The Hidden Origin of the Assemblies of God: Race, Power, and Pentecostal Myth

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

In my long list of things that people have asked me to research, the assemblies of God keeps coming up over and over again. And actually, just today, even, I had a person who contacted on the website, how is the assemblies of God connected to all of this?

And they were referring to not only Branhamism, but the New Apostolic Reformation, Carismania, the whole ball of wax. And it's interesting because I have research the assemblies quite a bit, but I haven't really talked about it that much.

And I don't purposefully, because, you know, there are organizations that over time have corrected themselves. And I hate to dig too deeply, because it, honestly, it doesn't matter which organization you dig into. If you go back far enough, you're going to find some mess.

And the better ones correct the mess, the more destructive ones they go deeper into mess, and create new messes altogether. And the assemblies of God is, in my opinion, it's in a strange category of, in-betweenness.

I have actually had a few run-ins with other researchers and historians while dealing with the assemblies, not directly for me, but for them directly. They warned me early in my research. They said, John, whenever you try to reach out to the assemblies, they don't seem to, and I'm paraphrasing greatly, they don't seem to be quite honest with their responses.

Now, whether that's true or not, that's a different story altogether. But I can tell you that just simply reading through anything that is written by a pro assemblies of God historian, you're going to find that it's not transparent.

You will find that the highlights of all of the good things are emphasized and all of the things that have been swept under the rug. Well, let's just keep them under the rug. That's sadly how that works.

Right down to, you know, I'll pull it up and I'll put it on the screen for those of you watching the YouTube version of this. But even on the about page of assemblies of God history, it's...

I don't know what to make of this. I know the history myself. I've studied the history of read through the newspapers, I've read through both pro and con historians about the assemblies. And I just don't know what to make of this because yes, it's kind of accurate, but it is so not transparent that you almost want to say that it's false.

And yet it's not false at the same time. I'll read this portion here. It says, as the revival quickly spread, many Pentecostals recognize the need for greater organization and accountability. And the founding fathers and mothers of assemblies of God met in Hot Springs, Arkansas on April 2 through 12, 1914 to promote unity and doctrinal stability, establishing legal standing, coordinate the mission enterprise, and establish a ministerial training school.

These founders constituted the first general council and elected two officers. He Doris Bell is chairman and later changed to general superintendent. And Jay Roswell-Flauer is secretary, as well as the first executive presbytery. Now, it sounds good.

I suppose to a new recruit into the assemblies of God. This sounds beautiful. A bunch of men and women gathered together in 1914. And they were all in one mind and they were all in one accord.

And they said, we're going to form an organization. And we're going to spread Pentecostalism around the globe. If you read the assemblies of God history page, that's what it reads like. It is so whitewashed that, you know, it's just, I don't know, like I said, I want to say it's fault, but it's not really fault.

A better way to put it is like this. One of the things that the assemblies of God preach is so strongly against is gambling. The sin of gambling. If you were to go into a casino in the assemblies of God, it is like stepping into Satan's den.

And let's say, for example, that I was in the assemblies of God and I had a gambling addiction that was my secret sin. And I was covering it up from everybody, including my wife.

And I told my wife, I'm going to go out and I'm going to go to the grocery store and pick up a loaf of bread. And she says, goodbye, honey, gives me a kiss.

Well, I go to the casino instead. And I waste a whole lot of money. And I walk out just before I've lost everything and I go to the grocery store. I'm down on my lot because I've just lost all my money.

And me being a addicted gambler, which I'm not, but let's say I'm an addictive gambler and I go into the grocery store and I walk up to the cashier and I say, here's a loaf of bread.

And oh, I would like that lottery ticket over there. And lady gives me the loaf of bread, the lottery ticket. And I win, you know, what? 20 bucks I went 20 bucks and she says oh wow you've won 20 bucks your bread is free if I went back to my wife and I told her well I went to the grocery store honey and I went to the cashier and she told me my bread was free that's a true story does it tell the whole story?

No is it quite honest I would say no I was dishonest to my wife that's that's where I would fall on this scale but interestingly if you know the history what the assemblies of God has on their page it's not that much different it really is not that much different than the story I gave so yes it is true there were several men and women who met together in hot springs arc and saw 1914 I think it was April if I remember right April 2nd through 12 something like this but the assemblies of God did not form quite like that it wasn't people gathering together

to form the assemblies of God instead they were meeting and I'll pull the newspapers up you can read the advertisements were for months prior to this the general assembly of the church in God in Christ and it says it will convene April 2nd and continue 10 days in the Grand Opera House services daily 3 and 7 30 pm many ministers evangelists pastors missionaries from home and foreign fields are coming to this convention mighty revival expected sinners saved sick healed an answer to prayer and believers and baptized in the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2 4 come everybody

services welcome H.A. Goss which is Howard a Goss pastor now Howard Goss is a name that I heard when I was in the message Howard Goss was connected to Brannemism the assemblies of God was connected to Brannemism in a strange and unusual way which I'll get into that later but when I first began researching I really was only researching because of Howard Goss Howard Goss if you remember back on the revival history series that I did with Charles they we had a person who is a Pentecostal historian who said that basically he was going through all of the archives of the different churches

and you could go in their archives and you could tell which pastors were racist and which ones weren't because in the photographs of their assemblies you could see those who had black people in the assemblies everybody's welcome those who had only whites you had to ask the question were they were they racist or were they white only and that drove me down the pathways of researching into the assemblies of God deeper than I already had which is interesting now I will say this Howard Goss he's in the southern part of the United States The Jim Crow laws were an effect and it wasn't like today where blacks and whites could

just simply go to the same church. There were laws and there were, it was a cultural difference. However, what my Pentecostal historian friend was referring to later after the Jim Crow laws were appealed, now this gets into the gray area.

Those who have the blacks in their photographs, obviously everybody's welcome and there's a welcome feeling. And so the black people come because they recognize they're welcome in the church. Those that are white only, you have to ask the question.

So I went down the path of studying the assemblies of God from that aspect, however, that is not really the only aspect to look at this because as I mentioned in the last episode that I did talking about free masonry, it isn't just one simple smoking gun.

I could very easily go to the connections to the clan and there are many between William Branum, many of his key figures. Even the assemblies of God, if you, I'll get into that a bit, there's some history there as well.

If you understand how the clan operated and that it was such a widespread common thing, you have to ask that question, but that's not the only question to ask, it's not a smoking gun.

Prior to 1914, men like Howard Goss, who is in the Pentecostal organization, were in the Church of God in Christ as one of the sects of Pentecostalism. The Church of God in Christ was led by a black minister Charles Harrison Mason.

And this as you can imagine in 1914 created a huge issue, especially in the southern states of Pentecostals. The Jim Crow laws were in effect, there were issues, there were some legal issues that were causing divisions in the Church already, just simply because of the legal issues with the Jim Crow laws.

But in the north, in the Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism was widely accepted as a interracial faith. And so the ministers in the north were accepting of the black minister. However, not everyone, even in the north, was accepting of the black minister.

The culture in the United States, like it or not, was not what it is today. I'll just say it like that. In the south, it was excessively different. They were outraged that there was a black leader in their Pentecostal denomination.

So this general assembly of the Church of God in Christ met in 1914. And as I understand the history, and there is a lot of argument among Pentecostal historians because neither side, the assemblies of God does not seem to be fully transparent.

The other side, once... the information but how do you get it? Most of it's been erased and none of the people who were there are even alive today to ask. But if you understand what is happening, it appears that the racial issue was coming to a head in 1914 and then exploded. So you had all of these people, hundreds of people who met in 1914, but they met under the Church of God in Christ. This wasn't a bunch of people coming together saying, hey, let's form the assemblies of God. It really was a revival and assembly that was being held, and it was being held under the auspices of the Church

of God in Christ. Whenever the racial tensions came to a head, it appears that it turned into enough of a debate that the white ministers decided we're going to split away from the Church of God in Christ where we can have white leadership and we're going to let the Church of God in Christ have black leadership. But even in that, there are some issues if you understand all of the history because you can't just simply have a black organization led by black ministers who could potentially influence white people. So we need to get white people who are in here to help sway the

balance of this vote. That's how odd this gets if you read back through the history. The legal structure of Pentecostalism was almost nonexistent. And so functionally, there were white ministers who were under black authority in this arrangement that caused this whole thing to basically come to a head and it came to a head in 1914. But as it relates to my research, the section on Charles Fox Parham on the assemblies of God pages, probably for me, it's the most interesting because of how it's whitewashed and why. But not just that, but because of the trails of history that lead

backwards and forwards from the New Apostolic Reformation all the way back to John Alexander Dauy in that sect, there's some history there which I've covered in several of the podcasts and you can read my book, Weaponized Religion from Christian identity to the New Apostolic Reformation.

You can get some of that history, but in this paragraph, it says Seymour, referring to William Joseph Seymour, had been a student of Charles Fox Parham who provided the doctrinal framework for the young Pentecostal movement. So you have different sects and branches of Pentecostalism.

Most of them are going to go to Seymour and they're going to just kind of ignore Charles Fox Parham. In fact, I was contacted by one historian who said, you mentioned Charles Fox Parham was the founder of Pentecostalism or the father of Pentecostalism and that's absolutely incorrect. Seymour was because he didn't, apparently, he didn't know the history.

But it gets even more interesting than that when you think of the new apostolic reformation side of things. I have mentioned several times in several podcasts and in the books. There's a reason why Charles Fox Parham was not fully accepted and widely accepted by all of the Pentecostals.

In fact, it probably should have been him that took over the revivals in Azusa Street and the history would read quite differently. Charles Fox Parham was facing a lot of criminal issues because of the things that he was doing to students who were young people who were gathering into his young people ministry.

And to keep it g-rated, I'm not going to talk much about it. Other than there was an accusation of Charles Fox Parham and a male student and Parham apparently confessed to it. You can read through some of the transcript in the newspaper.

So there is some issues with Charles Fox Parham. But whenever they trace this lineage, they mention specifically while the apostolic faith movement was largely confined to the South Central United States, the revival at Azusa Street catapulted Pentecostalism before a worldwide audience.

So what they're trying to do, even though they say doctrinal framework came from Parham, they're trying to limit the scope of what Parham did to Pentecostalism. And if you go back through the history that we have provided in the podcast and in the books, during the years when John Alexander Dowey who was the prototype for all of the faith healing movement, shenanigans, whenever he had lost his mental faculties and Zion City was flooded with all of these profits trying to get at his $10 million.

Charles Fox Parham is one who came to Zion City claiming to be the next Elijah. And we've covered that quite well. What happened there? We have also talked about, but he created a sect within Zion City that would impact the New Apostolic Reformation immensely.

In this sect that he created, they called them the Paramites, they started teaching deliverance ministries, the early phases of stages of what would become deliverance was being taught there in Zion City by Charles Fox Parham.

He trained FF Bosworth, who then later trained William Brannum. Bosworth was a leading figure in John Alexander Dowey's Zion sect. He also trained John G. Lake, who was a Paramite in the Zion City Paramite sect.

And there were others, there were multiple, until they began murdering people in their deliverance ministry, shenanigans. We've covered that also in the podcast, but there were people. who actually died under their training to try to deliver demons out of broken bones.

These people would actually say that a demon has caused this crippled lady to be her bones to be crooked. So we're going to physically straighten them by God and they did until they snapped the bones and out of the sheer pain this woman actually died.

And I think there were a few murders that happened because of this. So in Zion City, you had this mess. You had Parham who escaped that because he's being criminally tried for his things that he did with underage children.

You had all of the Parhamite murders which caused another scandal. So you have to separate that branch. You can't say that and there was a Parham presence in the North because you don't want the people to know this, right?

This is not the kind of thing that you talk about. And you certainly don't say Seymour had been a student of Charles Fox Parham in the history page on Assembly of God and say Parham who would have led the revival had he not done inappropriate things with children.

That's just not how you invite people to come to your organization obviously. But that part is really interesting to me because fast forward to 1914, whenever this is created, FF Bosworth who was a Parhamite, he is one of the original founders of the assemblies of God.

John G. Lake is at this meeting. John G. Lake who was in Africa came to the United States and he came to this meeting. These are the people who helped organize a separation between black and white and basically brought all of the white leadership out of the Church of God in Christ and put them into a new organization.

So let's go back to Howard Goss because he is kind of key to understanding how all of this unfolds. Howard Goss was a white Pentecostal leader and he is the one who helped organize the assembly.

Every advertisement has his name in it and these invitations were sent out to ministers but according to historians, these were primarily sent to white ministers despite having the Church of God in Christ name.

So picture this, picture you are in an organization, you're led by a black leader and somebody underneath you in this organization sends out all of the invitations but does it send them to black people and you're a black person leading it, how is this gonna make you feel?

This is not a good thing that Howard Goss is doing. There are significant questions as to whether he was racist and considering the fact that Charles Fox Parham, there are resources, reputable sources who link Parham to the Ku Klux Klan as late as, I think it was 1929.

So during this time, as Charles Fox Parham is laying down the doctrinal framework, Parham who's in the clan, FF Bosworth who later works with Branham who's working with the second and command of the 1915 KKK, Bosworth who is preaching and holding conventions in the clan headquarters in Indiana, these are the men that are being invited to this thing and among many others. There are probably others who were not even closely affiliated with the clan, but there were some and Gauss is sending these imitations apparently to white people and not sending them to black people.

So during the meetings what happened is there was a motion, this was this was like a forum where people were voting and and making motions for the upcoming years, plans, etc. There's a motion by the white leaders to reorganize and withdraw completely from the Church of God in Christ authority.

So again you've got imitations coming out to white leaders, you have this flood of white leaders coming in to vote and they basically hijacked the organization if you understand that history. Had it been the reverse, had the black leadership, had sent out letters only to black ministers and invited this large body of black ministers to come to this organization and say we want to kick out all of the white ministers.

This would have read entirely, the history would have read entirely differently, but that's not what happened. Gauss basically if you understand what happened here, he made a hostile takeover of the Church of God in Christ and hijacked it separating the organizations into two separate organizations, one for the black people, one for the white people. So back to my trip to the grocery store.

I told my wife that I'm going to the grocery store, I'm going to buy bread, I go gambling, I waste a bunch of money, I just happen to win money and I tell her part of the story and the part that I told was somewhat truthful.

Well the historians were the assemblies of God. They can legitimately say that the separation did not happen because of race because they can say that there was no statement issued anywhere in the assemblies of God in any of the motions or any of the aftermath that says we are leaving the organization because of race, but quite frankly they didn't need to. The result of this organization, the result of this assembly was that a white controlled denomination was created.

The white ministers, the ones who had the invitations obviously they come, they made a vote, they overwhelmed the black vote and the vote was, I don't know if it wasn't unanimous, but it was enough that they were able to create a separation or a division in the organization.

And the effect was this, the Black Pentecost was overwhelmingly remained in the Church of God and Christ, while the White Ministers go to the new organization, and the authority, the property, the credentialing, all of it was now racially segregated.

And again, in this era, this is broadly aligning with the American Church patterns of the South. So it's not that they were doing anything unusual. The only part of this for me that is unusual is it seems that an organization was hijacked because of sending only the invitations to the White people.

And again, if it were the Black people that did the reverse, this story would read entirely differently. Now does any of this exist on the history page of the Simblies of God know? If I were writing this page and I were wanting people to join the Simblies, there's no way I would tell them all of this history who's going to join, especially if you're a Black person who's going to join.

Now I have no problem saying any of this that I have said because of the fact that you could go back and you could question it. You could say, well, this was a different time.

This was a different place. This was a different era. There was a lot of racism that was happening in the United States. The Simblies of God was no different than the Baptist or whichever denomination you choose.

But with the Simblies, there is a key difference. As I mentioned, Parham, whose doctrinal patterns they trace, was affiliated by, according to historians, with the KKK into the 20s, the leadership did do this thing where they hijacked the organization and created the white establishment.

But the racism continued in the Simblies of God so much so that fast forward to 1980s. This is so far beyond this era that you would think, I mean, I went to school in the 80s, and I went to school with Black people and in my school, I never even considered race.

Even though I'm certain that there were other races in the school, I didn't see a difference between skin color. That's just how I'm wired. And I lived in a culture that was promoting this.

We were accepting of this. Well in the 80s, the Simblies of God were still having issues with race and the organizations. And it wasn't until I want to say that the 90s or the 2000s that they started to have this reconciliation with the Black Ministers and the Church of God in Christ.

We're talking decades, decades later, after all of the other churches, most of the other churches, have completely reformed racially. The Simblies of God admittedly, and according to their own publications, they still struggled with race.

an issue. Why? If you create an organization that is founded on a racial separation, there is no way that you're not going to have trouble with it for the rest of the time of your organization. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven 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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I mentioned earlier that my trails of history were going towards Howard Goss and the assemblies of God early in my research. And I never really talked

about where that went and why. But it went to the assemblies of God for many reasons, and it went to Howard Goss, because of one single statement by William-Brandham. In fact, if you search the transcripts, you'll only find one. He said, see, the oneness can't go to the assemblies. The assemblies can't go to the oneness. I've talked to some of the best men they've got.

Mr. Goss, Dr. Pope and many, the men who are great men, and I sat down with them, and I said, how can you teach that initial evidence as a scholar? I have studied William-Brandham's Trail of History, and studied the parts that aren't documented by the cult historians, and there's a lot of gray areas whenever you consider the organization that he was working with prior to what became the cult following of William-Brandham. During the years that he was working with his mentor, Roy Davis, the second-in-command of the clan, the man who baptized him or daint him into the ministry. This was not a good man. I'll just say it like that, and you can go to

one of my books and you can get the history on him. Whenever I began to realize that they were establishing a new Pentecostal organization, which defies all of the histories that have been written by the Brandham cult historians, and even those afterwards, because Brandham himself is not honest in his later years, he says that he was a Baptist minister, not a Pentecostal minister.

But as we have proven- on the shadow of a doubt, even the church even advertised itself as a Pentecostal church. They were setting up a Pentecost organization. William Brannum was working with Davis as a bishop in the organization, and they were trying to embed themselves in Pentecostalism.

I have my reasons as to my opinion as to why I think that is, but needless to say, Davis was on his own agenda. He was wanting to create what would later become the second or the third wave of the Ku Klux clan.

Brannum, I don't know if he was part of that agenda or not, but he's definitely working with the guys that were in that agenda, and part of that agenda for Davis apparently was Pentecostalism.

He goes up into Indiana where the state is highly desegregated. We had GT Haywood, who is this black Pentecostal leader, world-renowned black Pentecostal leader. As they're setting up this organization, there's a period of time which Davis just disappears.

My research, I wanted to know why did he disappear and where did he go. I had traced his trail to other key figures in Pentecostalism. There were leaders of Pentecostalism from Cincinnati who were coming down to Brannum's church, and Davis was affiliated loosely at that time.

There were Pentecostal leaders who Davis was going to, it's fully documented the trail of history in the newspapers, just reading through the advertisements of the churches. But then Davis disappears, and where did he go?

There was one single Cincinnati advertisement or newspaper article that described it, and I don't know yet why Cincinnati. I'm thinking Davis probably had some sort of a Pentecostal presence there, but I can't find it, and unfortunately a lot of the history has just simply been erased.

But in this one newspaper article, it talks about Roy Davis being extradited from Jefferson ville, Indiana, who are Louisville, Kentucky, to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and it mentions that he was facing extradition charges because of an automobile that Miss Kate B. Gay held the mortgage.

So basically Davis is under criminal charges of Grand Theft Auto, and he gets rushed down to Hot Springs, and there's not much in the article other than the fact that he's talking about being in some sort of a revival down in Hot Springs, and he says, if I go back, I believe I'll be ambushed, and I might even die, instead it would be investigation of a murder case.

So if you understand what Davis is talking about, he's talking about something far more than Pentecostalism, but at the same time, his time in Hot Springs, Arkansas, would have been for his Pentecostal denomination.

And what was the Pentecostal denomination in Hot Springs, Arkansas? It was the assemblies of God. So I have always wanted to find more about that particular revival that led to his extradition, because he actually did go to prison after this.

So this was a significant thing that happened, whatever happened. But I've wanted to find out why Hot Springs, what was going on there? Was it a clan operation? Was Howard Goss in the clan?

I don't know. Was he simply there because of the Pentecostal presence? I don't know that either. There's not much to go on. But I do know that Davis was there, and that's really what led me to this.

So I've talked about what I want to know. Now let's talk about what I do know. I do know that the assemblies of God is basically the center of gravity for the Pentecostal faith during the mid-20th century.

There were many other Pentecostal dominations, yes, and they eventually started to merge and form the United Pentecostal Church Inc. But the assemblies was basically, I don't know how you look at it, is basically that, like I said, the center of gravity.

If you were a Pentecostal minister and you were connected to the assemblies, you had access to pulpits, you had access to mission pipelines, likely you had access to funding. You had basically a canned audience ready to listen to you, and they would have these revival circuits.

So you could get into the revival circuit, and you're basically just going from church to church to church, offering to offering to offering. That's how this worked back in this era. I can't say why Davis was in hot springs, where he stole the car and disappeared, and Brannum eventually took over his church.

What I can say is that if he was in hot springs, it placed him right in the heart of the assemblies of God. So whether he went on purpose to connect to the assemblies or whether he just went on to hold a revival in a field somewhere, chances are he was going to meet an assemblies of God person, which may have connected him to God.

And he may have already been connected to God. So I don't know if God was in the clan, and Davis was building a new clan, then we had an immediate partnership. So I don't know that question, but what I do know is that the partnership did seem to form over time.

Brannum became deeply embedded into the assemblies of God. If you go beyond Brannum and think New Apostolic Reformation, even Brannum's campaign manager who founded Christ for the nation's Gordon Lindsay became an assemblies of God minister.

John G. Lake, as I've mentioned before, he was touring for the assemblies of God. You had many highly respected Pentecostal leaders who were in the Assemblies. So this was it. This was where you wanted to be.

Branum entered into that somehow and he became widely known and widely popular through the Assemblies in so much that there was an instance when the Assemblies of God rejected Branum and the latter rainfaith.

A good way to think of this is the Assemblies of God wasn't Branum's denomination or Branum's home, but it was the platform environment that he benefited from and later reacted against, which is another funny story for another day.

But the Assemblies of God leaders basically treated Branum at first as though he was the cash cow. Branum could come into a revival, thousands of people would come, they would seek healing. You had the showmanship angle, which I've talked about before, Branum would come in and part of the stage act was this little David Walker child who could levitate on stage and attract all of the crowd seeking to find a magician, I guess.

You had this kind of thing that was happening in the Revivals. The Assemblies of God was just a platform. It wasn't that they even really accepted Branum or Branumism, but Branum was entertaining and he was in this Revival circuit.

So once Branum's entered into the circuit, that's where this turns into a mess and it oddly resembles the way that the Apostolic networks work within the new Apostolic Reformation. Assemblies of God didn't accept Branumism, in fact they later rejected him, which I'll talk about in a minute.

But as part of this Revival circuit, Branum is influencing congregations. Much like in the New Apostolic Reformation, you have always Apostolic networks, some of whom would say we are fully against the New Apostolic Reformation and yet they let leaders who have been influenced by or are even in the New Apostolic Reformation in their Revival Circuits.

So your congregations are getting this cross-pollination, whether they like it or not. That was happening within the Assemblies. So as Branum enters into the Revival Circuits and he's going from church to church and he's spreading his weird esoteric nonsense, there were other ministers that were picking this up and they started preaching it.

And then eventually when the latter reign Revival broke out in North Battle for Saskatchewan, this influx of all of these latter reign affected people started coming down into the United States from Canada, spread throughout the United States their attending Assemblies of God churches, Pentecostal, United Pentecostal churches, all of these different flavors of Pentecostalism and their cross-pollinating.

And the end result was... this, the doctrine became so destructive from the cross-pollination that the assemblies of God themselves could no longer put up with it. They were watching ministers without any qualifications, with many of which did not even have doctrinal training or even understand doctrine of the Bible, who could become a minister or a leader or an evangelist simply by having hands laid upon their shoulders and praying for them.

And the way it worked in Latter-Rain, if this happened, if you were prayed for, will God was going to speak through your mouth and we're going to get a new revelation? And it doesn't matter if you don't know the old revelation of the Bible, the new one, the spoken word, the ramah.

This is a new thing, and it's more powerful than the Bible anyway. Well, the similes of God just said, no, we're not going to do this. You guys are destructive, and in the 23rd General Council that was held in Seattle, Washington from September 9th through 14th, 1949, the assemblies of God just fully rejected Latter-Rain.

And they said that we, as the assemblies of God, will not put up with the quote-unquote new order of Latter-Rain. And we recognize that yes, there's a hunger for this kind of thing, but we disapprove of these extreme teachings and practices, which being unfounded scripturally serve only to break fellowship of like precious faith and to sin confusion and division among members of the body of Christ.

And that's verbatim. I'm reading this resolution that was passed. So Brannemism came in, started cross-pollinating, other ministers started cross-pollinating. This mess was happening in this particular apostolic network, broadness to today, now the new apostolic reformation.

It's built upon all of these similar apostolic networks. These similes of God just being one of them. And I've talked to assemblies of God ministers, or not ministers, but people who are affiliated with these similes of God.

And they said, we reject the new apostolic reformation. We don't even like it. I'm scratching my head thinking, do you not know you're in a network? But that's how this works. It's so insidious because they're all kind of connected and they don't even know it themselves because number one, they're erasing their history.

Number two, they're not transparent if they know their history. And number three, it's just all connected and there's no gatekeeper that keeps the evil out. But there's nothing that says, we're not going to let you come preach in our church because you might preach that heresy from the new apostolic reformation.

Well back in this day, we're not going to stop William Brannum from coming because that's not how we work. That's not how we operate. He's in our revival circuit. And so they did until it became a problem.

But unfortunately, the problem was too late. Once this resolution was passed, this caused such a split in the assemblies of God that it's very surprising that the assemblies of God actually survived the aftermath of this.

It drove a wedge right down through the middle of the assemblies of God. And what happened was there were other Pentecostal organizations that had merged into the assemblies of God to form the assemblies of God.

One of them, one of the largest, was the independent assemblies of God. And they just decided we're going to break away because we want to side with Brannum in the latter reign side of the split.

So you had, on the assembly side, those who rejected latter reign, who said, this nonsense that's being taught is destructive and it's causing divisions in the church. Then you had the other side that said, we want the divisions in the church.

Literally, they wanted the divisions and they created it. So they broke away and the independent assemblies of God was formed. It was formed by A.W. Rasmussen, who was one of William Brannum. I think Brannum called him his bosom friend.

And working closely with Rasmussen was Joseph Mats and Bozay. They were not the only leaders, but they were significant leaders in the independent assemblies of God. This was the organization, if you have studied the history in our revival history series.

This is the organization and the men who would later ordain Jim Jones into the faith and launch Jim Jones in his ministry. So you had that wide of a split. You had people saying, if you do this, it's dangerous and you'll cause a division and you had the other side that said, we want a division and we're going to invite the danger.

We're going to invite Jim Jones into our fold and make him a leader in the sect. That's how bad this was. So the split happened and then beyond that, it got a little bit dirty.

The water was muddy. I'll say it like that. You had all of these different assemblies of God churches, many of whom had been recognized for years as an assemblies of God church and then suddenly decided to flip to the independent assemblies but not all of them changed the name of their church on the door.

So you had people who were attending, who thought they were attending a assemblies of God church but instead they were attending the independent assemblies of God. You had others who did change the name and they denounced it.

But the water was so dirty that people did not recognize whether or not they were part of the split and some of them I think just were not even fully aware that the split happened.

So the end result of this because of all of these apostolic... networks. You had all of these different churches who were cross-pollinating, you had these ministers in the revival circuits going around from church to church to church, and some of these ministers might go to an independent assemblies of God church, not preaching the Latter-Rain doctrine so that they could stay sanctioned, but they're preaching to an I-A-O-G church to later go to an A-O-G church, and the doctrines were still cross-pollinating.

And so some of the people in the churches didn't really understand the difference. And I've actually talked to people who were in those churches, and they said, we had no idea. We were independent assemblies of God.

We thought we were A-O-G. Then on the other hand, you had A-O-G churches who were fully adopting the Latter-Rain doctrine and brannemism. And you have to ask the question, were they really an assemblies of God church, or were they simply a church that didn't rebrand their organization after the split?

I've come to the conclusion that there were certainly assemblies of God churches that stayed with brannemism even after the resolution was passed. And I know this because Indiana and the assemblies of God became a rogue state.

And they just fully accepted brannem because there were ranking members of the assemblies of God who were brannemites. And they said, we're going to sit with brannem, but we're still an assemblies of God church.

And so there's this weird fight that was happening. Spearheading the fight for brannem against the assemblies was the assemblies of God first district superintendent, Roy H. Weed. So he was part of the assemblies of God in Indiana.

But as a rogue state, Roy Weed said, we want brannemism. We want the laterane version of, you know, brannem's message. And we still want to be assemblies of God. Now he had such clout in Indiana, he was one of the most popular pastors in the state that he was able to pull this off.

And he even wrote articles that was defending brannem in some of the brannem publications. Interestingly, his son Doug Weed was an advisor for two American presidents and was a special assistant to George H. W. Bush.

So this was a person who had both political clout who had, you know, as one of the most popular assemblies of God pastors in the state of Indiana, he had some pull and he was able to successfully, to some extent, defend brannem before the assemblies.

And what happened was he and others like him were able to push back and let brannem continue attending services, teaching his, his brannem specific flavor of Christian identity, of politics, of all of this weird, weird mixture that brannem had.

in assemblies of God churches for many years until they finally just sanctioned Brandham altogether and said, you can't come back. But he was Roy Weed was one of the people who was able to push this back. So there was a period of time in which the assemblies of God was accepting of Brandham. Then they split in half because of Brandham and later reign specifically. Then there was this period of limbo and eventually they just finally walked away from him. So as I said at the beginning, it's not that you can find one smoking gun that is an

issue and it's not even that this that I'm doing today is pointing fingers at the assemblies of God for the mess that we see today. That's not the case. The assemblies of God have somewhat reformed over time even though they're not quite transparent on their history page. If you understand that this is just one of the networks that is connected together in this framework of the Apostolic Networks forming the new Apostolic Reformation, now you can kind of see why and how it works the way that it does. I know that people are asking me, will you please examine the assemblies of God because there are ministers like

what's a good example, Bethel. There are good examples like Bill Johnson who come from generations of assemblies of God churches. Does that mean that assemblies of God is the problem? Absolutely not. It just means that they're part of this network and so they have been influenced in the same way that every congregation who heard any of this mess was influenced. That's how the networks work. You have these revival circuits and because there are no real gate keepers on doctrine, you can have these doctrines creep into the church that they sound good. They're entertaining but they're not quite biblical and I think

that's really the issue here. There were churches that allowed this in and the assemblies of God did put their hands up and say, this is destructive, get this letter rain out, but because there was no sense of urgency to stop the false doctrine before it affected the congregations, it was so widespread that the assemblies of God just simply could not contain it. It had, it was barreling down the tracks and there was no way to stop it once it got started.

Well, that's really what's happening today with the new apostolic reformation. How do you stop this thing? But now picture what I've described with the assemblies, picture it as one single node in this network of apostolic, this framework of apostolic networks. In that one node you have this issue, but each other node has similar issues and each one has became much like the assemblies of God with letter rain. How do you stop this? It's just too big of a mess where it is concerning for me if I were to...

Try to say that assemblies could be part of a smoking gun. It could never be the full gun. I would go back, like I said, the interesting part for me was Charles Vox Parham. I would actually go back there.

Assemblies of God does trace their doctrinal lineage through Parham, and Parham is one of the most insidious figures. If you understand what he was doing and why, he goes to two very, very destructive cults before forming his own cult in Kansas.

He goes to John Alexander Dowey, which I've mentioned. He goes to Frank Parham, which I've mentioned in other podcasts. And these are not good men that he's modeling his original apostolic faith mission for.

These are people who are cult leaders who have complete authoritarian control over their congregations, their converts to their faith. Was Parham looking for this type of authoritarian control? I know that there are historians who would argue, no, Parham was not like this.

But then my question is, well, why did he go to those places and why was he so entertained by that? And then take it a step further, why did he try to set up and establish a Parhamite faith inside of Zion City to take control of that organization?

There's only one reason why you would do this, the power, the money. You're going after the thing that was created by authoritarian control. He wanted this. He was bleeding to get this. He was just part of the same strategy. I hate to say it.

But because of this, now you have, as I mentioned, the deliverance thing, he's trying to create something new while he's in Zion City that it's bigger than what John Alexander Dowey did, because he's trying to take over that organization, that Zion City compound.

So as he's trying to do this, he's bringing in this weird deliverance thing that is actually killing people. And he's creating this in such a way that people think it is new. It is exciting. This is the next thing. This is the new revival that's coming.

These are the people that you can trace their doctrinal lineage into the assemblies of God. You can trace that all the way through Gordon Lindsay, who held these deliverance seminars with William Brannum. Gordon Lindsay, also a assemblies of God minister, you can trace that trail of doctrine. And that's really where this gets a little bit sketchy, because there are parts of the doctrine that you can clearly say, I read the Bible, and this actually matches. But there are other parts that you're scratching your head thinking, I don't know that there were any apostles that snapped the bone.

of their people whenever they had a crooked body. You just don't see this man, but that's what they were teaching and it was all to try to take over Dauy's compound. So if I were to look at this, like I said, as part of a smoking gun, I would say, if you choose par on as your doctrinal foundation, you're choosing someone, number one, who has crimes that are unmentionable.

Even the newspapers were not willing to mention what his crimes with the children were. That's how bad they were. Teaching doctrines that were killing people. Teaching deliverance to such extremes that I hate to say it, but even the witch doctors seem to be safer than what he was doing in Zion City.

It was pretty bad, right? And he's training other people to do this. That's part of the original apostolic faith. As he did train Seymour, and yes, Seymour did have the revival, but you can't really connect Seymour in this lineage on your history because there is documented evidence of a huge rift between Drosvox Parham and William Joseph Seymour.

Some of it is over the racial issue. If you read through what Parham says about the Azusa Street revival, he said, something through the effect, and I'd have to go back and look his exact words, but the blacks and whites were mingling like hogs or something like this.

It's offensive what he said. And that's the organization that's struggling with racism. They're tracing it back to Parham, who is allegedly in the clan, according to some historians, who's saying things like this, the blacks and whites are mingling.

That's your heritage. I have to question whether you should even put that on your page. If you're going to scrub all of the histories, you should probably scrub that part too. So anyway, this is, again, this is not to say that anything is bad about the assemblies of God today, who knows they've reformed.

They have tried repeatedly to reform over the racist issue, maybe they have, but it has been a problem for them. And I can truly say that you read through this history that's on the front page of their website, and there are some huge questions that are raised.

I'll just say it like that. So 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 Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.