From Church Of God To The NAR: A Hidden Historical Trail   Podcast Episode 581 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John traces a lesser-known historical connection between early Church of God networks, Roy E. Davis, and the later development of dominion-oriented currents in Pentecostal and charismatic history. The discussion examines A.J. Tomlinson, the 1923 Church of God split, revival culture, and the way fractured Pentecostal structures could give controversial figures access, legitimacy, and influence.  The episode also explores how church governance, political ideology, and revivalism intersected in ways that foreshadow later movements associated with the New Apostolic Reformation. Along the way, John connects Church of God history to Branhamism, Homer Tomlinson, Seven Mountains-style thinking, and broader questions about authority, theocracy, and the architecture of modern charismatic power.  00:00 Introduction 04:08 William Branham, Roy Davis, And Why Church Of God Matters 07:32 A Living Research Page And Why The Topic Draws Backlash 11:43 A.J. Tomlinson, Theocracy, And The Church Government Question 15:10 Who Was A.J. Tomlinson? 19:06 Why The Cleveland Revival Article Matters 24:33 The 1923 Crisis And Church Of God Schism 28:24 How Fractured Networks Let Roy Davis Gain A Platform 35:14 Revival Culture And The Cross-Pollination Of Ideas 38:37 Roy Davis, Institutional Ties, And The Branham Connection 43:02 Homer Tomlinson And A Failed Theocratic Model 50:40 Why Church Of God Is A Key Historical Milestone  ______________________ Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR: Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962 Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K ______________________ – Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham – Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ – Visit the website: https://william-branham.org – Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg  – Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham – Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr – Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books

Transcript

00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

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

00:40at william-branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it,

00:46is truly stranger than fiction. I have, in several podcasts in the past, mentioned the

00:52Church of God. And it's always interesting because I'm still researching. I'm nowhere

00:58near complete. There is just so much to untangle with Church of God. But anytime I mention it,

01:04I get a flurry of emails and comments. You've probably seen them, at least the comments side.

01:10And Church of God is interesting to me because, like Pentecostalism, it grew and split and grew

01:17and split. And when you say Church of God, you really have to clarify what Church of God you're

01:22talking about. Even in Wikipedia, if you type in Church of God, you'll see different names with

01:27parentheses. And that's because it grew and split and grew and split, which is a characteristic

01:34trait, I guess you would say, of the way Pentecostal has been influencing the churches. I'll just say it

01:42like that and try to keep it simple. So my research into the Church of God is nowhere near finalizing

01:50any form of opinion. And when I do mention Church of God, it's not that I'm against whichever branch

01:56of Church of God you're in. But where it gets really interesting is the splinter groups themselves.

02:02When you talk about one sect of Church of God, then you're talking about a group who is violently

02:09opposed to the other one. And so when I receive emails, I usually receive very highly critical feedback

02:16of specific areas of my research that is mentioned on the website or in the podcast. And then I'll

02:23receive a different email that you can clearly tell us from a different sect of Church of God

02:28that is fully supportive of those points, but takes the other points and fights the other guy.

02:35So it's almost like Church of God, different branches are fighting each other in conversation,

02:41indirectly using me as the silent mediator. And I honestly, I really don't have a dog in the fight

02:50whatsoever. I've mentioned that a few times. Many of the groups that I investigate, I really don't

02:56have a dog in the fight. I really don't care. I'm just looking at milestones in history as the spiderweb

03:03of mess has developed from modern Pentecostalism into the new apostolic reformation. But there's so

03:09many spiderwebs of connections that make this possible. And if you choose to ignore one specific

03:15intersection point, the whole rest of it doesn't make sense. For those who are very highly against

03:22me talking about John Wember and researching that intersection point, think what happens if you

03:28take that point out. If you take away John Wember, do you really have the connection of the Kansas City

03:34Prophets to the UK? Do you really platform them? Does the Kansas City Prophets turn into the

03:41International House of Prayer in Kansas City? And can it influence the entire new apostolic

03:46reformation in the way that it did today? Not really. If you take away that point, that's a very

03:51critical point. Well, Church of God has similar points, but they're far back in history. They're not

03:59really modern points. And when I began my research, there's one thing that really drove me into digging

04:05into the Church of God. I was raised to believe, like many people who are in the New Apostolic

04:12Reformation have been trained to believe, that William Branham was a Baptist minister and he had

04:19this experience from God. With that experience, he switched to a pseudo form of Pentecostalism

04:26and then went astray is how they phrase it. And then it turned into a destructive cult is what

04:31they're not saying. But that's not true. As I began to research William Branham and the history

04:38of the Church, the history of my grandfather's Church, which was Branham's Branham Tabernacle,

04:43I came to know that it wasn't a Baptist Church and why would anybody lie about this? So I started

04:50digging into it. I found out that William Branham was a bishop in a newly formed Pentecostal sect

05:00called the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, which was led by Roy E. Davis, his mentor. Roy E. Davis

05:08is the one who ordained him. And even in a letter to Gordon Lindsay, the founder of Christ for the

05:14Nations Institute, Roy Davis said that he is the one who ordained Branham and introduced him to the

05:20Pentecostal faith. So we have Davis's own words which counter Branham's later words that were used

05:26as part of his stage persona. So I began digging in this. I wanted to know why. For what reason

05:33would

05:34you want to cover up what church you were ordained in? So as I'm looking in Davis, number one, instantly

05:43I found all of the Klan-related stuff. He was the imperial wizard of the original Knights of the

05:50Ku Klux Klan. He was one of the founding members of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan. He helped write the

05:58bylaws,

05:59the Constitution, many other things. At least he claims this in the 50s. And so he was at minimum

06:06second in command to William Joseph Simmons. And that much you can kind of prove to the newspapers.

06:13Other key figures in Branham's ministry were also connected. Interestingly, William Branham's

06:21mentor appeared to have been kicked out of several churches. He was first kicked out of the Baptist

06:25because he had multiple wives in multiple states. He was kicked out of a Pentecostal sect. I believe it

06:34was the Church of God. He was kicked out of that group because they had not only found out about

06:40his multiple wives in multiple states, but also he had this thing for young women. And I'll keep it

06:48simple and keep it at that. But you can read between the lines what's going on here. And not just

06:53one

06:54young female. It was multiple young females. So he got kicked out of a Pentecostal church,

06:59a Baptist church, a church of God church. And he formed a religion, a denomination of which he

07:06became the head. What did he call him? The general overseer. And this group was called the Pentecostal

07:13Baptist Church of God. So I began to research these. I wanted to know, well, if it's Pentecostal,

07:21if it's Baptist Church of God, there must have been broader connections to this. And that's actually

07:28what led me into the Church of God research. Now, I'll admit, when I first published the Church of

07:34God research on my website, it was in its early stages. And I want to pause here to talk about

07:41that because I think some people really don't understand what I'm doing and trying to do.

07:47With a page that I put on the website, it's the beginning of a research page. And honestly,

07:52it's the beginning of a conversation. I'll put the page out. People will contact me. They'll send me

07:58information I'm missing. They'll send me information I got wrong. And over time, this matures into a more

08:06active page that's more accurately described historically, but yet critical. And that's how

08:12all of my pages begin. Whether it's John Wimber, William Branham, any of these, it starts out as an

08:17open door to a conversation. So you can look at a web page as though it's a living document. As

08:24I get

08:24new information that's critical enough to add to the document, I'll add it. And unfortunately, there's so

08:31many thousands of documents at this point, it's really hard to maintain them all. I eventually I'll

08:38probably need some help with this. But anyway, it's a living document. And I created a Church of God

08:43page. And I mentioned Roy Davis's connection to it. Now, when you do this, and realize from the rest of

08:52my website, the connection between Roy Davis and the Ku Klux Klan, this turns problematic to anybody

08:59who's in Church of God, they will immediately say I got, I can't tell you how many emails I got

09:05about

09:06AJ Tomlinson, trying to prove that he liked black people. Because they read the Roy Davis statement,

09:13they recognize the connection to the Klan. So therefore, I must think that AJ Tomlinson is

09:20not a person who likes black people. But that's not true. If you really know the history of the Klan,

09:28which not many people do, the Hollywood version of it just simply does not summarize their agenda.

09:37The Ku Klux Klan was actually established as a quote unquote Christian organization. Think of it

09:44not as a Christian denomination, but think of it more as a Christian fraternal order. So people would

09:52join into this, they were joining into a fraternal order, they had the rites, they had all the different

09:59rituals, etc. But the agenda, they believed to be Christian, and they wanted it to be present in the

10:06Christian churches. If you go online, you'll actually find photographs of the white-robed people

10:12inside of churches, because that was the agenda. So they were touting themselves as a true Christian

10:18order, but also at the same time mixing Christianity with politics, making it a fraternal Christian order

10:27that is a blend of Christianity and politics. They wanted to change the government structure,

10:34and that's really the bottom line. They did not like certain aspects of the government and certain

10:43laws that were being passed, and especially when you get into the 60s, whenever they wanted to keep

10:48the races separate. That was an agenda, but it wasn't just simply that. They were anti-Catholic.

10:55They were, I would say probably anti-Jew and anti-black is the wrong word. They wanted more to

11:03be able to govern and control the blacks and Jews, because Roy Davis himself, he wasn't so much opposed

11:11to black people per se. He did not want them to mix with the white race, and he did not

11:17want them to

11:17have any sort of governing structure over the church, etc. And that followed down through Branhamism.

11:26In Branhamism, we had black people that went to the Branham Tabernacle who had no idea that this church

11:31was planted by the head of the Ku Klux Klan. So whenever I mention A.J. Tomlinson and I mention

11:38Roy Davis, it isn't anything at all to do with black, which I wanted to describe that a little

11:44bit in this podcast. So for the sake of this podcast, there's a line that I want to trace

11:50that I don't think very many people connect. And that's A.J. Tomlinson of the Church of God,

11:56his theocratic church governance. Combine that with Roy Davis, who is a, as I mentioned, part of the

12:04Klan, head of the Klan, but he's moving through fractured Pentecostal networks. And Homer Tomlinson,

12:11who is A.J. Tomlinson's son, eventually would go and try to push this Dominion-style theocratic church

12:20government, so much so that he was branding himself as the king. And he wanted to, he wanted to become

12:26president, he wanted to become king of the United States. And there's some interesting articles. If

12:32you just type in Homer Tomlinson and search on Google, you're going to find all kinds of weird,

12:37weird stuff, right? The problem is, yes, he's connected to Church of God, but you will make people

12:44in Church of God fighting mad, depending on which sect or branch of Church of God they're in. They'll

12:50brand him as an extremist. But I want to trace that theocratic government that is being pushed

12:57directly from A.J. Tomlinson, who helped organize the church. And I want to express my opinion,

13:05which is that when you have a church like this, that is very, what's the word? It's very compatible

13:12with the Ku Klux Klan's agenda, which is why probably it attracted Roy Davis. Roy Davis wanted

13:19to allow the church government to overthrow what existing government was there. This would have

13:25been compatible with what he taught, so therefore he started moving through these networks. When you

13:31introduce that framework into your church, where you're taking Christianity and blending it with

13:35politics, what you end up is not Christianity. Christianity mixed with anything else cannot be

13:42Christianity. It becomes something else entirely. So this is not just simply about one controversial

13:47preacher, whether I'm talking about Tomlinson or Davis or Homer. It's more about the religious system

13:54that can give controversial men access, legitimacy, and influence. And if you carry this forward into

14:02what we see today, New Apostolic Reformation, it's really the architecture that enabled what we see today.

14:08So for me, the Church of God is a very critical milestone in this history. And it's one that's

14:15largely overlooked because historians make the mistake of trying to connect the dots theologically.

14:22This never works. You have to connect the dots architecturally. And by architecturally,

14:28I'm implying you have to look at what was their position in politics? What was their position in certain

14:35theology? But when you look at their theology versus the biblical core theology, and you see that there

14:45are some extra biblical ideas, how do they align in the variance between what they believe and what the

14:51Bible says? You'll find all kinds of spiderwebs of connections if you do this. And this is just simply

14:58one of the techniques that I use in my research. It's how I'm able to connect all of these ministries

15:03together. So I'm giving away all the secrets. You can do it too. All you have to do is just

15:08dig a

15:08little bit deeper than just the theology. So who was A.J. Tomlinson? I've mentioned him a few times

15:13in multiple podcasts and a few times in this one. I'm referring to Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson. He was

15:21one of the most influential Pentecostal leaders of his era through his role as the first general overseer

15:28of the Church of God, which was headquartered in Cleveland, Tennessee. And as you're probably

15:34aware, if you've studied anything to do with Pentecostalism, the Cleveland, Tennessee group

15:39has a little bit of infamy. And this is probably why there is so much debate whenever you talk

15:45critically about anything to do with Church of God. You have those that will say, no, we're in no way

15:50connected to Cleveland. And you've got the Cleveland branch who says, no way, those other guys have made us

15:55look bad. For me, again, I don't have a dog in the fight. But I'm interested in Tomlinson because

16:02under his leadership, the movement basically developed into a centralized form of Church

16:08government. And it expanded from a small holiness fellowship, just a normal Pentecostal-style group,

16:15into a very structured denomination with coordinated assemblies, publications, and missions.

16:21But what Tomlinson built was much more than just a denomination. He was not just simply organizing

16:28churches. Tomlinson was helping to build a centralized sacred authority structure. And it's really that

16:36structure that is appealing whenever you consider the broad scope of my research. The Church of God in

16:42Cleveland was shaped around the idea that leadership and the assembly reflected a restored New Testament

16:48order. So if you're thinking in terms of theocratic order, you have to have that theocratic order in order

16:57to be considered a New Testament church under that mentality. So what this did was this gave the movement

17:06strength, missions, publications, education, etc. And there's some interesting history there. I found, in fact, I'll put it on

17:15the screen if you're watching the YouTube version of this podcast. But I found one newspaper article which is talking

17:23about Roy Davis

17:24speaking in the Cleveland, Tennessee branch of the Church of God. So that would put him right here in the

17:30heart of what I'm

17:31discussing today. And for those of you who are on the video version of this podcast, I want you to

17:36pay close attention to the title line.

17:38It says, In Church of God Revival, Cleveland, Tennessee, November 21st. But pay close attention to in

17:45parentheses, it says it has the notation for special SPL period. This is significant because this overturns

17:53any claim that this was just a advertisement from that was presented by Roy Davis advertising his ministry

18:01in the local newspapers. This was a special report coming from Cleveland, Tennessee to this newspaper.

18:08And we know this is this is being reported from Cleveland, Tennessee, because this particular

18:15newspaper, if you look at some of the other articles, such as woman injured as auto rams auto,

18:21it is a report coming out of Cleveland, Tennessee. So this was a newspaper that was reporting

18:28events that were happening in Cleveland, Tennessee. This wasn't just some random advertisement.

18:34But at the same time, I find Roy Davis helping to establish a institution, a religious institution

18:42for the Church of God. Now, it could be argued that that is a different branch of the Church of

18:48God,

18:48which is true. But if you understand that Davis is coming directly to Cleveland, Tennessee,

18:54right in the heart of this, it ties the branches more closely than I think people realize.

19:00So there's a point of time in history when even though, yes, it had splintered and there were

19:05various orders of the Church of God, there were at least revivalists like Davis, which were

19:12communicating with multiple branches. And they weren't so divided as what it appears from the emails

19:18that I get. So you're talking about a movement that's growing in strength, but yet also was divided.

19:26So it had the opportunity through the divisions for somebody like Davis to come in. And basically,

19:33I don't know if he was trying to hijack the organization or what, but he saw it as a bedrock

19:40for which he could plant his ideology. That fact is evident in the very article that I'm,

19:46I put on the screen earlier. I'll throw it up again. In this article, it talks about all of

19:51the key points that I'm mentioning, especially it's being, he's being described as a lecturer

19:56for the Ku Klux Klan right here in the Church of God revival advertisement. So Church of God at that

20:03point in Cleveland, Tennessee was so aligned with the Klan agenda that they're advertising. He's a

20:08Klansman who's coming to speak here. But even that's not so important to me as two other things.

20:15Reverend Davis has been associated with the Reverend John Roach Straton, which at this point in time in

20:21history is significant because Straton was a key figure in the Supreme Kingdom, which was an organization

20:29that spun off of the Klan led by the Klan Supreme Religious Chaplain. And in that organization,

20:35they were basically describing the precursor to what in New Apostolic Reformation, we would call

20:42the Seven Mountains mandate. They wanted to take charge of the education system. They were unhappy

20:48with the government and wanted to change it. I think through this, they were also looking at media

20:54publications, trying to get embedded into the entertainment industry. It was basically the early

20:59stages for the Seven Mountains. So that connection is significant. But also, it mentions that Davis

21:06is a person who is affiliated with the Fundamentalist Association. That is significant because Davis was a

21:15director apparently in the Fundamentalist Association, which links him directly to Gerald Burton

21:21Winrod. Winrod, who was pushing the fascist-type ideology into early fundamentalism and who was

21:32preaching at Amy Semple McPherson's Foursquare Gospel Church. So there's so many different connections

21:37here that this is a very key intersection point in history. And again, I can't stress how significant

21:44that this one particular article is. You've got Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee, who's

21:51advertising the Klan, advertising John Roach-Straighton, advertising the Fundamentalist Association.

21:57This is, if you're looking for smoking guns of how all of this connects, this is your smoking gun

22:03connection. So I guess I should probably pause here and talk about the core problem with this

22:11theocratic language. Because I know if you're listening and you're in one of these groups that

22:16is doing this, you're thinking, well, what's wrong with this? Why would we not want our church

22:22to help establish the laws of the country? Is not this a good thing? So just to pause and talk

22:29about

22:30some of these problems. Once a movement starts saying that our government is divinely ordered,

22:36then suddenly the disagreements in government, whether you're voting for one party or the next,

22:42it's more than just a voting issue. Now it turns into a spiritual issue. If you're voting for a

22:49specific government party or a government agenda and you say, this is divinely ordered, well, that by

22:56default means that the other party, the ones who aren't the party you're voting for, is satanically

23:02ordered. It can only be one or the other. So it's a very dividing strategy as it relates to politics

23:10with this core purpose. Remember Davis, who he is and what he's connected to, this is exactly the

23:16thing that he wants. And it was so closely aligned to the Church of God that he's speaking in Cleveland,

23:23Tennessee. So when this happens, it starts to feel spiritual when you vote for your party.

23:30And you start to look at anybody who doesn't vote like you as though they're not spiritual. So it

23:35creates this, if you look at the framework of a cult, it creates this mental boundary between you

23:41and other Christians who aren't of your political mindset. And so the issue goes beyond Christianity.

23:49Is this fellow who's voting in a different way than you vote, is this fellow a Christian? Well,

23:55no, because he's not voting for my party. He must not be a Christian. Fast forward to

24:01today's new apostolic reformation. It has become so hypersensitive that now you have

24:08what I'm talking about here in history. Now you have it on steroids. Everybody's so aggressively

24:14against the other party. And so when I look in history, this is an intersection point where this

24:20happened. But it's just one of many. It's not the Church of God was the root of the problem.

24:25That's just a problem with the theology. In that type of system, opposing leadership

24:32can be framed, I guess, as a resistance to God's order. So if you are leaning towards one political

24:41party, but your church is telling you that it's God's divine order that we vote for this other party,

24:48if you follow your instinct and vote for your party, you are resisting God's divine order. In other

24:55words, this is an anointed party. This is a party that's moving forward as part of Christianity.

25:00So what this does, if you go to the cult mindset, it suppresses the ability to critically think

25:07about why you're voting. I'm voting because I'm told to vote. I'm voting this direction because

25:12the church wants me to, not because I even agree with any of the positions, which you may agree.

25:18But the problem is you're being robbed of that freedom. So this is a system. This is a theocracy that

25:25really robs people of their freedoms. This came to a head in 1923. And whenever I talk about what

25:34happened, I think many people will relate to it and what we see today. Because in 1923,

25:39the Church of God was in an open crisis. And that crisis included control, church funds, newspapers were

25:47starting to attack the group. They were starting to report that Tomlinson had appropriated about

25:53$14,000 of church funds. And for those of you who are good at math, $14,000 in 1923

26:00is the equivalent to $266,000 in the year 2026. So we're not talking about any small sum of money.

26:10This was massive. And I want to pause here just a second, because I've had multiple people

26:15from multiple podcasts videos on the website talking about this exact situation and saying,

26:22Tomlinson is in the right. Tomlinson is in the right. I want to point out that from a

26:27legal standpoint, the court system can cover the civil liability and the criminal aspects of the

26:35case. They cannot cover the ethical. And so here we have Tomlinson, who if you've traced the history

26:42of the court system and court record further in the future, he is cleared of any civil liability and no

26:49criminal charges were filed. So from a civil and criminal standpoint, Tomlinson is okay. But think

26:56about the ethical because that is where it really relates to my research with Roy Davis. Here you

27:02have two opposing factions. One person has moved $266,000 in today's money into a accounting system

27:12that doesn't even make sense. The court system kind of describes this if you trace that history.

27:18But you have another faction who's asking, Hey, where's the money? Where's the money?

27:24And from an ethical standpoint, you can understand why that's faction would be upset. We have a large

27:31sum of money that's gone missing in your accounting doesn't really account for where it went. So from

27:36an ethical standpoint, you can understand why the other side would be angry about this. And this really

27:42was an open door for Roy Davis to come into the disarray. Tomlinson was eventually removed from his

27:48position. But after that, with this massive sum of money, now both sides of the schism that occurred,

27:56both sides declared that they were the real continuation. Because why would you not? This

28:02is a massive sum of money that we need to continue our church. And they fought really hard to keep

28:07it.

28:08So at that point in time, you really had no clear center. There were two revival bodies, which would

28:16eventually split, I believe, into more. And the claims of their legitimate history now were in

28:22question. And so when I get emails today, I realized that's the reason why I get it. There is no

28:28clear

28:28path all the way back to the original history. There's all of these schisms and splits over who knows

28:34what all. And so what this created was a problem for me historically, as I was trying to figure out

28:41all of this mess. And I'm talking about Roy Davis, who's coming to Cleveland, talking to the Church of

28:49God, speaking on behalf of the Klan, all of these other agendas that he had. The year that that took

28:55place was in 1927. And this came after the split. So what happened was, I got people from each side

29:03of the

29:03split, claiming, no, he came to that other side, not ours. But here it says in plain text, it is

29:10Cleveland, Tennessee. But the key statement from the newspaper, as you can see clearly, it says it was

29:16a revival service that was held at the Church of God Tabernacle in Cleveland, Tennessee, which would

29:22have put it with the main body of the Church of God. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement

29:27started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic,

29:34and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William

29:40Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website,

29:47you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

29:53John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

29:59You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

30:06If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute

30:11button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that

30:17you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to

30:22thank you for your support. So I mentioned the timeline, which is significant. 1927, Roy Davis,

30:29who's William Branham's mentor, the former second in command of the Ku Klux Klan, the head of multiple

30:36fraternal orders, he is speaking at the Church of God Tabernacle in Cleveland, Tennessee,

30:42puts him right in the central hub of the Church of God. And this is happening after the 1923 schism.

30:51This is important and significant because of this. 1923, when the group fractured,

30:57think about how a fractured group can survive. The structure of it changes entirely. No longer is the

31:06authority. But the authority is harder to police. It's harder to say this person has credentials.

31:13This person is part of our main body. And you have Davis, who's kind of an outlier. He's working

31:19with the Church of God, but he's actually coming from a different part of Tennessee. He's coming in,

31:25and now he can come in and have a platform just instantly. And that's one of the problems with not

31:31having a solid set of boundaries around your doctrinal framework. People like Roy Davis can

31:38come in and now he can strongly influence the group. Take that to today's world. You've got all

31:46of these various apostolic networks, which are a result of the same exact fracturing, but on steroids.

31:53The Pentecostal movement, the Church of God movement, all of these different Pentecostal

31:58organizations split into 1,000 splinter groups. They're almost too many to count. But they're all

32:04combined in this apostolic network under the framework of the New Apostolic Reformation.

32:09How do you police this? How do you say that this person from this group over here is not

32:17credentialed? He's not speaking the theology that we like or we even believe? How do you gatekeep this?

32:24Well, this was a problem that happened in 1927 because of the split that happened in 1923.

32:31So when you have this, just simply being visible can function like credentials. I'm Roy Davis. I'm

32:39famous because of, and it lists it right there in the newspaper article. I'm famous because of my

32:43affiliation with the fundamentalist, my affiliation with the Klan, my affiliation with John Roach-Straighton.

32:50These become the credentials. It's not so much I'm, I'm a good fit for your group because of the

32:57doctrine. My doctrine is aligned with your doctrine. That's not what the newspaper article says. It's

33:03more about who he knows than what he believes. And that's the way that works when you have all of

33:09these

33:09types of schisms. It doesn't matter who you, it doesn't really matter what you believe. As long as you

33:15can say and boast that you have a credential, then you can move forward. So in other words,

33:21if you can get involved, you can look legitimate. And that's exactly what happened. Whenever Davis

33:27stepped in, this is the environment that he stepped into. Now, Davis did not come with a hidden past.

33:35I've mentioned in the podcast, you can go back through the revival history series, which is now if

33:42you want to listen to it on Spotify, it's now archived into a revival history archive, you can

33:47go to the podcast page on the website and see where that lives. But if you look through the history

33:54of

33:54the revival history that we've published, Davis's criminal, immoral, unethical past was not hidden

34:03from the public. He was an extremist and it was very well documented, but also he was a criminal. He

34:09was a scoundrel. He was all of the above. There's very little good that you can say about the man.

34:17And this was the person who is embedding himself into the revival circuits of the Church of God,

34:23later influencing Branham, who would later influence the entire world through the latter rain revivals and

34:30post-World War II revival history. So Davis has a extreme past, an extreme background. But think about 1923.

34:41This is a time when the Klan had been largely exposed as a domestic terrorist organization. There was a New

34:51York, I think it's New York World series of articles that came out that talked about how this group had

34:57invaded politics, had invaded churches, were running an anti-Semitic agenda, were so many different things.

35:07They were fully, fully exposed, which led to the downfall of that group and the rise of the Indiana Klan.

35:16And the Indiana Klan would grow to be the largest Klan organization in the United States history.

35:22And remember, Davis goes from here to Indiana. So there's some connections that I think people need

35:28to realize. But Davis did not come with a hidden past. He was coming into the Church of God at

35:34a

35:34time whenever Klan had immediate focus. And he's advertising in the Klan. So the fact that he

35:41advertised this in the Church of God revival, and anyone showed up to the Church of God tabernacle,

35:47for me, that is very, very significant. I can't even stress how significant that was.

35:54Also, this came on the heels of a second white supremacy group that William Joseph Simmons,

36:00who founded the Ku Klux Klan, and Roy Davis, as the royal ambassador, pushed in Tennessee called

36:06the Knights of the Flaming Sword. So this was another domestic terrorist organization. Interestingly,

36:14that group got shut down because it was far more militant than the Ku Klux Klan. And that was shut

36:21down about, I want to say it was the year 1925 that it was shut down. So two years later

36:26in Tennessee,

36:28you have the ambassador of the Knights of the Flaming Sword, which was widely recognized in Tennessee,

36:34who was working with William Joseph Simmons, who was part of the Klan, holding revivals here in the

36:41Church of God in Tennessee, Church of God tabernacle. So this is very, very significant.

36:47And I think people need, if there's one thing that you take away from that, it's not that

36:53here's the Klan, and here's an anti-black person who's coming to hold a revival. It's not that at all.

37:00They were pushing many of the same doctrines because of the idea, we need to be more American,

37:07and we need to throw out anybody in Washington who is quote-unquote un-American. We need to push

37:14out the Catholics because they're invading Protestantism. There's so many different agendas

37:19that this encompassed that it's not really a black or white issue. It's more of an ideological

37:27problem with domestic terrorism. There's no better way to say it. It's just such a complicated

37:32organization. And the takeaway is that this church was representing that complexity. And I think

37:41that's the key thing to understand. The other thing to understand is just simply the revival culture.

37:48Remember, this was a time when there was no televangelist. There wasn't a big radio ministry

37:56per se. Instead, you had these revivalists, these evangelists who were going from church to church,

38:02town to town. And they may or may not be aligned with the doctrine of the church that they're attending.

38:08So you can't even really say that the church was in agreement with the many things that Davis stood

38:15for other than the fact they did advertise it in the newspapers. But talk about his theology. They may

38:22not have been fully aligned with his theology so much as they were his ideology. Whenever Davis is

38:28touring through the Church of God, he may go to this church, but then he may go to a Baptist

38:32church

38:33later. He may go to just a normal Pentecostal church later, if you can use the word normal.

38:39There were so many different developing branches of Pentecostalism. But the key point is that one

38:46revivalist can go from one to the next to the next. And think about how a revival works. So Davis

38:53goes,

38:53he preaches at a revival. It's usually not just him. He's preaching in tandem with other evangelists,

39:00other revivalists. Davis hears something that the other evangelist or revivalist says,

39:06and then he spreads it to another group. So as you go from group to group to group,

39:11you're picking up ideas while planting ideas. So when Davis makes that circuit, he's speaking in

39:19tandem with one guy. That one guy may have given him ideas, but Davis gave the other evangelist ideas.

39:25So then that other evangelist goes, oh, this is a brilliant idea. We should have these things from

39:32the Klan. And then he starts on his circuit. Now he goes and he spreads it from church to church

39:37to church.

39:38The problem with this revivalist type culture is that it is such a cross-pollination of ideas

39:45that there's no way to pinpoint where exactly a doctrine came from. You cannot pinpoint it because

39:52one person picked it up from another, picked it up from another, and they're all going in these circuits

39:57constantly. So revival culture was perfect for reinvention. And there now take the Pentecostal

40:06element of speaking under the anointing. There are people in the Pentecostal movement.

40:12I believe this is the case with Church of God, but correct me if I'm wrong.

40:15You speak with the idea that God is speaking through you. Well, if you picked up the idea

40:20from the other guy, well, then the audience thinks that you got it from God. This is something new

40:25they've never heard. They don't know that you picked it up from the other guy in the other revival circuit.

40:31So the ideas of this theocratic government, etc., this could come to be perceived by the crowds as

40:41though this was a divine interpretation of Scripture. And I think it was because eventually

40:46this began to take hold. In that world, a man could rebuild religious credibility just simply by being

40:54seen in the right places and appear to the crowds as having been anointed by a new fresh word that

41:01he may have gotten from the other guy in the other revival. But the other key thing to understand here

41:07is that Davis was not just simply your average passing evangelist. They didn't just simply invite

41:13him because of the Klan or any of the things that they mentioned in the newspapers. Davis was a key

41:18figure, and he had somewhat credentials. I won't say credentials directly with the Church of God in

41:25Cleveland. But he did have credentials because in Knoxville, he was not just holding meetings. He

41:31was actually connected to the institutional planning of the Church of God. And this would have been the

41:36original Church of God. So if you're if you're looking at all the different branches and names of

41:41Church of God, here's another one for you to research and look into the original Church of God stream.

41:47In Dahlonega, Georgia, Davis claims that, well, the Church, I should say, claims that Davis is part of

41:55their organizational structure. And they tied him directly to the Davis-McPherson Institute in Dahlonega,

42:04Georgia. So Davis is actually named in the Religious Institute. And this is a school of theology,

42:11basically. This is a this is a group that's teaching Church of God theology. So when Davis

42:17goes to Cleveland, Tennessee at the Church of God Tabernacle, he is coming credentialed as having

42:24founded an institution for the original Church of God. So at this point in time, the schisms have

42:32happened and apparently even some more schisms. But the Church of God Tabernacle was inviting a key

42:38speaker from the original Church of God stream. And this person was a significant figure in that stream.

42:45So that would tell me that would link Davis directly to the Cleveland branch because they're inviting

42:52somebody who's in a different part of the schism, right? And depending on which side of that schism

42:58you took, you either see this as a friend or foe. There's no better way to put it. One newspaper

43:05article, which I'll throw it up here on the screen, it identified Roy Davis as the president of that

43:11school. So now Roy Davis is not just simply visiting pulpits. He's actually involved in the organizational

43:18infrastructure of the Church of God. And why does this matter for Branhamism? In my Branham research,

43:26as I mentioned, Roy Davis is he's a key figure. He is a bridge between the white supremacist ideology

43:34and the Pentecostal faith, all in Indiana, during an era, whenever the Indiana clan was exploding into

43:42the most massive clan organization in the United States history. This matters for that bridge to

43:48Branhamism. And Roy Davis represents a historical intersection point where you're merging politics

43:56and revivalism, Pentecostal history, institutional Pentecostal history. This is a significant point

44:06in time. And Roy Davis comes to Louisville, Kentucky, I want to say either one or two years after this

44:14revival with Church of God. So according to the timeline, you've got the Church of God splits 1924,

44:22Davis embeds himself in the Church of God during this time out in Dahlonega, Georgia. He sets up an

44:30institution. The Church of God Cleveland invites Davis back to Cleveland so that he can, I guess,

44:37influence them in the revival. Davis leaves to Nashville, Tennessee, where I can first place

44:44William Branham in a revival. I think it's 1928 or 1929. Davis is in the

44:51at the Parthenon in Nashville. William Branham mentions being in that revival and talks about

44:58Roy Davis drinking, I think it was strychnine or arsenic, some poison. So it places Davis with

45:05the snake handling poison drinking sect of Pentecostalism. Then he moves to Louisville,

45:11Kentucky, sets up his church, his organization headquarters, and finally lands in Jeffersonville,

45:17Indiana, which would eventually be my grandfather's church, the Branham Tabernacle. Davis plants that

45:25sect. So according to the timeline, Church of God is a serious, serious milestone in history.

45:32So when you have all of that background knowledge, and you consider what I said earlier about Homer

45:38Tomlinson, and I know it sounded like a joke, this guy wants to be a king who's taking over the

45:43United

45:44States. When you really get down into the details of this, Homer Tomlinson actually is a significant

45:51figure in the broader scope of the movement. He actually took the logic much further. Homer Tomlinson

45:58inherited more than just the family name of Tomlinson. He actually inherited the theological

46:04imagination of creating and establishing a divine government system. And if you compare that to

46:10what's happening in the New Apostolic Reformation today, he doesn't seem that far-fetched. He's

46:16basically, he was mocked for doing what they're talking about doing in the New Apostolic Reformation.

46:22Because A.J. Tomlinson had already normalized the idea that sacred authorities should have a

46:28visible institutional form. Roy Davis, who's working with John Roach-Straighton and others,

46:35in this Supreme Kingdom sect, they were wanting to establish the second iteration of the Kingdom of

46:42the United States, wherein the, in that case it was the Klan, but wherein these religious organizations,

46:49who the Klan touted themselves to be, would have authority over the government systems.

46:56So Church of God, the Church of God Tabernacle in Cleveland, is platforming Roy Davis, who has the

47:03same ideology that eventually was carried out into Homer Tomlinson's ministry. So Tomlinson basically just

47:09took that and pushed it further. But he took it out of the church order alone and entered into a

47:16political theological-type movement. He actually wanted to now take this to the next level.

47:23The sad part is, I look at the world today, and I look at the New Apostolic Reformation,

47:28I can't see any other way in which they would establish what they're describing without doing

47:33what Homer Tomlinson did. Tomlinson, he basically took his theocratic party and said,

47:39I'm king of the world. And he used very open and honest language about it. So in my opinion,

47:47Homer Tomlinson, though he seems a little bit weird if you read the newspaper articles,

47:51he was actually more honest than any single one of the apostles in the New Apostolic Reformation,

47:57because none of them are telling you, how would you establish this theocratic order? He's given

48:03you the way it gets established, because there aren't too many other ways in which you could do

48:08what they're talking about doing. So Homer Tomlinson's Theocratic Party, if you want to look at it,

48:14it was the first failed attempt at what the New Apostolic Reformation is proposing that we do with

48:21the Seven Mountains. So you have to be really careful how you look at this. Homer Tomlinson was

48:28not the founder of Seven Mountains theology, but he was part of the ideological framework that enabled

48:35this type of ideology to exist. In other words, he was an important precedent for the same type of

48:42theology. This belief that divine rule should become visibly embedded in public power through politics.

48:50He was doing it exactly as it would play out if you attempted to actually do this.

48:56So that's why this matters. This dominion style imagination that Pentecostalism,

49:04Charismatics, all of these different movements have adopted. It didn't just come out of nowhere.

49:10There are stages of history. There are intersections in history. Each one of those intersections matter

49:16because imagine this, take Roy Davis out of the equation. If he wasn't platformed in that revival style,

49:24would Homer Tomlinson have did what he did? I don't know. Maybe because A.J. Tomlinson was kind of pushing

49:31the precursor of this idea, the foundation or bedrock of this idea. But I can't really say that it

49:37would have happened. We just don't know. What we do know is that there are these intersections where

49:43these extremist ideologies are entering into Christian theology. And again, if you take anything

49:50and blend it with Christianity, what you end up with is not Christianity. You end up with something

49:55that is impure. So that's really the way to look at it and why this matters. The vocabulary has changed

50:02over time. But the idea behind the movement is much the same, no matter which intersection in time

50:09you look at. You know, previously, most of the congregation, if I understand the history correctly,

50:14they even did not vote because they thought politics were too rotten for Christians to dabble in.

50:22And much like the New Apostolic Reformation today, politics are evil. We're Christians. We're not

50:28politicians. And then eventually that turned into, we need to run and overthrow this thing. And that's

50:34kind of what he was doing. But he did it in a quote-unquote spiritual way, quoting Psalms or Proverbs

50:4229,

50:43when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. So he's using biblical terms,

50:49biblical scriptures and passages to try to blend politics with Christianity and establish this

50:58government style, which is basically, he wanted to set up a theocracy in the United States,

51:03much like most of the New Apostolic Reformation. And at that point in time, we're talking 1950,

51:10and he was running, I think, for the 1952 office. At that point in time, according to the reports that

51:17I've read, the Church of God actually held a celebration with, quote, dancing and unrestrained

51:24singing and shouting in the spirit. So we're talking 1950. This is long after the schisms. This

51:32is the son of Homer Tomlinson, who was a key integral part of early Pentecostalism through shaping the

51:40Church of God organization. The extremist version of this, one of the splinter groups, decides we're

51:46going to set up a theocracy, and the Church of God rejoices. So you can see how that the ideology

51:54is really the main focal point if you want to see how things progress over time. The theology is off

52:00to

52:00the side. It's the ideology that is pushing the movement forward. And obviously, we never had a

52:07king established in the United States. We never had a theocracy. But we did have people who attempted it.

52:14And not to pick on Church of God, again, I don't really have a dog in the fight of which

52:18schism is

52:19right and which one is wrong. Church of God is just one group in the long trail of succession and

52:26history of all of these intersections that I'm talking about in my research, where one group decided we're

52:32going to go and take over Washington. It's just one. There are quite a few of them if you look

52:37in history.

52:39All of that to say, it laid this bedrock, this foundation from which all of this was built upon.

52:46And eventually, it could breed things like we see happening today, where they're actually in bed with

52:52politicians. And you can go see photographs where they're in the White House, or they're in the

52:57national prayer breakfast. And then after the prayer breakfast, they're influencing

53:02politicians, congressmen, etc. You can read Jeff Charlotte's book,

53:06The Family, and you can find some of that history. All of this is connected, more than people

53:11realize. But the point I wanted to make with this podcast is that not many people really trace those

53:18connections through the Church of God. And honestly, if not for Roy Davis's name of his organization,

53:26the very organization where William Branham was birthed as a quote unquote,

53:31prophet of the new revival, if not for the name of the organization, I never would have looked at Church

53:38of God. But Roy Davis called it the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God. And there was another key

53:45component to this. After I left the Branham cult, I had a friend who was – his father was a

53:52church

53:52planter for the Southern Baptist Church. And after our services, I wasn't in his father's organization

54:00or denomination. But after church, we would discuss some of the theologies that his father was teaching,

54:10and that sect of the church was teaching. And it was identical point for point what I had

54:16whenever I was in Branhamism. The only difference was Branham was more extreme on those points.

54:22Where his church might teach modesty, our church taught the Pentecostal version of modesty.

54:28But doctrine for doctrine, if you take the prophet out of the mix, you had many of the same things.

54:34And I was – at the time, I was wondering, why is this? Because they're two separate denominations.

54:38Why are they so the same? And especially after I learned that Branham lied it wasn't a Baptist

54:43church. It was a Pentecostal church. Well, now I started to look at Pentecostal organizations.

54:47Why are they so similar? And I began to realize it's not really the theology that is the train tracks

54:55that this thing moved upon. It was really the mixture of ideologies, politics, and Christianity.

55:04When you combine those, you've got this rail system that led you from places like Church of God,

55:11where Davis is holding his revivals all the way into the New Apostolic Reformation, where Davis's

55:17successor, William Branham, has spearheaded the entire post-World War II healing revival,

55:23and he's named as one of God's generals. So you can see how this thing has just shifted and morphed

55:30over

55:30time. One of those train tracks leading to today is the Church of God. So that's why I've been digging

55:36into it. I'm actually far from concluding that research. There's just so much more to understand

55:44and more to try to detangle because it is a little bit complicated trying to even understand all of the

55:52different branches and what they believe and why they're different, etc. But hopefully this helps.

55:57Hopefully this something today can help understand the mess that we're in today. So if you've enjoyed our

56:04show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at william

56:08-branham.org.

56:09For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion

56:14from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

56:31I'm inこちら from Siemens, an

56:34Most people know how to work and how to predict these books.

56:34I know what is and I am enjoying it.

56:38I know what is and how to predict these books.

56:39So this is really real, first of all.

56:39I know.

From Church Of God To The NAR: A Hidden Historical Trail Podcast Episode 581

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