Cultish - William Branham & The Road To Jonestown, Pt. 6

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Happy to see today is our host pastor, Brother Jim Jones, from Indianapolis, South Carolina.

00:07

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Colters Entering the Kingdom of the Colts. My name's

00:12

Jeremiah Roberts. I'm one of the co -hosts here. I'm here with Andrew, the super sleuth of the show. Are you super excited for this finale?

00:19

I am super excited because just even the quality of that audio, I know that was William Branham speaking, but it brings me back to the

00:27

Jim Jones days when we were, you know, discovering Jim Jones and his theology, right?

00:33

And you can actually hear Jim Jones mentioned there, right? So it's very, I don't know, it's like a full circle thing with Colters for me right now that I'm feeling.

00:41

It's really interesting. Yeah, it's definitely full circle because, I mean, our very first episode was Ground Zero Jonestown where we went over,

00:48

Jeff and I, it was our very first episode, Ground Zero Jonestown where we went over the

00:54

Jonestown death tape, infamously known as Q42. Shortly thereafter, we did a sort of a road to Jonestown series called

01:04

Through Jones Colored Glasses where we talked about his worldview, some of the historical origins of even people prior to him,

01:11

Father Jehovah, George Baker, Father Divine, and eventually the influence he had on Jones.

01:17

And it was through that that we found out about William Branham and this connection that he had.

01:23

And so this feels almost like another underlying, this is like some bonus features.

01:28

These are like the lost episodes. It's like trying to understand the other third of Jim Jones's brain.

01:33

Like we've got two thirds in, this is like the last missing piece. Yes. So once again, we're back with John Collins for the grand finale of our series on William Branham, the latter rain, and the message movement.

01:46

John, how are you doing, man? It's good to have you back. Good to be back. I'm doing great. Okay. Excellent.

01:53

And so what we just heard again there, that was an audio clip of, you said, William Branham from hosting a revival service in Chicago, and he introduces brother

02:04

James Jones as from Indiana. And so historically they did different messages together and revival services together.

02:13

So can you just maybe just carry on from the last episode, just initially how they joined? Just talk a little bit more about that and just maybe describe too, just the overall nature of their, of Branham and Jim Jones's relationship together.

02:29

Yeah, so the nature is, even if you just think about the fact that he's introducing

02:35

Jones in Chicago, Illinois, as the host pastor, not as a pastor who's joining in the revival or somebody who's affiliated.

02:45

It's actually the host pastor in Chicago is Jim Jones. There was this,

02:52

I remember when I first left the cult here in Jeffersonville, we started attending a local

02:57

Baptist church and there was a lady that we met at the church in Sunday school.

03:05

She found out that we were, you know, we just recently escaped the Branham Tabernacle.

03:10

And I watched her eyes get great big and she called us out after service and she says,

03:17

I escaped that same church too. I left there. She said that her and her husband both were in it and that there was this big thing,

03:28

I guess it was before my time, whenever one of the books about Jim Jones was being published, there was a, apparently my grandfather put up a pretty good fight to keep it out of the local

03:40

Jeffersonville library. And she was, she worked for an attorney, so she was, you know, part of this big thing, trying to keep the lid on Jim Jones and William Branham.

03:54

And it just suddenly shocked her. She's like, oh my gosh, this thing is related to Jim Jones.

04:00

And she said it wasn't long after that, that she and her husband both fled and they, you know, they joined the

04:07

Baptist church that we attended. And whenever I came across,

04:13

I didn't even learn about the Chicago thing until much later, even after writing my first Jones book.

04:21

When I first came across that pamphlet that you mentioned, advertising the open door, there was quite opposition from the cult, as you can imagine, trying to contain it.

04:33

They wanted to present the argument that Branham's influence with Jones was simply one revival meeting that they barely knew each other, that in Indianapolis, and I think it's 1956, either 55 or 56, that Jones invited him and he came and he spoke and then he left.

04:55

Well, that is not the case at all. I found two massive revivals in Indianapolis, Indiana, that Jones was the host pastor, that Branham was the, basically the star speaker.

05:14

But there were several big names that attended that, many Pentecostal names, many latter reign names.

05:21

And I found a, basically a scribbled note of Jones's handwriting, and he's referring to being in the message cult.

05:33

The cult that I grew up in was called The Message, and he always wrote it with a capital

05:38

M, The Message, and there was apparently a member of Jones' congregation that was trying to escape, and he says, you know,

05:51

I know I understand you're leaving, but there are things about this message that you don't understand.

05:57

He's referring to being part of The Message, he's a message cult pastor. So there, you know, there was a lot much more going on than just simply one single revival meeting.

06:12

Jones was not only hosting Branham in Indianapolis, he was hosting him in other cities, and he was touring with the big hitters in this movement.

06:24

That's interesting. So you're saying that in that scribbled note, just for my understanding, Jim Jones was saying there's two somebody who was trying to leave

06:34

Jim Jones's cult, and he said there's things that you don't understand about The Message, and are you saying that Jim Jones was also, he was like a teacher of Branham's theology, in a sense?

06:47

Just specific things in terms of, like, the latter reign? You know, if you sum it up just simply by the word message, so let me phrase it a different way.

07:00

I spent a large part of my time growing up in the South, and if you go to a preacher in the

07:08

South, they're going to tell you that I'm speaking to you today on this message about the book of Luke, right?

07:18

They never capitalize the M for message. I'm speaking about this message. It's not a proper noun.

07:26

It's basically just them speaking. So Jones was joined into this movement, this latter reign movement.

07:35

During its early days, whenever the two, the latter reign and the voice of healing movements, were somewhat together,

07:42

Jones became part of the latter reign, which was the latter reign message.

07:48

I came across several articles advertising ministers who were in this thing.

07:55

It simply became known as the latter reign message, and then eventually shortened to the message.

08:01

So this thing that Jones was in was called the message. Now if you ask me specifically, was this message the same as what

08:09

I grew up in, probably not. But if you look at the history of what I was in, if you look at how it evolved and became what it was,

08:19

Jones was basically in the prototype of what I escaped from. Wow. That's huge, man.

08:25

Jones has his hand in everything. He was part of the peace mission movement for three years, and now he goes and gets part of the latter reign message.

08:31

It's just very interesting to me. Yeah, and I have a question too, just because, again, if any of you want to familiarize yourself with the story of just Jim Jones and his history and how they cross paths, if you want to go super in -depth,

08:45

I would say get The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Gwynne. He also wrote the autobiography on Charles Manson, which is also another excellent book.

08:52

But in, and also if you want to check out one of our earlier series, it was the first ever two -part series we ever did through Jones Colored Glasses.

08:59

I do have a question, and maybe you can just tell me what you know here, John, is that one of the huge influences that influenced

09:06

Jones was George Baker, a .k .a. Father Divine, and that when he was part of,

09:12

I believe it was the peace mission movement, there was a time, I believe, where Jones tried to sort of take over or he tried to take authority because at that time,

09:23

I believe, Father Divine was passing away or just getting to a point where he wanted to take direct ownership over that, but then he wasn't able to.

09:31

I believe there was conflict that came up, you know, and then, and obviously he moved on from then.

09:36

So at what point did they connect? Was it around when he was still connected, when

09:42

Jones was still connected to George Baker or was it after that, or do you know, like, where in the timeline that fell in as far as that connection goes?

09:50

Yeah, so first I want to say that, I want to reiterate, The Road to Jonestown was an amazing book.

09:56

I got a lot of my history from that book, but there's another book that I want to mention that's called

10:02

The Raven, and that book is written by John Jacobs and Tom Ritterman.

10:09

It was through The Raven that I actually started piecing things together, because The Raven mentions

10:16

Jones getting into the latter rain movement and he's keeping the road hot between Ohio and Indianapolis, and this would have been, it would have predated

10:27

Father Divine. He was, he didn't join into Branham's affiliation until 19,

10:35

I believe it was 1955 or 56, and he was heavily with Branham until about 57 or 58, and it was about 59 that he first visited

10:49

Father Divine in Philadelphia. Makes sense. Okay. All right, definitely.

10:54

And then, so I guess one of the questions I had, too, because here they are doing services together.

10:59

You look at some of the earlier ads of their revival services, so it's not, again, it's not just, oh, there's some loose affiliation, we don't really know who he was, it's kind of like a politician's answer, like, you know,

11:11

I don't really, not like, you know, Clinton was like, I smoke, but I didn't inhale, you know, trying to kind of weasel out of it.

11:18

But you know, it's literally, it's Jim Jones. This is the future pastor of this revival service, and even in those ads, it's hosted by the, this revival service by William Branham is hosted by the

11:32

People's Temple. This is where I'm really, I struggle when reading your recent book,

11:39

Breaching the White Hoods, trying to really grasp and make sense of Jones's whole history of racial equality.

11:47

When you look at some of the Jones healing services, and I'm assuming you may have, you probably have seen these given that you wrote for both the

11:54

Jonestown archives, is you would have, especially the People's Temple services, I believe over in Los Angeles, he would be very particular in how he would have someone who is white, someone who is black, so forth and so on, and his services, it was all about equality in the state of Indiana.

12:10

Jim Jones, Jr., he was the first black child to be adopted in the state of Indiana, historically, and everything he did was about pushing this ideology of racial equality, and he kind of really used all the tensions in the civil rights movement.

12:26

So with everything that we've studied and just seeing some of those crazy quotes, the whole history of Roy Davis, really going as close proximity to the origins of the

12:36

Ku Klux Klan as you can imagine, how does that make sense? How do you, at what point, how did that merge?

12:44

It just seems so dualistic. It is confusing. So I'm going to first defer back to the quote that we had in the previous episode.

12:56

Donnie Reagan, he mentions what white supremacists would call a black woman beautiful, and not that I'm calling

13:06

Mr. Reagan racist by any means, but it is very common for people in white supremacy groups to use that exact argument.

13:16

I can't be white supremacist because I think they're beautiful, or because I think that they should participate in church services with us, or practically anything.

13:27

Basically what they're saying, if you really listen to their words, is that here's this group of people, this group of humans that I see as different from me, and because I allow them this status that I also allow to my white people,

13:44

I'm racist. But they're still separating in their minds the two different groups of humans and seeing them separate.

13:53

William Branham himself had African Americans in his services. Congressman Upshaw, who was in this thing with Roy Davis, he was,

14:04

I believe it was the vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention. They had black people in their services.

14:12

Roy Davis was in several different types of churches. I can almost assure you that there were black people in his services.

14:21

On the one hand, you have to separate what is the perception today of racism versus the reality of how racism works.

14:32

But you also have to separate, here's Jones, who's in this thing that's highly popular, highly charismatic, highly entertaining.

14:43

Jones is joining into the entertainment industry. He's not joining into new religion.

14:49

He's joining, I think The Raven probably, the book The Raven probably got this dead on.

14:57

He was an opportunist, and he wanted the attention. He liked the attention.

15:02

He wanted to be the one out in the front. He's basically joining in this thing that he's blinded by the bright lights, and he doesn't see that, hey, wait a minute, there's this racist in the room with these

15:16

Klan connections. That's point number two. But point number three, think about the

15:22

Klan connections themselves. There are no open books. You can't go into Branham's church and open up his books and say, okay, these of my members are wearing white hoods at night.

15:34

These of my members have no idea that this is going on. These of my members are white hoods that I inherited when

15:41

Davis' church became my church. There's no official roster.

15:47

It's a secret society. There's no way Jones could have known. He's in Indianapolis.

15:54

Branham is, at this point in time, everywhere, but his headquarters is in Jeffersonville. Has no idea any of this is going on, but he sees the latter rain movement as an opportunity to build his platform.

16:08

He sees Branham as the leader of this platform, so why not invite him to Indianapolis? Also, I've read through the articles that covered

16:20

Jim Jones in the Indianapolis newspaper. He's actually doing a lot of very good things with People's Temple early on.

16:28

Whether that was from his heart or whether it was another good opportunity for self -recognition, who knows?

16:37

Like everything else that I've covered in my book, this is highly complex. Yeah. No, it definitely is very complex, and I think it is fascinating to see that Jim Jones being so caught up in just the tapestry and the magnitude of just sort of the showmanship.

16:56

You talk about the stage persona versus the real William Branham. One of the things that fascinated me,

17:02

I'm thinking back to both reading both The Raven and The Road to Jonestown about how Jim Jones, when he was a young boy, how he would just go around from church service to church service every single

17:12

Sunday just to kind of check out all the different denominations and just seeing how different preachers would interact, how they communicate with their fold, and even how he would study

17:24

Hitler and how he talked and how he communicated with his audience and how he'd be very quiet and would get people to lead, to really build up an audience, and how he was so caught up in that.

17:35

On some level, it would make sense that perhaps just maybe William Branham's, his charismaticism of just his ...

17:44

I've listened to just some clips of sermons of William Branham, and I could see how if you believe this is just God's prophet off the get -go, it's easy to kind of get caught up in that just almost that thrill.

17:59

It's almost like an adrenaline rush. You talk about people who are adrenaline jockeys and things like that.

18:05

But yeah, I guess it would make sense that maybe Jim Jones' appeal to be so caught up in Bran's charismaticism may have been almost a blind spot for him.

18:18

Would that be an accurate assessment? Those are just my thoughts. I think you're right, but I think there's even more to it still.

18:26

So in today's world, my kids, I can guarantee if I walk upstairs right now, they're in front of their

18:31

Xbox, and I almost guarantee you 100 % no question, my youngest one is watching

18:38

YouTube right now. Right. He's going to go up, and he's filling his head with all this entertainment. Before this existed, before there was this

18:45

Xbox Live and this YouTube, you had Cartoon Network. So my kids were on the couch, they're watching cartoons.

18:52

We're free from the cult. We can have TV now. We can watch Scooby -Doo, and it's not evil. They have entertainment everywhere they look.

19:00

If we go to town, they've got their entertainment on their phones. If they go to the movies, they have entertainment on the big screen.

19:08

Well, today's world is so just jam -packed with entertainment. Picture the world that Jim Jones grew up in.

19:15

He's in a very poor family, they're in a very poor part of town, in a very small town.

19:22

There really isn't a lot of entertainment. Even if they had a TV, it was a black and white TV, they didn't have

19:28

Cartoon Network, the things on there didn't interest the kid. But he could watch everyone, all the kids, all the families go to these big revival meetings.

19:39

They had music, they had singing. At this point, I've probably read 15 ,000 newspaper articles about revivals.

19:48

You've got revivals where they had hot dog stands outside. You have cold drinks.

19:53

This was like going to the circus, but instead of watching the animals, you're watching this guy who's screaming on the platform in an entertaining way that's so entertaining that people want to come back and they don't want to leave.

20:08

He's growing up in this world where that is his entertainment, but the way that the

20:14

Raven Book portrayed it, he wants to be the entertainer in this arena. I was just blown my mind thinking about coming from the preaching of sinners in the hands of an angry

20:28

God being preached publicly, and people getting convicted by God, and this massive shift of Christianity in American history.

20:37

All of a sudden, there's this Latter Rain movement or these other revivals that are going on that are almost counterfeits of what had happened in the past.

20:45

Instead of actual movements of the Holy Spirit, we see hot dogs and screaming preachers with their own word of the

20:54

Spirit and things of that nature. It's kind of blowing my mind, in a sense, hearing you talk about that.

21:00

You've read so many articles on the revivals of that time. Like you said, for Little Jones, that would have been entertainment.

21:08

That's his Cartoon Network. It's almost literally a cartoon version of the Gospel. It's a mockery of the

21:16

Gospel. It's a mockery of the truth. There's people that are just filling it, sadly. It just shows, during that time, the need for truth that there was in this post -World

21:29

War II era in American history, where people are coming through the Great Depression, and they're trying to make sense of the

21:35

Holocaust, things of that nature. There's real brokenness that's happening. But instead of going to the truth in some aspect, to get out of that era, they're instead going to entertaining

21:48

Gospel, which is very interesting to me. Just while you were talking there,

21:53

John, it was just putting those things into my mind. Yeah. Well, and there's the entertainment.

22:01

Think about your kids watching YouTube. If you were to have them watch the same exact show over and over and over and over, eventually, they're going to get tired of YouTube, right?

22:10

Right. So, these entertainers, they have to come with new, exciting, more appealing ways to present what they're saying, and new things that attract people.

22:24

But what happens when that runs out? What happens whenever you ... Eventually, you're going to run out of entertaining ideas.

22:33

Even as a writer, as an author, you get writer's block. As a speaker, you speak yourself into this corner that you can't really get out of.

22:43

Well, picture what happens whenever a minister whose motive and intent is not based on biblical principles, but is based on, what can

22:54

I say that will attract people? And I run out of it. It really turns into, what can

23:01

I say to keep people? What can I say to scare people from leaving? And if you watch, in parallel, both ministries, you watch

23:12

Jones and how he progressed, you watch Branham and how he progressed, and countless others who are in this thing,

23:19

I'm not even going to say that this is limited to Branham, because it's not. There were so many men in this thing that they really came to a place where, what else can

23:29

I say? They've heard everything. And now, the entertainment industry is progressing. There is good television.

23:35

There is good radio. What do I do to keep people from going out into these things? So you find this tendency for these ministers to try to just fight it.

23:48

And Branham's way of fighting it was, you're not allowed to watch television. You're not allowed to listen to the radio.

23:55

All these sets of rules. And the discipline, I think you mentioned earlier, either this show or the last one,

24:03

Jones disciplining the people in front of other people, that's all part of this thing, right? They're trying to scare people from leaving it.

24:10

Wow. You're blowing my mind right now, because you talk about how it worked in Branham's telling them not to watch

24:16

TV, not to get this form of entertainment. But then we got Jim Jones, when they're facing pressure from families of their loved ones who are stuck in the people's temple.

24:27

When they face that pressure, Jim Jones had been going to Guyana for some time, but getting that land. And then to get everyone away from the entertainment, to get everyone away from the media, he instead brings them to the middle of nowhere, and he becomes their source of news and entertainment in everything.

24:43

And like you said, when you run out of it, what are you going to do? You're just trying to keep them there. And we know how that ended with Jones.

24:50

It's just very sad. Right. All right. Yeah, so one of the questions I had, too, and this is just, we're kind of pushing forward to the connection of the road to Jonestown and just some of the connections there.

25:01

So one of the aspects, too, and this is connected to, you know, the latter reign, and this is in your book, when it said in 1951,

25:08

Jim Jones, he was offered a large sum of money to hold a series of revivals in Los Angeles, California, for the

25:14

Reverend Orville Lee Jaggers. Jaggers was an editor for Branham's publication, closely affiliated with Leroy Copp of the

25:21

Calvary Temple. Like Branham, Jaggers taught unusual doctrines concerning the

25:26

Zodiac's relationship to Christianity and teachings on unidentified flying objects.

25:33

Also like Branham, Jaggers' extra -biblical doctrines resulted in the formation of a destructive cult, and it should come to no surprise that the subject of UFOs would be repeated by Jones in the

25:44

Jonestown commune. What? Dig into that. So I'm just curious because, I mean, right now, all over the news, everyone's talking about UFOs.

25:52

We actually have a live stream with someone who's part of our UFO research team, but can you just unravel just a little bit for that?

26:00

Because that's something I've never even thought of, UFOs in Jonestown. We totally missed that in our initial research.

26:06

That's a beautiful title right there, by the way. Yeah. So that's a subject that could probably span another six episodes.

26:14

Oh yeah. Wow. UFOs were a fascination. They, you know, the thought of otherworldly beings has always been there, especially after the movies started bringing in,

26:28

Hollywood started bringing in the movies of the Flying Saucers and the Martians, et cetera.

26:35

This is not something that was limited to Jones or limited to Branham, but it was, it dominated this entertainment industry of this religious movement.

26:46

Gordon Lindsay, who was one of Branham's early promoters, part of the campaign team, and he eventually took over Branham's Voice of Healing publication, headquartered in Shreveport.

27:01

The same guy who I mentioned also that John Osteen was affiliated with, he wrote a whole series of books on the

27:11

Flying Saucers and their relation to religion. And that crept its way into the

27:17

Voice of Healing magazine, and all of these ministers were basically, they found a way to attract people because everything else that they said that was attractive was running out,

27:30

I guess, I don't know. But in these UFOs, people were just fascinated with UFOs.

27:36

Branham himself introduced this doctrine that UFOs were fallen angels, that we were seeing angels as they went through the skies.

27:45

And what's really interesting and quite ironic, if you look at any

27:51

Branham church in the world, you'll find, just do a search for Branham Space Cloud on any search platform, you'll find this photograph of this cloud that they've turned crooked where it looks kind of like some head of hair.

28:08

But William Branham claims that these angels came down from this cloud and gave him the mystery, alleged mystery, of the seven seals of Revelation.

28:20

What that mystery is, no two cult pastors can agree on. But what is interesting is, the cloud itself was actually formed from a nuclear, from a explosion of a

28:33

Thor missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And one of the world's top

28:41

UFO experts of the day went chasing this cloud trying to prove that it was a

28:47

UFO because he was going to, he was going to present before Congress this whole series of research on UFOs in the

28:57

United States and how we're being invaded from Mars or whatever. So William Branham's ministry was basically molded by this

29:06

UFO history, not only from Gordon Lindsay, but from this cloud that this

29:12

UFO researcher thought was unnatural clouds. And eventually the

29:19

UFO researcher abandoned it because it was, he basically proved that it was a

29:25

Thor missile detonation. So you've got all of this weird background, right? You've got the

29:31

UFOs that is invading the news, the movies. You've got

29:36

William Branham and Gordon Lindsay promoting the UFOs. And then during this period of time,

29:43

Jones comes into this, and so he's in this part of entertainment. Whether he believed it or not,

29:49

I'm not certain. I've actually got, I've actually got a little bit of research into what is, what

29:59

Jones' theology regarding the UFOs was, what he was attempting to say.

30:04

But I don't want to go too deep because that's an upcoming newsletter article for Jonestown Institute.

30:10

Oh, okay. Well, we can't wait to tune in and find out about that. So definitely very interesting in that regard.

30:17

So one of the things I'm curious about too, is that, and you had talked about this, maybe there's two things that just come to mind, is that you had wrote a separate book talking about the

30:29

Elijah prophecy, the spirit of Elijah, and how there were people throughout history that historically believed that they were the fulfillment of that, no, it was the prophecy

30:40

Malachi. The Malachi prophecy. The Malachi prophecy. And there are people historically were, had viewed themselves as the fulfillment of that prophecy and the connection between William Branham and Jim Jones.

30:51

Can you just talk about that just real quickly, just kind of gives people a summary of what you were trying to articulate in that book?

30:59

How early was Jones and Branham? Yeah. Whenever we, when I was, when

31:04

I was growing up, we were taught that William Branham was the Elijah of this day. Branham is, he was very deep into dispensationalism, and he believed that the seven churches of Asia Minor in the book of Revelation were seven church ages.

31:24

In fact, if you talk to occult believers and you ask them about the seven church ages in Revelation, they'll basically tell you that they believe that that exists, that it's spelled out clearly and how can you miss it in the book of Revelation.

31:40

But Branham added the word ages to the seven churches, and he did so by following, he basically plagiarized a bunch of documents created by this guy named

31:52

Clarence Larkin. So once he separated the timeline of Revelation into these alleged ages, he then took the book of Malachi and he,

32:04

Malachi was a scroll, right? It was, you know, it was one single piece of paper that was scroll, you know, not paper, but scroll that had no chapters, no verses.

32:15

It had basically the title of the scroll, and here's all the, here's all the lines of the scroll.

32:22

Much later, once the Bible was canonized, it had the title, the chapters, the verse numbers, et cetera.

32:29

Branham claimed that Elijah of chapter three in the book of Malachi was referring to John the

32:35

Baptist. But if you turn the page to chapter four, he claimed that referred to the end time messenger, which he promoted himself to be.

32:47

And I thought, you know, even deep into my research, I thought this was unusual.

32:53

This is the only time this ever happened. And as I'm studying just weird history that was leading up to the formation of this

33:03

Branham cult, I started noticing several other Elijahs and Davids and Moseses.

33:10

And one journalist in, I think it was Atlanta, Georgia newspaper, he said, when are people going to realize that when somebody says they're

33:17

Elijah or David or Moses, these guys are snakes. And so what happened essentially was there was a man who came to America from Australia.

33:30

His name was John Alexander Dowie. Dowie was a deep, heavy influence on two of William Branham's mentors.

33:41

Gordon Lindsay was influenced by Dowie, as was Fred Francis Bosworth.

33:47

Bosworth was in the Dowie cult in the Dowie communes in Illinois. And Dowie himself basically claimed to be the

33:57

Elijah the second or Elijah the third. So he was claiming to be this Elijah from Malachi four.

34:04

And when Dowie died, several ministers came and tried to claim his mantle, as they called it, which is basically saying that they wanted to take over his elite prophet status.

34:17

And according to the newspapers, Zion City, Illinois was just flooded with people who wanted to be the next

34:24

Elijah. And so Bosworth, he leaves this cult, you know, he's high up,

34:30

I think he was a music minister or something with Dowie. He joins forces with Branham. And it should come as no surprise that Branham then becomes the next

34:40

Elijah, right? He's learned this from his mentors. What really shocked me, and I just,

34:48

I can remember the moment that I read it, I almost fell out of my chair, I'm scrolling through all of this research with Jones, and I have all the transcripts from Jonestown Institute, and I'm reading through and I was specifically looking for similarities between the way that Jones held a healing act, his healing part of a stage act, because he and Branham were almost perfectly equal in the way in which they did it.

35:19

How they do their healing services? Yeah, they claim that they had this discernment, so you could call people out of the audience and say, you in the red shirt, you have a tumor, you in the green shirt have a cold, you have sniffles of the nose, or whatever it is that they did.

35:38

Jones mimicked Branham in the way that they presented the healing entertainment part of their meeting.

35:44

So I'm reading through this, and I'm reading the responses, and quite honestly, if you take

35:50

Jones's name out and put Branham, you can almost read the same transcript and think it's Branham. And this one woman says something to the effect, oh, thank you,

36:00

Elijah. And all of a sudden, my mind was blown. So I started searching through, did

36:07

Jones really believe that part of it? And that led me into studying his

36:13

Manifested Sons of God theology, which he got from Branham, which in turn would have given him the platform to be the next

36:21

Elijah. Wow, that's powerful. That's an amazing connection.

36:27

Maybe you can get, I want to get people to bring into this, and maybe you can kind of, We played this clip initially back when we did our series,

36:34

Jones Colored Glasses. So I'm going to play this brief clip of Jim Jones, and this is when he had moved over to Los Angeles at the

36:44

People's Temple. Again, the People's Temple, they hosted, they co -hosted William Branham doing healing services together.

36:51

And so I want to just give you a, after we play this, I want to just add some additional thoughts you may have in regards to their affiliation, what that really means, even for those to this day who still revere

37:02

William Branham in a very, in a very positive light, almost a very revered sense of who he was as they believe he was a man of God.

37:12

So let me go ahead and just play this clip real quickly and get your thoughts on this.

37:18

We're going to reach out to areas where man has seemed to have difficulty.

37:25

As we concentrate, that the gifts of the Holy Spirit might function, or what the secularists might speak of as the paranormal, let us believe, let us believe.

37:42

Sister Ingram, you're concerned about the losing, losing of your sight.

37:55

You're not able to see me clearly. Things just blur to you.

38:01

You have to stumble around lately through crowds and are not able to see even people's faces close up to you clearly.

38:11

That's true. You've told me nothing about your condition.

38:17

No, I haven't. Give that little sweetheart a little bit of love.

38:25

Thank you, baby. Now, take your glasses off.

38:42

Let's just dare, now, baby. We've seen Sister Brown here who was blind totally healed.

38:50

We saw one of our sisters blind from her childhood. It could be hysterical blindness, whatever.

38:55

We're not concerned. She was blind and could not see. Now, look at my face.

39:04

I'm going to hold up some fingers. You concentrate hard. I love you.

39:13

The people love you. Most importantly, Christ loves you. What do you see?

39:19

How many fingers? Three. Yeah, so as you'll hear, there continues to be a lot of cheering over this alleged healing that happened.

39:34

So my question to you, John, as you heard that audio, I'm sure you're familiar with this instance, given all your historical research.

39:40

Just upon hearing right then and there that audio of Jim Jones at the

39:46

People's Temple doing this healing service, what immediately comes to mind in relationship to everything you know about William Branham, both growing up in the movement and all the historical research you've done?

39:57

You'll laugh, but I'm going to say high school. I listened to—so

40:04

William Branham's sermons were recorded from 1947 to 1965. We had access to hear that version of his stage persona.

40:13

We don't have access to hear anything before, and interestingly, the very first words that he says in the earliest version of his earliest recording that we have access to hear says, we're getting some new gadgets for recording.

40:30

So I had this entire collection in high school, and there was probably a good,

40:37

I want to say, 30 to 40 percent of that collection was

40:43

William Branham doing exactly what you heard there. So I can remember in high school walking between classes.

40:50

I had a Walkman at that time, and I'd play it on my Walkman between classes. I would sit in the corner at lunch and listen to William Branham.

40:58

All of these healing meetings, there were sermons first and then the healing meeting afterwards, but if you're ever sick in the cold, say

41:10

I had the flu, what I'm going to play more frequently, I'm going to play the healing part because I might get some spiritual blessing from the healing.

41:19

So that's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling a flood of several things, several emotions. Part of it was what

41:26

I felt while I was in that, but I wanted to bring that up because that's what the people who are in this are feeling.

41:32

They're feeling all of this emotion, all of this hype. Now if I take the research side of it that I've applied to this, you'll notice the very beginning of this was an organ playing softly.

41:46

There were a lot of cues that were used that in,

41:53

I think it's St. Petersburg, they studied William Branham's services and his recordings and basically determined that all of it had elements of mind control, basically brainwashing.

42:04

Wow. And the structure of the meetings from the speech, the way it was presented, the atmosphere.

42:15

You'll notice the very beginning of this, Jones had this soothing, calming, still voice that made you feel comfortable.

42:23

If you compare Jones' words to Branham's words, they're different. If you compare

42:29

Jones' technique to Branham's technique, they're spot on a match. Jones is doing exactly what

42:35

Branham taught him to do. So he called this woman.

42:41

Now what most people won't realize from hearing this clip is Jones is mentioning a woman by her name, mentioning what it is that is wrong with her or her son,

42:51

I can't remember which. What he's doing there, this will be a woman who has never talked to him likely, a woman who believes that he's reading her mind, getting into her deepest, innermost thoughts.

43:06

And so this is what we believe. That's what I was in. What I didn't know was shocking to me.

43:15

So you have William Branham who's got this engine called

43:21

Voice of Healing. It became much bigger than him and it was ran by Gordon Lindsay after Branham, basically, he wasn't able to run it.

43:32

But this magazine was published all across the nation. So every single subscriber, they have their name and their address.

43:40

They also frequently ask for testimony letters. Tell us what's wrong with you. They would also say, do you know somebody else who would be blessed by this publication?

43:52

Send us their name, their address and their situation. So they're collecting all these names and addresses before databases exist, right?

44:00

They're all being sent to Shreveport. Now you've got this collection of people.

44:06

Then take any service. I'll use my own grandmother, for instance.

44:11

My grandmother entered one of the prayer lines from William Branham. And William Branham told her exactly who she was, where she was from, had never seen her before, told her what was wrong with her.

44:24

And my entire life until I left this cult, I believe that it was a miracle. He knew this.

44:30

It wasn't until after I left this movement that I pieced it together, overhearing all the conversations from my grandparents.

44:38

Yes, he spoke to her, told her exactly what was wrong with her, right down to the details.

44:45

You know, he knew exactly every single detail. What none of the family or William Branham or his staff will tell you is my grandmother also went to the previous meeting and the meeting before that and the meeting before that.

45:00

They're also collecting prayer cards right on the card. What's wrong with you? What's your name?

45:06

What's your address? And every single thing that they're giving through all of these various forms of collecting information, they may not even give it in the meeting that they're in that they get called out.

45:21

But they've probably given it before in a prior meeting. And the information that the speaker is using in this form of entertainment is he's going to tell you exactly what was written on that card or what was sent in on this publication.

45:36

And what's interesting is they collect these cards and they're numbered. And I didn't hear

45:43

Jones doing this part. I think Branham might have done it slightly differently. But Branham collected the numbers, and he would collect specific people in the audience with the card numbers.

45:55

And what would happen is they would write their number on a card. They'd give it in a box, and they may get 47, 48, 49.

46:02

So Branham would call 47, 48, 49. And what's depressing is if those people got out of order in line, he would stumble on the names, and he would get the wrong name for the wrong person.

46:15

And so you could tell after you're out of this influence, you can tell that this whole thing was staged.

46:24

But Jones is doing exactly what Branham is doing in the same exact style. And this is late in this—well, that recording was, what, in the 70s,

46:33

I think, 71, 72? Yeah. Yeah. That was in Los Angeles. So that's what

46:39

I—I differ slightly with the opinion given in the book

46:44

Raven. They say that Jones basically strayed from religion, that he became atheist, and he just kind of held on to it a little bit.

46:54

I see what he's doing in the 70s the same as what I see in the early 60s and 50s.

47:01

But what Jones is doing is he's taking the Manifested Sons of God theology, which basically states that, according to Branham, who originated the theology, that each major prophet or each messenger for each day had a different message.

47:20

It could be completely different than the previous one, and even completely different than the Bible. Jones has just progressed to his specific manifestation of the

47:31

Manifested Sons of God, and he's still holding the same exact kind of healing service that Boyle and Branham had in the same religious way that Branham did it.

47:40

Wow. That's fascinating. So one of the other questions I had, too, as we're going through this, and this has been so expansive, and it's still hard to believe we've only scratched the surface.

47:49

It's funny, I have lost track of how many times you've said, well, this one subject could be a ten -part or six -part series.

47:55

So it almost feels like after we do the sixth part, maybe we could do a follow -up sometime, because I think we're going to get a lot of feedback when we release this series.

48:02

So one of the things I did have a question about, and all this is leading up to the fact that, one,

48:08

I think one of the major connections you made in your book, and I think it's a fair assessment and a fair accusation, because sometimes people will just do this very general guilty by association.

48:17

I mean, especially when Jeff and I, we ran a karate school together, we would see people, a dime a dozen, these karate instructors who would go and they'd pose with Chuck Norris at some photo op, and they'd take that and they'd frame it up at their karate school to kind of show their credentials.

48:33

And it's literally the only association you have is you probably paid $5 to $10, or usually you have to pay a fee to get a picture with someone.

48:40

So sometimes association can be overrated, but I think in this particular sense, when you have at the very beginning

48:46

William Branham referring to him as his fellow brother, James R. Jones, of the

48:52

People's Temple, or from Jeffersonville, Indiana, like you see that. And then also, William Branham was supposed to have this special insight and anointing, this special aspect of discernment to be able to lead

49:05

God's people. So I think the argument could be articulately made, I think you may have made it in your book, that if this is indeed what

49:12

William Branham had, I think it begs the question to ask, how could he have not seen where Jim Jones was headed with, where Jonestown ultimately ended up on November 8th, 1978?

49:29

November 18th, yeah, November 18th, 1978. Yeah, but all that being said, the point being is that he did not see that.

49:36

That was just not part of it. And I think just given the alleged anointing and discernment he should have had, I mean, that does beg the question in that regard.

49:46

There's so many thoughts in there. So William Branham claimed that he could see nothing after 1977 is the argument that the cult would make.

49:56

But the two -edged sword that they walk by doing that is he also predicted the end of the world.

50:01

So if he could not see past 1977—I actually have on my website, there's a pamphlet that Spoken Word, Voice of God Recordings put out called

50:11

By 1977, that they basically up until the year 1977, they were saying,

50:18

Branham said it's the end of the world coming, so tell everybody far and wide that the end of the world is coming by 1977.

50:26

So there's so many thoughts that come in here, right? Jones is guilt by association.

50:35

Jones was just one of thousands of ministers that joined into this thing. So their primary argument would be that this is nothing more than guilt by association, that Jones just happened to be one of these many men.

50:48

But like you pointed out, Jones is hosting part of the revival. So that puts him in a different category than all these thousands of ministers who may or may not have came up on stage and sat and watched.

51:02

He's part of leading it, right? Jones joined into William Branham's Latter Rain version of his message through Joseph Mattson Beause of Chicago.

51:15

And Beause was one of Branham's strongest promoters. Beause basically signed

51:21

Jones' ordination into the Independent Assemblies of God, which was the

51:28

Latter Rain sect version of the Assemblies of God. And the assemblies themselves split in half over this

51:36

Latter Rain thing. So Jones was definitely in a different category. But even still, the argument could be made this was guilt by association, that even

51:47

Judas joined the disciples, right? So their argument, the argument that usually

51:52

I face whenever I discuss this is it was guilt by association and that Jones was just a bad apple.

51:58

But that is literally what drove me into studying the

52:03

Manifested Sons of God theology, how it worked, who was in it, why it exists, how it affected

52:09

Latter Rain. And the ultimate question that was being formed in my mind was there's absolutely no history of this on Jones.

52:20

Most people aren't even aware Jones was in this thing. Can I find proof that Jones was affiliated with this

52:28

Manifested Sons of God theology? And if you look on the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown website, we've got an article up there called

52:38

Joel's Army, the Manifested Sons of God. And I basically walked through my overview of this research, but it's everything from what formed

52:50

Jones's theology, where did that originate? And nine times out of ten, it was the same exact theology that William Branham had.

53:00

What could basically, what kind of platform, if not for the theology, could a man say that I am the spoken word?

53:12

And in what scenario could you have a mentor who says I am the spoken word and a person who's inviting the mentor to help him start his own revival who also says

53:23

I am the spoken word? In what world would you not see these two connected? Right. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

53:32

Exactly. Yeah, and then I guess the one question I had because you talk about for every action there's a reaction.

53:39

So at what point was there a fragmentation eventually between Branham and Jones given the tensions between the systemic racist origins of William Branham and Roy Davis eventually where Jim Jones was headed?

53:56

And then also I believe you mentioned there was a particular sort of prophecy anointing or blessing as you would call it that was given to Jim Jones, and that is directly connected to Jonestown.

54:08

Can you talk about that? Yeah, so in the first meeting that Jones had, the one for the pamphlet that you mentioned, the open door, that was a series of revival meetings that happened in Indianapolis at the

54:23

Cato Tabernacle hosted by People's Temple. Cato Tabernacle, interestingly, was also where the

54:32

Klan held their big meetings. And when the Indianapolis Klan took over Indiana and basically dominated the

54:39

United States, they held all their meetings in the Cato Tabernacle. And Howard Cato either allowed it or they outgrew it,

54:48

I don't know. But they're holding this series of revival meetings in this Klan building, right? So there's some history there that Jones had to have known.

54:56

I don't believe that Jones was white supremacist based on anything that I've studied so far.

55:02

Even my discussions with the Jonestown Institute, there's just nothing that even suggests that he was in that affiliation.

55:12

He was quite the opposite. He did a lot of good things, not labeling the black people as I'm doing good things for this other group of humans.

55:24

He wanted to join people together and show people that regardless of your skin color, you're one human race.

55:33

So I don't think that Jones was in any way affiliated with the white supremacy. I doubt he even knew it.

55:41

But what's interesting is in the end of that series of revivals, William Branham— See, the way this latter rain thing worked, for you to get the prophet status, you had to have somebody prophesy over you.

55:57

And I don't know if it was ceremonial or if it was William Branham just truly claiming that this was going to happen.

56:04

But he's standing there in front of Jones, and he has this vision. He doesn't know why he's having it, but he says he sees this great ministry coming out of this meeting.

56:15

Well, he's standing in front of Jones, who's starting a ministry in this meeting, right? There can only be one that he's pointing to.

56:23

So he joins in this thing, and that was 56, I believe.

56:30

By 57, Jones is starting to hold lots of meetings, and he's getting in big with Joseph Mattson Beause.

56:39

So now there's this weird scenario where Jones is no longer this guy that I'm trying to help get a ministry.

56:49

He quite frankly could be my competition. I don't know if that's going through Branham's head or not, but I'm seeing

56:55

Jones suddenly rise up to instant fame in this thing. And even in the book

57:02

Raven, they mention how quickly Jones became part of the revival circuits. I think it's that book that talks about him going out to the—you mentioned the

57:12

UFO guy. What's his name? I'm drawing a blank. In Los Angeles.

57:19

I would have to pull it back up. Yeah, I would have to pull it up too. But anyway,

57:26

Jones went to visit that guy, for instance, and he started holding meetings there.

57:31

That was part of his induction into this latter rain movement. So you've got this guy who's suddenly getting instant fame.

57:39

He's very charismatic, and if you study what he's doing, his technique is spot on.

57:45

I would say out of the others I've studied, like A .A. Allen and even

57:50

Oral Roberts did the same kind of thing, Jones seemed to be very, very much more aligned with Branham than the others did in their technique.

58:01

So you've got this guy who's sudden competition. Well, there was a clash of some kind, whether it was a competition or,

58:09

I think I mentioned in my book, Branham's using racial slurs and very racially charged statements in his meetings in the

58:18

Cato Tabernacle. So it could be that. It could be the clash.

58:23

It could be quite simply that Jones wanted to take over and wanted to put Branham behind. I don't know.

58:29

But for whatever reason, the two had a falling apart. Okay, so just in summary, to kind of wrap things up, and,

58:35

John, I just, again, appreciate you coming on for this six -part series. We've really only scratched the surface of the entirety of this amazing and complex history, going over several decades of American history as far as the big picture is concerned, and zooming in and seeing the very integral parts of this cult that has had huge influences from people all the way from the

58:57

Kardashians, the Osteens, to Jim Jones, to even a lot of well -known people.

59:02

If we said their names, you'd know who they are. So this has definitely been a fascinating aspect. So in summary, the main association, the fascination and connection with Jones, and you talk about this briefly in your books, is that William Branham, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, he spoke some sort of blessing or prophecy or gave some sort of anointing upon Jones, which ultimately had a huge effect on Jones and ultimately was a catalyst to Jonestown.

59:31

So can you just bring people in that as we wrap up the final part of this conversation and series?

59:38

Right, and I'll also have to preface this by explaining the difference between Branham's prophecy and what most listeners will be familiar with as pertaining to prophecy.

59:53

When you think of prophecy, you think of something of substance, something that can be proven to have been a prophecy after it happened.

01:00:03

In other words, I predict that the World Trade Center is going to fall and it will no longer exist.

01:00:09

After that happens, you can say truly that the World Trade Center no longer exists.

01:00:15

It's gone. It can be proven that it was a statement because I recorded it before the event.

01:00:22

The event happened, then after the event, I can go back and I can compare what happened to the statement that was made that was prophecy.

01:00:31

In these types of movements, prophecy is not so clear cut and dry.

01:00:38

Prophecies are very vague with many outs. They're given vague purposely because if whatever they're wanting to happen happens, then they can claim

01:00:47

I had a prophecy. If it doesn't happen, they can say, well, I just made a statement, right? So in Branham's way of saying a blessing, a prophetic blessing, you really have to read into how

01:01:01

Branham makes his prophecies and what he's saying. But I think this is probably clear enough that you both can get it.

01:01:09

So in Indianapolis, standing there at the very last meeting during the joint campaign with Reverend Jim Jones of People's Temple, Branham says,

01:01:18

I believe that God's going to pour out here a few minutes something. I don't know whether it's going to be spontaneous healings, whether it's a feeling with the

01:01:27

Holy Ghost, whether it's going to be a sending forth of a ministry. I don't know, but something's fixing to happen.

01:01:34

Remember, I told you. And I want to pause there because that's the key statement that usually happens in these types of vague prophecies.

01:01:45

He'll make this vague statement that could be literally anything, but makes it sound like it's the sending forth of a ministry, meaning

01:01:52

Jim Jones. And he'll say, remember, I told you, because if ever this thing happens, you can go back and you can see, yes, he told us.

01:02:01

It's a prophecy. He says, remember, I told you. I never felt this right in the prayer line.

01:02:08

Ask anybody. Here's men that's been with me since I was early in the ministry. You never seen that, picked it up, and I feel strong enough, look like to run a mile, run through a troop, and leap over a wall.

01:02:21

I never felt that way, never like that. Something started. Something's happening.

01:02:30

Wow. What are your thoughts on that, Andrew? It's exactly what John was saying. It's very vague.

01:02:36

It's very open. Yeah. It's like I don't even know what he's talking about. It could be something, but when it happens, it's him.

01:02:41

He said it. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking right now. It's open -ended, but this is the question about how did ultimately

01:02:47

Jones take this, and how did he apply that? Right. That's the big deal. Well, it gave him liberty, too. It's so vague. Right.

01:02:52

Just to give some examples of the application, just explain real quickly how that connected to Jonestown.

01:02:59

In fact, some of these things were even mentioned in passing in Jonestown. This death tape, Q42, this audio tape in full is available multiple places online.

01:03:07

I would not recommend anyone listen to it in full unless you want to have some serious nightmares and be traumatized.

01:03:16

It's one of the most disturbing things I've ever listened to, but in reality, this audio transcript that is available, in it, there's a couple things mentioned in passing about this prophecy of Bran or at least the application of it is mentioned in the death tape.

01:03:31

Can you just talk about that real quickly as we wrap up here? Yes. I listened to it, and I'm in full agreement it was horrific to listen to, but I was on a mission to find specific statements because the

01:03:45

Raven book got me curious. The way that they presented Jones' religious affiliation towards the end of his life, they basically were saying that he was not religious at all, that he had turned atheist, and they used some statements that the casual listener would probably agree with.

01:04:08

I think he even mentioned the sky god. There's no sky god up there. But see, when

01:04:14

I hear that, I think of William Branham. There's no sky god up there. God's here. He's manifested in us.

01:04:21

I hear it differently. Now, the difference between what I hear in reality is

01:04:28

I have to find Jones saying it. I unfortunately had to sift through not just the death tape but numerous sermons and statements and quotes by Jim Jones.

01:04:41

I was looking for key elements of the Manifested Sons of God doctrine.

01:04:51

I had chills go up my spine whenever I heard it, but William Branham had this theology that basically it stated that he was the

01:05:03

Manifested Sons of God. He taught that you could manifest God in you. Towards the end of William Branham's life, he said that the

01:05:11

Elijah of this day is the Lord Jesus Christ, not a man god, but he's coming in the form of a prophet.

01:05:18

Now, Branham was referring to himself, but if you take the essence of that theology, it's basically saying that the closer you get to the

01:05:29

Spirit, the more you get into this state of euphoria. You bring the Holy Spirit into your presence, and the

01:05:34

Holy Spirit is God, and therefore you're manifesting the Holy Spirit, you're manifesting God. Well, that's for the average person in this type of cult, but then you take it to the next level, to the central figure.

01:05:47

The central figure has to be above this level. So the central figure has to be the manifestation of the

01:05:54

God, and that's why Jones could say I'm the spoken word and I'm the voice of God to you, however he said it,

01:06:00

I can't remember. But on the death tape, right before he died, Jones, he says this.

01:06:08

He says, I have saved them. I've saved them. I made my example. I made my expression.

01:06:14

I made my manifestation. The world was ready, not for me. Paul said

01:06:19

I was a man born out of due season. I've been born out of due season, like we all are.

01:06:25

The best testimony I can make is to leave this cuss word world. Now, there's a few things that he's saying in there that relates back to the

01:06:35

Manifested Sons of God theology, the obvious word manifestation, but the second part of his phrase, he says

01:06:43

I was born out of due season. William Branham taught that each of these ages could have remnants that fell over into a different age.

01:06:55

So, in other words, if you were born in this one alleged age that he puts these categories on, and you were born at the end of it, you could be living in a different age, but not in the age that you were supposed to be.

01:07:09

You were born out of that due season. So, he's basically, Jones is basically stating exactly what he would if it were 1955, standing in front of William Branham, and Branham was there with all of these people with a cyanide -laced

01:07:26

Kool -Aid. Jones is saying what Branham would have been saying at the same exact time.

01:07:32

It blows my mind. Wow. Jim Jones was so interesting on so many different levels.

01:07:37

Like, he takes William Branham's Manifest Sons of God, like theology and teaching, and then he blends it in with Father Divine and divine economic socialism.

01:07:48

He's like an amalgamation of two different worldviews, right?

01:07:53

He's like New Thought, but then he's also this Christian extremist, in a sense, in terms of the emotional pull through faith healing and the experiential tugs of the heartstrings on the people he's speaking to.

01:08:07

He was just like a whirlwind of confusion. Like, that's what I get when I'm listening to him, and we can see where it ended, right?

01:08:14

Like, there's fruits that come from mocking God when you stand up in front of a congregation of people.

01:08:21

Like, the Proverbs says, there's a way that seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death, right?

01:08:26

And it says in the Bible, all that hate me love death. And we can see where it ends, right?

01:08:33

Like, it ended with Jim Jones, you know, not even necessarily having the guts to shoot himself, but having someone to do it for him.

01:08:43

And then 913, 918 people dying by his...

01:08:49

That's a bad God right there. He didn't save anybody. He killed them. And then we also have the fruits of what happens to William Branham, right?

01:08:57

Like, what was the ending? What happened to William Branham, John? How did he go?

01:09:03

William Branham died in a very horrific car wreck, nearly cut him in half.

01:09:09

He was traveling from, I think it was Prescott, Arizona, to a commune similar to some of them that we've mentioned previously in the episodes.

01:09:21

He was traveling from there through, I think, Amarillo, Texas, and he got hit on, hit on by a driver on the other side of the road and chopped him in half.

01:09:33

Wow. Wow. So here's, and again, I'm still kind of like,

01:09:39

I'm a little, I feel like I'm also a little shaken up because I'm thinking about the very end of the Jonestown death tape where Jones says, we didn't commit suicide.

01:09:47

We commit revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world. And there's that growling sound, and then it just goes silent and quiet for an indefinite amount of time.

01:09:57

And everyone knows that that silence at the end of Q42, which is this field of dead bodies sprawled over Jonestown, around 915 men, women, and children.

01:10:08

So I guess I just have one, maybe your thoughts on one last thing as we wrap up here. You mentioned this horrific car accident, and again, we were talking about the audio of this.

01:10:15

Do you sort of have it? If we can find it, we'll play it at the end. But for now, he said it is kind of hard to decipher and put apart.

01:10:22

But Jones is quoted as saying, it's saying here, he says, they won't tell you the truth because the black book is the easiest gravy train that they've ever been on.

01:10:33

Yet, Alan, and he's talking about Alan, this is a Pentecostal evangelist, came to me.

01:10:39

A .A. Allen. A .A. Allen, Oral Roberts spoke this. Billy Graham came right to us. Talking about Jack Arnold Beam and me and Claypool Hall.

01:10:48

And I don't believe a thing in that Bible, hardly. But he said, it's a hard way to make a living.

01:10:55

Billy Graham, who I prophesied his death, Billy Graham rather said his head would be, I said, he'd lose his head.

01:11:01

His head was cut off in Texas. And he's talking specifically about William Branham, about that car accident.

01:11:07

And then Jones goes on to say, he said, you can't preach the truth about that Bible. And then

01:11:13

I guess the tape cuts out. And he says, you can't preach reincarnation. You cannot preach the truth about the

01:11:18

Bible. You will be in trouble. I said, I choose to preach the truth. I said,

01:11:23

I'll be around while you'll be in trouble. Well, I'm still here. And his head is cut off from his body. So you think about the very beginning of it.

01:11:31

You have Branham talking about in the very first episode, he was talking about this angel that appeared on the right side of his head.

01:11:39

And that was a scientific photograph. Oh, man. So here we are, full circle.

01:11:45

Branham's head essentially is taken off. And Jones is here saying, I'm still here. His head is gone, talking about the most notorious cult leader in history.

01:11:55

In summary, what do you make of that quote as a whole as we wrap up here? Yeah, it's,

01:12:02

I don't know. There's a flood of emotions with this too. I also want to make a clarification.

01:12:08

He says Billy Graham, but he corrects himself and says Billy Branham rather.

01:12:14

So you miss it if you're not listening closely. He says

01:12:19

Billy Graham, who I prophesied his death. And he pauses and he says Billy Branham rather. You know, my family was deeply involved with this thing.

01:12:30

My grandfather was the pastor at Branham's, Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville. When Branham died, there was this big parade.

01:12:38

They brought him, he died on December 31st, I think it was, 1965.

01:12:46

They did not bring him to the grave to be buried until April. They were specifically waiting for Easter services that year.

01:12:58

They allegedly said that it was because the wife was in such critical condition that they had to wait.

01:13:06

Which conflicts slightly from the doctor's note who said that she was doing well back in December, January.

01:13:15

So during the course of this, while Jones is gloating, you've got my grandfather and all the people who were in this thing.

01:13:25

They were looking for him to rise up out of the grave. And what ended up happening is everybody came at Easter, whether they did it purposefully or whether she truly was suffering.

01:13:41

The end result is by doing it at Easter, everybody was in a celebratory mode.

01:13:47

They came to celebrate Easter like they always did. They had huge crowds for the burial.

01:13:54

And men like my grandfather and some other pastors that I won't name started this rumor that he was going to rise from the grave.

01:14:03

And as a result, even still today, if you drive at Easter and you drive out there early enough to the grave site, and you look out at this pyramid tomb where William Branham is buried, you're going to find people who are there praying, hoping that he's going to rise up out of the grave on Easter like Jesus did.

01:14:22

Wow. Wow. That's, I mean,

01:14:30

I guess, I mean, part of that just shows you just the, you know, talking about mourning, like in a situation like this, like, you know, the hope that we have, if we can just also just wrap this up and bring this full circle.

01:14:41

I'll just give my perspective is that you talk about those who mourn. We don't mourn as those who don't have any hope.

01:14:46

That as a Christian, my hope is in the physical, historically documented resurrection of Christ.

01:14:55

That, you know, we have hope because Christ lives, we too will live. That's our ultimate hope.

01:15:02

Not in the fact of some leader who's, that Jim Jones talked about,

01:15:08

I'm still here and his head is cut off from his body. Because his head is, he's still not intact. He's still in the grave.

01:15:15

Versus Christ, who's put all things under his feet and continues to surely but slowly put everything under his feet.

01:15:22

And he's, and the last thing to be defeated is death. And I don't know, just, I really appreciate,

01:15:27

John, and you can give me your thoughts as we wrap up here. Just your, you know, where you've come from. And I'm sure

01:15:34

I can only imagine, you know, just the burden for people still that are in this sort of enslavement and bondage.

01:15:42

And our hope, at least my hope, is that obviously, you know, we're focusing strictly on the historical origins of William Branham.

01:15:49

And so now I would just say, too, for, you know, in a series like this, this could be, some of you may have gotten to this point.

01:15:56

You may have started this off as a loyal Branhamite. And maybe throughout this series, maybe you had a couple of those

01:16:02

Morpheus holding up the Duracell battery moments. I mean, I'm sure you're not, you're not, obviously, if you're a

01:16:08

Branhamite, you're not allowed to watch TV right now. But if you watch The Matrix, you get that. But yeah, but like a serious fragmenting, you know, and that's a serious thing.

01:16:16

And, you know, we do want to let you know that if this is, if you're having challenges right now, like there is hope.

01:16:22

And, you know, reach out to us here at Cultish. You know, I'm sure there's resources as well, too.

01:16:27

I'm sure, you know, if you want to, I'm sure John has resources on his website, anything like that.

01:16:33

So any last thoughts, John? I mean, that's just kind of our thoughts, really, in summary. Like I said,

01:16:38

I just, I think you've been on an amazing journey. This has been just amazing conversations gone by so fast.

01:16:45

Any last things? I want to kind of give you the last word here as we wrap up here. Yeah, I think, honestly, the best way to summarize this is to use

01:16:53

William Branham's own words. It further reemphasizes what you just said.

01:17:00

It truly is a different form of religion that's not Christianity.

01:17:06

William Branham said that he preached the gospel of divine healing. Specifically, and I'm going to restate that, the gospel of divine healing.

01:17:16

And right after making that phrase, he says, you ministers preach it with me and we have the same results.

01:17:24

And he's referring to as the real gospel of Jesus Christ. So he himself is admitting that he has a different gospel.

01:17:31

It's a new gospel. It's a new exciting gospel. And the entire message, if you will, was this thing called divine healing.

01:17:40

That put emphasis on restoring the condition of the body that is living here on this earth.

01:17:50

So on the one hand, you've got this guy who's preaching this different gospel to protect, to rejuvenate this body.

01:17:59

And you've got the other side, the real Christians who are preaching that what does this body even matter?

01:18:06

The days on this earth isn't what we're concerned with. We're concerned for heavenly things.

01:18:13

So really, the best way that I can summarize this entire thing is you've got a man who is preaching a gospel designed to keep you held down.

01:18:25

With a doctrine that does keep you held down. And placing enough rules and fiction as obstacles in your pathway to finding the truth that you remain held down unless you can snap out of it.

01:18:44

All right. Well, that's a good way to sum it up. So again, John, just appreciate you coming on here. And again, just tell people real quickly where they can find you if they want to look into any of the historical resources to continue their research.

01:18:56

Is that something they want to do? All my research is published on William -Branham .org.

01:19:03

You can find me on Amazon, Preacher Behind the White Hoods, a critical examination of William Branham and his message.

01:19:11

And also in the newsletter sections of the Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and People's Temple.

01:19:17

Excellent. Excellent. Well, again, thank you for coming on, John. And if you all enjoyed this series, definitely comment on our social media.

01:19:24

Let us know what you thought. And we will talk to you all next time on Cultists. We're entering into the kingdom of the cults.