Rod Bergen:  I want to welcome James Manuel, once again, to the Off The Shelf podcast. James lives in Cape town, South Africa, and spent 40 years in the message. He believed it. He lived at, he preached it. The message was all that he, his wife and his children knew. It was his life. Since leaving the message 10 years ago in 2012, James has had a mission to expose the lies, deception, fraud, and corruption in the message wherever, and whenever, he gets the opportunity. He has challenged message ministers all over the world. We interviewed James over three years ago on the Off The Shelf podcast, and you can listen to that first interview on episode 50. James, welcome back to Off The Shelf. 

James Manuel: Thank you, Rod, Emily and Tim. It is such a privilege to engage in a conversation with all of you.
I must [00:02:00] mention that I'm very grateful for this opportunity. 

Rod Bergen: Now, we're really glad to have you, James. And also with me, as James mentioned today are Emily Arndt and Tim Kraus, our cohosts.
I will add, Emily has actually visited South Africa and met with James personally. Emily, you might give a little bit of background for that. 

Emily Arndt: I did, I had a chance to actually spend a few days with James and his family. He has a very lovely wife and great daughters, and had a chance to explore Cape town a little bit and have some fish and chips together and just hang out.
And James was surprised how tall I was, I guess that was the we kinda, meeting people off the internet. James is exactly who he says he is. I don't know if he could say the same for me, hopefully, but definitely James is like, wow, you're tall. But it was lovely. I would go back and visit him and his family in a [00:03:00] heartbeat.

That was, it was a very lovely time. 

Rod Bergen: Oh, that's wonderful. James let's get started. You indicated on our last interview that you were in the Seven Thunders movement. Last year, we interviewed Eleisha Moreno, who was raised in the Seven Thunders movement. How long were you in the Seven Thunders, James? Were you in it until you came out of the message?

James Manuel: Yes, but I have to qualify that statement before I embrace the so-called revelation of the Seven Thunders. I was mostly aligned with the main mainstream message groups in the seventies and eighties. I fellowshipped in churches that are regarded as mainstream message churches. One pastor that may be well-known to some is Harold Beckett. In the 1980s, I was the song leader, and I used to transport all the [00:04:00] visiting ministers from all over. Some of the names that come to mind are Lonnie Jenkins, Morris Ungren, the guy who sang at all William Branham 's campaigns and Bob Brown a very popular proponent of the Perousia movement. Yeah. I had the wonderful opportunity to sit in the company of these men and host them at our home after services.
It was from about 1990 that I started going to a church that preached the thunders. So by default, I became a thunder boy, even then, I was always a moderate message believer. We try to walk in the middle of the road. 

Rod Bergen: So from your perspective James, what were the distinctives of the Seven Thunders movement?  How did it differ from what you called mainstream? 

James Manuel: Well, the mainstream message folk are more moderate... quiet in the services, you will not find, let's say, a set of drums. The music would normally be an organ, a piano. The hand clapping would be very slow. And there'll be an amen here and there and praise the Lord here and there.

Whereas in the Seven thunder group, it was like a wild Pentecostal group. Whenever the minister preaches the people would run up to the pulpit and, with a fist in the air that you would hit towards the pulpit. Some of them would hit the pulpit. And then during the service, people would get slain and there'd be noise.

And it was really a noisy bunch. So from the main stream, like very, very extreme from the mainstream message, 

Rod Bergen: This is much more charismatic, Pentecostal in its approach to worship. 

James Manuel: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And yeah. Even the ministers, those guys would take off their jackets, they'll roll up their sleeves and they would build up a sweat [00:06:00] and, they all preach till the foam comes to the side of their mouths.

And sometimes the people won't allow the minister to finish his sermon. Because, and then they call it "the anointing fell" or the Holy Ghost fell, or the Holy Ghost took the service over. And people would be everywhere, lying everywhere. And everybody's going to run around covering sisters that expose themselves.

And the the big difference also with the Seven Thunder movement is that the sisters are the ushers. They run around with blankets and when they do the brothers must give way because they take control of the service when the slaying and stuff starts. 

Rod Bergen: Yeah. I've, I did a lot of traveling and I would say, there were a number of maybe what you would call mainstream.
Like I was in Trinidad a number of times, and I wouldn't say they were wildly extreme, but they would be, have considered by someone walking off the street to be more [00:07:00] Pentecostal in their approach. 

James Manuel: Yeah. There's been a lot of that kind of groups as well. There's one particular group, they were under the influence of an American minister.
And you'd probably know the name, Stephen Shelley. Those guys were extreme, but in another way. The preacher, when it comes to the pulpit, he would grab his style of his neck and he would walk with him. He would walk with a tie in his hand. And one hand in the pocket, the tie swinging in the other hand, and the sisters would be prophesying all the time and taking the services over... like really wild.

Rod Bergen: I should mention... Vin Dayal... It was just reported... and this is from the news yesterday. Pastor Vin Dayal, Vinworth Dayal, appeared before a magistrate in the Port of Spain yesterday. So that would have been July the first or second. On charges that alleged that on [00:08:00] December the 31st, 2019, he possessed criminal property in the amount of $28 million in Trinidad and Tobago currency, and has been charged with criminal conduct contrary to the Income Tax Act, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to suspect that those proceeds were criminal property.

So he's got a second charge in terms of another amount of almost 2.7 million Trinidadian dollars, which the police, I think, seized from his house on January the second, 2020. So these are charges that were laid under the proceeds of crime act in, in Trinidad.

And he was released on 10 million dollars bail and had to surrender his passport. 

Tim Kraus: Well he had the $10 million laying around though, right? 

Rod Bergen: No. The government seized all that. The government seized all that and I'll put a link, I'll put a link to this. There's a [00:09:00] picture of the money. He had 28 file boxes of cash. So it's yeah it's bizarre.

And this is the problem. I'm sure he's, doesn't think he's done anything wrong, but message ministers and pastors consider tithe money to be their own. And so when they do that and they take it under their own and treat it as their own. From an income tax perspective that can be construed as basically appropriating the property, which means you have to pay tax on it.

And if you didn't pay tax on it, you're guilty of criminal tax evasion. And I expect that's the way they're going to, they're going to attack him to that's. It's very interesting to note. 

James Manuel: Yeah, it is. It is. And, with that amount of money, there's a lot of explaining to be done. I'm sure I had that post up today and someone was complaining that he came clean. If it was dirty money, he would have handed it in.

I said, no, no, no. He handed it in because the notes that he had became obsolete, they had to change it for new notes. And that is the only reason, otherwise he would have held onto it. 

Rod Bergen: Yeah he didn't turn it into the government. He basically said, I would like to exchange this for real money, because as of December the 31st, 2020, the money was no longer valid as currency. The Trinidadian government basically came out with a plastic note, which is used in a lot of countries now, because it's a lot harder to counterfeit.

And so those old paper notes, they were going to become obsolete on January the first. And so he went down to the bank with 28 file boxes full of cash. 
Emily Arndt: Crazy stuff. For sure. So James, you're talking a little bit about your background in the message. And obviously you've rubbed shoulders with the likes of Lonnie Jenkins.

You said Morris Ungren. I remember seeing Morris Ungren. [00:11:00] He'd come and preach up by us when I was growing up. And there's always the thing. You weren't in the right part of the message. So that's the reason you left the message and you hear these things, but you're rubbing shoulders with some pretty, well-regarded, like you say, mainstream pastors.

So what caused you to start questioning the message in the midst of all this 

James Manuel: Emily, in 2007, a sister, just one of the sisters at church, approached me randomly with a simple question and it was persistent. Could you give me a direct quote where brother Branham said that thunders were opened and the direct scripture that declares the same. You have to understand by this time I was a respected student of the message and many regarded me as an expert when it [00:12:00] involved the conduct, order, and doctrines of the message .

Message pastors recognized the gift in me to interpret the message in the simplest form. Big name message pastors like Edgar Roscoe in South Africa. Sat in my lounge to convince me to come to his church, but yet a simple question stumped me. I honestly couldn't answer and it bothered me greatly. So what I did is I went to my pastor and asked him the same question.

He could not answer either. So instead of admitting that he couldn't answer the question, he went to one of the elders, which was a good friend of mine, who was brother Frank Von Nicke. And he told brother Von Nicke very quietly, behind my back... the two of us, brother Von Nicke and myself, used to have [00:13:00] a mission work up in Paarl, about 70 kilometers from Cape Town.

And we would go up there once a week and we would go and minister to those people. And he said to brother Von Nicke, make sure that you don't let James preach because he doesn't believe the revelation of the Seven Thunders. And obviously, brother Von Nicke was upset and I was upset, but that was the kind of thing that made me look closer at the message.

And do you know what these insistence that, as my revelation and my theme is that revelation must be explained, you must show it. And he couldn't. And he wanted me to just accept that it had to come by revelation and I wasn't willing to do that. And that sent me on my way searching.

And it took me all of five years, Emily, to really get to a stage where I had enough.

Tim Kraus: Well, James, you started to question the message and you mentioned that it took you five years... and a lot of us, when we leave the message, there's one event or one thing that actually triggers us... that causes us ultimately to leave the message.
What was that for you? 

James Manuel: Tim, many people left the message for various reasons. For some, it was because of false prophecies. For others, it was because of the false municipal bridge vision. Then for others, it was because of the South African/Indian false "Thus Saith The Lord" vision. For me, it was the cloud story. I remember vividly the mixed emotions I experienced when I discovered that the cloud story was a hoax. 

For all the time that I was in the message, I never hung a halo photo on my wall [00:15:00] at home. And my argument was simple, when people asked me... message people asked me, "Why don't you have brother Branham's photo on your wall?" And I would say to them, "Well, brother, Branham, wasn't a member of my family. That's why his photo is not on my wall." But the cloud photo had a special place in my lounge and whenever visitors came to our home, I would explain with great pride, how seven angels came to visit my prophet while he was hunting with his friends. I would show them the eyes, the mouth, the nose, and just trust that they see what I'm seeing and explain the reason why they came.

It was to reveal the seven seals of revelation to the seventh church age messenger... to bring the seventh church to the seventh church of Laodicea. By the time I discovered that this story was a hoax, I was already doubtful of many things in the message. But I was holding on for [00:16:00] dear life to William Branham, the cloud story hoax pushed me right over the edge.

This discovery has a devastating effect on my life. 

Tim Kraus: So we hear a lot from ministers that basically tell us we leave the message because we can't handle the message or we can't live the message. That clearly wasn't the case in your case. 

James Manuel: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I was even more... I held on to William Branham, but by this time I've left the ministers.
I, I didn't trust them, I didn't believe them. But I held onto my prophet and whatever he said, I believed. The story that you're backslidden, that you've left the message because you couldn't maintain the standards of the message... that is plain nonsense. 

Tim, when I started asking questions to message pastors, webmasters of message sites... and eventually Joseph [00:17:00] Branham... and I saw how they ran for cover. No one could answer simple questions. I knew I came to the end of the message. 

I remember the one webmaster, I think I sent it to Rod right in the early days. I think it was sometime in 2012. This one webmaster said to me, "You have to make a choice. Either, you believe William Branham or you believe Rod Bergen or Jeremy Bergen." That was the guys. I said to him, "I don't want to, you tell me." Says, "Nope, you either believe brother Branham, or you believe those guys." And, I left them. 

Rod Bergen: I think what's really interesting with your comment. James is that we never asked people on the website to believe us.

We don't ask them to trust us. We basically present the facts and then present enough evidence that they can go and check it out for [00:18:00] themselves. Because it's not about, "Oh, you have to believe me, or you have to believe William Branham." No, it's look at the facts that William Branham presented. Look at everything that surrounded it, including, the facts that his daughter, Rebecca Smith came out with.

The facts that, Gene Norman, who was with William Branham when he was hunting and said, "Oh, I heard the big bang and I looked up and I didn't see the cloud. But what I saw were two streaks in the air, like from a jet plane, but I couldn't see them. Back then, and we prove this from newspaper reports, which again are on the website, that people were complaining about sonic blasts from airplanes breaking the sound barrier. You never hear this any more, but back in the sixties, that was not that uncommon. I can remember being in elementary school and hearing a big bang and we're all freaked out. We're looking around, what was it? We looked around and couldn't see anything.

And our teacher told us, oh, a plane just broke the sound barrier overhead, and it would break windows. And that was something that happened because communism was a big threat. Everybody wanted to be ready. And so from time to time they broke the sound barrier above civilized areas. 

James Manuel: That's right. Yep.

And, it's w what's so sad is you have all the facts, you have everything in front of you. I cannot understand, even today, how people can look at it and still believe all that nonsense. 

Rod Bergen: The problem, James, is they actually don't look at it. And this is something that was brought home to me by a couple of brothers who came and questioned me and said, we realized that our pastor did not have our best interests in mind.

And they came to understand that the pastor had never checked any of this information out himself. One pastor actually admitted it. He actually said over the pulpit, he said, I started looking at it, but it made my head hurt. 

James Manuel: I remember my last pastor, when I left the [00:20:00] message, his name is Steven Delo. When I confronted him and I gave him all the details of the cloud story and he listened to me very intently. And when I was done, he said to me, if what you tell me is the truth, then William Branham is a false prophet. I still say to brother, Stephen, I didn't say that, you said that. Then he promised me he was going to look into it and come back to me. To this day, I haven't heard from Steven Delo. 

Tim Kraus: Yeah. The sad part is James, I think is that there are good message ministers, as an example, who have left the message. Some of them recently. Tim Humes comes to mind. Who basically, honestly, took a look at the message and some of the stories like the cloud vision, and actually like yourself actually did the study and they made the decision that they could not follow the [00:21:00] message given what they learned.

It's gratifying to know that people that actually search scripture and compare it to the message, they get it pretty quickly. Those people that don't bother, but essentially say my pastor is correct, they may never get it. And that's the sadness of it. 

Rod Bergen: Yeah. I have only run into one or maybe two people who have looked at the facts honestly and then decided to stay in the message. And they have admitted that they actually think that the facts are correct. There is a significant likelihood that William Branham was not who he said he was, or who message preachers say that he is or was, but because of ties to family and friends, they weren't prepared to leave what is in effect, a very [00:22:00] comfortable community inside the message. 

James Manuel: That is also a very sad approach.

But we do have that as well. Yeah. Yeah. I've come across a few message pastors in South Africa that now openly admit that everything in the message is not true and correct, but they're not willing to move. 

Rod Bergen: Big cost... People like Jeff Jenkins... And I'm sure this has cost you a lot, James. Where it's cost them their livelihood, because they didn't have any kind of training at anything outside of preaching the message.

Tim Kraus: Their livelihood, their association with people, their friendships, in some aspects, their family... it comes at a huge cost, when those folks like Jeff Jenkins or other message ministers choose to leave. 

Rod Bergen: That's correct. 

Emily Arndt: It's really like leaving a culture. I'm someone who's gone and lived in another culture for [00:23:00] almost six years.

And I say it was almost my second transition from one culture, to relearning a brand new culture, because I feel when I left the message in my early twenties, I had to learn everything I thought I knew within the message constraints, I had to relearn. I had to learn new vocabulary. I had to learn how to interact with people, how the church worked, what did this look like?

So it's terrifying. And it's sad to hear that people have seen the discrepancies, but choose to stay. But I understand it because it's hard. People say, oh, you just couldn't live the message you left. It was easier. It's pretty hard leaving the message and you lose it.

Yeah. Yeah. You've got to count the cost.

James Manuel: You better believe it. That's pretty hard.. 

Rod Bergen: James, moving to a slightly different subject. Paul talks in second Corinthians 11:4, and says that if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus, other than the Jesus that we preached, [00:24:00] or if you receive a different spirit from the spirit you received or a different gospel from the one you accepted, he said, you put up with it easily enough.

And that was a criticism of the Corinthian church. Does the message preach another Jesus? Or as Paul said, a different gospel? What does the Jesus outside the message look like to you compared to the Jesus of the message? What has the transition been like for you and what have you learned?