From Spoken Word to Silent Victims: The Birth of Voice of God Recordings | Charles Paisley  |  368 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

In this episode, John and Charles discuss the origins, inner workings, and eventual crisis of the central institutions that define the main sect of the William Branham movement. They trace the roots of these organizations—Branham Tabernacle, Spoken Word Publications, and Voice of God Recordings—through the doctrinal framework known as “Church Order,” laid out by Branham himself. Emphasis is placed on how these institutions became vehicles for deification of Branham, forming what the hosts call a “deity cult” that shaped global message churches. They highlight how governance at Branham Tabernacle excluded dissenting voices, enforced control through tithe-based voting, and set the stage for Billy Paul Branham’s eventual takeover.  The conversation shifts dramatically as Charles unpacks the disturbing history of the tape-recording franchise led by Gene Goad and Leo Mercer, which culminated in the formation of Voice of God Recordings. He recounts how this operation moved to Prescott, Arizona, forming a commune known as “the Park,” where systematic abuse allegedly occurred. The death of Roy Borders and the collapse of the Park triggered a crisis in the 1980s, prompting a reorganization of leadership and infrastructure. The hosts argue that Voice of God Recordings was created in direct response to this implosion. They reveal efforts by senior message leaders to cover up abuse, pointing to firsthand quotes from Perry Green and Lee Vayle. The episode concludes by emphasizing how these organizational dynamics and cover-ups became the foundation for the modern message cult, influencing not only internal followers but also charismatic figures in broader evangelical circles. ______________________ Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR: Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962 Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K ______________________ – Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham – Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ – Visit the website: https://william-branham.org – Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg  – Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham – Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr – Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books

Transcript

00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend,

00:00:47Charles Paisley, the founder of christiangospelchurch.org, and the author of Come Out of Her, My People.

00:00:53Charles, it's good to be back and to talk about all things deity cult and the main sect of the

00:00:59message. And for those who didn't tune in last time, we're talking about the cult of worship

00:01:06of William Branham that basically took over all of the entities that were primary to the

00:01:13following of William Branham. So whenever you hear these people from the NAR, say they came

00:01:19and they visited the gravesite or the Branham Tabernacle or the headquarters, or the headquarters

00:01:26is called Voice of God Recordings, you'll find there are key figures today that go visit these

00:01:32places. What they don't tell you is they're going to a place that actually worships a dead human being.

00:01:38And I grew up in this, so I was there, I was aware, I knew it was going on. I did not worship

00:01:44a dead human being, but I did not realize and recognize until I came back to Jeffersonville

00:01:50that that was what was going on and that was what I was supposed to do. And oddly, you find all of

00:01:56these people, even among the people who worshiped William Branham as, quote, God in the flesh, like

00:02:03my grandfather, if somebody were to approach them from the outside of this deity cult and ask,

00:02:09do you believe that William Branham was God in the flesh? I have actually heard my grandfather

00:02:14vehemently deny this. He would not admit it, except for in his resignation speech. That's the only way

00:02:21I got it on recording. He finally, after all of those decades, admitted it from behind the pulpit

00:02:27that he believed, what was his words, Branham was God tabernacled in human flesh. And honestly,

00:02:35I could say a lot about the movement and the headquarters and Jeffersonville and what people

00:02:39believe. But my grandfather really summed it up well. And you can go to my website, you can type

00:02:44in the resignation into the search bar, you'll find it, you can listen to his own words. But this

00:02:50became a cult that worshiped William Branham. And we're going to get into some of the dynamics of the

00:02:58business structures today. I want you to realize that this happened as the charismatic movement was

00:03:04really starting to blossom. Branham was the pillar that lifted most of those ministries up.

00:03:09They either were directly descended from it, or they were descended from others who had been

00:03:15part of that movement, many of which, like T.L. Osborne, were also part of the movement that

00:03:21believed William Branham was God in the flesh. This was openly declared. We've mentioned it a few times.

00:03:27So as we get into today's episode, and we talk about the business structures, remember that all of

00:03:32these organizations are dedicated to the worship of a dead human being.

00:03:37That is very well said, John. Very well said. I mean, even the names of the organizations

00:03:42are blasphemy, truthfully, if you understand what the words in the mean.

00:03:49So today, John, what I especially are hoping we can do is there was a crisis that hit the central

00:03:57institutions of the message in the 1980s. And I definitely want to get there and just talk about

00:04:02that crisis a little bit. But before we can get there and talk about that, we first have to talk

00:04:09about the history of the central institutions just a little bit, how they got started, how they came

00:04:14together, who led them. And I think if we do that, stitch all those things together, connect all those

00:04:19dots, it's going to help people understand the crisis of the 1980s a little bit better, you know,

00:04:25as to just what was such a big deal about it. Now, as we do that, before we dive in too deep,

00:04:33the first thing I've got to point out is the central institutions, except for the William

00:04:37Branham Evangelistic Association, the central institutions were actually created doctrinally

00:04:43in the message through the church order sermons, John. Three of the four central institutions were

00:04:48organized in these sermons. And I've mentioned before, we did, I believe, several full episodes

00:04:54on church order. Church order is like the constitution of the message. This isn't, you know,

00:05:01Jesus died and now you're saved and believe on him by faith. That is not what this is.

00:05:07This is how to organize the business entities. This is how to handle discipline. This is how

00:05:13church services should be carried out. This is much more, you know, metal meet the road for

00:05:20how the cult is organized. And most branches of the message observe this in some degree or another

00:05:28for how they organize themselves. And what William Branham did in church order is he set up three

00:05:37institutions. Okay, now the fourth one he set up in 1965, we talked about that one just a little bit

00:05:43in a minute maybe, but the William Branham Evangelistic Association was set up after these three.

00:05:48But these three were set up in the earlier 60s and later 50s. And what he did is he, the first,

00:05:55of course, the oldest institution is the Branham Tabernacle itself. That was the church that your

00:06:00grandfather was pastor over for 50 years, John. And it's the oldest, it's the granddaddy of it.

00:06:09And what he does in there is he sets up how the board should be organized, how elections should happen,

00:06:16how discipline can carry out the authority of the deacons, the authority of the trustees, the authority

00:06:22of the whole bit. And in summary, the way that he built out the system, John, to be a trustee or a

00:06:31deacon at the Branham Tabernacle, you had to be appointed by the general overseer and then confirmed

00:06:38by an election of the congregation. That's essentially how it worked. So the general overseer appointed

00:06:44somebody to basically stand as trustee or deacon, like it wasn't an open election, you know, just

00:06:50anybody couldn't run. He appointed you and then the congregation gave you a vote of confirmation,

00:06:54basically. And the general overseer, though, was not an elected position. It was, he was in it,

00:07:00William Branham was general overseer, and he was there forever until the day he died. And then,

00:07:05of course, the same more or less with Joseph as he found himself to the top level in that

00:07:10institution as well. So basically, the central figure controls who gets what position. And so

00:07:20William Branham had put the deity cult members, by and large, in control of that church before he

00:07:27left, the Branham Tabernacle before he left. As we mentioned before, the only member on the board

00:07:32at Branham Tabernacle who wasn't a full-fledged member of the deity cult was Banks Woods. And Banks Woods

00:07:39resigned shortly after William Branham died because he was upset that Billy Paul had did the hostile

00:07:44takeover. And when he resigned, that left the Tabernacle deacon board, rather the Tabernacle

00:07:49trustee board, fully in the hands of the Branham deity cult. And so that's the first institution I

00:07:55want to talk about and just point out to you those names on it. Fred Sothman was on the board back

00:08:01then, John. Your grandfather was on the board as a trustee before he became pastor. He became

00:08:08pastor a few years later. And Roy Roberson, those were really the three key guys on the board that

00:08:15had voting majority, John. It was your grandpa, Roy Roberson, and Fred Sothman. They were the three

00:08:21trustees that formed the majority of that board and gave the church over to Billy Paul following the

00:08:27hostile takeover. You know, they refused to confront him. Of course, your grandfather was also out in

00:08:32Arizona at that time, too. He wasn't actually an attending member. So basically, it was the takeover

00:08:37from Arizona of the Branham Tabernacle. So anyways, that piece is interesting. And I'll point out some

00:08:42more things in the next one. It is interesting. And the fact that grandfather was out of state,

00:08:49that's, it gets a little bit odd. Because in the later years, I know that I've mentioned this on

00:08:53recording. And I don't even believe any of the deacons that were in the tabernacle at that time

00:08:59would deny it if you were to ask them. But your vote was not counted when you voted at the Branham

00:09:05Tabernacle. You had to pay tithes. And I can't remember the limit. There was, there was a number of

00:09:11financial number that they had to meet, I think, before they would count it as actually paying tithes.

00:09:18And so even if you were in attendance every single Sunday, and there were, there were a large number

00:09:24of people that paid their tithes to the organization instead of the Branham Tabernacle, those people,

00:09:31their votes were not even counted. So every election, my grandfather would stand up and say,

00:09:36now we've taken the vote, and everything remains the same. And that's the reason why, because your

00:09:43vote literally wasn't counted. Until towards the end, the number of people that were starting to,

00:09:51it was another hostile takeover, basically, they came, a large number of people against my

00:09:56grandfather came, started paying tithes, and they had to count the vote once they figured out how

00:10:02votes were counted. So it's, there's some interesting history there, too, which we won't go too deep.

00:10:07But before we get into the rest of this podcast, I want to point something out.

00:10:11Now, we're talking about the main sect of the message. We're talking about mostly here in

00:10:17Jeffersonville, but there's a spiderweb around the globe that consider themselves to be part of this.

00:10:22There are also just as many, maybe more, Branhamites who see this whole thing as heresy.

00:10:31They, for example, William Branham in September of 1958 preached this sermon,

00:10:37why we are not a denomination. And most people outside of the main sect view everything that's

00:10:43happening within all these organizations as spiritual fornication, because that's one of

00:10:49the things that William Branham said in this sermon. He declared that anybody who created

00:10:55a denomination of faith was committing spiritual fornication and joining into the Catholic Church

00:11:02as the mother of harlots. And he, you know, in the sermon, he talks through the history of how

00:11:08Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists all come together as organizations. And they, I can't remember his

00:11:15exact words, but he said, basically, they die and they can never be spiritually revived. He, you know,

00:11:20he focused on God dealing with individuals, not institutions. And he declared that denomination

00:11:27separated you from the body of Christ. So even if you're in a denomination and you're Christian and

00:11:33you're professing to be saved by Jesus' blood and you've, you basically, if you are a Christian and you're in

00:11:41an organization, he declares you having accepted the mark of the beast. I'll just say it like that. But in the sermon,

00:11:48he goes through and he condemns all of these denominations, but he targets specifically

00:11:53organizations. He said, basically, once you form an organization, you spiritually are dead.

00:12:00And so people outside of this, they look at, well, wait a minute. There is an organization.

00:12:06This whole thing is established as an organization. And it was, there were organizations in existence when

00:12:12Branham was alive towards the end. But this whole thing established, Branham condemned the whole thing

00:12:18as being heresy and part of the mark of the beast, the mother of harlots.

00:12:23I know what you mean, John. Isn't it so strange? I mean, essentially, the central institutions of the

00:12:29message are the denominational level bodies of the main sect. I mean, it's really what they are,

00:12:37you know, when you think through them all, you know, how they work. And because they control,

00:12:42I mean, they own, they own property and they own churches all over the world, right? Like a lot of

00:12:47the property and assets of churches in Africa and in Europe and in India and other places, a lot of

00:12:55those assets are owned by incorporated groups that are basically sub-entities of the central

00:13:04institutions, right? Maybe we talk about that a little more with Voice of God. But in a lot of places,

00:13:08they own the churches, John. Like, I work with a lot of people that have left the message.

00:13:13There's people who have left a lot of message churches in Africa. And guess what? Voice of God

00:13:17keeps all of their property when they leave because the central institutions own, you know,

00:13:23the assets and properties. And it's not necessarily Voice of God here in the United States. They've

00:13:27created sub-entities in the other countries, right, that are registered within those national

00:13:31countries according to their local regional laws, right? But they have those sub-entities,

00:13:37basically, all over the world. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely, I mean, like a denomination,

00:13:42you know? And in some ways, even more controlling than your typical denomination. I mean, when the

00:13:46Methodists say, hey, we're breaking away, they let them go, right? But if you try to leave Voice of

00:13:52God, nope, we're keeping your church, ladies and gentlemen. So it's pretty rough stuff that happens

00:13:58to some of those people when they try to get away, John. It's not easy. Yeah, so there is,

00:14:06there's Voice of God, there's Voice of God and Spoken Word publications. Those are the next two I want

00:14:10to talk about, John. And the way, again, I'm trying to refer to them, certainly, is the franchise,

00:14:17which became Voice of God recordings, and the franchise, which became Spoken Word. Okay? And it's

00:14:23important to realize that what Voice of God and what Spoken Word are, they were established years

00:14:28before William Branham died as franchises. And those franchises are talked about right here in the

00:14:35church order books. In these books, William Branham explained how the franchises were to be set up,

00:14:40how they were to be organized, who would lead them. And he also explained how the finances worked,

00:14:47John. What those institutions did, Spoken Word and Voice of God, the franchises that became them,

00:14:53they were to pay a royalty. A royalty on every piece of literature they sold, a royalty on every

00:15:02tape they recorded, got paid up the chain, up the pyramid, okay? And ended up, obviously, with William

00:15:10Branham. And so, he explained in the church order book how the royalty system was to work on the

00:15:16intellectual property of the message. Okay? And the first one I want to talk about is the franchise

00:15:21that became Spoken Word Publications. Now, that franchise, again, was set up in those books when

00:15:28William Branham preached that, late 50s and early 60s. And when it was originally started, the head

00:15:34of that franchise was Banks Wood, the man who resigned in protests that I just recently had

00:15:39mentioned that was on the church board. So, he was running it, and he was essentially taking over from

00:15:46the original people who were publishing William Branham's literature, which was really the Voice of

00:15:51Healing Folks, right? Gordon Lindsay's people, Jack Moore's people, they were the ones who were doing

00:15:57the bulk of publishing and editing of William Branham's literature and sermons up until Banks

00:16:03Woods took over and he started that franchise. Up to that point, there hadn't been a lot. Even when

00:16:08he died, there wasn't a lot. There was maybe 35-ish of William Branham's sermons, and they were,

00:16:15for the most part, they were entirely abridged version of his sermons that had been published

00:16:20by the point in time when he died. The only really notable thing that had been published before he

00:16:26died was, or almost right on the edge of being published, was his Church Age book, which, truth

00:16:31is, it did come out just shortly after he died, but they were working on it for a few years.

00:16:36Anyways, Banks Woods was running that organization, and Lee Vale was more or less chief editor of that

00:16:42organization. And what happens is, they're the people William Branham appointed into it.

00:16:48When William Branham died, and that hostile takeover of the Branham Tabernacle happened,

00:16:53that is when Banks Woods resigned as trustee at Branham Tabernacle, but he also resigned as head

00:17:00of the franchise that controlled the literature publication at the same time.

00:17:05Lee Vale stayed on. But that then created an opening. They needed somebody else to run the literature

00:17:11publication franchise. And that is when Roy Borders enters into that position.

00:17:18So Roy Borders. Who is Roy Borders? Roy Borders is a very old-time Ladder Rain preacher. He actually

00:17:25toured with George Houghton and other original elders of Sharon Orphanage back in the 40s when

00:17:31Ladder Rain had just got started. He was a very well-known Ladder Rain preacher from the very earliest

00:17:37days of Ladder Rain. He was the man running spoken word publications for its first decades.

00:17:44And it actually took the name spoken word publications under his leadership in, I want to say it was

00:17:501969 that it was formally organized into spoken word publications. Now he had been running it since

00:17:57roughly 67, but 69 is when they incorporated, organized, named it spoken word publications.

00:18:04And he ran that institution. It was under his leadership that the whole debacle with Lee Vale

00:18:10happened where they realized, no, we can't edit William Branham's sermons because there's too much

00:18:15backlash. He's the man who really ultimately, along with Billy Paul, made the decision to print all of

00:18:20William Branham's sermons verbatim. And he's the one who oversaw a lot of the, you know, the original

00:18:27transcription work of Branham's sermons. Now when Branham died, William Branham died, there was only about

00:18:31500 of his sermons actually in circulation, recorded in circulation when he died. There's well over a

00:18:39thousand now. But back then when he died, they had roughly 500 sermons to transcribe and Boy Borders is

00:18:46the man who kind of spearheaded that effort. Now a lot of the people working in spoken word and a lot of

00:18:53the work to do the transcription was actually happening out in Arizona back then, John. A whole lot of the

00:18:58message community had moved to Arizona. And the actual original printing work or a lot of the

00:19:04original transcription work, a lot of that was happening in Arizona. And it was happening, the

00:19:08people back then were in the Tucson Tabernacle, right? So Perry Green was deeply involved in the

00:19:14early operations with spoken word publications. And that's also when this crisis happens that we're

00:19:20going to talk about in the 80s. And a lot of these guys end up coming back to Jeffersonville.

00:19:24A lot of that equipment ends up out there because Perry Green had helped procure a lot of that too.

00:19:30And so that's how he ended up with a lot of the literature publication ability because he had

00:19:35basically the originals of the spoken word stuff out there with him that they didn't bring back here

00:19:40to Jeffersonville. So anyways, that is the history of spoken word up into the 80s. And what leads into

00:19:46the crisis with spoken words is Roy Borders actually died in the 80s, John. I believe he died,

00:19:53I want to look, I think it was 1982 to four, I got the exact dates in my book. And it's easily found

00:19:59online, come out over my people volume two. But he died, I believe it was night between 1982 and

00:20:051984. I'll get the next date here while you chat next, John, but he died. And that put spoken word

00:20:13publications into a crisis of leadership. Okay. And I'm just going to kind of leave that there. And then I'm

00:20:20going to walk through the next franchise and show you how that crisis happens at the same time. So

00:20:25what do you think? It's interesting stuff, isn't it, John?

00:20:28It is. And to an outsider looking in, even if you are in the Branham cult of personality,

00:20:35but you're looking in on the main sect in this episode and you are not part of this,

00:20:40it's hard to understand just the complexity of what Charles is describing. Because here in

00:20:45Jeffersonville, I think I have mentioned this a few times, if you attended the Branham Tabernacle

00:20:50and you're an outsider, you didn't catch it. If you were, have you lived here for any period of

00:20:56time, you noticed that there were three different categories of people. You had the people who were

00:21:02strongly followers of Prophet Jr., which I won't give the name, but everybody can figure out who I'm

00:21:07talking about. You had the people who were strongly devoted to my grandfather. And then you had this

00:21:14weird subset of people that were even further into the deity cult, so much so that they were openly

00:21:20declaring it. And there would be, if any Easter or big event, there was always this big van parked out

00:21:27beside the tabernacle that said either William Branham was God or Prophet Jr. was God. My grandfather would

00:21:35have the deacons come out with black trash bags and duct tape and just tape over the side of it so people

00:21:41didn't think we were freaks. But that's what was going on. So you had that level of complexity. Well,

00:21:47because you had these different sides of people, and they were strong divisions, I'll say it like

00:21:53that. What happened is, oddly, within the main sect, there was a cult that developed within the cult

00:22:01that was surrounding these organizations. So while William Branham was the central figure overall,

00:22:07you also had many who viewed it as like this trinity of gods. You had William Branham as the

00:22:16god, you had Prophet Jr. as the god, and you had these organizations as the god. So you had this

00:22:21trinity of demons, basically, is how I best could describe this. But this is what happened, and this

00:22:28is what formed, eventually, what would lead to another hostile takeover in the, what was it, year 2015,

00:22:34I think it was. All of this comes from what we're talking about here.

00:22:39That's all very true, John. We ought to, before we're done, get all the way, maybe we could go all

00:22:43the way up to 2015. So I only went to 2005 in my book, but there has been a whole lot of really

00:22:49interesting things happened since 2005, so that we could definitely talk about some of that. That

00:22:54could be pretty interesting. So coming back to the central institutions again. So we've talked about

00:23:02the bread of tabernacle. We've talked about spoken word, which is basically, that franchise is doing

00:23:08all the literature publications. Now let's talk about the third central institution. Now the third

00:23:16central institution is the franchise that became Voice of God Recordings. Now this is probably, in some

00:23:25ways, the more important of the two, as far as creating literature and recordings. So the franchise

00:23:32that became Voice of God Recordings was also organized, John, in the Church Order books. This was in here.

00:23:39William Branham explained how it works, how the royalties would happen, who would be in charge, and how all

00:23:43that would go. So the way that it was set up is, now tape production had been going on for some time

00:23:51before the franchise stuff was set up with Church Order. The very oldest, oldest message tapes that we

00:23:58have today, John, were actually created by Estelle Beeler. Very interesting. The original, the oldest

00:24:03recordings of the message known are Estelle Beeler's recordings. Like I mentioned, he was a healing

00:24:09evangelist. He traveled the circuit a bit himself, and he was a regular to Branham Tabernacle. The very

00:24:15oldest recordings are from him. Then some of the nearly oldest recordings are from Roy Roberson.

00:24:21Roy Roberson had a little wire recorder at the Branham Tabernacle, and he did some recording

00:24:27as well. And so the oldest recordings, up until Gene and Leo showed up, was made by generally Estelle

00:24:34Beeler or Roy Roberson. It wasn't a for-profit sort of a thing. It was just a, you know, they were just

00:24:41making recordings to make recordings. It wasn't until, if you go back in time, the year that William Branham

00:24:49started selling his recordings, like advertising them selling, was 1953. And if you will look

00:24:57through the timeline, what happened in 1953? In 1953, William Branham lost the sponsorship of

00:25:02Assemblies of God, okay? He got, he took a big financial hit that year. And they started selling

00:25:08tapes as he lost that sponsorship. And so the tapes, in my opinion, was part of his effort to

00:25:15create a new revenue stream at that time when he lost a very important sponsorship.

00:25:22So when he started making the tapes, he brought onto his team two, they were actually, one of them

00:25:30was not even an adult at the time. If you go back and look, Leo John was a minor when he started working

00:25:36for William Branham. I believe the math comes out to him being 15 or 16 years old when he started doing

00:25:42this, okay? He was a minor, John, when all this started. Now Gene Goad was not. Gene Goad was a

00:25:47few years older. So Gene and Leo came on and they started traveling everywhere with William Branham

00:25:54and they would be responsible for making the recordings. And this started roughly 53 or 54

00:26:01and certainly had been, was going on by 55. The exact date it started is a little hard to pin down.

00:26:07Um, there's, there's some varying accounts, but, uh, it, it, somewhere between 53 and 54 is a pretty

00:26:12safe bet that they started, you know, being the guys doing all the recordings. So as it started,

00:26:18they made all the recordings, John, and they would sell the recordings and they'd get to have a little

00:26:22cut of whatever they sold, basically. That's, is how it worked. But when William Branham did church

00:26:28order, he formalized it and he explained how it would work. And we can only assume that it was

00:26:35similar to how it already worked. But in a nutshell, he gave permission for, um, whoever was making

00:26:43the tapes to keep, um, all of the profits except for the royalty that came back to him. And his royalty,

00:26:50uh, was, I believe it was 25 cents a tape, John, was the royalty going back to William Branham. If memory

00:26:56serves me correctly without looking it up. He, his royalty was 25 cents a tape and then whoever was,

00:27:01um, running the franchise got to keep all the rest. Well, remember they were charging six bucks a tape,

00:27:07right? So, so that's, that's 575 for me and 25 cents for Mr. Branham, you know, if, if everything

00:27:13was being done according to the book. Now, when he established church order, Gene and Leo continued

00:27:20to be the guys making the tape. But what he did is he put Fred Sothman and Fred Sothman's son-in-law,

00:27:28James McGuire, um, in charge of the franchise. And what it did is it essentially turned Gene and Leo

00:27:35into the employees of Fred Sothman and James McGuire. So Gene and Leo had, they, they had the

00:27:42master tape library, they had the duplicating equipment, and they were still following William

00:27:48Branham around, by and large, making the recordings. And now Fred Sothman and James McGuire are the guys

00:27:55they reported to, to make all the tapes, okay? Now, this, that's what happens here in church order.

00:28:02Now, this was all before they moved to Arizona. In the early part of 1963, all these guys packed up

00:28:09and they moved to Arizona. Gene and Leo moved out there, Fred Sothman, James McGuire moved out there,

00:28:14William Branham moved out there. And they took all the master tape library with them, they took all of the,

00:28:20um, recording and duplicating equipment with them. And as you know, James, John, um, Leo and Gene,

00:28:27they set up shop in Prescott, Arizona, and they built the commune known as The Park, which was a

00:28:32torture molestation commune and unspeakable horrors happened in that commune. There's, I believe,

00:28:38five or six, um, survivors of that park who have told their stories. Um, you can get and you can hear

00:28:46about the horrors that were happening in that park. We did full episodes on it. There's been

00:28:50interviews with Deborah Thibodeau Dalton. Um, and I'll also say this, John, some of the survivors of

00:28:56that park came back to my church after all that happened. And Gene Goad himself, John, came back

00:29:02and was attending my church in the 1990s, okay? The early 1990s. The last time I believe he was in our

00:29:08church was 1991. Gene Goad. So, yeah, we know, we know a lot of stuff, okay? Like we're not,

00:29:16we're not disconnected from this stuff. We're not people talking about things we don't know.

00:29:20That's what people would like you to believe is that we're talking about things we don't know.

00:29:24No, we talk of what we know and have witnessed and seen, okay? And so, at any rate, John,

00:29:31in the 1960s and the 1970s, where are all of the tapes coming from? They're coming, by and large,

00:29:43from the park. The park is where the tape manufacturing enterprise was at. Fred Softman,

00:29:52James McGuire were the heads of the franchise. Gene and Leo were working for them, okay? And they're

00:29:58all in the deity cult. It's all the deity cult. James McGuire was in the deity cult, too. And

00:30:04James McGuire was specifically one of the men William Brennan was talking about when he preached

00:30:07the Bruce Serpent, actually. Him and Fred Softman were two of the three men that he was talking about

00:30:11specifically in that sermon. James McGuire and Fred Softman and the third man named Tom Simpson are

00:30:15the ones who went to William Brennan's house after and apologized and did, you know, all that stuff.

00:30:19Anyway, coming back to the park, that is where the tapes, by and large,

00:30:28were being produced in the 60s and the 70s, John, and up into the early 80s. The park imploded in,

00:30:35I want to say it was roughly 1978. Some people left the park in waves over the abuse. I think the first

00:30:42big leaving was in 75. There was another, but Leo held on to some of the people and he kept things going

00:30:49there up until 78 and 79 and 80. So Leo was still in that condition. They were still doing the tape

00:30:59manufacturing out there, John. He contracted the HIV virus AIDS, John, right in that period of time, is what the

00:31:08message legend is. And he died in 1987. But he contracted the AIDS right in that window as well. And so you have this

00:31:16crisis hitting the central institutions, the two key franchises that produced all the literature and

00:31:22all the recordings. One, the director, Roy Borders, died of spoken word. He was, they were out doing

00:31:28their stuff in Arizona then. And Leo and the park has went off the rails in a way that is unspeakably

00:31:37horrific, John. And they have the master tape library in the commune. So the whole thing,

00:31:49the central institutions are going into a crisis as you come into the early 1980s and something has

00:31:56to be done about it. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the

00:32:01progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other

00:32:07fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham

00:32:13Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the

00:32:21compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,

00:32:27with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and

00:32:34documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to

00:32:40the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always,

00:32:46be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

00:32:52On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:32:56So for the people who are outside looking in, the researchers who are listening to this podcast,

00:33:02I want to unwrap some of that. When we mention these names, Gene and Leo and the Park,

00:33:07we actually have covered these in past podcasts, if you want to go back. But Gene, Goad, and Leo

00:33:14Mercer were basically William Branham scribes. If you consider what a biblical Old Testament prophet was

00:33:23and how they had scribes to document what was said by the prophet, that's what they were establishing.

00:33:29The difference is these so-called scribes never really documented prophecies before the event.

00:33:35Most of them were documented after William Branham made the claim of the event. You can go look through

00:33:41his list of prophecies. And surprisingly, there are, I think, maybe only three out of, I can't remember how

00:33:48many there are, where the event occurred after it was declared. So these scribes failed in many,

00:33:56many ways. But they established a commune, which was a prototype

00:34:03community that William Branham was declaring as Little Goshen. And within this community,

00:34:09there were all kinds of abuse. I can't even go into details, or YouTube would filter and block this

00:34:15video. But you can go into my website and type in Gene Goad or Leo Mercer. You can type in, I think

00:34:23it's Keith Locher, where the Supreme Court started investigating into the abuse in this compound.

00:34:30This was a horrific, horrific thing. But keep in mind, so William Branham is preaching. And for the era,

00:34:38if you were even a Pentecostal or mainstream minister within a normal church, you really didn't have all

00:34:45your statements recorded and published verbatim in the same way. You might have books, you might have

00:34:50literature. But these guys were literally recording and in the later years started transcribing these

00:34:59statements. And think about the names of the organizations. They're recording William Branham's

00:35:03words, and they call it the spoken word. And later, Voice of God recordings was established,

00:35:09like Charles mentioned. They were literally deity cult members who believe William Branham was God in

00:35:16the flesh, establishing the written word and the recorded word for today as a new Bible. And these were

00:35:25not good men. Like I said, you can go back and listen to the podcast. These were not good men doing this.

00:35:29But these men are what established the entire tier of organizations that exist today.

00:35:38You're correct, John. I mean, unspeakable horrors were carried out in the park.

00:35:43Terrible, terrible, terrible stuff happened to young children, you know, young three, four,

00:35:49five, six year old children, even just horrendous, horrendous stuff, John. And there are,

00:35:56I mean, to my estimation, perhaps 100 to 125 children victims of all of this. I mean, it's

00:36:03very horrific stuff. A number of them have come public and told the stories. And this,

00:36:10people try to downplay this, John, they try to downplay the park. Oh, this was a fringe. Oh,

00:36:16this wasn't really connected to the main set. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Right?

00:36:22There is no message without these people. This is where the message, this is where the tapes come

00:36:27from. These were the men who made the tapes. If you subtract Gene and you subtract Leo,

00:36:32there is no tapes. There is no transcripts. There is no spoken words. You take these men away,

00:36:39you do not have a message. You cannot get more central to the message than these men and some of the things

00:36:47going on in this park. Right? And that's why of all of the areas of abuse and everything,

00:36:52John, I feel like for me, this is why I come back and focus on this one so much,

00:36:56because it is so central. And it's so dishonest the way that people try to hide everything and cover

00:37:02it up. And, and John, how did, how did they get away with it? Because I'll tell you what,

00:37:09a lot of people knew what was going on there. They knew what was going on while it was going on.

00:37:14And as it all fell apart, because it was so central, because it was so important,

00:37:20it all had to be covered up. It had to be covered up because this was where the

00:37:27franchise that became Voice of God Recordings got its tapes and produced its tapes right before Voice

00:37:35of God existed. Voice of God was organized in reaction to the crisis. I think that is a very fair

00:37:42assessment. That's my opinion, right? Other people might have a different opinion. My opinion is that

00:37:47Voice of God was organized in response to this crisis in the 1980s, John. The park imploded. The

00:37:55master tape library was in the hands of homosexual, child molester, sex perverts, right? And something had to

00:38:05be done because they had got HIV and were going to die. Something had to be done in order to continue

00:38:12the tape manufacturing moving forward. And you can look into when Voice of God was organized, John. And

00:38:21actually, Joseph Brennan was actually very kind and he shared the letter when it was organized, John,

00:38:29in his Here I Stand that he mailed out, I believe in the 1990s. There's a Here I Stand letter he sent out.

00:38:35And in that, Joseph Brennan shared the documents where Voice of God was created. And in that document,

00:38:42it says that the franchise to produce tapes was being transferred by the William Brennan Evangelistic

00:38:49Association, which owns all the intellectual property. It's the top of the pyramid. It transferred the

00:38:53franchise to Voice of God Recordings. So the question is, who owned the franchise, John, before

00:39:00it was transferred to Voice of God Recordings? Follow those dots and you are going to go straight

00:39:06to the park, ladies and gentlemen. Okay? Follow those dots, you'll go straight to the park. Fred

00:39:10Soffman was the man who owned the franchise and his son-in-law, James McGuire, and operations were

00:39:16being conducted in the park. Okay? Voice of God had the franchise transferred to themselves,

00:39:23by the WBEA, after, and if you line up all the dots and connect everything out, all of that happened

00:39:29in direct response, in direct timing, in my opinion, to the breakup of the park, the HIV diagnoses of

00:39:39Leo, and the death of Roy Borders, the crisis that struck the central institutions in the 1980s. Now,

00:39:46a person could speculate a lot of things about why. Why organize a new legal entity, you know?

00:39:53I don't know. To avoid legal responsibility? I don't know. We could guess. There's a lot of

00:39:57reasons we could think. But Voice of God was created in the aftermath of the collapse of the

00:40:01park to continue on production of tapes, and also to take over the literature publication in some ways,

00:40:07because Roy Borders had died. And when that happened, they moved the operations all back here

00:40:12to Jeffersonville, John. That's when a lot of the people who worked in the tape production and

00:40:19publication stuff, they moved back here. So the Dee Dee cult, John, a lot of the Dee Dee cult

00:40:23returned from Tucson back to Jeffersonville in the 80s, as that all imploded, right?

00:40:32And once again, Jeffersonville is the undisputed headquarters of the message from the 80s, right?

00:40:37But when all that imploded, a lot of the stuff moved back here. So I'm just pointing this out

00:40:43and connecting these dots, because John, I don't think that our average listener has connected these

00:40:49dots. And I just want to make sure that people understand this. There's a reason we've honed in

00:40:53on the park and focused on that a lot. And there's also a reason why many leaders within the message

00:41:00never publicly cried out against what was happening in the park. There were people who knew what was

00:41:06going on. That's the sad part of this. And if you go read the story or listen to our podcast and

00:41:11understand what was happening there, it is one of the most awful, horrific things that you have ever

00:41:19heard of. And it angers me that there were not people rising up and saying, you've got to put a

00:41:24stop to this. Call the government. Call the local authorities. Make this stop. They're torturing kids.

00:41:31And none of that happened. They knew that it was in existence. They knew what was happening there.

00:41:36Even long after the park was shut down and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court,

00:41:43nobody warned the message members that this could be a problem and that there were predators among the

00:41:50leadership. But they knew, my grandfather knew that there were predators among the leadership.

00:41:55I can remember hearing, not to the depth that I know now, but I remember hearing just stories here and

00:42:02there of what was going on with Gene and Leo. And then from behind the pulpit, my grandfather would

00:42:08also talk as though they were these respected figures because it created this situation of

00:42:14conundrum. They're in leadership. They are solely responsible for every single thing that exists today,

00:42:21not just within the message, but even outside of the message. When you hear people like Perry Stone

00:42:27claiming that William Branham was this great prophet, he only knows this because of these organizations.

00:42:32And whenever you hear, oh, I don't know, some of Paul Cain's testimonies of William Branham,

00:42:38Cain was involved with this movement and he is another problem all of his own.

00:42:42He was there. But his stories are confirmed and backed by these organizations. So whenever he tells

00:42:50it to people at Bethel Church, they contact these entities that are completely organized deification

00:42:58of Branham denominations. They contact those people to get the literature that I have had people tell me

00:43:07who came out of Bethel's supernatural school of ministry. They call it Hogwarts, which is kind of

00:43:12funny. But they say within the supernatural school, they had Branham's literature. They got it because of

00:43:18these guys. So these are terrible, terrible human beings that were not stopped because they are what

00:43:25created everything that we see in existence. There would not be a message cult without them, like Charles said.

00:43:30That is all very correct, John. Very correct. And the history of these things is important to know.

00:43:38Right. Now, are we saying that, you know, the leadership of Voice of God was involved in doing

00:43:45all that stuff? No, not saying that. But this I think it is fair to say that what happened with the

00:43:51organization of Voice of God was, in my opinion, a reaction and to deal with the fallout of the collapse

00:43:58of the park and the death of Roy Borders. And you're correct, John. There was an active, consorted

00:44:06effort to cover it all up. Right. An absolute effort to cover the whole thing up. People did

00:44:12know what's going on, John. And let me read you a quote here, John. This is a quote from Perry Green.

00:44:17OK. And maybe before I read this quote, just let me explain how serious some of this stuff was.

00:44:23So when Keith Loker, when that trial happened in the 90s, so Leo died of his medical condition in 1987.

00:44:33OK. At that point, Gene Goad came back here to Indiana. And like I said, at that point, he actually

00:44:41attended my church during the early 90s and was off into another church of our sect of the message after

00:44:47that. Well, when he found out that the Loker trial was going and that people were going to testify

00:44:54about what happened in the park. OK. That all happened the week before their testimonies and

00:45:00stuff was going to happen. That is when Gene Goad committed suicide. OK. Gene Goad committed suicide

00:45:07when he realized the stories were going to come out publicly. That's why he killed himself.

00:45:11And shortly after that, it all comes out. And in those court trials, the people actually did name Gene

00:45:17Goad personally and some of the stuff he did in those trial records, along with Leo. And there was just

00:45:25unspeakable horrors that happened in the park, John. Again, our listeners are welcome to go listen,

00:45:30read articles and stuff and hear the things that happened. But he killed himself rather than have to live with

00:45:37the exposure of it. And let me, though, read you a quote from Perry Green, because there was,

00:45:44I'm telling you absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt, a coordinated, directed cover up

00:45:49of this whole thing by the senior leaders of the message. And let me give you an example of Perry

00:45:55Green doing that. This is on recording. This is on recording. I'll read it to you. Perry Green said,

00:45:59this is from 2002. He said, William Branham spent two hours telling me about Leo and Gene.

00:46:06He told me how they had come and what they had done. He told me all of their faults. He told me

00:46:12how they practiced extortion, how they got people to move out to Chicago, how they took money and that

00:46:18and sent him a little bit and kept the rest. And he had me so angry at those two boys that the next

00:46:23time I saw them, I was going to roll up my sleeves and I was going to put some double anointing of Texas

00:46:29on them both. We got back to Flagstaff, Arizona, and we pulled up to the Cowbells restaurant to go

00:46:35eat. And Brother Branham had been driving since Salt Lake City. You know how it is. We were stretching

00:46:41and getting the kinks out of our back and everything. Brother Branham looks at his watch and he says,

00:46:45hey, we got a couple hours. We can go over the mountain here and see Gene and Leo before we go home.

00:46:50Perry Green made a very long pause right here, John. Very long pause.

00:46:55I stopped. I said, Brother Branham, I don't understand. He said, don't understand what?

00:47:02I said, you spent two hours today telling me what crooks they were and now you want to go see them?

00:47:11And this was the only time Brother Branham ever really rebuked me. He said,

00:47:15Brother Green, I am disappointed in you. You want to know my reaction? What did I do?

00:47:21He said, though I know you don't understand, just because they're crooks doesn't keep me from loving

00:47:29them. So I started, Perry Green says, I started doing everything I could to love Leo and Gene.

00:47:39Okay, that's a loaded statement. I started doing everything I could to love Leo and Gene.

00:47:45I want you to know, don't you talk with a motive or a purpose to destroy them. You talk about them

00:47:52because it's the truth and you be sure you don't have any bitterness in your heart. You make sure

00:47:58your purpose is not to make them look bad. Whatever you do, you love them. That is the

00:48:05way Brother Branham practiced it. Perry Green delivered those remarks in Ed Biscoll's church

00:48:10to a crowd of nearly a thousand people. Okay, there was a directed cover-up of this whole thing.

00:48:16People were threatened, like that, in Ed Biscoll's church publicly, to not talk about this thing and

00:48:22to love Gene and Leo no matter what they did. That is not the only one of these guys on recording

00:48:29doing this sort of stuff. Gene and Leo were all children and bodies in basements and stuff. I mean,

00:48:39the horrors that these men were involved in. And you just heard Perry Green. No matter what they do,

00:48:45you love them. That's the way Brother Branham practiced it. John. Oh my, my John. The leaders

00:48:53are on recording directing the cover-up too. Yeah, it's horrific what went on. And for the

00:48:57sake of the podcast platforms that we use, I will probably have to go back and edit some of what

00:49:03Charles had just said. So... Beep out some words. Beep out some words or something. So if you hear a

00:49:08beep, that's why it is. But it is terrible what's happening in this movement. And the leaders

00:49:15knew it. Most of the men are dead and gone, so we can't really hold them accountable. But the sad

00:49:23truth is that there were others who were not in leadership who also knew what was going on,

00:49:28and they didn't hold the leadership who was covering up accountable. So this turns into this

00:49:33big mess where there's this cascade of errors that basically leaves these men not held accountable,

00:49:41and the movement is growing and spawning off of that. That cover-up is what created the message

00:49:47that we see today. You're correct, John. And the fact that there was a cover-up is, I mean,

00:49:52I think well-documented just by quotes like that one I read you from Perry Green. And if you listen to

00:49:59the rationale of the people who were directing the cover-up, you heard how Perry Green said,

00:50:04Brother Branham said to love them. And Brother Branham said,

00:50:07just because they're crooks don't keep me from loving them, right? William Branham is the one who

00:50:13gave this example to the leadership of the message. The reason Gene and Leo were allowed to get away

00:50:18with everything that they did is because William Branham, while he was still living, directed the

00:50:24senior leaders to allow Gene and Leo to get away with everything they did. Beyond a shadow of a doubt,

00:50:30I mean, that's exactly what Perry Green is saying. That's the same thing Lee Vale says. Lee Vale says,

00:50:34for example, that William Branham told it to him. And William Branham even apparently showed

00:50:40Lee Vale the vision book, John. And Lee Vale says that he saw in the vision book,

00:50:44thus saith the Lord, leave Gene and Leo alone. He saw thus saith the Lord, leave Gene and Leo alone

00:50:51in the vision book. William Branham was actively courting and instructing all the rest of the inner circle

00:50:58to let Gene and Leo do whatever in the world they wanted and leave them alone. That's the testimony

00:51:05that comes to us from the other senior leaders. And you gotta wonder why. It's very disturbing,

00:51:11isn't it? And it's especially disturbing to realize William Branham was the one directing everybody

00:51:17to leave them alone. If you're a prophet of God, John, and you know that terrible things are going to

00:51:24happen like that. Just let me ask you this. Would Jesus say, leave them alone? Would God say,

00:51:30leave them alone? No, no. God would say, call the police, for goodness sakes. That's what God would

00:51:37say. You know, God would not say, leave them alone. God would say, call the police. And so,

00:51:42again, it's just so, it's so terrible, the stuff that was allowed to go on.

00:51:46The other thing that's really difficult to put into words, there were men and women who were part

00:51:53of this commune that Gene and Leo were leading. I have family members who were in that park. And

00:52:02when they came out, they were some really messed up people. What had happened to them and the levels of

00:52:09authoritarian control that they were submitting themselves to was horrific. And what it does to

00:52:14the mind is awful. You had people who were in this, who came out and went into other churches.

00:52:22Yet, as we've mentioned before, some of the mythology that developed in the message in the

00:52:28later years came from people who witnessed things that William Branham said or did. Some of those

00:52:34mythologies were flowing out of the park. Obviously, through Gene and Leo, most of their time with William

00:52:42Branham was spread throughout the message. And I think it's even made it into some publications.

00:52:48But these were messed up people. So the mythologies themselves were also tainted. And as that spread

00:52:53through the message, not only did you have this horrific group of men who created the organizations

00:52:59that stand today, and the organization simply would not exist without them. The things that they were

00:53:06bringing to the table that became part of the movement was also just as bad.

00:53:11You're correct, John. And so I hope that I have painted the picture for our listeners of the crisis

00:53:18that hit the central institutions in the 1980s. Roy Borders has died, which put spoken word into crisis.

00:53:24The park has imploded. The master tape library is in the possession of a man dying of HIV, AIDS.

00:53:32The central institutions are in crisis. Besides that, in these exact same years, John, is when Ewald Frank

00:53:40broke away. These are the same years that Ewald Frank broke away. And Ewald Frank had all of the

00:53:47foreign language translations. So the central institutions are also losing access to all the

00:53:52foreign language literature at the same time. So there's just this huge crisis rocking the central

00:53:58institutions of the message. And the way that the central institutions, in my opinion, the response

00:54:04seems to be that they created Voice of God recordings. And so they organized Voice of God recordings in,

00:54:11I believe it was 1984. And now here's a couple interesting things about Voice of God, John. If you go back to

00:54:19when Voice of God, when Voice of God was first organized, one of the trustees of Voice of God was a man named

00:54:26Floyd Patterson. Floyd Patterson. Now, there's more than one Floyd Patterson in the message. But I believe

00:54:35this is the Floyd Patterson of Flagstaff, Arizona, John, based on everything I can see with the addresses and

00:54:42everything. Where did the bulk of Leo's commune go to when the commune imploded? They went to Floyd

00:54:51Patterson's church in Flagstaff. That's where they moved, John. And he becomes one of the trustee of

00:54:56Voice of God recordings. Now, I'm telling you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Floyd Patterson absolutely knew

00:55:04what had happened in the park because the majority of the escapees came there. And now he is a

00:55:11trustee suddenly on the board of Voice of God recordings, okay? You know, just, you know,

00:55:18think about that a little bit. And as that happens, John, things start changing. There's rumors about

00:55:28how Voice of God got a hold of the Master Tape Library. There's like multiple stories and I don't

00:55:33know which one is true. There's a legend that Billy Paul organized a raid on the park and they came in and

00:55:39they seized the Master Tape Library from Leo. There's also a legend that some of the people who

00:55:45left the park took the Master Tape Library with them to Floyd Patterson's church. I don't know if

00:55:50that's true. And there's also a legend, probably the most interesting of them of all, is that Leo took

00:55:58all the tapes out in the Arizona desert and buried them. Oh, Master Tape. Which could be, you know,

00:56:04what happened to the Master Tape Library is a little bit of a message legend and a mystery.

00:56:10But somehow or another, Voice of God managed, it seems like they got a hold of a lot of them. But,

00:56:15you know, here's the thing. If you guys remember back in those days how Voice of God used to put out

00:56:21these feelers, does anybody have a copy of a tape we're missing in our library, right? They were doing things

00:56:26like that. You know, that would maybe indicate to us that they didn't get the whole Master Tape Library

00:56:31from Leo. But maybe somehow some of it, you know, didn't make it to them. But nevertheless,

00:56:38something or another happened and somehow Voice of God got control of the Masters and got control to

00:56:43start, you know, doing the duplicating. And Fred Softman almost certainly played a role in all that

00:56:50as well. Fred Softman basically came over from the old franchise and he was a key figure

00:56:56in Voice of God in those early days as they stood up their, the tape duplicating efforts.

00:57:03And John, this is another pretty interesting thing. I have always been told, I was there

00:57:08like when Voice of God dedicated their buildings and stuff, you know, back in the 90s and different

00:57:12things. We live here in Jeffersonville. Our sect of the message always loved to go over and spy on

00:57:17on the stuff going on whenever they could. We'd make good sermon fodder, you know what I mean,

00:57:23for the preachers. So they're over there spying on everything. And basically, John,

00:57:30the story that we were always told, and as far as I know, I think this is true. The man who named

00:57:37Voice of God Recordings, the man who named Voice of God Recordings was Fred Softman. Fred Softman.

00:57:44Fred Softman, the man who said, William Branham told me, I am Elijah, I am Moses,

00:57:50and I am the Messiah. And don't tell anybody else. That is what Fred Softman believed about

00:57:56William Branham. Fred Softman believed that William Branham was God. And when Fred Softman

00:58:01would have chosen the name Voice of God Recordings, the God in Voice of God Recordings

00:58:06was William Branham. You know, Charles, I've been trying to think of a good way to end this podcast

00:58:11all throughout the things that we've said. But there's really no better way than simply the

00:58:15names themselves. You have William Branham who's speaking, and his words are being recorded by

00:58:22men and women who believe that he is God in the flesh. This is another Jesus Christ come down in

00:58:28the flesh through the manifested Sons of God doctrine that we've been discussing. This is God. And these

00:58:35people named the institutions in the same way. This is the spoken word of God. So in other words,

00:58:41you have your Bible that we call the word. Well, here is the spoken word that goes with the written

00:58:46word, which they openly declare. And then they name the institutions the Voice of God. And they start

00:58:52publishing the voice of, you know, they believe William Branham is God. This goes all around the globe. So

00:58:58again, whenever you're reading about these men and women in the charismatic movement or the new

00:59:04apostolic reformation that believe this is one of God's generals, they believe that because they're

00:59:10getting this information from these organizations, this denomination called the message or called voice

00:59:16of God, however you want to call it, this denomination of faith is producing literature, advertising it as

00:59:23the voice, the direct voice of God coming through a human being. And so this is God. They believe this

00:59:30is God. There's no, there's no more than I can say that really sums it up other than the names themselves.

00:59:37It's all such a very sad story, John. It really is a sad story. But I do think we have helped our

00:59:44listeners today to just connect dots, you know, and also shared some of our opinions about how to

00:59:50interpret the way that those dots connect. And so I hope it's helpful to our listeners to put pieces

00:59:55together. You know, through this whole period of time, Billy Paul was the man running the central

01:00:01institutions. He was. You might see some other names out there, but Billy Paul was the man running the

01:00:06central institutions through this period of time. So I think that's an important note. So come back

01:00:12next time, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to continue the story. We really only kind of got

01:00:17talking about the central institutions up into the 1980s here today. But we have more to say

01:00:22that happened in the 80s. The 80s was a very explosive decade for the main sect of the message,

01:00:26wasn't it, John? There's a lot more before we get out of the 80s, I think, that we got to talk

01:00:31about. And so maybe we'll do that in our next episode. So much more to say, but we'll stop there.

01:00:37If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

01:00:41You can find us at william-branham.org and christiangospelchurch.org. For more about the

01:00:46history of William Branham and the healing revivals, you can read Come Out of Her My People.

01:00:51For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion

01:00:56from Christian Identity to the NAR, both available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

01:01:09Let's go.

01:01:39We'll see you next time.

From Spoken Word to Silent Victims: The Birth of Voice of God Recordings | Charles Paisley | 368

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