Perry Stone, UFOs, and the Flying Saucer Theology of the Healing Revival | Podcast Episode 616 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John examines the strange history of UFO fears, flying saucer theology, and apocalyptic prophecy inside the postwar Healing Revival. From Gordon Lindsay's Voice of Healing articles to William Branham's statements about saucers, signs in the heavens, and the rapture, the discussion traces how fear-based revivalism spiritualized world events and turned cultural panic into prophetic certainty.  The episode also connects mid-century UFO culture, Fate magazine, O.L. Jaggers, W.V. Grant, Perry Stone, and Branham's later cloud theology to show how fringe ideas entered revival preaching and shaped later charismatic and New Apostolic Reformation patterns. The result is a documented look at how fear, prophecy, and sensational claims worked together inside a movement that claimed divine authority.  00:00 Introduction 00:49 Fear-Based Religion And Spiritualizing Everything 02:21 Postwar Anxiety, Armageddon, And The Rise Of Healing Revival Culture 03:02 The 1947 UFO Wave Enters The Revival-Era Imagination 08:16 Voice Of Healing Turns Current Events Into Prophecy 15:28 Branham, Flying Saucers, And Signs In The Heavens 21:05 The 1950 UFO Boom And Gordon Lindsay’s Flying Saucer Theology 24:00 Fate Magazine, Occult Imagery, And Revival Sensationalism 28:03 O. L. Jaggers, V. W. Grant, And Little Men In Flying Saucers 34:22 Christ For The Nations, Voice Of Healing, And The Spread Of UFO Themes 36:49 Branham’s UFO Theology Develops Into Rapture Theology 47:01 Flying Saucers, Celestial Bodies, And Branham’s Rapture Claims 49:14 The Arizona Cloud, Seven Angels, And UFO Formation Theology 53:04 James McDonald, UFO Research, And The Cloud Debate 55:26 Why Resurrecting UFO Theology Matters Today 56:36 Closing Resources  ______________________ Clarification: In one section,  Perry Stone’s claim was misstated as though he personally had a secret meeting with U.S. intelligence. More precisely, the public reporting indicates Stone claimed pastors/ministers were warned through private meetings or people connected to government/intelligence circles about possible UFO/UAP disclosure and its impact on Christian faith. ______________________ 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.

00:49I grew up in a background where there was a religious movement that spiritualized everything.

00:55And when I say everything, I mean everything.

00:59There were people that if they went to the grocery store, and the grocery store didn't

01:03have their favorite brand of toothpaste, and they had to buy some other brand of toothpaste,

01:08they would think God had divinely inspired the grocery store to be out of that toothpaste

01:13so that they could get the other brand because they needed it for some cavity.

01:17I mean, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it was pretty close to that.

01:22People spiritualized everything.

01:25And usually, in the type of movement we were in, usually the spiritualization wasn't on

01:31the things that were helpful, but they were on the things that were harmful.

01:36Because the movement capitalized on the fears of the people, they would try to rile them up

01:43by telling them that at every turn, every corner that you make in life, you're going to find

01:50these demons that are out to get you.

01:52And in fact, we had an entire series called Demonology that we listened to how the demons

01:58were out to get us.

02:00And rather than instilling a comfort to the parishioners of the churches that we attended,

02:06they would send you fear instead of comfort so that you would be scared that God was powerless

02:13to save you unless you had the spiritual insight of the leader, whoever the leader may be.

02:18Well, that was a huge part of the healing revival culture.

02:23From its inception, this thing developed from a fear.

02:27And there were actually multiple fears, the biggest of which obviously was this was coming

02:33on the heels of World War II. And after World War II, there was this brief period of comfort

02:40and peace where people thought, okay, this is it. That was the big one never again. But shortly

02:47after that, people started fearing that there would be another one, there would be another

02:50global war, and that would be Armageddon. And the fears of Armageddon spread throughout the

02:56movement. Interestingly, that's not the only thing that spread throughout the movement.

03:01There were some fears that were just out of this world. I'll say it like that. The fears

03:08of the UFO culture. Because if you think about the timeline, 1947, that's whenever the latter

03:16rain movement was birthed, when William Branham and his team of evangelists started to grow

03:22and they started to sweep through the United States and Canada. That was 1947. Well, at the

03:28same time, we have another thing happening in world history, UFOs and little green men.

03:34I kid you not. There were so many widespread fears that Martians or moon men were invading

03:40the United States and flying saucers. And believe it or not, we'll get into this history in a bit,

03:46but believe it or not, it was making its way into the healing revivals. And William Branham,

03:51who was the leader of the revival, was not any exception to this rule. If you study what he says

03:57closely and then compare it to the timeline, he is talking about UFOs. In fact, in some cases,

04:03he even mentions flying saucers. So we'll get into that history in a bit. But I was reminded of this

04:09recently whenever Perry Stone, who is an open supporter of William Branham, he started claiming

04:16that he had a secret meeting with members of members in the know in Washington, and they were

04:23warning pastors that suddenly we're going to let all of this information out. And when we do the

04:30American public, you ministers need to contain this because the public are going to suddenly learn that

04:36there are Martians or I can't remember how he said it exactly. But it was, in my opinion,

04:42it matched very eerily similar to what we saw in history. So I wanted to go through that history,

04:50but keep in mind, this is Perry Stone, who endorses William Branham, who recently even,

04:56he started claiming that William Branham was a very accurate prophet. He started going through his

05:021933 prophecies, which we have fully debunked at this point. And Perry Stone was familiar with

05:09the ministry of William Branham. If he was that familiar, where he can say that he believes in

05:15these seven prophecies, he would have also been familiar with all of the UFO stuff that William

05:21Branham taught. In fact, if you read what he's saying and read what Branham is saying,

05:26it's pretty similar. So let's get into that history a bit. Let's talk through, well, first,

05:32let's talk through the UFO history. In June of 1947, about the same time that William Branham's fame

05:38began to spread and the healing revival started to pick up steam. It was widely reported throughout

05:44newspapers carried by the Associated Press that flying saucers had visited the United States.

05:51And all of this huge wave of UFO sightings didn't really play any effect in the healing revival itself

06:00at that point. But it was in the back of the minds of everybody who was in that audience. And

06:05I'm

06:05certain if you were attending the healing revivals, I'm certain there were people who were talking

06:10about it. They would ask questions like, well, what is this? And in the movement, as I said earlier,

06:16it tries to spiritualize everything. So in the back of the minds, everybody's thinking, oh my gosh,

06:21we're seeing these flying discs. What are these things? And what is the spiritual implications of

06:27these flying saucers? The next major escalation was July, I think it was July 8th, 1947, when the

06:36Roswell Army Field announced that it had recovered a flying disc. And it produced the famous, it's now

06:43famous, the Roswell Daily Record headline that if you read through the histories of UFO sightings,

06:50this is a big one, right? This claim was walked back within, I think it was a day as this

06:56was balloon

06:57debris, but the headline had already spread and panic started to ensue. So you have a public that

07:06is being given information about United, about flying saucers. You got the same public that is starting

07:15to learn that, wow, this healing revival is beginning to spread. And even the casual person

07:21who wasn't really Pentecostal started to see the combination of two of these things and just kind

07:28of had to scratch their head, right? Any who were in the same mindset that I was in, where you

07:33spiritualize everything, you started to wonder, well, we just came through the world wars. The Bible said

07:41there would be wars and rumors of wars. That was one of the themes that was carried through the

07:46revival, that passage that they quoted from the Bible. They were starting to link these things

07:53together as, well, this must be the end of days, right? And sadly, the revivalists started to capitalize

08:01on the fears that were starting to build within the United States. And again, the fear of UFO had not

08:09yet

08:09set in, but it was starting to come at the same time. So in the background of everybody's mind,

08:16they're thinking through this. Now, Voice of Healing magazine, which was started by William Branham

08:22to promote his ministry, eventually taken over by Gordon Lindsay. It would later evolve to Christ for

08:29the Nations, which is a big institution that trains many leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation and

08:36works in tandem with them. They began producing articles that were prophesying to make the people's

08:45fears greater so that, I don't know the intentions, but it appears that it would be so that the people

08:52attending the revival would be more attentive and start to believe that, well, things must be coming

08:58to a close. The world is about to end. We're starting to see flying saucers. And we just came through

09:04World War II. We're about to go through World War III. So in the Voice of Healing magazine, a series

09:10of articles was published entitled, The World in Prophecy, Sidelights and Incidents of World Events

09:17in the Light of Prophecy. And in this series of articles, the authors were given the opportunity to

09:24connect all of the many world events and tell people just how much they needed to fear. In fact,

09:31I'll read you a section here in one of the columns. They, they, and actually, this is the very first

09:37of the series. It has in bold letters, the number 666. And it says, time is running out and the

09:44days of

09:45this present age are numbered. Men who are guiding the affairs of this world in most cases, little

09:51realize that there is one greater than they who is ruling and overruling. Man proposes, but God disposes.

09:57Had we the space, we might demonstrate some interesting things which reveal the manner in

10:02which events in this world are being guided according to a pattern. We shall give one example

10:07and perhaps next month carry the demonstration at further length. And then it poses the question.

10:14The question is, are world events occurring at random or are they following a demonstrable time

10:20pattern, thus evidencing a supreme being who is overruling the history of the world? In other words,

10:28the history of the world is coming to a close. The over ruler is coming to destroy so on and

10:33so forth.

10:34This came on the heels of one of the more famous UFO encounters. The article was published in August,

10:431948, just days after the child's witted UFO encounter, where two Eastern airline pilots reported

10:51a glowing high-speed object near Montgomery, Alabama. And that backed what all of the newspapers

10:57were saying, because these were trained pilots and aviation professionals who were starting to see

11:04these unidentified flying objects. And again, the UFO sightings were completely separate from the

11:10healing revival movement at this point in time. But as all of these fears are mounting in the

11:16background, the World in Prophecy in September of 1948 published a diagram. And in the diagram,

11:23you can look at it. I've got it on the screen. If you're watching the YouTube version of this,

11:28it's entitled Remarkable Demonstration of the Manner in Which World Events Are Occurring,

11:33Not at Random, But Readily Recognized Time Patterns, or Time Measures.

11:39And right under that, they put Bible Key, and they gave you the quote from Revelation 13, 18,

11:46Here is wisdom. Let he who hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of

11:51a

11:51man. His number is six hundred threescore and six, or six, six, six, which everybody knows is the

11:58evil number, right? So what they did, if you look at this diagram, they took time spans of 666 days,

12:08and then read through history to see what happened during that time span, and listed all of the

12:14oh my gosh events that could happen during that series of time. The interesting part about this

12:20exercise is, you could do the same thing if you use 333, or 1818, pretty much any number that you

12:28take. If you want to calculate time spans based on that range, you are going to find a world event

12:34happening during that time span, and it's all in how you present it to the people. So this is no

12:40coincidence. Whoever wrote this article, and I believe it's Gordon Lindsay, his name is at the

12:46bottom, he literally took the number 666, which is going to instill fear in the hearts, and then

12:54categorized and divided all of the time that is leading up to the current day, saying,

12:59look, I found these events that happened in a time span of 666. I mean, you can't make this stuff

13:06up,

13:06right? So I would love to do this and use 333, but I'll let one of you do the math

13:13on that.

13:14It really, it's just, it's nonsense, but that's what they were doing, is presenting nonsense to the

13:21people. Well, this nonsense continued into what would eventually become a series of doomsday prophecies,

13:29the movement as it continued to grow and develop. They focused so heavily on the end of days,

13:36because this set the pace for the doomsday themes that emerged in the latter rain movement.

13:43I know Branham is famous for his 1977 doomsday prediction, and you can find all kinds of things

13:50on the internet if you want to look that up, but 1977 wasn't his only doomsday prediction.

13:55And I've, in fact, if you go to the website and you just type in doomsday, you can find,

14:00I've got all kinds of information on this. These people continue to instill fear that the current

14:06year, usually the current political campaign was marking the end of days. That's how this movement

14:14was to develop. And it developed from this, from Gordon Lindsay setting the pace that we're in doomsday,

14:21we're in 666, people. Be scared, because I have divided time into categories of 666 days.

14:30Well, that theme continued to build and grow, and people have started to link in their minds all

14:37of the different things that were happening within the current events of time. That is something that

14:44Lindsay and Branham and others were successfully able to do to convince the movement that we are at

14:52the end. We have divided into 666 days. And now, if you look at any world event, I don't care

14:59what it

15:00is, try to find something that's similar to that event in the Bible. And they were doing this. They

15:06would look at, like, May 1948. The state of Israel is established. Well, if you are in the British

15:13Israel camp, this is an important day for you. Even if you're not a British Israelite, you start

15:18to think, well, what about all of the scriptures talking about Israel? This must be the end of days.

15:23This must be the end of days. Well, eventually, this end of days theme started to attract people who

15:30had notions about flying saucers. And William Branham was one of the foremost leaders of the

15:37revivals. By 1953, he's openly talking about the fears that we should have of flying saucers. I'll

15:45read you a quote from 1953, a sermon entitled Speak to the Rock. He said, underground jet planes,

15:50planes going out from under the ground like that. Under there was an atomic bomb just ready. You can fly

15:56the whole world around in just a little bit with an atomic bomb. And they can send these saucers out

16:02across the nation, drop a bomb, and in 20 minutes time, explode the whole earth. So fast forward to

16:08today, we have seen, now it's called UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. They give it instead of UFO,

16:19mainly because there have been so many different types of sightings that they're not sure if it's yet an

16:25object or if it is just something that is a phenomenon that people are seeing. The United

16:31States government, the Pentagon, or now they call it the Department of War, has released a trove of

16:39documents about UFOs and what they call UAPs. To those of us who have been interested and have studied

16:47in the past about flying saucers and its history, most of what they released was nothing new. Although I

16:54will admit, as I was reading through it, there were some things that I didn't know. Like I did not

16:59know that

16:59during the moon landings, they actually saw things that could have been out of this world. But the majority of

17:06the things that I read, as I'm reading through this documentation they're releasing, most of it was no

17:12surprise at all. What was a surprise leading up to the release of those documents? Perry Stone, who's a well

17:21-known

17:21evangelist, author, Bible teacher from Tennessee, somebody we've mentioned from time to time, he began warning

17:29before the release of documents. He claimed that he had a secret meeting with U.S. intelligence and that the

17:38U.S.

17:39intelligence officials were about to release the secret files on the extraterrestrials, which if you read the

17:46documents, I think there might be one mention of something that they saw that looked like a smaller

17:53person. But there was no real mention of extraterrestrials. But according to Stone, the officials had warned a

18:01small group of ministers with a large reach in the Christian community that the government was about to

18:07release these reports and that possibly there would be videos of aliens and spacecraft which were not of this

18:13planet. And essentially what he was trying to say, if you read, if you listen to what he has said

18:21and

18:21read some of the news reports about it, he was trying to say that the release of this information would

18:28be

18:28so impactful that we would see a large number of people who would leave Christianity because we have

18:34seen now this extraterrestrial life. And they, in fact, that one of the, one of the articles I was reading

18:42was talking about, the comments made about the book of Genesis and the difference between what they're

18:48seeing with the UFOs, as though there was going to be some massive revelation from these files.

18:54And again, I read through them myself. You read through it and they're not talking about anything

18:59new. There's nothing really that astounding. In fact, there's not enough information really to

19:05conclusively say what it is that they saw. Although there are some interesting facts, which,

19:10you know, if you, if you're interested and you want to look, you can go to, you can just type

19:15in UFO

19:16files or UFO documents. You can find these for yourself. But what I did find most interesting

19:22is that while telling the public that there was no such thing, they had, the government is not

19:29investigating UFOs, all of this stuff. What I found interesting was in the reports, the way in which

19:36they documented it, there were several data points that they were collecting. And it was an organized

19:41set of data points. When you go from document to document to document, you can see that they're,

19:46they're talking about how did, how was it propelled? What was the shape, all of this, all of the

19:51different aspects of it? I can't remember the list, but there were data points that were collected

19:56way back when. And then in modern documents, I came across a couple where it appears that they

20:02have added a data point for payload, which is fascinating to me. They're really tracking alien

20:08payloads, right? Well, this kind of stuff, I guess, scared Perry Stone because he was thinking,

20:15oh my gosh, we're going to see an exodus of people who now believe UFOs and no longer believe

20:20Christianity. That was the fear that he is trying to apparently instill into the people. And again,

20:27it's just a distraction from the original truth. Whenever people study Christianity, study the Bible

20:35and read what it says, it's not supposed to be a religion that is based off of fear. And in

20:43fact,

20:43there's a Bible quote, perfect love casts out all fear. So it goes to show when you're trying to build

20:49a

20:49movement and you're trying to use fear to further grow that movement. Fear is the thing that you

20:57focus on most. It shows that you don't have perfect love because perfect love casts out fear. That's

21:03that's straight from the Bible. That's not what this movement was doing. 1950 was a big year in UFO

21:10history and not just for the healing revivalists. I'm talking about for the nation at large. In January of

21:171950, Donald Kehoe's The Flying Saucers Are Real appeared in The True magazine. And this was probably

21:24the most influential mainstream UFO set of articles. Kehoe argued that the saucers were real and possibly

21:32extraterrestrial. They weren't just hoaxes or hallucinations. And this article helped move the

21:38UFO discussion into a serious national conversation. That national conversation included both from the

21:46healing revivalist and the non healing revivalist. Everybody began talking about it. March of 1950,

21:53Farmington, New Mexico, a UFO armada was reported. Hundreds of people reportedly saw shiny objects over

22:02Farmington for several days. And that story became part of the UFO folklore. And suddenly that began

22:09connecting for the religious community Bible passages like there will be signs in the heavens and all of

22:15the different passages of scripture where people could tie things are happening in the heavens. We don't

22:21understand to look the world is ending and we're dividing days into 666 day categories, right? That was March of

22:301950. In May, Paul and Evelyn Trent took photos of UFOs that became among the most famous flying saucer images.

22:40They

22:41were published in June locally, but then spread throughout Life magazine, for example, published them. And for

22:49religious audiences, now these photographs were giving credibility to the saucer claim. And it was visible evidence that we've got

22:59to

22:59talk about this. And that's what the healing revivalists began to do. They started to talk about it. The very

23:05next month,

23:06Gordon Lindsay published an article in the Voice of Healing under the column this month's prophetic article entitled

23:13Prophetic Significance of the Flying Saucer. And in this article, he started to talk about the serious question that has

23:21now

23:21arisen. We see all of the flying saucers are being cited and published in the newspapers. It's held the American

23:29public attention. And the question has remained, do the saucers actually exist or are they a figment of human

23:37imagination? And Lindsay began to argue that, well, no, these are prophetic significant events and we need to tie

23:46those back to the world is about to end because everything goes back to the world is about to end.

23:52That is how the movement

23:53developed. That's how it continued. That is what they wanted to project to the people. And they actually, Lindsay

24:03actually had a photograph that was taken from a copy that I guess he got from Fate magazine. It says

24:10actual

24:11photographs of flying saucers, courtesy of Fate magazine. And I'll pause right there for anybody who is unfamiliar

24:18with Fate. Fate was an occult paranormal reader's digest type magazine for people who are interested

24:26in UFOs and psychic phenomenon, ghosts, strange but true reports. This was not your normal news that he

24:36got this image from. He got it from the most absurd place for a Christian minister or Christian evangelist to

24:44get it from. So there's a copy. There's literally a photograph of a Fate magazine photo in the voice of

24:51healing. It's it's

24:52crazy funny when you think about it. So then taking it right out of the playbook of Fate magazine, Gordon

24:58Lindsay

24:58shifted the voice of healing to do kind of the same thing, which is a large problem with how the

25:05movement later would

25:06develop. In the voice of healing, they started publishing things like this issue is signs in earth, air and sky

25:13air and sky foretell the imminent return of Jesus Christ. And they even have a photograph of a cloud

25:19formation that they say looks like Jesus Christ. But you can see they probably sketch just a little bit

25:26inside of the photograph to make it look like the cloud is showing Jesus with his arms open wide. I

25:32assume

25:33based off of the way that I see this sketched, I assume that the actual face part was something was

25:40the pin

25:40drawing and the outside rim of the cloud formation is just a cloud that, yes, it might look like some

25:47arm stretch, but who knows? But at the bottom, it's got captions like you would read in the National

25:54Enquirer magazine or Fate magazine. Don't fail to read dramatic report of God's dealing in Kansas City

26:02disaster. And think of the televangelists today. Think of all of these people that anytime there's a

26:08tsunami, there's an earthquake, there's some catastrophic event, they say God is destroying

26:15the earth. Well, that's where all of this came from. That's how this developed. They were showing

26:21prophetic signs. They were trying to connect an event, doesn't matter what the event was, but

26:26especially if it was a devastating event, they're going to try to connect that to something biblical

26:31and say, be afraid. That's really what they're doing. Be afraid people. So I read through this and

26:39it just, it blows your mind, really. Here's another example. The Voice of Healing, August 1951,

26:46world disaster impending, present mass revivals is the world's hope. And they go through and they list

26:54all of the different disasters that are happening and saying, you know, they're tying events like

26:59Hiroshima. At the bottom, it even says, be sure to read the Voice of Healing Correspondents report of

27:05Hiroshima tragedy in Japan today. This is much like you would see if you were in the grocery store

27:12and you see all of those weird magazines right there at the checkout that just have these obnoxious

27:17titles to try to get you to grab the magazine and read. And it's, it's really just, it's just really

27:24nonsense. Well, that's how the movement was developing. And this is 1950. Whenever all of

27:30these ministers and evangelists say, William Branham was God's prophet, but he went astray later.

27:36Well, think about this. This is where the movement sat in 1950, not, not the later, right? This is back

27:43whenever they're talking about, he was a man of God. Well, they're talking about UFOs and they're getting

27:49it directly from fate magazine. That's how bad this is. And it affected the movement. It really did.

27:57If you go through and read any of the revivalists of that era, I'll use another one. O.L. Jaggers,

28:05one of the famous healing evangelists, voice of healing evangelists, who was heavily advertised in

28:10the Voice of Healing in the Shrine Auditorium in 1953, held a series of meetings. And his subject was,

28:18who are the little men in the flying saucers? And he asked the questions, what was the disc that was

28:25chased by a Marine pilot over Southern California last week? Proving this disc did have a little man

28:31as a pilot. What was the eight inch disc that passes U.S. pilots over Japan and Korea? And where

28:38did it come from? Proving there was a little man in the eight inch disc. Irrefutable proof that flying

28:44saucers and little men in flying saucers do exist. Proof that there will be little men in flying

28:50saucers in the future than there have ever been in the past. Not a fantastic message. Let me repeat

28:56that. Not a fantastic message. And he's advertising his latest book, which is, happens to be entitled

29:03Flying Saucers. And it says, this is the result. This sermon is the result of 10 years of research by

29:10Reverend Jaggers. So for 10 years, he has been researching these flying saucers. And it says in

29:18bold here, Reverend Jaggers will prove that little men from one inch tall to as high as a mountain

29:24actually exist and are perfectly described in the Bible. So this thing was nonsense, but that's what

29:31the healing evangelists were doing. They were taking concepts from places like Fate Magazine, not just

29:38Faith, but things that they could tell were entertaining to the people and just out there

29:44enough to be absurd, but yet vaguely similar. And I'm using that very, very loosely. Vaguely similar,

29:55eerily similar to something that they could point to in a passage from the Bible that makes people wonder,

30:02huh? I wonder if that could be, I see there is a similarity there. It sounds really weird, but

30:09let's just go with it because that's what the revivalists are doing.

30:14Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern

30:19Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements

30:25into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical

30:31Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the

30:38compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,

30:44with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and

30:51documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the

30:57cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always,

31:03be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

31:08On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

31:13By the mid-1950s, the Voice of Healing Revivalists, the Lateran Revivalists, Evangelicalism in general,

31:21were widespread experts on UFOs. As funny as that sounds, O.L. Jaggers, who I mentioned was

31:29very, very popular in the Healing Revival movement, he started talking about how these UFOs,

31:36these flying saucers, were coming down and they were kidnapping human beings from Earth. And he had

31:41proof of this. In fact, he advertised this and he held a revival at the San Francisco Revival Center.

31:47And he said he had documented proof from governmental sources that flying saucers do exist and positive

31:54proof there are little men in flying saucers from six inches tall to 30 inches in height. He gave the

32:02he had the names and addresses of people that had been kidnapped by flying saucers. And this is the

32:08funniest part. He advertised the revival as not a fantastic message. This is based on scientific and

32:16biblical facts and 10 years of research. So 10 years of research made O.L. Jaggers realize that

32:23there are little green men and they're coming down and they're kidnapping people. That was not unique

32:30to him. That was something that was flowing through the revivals. It's unbelievable. It's really

32:35unbelievable. There were people like V.W. Grant, who was also very popular. He had a pamphlet that he

32:42distributed called Men in the Flying Saucers identified, not a mystery. And this is something

32:50that you don't really hear about when you hear God's generals. You don't hear that the generals

32:55were warning people that little green men, six inches tall, were coming and kidnapping people

33:01and trying to instill fear into the hearts of all of their parishioners and their attendees at the

33:08revivals. You're going to be caught by this little green man that's only six inches tall if you don't

33:15come and get right with God. That's what they were saying. In fact, this little, this men in the

33:22flying saucers identified. I wish to goodness that this history was preserved and not lost to time

33:30because it has, look at the chapter titles. I went on board a flying saucer. I saw and talked to

33:37the men

33:37in the flying saucers. The men in the flying saucers will soon return. You just don't hear sermons like

33:44this in today's New Apostolic Reformation. Now, Perry Stone is resurrecting this old theology,

33:51apparently, so maybe we might see it in the future. I don't know. Honestly, I actually hope they start

33:58talking about little green men. I really do. They produce enough fiction in the New Apostolic Reformation.

34:04Why not reintroduce that same fiction? They're resurrecting all kinds of things, and people can

34:12obviously see that there's something wrong with this. Really, obviously, that's why this is a race

34:17to time. You just don't find this kind of thing in today's world, right? But that is what they were

34:23doing. As I mentioned earlier, Gordon Lindsay, he was the editor of Voice of Healing. He's the founder of

34:32Christ for the Nations Institute. We've talked about how influential that institution is to most of the

34:39NAR. You find so many people that were trained under this, and they're being trained, really, if you

34:45think about it, they're being trained with Branhamism, but it's not got the name Branhamism, because Gordon

34:50Lindsay and William Branham together started this whole thing. That's how this evolved. Gordon Lindsay had a

34:56book entitled The Riddle of the Flying Saucers. And again, this is not something that you often hear in

35:04history. He had, he had many different publications that he was promoting this idea that there were, there

35:11were flying saucers, but he did it, as I mentioned, in the Voice of Healing. There, I've got a cover

35:17here of the Voice of

35:18Healing magazine. There is a, there's a compilation that's entitled, UFO Aliens Seeing in the Heavens and

35:26Divine Intervention, the Collected Issues of the Voice of Healing. And on the front, it's got the alien V

35:33formations. It's got a picture from Lubbock, Texas. The first sighting of the V formation is August 25th,

35:411951. There were photos, August 30th, 1951, another V formation. And then there's one that's called the

35:49Lubbock Lights, that you can see all of this right in the Voice of Healing issues. So people who were

35:55joining into the revivals were going to the booths before they get into the conventions, they were

36:00picking up these magazines, and they were learning that little green men were coming to get them.

36:05That was what was in the revival. It is so unbelievable. But when you look at today's

36:13revival, and you look at how they condemn the other cults, people like the Heaven's Gate cult,

36:20these revivalists will claim, see what the world has. They go off into these extremes. They'll talk

36:26UFOs. They'll talk Heaven's Gate cult. I actually heard a minister say something like this. I tried to

36:32find it for the podcast, but I can't remember who said it. But they were talking about the Heaven's

36:37Gate cult. And they came from this same lineage. They came from the lineage of evangelists talking

36:43about little green men. That's how weird this is. You can't make this stuff up, right? Well,

36:51the V formation theology, it actually turned into a theology. It entered the prophetic. And that is

36:58where this turns really dark and sinister. To give some background of this, I want to read some of

37:03William Branham's statements about flying saucers. Because remember, he was the foremost leader of

37:09the healing revivals. He was the person everybody was trying to mimic. They were all trying to rebuild

37:15a ministry just like his. People like Paul Kane would advertise themselves in the newspapers saying,

37:21another Branham. That's how famous Branham was and how respected his theology was. Well, he was no

37:30exception to this UFO theology rule. And he said things that were building up to the UFO theology

37:36in the early 50s. Here's a quote from 1953. He says, you see signs appearing, wonders appearing,

37:44mysterious things happening, flying saucers through the air, and everything else. Jesus said there'd be

37:49signs in the heaven above and in the earth below. So that statement itself, it's a little harmless.

37:56It's not that bad. But that's how the progression began. It entered into the theology. Now we have a

38:02UFO theology. We're connecting the signs in the heaven to the UFOs. And through that connection,

38:08we can point it back to the Bible. So now we have a biblical answer for this thing that is

38:13happening

38:14that we can't explain. In other words, we're going to spiritualize this thing we can't explain.

38:19We're going to use the Bible passage to explain it. And now we are in control of the information.

38:25We are in the know and the rest of the world has no clue. That was really what was being

38:31pitched. And

38:33it, like I said, it's a little bit harmless in the way that it's pitched. But if you understand

38:38all of the background theology that goes with that, it's insidious. It really, really is. So that was

38:451953. In 1954, the question was starting to form in the minds of the people attending the conventions.

38:54And in 1954, one of them came in the form of a question that was submitted to William Branham.

39:00And it's the question was this. What are the flying saucers? And are they something from God

39:07sending out for a sign? I'm asking you to stay another week. Please stay another week. So this is

39:14coming from a person. If the question is legitimate, there are some questions as to whether the questions

39:21themselves are legitimate. But it was a question that was posed before the people went out onto

39:27the recording and was distributed widely among all of the followers of William Branham and the

39:33revivalists. So in other words, even if the question wasn't real, it was something that was

39:41that went out and was distributed into the minds of the people so that then they could have the same

39:46question. But more than that, they could have Branham's answer. And Branham gets into details. I won't

39:53even go into this. You could read it if you want it. The tape index is 1954 0515. But the

40:00point I'm

40:00trying to make is it was developing into a question by 1954 that the congregation needed answers for.

40:10And then what Branham did was he tried to take the theology of the signs in the heavens, but then

40:17combine it with his doomsday theology. And so he started combining it with levels of destruction.

40:23Also in 1954, he said, when Jesus said the tidal waves would break the shores up and down the banks

40:29of the sea, when the great signs and wonders would appear in the heavens above, such as flying saucers

40:34and things. Now, I don't know about you, but I never heard Jesus say that. And his words, and I'm

40:42quoting,

40:43when Jesus said, and then he goes, such as flying saucers and things. So what he's doing is he's taking

40:49something that we don't know what is, we're going to spiritualize it, we're going to pretend that we

40:54know what it is, and we're going to tie it back to what Jesus said. So that is actually heretical.

41:01That's putting words in Jesus's mouth. But more than that, it's taking an element of control

41:07of the situation, instilling it as fear into the people's minds. And then through that fear,

41:14they look to him for the answers of the flying saucers question. 1955, Branham said, all these

41:21things coming up like little flying saucers, flying saucers is going to come to the church, and we

41:27little wee men coming through testing the power of God, all this fanaticism. If that statement were

41:34the only thing that he said, that's actually pretty good. He says, these guys are fanatics,

41:38these flying saucers, these wee little men. But remember, he is the leader of the revival. And this

41:45isn't the only thing that he said. This, this probably was a statement to an audience that were

41:51skeptical of this UFO craze and Jaggers, all of this nonsense. But Branham is working directly

41:57with Jaggers and Gordon Lindsay and others promoting the UFO doctrine. So he can't really

42:02hold it back. So let's keep reading. 1955, a little later in the year, he goes back to the signs

42:11of

42:11flying saucers through the air, where even the Pentagon don't know what to think about it signs in the

42:16heaven above. So he's kind of retracting from what he had earlier said. He's, he's tying it back to the

42:24signs in the heavens. But listen to this. On May 22, 1955, Branham preached a sermon entitled The Ark.

42:33And if you think about flying saucers and think about the ark, there's a lot of questions that can be

42:40raised here. He does get into the UFOs, but he ties it into some other weirdness that it gets really,

42:45really crazy. He's praying. And he says, Father, God, I pray today that the door is still open,

42:50that people coming from the east and west, north and south gathering. Great signs are happening in

42:55the skies. Fearful sites. The atomics of the air has been split. Hydrogen burnout. Saucers are flying.

43:02Missiles that can't understand. Some sort of intelligence, they think, from somewhere else.

43:07They don't know. And science can't find out. Mysteriously slipping down on the scene with lightning

43:13speed. Oh, God, we're at the end. And then he talked, he goes into his pyramidology. He says,

43:19in the great pyramid that Enoch built, the last chamber is gone, ready for the king's chamber now.

43:24And to those of you who haven't been following the Christian identity, British Israelism podcast,

43:31and all of that theme, what he's tying this to is the British Israel notion that the great pyramid of

43:38Giza was built by Enoch, not the pharaohs. And he says that he claimed that it was a Bible written

43:47to

43:47the ancients. And that Bible was a prophetic milestone, mile marker of time for us to see when

43:55the end is coming. In other words, it was tied to his doomsday theology. So he's tying flying saucers to

44:01his doomsday pyramid theology. And he is talking about this some sort of intelligence. And that's

44:08where this starts to take a turn. The moment he introduces the flying saucers with the theme of

44:14the ark. Now it turns into a more devastating, more destructive theology. In 1956, the same year he

44:22began working with Jim Jones, that destructive theology now started to enter into his apocalyptic themes.

44:29And UFOs were part of this. In 1956, in January 22nd, the junction time, he said the United States

44:37is shaking. The great bureaus and so forth in the great Pentagon and all of that investigating

44:44supernatural things. And I want to pause there because remember what he said. He rejected the

44:49idea of little green men and all of this. Well, now he's saying that it is supernatural. He says,

44:54flying saucers, what are they? Oh, they say we've seen little men in them and all stories.

44:59They try to deny it, but they're there. Why? God said there would be great signs above in the

45:06heavens above and on the earth. We got it. They're afraid. So by 1956, William Branham is fully on board.

45:13And that's the point in which this really goes crazy and off the rails. Because if Branham gets on board

45:19with

45:19the UFO doctrine as the leader of the healing revivals, every single platform of ministry

45:25that's built on top of Branham, they all have to adopt it. So when Branham went in full force,

45:32now this gets off the rails crazy. Later that year, Branham began to notice the formations of the

45:39saucers. 1956, in November 25th, a blushing prophet is the title of the sermon. He said,

45:46you see it in the paper the other day where they're requiring science, the Pentagon, to answer

45:50the flying saucers. It wasn't myth. It wasn't something imagined. It was real. It was an

45:56intelligence. They flew in battle formation. They could stop. They could start. They could stop.

46:02They could tell it was an intelligence. They know it. The people laughed and they said flying saucers

46:07made fun of it. Now, if you talk to a Branhamite, they'll tell you that William Branham totally rejected

46:13this UFO thing. He was against this fanaticism. And they'll usually point back to that quote that

46:18I referred to before. But remember, Branham was appealing to different audiences. And when he would

46:24go to a crowd that was a UFO fanatic crowd, he was preaching UFO doctrine full steam. When he went

46:30to

46:30a crowd that was a little bit skeptical, you can tell because he'll talk about all those other ministers

46:35that say the thing that he just said in other cities. And so it's a conundrum in trying to understand

46:41what's in the man's head. He's saying, he's speaking on one side of the mouth to one crowd

46:46and the other side to a different one. But here's the point I want to make. This built up to

46:51a climax

46:52in 1965. And he, this was carried to the extreme that it eerily matched the Heaven's Gate cult.

47:00In 1965, in August 22, in the sermon entitled, Crisis Revealed in His Own Word, he says,

47:07you see these little pockets going through the air. They call saucers, so forth. People that,

47:14well, we better leave that alone. He stops himself. He says, here, these people come up

47:18missing, you say. Don't hear from them. They're standing there and they're not there. That's the

47:24way the rapture is going to be. One of them will drop right down and this terrestrial body will take

47:29on

47:29a celestial body. There's a lot of things that I want to mention with this quote, because this is

47:35probably of all of his UFO theologies, this is the most important one because it ties so many

47:42different themes we've talked about. The Christian Identity Doctrine had the idea that you had a

47:47celestial body out in space and you had a earthly body vessel here and you would be reunited with

47:53your spiritual celestial body. So what William Branham did was he took the UFO theology, combined it with

48:00Christian Identity, merged the two, and said that that's how the rapture is going to be. A UFO will

48:07sweep down, pick up your body, and take you up to your celestial body. That literally is what the man

48:13just said. Also, he is saying exactly what O.L. Jaggers said, even though he had condemned O.L. Jaggers

48:21and

48:22others for it. He says these people come up missing. In other words, the UFO comes down and allegedly

48:27kidnaps them. Well, in this theology that Jaggers and others were preaching, the kidnappings weren't

48:33kidnappings per se. They were some sort of an abduction for a heavenly purpose, and that's what

48:39Branham is trying to say here. But Branham ties it strongly to his rapture theology. Now remember, this is

48:461965 in August. Branham dies just a few months later. So had this continued, there's a great chance it would

48:54have

48:54turned into another Heaven's Gate cult. It didn't, because he died. Fortunately, he died. But you can

49:01see how this progressed over time. It started with, yeah, there's signs in the wonders, we don't know

49:05what they are. And it went all the way to, you will be taken to heaven in a flying saucer.

49:11Now here's where

49:12it gets really, really interesting. Many of you have seen the photograph that's hanging in many of the

49:18Branhamite churches. It's on their websites of this cloud that has been fully debunked. You can find

49:24that in our revival history series. William Branham claimed that the cloud was seven angels, and that

49:31seven angels came down and visited him in a location in Arizona. Unfortunately, while he was in Houston,

49:38Texas at the time, he claimed that he was there underneath the cloud, and that it was given to him

49:44the

49:44revelation of the seven seals while he was under this cloud of seven angels. Not many people know

49:50it who are in Branhamism, and especially who are outside of Branhamism. But this actually began with

49:56a UFO theme. And it's very difficult to catch unless you pair the timelines of UFO theology, revivalist UFO

50:06theology, and what Branham is saying. But before there were seven angels, he starts talking about

50:14the stars that he was seeing in the V formation. He refers to it directly in 1962 before he goes

50:23out

50:23west to hunt. And again, that's a bigger history than this podcast can contain. But to summarize,

50:32he has this alleged vision that he was told to go out west by five angels, and he specifically says

50:39five spelling grace, G-R-A-C-E five, which is basic elementary math, he goes out there, he gets

50:47called to Houston, Texas, to help save a transgender murderer. While he's in Houston, Texas, this Thor

50:56missile detonated for the missile defense system, and caused this massive unknown cloud ring.

51:02And so at the time, the US Air Force and Vandenberg Air Force Base knew what this cloud was. William

51:11Branham learned about it later when he went back to Arizona and then back home and said,

51:16I was standing there under these seven angels. And the people had forgotten that he said five,

51:21not seven. But listen to what he says when he talks about those five, and keep this in mind.

51:27By this time in his ministry, he had taught that these UFOs were these things that look like lights

51:32in the sky were actually investigating angels. So when he's associating an angel in the heavens to

51:40something as a sign, he's literally talking about this light object that you can't make,

51:46you can't tell what is a UFO, essentially. He says,

51:50and no more than the second group of birds came by, I looked to the west and look like in

51:55the form

51:56of a pyramid, nothing V formation form of a pyramid, two on each side with one at the top,

52:02and five came out the mightiest angels I saw in my life. So he literally just described a V formation,

52:08two on each side, one at the top, that's a V formation. And he said, mightiest angels I ever saw

52:14in my life, they brought them into this constellation of a pyramid. So constellation,

52:20he's talking about stars or lights. And he says, these angels are five. Now I thought the death angel

52:26would be one, five would be grace, G-R-A-C-E. So what Branham is talking about here is

52:32a UFO V formation.

52:34And he goes out west, he allegedly is visited by seven angels. But unfortunately, according to the

52:43timeline, we've been able to piece together, he was not there at all under this cloud that happened.

52:49But it all began with UFO theology. And almost nobody in William Branham's cult of personality

52:56is aware that it began with this UFO theology. We also talked about this in the revival history

53:03series. But there was a UFO scientist named James McDonald, who is investigating the cloud ring.

53:11And if you go to any of the Branhamite defenders, they will mention James McDonald when they try to

53:17defend this cloud thing. Because James McDonald was trying to prove that it was a UFO. And he created

53:23an initial report, this was the pre investigation report, that said that he was investigating this

53:31was higher than any cloud could form. And so because it was an unknown thing, the cult uses that in

53:38fact, Branham used that as proof that this was seven angels. That's that's how weird this gets.

53:44What they don't give you is the second report where he actually went and determined that no,

53:49this this was nothing unusual. Also, what a Branhamite defender won't tell you is that

53:55James McDonald was a UFO chaser back during a time whenever UFO chasers were very frowned upon,

54:03much different than today's world, where now it's like this pseudoscience that's turned into,

54:08well, we don't we don't know what these things are, but we admit that they exist.

54:13But he he was a UFO chaser and he chased it long enough to determine that it wasn't

54:21something that was out of this world. It was something that was provable. And so he abandoned

54:26that. But he compiled this big list of things that were unprovable for a congressional hearing

54:34that he was going to attend. Now, sadly, James McDonald became the laughingstock of the scientific

54:40community because he was a UFO chaser. And back then that was widely frowned upon.

54:47What a lot of people don't know. Also, we talked about this in the revival history series. He was

54:54ridiculed most heavily by people within Branham's cult following. According to ministers that were in

55:01William Branham's cult of personality, Perry Green, who is one of William Branham's strongest

55:05promoters and supporters, was confronting McDonald on multiple occasions, trying to ridicule him for not

55:13believing in seven angels instead of UFOs, and apparently pressured him to the extent that,

55:20combined with all the other things that he was facing, James McDonald sadly took his own life.

55:26And so this did actually end and result in a death, which is really sad. But when you consider the

55:33broad scope of everything that I've mentioned, from starting out as signs in the heavens that we

55:38don't know about and, you know, theology, that's not really that destructive to one of these days,

55:45a UFO is going to come down and take you into heaven. This is a wide variety of mess. That's

55:51about

55:51all I can say. And for somebody who is supporting William Branham and promoting his 1933 prophecies,

55:59trying to resurrect the UFO themes that were coming from yesteryear.

56:04All I have to say is this. You probably need to do just a little bit more research,

56:09because most of it has been debunked. And this UFO theology, there's no need to resurrect it.

56:16Once you do, you're going to alienate every single person who now understands that,

56:21no, we're not going to be in a cult that talks about UFOs coming down to take us to heaven

56:27and giving

56:28us a celestial body and replacing this local body. So much more I could say about that. And I'll just

56:34let it go. If you've enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can check us out on the

56:38web.

56:38You can find us at william-branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new apostolic

56:43reformation, you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon,

56:49Kindle, and Audible.

Perry Stone, UFOs, and the Flying Saucer Theology of the Healing Revival | Podcast Episode 616

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