Branhamism

It's a hard journey, no matter what group it is.

But those who are indoctrinated with Branhamism, it is so incredibly hard because it is so many levels more destructive, and you have to have a support group.

Did you have anybody who was helping you while you were going through all of this?

I have a dear friend who we talk about the word all the time.

And how do you reconcile this? I experienced this to a limited extent because my family moved from coast to coast.

We lived Arizona to South Carolina, everywhere in between, going to different sects within Branhamism.

Branhamism, like Pentecostalism, is this tree that produces never-ending branches because people have a disagreement, a schism, and a new sect is formed.

It just continues over and over.

So I'd go to one sect, and I would hear them preaching against the other sect, and then we would move to [chuckles] another sect, and they're preaching against both of those.

I'll say it like that, a com- charismatic style independent evangelical church.

I've not dug into the histories yet to know was it connected to Branhamism.

I put that off to the side because that's actually a different story than the one we're talking about here.

The story here is actually more important because we're talking about a person who is involved in a situation that matches so many stories that we have of people who are giving their testimonies every Friday, talking about the things that the pastor is doing that should have raised a thousand red flags, and every elder should have stood up and said, "No, we've got to put a stop to this." The people should have walked back and said, "No, you, you can't talk about those things from behind the pulpit." I'll get into some of those in a minute, but it is very, very important.

There are women who feel trapped because the person that they are subordinate to is not, either not a good match for them, or B, is simply abusive to them.

I know situations like this.

We were taught in Branhamism, and remember, Branhamism is what began the, the Latter Rain movement, which is a huge milestone towards coming into the charismatic movement, New Apostolic Reformation.

They were teaching the complementarian view, but they were teaching a very authoritarian model of this.

I've been having multiple conversations, as everybody is aware, with people who were in the New Apostolic Reformation or were impacted by it, because there are certain aspects of this that really, really fascinate me.

I grew up in a world of Branhamism, which was one of the precursors to the New Apostolic Reformation and the Charismatic Movement, and some of the themes that are in the New Apostolic Reformation just seem so odd [chuckles] whenever I try to think about them.

And that's me in a group that was part of the historical lineage of New Apostolic Reformation.

And I can only imagine what it's like for people who are outside of this thing looking in.

And Daniel, if you keep reading, I think it's Daniel 12, it even makes the relationship clear.

It says something to the effect, Michael, the great prince who has charge over your people.

And this is a object of debate for me coming out of Branhamism because Branhamism liked to go the Jehovah's Witness route.

And he would say that Michael was actually Jesus.

Being in IHOPKC and the things that you've been through, it was levels worse, I think, than even what I escaped.

And if you stop and think about that, whenever they talk about the cults and they talk about some of the more destructive groups, Branhamism is one of the more destructive.

You don't hear the same level of destructive being talked about with IHOPKC, yet they are more high demand.

Maybe the difference is IHOPKC was just a little,

Different ways in which, in fact, the way is one of the Names that they go by in this group, and there's a group in the United States called The Way.

And the question is, is this related to Branhamism or the latter rain or any of the different areas of my research? And it is.

But I want to talk a little bit about what that is, what the 2x2 group is, and also how and why it's related.

Because if you look historically, they are two completely separate groups with no real interactions.

So you literally had an upper tier and a lower tier which is another commonality between this group and many of the other groups because once those two tiers are established then the central figure is the top of the pyramid.

And here's where we begin to see how similar all of these groups are.

When you examine not only this group, but you can look at Branhamism, Lateran, Word of Faith.

Once this is established, once you have the tier structure and you have a separationist view, think of what comes next.

So let's talk about your name just a little bit.

So for people who weren't in Branhamism, you had specific names of people who were close to the prophet, the quote-unquote prophet, and those were the special people, and you always wanted to hear them.

My grandfather was one of the names.

Your grandfather was one of the names.

And part of me, when I was going through the history, part of me wanted to know why all of that is.

And I started looking at the different branches, especially as I was talking through it with Charles.

And then the other part of me wanted to know, okay, we had this mindset of what Branhamism was, and we didn't call it Branhamism, we called it The Message, and it really only consisted of what happened from about 1964 until current, and even that had many different iterations and many different splinter groups.

But if you went before 1964, there was a different version of Branhamism, and they had their splinter groups, and they went off into all kinds of weird things.

And they weren't saying Hebrew roots and latter rain, but there were cross-pollination doctrines flowing through it, and so there was this compatibility for anybody who's seeking simplicity in the gospel.

In fact, that was one of the themes that was often spoken in Branhamism, is we must have the gospel in simplicity, and they would argue that the mainstream churches did not have this, The interesting part of that, if you take the theological study, they so far overcomplicated the gospel that nobody knew what it was in the movement.

But then comes along the Jesus movement at its birth.

You had all of these young Christians who they were starting to reject institutional Christianity for looking for something simpler.

It really is.

And so once it gets to the point where the leader has named the church after himself.

I actually did this exercise when I was leaving Branhamism.

I wanted to know when did it deviate from Christianity to become Branhamite.

And I was suddenly surprised when this husband and wife, they drove here and they were looking in the archives and they found that before William Branham had taken over the church, it was a Pentecostal church.

And to anybody who's in the Branham movement, this just blows your mind because there's this life story that is like the prophetic history of Branhamism, how he rejected the Pentecostal call because of his mother-in-law.

He literally said, my mother-in-law made me reject those Pentecostals, his holy rollers, she would call them.

And so for years, I had dodged the Pentecostal call and And he blames his wife's death on his mother-in-law's causing this.