- 2 days ago
John and John McKinnon examine how the roots of a popular religious movement today can be traced to the legacy of a mid-20th-century preacher. They discuss how teachings once considered fringe have now evolved into widespread belief systems with immense influence. The discussion critiques the theological framework that prioritizes emotionalism, prophecy, and hierarchy over sound doctrine and personal transformation. They explore the historical lineage of doctrine, noting how manipulation of Scripture has enabled abusive leadership structures and created spiritual harm for countless followers.
The conversation challenges listeners to reconsider the authority given to self-appointed leaders and scrutinize the way fear, branding, and elitism are used to keep people captive in spiritual systems. Through detailed examples, they explain how doctrines attributed to divine revelation often originated in earlier, questionable sources, and how this pattern has led to a distorted gospel centered on personalities rather than Christ. The episode ends with a call for deeper, contextual study of Scripture and promises more revelations in future discussions.
00:00 Introduction
02:17 The Message as a Platform for Control
06:01 The Lying Prophet and Disqualification from Ministry
10:03 Scripture Twisting and Misrepresentation
15:00 Authority, Abuse, and the Role of Deacons
20:40 William Branham’s Background and Doctrinal Sources
25:05 Fresh Revelation and the Rise of Mediator Figures
30:36 Branding, Fear, and Cult Identity
36:03 Sensationalism and Emotional Manipulation
42:44 False Elitism and Bride Theology
50:51 The Gospel Lost in Signs and Emotion
57:10 Anti-Intellectualism and the Seminaries Critique
1:04:49 Eisegesis vs. Exegesis: Why the Message Is Spiritually Harmful
1:06:47 Preview of Future Investigations into False Prophecy
______________________
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
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– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
The conversation challenges listeners to reconsider the authority given to self-appointed leaders and scrutinize the way fear, branding, and elitism are used to keep people captive in spiritual systems. Through detailed examples, they explain how doctrines attributed to divine revelation often originated in earlier, questionable sources, and how this pattern has led to a distorted gospel centered on personalities rather than Christ. The episode ends with a call for deeper, contextual study of Scripture and promises more revelations in future discussions.
00:00 Introduction
02:17 The Message as a Platform for Control
06:01 The Lying Prophet and Disqualification from Ministry
10:03 Scripture Twisting and Misrepresentation
15:00 Authority, Abuse, and the Role of Deacons
20:40 William Branham’s Background and Doctrinal Sources
25:05 Fresh Revelation and the Rise of Mediator Figures
30:36 Branding, Fear, and Cult Identity
36:03 Sensationalism and Emotional Manipulation
42:44 False Elitism and Bride Theology
50:51 The Gospel Lost in Signs and Emotion
57:10 Anti-Intellectualism and the Seminaries Critique
1:04:49 Eisegesis vs. Exegesis: Why the Message Is Spiritually Harmful
1:06:47 Preview of Future Investigations into False Prophecy
______________________
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
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00Transcription by CastingWords
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.
00:00:44And with me, I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, John McKinnon,
00:00:48the author of The Persuasive Preacher, The Gifted Prophet, and The Noble Politician.
00:00:53John, it's good to be back and to talk about rotten fruit.
00:00:57I don't know any better way to sum up this episode than this is a discussion of rotten fruit
00:01:03and why you see such a mess in the world today.
00:01:08You know, people have reached out to me, and before I even did what I started doing,
00:01:14I was reading news reports where they're asking the question,
00:01:17how did all of this mess come to be?
00:01:20How do we have these self-proclaimed prophets and apostles governing people,
00:01:25and why do people so willingly submit to them?
00:01:28It seems as though, you know, people would just walk away from this kind of thing
00:01:33if they're asked to submit to the authority.
00:01:36But yet, that's the very foundation of what was created with William Branham's message cult.
00:01:41And it laid the foundation that really, I look at it as though it's a platform of enabling.
00:01:49And it enabled several predators to, you know, choose congregation as their prey.
00:01:56And it created a platform where the congregation would willingly submit to them.
00:02:01So, it's going to be quite an interesting discussion.
00:02:04But in the end, it turns out that this is going to be a discussion of rotten fruit.
00:02:09So, thank you for coming back to do this.
00:02:12Thank you, John.
00:02:13It's good to be back here again to record another episode with you.
00:02:17We've got a lot to talk about today, and a lot of it's going to focus on the ministry of William Branham
00:02:23and how it's related to the NAR today and how things migrated from the message into that movement
00:02:31and a lot of the practices that he started out with and adopted for himself.
00:02:36You know, they borrowed from, and it's what we see today, what we see going on.
00:02:42And I want to title this, you know, Why Is the Message Harmful to Christians?
00:02:46There's a whole lot of episodes we could do on this, and I know we'll probably do many.
00:02:52But one of the main reasons that the message is harmful is because of Scripture bending and twisting.
00:02:58You really have to stretch Scriptures every which way to believe what you do when you are saying you believe the message.
00:03:08And so, when you're in that, you don't really see that.
00:03:10You don't, unless you step back and really take a good look at what the Scriptures really say in context
00:03:17and who they were spoken to, if you try to read into it and read between the lines,
00:03:22as we were often taught to do in the message, you can read anything into the Scriptures if you want to read between the lines.
00:03:29But I think if you look at the Scripture as being God's Word, you really want to know what was He trying to say?
00:03:35What was He trying to communicate to the group of people that they were written to?
00:03:39So, we're going to see that today and see many examples of Scripture bending and twisting.
00:03:44And I do want to go into that even in more detail in future episodes.
00:03:48So, I'm very happy and excited to get started with this.
00:03:53I think that's why this is so significant today.
00:03:56When we talk about William Branham's legacy, we're not just talking about these weird theologies that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s.
00:04:04We're actually talking about the DNA of what was created and what developed into the New Apostolic Reformation today.
00:04:11You have all of these apostolic networks with all of these self-proclaimed prophets and apostles,
00:04:18and they're using the same exact strategy.
00:04:21They're elevating themselves above Scripture, and they have become mediators between God and man.
00:04:27So, once they have established that authority, the people who are submitting to this authority,
00:04:33they're left with questions whenever their authority on Scripture deviates from what the Scripture actually says.
00:04:41They're trained and manipulated to choose what the apostle or prophet has said over what it actually says in the Bible.
00:04:49And you and I have came across this before.
00:04:52Members of William Branham's cult, if they're left with that decision,
00:04:56do I choose what the Bible says or do I choose what William Branham said?
00:04:59They will often choose what the Bible said over William Branham,
00:05:03because the spoken word, which is William Branham's words, comes in greater authority than the written word.
00:05:10And that's the essence of heresy when you think of this.
00:05:14So, to understand what happened today, you really have to dive deep back into what is Branhamism.
00:05:21Why did he create this mess, and how did all of this develop from it?
00:05:24So, it all starts with the ability to convince people that even if your prophecy fails,
00:05:31you are still speaking from God and to overlook the failure.
00:05:36And, again, we're examining the fruits and this rotten fruit,
00:05:39but to understand that, you have to understand William Branham.
00:05:44You have to understand the relationship between William Branham and the people that he has under his authority.
00:05:50So, yeah, John, I totally agree.
00:05:52You know, these things that we're going to talk about today should really bother,
00:05:56you know, those people who are in the message still.
00:05:59And I want to continue focusing on, you know, what we called last time, you know, the lying prophet.
00:06:05That's going to be another theme in all of this is the theme of the lying prophet.
00:06:10I've got many things to say about that, maybe not all together in this episode,
00:06:15but I know in future episodes I do want to go in detail on some of those things
00:06:20that clearly would disqualify, you know, William Branham to be the end-time prophet or a prophet at all.
00:06:28So, a lying prophet, you know, to message believers, that term really should not bother them.
00:06:34You know, it shouldn't bother them at all that I use that
00:06:37because message believers have told me again and again that they all admit that he lied,
00:06:42and they do accept that as fact, but they also excuse that
00:06:47because they believe they have examples in Scripture of where lying was permissible for God's prophets to do.
00:06:54So, the question message believers should ask themselves is whether Branham's lies do, in fact,
00:07:00bring a disqualification to his ministry.
00:07:03So, I think we can find things that will, in fact, disqualify him or others to proclaim him as a true prophet.
00:07:11You know, I think we'll find those things.
00:07:13I know for a fact we will.
00:07:16I'm confident that we can, and I won't get into all that in this episode,
00:07:19but I know in future times I do want to.
00:07:23And then believing, you know, if you do disqualify, say you don't have,
00:07:28there's not a prophet that was here, and if you can come to that conclusion,
00:07:33then something called the message is totally unnecessary.
00:07:35It's really unfruitful to your Christian life, and it's also unproductive in the kingdom of God overall.
00:07:43I want to bring out a couple of Scriptures for this episode, too.
00:07:46In 2 Corinthians 4, 2, first half of that verse says,
00:07:49And in 2 Peter 3, 16, Peter was referring to what Paul's ministry was.
00:08:05So, I think that's where we're going to find that William Branham kind of winds up in this.
00:08:29He was, for one thing, unlearned, and then he was very unstable, I'd say mentally and in his stableness of the Scriptures.
00:08:39I think he was unstable in that as well in many of the things that we're going to point out today.
00:08:44There's positively one thing that Paul did condemn, and others also in the Scripture condemned,
00:08:50in the New Testament, not just the Old, and that is a sin of lying.
00:08:53And so, if William Branham says he preached the same thing Paul preached,
00:08:58and then has a habit of lying overtly, then he's definitely not living up to what Paul preached.
00:09:04And the message then becomes a do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do religion.
00:09:10The leaders can follow this pattern as well, and they do follow that pattern.
00:09:13The outside looks really good, and we're going to see that as we go through this episode.
00:09:17There's a Christian front to it, but behind the scenes, there's a totally different story.
00:09:22You know, a corrupt tree really internally cannot bring forth good fruit,
00:09:27and I know you and Charles have certainly pointed out much of that bad fruit that the message has produced in recent days.
00:09:34Exactly.
00:09:35You know, one of the biggest eye-openers for me is when I began to realize that they had misrepresented what a prophet was,
00:09:43and they had misrepresented the relationship between a prophet and others,
00:09:49and how that was basically a mouthpiece for God.
00:09:52It wasn't this authoritarian structure.
00:09:55But worse, they had misrepresented and confused people as to how to evaluate a prophet.
00:10:02We often get the comments,
00:10:03Why are you doing this?
00:10:04William Branham was a vindicated prophet of God because he could heal people.
00:10:09Those are two different things, man.
00:10:11If you're a prophet, you're vindicated by whether or not the prophecy comes to pass.
00:10:16And it's not a swing the bat as many times as you can, and maybe you'll hit the ball type of relationship.
00:10:23A prophet, you're going to hit it every time because it's God speaking through the voice of the human.
00:10:28So, if you understand that in cases where these are lying prophets,
00:10:34where these prophets are saying things that aren't coming to pass, that aren't true,
00:10:38and then twisting the Bible to make the Bible fit their agendas,
00:10:45and to try to misrepresent how to evaluate the prophecy,
00:10:49you end up with this case where the spoken word is so distorted and twisted
00:10:53that it in no way matches or even is a close representation of what's in the Bible.
00:11:00So, this twisting of Scripture, that's where you really have to be careful with these guys.
00:11:04So, yeah, John, to continue on this point of what we're getting to about Scripture bending and twisting,
00:11:11you know, there is a definition for Scripture bending.
00:11:13It refers to interpreting or implying Scripture in a way that distorts its original meaning
00:11:18or the intent to support a particular viewpoint or agenda.
00:11:22It often involves taking verses out of context, ignoring the larger narrative,
00:11:28or imposing a modern understanding on ancient text.
00:11:32It can lead, and definitely does lead, to a misrepresentation of God's character and teachings.
00:11:39There's a thing called distorting the meaning of Scripture.
00:11:42It involves twisting the meaning of Scripture to fit a predetermined conclusion
00:11:46rather than letting the text speak for itself.
00:11:49Now, anybody in the message knows the Scriptures that William Branham used quite often
00:11:54was Malachi 4, 5, and 6, Luke 17, 30, the revealing of the Son of Man,
00:12:00or when the Son of Man is revealed.
00:12:02Also, Revelation 10, 7, which we did speak of in the last episode,
00:12:07talking about Revelation 10, 7 being related to the cloud
00:12:10that was proven not even to be supernatural.
00:12:13Also, there's another error that people do is they ignore the whole context.
00:12:18You know, we find that very often in William Branham's ministry,
00:12:21just not looking at the context of Scripture at all,
00:12:25but definitely reading himself into Scripture.
00:12:29Selective use of verses.
00:12:30I find that to be very often the case in William Branham's ministry.
00:12:35There was only a select set of verses that we used over and over and over again,
00:12:40and we ignored the rest of the text.
00:12:42I mean, until I got out of the message,
00:12:45I never heard many, many sermons on just, say, one book of the Bible.
00:12:50It was always pick and choose Scriptures out of certain books,
00:12:53but you never would see somebody teach through the whole Scripture verse by verse.
00:12:58And that was new to me,
00:12:59but I was very happy to run into ministers that do that
00:13:03in their expository preaching.
00:13:05So it's very problematic to do this because it leads to misrepresenting God.
00:13:10And I think there's many things I could say later on in other episodes
00:13:15about how God has been misrepresented in the message.
00:13:20It leads to a distorted view of God.
00:13:23It also leads to false teaching and also spiritual harm.
00:13:26And that's why I asked the question today, you know,
00:13:28what is the harm in the message,
00:13:31or why is the message harmful to Christians?
00:13:34Examples of Scripture bending that I can point out right now
00:13:40is taking a single verse about God's love and mercy
00:13:44and ignoring other verses about His justice and holiness.
00:13:47So if you hear most of what you hear about the preaching of today
00:13:51is that, you know, God loves you,
00:13:53He's got a great plan for your life,
00:13:55and then you're going to become great and powerful,
00:13:57and you just need to fall into it.
00:13:59Whereas, we lose the fact that we need to be broken and repentant before God,
00:14:06and we lose the sense of awe about His justice and holiness as well.
00:14:12William Branham used parables to support his ministry,
00:14:15such as the parable of the wise and the foolish virgin,
00:14:18to support his view of the bride and the nominal church.
00:14:21He also misrepresented Acts 19 to support his view of re-baptizing Christians
00:14:28and saying that that was what Paul preached.
00:14:30But one day when we do go into Acts 19,
00:14:33I think we can clearly show that that context was not even about Paul re-baptizing some Christians.
00:14:40He also misrepresented or misinterpreted Revelation 10-7 and Malachi 4.
00:14:47There's many other things that you could say.
00:14:50But using Scripture does justify harmful actions sometimes.
00:14:56So many ministers, in fact, many of the ones you and Charles are pointing out,
00:14:59have used their authority to support abuse of power.
00:15:03And one clearly good example of this is William Branham's view of deacons.
00:15:08In all his teaching of deacons, or any time he mentioned deacons,
00:15:12he always called them the police of the church.
00:15:15So they always kept order.
00:15:18They somehow kept everything in order, and if you got out of line,
00:15:21the deacon would come and tap you on the head or point you to the door.
00:15:25It was always something like that, some police.
00:15:29But deacons in the Christian church have a much different responsibility.
00:15:34Sure, they can help to keep order,
00:15:36but they also minister to the church's ministry and community needs,
00:15:40such as assisting with worship services, pastoral care,
00:15:45organizing outreach programs, supporting or managing the church administration.
00:15:49There's many duties that William Branham didn't mention.
00:15:54But let me say a quote here real quick from 1963 in church order on December 26th.
00:16:00William Branham said,
00:16:02A policeman or the deacon is a military police to the army, courtesy, but yes, with authority.
00:16:09So he's talking about, you know, they'll walk you out the door with courtesy,
00:16:12but he's got authority to do it.
00:16:14He said, you know what a military police is?
00:16:16Actually, if he carries out his rights, I think he's just like a chaplain.
00:16:20You see, it's courtesy and everything, but yeah, he has an authority.
00:16:24You must mind him.
00:16:26See, these rookies out there go and get drunk while he puts them in their place.
00:16:30And so a deacon is to put them in their place.
00:16:33Now, remember the deacon is a policeman,
00:16:35and a deacon's office is actually more strict than most any office in the church.
00:16:40I don't know of any office more stricter than the deacon's office.
00:16:43That's right, because he's got a real job.
00:16:45He's God's man.
00:16:46And he's God's man just as much as the pastor is.
00:16:49So, you know, he's saying that to show that,
00:16:54and it also teaches other deacons in the message, you know,
00:16:58that I'm God's policeman, I'm going to keep order.
00:17:01And, you know, anybody that disagrees with anything the pastor's doing,
00:17:05we're going to make sure that they get squashed and get walked out the door
00:17:09and they don't have any influence among the congregation.
00:17:12Now, I can see that should be the case if somebody's bringing false doctrines and so forth.
00:17:18But if you have a simple thing you want to say about the message, of course,
00:17:23you're going to be walked out the door very quickly.
00:17:27But anyway, he goes on with a few more quotes.
00:17:30I won't read those right now just for the sake of time.
00:17:32But the deacon does have a lot of authority in message churches.
00:17:36He's probably he's second behind the pastor and authority because message churches are organized around a pastor.
00:17:44And we're going to see that the pastor is what William Branham calls the head of the church.
00:17:50And there's no higher authority.
00:17:51So rather than operating in a congregation of elders where you have some wisdom of the elders and men that are proven and serving as an elder,
00:18:03you have just one pastor and he's the head.
00:18:05And kind of what he says goes.
00:18:07And you can't really overrule him.
00:18:09So that's another harmful thing about the message because it does lead to an abuse of power.
00:18:14I agree.
00:18:14And, you know, Charles and I were going through that right now in the podcast.
00:18:18We're talking about some of the fruits of that.
00:18:21How was this power abused?
00:18:23But beyond that, if you really take a step back and look at it, the message itself has so many different versions and varieties and flavors.
00:18:32And some of the churches are really authoritarian.
00:18:35Others are somewhat benign.
00:18:37But here's what gets really interesting.
00:18:40If you're on one of the authoritarian side and you are in that church, you begin to feel like you're being oppressed.
00:18:46You understand it.
00:18:47If you're in one of the others that seem to be benign, you would laugh at everything that you and I are saying.
00:18:54You would not believe it because our church isn't like this.
00:18:58We don't see this.
00:18:59But ask one of the critical questions to the leaders just one time and see what happens in these churches.
00:19:06Suddenly you're going to see that power being flexed.
00:19:09There is an abuse of power, but it's more to the point there is a – they formed an identity, a relationship around William Branham himself.
00:19:21It becomes to be a brand.
00:19:22We are a branded William Branham group.
00:19:25We cannot question it.
00:19:27Even though some of the churches are benign and they seem to distance themselves, the moment that question is asked, the moment they come in contact with critical information, always the critical information must be suppressed.
00:19:40That's simply how it is.
00:19:42When you go beyond this and you start to look at some of the churches that formed because of this, they have – they've actually shifted and reworked their branding to where there is this – I don't know what you call it.
00:19:56There's an array of people that are welcoming.
00:19:58It's like the marketing in a business world, right?
00:20:00There's these people that are welcoming, they're open to answering questions, and these aren't the ones that are the authoritarian structure.
00:20:08This is just the branding that makes it feel like you're welcome and like it's not authoritarian.
00:20:15But the moment you get deeply embedded into it and you start to pose a risk to the others, that's where you start to see the authoritarian structure.
00:20:23If you have critical information that may convince others to leave, if enough people leave, there's a loss of financial revenue, and that's where this turns problematic for these guys.
00:20:35Yes, John.
00:20:36I think one of the things that I want to focus on is how did William Branham allow himself to bend scripture?
00:20:44How did this come about?
00:20:45I think a lot of it has to do with really his background and training.
00:20:49You know, he was only about, I would say, 22 years old.
00:20:53If you either go by the birthday of 1907 or 1909, he was somewhere around 22 years old, say around 1929 when he first joined the church at Roy Davis' church and accepted Christ and became exposed to the Bible.
00:21:08According to him, his family wasn't religious.
00:21:10He never studied the Bible until he became a Christian, and of course, he was around 22.
00:21:15So everything he was taught, it was really under Roy Davis' ministry.
00:21:20And, you know, we've gone through all the things Roy Davis believed, and it was primarily him for several years.
00:21:26You know, he sat under it.
00:21:28He was only a Christian about three years before he had a tent meeting, you know, William Branham was.
00:21:32So very early on, he conducted a service and stepped out and conducted a revival meeting, probably under the advice of Davis to build the church membership.
00:21:44But he was really a novice at the time, and I suspect that he had very limited knowledge of scripture.
00:21:49So he was only operating with what he was taught under his pastor.
00:21:54But then he was kind of forced into becoming a pastor and becoming in a position of leadership in 1934 after Davis' church burned.
00:22:02And that was only three or four years after becoming a Christian.
00:22:05So he was very new.
00:22:07But many things were happening in the church at that time, and I know he was observant of all that.
00:22:12You know, Pentecostalism was fairly new.
00:22:13All these traveling ministries were very new, people going around, holding revivals.
00:22:20Even him and Davis had gone around holding revivals.
00:22:23John Alexander Dowie, you know, he was still probably talked about quite a bit.
00:22:29Just the man that was across the river from him was William Souders.
00:22:33You know, he would go up and down the river and had this story about an angel coming to him and a light at the river while he was baptizing and so forth.
00:22:41There was John G. Lake.
00:22:42There was Frank Sanford up in Maine that took a ship around the world to call it the Holy Ghost Ship to take a group of people, and they ended up in a sad state as well.
00:22:54So the lure was getting caught up into those schemes, and it was powerful because it meant a good bit of money for those men.
00:23:01And a lot of men and women were rising up and boosting their personalities and making themselves something great.
00:23:08And they ran a lot of that.
00:23:10It was like a business to them.
00:23:11They made money at it rather than really having a true ministry.
00:23:16And many absurd practices were even condoned.
00:23:19The focus was really far from the gospel of Christ.
00:23:23And, you know, William Branham observed all that.
00:23:25He was part of that.
00:23:27People were even harmed and died as a result.
00:23:29And so I believe this carried over into Branham's ministry because he gave many people a false hope.
00:23:36Many were declared healed with, thus saith the Lord in his ministry, when in fact they were not healed.
00:23:40And even you can say if there were one or two on record that actually got healed, that God actually healed them.
00:23:47These types of ministries do damage people far more than they actually end up helping just because of the mass of people that are given a false hope.
00:23:56Many false doctrines rose up over time as well because usually the word of God is put aside in favor of what became, say, fresh manna, fresh revelations of the day.
00:24:07And that notion, the fresh manna, the fresh revelations for the day, that has began to dominate the movement.
00:24:14If you look at new apostolic Reformation leaders today, even in some of the Pentecostal sects that would not really identify as being part of this, you know, the apostolic networks,
00:24:26everything that branched off of Branhamism or was influenced by Branhamism, they wanted to have this as, I guess you would say, it was more important than the leading of the Holy Spirit.
00:24:39This new manna, this new revelation that came from the leader, this was our new Holy Spirit.
00:24:44This is our mediator between God and man.
00:24:46And just like William Branham, whenever the people want an answer from the Lord, many of them will go back and listen to the recordings of Branham, and they say that they get their answer from the recording.
00:24:58So instead of, you know, praying to God and the Holy Spirit leading them, well, let's put in a cassette tape, and now it's an MP3, whatever it is.
00:25:07They've chosen that pathway, but more problematic, as they're doing that, they're also picking up doctrines.
00:25:16And one of the questions that hit me initially, which I have an opinion on it now, but as you're going through those doctrines, how much of those doctrines were really fresh manna?
00:25:26How many of these doctrines really came from the Lord speaking through William Branham?
00:25:31If you go back into the sermons and you begin to understand what it is he's saying, many of the doctrines that he's preaching, he's claiming, came directly from God.
00:25:41And it was a new revelation to him.
00:25:44Even though he had this stack of books, he would say, an angel met me and gave me this, and I'm giving it to you.
00:25:50So therein lies a huge question.
00:25:53Yeah, John, what I can say about William Branham's teaching, of course, is that none of it was really original.
00:25:58And what I see him doing, if you can look at what he taught, you can go find someone else that has taught it before.
00:26:05So he's really taken his material from others, even though he may have had a sincere effort to find the truth.
00:26:12He may have tried to put it all together, taking bits of pieces here and there to try to put it all together as truth.
00:26:18But it eventually became his truth, and eventually it became him revealing the mysteries and not the things that he found.
00:26:25So his efforts just led him down a path of being ostracized by the mainstream because he picked up so many oddball doctrines
00:26:33and then began to teach a lot of things that were very strange doctrines that caused him to be condemned by all others.
00:26:42And then he condemned everyone after that.
00:26:47Once you become in your own little corner with your own doctrines, then you ostracize everybody else,
00:26:54and you claim that everybody is false, but you're the only true one is usually what happens,
00:26:58and that's what really happened in the message.
00:27:02They may believe that, and this is what the groups do today, that they may believe other people can have salvation,
00:27:09but they don't believe that they're the elite Christians, that they're not in the bride,
00:27:14or they won't live in the city of God, and they become second-class citizens of heaven.
00:27:19But, you know, I don't read of those different salvations in the Bible myself,
00:27:25and the Bible does call our salvation a common salvation, meaning it's the same for everyone,
00:27:30and everyone receives the same blessings that came upon us because of the sacrifice of Christ.
00:27:36So, some of the doctrines William Branham latched onto were serpent seed, which he got from Davis.
00:27:43Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ is the only formula, which Davis was also practicing that.
00:27:49There were gifts of the Spirit and his time with Davis.
00:27:52Of course, you know, they drank poison.
00:27:54They went to such meetings doing strange things such as that.
00:27:57But then from the Pentecostals, William Branham took an extreme form of the holiness standard from them, of dress,
00:28:05and it became sort of works-focused for keeping your salvation.
00:28:11And his preaching style, he also took much of the revival atmosphere from the Pentecostals.
00:28:17He also took his eschatology, which is a study of end times from others like Clarence Larkin, Ellen G. White,
00:28:24the Seventh-day Adventists, and others that he studied quite extensively and then preached later on in his ministry.
00:28:32You know, his sermons were, I would say, all over the place as he tried to come to some solid conclusions
00:28:37about what is the baptism of the Holy Ghost.
00:28:40He struggled with that over the years.
00:28:42And it's so strange that how can you call yourself a minister and from the start you struggle with
00:28:50how do you know if you've got the Holy Ghost or not?
00:28:53You know, if you can't just look into the Word of God and believe that
00:28:55and know what God is doing in his salvation work upon you
00:28:59and know why you and how you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
00:29:05then, I mean, how can you even say you're a minister of the gospel?
00:29:08You know, he struggled with what is the new birth and how are God's children adopted?
00:29:13He preached the sermon series of adoption and had this interesting way he set adoption
00:29:20as being a totally separate work from even your salvation.
00:29:24He also taught the Godhead in a strange way.
00:29:29And confusion is really the word when trying to nail down what he really believed most of the time
00:29:34in those type of doctrines.
00:29:36You know, you would hear him say one thing in one place and hear him say things in another place
00:29:41that totally contradicted what he said, you know, a month ago.
00:29:45And that's why message believers are really confused most of the time, I would say.
00:29:52But some ministers will come down to the fact that all you need is Christ.
00:29:57You need to make sure you've had a new birth with and met Christ.
00:30:01And really, you know, if you know that, then why would you need William Brown's message in the first place?
00:30:09Because that's where it's all key is knowing Christ.
00:30:13So when people try to say you've got to add on the message, you know, they're really just adding on things.
00:30:20It's not even in the word.
00:30:21So then they become that's when you start getting off the word.
00:30:24And that's when people start saying things like to have the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
00:30:28You have to believe the message.
00:30:30And if you don't believe the message, then it's obvious you don't have the Holy Spirit.
00:30:33Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism
00:30:40transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
00:30:47You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:30:54On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
00:31:04with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:31:09You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:31:15If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
00:31:21And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:31:28On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:31:33So this has turned into a huge, huge mess today.
00:31:37If you look at today's religion and politics, and you start to see and understand that these two are beginning to be blended together,
00:31:45and you begin to identify with it.
00:31:48It's not just that you identify as Christian.
00:31:50You have to identify with certain legislation.
00:31:54You have to identify with groups of people.
00:31:57You're forming an identity based on your ideology rather than just simply being a Christian as to follow Christ,
00:32:04to understand that, as to understand Christianity.
00:32:08But what has happened is, like I said earlier, these guys have created branding.
00:32:12And it's nothing new to the New Apostolic Reformation today.
00:32:17Any of these apostolic networks, they love their branding.
00:32:20You follow this prophet, that prophet, or the other one.
00:32:23Well, back during the healing revivals, you had all of these ministries that were being created by William Branham
00:32:31and Gordon Lindsay through the Voice of Healing Networks.
00:32:35You basically had a starter kit for starting an evangelistic tour in ministry if you joined into this thing,
00:32:42and especially if you got advertised in the Voice of Healing magazine, you had an instant following.
00:32:47So what happened is you created this structure where you could appoint individuals to become additional mediators between God and man.
00:32:59And it turned into this big, big mess whenever you think about it.
00:33:02But it all comes back to, like you said, it's a bending of Scripture.
00:33:06You can't even have any of this if you're just simply staying with the Bible.
00:33:10So when we look at, you know, William Branham is the history behind this, and you look at the fruits of it today,
00:33:17you begin to understand that what was created, it wasn't a Christian structure.
00:33:22It was more of a branded structure.
00:33:24And many of the themes that came, you know, flowed through this.
00:33:28As you said, William Branham copied it from everyone.
00:33:31Some of the sources that he copied it from, such as Roy Davis, these were very, very bad individuals.
00:33:38And their agendas, really, if you think about what they were doing and why they were doing it, it's really scary to think of it.
00:33:44That's right, John.
00:33:45And I would say that, you know, what we see today in the NAR and the Message and other places is just the fruit of what William Branham spearheaded.
00:33:57Him being the type of person that he was, he did spearhead the sensational, and all the sensationalism we see in the NAR today really came out of this tree.
00:34:10You know, the NAR is definitely not a mainstream, you know, Christianity, although they do try to, they want to make it mainstream so that everybody's going to fall into it.
00:34:19And I would hope that one day that never happens, of course, the truth will prevail.
00:34:26But, you know, Branham's method became the model for using the Word of God for your own interests instead of teaching the people the Word so that they can be better Christians and just live this life in a better way for God.
00:34:39And it really wants to promote your own interest or what you believe about the Scripture versus what the Scriptures are actually saying.
00:34:47William Branham's theology really causes people to believe they are larger than life.
00:34:52We know that, you know, most people in the message believe they're some type of elite Christian, and they look down on everybody else.
00:34:59Or that they become, one day they'll become somehow a god with power to speak things or make things come to pass and so forth.
00:35:06But it doesn't matter, too, in the NAR, as it didn't matter in the messages we've seen, as you and Charles have pointed out many times, these ministers, whether they're qualified or not, to even be a minister.
00:35:18Any person with a little charisma or if they were promoted by William Branham while he was alive, prayed over perhaps, they're the ones that are promoted to be God's man of the hour.
00:35:32Anybody with charisma can draw a crowd.
00:35:34I mean, it just can happen.
00:35:35And they've got the energy to do it.
00:35:37When you add some worship music to that, something looks like supernatural happening, you know, if you can produce that or convince people that God spoke to you, lip to ear in some way in dreams or visions.
00:35:50And then you use all that high energy that you got into like a motivational speech, you know, and you declare to the people how good they are and how powerful they are and how prosperous God wants you to be in this life here and now.
00:36:04And speak as if you're on the cutting edge of what God is really doing today.
00:36:09And I'm sure you'll have no problem gathering crowds.
00:36:11We see it time and time again in what the ministries are today.
00:36:17You know, William Branham gathered his following much the same way, except, you know, for him and his day, he really focused on doomsday because he wanted everybody to know that he was the last day prophet.
00:36:29And right after that, the earth was going to burn.
00:36:32So he had people on the edge of their seat just waiting, just wanting to know what God was going to show him next, because at any day, the bombs are going to drop on America or great earthquake was going to happen.
00:36:43And half of the United States is going to fall into the sea or whatever it might be.
00:36:48You know, we were on the very verge of, of course, to come into the Lord, which I believe the Lord can come in any day, but he took it to that extreme.
00:36:57And so to do that, he wanted to convince others he was the last day prophet.
00:37:00So he easily convinced them that doomsday was at hand and that God was not sending anybody after him, because why would God need to if he's going to destroy the earth?
00:37:10You know, William Branham's convinced his followers that God had revealed all the mysteries to him or had tied up all the loose ends in scripture.
00:37:19And so there's no need for anybody else to rise up after him because declaring a new revelation because he's, he's already revealed it all.
00:37:27But, you know, even with that, even, even by him, maybe saying that or alluding to that, you still had men rise up after him saying, I'm the successor.
00:37:35Uh, and I, I've got all this new revelation or I'm the, I'm the fulfillment of these seven thunders or whatever it might be.
00:37:43Uh, they, they, again, use that same pattern and the same methods that William Branham used to take scripture and use it for their own interest, to promote their own selves and to make themselves fit in scripture some way where they obviously do not.
00:37:56Uh, so that's the problem, you know, with ministries like his, it exalts man and it puts them on a pedestal where everybody bows to the man.
00:38:04And, and, and you have to do that to be in fellowship with that particular group, no matter what group it is.
00:38:10Um, I plan to go into this more as we get into more episodes and show once you start down that road of sensationalism and ministry to draw crowds, then it opens the door to more and more of the sensational.
00:38:22Cause you have to have that to keep the crowds.
00:38:24You have to keep the crowd on edge.
00:38:26You have to have the most current vision or prophecy, and you have to have the next big meeting that was much bigger than the last.
00:38:34And the hope is that the public will buy into whatever you're selling.
00:38:37And if you can ever get them hooked, uh, then you've got them and they're loyal to you.
00:38:42But if it doesn't happen as what happened in William Branham's ministry, then you will cut your losses and just keep your inner circle, draw them close to you, whoever's most loyal to you.
00:38:51So that's, that's exactly what happened in William Branham's ministry.
00:38:54And fortunately I would say it did because had he'd have got, uh, some of the things that he spoke, if they would have had any kind of hint of coming to pass, then no telling what the message would have been today.
00:39:06But I'm so thankful that, that God did not allow that to happen because how that, if that would have happened, because, because any minister can speak a hundred different things and maybe one of them will hit.
00:39:19Maybe one thing will happen the way he says it.
00:39:21Um, but if it ever happens that way and, and a ministry like William Branham's, it would have swayed a lot of more people than it did, but thankfully, uh, it didn't.
00:39:30So, so that's what I want to show eventually in more episodes is many of the ministers I've talked to, I've asked them, do you know about the 1952 vision that he had?
00:39:41And they, they know nothing of it because usually they only focus on things 1963 and beyond, you know, after that cloud appeared, uh, that that's what they focus on.
00:39:50They don't even look back at things that happened prior to that.
00:39:54So that's what I hope to bring out in the future, John, as we get into these episodes.
00:39:57Yeah, I'm excited to get into that with you.
00:39:59But there's one thing that you said that I want to go back and focus on just a little bit more.
00:40:04You're talking about fear.
00:40:06Whenever theologians or scholars look at the doctrinal connections between what you see in the new apostolic reformation today and to Branhamism and to charismatic movement, you know, all of these different movement, word of faith, prosperity gospel.
00:40:21Whenever you examine the doctrinal connections, it's very difficult to piece it all together because you're going to find people who, like you said,
00:40:29after William Branham dies, another one raises up and he has this new thing.
00:40:34And this other guy raises up and he has this new thing.
00:40:36Even within the message, we have all these splinter groups.
00:40:39And what happens is some guy goes insane and he believes that his sect is the new he's the new Messiah.
00:40:46He's the new mediator between God and man, the new prophet, whatever they want to call themselves.
00:40:52But they all seem to share one single element, and that is fear.
00:40:56If they can hold their congregations captive by fear, and that fear manifests in many different ways.
00:41:03Like you said, Branham had the doomsday.
00:41:05If you go to understanding what is the theology in, oh, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.
00:41:12They had a different version of doomsday, but it was the same strategy of fear.
00:41:18So doctrinally, you would look at, you know, IHOP KC and you think, well, that's nothing to do with Branhamism.
00:41:23But if you understand how they did what they did in captivating the people and understand that Paul Cain was William Branham's protege,
00:41:32you began to understand, wait a minute, there's more here than meets the eye.
00:41:36And that fear, it captivates people.
00:41:39That's what holds people in the cult.
00:41:42And it makes it very difficult whenever they decide they want to leave.
00:41:46It's not like just leaving an average church.
00:41:49You go to, I don't know, the Baptist church, Methodist church, whatever denomination you pick.
00:41:53You start going to the church, and then you decide, ah, this is not for me.
00:41:57Well, you leave.
00:41:57There's no fear in leaving because you're not leaving Christianity.
00:42:01You're leaving that particular building of that, you know, those particular people.
00:42:05But this has created a cult of identity, cult of personality, where when you leave, you're afraid to leave because you're leaving that brand.
00:42:15You're leaving William Branham as the brand.
00:42:17You're leaving Mike Bickle as the brand for IHOP KC, whatever it is, that brand.
00:42:22And that, you know, that really holds you captive, that fear.
00:42:26So as you get into this and you start to think about, well, you know, going beyond that, what do they have more for me beyond the brand?
00:42:35And as you leave, you begin to, you look backwards.
00:42:38You begin to think, well, what do they have that I'm missing in the new church?
00:42:41You're always looking to that brand.
00:42:43And that's, for me, that's a big deal.
00:42:46Yeah, there's many, John, there's many promises the NAR puts up there.
00:42:51You know, many things that they will promise you in this life and just things are leaving out things in Scripture that really should be focused on in the Christian ministry, such as genuine repentance and brokenness over sin.
00:43:04And, you know, you rarely see that.
00:43:06What you see is a lot of worship, a lot of emotionalism, and a lot of the sensational.
00:43:12And what the NAR does promise you is maybe raw unchecked power, you know, say living under the glory cloud or unlimited blessings or gifts in abundance.
00:43:22And I believe all this leads, and we see this in the message, we see it leads to a spiritual pride and working things up through human effort.
00:43:31You know, they want to wait on God for something, the next big thing to come forth.
00:43:39Some ministries that I know of have like a theme for the year, and they've gone into the prayer closet.
00:43:45They've come out, well, this is where God's taking us for the year.
00:43:47Kind of like leading the children of Israel somewhere.
00:43:50They're leading them to a newer and newer promised land, and where God's going to take them to a new height, whatever it might be.
00:43:58And rather than just focusing on the things that the Bible teaches that we are to do in this life, which is humility, repentance, you know, victory over sin, living for God, and then loving your neighbor.
00:44:10The very simple things are lost in all that sensationalism, all that emotionalism, and all those beliefs.
00:44:19And I'm sure there's some that do focus on that, but the majority definitely does not.
00:44:24So the most deceptive part, I would say, of William Branham's ministry by far, and also the NAR, is the Christian front that it puts on.
00:44:34You know, they're able to come across as Christian, capturing, you know, many sincere people who are the most vulnerable, I would say, because they want to believe.
00:44:44They want to know God.
00:44:45And so if somebody's got that Christian air about them, they've come across with a Christian front, they can easily be deceived.
00:44:54So had we had access to many of those earlier recordings of William Branham's, I believe it would have been clear that he was under the influence of something other than the Word,
00:45:03because we caught just a tail end, and we've gone through it in our episodes before, about how he used certain practices that were just questionable.
00:45:13And we see where he moved away from talking about those practices that he used in a couple of his early recordings in 1947,
00:45:21the ones we have access to, such as where he talked about moving bracelets or causing crossed eyes to become straight with just his mind power alone.
00:45:30And apart from the power of God, he said he didn't even need the power of God to straighten someone's eyes out, and he claimed that was given to him.
00:45:39So we see Ernst Baxter, in his testimony, even alluded to that.
00:45:43He said, I've told him not to say things like that, and it just got so unbearable to him that he had to leave his ministry
00:45:50because he kept saying things that were just, you know, not scriptural.
00:45:54So I'm sure there are a lot, I won't say all, but a lot of these men and women in ministry have put on a Christian front.
00:46:03But behind the scenes, you know, they are much different.
00:46:06And really, a lot of them are not even qualified for ministry, according to the way the Scripture qualifies men for ministry.
00:46:14And y'all have spoken about that, about the men that have been exposed, you know, in the last few years even.
00:46:21But in William Branham's case, it was just his outright lying and misrepresenting events in his life or making up fabricated stories, you know, that really, I would say, disqualify him.
00:46:35The ministers of the NAR go even further with fabrications.
00:46:38We see so many crazy things that they've said, supposing to be from God.
00:46:44But these are things so outlandish, I would say, I would definitely say they could never have happened because otherwise this man's some great, he's like a Moses or something.
00:46:58You know, things like that didn't even happen to Moses.
00:47:00So the harm in the message, too, I would say, in seeing all these things is in the ministers that are ministering the message today, especially the younger ministers who are coming up and who are sold out and are not doing the research.
00:47:17But they're just relying on what their parents have told them, what other ministers have told them, even the older ones.
00:47:22And there's still some of the older crowd that's still living that actually were part of the meetings that William Branham had.
00:47:30You know, they rely on those stories.
00:47:32And, of course, the whole story is not told.
00:47:35And so the seeds of the healing revival, of course, have produced all that we see today.
00:47:39And I would say we see a lot of this in the NAR as well.
00:47:44Like, as 2 Peter 2.17 says, you know, these are wells without water.
00:47:48There's really no substance to them.
00:47:50Clouds that are carried about with a tempest.
00:47:52They're blown about with every wind of doctrine, of course.
00:47:56And the Bible does say that the mist of darkness is reserved forever for them, except they repent.
00:48:03Message believers, you know, they might not agree with me on this, but I believe William Branham was unstable.
00:48:09In the scriptures, but he's caused a generation, because of it, he's caused a generation of ignorance in the scriptures by the way he acted.
00:48:18He does have a mixture of Christ.
00:48:21The message is a mixture of Christ and Branham.
00:48:24But you know that when you mix anything with the Word of God that would compete with Christ for attention and worship,
00:48:31it's definitely error and something to be avoided.
00:48:35William Branham would make claims like, because he knew,
00:48:38because he believed he knew the author of the Word,
00:48:41that it was better than really trying to know what the Word says.
00:48:45And if you tell people that, of course, you can ignore what the Word says,
00:48:49because you can just say, you know, the author of the Word told me this.
00:48:52So whatever voice came to him and he thought it was God,
00:48:56that's what he would believe what the Word meant.
00:48:59Or he would be teaching it out of his own ideas and injecting himself.
00:49:04That's where we see that twisting of bending of scripture happening.
00:49:09So if you compare what he taught, and we're going to do this in upcoming episodes,
00:49:14if you compare what he taught with scripture,
00:49:16we can see that he only bent the scripture to tell others about himself
00:49:20and how he fulfilled many scriptures in this day and caused the people to believe it.
00:49:26I know from the ministers I've talked to, I've really asked them down to the nitty-gritty,
00:49:32you know, peel back this onion and tell me what convinces you that William Branham was the prophet of this age.
00:49:40And 100%, every time they tell me it was his gift, it was hearing on tape, of course, that, you know, it was never wrong.
00:49:49For the most part, that's all they've heard is the times that it appeared to be never wrong.
00:49:56But I know for a fact that we've got scriptures of where Jesus told us
00:50:01that we can never rely on gifts, supernatural signs, you know,
00:50:05as vindication of the prophetic or a prophet or a minister.
00:50:08Jesus said that false prophets would arise doing great signs and wonders
00:50:13and would carry many away and deceive many.
00:50:16So these ministers that just say, well, the final straw or the final,
00:50:21when you peel back everything and you say, this is why I believe
00:50:24it's because of his miracles, his signs, or whatever he has vindication,
00:50:30rather than the correct teaching or teaching of the word of God,
00:50:34then you're really on shaky ground.
00:50:35So the message is not only on shaky ground because of the lies,
00:50:41now you're on shaky ground because your first inclination is to believe the signs and wonders,
00:50:46you know, rather than the word of God.
00:50:48And that, for me, is the heart of the problem.
00:50:51What Branhamism created, like it or not, I know that if you're in the Branham cults,
00:50:55they try to deny this, but Branham created a framework where the emotions replaced the gospel.
00:51:02The signs, wonders, miracles, if you look back at the advertisements,
00:51:06the way that this movement was marketed, the way that they used the marketing strategy was
00:51:11they would have newspaper ads with, you know, Branham included, signs, wonders, miracles,
00:51:17come ye, come see, it was like a circus, come see the miracle, come see the miracle.
00:51:21Well, then when you got there, you got into the emotion of seeing the miracle,
00:51:25and they focused more on the emotion than they did the Bible.
00:51:29So whenever Branham says something that is, you know, in some cases, it's anti-biblical,
00:51:34some of the things he's saying.
00:51:35Many cases, it's just extra-biblical.
00:51:38When they hear those things, they don't care because they're caught up in the emotion.
00:51:41They're branded the, you know, William Branham's brand,
00:51:44or there's thousands of ministers that were in this,
00:51:47each different brand had a different version of the emotion that you could carry.
00:51:52And they were looking towards that emotion more than they were in, you know, in the Bible.
00:51:58Where it gets problematic is that is what all of this developed from.
00:52:02If you look at the charismatic movement, look at, you know, John Wimber.
00:52:06He liked to call it the feels.
00:52:08He would say we have the emotion, the feels, the signs.
00:52:10We can do the signs.
00:52:12And the focus becomes more on the emotion than it does the Bible.
00:52:16But more to the point, once you get caught up in that emotion,
00:52:20you get to be elite.
00:52:22You get to be different from all other Christians.
00:52:24Even if you don't see yourself as an elitist,
00:52:27what happens is when you start to see other Christians that don't share those same emotions,
00:52:32you start to think of yourself as better than them.
00:52:34You're different.
00:52:35You have different emotions.
00:52:37And all of this, like I said, it's a framework that Branham laid down,
00:52:41that everybody is built upon.
00:52:42But the really scary part is if you understand that William Branham himself admitted he had
00:52:49severe mental health issues, he admitted to being hospitalized for it.
00:52:53And we've identified, we've had testimony where talking through his, you know,
00:52:59his complete psychosis in some of these cases, when you start to understand that many of those
00:53:04emotions were built upon something that developed from mental health issues,
00:53:09this turns into a huge, huge problem.
00:53:11That's so correct.
00:53:12That's so right.
00:53:14I would say, as I mentioned before, the main drawing card of the message,
00:53:18other than what appeared to be supernatural, you know, happenings,
00:53:23which we've shown the cloud was definitely not supernatural.
00:53:26It teaches you to think of yourself as totally unique from other Christians who are really not
00:53:30in the message.
00:53:33People say the message is Christ.
00:53:35You know, the message believers will say only the bride believes the message and you're not
00:53:40in the bride unless you believe the message or the bride is under a separate covenant.
00:53:45And really to believe that and to believe that other people are saved, you have to believe
00:53:49the bride has a separate covenant with God other than any other Christian.
00:53:53And God has more than one covenant with Gentile Christians.
00:53:56And the bride is more special and different than the regular Christian or that the bride
00:54:01isn't the only elect there is.
00:54:05And so people take that bent that William Branham used to teach the scriptures by.
00:54:09And one of the main parables that he used a lot was the wise and the foolish virgin.
00:54:14And he illustrated that to be like the bride and the nominal church.
00:54:19But I want to show that later on in another episode.
00:54:22I want to talk about that more and just show how that's that's not the case.
00:54:27There's not really a lot of evidence for that.
00:54:30The same.
00:54:30He uses the story of Eliezer searching for a bride for Isaac.
00:54:34And then the women, of course, you know, the woman that became Isaac's bride was the bride of Christ.
00:54:39And then the other women who were not chosen were, of course, the foolish virgin, and they
00:54:44were left out.
00:54:45And that's used many times to illustrate William Branham's message.
00:54:50The serpent seed doctrine is also used to show how the bride is God's seed and the rest are
00:54:54serpent seed or nominal Christians somewhere in between.
00:54:59Now, I'm not sure I've ever heard Branham explain how nominal Christians are somewhere in
00:55:05between the seed of God and the serpent seed.
00:55:07There has to be a third seed somewhere if these nominal Christians are somehow saved and going
00:55:12to be in heaven, you know, as other Christians are.
00:55:16So there's other sinister practices, I believe, in the message.
00:55:21Not only do they outright refer to other Christians as nominal or non-elect or foolish virgin or
00:55:27cannon fodder because they believe they're going through the tribulation when the world's
00:55:31going to be blown up.
00:55:32They also belittle other Christians and other churches in ways amongst themselves.
00:55:37They never see other Christians as their equals in Christ.
00:55:41They'll always put them to the side.
00:55:43And in their pride, they have to place themselves as elite Christians or the elite of the elite.
00:55:50Examples of how they do this is they would probably say things like, we have the revealed
00:55:55word, which is the spoken word.
00:55:58Or you'll not hear the true word in a non-message church.
00:56:02Or all you're going to get in denominational churches are crumbs.
00:56:05You know, you won't get the full word or the bread of life.
00:56:09And it's odd, though, when they travel, you know, maybe go on vacation.
00:56:13There's no message churches around.
00:56:15You know, they might visit a Baptist church or a Pentecostal church.
00:56:18And then they'll make statements like, well, if you can't get a loaf of bread, then you
00:56:22get a slice.
00:56:24But then they also equate denominational churches as receiving the mark of the beast.
00:56:29So if the denominations are the mark of the beast, then why would you even want to go
00:56:34there to get a slice?
00:56:35You know, it just doesn't make any sense sometimes, things that they do.
00:56:40They tend to belittle other ministers.
00:56:42The ministers themselves will belittle other ministers who've really studied the word of
00:56:47God and put some effort into their sermons to really look at the context and the audience
00:56:52who the word was written to.
00:56:54But no message minister is doing this to any broad extent, I would say.
00:56:59They're only hearing what William Branham has said about the word, and that's where they
00:57:03get their sermon content.
00:57:05They downplay studying anything outside of the message, really.
00:57:08And they do say that when you go to school, because William Branham said this, when you
00:57:12go to school to learn to study the Bible, then you get further from God.
00:57:16You know, it's kind of odd, you know, when you're following a man like William Branham,
00:57:22you think you're getting closer to God.
00:57:24But if you're going to learn how to study the Bible, then it's going to take you further
00:57:27from God.
00:57:28You know, those two things are contrary to one another.
00:57:31But I think if you said, John, you know, William Branham did have some mental issues.
00:57:36He tended to be jealous of others who were successful in ministry.
00:57:41He was especially jealous of men who probably graduated seminary, had a good working knowledge
00:57:46of the Bible, which he didn't have.
00:57:48He knew he was out of his league with them, and they didn't fit his agenda or as a narrative
00:57:52about himself.
00:57:53So he really ended up condemning them.
00:57:55He belittled them every chance to God.
00:57:58He indicated they couldn't go very far with God.
00:58:00So here's some examples of a few quotes I've got, just picked out.
00:58:05He said this many times, but in 1950, this is very early on in his ministry, in Believest
00:58:11Thou This, January the 15th, he said, people's got, putting on so much of the gospel's got
00:58:16to a thing, it's all padded up, educated up.
00:58:18They put them out here in these seminaries or cemeteries or whatever it is, all the same,
00:58:25both dead places.
00:58:27And that just put me in mind of a seminary preacher, reminds me of an incubator chicken.
00:58:32A little incubator chicken, just chirps and chirps and chirps, ain't got no mammy.
00:58:36He's mechanically turned out, puts me in a mind of an incubator preacher too.
00:58:40You know, what a statement to make.
00:58:42I mean, here you are three years into your ministry to the broader public, and you've
00:58:48gotten famous with your healing revivals, and now you're now throwing off on ministers
00:58:53who are going to seminary.
00:58:55And whether he meant it or not, it all fit into his broader plan of him being the last
00:59:00day prophet of God.
00:59:02You know, he didn't want you going out there studying the word of God, stay away from the
00:59:05seminary.
00:59:06And of course, his ministers today enter the message, stay away from seminaries.
00:59:10They stay away from the study of God's word just so they can hear what the message teaches
00:59:15and stick to that.
00:59:17You know, it's really just a shame that that has happened.
00:59:21And that's another harmful thing in the message.
00:59:24It's harmful to Christians' growth.
00:59:26It's harmful to the ministry that's trying to preach the word of God.
00:59:30Listen to another thing he said in 53, Israel and the church.
00:59:34He said, that's what's the matter today.
00:59:36There's death in the pot.
00:59:37Some of these old, cold, seminary, formal, ungodly places going on, trying to teach some
00:59:42theology.
00:59:43They're tearing the people, tearing them away from Christ.
00:59:48So in the ministries that I've been associated with and those that are trying to expound the
00:59:53word of God that have been to seminary, that understand the scriptures and the languages
00:59:59that came from, the people that it was spoken to, the history behind it all.
01:00:02I mean, they're actually trying to get them to Christ and get them to understand the scriptures
01:00:07and an application that's true to them for this day.
01:00:11And it's all very simple.
01:00:13But William Branham had to pull people aside and condemn people from studying and just say,
01:00:21it's only going to be revealed to us.
01:00:22So here's another quote he said in 1958, Queen of the South.
01:00:26He says, I thank thee, Father, thou hast hid it from the seminary students, the wise and
01:00:30imprudent, and revealed it to babes such as would learn.
01:00:33It's hid from the eyes of the smart and educated.
01:00:36It's revealed to babes such as will learn.
01:00:39And what he was really meaning there is that he was meaning that if you're going to learn
01:00:44anything, you're going to have to learn it from me and what I'm teaching you.
01:00:47You know, my interpretation of the word of God, that's really underlined in his agenda
01:00:52and what he really meant through all that, I really believe.
01:00:56You know, it's kind of funny.
01:00:57I grew up in the same way.
01:00:58I was indoctrinated in the same way.
01:01:00We did not like seminaries.
01:01:02We called them cemeteries.
01:01:04And anybody who had any seminary training, we branded them as, quote unquote, intellectuals,
01:01:10which we use as a derogatory term.
01:01:13And now that I'm away from this, I'm thinking, well, that was actually a compliment.
01:01:16But we used it as an insult.
01:01:20We did not like seminaries.
01:01:22And I got to thinking about that after I was leaving.
01:01:25I would rather hear a minister who has studied and understands the Bible than somebody who's
01:01:30just rattling off things because it's on his own whims.
01:01:34And I started comparing it to a dentist.
01:01:37Would you like to go to a dentist and have him take that little high-pitched, that drill
01:01:42that drives your ears crazy and stick it in your mouth and start drilling?
01:01:46And he's had no schooling whatsoever to understand how to use that drill or how to apply it.
01:01:51Would you even let him put the thing in your mouth?
01:01:54And yet we want to allow, in these cults, we want to allow the same exact thing to happen
01:02:01with our souls.
01:02:02We want to allow people to start drilling on our souls without having any sort of training
01:02:08or understanding in what is sound biblical theology and what is not.
01:02:13And the sad truth of it is, like I mentioned, there are mental health issues that caused
01:02:19all of this.
01:02:19But more to the point, you mentioned earlier William Branham himself had little or no training.
01:02:25Well, when you go before other people, you know, your competitors are all trained individuals.
01:02:30How are you going to rise above them if you don't belittle them for their training?
01:02:34And how are you going to convince your crowds that you have anything respectable to say without
01:02:40the training other than if you can convince them of a doctrine, a false doctrine, that we
01:02:45should allow these dentist ministers, these evangelists, to start drilling on our souls
01:02:52without having any training whatsoever?
01:02:54So the last thing, John, that's so right, but the last thing I want to mention about
01:03:01one thing William Branham was a master of, if he was a master of anything in the Scripture,
01:03:06here's what he was a master of.
01:03:08It's a term called eisegesis.
01:03:11Eisegesis, to define it, is a practice of interpreting a text by reading one's own ideas,
01:03:17opinions, or biases into it, rather than drawing the meaning out of it.
01:03:22It's essentially imposing one's own interpretations on a text, rather than to seeking to understand
01:03:28the author's intended meaning.
01:03:30So if we really believe what the Bible said it was, and if William Branham believed it,
01:03:36he would never have approached it from his own point of view like he did.
01:03:39And that was a fatal error.
01:03:41And that is what is one of the harmful things to the message believers today.
01:03:46And it's harmful to be in the message because of it.
01:03:48You know, it's fine to believe the promises of God are for you that are in the Word.
01:03:53But William Branham thought of himself very highly to place himself in the fulfillment
01:03:57of Scriptures.
01:03:58So either one or two things, he was either self-deceived of it all or intentionally deceiving
01:04:03others or somewhere in between.
01:04:06But I would conclude, you know, the best way to examine and teach the Word is from exegetical
01:04:10point of view.
01:04:12And in this process, there's always an application for us today.
01:04:16You know, even though you're expounding Scriptures and the original text, there's always an application
01:04:21to us.
01:04:23But exegesis is the critical explanation or interpretation of a text of Scripture, especially
01:04:29a religious text like the Bible.
01:04:31So it involves carefully examining the text language, historical context, literary features
01:04:37to determine the original meaning and intent.
01:04:40So that is what exegesis is, not eisegesis.
01:04:44That's the difference.
01:04:46So I would say the message is harmful because through all of William Branham's teaching, the
01:04:51gospel is not well understood.
01:04:53If you listen to a sermon starting to finish, you're going to question whether you're even
01:04:57into faith or not.
01:04:58But people's faith is even directed at something other than Christ, you know, in His work,
01:05:03you know, in the end.
01:05:05The doctrines of grace are not even preached.
01:05:07All the riches of salvation God has given us is never heard.
01:05:12In many churches, even a false gospel is believed, and that's had to be corrected over the years.
01:05:18The message closes people in and is limiting to them.
01:05:22It keeps people from spiritual growth.
01:05:24You know, because you've focused on just a certain set of Scriptures,
01:05:27and you don't broaden your horizons.
01:05:29I never even heard, say, the whole book of Romans preached until I came out of the message.
01:05:35And there's wonderful things in the book of Romans.
01:05:39And to understand that book is very key to understanding your salvation.
01:05:43But it's not preached in the message.
01:05:47Only bits and pieces.
01:05:50It prevents people from true fellowship with the entire body of Christ.
01:05:53It controls the mind, and say, in an abnormal way.
01:05:57The mind is not free in Christ, but is bound by that system of beliefs.
01:06:02William Branham just recycled, you know, what men had been doing in an earlier time
01:06:06and developed a narrative, you know, about himself,
01:06:08and then plagiarized, you know, these things from others.
01:06:12You know, he got Elijah from Dowie.
01:06:14He took the seventh church-age messenger idea from Charles Taze Russell with the Jehovah Witnesses.
01:06:20He got his dispensational beliefs from any list of the mysteries from C.I. Schofield's, you know, Bible, study Bible.
01:06:28But after his death, you know, his legend grew.
01:06:31And efforts through the men like Perry Green and Ed Biscoe and others
01:06:35just promoted Branham's miracle signs, prophecies, healings, life story.
01:06:40And most of that was false, but maybe they didn't know any better at the time.
01:06:45And they only found out over time, but they never corrected it.
01:06:48And to this day, I've not corrected, for the most part, you know, the things that they said.
01:06:53Any healings that took place in the meetings were way overstated.
01:06:58But in the coming episodes, John, I want to continue to expose, you know,
01:07:01how William Branham injected himself in the Scriptures, how he bent Scriptures, you know, his false prophecies.
01:07:07There's many things that we can dive into there that I want people to hear.
01:07:11Because, like I say, when I ask ministers about, have you heard about this 1952 prophecy?
01:07:16They'd never heard it.
01:07:18How could they not if they've been listening to the message for 30 years like I have?
01:07:22You know, but I'm also going to show how he misrepresented the Scriptures to his followers,
01:07:27you know, in order to promote himself.
01:07:29So I'm really looking forward to it, John.
01:07:31And we'll certainly have a good time doing it.
01:07:34Absolutely.
01:07:34And that's one of the funniest things that I have come to understand.
01:07:37Whether you're working with the William Branham cult or many of the variety of cults
01:07:42that are in the New Apostolic Reformation or Charismania,
01:07:45whenever you're helping somebody escape one of those cults,
01:07:49before you can tell them and explain to them why they're not supposed to believe a certain thing,
01:07:54you have to first explain what it was that they were supposed to believe in the first place.
01:07:58Because people just simply haven't done their due diligence and they have no idea of the mess that they were involved with.
01:08:04So, so much more mess and rotten fruit that we can talk through and we'll get into it more next time.
01:08:10So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:08:14You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:08:17For more information about Roy Davis and William Branham, you can read
01:08:20The Persuasive Preacher, The Gifted Prophet, and The Noble Politician.
01:08:24And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,
01:08:28you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:08:32Both available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:08:35Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:05Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:35Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:36Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:37Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:38Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:39Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:40Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:41Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:42Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:43Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:44Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:45Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:46Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:47Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.