Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Come Out of Her My People Vol II:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNFN2XYR
In this episode, John and Charles examine the pivotal yet controversial role of Lee Vayle within the development of the William Branham movement. They trace his journey from a Canadian evangelist to a central figure in the Message, highlighting how Vayle’s proximity to Branham afforded him unique influence. Through roles such as co-editor of foundational publications and Branham’s self-declared theological explainer, Vayle helped codify and interpret doctrine, often manipulating sermon content to craft a coherent theological narrative. His deep involvement in publishing “20th Century Prophet” and “The Exposition of the Seven Church Ages” positioned him as an architect of key doctrinal texts, even as it ignited fierce internal controversy.
As the conversation unfolds, the hosts unpack Vayle’s doctrine of the “Parousia,” in which Christ’s return was redefined as a two-phase event beginning in 1963. This reinterpretation, drawn from Jehovah’s Witness theology and embraced by the message community, ultimately fractured it. The core of the schism arose when Vayle preached that Christ had vacated the mercy seat—ending His intercessory role—which most believers interpreted as declaring salvation closed. Despite William Branham’s own approval of Vayle’s work, backlash from the message community forced a shift toward verbatim transcript publication, culminating in Vayle’s resignation. The episode closes by connecting Vayle’s theology with present-day movements, emphasizing the heretical implications of doctrines that elevated Branham’s words above scripture.
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Who Was Lee Vayle and Why He Matters
06:28 The Branham-Vayle Relationship Begins
10:47 The Shift Toward Cessationism
13:04 Vayle’s Influence on Message Doctrine
18:04 Editorial Control and Ghostwriting
23:09 20th Century Prophet and the 1933 Baptism Story
28:02 Exposition of the Seven Church Ages Controversy
36:42 The Book’s Influence on Modern Apostolic Networks
44:05 Vayle Resigns as Editor; Verbatim Policy Begins
46:15 “Authorized Interpreter” and the Fake PhD
50:54 Building a Loyal Network of Churches
56:39 Introduction of the Parousia Doctrine
1:00:13 Christ Leaving the Mercy Seat (The Real Schism)
1:04:00 Doctrinal Fallout and the Rise of the Parousia People
1:06:15 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
______________________
– 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://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Come Out of Her My People Vol II:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNFN2XYR
In this episode, John and Charles examine the pivotal yet controversial role of Lee Vayle within the development of the William Branham movement. They trace his journey from a Canadian evangelist to a central figure in the Message, highlighting how Vayle’s proximity to Branham afforded him unique influence. Through roles such as co-editor of foundational publications and Branham’s self-declared theological explainer, Vayle helped codify and interpret doctrine, often manipulating sermon content to craft a coherent theological narrative. His deep involvement in publishing “20th Century Prophet” and “The Exposition of the Seven Church Ages” positioned him as an architect of key doctrinal texts, even as it ignited fierce internal controversy.
As the conversation unfolds, the hosts unpack Vayle’s doctrine of the “Parousia,” in which Christ’s return was redefined as a two-phase event beginning in 1963. This reinterpretation, drawn from Jehovah’s Witness theology and embraced by the message community, ultimately fractured it. The core of the schism arose when Vayle preached that Christ had vacated the mercy seat—ending His intercessory role—which most believers interpreted as declaring salvation closed. Despite William Branham’s own approval of Vayle’s work, backlash from the message community forced a shift toward verbatim transcript publication, culminating in Vayle’s resignation. The episode closes by connecting Vayle’s theology with present-day movements, emphasizing the heretical implications of doctrines that elevated Branham’s words above scripture.
00:00 Introduction
01:00 Who Was Lee Vayle and Why He Matters
06:28 The Branham-Vayle Relationship Begins
10:47 The Shift Toward Cessationism
13:04 Vayle’s Influence on Message Doctrine
18:04 Editorial Control and Ghostwriting
23:09 20th Century Prophet and the 1933 Baptism Story
28:02 Exposition of the Seven Church Ages Controversy
36:42 The Book’s Influence on Modern Apostolic Networks
44:05 Vayle Resigns as Editor; Verbatim Policy Begins
46:15 “Authorized Interpreter” and the Fake PhD
50:54 Building a Loyal Network of Churches
56:39 Introduction of the Parousia Doctrine
1:00:13 Christ Leaving the Mercy Seat (The Real Schism)
1:04:00 Doctrinal Fallout and the Rise of the Parousia People
1:06:15 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
______________________
– 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:
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend,
00:00:46Charles Paisley, the founder of christiangospelchurch.org, and the author of Come Out of Her, My People.
00:00:53Charles, it's good to be back and to talk all things the message, and today, Lee Vale,
00:01:00I've been wanting to get into this quite a bit. We've had a lot of people who are just
00:01:05slightly curious, and I have at least one person who has escaped the Lee Vale sect of the message,
00:01:11who's feeding me all kinds of stuff, and I don't think people realize the significant critical role
00:01:18that he played in bringing the message into what it is today. And, you know, even though when you
00:01:25look at his ministry and you look at, you know, even his sect, it's just, I think it's like a little
00:01:30converted house out in the middle of nowhere, but it seems so small, but yet he had such a big impact
00:01:37because of who he was to William Branham. Yeah, John, I'm looking forward to talking about Lee Vale
00:01:42today. Lee Vale is actually very, very important, and you're correct. He is one of the smaller sects of
00:01:49the message, but it is nonetheless a very important sect of the message. I would definitely put it in
00:01:55there with the major sects overall. If our listeners remember, we're working our way through
00:02:01the sects of the message, kind of in the chronological order that they broke away, and I
00:02:05might point you back to the diagram again that I've shared a few times, and if you look, the Lee Vale
00:02:11sect was the third major sect to break away from the message. The Faith Assembly Fellowship broke away
00:02:17in 1968. The Thunders, Joseph Coleman, broke away in 1974, and Lee Vale and his sect of the message
00:02:24is often referred to as the Perugia people. They broke away in 1977. That's when that began, and so
00:02:31we're going to walk through that today. We'll explain what the whole Perugia deal was and the other
00:02:37people who were some of the other prominent people that were in his sect of the message, but
00:02:41yeah, Lee Vale is a very interesting guy. Lee Vale is, in fact, a Canadian John.
00:02:47I don't know. Maybe not everyone realizes that, but Lee Vale was a Canadian. He was actually in
00:02:53Western Canada. He was kind of an itinerant traveling evangelist, you know, on a small scale
00:03:00back in the late 1940s. He first encountered William Branham in 1947. He was actually at some of William
00:03:07Branham's revivals in Western Canada. He didn't actually get an introduction to William Branham then,
00:03:12but that was his first time seeing him in a revival. You know, message legends actually put Lee Vale at
00:03:19the Sharon orphanage, John, at the very early days of the latter rain movement. He was supposedly
00:03:25connected to latter rain from the very earliest days. Now, just how true that is, I'm not actually
00:03:31sure. I'm not really sure if there's any truth to the legend, but it is nonetheless, you know, a notable
00:03:36legend. I've not been able to verify if it's true, but, you know, that was going on. In 1953,
00:03:43Lee Vale got invited to serve as a pastor of a church in West Palm Beach, Florida. So he came
00:03:50from Canada. He moved to Florida, and the associate pastor he had there was a man named Ned Iverson.
00:03:57You'll find William Branham talk about Ned Iverson quite a bit too, and the two of them pastored the
00:04:01church down there for a few years. Well, somewhere along that period of time, I believe it was,
00:04:09you know, 1954 or 55, Lee Vale has a prophecy. So he's, you know, into Pentecostalism. He gives
00:04:17his congregation there in West Palm Beach prophecy, and he says, behold, a prophet from the north shall
00:04:23come to tell us the truth. Okay? And as I have pointed out before, West Palm Beach is very close
00:04:32to the most southerly point in the United States. Okay? That's what I was thinking. How big of a
00:04:36prophecy is this? Everything's north. I know, exactly. So you don't get pretty well any preacher
00:04:43that's going to come to them is going to almost, you know, 99.9% of preachers are going to come from
00:04:48the north. So lo and behold, just shortly after that, William Branham comes to town and holds a
00:04:53revival series. And Lee Vale, through that revival series, actually meets William Branham face-to-face
00:04:58for the first time, and that begins their relationship. And of course, naturally, he
00:05:03thinks, this is the fulfillment to my prophecy. We have found our prophet. It's so odd thinking back
00:05:09about how we used to view prophets in this movement, and it wasn't limited to just the
00:05:14message. I have had conversations with Pentecostal people, with charismatic—I have a lot of Pentecostal
00:05:21charismatic friends—they still kind of believe this, and they have really taken away and distracted
00:05:28from what the word prophet really means. And in fact, I just had a conversation with David Fish—that'll
00:05:36soon be coming out, probably before this—but we were talking about how the emphasis on the gifts
00:05:41in the way that it is presented has distracted from the true meaning of a prophet. And yet, at the same
00:05:48time, you have ministers like this that are just throwing out random loose things that—I mean,
00:05:53anything north of Florida can be presented who's claiming as a prophet. Anybody who's coming can be
00:06:00this. But the way that the message has set the standards for charismatic movement, I think, is
00:06:07the significant part. Because William Branham kind of established this in that he and Gordon Lindsay were
00:06:15creating this pyramid scheme of prophets and ministries, and so everybody coming into this can
00:06:21very easily become one. It is all very odd, isn't it? You know, Lee Vale, after he met William Branham—and
00:06:29I believe already before he was associating with the Independent Assemblies of God—but through the
00:06:33Independent Assemblies of God, after he met William Branham, he ended up moving to Ohio, where he became
00:06:39pastor of another church in Ohio. And Lee Vale claimed his background was Baptist. But there are
00:06:47elements in his testimony that he was believed in speaking in tongues from 18 years old. So he was—if
00:06:53he was a Baptist, John, he must have been a Pentecostal Baptist. Because, you know, he had some really unusual
00:06:59Baptist practices, right? So, anyways, he claimed to be a Baptist, but, you know, obviously a tongue-speaking
00:07:07Baptist. And he claimed to be, you know, claimed to be pastoring a quote-unquote Baptist church in
00:07:14Ohio after he moved there in about 1950, you know, 1957, 58, roughly. So, once he was there, though, and he
00:07:23started working around William Branham quite a bit and with the Independent Assemblies of God—if you
00:07:27listen to his testimonies, it's about the year 1958 when Lee Vale starts to accept William Branham's
00:07:33Elijah claims, okay? So, while he did and had met William Branham a bit, 1958 is when he really
00:07:39started to accept what we would describe as the message—started to accept that William Branham
00:07:44was Elijah. And, of course, by that point, there's already a fairly well-established community,
00:07:48especially in Jeffersonville, who already believes William Branham is Elijah. So he's joining himself
00:07:53to a larger cult of personality that already existed at that point in time.
00:07:59So, when William Branham died, you know, and as those first schisms unfolded that we've talked
00:08:05about, Lee Vale actually aligned with the main sect. He stayed on the side of church order.
00:08:10And Lee Vale himself was actually among the most conservative of all of the preachers when it
00:08:16came to the gifts of the Spirit. And what Lee Vale told his audiences, Lee Vale told his audiences that
00:08:24he had a private conversation with William Branham in about 1959. And in about 1959, William Branham
00:08:30told him that the gifts of the Spirit were ceasing right then, and that there would be no more gifts of
00:08:36the Spirit after that. And Lee Vale actually became a cessationist after William Branham died. He no longer
00:08:42believed in the gifts of the Spirit. He didn't even have private gift rooms. So he went down this path
00:08:47where his followers are, I would say, you know, arguably the most closest thing in the message
00:08:54there is to cessationists. And it all ceased with William Branham. And you'll find some of the other
00:09:00main sect churches are not too terribly far from that. But Lee Vale is definitely a huge father and
00:09:06promoter of that idea that the gifts of the Spirit ceased with William Branham.
00:09:11It's funny you say that because among my Pentecostal and charismatic friends,
00:09:15we often, often the gifts come up in discussion, right? Because they, they really want to probe my
00:09:21head and see what it is, but I believe, and I'm very cautious not to try to sway people either way. So
00:09:28I usually don't give that up. But in the message, the gifts were this weird taboo thing,
00:09:33because William Branham, like Bosworth, tried to separate Pentecostalism. The main,
00:09:41the majority of Pentecostals believed that speaking in tongues was evidence of the Holy
00:09:45Spirit. And they tried to draw this dividing line in the sand and say, no, it's not. It's the healing.
00:09:51And so there was this big rift that came. Well, then somewhere in the middle of this,
00:09:56William Branham claimed that he himself could speak in tongues. And I've got a video up,
00:10:00but he basically fakes it before the entire audience that he's speaking to. He mentions going
00:10:07to, I can't remember the country, Jamaica or something. Finland, I think. Finland, yeah.
00:10:11Yeah. And he hears this, this phrase, humel and raha. And he comes back and he's speaking in an
00:10:16audience and he says, and I heard the most wonderful phrase, humel and raha. It was great.
00:10:21And it means this, I can't remember what it means, but he's telling it.
00:10:25I think something like this. Right. And he tells everybody that he heard it. And that was,
00:10:31that was wonderful to him. Well, then a few, maybe weeks, maybe months later,
00:10:37he's speaking to a crowd and he says, and humel and raha. Wait, what did I say? God just spoke
00:10:43through me. And so he fakes the whole thing. Right. And so you're, you're kind of in this weird place.
00:10:49If you understand his ministry, he really denounces people who emphasize speaking in tongues. And then
00:10:56here he is faking it. You know, when we talked through the church, church order episodes, there
00:11:03was a point in time when the brand of tabernacle and the entirety of the message community was,
00:11:09you know, rampant with the gifts of the spirit. I mean, prophecy, speaking in tongues,
00:11:14they would dance, shout, roll around on the floor, you know, foam with the mouth,
00:11:18slain in the spirit, the whole bit all through the church services. Right. And so, yeah,
00:11:24William Branham changed that. And so within the message, you have kind of a rainbow of opinions
00:11:29on the gifts of the spirit, which is maybe unusual for people on the outside, especially,
00:11:34I think for the NAR people who say, William Branham is this example that we all must be like.
00:11:40And it's kind of shocking that his, that maybe a large section of his cult of personality
00:11:44doesn't believe that. And like he was this, no, to, to the cult of personality, a lot of them,
00:11:50he was this one singular coming of this figure. Um, and he left and they don't really, a lot of
00:11:56them, like I said, they're more or less cessationists. They don't believe it's going to happen.
00:11:59And, and it's actually based according to Lee Vale and William Branham himself personally saying that,
00:12:04and then also in his sermons, really discouraging it. So Lee Vale's sect of the message is very much in
00:12:10that, uh, in that vein of thought. Um, so I think that's something important to point out.
00:12:16Now, before Lee Vale fell out, um, he was very important, uh, to the main sector of the message
00:12:23and to William Branham. Um, Lee Vale, uh, you know, as William Branham's campaign team fell apart,
00:12:30we've, we've talked about that in a revival history series, you know, as William Branham had his
00:12:35falling out with a voice of healing and he started to lose his earned backsters and FF Bosworth died
00:12:40and all these other things happened. William Branham starts needing to import and get new people,
00:12:45new talent on his team. Well, Lee Vale is one of those guys that after he loses a lot of his initial
00:12:52campaign team, um, he gets, um, offered positions on Branham's team to replace people who are leaving.
00:12:59And, um, among the many things that Lee Vale did on maybe about four of William Branham's revival tours,
00:13:07Lee Vale went along as kind of a, um, an opening act, a supporting evangelist who kind of did the
00:13:13earned Baxter bet where he would do some Bible teaching and then introduce William Branham. So
00:13:17Lee Vale had a little bit of that activity. He, it was, it was a minor role. Like I said,
00:13:22it was only about four of his revival series that he did that. But through that, um,
00:13:27um, he still, he started to get a relationship with William Branham where he was more or less
00:13:32like a sounding board for William Branham and William Branham would like bounce ideas off of
00:13:37him. This is how, you know, Lee Vale described it. And even though he only did about four revival
00:13:43series with him, he continued to be the sounding board for William Branham really for the rest of
00:13:47his life. Um, and William Branham would bounce ideas off of him. Like, what do you think about,
00:13:52hey, the seven thunders of revelation, Lee Vale, here's what I think, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:13:56And Lee Vale, oh yeah, that sounds nice. And here's what I think. So that's, you know,
00:14:00and they would have these exchanges, which William Branham would use to help develop some of his ideas.
00:14:06Um, and so Lee Vale played probably more so than any other preacher. He played a fairly important role
00:14:14as a sounding board in helping William Branham develop some of his, um, some of his various ideas,
00:14:22uh, that he came up with and preached. And William Branham even alluded to some of this on tape quite
00:14:28a bit because he would say concerning Lee Vale, if you have any questions about the things that I preach,
00:14:33the person you need to go ask is brother Lee Vale, Dr. Lee Vale, who's here on this tour with me.
00:14:39And so Lee Vale traveled along with him and was almost presented as a sort of a,
00:14:45I mean, he straight up presented as a theologian, a doctor of divinity, a PhD is what William Branham
00:14:50presented him as on the tours. And that the people, if they had any questions about what he preached
00:14:55or thought or believed they could go to Lee Vale and Lee Vale was the official explainer of, of the
00:15:01message in these things to the, to the people, um, on the tours. So it was a very important role that
00:15:07Lee Vale held in that way. And one of the interesting things to think through as you're
00:15:12doing this is the cross pollination, because when you have a main speaker who's on stage and he's the
00:15:17big showmanship act, right? And you have these people who come before him, often the main speaker
00:15:24listens to the people who are speaking before. And so as William Branham is there and he's, he's going
00:15:30to be preaching and doing his faith healing gig. He's listening to Lee Vale. And what's interesting
00:15:36is the cross pollination there because the things that Lee Vale says doctrinally can sometimes flow
00:15:43over into what William Branham says doctrinally and vice versa, because Lee Vale being a cult member,
00:15:50he can feed off of William Branham and William Branham can feed off of him. So if you look at it like
00:15:56that, Lee Vale could possibly potentially have been a part in just evolving William Branham himself to
00:16:03who he was. And considering the fact that we have the, you know, the secret audio letter from William
00:16:09Branham to Lee Vale, where they're kind of, if you read it and understand what William Branham is saying,
00:16:15he's telling Lee Vale to manipulate the crowds. You plant this seed and I'm going to follow it up with
00:16:21my ministry and grow it into this deity thing, right? So he and Lee Vale are kind of collaborating in a
00:16:28indoctrination manipulation scheme, according to this recording. Well, this went far back before,
00:16:34prior to the recording, because they're, they're kind of working together on stage.
00:16:38Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I think it's very fair to credit Lee Vale with influencing
00:16:45William Branham's views on a lot of things, honestly. I mean, the people have the idea,
00:16:50of course, in the message that, you know, angels and the Holy Spirit and all this stuff came to
00:16:54William Branham and gave him all of this divine revelation. No, that never happened. William Branham
00:16:59tricked us on every stitch of that. The truth is, every stitch of it, he was reading out of his library
00:17:05books, you know, and in that process of getting all these ideas out of his library books,
00:17:10Lee Vale is one of the people, we know of others besides Lee Vale, but Lee Vale was one of the key
00:17:16figures that he was sounding this information to, getting feedback from Lee Vale, using his opinions
00:17:22to then tweak his views a little bit, you know, maybe to pre-address some certain criticisms in it.
00:17:30And then he'd preach it, he'd deliver it, right? And Lee Vale would help him set it up. You're exactly right,
00:17:34John. And Lee Vale played, I think, calling it a collaborative role in developing some of the core
00:17:41beliefs of the message. Lee Vale was absolutely involved in that. Another person who was absolutely
00:17:46involved in that, John, was Bankswood's wife. You're right. I had a person contact me who was
00:17:52feeding me all kinds of inside information. In fact, a large part of my website exists because of the
00:17:58information that this person was giving me. And this person informed me, not just the way in which
00:18:07she was feeding William Branham information, to the extent I'm told that she was helping, you know,
00:18:13prepare the sermon notes. So he would go out and some of the doctrines were, it was Jehovah's Witness
00:18:18doctrine, she was preparing in his sermon notes. And then he wouldn't prepare his own sermons, he would
00:18:24go speak from what she had prepared. That's exactly right. And let me describe just a little bit how
00:18:29that works. So Bankswood and his wife were William Branham's next door neighbors, okay? Walk out his
00:18:36back door, walk across the property line, he's at Bankswood's house, okay? Bankswood was put in charge of
00:18:46the literature publishing efforts of the early message community. And so what turned into spoken
00:18:53words publications? Bankswood's was the original leader of that, okay? And in 1962, William Branham
00:19:03asked Lee Vale to become the editor of all of his public, all of his sermons within that, within
00:19:11that franchise to produce literature which Bankswood's had. So Bankswood's was in charge of. So Lee Vale was
00:19:17at Bankswood's house with him and his wife working on the literature publishing endeavors, John. And so
00:19:24when William Branham would come over and use Lee Vale as a sounding board, Bankswood's wife was there
00:19:30with Lee Vale helping out in all the endeavors. So he was he was sounding off both of them at the same
00:19:34time, okay? This is this is how it worked. And some of it they he would do by tape or by phone call. But yeah,
00:19:40they were Bankswood's wife, in a sense, acted as a secretary to Bankswood's and Lee Vale through
00:19:46that period. And that's how she that's how she was in the position to help him write his sermon notes
00:19:51and do all of those sort of things. It was it was as part of the franchise that turned into spoken word
00:19:57publications, right? So you think of what Helen Borders does for Mr. Joseph today. That's what she was
00:20:03doing all those years ago, Bankswood's wife. So we can talk more about Miss Helen Borders at a later
00:20:10date. But anyway, as we as we as we kind of move along there, that's what Lee Vale was doing. He got
00:20:17invited to be the publisher of literature, the editor of the literature that William Branham was writing.
00:20:26And let me explain to why that was necessary. So as William Branham kept having falling out with
00:20:33voice of healing and and and the voice of healing people, before Lee Vale, the editor of William
00:20:41Branham's literature was Anna Jean Moore, who is Jack Moore's daughter. Well, Anna Jean Moore got to the
00:20:49point where she said, these sermons are incoherent. I cannot edit these anymore. It got that bad. Yeah.
00:20:56And she's like, I can't. This doesn't make sense to me. I can't edit these anymore.
00:21:01You really need somebody who's closer to you and travels with you that can you know,
00:21:05that can ask you, what did you mean here? And what did you mean there?
00:21:09Because it's nonsensical to her. And she she more or less bows out from editing all of the literature.
00:21:17So and voice of healing, you know, had the big printing presses and everything. All the literature
00:21:21was still published at voice of healing back then. But she bows out as editor. And so Lee Vale
00:21:26comes in and takes over as editor to backfill Anna Jean Moore's position in that in that group.
00:21:33So Anna Jean Moore was doing it before Lee Vale. And Lee Vale actually credits Joseph Mattson-Bose for
00:21:41coming up with the idea and recommending him to replace Anna Jean Moore. So that kind of just kind
00:21:47of give you an idea what's going on behind the scenes with all these people back then.
00:21:50It also gives you a special inside view of what it would have been like to be working with William
00:21:56Branham. And keep in mind, Voice of Healing evolved into Christ for the Nations Institute,
00:22:02which is significant in the charismatic and now the NAR movements. These people knew that the sermons
00:22:08were incoherent. And if you read between the lines of what she's saying there, she's really saying
00:22:16doctrinally, you're like a ping pong ball.
00:22:19I think that's an accurate statement, John. And we can put up here on the screen an interview.
00:22:25Anna Jean actually did an interview with, I don't know who it was, somebody from Oral Roberts
00:22:31University. And the archives of her interview about her no longer being able to do the editing
00:22:38is actually in the archives at Oral Roberts University. So all this is recorded out there,
00:22:43actually, for people to just, you can read it your own, you know, you can read what Anna Jean
00:22:48Moore said herself and compare that to what William Branham said. And you'll find that somebody was
00:22:52spinning a bunch of stuff to us in the message about how all of this unfolded, right? Because
00:22:57it doesn't actually match what actually happened. So anyways, Lee Vale takes over as editor. And one of
00:23:06the very first things, John, that Lee Vale put together for William Branham was this book right
00:23:12here called 20th Century Prophet. This is the very first, what I would call the very first message
00:23:20biography of William Branham. Okay, before this, there's other biographies that have been published, but
00:23:26I would think of them more of his latter rain biography. They were produced by people who weren't
00:23:31necessarily in his cult of personality. This is the first biography of William Branham published by
00:23:38and through his cult of personality. And Lee Vale was the editor of this book. And I want to point out,
00:23:44as you're looking at the book, if you're listening and don't have the video feed, I'm going to point
00:23:49it out. But on the cover is what looks like an ancient Bible scroll. And that is to signify William
00:23:57Branham as the prophet. The interesting thing is the contradiction in that image, because there
00:24:02wasn't a single prophecy that was written down on a scroll, as the Old Testament prophets did,
00:24:08while William Branham presented himself to be an Old Testament prophet. Every single prophecy,
00:24:13the only thing that you can do to identify one of his prophecies is to hear him say it after the fact,
00:24:20versus the ancient Hebrew prophets, whenever they prophesied, they wrote it down so that afterwards,
00:24:26their prophecies could be evaluated to see if it was a prophecy from God or not.
00:24:31So the significance of that image is just, it's astounding to me.
00:24:35This biography was wrote before William Branham died, like the text of it and everything. And
00:24:40William Branham personally approved this biography to be printed. This was one of the very first
00:24:44publications of what became spoken word publications, John. And so if you want to know
00:24:49what William Branham believed about himself at the end of his life, this book is what he believed about
00:24:55himself. This, the transcripts of all this was created before he died. Okay. And Lee Vale edited it.
00:25:01So it's right here. I don't think maybe not a lot of people realize this, but this was actually
00:25:07initially wrote before he died. And it came out just after he died to the message community.
00:25:12There's some interesting stuff in here, John. One thing I will point out to you, which is on page 37,
00:25:20which again, I don't think a lot of people notice. Lee Vale wrote that the only person who heard the
00:25:30voice at the river in 1933 that said, as John the Baptist was sent to forerun my first coming,
00:25:37so you have been sent with a message to forerun my second coming. Lee Vale very clearly says on page 37
00:25:43that the only person who heard that voice speak at the river that day was William Branham.
00:25:49Okay. So I think that this is, there's things here that were known, and I think it's just important
00:25:58to point that out to people. Lee Vale admits in here that there is not a single known witness,
00:26:04when he wrote this book in the 60s, that corroborates William Branham's story of what happened at the
00:26:091933 baptism. And again, I just want to really point that out here in this book.
00:26:14You're right, and it is significant to understand the mentality of William Branham before he died,
00:26:21especially in the later years, because as we have discussed often, his mental faculties were
00:26:27really failing towards the end of his life, which is going to also be interesting the deeper we go with
00:26:33the Lee Vale doctrine, because the years in which he was mentally unstable were the years in which
00:26:40everybody believed that he had the divine word of God. And some people take it to the opposite extreme
00:26:47and say that the years from 1947 up until 63, when William Branham was in the height of his fame,
00:26:54they say that that was uninspired. So this whole thing, the book that you have,
00:26:59the view into his head, is significant. Let me read you just the excerpt here,
00:27:04since we probably won't put pictures up here because Voice of God has all this copyrighted,
00:27:08because it's their literature. The quote is on page 37,
00:27:13as many ran in fear and others knelt in prayer, a voice spoke out of the pillar of fire and said to him,
00:27:18William Branham, as John the Baptist was the forerunner of the first coming of Christ,
00:27:23so your message is the forerunner of the second coming of Christ. Of course,
00:27:27he alone heard the words. And it goes on to describe what other people may or may not have
00:27:34actually witnessed, which we talked a little bit about in some prior episodes when we did the 1933
00:27:40stuff. So other people claim that there was some sort of a loud explosion when that happened,
00:27:47like a sonic boom or a dynamite blast or something of that nature. But nobody heard,
00:27:53nobody heard or saw what William Branham heard or saw. And Lee Vale is pretty open about that
00:27:58in that book. So Lee Vale ends up editor of the publications, and that one comes out first.
00:28:04The one though, John, that really is, I would say, super, super important is, I have another one here,
00:28:10The Exposition of the Seven Church Ages. This is the really, really important one. When Lee Vale came on in 1961 to the team,
00:28:20it was actually the Church Ages that he was brought on most specifically to work on. And that is specifically
00:28:28what Anna Jean had turned down. Believe it or not, when William Branham died, there were not a lot of his
00:28:34sermons in print. Only, I would say, maybe 30 of his sermons were actually in print when he died. It
00:28:41wasn't actually all that lot. Most of the ones that had been put in print had been basically wrote up,
00:28:47typed up as abridged versions, and had been ran in Herald of Faith. That's where most of them were.
00:28:53There wasn't spoken word magazines before he died, like where they printed out full transcripts. That
00:28:58didn't exist before he died. That all came after. But before he died, there were abridged sermons where
00:29:03they basically, about one-third of his sermon would get summarized up and put into, ran in Herald
00:29:09Faith magazine, or occasionally there would be one in Voice magazine, or there was also occasional
00:29:15times where there would be one in Voice healing, you know, just the abridged versions of his sermons.
00:29:20And that really was the only thing that was in print. And that's why Anna Jean Moore had got
00:29:23started because she was basically abridging them, summarizing them so they could fit, you know, on,
00:29:29you know, maybe five to six pages in a magazine instead of, you know, the whole sermon and spoken word
00:29:34publications. So, anyways, Lee Vale is to publish the seven church ages. And this is William Branham's
00:29:43first really big, you know, big series to be published. And in that sermon, I mean, I, if our
00:29:50listeners don't know, roughly William Branham is preaching that the history of the church since Jesus
00:29:55Christ is broken into seven ages, symbolized by the seven churches of Asia, and there's a messenger to
00:30:00every age and he is the messenger to age number seven. And that's, that's kind of the summary
00:30:05in the end of the world is going to happen now because he's here and it's age number seven.
00:30:10Well, Lee Vale, it actually started, John, after, after, after Anna Jean Moore said she couldn't do it,
00:30:22William Branham first went to JT Parnell. So we've talked about JT Parnell a few times. JT Parnell was a
00:30:28message polygamist. He started being a polygamist in 1965 after William Branham preached marriage and
00:30:33divorce. And William Branham actually had one of JT Parnell's polygamist wives type up the original
00:30:42manuscript, John, for the seven church ages book. And one of JT Parnell's polygamist wives who typed
00:30:49up that manuscript provided it to Lee Vale as the basis to start editing it. And then, having got that,
00:30:56William, or Lee Vale starts working with William Branham to go through all the text of the pages and
00:31:03everything and turn it into the book that we have today. I want to talk some more about that though.
00:31:09Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern
00:31:15Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements
00:31:21into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's
00:31:27website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research
00:31:35of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
00:31:42audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation
00:31:48on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause,
00:31:54you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top. And as always,
00:31:59be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:32:04On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:32:09It's really funny when you think about it, because whenever I first published the information that
00:32:14William Branham openly supported polygamy, I got a lot of backlash from message preachers. They're
00:32:21saying, no, he didn't. You know his words, because he speaks out of both sides of his mouth. You can
00:32:26find some sermons where he condemns it, but you find other sermons where he praises it. And the point
00:32:31that all of them seem to miss is William Branham worked closely with multiple polygamists, and he
00:32:38simply didn't care that they were polygamists. So if he were this outspoken prophet trying to true
00:32:45the bride up for the last days, and polygamy in his view would have been wrong, he would have openly
00:32:50condemned it and not supported these guys. But he worked with polygamists. Oh, absolutely. William
00:32:56Branham worked with all kinds of dirty scoundrels, and he knew they were dirty scoundrels when he worked
00:33:00with them. Yeah. Absolutely. And yeah, the exposition of seven church ages, you know, this beloved message
00:33:07book was in part the product of message polygamists. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the truth.
00:33:12Just as the, you know, a very large faction of the message community globally was recruited by
00:33:18polygamists, especially in Africa. You know, Sidney Jackson was a polygamist, the man who spearheaded
00:33:23message outreach efforts in Africa after William Branham died. And J.T. Parnell, we might do a full
00:33:28episode on him. He launched a polygamist sect of the message after William Branham died. Yeah. So at
00:33:36any rate, it's kind of around the writing of the seven church ages where Lee Vale starts to get into
00:33:44trouble and have disagreements with the rest of the message community. So when Lee Vale wrote this book,
00:33:50John, I'm sure you have been in the message your whole life. This is actually a fairly controversial
00:33:55book in the message, isn't it? Yeah. And this book in the message is controversial,
00:33:59not because of William Branham preached the sermons on the seven seals, but because Lee Vale
00:34:05edited the book. And when I say he edited the book, like he, on one level, he did two different
00:34:13things. On one level, he cleaned up William Branham's grammar. There's like, if you go back and
00:34:18you listen to the original sermons William Branham preached and compare it to here,
00:34:21Lee Vale subtracted roughly 20% of what William Branham said. And if you go through and kind of
00:34:29compare it out, you'll find out the 20% that Lee Vale subtracted was, you know, it was junk.
00:34:37It was meaningless. It had no, it was not substantive to the topic. It was William Branham going out in
00:34:44left field and chasing a squirrel. It was William Branham misspeaking. It was William Branham sneezing and
00:34:49coughing and hemming. It's that sort of stuff that Lee Vale cut out. But John, to the main sect of the
00:34:56message, especially the deity cult, and especially a lot of the people who were starting to treat
00:35:02William Branham's sermons as scripture, it was like he was deleting verses out of the Bible because he
00:35:08deleted William Branham's coughs. You know, it was that bad, John. And so one side of the message is
00:35:15outrage that Lee Vale has deleted roughly 20% of William Branham's sermons when he published the
00:35:22book. Is it possible, John, that Lee Vale edited out the rapturing faith? Oh my goodness, like we just
00:35:28can't take that risk. So that was like one side of the Fuhrer that started against Lee Vale.
00:35:35There's so much I could say there, and I don't know how to trim it down to, because it's a side
00:35:40story to this podcast. But the Pentecostal movement, by and large, was trained through
00:35:45British Israelism to take specific verses and emphasize the power of each individual verse.
00:35:53And they do that with the Bible. Well, then the message comes along, and William Branham presents
00:35:58the idea of the spoken word, which eventually evolved into word of faith, etc. And they had the
00:36:04same philosophy, but they applied it to William Branham's words. So to remove one single sentence
00:36:09of this is blasphemy. And the significance of this particular book is crazy because in the,
00:36:16I guess it was the previous episode, we mentioned Chris Reed and Morningstar, Stature of a Perfect Man.
00:36:22The image of the pyramid that he's showing is the church ages. And Reed, who is influential in
00:36:30IHOPKC, and you know, all of these groups that are looking to Morningstar and connected with them
00:36:37through the NAR apostolic networks, he's feeding William Branham's seven church ages into them,
00:36:44right? And he very cautiously changes. I don't know if you caught it, Charles, but he changed in
00:36:50his version of the diagram where all of the message cults has the word Branham for the Laodicean church
00:36:58age. He simply, he took the word out and replaced it with another word. So he's preaching Branhamism.
00:37:04He takes Branham's name out of it. And yet he's preaching this, the seven church ages. It is one
00:37:11of the most significant and controversial doctrines in the message. I know, John. And it's a really big
00:37:18deal to the main sect, the people who are adopting quote preaching, the people who are implementing tape
00:37:24churches. It's a really big deal that Lee Vale subtracted portions of William Branham's sermons
00:37:31out. They are, it's outrageous to them. Well, the other sect of the message, the sect I come from,
00:37:37John, they were upset for the exact opposite reason, okay? It wasn't what Lee Vale took out,
00:37:43but it was what he added that outraged the sect of the message I come from. And there is actually
00:37:48quite a lot of stuff in here that William Branham did not actually preach when he preached the seals,
00:37:56or when he preached the church ages. And what Lee Vale did is he sort of integrated some of William
00:38:03Branham's sermon on the seven seals with his sermon on the church ages. And so you end up with a bit of
00:38:09a synthesis where Lee Vale is merging some sermons in here that weren't really part of when William Branham
00:38:16originally preached it. And so it basically comes out, this book is a good 30 to 40 percent different
00:38:24than the original sermons that William Branham preached on this topic. And to the stuff he cut
00:38:29out, well, the people are outraged that he cut out the, maybe he cut out rapturing faith for goodness
00:38:33sakes, you know? And then to the stuff that he added, he is like, he is inserting his words in
00:38:39the place of the prophet. It's like he's adding to the Bible. So he's, it's, people are,
00:38:44they get him coming and going on this, John. And Lee Vale, Lee Vale is kind of blindsided by this.
00:38:51And the truth is, this was published like the year after William Branham died. But here's the
00:38:55thing that people didn't, I don't think they realized, William Branham proofread this thing.
00:39:01William Branham blessed the whole thing. William Branham, and Lee Vale has the tapes to prove it,
00:39:06don't he? So William Branham actually indeed did go page by page through this book with Lee Vale
00:39:13and say, yes, keep that, keep that, no, take that out, take that out, yes, keep that. William Branham
00:39:17literally did that page by page for this book. And maybe we can put a little bit of the recording
00:39:23up here, John, of when he did that. But yeah, and Lee Vale, after all of the outrage he had kept,
00:39:29William Branham told him to destroy all the evidence because Lee Vale had recorded it.
00:39:33But Lee Vale published all the tapes of all of his time with William Branham going through,
00:39:37yes, this page, that page, and basically proved that William Branham did indeed go through this
00:39:43book with him page by page. And it is indeed what William Branham wanted it to be, regardless
00:39:48of what anyone else in the message has to say about it. This is William Branham's work.
00:39:53Brother Lee, in section 4 here on page, page 32, and number 4. Don't you think it would be a good thing
00:40:06right there or that you're speaking about Abraham, the job himself being a regime of what Pharaoh was thinking
00:40:17and the tent behind him, that it would be good to place the scripture there.
00:40:23I believe it's found in Hebrews, the fourth chapter of the twelfth verse,
00:40:28for the word of God is sharper than a two-inch sword
00:40:30and deserves the thought of the heart's joint,
00:40:34but this was the word of God manifested.
00:40:38And I would show there then that this was the word manifested.
00:40:43See, God himself is the word,
00:40:47and it's the word that discerns the thought that's in the heart,
00:40:50and that's how Jesus, in the beginning, being God,
00:40:54and God loves the word.
00:40:56The word made manifest.
00:40:58You see, how you need to know the thoughts in the heart
00:41:02because he is the word.
00:41:05Get it now?
00:41:06And then the portion of the word that's lying to this day,
00:41:09which is a prophet, also will know the thoughts in the heart
00:41:14because it will be the word made manifest in a man
00:41:19that can know the thoughts that's in the heart.
00:41:23Thank you, Brother Lill.
00:41:24Brother Lill?
00:41:25Um, hey, um, what was that number now?
00:41:28I forgot it.
00:41:29What is that?
00:41:30No.
00:41:3141.
00:41:32Page 41.
00:41:33And this is number five on the side.
00:41:36Very beautiful.
00:41:37This is, I really like this.
00:41:39And I like all of it.
00:41:40And this is really outstanding here.
00:41:42When, uh, Moses is speaking here about raising up,
00:41:45uh, uh, the Lord has raised him up a prophet.
00:41:49And God has spoke to them himself out of the fire up on the mountains.
00:41:52And he promises here that he'll not do that no more,
00:41:55but he'll always speak to them through a prophet.
00:41:58The Lord chose God to raise up a prophet.
00:42:01And you might, uh, emphasize that a little bit,
00:42:04see that God promises here that from which forth when he speaks,
00:42:07it'll be through a prophet.
00:42:09Not in the world,
00:42:10he got all of it,
00:42:11but he's on bar to the fire and so forth like that.
00:42:14But he'll lose you in trouble.
00:42:15Thank you, Brother Lill.
00:42:16It's nonsensical, man.
00:42:18And the argument,
00:42:19the controversy itself is proof positive that the people have replaced the Bible with the words of William Branham.
00:42:26That argument,
00:42:27that fight,
00:42:27you know,
00:42:28to keep it exactly as it is verse vibe.
00:42:30I laugh using the word verse because it's not a verse.
00:42:33He was,
00:42:33he was speaking and he was speaking like a ping pong ball,
00:42:36but they,
00:42:37they take each single sentence that he said,
00:42:40and they've turned it into a verse.
00:42:41And remember,
00:42:42as I just said,
00:42:44Chris Reed and Morningstar,
00:42:45not only Chris Reed,
00:42:46but many,
00:42:47many of these NAR guys are trying to promote Branham as the,
00:42:51you know,
00:42:52more than,
00:42:53more than a prophet.
00:42:54They,
00:42:54they like to take this philosophy that he's part of the coming,
00:42:59you know,
00:43:00Joel's army manifestation,
00:43:01et cetera.
00:43:02He's the one who laid the groundwork,
00:43:03which by and large he did.
00:43:05But if you understand that his words were like a ping pong ball and other people were manipulating,
00:43:12combining his words and the movement by and large viewed his verse,
00:43:17his words as a Bible,
00:43:19you really,
00:43:19really understand how,
00:43:21I don't know what the word is.
00:43:23It's heretical.
00:43:24You really understand how heretical this is.
00:43:26I know it,
00:43:27it,
00:43:28it's,
00:43:29if you're not inside the message,
00:43:30it is maybe hard to wrap your mind around just how big of a deal this was when this all happened.
00:43:35But this was life and death issues to the message community.
00:43:39You know,
00:43:39whether he was adding to or taking away from,
00:43:41this was life and death issue when this happened in the early message community.
00:43:46And what happens,
00:43:49John,
00:43:49is basically the uproar and the furor and the backlash,
00:43:53when this comes out.
00:43:54And this is the first major publication from spoken word publications right here.
00:43:58When the backlash of all that happens,
00:44:01the reaction of the group is essentially that they're going to publish all the William Branham sermons verbatim moving forward.
00:44:11So it was actually the furor and backlash to this book which led to all of the spoken word transcripts to be published verbatim.
00:44:18So this came out,
00:44:20I want to say in 66,
00:44:2167,
00:44:22I have the exact dates in my,
00:44:23in my book,
00:44:25but that came out right.
00:44:27Really,
00:44:27a spoken word was starting off.
00:44:29Spoken word was named spoken word in 1967.
00:44:33If,
00:44:33if you remember back a few episodes ago,
00:44:35we talked about how Banks Woods resigned more or less in protest from all of his positions when Billy Paul overthrew the Branham Tabernacle.
00:44:45Well,
00:44:46he was still the head of what turned into spoken word publications when he resigned.
00:44:50And following his resignation,
00:44:51they put Roy Borders in charge.
00:44:53So Bank Woods was in charge of spoken word publications before Roy Borders.
00:44:57Roy Borders took over and that's when it was named spoken word publications.
00:45:02And this was the first,
00:45:03um,
00:45:04real,
00:45:04really the first literature that came out of spoken word publications.
00:45:07This biography and this 20th century prophet book,
00:45:09these were the original publications out of there.
00:45:12And after Roy Borders took over and,
00:45:16um,
00:45:16you know,
00:45:17in that transition point,
00:45:18a time after William Branham died.
00:45:20And so as that happened,
00:45:23John,
00:45:24um,
00:45:25Roy Borders and Lee Vale kind of have a little bit of a falling out.
00:45:29Lee Vale resigns as chief editor and Roy Borders makes the decision from here on out,
00:45:35everything will be published verbatim.
00:45:38And that is what they started to do.
00:45:40It's essentially the message version of the book of Mormon.
00:45:44You,
00:45:45you literally take the words of William Branham,
00:45:48which is the new Bible,
00:45:50right?
00:45:50And it's combined with the old Bible.
00:45:51It is exactly what the Mormons do.
00:45:54And I've heard sermon after sermon about,
00:45:57you know,
00:45:57the Mormons and how they're a cult and how they have added to or taken away from the word of God.
00:46:01Well,
00:46:02they're doing the same thing in the message.
00:46:03It's quite something else,
00:46:04isn't it?
00:46:05So after,
00:46:07after Lee Vale resigns more or less stops being the chief editor of all of the literature for spoken word publications and the franchise doing all the message literature,
00:46:17he starts really to lean into his role as the authorized explainer of the message that really is where he kind of takes his lead and his big focus after that.
00:46:28He feels like it's his job to go around and help people understand the complexities of the message that are hard to understand.
00:46:37And let me give you a quote from William Branham.
00:46:39William Branham endorsed Lee Vale very,
00:46:41very highly.
00:46:42This is from a sermon,
00:46:43Jesus Christ the same yesterday to Dave forever from 1958.
00:46:47William Branham said,
00:46:48if there's anything you lack of understanding,
00:46:52something that you do not understand,
00:46:55my associate brother Vale here is available at all times to explain anything that seems mysterious to you ministering brethren or wherever you are or any lay member or anything.
00:47:09Wow.
00:47:10So William Branham made quotes like that about Lee Vale a lot.
00:47:14And that endorsement from the prophet of God,
00:47:17John,
00:47:18basically gave Lee Vale supreme authority to interpret the message after William Branham was gone.
00:47:26And Lee Vale played that up to great effect.
00:47:29William Branham did indeed make Lee Vale the authorized explainer of the message.
00:47:34And so that is what Lee Vale undertook to do for the rest of his life.
00:47:40And he took that very,
00:47:42very seriously.
00:47:43And another thing that is quite notable is,
00:47:46you know,
00:47:46all throughout the healing revivals,
00:47:48wherever they went or whenever William Branham introduced Lee Vale to kind of back up Lee Vale and make it look like he was this great authority.
00:47:56He would always call him Dr. Lee Vale.
00:48:00Right.
00:48:00And he would always emphasize there's times he point blank said Lee Vale had a PhD.
00:48:05He'd say things like this.
00:48:07But we but come to find out Lee Vale never went to college.
00:48:11Lee Vale was not a doctor.
00:48:13Lee Vale did not have a PhD.
00:48:15None of that was true.
00:48:17William Branham made it all up and Lee Vale went along with him all of those years allowing him to say he was a doctor and allowing him to say he was this great theologian.
00:48:31And it was all just an act all along, John.
00:48:33The whole thing was a hoax.
00:48:34It was a scam.
00:48:35Yeah, and, you know, I've had people tell me that's not significant.
00:48:39That doesn't matter.
00:48:40And I'm like, it doesn't matter that he was lying.
00:48:44And when they throw on this word vindication, he's the vindicated prophet of God, referring to William Branham.
00:48:50Well, when you have a person who's self he himself is making the vindication by saying, here's Dr. Lee Vale and he supports me.
00:48:58He's a very educated man and he supports what I say.
00:49:02You're making your own vindication.
00:49:05Well, let me turn it around the other way, John.
00:49:07Wouldn't it be a failed discernment?
00:49:09I mean, if he's discerning Dr. Vale to be a doctor, I mean, isn't that evidence that William Branham doesn't really have a gift of discernment?
00:49:15I mean, isn't that evidence that William Branham, so obviously William Branham's just lying and knows it's not true.
00:49:21But, I mean, if he's this great prophet, obviously William Branham has no gift of discernment.
00:49:26Obviously, William Branham is unable to know these things, right?
00:49:29Because he's incorrectly discerning someone to be a doctor when they're not.
00:49:34Okay, so I go down that road with it.
00:49:36I mean, it just, all of this stuff blows up William Branham.
00:49:39He's dishonest.
00:49:41He has no gift like he really pretends.
00:49:43It just blows him up.
00:49:44And he's like faking this guy as an authority.
00:49:46Yes, this great authority agrees with me.
00:49:49But he's not really an authority.
00:49:50Yeah, and even what you said right there, I want to pause because for the listeners who weren't in the message cult, that statement would be a little bit hard to understand.
00:50:00But in the message, which included the latter rain, by and large the latter rain movement accepted this version of a prophet.
00:50:09An all-knowing, all-seeing, omnipotent God, basically, is what a prophet is.
00:50:15Peer into your soul.
00:50:16Peer into your soul.
00:50:17Can hold your hand and look in your eyes and see everything that you've done.
00:50:22Basically, they were creating a sorcerer.
00:50:24This is a sorcerer, not a prophet.
00:50:27Versus a biblical prophet is a person who can't control it.
00:50:31Whenever God speaks through him, God just happens to speak through him.
00:50:34It's not this, I don't know, it's not this flowing river that flows through his mouth with an on-off switch.
00:50:43It's literally God chooses whenever it's going to happen, and it happens.
00:50:47But they have turned it into, the prophet is the sorcerer.
00:50:51He can peer into your very soul.
00:50:54And so, I mean, obviously, we know this throws William Branham into question that he did that.
00:50:58But who else does it also throw into question?
00:51:00It throws into question Lee Vale, who went along with it for all those years, right?
00:51:04So, Lee Vale himself, obviously, just through that interchange, proves Lee Vale will lie on William Branham's behalf.
00:51:13That is, you know, and I pointed that out with a lot of these, you know, with people as we went through.
00:51:18They lie knowingly on William Branham's behalf.
00:51:21Like, Lee Vale lied on William Branham's behalf a lot.
00:51:25And so there's a reason we can't really trust any of their testimonies, right?
00:51:29Because there is a proven track record of them lying to support William Branham.
00:51:35And this whole going along with being a doctor of divinity thing was Lee Vale lying to support William Branham.
00:51:41And it's very – it destroys their credibility is what really makes it so important.
00:51:47It proves to us we can't really trust what they say to us, especially about William Branham, because they have a track record of dishonesty on that subject.
00:51:55Absolutely.
00:51:56I mean, this is not something that you see in normal Christian circles.
00:52:00I'll say it like that.
00:52:02If you're in the message, this kind of, you know, you're so used to people lying to, you don't care.
00:52:07You kind of turn it off.
00:52:08But if you were to go to a reputable church with a reputable preacher who has went through his studies and he has actually got a doctor of divinity and knows the work involved and the study involved to get that, they're actually offended by this.
00:52:24Why is this man lying?
00:52:25This guy doesn't have a doctor of divinity.
00:52:27He doesn't have a clue about scripture because he's never been trained.
00:52:32And therein lies the problem.
00:52:34In the message, in the Lateran movement by and large, they teach you and indoctrinate you to believe that the study of the Bible and the discourse of study for centuries, for, you know, millennia, having gone through that and understanding what it is you're preaching about is heretical.
00:52:54They actually teach that it's heresy to go through and get your doctor of divinity.
00:52:58So now think about that.
00:53:00You have a movement that condemns every single person with a degree in religion whatsoever.
00:53:08And they call the seminaries, they call them cemeteries.
00:53:11But yet here's the person who's instigating all of that, giving the title to Lee Vail, who's his assistant.
00:53:18Lee Vail, through these years, you know, while he was still, you know, popular before all the Perugia stuff happened, he became – he traveled quite widely.
00:53:27He traveled to Europe.
00:53:29He worked alongside Ewald Frank, toured churches in Europe.
00:53:31He did the same across North America, Canada, the United States, Mexico.
00:53:37I believe he even made some trips into the Caribbean and Central America as well.
00:53:42But Lee Vail traveled a lot and went to a lot of different churches.
00:53:45And as he did that, he developed a group of churches that were loyal to his version of the message and were highly respecting of his role as the authorized explainer of the messages.
00:54:02If you have any questions, you can ask Dr. Lee Vail, right?
00:54:05They really gave a lot of credence to that endorsement from William Branham.
00:54:09And that group of people form the sect of the message and basically separate from the main sect with Lee Vail when the Perugia stuff happens.
00:54:20And I just want to kind of walk through who some of those were.
00:54:22The most notable one is a man named Terry Spruill.
00:54:26And Terry Spruill had a church in Edmonton, Alberta, and his church was called Word of Life Tabernacle.
00:54:35Lee Vail's own church was called Grace Gospel Church. It was in St. Paris, Ohio.
00:54:40So Terry Spruill's church is of the Lee Vail Persuasion, John, and is probably one of his most, really his most important supporters.
00:54:47And together they were, in some ways, you could almost think of them as a team back in the early days.
00:54:52They traveled a lot. They supported each other a lot.
00:54:56And they worked together to kind of develop the network.
00:55:01Another really important church that was in Lee Vail's network was a church called, it was called Grace and Truth Tabernacle in Beaumont, Texas.
00:55:09And that was Jack Bell's church, John. Jack Bell's church. You probably heard of Jack Bell.
00:55:15And so those three churches really formed the anchors of Lee Vail's sect of the message.
00:55:23Besides that, Ned Iverson remained more or less in agreement with Lee Vail for his entire life.
00:55:29And Ned Iverson, like I said, he took over the church in Florida after Lee Vail left.
00:55:33And Ned Iverson also planted several churches in North Carolina and South Carolina who ended up in that affiliation with Lee Vail's sect of the message.
00:55:42So altogether, John, I mean, I would say, based on what I know, there were probably around 1,200 people in Lee Vail's sect of the message across all of those churches in the mid-70s and up into the 80s.
00:55:58So it was a, you know, it was a, it was, I would definitely call it a major sect of the message.
00:56:02They had an outsized influence just because of who Lee Vail was.
00:56:07They were never one of the large sects of the message, you know, with tens of thousands of people.
00:56:11But they were, they were a pretty notable sect of the message.
00:56:14Besides that, they did end up doing some, because Lee Vail had traveled internationally somewhat, they had international contacts.
00:56:23And as they broke away, they did do some mission work.
00:56:26And they do have, there are churches, some few churches of Lee Vail's persuasion in Africa and in Central America.
00:56:34So they do have a small overseas presence as well.
00:56:37So, so, um, kind of wrapping that up, let's talk about the Perusia, John.
00:56:41Let's actually talk about the thing that caused the schism today.
00:56:46Um, and, and, and we're starting to run out of time, so we might just get to talk about it a little bit.
00:56:50But, so, the Perusia, what is that?
00:56:53I mean, that's a really, it's an interesting word, Perusia, right?
00:56:57So, let me, let me kind of describe this to our listeners.
00:57:00Um, so, most of the message, John, with the exclusion of Ewald Frank,
00:57:06with the exclusion of Ewald Frank, every significant message preacher and every significant sect and part of the message
00:57:15believed that Jesus Christ returned in some vague way in 1963 when William Brennan preached the Sermon on the Seals.
00:57:25Okay, you know, with the cloud and all of that that happened in 1963.
00:57:28So, every sect of the message believed that.
00:57:30And, as time went on, um, there, there, there kind of started to be a controversy, you know,
00:57:37how do we, how could, how could Jesus in this vague way have came back spiritually in 1963?
00:57:44And now it's 1977, you know, and all of these years have went by.
00:57:50How's come nothing has happened?
00:57:52Like, what, how do we explain all this away, right?
00:57:54Like, like, there was an awareness in a lot of people that this thing has went on a whole lot longer than it should have, right?
00:58:02And now we're starting to question, did Jesus really come back in 1963?
00:58:06I mean, what's going on here?
00:58:07Because it's a weird thing, right?
00:58:09Because they thought Jesus was coming back in 63, that the rapture was basically in progress,
00:58:13and they were all going to leave back up with, with Jesus.
00:58:16Like, Jesus, he made his trip down to pick up the bride in 63,
00:58:21and then any minute he was going to take them, they were all going to go back to heaven.
00:58:24Well, LeVale's sermons on the Perugia was his way, as the official explainer of the message,
00:58:32to try and rectify all of this and to put it into context for everybody.
00:58:38And what he did is questions of that rose up.
00:58:41LeVale actually went back to the original source material that William Branham copied his sermons out of when he preached it, John.
00:58:48And William Branham, when he preached Revelation chapter 10, he copied that out of the works of Charles Taze Russell, the Jehovah Witnesses.
00:58:57And LeVale knew it because he was there with Bankswood's wife and everything when they came up with it all collaboratively with William Branham.
00:59:06LeVale knew it came out of the Jehovah Witnesses stuff.
00:59:08So he went back to Charles Taze Russell's books where the original stuff was on all this.
00:59:14And guess what Charles Taze Russell called all this in his book, John?
00:59:17He called it the Perugia.
00:59:19Okay?
00:59:19And so he pulls it out, and he basically gave Charles Taze Russell's explanation of the Perugia
00:59:26to try and help the people in the message make sense of what had happened.
00:59:31And the short of it is he basically breaks the second coming of Jesus into two phases.
00:59:38There's phase one, where Jesus returns spiritually but not bodily.
00:59:43And that spiritual return, which precedes the bodily return, is called the Perugia.
00:59:48So the spiritual return comes first, the Perugia, in 1963.
00:59:52And then somewhere down the road, the bodily return will come.
00:59:56Okay?
00:59:56And so that's what LeVale is doing with the Perugia.
00:59:59He is showing people how to break Revelation chapter 10 and the second coming of Jesus into two phases,
01:00:06the Perugia being the spiritual phase.
01:00:08And he's saying, since 1963, we have been in the Perugia.
01:00:11We've been in the spiritual phase, waiting for the bodily return of Christ.
01:00:16And so that is essentially what Perugia means.
01:00:19But here's the thing, John.
01:00:20That is not controversial in the message, is it?
01:00:23No.
01:00:23I mean, other than Ewald Frank's groups, everyone in the message believes this.
01:00:26And I would go so far as to say, not everyone believes it today.
01:00:30But you go back 20 years ago, 30 years ago, yeah, everybody believed this.
01:00:36And, you know, there's like some message apostates out there, John, who say, no, we never believe that, you know, because there are more recent converts in.
01:00:43I would say if you don't believe this, you might not believe the message, actually.
01:00:47Because unless the Lord descended from heaven with a shout, there is no message, right?
01:00:51I mean, you know, using the loaded language of the message there, people might not entirely grasp what I mean.
01:00:56But in message parlance, if the Lord did not descend from heaven with a shout in 1963, there is no message because the message is the shout.
01:01:03And so, at any rate, that particular piece was not controversial.
01:01:10The piece that caused the controversy, John, that led to everyone coming after him was what I'm going to describe next.
01:01:17And Lee Vale described it like this in his sermons.
01:01:19He said, after he preached this, the people in the message came after him with pitches, with torches and pitchforks.
01:01:25Like, it was a terrible reaction when he added this next part.
01:01:30So, Lee Vale basically claimed that in 1963, and it was 1977, roughly, when he really started to hone in on this,
01:01:40that in 1963, Jesus Christ, quote, unquote, left the mercy seat.
01:01:45And that upon leaving the mercy seat in 1963, the intercessory work of Christ had ended.
01:01:51Therefore, there was no more intercessory work of Jesus Christ.
01:01:56And naturally, most of the people in the message community, with their understanding, this is going really deep into message theology, message thinking.
01:02:07But the sum of it is, the people in the message more or less interpreted what Lee Vale was saying as, no one else could be saved.
01:02:15Like, Lee Vale was closing the doors.
01:02:17No more children could be saved.
01:02:19No new converts could be saved.
01:02:21No one new could be saved and make it because Christ had left the mercy seat.
01:02:26That's how the overwhelming majority took what Lee Vale was saying.
01:02:31Now, I don't really think that's what Lee Vale meant.
01:02:34I think if you go back and you listen to his sermons on it, that's not entirely what he was saying.
01:02:38He was actually trying to switch over to the concept of, boy, we're going deep into message-loaded language, John, here.
01:02:45He was transitioning from Christ's intercessory work being the means to salvation.
01:02:53He was transitioning from that to the bleeding word being the intercessory work for Christ to be saved.
01:03:00And so, in message thinking, William Branham, when he delivered his special revelations, those revelations were the bleeding word, the quote-unquote bleeding word.
01:03:10In the same way that Jesus was the word made flesh, William Branham's revelations was the bleeding word.
01:03:15And so, if you took the bleeding word, William Branham's revelations, you were covered by the blood, the bleeding word.
01:03:21And so, you no longer needed the intercessory work of Christ on the cross because you have the bleeding word.
01:03:25Anyway, this is very deep into message thinking.
01:03:28And it can be very confusing, I think, to people who are not familiar with this ideology.
01:03:32But at the end of the day, the people in the message could not wrap their minds around the fact that Jesus Christ would leave the mercy seat and people could still be saved.
01:03:42They didn't want to fully go over to the bleeding word fully replaces the intercessory work of Christ.
01:03:49And so, that is what then sets up the schism, John.
01:03:51Everyone is turning on Lee Vale.
01:03:54And it's not because he preached that Christ secretly came back in a spiritual way in 1963.
01:03:59It's because he preached that Christ left the mercy seat and the intercessory work of Christ ended in 1963.
01:04:07That is what caused the explosion.
01:04:11And to the people who weren't in the message, who are studying the NAR and its history, who are listening,
01:04:18we just dropped an atomic bomb of heresy right at the end and didn't give enough explanation of it to really understand it.
01:04:27So, I think we're going to probably have to do another episode and just fully dive deeper into this.
01:04:32But to – so, for both sides who are unfamiliar with this word parousia, it is a common theological term.
01:04:39It just simply means the second coming of Christ.
01:04:41Every Christian believed this.
01:04:43You're looking for the second coming of Christ.
01:04:45However, when you take the manifested Sons of God, Joel's Army theology, what developed strongly in IHOP KC and Morningstar, who's, you know, preaching Branhamism,
01:04:57all of these movements that are really basing off of this theology.
01:05:00What's interesting is there's – and, you know, it's more than I can really say in this two-minute segment.
01:05:08But what's interesting is these are the same people that say William Branham went astray during his latter years.
01:05:14They're really referring to – when they say that, they're really referring to from 1963-ish to 1965 because they see the formation of this deity cult emerging.
01:05:24And they want – they don't want to be associated with it.
01:05:27They know it's going destructive.
01:05:30So, they say, we cut it off right here.
01:05:32But Lee Vale, as you mentioned, was working – he came in contact with William Branham around 1947, something like this.
01:05:39He started preaching Branhamism heavily in – what was it?
01:05:43It was the mid-50s, I think.
01:05:45And all of this is developing during the years that these NAR guys say that William Branham was not gone astray.
01:05:52So, as these doctrines are progressing, they're talking about the good – they've divided William Branham into two, the good guy and the bad guy.
01:06:03Well, the good guy that they're saying is teaching everything that is in this heretical bombshell that we just dropped.
01:06:11So, let's table it.
01:06:13Let's come back and let's dive a little bit deeper into the word Perugia and Lee Vale and all of this.
01:06:19Are you okay with that, Charles?
01:06:21That sounds great because you're right.
01:06:23There's so much there to untangle.
01:06:24And besides that, I want to talk about what happened in Lee Vale's sect of the message after he broke away too.
01:06:29So, I think we can easily go through another episode and try to unpack some of that language a bit more.
01:06:35But, yeah, I think we've set a good table here.
01:06:37So, this sect of the message is often referred to as the Perugia, the Perugia people.
01:06:43And Lee Vale launched this sect of the message in 1977 after all of the backlash to his, specifically, Christ coming off the mercy seat in 1963.
01:06:54Awesome. Well, let's come back and let's do it.
01:06:57So, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:07:00You can find us at william-branham.org and christiangospelchurch.org.
01:07:05For more about the history of William Branham and the healing revivals, you can read Come Out of Her, My People.
01:07:10And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:07:18Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:07:48Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:08:18Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:08:20Weaponized baptism.
01:08:22Weaponized Mum