William Branham, a man who lost his way.
I know that the title I have given this article will be a turn off and objectionable for those of you who have followed the ministry of this man and consider yourselves to be part of the group called “Message Believers”. So just to state my position concerning this man and his ministry as I see it, I will begin with a personal testimony of my own and speak from my heart as God has revealed the facts to me.
I was privileged to have personally known William Branham and his family as they were close friends with my Grandparents, Roda and Ella Cox. My Grandparents, in addition to have been close friends with the Branham Family for many years were also the Secretary and Treasurer of William Branham’s Evangelistic ministry. Because of serving in these offices they received the mail that was sent in from around the World and personally answered these letters for William Branham. While living with my Grandparents I heard about all the testimonies of healings that took place and the souls who received the salvation of the Lord around the World.
The only next best thing that could happen to anyone, other than to have been present during the ministry of Jesus, is to have been alive during the ministry of William Branham and witnessed the power of God working through his ministry. If it wasn’t enough to just believe the way God worked through His Son Jesus as He preached the gospel as it is recorded in the Bible to cause a person to believe, it became even more real in our time to witness the same thing with William Branham’s ministry. If a person had faith in God before He sent William Branham, their faith had to be multiplied many times over to see God working in our day.
Because of the testimonies about this demonstration of God in my day my faith has benefited tremendously from what I have witnessed and heard about. I personally thank God, not only for sending Jesus to make the atonement for me, but also for the opportunity to have been alive during William Branham’s ministry, who was without a doubt, A Man sent by God.
The one and only commission that William Branham received from God was to “do the work of an Evangelist” and at that time I believed to “pray for the sick for their healing”. This was how his ministry started out and because many healings being reported having taken place, he was invited to other churches to minister to the people with some supernatural gifts that were in operation. In the beginning William Branham did not preach in these churches. Only after someone else had preached a sermon, he was called to the podium to perform his healing ministry.
After a time William Branham then began to preach and because of the differences in his preaching and the doctrines that the churches had, invitations to preach in other churches stopped.
William Branham and some of his associates then began to organize evangelistic crusades and traveled around holding healing meetings on their own. Somewhere along the way, William Branham lost sight of the commission that God had given him to preach the gospel and began to teach bible doctrine, getting out of his calling and eventually lost his way in what he was supposed to have done. He was sent by God to preach the gospel, but thought his commission was to teach doctrine. That was not what God sent him to do.
William Branham realized this after a time and said, in his own words:
“I've wronged. I've done wrong. That's why I've based these sermons the way I have. 'Cause He said, "As I was with Moses, so will I be with you," and when that hand come down and pointed that very same Scripture... For a long time I've wondered, because I didn't know what the commission was. I've looked for something supernatural beyond that. God cannot get away from His commission. God give the commission; that's what it must remain.”
William Branham said: “There's the new ministry. It's just been revealed to me. "Pray for the sick. Get the people to believe you." God can never leave that. That's His commission; no matter what goes on, how much I fail. I fail miserably. I should've never went ahead with them signs; that wasn't the will of God, but God's blessed it anyhow. But I'm ready to leave this mountain. I want to go across Jordan. I want to carry the commission. "Get the people to believe you."”
But by this time, because of the success of the overwhelming nature of the supernatural occurrences during his life and ministry, it was too late to get back to the basics of his commission from God. Those who were close to him convinced him that he was more than just an evangelist. They started to promote him as a prophet and the fulfillment of many other prophesies in the bible, such as the seventh age messenger, the return of Elijah, the angel of Revelations chapter ten, etc and it had gone too far to correct these errors in belief.
Just like many preachers before and after him, he believed that God was going to reveal the secrets of the seven seals to him and preached on them, but it also was in error. He said that seven angels opened the seven seals to him and knowing that the bible said it was Christ that would open them in Heaven, before the Throne. He interpreted the receiving of the King’s sword in the mountains of Arizona as being the third pull, the revelation of the Word, but it wasn’t. He got part of it right, it was the third pull being the manifestation of the spoken Word, but he didn’t interpret it that way and the third pull was not manifested during his ministry. He misinterpreted the cloud of seven angels and the blast as being the sign for him to preach the seven seals, but it wasn’t. It was the sign of how his life and ministry would be ending instead.
It is not my intent to make William Branham look bad because he was a good, honest and humble man of God that did a tremendous work for God and many souls were saved because of his efforts. What I have described is just the result of an amazing ministry having ended so abruptly because of the influence of other people causing William Branham to get out of his calling that God sent him for.
Even now exists a blind following of his teaching that in part is not in harmony with the original scriptures being circulated around the World and the people holding him up as an idol with his picture above their mantels with the light shining above his head. Here is a man that had very little in the way of wealth during his life as he practically lived out of a suitcase, while his family is raking in millions of dollars each year selling books and tapes all over the World as they distribute a large amount of false teaching that is against God’s Word.
All of William Branham’s teaching was not in error, but he started off with two doctrines that formed the basis for much misinterpretation of scripture. The first enormous error that he started with was that the bible was in its entirety the Word of God and error free. That is absolutely not true. The bible contains many errors that contribute to false interpretations and even though the bible does contain the Word of God, it is not completely God’s Word.
The second very important misinterpretation of scripture was his teaching that Jesus and Jehovah God the Father was the same person. Many scriptures deny this fact that he taught, but some are interpreted to infer that Jesus might have been. Although, the preponderance of the scriptures states that Jesus and the Father were not the same person, but Jesus was the SON of God and not God Himself.
On Saturday December 29, 1962 William Branham had the vision of the angels coming for him and the blast that was to end his life and thought it was his end being shown to him. The next day on Sunday December 30, 1962 he preached two sermons at the Tabernacle in Jeffersonville Indiana. The two sermons were “The Absolute” and “Is this the sign of the end, Sir”. You can’t believe how appropriate these were.
I believe that he expected his death to be very imminent and attempted to set the record straight by preaching on “The absolute” before leaving on a trip that he might have thought was his last time being in the Tabernacle. During this message of “The Absolute” he made it clear that the absolute in our lives should be “The Word of God” and only that.
The Word of God is the only absolute and exists in the original scriptures before man has polluted it with his incorrect interpretations and translations. The true Word of God is the absolute and is not dependent on anything else including some preacher’s interpretation.
We must get back to the basics just like William Branham knew he had to get back to what he believed at that time was his one and only commission which was to “pray for the sick”.
Back to the Bible is the word for this day as the time is short.
Accept this from a Watchman on the wall sounding the alarm.
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