Stage Personas, Elijah Mythology, And The Hidden Theater Behind Revival Culture | Episode 604

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:07][music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at william-branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction.

[00:00:49]Today, I'm looking at stage personas.

[00:00:52]I've mentioned quite a few times that whenever I was growing up in the Branham religion, I was obviously a follower of William Branham, and I believed that everything that he said was static from point A to point B, and for me, that meant from the year 1947, which is the first sermon that I had access to hear, all the way to 1965, which was the last sermon that I had before that he preached before he died.

[00:01:20]And after I left, I did not realize the scope of how many different changes were involved in this ministry.

[00:01:29]>> [snorts] >> It took me quite a bit of digging and research to understand even the concept that a stage persona could exist, and especially in something as significant as a {quote} messenger for the last age, which is what we believed William Branham was.

[00:01:48]After exploring all of that and then learning later that this type [clears throat] of ministry is really what birthed the modern charismatic movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, I started to realize that the concept of a stage persona was something that was replicated from ministry to ministry.

[00:02:07]And the moment I learned this, I began to think of all of the sinister ways in which this could play out. I never really paused to think about the culture involved, which was a key aspect that I really needed to understand, and I I feel that listeners probably should as well.

[00:02:27]Um one of the one of the conversations that Bob Scott and I often have are the issues that we have with perspective and with historical culture, because the culture that exists today does not match the culture of the ancient world, and often we're studying the Bible and parts of the ancient world, well, [clears throat] even in the last, you know, 100 years, whenever we're talking about all of these ministries that are evolving into the New Apostolic Reformation, the culture has changed and shifted so much over the past few decades that some of the things that we see today as purely evil and immoral, unethical, etc., in just a few years gone by, they saw it as commonplace. So, you have to understand the culture that you're talking about, and you have to understand how it has changed and shifted over the years, and then you have to evaluate which is correct. The way that it that it shifted, is that correct, or the way that it was in the past, is that correct?

[00:03:29]As a person who is fascinated with history, I'm really interested to see how history has played out so that when people make mistakes or movements make mistakes, how did they handle those mistakes? Did they move forward in a progressive way and in a way that progresses them towards truth and less error, or did they go the opposite direction? Which brings me to this book, God's Generals.

[00:03:55]When [clears throat] we're talking about stage personas and people who were never in the charismatic or Pentecostal movement come across this book and they read it, their first thought that comes out of their into their brain and out of their mouth is, "Well, this is this is just a bunch of stage acts. Why are people following these people so closely?"

[00:04:16]To the person who is involved with the ministries, um who see nothing unusual about it, they look at the person who just asked the question, "Why why are you believing in these stage acts?" And they don't really understand the concept of what that stage act phrase means, because they see these people as truly God's Generals, which is why the title of the book.

[00:04:41]I first came in contact with the idea of a stage persona through a very, very little-known book or pamphlet that William Branham published about his earlier stage personas. And this this little pamphlet, which it's very, very difficult to find, this is a 19, I believe it's 1945, or at least that's the date that's mentioned in this book.

[00:05:05]Branham talks about reinventing his stage persona.

[00:05:09]And that's why you don't find this one out for sale very much, and I don't think you're going to find it mentioned in God's Generals, because there's [snorts] this rule, unwritten rule, about the stage personas in the Pentecostal charismatic movement, which matches very closely to, if you've seen the movie Fight Club, um the first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club. Well, the first rule about stage personas, you don't talk about the stage personas. And that goes for people who are in the movement and leadership who have their own stage personas, they will never mention that the other guy or other female has one, because they too are using a stage persona at some point.

[00:05:55]The reason this is important and the reason why I am talking about it today, I recently had a conversation with Franklin Hall's grandson, and I watched the comment feeds. I know there were a lot of people who were upset because this is [clears throat] a this is a person who is a descendant of Franklin Hall, one of the two catalysts for the Latter Rain movement, William Branham being the other one. And he was definitely not aligned with me in theology.

[00:06:25]But one of the beautiful aspects of the platform that I have built is, I can have a conversation with people who disagree with me, and I can share it on the podcast, and every person, no matter what they believe or how they believe, >> [snorts] >> can introduce facts that are very important towards furthering research.

[00:06:46]That conversation, if you missed it, you can find on the podcast list or on the YouTube site. It's called Franklin Hall, Latter Rain, and the untold roots of Pentecostal history. And in this conversation, as I was talking through the Franklin Hall's history and the difference between his person and what he was and became on stage, there were a few very important topics that came out, many of which I have wanted to get on the record, and it's very difficult because what happens in Fight Club stays in Fight Club, but >> [clears throat] >> in the Pentecostal charismatic movement, many people who are very close to the leadership of the movement are aware that there's a difference whenever the person walks out onto the platform and what they see from behind the scenes.

[00:07:39]And if you are a minister's son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter, you recognize this pretty quickly because you sit through the service and you hear the person just on fire and often times they're raising their voice when they're preaching, and then you meet them after service and some of them joke around, kid around, it's a totally different person, and that's how you would usually say it, "This is a totally different person."

[00:08:05]But in the charismatic movement, the Pentecostal movement, >> [clears throat] >> it went just a step further than this, and it did so because of the culture, which is one of the topics that I discussed with Franklin Hall's grandson.

[00:08:19]Very important conversation. There were some very critical key details that came out of this that I think need to get on record and more people need to talk through them.

[00:08:29]One of them, we were we were discussing Gnosticism, and one of the most important facts that came out of this was the uh close relationship between what Franklin Hall was teaching and Gnosticism, and the question as to whether that is a Christian teaching or not. I have my opinion, and Franklin Hall's grandson obviously had his, and they were not quite aligned, but you can [clears throat] understand how the culture was evolving because Franklin Hall was well respected in the Pentecostal movement.

[00:09:04]And he without Franklin Hall and William Branham, there was no Latter Rain.

[00:09:08]Without Latter Rain, there was no charismatic movement. All of this chain of events, every single detail is important to understand.

[00:09:17]So, I [clears throat] began talking to him about the stage personas, the stage acts, as some people call them. He said what I already agreed with, the fact that the culture of the Pentecostal movement of the era was that you had a stage persona, and that was very different from your person. The question that arises from this, in today's world, you would first ask, "Is that bad?"

[00:09:41]And that's not a question I'm going to answer in this podcast. I'll let you decide, but what I will say is that it isn't something that you can find very easily if you look outside of Pentecostalism for the sole purpose of uplifting God's generals, for you to have a stage persona who can be a messenger from God, a [clears throat] spiritual leader, a fivefold ministry, a ranked official in the in the charismatic Pentecostal movement. For you to be any of these things, you have to be slightly more than a human. You have to be anointed. You have to be gifted. You have to be prophetic. You have to have been visited by an angel.

[00:10:28]There's so many different things that are combined into the stage act.

[00:10:33]The problem lies within what is supernatural and what is real because these stage acts often included fiction.

[00:10:43]So, for William Branham's um stage act, in his early years, according to his own writings, his early form of a commission was a vision by God of white-robed people coming to say, "The people of your tabernacle will not eat your bread. Go out and have a healing ministry." And then he describes his healing ministry, which apparently drew big crowds in the Pentecostal movement. He is describing, and he even wrote the date in this as 1945.

[00:11:15]For those of you in the audio-only feeds, this is "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision," and you can find a copy of it on my website. His later stage persona changed so significantly that even the year of his stage persona had origin had changed from 1945 to later it became 1946 or 1947.

[00:11:38]Later versions, he introduced the idea that an angel had came down to visit him to give him this new ministry. And the dates of the new ministry shifted.

[00:11:49]The reason this is important, and as Franklin Hall's grandson mentioned, it was not uncommon to have a stage persona. The question that I have is is it ethical to have a fictional stage persona? That's really where this gets to be a little bit tricky.

[00:12:08]The other problem is that people like Franklin Hall would have known when when William Branham is touring with him and talking about how the gift came and holding the [clears throat] healing lines, people who were aware that he changed his stage persona so significantly that it turned from a vision of white-robed people to an angel of God coming down and giving him this gift to later revising the stories about the angel of God.

[00:12:37]Everyone who's in leadership who's listening, they're all aware of the stage persona and how it is changing and shifting.

[00:12:45]So, that would mean that when you look at the photos of William Branham preaching and all of these men in his campaign team with him on the um platform as he's preaching, every one of those men and women who heard him change the details, they're aware that it is fiction that he's creating.

[00:13:06]However, as Franklin Hall's grandson mentioned, it was not that uncommon in the Pentecostal movement to have a fictional stage persona. And for that reason, our discussion, which was brief, about Gnosticism is critically important because Franklin Hall's [clears throat] grandson's views on Gnosticism, which did not really align with mine, would have likely matched what Franklin Hall believed. And the way that he described it, it leads me to believe that that is the case.

[00:13:36]>> [clears throat] >> In that in that viewpoint, Gnosticism was compatible with Christianity.

[00:13:43]But in my viewpoint, Gnosticism is incompatible with Christianity. So, it [clears throat] shows two things. Number one, two people can have a healthy conversation and both can learn from each other, which is what we did, and we had disagreements, and the conversation was fruitful. I learned what he believed. I learned what Franklin Hall likely believed. And yet at the same time, I hold to my beliefs, and that is that Gnosticism is not compatible with Christianity, and in fact, in the ancient world was deemed as heretical. You can read Irenaeus's [clears throat] series of books against heresies, where he walks you through all of the different Gnostic groups and ideologies, and shows you how pagan religion and pagan thought merged with Christianity to create something new, and the new thing was not Christianity. It was something new.

[00:14:35]Gnosticism, the core emphasis or belief was that you must [clears throat] have a secret knowledge or secret revelation, a mythic cos- cosmology, different things that were a part of the ancient pagan belief system, such as symbolic language, sometimes symbolic numbers. These were the divine mysteries, and for you to be a true Christian, you must know the secret revelation, the secret mystery that all the other Christians don't have. Only we have. And so, in essence, Gnosticism was the idea that we can create a cult, which is more elite than the broader body of Christians. And that's exactly what happened, and that's why Irenaeus condemned Gnosticism.

[00:15:23]But [clears throat] there were part of these mystery elements that they were teaching relates very closely to what I'm talking about with stage personas, which is why that discussion was critically important.

[00:15:36]In the ancient world, there are different versions of the mythologies.

[00:15:41]You can almost go through every single mythology and find through history where it changed, sometimes into new gods entirely.

[00:15:49]And there was this concept, especially in Greece, about having religious theater. The theater, the drama grew out of religious practices. The best example of this, I guess, is Dionysus. There were masks used to embody gods and roles and characters.

[00:16:07]And pagan [clears throat] religion had this ritual that was played out sometimes in a theatrical or a drama setting. And you can find this in different various groups. I think Dionysus, the cult of Dionysus, is probably the most common. But whenever ideas like this merged into Christianity, what happened was they started to bring aspects of this theatrical performance into Christianity. So much so that one of the groups had this concept, which I've mentioned before, "Lies for the sake of a holy end." Ideas like that, you can see very similar concepts in what emerged out of the Pentecostal charismatic movement. Not everyone, but there were some people who were inventing things that weren't true and then merging it with their stage persona to make claims of going to hell and back, going to heaven and back, having an angel on the platform, having seen an angel. There are just so many different supernatural weirdness that was happening that I think if people today were to read through this God's Generals book and then go read some of the literature that was published by the people who are mentioned in the book, I think they would read this book quite differently than it reads today. They would read this as though it were theatrical or, you know, fictional because many of the ministries that it is talking about had fictional aspects in it.

[00:17:40]Now, >> [clears throat] >> the question that would be raised from the Pentecostal charismatic side, "Well, yes, they had fiction, but look at the work that they did towards bringing people into Christianity." That's usually the response that you get.

[00:17:53]The question for me is is that ethical?

[00:17:56]Because, as Irenaeus said, "Lies for the sake of a holy end." That's a heretical practice. It's not something that was condoned back then. Should we condone it in the world today? That's really the question.

[00:18:09]Now, to be fair, [clears throat] when I was speaking with Franklin Hall's grandson, we weren't really going that deep. We weren't talking about lies for the sake of the holy end. But what we did discuss briefly was the fact that in his worldview, Gnosticism was okay and compatible with Christianity.

[00:18:29]And the fact that that worldview can connect to the Pentecostal movement, for me, it shows that there is at least something wrong with the structure to allow it in the first place because if it were condemned as as heresy in the ancient world, you have to question, "Well, if it's heresy back then, why is it not heresy now?" And for me, that was the biggest question that came through my mind as I was talking to him.

[00:18:58]But then, as he continued to talk, I started thinking about the culture because that was a critical aspect. In the culture, it really didn't have an effect because people were so used to the stage persona concept.

[00:19:12]And for me, I wanted to know why. Why is that? To understand that, you really have to put yourself into the perspective and the mindset of somebody who was living in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, the years that I'm talking about that William Branham was reinventing his stage persona.

[00:19:30]In [clears throat] today's world, if we want entertainment, we can simply turn on the television, and we can watch a movie or a thousand different television shows. It's very easy because we have entertainment [clears throat] just at the click of a button. Even on our phones, we can pull up entertainment.

[00:19:48]But back in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, it was not like this.

[00:19:51]In fact, to go to a movie theater back then, it wasn't that common in especially in the rural settings.

[00:19:59]In the bigger cities, there were people [clears throat] who attended the movies, but it wasn't like today where you can just simply on a Friday night go watch a movie. It was quite different. Part of that difference can be attributed to something called Chautauqua, which was a major American movement that mixed religion with education and lectures and culture and entertainment. Chautauqua [clears throat] is something that you can find even William Branham mentioned it a few times. There were people in his inner circle that were part of the Chautauqua.

[00:20:31]And this began essentially as a training system for Sunday school teachers in the mid 1870s in Western New York.

[00:20:42]But it it expanded into something much much bigger.

[00:20:45]It became basically an adult education system where you could go and hear a public lecture, or you could hear music, or drama, or popular speaking.

[00:20:56]There were [clears throat] a variety of different forms of entertainment that introduced that were introduced into the Chautauqua.

[00:21:03]And what would happen is a person who would get into the Chautauqua circuit, and then they would go around from city to city, town to town, and then it's kind of like a traveling variety show of sorts. But by the 19th and 20th centuries, it basically became this this movement that was traveling around in tents and auditoriums, much like what evolved into what became the revival circuit of the healing evangelists.

[00:21:33]And there's a reason for that. Again, there were people in Branham's inner circle who were part of the Chautauqua, saw the effective way in which that this was orchestrated, and so they started to do the same thing.

[00:21:47]So people who had been in a variety show of sorts and had a stage act in the Chautauquas, could easily go into Christian ministry and become an evangelist and bring with them the stage act and presence, because that's what people expected. So as the entertainment system began to evolve from Chautauqua into the healing revival, people who were just the average person who's seeking entertainment, that's what they expected whenever they went. They were expecting to go to these tents to see a show.

[00:22:21]And when you went to a revival tent, they often sold hot dogs or had [clears throat] had different refreshments, like much like when you go to a circus.

[00:22:30]And that's because that was the nature of this. That was their form of entertainment. So whenever a healing revivalist came into town and had a massive crowd, it wasn't even necessarily that the massive crowd that were was being reported in the news was a result of their adherence to the movement. It was just that this was the community, and the community came to see the entertainment. And the entertainment just happened to be a religious speaker at the time.

[00:22:58]So whenever you hear many of the people today in the New Apostolic Reformation or charismatic movement talking about these massive crowds that were coming and people were being converted by the thousands, that's not necessarily the case. Maybe they were converted, but generally speaking, they were average people who had become accustomed to this form of entertainment, and they came to see the stage act. And sadly, or if you're you're in favor of it, I I guess you would say strategically, they did put on a stage act that were sometimes using elements of fiction in the stage acts. And for me, that was a very difficult concept to come to terms with.

[00:23:45]The biggest takeaway from learning that there were stage acts in Pentecostalism was really to learn that the culture had been already primed to accept it.

[00:23:57]The Chautauqua was just one of many different forms of entertainment that had a similar impact on what became modern Pentecostalism and later charismatic movement. There were different [clears throat] types of paid programs where people could go to hear public lectures or public speech or speakers, debates.

[00:24:16]>> [clears throat] >> Basically, they were coming to see polished delivery.

[00:24:19]And because there was no widely distributed forms of entertainment, they would pay to go hear these lectures because that was their entertainment.

[00:24:28]By the mid-19th century, some of these things had become so polished that when the major speakers were touring from town to town, different parts of the town would gather together to hear them whether they agreed or not, because that was their entertainment. Another major source, for example, is melodrama.

[00:24:48]Melodrama trained audiences to respond with emotions. So you would have stark moral contrast that were [clears throat] basically providing storytelling, mixing it with sensational climaxes, and that progression from the crisis to the climax is something that was widely adopted in Pentecostalism.

[00:25:11]You usually had the climax, which was the sudden end of the world and all of the disasters that would follow it.

[00:25:18]And when we look at that culture today, we think, "Well, that's terrible. Why did they try to keep people bound with that fear of doomsday, constant doomsday?"

[00:25:27]We have to understand that that culture expected that. Back in the, you know, '30s, '40s, and '50s, they [clears throat] had just came through the World Wars, and this was something that was very relevant to their situation.

[00:25:39]So they expected this type of a climax.

[00:25:42]And usually the climax came in this form. It would start with the drama. People would There would be some storytelling, get the audience to get familiar with you as the speaker.

[00:25:54]And then you would get into how evil the world has become, and the soon-to-come end of days that is going to just destroy the entire earth.

[00:26:05]You'd get people built into that fear in that climax, and then you would start playing a soft organ in the background and say, "Come to pray." They would have the altar calls, the healings, etc. This was all part of the melodrama that was playing out within these tent revivals.

[00:26:21]Another movement that had a strong influence, even though it seems vastly different, was vaudeville.

[00:26:27]Vaudeville and this form of variety-type entertainment had the fast pacing, the timing, the crowd reading, the emotional shifts, all of the elements that you saw in the revival movements, you would see in vaudeville.

[00:26:43]But the key concept here to understand is with vaudeville, [clears throat] you had these very memorable bits of entertainment that was associated to the public identity. And when that recognized public identity would go from town to town, it was it was became it became more than a stage act. This became a person who embodied what they're talking about.

[00:27:06]And that's really what happened with the revivalists, and that's why again you have God's generals, because as these [clears throat] religious entertainers were going from town to town, their most memorable moments were associated to their person or their stage persona.

[00:27:22]And so you would recognize them as they went from town to town, with their persona came their identity, and that identity was linked to their spiritual stage act that they were creating. So when Branham is going from town to town to town saying, "I have an angel on the platform with me," that is that was his stage act. That was his identity. That was his, if [clears throat] you want to want to say it like this, that was his vaudeville act.

[00:27:48]But if you look back at his original stage persona, it didn't have that. So there came a point in time in which Branham became aware that if he could take something that was so unique to the movement, that only he could present this, then it would become associated with his stage act or his public identity, and people would recognize him when he went from town to town.

[00:28:16]Interestingly, >> [laughter] >> through the work of Gordon Lindsay, this became a a platformed idea that many others started to adopt. And if you read through the early Voice of Healing magazine, you'll find all kinds of different identities that became part of what I would consider a replica of vaudeville, but it was happening within the post-World War II healing revival.

[00:28:41]Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the Latter Rain, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

[00:28:54]You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.

[00:29:01]On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

[00:29:15]You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

[00:29:22]If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

[00:29:40]So now that we've talked about some of the culture, and you can go deeper into any of these if you want to go look them up. Wikipedia or many of the other search [clears throat] sites will show you different elements of the culture as it relates to vaudeville or any of these that we talked about. But now think about the movement as a whole from a doctrinal standpoint. If you look at any of the different types of stage acts that I've mentioned, they don't really stay the same or people just they stop attending. If you go see a vaudeville act, for example, in the olden days, and they keep doing the same act over and over, you're going to get tired of that act. Yet, the act is what really associated the stage presence with the person who was on stage.

[00:30:27]Now take that concept and apply it to a traveling evangelist or minister who is trying to mimic some of the things that is a form of entertainment that was modern back then, that was appealing to attract crowds, many of which, [clears throat] again, was probably with good intent. If you can attract the crowds and you can give them an entertaining uh show whenever they attend, you might convert people to Christ. I think that was the intentions by some, maybe not all.

[00:30:58]But now take that to the next level. The stage act has to continue to improve, to get better, to continue to draw the crowds. And how do you do this?

[00:31:08]Doctrinally speaking, if you're preaching from the Bible, there is just the Bible. And if you try to improve on this, what you end up with is something that isn't the Bible.

[00:31:19]And sadly, I think that's the pathway that many of the stage acts chose.

[00:31:24]However, there are some very interesting elements if when you consider some of the different flavors of stage acts, flavors of ministries, flavors of religion that was involved in this.

[00:31:38]And I go back to the Gnostic comments that we had earlier.

[00:31:43]Whenever you have something that has a secret only you as the crowd who is listening to the speaker can hear and perceive and understand, it makes it appealing to those who are not in the crowd. So, the people who are in the crowd, if you tell them something special that they've never heard before, when they leave, they're going to go to the people who didn't attend the act, and these act would stay these acts would stay in the cities for days, weeks, sometimes even up to a month. The these acts would continue, these religious stage acts.

[00:32:20]Now, >> [clears throat] >> when you do this, what secret knowledge can you give them that the rest of the crowd hasn't heard? The only way that you can do this is to take something that is somewhat vague in the Bible and improve upon it. And when I say improve, I'm using that word very loosely. But you take it and you give special insight that is only yours. It's only part of what you bring as your stage act. That's what some of the people did.

[00:32:51]We've talked about some of the different doctrinal flavors that were being introduced to spice up their religion.

[00:32:58]One of the biggest was Christian Identity. That's a theme that I talk about often.

[00:33:04]It really had the biggest secrets because from its core inception, it was British Israelism to begin with. And from its core inception, it was the idea that we are the lost 10 tribes of Israel, we're part of the lost 10 tribes of Israel. We as the church, whenever you're reading these passages of text from the Bible, it applies to us as the church.

[00:33:27]Well, when you apply that, now you can reinterpret some of those phrases from the Old Testament, and it gave ministers an edge.

[00:33:36]It wasn't anything new for the revivalist of the Latter Rain Revival, post-World War II healing revival.

[00:33:42]British Israelism came much earlier. It predated Pentecostalism, modern Pentecostalism.

[00:33:48]So, it wasn't anything new, but they could easily spice it up, and then what however they spiced it would be applied to their stage presence. So, if you're coming to hear act one from person one, you're going to hear this version of the doctrine. And then you come here act two, person two, you're going to hear a different version of the doctrine.

[00:34:13]One of the themes that was introduced because of all of this came from the last chapter of the book of Malachi, which is the last book in the Old Testament. Again, the Old Testament being written to the Jews, now we can reinterpret this as under the British Israelism framework to interpret it written to the Gentiles, which is kind of twisting the text a little bit.

[00:34:37]The last chapter says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet."

[00:34:41]Well, this got reinterpreted in many different ways, and we've talked about those from John Alexander Dowie's cult in Zion City.

[00:34:50]William Branham claimed to be a the Elijah. Now add to everything that I've just said, the idea of a saga.

[00:34:57]A saga, according to Webster's dictionary, was a prose narrative recorded in Iceland between the 12th and 13th centuries.

[00:35:06]And if [clears throat] you study this out, you can go look at some of the different examples online, or you can read Wikipedia.

[00:35:13]It was a mixture of legendary historical figures and mythology, mythological figures, that [clears throat] were combined to tell the stories of a the heroic age of Norway and Iceland.

[00:35:26]And we use the same word saga now for an old, long, detailed account. You would watch the saga of Star Wars. You would watch the saga of Lord of [clears throat] the Rings or The Hobbit or any of these epics that we have today, these sagas or these epics, that which are basically long tales that have lots of descriptions.

[00:35:47]And they have lots of figures.

[00:35:50]Think Marvel Universe. In the Marvel's Cinematic Universe, you have all of the different characters in Marvel that one story alone tells part of a tale, but if you understand the entire saga, you have watched every single one of the different tales of the Marvel figures, and all of these combined to make an epic story.

[00:36:12]Well, somewhere along the line, these doctrines that were introduced, some of which came from British Israelism, some from other sources, combined with the idea that we have this secret knowledge, the secret revelation, the others do not have it.

[00:36:30]They combined to make a saga or an epic, and different versions of sagas and different versions of epics. One of the most, I think, destructive to the church, especially as it relates to Pentecostalism all the way to the New Apostolic Reformation, was the saga that was being created surrounding the British Israel idea that we are the lost 10 tribes of Israel, and these Old Testament passages that were written to the Jews, we're going to twist the text a little bit and apply it to the Gentiles. And the saga of Elijah, as it began to unfold in the movement, turned very destructive. You can trace its elements all through history. We've done it several times in the Weaponized Religion series. But the epic of Elijah, to put it into simple terms, if you read the last chapter of Malachi, it says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet." Fast forward to the Gospels.

[00:37:27]Luke has the best example.

[00:37:29]The disciples ask, "Were you not supposed to send Elijah first?" And Jesus said, "Elijah has already came, and you did not know it."

[00:37:38]Well, under the [clears throat] British Israel framework, they twisted this a bit to claim that everything that was written in the Old Testament, yes, it was written to the Jews. Yes, Elijah did first come. But we can read it in two ways. We read it one for the ancient world, written to the Jews, and then we can read it in a different way and reinterpret each passage to apply to the Gentiles or us today. And that's exactly what they did. So, they were matching some historical elements with some modern uh I hate to say it, but it was fictional elements. Mixing this together, and they created a saga. So, you had the Elijah saga.

[00:38:18]And leading the revival was William Branham. He was, by most accounts, the leader of the post-World War II healing revival.

[00:38:27]He became the embodiment or the persona of the Elijah ministry that was to come.

[00:38:33]So, people started coming to this, and if you came to see the stage acts, and I'm using that word plural, not just Branham, but many of the others, they were all joined together in a movement, and the movement became the Elijah movement. And so, whenever they would reference the passage, and people [clears throat] speakers were referencing Malachi 4 or even sometimes the book of uh Luke, Matthew, Mark, when they're talking about Elijah, often they're paraphrasing in such a way that they can apply it to the things that they're doing currently.

[00:39:10]And we read it today or hear it today, and we can't really make that connection because we don't know the modern events they were referencing. It becomes almost like a loaded language that doesn't really last throughout time.

[00:39:23]But what did last was this notion that the Elijah ministry was going to come into the movement, and truly [clears throat] they believed that it did. What's really destructive about that is the fact that you had all of these competing, warring factions within the movement, and some of the ministers started to try to break out. In other words, they had a stage act, they had something that you could point to them as having a unique to the ministry.

[00:39:56]Well, now we're going to make that even bigger, and we're going to claim that well, we have more of the Elijah spirit.

[00:40:01]We have more of the manifestation.

[00:40:04]And this [clears throat] birthed the manifested sons of God. If you follow the trails of history, eventually there were people who started to say that the manifested sons of God would reemerge as us in this new Elijah ministry, and they started to connect the two.

[00:40:21]The sad truth of this is some of those who broke out and tried to become bigger than the movement, they started to claim that they were the Elijah, William Branham being chief among them.

[00:40:32]And for that reason, there were prophets and prophetesses in the movement who started to condemn those who were breaking out, such as Anna Schrader.

[00:40:42]Anna Schrader called William Branham out and said that he had gone in the error of Dowie, according to research accounts, you can find them online.

[00:40:52]Most of her prophecies you cannot find online. I do have one book of her prophecies, and they're a little bit strange, to say the least.

[00:41:01]But for the most part, she just according to the historical accounts, she condemned him for going in the error of Dowie. And the error of Dowie to everyone in the movement was that he thought he was the Elijah. There was no other. What happened over time is that the Elijah saga, among the other sagas that were starting to play out in the ministries, [clears throat] started to change in ways that it became no longer just simply theatrical ministries.

[00:41:32]It became a dramatic identity. Each of the characters who were claiming to be either the Elijah's or the David's or the Moses's, and there were different [clears throat] ones who had different legendary connections to the tales in the bi- to the stories of the Bible.

[00:41:48]These legendary tales that were being created started to create dramatic identities. And that's where the danger really lies, because each single identity now became a central figure around their cult following, which may have started somewhat benign, but eventually some of them broke out into more destructive cults, because they're starting to see the the person who's making this theatrical claim as more than just a human.

[00:42:18]In other words, the ministries that I'm talking about, the Elijah ministry, the Moses, the David, all of these different figures that they have resurrected from the Old Testament, started to create distance between the leaders and the followers. So, the leader became the one with a single access or insight, the special revelation, the special inside knowledge or the gnosis. This is now the the man or woman who has embodied that entire ministry. In other words, they eventually became gods before the people, whether they promoted themselves as God or claimed to be God or not. They were the one who had the special insight that none of the other figures had. And that's really where the Gnosticism theme starts to come in, because you can't say they're teaching Gnosticism, the doctrine is quite different. In this [clears throat] Elijah ministry, the idea of Elijah that they were they were teaching, it's not identi- identical to the actual gnosis or the knowledge of the Gnostics.

[00:43:21]But where it is somewhat similar is the fact that both have hidden meaning, secret revelation, deeper insight.

[00:43:29]>> [clears throat] >> In in essence, it became a mystery cult.

[00:43:32]Each of the different figures had their own mystery cults, much like the ancient world of all of the gods and demigods of of Greece and Rome, now you had ministries who were doing this in Latter Rain and the post-World War II healing revival.

[00:43:47]So, this began to develop into a theme that turned into a saga. You had each of these different figures, and how do you bring them all together?

[00:43:57]That became the question.

[00:43:59]One of the people who was able to foresee that this was going to happen was Gordon Lindsay, the founder of Christ for the Nations. Gordon Lindsay was intimately familiar with the Elijah doctrine, his family being part of the cult in Zion City under John Alexander Dowie, and his family were also followers of the Parhamites sect, which included Charles Fox Parham, John G. Lake, F. F.

[00:44:26]Bosworth, among others, who were also teaching and spreading British Israelism and the Elijah doctrine.

[00:44:34]Gordon Lindsay was also a frequent speaker at different Christian Identity or British Israel events. So, he knew the core concepts for teaching the doctrine. So, for him, the most important saga, I believe, was the saga of Elijah. And you can tell this from some of his literature, including The Man Who Would Not Die or Did Not Die, Elijah.

[00:45:00]This is referring to, if you read the books that in the publications he gives, this is referring to the Elijah coming into the ministry, into the saga that that we have created. Each person has this embodiment of the saga. And there were different names by different people. The manifested sons of God is just one, but the the idea was that Elijah has returned to the church, and now he is coming in the anointed spiritual leaders, not the general [clears throat] assembly of the church, but specific key individuals who became basically the gods and demigods of the movement. And again, that verbage is not used. You won't find him saying that these people are gods, but if you watch how the structure began to evolve, they did become somewhat gods before the people. You could not question them, they were beyond any accountability. They were a level up here, while the rank and file members were down here.

[00:46:00]Whenever William Branham started to introduce the serpent seed doctrine of Christian Identity, interestingly, this would have been a doctrine that Gordon Lindsay was familiar with.

[00:46:11]The timing of the introduction coincided with some events in civil rights history that made it very [clears throat] problematic for the ministries, because the Christian Identity doctrine had adopted some very racist themes in the two seed doctrine, and that was starting to be more widely apparent. So, when this happened, William Branham even mentions this on recording, 300 ministers, including Jim Jones, rose up against him and started prophesying against him.

[00:46:42]We don't have a timeline yet on when exactly Anna Schrader issued her alleged prophecy, but what we do know is that there were hundreds of these things, and there became this big battle between the factions of Voice of Healing and some [clears throat] of the others in the Latter Rain movement, specifically over William Branham and his um rebuking for teaching some of the doctrines. And again, Branham mentions this on recording, this this wasn't a secret.

[00:47:11]But what Gordon Lindsay did, he tried to take advantage of that situation, Branham having become the embodiment of this Elijah figure to many people who were in the movement.

[00:47:24]Now, through the help of Anna Schrader, he was able to condemn Branham as the Elijah, and Schrader's prophecy started applying the Elijah theme to a coming and developing structure that was happening within the church. And I'll just read one of Anna Schrader's alleged prophecies about the movement. Some key details I want you to recognize as I read through some of this prophecy. It's interesting that the prophecy comes in the King James English. That's for me the first thing that stuck out, but also, if you read through her books of prophecies, you can find at least one of them on Amazon, there is always an out. She will prophesy this thing is coming, but she would always given unless, and then give the alternative. So, they were so vague, and they were so double doubly speaking that you could really say it either happened or it didn't happen, or it didn't have to happen.

[00:48:19]>> [laughter] >> But >> [clears throat] >> in this prophecy about the coming Elijah and Elisha ministry, you have [clears throat] to remember Branham was the focal point of the Elijah ministry during a certain period of time.

[00:48:31]And we don't know exactly when this one was written, but she said, "Prepare ye the way before me, as you know that ye are entering with the Elijah ministry.

[00:48:41]There is much land to be possessed. So, think dominionism.

[00:48:46]And many there are who claim the double portion of Elisha, but I declare unto you that Elijah's ministry must first come. Yea, the double portion must be ministered according to the ways my ministers entered into Elijah's ministry.

[00:49:01]For was not Elisha his servant? Was not Elisha a plowboy? Did he Did not he humble himself, and did he not sacrifice the oxen? Yea, did he not leave all to follow my servant Elijah into the very crossing of the Jordan?

[00:49:18]And I could continue, but it's basically the same thing. It's King James English, and if you were alive during this era, and you're watching the ministries of the era, you would know exactly the people, that male and female, that she's pointing to with this alleged prophecy about the coming Elijah ministry.

[00:49:37]When William Branham died, the doors opened for this.

[00:49:41]We've [clears throat] mentioned before T.L. Osborn, who was working with Kenneth Hagin and others to help develop the word of faith prosperity gospel.

[00:49:49]He was referencing that same exact theme. At William Branham's memorial service, T.L. Osborn said, "I know that some people will think I'm sacrilegious or off doctrinally, and it doesn't really matter, but God came again in human flesh and said, 'Apparently, I must show them again. I must remind them again. They must see one more time.

[00:50:12]Once again, they must know what God is like.' And he stepped down and sent a little man, a prophet, but more than a prophet this time, a Jesus man this time." And that was it. After William Branham's death, at the memorial service, so this is 1966, you have Anna Schrader, who's starting to introduce themes of dominionism through the Elijah ministry.

[00:50:34]You have T.L. Osborn, who's saying this was God basically manifested in flesh, if you read what he is saying correctly, if you were there to hear what he is saying correctly.

[00:50:45]So, the movement was starting to adopt themes of dominionism through the Elijah ministry. And after he died, Gordon Lindsay published this book, The Man Who Did Not Die Elijah.

[00:50:56]And at the very end of it, he said, "Elijah shall come first and restore all things. Perhaps the very Elijah of Bible times will come to earth in the literal fulfillment of that prophecy. If that is God's plan, so shall it be. God will take care of it in his own time. But, it is our concern that God will raise up many Elishas and many John the Baptists that will thunder repentance and shall bring the message of deliverance to a world whose sun is about to set in a night of apostasy and judgment. Only the spirit of Elijah will meet the challenge of our day."

[00:51:31]And he goes on to say that we need, we must have men who will minister in the spirit of Elijah. Thank God, they are coming.

[00:51:39]So, this book opened the door to the new apostolic reformation. All of the different ministries that became the manifested sons of God, the word word of faith ministries who could say that we are speaking the new revelation, the new word for our day, this book opened that door, and it was opened because of having this saga of Elijah that Gordon Lindsay and others were starting to produce for the different stage acts. As these stage acts were touring from town to town, now they could all come together, and they could all be part of the Elijah ministry. The chief Elijah among them had died, so we need to spread this to all of the people, and then they can start adopting those themes.

[00:52:23]And where do you go from there? Again, when you have this type of stage presence, the stage presence has to get bigger and bigger to keep the tra- crowds coming. So, they all adopted one way, shape, or form this type of Elijah ministry that was being taught back then, and then platformed it with the other key concepts like the dominion theme, the deliverance theme, all of these different themes that were starting to enter into the saga.

[00:52:51]For me, this raises two very important questions. Number one, when does the saga end? But, number two, the question of ethics really comes into play here because it is an ethical question that's unavoidable.

[00:53:05]If people are purposefully cultivating some sort of a stage persona that is blending fiction with religion into the stage persona, so that their stage act can be bigger than the next guy or next girl, where do you where do you draw that line? How do you draw a line between this is fiction and this is Christianity?

[00:53:27]And what do you do when those lines become blurred?

[00:53:30]We've seen time and time again, and the ministries have been called out. They're saying things that just simply aren't true or biblical.

[00:53:37]But, the movement, that the following that has been created around those movements, they don't care because that's what they have been culturally trained to become accustomed to. In other words, the culture of the yesteryear, the 1940s and 1950s, they had all of these different acts.

[00:53:57]They were trained over time to accept those acts in their their current form. But, things like this, the Elijah ministry, has morphed into something new that's even different and somewhat more fictional. So, where do you draw that line, and how do you untangle the blurring of fiction, especially to people who would rather have the fiction than they would the real truth because they've become so excited and accustomed to hearing the stage acts? Where do you draw that line?

[00:54:30]And for me, that's that's probably the most important question.

[00:54:33]Because the danger of the revival culture is that it ties directly to the emotions of the people, and you can't untangle that. It gave certain people these elevated stage presences, the Elijahs, [clears throat] the Davids, the Moseses, these messengers, prophets, forerunners, etc. The emotion of the people became tied and linked to the human being, and the human being was supposed to be greater than they were.

[00:55:03]So, how do you untangle this?

[00:55:05]And for me, I I don't know that there's a good answer other than it's as though the entire movement needs a strong deprogramming before they can even accept the idea that they have been sold a bill of goods that, whether intentional or not, was nothing more than stage personas.

[00:55:23]So, for me, that is the biggest question, and I don't know if there's a good answer.

[00:55:27]>> [laughter] >> Hopefully, we can help people to understand that this this is what you're looking at when you come to get into one of these ministries, and you want to join into this revival culture, accept the fact that you're going to hear a stage presence that isn't quite based on truth or even scripture.

[00:55:47]So, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at william-branham.org.

[00:55:54]For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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