How Destructive Cults Begin- The Slow Drift from Sincerity to Control

Music Hello! Welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, author of the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician.

John is good to be back and to talk about the dynamics of a cult, which really sums up every episode we do, but today specifically we're getting into the gradual change into a cult, because not many people really think about this.

I remember, I've mentioned this a few times on the podcast. There's a couple of really good examples of how people can react to very gradual change, and one of the changes that I did as a joke had a friend that I worked with in his office.

He had his back to the wall and he had his desk where when you walked into his room, you would first see his desk and then you would see him. Well, a friend of mine and I, we would stay late and we'd come into his office after he left, and we would push his desk about one millimeter closer to the wall, every single day for weeks and weeks and weeks and months.

And towards the end of our time doing this, he finally said, John, I'm going on a diet. I just feel like the walls are closing in on me, and I'm going to lose weight. So if this man is thankful to me, he's a lot healthier today than he was back then.

But anyway, you can see if something changes really gradually, you don't really notice it. One of the exercises I did whenever I left the brand I'm called, and I know this is taking it so far to extremes, I'm not recommending that anybody do this, but I, for myself, wanted to do this.

There was a, there was a change in leadership at one of the churches that I went to. And I wanted to see which direction the church was headed. So after the leaders left, the new leaders came in, they started preaching, and I purposefully paid close attention to a sermon, and then I would purposefully tune out the next five, and then purposefully pay close attention to the sixth and so on and so on.

And when I did this, I was watching drastic changes, not gradual changes. Had I sat and listened to every single one and paid close attention, I would have not noticed the gradual change because many people didn't.

But I began to notice it, and... Ironically, it was shifting its way towards the cult that we had left, the divine healing aspects. They were, I'm not going to go into great details, but there were some things they were doing that really was just wrong and had I not done this exercise of just paying partial attention, I probably would not have caught it.

But I did, I caught it, and what it was an example of is how gradual change can be adopted by people and they'll just readily accept it because they're not noticing the shift that is happening.

Well, that's the same way it works with a cult. Not all cults openly, you know, Jim Jones and people's temple, he would not have openly said, hey, join me, we're going to go to South America and you might not survive.

He would have not had a single person to join him. But gradually over time, they become assimilated, they adopt a doctrine, they bring in all of the fear tactics, the strategies, the God complex, the authoritarian control, all of these things come into the people gradually and what happens is just, it hijacks their lives.

So I'm a little bit excited to get into this one if you can't tell. There's so much to talk about, but anyway, we'll get into the dynamics of a cult. Once again, it's great to be back and to do another episode with you and we ran out of time last time, but I want to continue on, you know, what we started on our discussion of how to start a cult or how cults begin and that started out with the foundation of the character himself, you know, there has to be a leader when you have a cult, there has

to be a leader somewhere and if it's a cult, it's going to be a human being. So today we're going to continue that discussion and it's not about personalities as much as is about the patterns that we see, you know, in these cults and when people talk about them, you know, they often focus on the extreme outcomes, but usually what gets missed is just the ordinary and gradual process that's happening here as cults are beginning to form.

You know, cult leaders, they don't typically, typically start out with trying to deceive people. In fact, you know, most of them start out very sincere, sincere minded and wanting to help people and believing they're doing a good thing.

But more often they get caught up in their own energies and their charisma and their sense of calling until they begin to believe, you know, these narratives. You know, at that point, the discernment becomes very difficult because everything then passes through the lens of what the leader is saying or the message that they're delivering or the system that they built, scripture and the accountability of the leader and even Christ himself is slowly eroded and pushed aside.

It's not all at once, but piece by piece and that's how it happens very slowly over time. Authority, you know, then shifts inward and the leader begins to frame his ministry. You know, it's totally something extraordinary out of, you know, totally unique, something that can't, you know, be questioned, you know, without you having the spiritual consequences of your...

Oh, and what follows as a pattern that we see repeated again and again, you know, as leaders come and go, the leader becomes exceptional, you know, in their own mind. They become uniquely called and and they're opposed by the outside world.

They're misunderstood accountability, as we've seen as no longer correcting the ministry. It's just persecution. If anybody disagrees with it, it's not because they are disagreeing over valid circumstances. They're actually rebelling against what God is doing.

So over time, that leader's identity becomes fused, you know, with his calling. So that when you question the work that he's doing, it's like an attack on the very person. And alongside that becomes a deep need for significance.

You know, the need to be central, to be irreplaceable and religion becomes that place. You know what the worth is proven followers become the source of the validation of it because they're repeating the miracles and the signs and the wonders that happen.

And that's proof that God is at work and evidence to them that everything's got to be right about this. You know, from there, we move into something more powerful today and it's called the story.

You know, stories are very powerful in their own right. You know, people love to hear a story. But the stories that come from these leaders of future cults, they don't start with doctrine. They start out with biography and the way the leader frames that story of his birth as youth is calling becomes the foundation of his authority later on.

And once that story becomes embedded and accepted, everything else starts falling into place around this man. And that's what we're going to walk through today, you know, we're not sensationalizing things, but we're understanding how these systems form and why they need to hold people so tightly and why they do hold people tightly to it.

And while they're so difficult question, you know, once they're firmly in place. And the key point that I'll stress right here is that firmly in place, when you're in one of these religious movements, it feels like it's spiritual, it feels like it's godly, it doesn't feel extreme.

But what happens is because over time, it has gradually got to this place. You're building upon doctrines that sometimes they're extra biblical, sometimes they're anti-biblical. And each one of them is a puzzle piece that builds this puzzle that the leader is trying to paint in your head.

Well, once you have all of these building blocks in place, it feels right, it feels spiritual. And you don't recognize how extreme it can be unless you're gradually watching it change to the extreme.

So firmly in place doesn't always mean that it's good. It just simply means that it has been adopted as called doctrine. And you really have to think through those doctrines critically to examine whether something should be firmly in place.

Not everything should. As well, said, John, you're right on point. You know, the sad part is cult leaders just get caught up in their own energy and charisma and self promotion. They believe the deception themselves eventually it becomes part of their identity. Really, they can no longer discern what is truth, what is correct, or not, because everything they do has to come through the lenses of their message or their belief system.

And that's why the Bible can be changed and it can be altered, discarded, altogether because they have found some way to create a channel that draws people into it and just keeps that deception going. To go along with it, the fact that they throughout the authority of themselves, whether it's the Bible or Christ himself, and then they turn inward and they throw out the red herring of their ministries, that it's being an extraordinary thing happening in this day to their followers. They get the followers turning their attention to this ministry and turning their eyes off of Christ and then they get right straight

in the way of Christ while they're promoting their ministries. They convince their followers of the phenomenon occurring in their ministries and that points to themselves and it leads others to believe in the uniqueness of their ministry. That it's a one of a kind that no one else has anything like it. And if they do see other ministers coming along and doing some of the same things, they just call it a carnal comparison or a carnal impersonation of what I've got. That's what we've heard William Brantam say a lot about ministers that did a lot of the same things he did. They don't like competition. They try to downplay others

or point to others imperfections and mistakes and they just ignore their own at the same time. Everything they do, from that point on, is pointing to themselves as some great one to come. Once they've reached a certain place and feel like they've got the foundation set, then everything points back to themselves. And then they start looking for confirmation bias in everything that they do. That's very explicitly shown in the ministry of William Brantam. And a lot of them has to do around just simple photographs. They were made to be something supernatural when they were either just floodlights, calling floodlights in the Houston

stadium, you know, pillars of fire or even a defective camera. You know, we're light got onto the film and then calling that the pillar fire because it appeared amber. But you know, Paragreen debunked that one himself. With any picture, people bring me, I say light got in your camera. And brother Fred Sothman had a Polaroid camera that had a flaw and every picture he took had it that way. And he would show it was the pillar of fire. And I think I've told you people the story about the house up here. They took some for brother Ells and Mainz and brother

Strayhan, which is related to Billy Wiggins. And they were saying, look at that. The pillar of fire is old brother Brown's swimming pool. And I'm working on the Dan hanging some curtains my mother made. And I told them I said, brothers, you know, there's a way to find out But that's a pillar of fire and not.

And as I said, well, that lawyer across the street, I said, he's a falsehold on everything you've done zoning and all. I said, take a picture of his house. It's the pillar of fire zone in.

Well, brother, the sophomore didn't want to take that picture. So I asked brother, Maine, to the film belong to in that Polaroid camera. He says, mine. I said, what do you want a picture of?

He said, we've only got one left. But I want to pick to that house. So they went outside, and I kept hanging the curtains. But while they came back inside, and nobody said word about that picture.

But I noticed him by the soft-boned shirt pocket. That picture was sticking in the pocket.

I was hanging that big-long curtain up there. There's been out a two-second material, I called it. And I was up on a ladder, and I asked brother, Fred, if he'd take a broom and hold his rod up here, or will I put a screw in it.

And when he came over and did that, I reached down and took the picture of his pocket.

And I said, well, look at there. There's a pillar of fire over that long years out. You know, the sad part is, it really comes down to the way that we were wired. I'll never forget, I took a job at an executive level in this IT company, and I'm so embarrassed when I think back to it, but I believe this brand-of-stuff hookline and sinker.

And I was proud to talk about it. And this guy came into my office who was very much a Christian. He wasn't a cult Christian. And we got to talking about Jesus and God.

And I wanted to inject, well, did you know there's a profit. And so I started talking about it. And I went straight to that. I went straight to, did you know that there were these strange lights that followed him around?

And I'll never forget. I showed him, if you're watching the YouTube version of this podcast, you saw one of the photographs. But there's this photograph where obviously the camera was just destroyed whenever they took the picture.

And it was letting the light flood in. He looked at it and he said, man, that looks like that was a pretty bad camera. And he said that before I was trying to tell him that that's, I don't know, the pillar of fire or God or whatever it was, he said it before I was able to say that.

So it's like, oh no, I can't talk about this because he thinks it's a destructive camera. It's a defective camera. And the funny part of it is, that's really what it ended up to be.

I had not heard Perry Green say this at that time. Years later, I'm doing my research and I came across that audio clip. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe. And there were people that knew Perry Green was one of the key figures in the message.

The date on that sermon was long after everybody believed this nonsense. And I'm fairly certain I heard him talk about the lights and the pillars of fire and all this. But there comes a point whenever you're confronted with the obvious knowledge of truth, you knew things were wrong and you're saying them anyway, where he got pushed into a corner apparently and he must have said this. That's the only reason I can think he did this.

But it all comes down to this fact. He's not the only one that knew this. And Fred Sothman, I've got video, I won't play him now, but I get clips of him talking about how William Brannum was God in the flesh. Well, he's part of the one who's propagating all of the propaganda about William Brannum with his fake camera. And yet he's the one who's saying he's God in the flesh and people are believing it. I just don't understand how people can do this. They really have to have a severed conscience to be able to do this. So what this leads into is exceptionalism

you know of the ministry without accountability at all. Future cult leaders almost always possess that deep conviction that their ministries are fundamentally different from anybody else's. They have a uniquely perceptive ministry. They are uniquely called. They're all uniquely misunderstood and they're all opposed in the same way. It's not a healthy confidence to have though, researchers shown that's not a very healthy confidence. It's called, they gave it a term, you know, psychologists give that a term called ontological exceptionalism. And that's just the belief that now you're outside the ordinary rules of conduct, you know, say a ministry.

They just don't apply anymore to you. You know, cult leaders, once they get on that platform, they start to accept admiration from their followers, but they don't accept pure correction. They also exert authority over everything saying that they've got the truth, but it's not a mutual submission to others. They also demand loyalty to their group, but then they don't offer transparency of what's happening behind the scenes. So the result of all that is accountability is reframed when they're trying to be held accountable by others. That's refrained as persecution.

They believe they're being persecuted because somebody's trying to hold them accountable. And the correction of their ministry becomes attacking God's anointed. But another step down this path to become a cult leader is called identity fusion.

So this is another thing that gets part of their makeup or their persona is their identity is fused with their calling. The leaders identity becomes inseparable from the calling. If you begin to question the calling that they were called of God to be the prophet of the age or called of God to manifest Christ or be a manifested son or whatever you might want to say, you're threatening their self. You're threatening their ego. And then your disagreement becomes you're actually conducting warfare against them. You know, if you Look at Jim Jones' ministry.

He felt like the government was conducting warfare against him, and the only option was the way out they chose. You look at David Kuresh and his ministry. Well, when the government came calling to take them on account of the abuses that were happening in their group, it was a persecution, and they arm themselves and fought to the end.

It was an attack, and it became warfare. Exactly, and the problem is so widespread. I keep hearing the phrase touch-knock-God's-anointed, and I look back, we heard the same exact thing in the Brandham call, but it has grown so far, so many levels beyond this, because now they've got, in the New Apostolic Reformation, they've got this idea of spiritual warfare, and if somebody, if somebody in leadership is a predator, suddenly, whenever they get exposed, they say, we were under spiritual warfare.

Touch-knock-God's-anointed, I'm God's-anointed. You can't touch me. And it really stems from that same thing. They have built this mythology. They've built the mythology around themselves, so they have this, I don't know, this barrier, the shield that they're untouchable, and yet at the same time, they're knowingly teaching things that are false, and I just, I really have a problem with this.

Anytime you attack the identity of the person, you're attacking their very self, but in a healthy ministry, when you have identity fusion going on, that's equal to your calling, and you're a Christian. Then you will say things like, I serve Christ, and my identity is only in Him, not in myself, not in who I am.

In a cult-forming leadership, though, you have your identity, is your calling. And when the calling is questioned, the self is threatened. Therefore, when this warfare happens, it produces defensiveness of the critics, it is masked for zeal for the Lord.

Anger that you have toward those critics is masked as righteous indignation. Control over the groups of people is masked as protection of the people. You know, Jim Jones said this many times, I brought you out here to Guyana to protect you, to protect you from all the forces against us.

There's also in these cult leaders, in their very makeup and their characteristics, and as they're developing their persona, is the exhibit the intense need to be needed. And also, the intense need to be central to everything.

So you'll find that to be true in these groups. The leader has to be, he has a desire to be needed. That's first central and foremost, he has to be needed. And then he has to be central to everything.

This happened in Branham's ministry because he had a strong desire to have friends and always had an intense need for friends. And that can be healthy. you want to control them for your benefit and your ex-altation.

But he said this in experiences in 1947, he admitted he said at one time I didn't have many friends because I was considered amongst the people of Sissy. He said, but since I've come out from God, for found God's people, I've had millions of friends.

In 1951, he stated in a sermon, Principles of Divine Healing. When I was a little lad, I didn't have too many friends, but I always loved people. I wanted friends by now trying to serve God and do what I know to do, tonight I guess I have between six and eight million friends around the world.

Well, I wasn't too many years, maybe 12 years after that, after his so-called friends realized what he was preaching was off the word and he started promoting himself. And some of the characters he was hanging around, he lost a lot of this.

And then it became anger and a resentment. And he preached the sermon called indictment in 1963 where he indicted the whole generation for rejecting his message. So the other need they have is to be very central.

So for him to indict the whole generation, all the denominations, everyone that's not following his message, that's a pretty bold statement. And that shows he had a deep need to be central. If he wasn't needed and wasn't central, he condemned everybody else.

There's no doubt that William Brown time and time again told the people that his ministry was the only one to this age and there was only one prophet to every age. He was central to all that God was doing in this world even at the time.

His ministry even had a greater amount of miracles than Christ. He was more successful than Christ was. Another need they have is that their ministry is irreplaceable. So irreplaceable. It goes without saying William Brown and believed he was indispensable to the bride of Christ.

Without his ministry, the bride couldn't get ready, couldn't get dressed for the rapture. So the need often co-exist with these other factors here that he sees in his life. This happens with every leader that has come up.

Early rejection. He often talked about how he was rejected in his town William Brown and did because of his family business of making whiskey. There's also some unresolved shame that could be going on there.

There's chronic insecurity and that produced a lot of anxiety in these men. There's also unprocessed trauma perhaps in their childhood. William Brown made a statement in an uncertain sound in 1955. He said, I was telling the wife some time ago, I may have told her before.

You know my daddy's background, my family's background. I love my daddy. He's going on. He died in my arms praying but he drank. All my family drank. They done great, harmful things yet disgrace to society.

My brothers drink not because I want them to. I cry for them pray for them everything else. It used to be before God called me. I'd be standing on the street. talking to somebody. I don't count the name. They say, Oh, random. Oh, get away. Somebody else come by. Look for somebody say, get away from him. All right. And they get away. They wouldn't talk to me. So you see what he may have. There's some unresolved shame going on in his life, his insecurity, unprocessed trauma. You know, who knows what the drinking of his family did

to him, as far as traumatizing, you know, that young boy, you know, growing up and listening to the story, the life stories over and over and over again, learning how difficult his life was, it was really, really hard as a child. I can remember sitting and crying, listening to those things. And I whenever he poured his heart out onto the pulpit, I, you know, my heart went there with him, learning that parts of it were untrue was problematic for me. However, there were some parts that were definitely true. He did experience severe trauma. And one

of the things that not many people think about the trauma itself is appealing. So the crowd is listening to it and they're getting involved that it's, you know, it touched me, it certainly touched everybody who listened to it. But often the trauma doesn't get resolved in these types of movement. Instead, it gets spiritualized. So by the nature of the movement, his story was something that became fantastic in the group. And that's why you tell it over and over and over again. As I was studying the newspapers and looking at all of the different people who are doing the same thing, Brannum is doing, they

all have a life story. And they usually all had some sort of a trauma involved with it. Howard Cadel, who brand, one of Brannum's close friends, the head of the Cadel Tabernacle, he had a rags to riches story and how difficult his life was because of his, some ailments that he had. That was very appealing to the crowds because anybody who's suffering, they can, they can connect with this. But when that connection to trauma gets spiritualized, here's the problem. Now, every person who they may not even have anything wrong, they're experiencing to some extent that same trauma that the central

figures have. So as that trauma begins to build up within them, they start to feel the things that pain the central figure, they enjoy the things that the central figure enjoys. And you start to mold and shape your identity around the trauma, and that's really unhealthy. That's well said, John, you know, you're right on point again. And so continuing on, you know, finally, we're coming to the very core of what seems to be the motivating factor, you know, in these men's lives, you know, religion becomes the arena where worth is proven. Christ alone, saying it is finished is just insufficient. Because the

leader still needs to matter. So followers, you know, become to the leader validation sources, you know, they have to have those followers to validate what they're doing. So they're supernatural, there's photos, there's visions, there's prophecies, and everybody's saying that they're all true.

And then to the followers also are mirrors to the leader as they're great men of God. They speak of the great things seen in the ministry and they're really talking about all the fish tales and the fish stories and the squirrel stories and things that go on in the ministry is being great.

And all this becomes proof of divine favor, it becomes proof that God is doing the work that he's in the midst of the people. So these things prove to them that everything is from God.

And there are several more factors that are powerful on why a quote formation happens within the framework of creating the character and this proper stage persona. It's just like an actor in a movie, you know, once they create this persona, as long as the leader stays in that character, it works.

You know, followers overlook the red flags and pop up, they overlook the contradictions that happen. We've seen that. They overlook the injustices that occur because they all assume that it's all the work of God and God has a reason for doing it.

You know, in Brandon's case, when his teaching conflicted with Scripture, the explanation became that Jesus himself did this to thin the crowns out that he spoke very obscurely to the crowd or he spoke things like, you've got to eat, drink my blood and eat my flesh to be a part of this group.

And that calls many people to leave him. And that's exactly in this case when the leaders of speaking and people are leaving, they just attribute it to the God who's trying to thin the crowns out.

You know, evidently, when in Brandon's case, he knew his preaching was not matching up with the Word and his followers were more likely to question his teaching with the Bible, but he fixed that issue by saying, Jesus said things to throw the people off the trail.

Like he did when he said, except to eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. So this became the excuse that many used to believe William Brown's ministry had to include things that no one else could understand or compare to Scripture because he had to thin the group down.

It was made to be intentional rather than the fact that he did not want to teach the Scriptures just for what the text said, but it wanted to play Scripture, all the Scriptures within the context of his own ministry.

So what it becomes, the next thing that becomes to form this cult and the way the leader has to start out is he has to have a powerful origin story, how he began or how he was born.

Many of the high control movements, you know, they don't begin with doctrine. They begin with a story about the leader's birth, his youth, his calling into ministry. And we see that happening in William Brown's life because he spoke about his life story many times.

He would come out and demonstrate a gift of divine healing, talk about the angel coming, he began with his birth, even having visions from 18 months old, or even having the light come in over his crib when he was born.

Now these narratives They're really not incidental, they're just very strategic. They function to establish a pre-authorized trust in the people, or they're immune from critique among others because, look, God called me in this way.

And it eventually leads to leadership before the doctrinal claims are ever tested, so they already become empowered by the people. Williams-Random's mystery of healing became empowered by the people long before he ever taught serpent seed, long before he ever taught these other doctrines that discounted the deity of Christ and so forth.

He started out with the life story and the gift of healing and all that to draw the crowds before he ever got to the point about his doctrine. And he also said that was very similar to what Jesus did because when he started being rejected, he said, Jesus came out with divine healing, and then when he became out with his doctrine, the people left him.

So in that way, he put himself right beside Christ as a ministry just like Christ. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation?

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

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

I remember whenever I was in the movement, I would sometimes encounter people that would say things very cautiously, very calmly, very carefully. They would say things like, did you know that you're in something that is teaching heresy?

And I was so greatly offended by it, even though looking back, they were saying it in a very kind way and they were saying it very accurately, I was offended by it because I believed the mythology that they were teaching.

I had believed it hook line and sinker. What I did not recognize was just how heretical it was because I did not realize that what it was doing was displacing the gospel and the focus was on the human, not on the gospel.

But more to the point, the human was being empowered far beyond what Jesus was. It really did not hit me until I was deep in my research. And I started looking at the number of times that William Brannum would say things like, that had been done in my ministry, then Jesus did when he walked on the face of the earth.

I read that, and I like scratch my head. I read it again. I can't believe that he just said that. I had heard him say that, but I had somehow blocked it. I had tuned it out. After I left, and I started to wake up, it wasn't just one time. He was saying it multiple times, and he wasn't the only one in the movement that was saying that. All of these people who were joining in, you can look at the photographs of the people in Voice of Healing magazine, different places.

All of these people are joining in, thinking, this movement is growing like this freight train barreling down the tracks. Nobody can stop it, and it has become greater than Jesus. That was the theme that was flowing through this, and my gosh, how heretical is this? You claim that you're in Christianity, and you claim what you have is better than what Jesus brought. How can that even be similar to Christianity? It comes down to the fact that what they were pushing was the mythology itself. The mythology had become in their minds greater than Jesus, and they would always go back

to that phrase, greater works shall you do, and they would say, this empowers us to believe that we're greater than Jesus. But no, you can't do this and not go into heresy. There's no way that you can do that. As I'm listening to this, and as I'm studying, and researching, and coming to realize, what it had done was it had distracted us from Christianity, and so many people got so caught up in the signs and wonders and miracles that they really didn't care about just even the basic core concepts of Christianity. In fact, Brannum and some of the others would say, we need to move

beyond this. How can I teach you algebra when you don't know your ABCs? He would say things like this. That's the weight that hit me when I began to realize that when he said that, how can I teach them algebra before they know their ABCs? What he's really trying to say, what he's openly saying is that if you're a Christian and you believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is elementary level ABCs to what we have. In other words, we have something better than the gospel of Jesus Christ, and for me, I just could not live in the mythology, so I got my family out. This pattern appears

repeatedly in other movements. Charles Tay's Russell, for instance, Joseph Smith, William Souders, John Alexander Dowey, Jim Jones. Their theologies were all different, and that's what's strange about all them claim to be Christian, but you can't find their theologies matching up.

And really, Christian doctrines should say the same thing over and over again if it's true Bible scripture. Their authority was building strategies, how they built their authority was very similar. So they started out with their birth narratives. It was a defining feature in their movements.

It was more like a retroactive sacredization of their birth, meaning their birth was very sacred to the world. Joseph Smith, you have framed his early life as spiritually unique, which came in divine visitations later on. William Bratum, of course, introduced supernatural signs around his birth, implying his election to become a prophet. John Alexander Dowey portrayed himself as set apart as an Elijah. William Souters also claimed special messianic status through prophetic interpretation of his own origins. And if anybody doesn't know William Souters, you ought to study out about him because him and William Bratum's ministry match pretty

closely when they speak about their beginnings. Jim Jones, he was less a supernatural later. He was less supernatural in the beginning, but he later recast his childhood, compassion and social activism as evidence of his messianic destiny. Charles Russell emphasized that he was intellectual and very precocious spiritually and was questioning his youth and was looking to God for leadership. So all of them have some kind of narrative to go along with their calling. And if a leader is chosen from birth, then opposition becomes resistance to the man, not only to him, but to his very destiny, what he was called to do. The leader's authority

doesn't rest on scripture anymore. It, or on his character, accountability is on the fact that he was called to be who he was. So there's a youth narrative that goes along with that. Of course, all of them are alienated from their peers. They were dissatisfied with the churches. They claim early visions, voices, extraordinary insight to the scriptures. They established the leader. Here's how they established the leader there with other stories. He's misunderstood spiritually. He's morally separate. You know, you can think of the stories where William Bratum said that Angel told him never to drink or smoke or to file his body because he had a work to do

when he got older. Or they become intellectually spiritually superior because they were the ones sharing the voice of God from the youth. They all struggled against the established church of the day. They weren't accepted usually. And they always had questions about what religion was correct. So it was just a confirmation of their vine calling when they can bring out all these stories. And they all were very similar. They're called a ministry. You know, it was a decisive calling. And once they bring that out, the commissioning becomes either commissioning by angels, by visions, heavenly voices, or spiritual encounters. And so in these account, the

authority to do what they do bypasses all Christian institutions because now they're above it, because they've been called of God by angels or visions or voices to do what they're doing. Scriptures subordinated to their personal experiences.

So, that's how they get around this. All of them have claimed those types of significance. And then it establishes unquestioned authority in themselves. And if God is speaking directly to me, then if you question me, you're questioning God.

And so it's very effective once they get to that point. So they built their whole foundation and now you cannot question me. Now I'm above the scripture, I'm above God, I can even rewrite scriptures.

When we've seen groups rewrite their own scriptures, we've seen Charles Tay's Russell's group rewrite their own scripture. We've seen Joseph Smith's group rewrite their scriptures. But we've also seen men who don't rewrite scripture, but they even speak the spoken word.

And that becomes scripture on tape. Or they misinterpret scripture and say something that doesn't say. And that becomes the new scripture. One of the things that really hit me whenever I began all of this research, we were taught that William Brannum was the only guy.

He was the number one. There were some fakes out there, but they couldn't really do the real thing. Only Brannum had the gift, right? And then I discovered the voice of healing magazine, which William Brannum himself started in Gordon Lindsay eventually took over it and it grew until it finally became Christ for the nations.

As I'm reading through some of those articles, I started noticing all these patterns and they're crazy, man. You've got all of these people who claim that they had some kind of supernatural birth or unusual childhood.

That's one of the other, sometimes both. And they were claiming angelic visitation, some of them demon, some of them. I went to heaven for a few hours and here's what it looks like. And folks, I went to heaven, step right up and listen to me.

You've got, it becomes like a carnival. You've got all these people who are telling these fantastic stories. And suddenly the thought hit me, man. If you're subscribing to this, you're going to think that, oh my gosh, the whole world is having this wonderful supernatural experience.

Why am I not having it? Everybody sees an angel. Everybody sees a demon. Everybody has an unusual childhood, unusual birth. And it wasn't until years later, I began to realize that there was really a strategy behind it.

This was not something that just happened by happenstance, man. These guys specifically chose their stories for their stage acts and then the stage acts went out and they raked in a lot of money.

You can read about how much money some of these people had gained. It was a strategy. So my question for you is, how does the strategy work? It's a three stage strategy here. They've got their birth, their youth, and their calling.

It's powerful for several reasons here because it creates, when they project these stories out to their audiences. And you imagine the life story, when I heard the life story of William Random, you know, you just weep with it.

It creates emotional bonds. Before the doctrinal testing. So long before I ever started really studying deeply into the doctrines of William Brannum I was already into his life story and who he was as a prophet of God and all these experiences and I was weeping along with his life story and emotionally attached to him Follow followers encounter the leaders First as a story not as a system and that emotional identification with them precedes or comes before their critical evaluation. So by the time you can get to where you can critically evaluate things your mind is already in a type of control

It reframes the doubt as Spiritual failure You know if the leader was chosen from birth and commissioned by heaven then doubt is not intellectual anymore It's moral so for you to doubt they're calling it becomes a spiritual failure for you Because why should you doubt you've seen how God called him so already your mind is captured Emotionally and now intellectually you can a longer question and Then that you're very identity collapses into a loyalty to the man and Then to reject his authority is to reject God's plan his prophetic destiny even yours and your his own calling and your own calling to be a child of God

And what these things do it resists Faultsification, you know the narratives they give we're not able to be tested You know you couldn't test what we in Bram was Santa by his life story But they're there are certain newspaper articles that were able to be seen later which contradicted his own life story because The life stories back then when they could relate them without all the research tools we have available today They're based on private revelation reinterpretation of events that happened after the fact So there were no way to be verified but the broader pattern here is the strategy is effective

Across many high-control movements because it replaces Christ a Faith-based in Christ to a biographical faith a present-day Ministry faith in the ministry of today and that's why there are so many different groups that have such similar names Present-truth ministries present-day ministries. I could go right down the line There's all of these ministries that talk about here's what we have now This is our mythology. This is the thing that we have now come listen come listen It's it's better than the church down the street who are just teaching the gospel That's all they have is the gospel and

Really it goes back down to what William Brannum said how can I teach them algebra before they knows their ABCs You are belittling Christians who have just the gospel because it's not good enough for you and my mind always goes back whenever I first heard Heard the gospel for the first time and I'm starting to realize that this is so much better than anything that he taught in his mythology Why would you want to abandon this and then I began to realize their their passages that talk about this in the Bible.

Those who follow the itching years, those who are seeking after signs and wonders. That's all this was. If you look at the advertisements, they're advertising signs, wonders, miracles, in almost every advertisement. People want to go to this because itching years.

There's really no better way to say it. And it has simply displaced the gospel for this movement. They really don't care about truth, they don't care about Jesus. All they care about is the signs, wonders, miracles, the mythology.

And that's why, like I said earlier, they have to support that mythology. If any piece of it were to discover to be fictional, which many people have already, if you take that piece out, well, the whole thing starts to topple over.

So they have to fight to keep that, whatever is the mythology that's been exposed. The mythology to them is the most important part. And go right down the line of all the cults. Like you've just mentioned, every one of them has something similar.

Yet they're each different. So when people look at the different cults, they see all of these different movements and say they're no way connected. But at the core, they're all doing the same exact thing.

Come listen to our mythology, our leader has it. The other churches don't. We have something better than the gospel. As we said, Jim Jones said, I am the Christ of today. Where's the Christ working?

That's where your faith becomes. Not in the Christ that died on the cross in history, but the Christ that's manifest today. Salvation, subtly, history shifts from what God has done in Christ 2000 years ago to what God is doing through this person alone.

The result doesn't become immediate abuse here, but structurally now they're primed for abuse. The leader's story becomes sacred. Correction becomes impossible. I mean, you try to go correct someone today that believes in the message of William Brannum about this life story that he had.

It's almost impossible. So the conclusion to all this, let's come to a conclusion to it all. The formation, you know, of many cults is not accidental. You know, it follows this pattern that we've just laid out here.

Personal biography becomes a theological foundation. They created their character through all this. They've constructed a narrative of divine destiny from their birth. They've realized what the audience is out that they're speaking to will most accept.

So they have to present themselves as poor or, you know, whatever they have to present themselves as, they may not really be that, but they have to present themselves as that to be accepted.

And from their reinforced youthful separation from everybody and in their supernatural commissioning, the leaders then secure loyalty. And that precedes and overrides any discernment that comes later. And we can say that in the ministry, when you go, with the first pull and the second pull of William Brown's ministry.

You know, doctrine wasn't emphasized so much back then. In fact, he said he's not preaching doctrine. He's preaching the great truths of the Christian faith and so forth. But it only becomes later. And long before he really started nailing his doctrine down, he was already starting to be rejected.

But eventually he brought that doctrine out. And then by then as followers that were still loyal to him, they didn't question it. It overrides their discernment. History shows that when the movement's credibility depends on believing a man's story, rather than testing a message, the truth becomes secondary to the trust that people have in him.

And faith becomes vulnerable to control. You know, that's just it. When I began to realize that there were so many things that weren't true and yet at the same time there were people who had uncovered the facts behind the things that were being taught.

In other words, they were saying things that they knew. They themselves knew were not true. Yet they continued to tell them because it was part of the overall narrative and that overall narrative told a mythology.

And then the mythology continued to grow over time. But if you take away elements of that mythology, the whole mythology itself falls apart. So there were people who were upholding what they knew not to be true to help uphold the entire mythology.

That became a real problem for me. A good example of this, William Brannum's, the very foundation of his ministry actually, he claimed in around 1955, I think it was. He began saying that he had a series of seven prophecies in 1933.

So this is 20 years after the fact. He claims this and he claimed that it's on this written on this piece of paper that he kept in his bedside stand. And when people began to ask for it, oh, it's not there.

I buried it in the cornerstone of my church. You can't see it because I buried it. And so this became part of the mythology. He had these prophecies and they were buried in 1933.

When I discovered the deed to his church was 1936, I scratched my head thinking, wait a minute, how does that work? Because there were prophecies that, you know, nothing just nothing fit, nothing fit, I'll just say like that.

At the same time, I had no idea that my grandfather was part of, he was part of the church whenever they dug up the cornerstone after Brannum died to see this list of prophecies.

And the cornerstone was empty. I just, it blows your mind when you think of that. That is like the found day, that's the reason why they call him a prophet and they call him a vindicated prophet on top of that.

And yet it's not there. Well, did he have him? He said it 20 years after the fact where's the proof he even said it. Right? And then to find out, after they dug it up and they found it was empty, they found that Brannum lied about the whole thing.

They continued to say that it was buried in that cornerstone. I've heard my grandfather say that. He was there when it was dug up. And then I learned that it was dug up a second time because the people who, there was a car apparently that hit the side of the building according to the legend of the church.

And when that car hit it, people said, hey, let's dig it up. It's right here where the cornerstone is. And apparently my grandfather was there for a second digging up of this thing. Well years after this, after his been dug up twice and the mythology has been completely overturned, I can remember growing up and hearing my grandfather say it's buried in the cornerstone, these prophecies.

Now how can you do this? Why would you do this? And it really comes down to the fact that people who are in these types of movement, even the leaders, especially the leaders, they don't really care about the truth so much as they do the mythology.

If you can prop up this mythology, it can build people up into this hype. And according to the way that they believe that it works, you can tell these lies for the sake of a holy end.

Because if you do, you will elevate people's faith and then they can faith themselves healed or whatever is the thing they're claiming, word of faith. They can speak things into existence, that kind of thing.

And it's all about the mythology. So for me, once I learned that the mythology itself was false and I'm sitting here trying to reconcile, here's the Bible I hold in my hand, and here's the mythology they want me to believe.

One of them, I'm supposed to believe is true, which is the Bible. And the other thing, I know is false, but I'm supposed to believe it's true anyway. My grandfather said this, believe it anyway, even though you know it's false.

How can you make this work? How can you say that this is a Christian religion? It's not a Christian religion. It's a mythology and that's really all it is. Once I learned the error, I walked away from the error, but I have watched, I have spoken to people who knew the error, who still know the error, and remain in it because they would prefer to have the mythology over the truth.

Truth is secondary. My trust in the man is primary. And that's what we see happening here and all these cults, John. And I'm gonna look forward to going into six more episodes of this to talk about how to start a cult, how cults form, and we're gonna get into a lot of good details you're looking forward to it, John.

Absolutely. 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-Brandom.org. For more information about Roy Davis and William Brandom, you can read the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician.

And 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. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.

Bye.