- 2 days ago
John and Monica examine forgotten Pentecostal history, tracing how William Branham, Latter Rain theology, and overlapping revival networks intersected with groups such as UPCI, ACOP, and other Pentecostal circles. They discuss Ern Baxter, Nathaniel Urshan, W.E. Kidson, Jim Jones, and the broader question of how controversial teachings and personalities moved through churches that later distanced themselves from that past.
They also explore why so much of that history is poorly remembered, how theological ideas were adopted, rejected, and revived in new forms, and why understanding Pentecostal origins matters for Christians evaluating modern charismatic movements. The conversation connects early Pentecostal developments to later themes such as five-fold ministry, shepherding, mature sonship, and the ongoing influence of Latter Rain ideas.
00:00 Introduction
05:51 Full Gospel Connections And The Postwar Healing Revival
11:13 Jim Jones, Youth Camps, And UPCI Memory
16:44 Complex People Inside Troubled Movements
22:07 ACOP, ECOP, And Forgotten Pentecostal History
27:23 Branham, Kidson, And Voice Of Healing Connections
32:20 Ern Baxter, ACOP, And The Big Tent Problem
38:16 Faith-Healing Claims And The Cancer Story
43:28 Manifest Sons, Five-Fold Ministry, And Modern Revival Language
49:19 Advice For Pentecostals: Learn Your History
______________________
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
They also explore why so much of that history is poorly remembered, how theological ideas were adopted, rejected, and revived in new forms, and why understanding Pentecostal origins matters for Christians evaluating modern charismatic movements. The conversation connects early Pentecostal developments to later themes such as five-fold ministry, shepherding, mature sonship, and the ongoing influence of Latter Rain ideas.
00:00 Introduction
05:51 Full Gospel Connections And The Postwar Healing Revival
11:13 Jim Jones, Youth Camps, And UPCI Memory
16:44 Complex People Inside Troubled Movements
22:07 ACOP, ECOP, And Forgotten Pentecostal History
27:23 Branham, Kidson, And Voice Of Healing Connections
32:20 Ern Baxter, ACOP, And The Big Tent Problem
38:16 Faith-Healing Claims And The Cancer Story
43:28 Manifest Sons, Five-Fold Ministry, And Modern Revival Language
49:19 Advice For Pentecostals: Learn Your History
______________________
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.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org.
00:42And with me, I have my very special guest, Monica Unglis, former member of UPCI and ACOP
00:49Pentecostal organizations.
00:51Monica, it's good to have you on.
00:53We have been communicating for, I don't know, one, two years, maybe longer with your research
00:59into Pentecostalism, Branhamism, and Jim Jones.
01:02And in fact, I did not tell you this before we recorded, but I went down paths of research
01:09that I probably would not have gone had it not been for your emails about Jones and his
01:15singing group and his involvement in all of this.
01:17It led me to Nathaniel Urshan, who was big into Pentecostalism, a UPCI guy, and his connection
01:24to Jones Branham and the center circle.
01:27So, so much to talk about.
01:29Maybe if we could begin by letting you tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
01:33Well, thank you very much, John.
01:35It's an honor to be here, and thank you so much for the invitation.
01:40I'm a fourth-generation Pentecostal.
01:42I was born into it in the, in the 60s, and I listened to your podcast originally under
01:52that lens, under the UPCI and the ACOP, and well, and the PAOC lens as well, just because
02:00of my family history with it.
02:04And when I listened to your podcast, I missed a lot of key information, who was doing what
02:11and where they were coming from.
02:16And I knew that there was a connection somehow, I just couldn't place it.
02:21And it wasn't until just very recently, within the last month or so, that I realized that
02:28there was very large William Branham ties to my ACOP church, specifically my downtown
02:35Calgary Full Gospel Church.
02:37Darrell Bock Absolutely.
02:38And I get contacted from several Pentecostal people, some who are quite unhappy with me,
02:44and others who are open to learning the true history as it was recorded.
02:50So I get all kinds of different types of feedback.
02:54But the thing that I'm learning from a lot of people is that there were so many different
02:59connections to either Branham, Jones, Branham's mentor, Roy Davis, basically Branham's inner
03:05circle, into all aspects of Pentecostalism, that it's almost impossible to even trace,
03:11because many of those branches have now started to try to erase those roots, since the men are
03:17very sinister men I'm talking about.
03:19In fact, I have on my screen, which I can't talk about, but I have an email now from a
03:25person who's very unhappy that William Branham's mentor, Roy Davis, was working so closely,
03:31apparently, with the Church of God.
03:33And so I'm having to respond with all of the different research that we found, which is
03:39unquestionable research.
03:40And, like you said, there are these connections, and how do you dig into this?
03:46How do you, what is your strategy when you're going into some of your research in Canada?
03:53Where do you begin with all of this tangled spiderweb of research?
03:57Well, I'm not really a researcher.
03:59I'm more of just a learner.
04:01And what I've learned is that we have lost our history.
04:11When I spoke with my husband, no clue who William Branham was.
04:16I spoke with my parents, no clue who William Branham was.
04:20Never really even heard of the latter rain.
04:23And we went to a latter rain church, officially, technically, if you wanted to look at it that
04:28way, but we never even heard of the person.
04:33And talking with my folks about the different doctrines, well, yes, my parents have heard
04:41the serpent seed being preached, and they walked, and my dad walked out of the service.
04:48My grandparents on my dad's side went to a latter rain meeting and walked out of the service.
04:53And that was the only real latter rain information that I knew about.
05:00But then, in your podcast, you talked about Trossack's camp in Saskatchewan.
05:07And it's like, oh, well, they're affiliated with us.
05:11And I remember John, sorry, Charles, Pastor Charles saying one time, if you're in a full
05:17gospel church, you're in the latter rain denomination.
05:22And I'm thinking, oh, there must be full gospel churches everywhere.
05:27They can't all be part of the same denomination, because lots of churches have the same names.
05:34And then, reading your books and listening to your podcast, it's like, oh, Pastor Cossack,
05:42which was my husband's and my parents' pastor, invited William Branham to our church.
05:50So many connections.
05:52You know, I honestly, whenever Charles said that, I didn't fully believe it, even though
05:58I had done some research.
05:59But I started going back through the newspapers, and pretty much any time that you saw that
06:04phrase, full gospel, after 1947, they were usually affiliated with, maybe not latter rain,
06:12but at least with the broader post-World War II healing revival, of which William Branham
06:17was the foremost leader, according to many historical accounts.
06:20Now, if you go back before this, you're going to find advertising, we believe in the full
06:26gospel, but it didn't quite mean the same exact thing as it did after latter rain.
06:30So, I started re-evaluating, and that's part of what led me into some of the research that,
06:36combined with what you had sent me, I was digging into Jim Jones and all of his historical background.
06:43And the Assemblies of God had, like you said, some of the history just doesn't exist anymore.
06:49I'm not going to say why they chose to remove it, but clearly it's not there.
06:54But Jim Jones was working with the Assemblies of God, up until the Assemblies denounced
07:00latter rain, and then the whole thing split.
07:02Well, Jones picked the latter rain, the Branham side of the split, and part of the Assemblies
07:08took the other side.
07:09And then the question was raised, well, yes, that happened, but did he know William Branham?
07:15And then, lo and behold, we came across all of the correspondence between Joseph Mattson-Bose
07:20and William Branham that was introducing Jones to Branham.
07:24So, you find these clear evidence trails, and you have to ask the question, yes, the evidence
07:30exists.
07:31Why do the histories not exist?
07:33What is happening that would cause people to remove their own history?
07:36Well, that's a really good question, and it's been lost.
07:41When the Jonestown incident happened, I remember my parents being very invested in those news
07:53reports, and in the early 80s, there was a made-for-TV movie about it that we, well, we had
08:02to watch
08:03because my parents couldn't get enough of that information.
08:08And anecdotally, they said that their uncle, who was a pastor in the ACOP church, said that
08:16it was the real Jim Jones, but I haven't been able to lock that down.
08:22Yeah, I still am in the process of trying to lock all of this down.
08:26And Jones is just one of many figures that it's really the same thing.
08:31What you find is there was this band of men who were, and women, who were very, what's
08:37the word?
08:38They were riding the wave of a theme that was quite popular, yet quite extreme.
08:44I think that's the best way to say it.
08:46And so, during that era, whenever this form of extremism was growing in popularity, it
08:53was okay.
08:54People, you know, even though they were a little bit hesitant and skeptical, they were accepting
08:59of it.
08:59But then, once it was all kind of outed, basically over this serpent seed thing, that was the
09:05drawing line in the sand whenever it was very clear that this was a Christian identity theme
09:10that they were pushing.
09:11Once that happened, then you find hundreds of ministers and evangelists who are standing
09:16up and saying, no, we want no part of this.
09:19Mm-hmm.
09:20Yeah, that's very interesting, especially when you look at the historical Pentecostal groups
09:27were very white.
09:30So, that leads me to one of the other things that you had sent me.
09:34You had, in the past, sent me this article of Jim Jones, who was singing in this, I think
09:39it was a quartet or a trio, and they were going around to Pentecostal churches, mostly, from
09:44what I could tell, mostly Assemblies of God churches.
09:46But I do believe that there were some UPCI or at least something affiliated with UPCI.
09:52And they became somewhat famous, or what's the word?
09:57Not widely famous, but respected within the community, I think is the way to say it.
10:01And I was trying to pinpoint, at your request, did Jones go to your specific church, which
10:10I never was able to prove that.
10:11Some of the band members were swapping in and out, so there's no way to say, was he there
10:15at that exact time?
10:17But at minimum, it looks like it's plausible.
10:20He probably did.
10:21We just can't find evidence to support it.
10:24But what it gave me was the broader aspect of this.
10:29Jones was becoming influential in circles that weren't even, I would say, hardcore latter-rain
10:36circles.
10:36It was going beyond, through his music ministry and through his youth ministry, which is something
10:42that is confirmed quite a bit in the book, The Raven.
10:46It talks about how Jones was working with the young people and how it wasn't a competition,
10:51but it was a growing theme, like Billy Graham's Youth for Christ, where they were targeting
10:56the youth and they were starting to spread the global mission of spreading Christianity.
11:01Well, Jones was involved with this from the youth perspective, and it seemed to be quite
11:05popular among the Pentecostals.
11:07Well, if I were to believe my parents, and they were at the first youth camp at the UPCI
11:18outlet camp that should have been 1954, and pastors Nathaniel Urshan and his wife Jean came
11:28up to that meeting.
11:30They had their baby with them, so we know what time frame that was.
11:34And that's when that harvester trio came up with them and drove up with them from Indianapolis
11:41to our camp, and the folks say that Jim Jones was the musical entertainment for the youth
11:54camp, but they also claim that he was a youth pastor under Urshan in Indianapolis, and that's
12:03what they believe, and that's what they have always believed.
12:05Yeah, and that's interesting.
12:07I have done some research into Urshan, and I have been in indirect contact with some of
12:13his descendants, and as you know, the Urshan family are quite big into the Pentecostal in
12:20this region, into Pentecostalism.
12:22So it's something I'm treading a little bit carefully because I don't want to make an
12:27association that isn't there, but from everything that you have sent and everything that I can
12:31find on the research in the newspapers, it looks very plausible that that was happening.
12:37I did talk to a person who was in one of Nathaniel Urshan's.
12:42Apparently, he held these conventions years later after Branham's death, and he was talking
12:49very favorably of William Branham.
12:51So it leads me to believe that there's more here going on than meets the eye, but again,
12:56I'm trying to connect the dots historically, and it's a little bit difficult when everybody
13:00erases their history.
13:02Now, my maternal grandmother had an uncle, and his name was Clarence, Uncle Clarence Cross,
13:12and he was a contemporary of Andrew Urshan and Nathaniel Urshan and Howard Goss, just because
13:23my uncle was one of the first Pentecostal pastors in Ontario, joining in the movement, they say
13:311905, but that was where the family came out of the Holiness movement because they were
13:38Holiness pastors under Ralph Horner.
13:41They were Hornerites, and after the Hornerite split, we were in the Standard Church, which
13:48is also another Hornerite branch.
13:51And that's also interesting because Howard Goss is a respected figure in Pentecostalism,
13:57but he was in the South in a region during this era when the blacks were being oppressed.
14:05And some of my research recently into the Assemblies of God places him within the movement whenever
14:11it was split black versus white, and new denominations were formed.
14:15So, I'm still piecing all of that history together.
14:18I'm working with a Pentecostal historian for that, and his research is a little bit suggestive
14:23of the racial aspects of the early Pentecostals.
14:27But I'm treading very cautiously because there was this North and South split in Pentecostalism.
14:33In the South, you had a lot of people who that was just the culture, and it was a different
14:38era.
14:39I want to rightly separate what was culture and era versus what was agenda and what was
14:45just completely wrong.
14:47So, I have my work cut out for me, but it is quite a bit to go through.
14:51Well, from what I've learned about Pentecostal history in general, Howard Goss was involved
14:59in the 1914 formation of the Assemblies of God, and he was also involved in the 1919 formation
15:12of the Pentecostals Assemblies of Canada.
15:15And that's where my uncle Clarence comes in because he was also part of the 1919 formation
15:21of the PAOC.
15:24And then in 1921, there was a split in the PAOC between the Trinitarians and the Oneness,
15:34and the Oneness formed the ACOP under Reverend Franklin Small.
15:40And my uncle Clarence, he was involved in that.
15:44He was a signer in that formation as well.
15:47And I'm not sure exactly when Uncle Clarence left the ACOP because he was a UPCI pastor
15:55and teacher at the Bible school for a really long time.
16:00Howard Goss was the pastor at my church in Ontario at the Brockville Tabernacle.
16:09He was there from 1937 to 1939, and then in 1939, Uncle Clarence came and pastored the Brockville
16:19Tabernacle for about 20 years.
16:22He married my parents.
16:25He married my grandparents.
16:28Uncle Clarence passed away when I was two years old.
16:32I don't really know him, but he was well-loved in the family, a very, very humble man who
16:41lived a simple farm life.
16:44You know, that reminds me a lot of my grandfather, and that's one of the more difficult things
16:49that I have to work through.
16:50There are many really, really good people within Pentecostalism, even in the histories we're
16:55talking about, some of them who are mixed in with bad agendas, but yet at the same time,
17:01they were a complex person.
17:02I think that's the best way to say it.
17:04In that complex makeup of their person, they were involved with something in some cases that
17:10was very bad, while they were at the same time trying to do something very good, which
17:15was something that I was trying to detangle whenever you were contacting me about Jones.
17:20Jones, Jones was well-respected and even received awards for working with the African-American
17:27communities, helping the poor, a lot of different agendas that he had that were really, really
17:33good.
17:34So during that era, you would not have placed him in the category of working with some
17:39of the more sinister figures in my research, but at the same time, he was.
17:43So you have to separate what was the person, what was the agenda, and what were the theologies
17:53and the political ideologies that were influencing them?
17:56I don't know if Uncle Clarence would have had political ideologies.
18:02He was just a teenager when he got involved in all of this, and he was 22 years old when
18:09our Uncle Alexander McCready up and left.
18:14They shook hands, they had a disagreement on doctrine, and Uncle Alexander left Uncle Clarence
18:21in charge of half the denomination because the congregation split in the Sand Bay Lansdowne
18:29area.
18:30So Uncle Clarence was just 22 years old, taking over a congregation.
18:36And that's the other thing, too.
18:39There's this theme that is starting to emerge among many people like myself, where you're
18:46seeing something that just clearly doesn't match the Bible.
18:49In many cases, it's heresy.
18:51And so it leads to a lot of people becoming heresy hunters.
18:56And I try to avoid that label as much as I can.
18:59There's this weird problem, though.
19:02In Pentecostalism, there wasn't the overarching need of having somebody who was trained in
19:12Bible history, Bible text, scholarly understanding of the Bible.
19:17In fact, it was somewhat taboo among Pentecostals.
19:20So, therefore, it opened the doors for people who were under – I started to use the word
19:26underage, which isn't correct.
19:27They were underdeveloped in their skills of understanding the Bible.
19:31I think that's the best way to put it.
19:33And you even had some youngsters who were like 7 years old, 13 years old, who were preaching
19:38the gospel, which is fine.
19:40They can do that.
19:40But there's this fine line between what is preaching out of excitement and what is solid
19:47teaching that matches what the Bible says.
19:50And it seems that when you invite everybody in that type of mentality, where we're just
19:55going to snub anybody who has scholarly understanding of the Bible, it opens the doors for just horrendous
20:02things to emerge in the church.
20:04Well, that's very interesting because there has always been Bible schools to teach pastors.
20:14There is the PAOC Bible School – what did you call it?
20:21BBI, the Bethel Bible Institute in Star City, Saskatchewan.
20:26So, that was a training school for pastors.
20:29We've got the Full Gospel Bible Institute that used to be in Eston, Saskatchewan.
20:36That's where my husband went initially.
20:39He went on to further Bible school and got his bachelor's in theology.
20:48So, I really have a hard time with pastors that don't have, you know, original languages.
20:59I'm starting to have that same hard time.
21:02The funny part is, it's not just Pentecostalism that shares this issue.
21:06Sometimes you can go into mainstream denominations and they'll have the same thing because there
21:11is an excitement to helping the youth become charged and excited about sharing the gospel.
21:18So, there is this fine line you have to walk.
21:20But, for me, I'm looking at the fruits of some of the bad teaching, and you can trace
21:26it right back to some of these people who just had no clue what was in the Bible.
21:29Well, from what I see, the UPCI was sheltered or sheltered themselves from William Branham.
21:38I see back in 1999, Pastor Bernard wrote a book about Pentecostal denomination history, and
21:49he wrote about the latter reign and how it was rejected.
21:53And that's really good.
21:55However, in the ACOP group, this is where I remember Charles saying that somebody was the
22:04big tent.
22:06Oh, boy, John, that big tent was key words for me and didn't know it at the time.
22:16So, going back to my husband's family history, so a little bit about history for me.
22:25I was born and raised into the UPCI, but then we moved across Canada, and we were looking
22:32for a Pentecostal church in the city that we were moving to, and our ACOP uncle suggested
22:41the Downtown Full Gospel Church because they were ACOP.
22:44Okay, great.
22:46Had no idea that the Downtown Church was anything other than ACOP, because that's what we were
22:53familiar with.
22:54We had no idea that it wasn't ACOP originally.
23:00It was Full Gospel Missions under the Evangelical Church of Pentecost.
23:07We call it the ECOP.
23:09So, when, I think you and Charles had said the ECP, so it didn't click on me, because that
23:14wasn't the verbiage that we use.
23:16Yeah, and it's difficult for me.
23:18Pentecostalism is like this big pane of glass that's being carried across the street, and
23:24somebody smashes with a hammer.
23:25It just splinters into all of these different groups, and how do you keep track of them
23:28all?
23:29I know some of the big acronyms that relate to my research, but where it went beyond there,
23:35it's really difficult.
23:36So, we got a few things wrong.
23:38Right.
23:39And listening to your first podcast, or the first time listening to your podcast, I miss
23:44this.
23:45So, we've got, in 1927, the ECOP forms, and in 1932, we've got Trosex Camp.
23:53That's all the ECOP people.
23:56And then we've got, in 1935, we've got George Houghton and Percy Hunt at the PAOC Seminary at
24:08the BBI, which is now called Horizons College and Seminary.
24:14Wow.
24:14And so, yeah, we've got Ern Baxter joining the ECP in 1943, okay?
24:23And so, in 1944, our Bible school opens, John, the Full Gospel Bible Institute.
24:29That's where I should have gone after graduating high school.
24:33So, I personally chose not to for two reasons.
24:37They're going to sound silly now.
24:38One, I didn't want to learn the piano.
24:41And two, I didn't want to be a pastor's wife.
24:45You know, the names you mentioned, obviously, for those who don't know and aren't aware,
24:52Ern Baxter was William Branham's partner in the Latter Rain Revivals.
24:55Where it gets interesting is the way Branham describes it, he later come in contact with
25:02Ern Baxter.
25:02But some of the research that we have puts that into question.
25:07Branham's backstory isn't correct.
25:10In fact, in Branhamism, just like some of the other groups we've been researching, some
25:16of that history has been erased.
25:17And in Branham's case, it seems to be purposefully.
25:20Some of the other groups, I don't know.
25:22Well, maybe they just are unaware, but Ern Baxter was a Pentecostal who was right in
25:28the vicinity of where Branham was having his strongest area of influence in the late 40s.
25:34But we have traced Branham back to one of the acronyms, the PCI.
25:38We've traced Branham to working with the PCI before Branham was supposed to have even received
25:44his alleged commission to go heal, pray for the sick.
25:48And through some of the research that I've been doing with John McKinnon, going back to
25:54the Weaponized Religion series that we do on the podcast, we have traced, it seems that
26:00Branham was working with Pentecostals as early as the late 20s.
26:04So how widespread was his influence?
26:07I don't know.
26:08It's really hard to say.
26:09But he was working under Roy Davis as apparently a bishop in Davis's Pentecostal sect, which
26:15was the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, P-C-B-O-G, if you want to throw acronyms out.
26:25And Davis had influence from California all the way to Georgia and parts of Cleveland,
26:32Tennessee, which is part of the email that I'm writing right now.
26:34So you've got this wide path of potential influence, and you've got the years late 1920s.
26:42So did Ern Baxter already know him?
26:44I don't know.
26:45There's a very good chance he did know Davis, or at least had heard of Davis.
26:49But we can't prove that because there's really no registry of history.
26:53But then you bring into the other names that you've mentioned, Ern Houghton, Percy Hunt.
26:58These were big into the Sharon Orphanage, and there's clear evidence, fully documented evidence
27:04that Houghton was part of the Christian identity theology movement.
27:10So when you bring that to what you have, now you're bringing Christian identity, Pentecostalism,
27:16Branhamism, full gospelism, all of these different streams merging and converging where you're
27:22talking about.
27:22Yes, and let's not forget the Urshan Branham Revival Healing Tours, where Branham was working
27:31with the head of the UPCI, Urshan, before it was the UPCI, and Branham was also working
27:40with W.E.
27:41Kidson, who was also a head of the UPCI in some capacity.
27:46Exactly.
27:46And he would have been the PCI connection that I was talking about.
27:50In fact, not many people know this history, we've published some of it, but when Branham
27:55was working with Kidson, he was writing for Kidson's newsletter as an editor, and the later
28:04story that Branham gave was that he was uneducated, so he would not have been a writer.
28:09And the column that was in the newsletter that Kidson was publishing, there's a column entitled
28:15The Voice of Healing.
28:16That later became William Branham's Voice of Healing magazine, which was later taken over
28:21by Gordon Lindsay.
28:22Yeah, and here I'm going to show you something, John.
28:28Here is a hymnal that was on my mom's piano.
28:33And if you look inside, compiled by A.D.
28:39Gurley and W.E.
28:40Kidson.
28:41Wow.
28:42And we have here Copyright 1934, Herald Publishing House in Dallas, Texas.
28:51And it is the Stamps Baxter Music Company.
28:56So that was really quite interesting.
29:00My father-in-law has listened to the Stamps Quartet forever because he came out of the
29:09ECP before they merged into the ACOP.
29:13Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of
29:19modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
29:24movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
29:27You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
29:32william-branham.org.
29:34On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
29:40Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
29:45audio, and digital versions of each book.
29:48You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
29:54movements.
29:55If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
30:00Contribute button at the top.
30:01And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're
30:07listening to or watching.
30:08On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
30:13So you mentioned the Stamps Quartet.
30:15In my research of William Branham's mentor, Roy Davis, as I mentioned, Davis was well known
30:21from coast to coast.
30:22And there was a point in time in California, whenever, interestingly, according to the timeline,
30:30as the California Ku Klux Klan was being rebirthed, he, who was the former head of the Ku Klux Klan,
30:36a head, was in California, building a church, building a movement, and who knows what all
30:41else.
30:42But he was also the emcee of a, I think it was a statewide quartet convention.
30:50And in it, it mentioned several names, some of which were a little bit curious whenever I started going into
30:57it.
30:57But it said that, and the verbiage sounds like he was part of the original Stamps Quartet from Texas.
31:04And so I started researching that because I was a big fan of J.D. Sumner and the Stamps,
31:09which would have been a later iteration of the Stamps.
31:12I have not yet found any proof to overthrow that claim.
31:17Whether he was in it or not, I don't know.
31:19But at minimum, he was touring around with people who were connected to the Stamps Quartet.
31:25So you've got Stamps Baxter, which, interestingly, the name Baxter, it's not, I don't think it's the
31:31same as Ern Baxter, but the coincidence is kind of funny.
31:35And right there in your hymnal, it's bringing all of these connections together.
31:40Well, I just find it very interesting that they say that Roy Davis was an original Stamps
31:44member from, what was it, 1924 to 1945 when he left.
31:50So I have a hard time imagining that in 21 years, nobody knew.
31:57Yeah, I do, too.
31:58The first thought that hit me was, maybe it's a different Stamps Quartet.
32:02But what it's describing, if I'm understanding the history of the Stamps Quartet, it is describing
32:07the correct one as it evolved into the J.D. Sumner version of the Stamps.
32:13J.D. Sumner and the Stamps were the opening act before some of the Elvis concerts, which is
32:17also kind of interesting.
32:19Well, to talk about the other Baxter, Ern Baxter, who was not part of the Baxter Stamps
32:25Quartet, Ern Baxter ended up being a pretty big name in the ACOP.
32:32He was a big ECOP leader at the time of when they merged.
32:38And I have found pictures of Ern Baxter in the ACOP's official End Times Magazine, End Times
32:49Messenger Magazine.
32:51And I nearly fell off my chair, John.
32:55You see, Ern Baxter sitting two doors down from my pastor.
33:01And then there's other people in this group, and it's like, these are all the Saskatchewan
33:05people.
33:07Well, take it a step further.
33:09I was so shocked when I started working with people in the charismatic movement who started
33:14saying many of the same things.
33:15Oh, that's the same Ern Baxter that started the shepherding movement.
33:18Our church was connected to the shepherding.
33:21And I started going through all of the history of the spiderweb of where all of this went.
33:27And like Branhamism, you go to the ends where the fruit starts to be produced, and it's
33:32not really good fruit that's produced by these people.
33:35Now, they may not have had bad intentions, but whenever you have people who really don't
33:41understand doctrine, and they're introducing new extra biblical themes into their preaching,
33:46there's just really no telling where it's going to go.
33:48Well, and I think that was a problem when the merger happened in 1953.
33:54See, Ern Baxter and the ECOP, they were Trinitarians, and the ACOP started out as a Jesus-only
34:05oneness group.
34:06So, now Ern Baxter introduced a whole lot of theology that we didn't have before.
34:15And going back to what Charles said, the ACOP treated it as the big tent.
34:23We accepted anybody, doctrine schmachtrin, anything goes.
34:29And the official stance of that would be theological diversity.
34:38Well, I'm sorry, John.
34:40There's a lot of diverse theology that is nowhere close to Christianity.
34:46That's another thing that really was difficult for me to understand.
34:49And I came through it partially through the Urshan research.
34:53I spoke with another Pentecostal minister who wishes to be unnamed, but he was at one of
35:01the meetings that Branham was apparently in, or his father was in one of the meetings Branham
35:06was in.
35:07And his father walked away and said, I'll never go back to this.
35:10We're oneness Pentecostal, and Branham just baptized that person in Father, Son, and Holy
35:15Ghost, which is totally against the oneness Pentecostals.
35:18They see it as an unforgivable sin.
35:21It's a crime if you do this.
35:22So there was a strong division, but Branham is historically known as modalist or oneness,
35:29having denounced the Trinitarian doctrine.
35:32But yet you find him praying to the Trinity in some churches and then condemning anybody
35:37who does as having the mark of the beast in other churches.
35:41So there's this wide variety of people.
35:44It didn't really click until I found the very first issue of The Voice of Healing when
35:49it started, even in the title, it says an interdenominational publication.
35:55What it's trying to say is we don't care what you believe as long as you're joining
36:00our movement.
36:01You can believe the black or the white or the gray or anything in between.
36:05We don't care.
36:06Just join our movement.
36:08Once everybody joined, then it turned into a very black or white cultish mentality.
36:12How I see that today or how I describe that today is just slap a Jesus Christ sticker
36:18on it and call it a Christian.
36:20The thing of it is that what they're preaching in many cases has no resemblance to the gospel
36:25and they'll call it the gospel.
36:27And it really goes back to what I said before.
36:30When you have people who aren't trained, some of them are so untrained they've never even
36:34heard what the gospel of Jesus Christ is.
36:37So they don't understand it.
36:38But they're using the word gospel.
36:40So when you stamp that label on it, we're preaching Jesus and we're preaching the gospel.
36:45When people hear those labels, they think, oh, this must be a Christian gospel.
36:49It's just, sadly, in some cases, it's not even close.
36:52I would have to imagine that my original ACOP family would be very surprised of how much influence
37:04William Branham and the latter rain has actually had on us via Earn Baxter.
37:11I see that currently in today's ACOP world, they bring in people like Cindy Jacobs and Mike Bickle
37:22and pastors from the Vineyard Movement.
37:27And I'm thinking, oh, good grief.
37:29What is going on here?
37:32And it makes me wonder, do they even know our history to be able to associate?
37:40Because I'm almost 60, John.
37:43My peer group doesn't remember this.
37:45My parents and my husband's parents, they're in that 90-year-old age bracket.
37:51They don't remember it.
37:53Well, I shouldn't say that exactly.
37:56My father-in-law does remember William Branham because in 1947, when William Branham came
38:03to Calgary, he came to our church.
38:06And my father was in that, in one of those services during that week that Branham was here.
38:15And I first listened to your podcast and I listened to Charles and he said, and you know,
38:22John, and the cancer fell right off her head.
38:25And I kind of laughed.
38:27And it's like, oh, that kind of reminds me of that Jim Carrey movie, Man on the Moon,
38:32where Andy Kaufman was terminally ill and goes to Hawaii to a faith healer.
38:40And he sees the faith healer palm the chicken gizzards into his hand before the ceremony.
38:47And Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman laughed because he knew it was just a con.
38:53And that was his game.
38:55That was his comedic game.
39:00So, after listening to your podcast, I went and spoke to my father-in-law.
39:07Have you heard of William Branham?
39:08Oh, yes, I was 12 years old in that service.
39:11And my mother got healed and the cancer fell right off her head.
39:18He quoted Pastor Charles.
39:21I couldn't believe it.
39:22I grew up with those same stories.
39:24And what's funny is when I was in the cult of Branham, I had some knowledge of other cults.
39:31And I was aware of Jim Jones and People's Temple, obviously.
39:34They were the number one most infamous.
39:36But I knew that Jones did the gizzard trick.
39:40That's something that's in many of the documentaries.
39:42He's dropping chicken gizzards and they're believing that it's, you know, almighty God.
39:47I never put two and two.
39:48When my grandfather would say that the tumor just fell right out on the platform and everybody could see it,
39:53I never really thought about the seriousness of this.
39:57And I'm laughing really at the absurdity because Branham was doing the same thing.
40:02There's no question about it.
40:04Even if you understand medical science, how a tumor works, that it's not even possible for this to happen.
40:10But that's what the people were doing and they were dropping animal parts.
40:15For me, once that hit me, the scope of how insidious that was, I started to just be, I was
40:23sick to my stomach.
40:24Because these people were tricking other people in the crowds to believe that they had some magic gift that they're
40:30claiming was of God.
40:31And tricks like this were being used.
40:34And that's just one of many different tricks that's being used.
40:37It was Pastor Cossack was pastoring the downtown church.
40:42And when William Branham came through, Pastor Cossack also was in the UPCI because he was in Ontario at the
40:52outlet camp in the early 40s.
40:55That's where my parents remember him from.
40:59Pastor Cossack was my husband's pastor when he was a small child in the early 70s.
41:06And it was Pastor Cossack in 1953, no, 57, 1957, where Cossack has invited Ern Baxter to the ACOP Fall
41:22Bible Conference as the Bible teacher.
41:25Like I said earlier, it's this unending labyrinth of connections.
41:30And each one you go down, you find that Branham's not really the only epicenter.
41:36You'll follow a connection and then there'll be another explosion into another epicenter.
41:40And that will splinter off into all of these different groups.
41:43It is like a cancer.
41:47It's like a tumor.
41:47It grows.
41:48It metastasizes.
41:49It spreads.
41:50It does it again.
41:51And it just keeps repeating.
41:53And for me, it really goes back to this.
41:56The Bible says, by the fruits you'll know them.
41:58Well, if I'm examining the fruits of this movement, all I see are something that looks good, looks clean, using
42:05the name Jesus, using the word gospel.
42:08But it isn't quite the same Jesus and it isn't quite the same gospel.
42:12It is something just a little bit different.
42:13Where this gets confusing, John, is doctrines are introduced, they're taken out, they're rejected, but they come back a little
42:25bit.
42:26And so are they rejected?
42:28Do we really teach this?
42:30Do we not?
42:30I saw in a 1967 End Times Messenger magazine where at the ACOP conference that they're teaching the pastors manifest
42:47sons of God.
42:48So this is 1967 and they're teaching this to the pastors and I saw a picture and mom's cousin, who's
42:57a pastor, is sitting in this conference.
43:01So I wonder how much this has actually influenced us.
43:07And then we've been in my research in 1974, same magazine, we have someone calling out the Man-Child Company
43:19as heresy.
43:20So we're teaching it, but we're saying no, but we're teaching it, but we're saying no.
43:28So it's very confusing, John, very confusing.
43:33And how I look at this is the two things necessary.
43:41You needed the five-fold ministry to get to the manifest sons or mature sonship, I guess is what they
43:49call it nowadays.
43:50Because you talk manifest sons of God and people don't even look at you.
43:55You say mature sonship.
43:57Oh, well, that piques everybody's interest because they know about mature sonship.
44:02You're going to be, I guess we have different tiers of anointings now.
44:07We're not just anointed with the Holy Spirit as a Christian.
44:12Now we've got different tiers of anointing, different specialties.
44:17So that's crazy.
44:20Now my husband, in Bible school, for sure they taught five-fold ministry, but they didn't teach it as current
44:33-day offices.
44:34There was no capital A apostle, no capital anything.
44:39In fact, they said the apostle didn't exist.
44:42So really, it was only a four-fold ministry that they taught.
44:45The thing of it is, you almost can't have the movement unless you go back to manifested sons.
44:52Because if you go back to the history of the Sharon Orphanage, that's what they were trying to produce.
44:56They were trying to evolve Christianity into a new creature that wasn't quite the same creature.
45:01And in fact, many of the circles use that language.
45:03We want to become a new creature in God.
45:06Well, when they say that, they don't take the biblical meaning of this.
45:09They're adding all of these things to what this new creature is.
45:12And in the end, no matter what label they put on it, it's always the manifested son of God.
45:17That's why you mentioned Mike Bickle.
45:19Paul Cain was big in this.
45:21Paul Cain was one of William Branham's protégés, I guess you would call him.
45:25He and Mike Bickle and Bob Jones basically recreated this idea that we're going to create a new Sharon Orphanage.
45:32We're going to call it International House of Prayer in Kansas City.
45:35And we're going to resurrect the manifested sons of God theme with prayer 24-7, all of the things that
45:42I think the Sharon Orphanage would have evolved into had they survived the Assemblies of God split that happened.
45:49But what they were trying to recreate was nothing new.
45:53They were just recreating something old.
45:54I keep an eye on my home church in Ontario and my home church here in Calgary because they are
46:01such love places by me.
46:04They will always be my home church and the people there will always be my friends and family.
46:10So I always check on what's going on.
46:14And I've heard some different language that I said to my husband, this isn't the same church that we grew
46:23up in.
46:23This is not the same gospel that we loved and heard.
46:29New words, like I said, anointed.
46:32Well, I was always taught everybody is anointed.
46:36So there wasn't anybody extra anointed.
46:41And another phrase that I heard recently was covenant relationship.
46:48And my definition of that is I've got the dirt on you and you've got the dirt on me and
46:53we're going to support each other no matter what.
46:56Absolutely.
46:57Basically, it's the same thing as the shepherding movement, but in reverse.
47:02Instead of having the hierarchy with five guys at the top, we're going to have smaller hierarchies, but we're still
47:07going to have the dirt on each other.
47:09Another word that I heard in my church was, we want you to experience Jesus.
47:19And I don't even understand what these words mean anymore, John.
47:25Experience Jesus.
47:27That's just something.
47:29Well, it's basically turned into a carnival of sorts with these different entertainment rides that you can go down.
47:38You can experience Jesus in this entertaining way.
47:41And for me, it really goes back to what I said earlier.
47:44If you don't know the gospel, you're preaching a different gospel.
47:48You, by human nature, are going to create one that is more entertaining to the crowd so that it brings
47:53more people in.
47:54And then it becomes a gospel of entertainment.
47:57And the question becomes, is that the same gospel?
48:00Can it even be the same gospel?
48:02When my husband finished Bible school and came back to Calgary, he noticed that our church really changed.
48:14And I asked him in what way, and the way he described it, he just made it sound like it
48:19was a normal UPCR service.
48:22But to them, that was very fanatical compared to what we were used to.
48:27It was very orderly, and nothing went crazy.
48:33But after my husband came back from Bible school, he said that something had changed, and he was concerned that
48:42they were looking for experiences now.
48:45And this is, I would say, 1996, where my husband was leading worship at a POC First Alliance church.
48:56And John Arnott from Catch the Fire had come, and he had said, well, let's hurry up and get through
49:04the sermon so we can get to the fun stuff.
49:08So I guess that must have been the experience, the fun stuff that they were looking for.
49:12And there's the ties to the charismatic movement through John Arnott, who was at the Toronto Blessing.
49:18So, so many different spiderwebs of connections, all of them seem to be converging in various places in the timeline.
49:25If you could give some advice to people who are in this type of movement, what advice would you give
49:30them?
49:31I would say, learn your history.
49:36Just learn your history.
49:39And once you can put your own history together, then things will start making more sense.
49:45And the only other thing that I can suggest is the POC rejected Branham.
49:52The Assemblies of God rejected Branham.
49:56We've got different documentation out of the ACOP, wishy-washy, but still rejecting him.
50:02We've got the Assemblies of God rejecting the shepherding movement.
50:09And my advice would be, can all of these places be wrong?
50:13They were, they experienced it, the latter rain, they experienced the latter rain at the time that it was happening.
50:20So, we have to take their authority on it, because this is 75 years later, we don't know it.
50:27And it's interesting, I recently put a podcast out just going through the different things that the Assemblies of God
50:35said about the latter rain movement when they denounced it.
50:38And it's so interesting if you compare it to what charismatic Christianity today has become.
50:44It is the very thing that Assemblies of God back in 1949 had denounced.
50:49But yet, so many people have forgotten that history, that they're starting to recreate that history, not knowing that they're
50:55recreating the error that was already condemned long ago.
50:59So, so many different interesting points in history.
51:03And I think some of your research, when I get the chance to go deeper into what you've sent me,
51:09I think it's going to explode into a new world of different labyrinths that I can go down and connect
51:14different Pentecostal histories to the same movement.
51:17Thank you so much for doing this.
51:18Thank you so much, John, for having me on. It's been an honor and a pleasure.
51:23Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us
51:27out on the web.
51:27You can find us at william-branham.org.
51:30For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to
51:36the NAR.
51:37Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
52:16Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
52:44Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
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