- 11 hours ago
John Collins and John McKinnon continue their series on how high-control religious movements form, focusing on the role of self-promotion in shaping cult leadership. They examine how repeated miracle stories, prophetic claims, and dramatic testimonies can gradually replace biblical authority with loyalty to a personality. Drawing from examples such as William Branham, John Alexander Dowie, Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Smith, William Souders, and Jim Jones, they explore the recurring pattern of leaders elevating personal experiences into public credentials.
The discussion also analyzes the psychological mechanics behind repetition, emotional storytelling, and exaggerated claims—especially surrounding Branham’s India trip and shifting prophecy narratives. By tracing how failed predictions are reframed and normalized, the episode highlights why critical thinking and historical scrutiny are essential safeguards for Christians navigating modern charismatic and prophetic movements.
00:00 Introduction
02:30 How Cults Begin With Personal Testimony
08:50 Repetition, Confidence & The Psychology Of Belief
15:20 John Alexander Dowie & Early Healing Empires
21:00 Failed Prophecies And Why Followers Stay
27:00 William Branham’s Miracle Narratives
34:40 Emotional Bonding Through Storytelling
43:00 The India Trip And Expanding Claims
52:30 The India-Africa Prophecy Reversal
55:00 Warning Signs Of Self-Promoting Ministries
______________________
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
The discussion also analyzes the psychological mechanics behind repetition, emotional storytelling, and exaggerated claims—especially surrounding Branham’s India trip and shifting prophecy narratives. By tracing how failed predictions are reframed and normalized, the episode highlights why critical thinking and historical scrutiny are essential safeguards for Christians navigating modern charismatic and prophetic movements.
00:00 Introduction
02:30 How Cults Begin With Personal Testimony
08:50 Repetition, Confidence & The Psychology Of Belief
15:20 John Alexander Dowie & Early Healing Empires
21:00 Failed Prophecies And Why Followers Stay
27:00 William Branham’s Miracle Narratives
34:40 Emotional Bonding Through Storytelling
43:00 The India Trip And Expanding Claims
52:30 The India-Africa Prophecy Reversal
55:00 Warning Signs Of Self-Promoting Ministries
______________________
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
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LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org.
00:41And with me, I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, John McKinnon, the author of The
00:46Persuasive Preacher, The Gifted Prophet, and The Noble Politician.
00:50John, it's good to talk through what we're talking about today.
00:54I'm so glad that you actually picked this topic, and I'm so glad that you did.
00:57We, in today's world of Christianity, we have this accountability reckoning.
01:03And the odd part is, if you follow the news and study what's happening, it's actually extending
01:09beyond Christianity.
01:10There's an accountability reckoning just happening.
01:13I don't know if people just simply got tired of it and said, we've had enough, or I don't
01:19know what happened.
01:20But I know that Mike Winger's work has played a strong part in what's happening with the
01:25accountability reckoning in Christianity.
01:28And the topic that you've brought up today, which I don't know if you even thought about
01:32this, but it really plays a significant part.
01:35Because whenever self-promotion becomes immunity, and you create this network where leaders can
01:46self-promote and become an authority figure, authoritarian figure, who won't allow anybody
01:53to critically think, won't allow anybody to request accountability, and tries to cover things
02:00up.
02:00This cover-up culture, authoritarian culture, all of this comes from one single aspect.
02:06We have a culture in religion where you can allow self-promoted ministries.
02:12And that's the subject you picked today, which I'll let you talk more about it.
02:17But it is a significant problem, and it's far bigger of a problem, I think, than anybody
02:21realizes.
02:22Well, John, it's good to be back and to continue this series of podcasts that we're on this
02:28time.
02:28And we're on doing part three of how to start a cult.
02:32And we're just getting started with this, really.
02:34And we've got much more to come.
02:36You know, last time, we started with building the character of the person, you know, creating
02:41your character.
02:43And to begin your start as a cult leader, that's really the foundation of the cult of personality.
02:49I'm really excited about this topic today that we're covering because we explore why and
02:55how groups that separate themselves from mainstream Christianity form and how they all start from
03:01a common leader who felt they were uniquely qualified to deliver the truth to the church.
03:07Cults can actually form with good intentions.
03:09You know, in the beginning, it's important to say this clearly.
03:13You know, many cults do not begin with evil intentions.
03:16They often start very slowly.
03:19And nothing feels extreme yet.
03:21And they take years to develop their cadence, their pattern.
03:25Many people come and go in the early days.
03:27And then when their craft is well honed, they just break out into the scene in a major way.
03:34Many people then are captured in the group.
03:36And many of them are smart and intelligent people.
03:39And they're captured in this way after the personality is formed and after the leader has
03:45established his stories, as we'll talk about today.
03:49Now, leaving then, at that point, doesn't come just changing churches.
03:53It means if you've invested all your life into this cult, it means you lose your friends,
04:00your family, your identity, sometimes even face threats, especially if you're trying to
04:06expose what's going on within the group.
04:09So today, we're focusing on the way cult leaders use self-promotion to influence others and boost
04:14their popularity and why that technique is used by cult leaders and why it's effective
04:21amongst people.
04:23And cult leaders talk about their calling, their experiences, their encounters with God
04:28to get their self-promotion started.
04:32But over time, you know, something interesting does happen.
04:35The leader doesn't even have to promote themselves anymore after they started out in the early
04:40days.
04:42The followers actually start promoting the leaders at that point.
04:47They repeat all the stories.
04:49They defend the claims of the leader.
04:52And they correct anyone that questions them.
04:55Personally, this happened to me back in the 1990s because I was so convinced that, you know,
05:01William Branham's ministry was the truth.
05:03I wanted to make a documentary about it and put all the testimonies, stories, anecdotes I had
05:09collected over the years into something just so definitive that people could not deny it to be true.
05:16Back then, before we had the internet, and you know, I can remember those days very well, we had little
05:23access to research or even the material, you know, that was discovered early on by folks like Peter
05:29Deiser.
05:31Little things would begin to come out, you know, as things got more widespread.
05:38So over time, by the time I did the video, actually, the documentary, I knew that the cloud was not
05:47exactly right.
05:48I knew that William Branham wasn't under the cloud in 1963.
05:53And in the documentary, I had to change what I was planning to do.
05:57Instead of saying he was under the cloud, I actually had to say that it appeared over Arizona.
06:02Because I knew the cloud was 200 miles from where he was standing at, you know, the next week even.
06:11Not while the cloud was actually there.
06:13If he had been there, this still would have been 200 miles away from him.
06:16200 miles is a good four-hour drive or three-hour drive if you want to get away.
06:23So you'd never be able to really be underneath that cloud 200 miles away.
06:28But I still believed it was caused by angels at the time, amazingly.
06:32It did not shake me that William Branham was not there at the time.
06:37That didn't shake me at all.
06:38I still didn't have all the facts yet.
06:40And years later, when I look back on that documentary that I made, I see it clearly, what I was
06:47doing.
06:47It was really full of fantasy.
06:49I relied on witnesses who were already fully invested in the movement to give their testimony.
06:56And I didn't have all the facts.
06:58And they were just repeating mostly just the Pentecostal folklore and Branham's own stories as if they were proven truth
07:06already.
07:07At least it was truth to them.
07:09So what I didn't realize then was that many of those stories just simply weren't true.
07:16And that's how people really get hooked.
07:18You know, you assume the leader is telling the truth.
07:20But in reality, they've lied to you.
07:24And often, very confidently and consistently over time.
07:30And you don't realize it at all.
07:32And while you're in there, you would even go to the point of saying,
07:36it doesn't matter to me if he didn't tell the truth.
07:40Because there's many people in the Bible that didn't tell the truth.
07:43You know, I think that's the part that a lot of people really miss.
07:45You can quote the Bible directly, accurately, and still misrepresent the reality.
07:52It all really comes down to context.
07:55And a lot of times what happens is these people, there's a, I hate to say it,
08:00but there's a lot of people in the movement who don't really have good ministerial credentials.
08:06And I don't mean necessarily college education or seminary experience.
08:11I'm talking about just knowing the basics of the Bible, knowing what it is, knowing how to read it,
08:17knowing the genres, knowing the parts that are symbolic, the parts that are literal.
08:24What happens is you have a lot of people in the ministry who just have no idea what the Bible
08:28actually is.
08:29And they think of it as a book that is the breathed Word of God,
08:35rather than a library that is combined by many people who were influenced by God.
08:40Some of it, obviously, breathed by God.
08:43You can clearly tell when the prophet is speaking.
08:45But they don't understand what the book is.
08:47And that's really the real problem here.
08:49Because what happens is they will emphatically repeat with confidence.
08:54And as they do that, the listener, whether right or wrong, will believe what they say.
09:00If it's right, then they're believing the right thing, and that's good.
09:03But sometimes it's not right.
09:05They will emphatically repeat what's wrong over and over again, and it gets stuck in people's head.
09:11Then, sadly, when the people read that passage,
09:15they read what has been spoken to them instead of what is in context of the Bible.
09:20That's really the real problem here.
09:22And at its core, this is really the problem I have with it.
09:26At its core, there is one similarity,
09:29and that is the repetition emphatically and positively with confidence.
09:36If you understand what that means and understand what con man is,
09:40a con man is somebody who speaks emphatically with repetition and confidence.
09:45People believe this sort of thing.
09:46And it's a, I hate to say it, humans are, in some ways, are a little bit weak-minded.
09:52They fall into that trap.
09:53And that's why so many con men can prey upon people and, you know,
09:58take, wreak havoc in their lives.
10:00I'll just say it like that.
10:01In the spiritual world, they're wreaking havoc with their spirituality,
10:05and the religion gets hijacked.
10:06That's really the real problem here.
10:08So for me, understanding that it isn't just that they're reading the Bible,
10:15but they're reading it and emphatically saying that it means something that isn't quite in context.
10:21It sounds right, and it's repeated often.
10:25And then take that a step further in Branhamism.
10:28I was shocked to learn whenever somebody pointed out to me,
10:31I had, we got in a bit of a, not debate, but a discussion, a very passionate discussion.
10:38I'll say it like that.
10:39And I quoted a Bible verse to him, and I said, yeah, but, and I quoted the verse,
10:44and he looked at me, and he scratched his head.
10:46And this is a guy who knew his Bible far more than I do.
10:49He scratched his head, and, John, I don't think that's a Bible verse.
10:54And I said, yeah, it is.
10:55Well, also what con artists do, they will lie, outright lie to your face.
11:00And Branham had a set of different Bible verses that he invented.
11:05Some of them, we've talked about this before.
11:07It's either you and I or in the Revival History series.
11:10But they will, Branham did it.
11:13He would take a Bible verse, and he would combine it with this other verse,
11:16join the two together, and make it say something that neither verse, neither passage said.
11:21But he did it emphatically, repeated, with confidence.
11:25And that is, by definition, a con man.
11:27Many high-control religious groups, you know, they didn't begin with some new creed
11:32or a systematic theology in the beginning.
11:35They began, what they begin with is stories.
11:39Stories of what God supposedly did through their person.
11:44The stories were not incidental.
11:45They were strategic.
11:47They were repeated over and over.
11:49They were refined and placed at the center of the movement's identity
11:54until belief in the man's experiences became the gateway
11:59then to the belief in the message they brought.
12:02Across movements associated with, we've got Charles Taze Russell with Jehovah Witness.
12:08We've got Joseph Smith, Latter-day Saints, William Branham with the message.
12:13There was another man, William Souders, which is a pretty interesting person who you wonder
12:19if William Branham didn't take some of his techniques off of his ministry.
12:23There was John Alexander Dowie.
12:26And you and Charles have been really talking about him lately and all that he built in that empire that
12:34he had.
12:35There was also Jim Jones, who was an associate of William Branham in the earlier years, in the 50s.
12:42And they all had a common strategy amongst themselves.
12:48They self-promoted themselves through their so-called divine endorsement.
12:54They would talk about how God has uniquely ordained them to bring the truth.
12:59And they all had, you know, little different nuances and different stories.
13:05But it was all for the same reason, to bring people into their sphere of influence.
13:11So the pattern begins, what it begins with is, well, what God did to call me from my birth.
13:19The first step is almost always personal testimony elevated to a public credential of sorts.
13:27They have no educational background to fall back on.
13:31They have nothing but their supernatural stories of how God called them from their mother's womb.
13:37So Joseph Smith, for instance, who founded Latter-day Saints back in the 1830s during the American religious revivals that
13:47were going on,
13:47he grounded his authority in accounts of angelic visitations and the reception of some gold plates.
13:55He repeatedly emphasized that God singled him out for these revelations that no one else could obtain,
14:02which eventually resulted in the publishing of the Book of Mormon.
14:07And they claim it's another testament of Jesus Christ, even.
14:11So the self-promotion tactics here was a dramatic vision starting at age 14, God and Jesus appearing to him,
14:21God the Father.
14:22And then the angel Moroni, who he named, revealing these golden plates for the translation to the Book of Mormon.
14:31He claimed a miraculous translation of these plates, using seer stones, looking into a hat.
14:40And he also performed healings and exorcisms among his early converts.
14:47You know, that all framed it all together as proof that he was a prophet of God.
14:54Then their cult began to form, as they drew followers, they positioned himself as the modern prophet.
15:02And he continued to have ongoing revelations.
15:04Of course, it led to their communal living, giving up their property rights, led to polygamy, and then they had
15:13to migrate to Nauvoo.
15:15But it created a tight-knit group, all under his control, until he died.
15:21And then you had a series of successors after that.
15:24You know, next, a famous figure in this country, back in the early 1900s and late 1800s, was John Alexander
15:32Dowie.
15:33You know, he promoted himself as a divinely appointed restorer of apostolic Christianity.
15:39He really believed it.
15:40And he talked about all his thousands of healings that occurred, his prophetic insights to justify his authority over the
15:48people.
15:49And he demanded they give up all property rights to join his city of Zion.
15:55But he founded that city in Illinois called Zion City.
15:59And he declared himself, his self-promotion tactics of John Dowie was to declare himself as Elijah, the restorer.
16:06He was going to build a utopian city as proof of God's mandate to him.
16:13And people actually bought into that by the multitudes.
16:17And he became a billionaire in today's terms.
16:20You know, a lot of people probably get tired of me talking about Dowie.
16:23But when you understand that he was the prototype for what exists today in the Pentecostal charismatic movement,
16:30one of the prototypes, I should say, when you understand that and then understand how significant it is,
16:36you almost can't talk about him enough.
16:38He was, by all accounts, in fact, I've written a book.
16:43You can read more detail of what I'm about to say.
16:45But he was, by all accounts, a con man.
16:48If you understand all of the things that he claimed, the things that he did, how he swindled people out
16:53of their money,
16:53all of the lawsuits he got in, civil lawsuits, some criminal lawsuits, this guy was a scoundrel.
17:00But he made, like you said, in today's money, it's billions of dollars, half a billion dollars, I think it
17:06is.
17:06Well, what happened was he created such an empire.
17:10Everybody wanted their hand in the pot.
17:13They wanted to replicate this.
17:15And many people have tried.
17:17They've never really taken it so far as what Dowie did.
17:20And the communal lifestyle, the things that happened there, that's awful.
17:24But he created the prototype.
17:26And then everybody who stemmed off of this movement, they all began to self-promote.
17:31The ones that turned into destructive cults, they self-promoted and then said, we have the true thing.
17:36Everybody else has the false thing.
17:37We have the true healing.
17:38They don't.
17:41And, you know, they're conning people out of money, but conning them spiritually, too,
17:45because they join into it thinking that that must be true.
17:49They're saying it.
17:49It must be true.
17:50And then you find out, no, they're just copying all of these guys from the past.
17:55I grew up in that world.
17:56I thought Branham was the only true one.
17:57I thought it was new.
17:59He taught that salvation included healing and the atonement, all of these things that Dowie taught.
18:05I thought it was new, but it was more of a focus on the miracles.
18:09And bottom line is, in today's world and in the world's back when, miracles sell.
18:16His miracle angle on this to confirm his divine authority was conducting mass healings, rejecting medicine as sinful.
18:26And he claimed thousands were cured through faith, and he drew crowds during events like the 1893 World's Fair.
18:36And he would camp out there and draw many followers.
18:42His cult formed in this community that he built, and they viewed him as the prophet.
18:48But eventually it fell apart through scandals, a lot of financial mismanagement, you know, begging or trying to get people
18:57to give their money to him.
18:58It led to his downfall, but it has certainly birthed the offshoots that we see today in Pentecostal Christianity.
19:06You know, the key aspect here is Dowie's healings weren't just acts.
19:11They were ads for his divine status.
19:14They were turning the believers into residents of his holy city under his total control.
19:21You know, another one that we can talk about is William Souders.
19:25He went further and interpreted his experiences as proof of Messianic identity.
19:31And he founded a church called Gospel Assembly in 1914.
19:36It was a Pentecostal offshoot.
19:38But him and William Branham had a lot of similarities because he claimed God spoke audibly to him during an
19:44Ohio River baptism,
19:46the same way William Branham did in 1933.
19:48And the angel or God announced his ministry at that time, and he had visions of restoring the true church.
19:59He positioned himself and promoted himself as insights to having divine revelations.
20:07He rejected all denominations of Babylon.
20:10And he set himself up as the leader of God's remnant.
20:14So all who joined his group were the remnant that were the little flock, the ones that were to be
20:21the elect of that age.
20:24And he attracted many followers by emphasizing his exclusive authority on Scripture.
20:30It led to non-denominational assemblies.
20:33But a lot of strict control and isolation.
20:35We see a lot of these similarities in William Branham's movement today.
20:41The key insight for Souders, well, he took ideas from Jehovah Witnesses and Pentecostals.
20:47And his heavenly voice calling on the Ohio River made him the irreplaceable head.
20:53And it fostered a dependency on him.
20:57Then we have Charles Taze Russell himself of the Jehovah Witnesses.
21:01He was less miraculous.
21:04He was more intellectual.
21:05But he claimed that he had prophetic discoveries, evidence that God had uniquely enlightened him on prophetic events.
21:14And so he set a lot of dates.
21:15And his promotion of himself was he set the date of Christ's return.
21:20And, you know, he founded a Bible student movement.
21:24And it was in the late 1800s.
21:26So he was a date setter.
21:28But eventually all his dates fell apart.
21:32But the movement still continues today.
21:34Very strong.
21:35He claimed divine inspiration for Bible interpretations.
21:41He also did some miracle claims as well.
21:45But selling something called miracle wheat to raise money.
21:49It was at high prices.
21:50But he claimed that the miracle wheat would grow like no other wheat could grow.
21:56And it was exposed later in lawsuits as ordinary wheat.
22:01He attracted thousands of people just by promoting himself as God's channel for truth.
22:07It didn't take much.
22:09It didn't take the miracles with Charles Taze Russell.
22:13And Russell's book sold millions of copies back in the day.
22:18But his prophecies and things did not come to pass.
22:22But it binded the followers together.
22:25And as we'll see in later episodes, these things, you can have failed prophecies.
22:31But the group will not let go just because you have that happen.
22:35No, they won't.
22:37And that's one of the things that really surprised me.
22:39Because whenever I was in it, I believed that all of the prophecies were true.
22:43I believed that they came to pass.
22:45I had no idea that any of them were even questionable.
22:48I really didn't.
22:49In fact, the thing that went through my mind, I was thinking, how can the world not see this?
22:53He had these prophecies that came to pass.
22:55Why is not the whole world of Christianity involved in this thing?
22:59And then when I find out, no, I've been duped, and there are huge, significant flaws with the prophecies, I
23:06came to realize that I had been conned.
23:08And that's a big deal for me.
23:10But they focus on the prophecy because there's a reason for that.
23:14If you scatter bomb people with prophecy, you can just fling them prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, make it just
23:22vague enough, one of them is going to come true.
23:24It's like if you're watching football on Sunday and you make predictions of all of the games, well, you're likely
23:34to get one of those predictions true, right?
23:36Well, that's what they do.
23:38And so the entire group just hones in on whatever vague prophecy came true and then ignore all the ones
23:45that failed.
23:46And what happens is over time, as they continue, the ones that failed get forgotten.
23:51And the minister who's self-promoting himself, he does not want the congregations to realize that if a prophecy fails,
24:01it means that the speaker, the prophet, did not have a prophecy from God.
24:06He's speaking out of his own mouth.
24:08And if they understood that, they would realize that, yeah, even if you got it true, he's speaking out of
24:13his own mouth.
24:14I can't really trust a word the guy says.
24:16And it all comes back to what I said earlier.
24:19When you have a con man who is very emphatically repeating things that aren't true to convince people to give
24:26them their money or rob them of their spirituality, if they continue to repeat it enough, people will believe it.
24:32And the things that are repeated are what they believe and remember.
24:36The failed prophecies, the things that they don't repeat, they just kind of fall off of the group's identity.
24:43You know, William Branham centered his ministry on angelic commissioning, supernatural signs, unparalleled healing claims, and he presented them as
24:54proof of unique divine favor.
24:57So, he started this movement back in the 40s and to the 60s.
25:02His self-promotion tactics for him was recounting the visions that he had from a birth, a light that appeared
25:10over his crib at birth, whirlwinds that appeared in trees and voices coming out of the whirlwinds at an early
25:18age, telling him what he should do.
25:20He had from angelic commissioning, angelic commissioning for his global healing movement, other visions and miracles that occurred in his
25:28ministry that he would testify about.
25:30So, he was more of the miracle worker, performing stage healings, discerning diseases, and thoughts of hearts via his trances
25:41that he would go into or visions.
25:44He claimed 100% accuracy, and that built a message following, eventually.
25:51Devotees viewed him as the voice of God for the age.
25:55And Jim Jones, alongside of him, also had healings, miracles, and he formed what's called the People's Temple.
26:03But his led to the Jonestown Massacre, of course.
26:07But Jones was a little different.
26:10He had to stage his healings a lot of times.
26:13It was even known that he used chicken livers, that people coughed up his cancers in the audience.
26:20And we'll see.
26:21You wonder if William Branham also may have done similar things because he claimed to have cancers in bottles of
26:29alcohol at times.
26:32But Jim Jones' utopia was a socialist experiment, and they moved to Guyana, South America, isolated everybody in the group
26:43after they gave him their blind trust.
26:47He was a pastor when he started out, but he elevated himself to God-like status in the end.
26:56And people did not see that until it was too late.
26:59So, in each case, you know, the leaders experience all these experiences they have and that they claim.
27:06They all precede the doctrine that they're going to bring later.
27:10The movement begins by asking followers to trust, trust me, trust my story.
27:15And once the believers believe what the future cult leader is telling them,
27:20and the signs and the wonders, whether true or not,
27:24they become emotionally tied to the man.
27:27Signs and wonders make it even more appealing, and the ties become very strong because of that.
27:34You know, William Branham was probably known more for his storytelling than for his Bible teaching.
27:40Storytelling is a technique that's well known.
27:42If you want to create an emotional connection with your audience, you know, you tell stories.
27:47They touch our emotions, which makes them so powerful.
27:53So, he tells of a couple of things.
27:56I'll tell one quote here from the angel of God, 1948.
27:59Just an example of how he can use the story to get your emotional connection with him.
28:05He talks about praying for a woman, and she actually saw the angel of the Lord.
28:13And she testified to this.
28:15She said, when Brother Branham knelt down to pray for me, then this man, of course the angels, looked,
28:20come up there.
28:21Instead of praying, he just kept looking down at Brother Branham.
28:24And he looked around at me and said, he said to her,
28:27now you come for healing and you'll be healed.
28:30And then said, now doesn't Brother Branham look awful thin?
28:34Said, but he will be strong after a while.
28:36Now, see, and said, then when they started moving the stretcher away, he walked right
28:41on out the door with me.
28:44And that's the last I've seen of him.
28:46He said, now that's the angel of God.
28:48William Branham testifying.
28:50He said, that was the angel of God.
28:51He's been seen many times in the services.
28:54And I know he's here tonight.
28:55I know he's here.
28:56I've failed him three of four times since I've been here.
28:59So just by him telling that story about a woman that claimed she saw the angel of the
29:04Lord and him having pity on William Branham about him looking awfully thin, the way he spoke
29:12that, it just created that connection with the audience.
29:15You kind of felt sorry for him because he was under a great strain at the time with all
29:20the ministry and the hours and hours of praying for the people at the time.
29:24Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of
29:30modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
29:35movements into the new apostolic reformation?
29:38You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
29:43william-branham.org.
29:45On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
29:51Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio,
29:57and digital versions of each book.
30:00You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
30:05movements.
30:06If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
30:11Contribute button at the top.
30:13And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
30:18to or watching.
30:19On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
30:24You know, I had a conversation recently with a person, we were talking about manipulation
30:28and how it's developed and grown in the movement.
30:31And it's really odd when you think about it, because the patterns of development from the
30:36early years, they actually would not work today.
30:40And it's more of a conversation for another podcast, I think.
30:43I'll just give the highlights of what I'm trying to say.
30:45But what happens is these movements have learned by just by trial and error, I believe.
30:51I don't think anybody mastermind this operation and planned it.
30:55But they learned how if they played on the harp strings of the people, the people would fall
31:01into a genuine concern for what's being said.
31:04And they would be more receptive to whatever it is.
31:07It could be doctrine.
31:08It could be story.
31:09It could be stage persona, miracle or money donation, whatever it is.
31:14You play on their play on the harp strings and they just can't take it.
31:18That's it's human nature.
31:19You want to connect with people and that's how you connect.
31:22And I've studied this a lot.
31:25I've mentioned a lot of times I study psychology quite a bit.
31:28If you compare what Hitler did and how he did it to the nation of Germany and convince
31:36people to do things that ordinary humans just simply wouldn't do, there are psychological
31:40techniques that he's using.
31:42And you can this is not me talking.
31:44You can go study.
31:45And this is actually kind of common knowledge.
31:47But his style of speech, his pattern of speech, the way that he did it, it was almost a hypnotic
31:54technique.
31:55He would start by giving some friendly, some story that would just bring their guards down.
32:01They make them feel more receptive and then start speaking and get faster and faster until
32:06he kind of matched their heartbeat.
32:08And as their heart gets full of anxiety because of the things he's saying, their heart goes
32:12faster.
32:13He goes faster.
32:13And this pattern repeats and the cycle repeats until he's just screaming at them.
32:18And the screaming at them part, the climax of this, that's what you usually hear when
32:23you think of Hitler.
32:24In fact, they've got these generators where you can add some names and texts and you can
32:29have Hitler speaking in that fast, fast pace, that heightened anxiety pace.
32:37Well, if you study what Branham was doing and not just Branham, there were others that
32:40were doing it, that's really how they structured their ministry.
32:44I don't think that they really patterned it after Hitler because why would you?
32:48But over time, people began to realize that this is effective.
32:51This is a speech pattern that works.
32:54What's odd to me, if you go back and you look at some of the other areas of the culture,
33:02like politics, for example, you don't find too many people doing that strategy.
33:06You do find some, but you don't find a lot.
33:09Instead, you find people that they may be speaking loudly because they've got an audience
33:14and they don't have a good microphone or it may be even before microphones, but they
33:19may be speaking loudly, but they're not speaking distinctly in that pattern where it gets people
33:24to bring their guards down and then inject whatever they want in their head.
33:28You find that with Hitler, but you don't find it very often except for in this type of
33:32religion.
33:33And that's where it gets really odd for me.
33:35Why did they choose to do this?
33:37Now combine that with some of the other things.
33:39You've got the, you know, in the old revivals, you had that organ music, that soft, slow organ
33:46music with a pulsating beat that matches your heart.
33:48We've talked about this on the podcast that I've done about music.
33:51There are so many different elements that individually, I don't think they would have had as massive
33:56of an effect, but combine all of these elements and it is a, it's a strategy for manipulating
34:04people.
34:05And I just, I have a huge problem with that, but it all comes back to this thing.
34:10People are self-promoting and they're in an environment that has a tool and a technique
34:15for manipulation that has been mastered.
34:17And so these cult leaders, they just rise up and there's no guardrails.
34:21They, they have the engine, they know how to do it, they know how to abuse it, and they,
34:25they just hijack the people's minds.
34:27So John, I fully agree with you there.
34:30You know, that's, that's a very interesting, interesting take on that.
34:33And I think it's, uh, strange how these things develop, but, uh, we're going to continue
34:40on and talk about this, uh, self-promotion.
34:44But secondly, you know, we discover that repeated self-promotion finally becomes the identity of
34:51the person as, as we know him, as we come to know him.
34:55And that's all on the surface there.
34:57He, you know, they're not always transparent.
35:00So all you get to know is what they're testifying to you.
35:03And each cult leader develops the impression of himself and, and his calling that he wants
35:08to make, you know, on the audiences and repeats this again and again, you know, everywhere
35:13he goes throughout the nation, everywhere he travels.
35:17And in the early days, you know, William Branham never preached much, but just told his life
35:20story.
35:21He told testimonies in meetings of, of how the meetings went.
35:26He told of his angelic experiences, experiences with casting out demons and what they look like.
35:33Experiences with, experiences with God in the wilderness, um, hearing God's voice, experiences
35:39with the angel, you know, that met him, the coming of his gift.
35:44You know, all these things, they were just stories.
35:46They weren't really teaching the Bible.
35:49Uh, they were just building people's faith in him that he had what he was talking about.
35:56And then he went into his divine healing services to pray for the sick people.
36:00But of course, prior to that, you know, uh, FF Bosworth, uh, Earn Baxter and all, they prepared
36:06the people with the Bible because they had the Bible knowledge, you know, to proclaim about
36:11how people should accept their healing and so forth.
36:15But this method that he used, you know, it worked very well to build his reputation, you
36:21know, as a great prophet of God before the people, at least initially, amongst the Pentecostal
36:26people.
36:28So, number two, we learn that this repetition, it turns his testimonies into his identity.
36:35He really becomes what he's been testifying about.
36:39That's, that's what his identity is.
36:40He finds his identity in all these stories and the stories were repeated over and over.
36:48So, repetition achieves three things.
36:51It achieves, it normalizes these extraordinary claims.
36:56It makes them normal for him to have, you know, supernatural experiences.
37:00We just expect that of him.
37:02And so, we're on the edge of our seats every time he comes to the platform.
37:05What is he going to give us, give us next that's supernatural?
37:10And some examples of things that he did over the years.
37:14He talked about creating squirrels that he shot and killed.
37:18He talked about speaking a storm out of existence one time in Colorado.
37:23He talked about resurrecting a fish back to life by the spoken word or raising the dead from
37:29the morgue in his hometown.
37:31And, you know, that was debunked, the raising of the dead from the morgue.
37:36He did that early on in his ministry in about 1947.
37:40And Jeffersonville called him out on that one.
37:43But, you know, after he's talked about that, most people don't hear about the debunking of
37:48that story.
37:49But after that reputation is established to be a man that walked in these supernatural
37:56experiences, then anything he said was almost taken at face value.
38:01And that's what eventually happened in his followers.
38:04He could not be questioned because here he was, the man with the supernatural experiences.
38:09How would you question it?
38:11And that's really how leaders start gaining power.
38:14And that's how he started gaining power.
38:16Once they're elevated above everyone else, because no one else is really having these
38:21types of experiences, that's very unusual.
38:24Then when you question, examine, you want to just question, examine the claims, you know,
38:30just to see if they're right or not.
38:32Then you get accused of rebellion and unbelief.
38:37Followers would probably tell you that if you're a true believer, you just believe,
38:41by faith, and you don't doubt anything he says.
38:45So number two, what it does, it bonds followers emotionally to this leader.
38:52You know, you listen to his life story and you laugh with him on things that are funny.
38:57You cry with him when his wife dies.
39:01You weep over the tragedies in his life and you rejoice in the successes that he had.
39:08But eventually, being so emotionally tied to the leader, you actually try to, you try to
39:14start being like him.
39:15You may try to start looking like him, wearing the same type of hat he wears.
39:21You try to act like him, speak like he does.
39:25And what this essentially does is cause you to live your life through him.
39:29You're no longer an individual anymore.
39:32You've really become a part of him.
39:34Even after he's gone and dead, if you're listening to these tapes, you're trying to live your life
39:39through him.
39:41You try to act as if, you know, the ones that are true diehards, they want to act as if
39:46some
39:47part of their life story is similar to what things he experienced in life.
39:52Anything you can do to match your life experience with his, you look for it because you want
39:58to become what he is on a human level.
40:02You tend to like what he likes, hate what he hates.
40:05You try to imitate him, you know, but he's just a mortal man.
40:10But that's how deep this goes into the followers.
40:13I've seen it over and over in the group, you know, we came out of.
40:16At its core, it's just simply hero worship.
40:18But when you look at each one of these groups that have descended from this, they all share
40:23that same similarity.
40:25Their IHOPKC, for example, they call it the prophetic history.
40:29What is it?
40:29It's the stories of how the leaders came to be and the stories of how the leaders came
40:34to be and all of their different supernatural gifts, experiences, hardships, all of these
40:41different things.
40:42They take forefront in the movement and the Bible takes the backseat.
40:47That's really the problem here.
40:49Branham, whenever he was telling all of his life stories, I remember crying just as a kid,
40:54crying at some of the hard things that he went through.
40:58And you and I have talked about this.
41:00A lot of them were fiction, but some of them were actually true.
41:02And if true, I'm certain that the man really did have a hard time.
41:06I'm not going to deny that.
41:08But the fact that the religion actually revolved around the life stories, not the Bible, so
41:15much so that when you leave, the group will think that you're not Christian because you
41:21don't believe the life stories, the leader and his significance and his authority.
41:25It's all about the leader.
41:27It's all about the man who is self-promoting or female who is self-promoting.
41:30So for me, the stories, that's really problematic.
41:34And again, half of them are fiction.
41:37None of them really have anything to do with the Bible.
41:40They're just a personal experience.
41:41I could share my personal experience.
41:43I could make everybody in the audience cry at some of the things that my family's gone
41:47through.
41:48But does that have any effect on their spiritual walk with God?
41:51Not really.
41:52I would be a fool if I tried to do that.
41:55And yet we find these people who are in big ministries, big name ministries that are doing
41:59it.
42:00So for me, it's just, it's so problematic, man.
42:03These stories, number three, what these stories do is they fuse the leader's identity with
42:09God's activity in the minds of the followers.
42:13So whatever the leader's doing and expressing is actually what God is doing at the time today
42:19in the earth.
42:21That's how they take the leap to say, because of what happened in Arizona and the mystery
42:27cloud, that was a fulfillment of what God was doing on the earth today in Revelation
42:32chapter 10, verse 1 to 7 was revealed.
42:46The leader becomes the center point of history, you know, at that moment in time.
42:52The message, of course, became to us the coming of the Lord and the time of God's judgment on
42:58the world.
43:00It became the opening of the word to us or the rapture that was going to come for our
43:05little group of people.
43:07All of the world and what God was doing at the time when we were in the message of William
43:13Branham was funneled into what our group was doing.
43:16When God became, you know, really small, his power to save people in this world was limited
43:23only to our select group.
43:25His gospel of grace, you know, became too weak to regenerate people until eternal life unless
43:32you believe the message.
43:34His power to act on earth became impossible without going through the prophet of the hour.
43:40So the movement no longer existed apart from the leader's experience.
43:44So to doubt all these miracle stories or any part of it was really to come against the
43:50movement itself and to cast doubt on the whole movement itself.
43:55That's why the testimonies and stories often grew in their miraculous details and expanded
44:01over time.
44:02It became more dramatic, more numerous, more central to his experiences in vindicating the
44:07message.
44:09You know, in our experience, you know, I think we've seen it over and over as William Branham
44:13was well known for stretching the truth when it came to his stories and how they really
44:19became massive fish stories or fishtales.
44:23What may have started out as a simple story really increased a thousand fold by the time
44:29he told it the fourth or fifth time.
44:32You know, a very good example of this we find is in his trip to India.
44:36You know, it started out when he came back.
44:39He testified of just having regular meetings in a church for a couple of days.
44:44He wasn't allowed to stay there but a few days with really a small number of people by
44:48comparison to the thousands that he had early on in his ministry.
44:53It's not the event, you know, he expected when he went over there by vision from the Lord,
44:58actually.
44:59But what it turned into was him ministering to the largest congregation he ever ministered
45:06to.
45:06It turned into the greatest success in ministry he ever experienced.
45:11It turned into the greatest meetings he ever achieved.
45:16It eclipsed even the South Africa meetings in 1951, which we have much documentation on and
45:23many pictures of the thousands of people that were there, probably as many as 75,000 people
45:29there.
45:30But we have none of that with his India trip at all.
45:34It also turned to him challenging every religion in India, every major religion in India to a
45:40showdown in front of maybe half a million people.
45:45And they were stacked like cordwood in the streets with him speaking to them on loud speakers.
45:52That's what it turned into from him just being preaching in a normal church, which is all
45:57we really have pictures of to document the India trip.
46:01You know, if there were thousands in the streets out there trying to hear his message, why did
46:07we only get a few pictures of inside the church?
46:09Why didn't somebody that had that camera step outside the church and take a picture of who
46:14was in the streets?
46:16Well, it was because there really wasn't any, and it wasn't the crowds that he was
46:21making it out to be.
46:22No, it wasn't.
46:23And that's the point I was trying to make earlier about the similarities between these
46:27types of ministries and what a con man does.
46:29It convinces the people of something that's not true.
46:33And when you think of con man and you think of it in terms of what you see on TV,
46:38it's usually
46:38for the purpose of money.
46:39But a con artist doesn't necessarily go after just money.
46:43It might be power.
46:44It might be control.
46:45It might be popularity, et cetera.
46:48There are people who will con their way into a position.
46:50There are people who will con their way into a position at work.
46:53I have actually seen them do it as an IT director.
46:57I have seen people who knew nothing about the job role that they were in, but they had convinced
47:02other people to get there and successfully done so.
47:05So when people speak repeatedly and with emphatic accuracy on specific details that can be associated
47:14with what they're trying to tell you and do it with confidence, there are people that
47:19will believe it.
47:20And like you said, even the things that aren't true, they'll do it.
47:23The problem is in Christianity, what place is there for this?
47:28I mean, if you're not telling the truth and you're saying that God is doing this thing,
47:33well, you're lying about God.
47:34And that's, for me, that's just, it's really problematic.
47:37So, John, I'm just going to read a few quotes, and I think we'll probably have to finish
47:40up next time and finish up with what I plan to talk about.
47:46But I just want to read these few quotes from the India trip to finish up with this to show
47:50how he eventually exaggerated stories.
47:53And that was what was going on with our point here.
47:57In 1957, he spoke about his India trip.
48:01And when I had been very much constrained to go to India, and yet, as many as you might
48:06know, the India trip wasn't the success that it should have been.
48:11He said, because I failed to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, never recognized it after
48:16he gave me a vision to go to Africa first and then India.
48:19And this was at the time he was trying to make up excuses as to why the India trip was
48:25so
48:25poor.
48:26But it was after this, a year later, that he changed his tune altogether.
48:32I mean, this was a year later, exactly.
48:36He preached in 1958 in a message called Called Out.
48:41Instead of saying it was not the success it should have been, he said this,
48:46I had the privilege just a couple of years, last couple of years, of having one of the
48:51greatest meetings the Lord ever let me have in Bombay, India.
48:58In 1960, a couple of years later, of course, he spoke, I just picked out a few quotes here.
49:04But he says again, and I've seen people that come in the meeting like in our largest crowd
49:11that we ever had was 500,000s at Bombay.
49:16He says again in 1961, recently I was in India, Bombay, where we, the Lord let us preach to
49:23the greatest crowd, and there's a blank spot on tape after that, he said, 1,000 blanket
49:28natives, he probably said 500,000 blanket natives breaking their idols on the ground, receiving
49:35Christ as Savior.
49:37I guess in India it was three times that, but we couldn't count them.
49:43Just a few months later after that, in 1961, he said this, well, maybe I get a chance to
49:49speak of India.
49:50And he was talking to somebody there in the line.
49:53He said, was you there when I was in India, not there?
49:56He said, that's where I had my greatest gathering at Bombay, 500,000 at one time.
50:03In 1962, he said this, he said, let me just stop again just a moment.
50:08When I went to Bombay, I count that my greatest meeting because of the effects it had on the
50:14people.
50:15And if in Africa they say 30,000 came to Christ at one time, then there was 150,000 or
50:21200,000
50:22and of course his vision said 300,000, came to Christ at one time out of that half a million
50:28there.
50:30He said in 56, we'll jump back a minute, he said, this week we'll be telling about our
50:36experiences over in India where 500,000 people or more come to the meetings.
50:41And the things that God did and just watch, nothing.
50:46I'm a fanatic.
50:47I'm not a fanatic.
50:49I just don't try to misrepresent things.
50:52I try to be honest and tell the truth as far as I'm allowed to tell.
50:56That's a very telling statement there, John.
50:59John, when he said very early on in 1957 that the India trip just wasn't the success it should
51:08have been.
51:10And in 1956, he was telling the people, I'm going to tell you the truth.
51:15I try to be honest and tell the truth.
51:18So we see he's very contradictory here in saying the India trip was not the success it should
51:23have been.
51:24And then all through the years in 1960 to 62 and even further, he was saying it was the
51:30greatest meeting he ever had.
51:33So we see there's a lot of issues with that.
51:35But that's how cult leaders build the momentum and they keep it going with these stories.
51:40They're not allowed to be questioned.
51:42And so because he gives us obscure mayor of Bombay, India, say that said there was 500,000
51:50people there and he may or may not have said that, he goes with that.
51:55And that's how he gets to that number because he has to fulfill that vision in some way about
52:01the India trip.
52:02Because as we know, he never got a chance to fulfill that either in Africa or India.
52:07I remember whenever I was first coming out of this, you go through all these floods of
52:11emotions and you get angry, you get happy, everything's funny, you get sad.
52:16You basically, you have a part of you that's dying and you go through all the stages of
52:20grief in your head.
52:21Well, when I was in the everything's funny stage, I made this little video with my banjo
52:27and I had Branham going, his prophecy said, I'm going to go to India first, then to Africa.
52:33But he can't remember which the prophecy said and the prophecy failed.
52:37He admitted that it failed, but he kept flipping India and Africa.
52:40And I did the Indian Africa shuffle.
52:43That's what I called it.
52:45I don't know if the video is up.
52:46It got taken down with the first website.
52:48But anyway, the problem is he said it so emphatically so many times on recording, nobody
52:56really caught that he kept changing the story.
52:58And I have had people contact me who did stumble across that video back when I made it.
53:04And they said, you're off in left field, John.
53:06This prophecy came to true.
53:07This is exactly what happened here.
53:09And I'm looking at it and they weren't aware that Branham himself admitted that it was a
53:15failed prophecy.
53:16He openly admitted the prophecy failed.
53:18And that's why he was doing the India Africa shuffle.
53:21But there are people that because it kept repeating over and over and over, they believe it, even
53:28though it was a self-admitted failure of a prophecy.
53:31And that's really what I'm talking about with regards to this repetition.
53:35If you can keep repeating the false thing, people are going to eventually believe it.
53:40They'll just give up and turn off all critical thinking.
53:43And my argument is don't do that.
53:46Don't turn off critical thinking.
53:47If somebody claims that God is speaking, you want to at least be sure that it's God and
53:51not something else.
53:52And in this case, it was just a man's wild ambitions for self-promotion.
53:57So critically think.
53:58Listen to what is being said.
53:59So yeah, John, that's so funny.
54:03I mean, these things we go through, we can point out error after error or contradiction
54:08after contradiction.
54:10And people just don't want to hear it.
54:12You know, the people that's maybe in a group like this, a high control group or in the message,
54:18they've tuned it out.
54:20They don't want to face the facts.
54:22I know it's hard for them, and I know that cognitive dissonance plays a factor in this.
54:29The way our minds work, it plays a heavy factor.
54:33And there can be a heavy toll on their lives for giving an error to something like this.
54:39But, you know, if they want the truth, they really need to think about it very seriously.
54:43But I think we'll stop there because I probably have gone an hour and, you know, we need to wrap
54:49it up so we'll just stop there and we're going to continue with this self-promoting idea next
54:54time and point out a few more things and have episode number four in this series.
55:03And then from there, we're going to get into some really good things, John.
55:06And we're going to talk about even more things that cult leaders do to build their system.
55:13And we'll find that the patterns are prevalent in every group out there, all the ones that
55:19I've mentioned today.
55:20The same pattern exists.
55:22And what we as Christians should not be trying to do, it should be a red flag to us.
55:27If anybody's trying to build a one-man ministry or a ministry around one man, you know, that's
55:34a red flag to begin with.
55:36You know, we're a many-membered body, and we need to take the wisdom of the thousands
55:42of years of church history into account when we go to promote ourselves.
55:48And we better be able to back up what we're saying, and you better be able to stand up
55:53to the scrutiny.
55:56But really, no one should be promoting themselves because, you know, Paul said, he said, I'm
56:00just one of the ones that ministered to you and you believed.
56:04You know, who is Paul?
56:05Who is Apollos?
56:07But we're just ministers, and because of how God used us, you believed.
56:13The important thing is that you have Christ and that you believed in Him, not that you
56:18believed in what we said, other than the fact we gave you the gospel, the original gospel
56:24that was given to the apostles.
56:26And that's all that should be done today.
56:29And that's all that should be in any church today is the original gospel.
56:34Not all these additions and promotion of men and so forth.
56:38So we'll get into all that later on in this series, John.
56:42And I look forward to it, and look forward to what's coming.
56:45Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out
56:47on the web.
56:48You can find us at william-branham.org.
56:50For more about Roy Davis and William Branham, you can read The Persuasive Preacher, The Gifted
56:55Prophet, and The Noble Politician.
56:57And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized
57:01Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
57:04Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
57:06And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read The Persuasive Preacher.
57:36You can read The Persuasive Preacher.
58:06You can read The Persuasive Preacher.
58:12You can read The Persuasive Preacher.
58:14You
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