Self-Promotion: Turning Ordinary Preachers Into Cult Leaders

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at www.William-brannum.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, the author of the Persuasive Preacher, the Gifted Profit, and the Noble Politician.

John, it's good to talk through what we're talking about today. I'm so glad that you actually picked this topic and I'm so glad that you did. We, in today's world of Christianity, we have this accountability reckoning.

And the odd part is if you follow the news and study what's happening, it's actually extending beyond Christianity. There's an accountability reckoning just happening. I don't know if people just simply got tired of it and said, we've had enough or I don't know what happened, but I know that Mike Winger's work has played a strong part of what's happening with the accountability reckoning and Christianity.

And the topic that you brought up today, which I don't know if you even thought about this, but it really plays a significant part because whenever self-promotion becomes immunity and you create this network where leaders can self-promote and become an authority figure, a authoritarian figure who won't allow anybody to critically think, won't allow anybody to request accountability and tries to cover things up, this cover up culture, authoritarian culture, all of this comes from one single aspect.

We have a culture in religion where you can allow self-promoted ministries. And that's the subject you picked today, which I'll let you talk more about it. But it is a significant problem and it's far bigger of a problem, I think, than anybody realizes.

Well, John is good to be back and to continue this series of podcasts that we're on this time. We're on doing part three of how to start a cult. And we're just getting started with this really, and we've got much more to come.

You know, last time we started with building the character of the person, you know, creating your character. And to begin your start as a cult leader, that's really the foundation of the cult of personality.

I'm really excited about this topic today that we're covering because we explore why and how groups that separate themselves from mainstream Christianity form and how they all start from a common leader who felt they were uniquely qualified.

to deliver the truth to the church. Colts can actually form with good intentions. You know, in the beginning, it's important to say this clearly. You know, many Colts do not begin with evil intentions.

They often start very slowly and nothing feels extreme yet. And they take years to develop their cadence, their pattern. Many people come and go in the early days and then when their craft is well honed, they just break out into the scene in a major way.

Many people then are captured in the group and many are smart and intelligent people. And they're captured in this way after the personality is formed and after the leader has established his stories as we'll talk about today.

Now, leaving then, at that point, does it come just changing churches? It means if you've invested all your life into this cult, it means you lose your friends, your family, your identity, sometimes even face threats, especially if you're trying to expose what's going on within the group.

So today, we're focusing on the way cult leaders use self-promotion to influence others and boost their popularity. And why that technique is used by cult leaders and why it's effective amongst people. And cult leaders talk about their calling, their experiences, their encounters with God, to get their self-promotion started.

But over time, something interesting does happen. The leader doesn't even have to promote themselves anymore after they started out in the early days. The followers actually start promoting the leaders at that point. They repeat all the stories.

They defend the claims of the leader and they correct anyone that questions them. Personally, this happened to me back in the 1990s because I was so convinced that William Brown's ministry was the truth.

I wanted to make a documentary about it and put all the testimony, stories, anecdotes. I had collected over the years into something just so definitive that people could not deny it to be true.

Back then, before we had the internet, and you know, I can remember those days very well. We had little access to research, or even the material, you know, that was discovered early on by folks like Peter Dyser.

Little things would begin to come out, you know, as things got more widespread. So over time, by the time I did the video, actually, the documentary, I knew that the cloud was not exactly right.

I knew that William Brown wasn't under the cloud in 1963. And in the documentary, I had to change what I was planning to do. Instead of saying he was under the cloud, I actually had to say that it appeared over Arizona because I knew the cloud.

was 200 miles from where he was standing at the next week even.

Not while the cloud was actually there. If he had been there, this still would have been 200 miles away from him. 200 miles is a good four hour drive or three hour drive, if you wanna get away.

So you'd never be able to really be underneath that cloud, 200 miles away. But I still believed it was caused by angels at the time amazingly. It did not shake me that William Brennan was not there at the time.

And that didn't shake me at all. I still didn't have all the facts yet. And years later, when I looked back on that documentary that I made, I see it clearly what I was doing.

It was really full of fantasy. I relied on witnesses who were already fully invested in the movement to give their testimony. And I didn't have all the facts. And they were just repeating mostly just the Pentecostal folklore and Bradham's own stories as if they were proven truth already.

At least it was truth to them. So what I didn't realize then was that many of those stories just simply weren't true. And that's how people really get hooked. You assume the leader is telling the truth, but in reality, they've lied to you, often very confidently and consistently over time.

And you don't realize it at all. And while you're in there, you would even go to the point of saying, it doesn't matter to me if he didn't tell the truth because there's many people in the Bible that didn't tell the truth.

You know, I think that's the part that a lot of people really miss. You can quote the Bible directly, accurately and still misrepresent the reality. It all really comes down to context and a lot of times what happens is these people, I hate to say it, but there's a lot of people in the movement who don't really have good ministerial credentials.

And I don't mean necessarily college education or seminary experience. I'm talking about just knowing the basics of the Bible, knowing what it is, knowing how to read it, knowing the genres, knowing the parts that are symbolic, what the parts that are literal, what happens is you have a lot of people in the ministry who just have no idea what the Bible actually is.

And they think of it as a book that is the breathed word of God rather than a library that is combined by many people who were influenced by God. Some of it obviously breathed by God.

You can clearly tell when the prophet is speaking but they don't understand what the book is. And that's really the real problem here because what happens is they will emphatically repeat with confidence. And as they do that, the listener, whether right or wrong, will believe what they say.

If it's right, then they're believing the right thing and that's good. But sometimes it's not right. They will emphatically repeat what's wrong over and over again, and it gets stuck in people's head. Then, sadly, when the people read that passage, they read what has been spoken to them instead of what is in context of the Bible.

That's really the real problem here. And at its core, this is really the problem I have with it. At its core, there is one similarity, and that is the repetition emphatically and positively with confidence.

If you understand what that means, and understand what con man is, a con man is somebody who speaks emphatically with repetition and confidence. People believe this sort of thing. And it's a, I hate to say it, humans are.

In some ways they're a little bit weak-minded. They fall into that trap. And that's why so many con men can pray upon people and, you know, take wreak havoc in their lives. I'll just say it like that.

In the spiritual world, the wreaking havoc with their spirituality and the religion gets hijacked. That's really the real problem here. So for me, understanding that it isn't just that they're reading the Bible, but they're reading it emphatically saying that it means something that isn't quite in context.

It sounds right, and it's repeated often. And then take that a step further in Brannemism. I was shocked to learn whenever somebody pointed out to me. I had, we got in a bit of a, not debate, but a discussion, very, very passionate discussion.

I'll say it like that. And I quoted a Bible verse to him and I said, yeah, but, and I quoted the verse. And he looked at me and he scratched his head. And this is a guy who knew his Bible far more than I do.

He scratches his head and, John, I don't think that's a Bible verse. And I said, yeah, it is. Well, also what con artists do, they will lie outright lie to your face. And Brannem had a set of different Bible verses that he invented.

Some of them, we've talked about this before, is either you and I or in the Revival History series, but they will, Brannem did it. He would take a Bible verse and he would combine it with this other verse, join the two together and make it say something that neither verse neither passage said, but he did it emphatically repeated with confidence.

And that is by definition a con man. Many high control religious groups, you know, they didn't begin with some new creed or a systematic theology in the beginning. They began, what they began with is stories.

Stories of what God supposedly did through their person. The stories were not incidental, they were strategic. They were repeated over and over. They were refined and placed at the center of the movement's identity until belief in the man's experience has became the gateway then to the belief in the message they brought.

Across movements. associated with we've got Charles Tay's Russell with Jehovah Witness. We got Joseph Smith, Latter-day Saints William Brownham with the message. There was another man William Souters, which is a pretty interesting person who you wonder if William Brown didn't take some of his techniques off of his ministry. There was John Alexander Dowey and he and Charles have been really talking about him lately and all that he built in that empire that he had.

There was also Jim Jones who was an associate of William Brownham in the earlier years and the 50s and they all had a common strategy amongst themselves. They self-promoted themselves through their so-called divine endorsement. They would talk about how God has uniquely ordained them to bring the truth and they all had little different nuances and different stories but it was all for the same reason to bring people into their sphere of influence. The pattern begins, what it begins with is what God did to call me from my birth. The first step is almost always personal testimony elevated to a public credential of sorts. They have no educational background to

fall back on. They have nothing but their supernatural stories of how God called them from their mother's womb. So Joseph Smith, for instance, who founded Latter-day Saints back in the 1830s during the American religious revivals that were going on, he grounded his authority and accounts of angelic visitations and the reception of some gold plates. He repeatedly emphasized that God singled him out for these revelations that no one else could obtain, which eventually resulted in the publishing of the Book of Mormon and they claim it's another testament of Jesus Christ even.

So the self-promotion tactics here was a dramatic vision starting at age 14, God and Jesus appearing to him, God the Father, and then the angel Moroni, who he named, revealing these golden plates for the translation to the Book of Mormon. He claimed a miraculous translation of these plates using sear stones, looking into a hat, and he also performed healings and exorcisms amongst early converts. You know, that all framed it altogether as proof that he was a prophet of God.

Then their cult began to form as they drew followers, they positioned himself as the modern prophet and he continued to have ongoing- revelations. Of course it led to their communal living, giving up their property rights, led to polygamy, and then they had to migrate to Navu. But it created a tight-knit group all under his control until he died. And then you had a series of successors after that.

You know, next, a famous figure in this country, back in the early 1900s and late 1800s, was John Alexander Dowdy. You know, he promoted himself as a divinely appointed restore of apostolic Christianity. He really believed it. He talked about all his thousands of healings that occurred, his prophetic insights to justify his authority over the people.

And he demanded they give up all property rights to join his city of Zion. But he founded that city in Illinois called Zion City. He declared himself, his self-promotion tactics of John Dowdy was to declare himself as Elijah the Restorer. He was going to build a utopian city as proof of God's mandate to him. And people actually bought into that by the multitudes and he became a billionaire in today's terms. You know, a lot of people probably get tired of me talking about Dowdy. But when you understand that he was the prototype for what exists today in the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement, one of the prototypes, I should say,

when you understand that and then understand how significant it is, you almost can't talk about him enough. He was by all accounts. In fact, I've written a book. You can read more detail of what I'm about to say. But he was by all accounts, a con man. If you understand all of the things that he claimed, the things that he did, how he swindled people out of their money, all of the lawsuits he got in, civil lawsuits, some criminal lawsuits. This guy was a scoundrel. But he made, like you said, in today's money, it's billions dollars, half a billion dollars. I think it is. Well, what happened

was he created such an empire. Everybody wanted, everybody wanted their hand in the pot. They wanted to replicate this. And many people have tried. They've never really taken it so far as what Dowie did. And the communal lifestyle, the things that happened there, that's awful.

But he created the prototype. And then everybody who stemmed off of this movement, they all began to self-promote the ones that turned into destructive cults. They self-promoted and then said, we have the true thing. Everybody else has the false thing. We have the true healing. They don't. And, you know, they're conning people out of money, but conning them spiritually too, because they join into it thinking that that must be true. They're saying it, it must be true.

And then you find out, no, they're just copying all of these guys from the past. I grew up in that world. I thought Brannum was the only true one. I thought it was new. He taught that salvation included healing and the atonement. All of the things that Dauy taught. I thought it was new, but it was more of a focus on the miracles.

And bottom line is, in today's world and in the world's back when miracles sell. His miracle angle on this to confirm his divine authority was conducting mass healings, rejecting medicine, and sinful. And he claimed thousands were cured through faith.

And he drew crowds during events like the 1893 World's Fair. He would camp out there and draw many followers. His cult form in this community that he built, and they viewed him as the prophet, but eventually it fell apart through scandals, a lot of financial mismanagement, begging for or trying to get people to give their money to him.

It led to his downfall, but it certainly birthed the offshoots that we see today in Pentecostal Christianity. You know, the key aspect here is Dauy's healings weren't just acts. They were ads for his divine status. They were turning the believers into residents of his holy city under his total control. You know, another one that we can talk about is William saladers. He went further and interpreted his experiences as proof of Messianic identity. And he found it a church called Gospel Assembly in 1914. It was a Pentecostal offshoot, but him and William Brownham had a lot of similarities because he claimed God spoke audibly to him during a Ohio

river of baptism, same way William Brown did in 1933. And the angel or God announced his ministry that time. And he had visions of restoring the true church. He positioned himself and promoted himself as insights to having divine revelations. He rejected all denominations of Babylon.

And he set himself up as the leader of God's remnant. So all who joined his group were the remnant that were the little flock, the ones that were to be the elect of that age. And he attracted many followers by emphasizing his exclusive authority and own scripture. He led to non-denominational assemblies, but a lot of strict control and isolation. We see a lot of these similarities in William Brownham's movement today. The key insight for Souters was he took ideas from Jehovah Witnesses and Pentecostals. And his heavenly voice calling on the Ohio River made him the irreplaceable head.

And it fostered a dependency on him. Then we have Charles Tayes Russell himself of the Jehovah Witnesses. He was less miraculous. He was more intellectual, but he claimed that he had prophetic discoveries, evidence that God had uniquely enlightened him on prophetic events, and so he set a lot of dates.

And his promotion of himself was, he set the date of Christ's return and you know, he founded a Bible student movement and it was in the late 1800s, so he was a date but eventually all his dates fell apart, but the movement still continues today, very strong.

He claimed divine inspiration for Bible interpretations. He also did some miracle claims as well, but selling something called Miracle Wheat to raise money. It was in high prices, but he claimed that the miracle wheat would grow like no other wheat could grow. And it was exposed later in lawsuits as ordinary wheat.

He attracted thousands of people just by promoting himself as God's channel for truth. It didn't take much, it didn't take the miracles which Charles takes Russell, and Russell's book sold millions of copies back in the day.

But his prophecies and things did not come to pass, but it binded the followers together. And as we'll see in later episodes, these things, you can have failed prophecies, but the group will not let go just because you have that happen.

No, they won't. And that's one of the things that really surprised me because whenever I was in it, I believe that all of the prophecies were true. I believe that they came to pass.

Had no idea that any of them were even questionable. I really didn't. In fact, the thing that went through my mind, I was thinking, how can the world not see this? He had these prophecies that came to pass. Why is not the whole world of Christianity involved in this thing? And then when I find out, no, I've been duped, and there are huge significant flaws with the prophecies. I came to realize that I had been conned, and that's a big deal for me.

But they focus on the prophecy because there's a reason for that. If you scatter bomb people with prophecy, you can just fling them prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, make it just vague enough. One of them is going to come true. It's like if you're watching football on Sunday, and you make predictions of all of the games, well, you're likely to get one of those predictions true, right? Well, that's what they do. And so the entire group just hones in on whatever vague prophecy came true, and then ignore all the ones that failed. And what happens is over time,

as they continue, the ones that failed get forgotten. And the minister who's self-promoting himself, he does not want the congregations to realize that if a prophecy fails, it means that the speaker, the prophet, not have a prophecy from God. He's speaking out of his own mouth. And if they understood that, they would realize that, yeah, even if you got it true, he's speaking out of his own mouth.

I can't really trust a word the guy says. And it all comes back to what I said earlier, when you have a con man who is very emphatically repeating things that aren't true to convince people to give them their money or rob them of their spirituality. If they continue to repeat it enough, people will believe it. And the things that repeated are what they believe and remember.

The failed prophecies, the things that they don't repeat, they just kind of fall off of the the group's identity. You know, William Brannum centered his ministry on angelic commissioning, supernatural signs, unparalleled healing claims. And he presented them as proof of unique divine favor.

So he started this movement back in the 40s and to the 60s. His self-promotion tactics for him was recounting the visions that he had from a birth, a light that appeared over his crib at birth, whirlwinds, that appeared in trees and voices coming out of the whirlwinds at an early age, telling him what he should do. Angelic commissioning for his global healing movement, other visions and miracles that occurred in his ministry that he would testify about.

So he was more the miracle worker, performing stage, healings, discerning diseases, and thoughts of hearts via his trances that he would go into or visions. He claimed 100% accuracy and that built a message following eventually devotees viewed him as the voice of God for the age. And Jim Jones along side of him also had healings, miracles, and he formed what's called the people's temple, but his led to the Jones Town massacre, of course.

But Jones was a little different. He had to stage his healings a lot of times. It was even known that he used chicken livers that people coughed up as casters in the audience. And we'll see, you wonder if William Browns also may have done similar things because he claimed to have casters and bottles of alcohol at times. But Jim Jones's utopia was a socialist experiment. And they moved to Guyana, South America, isolated everybody in the group after they gave him their blind trust. He was a pastor when he started out, but he elevated himself to

God-like status in the end. And people did not see that until it was too late. So in each case, you know, the leader's experience. All these experiences they have and they claim they all precede the doctrine that they're going to bring later The movement begins by asking followers to trust trust me trust my story and Once the believers believe what the future cult leaders tell them and The signs and the wonders whether true or not They become emotionally tied to the man Signs and wonders make it even more appealing and The ties become very strong because of that

You know we in Brannum was probably known more for his storytelling than for his Bible teaching Storytelling is a technique that's well known if you if you want to create an emotional connection with your audience You know you tell stories they touch our emotions which makes them so powerful so He tells of a couple of things. I'll tell one quote here from the angel of God in 1948 Just an example of how he can use the story to get your emotional connection with him He talks about praying for a woman and she actually saw the angel of the Lord and

He and she testified to this when brother Brown knelt down to pray for me Then this man of course the angels looked come up there instead of praying He just kept looking at it brother Brown And he looked around at me and said he said to her Now you come for healing and you'll be healed and then said now doesn't brother Brownum look awful thin Said but he will be strong after a while See and said then when they started moving the stretcher away he walked right on out the door with me and that's the last I seen of him

He said now that's the angel of God we in Brown testifying he said that was the angel of God He's been seeing many times in the services And I know he's here tonight. I know he's here. I've failed him three him four times since I've been here So just by him telling that story about a woman that claims she saw the angel of the Lord and him having pity on William Brownum about him looking awfully thin the way he spoke that it just created that connection with the audience You kind of felt sorry for him because he was under a great strain at the time

With all the ministry and the hours and hours of praying for the people at the time Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism Transition through the latter rain Charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website William dash Brannum dot org on the book's page of the website You can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley Stephen McCummery 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 and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, I had a conversation recently with a person. We were talking about manipulation and how it's developed and grown in the movement. And it's really odd when you think about it because the patterns of development from the early years, they actually would not work today.

And it's more of a conversation for another podcast, I think. I'll just give the highlights of what I'm trying to say. But what happens is these movements have learned by just by trial and error, I believe. I don't think anybody mastermind this operation and planned it. But they learned how if they played on the harp strings of the people, the people would fall into a genuine concern for what's being said. And there would be more receptive to whatever it is. It could be doctrine, it could be story, it could be stage persona, miracle or money donation, whatever it

is. You play on the harp strings and they just can't take it. That's it's human nature. You want to connect with people. And that's how you connect. And I've studied this a lot. I've mentioned a lot of times I study psychology quite a bit. If you compare what Hitler did, and how he did it to the nation of Germany and convinced people to do things that ordinary humans just simply wouldn't do, there are psychological techniques that he's using. And you can, this is not me talking, you can go study. And this is actually kind of common knowledge. But his

style of speech, his pattern of speech, the way that he did it, it was almost a hypnotic technique. He would start by giving some friendly, some story that would just bring their guards down.

They make them feel more receptive. And then start speaking and get faster and faster until he kind of matched their heartbeat. And if their heart gets full of anxiety because of the things he's saying, their heart goes faster, he goes faster. And this pattern repeats and the cycle repeats until he's just screaming at him. And the screaming at him part, the climax of this, that's what you usually hear when you think of Hitler. In fact, they've got these generators where you can, you can add some names and texts and you can have Hitler speaking in that fast, fast pace

that heightened anxiety pace. Well, if you study what Brannum was doing and not just Brannum, there were others that were doing it, that's really how they structured their ministry. I don't think that they really patterned it after Hitler because why would you? But over time, people began to realize that this is effective. This is a speech pattern that works. What's odd to me? If you go back and you look at some of the other areas of the culture, like politics, for example.

Oh, you don't find too many people doing that strategy. You do find something, but you don't find a lot. Instead, you find people that they may be speaking loudly because they've got an audience and they don't have a good microphone, or it may be even before microphones, but they may be speaking loudly, but they're not speaking distinctly in that pattern where it gets people to bring their guards down and then inject whatever they want in their head.

You find that with Hitler, but you don't find it very often, except for in this type of religion. And that's where it gets really odd for me. Why did they choose to do this?

Now, combine that with some of the other things you've got the, you know, in the old revivals, you had that organ music, that soft, slow organ music with a pulsating beat that matches your heart.

We've talked about this on the podcast that I've done about music. There are so many different elements that individually, I don't think they would have had as massive of an effect, but combine all of these elements, and it is a strategy for manipulating people.

And I just, I have a huge problem with that, but it all comes back to this thing. People are self-promoting, and they're in an environment that has a tool and a technique for manipulation that has been mastered.

And so these cult leaders, they just rise up, and there's no guardrails, they have the engine, they know how to do it, they know how to abuse it, and they just hijack the people's minds.

So John, I fully agree with you there, you know, that's a very interesting take on that. And I think it's strange how these things develop, but we're gonna continue on and talk about this self-promotion.

But secondly, you know, we discover that repeated self-promotion finally becomes the identity of the person as we know him, as we come to know him. And that's all on the surface there. You know, they're not always transparent.

So all you get to know is what they're testifying to you. Each cult leader develops the impression of himself and his calling that he wants to make, you know, on the audiences and repeats this again and again, you know, everywhere he goes throughout the nation, everywhere he travels.

And in the early days, you know, we in Bram never preached much, but just told his life story. He told testimonies and meetings of how the meetings went. He told of his angelic experiences, experiences with casting out demons and what they look like, experiences with God and the wilderness, hearing God's voice, experiences with a angel, you know, that met him, the coming of his gift.

You know, all these things, they were just stories. They weren't really teaching the Bible. They were just building people's faith in him that he had what he was talking about. And then he went into his divine healing services to pray for the sick people.

But of course, prior to that, you know, FF Bosworth, earned backsternal, they prepared the people with the Bible, because they had the Bible knowledge to proclaim about how people should accept their healing and so forth.

But this method that he used, it worked very well to build his reputation as a great prophet of God before the people, at least initially, amongst the Pentecostal people. So number two, we learn that this repetition, it turns his testimonies into his identity.

He really becomes what he's been testifying about, that's what his identity is, he finds his identity in all these stories. And the stories were repeated over and over. So repetition achieves three things. It achieves, it normalizes these extraordinary claims.

It makes them normal for him to have supernatural experiences. We just expect that of him. And so we're on the edge of our seats every time he comes to the platform. What is he going to give us next, that's supernatural.

And some examples of things that he did over the years. He talked about creating squirrels that he's shot and killed. He talked about speaking his storm out of existence one time in Colorado. He talked about resurrecting a fish back to life by the spoken word or raising the dead from the morgue in his hometown.

And you know that was debunked, the raising of the dead from the morgue. He did that early on in his ministry in about 1947. And Jeffersonville called him out on that one. But you know after he's talked about that, most people don't hear about the debunking of that story, but after that reputations established to be a man that walked in these supernatural experiences, then anything he said was almost taken at face value.

And that's what eventually happened in his followers. He could not be questioned because here he was the man with a supernatural experiences. How would you question it? And that's really how leaders start gaining power.

And that's how he started gaining power. These are elevated above everyone else because no one else is really having these types of experiences as very unusual. Then when you question examine, you want to just question examine the claims, you know, just to see if they're right or not.

Then you get accused of rebellion and unbelief. Followers would probably tell you that if you're a true believer, you just believe by faith and you don't doubt anything, he says. So number two, what it does, it bonds followers emotionally to this leader.

You know, you listen to his life story and you laugh with him on things that are funny. You cry with him when his wife dies. You weep over the tragedies in his life. and you rejoice in the successes that he had.

Eventually, being so emotionally tied to the leader, you actually try to start being like him. You may try to start looking like him, wearing the same type of hat he wears. You try to hack like him, speak like he does.

And what this essentially does is cause you to live your life through him. You're no longer an individual anymore. You've really become a part of him. Even after he's gone and dead, if you're listening to these tapes, you're trying to live your life through him.

You try to act as if, you know, the ones that are true diehards, they want to act as if some part of their life story is similar to what things he experienced in life.

Anything you can do to match your life experience with his, you look for it because you want to become what he is on a human level. You tend to like what he likes, hate what he hates.

You try to imitate him, you know, but he's just a mortal man. But that's how deep this goes into the followers. I've seen it over and over in the group, you know, we came out of it.

And it's core, it's just simply hero worship. But when you look at each one of these groups that have descended from this, they all share that same similarity. They're, I hop KC for example, they call it the prophetic history.

What is it? It's the stories of how the leaders came to be. And the stories of how the leaders came to be and all of their different supernatural gifts, experiences, hardships, all of these different things, they take forefront in the movement and the Bible takes the back seat.

That's really the problem here. Brannum, whenever he was telling all of his life stories, I remember crying just as a kid, crying at some of the hard things that he went through. And you and I've talked about this, a lot of them were fiction, but some of them were actually true.

And if true, I'm certain that the man really did have a hard time. I'm not going to deny that. But the fact that the religion actually revolved around the life stories, not the Bible.

So much so that when you leave, the group will think that you're not Christian because you don't believe the life stories, the leader and his significance and his authority. It's all about the leader.

It's all about the man who is self-promoting or female who is self-promoting. So for me, the stories, that's really problematic. And again, half of them are fiction. None of them really have anything to do with the Bible.

They're just a personal experience. I could share my personal experience. I could make everybody in the audience cry at some of the things that my family's gone through. But does that have any effect on their spiritual walk with God?

Not really. I would be a fool if I tried to do that. And yet we find these people who are in big ministries, big name ministries that are doing it. So for me, it's just, it's so problematic, man.

The story. Number three, what these stories do is they fuse the leader's identity with God's activity in the minds of the followers. So whatever the leader is doing and expressing is actually what God is doing at the time today and the earth.

That's how they take the leap to say, because of what happened in Arizona and the mystery cloud, that was a fulfillment of what God was doing on the earth today in Revelation. Number 10 verse 1 to 7 was revealed, or was actually this day, this scripture is actually revealed in this time, or has been experienced in this time.

The leader becomes the center point of history, you know, at that moment in time. The message, of course, became to us the coming of the Lord and the time of God's judgment on the world.

It became the opening of the Word to us or the rapture that was going to come for our little group of people. All of the world and what God was doing at the time when we were in the message of William Brannum was funneled into what our group was doing.

God became, you know, really small. His power to save people in this world was limited only to our select group. His gospel of grace, you know, became too weak to regenerate people until eternal life unless you believe the message.

His power to act on earth became impossible without going through the prophet of the hour. So the movement no longer existed apart from the leader's experience. So to doubt all these miracle stories or any part of it was really to come against the movement itself and to cast out on the whole movement itself.

That's why the testimonies and stories often grew in their miraculous details and expanded over time. They became more dramatic, more numerous, more central to his experiences and vindicating the message. You know, our experience, you know, I think we've seen it over and over as William Brannum was well known for stretching the truth when he came to his stories and how they really became massive fish stories or fish tales.

That may have started out as a simple story, really increased a thousand fold by the time he told it the fourth or fifth time. You know, a very good example of this we find is in his trip to India.

You know, it started out when he came back. He testified of just having regular meetings in a church for a couple of days. He wouldn't allow to stay there, but a few days with really a small number of people by comparison to the thousands that he had early on in his ministry.

It's not the event, you know, he expected when he went over there by vision from the Lord actually. But what it turned into was him measuring to the large congregation he ever ministered to. It turned into the greatest success and ministry he ever experienced. It turned into the greatest meetings he ever achieved. It eclipsed even the South Africa meetings in 1951, which we have much documentation on and many pictures of the thousands of people that were there. Probably as many as 75,000 people there. But we have none of that with his India trip at all. It also turned to him challenging every

religion and every major religion in India to a showdown in front of maybe half a million people. And they were stacked like cordwood in the streets with him speaking to him on loud speakers. That's what it turned into from him just being preaching in a normal church, which is all we really have pictures of to document the India trip. If there were thousands in the streets out there trying to hear his message, why do we only get a few pictures of inside the church? Why didn't somebody have that camera? Step outside the church and take a picture of who was in the streets? Well, it was because there really wasn't any.

And it wasn't the crowds that he was making it out to be. No, it wasn't. And that's the point I was trying to make earlier about the similarities between these types of ministries and what a con man does. It convinces the people something that's not true. And when you think of con man and you think of it in terms of what you see on TV, it's usually for the purpose of money. But a con artist doesn't necessarily go after just money. It might be power. It might be control. It might be popularity, et cetera. There are people who

will con their way into a position. There are people who will con their way into a position at work. I have actually seen them do it as an IT director. I have seen people who knew nothing about what they, the job role that they were in. But they had convinced other people to get there and successfully done so. When people speak repeatedly and with emphatic accuracy on specific details that can be associated with what they're trying to tell you and do it with confidence. There are people that will believe it. And like you said, even the

things that aren't true, they'll do it. The problem is, in Christianity, what place is there for this? I mean, if you're not telling the truth and you're saying that God is doing this thing, were you lying about God? And that's for me. That's just, it's really problematic.

So John, I'm just going to read a few quotes. And I think we'll probably have to finish up next time and finish up with what I plan to talk about. But I just want to read these few quotes from the India trip to finish up with this, to show how he eventually exaggerated stories. And that was what was going on with our point here. In 1957, he spoke about his India trip. He said, and when I had been very much constrained to go to the Indian And yet, as many as you might know, the India trip wasn't the success that it should have

been. He said, because I failed to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, never recognized it after he gave me a vision to go to Africa first and then India. And this was at the time he was trying to make up excuses as to why the India trip was so poor. But it was after this a year later that he changed his tune altogether. I mean, this was a year later, exactly. He preached in 1958 in a message called, called out. As soon as saying it was not the success it should have been, he said, this, I had the privilege just a couple

of years, last couple of years of having one of the greatest meetings the Lord ever let me have in Bombay India. In 1960, a couple of years later, of course, he spoke, I just picked out a few quotes here, but he says again, and I've seen people that come in the meeting like in our largest crowd that we ever had was 500,000s at Bombay. He says again in 1961, recently I was in India, Bombay, where we, the Lord, let us preach to the greatest crowd.

And there's a blank spot on tape after that. He said, thousand blanket natives, he probably said, 500,000 blanket natives breaking their idols on the ground, receiving Christ's Savior. I guess in India was three times that, but we couldn't count them. Just a few months later after that in 1961, he said this, well, I maybe I get a chance to speak of India. And he was talking to somebody there in the line. He said, was you there when I was in India, not there? He said, that's where I had my greatest gathering at Bombay, 500,000 at one time.

In 1962, he said this, he said, let me just stop again just a moment. When I went to Bombay, I count that my greatest meeting because of the effects I had on the people. And if in Africa, they say 30,000 came to Christ at one time, then there was 150 or 200,000. And of course, his vision said 300,000 came to Christ at one time out of that half a million there. He said in 56, we'll jump back a minute. He said, this week we'll be telling about our experiences over in India where 500,000 people will more come to the meetings. And the things that God did and just watch,

nothing, I'm a fanatic. I'm not a fanatic. I just don't try to misrepresent things. I try to be honest until the truth as far as I'm allowed to tell. You know, that's a very telling statement to John when he said very early on in

1857 that the india trip just wasn't the success it should have been and

In 1956 he was telling the people I'm gonna tell you the truth. I'll try to be honest until the truth So we see he's very contradictory here and saying the india trip was not the success it should have been and Then all through the years and 1960 to 62 and even further. He was saying it was the greatest meeting he ever had So we see there's a lot of issues with that, but that's how cult leaders build the momentum and they keep it going with these stories They're not allowed to be questioned so because he gives us obscure

Mayor of Bombay India say that said there was 500,000 people there and He may or may not have said that he goes with that and that's how he gets to that number Because he has to fulfill that vision in some way About the india trip because as we know he never got a chance to fulfill that either an african war India I remember whenever I was first coming out of this you go through all these floods of emotions and you get angry You get happy you everything's funny you get sad You basically you're you have a part of you this dying and you go through all the stages of grief in your head

Well when I was you know when I was in the everything's funny stage I made this little video with my banjo and I had a brand. I'm going his prophecy said I'm going to go to India first then to Africa But he can't remember which the prophecy said and and the prophecy failed He admitted that it failed, but he kept flipping Indian Africa and I did the Indian Africa shuffle That's what I called it. I don't know if the video is up I got taken down with the first website, but anyway the problem is He said it so emphatically so many times on recording

Nobody really caught that he kept changing the story and I have had people contact me who did stumble across that video back When I remade it and they said you're often left field John this prophecy came to true This is exactly what happened here and I'm looking at it and they don't there They weren't aware that Bratum himself admitted that it was a failed prophecy He openly admitted the prophecy failed and that's why he was doing the India Africa shuffle But there are people that because it kept repeating over and over and over they believe it even though it was a self-admitted failure of a prophecy

And that's that's really what I'm talking about with regards to this repetition if you can keep repeating the false thing People are going to eventually believe it. They'll just give up and turn off all critical thinking and my argument is Don't do that. Don't turn off critical thinking if somebody claims that God is speaking You want to at least be sure that is God and not something else and in this case it was just demands wild ambitions for self-promotion So critically think listen to what is being said. So yeah John that's It's so so funny. I mean these things we go through

group, we can point out error after error or contradiction after contradiction. And people just don't want to hear it. You know, the people that's maybe in a group like this, a high control group or in the message, they've tuned them, tuned it out. They don't want to face the facts. I know it's hard for them. And I know that cognitive dissonance plays a factor in this. The way our minds work, it plays a heavy factor. And it can be a heavy toll on their lives for a given year or something like this. But you know, if they want the

truth, they really need to think about it very seriously. But I think we'll stop there because I probably have gone an hour and you know, we need to wrap it up. So we'll just stop there and we're going to continue with this self-promoting idea next time and point out a few more things and have episode number four in this series. And then from there, we're going to get in some really good things, John. And we're going to talk about even more things that cult leaders do to build their system. And we'll find that the patterns

are prevalent in every group out there, all the ones that I've mentioned today. The same pattern exists. And what we as Christians should not be trying to do, it should be a red flag to us. If anybody's trying to build a one man ministry or a ministry around one man, you know, that's a red flag to begin with. You know, we're a many membered body.

And we need to take the wisdom of the thousands of years of church history into account when we go to promote ourselves. And we better build it back up what we're saying. And you better be able to stand up to the scrutiny. But really, no one should be promoting themselves because we know Paul said, he said, I'm just one of the ones that ministered to you. And you believed, you know, who is Paul? Who is a Paulos? But we're just ministers. And because of how God used us, you believed the important thing is that you have Christ and that you

believed in him, not that you believed in what we said of them. The fact we gave you the gospel, the original gospel that was given to the apostles. And that's all that should be done today. And that's all that should be in any church today is the original gospel, not all these additions and promotion of men and so forth. So we'll get into all that later on in this series, John. And I look forward to it and look forward to the what's coming.

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-Branum.org. For more about Roy Davis and William Branum, you can read the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophets, 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 Automobile.

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