William Branham

Over 25,000 people came to the little city from twenty-eight states and Mexico.

 Under Gordon Lindsay’s direction, Branham teamed with the colorful Canadian Ern Baxter in Vancouver, British Colombia in a fourteen-day series of meetings with over 70,000 people attending. In January, they held revivals in Miami and Pensacola, and in the spring, they preached a huge campaign in Kansas City.

In 1950 he went to Europe, and in 1952 he went to Africa. Thousands filled the largest auditoriums night after night with many standing outside. His healing ministry became a worldwide legend.

The younger healing evangelists viewed him as a man set apart, “He was number one,” said Richard Hall. “Of the common run of evangelists that we have now, put twenty of them at one end and William Branham on the other, he would outweigh them all.”

His gift of the “word of knowledge” amazed tens of thousands. F.F. Bosworth wrote in 1950,

“The Angel told him that the anointing would enable him to tell the suffering many of the events of their lives from childhood to the present . Sometimes Brother Branham will push the microphone away and tell the person any unconfessed sins in their lives they must repent of before the gift will operate for their deliverance. As soon as such persons acknowledge their sin, their healing often comes before Brother Branham has time to pray for them.”

Many who saw him insisted the gift was “exactly 100%.” An interpreter for him in Switzerland and later a historian said, “I am not aware of any case in which he was mistaken in the often detailed statements he made.” A contemporary evangelist recalled, “I’ve been with him when he would meet a person he had never seen and immediately call him by name.”

He preached and prayed for the sick 3-4 hours until taken bodily from the platform. There were no “hard cases” for him. In one 1950 meeting “nine deaf mutes came in the prayer line and all nine were healed.”

His sermons were largely stories of personal experiences, and he had a trait that impressed his audiences and colleagues alike: “an outstandingly humble spirit.” “There is nothing boisterous or arrogant about him,” wrote an observer. “He is a meek and humble man…loved by all. No one begrudges him success or is envious of his great popularity.” This humility, coupled with a refusal to discuss controversial doctrinal matters, won him support from a wide range of Pentecostals through the 50s.

However, Branham’s life and ministry took a turn for the worse later in life. In 1955, his finances faltered through his own carelessness. In 1957, he received a dream in which he was ministering in a “white disk” above a pyramid. A voice from heaven said that no other man could stand in the disk “unless he die or be killed,” and that Branham was “the only one who can and will stand there.” Branham considered this dream to be of great significance, and by 1963 he became convinced that he was “Elijah” and the true “Messenger of the Covenant.”

On December 18, 1965, a drunken driver