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William Branham Historical Research
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John traces the overlapping religious networks that connected Christian fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, healing revival movements, and later apostolic networks. Beginning with figures including Charles E. Fuller, William Bell Riley, Aimee Semple McPherson, Gerald Burton Winrod, Paul Rader, and Roy Davis, he examines how conventions and interdenominational organizations created connections across otherwise separate movements.

The discussion follows those networks through the World Christian Fundamentals Association, Defenders of the Christian Faith, Fuller Theological Seminary, Latter Rain, the Voice of Healing, Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International, John Wimber, and C. Peter Wagner. Rather than presenting these organizations as one continuous movement, John argues that layered networks, shared causes, conventions, media, funding, and influential personalities helped create connections that eventually intersected with what Wagner called the New Apostolic Reformation.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
04:37 Charles E. Fuller and the Origins of Fundamentalism
08:34 William Bell Riley and the Fundamentalist Networks
13:44 Aimee Semple McPherson and Pentecostal Influence
19:26 Gerald Burton Winrod and Christian Identity
26:39 The 1929 Fundamentalist Campaigns
35:32 Charles Fuller's Direct Connections to William Branham
43:50 Funding the Networks Through Full Gospel Businessmen
50:01 How the Networks Became the New Apostolic Reformation

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Transcript
00:31Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it,
00:45is truly stranger than fiction.
00:48When I began my research long ago, back before 2012, when my family escaped the Branham cult
00:55of personality, I had no idea where any of this was going to lead.
00:59And I especially did not know that I would be connecting Branham to some of the more
01:04recent ministries that are plaguing politics and religion at this moment.
01:10I only thought about Branhamism because that was my entire worldview.
01:14As I began to study Branhamism and what it actually meant, I started connecting him to
01:20other figures.
01:21And each figure was extremely important in the history and trajectory of religion in
01:27the United States and abroad.
01:29And some of the names just really surprised me whenever I got into it.
01:34For example, I never would have realized whenever I began this that I would connect Branham to
01:40William Joseph Simmons through Branham's mentor, Simmons, who rebirthed the 1915 Ku Klux Klan.
01:46That's a significant connection.
01:48And yes, it is just a connection.
01:50You can't say that Branham and Simmons were working together or anything like this, but
01:55it is a connection and it was important.
01:57And later it opened up an entire world of research that I never thought I would be able to dig
02:02into.
02:03Some people have asked, why do you keep the name William Branham Historical Research?
02:08Because now my research is so broad and so far beyond Branhamism that it doesn't really make sense
02:16unless you understand that Branham was this linchpin that tied all of these different themes and
02:21ministries and ideologies together.
02:23And one of them is the New Apostolic Reformation.
02:26For that reason, you can find leaders of NAR who reference Branham and say that they want
02:32Branham's mantle or Branham's spirit or something like Branham brought.
02:36Because he was the linchpin that just tied all of this together.
02:41And one of those connections, in the same way that you would connect Branham to William
02:46Joseph Simmons, one of those connections can take you through to C. Peter Wagner, who is
02:52the man who actually gave the entire movement the branding that it has today.
02:58New Apostolic Reformation is a term that he had coined.
03:02And so, whenever I began to understand that, it opened doors of research that I did not
03:09know existed.
03:10Because connecting Branham to C. Peter Wagner through various figures also connected Branham
03:17to other figures.
03:18And I began to explore those.
03:19Many of them have spun off into either things like NAR or extremist groups.
03:25For example, connecting Branham to Jim Jones.
03:28It's a big deal.
03:29But the thing to understand is that the New Apostolic Reformation did not begin in a vacuum.
03:36So when you see the president and you see these figures behind him, these religious figures
03:40who appear to have much more say in Washington than they should, think all the way back through
03:47my research and you'll connect it to various themes and ideologies and movements.
03:51One of them is the Fundamentalist Movement.
03:54And it's a really, really important theme.
03:57I think it's worth discussing, at least in this podcast, maybe actually in a few.
04:03But think back to the C. Peter Wagner picture.
04:06Again, Wagner did not emerge from a vacuum.
04:10He was 30 years at Fuller Theological Seminary, which, interestingly, is a seminary that I have,
04:17through my research, tried to be in contact with because of Branhamism.
04:22There are multiple connections into Fuller through Branhamism, but one of them, the most
04:28significant, is Charles Fuller, the founder himself.
04:31You can find Branham mentioning Fuller.
04:34But as it relates to Christian fundamentalism, there's a much, much stronger connection.
04:40And so, I want to talk about that connection in this podcast, and it may explode into other
04:46podcasts, but let's first talk about who Charles E. Fuller was.
04:50Fuller was born in 1887 and was born in a family that was very wealthy.
04:56They were owners of a California orange grove.
04:59And he had very little interest in religion whenever he was young.
05:04But after he graduated from college in 1910, working as a chemist and working in the citrus
05:11industry, he married his high school sweetheart and was eventually converted under the preaching
05:17of Paul Rader, which is a name that we will mention later in this podcast.
05:22Rader had connections to Branham through various people, and Branham's theme song actually
05:27was written by Paul Rader.
05:29Rader was the pastor of the Moody Church in, I think it was 1916, and Rader was one of
05:36the presidents of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which is another organization that
05:42we'll mention later in this podcast.
05:44But after his conversion, Fuller began to teach Sunday school at a church in Placentia, Orange
05:50County, Los Angeles.
05:52And he entered the, I believe it's pronounced Biola University, eventually becoming a
05:59chairman of the board.
06:00But in this university is where things began to change.
06:03He shifted toward Christian fundamentalism and dispensationalism, both themes that were
06:10strongly developed and presented as biblical truth under the Latter Rain ministry through
06:16William Branham and others.
06:18So he has so many different connections in his early years to what would develop into Latter
06:23Rain.
06:24But whenever he began holding revivals all down the west coast of the United States, using
06:31his radio ministry to get his message out, he suddenly found himself without his pastoral
06:37position because there's some discrepancies as to what actually happened in the history.
06:41But he either he resigned or he was fired from his ministry.
06:45And in 1933, he formed the Gospel Broadcasting Association in order to support his radio ministry.
06:53And he became very famous in the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, which was a weekly Sunday radio
06:59broadcast that aired from 1937 through 1968.
07:04And his ministry is being aired on the radio in the Los Angeles area during the same time
07:10that William Branham's mentor, Roy Davis, was also in the Los Angeles area.
07:14Davis, who had a radio personality and a radio show, who also was the emcee of the California
07:21Gospel Convention.
07:23There's no evidence that directly ties the two together.
07:27But being in the same network, among the same circles of people, as a public figure, both
07:33of them likely knew each other, or at least knew of each other.
07:36And that's a part that we'll set off to the side for now.
07:40But eventually, Fuller founded the Fuller Theological Seminary, which is in Pasadena, California.
07:45Interestingly, in 1947, which is the year that we start to see Latter Rain begin to form and
07:53take shape.
07:53But the thing to understand about Charles Fuller, as it relates to this podcast, is that Fuller
07:59was not just simply the founder of a university.
08:02He was a widely controversial radio minister.
08:05And he was one who was very active and very public in the fundamentalist modernist debate.
08:11He used that controversy to even further fuel his ministry.
08:16He held battles over biblical authority, for example.
08:19You can find newspaper articles of his anti-evolution campaigns and working with other figures in
08:25the anti-evolution ministries.
08:28He founded Bible Institutes.
08:30He held evangelistic campaigns.
08:32And he became very famous through his old-fashioned Revival Hour program, pushing many of those
08:38agendas.
08:38The other person that I need to introduce for this podcast is William Bell Riley and his
08:43World Christian Fundamentals Association.
08:46This is a very important organization that is also the linchpin between different ministries
08:53connected to William Branham, which is the broader linchpin, as I mentioned earlier.
08:57The organization was founded in 1919.
09:00And this was an interdenominational organization that was connecting fundamentalist ministries.
09:08So think of it as a hub of different ministries, different networks of ministries, all with
09:15the fundamentalist mindset, being connected together to create and establish a movement.
09:21And it was formed strongly opposed to the modernist theology.
09:25It was strongly supportive of prophecy and premillennialism and other themes that they considered to be
09:32fundamentals of Christianity.
09:34That's why the name World Christian Fundamentals Association.
09:38So this group held institutional battles over seminaries, denominations, and ministers to fight
09:47what it believed to be a battle against an invasion of outside forces against the fundamentals of
09:54Christianity.
09:54So this is much larger than just the theology.
09:58This is one of the early forms of networking.
10:01This is one of the networks that would eventually become a key hub of networks connected into the
10:08New Apostolic Reformation.
10:10That networking is very important.
10:13And also, think about that word interdenominational.
10:16This is a platform in which many different denominations could cooperate because they believed
10:22that they were fighting a common enemy.
10:24And the enemy of my enemy is my friend, basically.
10:28So that's also important when we get later in the story because that's the same platform
10:34that was used by the healing revivalists as they began to network across all these denominations.
10:39So you have all of these spider webs of networks popping up, each connected for a specific agenda.
10:46They were each aligned, and through different hubs, like William Branham and others, you see this vast
10:51network of groups connected together for different common goals.
10:56And you can carry this through the research.
11:00You can find connections to Latter Rain.
11:02Latter Rain did this.
11:03Go out to the Charismatic Renewal.
11:05You'll see that they used the same strategy.
11:07And when C. Peter Wagner eventually comes out with his term, the New Apostolic Reformation,
11:13he is literally putting a branding on all of these different various networks that already
11:19existed.
11:21So watch the organizational pattern.
11:23People who distrust established denominational institutions.
11:28That's the key.
11:30Once they begin building all of these networks across all of the denominational lines in the
11:35sand, so to speak, they started to create shared causes and influential personalities.
11:42That were each speaking to the different agendas within each network.
11:47So you can picture the broad, vast spider web of networks, each having a hotspot.
11:52On top of that hotspot was a key figure or personality.
11:56That's the thing to understand.
11:58The other thing to understand is that many of these hubs in the network were supportive
12:03of the other hubs in various ways.
12:05For example, I could talk about a tangent, which is the Dearborn Independent, which is
12:11Henry Ford's newspaper.
12:12And I could talk about how it was pushing the anti-Semitic conspiracy materials that would
12:18eventually fuel the movement that became known as Christian identity.
12:24It has connections to many of these various leaders that I'm talking about, Roy Davis, William
12:29Branham's mentor, and another figure, which I'll mention here soon, which is Gerald Burton
12:34Winrod.
12:35This was a network that was supportive of those people, but not necessarily their entire network,
12:41just different ideologies that brought these different networks together.
12:46So they were networking as different platforms, different movements, different meanings of
12:52existence.
12:53But some of those meanings of existence, like I said before, the enemy of my enemy is my
12:59friend.
12:59You can almost connect many of these various organizations and movements that are in the
13:04networks that Wagner would later dub the New Apostolic Reformation simply by connecting
13:10their enemies, which is really, really interesting if you think about it.
13:13It's not that they were aligned in doctrine or biblical understanding.
13:19They were more aligned against a focused enemy.
13:23And as such, it really resembles more of a political network than it does a religious network.
13:29Yet they were all operating under the umbrella of religion.
13:34Many of them were operating this way, I should say.
13:36And under that umbrella, they were connecting each other for the sole purpose of helping support
13:42each other against the common enemy.
13:44Another person that I have to mention before we go too deep is Amy Simple McPherson.
13:48For those of you who are unaware, she was a Pentecostal evangelist and minister.
13:54She was very, very into the stage presence type of Pentecostalism.
14:00You can find her flowing robes, her radio broadcasting towers, etc.
14:04She was unmistakably Pentecostal with the healing, the miracles, the prophecy, the gift of tongues,
14:11dramatic revival meetings, and all of the above.
14:13But she also participated in many other themes that I have researched and published information
14:20on, such as the Christian identity movement.
14:23Whenever I was researching Christian identity, I kept finding all of these trails back to life
14:27Bible college.
14:28And when I was researching Branhamism, I also found trails back to life Bible college.
14:33Gordon Lindsay, who was William Branham's early campaign manager, was trained in life Bible
14:39college and was a leader in the Foursquare movement, which McPherson led.
14:44So there are several connections, both religious and political, that travel back through Amy Simple
14:51McPherson through history.
14:52But she came out of the Pentecostal world, the early Pentecostal world, converted under
14:58evangelist Robert Simple, who she married, and her connections to Pentecostalism landed on
15:06the William Durham side of the equation, which I've recently published a podcast about Durham
15:11and his impact on the movement.
15:14Well, Angelus Temple, Amy Simple McPherson's church, changed the scale of Pentecostalism.
15:20In 1923, she opened one of the largest, maybe the first true megachurch.
15:26If you look through history, thousands of people could attend her church.
15:30And in the church, you had the healing services, the very theatrical sermons, the music, all
15:36of the presence that you would see if you go to a modern NAR church gathering.
15:42But you wouldn't see the funny lights that they have and the smoke and all of that.
15:46But it was a very elaborate stage presence.
15:49And she, like some of the others in Los Angeles, had a very, very large radio tower that was
15:56attached to the Angelus Temple, if I remember correctly.
15:59She launched KFSG, I think was her call letters for her radio broadcasting radio station.
16:07And so it became one of the very earliest church-owned radio stations from Angelus Temple.
16:14So when you think of how this developed into the stage presence that is in charismatic movement
16:21and New Apostolic Reformation, she set the standard.
16:24And she promoted her ministry as very much aligned with the themes that would be in later
16:32latter reign.
16:32But during the fundamentalist movement, where it was a participation of different denominations,
16:39but she was doing it under the umbrella of her four-square church denomination.
16:45So not that she was fighting for Pentecostalism.
16:48She was participating in the broader movement.
16:51And many of the themes that you would find later in the latter reign charismatic movement,
16:55she was already teaching, such as healing being central, not peripheral to the Christian experience.
17:01Healing testimony, for example, became a huge part of her evangelistic message.
17:07So McPherson demonstrates the cross-denominational appeal that would become later a dominating
17:16experience within the latter reign movement.
17:18And many of the subsequent movements would try to emulate this, but never with the same
17:24stage presence that she had.
17:26She was kind of unique in the way that she presented herself.
17:29So all of that's important to understand.
17:32But now bring in Christian fundamentalism.
17:35Her ministry was strongly aligned with Christian fundamentalism, and she was aligned in agenda
17:42with some of the other themes that I have mentioned.
17:46In fact, you can read research studies on how the Klan came to rescue her and why.
17:51But she was also aligned with Gerald Burton Winrod in so much that whenever there was public
17:58outcry against people who were defending anti-Semitism, right, I want to say it was the very Sunday
18:05after the Night of Broken Glass in Germany, during a time in the United States when so many people
18:11were giving public outcry against Germany for their persecution of the Jews.
18:15She is bringing in one of the most anti-Semitic figures in the United States to show her support
18:22of him, apparently.
18:23That's what it looks like from the newspapers if you read them.
18:26So she's very important, and her connection to fundamentalism comes through Gerald Burton
18:32Winrod, which I'll get into in a minute.
18:34But you have to understand that Angelus Temple is one of the key pillars of Pentecostalism and
18:41latter rain. Whenever Pentecostalism held its, I believe, 50th anniversary, they invited
18:48William Branham to come speak at the Angelus Temple as one of the keynote speakers. This is during
18:54a celebration of Pentecostalism, and her temple being very near to Azusa Street, it put it in
18:59proximity of the revival and the events. So her Angelus Temple is very important. Her ministry is
19:06very important, and if you followed the revival history series, you know that her four square
19:12gospel and some of the leaders in it are very important because they later become figures and
19:17faces that you see in the latter rain movement and beyond. So I can't stress enough the importance
19:22of digging into her if you're looking into the history of all of this, but I want to focus instead
19:28on Gerald Burton Winrod. When I was researching Branhamism, I came across an obscure statement that
19:34Branham made that sounded like he was talking about his Seven Prophecies of 1933 as the cult
19:41has branded it, where he mentions that he was almost arrested, and I wanted to know why. So I was
19:47digging
19:48into that, and that really is what opened the door to Winrod and some of the other research. I was
19:54collaborating with other researchers, and by putting all of the puzzle pieces together, we finally
19:59determined that William Branham's ministry was either connected directly to or was indirectly connected
20:05through Branham's mentor, Roy Davis, to Gerald Burton Winrod. In the early 50s, as Branham began to
20:12establish what would later become known as his Seven Prophecies of 1933, and a side note here is that there
20:20are almost 18 different variations of prophecies if you take all of his stories and combine them. He is not
20:27consistent on what these prophecies are, or if they were even in the original seven. But all of that
20:34aside, he says that he was almost arrested for preaching on a subject that he had entitled Mark
20:39of the Beast, and he said that if ever Mussolini went towards Ethiopia once he come into power, there
20:46would never be peace until Jesus comes. And he said that all of the isms, which is what he termed
20:52communism,
20:52fascism, Nazism, they would all wind up in one ism, and they would dominate the world. And his end times
21:00scenario is kind of changing depending on the era. Early in his ministry, he claimed it would be communism,
21:07and then later he changed it to Romanism, which is also another interesting side story. But the bottom
21:13line is he said he was almost arrested for this. I began to research what other ministers were almost
21:20arrested for preaching on the same subject. And interestingly, that led to me finding the Great
21:25Sedition Trial of 1944, in which Gerald Burton Winrod and others were named as defendants. Winrod
21:32eventually criminally prosecuted and to go on trial as in one of the biggest sedition trials in United
21:39States history. And while that history is very interesting and worth pursuing if you're digging into
21:44this, it is more directly related to my Christian identity research than it is this particular
21:50research about Christian fundamentalism. Winrod was one of the people who was complex in that he was a
21:57strong force in the fundamentalist movement as he was the Christian identity movement. And there are
22:03themes that kind of cross over between the two, but in the end, his alignment with the movement and their
22:11position against Franklin Delano Roosevelt led to the Great Sedition Trial. And many of the prophecies
22:17that both Winrod and Branham had were originating around that theme and that political agenda.
22:25That's a side story, but it's worth mentioning because it shows the character of the people that
22:31I'm talking about connected to the heart of this movement. Winrod is again connected directly to Amy
22:36simple McPherson, McPherson so much that she's supporting him during one of the most controversial
22:42times in German and American history. And Winrod is labeled and branded as one of the most infamous
22:50Nazi people in the United States, spreading the protocols of the learned elders of Zion,
22:55which is a very anti-Semitic publication, which again, ties to my Christian identity research.
23:00But where Winrod becomes greatly of interest in this podcast is his connection and his leadership
23:08in the Christian fundamentalism associations. He, in fact, was on the board of directors of the world
23:15Christian fundamentals, as was William Branham's mentor, Roy Davis. So these two men were directors of
23:22the same organization, likely were holding events together. We can't prove that through history.
23:28It's not been recorded, to my knowledge, but they're directors on the same organization.
23:33So they definitely had a cross pollination of ideas. So let's talk just a bit about Gerald
23:39Burton Winrod. He was born in Kansas in 1900. It is believed by some that he was working with Charles
23:47Fox Parham, the father of modern Pentecostalism, though he does not name the Pentecostal figure that
23:53he was connected to by name. He does mention that he's connected to a famous one in one of the
23:58publications. He was an evangelists. He was an organizer. He was a publisher. And like I said,
24:05he became known as the Kansas Hitler or sometimes the Jayhawk Nazi because of his ties to Germany.
24:11He got very wealthy after visiting Nazi Germany and coming back with an agenda to spread the protocols
24:19of the learned elders of Zion. So there's some sketchy history there, which I won't go into in this
24:25podcast. But for those of you who are researching, that's definitely of interest. But as it relates
24:30to Christian fundamentalism, 1925 becomes of interest because in 1925, Secretary of State
24:38and three-time presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan took a public stance against the theory of
24:45evolution. And he described it as a duel to the death. And he became known through his slogan that
24:52we are the defenders of the Christian faith. After his death, Gerald Burton Winrod took that
24:59theme and that slogan and ran with it, creating an organization that was called the Defenders of
25:05the Christian Faith. Defenders of the Christian Faith was a fringe political pseudo-religious fascist
25:11movement. And the movement itself, or the organization, was named in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944,
25:18which I had previously mentioned. It was named as a co-conspirator accused of undermining the morale
25:24of the United States troops through the sale of Nazi propaganda. To say that Winrod was popular during
25:31this time period is an understatement. The movement grew so rapidly and grew so large that it eventually
25:38earned the nickname the Flying Defenders, which was a nod to Congressman William D. Upshaw's anti-saloon
25:45flying squadron. Upshaw being connected to this, being connected to Branham, he's another linchpin,
25:50which we won't mention in this episode. But within one single year, the organization claimed members
25:58in 85 cities and towns across Kansas, which was approximately 50 counties with additional members,
26:05scattered over 15 other states. There were approximately 10,000 subscribers to his
26:11newsletter publication called The Defender. And Winrod himself claimed that he addressed more than
26:17200,000 people in Kansas alone. By 1927, he was popularly dubbed the Bryan of Kansas after William
26:27Jennings Bryan and the Kansas Cyclone, both references to William Jennings Bryan and William D. Upshaw.
26:35And in 1929, all of these histories that I've just mentioned begin to converge together and come
26:41to a head. When Chicago evangelist Paul Rader, who I mentioned previously, advanced this coordinated
26:48effort, this national campaign against what he called the teachings of evolution and modernism.
26:54And he began to recruit, quote, the most prominent fundamentalists in the country, which included
26:59Gerald Burton Winrod and Paul W. Rood, the president of the Bryan Bible League, which was named in the
27:06honor of William Jennings Bryan. And they held it in the Cato Tabernacle, which if you have studied my
27:13Christian identity and clan research, was integral to the Branham history, the clan history, the Upshaw
27:19history. And the goal was basically to persuade and carry the fundamentalist campaigns into every single
27:28state in the United States. Where all of this comes together through this history is that Charles E. Fuller,
27:34the founder of the Fuller Theological Seminary and a representative of the Los Angeles Bible Institute,
27:41played an integral role right here in the heart of the battle in Indianapolis.
27:46Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern
27:52Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements
27:57into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's
28:04website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research
28:11of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
28:18audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various
28:25people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support
28:31the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe
28:37to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical
28:42Research, we want to thank you for your support. In 1929, there is an event that brings together many
28:50different streams of ministries that is very significant when you think of the trajectory
28:55that would eventually lead to the New Apostolic Reformation. In 1929, at the Cato Tabernacle in
29:02Indianapolis, Indiana, Gerald Burton Winrod holds a meeting for the defenders of the Christian faith.
29:08Now, for you researchers who are interested in studying NAR and you're listening to this podcast,
29:14trying to learn more, I highly recommend that you go to newspapers.com or whatever is your
29:19newspaper search engine and type in defenders of the Christian faith. You also find it under
29:25defenders convention. Sometimes it's just called the defenders, but this is significant because when you
29:32think of today's New Apostolic Reformation and you think of all of these conventions that they have,
29:37where they're networking people, various individuals and the leaders of each of the independent and
29:45sometimes not independent apostolic networks, this was a precursor to that and it was done through the
29:52platform of the defenders of the Christian faith. To stress the importance of this, think of this
29:59particular meeting at the Cato Tabernacle and think of the history of the Cato Tabernacle as it relates to
30:05my research and Christian identity. Cato Tabernacle was a evangelistic tabernacle as it would seem by the
30:14name, but it was also the headquarters of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, which was the largest Klan in the
30:20nation.
30:21When you look at the photographs of the Klan storming Washington and holding these parades,
30:26that was the Indiana Klan that did this. Cato Tabernacle was also holding events for different
30:34revivalists who were very strongly connected to William Branham and Branham himself mentioned that
30:40he was directly connected to Cato. So you have all of these intersections between him and Branhamism.
30:46Fast forward to the 1950s, Jim Jones' ministry was literally launched as a public platform by connecting
30:54all of the latter rain and voice of healing evangelists at the Cato Tabernacle in Indianapolis.
31:01So Cato Tabernacle is significant. A lot of research you could go into there.
31:06But the point I want to make for this 1929 meeting is Paul Rader, who, as I mentioned,
31:12was the person who wrote William Branham's theme song, Only Believe. Paul Rader was a Christian and
31:18Missionary Alliance minister. And he served from 1919 to 1924 as the president, if I remember correctly.
31:271929, which is right after this event, he is at his Chicago church. He goes on a mission and he
31:35invites Gerald Burton Winrod, who I mentioned previously as the Kansas Hitler, the Jayhawk Nazi,
31:41invites Gerald Burton Winrod to fill his pulpit.
31:44So you have Amy Supple McPherson, who is strongly tied to the Pentecostal movement,
31:51who also invites Gerald Burton Winrod to her pulpit. Paul Rader, who's Christian and Missionary
31:56Alliance, to his pulpit. Very significant. There are figures that are connected to Branhamism
32:02that are Christian and Missionary Alliance ministers. I've mentioned a few of those in various podcasts.
32:07But when you consider that Charles Fuller, founder of the Fuller Theological Seminary,
32:12was not just an active member of the Defenders of the Christian faith. He was one of the leaders of
32:18the Defenders. And you can search the newspapers and you can find all of the headlines where he is
32:24going to attend these conferences and being photographed, as in this case,
32:28there with the leaders of the convention. So prior to New Apostolic Reformation, you have Charles Fuller,
32:36who was founder of the Theological Seminary where C. Peter Wagner was working with John Wember prior to
32:42the New Apostolic Reformation's naming, if you will. But they were doing conventions very similar to
32:48what would be held in the New Apostolic Reformation. They're working with Paul Rader, who was connected
32:55to the Christian Missionary Alliance. And if you trace that lineage, you get the higher life,
33:00the healing, the missions, the expectation of supernatural power, basically everything that
33:06John Wember was pushing, everything that C. Peter Wagner was pushing, prior to even the existence of
33:12Pentecostalism. So for the researchers who are looking into this podcast to get clues as to how the New
33:19Apostolic Reformation developed, think about this. Most researchers trace Nahr through Lateran and into
33:26Pentecostalism. But there are multiple various streams because of the different types of conventions
33:33that are bringing the networks together. The reason for this is when you study what C. Peter Wagner
33:39did when he named the vast array of networks as the New Apostolic Reformation, he's naming groups that you
33:47can connect to Pentecostalism. But what he's not mentioning is that these networks existed prior to
33:53his naming of them, and they were networked through other platforms, such as the defenders of the
33:58Christian faith. Charles Fuller, who is a leader in these conventions, is working with Gerald Burton
34:04Winrod, who's bringing all of the Christian identity in. But not only that, he's bringing in the prophetic.
34:11So you had conventions that were advertising themselves as prophetic long before New Apostolic
34:16Reformation was advertising their conventions as prophetic. So this was a network that was very much a
34:23precursor to the New Apostolic Reformation. And we're talking 1920s or almost 1930s. So this is
34:30this is a convention that is held even before the Lateran movement was developed. We're talking in
34:36between Pentecostalism when it starts to fade out. Now here's something new. It's a new thing. And then
34:42later, New Apostolic Reform or Lateran would be developed from many of these themes. So you have multiple
34:48layers. If you think of it like this, you have C. Peter Wagner's networks that he's describing.
34:54Well, they're built on another layer of networks of meetings and conventions. Christian fundamentalism
35:00is part of it. But with Gerald Burton Winrod, because of who he is and what he's teaching,
35:06you're bringing in doomsday focus. You're bringing in Nazi-ism, oddly enough. You're bringing in the
35:14anti-semitism. You're bringing in the learn the protocols of the learned elders of Zion.
35:19You're bringing in all of these different wild conspiracy theory themes with an end of day's focus,
35:26claiming to be prophetic and joining different ministries of different denominations and non
35:32denominations all together under the umbrella of the defenders of the Christian faith. Now let's talk
35:38about Charles Fuller and his significance as it relates to William Branham and the latter rain
35:44movement and beyond, because not many people are aware that this connection exists. In 1947, in April,
35:51William Branham was speaking about the condition of the people on the west coast and how divine healing
35:58was having difficulty penetrating them. He says, Brother Charles Fuller was speaking to me when we were
36:05down at Long Beach and he said to me, Brother Branham, the reason is this west coast has everything
36:11under the name of divine healing. They have blue flame worshipers, Father divine worship, and everything
36:17under the name of the divine healing. It's such a stumbling block. When I found this, I was a little
36:23surprised. I didn't yet know who Charles Fuller was and his significance as it related to New Apostolic
36:30Reformation, C. Peter Wagner. I was at the time actually looking into Fuller because there is an
36:37archive of notes from Joseph Mattson-Bose's desk in the Fuller Theological Seminary and in those notes
36:44are notes that are letters that were sent to Jim Jones of People's Temple. In fact, I have a couple
36:50of
36:50them on my website if you want to go to the Jim Jones page. So there's fully documented evidence of
36:55all of
36:55these connections, and you can find it there at Fuller. I kind of just wanted to know who Fuller
37:01was and casually typed it into the search engine, branham.table.branham.org, and lo and behold,
37:08he's connected directly to Branham. Branham goes on to say in various meetings that he's describing
37:15Fuller and he's describing, quote, the brothers here tonight. And when he says things like this,
37:21there are photographs out there that you can see of this, but when Branham held a revival,
37:25often there were ministers lined up behind him as supporting ministers. And they would be showing
37:33their approval of the ministry. Sometimes they would casually speak. Sometimes they would hold
37:37an actual sermon. But these were supporting ministers. And in the lineup is Brother Fuller.
37:44And he names them, 1947, December, he says, Brother Faulkner, Brother Outlaw, Brother Fuller,
37:51all the brothers here. 1950, I was having a service with Charles Fuller, Charles Fuller over in Long
37:57Beach. And you can go down the lineup. There's about 60 hits if you type in Fuller in table.branham
38:05.org.
38:05And you can see all of the many times he's talking about Charles Fuller. The two apparently were
38:11deeply connected. So Fuller's theological framework, if you put it into the perspective of what developed
38:19into NAR and see all of the various connections, Fuller is working directly with the most notorious
38:26anti-Semitic person in the United States at the time, which was Gerald Burton Winrod. He's working
38:34with the former Christian Missionary and Alliance president. So this gives him a combination
38:41of maybe not fully supporting, but at least okay with working with people who are fully supporting
38:47Christian identity, higher life, divine healing as part of the atonement. You can go right down the
38:55line of many of the things that you're going to see in New Apostolic Reformation. Charles Fuller
39:00is building his worldview by working with these men, and then pushing that worldview through all of these
39:07networks whenever they hold a Defenders Convention. So now let's bring it back to the World's Christian
39:12Fundamentals Association, because there are multiple networks, multiple conventions, multiple
39:18organizations that are bringing all of these people together. And again, the networks that comprise the
39:25New Apostolic Reformation, they're layered networks. They're not just one flat network. And if you're
39:31watching the YouTube version of this, you'll see I have the 12th Annual Convention of the World's
39:35Christian Fundamentals is at the Cato Tabernacle at the same event. Gerald Burton Winrod, according to
39:42the research that I've been able to find, he addressed the World Christian Fundamentals Association in 1926,
39:49received a standing ovation and was appointed the extension secretary. I believe he was either later
39:57or maybe before a director, but clearly by the 1920s, he was part of the leadership of that network.
40:03So this puts him in the Defenders of the Christian Faith, the World Christian Fundamentals Association.
40:10These are two different networks, but both sharing many of the same ideas. I learned this because Roy
40:17Davis, William Branham's mentor, was also a director in the World Christian Fundamentals Association.
40:24There is a newspaper article, I think it was from 1937, where it mentioned that he had served for
40:30two years as the national director of the organization. So for two straight years, he was a director of the
40:37organization. What we don't know are the years that those two years began. He could have either been
40:43working directly with Winrod or he was working after Winrod. But the point I want to make here is
40:50leaders of these organizations often continue collaboration with these conferences long after
40:58they hold a leadership position. Winrod went off and formed the defenders of the Christian faith, and that was
41:04his primary focus. Davis went off and he's trying to organize the clan. That's his primary focus. So these two
41:12have
41:12different agendas, but they join back together through Christian identity. We learn in Branham's recordings, he even
41:21mentioned that Roy Davis was teaching Christian identity in his church in the 30s. So you have these
41:28various platforms that connect each node of each network in each layer of network. This gets really
41:35confusing. And through those layers, now you can connect multiple streams to Gordon Lindsay, who is the
41:43founder of Christ for the Nations. Lindsay was the keynote speaker for various anti-Semitic groups such as the
41:51Anglo-Saxon Federation. I've talked about this in a few podcasts. You can look up that research on the website.
41:57He was a key speaker in one of the more infamous Christian identity groups. At these conventions,
42:05picture leaders of different networks such as Gerald Burton Winrod. I can't place him in that exact
42:12convention, but I can assure you that he was going to that type of convention because that's how these
42:17conventions work. He is networking and Winrod is, I would say, through his defenders, he's probably
42:23even more popular by far than Gordon Lindsay, but also than the Anglo-Saxon Federation. So through the
42:33defenders of the Christian faith, you've got Winrod who is working with Pentecostal networks,
42:38fundamentalist networks, anti-Semitic networks, all of these different groups that have different
42:46platforms from which you can cross-pollinate ideas. That's really the point I'm trying to make here.
42:52Some of those ideas may have reached all the way to Branham's mentor and it went into Branhamism and
42:57Latter Rain. Some of them may have went to Gordon Lindsay and it went into Voice of Healing and Latter
43:02Rain.
43:03But you can see there are different entry points into the cross-pollination of ideas.
43:09So now that these networks are established, the idea was we want to take our mission of whatever
43:15is the ideology that we're cross-pollinating, we want to take it to the world. So Gordon Lindsay,
43:21he formed later Christ for the nations, plural, but before that it was the Voice of Healing and it was
43:26an
43:27international event. They were holding conventions internationally. In fact, for a period of time,
43:33Voice of Healing was named Worldwide Revival or something like this. You also have Charles Fuller,
43:39who later founded the Fuller School of World Mission. He had a mission-minded focus. You had
43:45Paul Rader, the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Each one of these were seeking to push the agendas
43:52worldwide. How do you do this? You need to fund it. So let's bring in Full Gospel Businessmen's
43:57Fellowship International into the picture. You've got conventions for the anti-Semitic works of
44:03Gerald Burton Winrod. You have conventions for the Christian Fundamentalism. You have conventions for
44:09the Christian Missionary Alliance. You had the Pentecostal Conventions. And now think about this.
44:15Now you have Full Gospel Conventions where cross-denominational relationships began to form
44:21with businessmen who had businesses and money so that they could bring charismatic and healing ideas
44:28far beyond Pentecostal denominations into the entire earth. That was really the mission that was formed
44:35here. And I've said this before on the podcast. Others have said it. The founder of the Full Gospel
44:41Businessmen's Fellowship International, Dima Shakarian, was the nephew of the Kardashian patriarch.
44:49But he had a person working with him as one of the directors. There's some question as to whether
44:55he was a director or he was one of the co-founders. But he was a man who lived not
45:00far from me who was
45:01a Branhamite. So Branhamism had a deep connection to FGBMI. And FGBMI was helping to fund all of these
45:10networks, organizations, platforms, ministries, and missions. So fast forward to the apostolic
45:17reformation. Think of everything that you see when you go to a convention for NAR. And think
45:22through everything that I have just mentioned. You've got politics, business, money, funding,
45:27missions, healing. All of these various things come together through all of these various networks.
45:33And the defenders of the Christian faith was one of the first real networking strategies to bring
45:42all of those ideas together. They did it through Christian fundamentalism, not Pentecostalism.
45:47And I think that's significant. If you're a researcher, you need to understand that
45:52many different ideologies, not just the holiness and Pentecostal themes, many different ideologies,
45:59some political, some anti-Semitic, were all part of the history of the core that created the networks
46:06that would be later branded as New Apostolic Reformation. It's not that they conceived New
46:12Apostolic Reformation. See, Peter Wagner, again, didn't say, I invented this. He said, instead,
46:18I see this thing and I'm calling it NAR. So it's something that did exist. And you can't flatten that
46:26network. You can't say that this is a flat network of Pentecostal organizations and intersections.
46:33This is a very vast network with many, many, many different layers. I'm certain by now,
46:40most of you can connect the dots. But for those of you who are new to this history and you
46:44need some
46:45help, go back to Charles Fuller, founder of the Fuller Theological Seminary, founder of the Fuller
46:51School of World Mission. Well, this Mission Institute is what would become eventually the
46:57academic home for the church growth and experimentation, I guess you would call it.
47:04It was far removed from Charles Fuller's original fundamentalism, but it was the bridge between
47:11the fundamentalist networks and C. Peter Wagner. C. Peter Wagner had a long tenure at Fuller,
47:17and his movement, his pushing of the world growth agenda. This turned all of the networks that we're
47:26talking about into a more signs and wonders-focused network. He introduced and developed, I would say
47:34he more than just introduced, he developed the concepts of spiritual warfare. He redefined and further
47:41empowered the idea of apostles and prophets in Nar, and he took things to a new level. That's what C.
47:49Peter Wagner did.
47:49Off to the side, you have John Wimber, and Wimber worked with C. Peter Wagner, and Wimber formed, as you
47:57know,
47:57the Vineyard Networks, the Signs, Wonders, etc. This is a bridge between what C. Peter Wagner was pushing and many
48:06of the
48:07charismatic supernatural events, all built on that same core that I've just described. So once you have
48:14that combination, and you connect Wagner to the territorial spirits, the spiritual mapping, the
48:20warfare ideas that I've covered in recent episodes, now you have this broad array of people in networks
48:29that can resemble platoons. And if you have platoons, you have to start thanking God's generals,
48:34and that's whenever people begin to write books called God's generals, so that they can see all of
48:41these networks, all of these vast nodes as armies at their disposal. So you're bringing in spiritual
48:46warfare, you're bringing in the apostolic and prophetic. But remember, if you go back all the
48:52way down through these layers, you're going to find each one of those things that I just described.
48:57Church growth already existed. Look at Amy Semple McPherson's massive megachurch and look at all
49:04of the people that wanted to copy that idea. Prophetic movement, that's exactly what Gerald
49:09Burton Winrod was pushing in his meetings and his conventions, and that's something that totally
49:16pre-existed the New Apostolic Reformation, the latter reign, etc. You have all of the Dominion and Seven
49:24Mountains Mandate ideas. I've covered this in a few podcasts, if you haven't heard them. I think I've
49:30got another one scheduled that I'll be doing soon with Pia Hugo. But Dominionism, Seven Mountains Mandate,
49:36you can take that all the way back to the Supreme Kingdom, which was an idea developed by leaders of
49:43the 1915 Ku Klux Klan. So all of these various layers of history, nothing is new is the point I'm
49:51trying to
49:51make here. You can see and identify through the layers of networks that are stacked up that eventually
49:58would be called NAR. You can see each of the elements of New Apostolic Reformation in one of
50:04those layers. So as a connecting the dots episode, I know that this has gone many different directions.
50:09Let's try to go to a bird's eye view and let's look down at everything that I have pieced together
50:14and try to make sense of it. I began this talking about the World Christian Fundamentals Association,
50:22and it is different than NAR. The two are not the same movement. The NAR did not simply inherit the
50:28World Christian Fundamentals theology or even their organizational structure, but they did develop from
50:35the networks that were established, as we've clearly shown here. It's really two theological worlds.
50:42The World Christian Fundamentals came out of the fundamentalist modernist debate, and later the
50:48apostolic networks, which emerged largely from Pentecostalism, Lateran, charismatic movement,
50:54church growth, restoration, etc. All of those networks that were a Pentecostal network had connections
51:02through these conventions, such as the defenders of the Christian faith, so that when you develop the
51:08NAR network, you're building it on top of a Pentecostal network, a defenders network, etc. So you've got
51:14different layers of networks was the focus there. Both faced a similar problem. Both the World Christian
51:23Fundamentals and the NAR faced a similar problem. How do you unite Christians from different churches with
51:29different denominations for an agenda when many of those denominations are not collaborating with each
51:36other? And whenever some of them aren't even sharing your focus, how do you unite them? And the answer is
51:42simple. You create a network. Fundamentalists could create the network, they could hold these conventions. In the
51:48conventions, you might see a Baptist, you might see a Presbyterian, you might see Methodist, Pentecostal,
51:54Independent, Fundamentalist, etc. It was a way of connecting different people, but also connecting different networks.
52:01That's why we see Fuller, who is, I can tie him very clearly to Christian fundamentalism and some of the
52:09elements that would later become Charismania or Latter Rain. That was an answer to the problem. We create a
52:16network. And so that is how, when you look through the Latter Rain, you look through Charismatic
52:21movement, you look through Pentecostalism, you can see different networks of different people, and they're all
52:26layered. So see Peter Wagner, when he branded all of this that he saw as New Apostolic Reformation,
52:32he mentions the networks, he does not mention the stacks of networks. I think that's the takeaway there.
52:38So later, these apostolic networks created cross-denominational boundaries, because again,
52:46they're inviting people with different ministries, different organizations, conferences,
52:51divisions, you had different theological positions. But they could be organized with all of this varying
52:58conflict of doctrine and scripture, organized around these ministries of apostles and prophets
53:04and prayer networks, training organizations, shared objectives, etc. So instead of one global
53:10denomination, in fact, that's one of the arguments of the people who are in NAR. They say,
53:15there is no NAR denomination. Well, that's true, because it is connecting networks of people and
53:22ideologies, and then layering those networks of people and ideologies. The thing to understand is
53:29the layers. That's a big takeaway from this. In those layers, you have one layer which may not match
53:36the one at the top, but it is required to get to the one above it. So you create a
53:42layer of the
53:42defenders of the Christian faith, for example. Very anti-Semitic, yet very prophetic. You can't say
53:49that the layer above it continued the anti-Semitism, but it did share many of the same objectives,
53:55and it just kind of reframed what it was talking about as an agenda or as a focus of crisis.
54:03So they
54:04rebranded the crisis and moved on and moved forward. You can actually see this happening in the Lateran
54:09movement itself through Branham sermons. Eventually, what was initially the crisis that they thought
54:18was communism, the communist crisis, it later actually shifts to Rome, and it's the Roman crisis,
54:23which is a little bit odd when you think about it. But that was how they framed it. We have
54:29conventions,
54:29we have networks, we have a crisis, we're going to later shift it to a different crisis. Media is
54:35essential in all of this. We have the initial publications, which went out in newsletters or
54:41pamphlets, later magazines. Whenever the radio ministries were developing, you had the radio broadcast
54:48ministries. When television comes on the scene, you have television. Media gives them a way outside of
54:55the conventions to further bring people together and invite them to the conventions. So in doing this,
55:02you can actually target a network that's not even part of what came to the convention. Suddenly that
55:07network joins in and the media starts to bring people together. So in essence, the technology
55:14changes over time, but the structure is exactly the same. All of these networks matter because again,
55:21they're stacked on top of each other. And looking from the top down, you begin to see how these were
55:28reshaped over time. So hopefully all of this makes sense. I know for a connecting the dots episode,
55:33I went in a lot of different directions, but they all come together through the networks.
55:38That's really the takeaway here. So if you've enjoyed the show and you want more information,
55:42you can check us out on the web. You can find us at william-brannum.org.
55:45For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read weaponized religion
55:50from Christian Identity to the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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