Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts: https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR: Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Come Out of Her My People Vol II: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNFN2XYR
John and Charles investigate the controversial life and teachings of Ewald Frank, a major figure in the movement that grew out of William Branham’s influence. They explore how Frank’s leadership unraveled following serious moral failings, resulting in the development of unusual doctrines to justify personal actions. Throughout the discussion, they reveal how doctrines such as the “two-soul” teaching emerged, how widespread the acceptance became, and how the movement’s international reach, especially into Africa and Europe, was shaped by these events.
The discussion expands into the disturbing intersections between religious groups and powerful political regimes, highlighting Frank’s connections to international mission networks and to questionable organizations abroad. John and Charles also reflect on broader patterns of cover-up, doctrinal manipulation, and the complex web of relationships that protected and perpetuated harmful behaviors within the movement’s leadership. Their conversation uncovers a rarely seen history that sheds light on why so many followers were left unaware of the deeper truths behind the public faces of the movement.
00:00 Introduction 02:05 The Collapse of Ewald Frank’s Church 05:02 The Secret Divorce and Two Soul Doctrine 10:00 Doctrinal Fallout and Message Fragmentation 17:04 The Global Spread of Frank’s Influence 24:16 Tolerance of Polygamy in Africa 27:00 Race-Based Teachings and Subservience 36:59 Post-War Revival and German Connections 40:01 Colonia Dignidad and Crimes Against Humanity 45:01 Intelligence Ties and Government Inquiries 49:21 Escapees, Coverups, and the Silence in Europe 54:08 The Movement’s Ongoing Refusal to Acknowledge Abuse 56:07 Ewald Frank’s Death and What Comes Next
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00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at william-branham.org,
00:00:43and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend, Charles Paisley,
00:00:48the founder of christiangospelchurch.org, and the author of Come Out of Her, My People.
00:00:54Charles, I'm excited for today. I was excited at the end of the last one, as you know,
00:00:58but getting deeper into Ewald Frank and into the really, really interesting things that we have uncovered with Ewald Frank
00:01:07that are connected to government powers, world systems, world religion.
00:01:12We're getting into some of the weird stuff today.
00:01:17I don't know how far we'll get towards the colonia dignidad, but there are so many things to talk about with Ewald Frank
00:01:25and his spread of the message, and I was doing some research right as we began to talk through this episode today,
00:01:34and it is becoming widely known now that some of the more extreme sects of the message are producing some of the more heretical doctrines.
00:01:43So, from this tree that Branham created, all of the branches are bearing fruit that even some of the mainstream research
00:01:52has been able to detect that this was a rotten tree.
00:01:56Yeah, we're picking up today, John, where we left off,
00:02:00and we have been just gradually working our way through each of the major sects of the message,
00:02:06you know, that broke away from the main sect.
00:02:08Yeah, and we're, we've been, what, I think we've been doing about two episodes on each one.
00:02:13Oh my God, we could do a whole series on each one, but we are just kind of trying to hit the highlights for people
00:02:18to, you know, touch the bits that'll be useful for people just to have a basic understanding,
00:02:25at least, of what these different sects are like and kind of their distinctives.
00:02:28And, you know, as we look at Ewald Frank's group today, you know, within the message community,
00:02:34his following is often derisively referred to as the two soul people.
00:02:40And we're going to finally explain today why they have that label.
00:02:44But a lot of it goes back to the big event that led to the schism of Ewald Frank's sex scandal,
00:02:51which led to his division from the, you know, the main sect of the message.
00:02:54Well, as we kind of left off in our last episode, Ewald Frank, in 1979,
00:03:03there was this massive explosion in his church where his sex scandal came to light.
00:03:09And in order to hold on to power and control, he basically torched his congregation,
00:03:19destroyed, you know, and ran over everybody he could in order to hold on to power.
00:03:25That's exactly what happened.
00:03:28And he just, he basically destroyed his church in order to hold on to power.
00:03:33Over 90% of the people left.
00:03:35He went from hundreds and hundreds of people in his church down to 30 people left in his church as you come into 1980.
00:03:41And the way he did things and handled that situation,
00:03:46he did it in such a way that the mission network that he was a chief figure of and the broader message community
00:03:53had no awareness that the sex scandal had happened or that his church had even had the massive explosion at the time.
00:04:01And so at the very first, he had successfully kept all of this under wraps, John.
00:04:07And it's really shocking.
00:04:10And, you know, the people in that church when those things happened,
00:04:14a lot of them were very badly impacted by that situation.
00:04:17I know in some of the interviews I conducted and different people I talked with to ask questions about some of these things.
00:04:23You know, all of these years later, you can still, I mean, we're 50 years beyond, close to 50 years beyond some of this stuff now.
00:04:31People are still, you know, badly impacted.
00:04:34You know, it's like something they all wish they could just forget that even happened, you know,
00:04:39this event when he destroyed his church and all of the people he harmed.
00:04:45But, you know, as we went through that, you know, as you come out to the other side of that,
00:04:51the way that this thing starts to break out and become known to the broader community,
00:04:56as you come up to the year 1984, Ewald Frank finally decides he's going to divorce his wife
00:05:03and marry his secretary, who is a woman that he had been having an affair with.
00:05:10And so at that point, when he goes to the step that he's finally going to divorce his wife,
00:05:15you know, he's torched his church, he's burned it to the ground, he's going to divorce his wife,
00:05:19he's going to remarry.
00:05:20At the point that that happens, his wife, whose name is Helen, travels to Tucson, John,
00:05:27and she has a meeting with Perry Green, and she tells the whole story to Perry Green.
00:05:34And this is how the story finally leaks out to the broader message community.
00:05:40And it's really 1984 when it starts to really spread far and wide,
00:05:44and the whole message world starts to wake up to the reality that Ewald Frank has had a sex scandal,
00:05:50he's divorcing his wife, he's marrying his secretary, and he torched his church in the process in order to hold on to power.
00:05:58It's such a mess, man.
00:06:00And to think that, again, this is the fruit that we see that is blossoming from William Branham's base theology.
00:06:07What's really interesting is a lot of these ministers, they will do things like this to kind of erase history.
00:06:13When you torch the church after you've had something like this, whether it's an affair or you've done some kind of money scandal that the church is aware of,
00:06:23if you split the church and divide it, your faithful will stay with you.
00:06:26Those who are not faithful, who would otherwise create a problem for you, they leave.
00:06:32And so you've just had this big cleansing of your church.
00:06:34And suddenly, because you're faithful, still stuck with you, they just kind of forget it over time, and they produce offspring.
00:06:42The offspring have no clue that this really was a big deal back in their parents' day.
00:06:47And they do the same thing with doctrines.
00:06:50I've seen some of the doctrines that these ministries have produced.
00:06:54We had a comment recently.
00:06:56A person was commenting on one of the videos that you and I did,
00:06:59and they said that the year 1977 wasn't such a big deal.
00:07:04They were there in the church during 1977 and were exaggerating that.
00:07:09Well, they weren't aware, apparently, that entire books were produced that had the title 1977.
00:07:16Entire churches moved continents because of 1977.
00:07:20It was a massive deal for the message cult because that was William Branham's most famous doomsday prediction.
00:07:27It wasn't his only one, but it was his most famous.
00:07:30And so, across the vast expanse of the message, and other countries included, it was a big, big deal.
00:07:38And you mentioned the Two Seed Doctrine.
00:07:40What's really interesting is, again, if I go back to some of that research,
00:07:45it is limited in scope to the message extremist sects.
00:07:49However, if you go back in time during latter reign, Christian identity had birthed this notion of celestial souls and celestial bodies,
00:07:59and we were humans seeking out that celestial being.
00:08:04If you follow that doctrine out to its logical conclusion,
00:08:08Ewald Frank was preaching exactly what all of the big names were preaching in that era.
00:08:14Not all, but many of them.
00:08:17Jim Jones was going out to, I can't remember the guy's name out on the West Coast,
00:08:21but he was frequenting a church that taught the Two Seed UFO Doctrine.
00:08:26And if you do a search for latter reign UFO doctrine, you'll find some examples.
00:08:30But the UFO doctrines were a big deal because of Christian identity.
00:08:35Branham taught it.
00:08:36Branham claimed, in one instance, he went so far as to say that
00:08:39these flying saucers we see, that's the way the rapture is going to be.
00:08:43One flying saucer is going to come down, and it's going to pick up this little tiny group of people,
00:08:49and then the UFO will take us to heaven.
00:08:51I can't remember his exact words.
00:08:53I can probably throw it up on the screen.
00:08:55But it was a widespread doctrine because in Christian identity,
00:08:59you were marrying your earthly soul to the celestial body and celestial being.
00:09:05Those two were merging together.
00:09:06I don't believe that it went so far as to say that there were two separate souls.
00:09:11But Ewald Frank just built upon this and followed that doctrine out to its logical conclusion.
00:09:17Yeah, it's a fairly common belief in the message.
00:09:19I mean, it was still preached by the preacher at our church before I left the message,
00:09:23you know, just immediate months before.
00:09:26UFOs are angels.
00:09:28Like, that's what is generally believed.
00:09:29The UFO is some sort of an angelic being, and its appearance in the heavens is a sign of the end,
00:09:36you know, of the angels doing God's work at the last days, which is pretty bizarre.
00:09:44Really, to be quite honest with you, that is a bizarre idea.
00:09:48But that is a very common held belief in the message,
00:09:51because William Branham taught that UFOs were angels in the heavens at the last days.
00:09:57But Ewald Frank, he started to develop a doctrine on the backside of this sex scandal.
00:10:04And, you know, up until then, up until the sex scandal happened,
00:10:08Ewald Frank stayed very close.
00:10:11If there is such a thing as message orthodoxy,
00:10:14Ewald Frank stayed very close to message orthodoxy up until his sex scandal, right?
00:10:20I mean, he kind of played it down the center, you know what I mean?
00:10:25And he did it in such a way that he could be very ecommunical
00:10:28and work with most of the other sects of the message.
00:10:31But when the sex scandal happened,
00:10:34this is what kind of precipitated him to come up with his first unusual doctrine,
00:10:40and the doctrine for which all of the rest of the message community labels him and his followers.
00:10:45And here's the thing, you know, whether it's 1977, whether it's the Two Souls stuff,
00:10:50whatever it is, the thing is, you know, we don't have to guess about all these things.
00:10:53All of these guys recorded all of their sermons.
00:10:56They all thought they were the continuation of God's voice,
00:10:59and every single one of these guys recorded just about everything they ever said.
00:11:03All the tapes are still around.
00:11:05I mean, I have hundreds and hundreds of Ewald Frank's tape,
00:11:07just like I have Lee Vales and Joseph Coleman's and all the other guys.
00:11:11But there are all of their tapes are still around, right?
00:11:15And so, you know, people can say what they want about the past,
00:11:19but, I mean, the truth is all of the recordings still exist,
00:11:21and anybody can just go listen to them, right?
00:11:24And hear for themselves the things that they say.
