Examining the Ministry of William Branham

Was it a 20^th Century Prophetic Ministry

 

or

 

A 20^th Century Deception of the Devil?

 

This is without a doubt the most difficult message that I have had to deliver to the people of God. Only by way of hindsight is it possible to see the length that satan has gone to in order to deceive believers in this time of the end for the purpose of disbelieving the Word of God and the scriptures that He has given to us.

Satan has always wanted and strove to be the Master of the Universe and to position himself above God. Even the scriptures say that satan himself is transformed (disguised) as an angel of light and his ministers as the ministers of righteousness. (2 Corinthians 11:14-15) This should be obvious to those who seek the truth and believe the scriptures as they have been recorded throughout the bible.

The only reason that I have taken up this examination of William Branham’s ministry was because of the veracity of his bible teaching. It was obvious to me that the accuracy of his teaching was not in accordance with bible truth as it is written. We must have an absolute and the bible must be our absolute. If not, then who can we believe? Do we believe the doctrines adopted by any of the other churches, or those taught be the thousands of preachers throughout the World according to their interpretation of bible scripture? Without knowing where else the real truth lies, we must turn to the bible and make it our absolute for learning the truth of God’s Word.

Now I want to make it very clear that in the following assumptions I am not declaring all that I say as being factual. I am stating most of what I say as being only a possibility. What I am attempting to describe is not an attack on the ministry of William Branham, or on him personally, but is meant to be an exposition of the continuation of the devil’s plan to deceive the people of God and cause them to not believe God’s Word as has been presented to us in the bible.

Before we start at the beginning when the angel visited William Branham with the delivery of the commission of a Divine Healing Ministry, I am going to begin at the end and show what was the result of the efforts put forth from the devil and how he succeeded in what he intended to do.

Here we are in the 21^st century and we have a group of people that have followed and believed completely in William Branham’s ministry, including what he taught as the truth of the scriptures and that God was in it all. But what we presently have is teaching that does not line up with the scriptures, but is one man’s interpretation of them. Here we have millions of people around the World who believe they have received the gospel of Christ and are saved, but may very well not be. Here we have all of his followers that believe that William Branham was a Prophet of God and all they have heard about the supernatural events that occurred in his ministry were of God and actually occurred, but may not have been as they were presented.

First we want to take note of what is known as the “River Scene”. William Branham, at the beginning of his ministry was baptizing new converts in the Ohio River on June 11, 1933 when an unusual event occurred. Out of the sky a bright light came down out of Heaven above their heads and caused great excitement and concern as to what it was. William Branham testified that he heard a voice coming from above that said to him: “just as John the Baptist foreran the first coming of Christ, your message will forerun His second coming”.

It was not defined as to what his message was at that time which was to forerun the second coming of Christ, but even until this day, some eighty years later, this message is still being spoken of and his followers have mixed ideas about what the message is. Because of this so called message, his followers call themselves “message believers” and have designated certain churches as being message churches.

Now I do not deny that this river scene with the light coming down out of Heaven actually occurred and it could very well have been sent down by God. The only thing about the light that causes me to be cautious about is a bible scripture in Revelations 13:13 where it describes fire coming down from Heaven in the sight of men and how they were deceived by miracles being done afterwards.

Then we have a picture that was taken in 1950 that was presented to the people as being a sign of the vindication of William Branham’s ministry, but that might not be completely accurate. Yet without that picture and the testimony behind it, the people wouldn’t have anything except hearsay to anchor their faith on that his ministry was completely being of God.

Do I believe that William Branham was intentionally deceiving anyone with his teaching or anything else in his ministry? Absolutely not! I have always considered William Branham as a Godly man, honest and doing everything that he believed God wanted him to do. Even though, I honestly believe that William Branham could have been deceived by the devil and was an unknowing participant in the devil’s objective to deceive the people of God into not believing the truth of Bible scriptures.

If the devil didn’t have a part in the people accepting what William Branham taught which was in contradiction to the bible, it is hard to believe. From the beginning of mankind, the devil has been instrumental in convincing people of the word of God not being true and from what is evident in William Branham’s teaching, the devil could very well be causing it today.

Now I want you to take a look at what transpired when the Angel visited William Branham on May 7, 1946. The angel introduced himself as coming from the presence of God, but did not introduce himself as to who he was, nor did William Branham ask him.

Many times throughout bible history an angel of God appeared to certain people to deliver a message to them. During many of these appearances the angel made itself known by name. All of the heavenly beings depicted in the scriptures were called angels, even though most of the time it was Jehovah God Himself.

Take as an example the angel who came to Hagar, the maid of Abraham’s wife, who appeared to her in the wilderness. When Hagar spoke to the angel she called Him Jehovah God. So it was God Himself appearing as an angel. The same when an angel visited Abraham when he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac and made Himself known as Jehovah also. Many times that an angel visited certain people throughout history, it was Jehovah God Himself.

Then there was a time when an angel visited Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist and made itself known by the name of Gabriel. This same angel Gabriel also visited Mary the mother of Jesus to announce the birth of Jesus.

When Saul of Tarsus was visited by a Heavenly being, he asked the question” Who are you Lord”. Saul thought it was Jehovah God, but was told that it was Jesus.

What really disturbed me about the message the angel gave William Branham was that he was being given a gift of Divine Healing, but the people would have to believe him before they could be healed. Now that doesn’t sound like he was getting a gift of healing to me. If God gave a person a gift of healing, it stands to reason to me that with that gift he would be able to heal anyone he desired to heal whether they believed him or not. So with the statement from the angel being what it was, William Branham didn’t really receive a gift of healing.

Now we all know that God can bestow a gift of healing on a person if He wills. After all, Jesus had the gift to heal whoever He wanted and anytime He wanted. I believe that is how a true gift of divine healing from God would work. Now I’m not necessarily saying that the angel didn’t come from God, but if he did and if William Branham was to be given a gift of healing, he would have used it in that manner. But if this angel wasn’t sent by God, that would account for a true gift of healing not being given to him.

There was said several times by William Branham that his commission was to pray for people and if they were to believe him that he was sent by God, they would receive their healing. There was a time when he said the angel told him after praying for a person’s healing and if there was no indication that the healing took place, “just ask a blessing and walk away”. This sounds like healing was dependent upon the faith of a person and not on a gift of healing from God.

One other thing that we should take note of. I’m not saying that this angel was or was not sent from the presence of God, but consider this. We all know that God has the ability to heal a person of their sickness or their disability and because He can, He can also give someone the gift of healing. We also know that the devil cannot heal anyone, so he does not have the ability to give someone the gift of healing either. So for this angel to say just pray for a person and if they believe then God will heal them and if they are not healed you can say that they didn’t have faith enough to be healed. God doesn’t have to work that way does He?

There was also something else that the angel told William Branham. He told him in William Branham’s own words:"As the prophet Moses was given two gifts, signs (rather) to a-vindicate his ministry, so will you given two--so are you given two gifts to a-vindicate your ministry” The angel said that Moses was given two signs to prove to the people that God had sent him to deliver the people out of Egypt, but that is not true. The angel was in error because the scripture says that God gave Moses three signs. (Exodus 4:1 thru 9) Now you would think that the God who sent the angel and the angel himself would have known the scripture better than that. So I wonder if in fact that angel was sent by God, or was this just the beginning for setting the stage for something to occur later on in his ministry when he began to teach bible scripture which turned out to be in error

Now here was this angel that visited him with the commission who said that he would be with him in the ministry. Here was this angel who traveled with him and moved around the meeting hall pointing out people who he was to address in the meeting. Here was the angel who was always on the platform in the prayer line with him so the people would pass by the angel first before he would pray for them. Here was the angel who had his picture taken above his head. Here was the angel that met with him teaching him different things. Here was the angel who visited him in motel rooms and once allowed William Branham’s son to see him. Here was the angel who was the pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt. All of this and he never addressed the angel by name, one who was with him from his birth and throughout his life.

Here was an angel who said that he came from the presence of God to present him with a gift of Divine Healing that wasn’t truly a gift and would only be effective if the people believed him. A gift that even cancer would be cured, but only if the people believed him. If William Branham truly was given these gifts to operate throughout his ministry, it doesn’t seem like to me that it would be necessary for an angel to be with him all the time. I did notice in the scriptures that Paul the Apostle used a little caution and common sense when he asked “who are you Lord” to be certain that he was receiving a legitimate Heavenly visitor.

This all seems very strange to me, so I would question just exactly who this angel was and did God actually send him to William Branham? This nameless angel who guided his every move and taught him everything he needed to know. So now I would like to ask, where was this angel when William Branham really needed him the most, at the time of the accident that took his life? I’m sure that some of you will say that William Branham had completed all that God wanted him to do and just took him home. If so, then why is there still no unity of the faith that he worked so hard to attain? If so then why are the message believers themselves not in unity with each other in their beliefs? If so, why is it that many people continue to not accept his teaching? If he was a prophet of God, surely he would have been sent to believers all over the World and not just a few who would be convinced that his teaching was of God.

I would like to insert this to his favor, that I am sure there were a lot of healings as a result of his ministry, but I’m also sure that the healings took place as the result of the faith in God that the people had and not because of this so called gift of healing that he was supposed to have received. I am also certain that because of his ministry there were many that were saved, but I’ll qualify that and say they were saved if they were taught to have faith in the Gospel of Christ, believing that Jesus was the Son of God as the scripture states.

Now as we come to the picture that was taken in Houston Texas in 1950 I have just a few things to say. First, if the picture did show a supernatural light above his head and that’s what it actually was, then God made it appear to vindicate his healing ministry because that is what he was involved in at that time. The appearance of that light on the photo could have been a heavenly being, but no one knows for certain. One thing is for sure, that photograph has been instrumental in the adoption of William Branham’s teaching and the promotion of him being a prophet, whether it is true or not.

In March of 1963 William Branham preached a series of sermons supposedly to explain the meaning of the opening of the secrets of the Seven Seals of Revelations chapter six, seven and eight. The problem I have with any man proclaiming that he has opened the seals is that according to the scriptures, no man in Heaven, nor on the Earth, neither under the Earth was found worthy to do this. (Revelations 6:3) The scriptures state that only the Lamb, Jesus Christ Himself, only He is able to open these seals. Another thing is according to scripture when He is to open the seals it is in Heaven and He does it after the Rapture and resurrection of believers. Verse nine of Chapter Five describes those who are present at the opening, the redeemed out of every Nation on the Earth. So William Branham may have preached on the Seals according to his interpretation and all it amounted to was his opinion on what they meant.

One thing occurred during the week of his delivery of the seven seal messages that I thought was very wrong and shouldn’t have happened. The Monday morning after the seal messages were complete, William Branham met with two other men in a Motel room and cut about 20 minutes of recording out of the seventh seal message that could cause him a problem. Then William Branham, while in the Motel Room, preached into a recorder a substitution for the part of his message that was cut out. After preaching this message to the people in the church, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit if he was, then he replaces the cut out part with an ending that suited him. This kind of deception is certainly not pleasing to God and beneath what I expected from an honest man which I had always believed he was.

Up until sometime in the 1950’s William Branham mostly evangelized and held meetings where he concentrated on praying for the sick. For the most part in the beginning of his ministry when services were held, other preachers would preach a sermon and afterwards William Branham would conduct his healing ministry. Sometime in the 50’s he then started to teach out of the bible, something that God didn’t ordain him to do, although he knew that it was not his calling, he was insistent to begin teaching anyway. Because of his heretical teaching which was in opposition to Bible scriptures, almost no church group would invite him to hold services.

By December of 1955, his invitations to hold meetings for other church groups started to diminish and found that finances were not available to pay the expenses for holding evangelistic meetings, so he announced that he was going to leave the missionary field. According to what he said afterwards, God was not pleased with his decision.

Then at some time while he was squirrel hunting he told of a voice that spoke to him out of nowhere and said to him: “Jehovah of the Old Testament is Jesus of the New”. He said that he had always thought that was true, but after hearing that voice tell him, now he was sure. Well without a doubt this was the most profound departure from scriptural truth that I have ever heard. Throughout the bible it testifies that Jesus was the Son of God and now William Branham is about to teach that Jesus was in fact God in the flesh. I believe that under the circumstances I would be most inclined to question just whose voice it was that he heard.

Prior to this, William Branham had decided that it was not possible to know the truth of Bible scriptures without receiving a spiritual revelation of what they really meant. He followed this up with the statement that unless you were a part of God’s Elect, you could not receive the revelation of the truth of the scriptures. All of this was a result of his own private interpretation of what the bible literally said.

This departure from literally believing what the scriptures teach led his followers and himself down a path that led them just exactly where the devil wanted them to go. Nothing pleases the devil any more than getting people to mistrust the meaning of what God has sent to us in the Holy Bible.

William Branham made the following statements at one time or the other as follows”

“So anything, any teacher, any Bible expositor, anything else would teach you or try to get you to believe anything one little iota different from what this Bible says it, it's a false teaching. It's Satan again just exactly like it was to Eve. God goes right on, no matter what he does, what Satan does, God goes right on proving it to be so.”

“Now, I'm going to tell you what you must not do. Now, you must not misinterpret the Word. It means just what it says. It needs no interpreter. But if you're reading between the lines and try to make It say something, that in between the lines says something different than what the lines says, then it's wrong.”

William Branham said: “You say, "I heard a voice tell me this." If it's contrary to the Word, it wasn't God's voice. God's voice comes with the Word.”

“If anybody teaches anything contrary to the Word, I wouldn't believe it”

 

William Branham throughout his ministry preached that if you hear a voice, or have a revelation, or read something between the lines (your own interpretation) and it doesn’t conform to what the scriptures say, then it’s wrong. Then he turned right around time after time and did the exact thing that he said you shouldn’t do.

That is the whole reason that his teaching on predestination, God’s Elect, God’s foreknowledge, things that occurred before the foundation of the World and the most extreme thing that Jesus was not the Son of God, but God Himself that came to Earth in a flesh body that He made for Himself, was in error. These things were taught in error because his teaching was not according to the written Word of God.

Was William Branham’s ministry ordained by God? Was he really given a gift of Divine Healing? Did he get out of what God called him to do when he started to teach scripture instead of staying as an Evangelist? Was William Branham a God sent Prophet? Was William Branham the prophesied coming of Elijah? Was William Branham the Seventh Church age messenger? Was William Branham the 7^th angel of Revelations 10:7? Did William Branham reveal the secrets of the seven sealed book? Did his message forerun the second coming of Christ just as John the Baptist foreran the first coming?

John the Baptist was still alive when Jesus came the first time and now William Branham has been gone for 47 years and Christ hasn’t returned as of yet. So what do you think about the totality of his ministry? Was it a bible based ministry or a ministry of errors that deviated from bible truth.

The real end time Message of the Hour, just as William Branham stated, is to return back to the truth of Bible Scripture and believe what it says. Following is William Branham’s statement about the “message of the hour”.

“The Message of the hour is, to repent and turn back again to the faith of the Father and we're promised that to restore. Every voice has a message behind it. And the message was restore the faith back to the original faith, Malachi 4. Restore back the faith to the‑‑of the fathers to the people. They've got off in all kinds of everything, but restore back again that faith. The message of the hour is, "Return back to the Word."

What is God going to have to do in order for all you poor mislead message believers whose doctrines that you have accepted which are in error and not according to the written word, to get back to the truth and prepare yourselves for the soon return of Christ for His Church?

 

 

 

Do you see this above picture? I bet that every Message believer has it and every “Message Church” has it displayed in their church. Every web site on the Internet has it displayed on their front page.

What does this picture represent to you? Does it represent a Prophet of God with a supernatural light above his head vindicating that God is with him in his ministry? Does it validate all of what he taught to be the truth of God’s Word? Well, that is possible and easy to believe considering all that we have read about him and the signs that followed his ministry. But what affect does this picture have on the believer? Does it represent a man that has brought the revealed word of the day to the church? Was his revealed word the absolute truth of God’s Word? I say that it does not considering how his teaching deviated from bible scripture. Even William Branham taught that the written word of the Bible must be our absolute and according to scripture we are not to add to or take away from what is written.

If that is our absolute, then how can we ever accept that Jesus is God and not the Son of God when the scriptures overwhelmingly say something different? It is written in the scriptures in at least two places that God the Father spoke from Heaven and said aloud: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him”. If God openly recognized Jesus as His Son, who are we to deny that? I believe that if we knew the mind of God, He probably regrets allowing this picture to exist for so long to represent what a lot of people believe that it represents. If anything and if God was responsible for it, it was meant for the vindication of William Branham’s ministry of Evangelism and not a vindication of his teaching.

There are those who question why God would select a man like me to bring up these points of discussion about William Branham’s teaching and make the charge that his teaching was in error and did not conform to bible scripture. Unlike William Branham I can’t produce a picture with a supernatural light above my head, I don’t have the gift of healing, I don’t have the gift of knowledge that allows me to know what’s in the mind of others and I can’t walk on water. The only thing that I do know is that God has endowed me with the gift of wisdom and spiritual discernment that permits me to understand and believe the scriptures just as He expects all of us to do.

Well just as Jesus made a statement about if the people didn’t sound off as He entered Jerusalem, He would have the stones to speak out. The same stands true today. If God can’t find anything except modern day hard headed, cowardly preachers that would speak out the truth of the scriptures, He must have chosen me. If you want to question that, please take it up with Him, don’t ask me.

If any of you chose to not believe what I say, that’s up to you. I’m not so much asking you to believe me, but I am asking you to believe the scriptures that I speak of without considering them in regard to any man’s interpretation.

Consider the alternative to not believing what the Bible says and the result of your choice. The Bible must be our absolute. Only the Bible is the absolute truth and God expects all of us to keep His Word and believe what His Son Jesus Christ said:

Those who believe the Gospel and are baptized will be saved. The Gospel states that God sent His only begotten Son into the World and those who believe in Him and who He is shall be saved. If you hold to the false teaching that Jesus was actually God in the flesh, then you are denying the truth of the Gospel.

The devil has been deceiving the people since the beginning and still is doing it in order to foil God’s plan of salvation by convincing you that the Word is not complete or true and requires you to have a revelation according to someone’s interpretation in order to know the truth.

The devil is a liar, always has been and always will be. His future is in the Lake of Fire, don’t make the mistake of believing his lies or you may be joining him there.

Now that I have completed my examination of Brother Branham’s ministry and considering what I have discovered, I feel great disappointment, sadness and despair. I began as a true believer in what I have heard and read about the things that occurred during his services and now I feel about as low as I possibly can. Like I have said many times, I owe my great faith to those things I thought I knew about his work for God, but now I feel very despondent over my findings.

Regardless of those facts that have disappointed me, I still have my experiences with God that I know are real and will continue to rely on the Bible for my absolute. I have met with God in many ways and know what He expects of me and will continue in the truth of His Word and not depend upon man’s interpretations to teach me, instead as always I will depend upon the Holy Spirit to guide me into even a closer relationship with Him.

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