William M. Branham facts for kids
Quick facts for kids William M. Branham |
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 Branham in 1947 |
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| Born | April 6, 1909 in Burkesville, Kentucky, U.S. |
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| Died | December 24, 1965 (aged 56) in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. |
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| Children | 5 |
William Marrion Branham (April 6, 1909 – December 24, 1965) was an American Protestant Christian minister and faith healer who initiated the post-World War II healing revival, and claimed to be a prophet with the anointing of Elijah, who had come to prelude Christ's second coming; some of his followers have been labeled a "doomsday cult".
He made a lasting influence on televangelism and the modern charismatic movement. Branham was the first American deliverance minister to successfully campaign in Europe; his ministry reached global audiences with major campaigns held in North America, Europe, Africa, and India.
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Early life
William M. Branham was born near Burkesville, Kentucky, on April 6, 1909, the son of Charles and Ella Harvey Branham, the oldest of ten children. He claimed that at his birth, a "Light come [sic] whirling through the window, about the size of a pillow, and circled around where I was, and went down on the bed". Branham told his publicist Gordon Lindsay that he had mystical experiences from an early age; and that at age three he heard a "voice" speaking to him from a tree telling him "he would live near a city called New Albany". According to Branham, that year his family moved to Jeffersonville, Indiana.
Branham told his audiences that he grew up in "deep poverty", often not having adequate clothing, and that his family was involved in criminal activities. Branham's neighbors reported him as "someone who always seemed a little different", but said he was a dependable youth. Branham explained that his tendency towards "mystical experiences and moral purity" caused misunderstandings among his friends, family, and other young people; he was a "black sheep" from an early age. Branham called his childhood "a terrible life."
Branham's father owned a farm near Utica, Indiana and took a job working for O.H. Wathen, owner of R.E. Wathen Distilleries in nearby Louisville, Kentucky. In March 1924, Branham's father was arrested for bootlegging activities, convicted and sentenced to a prison.
Healing revival
Branham claimed that he had received an angelic visitation on May 7, 1946, commissioning his worldwide ministry and launching his campaigning career in mid-1946. His fame rapidly spread as crowds were drawn to his stories of angelic visitations and reports of miracles happening at his meetings. His ministry spawned many emulators and set the broader healing revival that later became the modern charismatic movement in motion. At the peak of his popularity in the 1950s, Branham was widely adored and "the neo-Pentecostal world believed Branham to be a prophet to their generation". From 1955, Branham's campaigning and popularity began to decline as the Pentecostal churches began to withdraw their support from the healing campaigns for primarily financial reasons. By 1960, Branham transitioned into a teaching ministry.
Unlike his contemporaries, who followed doctrinal teachings which are known as the Full Gospel tradition, Branham developed an alternative theology which was primarily a mixture of Calvinist and Arminian doctrines. His closest followers accepted his sermons as oral scripture and refer to his teachings as The Message. Despite Branham's objections, some followers of his teachings placed him at the center of a cult of personality during his final years. Branham claimed that he had converted over one million people during his career. His teachings continue to be promoted by the William Branham Evangelistic Association, which reported that about 2 million people received its material in 2018.
Throughout his healing revivals, Branham was accused of committing fraud by investigative news reporters, fellow ministers, host churches, and governmental agencies. Numerous people pronounced healed died shortly thereafter, investigators discovered evidence suggesting miracles may have been staged, and Branham was found to have significantly embellished and falsified numerous stories he presented to his audiences as fact. Branham faced legal problems as a result of his practices. The governments of South Africa and Norway intervened in order to stop his healing campaigns in their countries. In the United States, Branham was charged with tax evasion for failing to account for the donations received through his ministry; admitting his liability, he settled the case out of court. The news media has linked Branham to multiple notorious figures. Branham was baptized and ordained a minister by Roy Davis, the National Imperial Wizard (leader) of the Ku Klux Klan; the two men maintained a lifelong relationship. Branham helped launch and popularize the ministry of Jim Jones. Followers of Branham's teachings in Colonia Dignidad were portrayed in the 2015 film Colonia.
Teachings
Branham developed a unique theology and placed emphasis on a few key doctrines, including his eschatological views, annihilationism, oneness of the Godhead, predestination, and eternal security. His followers refer to his teachings collectively as "The Message".
Divine healing
Throughout his ministry, Branham taught a doctrine of faith healing that was often the central teaching he espoused during the healing campaign. He believed healing was the main focus of the ministry of Jesus Christ and believed in a dual atonement; "salvation for the soul and healing for the body". He believed and taught that miracles ascribed to Christ in the New Testament were also possible in modern times.
Branham believed that all sickness was a result of demonic activity and could be overcome by the faith of the person desiring healing. Branham argued that God was required to heal when faith was present. This led him to conclude that individuals who failed to be healed lacked adequate faith.
Restorationism
Of all of Branham's doctrines, his teachings on Christian restorationism have had the most lasting influence on modern Christianity. Branham taught the doctrine widely from the early days of the healing revival, in which he urged his audiences to unite and restore a form of church organization like the primitive church of early Christianity.
The teaching was accepted and widely taught by many of the evangelists of the healing revival, and they took it with them into the subsequent Charismatic and evangelical movements.
The teaching holds that Christianity should return to a form mirroring the primitive Christian church. It supports the restoration of apostles and prophets, signs and wonders, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare, and the elimination of non-primitive features of modern Christianity. Branham taught that by the end of the first century of Christianity, the church "had been contaminated by the entrance of an antichrist spirit". As a result, he believed that from a very early date, the church had stopped following the "pure Word of God" and had been seduced into a false form of Christianity.
He stated the corruption came from the desire of early Christianity's clergy to obtain political power, and as a result became increasingly wicked and introduced false creeds. This led to denominationalism, which he viewed as the greatest threat to true Christianity.
Annihilationism
Annihilationism, the doctrine that the damned will be totally destroyed after the final judgment so as to not exist, was introduced to Pentecostalism in the teachings of Charles Fox Parham (1873–1929). Not all Pentecostal sects accepted the idea. Prior to 1957, Branham taught a doctrine of eternal punishment in hell. By 1957 he began promoting an annihilationist position in keeping with Parham's teachings.
He believed that "eternal life was reserved only for God and his children". In 1960, Branham claimed the Holy Spirit had revealed this doctrine to him as one of the end-time mysteries.
Godhead
Branham shifted his theological position on the Godhead during his ministry. Early in his ministry, Branham espoused a position closer to an orthodox Trinitarian view.
By the early 1950s, he began to privately preach the Oneness doctrine outside of his healing campaigns. By the 1960s, he had changed to openly teaching the Oneness position, according to which there is one God who manifests himself in multiple ways; in contrast with the Trinitarian view that three distinct persons comprise the Godhead.
Branham came to believe that trinitarianism was tritheism and insisted members of his congregation be re-baptized in Jesus's name in imitation of Paul the Apostle. Branham believed his doctrine had a nuanced difference from the Oneness doctrine and to the end of his ministry he openly argued that he was not a proponent of Oneness doctrine. He distinguished his baptismal formula from the Oneness baptism formula in the name of Jesus by teaching that the baptismal formula should be in the name of Lord Jesus Christ.
Opposition to modern culture
As Branham's ministry progressed, he increasingly condemned modern culture. Branham viewed education as "Satan's snare for intellectual Christians who rejected the supernatural" and "Satan's tool for obscuring the 'simplicity of the Message and the messenger'". Weaver wrote that Branham held a "Christ against Culture" opinion, according to which loyalty to Christ requires rejection of non-Christian culture.
He denounced television, rock and roll, and many forms of worldly amusement.
Branham advocated living an ascetic lifestyle. When he was given a new Cadillac, he kept it parked in his garage for two years out of embarrassment. Branham openly chastised other evangelists, who seemed to be growing wealthy from their ministries and opposed the prosperity messages being taught. Branham condemned any emphasis on expensive church buildings, elaborate choir robes, and large salaries for ministers, and insisted the church should focus on the imminent return of Christ.
Branham's opposition to modern culture emerged most strongly in his condemnation of the "modern women". He taught that women with short hair were breaking God's commandments and "ridiculed women's desire to artificially beautify themselves with makeup". Branham viewed a woman's place as "in the kitchen". Citing the creation story in which Eve is taken from Adam's side, Branham taught that woman was not part of God's original creation, and she was a byproduct of man.
Predestination, & Race
Branham believed the term "predestination" was widely misunderstood and preferred to use the word "foreknowledge" to describe his views. Branham taught that humanity's choice in salvation was negated by their ancestry, and that genetics determined one's eternal destiny; the offspring of Cain were foreordained to damnation while the offspring of Seth were foreordained to salvation.
Branham was open about the implications of his beliefs and publicly supported segregation.
Branham also openly opposed interracial relationships and connected people of mixed race ancestry to the wicked "hybrid" race of the serpent.
Prophecies
Branham issued a series of prophecies during his lifetime.
His most significant prophecies were a series of prophetic visions he claimed to have in June 1933. The first time he published any information about the visions were in 1953. Branham reported that in his visions he saw seven major events would occur before the Second Coming of Christ, including the prediction of the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Second World War, the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, and the rise of communism. Most of his predictions had already been fulfilled by the first time he reported the visions in 1953.
In the 1933 visions, he reported seeing self-driving "egg-shaped" cars in one vision. Branham later claimed he saw a car in 1960 that fulfilled his vision. Among the prophecies was also a prediction that the United States would "elect the wrong president" as a result of giving women the right to vote, which he later interpreted to be John F. Kennedy. He also predicted a powerful woman would take control of the United States, which he later interpreted to be the Roman Catholic Church, which he reported as also being fulfilled with the election of Kennedy who was Roman Catholic. His visions ended with the apocalyptic destruction of the United States that left the nation's cities in smoldering ruins. After sharing his prophetic visions, Branham offered a prediction that the rapture would happen by 1977.
In 1964, Branham said judgement would strike the west coast of the United States and that Los Angeles would sink into the ocean; his most dramatic prediction. Following the 1964 prophecy, Branham again predicted the rapture would happen by 1977 and would be preceded by various worldwide disasters, the unification of denominational Christianity, and the rise-to-power of the Roman Catholic Pope. Branham was deeply anti-Catholic, and viewed the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church as the agents of Satan who would bring about the end of the world. Branham's prediction of the end of the world by 1977 was widely circulated and well known. After the world failed to end in 1977, Time Magazine included the failed prediction as one of the "top ten end-of-the-world prophecies".
Death
Branham continued to travel to churches and preach his doctrine across Canada, the United States, and Mexico during the 1960s.
On December 18, 1965, Branham and his family – except his daughter Rebekah – were returning to Jeffersonville, Indiana, from Tucson for the Christmas holiday. About three miles (4.8 km) east of Friona, Texas, and about seventy miles (110 km) southwest of Amarillo on US Highway 60, just after dark, a car driven by a drunken driver traveling westward in the eastbound lane collided head-on with Branham's car. He was rushed to the hospital in Amarillo where he remained comatose for several days and died of his injuries on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1965.
Branham's death stunned the Pentecostal world and shocked his followers. His funeral was held on December 29, 1965, but his burial was delayed until April 11, 1966; Easter Monday.
Legacy and influence
Branham was the "initiator of the post-World War II healing revival" and, along with Oral Roberts, was one of its most revered leaders. Branham is most remembered for his use of the "sign-gifts" that awed the Pentecostal world. According to writer and researcher Patsy Sims, "the power of a Branham service and his stage presence remains a legend unparalleled in the history of the Charismatic movement."
Images for kids
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William Branham c. 1930
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Roy Davis, William Branham's first pastor.
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House of David commune in Michigan
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Billie Branham Pentecostal Tabernacle c. 1935
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William Branham and F. F. Bosworth, c. 1950
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F. F. Bosworth counsels attendees on the doctrine of divine healing at a Branham Campaign meeting in Tacoma, Washington, April 1948.
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The April 1948 cover of Voice of Healing magazine
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From left: Young Brown, Jack Moore, William Branham, Oral Roberts, Gordon Lindsay; photo taken at Kansas City in 1948
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Branham at a healing campaign meeting
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A prayer card from a William Branham healing campaign.
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Branham at the Sam Houston Coliseum in 1950
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A 1947 Vancouver Sun Headline about Branham Campaign
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See also
In Spanish: William Marrion Branham para niños
