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Transcript
Well, it’s time to begin our service this evening. I’m glad you’re here joining us.
I want to send my special greetings to all our friends at Faith Assembly Church, especially the ones who reach out to us so regularly. We are continuing to keep you in our prayers. We are thankful for each one of you, and we are praying that God will bring about a change in circumstances. I know quite a few of you reached out over the past three weeks with some of the really bizarre things that have been happening lately. I may mention some of that later in this talk, but just know we are praying for you all, and we appreciate every one of you.
If this is your first time joining us, and you wonder who we are and what we are up to, my name is Charles Paisley. I am and most of our listeners here are formerly members of the cult following of William Branham known as The Message. The Message is a global doomsday cult with millions of members. It started here in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and spread all over the world. I am formerly associate pastor of the second oldest message church in the world, right here in the Jeffersonville area. This is a little mission we operate to offer encouragement to those leaving the message and to take a look at the plain reading of scripture as we seek to wash out of our minds what, for most of us, has been a lifetime of indoctrination.
Tonight I’m going to give another little talk. This will be the second time I have done this during our Ephesians series. Because, as we hit a few different scriptures, I just feel compelled to stop and speak more specifically about the places we come from and how what we are reading relates to situations there. And so that is what we will be doing again today. I will read a text before I speak on the topic tonight. It is Ephesians chapter 5; I will read from verse 11 down to verse 15. And the apostle Paul writes:
11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Prayer
Lord God, I pray you help us to see with spiritual eyes and to hear with spiritual ears and to discern with a spiritual mind. And Lord, let every word spoken be only that which will serve to set souls free. I ask it in Jesus’ name.
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Introduction
What we’re going to talk about this evening is directly related to these verses that we have read from the book of Ephesians. And I hope you noticed, as we read, that Paul tells the Ephesians that there are times when it is necessary to flip on the light switch—to shine a light on a situation, or on a circumstance.
In doing something like that, there is a biblical pattern to be followed, where in most cases you will first talk with the people involved in a private way, then to elders, and finally to the whole church. As it relates to the things we will speak of today, that pattern has already been followed. The leadership of Faith Assembly Church is now in full rebellion against God. They have refused to hear the truth, they have refused to change course, and they are going headlong down the path of perdition.
Someone might say, “Brother Charles, who are you to say anything? What right have you to say any of these sorts of things, which you have said, and will go on to say?” I will tell you, brothers and sisters, I have every single right to say everything I have. In fact, we are enjoined and commanded by scripture to do what we have done. These scriptures we are looking at here in Ephesians are just one of the places where scripture commands us to do these things. The truth of the matter is, we would be failing God by ignoring what has happened and moving along without confronting it.
As far as who has a right, no one has more right than we do. We are the people who have spent our entire lives in the message. We are from the oldest families of the message. People like me were part of senior leadership in the most senior message churches. You will be hard-pressed to find someone who has more right or more of a burden to these things.
So, we will continue to tell the truth. We will continue to shine the light on the darkness. We will continue to do that as long as we feel constrained by the Holy Spirit to do so.
When a situation is going on, like what is going on at Faith Assembly Church and in other message churches, and no one is taking responsibility for it or seeking to make right what they have done, it’s our Christian duty to say, “Hey, these things happened.” It’s our Christian duty to give a warning and tell people to beware because they have not changed their ways and have entered into a realm that makes them dangerous. We need to erect warning signs around them so that other people will beware and use caution. That’s exactly what I’ll be doing in this talk.
If you’ve been listening through our series over the past few years here, there are bits and pieces of this that have been included in some of the different lessons that we’ve gone through. But I’m going to try and put some things together into one narrative here, and also to include a lot more details than I’ve said previously, in hopes that you’ll be able to have all the pieces in a way that you can understand.
Chiefly today, I am going to be talking about a man named James Allen. I’m going to walk you through some different situations that occurred, things that James Allen has been involved in, the life that he has lived, and things that are important for people to know about this man and the church which is protecting and supporting him.
James Allen is still living; he is presently the pastor of Faith Assembly Church in Jeffersonville. It’s the church that was started by Raymond Jackson. It is the original sister Church of the Branham Tabernacle and the second oldest message church in the world. The majority of the people there are descended from the oldest message families, many of them are William Branham’s original followers from the earliest days of his ministry. By the earliest days, I don’t mean the late ’50s and ’60s like most people would mean by that. I mean the 1930s and the 1940s, decades before Perry Green or Lee Vayle or Willard Collins or any of those figures ever came around. I’m talking about people who were at the meetings when Georgia Carter was healed at Milltown, before the healing revivals even started. The people and families at Faith Assembly Church are the oldest and longest followers of the message in the world. A number of the families even go back before Billy Paul was born. There is no other church in the world that has that depth of witness to William Branham’s ministry. That has been one of the main drawing cards or claims to legitimacy of Faith Assembly Church within the message. Raymond Jackson used that to great effect while he was still living.
You won’t find another church with that level of pedigree within the message—not even the Branham Tabernacle.
James Allen is from Liberty, Kentucky. He became a Methodist minister; he went to seminary. He is, to the best of my knowledge, the only seminary-trained, college-educated message minister in our churches. He does not present himself to you that way, but James Allen is a college-educated seminary-trained minister. James Allen was pastoring a church in Burkesville, Kentucky when he first heard about William Branham. Burkesville is where William Branham was supposedly born, and some of William Branham’s family supposedly still lived there at the time James Allen was a pastor there. In that time, he was introduced to the message by the Caps family. I believe it was Taylor Caps specifically. I believe Taylor Caps was a deacon in his Burkesville church, if I recall correctly.
That occurred, I believe, in 1959. William Branham held some revival meetings at the fairgrounds in Campbellsville, Kentucky around that time, and James Allen and his family, his parents and so forth, attended those revival meetings. As most of us know, there was a pretty prominent case of failed healing that occurred at those Campbellsville meetings. William Branham had told a particular woman in a very dramatic way that she was going to be healed, and it never happened. When James Allen’s family saw that, they decided to have nothing to do with William Branham after that because, obviously, there had been a case of failed healing. They witnessed the whole thing firsthand, and when you see that firsthand, it’s obvious that William Branham did not have this gift he was telling everybody about. He was deceiving them. If you pronounce someone healed, but they never get better, you are a fraud. That is what happened with William Branham at the Campbellsville meetings.
But by then, James Allen had been hooked, and he ended up making some really bad life decisions to join the cult of William Branham. James Allen basically got himself kicked out of the Methodist Church and began to get more and more isolated from his family. Then he finally packed up his family, I believe in the year 1961, and he moved his family to Jeffersonville. Pardon me if I might have these years off by a little bit; I didn’t go double-check all the dates. I am just giving you this from my memory. It’s possible I might have a minor detail off here or there as it relates to the dates.
James Allen basically gave up his entire life, packed his family up, and moved to Jeffersonville. He walked away from his career, from his education, from his family. He gave up everything so he could move to Jeffersonville, and there were a lot of people doing that back in those days.
I want to pause right there and point out to you that this is how cults work. The message has been a cult for many decades. This isn’t something that just happened recently. Getting people to abandon their entire life, to abandon their family, to abandon their jobs, to pack up and move far away—that is a tactic used by cults. People who do that are in a radical state of mind and are clearly under the influence of indoctrination, because that is not a healthy or wise decision for someone to make.
Cults try to do that, and the truth is, a large part of the message community in Jeffersonville is in that same situation. Cults do that to isolate their members, and once you are in that position, isolated from your friends and family, stepping away from a good job or a good career to serve the group, you become dependent on the cult. Then they can use that over time to control you and manipulate you. At first, it seems like they love you and are helping you, and it can seem really good at first. They call that love bombing; it’s a cult recruitment technique. It is something they do to try and make the new people feel special or important, to draw them in, and make them feel like they really found a place they belong. It’s to get you to make those early radical decisions that draw you in.
But then, once they’ve got their hooks into you, that’s when all of the strings that are attached start to get pulled. When you’re in a position where you have alienated your family, where you have turned your life upside down, you don’t really have a way back to where you came from. In that situation, you can feel more or less trapped, and it becomes increasingly difficult to get away from the group that has sucked you in.
James Allen told us many times about how his family had been alienated by his actions when he joined the message—how he gave up his career and his income and his education and everything. He gave all that up to join the message. Brothers and sisters, the truth is, he made some really bad decisions.
James Allen is a man who witnessed failed healings with his own eyes, a man who saw homosexual clues in the life of William Branham, who rebelled against the church he was in, who severed his own family to go down a road chasing a false prophet, who ignored the wisdom of his own parents and his own brothers who were ministers. James Allen told me all that himself, with his own mouth. He knew William Branham was a fraud. But still, he went to follow him because his mind was clouded by some radical and some unwise ideas.
Today, we look at him and wonder how could he have been so foolish. And we do need to wonder how could he be so foolish, because he is in the position he is in today because of his foolish decisions.
But by then, James Allen had been hooked. He ended up making some really bad life decisions to join the cult of William Branham. James Allen basically got himself kicked out of the Methodist Church and began to get more and more isolated from his family. Then he finally packed up his family, I believe in the year 1961, and moved his family to Jeffersonville. You pardon me if I might have these years off by a little bit; I didn’t go double-check all the dates. I am just giving you this from my memory. It’s possible I might have a minor detail off here or there, as it relates to the dates.
James Allen basically gave up his entire life, packed his family up, and moved to Jeffersonville. He walked away from his career, from his education, from his family. He gave up everything so he could move to Jeffersonville, and there were a lot of people doing that back in those days.
I want to pause right there and point out to you that this is how cults work. The message has been a cult for many decades. This isn’t something that just happened recently. Getting people to abandon their entire life, to abandon their family, to abandon their jobs, to pack up and move far away—that is a tactic used by cults. People who do that are in a radical state of mind and are clearly under the influence of indoctrination. That is not a healthy or wise decision for someone to make.
Cults try to do that. The truth is, a large part of the message community in Jeffersonville is in that same situation. Cults do that to isolate their members. Once you are in that position, isolated from your friends and family, stepping away from a good job or a good career to serve the group, you become dependent on the cult. Then they can use that over time to control you and manipulate you. At first, it seems like they love you and are helping you, and it can seem really good at first. They call that love bombing; it’s a cult recruitment technique. It is something they do to try and make the new people feel special or important, to draw them in, and make them feel like they really found a place they belong. It’s to get you to make those early radical decisions that draw you in.
But then once they’ve got their hooks into you, that’s when all of the strings that are attached start to get pulled. When you’re in a position where you have alienated your family, where you have turned your life upside down, you don’t really have a way back to where you came from. In that situation, you can feel more or less trapped, and it becomes increasingly difficult to get away from the group who has sucked you in.
James Allen told us many times about how his family had been alienated by his actions when he joined the message. How he gave up his career and his income and his education and everything. He gave all that up to join the message. Brothers and sisters, the truth is he made some really bad decisions. James Allen is a man who witnessed failed healings with his own eyes, a man who saw homosexual clues in the life of William Branham, who rebelled against the church he was in, who severed his own family to go down a road chasing a false prophet, who ignored the wisdom of his own parents and his own brothers who were ministers.
James Allen told me all that himself. When he denies it, he is exposing himself as a liar. At this stage, I know many people at Faith Assembly have reached out to me as they are beginning to notice these dishonest lies James Allen is making from the platform, where they are catching him denying things they know he said. I have had nearly a dozen people call and tell me that James Allen told them black people are the serpent seed, and they were shocked when he lied from the platform and denied it. The truth is, once you catch them telling lies, it becomes really hard to trust them again. I want to continue to encourage you all to question everything James Allen says. He is most certainly misleading you about things, and for him to do that is really continuing to expose what kind of a man he is to those of us who knew him.
James Allen was very radical. You have heard him tell the story that he was there with the members of the deity cult when they jackhammered up the cornerstone of the tabernacle. Back in those days, James Allen was friends with the people who started up polygamy in the message. He was friends with the people who believed William Branham would resurrect from the grave. Back then, he was not part of Faith Assembly, and he was not in Raymond Jackson’s circle of friends. He comes from a different branch of the message in that way.
James Allen actually attempted to follow William Branham when he moved to Arizona, but that didn’t work out. In those things, James Allen really demonstrated what kind of a person he was back then. It proves to us with those actions that he is deeply under the influence of a cult leader. He made really terrible life decisions that negatively impacted his family, over and over. During those years in the early 1960s, he was invited to preach at the Branham Tabernacle. After William Branham died in 1966, he started a house church here in Southern Indiana, and that continued on until I believe the year was 1969. In 1969, he finally made the decision to start coming to Faith Assembly. He was coming from a background of people who were waking up to the fact that William Branham was not going to resurrect. He was not someone like Raymond Jackson back then.
He may deny that he was looking for the resurrection of William Branham back then, but once again, he is definitely lying to you if he does. That is exactly the camp he was in. I have heard it testified to me by multiple people who knew him back then, that he was looking for the resurrection of William Branham in the first years after he died. I want to warn you about trusting the things he says about the old days because he is selective in what he shares, and he leaves out a lot of things he knows would make people doubt the message, including things about himself.
Now my family was in the message attending the tabernacle before James Allen joined. They were also at Faith Assembly before he joined there too. So my family is witness to the entire span of events with James Allen. My family goes back further than him in all of these things. I have had my grandmother and grandfather sit me down at different times, my grandmother especially, and tell me the things she knew about James Allen that had happened over the years.
To the best of my knowledge, James Allen had a single conversation with William Branham in his entire life. James Allen really was not anybody notable while William Branham was living. He continued to not be anyone particularly notable through the years that Raymond Jackson was alive. In fact, he did not have a very good reputation most of that time.
The main reason for that was that he had a very troubled personal life. James Allen was an abusive man with his family. I’ve heard stories from a variety of witnesses about how he treated his children. In particular, two of Raymond Jackson’s children shared with me details and stories of things around the abuse of James Allen’s children. I see no reason to disbelieve Raymond Jackson’s children, as they gave me some pretty long explanations of some things that happened with James Allen and his children. I didn’t solicit that information; two of Raymond Jackson’s children just came and offered it to me after I became a minister. If I hear them deny that they told me those things, then I’ll say their names and tell you the whole story that they told me. So I’ll leave that up to them.
From a variety of witnesses, James Allen was abusive towards his children. One important way in which we can know this is true is actually the case of his daughter. During the 1970s, the police intervened and took his daughter out of his home. The police came in and put James Allen’s daughter into protective care after some of the abuse that she suffered. When that happened, it was fairly public knowledge among the people in the church. I have heard the details of that from multiple people, including a girl who was a close friend of his daughter at the time. Again, I am not going to relate the nature of the abuse, but if I hear that people are denying this, I will go ahead and share all the details and the names of the people who told it to me.
I want you all to know it’s not just James Allen at fault, but there is a whole network of people who know these things and cover for him, for whatever reason. If I find out they are continuing to cover for him, then I am going to expose them too.
At the time, Raymond Jackson actually preached a four-part series of sermons about it. He didn’t mention James Allen by name, but he talked about the situation and more or less rebuked James Allen for some of the things he had done. I have a copy of those tapes, and I believe they are on the church website if you go look for it. It’s there, but unless you knew it was about James Allen, it won’t be terribly obvious to you that he’s talking about that situation. But back then, the people knew what it was all about.
James Allen has this history of having a troubled home and being an abusive father to the point that the police stepped in. But it didn’t stop there. I think everyone probably knows that James Allen and his wife eventually separated. The story there is similar again: James Allen’s wife claimed that she was abused by him. I don’t think there’s anybody at Faith Assembly who was there in the ’80s or ’90s who would not know about this. I’ve had James Allen tell me about these things personally. I know his side of the story, and then I have had his wife tell me about it personally too. So I know both sides of that story from their own lips.
No matter how you shake it, it was a very unhealthy situation, and James Allen’s home was very abusive. He was most certainly not innocent in the situation. When you put that in light of other things we’re going to talk about today, I think a picture is going to start to form in your mind. But let me pause here and say that these things alone are enough to disqualify James Allen from ministry. He fails right here to meet the qualification of a minister.
On this same point, I want you to think very seriously. You can do this for the other preachers at Faith Assembly too. Do you want to have a home that looks like these people’s? Do you want to have a screwed-up home? You need to look at these men and see what they have produced in their own homes. You can be sure that if you follow their example, you are going to end up with the same thing.
You might say, Brother Charles, it’s really wrong of you to do this, it’s really wrong of you to say these things publicly. I will say back to you that James Allen has done these very things to more people than I can count. He has publicly aired people’s dirty laundry, humiliated them, turned everyone against them, ruined their lives even. He has done this to more people than I can count. Perhaps more than any other person I know, he is deserving of having all these things said about him. He has refused to make anything right; he has refused to change his ways. In order to protect people from this man, it is important that we share all these details.
Getting back to the backstory here: because of the bad reputation he developed as a result of these things, James Allen never really rose into any sort of prominent position as a minister during his lifetime. I wonder why it is that Raymond Jackson let him preach at all. I think the answer to that is because James Allen was the ultimate yes-man. He almost slavishly followed Raymond Jackson. Along with Bud Thompson, he did a lot of the dirty work for Raymond Jackson and let Raymond Jackson keep his hands clean. They would run people off who disagreed; they would do all the harassment in their sermons. They would do the most hard preachings, and that more or less let them be the bad guys, and Raymond Jackson could be the good guy. That dynamic served Raymond Jackson well, and, truthfully, I think that is probably why he kept James Allen around. But never in a million years did anyone look at James Allen as someone who was remotely qualified to be Raymond Jackson’s successor.
When Raymond Jackson died, James Allen struck almost immediately to seize control. He did it at the funeral and more or less put himself up as Raymond Jackson’s successor right out of the gate, which, the truth is, was such hubris. He was in no way prepared or qualified to hold that position. The truth of it bears it out. Straight out of the gate, he drove everything into the ground. I think the first churches he cut off were the people in Mexico and Brother Saucedo. Then he started into the church in Canada. Then there was Amos in Nigeria. He was just getting started. By the time 2008 came, Brother Jackson was only gone three years, and James Allen had driven off 90% of the other churches and preachers.
You can’t call that anything but sheer incompetence. He drove them off; he never tried to save any single relationship. Once they were gone, just like he continues to do to this day, his attitude is just “good riddance.” It’s like he is glad to run people off.
I want to say this plainly: regardless of anything else, that is the devil. That is a devilish spirit that drives James Allen. It’s the same devilish spirit that broke up his home, and that behavior from him is absolutely of the devil.
Through that time, many of us faced very hard decisions about what to do. Because of the way James Allen was—and Bud Thompson was not much better—if you didn’t tow the line and back him up, they would run you out of the church, break up your homes, force divorces, and separate families, parents, and children. That was their standard practice in those years.
You really were taking your life into your hands to even allow yourself to question what was going on.
James Allen began to claim to be an apostle in those years. Of course, no one ever gave any basis on which to believe he was an apostle other than the fact that he was more or less Raymond Jackson’s successor. As far as I know, he never claimed Jesus Christ appeared to him, he never claimed he was commissioned as an apostle in any way. There’s really just nothing there to base him being an apostle on, except the fact that he claimed to be an apostle and that other people started saying he was.
To be clear, brothers and sisters, James Allen is no apostle. He is no minister at all. He is not qualified to stand behind a platform based on the scripture. Anyone who has heard him do much preaching can see that James Allen is not a gifted speaker, and he has never been.
There is so much more I could say about that. Everybody knew he was a poor preacher. I remember Bro. Turner talking to me about it when I took over editing the Contender. He said it was impossible to do much with his sermons; they were just a mess. He gave me some advice about how to approach it. Printing his messages and editing them is like untangling a knot. He has a hard time actually making a point, and he is always going into left field. He preached “Hell is Not Eternal,” Part 37. It took him 37 sermons to preach that topic, which is unbelievable. What is even more unbelievable is that in those 37 sermons, he failed to read the one and only scripture on which Raymond Jackson and William Branham had based that belief. The whole time you are just cringing… How can he preach 37 sermons on this? After it’s all said and done, how could he have left out the most important scripture to the topic?
But that is James Allen’s typical preaching style. Unless you already have a pretty good grasp of the topic he is preaching, you are probably going to walk away very confused by the things he says.
As I say all this, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that it was all bad. James Allen never did anything good or useful or helpful. That’s not true; there were some redeeming qualities there, and there was some good that came out of it. But on the balance, James Allen is not the kind of guy you would expect to be able to take the reins of something as big or complex as the flagship church of one of the largest sects of The Message. The years prove it out. He ran the whole thing into the ground after he took over. We went from dozens of churches and ministers and thousands of people down to three churches, about five preachers, and a few hundred people. The teachings also got very confusing, complex, and weird. He really did run everything into the ground, which is what you would expect from someone who is in over their head, doing something they’re not really qualified to do.
The next thing I want to point out to you are some things that James Allen did in the last years of Raymond Jackson’s life. The first thing I want to point out to you is what happened in about 2001 or 2002. If you recall, in those years, there were a number of preachers whom Raymond Jackson excommunicated and put out of the church. At the root of it all was the fact that they were not fully on board with his 2004 and a half-week of Daniel prediction. He had taught that the week of Daniel would begin in about the middle of the year 2005. That was about 20 years ago, and it’s pretty obvious that he was very mistaken in preaching those things. It was a really big teaching of his nearly a decade leading up to 2005.
During that period of time, James Allen did something really radical. Across two separate church services, James Allen took a microphone and went around the church, confronting basically every adult in the church and forcing them to go on the record publicly in front of everybody about their position on these things. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of people, and one by one, they were confronted in front of the entire church, on live broadcast to the entire global fellowship. They were confronted to give an account of where they stood on the matters. He did this about two weeks after the whole situation had come to a head and exploded.
This sort of thing became a pattern for James Allen. I don’t mean necessarily going around with a microphone and putting people on the spot in that way, but it’s a pattern he undertook. When situations happened, instead of giving people time to think about it, time to digest what was happening, and letting them weigh things out, he jumped in almost at the get-go, forcing people to make decisions and go on the record and commit to something before they really even knew what was going on.
No one in the church understood the full situation. Most people had never heard the other side of the story; they just knew what had been presented by Raymond Jackson and his side. The next thing you know, James Allen’s going around the church making everybody go on record publicly to take sides, taking sides in something where they really don’t know what is going on. If you have ever heard people say, “I stand 100% behind the ministry, I stand 100% with the preacher,” and wondered where that statement comes from, that started to be said when this microphone situation happened. That was what people were expected to say: “I stand 100% behind Raymond Jackson and the ministry at Faith Assembly.” Anyone who could not say that was eventually going to be purged out of the church.
There were a lot of people sitting there who were still digesting everything. They were not ready to take a side; they knew something wasn’t quite right, or they didn’t have all the facts yet. They didn’t want to take a side until they understood. There was not a single person who actually said, “I have a problem with this, and Raymond Jackson is handling this wrong.” Not a single person said that. The most anyone said was, “I am still thinking about it,” or “I have questions,” or something like that. But that was all it took to purge them out. Just saying they had a question would be enough to be purged from the church. James Allen did that. He confronted people before they could even look into things or investigate, and he confronted and challenged them publicly.
This is absolutely wicked and ungodly behavior. James Allen has repeated that sort of thing many times in various ways. He did it to me personally, repeatedly. It is absolutely wicked and ungodly to go to people and force them to make huge dramatic life-changing decisions on the spot, and even worse to do it publicly and pressure them in the way that he did. James Allen, when you listen to this, I want you to know that what you did is a wicked tactic of the devil, and you owe every single person you have done that to an apology.
For everyone listening, I want you to understand that this is a common tactic of cults. They don’t want to give you time to think things over; they want to press you into a decision and a judgment right then and there. If they can do it publicly, even better, because they want you on the record. This serves to entrap you. As people, once we come out in a public way like that, it’s very hard for us to walk it back. It makes us feel dishonest, and they’re playing on that. They pressure you to make a decision and then use that against you if you ever change your mind when you find out more information. They know that if they can get you to make a judgment and get on record, even if over time you gradually discover you made a wrong decision, you will be very reluctant to walk it back. This is the tactic of a cult, a tactic of the devil, meant to entrap people.
You all know what happened as a result of those things, especially the division when James Allen went around with the microphone. When the fallout hit all the churches with those splits, our families were broken up, homes were broken up, divorces happened, children and parents were separated, and there were even suicides. You did that, James Allen. You are guilty of that, James Allen.
I can hear the wicked mouths of those people now. They will say something like, “Well, you are someone who puts your family above the truth, family connections over the truth.” But that’s not true—we stayed right there with you through all that. We let you separate us from our families, and we went right along with you.
The thing is, it wasn’t the truth. Time proved out that you made us separate our families and break up our homes for nothing. The main thing back then when he was going with the microphone to confront everyone was getting people to agree with the 2004 and a half prediction. That was one of the main things he was after. And guess what? It was all wrong. 2004 came and went. The week of Daniel didn’t start. And James Allen, you caused all of that harm and destruction for nothing, absolutely nothing. You broke up homes and families, caused divorces, and separated parents and children—all for nothing.
That’s evil, brothers and sisters. I can hear you saying right now, “That never happened. You are making it all up.” That is wicked and evil too. It absolutely did happen. I could take about an hour and name names and talk through those situations, but for the sake of those people, I won’t. The fact that people cannot even admit the truth that these things happened is proof of the brainwashing they are under.
When you’re on the inside, it’s hard for you to recognize these things, but this is what happened, and it happened repeatedly between 2001 and about 2012. For a man like James Allen, it means nothing to break up homes and destroy lives that way. As I already explained to you, that is what he did to his own family. He broke up his own family and relationships over this stuff. If he would do it to himself, you better believe he would have no problem doing it to you. That is exactly what he has done repeatedly since he became pastor.
When we come to 2008, this is where it goes to the next level of evil. In 2001 and 2002, they were doing this sort of stuff to people who did not 100% agree with Raymond Jackson and his 2004 1/2 predictions. James Allen played a central role in purging people out through that. But guess what? When 2008 rolled around, we found out James Allen didn’t agree 100% with Raymond Jackson himself. He had been going along with purging all those people out, but then he was guilty of the very thing he ran people out of the church for.
When he preached his sermons on the third day, he dramatically changed the way Bro Jackson taught those things. He redefined 2004 1/2 and made it so that was not really when the week of Daniel would start. What is so evil about this is that as he preached the third day and said the week of Daniel would not start in 2004 1/2, he had the gall to tell us all that we were confused and that Raymond Jackson had actually always preached it that way, that Raymond Jackson never said the week of Daniel would start in 2004 1/2. He had the wicked unmerited gall to tell us over and over that never happened—the very thing all kinds of people had been purged out of the church over, the very thing that led to homes and families being broken up. He had the gall to tell us we were confused and that never happened.
What can you call that? What’s the term we would label that with? That’s wicked behavior; it’s dishonest behavior. He was preaching the third day in a way that contradicted Raymond Jackson, but he could not just come out and say Raymond Jackson was wrong. He gaslit all of us and tried to tell us we were just confused.
James Allen, God have mercy, you need to be on your knees repenting for this stuff, and you need to be apologizing to all of us for it.
Here’s the thing: when he did that, when he preached the third day, just about every last person sitting there was scratching their heads. They were thinking, “Wait a minute, this is not what Raymond Jackson preached.” I remember the moment the words came out of his mouth about the third day. I was sitting next to Marc Davis. I said, “That’s not what Brother Jackson said.” He looked at me and nodded.
James Allen said, “It’s so quiet in here, I could hear a pin drop.” I looked at Marc Davis again and said, “It’s because that’s not what Bro Jackson said.” Everyone was honestly terrified about what to think. Anybody who had sat through and went through all those things knew he was saying the opposite of what Raymond Jackson preached.
But again, James Allen continued this absolutely wicked pattern of behavior. Instead of telling the truth and just saying Raymond Jackson was wrong, he tried to bowl everybody over and say that Raymond Jackson was right and what he was preaching is what Raymond Jackson preached all along, and we were just confused. James Allen was bold-faced lying to us about all of that. Of all the things James Allen has done, this is just about the most wicked of all.
To pull that kind of trick on us, brothers and sisters, after breaking up all those homes and families, then to turn around and preach the opposite thing himself, but the whole time tell us he’s preaching the same thing as Raymond Jackson—that is a tactic from the devil. Nothing but lies.
What comes next is worse. Most people across all the churches, including most of the preachers, recognized that James Allen had changed this really important thing that Raymond Jackson had preached but pretended we were all confused. In his desperation to advance that lie and keep up that fake image, James Allen ended up causing the worst collapse of all. Almost every other preacher and church broke fellowship with Faith Assembly.
James Allen instigated the whole thing. It was that lie he kept pushing—that he was preaching the same thing as Raymond Jackson and we were all just confused—that caused it all. James Allen, this is another thing you need to repent for, one more massive lie with huge damage to the lives of people.
Once more, as everything broke up, there were more divorces, more family separations, and this was about the worst one yet. There were suicides and death that happened in that round again. All because James Allen needed to keep up the lie that we were all confused and he was still preaching the same thing as Raymond Jackson.
Now, I have said all this up to this point just to give you the background to what I want to say next.
Because, while James all is doing all this
While he is breaking up our homes, while he is breaking up our families
While they are driving people to suicide
While they are separating parents and children
While he is pushing all of that
There is something else going on behind the scenes
And that is what I want to share with you.
I want you to know about these things that were going on behind the scenes through all of this
James Allen’s three sons are all sex perverts or sex predators
And we can only wonder where they learned that behavior
I’ve related to you before how one of his sons came into the church, committed adultery with a married woman, and broke up their marriage
That was happening in these years, while James Allen as doing these things in the church
After that happened, James Allen pressured the lady to divorce her husband, And then she married James Allen’s son
The lady had children from her first marriage, a son and a daughter
The son, who I knew fairly well, spent quite a bit of time with him, He would be about 15 years younger than me
He was quite upset with the situation, he was a 18-year-old about that time, and he threatened to expose the situation
Well they had him thrown out of the home, pressured him to join the military, and last I heard he is on the DMZ next to North Korea
That’s what they did to get rid of him
That’s evil
And I know that’s what happened, because that’s what he told me himself
And I was there when these things were discussed in the back room as well
And then James Allen’s next son, who was also attending church
He seduces this same woman’s daughter, who would be his niece by marriage
So the brother is sent off the military
And James Allen’s second son seduces his sister
And she was, to the best of my recollection, a minor at the time
He seduced her, he committed what, in my opinion would be statutory rape
He was a sex predator in the church
And the way these things go, they call a meeting and I was invited to it
And the same way James Allen does with so many things,
He laid out his side of what had happened
He told his version of what his son had done with the young girl
And we’re pressured to make a decision right then and there
And while I’m sitting there, trying to digest what I’m hearing, trying to understand the situation
They’re pressuring us to make decisions and judgments on it right then
And Steve Yarhaus was right there helping apply the pressure
Unlike the rest of us, Steve already knew about it before hand
And it is likely the whole meeting and the thing was a setup Steve orchestrated to pressure the rest of us to give James Allen cover
There was no investigation, there was no talking to the girl, there was no getting the other sides of the story
We’re just being pressured to make a decision on the whole thing right then and put it to bed
And, young lady – if you ever hear this and you want to sue the church for all this
You call me up and I will testify in court what was said in the back room
And you can probably get a lot of money out of this
And you would deserve it
Because this whole thing wasn’t right
And it wasn’t me, but one of the deacons in the room more or less said we should let the whole thing go and exonerate James Allen, and just let it go
And that seemed to be the consensus, nobody suggested we should call the police, no one suggested we should investigate further
And the girl ended up put out of the house and forced to go live with James Allen’s sex predator son
That’s how that situation ended
And I’ll tell you the truth, brothers and sisters. These sort of things bother my heart to this day that they force me to be involved in this stuff
I have to say to James Allen and Steve Yarhaus
How dare you force me to go along with this stuff
I mean, how dare you
And then say I have no right to talk about it
I am to the point where, I really don’t care what people think about me
I am telling the truth about this stuff, because I am not going to take this stuff to my grave
I look back now, and we should have investigated that, and we probably should have called the police and turned James Allen’s son in as a sex predator
We certainly should have warned the church that we had a sex predator, who had been seducing young girls in the church
But instead we covered the whole thing up
So, that is the second behing the scenes I want to share.
One son is is breaking up a marriage with adultry, and its covered up
Another son seduced a minor, and they covered it up
And now here is the third thing
Now this is James Allen’s third son
And in 2011 when this saga begins
James Allen’s was arrested for child molesting
And I’ve got the court records right here. I’m going to show these to you
And first let me show you these church directories
These are the directories of members of the church, this one is from 2011
And when you open it up, you see James Allen lived on Cox ferry road in Salem
And then here is another directory from 2015, and same thing, James Allen lives on Cox ferry road and Salem
And I’ll put copies of these things up with the transcript on our website
Visit christiangospelchurch.org, you’ll find transcripts of all of our lessons, and I’ll post this up there
And the reason I’m showing you James Allen’s address in the church directory, is because I want to make sure you understand that the James Allen in these court records, is the same James Allen who is the pastor of faith assembly Church
And if you look at these court records, you will find the exact same address of James Allen, on Cox ferry road in Salem
And as you read through these court records, you read that James Allen bailed his son out of jail when He was first arrested for child molestation
And that that the child molester lived in James Allen’s house for years
And that James Allen was doing all kinds of different things to protect and help his son try to beat these child molestation charges
And the victims here are children, who were molested
And so, I am not going to say their names
But, if you find out who these children were – you will discover that James Allen has lied to the church, repeatedly, from the platform about these things
And so James Allen is living with a child molester,
James Allen is protecting a child molester
James Allen is lying to the church about the child molester
And that child molester was absolutely around people in the church through this period of his arrest and conviction and so forth
Absolutely
And If you wonder why James Allen tends to be such a loner, why he seems to be so private and stay away from everybody so much
This is part of the reason why brothers and sisters
He was actively involved in trying to cover up and protect a child molester
And The child molester was living in his house with him
And he didn’t want anybody to find out
You might say brother Charles, how did you find out about this
Well Brothers and sisters, I’m one of the few people who got invited to go to his house, through all those years
I got to meet him, I got to see these things for myself
I know I am really quiet person in the message
There is a reason they trusted me
And they trusted me because I kept the things I knew to myself
And I did that, because I thought these men were some sort of special servants of God
But the truth is, they are just wicked decievers
And, as I say all these things, it is important that we never lose sight of grace
There is grace
People make mistakes and can repent and be forgiven
And I don’t want to go so far as to take that away from anyone
And, if there is repentance, there is forgiveness, plain and simple
But there is no repentance with these things, brothers and sisters
There is just cover up
And abuse of the victims
And so, those are the three things I wanted to share with you in a really plain way. Those things were not happening fifty years ago. Those things were all happening after Raymond Jackson died, while James Allen was the pastor.
And here’s the point I would really like to make: Through all of these years, James Allen is breaking up homes and families. He is separating parents and children. He is causing divorces. He and Bud Thompson were telling us we have to stay away from our family who don’t agree with what James Allen preaches. If they disagree with James Allen’s polygamy teachings, we have to stay away from them. If they disagree with the third day, we have to stay away from them. On and on. And they broke up plenty of homes that way.
And all the while they were doing that, all the time James Allen was doing that, he was living with a child molester, who he knows is a child molester. It was wrong for you and I to have contact with our family who disagreed with what he preached, but it’s perfectly fine for him to live with his own family who was a child molester. It was perfectly fine for him to carry on relationships with sex predators.
And that is absolute wicked hypocrisy. It is so evil that he would break up our families over things that were frankly ridiculous, but he would not break up his own family over child molestation. His son even came to his wife’s funeral. I was there. I preached the funeral. I shook his hand and everything—the child molester.
And if you will just take the time to think that through, and let it sink in what James Allen has done, I think you’re going to see that James Allen is a deeply flawed human being who has committed some very wicked acts that have harmed numerous people. And it’s not okay.
And, brothers and sisters at Faith Assembly, and I am not talking about the ones who have woken up and you are trapped and can’t get out. I am not talking about you. You are precious people, and I know your circumstances, of all the different ones who speak with me. So I am not talking about you. But you ones who are sitting there going along with this stuff, and now you know these things are going on, you are making a conscious decision to support this evil.
And don’t give me some sort of nonsense about you have the truth. Hell’s bells. What you have is child molesters. What you have is sex perverts. What you have is wicked. And unless you are actually going to do something about that, I don’t want to hear nothing about your so-called truth.
And, sad thing is, I am just talking about the situations around James Allen today. And this is not even the half of the sex perversion going on at Faith Assembly. And if you think I don’t know about all those things—you’ve got another thing coming. I know about every stitch of that too. And it’s hard to hear the words coming out of the mouths of people who are just a bunch of wicked hypocrites. And I hope and pray you start to wake up. Because we are not going anywhere, and we are going to keep going deeper with stuff until either we see some repentance, or we have humbled all the pride in the hearts of you hypocrites.
And let me just point out one example. There was a man and a woman who got married at Faith Assembly. James Allen had forbidden their marriage because the man was about fifty years older than the girl. And because they got married anyway, he made them stand up in a church service and threw them out of the church right in the middle of the service. Because the older man had married a younger woman, he made a big public spectacle out of it. He harmed that family, causing family separations—all the typical stuff.
But at the same time he is doing that, he is totally silent about his own family who is molesting kids. Totally silent about his own son who—he didn’t even marry the girl—he just seduced her. And it was cricket. He said nothing about it.
And you just compare those two situations. I ask you, which one is worse? And I ask you why he covered one up but publicly humiliated the other and damaged their family. Why did he do that? How can we call that anything but evil hypocrisy?
James Allen, you owe a whole lot of people an apology for the things you have done. You are not an apostle; you are an imposter. You are a wicked deceiver, and you are an abusive and cruel man.
Baptisms
Baptisms
And now I’m arriving to the last thing I want to share with you
And if you have listened to my testimony of when I left Faith assembly, you’re going to have some pieces of this already
But I’m going to give a lot more to you right now
For quite a few decades, Faith Assembly has observed a baptismal practice where the preacher and the children being baptized changed together in the back room
The preacher and the little boy getting baptized, go in the back room, they both take off all of their clothes together, and they both get into their baptismal outfits together in the back room
That has been the practice at faith Assembly Church for decades
And I have spent quite a bit of time at this stage, investigating that practice, everything that was going on, I’ve talked to quite a few people who went through it as adults and children
And I have a pretty good idea and understanding of when it started, and who started it, and the things that we’re going on
And what I’m going to tell you, is that this practice was started by homosexual child molesters
The practice of taking children in the back room, and changing in the same room as them before a baptism, was started by the homosexual child molesters who were William Branham’s student preachers
And as you think about that, there is no reason for it
Faith Assembly has bathrooms
It even has a private bathroom in the back of the church
There has never been any good reason for the children to be naked with the preachers
Never
And that practice actually started at the Branham Tabernacle
And that practice, for a reason I’m still not sure, carried over to faith assembly Church
But I can’t say this for sure, Faith assembly Church had at least 2 ministers through the years who are also child molesters
At least two of the ministers who have conducted the baptisms at Faith Assembly where child molestors
These men, who were taking part in this practice, of taking off all their clothes with the children in the back room, two of them were absolutely child molesters.
I will put my hand on a bible and swear to it in court if I have to
And I know at this stage a number of other people who will do the same
And the two that I have been able to get witness verification where child molesters, those two men are dead now they’re no longer living
But all of the ministers took part in the baptismal practice
That includes James Allen
And I’ve talked to multiple people, who all confirm to me, that James Allen exposed himself to them as children
And I want to say that again. Nice and clearly for you all to hear
James Allen, the pastor of Faith assembly Church, has repeatedly exposed his private parts to children before and after baptisms
Let me say that to you again
James Allen, the pastor of Faith assembly Church, has exposed his private parts to children before and after baptisms
I have no indication that he did anything more than expose himself to the children, but he absolutely exposed himself to the children
And multiple people confirmed to me that when it happened that he made absolutely no attempt at modesty
He could have turned his back
There are lots of things he could have did
But he didn’t
He just let it all loose right in front of the kids
And I will say on the record here, that was my own experience when I was baptized too, as a minor
It was almost like the preacher was putting himself on display
It was so strange
To not even have them turn their backs
Its hard to get your mind around
And I got to say, when you put that alongside all these other things I’m talking about, it’s pretty disturbing
And that practice carried on at Faith assembly until I became a minister
And the first time I had to baptize a child, and I was put into the back room,
At it was at that stage, it sunk in for the first time, that they had been doing that for decades
And a lot of people at faith assembly know that had been happening
I could give you a list of names of people who knew it was happening
Both men and women who knew it was happening
And who went along with it, and enabled it
And it’s so normalized, that the people just went along with it like that’s just how it is
They’re totally brainwashed to go along with it
I’ll give you an example
One time David Levy was helping with the baptisms
And there were two young boys maybe 9 and 10 years old, they were brothers
They were going to be baptized
And they went in the back room to change into their baptismal clothes
And I shut the door behind the boys and didn’t go in with them
And David Lavvy comes up, heading for the door.
He’s going to open the door and go in with the boys with their clothes off
And I got between him and the door, and said no. We’re not going in yet
And he looked at me, gave me a really funny look
I think that might have been the first time he did a baptism with me
And he knew that was not how the other preachers did it
And as he gave me that funny look, I explained to him that exposing yourself to children is a crime
And he kind of took a step back and he looked at me almost with horror on his face, and he said oh my goodness I never thought of that before
And brothers and sisters, that’s exactly how it is
The people have went along with this stuff for so long, it doesn’t even register in their minds that they’re doing something wrong
They have observed and went along with the preachers doing this for so long, that to them, It just seems natural and okay
Because the preachers acted like it was natural and okay
But it’s not natural and okay
It’s not okay for the preachers to go in the back room and take off all of their clothes with a naked child
That is not okay
And there has never been a point in time or that sort of thing was okay
There has never been a time were it was appropriate for a preacher to take a child in the back room and both of them strip naked together
That is not acceptable behavior at any time ever
But that is exactly what went on at Faith Assembly for decades
And that practice was created by the homosexual child molesters who worked with William Branham
And that practice came to Faith assembly, and child molester preachers took part in that practice at Faith Assembly
And If you want my opinion, some preachers, used that practice to groom children, to find victims
I’m not accusing James Allen of that, but that is absolutely what I believe some of the other ministers who were child molesters were doing
And today if you go to Faith assembly Church and you find that practice doesn’t happen anymore
I want you to know that it’s not because of the good people at Faith assembly Church
The good people at faith assembly church never put a stop to that
The person who put a stop to that was me, after I became the associate pastor
I bought changing screens, out of my own pocket, donated to the church so people could change in privacy
And I’m the one who stopped the practice of the preachers exposing themselves to children
And hopefully it is still stopped
Hopefully they have not started it back up again
And I wonder – did the church board investigate any of this when they found out it was going on?
Did the church board make a policy that they wanted the preachers to stop showing their private parts to children?
I hope so, but I seriously doubt it
And James Allen, you and the rest of the leadership of Faith Assembly Church owe an apology to me, and every other member of Faith assembly Church for having conducted yourselves this way
You owe us an apology for what you did in exposing your private parts to children, you owe us an apology for covering up and saying it never happened
And you all need to resign
Every last one of you
You need to resign and close down the church
Because a church that would systematically allow these sort of things to go on, is not a church that should exist.
Faith Assembly, you need to close down and shut your doors and issue a public apology for this behavior
And anyone listening out there, I want you to know Faith Assembly Church is not a safe place to take your children
Every single case of child abuse and molestation that has ever happened
I believe it has been covered up and hidden by the church leadership
I’m unaware of a single instance of a perpetrator being reported to the police ever
Prayer Shawl
Now there is one last thing I want to relate. Over the past two or three weeks, I have had about twenty-five different people at Faith Assembly reach out to me about this. And brothers and sisters, as you listen to this and you are seeing the problems, I want you to know you are not alone. I know many of you are afraid to talk to each other about these things because they have threatened you so badly. But there are many people at Faith Assembly who are still there, who see these problems and just don’t know what to do about them. I had about twenty-five different people reach out and share this story with me. I was not there, and I have not seen it—so it’s possible I have some of this a little wrong because it’s all second-hand.
About three weeks ago, something really disturbing happened at Faith Assembly. James Allen got a Jewish prayer shawl and put it on himself. He went into the book of Malachi and read where Jesus will come with healing in His wings. Then, James Allen more or less impersonated Jesus Christ and told everyone to come touch the wings of Jesus’ garment. He had everyone line up and walk by to touch his prayer shawl. As he did, he kept saying “only believe” and had them singing “only believe.”
Brothers and sisters, that is right on the edge of blasphemy. James Allen, you are not Jesus, and it is absolutely outrageous for you to impersonate Jesus like that. Here is the thing, brothers and sisters: James Allen’s mind has not been right for a long time. He would not have done that before his judgment was impaired. But he is not really thinking straight. As everyone came around and he was telling them they could all experience healing, what actually happened was that most of the church got COVID. Instead of healing them, he spread COVID to most of the church, and so many people got sick that they had to close the church.
I think that tells us what God thought about James Allen impersonating Jesus. James Allen, once again, when you listen to this, if you have any common sense left in your head, I hope you will get on your knees and repent before God. You are not the Messiah; you do not have healing in your wings. For you to do that is absolutely blasphemous. I hope you will make a public apology to the church for giving them all COVID, and we sure hope to God no more people die this time.
Now as I bring this talk to a close, you may be wondering who else in church leadership knew about all these things. That is a good question. I have thought pretty hard about it. David Jackson knew parts of these things. Dan Berta knew parts of these things. Some of the trustees, like David Lavy, knew parts of these things. But the only two people I think knew every part are Kevin Crase and Steve Yarhaus. They knew it all, which makes them accomplices to it all. Whatever James Allen deserves, they also deserve.
When you consider this matter, those men should not have a voice in judging it. It’s time for the trustees of the church to start taking some of this stuff seriously. At the end of the day, it is you trustees who have the legal liability regarding all these things. It is your responsibility under the law to be policing all this, and you are the ones who will bear the burden if the victims decide to start pressing their claims. I hope you think seriously about that, because we are not going away, and these things are not going away.
There are lots of things I am willing to say we need to just let go. But when it comes to child abuse and this sort of thing, I am absolutely of the opinion that it is our obligation to do whatever it takes to make sure an end is put to these things. Let me finish by reading out a text again:
11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. 13 But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, 14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Let me close in prayer:
Lord God, you see that this has been a very hard topic to talk about, and I am sure it’s an even harder topic for people to listen to, especially people who have never heard these things before. God, I hope and pray that people can wake up and be delivered from harmful situations. Give us strength, O God, as we stand for what is right, good, and true. Deliver your people, I pray, from all those who would seek to hold them in a trap. Lord God, you know our heart’s desire is to see people repent and turn to You. We pray you bring strong conviction upon the hearts of all the leadership of Faith Assembly, that they repent of what they have done and turn their hearts to You by putting a stop to this wickedness that has taken hold. Lord, we pray they repent and turn from their wicked ways. But, O God, if they do not repent, we pray, for the sake of the innocent, that You bring swift judgment on the wicked men who are perpetrating these abuses and blasphemies in Your Holy name. This we ask, in Jesus’ name. Amen.