Our Stories: An Interview With Daniel Horton - Episode 161 William Branham Historical Podcast
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Daniel Horton shares his journey out of the "message" movement. He discusses his traumatic experiences growing up in the message, particularly the emotional and religious impact of its teachings. He recounts how his church evolved from mainstream beliefs to controversial practices such as polygamy and the worship of William Branham's son. Daniel highlights the manipulation and indoctrination within the movement, describing how followers are often unaware of the extent of their beliefs until they leave.
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https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Daniel Horton shares his journey out of the "message" movement. He discusses his traumatic experiences growing up in the message, particularly the emotional and religious impact of its teachings. He recounts how his church evolved from mainstream beliefs to controversial practices such as polygamy and the worship of William Branham's son. Daniel highlights the manipulation and indoctrination within the movement, describing how followers are often unaware of the extent of their beliefs until they leave.
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Transcript
00:00You
00:31Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research
00:35podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham
00:40historical research at william-branham.org and with me I have my very
00:45special guest, Daniel Horton, former Message Believer. Daniel, it's good to
00:50have you on here finally and tell your story on the podcast. We've exchanged a
00:56few emails and your story was interesting to me, so I know it's going
01:00to be very interesting to our listeners and hopefully give them some
01:04encouragement of somebody who has escaped and came to the other side. So
01:08good to have you on here. Maybe if you could just tell everybody a little bit
01:12about yourself. Well, my name is Daniel Horton. I'm 38 years old. I've left the
01:19message. I've went there to a church till I was 13 and didn't formally renounce
01:25believing in it till I would say probably 2019-18. It's left me with a lot
01:34of trauma throughout the years, religious and emotional trauma and mental
01:39anguish. Yeah, and I just found your website one day and I said, you
01:45know, I'm gonna reach out, especially since I read the deity cult, I mean
01:51heard the deity cult podcast, so here we are. Yeah, the deity cult is so unusual.
01:59You know, growing up it's really weird because I would never have called
02:03myself a member of any sort of thing like this and I would say we never
02:07worship William Branham, but I would have no problem when my grandfather would
02:12rattle off things like he was God tabernacled in human flesh. I can't tell
02:17you how many times I heard him say that and I'll never forget I was having a
02:21conversation with people right after I left. Well, I had a few people for a short
02:27time that would talk to me and I was explaining this and the problem that
02:31that, you know, that raises and they didn't believe me. They said, there's no
02:35way your grandfather says that. He's not worshiping anything but God and Jesus
02:40and then in his resignation speech he said it and you, you know, you've probably
02:46heard it's on the website, but people get so trapped in this thing and they get
02:51so manipulated in the head that they believe strange things and they don't
02:56even realize that they're believing and sometimes openly saying them. Well,
03:01growing up, you know, you hear things and then as I grew older, here's the thing
03:07is kind of like your experience, but mine happened way before the pastor passed
03:13away. Going through church, like from when I was a kid to maybe six or seven, it
03:19was like plain Jane what you would hear in all things and then marriage and
03:25divorce and polygamy started fishing its way in. Well, okay, and then, you know,
03:32later on, which I'll probably touch on later, is my church started to pray to
03:39Joseph Branham. Not Brother Branham, but Joseph. Wow, and your church was not alone in that.
03:47That's the other thing. I'm glad that I have you on here to say this because I
03:52try not, unless I can find some documentation or somebody who can say it,
03:57I try not to put it on the website, but that is widespread. There are a lot of
04:01churches and a lot of, they call them tape home churches, people that gather in
04:06their houses that they will openly pray to William Branham's son and, you know,
04:11it's kind of underground. The people will do it in these church
04:16settings, but then when they're around other believers, they kind of keep it to
04:20themselves because they have the special knowledge that's more special than the
04:24rest of the cult. Yeah, I've heard that. The question I have is, I really haven't
04:29dug tertiary through your site really that much, but polygamy, is it a well-practiced
04:37thing? Well, obviously not from the mainstreamers, but I'm talking about just
04:42the underground sects. Well, the question really becomes what is mainstream?
04:47Because William Branham himself didn't continue one single thread of religion.
04:54If you examine his, you know, the years from 1947 to 1953, it's a completely
05:00different religion than 63 to 65. And what happened was, if you go back, I think
05:07Charles and I addressed this in two places. We actually had a podcast that we
05:11called Marriage and Divorce, and we had another episode that I think is called
05:15Polygamy. It was widespread. Now, it's kind of like the deity cult, it's kind of
05:23gone underground. What happened was William Branham's son, Billy Paul, he got
05:31a divorce and then remarried. And this turned into a big problem for William
05:35Branham because he had created this fake stage persona wherein he said that it
05:41was wrong for somebody to be remarried after they got, after they were married
05:45to their first spouse, unless that spouse died. And Billy Paul did this, and
05:52William Branham later, he came on and, you know, he started claiming that he
05:57annulled it to try to prevent it. And that didn't work, and anybody who could
06:03have access to the courthouse records can see, no, that was not an annulment,
06:07that was an actual divorce. But what happened was, he introduced this doctrine
06:12where he said it was okay for the male to remarry, not the female. And he gives
06:19all these crazy examples, there's one male doe, there's many female does, and he
06:25he goes through like the entire animal kingdom and shows how it's in God's
06:29perfect plan for one man to have many, many wives. And then he goes through the
06:35Bible, you know, King David, etc. What happened was, everybody who heard that,
06:39who had that inclination, which I can't even imagine somebody having, they said,
06:45whoopee, now we can have multiple wives, and that spread like wildfire, especially
06:51in some of the African, you know, sects of the message. So it actually was at one
06:57time widespread. Now, I'm told that in parts of Africa it still is, and oddly
07:05enough, when I published that research, there were actual message ministers
07:10sending me information about Voice of God recordings that I didn't know,
07:15because I was publishing the thing that they had based their doctrine upon, and
07:20they realized that Voice of God is trying to deny and reject this thing
07:24that William Branham did. So I'll say it like this, I had polygamous sects of the
07:30message who still believed William Branham, who helped me publish my
07:34polygamy pages on the website. I see. So is that common in America? Of course, you know,
07:41due to anti-bigamy laws and stuff. Is it widespread in America, not just African
07:48countries, where that's not necessarily shunned, but is there, or do you know,
07:54aware of, besides my own church that practices polygamy? Well, former church, I
08:00can't. It's old habits, man, old habits. Yeah, Charles had a struggle. He kept saying
08:06Brother Branham for the first, I don't know how many episodes. He gets stuck in
08:09your head. I don't know that I would call it widespread, but again, you've got all
08:15of these quote-unquote tape home churches, and if you count a family's
08:20house as a church, you might say that there's a lot of them. But I have, in the
08:27work that I've done so far, I've come across, I think, four, either four or five
08:30different churches that were allowed polygamy in multiple states. So it's
08:37not just one church, and it's not just one state in the United States. How aware
08:42were you when I emailed you? You didn't seem aware of my pastor, who is
08:49Elwood Gallimore, who is no longer with us. How aware was more, I would say, more
08:57believers of this guy, I mean of my former minister? I know that my
09:03grandfather had news reporters and often ministers calling him to ask about the
09:10polygamy, and in fact, that's one of the things that was shared to me by these
09:14ministers from Africa. They said that we confronted your grandfather about this,
09:19and they actually gave me video footage of them confronting my grandfather about
09:23this. So I don't know if he was aware of your specific minister, but he's
09:29definitely was aware that there were polygamous sects in the message, and from
09:35from the videotape, I can assure you that my grandfather was not the only one.
09:39I got you. I know that pretty much answers my question on that. So all right,
09:46let's have a conversation. Any questions that you have for me? Yeah, so before we
09:52had, before we started recording, we were talking about your life in the message,
09:56and you mentioned, you know, as we started here, you mentioned that you had some
10:00traumatic experiences that, I think the word you used was it programmed parts of
10:07your brain to believe in certain ways. Just in general, what was it like for you
10:12growing up in the message? It was sometimes lonely. Like, man, like until I
10:19moved closer to my cousins, you know, everybody that was in it, like, it was
10:23being the odd duck in the church. I mean, living in the world, when your foot, one
10:28foot's in the church, and the other foot's, you know, not homeschooled, because a lot
10:33of our kids, the kids that from my former church, are homeschooled now. So that's
10:38not a problem. When I was growing up, we couldn't do that. Like, we had, didn't
10:44have the abilities that people do now about homeschooling. So when I went to
10:50school, it was, well, I can't do this because it's against the word, or, you
10:56know, message. And I couldn't go listen to certain types of music. I couldn't, you
11:03know, do movies, even certain types of like the game stuff they didn't care
11:07about, which was weird to me. But yeah, outside of the church, everybody outside
11:15of the church, as far as schoolmates and stuff, were looked on suspicion. My
11:20mother, God bless her, is the only reason that I came out semi sort of not weird.
11:25Yeah, the cult rules, you know, growing up, you're convinced that it's not a rule.
11:32You're convinced that it's something that you want to not do, which is really
11:36weird if you think about it, because there were an awful lot of things that
11:39normal children would have wanted to do. But we convinced ourselves in our minds
11:44that, no, we don't like television. We don't like this music. At least I did. I
11:49know that there were some people that, you know, that tried to listen to it
11:54in secret and whatnot. But I could honestly go into a shopping mall
11:58where they're playing rock and roll music, and I would, in my head, I would
12:03chant, like, Only Believe and weird songs to try to drown out what was coming in.
12:08And I'm a musician, so, like, I should have liked, I should have wanted to like
12:13the music, but I just didn't. And after I left, I started thinking about that, and
12:19there's a, if you go to my website and you just type in cult rules, you'll see. I
12:24did a deep dive in trying to understand why the rules, because some of the rules
12:29were really stupid, if you really stopped and thought about it. And I got
12:34to thinking about, you know, I went to churches from Arizona to South Carolina
12:39and everywhere in between, and no two churches had the same rules. And I kept
12:44thinking, why is this? And I got to thinking about the sermons that we heard.
12:48You know, people, after William Branham died, because you're in a religion where
12:54you're convinced that you can save yourself by the things that you don't do.
12:59That's essentially what the message is. Well, when he died, and they didn't
13:05immediately go up in the rapture, all these ministers try to come up with new
13:09and exciting ways in which you can punish yourself by not doing other
13:12things. And so they scour through the message, and what happens is, when you
13:17find William Branham ranting against something, then a new rule is born. And so
13:23I went through some of his rants, just at random, and I found things like, you're
13:28not allowed to use a washing machine, because he ranted against it. You women
13:32with washing machines, now you can go out and get a job. You know, this weird thing.
13:36Open-toed shoes, no painted toes. The kicker was, no booster bras. If you're a
13:42female, you cannot wear the, you know, the wireframe. It's, that kind of thing is an
13:48actual rule, if you go back and you apply the rules in the way that these ministers
13:53do. But all it is, in the end, is just simply robbing people of their freedom.
13:58Doctrinally, or, I guess we could consider us a sect in a sect, when
14:06Brother Branham, well, there you go. William Branham spoke about different things.
14:12It's either he was speaking as the man, but if it said, thus saith the Lord, it was
14:18God speaking through him. So, there's very different doctrinal rules about
14:23what's actually not able to be done, and what is just him talking. So, I mean,
14:30like, that's just my experience growing through the message. Yeah, and if you're
14:38in the Worship Joseph sect, there's a quote out there somewhere. Joseph Branham
14:42says, I believe every word that the Prophet said is, thus saith the Lord. And
14:47so, you have to apply it all, blanket statement. And that was one of the big
14:52things that, right before I left, I had a conversation with a family member, and I
14:58think he must have just simply, he had recently heard that from Joseph Branham,
15:04and his family were doing it. Like, no matter what they found on tape, no matter
15:09how nonsensical it was, they believed it. And I was like, no, man. You know, he said
15:15that it'd take, what was the example? I said the example was, William Branham
15:21said on recording that it would take millions of light years for an angel
15:27flying at light speed to go from Earth to Mars. And now we've got a Mars lander
15:31that's actually landed on Mars, right? So, there's no way it took a million light
15:35years. And I tried to explain this to him, and suddenly I was a sinner,
15:41because I had doubted this nonsense that the Prophet said. So, it really depends on
15:46the sect, and especially how close they are to the deity cult. Those in the deity
15:53cult, they will take everything blanket statement. It was mixed with mine. Like,
15:57the only thing that they felt was like, you know, 100% was Joseph, my son,
16:05that were more than a prophet. And then they just, with that one. Did they ever
16:11say what prophecy he had that made him a prophet? I have no clue. I'll be honest
16:17with you. This is just from what I heard, and like I said, 13 and under. So, this is
16:23my information as a child to early teenagers. I did make sporadic, you know,
16:28visits now and then. So, near the end, I never really tuned in to see what their
16:32doctrine was at this point. Yeah. So, you grew up in this, and they had all of the
16:39rules, and that impacted your life. How does that affect you from your day-to-day
16:44life now? Having been in a cult, and had this weird thing that we had growing up,
16:51all of this end-of-days theology, doomsday is about to come, that America
16:56is going to be obliterated. Did that impact you, you know, when you got older?
17:00Sometimes. Even now, I have an unhinged hatred for California. I don't know what
17:07it is, but that I can certainly say 100% is on message belief. The one that
17:16bothers me the most, and that really made me feel bad, is that one time that I
17:21chastised my mom for cutting her hair at my first wife's and I's
17:28wedding. I just tore her down, and to this day, years later, after I've
17:34deprogrammed enough, it's still something that haunts me. And then the
17:40lastly, here lately, I've become permanently disabled. The mental thing
17:45in the back of my mind is like, your wife is working, you're not doing anything. It
17:49puts you in a mental spiral that's just down and down and down, because you're
17:55not much worth as a man unless you're working or providing, and you can't even
18:01do that. So that's the situation that's most affecting me right now, is
18:06that whole patriarchal view of men are this and have to be the sole provider,
18:12women aren't supposed to work. That is still something that taps me on the hand
18:17every once in a while. Yeah, I understand that. After we left the message, I
18:23got to thinking about all of that. I mean, it's just pure nonsense, because
18:28there were certain tasks around the house that only females should do, and
18:32men should never do those, and vice versa, depending on the sect of the message, of
18:36course. It's almost like this 1950s leave-it-to-beaver lifestyle, right? And I
18:43grew up, I had severe allergies, severe. Some of the worst allergies that I've
18:49known people to have, I had, and yet mowing the lawn was the man's job. So
18:55even after I got married, I continued to mow the lawn all through the years until
19:00we left the message, and even a long time after that, because I'm, you know, I'm the
19:05man. That's what the men do. They mow the lawns, right? And my wife kept telling me,
19:09just let me do it, and I was too stubborn. And, you know, finally I gave in. I let
19:16her do it. It changed my life so much, because I didn't have all of the
19:19congestion, and the eyes, and the coughing, and she, once I saw that,
19:25then I next had to overcome the fear of, it wasn't a fear, but it was like this
19:31negativity towards medication. So I was avoiding allergy shots all those years,
19:35and once she showed me how much better things could be, I started
19:40taking allergy shots, and now, you know, I could go mow the lawn now, I'm fine. But
19:45there is this clear separation between the men and the women. I remember my dad,
19:50he wasn't the nicest fellow. He'd warm a nice drink, mom would come back to
19:59him, because that's what a Bible-believing believer believed. Yeah.
20:05And it got bad. Every single time he'd take her up to get prayed for, and
20:12eventually, folks knew, but they wouldn't say nothing. But after he left her, and
20:17then she tried to see other people, they would call my mom all types of stuff.
20:22This is family now, just due to the indoctrinal beliefs of the message. Like,
20:28my mom was called a harlot, an adulterer, and everything else, and she's a
20:37very devout lady, and raised her kids all by herself. But yet, you know, she's the
20:45one, you know, that got beat on and everything, and talked about. That is
20:51still a chip on the shoulder I have, not just with that with different members of
20:57my family, but also the patriarchal beliefs of the message, is that things
21:03like that don't leave your mind. Absolutely. Yeah, it's so sad. I have tried
21:10to remove all the chips, but there are certain things that really bug me, and
21:13the one for me is that we were taught this weird pseudo-gospel, where you also
21:21had to believe divine healing as part of your salvation. And I know that there are
21:27people, there are message sects that will argue with that, but if you take
21:31everything that William Branham said about divine healing back to its core, it
21:35all leads to, you're either believing in this divine healing thing, or you're
21:40unsaved. And what that does to a person is, if they develop a chronic disease or
21:48health problem, then they begin to feel as though they're a sinner. They don't
21:53have enough faith. And William Branham said, sin is unbelief, and therefore, if
21:58you're not getting healed, it's because you have unbelief, and therefore, you're a
22:01sinner, if you take it back to its logical conclusion. So I know people who
22:05developed severe chronic diseases, who thought it was their fault, thought they
22:11were living in sin, and while the disease was bad enough, or the condition was bad
22:16enough, it was severely amplified by the fact that they had so much inward
22:21condemnation that developed purely because of the religion. So what little
22:28bit of happiness they could have had was completely robbed, in my opinion, just
22:32because of this false doctrine that William Branham, and F.F. Bosworth, I
22:38think is the one that trained him, but those two guys took this, and they
22:42ruined people's lives with it. I remember growing up, when I first had developed
22:47type 1 diabetes, like that was when I was like in and out. Like after 13, I
22:53never went full-time, but I was desperate, and I thought, well, maybe this is my
22:59golden ticket. And I just heard, well, if you just believe, you can
23:04heal yourself. So I stopped taking my insulin, and well, that didn't end out too
23:09well. And yeah, as a type 1 diabetic, I learned very quickly that you can't go
23:18off for very long. Yeah, I have family members who have, I'm not gonna give
23:22names, but they have type 1 diabetes, and there was a period of time they were in
23:28a coma from it. So this is not something that you play with, but again, when
23:33you're in a divine healing cult, you try to, you know, leave off the meds, say that
23:37you believe, have faith, and you can end up dying from that. That's how bad that
23:42is. Is there a lot of mental health issues for people that have
23:48been through the message? I know that when I was, my mom, like I said in my
23:53emails, was what people would consider a liberal of the church. I was taking the
23:59doctors, I was allowed to go to certain dances and things as I got older, when my
24:03grandfather passed away. After my grandfather was gone, my mother really
24:08went laissez-faire with me a few times, as far as different things. I struggled
24:15with mental health all my life. I had a tribute to some of that, me and my dad,
24:19and some of it, you know, the message and different things. But as I started to
24:25take medicine for it, I was looked upon as being mentally, well, I was mentally
24:32unwell, but literally to the point of being crazy, just when I was just dealing
24:36with anxiety and depression. And I do believe that's, I have what's called
24:43borderline personality disorder as of right now. I believe that a lot of that
24:49situation was stemmed out from the message and living under my dad. And
24:58there you go. Part of your argument, I mean, what you were saying earlier
25:04about people take it to an extreme to where they will stop taking insulin,
25:08mental health meds, and stuff like that. I was to that point, but I stopped
25:15taking my mental health meds and realized that I needed to be on them, or
25:19else I didn't feel normal, or at least baseline. But yeah, I totally get where
25:28you're coming from on that one. Yeah, the mental health is something that I'm
25:31very passionate about, because I've studied it to no end. I have family
25:38members that are, for the rest of their lives, they'll suffer with severe mental
25:42health issues. And I have personally sat down with ministers in the message who
25:49said that any person who takes any medication for mental health, they might
25:54as well be sent straight to hell. Because this minister, and it's so odd,
26:00I'm laughing at the absurdity of it, he said, I've watched time and time again
26:05when people take a mental health medication, they leave the message. So we
26:10know the devil is in those pills. And now in hindsight, I'm looking back and, no,
26:14these people, you know, they had the cult craziness and they took something that
26:20helped them stabilize and realize, no, wait a minute, I'm in a cult. But I began
26:25studying the mental health very, very thoroughly, and it becomes almost like
26:31this chicken or an egg problem. You had so many people that were so desperate in
26:37one way or another, either for healing or for whatever brought them into the cult.
26:41And then once they got into the cult, they were the same people. So if they
26:46came with a mental health issue, they still had it. And if they came to be
26:50healed of mental health issues, they never were healed. And there's this
26:55hereditary factor, right? So if you bring a lot of people in the message who have
27:00problems, well, most of the people who marry each other in the cult are from
27:06the same group. So now you've got mental health people, people with mental health
27:10issues marrying also other people who potentially have it. And it's this
27:15cascading problem, right? So I began researching, and I actually had some
27:22in-depth conversations with Dr. Stephen Hassan, and he explained that it goes
27:28even levels beyond that. There's a growing part of the
27:35psychological community that see cult itself as a mental health disease. People
27:40who join a cult, the way it impacts your brain, it has every aspect of a disease.
27:47It's a disorder. And so there's this growing notion that it is a cult mental
27:53health disorder, something like this. I can't remember the exact name. And he
27:57said, even worse than that, there are people who get diagnosed with bipolar
28:02disorder because they have all of the symptoms of bipolar, and it's because
28:08they have not addressed the cult trauma in their life. And I can't remember, I
28:13think he gave a TED talk on this. He's either that or he gave a speech in a
28:17university. But he had worked with a person who was a cult survivor and
28:23basically gave this person therapy for the cult indoctrination and the cult
28:28trauma. And this person was able to come completely off their bipolar meds
28:34because they did not have bipolar disorder. So there's also this aspect
28:38that the cult trauma can cause the mental health issues. So it's a chicken
28:43and egg compounded by about ten different layers. I do have an off
28:48question for you. We didn't celebrate Christmas per se. How typical is that
28:55with other parts of the message? It is widespread because you were not supposed
29:01to, except for in Jeffersonville, where everybody knew that William Branham did.
29:06And the irony is he mentioned on recording that they were exchanging
29:10gifts. In fact, in the Branham Tabernacle, they exchanged Christmas gifts, and it's
29:16on recording. But in the South, for example, my grandfather there was
29:21strongly against Christmas. He allowed it for the children, and a lot of families
29:27would be... that's the way they would do it. They would be against it for the
29:31adults and maybe exchange gifts, but not be all into it. But for the kids, here's
29:37some presents. But there were also some warped versions of that where the
29:42celebration was just so haunted by the message that they fought it off. I
29:47never experienced it because my family, they were in the Branham family's
29:53house to see his Christmas tree, and they saw the presents afterwards. So it was so
29:58different for me. That's one thing that has been bugging me for all of my life
30:04is like if I told people that the Branham did celebrate Christmas, I'd be
30:11a heretic. Like I could take pictures in their house of the Christmas tree and be
30:17told, well, don't believe it. I'm like, that's almost like the conversation I
30:23have with my mother before I came on here, because as much as I wanted to get
30:28my story out there, I still respected my mother enough to say, hey, would our
30:32relationship be the same if I went on this podcast to do this stuff? And she
30:38said, well, I love you, but I know you're playing with your life. Wow. I'm impressed
30:47that you have the relationship with your mother that you can do that. There
30:51are a lot of people who've left the message, and the ties between the cult
30:56and the parents are stronger than the ties between the parents and the
31:00children. And so the parents will actually cut off, in many cases,
31:05they'll cut off their child if the child decides to leave, or especially if the
31:10child says anything publicly about the message. So the fact that you have that
31:14relationship is actually really good. Well, she left full-time because we moved
31:19down from Virginia to South Carolina. Our church was in Virginia. If we would have
31:25kept in the message, things might be a very different story. But she still goes
31:30up there and still believes that William Branham is a prophet, and for the longest
31:35time I said he was a prophet, but I don't believe that Joseph is God. And that was
31:40the first schism between me and what my church believed, was that they're
31:46sitting over here praying to a man that came through sex, and I'm like, God
31:51can't come through sex. This is heresy. No, no, no. So I'm over here praying to Jesus,
31:58and they're over there praying to Joseph, and it's like, praise Lord Joseph, and I'm like, huh? No, no.
32:08Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the
32:11progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
32:16Charismatic and other fringe movements, into the New Apostolic Reformation? You
32:21can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
32:25william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the
32:31compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John
32:36MacKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each
32:41book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and
32:46topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can
32:51support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as
32:56always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're
33:00listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we
33:05want to thank you for your support. It's really odd to me the polygamous sects,
33:10their close ties back to William Branham's son. I'll just say it like that
33:15and let that go, but the, you know, the fact that that human worship is so
33:23widespread, and it goes back to the days where William Branham was alive. We, you
33:30know, you just mentioned, you listened to the deity cult. There were a large number
33:34of people who really believed that William Branham was God in the flesh, and
33:38T.L. Osborne, who, I'm actually getting communications from all over the world
33:44right now about T.L. Osborne. Apparently he created some some global move of
33:51cultish or cult-like groups around the world. I didn't realize how widespread
33:55that was. I knew him from the, what is it, the Trinity Broadcasting Network or
34:00whatever, but he gave the eulogy for William Branham and said that, he said,
34:07I don't care if you label me a heretic, but this man was, God had come down in
34:11William Branham, basically, is what he said. So the fact that they were doing it
34:16back in the 60s, worshiping Branham, and then Branham died, and then that
34:21movement that had gone somewhat underground began to worship the son,
34:27and that is just, for me, that's just mind-boggling. I asked my mom also, I was
34:33like, well, Joseph isn't getting any younger, but what happens when he passes
34:39away? What are y'all going to do then? Well, we won't have to worry about that.
34:43And I said, well, Brother Branham's gone, Elwood's gone, Joseph is not a young
34:52man anymore. Mama, what are you going to do then? It's just, it's a conversation we don't
34:59have, and I know certainly my extended family that are still in it, the second
35:06they hear that I've done this, that they won't talk to me whatsoever. They'll
35:11brand me as a, yeah. Like I said, the church is disillusioned.
35:22It's splintered. They're not very, my pastor was the one thing that held that
35:29church together, but after it went, like people are doing their own, like you said,
35:34home-based church and stuff, but they're not really, they don't have a central
35:39figure keeping it together. And I said, give it another two or three generations,
35:44and probably by then that most people will not even heard of William Branham.
35:52And the community I was in, at least people I was related to, but it will take
35:59at least two or three messages to get that, I mean, generations to get that out of the
36:05system. Yeah, it's so weird how it works. I'm a gamer, we talked before this, you're
36:12a gamer and I'm a gamer, and on the original Legend of Zelda, there was this,
36:16like there's this one enemy that when you whacked it with the sword, it split
36:20into three bats. And that's what the message is like. One pastor dies and then
36:25there's all these little groups that come out and they're much weaker, smaller
36:28groups. But you mentioned in that hierarchy, and I'm interested to hear from
36:33you, you said William Branham's gone and Elwood's gone and what happens when
36:38Joseph died. The way that you gave that progression, it was as though there was a
36:43lot of reverence given to Elwood, which I have found to be the case in each of the
36:48splinter groups that did practice polygamy. How would you describe your
36:53relationship between the church and the pastor in that group? They thought he did
36:59no wrong when I said, you know, a pastor is supposed to be like, very modest. And,
37:07you know, somebody that's has a church full of people that are barely making
37:12ends meet, that, you know, works pumping toilets and factory workers is driving
37:17around two or three vehicles in a boat in a house that's paid for, that there's
37:21something going on here. And I did that once on social media, early social media,
37:29I think it was called High Five. And not even two, three seconds later, my mom's
37:34phone was ringing off the hook. And that's what I mean is like, there was a,
37:46I think that if it would have went on long enough, he would have probably pulled
37:52a William Branham. Mom doesn't believe that. And my family would say, well, Adam,
37:57you know, that's not him. Yeah. Yeah. It eventually probably would have been not
38:02Joseph. But, you know, there's revealed that blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I am
38:07anointed in something, but no, it stayed Joseph. But there were hints there that I
38:13felt that it was leaning in that direction, even though he was older in
38:17age, like nobody marries the children. And now let's just be blunt that they
38:24were children. I mean, in 93, he almost went to jail for it. And then recently, I
38:33mean, not recently, but early 2020 10s, he married the third one married. Like
38:41you don't get away with that stuff complicitly, without somebody worshiping
38:46you at least a little bit because nobody stops a man's like, Hey, why is this?
38:51Why is this guy marrying 16 year old girls? I mean, like, they use the whole
38:58concept of somebody, you know, a priest cannot marry a woman that's not been
39:03touched by man. Like, but still, that's, it's borderline pedophilia. And at given
39:13time, he probably would have done it again before he died. But then again, you
39:20know, I say I can't because I'm so intertwined with the message, and the
39:29church, and most of the members of that church were related to each other. You
39:34can't cast dispersions without, you know, saying something against family. So I'm
39:40all conflicted when I'm saying some of this stuff, because I'm in some ways
39:44related to him, and he was a dear family friend. It's hard to separate the pastor
39:49from the man. And yeah.
39:52Yeah. So as you were talking, it just clicked in my head when you who your
39:59your minister was, we had the exchange of emails and the name wasn't bringing a
40:06bell. But apparently, a long time ago, I actually put a research page up on on
40:11your pastor. Apparently, my grandfather was contacted specifically about your
40:16pastor, as was Voice of God Recordings. And their statements, if you if you go to
40:22my website and just type in polygamy, you can see their responses to this. And I
40:28had forgotten that I'd put it up. But also the videos that I mentioned earlier
40:31where my grandfather was confronted about polygamy, I've got up on that page.
40:35But I've researched so many things at this point, I've forgotten half of what
40:40I've published. It's a it's quite a bit.
40:44It's like a professor after so many years, you're like, well, you know,
40:48eventually some use out of there.
40:51Yeah, it's it's so crazy. But to think that, you know, to think this was
40:56connected back to the deity called boggles your mind, because the very men
41:04that they contacted, so they contacted and they spoke with Billy Paul. And I
41:09think they wrote into Joseph, if I remember correctly, I'd have to look that
41:12up. But so the writing in the headquarters and this is basically the
41:16headquarters of the deity called that these people are worshiping now as God.
41:20So the irony is just unbelievable. But the polygamy cults, as I understand it,
41:28they all go back to that marriage and divorce sermon. That's their proof text,
41:33so to speak. And that is the one that enables them to be this way. The irony
41:40there is I never experienced any of the polygamy groups growing up, but I did
41:45experience men who had failed marriages. I had close friends that they, you know,
41:51their marriage, they those two people should never have been married in the
41:54first place. I'll just say it like that. Well, some of them, not all, but some of
42:00the men ended up getting remarried. And they also went back to the marriage and
42:05divorce sermon because it allowed the one man who could marry multiple wives.
42:10So they actually took the polygamy portion of that sermon to justify being
42:16married again, while some of the other men would reference other statements that
42:20William Branham made contradicting this. And they'll, you know, they'll be single
42:24for the rest of their lives. But the irony is that both polygamous groups and
42:30men who remarried, they go to that marriage and divorce sermon. I don't know
42:33if I told it through an email, but my uncle did it. Like he was actually, along
42:39with the pastor, a practicing polygamist. And I love my uncle very dearly. But
42:45that was not a good situation. It caused a lot of issues with my
42:54grandmother. My grandmother was not a fan of polygamy. But as I recall, an
43:02anecdotal situation about my grandmother one time. We had a questions
43:07and answers night where people could, you know, ask their questions. And then
43:12we would doctrinally look for answers in the message. She asked and stands up,
43:18well, Brother Branham once stated that he couldn't do that to upset, you know,
43:24Miss Branham. Then why would y'all do it to hurt your wives? And then after that,
43:30you know, questions and answers and I kind of went away.
43:37Well, the bigger question for me, man, have they not told these men that if you
43:41do this, you also get multiple mothers in law? That's, you know, I fortunately I
43:48lucked out. I've got a really good mother in law. But I know some men that
43:52if you were to tell them that they would have multiple mothers in law, like the
43:56ones they have, there's no way they would take another woman for a wife.
44:00Yeah, did y'all have doctrinal issues about, you know, you could marry outside
44:05of the church? Or if they did, they'd have to be required to come.
44:10I attended some churches that I don't know that they openly said it, but it was
44:15an unwritten rule. You had to marry someone who was a believer. Because I'll
44:22say it like this, especially the churches that really preach the serpent
44:25seed doctrine. You had to believe that the people from the bad bloodline are
44:30outside of your church and the people of the good bloodline are in your church.
44:35And so if you marry somebody outside, you're marrying into that bad bloodline.
44:39And I have sat through some church services where ministers would allude to
44:44that fact. They wouldn't come out and say it because there may be somebody in the
44:48church who had married, but they they basically taught it in such a way that
44:54you didn't want to marry outside of the church.
44:56That's that's usually how it happened.
44:59I'll be honest with you. I tried that.
45:01But after a while of so many decades of people marrying into one another, it's
45:08just what you become weird.
45:10We're the only point at this point you look around and all you have is cousins.
45:15So I'm like, well, what am I going to do now?
45:18Yeah. Well, and it goes back to what I was saying about the mental health.
45:23There's so many complex layers to that chicken and the egg scenario.
45:28There's only so many times that the humans can reproduce with people of the
45:32same family tree without creating mental health issues.
45:36That's that's one of the one of the consequences of this.
45:40And some of the smaller churches that I've been to in the South, they were pretty
45:44close. Yeah.
45:48Yeah. I don't understand it.
45:50But I mean, if you get to the point where you can't marry anybody else, I think
45:57some rules need to be at least bits.
46:02Absolutely. As far as women's attire, is it always been long hair, long dresses
46:09through all the message or is it doctrinal differences like North and South?
46:15You know, it's really funny because it has gotten worse over the years.
46:20Now, if you go to most message churches, especially the ones that are tied back to
46:25headquarters, you can't even show your ankles because if you show your ankles, you're
46:30leading a man to sin, which is absurd, man.
46:35The ankles are not what really excite most men.
46:37I'll just say it like that.
46:39But back when William Branham was alive, I've even got photographs on the website of
46:44his daughters with skirts above their knees and sleeveless tops, which that was
46:50forbidden when I was in the call.
46:51You had to have a sleeve.
46:53You couldn't show your shoulders.
46:55And Joseph Branham wearing shorts, which, you know, half of the deity cult would just
47:01roll over in their graves if they knew that Joseph Branham was wearing shorts.
47:06Got a photo of William Branham himself wearing shorts.
47:09So there were rules that weren't.
47:14Weren't really exercised by the family, and then there were rules that grew worse,
47:20especially after he died, because, again, you're in a cult that's trying to save
47:24yourself by what you don't allow yourself to do.
47:28And so you're going to keep compounding.
47:30You can't save yourself.
47:31You can't make yourself be raptured.
47:33So you're going to keep stacking weights on your shoulder.
47:36And the end result of all of this is by the time, you know, most people escape when they
47:42do escape, they feel so burdened down with all of these weights that suddenly they're
47:47like, wow, this feels so much better to escape and not have all these ridiculous rules.
47:53When Billy Paul passed away and when Brother Branham passed away and foreseeably within
48:00the next 10 to 20 years, Joseph might pass away.
48:03Has there been instances of mass suicide, like a Jimmy Jones type of thing?
48:09If there is, I'm unaware of a mass suicide.
48:12There have been a few mass exoduses, because with each person like this, there's so
48:18much doctrine wrapped up into things that they have to do while they're alive and
48:23things that have to happen while they're alive that people just suddenly snap out of
48:28it. Wait, William Branham's dead.
48:30He was supposed to be the one to go lead all of the Jews to their salvation in Israel.
48:37If he's dead, he can't do this.
48:39So therefore, you know, a lot of people escaped when he died.
48:43And then Billy Paul, you know, the California is going to Los Angeles is going to sink
48:48before he's an old man, that kind of thing.
48:49So we've seen a few mass exoduses.
48:52I don't know of any mass suicides other than the ones that are mentioned on the
48:56website. Does everybody in the message have an aversion to California or is it just
49:04my sack? I would say a majority does, although I went with my family.
49:10My wife had never been to Los Angeles, so I took her on a like weekend getaway, her
49:15and the boys, and we went to see Los Angeles and we got to go stand right there at the
49:21maze company where this alleged prophecy happened.
49:24It's no longer even the maze company, which is also kind of funny.
49:28And while I was out there, I met a former message believer who took me and showed me
49:34some places. I got to see the the diehard tower there, which was really cool.
49:42And then he says, I want to show you this other place.
49:44And he takes me to a message church right by L.A.
49:47airport. And I'm like, I'm scratching my head.
49:50No, man, how can this be?
49:52Everybody in the message is is believing that Los Angeles is going to sink.
49:56And he said, yeah, but this this group's different.
49:58They don't really hold to that prophecy like the other ones.
50:02So apparently there are some that that don't consider William Branham's prophecy to be
50:09valid. Well, that is interesting.
50:12I might have to tell my mother about that, but Lord knows how this situation is going.
50:18Once this episode is released, well, hopefully, hopefully we don't hurt her feelings.
50:25I would hate to ruin a relationship that seems to be so solid.
50:29I don't think it'll end it like even if I happen to be gay, my mother said she'd accept
50:35me. She just wouldn't accept certain things in her house.
50:38So I do believe my mother would love me regardless of what happens.
50:42But I don't know if I'd be welcome in other people's houses back home in Virginia.
50:49Well, if it's in comfort, I'm not welcome in most that I grew up in.
50:54And I could assume so.
50:57I know there's a lot of, you know, allegations and actual events of sexual assault in
51:07different sects of Christianity.
51:08Is it very prevalent in the message?
51:12Because outside of my home, I know that it became very pedophilic with a lot of older
51:19men trying to marry younger women.
51:21But has there been any cases of where things were done and were covered up?
51:27I know of some.
51:28I obviously can't talk about it because there's legal issues with this.
51:32But what the former members who have escaped have confided in me, I won't say that it's
51:40widespread, but I will say that it is covered up and there's a lot of it.
51:46And I have, you know, of of the testimonies that have been given to me and of the things
51:52that I actually saw, I know that there were spousal abuse, there was sexual abuse that
51:59ministers knew about and covered up and supported the predator.
52:04And, you know, it's awful.
52:06My own grandfather was somebody that was like that.
52:10And there's good and bad things about my grandfather.
52:14That's one thing that I struggle with, is the fact that he knew of somebody being
52:19severely abused and he sided with the abuser rather than the victim.
52:25And that just bothers me.
52:26But it is there is a lot of it that goes to my next question.
52:31Of course, you just said spousal abuse and all that.
52:33I'm like, I would figure those would be two of the things that would make people want
52:39to stay, even if they don't want to stay.
52:41A lot of times, absolutely.
52:46And that happens, I'm guessing, through your research that you found a lot of domestic
52:53violence and stuff like that as a means of keeping them in line to not escape.
52:59Yeah, I won't say that there's a lot, you know, with any group of people, you have people
53:04problems. I think that's the best way to put it.
53:07The difference is this in the cult, you are taught that this is the elite, God's people,
53:13God's chosen few.
53:16And you can't keep that up when there are people problems that everybody can see.
53:21And so, for example, I I know of other churches where they have had something happen
53:28that was just as severe and they protected the person who was being abused and they
53:35warned the entire church that there's a problem.
53:38I've actually sat in one of these meetings where they said, this person has a problem.
53:43Keep your kids out of harm's way.
53:45That's what happens in a normal church.
53:48In the cult, they not only side with the predator, they will hide it from the people so
53:54nobody knows to even protect their children.
53:57And that, for me, is problematic.
53:59A lot of these pop up churches and, you know, at home churches, besides them, as far as
54:06membership in America, what numbers are we looking at with message believers?
54:11Because the only message believers I knew in my whole life before I saw randomly another
54:18group in South Carolina was maybe 300, if that, at tops.
54:25Like near the end, it was closer to about 150 people.
54:29You know, that's the irony, right?
54:31Every church that I went to, we were taught God's chosen few.
54:36And we listen to sermons where William Branham said one in a million.
54:39Right. And then right before I left Voice of God Recordings, the headquarters
54:46published a page that said there are between two and four million believers in the world
54:53that are ordering books and pamphlets of William Branham.
54:57So I got to after I left, I started talking with, you know, other people of other groups.
55:03And apparently around the world, it is very widespread.
55:07You go into Africa, especially, and they're just you know, there's a lot of these message
55:13cult sects and splinter groups, and they're all coming from different directions.
55:17You've got big churches that are probably more influential than Voice of God Recordings
55:23that are spreading William Branham into other countries.
55:27So it is widespread.
55:28Now, in the United States, ironically, it's all kind of dwindling out because people are
55:34starting to wake up and they have now they've got access to information so people can
55:38escape. So you've come a very long way, and I'm starting to feel like I'm in a questions
55:44and answers sermon myself.
55:45So I'll bring it back.
55:50No, I'm only joking with you.
55:52But if you could go back in time and say something to your former self while you were in
55:58this to give yourself some hope and encouragement, what would you say to yourself?
56:02I would have said that everything that you hear isn't necessarily the truth.
56:09Be observant, keep your eyes open and don't let people that are people you consider your
56:16betters or your elders or somebody that might be older, not necessarily that they don't
56:22know everything and that they don't always have your best interest at heart.
56:27Awesome. Well, thank you very much for sharing your story.
56:31You know, I'm certain that there's a lot of people that will get encouragement, but even
56:35more to the point, there are a lot of people who are in the deity cult and they don't even
56:40realize that they are, and especially those that are worshiping the sun instead of, you
56:45know, it's bad enough that I have to say they were worshiping the father, but now they're
56:50worshiping the sun openly and praying to him.
56:53It just shows how far that this thing has gone away from Christianity.
56:57So thank you very much for coming on here and sharing this with us.
57:01My pleasure, sir.
57:03Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on
57:07the web. You can find us at William-Branham.org.
57:11For an overview of the historical research of William Branham and the healing revivals,
57:15read Preacher Behind the White Hoods, a critical examination of William Branham and his
57:19message. Available on Amazon, Kindle and Audible.