Roy E. Davis
Rev. Roy E. Davis Sr. was a Baptist and Pentecostal preacher, founder of the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, mentor and ordaining pastor of William Branham, and a lifelong organizer in white supremacist movements, serving under William Joseph Simmons in the reborn Ku Klux Klan, helping form the Knights of the Flaming Sword, and later becoming a nationally recognized leader of the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; his career connected criminal scandal, religious fraud, gospel music, fundamentalist revivalism, Pentecostal sect-building, orphanage fundraising schemes, Klan reorganization, and Branham's early ministry, making Davis one of the clearest links between Branham's origins, Pentecostal restorationism, Christian nationalism, and organized white supremacy.
William Branham's Early Ministry
According to William Branham and the dates given for ordination,[1] his "conversion experience" was the moment that he was recruited into Roy E. Davis's Pentecostal Baptist Church of God Sect. Davis was a "personal friend"[2] that baptized him,[3] converted him,[4] and ordained him as a minister for the sect.[5] Though different versions of William Branham's stage persona used multiple dates for his recruitment, the date that Branham appears to have started working in the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God sect was 1928. Branham mentioned this date, mathematically, multiple times. In April 1959, Branham told his audience that he was converted "thirty-one years ago".
Pentecostal Baptist Church of God Sect
Roy E. Davis was the general overseer of the "Pentecostal Baptist Church of God",[1] a Pentecostal sect[2] that practiced "divine healing" and recruited members by allegedly drinking poison.[3] The national headquarters of the sect was at Jeffersonville, Indiana.[4] It was a Pentecostal assembly.[5] William Branham appears to have tried to conceal his involvement with the cult by being dishonest about the affiliation of the church led by Davis. According to the timeline given,[6] Branham claimed that Davis' Pentecostal church was "Missionary Baptist" (missionaries from the Southern Baptist Convention),[7] and that he was ordained into the Southern Baptist Convention. According to newspaper advertisements and testimony given by Roy Davis in Branham's The Voice of Healing publication, however, the sect was Pentecostal in 1933, the year Branham used. Roy E. Davis was banished from the Baptist Church by the Missionary Board on August 12, 1926,[8] placing Branham's ordination long before 1933.
Knights Of The Flaming Sword
The Knights of the Flaming Sword was a short-lived white supremacist fraternal order founded in 1924 by former Ku Klux Klan leader William Joseph Simmons after his fall from power, using Genesis imagery and militant Protestant symbolism to rebuild influence outside the main Klan while Roy E. Davis served as a major recruiter, royal ambassador, and public defender of Simmons; the organization rapidly gained hundreds of thousands of members, but soon collapsed into internal conflict, financial accusations, armed tensions, and Davis's public break with Simmons, revealing how Klan splinter groups blended biblical language, fraternal secrecy, political ambition, racial ideology, and religious authority into unstable movements that overlapped with the networks later surrounding William Branham.
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