Barry Coffey
Barry Coffey is the pastor of a Message church in Hickory, North Carolina.
Barry ghosted us
In 2012, we turned the Believethesign website from a site that promoted William Branham into one that examined him honestly. At the time, we sent emails to all of the churches that linked to our site, informing them of the change. Here is the email I sent to Barry:
From: Rod Bergen
Date: Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 6:13 PM
Subject: Believe The Sign website
To: Barry CoffeyBro. Barry,
If you haven't heard, my son, Jeremy, issued a formal apology for the prior information posted on the BTS website - http://en.believethesign.com/index.php?title=Humble_Pie
These things were so serious that i quit my job at the end of June as I really felt that Cindy and I needed the time alone to pray and seek God for His will in our lives. i have spent a lot of time with Jeremy discussing the church, the message and our experiences over the past few years and, although he is expressing what is on his heart, I can say that I am pretty close to where he is on a lot of these issues.
I appreciate you as a friend and trust we can remain that way.
Your brother in Christ,
Rod
Barry responded that he was at a funeral and would get back to me shortly.
I never heard from him again. Ever.
I emailed him several times without ever receiving a response.
Sadly, this is the way of the Message. If you ask too many questions, you might get ghosted.
The Present Truth
Barry's response to our re-focused website was to respond later that year from the pulpit at Hickory Bible Tabernacle with a six-part series called The Present Truth. Although I did not find out about his response until recently, we have now responded to all six sermons, one article for each. Below is a short overview of what those six responses found, for anyone who wants the shape of the whole before reading the parts.
The Pattern in Barry Coffey's Defense
What six sermons revealed when I answered them one by one
I did not set out with a thesis to prove. I set out to answer each sermon on its own terms, take his strongest argument, follow it honestly, and see where it led. What surprised me was that the same thing happened six times. In each sermon, the very move Coffey built his case on turned around and pointed back at the Message. I never had to import a pattern. His own arguments kept supplying it.
Here is that pattern, sermon by sermon.
Six sermons, one turn
Part 1, the test. Coffey's opening argument was a test: God will not put His power behind a lie, so the signs and wonders in Branham's ministry prove it was true. It is a fair test. But apply it evenly, to Branham's own documented stories, the Arizona cloud he was not standing under, the visions that shifted over time, and the test does not vindicate the Message. It indicts it. The very rule Coffey set for everyone else was the rule the Message could not pass. (See The Test That Fails Its Maker.)
Part 2, the proof. Here Coffey offered his hardest evidence: the 1950 Houston photograph of a halo of light above Branham's head, authenticated, he said, by the head of the FBI's fingerprint division, with every other photo on the roll blank. It is a specific, checkable claim. So I checked it. The examiner was not an FBI official; the FBI later stated it had no knowledge of the photograph. The rest of the roll survives. The proof offered as unshakeable collapsed the moment it was examined. (See The Photograph That Proves Too Much.)
Part 3, the absolute. Coffey established, rightly, that the Bible is the absolute against which everything must be tested, and he even conceded that a prophet can be wrong, that "everything a prophet says is not thus saith the Lord." Then he exempted the one man his own principle was built to test. Apply the absolute to Branham's failed "Thus Saith The Lord" predictions and the exemption cannot hold. The standard was sound. It was simply never allowed to touch its intended target. (See The Absolute He Would Not Apply.)
Part 4, the word. Coffey took the word "heretic," which the world throws at the Message, and wore it as a badge: a heretic is just a brave dissenter, like Galileo or Luther. But that is not what heresy means. In its historic sense, drawn out in Under the Halo from Alan Hirsch, heresy is a fragment of real truth extracted and inflated until it crowds out the greater Truth, until the part becomes the whole. By that definition, the real one, the label he wore as a badge describes his own movement. (See What Heresy Actually Means.)
Part 5, the code. Coffey spent half a sermon condemning external dress codes, Amish, Muslim, Hasidic, Catholic, as legalistic and "holier than thou," and stated the principle that undoes them: "it's what's on the inside that matters." Then, in the same sermon, he preached his own code, uncut hair, no trousers, no sleeveless, and told a wife to defy her husband to keep it. The holiness he condemned in others was the holiness he required of his own. (See The Dress Code He Condemned.)
The Conclusion, the defense. After six sermons of promising a reasoned defense, Coffey ended by telling his people to avoid the arguments, to accept things by faith where there is "no bounty of evidence," and to see themselves as the living proof of prophecy. The defense he built the series to deliver closed with an instruction to stop looking. (See The Defense That Says "Stop Looking".)
Why the same thing kept happening
Six times is not a coincidence, and it is not cleverness on my part. When a defense keeps failing in the same way, the failure is telling you something about the thing being defended.
A claim that is true does not need to be shielded from its own tests. It welcomes them. It gets stronger when you apply the standard evenly, check the proof, test it against the absolute, define the terms honestly, hold it to its own rules, and look closely. Truth has nothing to fear from any of that.
The Message failed in the opposite direction every time. Its own test indicted it. Its own proof collapsed. Its own absolute had to be suspended. Its own badge described it. Its own standard condemned it. And its own defense ended by asking people to stop examining. That is not the profile of a true claim being unfairly attacked. It is the profile of a claim that cannot survive contact with its own principles.
I want to be clear that this is not an attack on Barry Coffey. I always liked Barry and was genuinely surprised he ghosted us. The pattern is not a verdict on him. It is a verdict on the thing he continues to defend. A capable, sincere man will still lose every round if he is defending a position that turns against itself, and that is what happened here, six times over.
An honest word to the reader
If you are inside the Message and you have read this far, I am not your enemy, and I am not asking you to take my word for any of it. Every one of these six responses rests on primary sources, Branham's own recorded sermons, his own timeline, his own quotes, the documentary record, so that you can check it for yourself. That is the whole point. The one thing I am asking is the opposite of what the conclusion of this series asked of you: do not avoid the arguments. Look at them.
The gospel has never been afraid of examination. It is the faith that says "come and see." If the Message is true, it will withstand your looking. If it is not, then you deserve to know, and a faith worth having is waiting on the other side of the questions, not behind a wall built to keep them out.
Come and reason. All six responses are linked above.
Other statements and quotes from Barry Coffey
Infallibility
“Not that Brother Branham is infallible by any stretch. Because he was human. And you’re going to have to take that up with God for making him human.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "If I Was A Boy In The Message, Part 3", November 13, 2024 [47:28] [Source]
Context
A direct admission from a prominent Message pastor that Branham was "not infallible by any stretch." The defensive framing — "take that up with God for making him human" — reveals the tension between defending Branham and acknowledging his fallibility.
The Message is the only way
“My heart went out to people who have turned their back on this message. Where would you turn today, having known about this message and the answers it supplies, and you turned away from it and categorically denied? Where do you go now? Where, what website do you go to now?” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "What Adoption Taught Us", March 29, 2020 [32:46] [Source]
Context
Coffey’s rhetorical question — "where do you go now?" — reveals the movement’s core control mechanism: the belief that there is nowhere else to go. This is the classic high-control group framing that keeps people in even when they have doubts.
We are self-righteous
“I personally know, and spent many, many hours, with the people who have written many of these websites, you know, Believe the Sign, and different ones. I know those fellows. I was associated with them when they were following the message. And I know a little bit about the lives that they live. And you'd probably be shocked that some people have such a self-righteous attitude about cutting down the message.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "The Present Truth, Part 1", March 5, 2023 [1:15:08] [Source]
Context
Coffey claims personal knowledge of BelieveTheSign creators and attacks their character rather than addressing their documented evidence. The ad hominem approach reveals an inability to engage with the substance. When we first changed the focus of the website in 2012, Barry said he would contact us. He never did. We have attempted to contact him several times but he never returned any of our emails or texts. How can you judge someone as self-righteous when you never returned their calls?
This website is like a cancer, but just a mini-cancer
“You remember a few years ago when the Believe the Sign thing rose up and all of a sudden as that began to creep through kind of like a mini cancer among the body of believers, it brought out things in people that shocked a lot of us.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "Step Into The Waters, Part 6", March 7, 2021 [1:05:22] [Source]
Context
Coffey compares BelieveTheSign to cancer. He claims personal knowledge of its creators and launched a 5-part sermon series in response. The comparison reveals the threat level the evidence-based website represents to the movement.
The newspaper articles on the Message were well researched
“Most of you have been painfully aware of some of the negative publicity that we who believe the message of the hour have received in the articles that were published in the Hickory Daily Record. And I knew about this about a year ago and they came and interviewed several churches. There was a reporter who came around was doing investigative research on the message community and had heard some comments about things and then was developing these articles for over a year and they interviewed a couple of brothers that we know and tried to get some other balanced information about it.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle (Hickory, NC), November 2024 [Source]
Context
Coffey acknowledges the reporters' diligence — confirming they spent over a year conducting research and sought balanced information from Message churches. This contrasts sharply with Haylett's dismissal of the series as based on "a few little facts."
Writing off the municipal bridge prophecy with no evidence
“A lot of these people who have left the message, they've focused on certain points that are unconscionable. They're unprovable because they existed or happened before Google existed and they're unprovable. You know, we were talking about the bridge. Peter and I were talking about the bridge many years ago and how many people actually fell off the bridge. And there's some different ideas about how many people actually fell off the bridge.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "The Present Truth, Part 1", 2023-03-05 [1:30:39] [Source]
Context
Coffey inadvertently admits the bridge prophecy is "unprovable" and acknowledges "different ideas about how many people actually fell off." This from a defender — not a critic.
Has not done his homework
“George J. Lacey. And he said, the head of the FBI fingerprint document examined when that light was there. And he, the person who looked at the photograph, they didn't have an answer for it.” — Barry Coffey, "Warfare" — Hickory Bible Tabernacle, 2023-11-01
Context
Coffey repeats the false "head of the FBI" title. Lacy was never head of the FBI — he was a private document examiner who did freelance work.
"Press Play" not in the Message
“I searched every single one of Brother Branham’s sermons. And he never, ever told us to press play. I don’t have a problem with pressing play if Brother Branham had taught us to do that. But he never did.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "Marks, Seals, and Cults, Part 2", July 13, 2025 [1:09:56] [Source]
“If the message just remains press play, it’s failed. Absolutely. Because we are not meant to idolize Brother Branham. We’re not meant to say, Brother Branham, tell us what to think. Tell us what to dress like. Tell us what to do.” — Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "The End Run", March 2, 2025 [1:41:56] [Source]
Context
Coffey searched all 1,200+ Branham sermons and found ZERO instances of "press play." The entire press play movement is built on a phrase Branham never used.
Coffey says if the Message remains "press play" it has FAILED. Uses the word "idolize" — a stunning accusation from within the movement.
Believed William Branham was an inter-dimensional traveler
“Am I there or am I here? Brother Branham’s a man who’s used to traveling between dimensions. He’s done it. He knows what it’s like to go beyond the curtain of time. He knows what it’s like to go into the regions of the lost.”
— Barry Coffey, Hickory Bible Tabernacle, "Rapturing Faith, Part 19", November 17, 2024 [1:41:35] [Source]
Context
Coffey normalizes "traveling between dimensions" as routine for a prophet, implying errors are natural byproducts of moving between realms.
Footnotes