 77, because I think my sister graduated in 78 from high school.

My dad and mom, one of them went out and bought a little black on white television so that my older sister could watch the news and be more up on current events for a class that she had.

And my youngest sister and myself sat in front of the TV that first night and watched Walter Cronkite or whatever it was for, we think we watched TV for an hour and a half, just watched the news.

We were just like, you know, but getting back to the television thing, I've never been a UPC licensed minister. My brother was or is or was for a while, not a pastor, but a minister.

But I have friends who have been or are. And I know there were some votes at general conference, which was their annual convention, if you want to call it that. I think one was in 2007 and one was in 2013.

The first one I think was about whether or not we should use video advertisements, something like that. And then 2013 I think was more long lines of television for requirement, not to have for preachers.

And I think I told you in an email that there was a split, maybe both times, but in 2007, I think it was the worldwide Pentecostal fellowship, which would be like the far right ultra conservative, they left because of that.

And I remember talking a few years ago to somebody on Facebook Messenger who said that the UPC in Florida was liberal. So again, this is all depends on what region of the country in.

And I attended a church in Oklahoma City, who a friend of mine, I went to a Bible, an Apostolic Bible college for one year in Minnesota. I met him there and he was originally from Oklahoma City.

And he said that before I moved there, he said his church was moderate by national UPC standards but liberal for Oklahoma standard, right? So and that's where I ended up going at the time that I lived in Oklahoma City.

But yeah, there's a wide variety of different nuances and stuff on standards and stuff like that. But I do want to mention. a memory I have from my childhood, you know, I don't remember my parents ever talking about William Brannum, but I do remember my dad talking about the latter rain movement, and I guess this was from the UPC. They looked down at the latter rain movement. They did not agree with it at all. I remember my dad calling it wildfire. He said, we want fire, but we don't want wildfire. And the latter rain movement was also used in the same vein as a charismatic movement.

No, I'm not going to say that all latter rain people are charismatic or vice versa, but I think there's a, it comes like that a little bit. And so that's just the memory I have.

My dad, not being in favor of the latter rain movement. And you know, I've enjoyed six or seven of your podcasts, but up until I started watching those, I'd never even heard of the new Apostolic Reformation. You know, the UPC in itself won the Spenacostles maybe more generally, because there's a lot of smaller organizations around that are won the Spenacostle, but the UPC itself I don't think they're very big on prophecy. Like William Brandham kind of got into at the end of his life. And I guess, correct me from wrong, Gordon Lindsey or somebody said, you know what,

you need to stick on on the gift of healing because, you know, you're not, you're not into, that's not where your prophecy is not where your gift is, right? And apparently that led to some prophecies that either haven't been fulfilled yet or just flat out wrong. You know, but I don't know if that's what caused the UPC eye not to be big on prophecy. Now, in a general term prophecy, just means preaching, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about fourth telling, we're talking about things in the future that are going to come to pass. You know,

the way I was taught, the way I was raised at the Bible college that I went to for one year in Minnesota, a passage from Ephesians says, we're built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

Jesus Christ Himself is the chief cornerstone. So that foundations are really laid. You can't go building on to it anymore. It's already there. So the UPC doesn't necessarily believe in modern day apostles and prophets like the 12 apostles and the Old Testament prophets like Elijah. We don't have those, they don't believe we have those gifts in the church today. There's some people that say that it still exists. I tend to disagree with that, but just let's just say for the sake of today, the UPC is not, they're not big on this prophetic gift, they're not into this manifest

sons of God stuff. I heard a little bit about that, but I didn't know, I never heard of a new Apostolic Reformation until a few days ago. You know, and that's part of the reason why I was wanting to have you on the podcast, to show the wide variety. So whenever I began publishing the information on the assemblies of God, and I got all kinds of hate mail to one of the consequences of doing what I do, I got this guy that was just blasting me. He said, the assemblies of God denounced Laterane back in 1948, and I said, yes, I know, you can go to the history page on my

website, you can see, actually, I've got a copy of where they denounced it. And in that same, as I'm reading through my emails, in that same exact day, I got another person who was contacting me, their assemblies of God of God church was hosting the Laterane Revivals. And even though it was being denounced, right? So you had this, you had polar opposite views, and it caused this schism that went through the churches. But more to the point. So Bernie Wade, one of the things that he mentioned, when he started naming the names, and he mentioned

the, like the key lot of Torium, I'd never really thought about it until he put it into perspective. This is where the, as the UPCI was growing and forming. That's where they were holding all their big conventions. He said, John, why keel? I don't know if you remember or caught that, but I go back and look, and I'm looking through the newspapers, good Lord, Bernie's right. How, how did I miss that? I've read through thousands of newspapers. And he starts talking about the heads of the UPCI that are working with Brannum. So in the early years, before, before Laterane existed, it seems as though they're grooming Brannum.

And for the road show with Hoekstra, who's got the levitating boy in Brannum, and they're in keel, and you've got a prophet, and you've got a levitating boy. That was the show that they had in Pentecostalism. I look at that, and I think for that's weird, you know? But then you go forward in the years, and there is the denouncing by the assemblies of God.

You've got the separation. There's a period of time in which the voice of healing revivals merge with the Laterane Revival, and they became one, and then they split, because what happened is so many churches started to sanction the ministers and say, we're not going to pay for this if you come, because they're part of the Laterane. When the money left, all of the showmanship revivalists, they decided we're not going to come. If we don't get any money, that's beyond us. So there was the separation that happened, right? But what happened prior to that separation is this big mess was created where you can't tell was one church

infected and one was one church not. I was recently, this would have been probably eight years ago. I was on vacation and we had the opportunity and pleasure of meeting some UPCI folk and we were in another country.

We weren't even in the same country and they happened to be from Indiana. So we had this incident bond because we're from the States and we're both from, not only from the States but both from Indiana, they're UPCI and it wasn't long before I overheard they were starting to talk about their profit.

And at this point, I was out of the brand I'm called and I'd not researched Pentecostalism at all and I'm like, your profit? Wait a minute. Are there others? And so I started digging in Pentecostalism.

And what I found is exactly what you described and exactly what they described. You've got this wide variety of churches, some of which are in the prophetic, some of which are exactly like you're saying they have reformed from all of this and you can't brand the whole Pentecostal movement with one brush.

That's why the New Apostolic Reformation is so insidious because you'll go to, if you're traveling, you go into a city, well there's a UPCI church. I want to go to it and it's a good one.

It's one that's reformed. You're traveling in another state. You go to another one and they're preaching politics. You've got the prophetic, they've got the revival culture, the end of days, all of the mess that comes with New Apostolic Reformation and you hear that.

If you have discernment and you can tell the difference, you know the good from the evil. But the problem that I have is what about your kids who don't yet know the difference between this.

So for me, it's fascinating and like I said, I was glad to have you on because I wanted to balance that scale and show that there are two sides to this coin. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because, you know, growing up, Jimmy Swagger would be on TV and I've enjoyed some of Jimmy Swagger's music over the years.

His singing is piano playing and stuff like that. But there was a point in time where he had, it sounded like he basically condemned all one of the Spenocostles to hell because they didn't believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.

They believe that basically, as I understand it, a modelistic view, but people can argue about that too. But there've been all kinds of different beliefs about God down throughout history. And like I said, a lot of it might depend on what time, what age, what location, what region you were born in to what that you ended up actually believing about God.

But, you know, there have been Jesus name people, which is another word that's used to describe one of the Spenocostles you make in them, Trinitarian Penocostles to hell and vice versa. You know, there's a lot of that that goes on or maybe has gone on in years past.

But I typically don't... I don't believe that, I believe the most important thing is your personal relationship, your personal walk with Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and some of my own personal beliefs have changed over the years because I started years ago, I was in a kingdom in Arizona and I went to an adult form at an Episcopal church because I wanted to learn more about church history and I was raised very anti-Catholic and I said I'm not one of the Catholic church to learn about church history, they persecuted, made martyrs out of people, right? So I go to the

Episcopal church, you know they branched off, they parted out Protestant reformation as it were, so and I was there for a couple of years and I learned a lot, very educated Episcopal priest was there and he came out one time, I didn't bring it up, he was an adult form before their Eucharist which is their main worship service on Sunday and he said you know Matthew 28, 19 was probably changed in antiquity to bolster the doctrine of the Trinity and I'm like wow he just agreed with what I was taught as a child, the UPCI would put out these these tracks on word a flame

I think it's word of flame press talking about the council of my see in what 365 AD or whatever, it's the man to the doctrine of the Trinity and and then maybe 10 years later I was in a new port news Virginia and I started attending a Messianic Pentecostal congregation, Messianics generally speaking are people who observe the Torah but they also recognize Jesus or Yeshua as the Messiah and by and large they don't believe that following the Torah is for their salvation but you follow the Torah because you're already saved that type of thing and they point out the half

of the half of the laws are more or less in the Torah you can't even follow it today because there's no temple but in any case I started attending this this congregation a new port news Virginia congregation Zion's sake and I learned a lot because I was learning the scriptures from the Hebrew cultural context in which it was written not as a Gentile trying to interpret it you know 2000 years later whatever from my Gentile perspective in any case I learned a lot and I learned that throughout history there have been different sex or groups of people who who worst upon this Sabbath

they they have kept the biblical dietary laws and observed the feasts of the Lord not the Jewish feasts the feasts of the Lord pass over Pentecost tabernacles trumpets they're seven of them right they're three in the spring then there's Pentecost and there's three in the fall which the three fall ones by and large have yet to be fulfilled all the day of Atomah is kind of like half and half, right? But there's these different groups throughout history, despite persecution by the Catholic Church, that still did this. There were ones in Ethiopia that did it.

They followed Jesus Christ and they followed the biblical dietary laws. They were on the Sabbath, etc. And so in that sense, I became more conservative in my thinking, but became more liberal because they took passes from Matthew chapter 5, I believe it is. And it's like those who follow the Torah, Jesus said, not one jot or tittle will pass from the Torah until all things have been fulfilled. Want to talk about prophecy? There's a prophecy right there by Messiah. Well, have all things been fulfilled yet? No, obviously not, right?

There's a lot of Old Testament passages today that still haven't prophecies that still haven't been fulfilled. So that's what they take, but there's another point where Jesus says to

the people there in Matthew that listen to what these rabbis and scribes and Pharisees say. Listen to what they tell you to do, but don't do what they do. You know, because they're hypocrites, right? So it was kind of like that. And he said that

whoever follows the, there's a passage, I'm not going to quote it correctly exactly, but there's a passage that says that he that does talks about the least in the kingdom and the greatest in the kingdom around Matthew chapter 5. It doesn't say that you're not going to be in the kingdom. It says the least in the kingdom or the greatest in the kingdom and it has to do with some of this stuff. I've just been talking about. I can't quote it verbatim.

But anyway, my point is my thinking about that became more liberal. So I wasn't like, oh well, these people that aren't following the Torah, they're going to hell, no? And messianics, they follow the Torah. It's not for salvation. They do it to please Messiah because they're already saved.

And people will say, well, you can't follow all the Torah because if you disobey one law, then you've disobeyed them all. Well, yeah, that might be true, but does that mean we shouldn't try to do it? If not, okay, then I guess it's okay to go out and commit adultery, right? No, it's not okay to go out and commit adultery. So I became more liberal in my thinking about salvation, in other words, all these Christians throughout society aren't condemned to hell necessarily because they don't agree with me and vice versa. It's about a personal relationship. And

The congregations of Messianic ones that God has led me to have been found a gospel. In other words, they believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and they believe in the gifts of the Spirit. So that's kind of how I've been led. That's my own personal testimony, because when I started going to congregation, Zientsake and Newport News, I was taught the council of my sea was bad, but it wasn't. From their perspective, it was bad, because the Catholic church would basically kill you if you worshiped on the Sabbath, if you followed the biblical dietary laws, or if you followed the feast of the Lord. They would kill you and

they did, right? So that was like my right hand, meaning my left hand, coming together like that, right? That was how God was leading me, but I kind of got off on it a little bit of a tangent there. But I did want to throw that out there, because we go through our lives and we think, you know, I've arrived. Well, no, the Caleb or the John, let's say the John of the Caleb from today, would probably argue with the John of the Caleb from 10 or 20 years ago, right?

Or maybe a week ago. In my case, thanks James so quickly. Exactly. So it's not necessarily about exactly agreeing on what you believe. It's about that personal relationship. Yeah, and that's just it. So many of these, so many of these scoundrels that I've been investigating, they wanted to create the cult mentality, because it was profitable, or there was, you know, money, sex, power, whatever it is that they were after.

But in doing so, they created very black or white mindsets. And what you're describing is a person who understands that not everything is black or white, not everything can be understood in a black or white manner. It's not all there are many shades of gray in between. And until you're able to understand that it is a personal journey with each person and that really, for a person entering into that journey after you've been in a black and white mindset, you have to throw out a lot of the things that you believed and then rebuild them, stack them back up into healthy ways

and ways that make sense, not ways that are just there because they have told you you have to believe this one way or another. I came to the conclusion too that whenever you are condemning a person for their journey and for the things that they currently believe or know at that time, they have to know those, they have to learn those things before they can build the next building block of their understanding. And because they don't have the next building block, they don't yet understand the full picture. So like putting together a puzzle, you start putting a few pieces

together, well, this is supposed to be an automobile. It doesn't look anything like an automobile. It's not till you get those other pieces. And some of these movements have surprised the people to the extent they want to control the knowledge and information that they have, so that they must always understand the picture as the leader sees it, not as an understanding that is growing within the person. Each person has to have their own journey and their own knowledge and understanding. That's why whenever I left the Brannum movement, I started reading the Bible over and over and over continuously, just washing all of the nonsense out of my head.

And what I found out was, I still believed some of the things that was taught to me, but I found out that many of them weren't really that important, and we had made them to be fundamental to your salvation important doctrines. And some of them I kept, some of them I didn't, but I began to realize none of that really mattered. If you really understand the Bible, none of that matters. There is a much bigger picture that people can learn. So I like the way that you put it, and that was probably a lot more eloquent than I did. I was going to add on to

some of something that you just said there, John. But I'm losing my train of thought a little bit. I want to throw this out there because I was talking with a UPCI friend of mine who's actually a minister in Indonesia right now, which is predominantly a Muslim nation, but he's done some research on some of the Pentecostal folks, preachers of your days of your. And I was chatting with him by messenger here a few days ago, and he brought up little David Walker. And I didn't even know who David Walker was until I looked at one of your podcasts, right? But David Walker is still alive

today. And my fact, my friend shared his Facebook page with me. You can follow his Facebook page. And so I just wanted to throw that out there in case you ever get a chance to interview a little David Walker. I don't know if you've had the chance, but another thing I wanted to talk about was Benji McNair Scott, a gentleman from England or the UK you had on here recently.

I enjoyed that podcast. And one of the things I wrote down was he said that the early church was radically charismatic and radically liturgical. And that peaked my interest because of my connection with the Episcopal church and studying church history. And then moving over to the Messianic congregations because the Messianic congregations are liturgical. They get that from the Hebrews, right? And the Anglican church and their 1979 Episcopal church and their 1979 prayer book, I believe the preface says they go back the P-R-E-F-A-C-E, the preface says that they've incorporated some of the liturgy from the early church or a significant portion of that into their prayer book.

A cost on how, I mean, I was just like, I first started going there. I'm like, hey, there's liturgy stuff. This is completely new to me, but you know what I fell in love with it?

I fell in love with it, John. And but the messianic congregations, especially the messianic kind of costal ones, they combine the liturgy and the spirit filled worship, which I believe is just beautiful and really neat.

But I wanted, I wanted to mention that too and give Mr. Scott a plug.

I don't know if there's anything else in my notes here that I wanted to talk about. Oh, I did want to ask you a question because my friend in Indonesia, he, he's scratching his head a little bit about some of these historical revelations that you've, you've unearthed and I've shared with him from what I've learned from these podcasts and, I mean, he believes, and I tend to believe too, that that William Brennan was using the gift of divine healing.

I'm not saying that everything he did was correct, but I have to believe that there was a lot of people healed through his ministry or the wise, what in the flourish like it did.

I don't believe it was all just a show. And I want to see what you think about that. Do you think there were divine healings that did occur through his ministry? That's going to ask you that.

Like I said earlier, not everything is black or white. Here's my opinion on this. My father was healed in the brand of meetings. And in fact, you can find on recording if you search for my dad's name, you can see where he's healed.

I know the story, I know my father, I know all of that. I know other people who, at least they tell me they were healed and I believe them. And the Bible says that where two or three are gathered, you, I will be in your midst.

So for me, if there are Christians gathered there and God is still the God of healing, which I don't see any place in the Bible that says he's not, there were people be healed.

At the same time, in any crowd, I could go to a ballgame. And I could say I could get the announcers podium, say, is there anybody in here who's sick in a ballgame? And then two weeks later, ask those same people, there will be people who get better. Some of them may have bad things wrong with them, but they, it, it is a numbers game. When you play the numbers game, there will be people get better.

There is a documentary by Darren Brown, which if you haven't seen it for your history research, you need to watch this. Darren Brown is an atheist, but he is exposing the faith healing charismatic movement. And he sets the stage as a big stage act.

He's coming into a place. You can watch all of the charismatic people coming in and he's doing the healing thing and people are falling out blessed. And I truly believe some of were truly blessed. However, at the end of it he says, now I just want to tell you, I know that some of you have after after they gave their testimonies, they were bar up to stage, yes I was healed, thank you brother for healing me that kind of thing. He said, now I just want to tell you I'm an atheist. This is not the power of God that I just want to show the people that

when you bring a crowd together there will be people healed. And the interview the newspapers were interviewing the people as they left saying, what do you think about this? And people are saying, yes, I don't know how he did it. I know he said he's an atheist, but God healed me when I was in there. My opinion is it has nothing to do with the man on the platform. Absolutely nothing.

My other opinion is here's the problem that I have found historically that I can back up. I can't really prove or disprove anything that I said prior to that, prior to this, but what I can prove is that many of the claims that he had of massive numbers of people being healed, I can find newspapers where there were newspaper reporters and journalists after the claim was made who went to the city to try to find one and couldn't find one. And yet he's gone from town to town saying, just go back there to that city. Watch those people heal. So many people there. I raised

one from the dead. Newspaper article comes out, you know, the journalist went to the town. No, that person wasn't raised from the dead. He was never dead. So if there's a true gift and there's a true thing happening, there's no need to deceive the people. But at the same time, the people are in that mindset that they're coming to get healed. And statistically, there will be people healed anyway. And all it takes is for one person to speak up and say, I was healed in this. Other people who are listening to them, their faith will be lifted because they watched this person healed.

And that's why they came. So you've got so many complex elements to this. You have a person who is literally deceiving the public, lying to the public, we can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He was lying to the public. We've got people who he claimed to be healed, who wasn't, people who he claimed to be healed, who actually died from the very diseases, he said. But we also have people that are healed. My father being one included. So my opinion of this is it is not black or white.

It's not something that you can say yes or no true or false. This is a complex mess. Okay, I was just curious about that because I haven't, the six or seven podcasts I've watched, I haven't seen, you talk about that, not saying you have it because there's a lot of podcasts on that, right? But I mean, I personally have been healed. I remember once in my life a pastor prayed for me after service and I was healed instantly of something.

And I have a friend who was, had an injured knee and was healed through the ministry of Benny Hinn. And at that exact same time, my friend, he fell back on the floor and he began speaking in tongues.

He was filled with the baptism of the Holy Spirit and he said, he told me he spoke in tongues for two or three days. So I mean, I hear these testimonies and so I was just wondering what you thought.

I also had another question if you want to wrap it up, because I know we've been here about an hour. But I don't know if this was on one of your podcasts, it was on one of the other ones from another ministry somewhere.

But Kenneth Hagan, free to Lindsay and Anna Schrader, apparently prophesied about Mr. Brandham eating his end. Interestingly, that ties back to our Jim Jones conversation. If you go to johnsound.edu.stsu, you can search for my name.

I'm working with the people at the Johnstown Institute to help uncover all of this history that's been concealed. And I think it's the last year's article or the year before that. I actually talk about that very thing because there was this rift that was happening.

As I mentioned, when the assemblies of God split, it caused all kinds of chaos. Well Gordon Lindsay actually started snubbing Brandham because nobody wanted to see Brandham. He was being sanctioned. And Gordon Lindsay wanted the money, apparently, I can't say what his intentions were, but it appears he wanted the money.

So he started snubbing Brandham, wouldn't let Brandham speak. And there at if I'm not mistaken, this is one of the conventions that johns himself hosted or maybe it was Joseph Matz and Bozay, one of the two.

But they're in this meeting. Brandham's not allowed to speak. They start fighting. In fact, if you go to the Jim Jones page on my website, you can read some of those publications. I think I've got them up there.

They all start fighting with each other. Brandham gets openly condemned and not just the people you've mentioned, many, many people start openly condemning Brandham and eventually it turned into prophecies of his death. Jones himself, prophesied of Brandham's death, where it gets interesting is Jones talks about it.

He talks about A.A. Allen being there, Brandham being there. And they all meeting and they're telling their innermost secrets to Jones. And Jones says Brandham said to me, he didn't believe a thing in that Bible, but it's what it is.

He's the only way to make a living or something like this. When I first came across that, I thought that doesn't make sense. I think Brandham was a good man. I think he was just a little deceived.

The more that I begin to understand and uncover of the deception that he did, I think Jones was actually telling the truth. And in this one instance, I have to believe the guy who was the infamous leader of the Jonestown massacre over Brannum, but all of that existed because at that point in time, Brannum started to preach his racist Serpent Seed doctrine.

That's ultimately, I think, what led Jonest to split. And whenever this happened, something like Brannum even mentions this on recording 300 ministers, I think he said, rose up against him because they suddenly realized this guy's a racist.

And so they started prophesying of his death, this big mess happened. I don't know that Hagen did. If he did, he never mentioned it or wrote it publicly to my knowledge. I think he claimed it after the fact, but some of the others you can read, they actually have a testimony about it.

Okay, well, I think it was Hagen and what I read that he said, maybe it was one of those two ladies that said it, I'm kind of getting confused on the details of it.

But at least one of them had said it was because he was getting into error and God in order to save his soul was going to remove him from the scene because he was, that was the reason or one of the reasons anyway, so it kind of drives with what you just said.

It's such a complicated mess, man, when you look at all of this and you look at all of the people involved, I mean, some of the people prophesying like Jim Jones, this is not a man of God.

I don't know that I really hesitate to believe that he had a prophecy. And if he did, it was a failed prophecy because he said, Brannum would have his head chopped off. Brannum's head wasn't chopped off.

My grandfather was in the room after the accident and Brannum was, his head was not severed from the body. So Jones, if it was a prophecy, it was a false prophecy, but I really questioned that part of it.

I don't think he had an actual prophecy. I saw a podcast about Jim Jones, apparently prophesying Brannum's doom or death or something. I haven't watched that one yet. Have you come across, do you have any thoughts about the claim that Brannum leaned over and prayed for his wife and she was healed during the aftermath of the accident?

All nonsense. In fact, you can confirm all that from the newspapers. After the accident, she's still struggling and it isn't until later. In fact, I don't know if you knew this, but they held his body from the grave for months that kept his body on ice and the claim that they were telling the people at the time was that they had to wait for her to heal before they could have the burial.

I questioned that too. I think she, according to the newspapers, she got better long before the burial. They were just trying to revive the cult. However, there was a... of time in which he was suffering. You did a podcast about Chris Reed. I know him a little bit through my cousins who went, they still go to the church that used to pastor in Indiana. I think it's Peru, Indiana. He was in a covenant apostolic church, which is very similar to what I believe today, which is I call myself a Messianic Apostolic or Messianic Pentecostal, but he kind of left that

when he went to South Carolina. But I remember talking to Chris or reading something that he said, we're talking about William Branham. Chris Reed and I were talking about William Branham. And he said he went to his burial site. I don't know if that's in Jeffersonville or is that in Jefferson ville? It is. He said, and after he went to his burial site, he started getting these visions or God started ministering to him and these prophetic gifts. It's such a weird mess, man. The deeper you dig, the more dirt you find and the weirder the people get. It's so much. But anyway,

thank you so much for doing this. I enjoyed it. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branham.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.