Destroy This Tape: William Branham’s Secret Instructions to Lee Vayle

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Brannem.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, author of Godhead and their own words, voices of oneness preachers of the in-time message.

John is good to be back and to talk about this secret letter that was written to leave they all. And I'm using the word secret. I actually use that in one of the videos that have put out about this.

Kind of as a joke but it's partially true because we in William Brannem's message called following had no idea that these kind of things were being orchestrated. And I'm using that word cautiously because I don't want people to take it too far but yet I also do not want them to dismiss it.

William Brannem was trying to project himself as the greatest prophet of this age. And the thing to understand that I had no idea until I started this research was that he was one of many prophets in the same movement and he had helped create the platform that generated these prophets.

So as he's generating his own competition, he suddenly realizes, wait a minute, I have competition. And I've got to back this down a bit. So what he tried to do was rise up above the rest of them and fast forward to whenever I was a child growing up in this, I had no idea that there were even others.

I knew of a couple he would mention random names from time to time. Usually what I'm finding out is most of the names were cut out. But then he tried to put himself as the chief apostle, the chief prophet among them. And part of how he did it was working with people like Lee Veil, where he would strategically place things into the public before he would say it. And that's really when we get into this letter, which we will in a minute, that's really the part to understand.

And it was a strategy. He had a strategy behind what he was doing. And when you combine strategy with things that really aren't true, which we've examined those, now you have this recipe for something that can really manipulate the crowds.

And I have a problem with this. So very, very excited to get into this. Thank you for coming back. Well, John, it's so great to be here once again. And we're continuing on with our study of these different things that start cults, different methods that men have used.

to start their own movement in the past and mostly in the past century you know we've seen these things come and go and a lot of them still remain so we're continuing on but these are the last couple of episodes we're going to do because I think we've thoroughly explored it by this time so there was there was a couple of letters that you know William Brannum sent different ones and I do want to go through those you know there was a they're very available on the internet one of them is and so I wanted to go through those because I had them analyzed and I wanted to

find out you know what are the tone of these letters what what is the motive behind these letters and it's very interesting to see after they've gone through the analysis really what is said about them and about the person that's writing the letter so the first one you know is readily available from a man which I'll speak about next time William Brannum had meetings with it was C Parker Thomas he wrote a letter to him but there is an audio letter that was written based on an audio tape that William Brannum made to leave El back when they were working together

in the ministry when William Brannum was alive and leave El was compiling all the the message doctrine and putting them to form that you know people can digest so William Brannum tend to feed him some information so we're going to go through that here so I just love doing these podcasts you know that we can focus on you know the things that we've lived out you know in our lives and what we've been most familiar with and see it that our experiences are playing out even in others who are part of the control groups and have left you know we see that the damage you know that it does when

extreme control mindset leaders you know attempt to shelter the people and control their lives and decisions and control what they believe or or even threaten them for leaving you know all the people suffer in some sort of way and they suffer some sort of psychological damage from all this you know and really the leaders although you know they are responsible for this you know they're rarely held accountable you know for any of it and that's a tragedy the truth Christian faith though offers freedom from all that you know churches and pastors and are just ministers to the

people and encourage them with the promises of the Bible and also warning them to take heed of Jesus is soon coming you know they're never trying to control them or kick them out from higher disagreements on doctrine you know it's true that their prescribed means that are necessary within the church when certain sins occur if the person doesn't repent but you know the gospels that Paul the gospel that Paul preached and the apostles preached lead people to repentance and the only issue judgment excommunication if the person is not willing to come back to the Lord

and repentance you know it's never never about what the word of God says because We can all look at the Word of God and agree, but these groups tend to disassociate with you if you disagree with their doctrine, which can be very much off the Word.

The groups we've been talking about are not like the way Paul preached it, because they go contrary to the Word, and they offer silent, quick, excommunications. If you even have questions about what is being taught or that's been our experience, questions about how the teaching compares with the Bible, they have to immediately cut you off, lest your voice be heard amongst the congregation, and they realize that they've been duped, you know, all these years.

You know, we can be as willing to sit down and have discussions about the Bible and what it says, and offer that to them, and how it compares with the teachings of the church, and but these groups are so closed off to discussion, you know, they might as well put a beside in the front yard of the church, where they meet that says, no questions allowed.

You know, we've seen first hand, you know, what happens when you do question them, but I guess knowing that we're all supposed to be about truth here, I would never have thought that the ministers or even my family would act just the opposite way.

Yeah, it's just so sad to me. I've worked with several people who all share the same story. Once they left the group, whichever group it was, Brannemism or any of the others, their family cut them off, their friends cut them off, some cases they're fully cut off, they can't even really have a conversation with their family.

In other cases, they're just emotionally cut off, so that bond that they once had before is ripped wide open, they have no bond whatsoever, no emotional connection. And the conversations are much like one person described it, you know, I could go to a grocery store and have a conversation with a random stranger and get more connection than I did my own family after leaving these groups.

And for me, there's just something wrong, whenever you are in a movement that is supposed to be professing Christianity, which should be strengthening families, it's actually breaking them apart. You can tell that the fruits of this are not of God.

Having gone through all this background that we've gone through in the last eight or so episodes, you know, I thought I would do an experiment, you know, just see what it would be like, what would be said about the person who would write letters about themselves, and this goes back to promoting your own self, you know, to others, you know, trying to promote their ministry.

So there's two letters that I mentioned that are readily available. One was the audio letter, and the other was similar nature that was sent to C. Parker Thomas. And he was a minister in Southern Pines, in North Carolina, who hosted William Brannum in the late 50s, about 1958, and in the early 1960s and 1962.

I'm going to begin talking about that, about what was said in these two letters here for these next two episodes. I said, is the speaker, you know, narcissistic, which means are they really stuck on themselves and trying to exalt themselves?

The transcripts, does show multiple narcissistic markers, though not in the clinical extreme, but there are strong indicators of narcissism. There's an extraordinary, self-referential authority. The speaker repeatedly frames himself as uniquely entrusted with revelation, insight, or divine access to others lack.

There's a centralization of God's activity around him. God's actions, guidance, correction and truth are frequently mediated through the speaker personally. I remember having to come to terms with that word narcissism, and I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty hard.

We were in a movement like all of the other movements that we've examined where the leader is boasting, I'm it, I'm the guy, or in some cases, the girl, I'm the final answer. I'm the one who is exalted above you all.

And for those of you who are struggling, if you try to think of the word narcissism and apply it to the leader, if you're trapped in one of these movements, just take narcissism and replace it with exalted, because you can go right down, passage by passage in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, and you're gonna find passages that talk about how bad that is whenever a human exalts himself.

Luke, I think it's 14, says, he who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. And the passage, if you read and understand what it's saying, basically, if a human is boasting in themselves, puffed up as another word they use in the Bible, I think Paul used it in one of his letters, he who's puffed up is going to be humiliated basically, but he who shows himself to be humble, he'll be well respected.

And so in the end, the one who's humble is the one who is exalted, but there's so many different ways to examine and determine is a person acting like this, and would you really want to be around them if you weren't already convinced that they were, you know, the Messiah or whatever your leader calls themselves?

For me, it's a huge problem because people are exalting themselves in ways that in some cases it's almost equal to God. Disagreements are implicitly framed as misunderstandings, spiritual blindness, or opposition to God, and not as legitimate deference of judgment.

There's even a narrative elevation here. Stories are consistently structured, so the speaker is the one that God listens to, the one that others misunderstand, or the one is proven right in retrospect. Like many times he would say, after I'm gone when these tapes are still here, you're going to know what upset is the truth.

You know, this does not require conscious vanity, you know, to be narcissistic, because it reflects what psychologists call a spiritual narcissist, where divine validation replaces ordinary self-critique. So the conclusion of this about narcissistic traits is the transcript exhibits.

narcissistic traits, especially grandiosity and exceptionalism, even if they're sincerely believed by him. So the second question I wanted to find out is, is this man really humble? You know, is he proud? The key pattern here.

The speaker frequently denies pride verbally, while simultaneously doing this, asserting superior discernment, dismissing the peers, his own peers, elevating his own experiences above scripture, or shared accountability. This is what they call a classic paradoxical pride pattern, such as, I am nothing, but God does everything through me.

Basic humility welcomes correction, you know, the real true humility. It limits their claims and de-centralizes self, but the transcript does just the opposite. So the conclusion was, pride is not loud or flamboyant here in this letter, but it is structural and persistent.

So we're going through the audio letter to leaveale, which anybody can read this. You can go to Google, you can type in Brannum, and then, in quotes, audio letter to leaveale. You'll find that this is published several different places.

In fact, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I believe it's in the software package that comes with Voice of God Recordings, which is Brannum's, the Brannum Organization. This was a secret letter. I know that whenever I put my little video out, analyzing it, I was saying many of the same things that you're saying, and people didn't really read the letter when they started responding.

People were saying, this is not a secret. What are you talking about, John? But if you scroll down, I think it's paragraph 26, if these numbers are correct. It says, now, remember, destroy this tape, erase it, or send it back to me.

See, I'm talking to you, just some of the things that you can draw your conclusion on. I want to emphasize that statement. You can draw your conclusion on. In other words, you're going to draw a conclusion.

I'm going to tell you what to draw it on, and that is, I hate to say it, it is narcissism 101. That is Pride 101. I'm right. You must agree to my being right.

That's what it's saying here. Instructurally, like you're saying, you can read it in almost every paragraph of this letter. It has been transcribed, so it is now written on some publications, but you can read the Pride.

It's just reeking of Pride. And again, it goes back to what I said earlier. He who exalts himself will be made low. That's really what's wrong here. This person needs to be made low when you say these kind of things, and I'll keep reading that paragraph.

Now, you might say something like this, though, as all prophets and all ages, see what I'm confessing to you, Lee, is that I understand, and you understand this position. but I can't tell it to the people. See, and you can just make this, if you want to use this, make this as your self-talking.

In other words, I can't say that I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, but you can leave ale. You say this thing, and you are the one who's going to exalt me. That's really what he's saying here.

And if you were a member of this group, which I was born and raised in, I did not know this thing existed, but if you were a member of this group way back whenever this was coming out, before he had achieved the status that he has today within the Brannum organization, you would have simply said, no, man, I don't know. He's telling leave ale what I should believe. I'm not going to believe that.

And that's why he said destroy this tape, but it is just reeking of pride. The core issue is the speaker claims a role that scripture explicitly warns against, which is a singular spiritual authority, unchallengeable, revelatory insight, and implicit leadership between God and others.

You know, even if he sincerely believes his claims, this role itself is theologically unstable. You know, scripture consistently requires a plurality of leadership, mutual accountability, testing of claims, submission to correction. So the transcript is resistant to all four.

So the conclusion is he may believe who he is and who he claims to be, but the claims exceed. They go beyond the biblical boundaries of Christa ministry. Oh, the next question I have was, should we even trust him? Well, the short answer, John, is no.

Not without extreme caution and external verification. And John, I would say that's all we've been trying to do all these years, is approach this thing with caution now that we have a lot of the information that we didn't have before, and provide external validation if you're claiming to be such, well, provide the validation for it.

Why should we not trust him? Because the claims are not falsifiable, they cannot be tested unless you already trust him. It's kind of a circular reasoning there. Authority is self-authenticating. So his own testimony is authenticated, his own self. There's no external second and third party witnesses to the fact of his authentication.

Descent is pathologized. It's not engaged. There's no visible accountability structure above him or beside him. He's his own boss. And this was the exact groundwork being laid for all of these problems that we see today in the new Apostolic Reformation, the charismatic movement, large portions of Pentecostalism.

When you have a person who's rising up to super apostle or super prophet with 0% accountability, there is no other person who can be their equal. when they're in that status. That's where the problems arise because those types of people, especially if they have narcissistic traits, like you said, they will just spiral out of control.

There is nothing that will keep them grounded. And that's why I believe that in the New Testament, it says, let two or three prophesies. It's not that there's gonna be one ultimate prophet or one ultimate apostle.

Jesus took that role in the New Testament. And if you're a New Testament church, a follower of Christ, you follow that pattern. You don't follow the pattern where there is somebody who's claiming that they are the next thing to God.

And all other people are not able to keep them grounded, keep them accountable. That's wrong in so many ways. This does not mean that he's insincere or that he's consciously deceptive or that everything he says is even false.

But it does mean that his framework invites abuse, even if it's unintended, and we've seen that happen. His followers are trained over and over again to trust him, rather than truth, testing, and a community.

So the final assessment here for this letter to leave ill is narcissistic traits, yes, pride, yes, self-promoting, yes, who he claims to be, well, there are claims without biblical warrant or they exceed biblical warrant.

So they're not backed up by the Bible. Trustworthiness is very low. Without strong external checks, he cannot be trusted. So the most concerning feature is not the tone of the letter, but it's the authority structure that he presents from it.

And where authority cannot be questioned, John, you know, truth cannot be safely trusted, or the words cannot be safely trusted. Whenever I mentioned the mental health issues that William Brannum faced, and he was the father of what would become the post-World War II healing revival, the foremost leader of that revival, he was well respected, carried forward into the charismatic movement, large portions of the new apostolic reformation today will reference Brannum as one of the lynch pins that really enabled everything that you see today.

So it is significant, but whenever people see this, and I'm talking about mental health, they say, John, you're not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, you're not capable of making those assessments, which is absolutely true.

I'm not going to say that I am something that I'm not, but we do have his own statements that are describing what the mental health professionals told him. We've gone through this before in a few different episodes, but it's good to bring him up here, because it really comes into effect whenever you are using the word like narcissism or we're talking about accountability and mental instability.

William Brannum himself admitted that he had an incurable problem that developed at a very early age... age, and that he himself had a high, high temper, none of which fits the pattern that you will hear of his psychological makeup from any of the leaders of the movement today, or any of the movements that sprung off of the Brannum movement.

But in his own words, and I've got these, you know, quoted, you can go find where he said it on a page that's entitled Struggle with Mental Health on the website, he often would claim that he was healed of this thing that he was never healed of.

And the reason that I say he was never healed of it, if you're healed of it, you don't say a second time I was healed of it again, or again and again and again, it continued to be a problem, a recurring problem throughout his life.

In fact, he said frequently that every seven years he had a nervous breakdown or a complete mental breakdown. Here's one of the cases where he said that I've been healed. He said, the Lord Jesus healed me of a terrible rundown condition, underfed when I was a child and nervous.

And until I was in such a condition that Mayo brothers said there wasn't a hope for me. And that statement alone, it's not really that telling because we don't know why he went to Mayo Clinic, but he does tell us later why he did.

He said that that's exactly just a few more come in here, run him completely insane. He's referring to somebody and using some Kentucky English to do it. He's referring to somebody who came in and he said, ran him completely insane because the medical doctor will tell you that temper is the first stage of insanity.

That's what Mayo says, the first stage of insanity. So he goes to Mayo Clinic, he's apparently suffering with a temper. We can assume this, we don't know this yet, but we assume that he has a temper and Mayo brothers has at minimum told him that he has something incurable, right?

And he says, that's the first stage of insanity. So if he's linking this to his story, he's literally saying that Mayo told him that he's insane. And let's keep going. He said some time ago, a few years ago, when Mayo brothers, one of the best clinics in the nation, been interviewed there twice since then, said to me, it's impossible, brother, madam, for you to ever get well.

Here's the tell tell sign in Gordon Lindsay's 20th Century Barnabas book. He said from June until the following year, brother, madam went through a Gethsemane that few ministers have experienced. The evangelist reached out into spiritual realms that had profoundly disturbed the kingdom of hell.

His battle with the enemy together with his great exertions went beyond his physical strength and caused him to have a nervous breakdown. One's advised him that he would have to leave the field indefinitely.

So when you piece all of these things together, what Gordon Lindsay said, what William Brandham said, and these are just a random scattering of examples. You can go through the recordings, table.brandham.org.

and type in different search phrases and find whenever he's talking about this thing that he has every seven years. He often calls it neurotic. Here's another statement. I've been a neurotic all my life as a little boy, something struck me that scared me.

Every seven years it would happen to me. Brother Jack remembers when I first started, come off the field for a year, something just happened. So he's referring to the thing that Gordon Lindsay said.

So all of these pieces tie it back together. And when you sum all of this up, you have an insane person who's leading the revival and people in the movement who were in leadership knew this.

A Gordon Lindsay is a person who knew this. So they're leading the revival with people who they know are insane, but it doesn't matter because it's turning into this movement that is almost unstoppable.

And so much money flowing through it, you don't want to stop it, I think was the bigger problem. So when you add all of this together, you have a movement that's led by somebody who's probably insane, if you believe everything that he has said that Mayo Clinic has told him, but then combine it with what you said about the narcissistic traits, all of the different aspects of why he would want to make himself to be puffed up, make himself to be more than he was.

And in the end for me, it's just simply, it's not scriptural. You should not follow a person who elevates themselves to that level. He who has been exalted will be made low. That's the, that's the verse that I keep going back to.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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You know, the real sad part about this is everything that we're talking about today, there will be people who just will openly reject it because they'll say, well, this was a messenger from God.

We don't expect him to be like other humans. We, we might expect him to be a narcissist because God is speaking through him. He's so filled with the power of God that he, he becomes like this or his brain can't handle all of the power of God.

So he's, he may seem mentally, insane, but he's not mentally insane. But remember, we have his own words saying that he technically was. That was one of the problems. And he went off of the field for this.

Now, the sad part about this is there are people that are like this that won't examine anything further. But the sadder part is the fact that when you are underneath the authority of somebody who has a mental health issue, you often pick up many of those traits. Think about Brannum's anger issues. He was really, really angry at people who did not agree with what he said, especially the things that he believed that he had a special insight, extrabiblical things that he had learned from God. When somebody said, I don't know, William Brannum, I don't know if I

believe this or not, he would just ridicule them with anger and hatred from behind the pulpit, showing the temper that Mayo brothers apparently had said that he was struggling with if I'm to make that connection. The temper was showing regardless of Mayo connection. You can go listen to the sermons. You can clearly hear the temper. And that temper is reflected in the people.

Try to disagree with any of them. Try to say something that, you know, the Bible says this one thing. And he said this other thing, I prefer to choose my Bible. I've done this. I've said this to people and they will just duck at you off. They'll be angry with you. They'll be bitter, they'll insult you. Read through the comments section. You'll find this alter out the comments sections. And it's because of this problem, whenever a person has mental health issues, those traits flow down to the congregation. Now, broadness to the broader movement, we have now this framework of apostolic networks, the new apostolic reformation that enables

people just like this to rise into positions of authority, many of which are having severe issues. You can read through the news and you can just tell. These are people with severe issues. Many of those traits are now trickling down into the congregations. And even worse than this, this is the scary part. This is the part that just makes me do everything that I do.

Think of the children who were raised in that environment. They're raised with the same issues flowing down to their parents. Now, their parents are flowing those issues down to their children. And the children are being raised in unhealthy environments. Listen to the stories that I have every Friday with people who have escaped us. Listen to the ones who said they were born and raised in it. And listen to what they were raised in. And you're going to find almost every case where somebody was fully indoctrinated and had children, the children suffered. And that's for me, that's a

problem. There's a very high sensitivity to any disagreement in the message. There's a preemptive justification of authority. He assumed he had authority to talk about these things. He assumed he was above his peers. He assumed he didn't have to be corrected.

He refuted As a misunderstanding, well, you're criticizing me because you don't understand the word, or spiritual failures and others. It suggests an ego-protective posture where authority must be constantly reaffirmed to prevent perceived diminishment.

He has to remain on top here. And we find that's true in the message churches and the message pastors and preachers everywhere. It's prevalent everywhere. No one's willing to humble themselves to even question anything or to even discuss anything.

There's a paranoid ideation, mild, moderate, non-delusional. The language suggests heightened suspicions of others' motives. Particularly, a fear of being misrepresented, a concern about betrayal or distortion, a vigilance over loyalty and alignment. It's consistent with paranoid ideation rather than psychosis.

It's reality-based, but relationally distrustful, with and others versus them subtext. So we find that present in message people because their heads have been filled with all of William Random's teaching and preaching. So when your head is filled with that, you get into a paranoid ideation.

You are very keenly aware of anything coming against the loyalty to the group. And that's why you get put out so quickly is because that's a very heightened sense of your paranoidism is very heightened.

So that's versus them complex. And throughout the whole thing, if you question anything, you become one of them and you're not one of us anymore. And there's also an authoritarian control orientation in the letter.

The speaker exhibits directive controlling interpersonal styles because it was characterized by very prescriptive language in the letter. Such as you might say this, it's an implicit demand to leave ale to align with what I'm saying here.

And there's an intolerance of independent interpretation. It's like you need to say it like I'm saying it, don't try to put your own spin on this. Authority is not presented as mutual or dialogical, but it's very hierarchical and corrective.

So very prescriptive. It's typical of high control religious systems here. So William Random very much demonstrated that in his message and others like him very much demonstrate this. There's an intellectualization as emotional defense.

There's an emotional vulnerability is replaced with a dense reasoning, a theological abstraction. It aligns with intellectualization. It's a defense mechanism used to avoid emotional exposure while maintaining dominance in the discourse. There's identity fusion with ideology.

There's a personal identity. The speaker's personal identity appears fused with the message or doctrine. You know, William Brandon and his message were won as we've heard many times. So he is won with the message.

He's won with his identity as Elijah. Disagreement feels personal to him. And of course to the believers in the message, disagreement with it is very personal. It's a very personal attack on really who they are.

The critique of ideas is treated as a critique of itself. And separation between me and the truth is really blurred. He becomes won with his whole belief system. It's psychologically significant because really, this is what ultimately prevents self-correction.

If you are won with this whole thing, it's your identity. And it just locks out all self-correction. It prevents it. And that's why we see what's happening today. It's also a messianic. The letter also presents a messianic self-positioning.

While not overtly claiming Messiah-ship, the letter reflects adjunctive messianic positioning. Of course, this occurs from his proximity to divine truth. You know, he had the ultimate truth. His role as the final interpreter of the word and the necessity of alignment with him to remain correct in your understanding.

Is common in secondary prophetic authority figures other than Jesus. Once people rise up and claim to be an authority figure as a prophetic authority figure, this is very common thinking line of reasoning with them.

There's also a lack of reciprocal relationality because the letter is strictly unidirectional. It's directed at Lee Vell saying, you have to do this. Please do this. It instructs him to do this. It corrects him, it explains.

It doesn't invite his mutual accountability at all. It reflects a low relational reciprocity. So there's no give and take here. It's all me dictating to you. It's often seen in personalities that prioritize control of a person over communion with a person.

There's a lot of psychological inflexibility too with the letter. The language shows cognitive rigidity. There's an alternative interpretations or preemptively dismissed. There's no other interpretation other than what I'm giving you in a sense.

New wants to anything that I'm saying is treated as error and baguity is framed as danger. And it aligns perfectly with authoritarian personality traits. And there's also a possible dependence on personality overlays. It's a dependency on validation.

There's a need to be acknowledged as correct. And I guess that's why William Brannum would get- very hostile and other believers or other denominations who didn't agree with him. Because he had a need to be acknowledged as correct.

He had a reliance on affirmation from the insiders. That's why he could go around with the deity complex and the deity believers and perfectly align with them because he needed affirmation that he was the son of God, that he could have been God in the flesh.

And there's a strong anxiety here in this letter about losing his influence. And that's one reason he had to pull his believers to himself in the end and indict the whole generation and the denominational world as being incorrect because he was losing influence.

He had a psychosis about losing influence. It was a strong anxiety. And what this creates John is a control dependency loop. For my 37 years of being in the movement, I never really caught it.

It wasn't until after I left and I began analyzing the sermons, what I was doing when I was analyzing the sermons is I would actually read the sermons and I would try to identify who are the people, what are the topics, what are the statements, where are the statements directed?

Are they directed towards me being William Branham or are they directed to God or the individual sitting in the seat? And when you do this exercise, you find some interesting things. Most of the sermons, in fact, I published some of those results and one of the blog posts to our videos years ago and somebody called that out.

They said, I never really caught that. He is always talking about himself. That's unusual, isn't it? And I said, yeah, absolutely, why would you do this? He was talking about himself so frequently. But the thing of it is, when I began to analyze them by comparing what was happening chronologically, everything changed.

Because I began to notice it wasn't always as bad as where it ended up. Many of the sermons that I use as my examples, for example, in this podcast, I will go towards the end of his life.

From about 1963, interestingly, after the Kennedy assassination, he went off the rails for whatever reason. And I have some questions about that reason. But he goes off the rails and he gets very angry at every body.

One of the reasons, one of the contributing reasons was, like you said, he is being sanctioned by many people. And those people are no longer inviting him to speak. He no longer feels that he has that control over them that he once had.

So when a narcissist begins to lose their control, that's when they come unhinged. And that's really what happened. So from, you know, in the very first early years of his ministry, he's saying things like, if they draw you out of their circle, draw a bigger circle and draw them back in, then towards the end of his life, he's saying, if they draw you out of their circle, condemn them to hell, then they're...

their cannon fodder. We don't want them. The sad part about it is, again, the people take on the mindset of the person with the mental health disorder and the mindset chosen was the one in the latter years. If they had chosen, if they had just chosen the one from the beginning, I don't believe it would be as destructive as it is today, but they chose the mindset of the person with mental health issues from the time whenever he was just coming unchained. That for me is, it's a little scary when you think about it. What you said is exactly correct, and you know, I just want to finish

up with this and expound on this term here, Control Dependency Loop, that what this message creates and what is underlying this letter that William Brannum wrote, it's driven by the need for validation and influence. So I have a strong need to be validated for what I'm saying and believe, and also have a strong need to be influential in on you. This pattern is classic narcissistic control dependency cycle. It's often seen in leaders with vulnerable or covert narcissistic traits.

It revolves around an internal fragility masked by external dominance. And here's how the loop operates. So we can see William Brannum had a very internal, his personal life was very fragile. But that was masked by his external dominance over the religious world at the time through his gift, his giftings, and perceived supernatural claims. And eventually it became, he became dominant over his own believers in a very high control there. But he had a very internal fragility about it on the other side of that. And he went into psychosis events and psychotic events because of it.

Number one, there's a core need here in people that exhibit the traits. There's a need to be acknowledged as correct. There's a grandiosity. And at the same time, there's a fragility there. The man has a deep-seated need for omniscience, being seen as the one who knows the truth, the vindicated authority of the sole interpreter of reality, of what your reality is, such as the divine will, the divine doctrine of God or insights into the scriptures that you don't have. And being wrong, if they thought they were wrong at all, it threatens their self-concept. It triggers

the narcissistic injury to them, such as shame, rage, or deflection. Number two, there's a reliance on affirmation from insiders, a dependency on supply. So we see this in the deity cult. He had a strong reliance upon the affirmation of that group to say he was something, which he was not.

He surrounds himself with a loyal inner circle and provides, they provide the constant. narcissistic supply to him, agreement, praise, public reinforcement of his correctness. And these insiders, they're rewarded with their proximity to him, the special knowledge or status, such as you're one of the few that understand.

And I can only think of when Perry Green, who was much part of his inner circle at the very last, and he went throughout his life, you know, promoting William Brownham over again, trying to make people believe these things about him being a prophet.

But Perry Green was rewarded by his proximity to William Brownham and the family. And the fact that he had special knowledge, because at one time he proclaimed, you know, I believe you're the prophet of Malachi 4.

And then, so to him, he had this special knowledge, his status. You know, he was one of the big names, say, it could happen with any minister, not just this one that I referred to, but it creates a codependency.

The followers need his approval and leadership. He needs their own wavering affirmation to stabilize his self worth. Number three, there's a strong anxiety about losing influence about in this control dependency loop. There's a hyper vigilance, and there's a control, any sign of doubt, any sign of criticism or independence from insiders triggers the abandonment anxiety, fear of devaluation of what they're believing.

This anxiety manifests as paranoid monitoring. I think I've heard a lot of that about that in the JWs. There's a lot of paranoid monitoring amongst their members, but the same is true in the message.

There's paranoid monitoring. Everybody's suspicious of each other. Everybody's wondering who's going to be the next serpent seed manifesting themselves. You know, there's no peace there. It's all anxiety, because everybody's really wondering, are you really my brother or not?

We can't just relax and be brothers and sisters in Christ in the message, and we only find that when we come out of it, because once you come out of it and get away from it, there's a total relaxation in the whole Christian world then.

I'm totally relaxed among others. I accept them as my brother and sister in Christ. The only thing that would disqualify them from being that is if they were unrepentant, or say if they were way off the word and who Jesus Christ was and who God was, and they believed a different Jesus or preached a different gospel or preached a different way of salvation of works versus the grace of God alone.

That would be the only reason I'd be suspicious, but I'm not suspicious of them because they don't believe this man is a prophet of God or because they don't believe my way of thinking about the end times or any other thing.

So that's why it creates a paranoid monitoring is when you're in these type of groups. And it's a terrible, terrible thing. It also, to reduce the anxiety that they feel, they only tighten their control mechanisms.

When you enter the church, there's things that other groups do called love bombing. The loyalists in that group, they just love bomb the new person coming in. But pretty soon, you find out what that love is really all about.

And whether or not it was true, agape love or not, isolating the group from outsiders. That's how they increase their control. You get isolated more and more. Discrediting the critics as impersonators, jans and jambers, call on them, deem us for saking or judicists.

Discrediting them, they just don't have the miracles we have. There's lots of things they can say there.

Requiring public testimonies of his correctness. Every time ministers get up into the pulpit, they have to say, well, brother random said this, brother random said that. If they don't constantly keep that public testimony before them of his correctness, people will begin to begin to be suspicious of the minister himself.

So then the feedback loop continuously reinforces itself through these control behaviors. But the need is never fully satisfied. It's a constant loop. There's a narcissistic hunger. It continues. The anxiety returns stronger than before.

It requires escalated control. Over time, the circle shrinks. Over time, the centers leave. Only the most compliant people remain. And we see this in message churches in general, some are growing because of the charismatic personalities that are there.

But others have dwindled down and even closed their doors because they're the most compliant. Increasing isolation and fragility remains even in the groups. So the clinical breakdown here is there's a very vulnerable narcissism here.

The key emotions, the primary driver of course is the vulnerability of the narcissism. But the key emotions here is a chronic grade, low grade shame. And as soon as only by external validation, there's defense mechanisms that are put up.

There's splitting. There's insiders good and outsiders are bad. There's projection, accusing others of deceit or imitations. There's an attachment style. Often, anxious preoccupied and in close relationships massed by authoritarian posture.

There's also outcome risk when their influence starts to wane. It ages, you know, through realizing the prophecies didn't come to pass or scandals that a upped or failed predictions, that can lead to narcissistic collapse, depression, paranoia, or desperate escalation.

The loop explains why men often demand loyalty tests. You know, Jim Jones and his day, he asked that members come up and pretend he claimed that he had some poison there for them to drink after they had drank the water, and it was only a test of their loyalty to see who would really drink it.

They rewrite the history to preserve correctness. And we see that in how William Brannum has been portrayed over the years, saying things about him that's not even true. But they rewrite the history to preserve the correctness of what they're trying to say.

They react intensely to perceive slides. You know, if you even say that, well, he could have been wrong here. You know, they intensely react to that. And the entire system depends on never being seen as fallible.

You know, we're never wrong. But as you've been saying how long, John, you know, we need to apply discernment to everything that's promoted as true, and use the scriptures as our guide, John. You mentioned the piece.

When my wife and I started attending other churches, that was one of the one things that I didn't know what to do with, man. We were at each other's throats when we were in the movement.

And why is that? I had no idea why that was. And I didn't even know that I was like that. That's really the sad part. You talk about all of the different aspects and dynamics of what it's like to be an destructive group.

You are pointing fingers at everyone. And the sad part about it is, whenever you start going to a different church, one that's not destructive, there is finger pointing, but it's usually at yourself. How can I make myself better?

You're not looking at the other guy to see, did they screw up? Did they not follow the prophet's demands? And then usually that spreads through the rumor mill. So everybody knows which ones did it, right?

It wasn't like that. Now, I will say that there are some churches that maybe they have some unhealthy things about them. But in the end, if you're in a healthy church, usually the finger pointing is all at yourself.

How can I better myself? How can I make myself to be a better person towards God and people? And that's really what it's all about. So for me, if I were to take one thing out of this whole episode, narcissism, the mental health, all of that aside, just think about what those types of groups do to yourself.

If you examine yourself and you just ask yourself, am I a good person, and is this group making me a better person? There's a lot of questions that people, I think, would solve for themselves if they would just ask that.

So John, that's right. I can see where you're coming from. And that's a great perspective. Today has been very interesting to go through this talk, and we got one more letter to go through, and it'll have some different nuances about it, because leave ill was a totally different...

person to William Brandham then C. Parker Thomas was. We're going to see through C. Parker Thomas' letter how he wrote to the very common minister not the inner circle. He was more of an outsider. But we're going to see what's in that letter and how it was analyzed there.

So I think this is a good stopping place today and next time I want to examine that letter and also rebuttal that C. Parker Thomas produced years ago of the ministry of William Brandham.

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-brandham.org. For more about the message teaching on the Godhead, you can read Godhead in their own words, voices of oneness preachers of the in-time message, 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.