Understanding & Answering William Branham: Part 1

william branham has had a tremendous influence throughout the world he and oral roberts were some of the main figures behind the healing revivals after world war ii and branham was one of its most respected leaders the legacy of his ministry can be seen throughout televangelism and the charismatic movement today though his role was influential in the beginning of the charismatic movement over time many of his more controversial doctrines were rejected still others would continue to praise him as a mighty man of god his teaching lives on in the lives of his followers who are commonly known as message believers the main brand of mind organization voice of god recordings claims that it has sent branham's materials to every country in the world in 70 languages in this first of a two-part video series i'll be talking about branham's life and claims of supernatural visitations and signs and in the next video i will closely examine some of branham's doctrines now to begin with i want to give a really quick overview of branham's life now william branham was born in kentucky in 1909 in a small log cabin very poor conditions he says that one year when he went to school he didn't even have a shirt to wear that's how poor that they were but even from the very beginning of his life these supernatural signs that he claims followed him throughout his life started even at the very beginning this is what he said here in his own words when the lord god brought me into the earth there was a light standing at the little window and when they opened the window the light come whirling in so at the very beginning of his life these supernatural signs were showing up but i want to pause for a minute and talk just a little bit about his grammar as you can see this last line they opened the window the light come whirling in that's not proper english we would say the light came whirling in branham did not have a lot of formal education so sometimes his english might have been a little bit choppy grammar wise that's not a criticism against him that's just the nature of things so when you see these things that i'm reading this is how branham said them okay when branham was three years old he received a message from god saying that he was going to live next to a town called new albany that same year branham's family moved to jeffersonville indiana which is next to new albany between 19 and 28 and 1933 branham was converted to christ and was ordained now the the timeline here is a little bit fuzzy if you go to many pro branham websites they will say that branham started his ministry in 1928 when he was saved there's a good reason why they say that because there are some things that branham said that would lead you to believe that's what happened now let me pause here again for a moment and let me explain what these numbers mean here that you see if you are a message follower you know what these mean so let me explain this to the rest of the folks let's look at this second example 63-12 this is a date and specifically a date that branham gave his sermon and the way this works then is the first two numbers are the year 63 that would be 1963 uh 1 2 12 that's the 12th month december and then 01 this is the date december 1st 1963. now if there's a letter after these numbers what that means is that branham gave more than one talk on that day so if it's an m means morning a is afternoon and e is evening so this would be december 1st 1963 in the evening if you'd be interested in checking up on any of these things that i say when i give a citation it's easy to do you go to the voice of god recordings website www.branham.org click on multimedia and then audio sermons from there you can choose to click on something that'll give you a transcript of what branham said or you can click on something that will let you hear what branham says on these very dates so back to 1928 these dates here in 1960 branham said that he had been in ministry for 32 years so take 1960 minus 32 what does that give you 1928 and in 1963 he says that he had been in ministry for 35 years again 1928. however there's a good reason to believe that maybe this isn't the full story william branham according to his story he moved in the late 1920s to arizona and begins a boxing career in this book william branham a man sent from god it says that he moved back to indiana when his brother edward died which was in 1929. two years later which would be now 1931 branham has an accident and almost dies and starts to wonder if he would be saved in the end so later he prays receives christ and starts attending a church who is pastored by roy davis and it's roy davis who ordains branham to the ministry in 1933 branham has what i'm going to call his first commission i'm going to go into great depths on this first commission in a little bit but just for now 1933 he has his first commission after this first commission his followers help him build his first church they lay the cornerstone and build the building and you can see this here this is the branham tabernacle in jeffersonville indiana in 1946 though he continues being a pastor there is a new phase of his ministry this is the beginning of his healing ministry we're going to look back at this in a little bit and go over it in detail and he continues his pastorate and healing ministry until 1965 when he dies in a tragic car crash like i said that was a really quick overview of branham's life now let's look back at some of these stations in his life in 1933 when he tells these stories and he talks about him throughout his life there are some parts of his story that are very consistent throughout time we're going to see there's other details that he changes a lot but the consistent parts of the story is he says that there was a revival service in which about 3 000 people attended and after the revival service they go down to the ohio river and branham baptizes the converts from the revival service when he was baptizing the 17th person a light comes down from the heavens and as the light comes down a voice speaks from the light and here's branham's description of what this light says here come that pillar of fire whirling out of the air coming down where i was standing and the voice saying as john the baptist was sent and to forerun the first coming of christ your message will forerun the second coming of christ now there's people standing on the bank watching this there's people getting baptized and you can imagine if this is if this is what truly happened it would have created a frenzy this would have been quite an exciting event to see and brandon believes this is exactly what happened people were excited about it and it got into the newspapers branham said the newspapers packed it and it swept into canada on the associated press around the world a local minister baptist minister baptizing and said a mystic light appears over him now what i've told you are the things that are consistent in this story and we're going to look in a minute at some things that are inconsistent but first let me explain to you why it's important let me give you an example say maybe you and a friend are hanging out in a coffee shop and some man walks off the street and he asks hey did you hear about that accident it was just right down the street no we didn't hear about the accident tell us about it so so the man says well there's these two cars one of them ran in red light and just hit the other car and the people inside they were hurt but but thank goodness nobody nobody was seriously hurt there's about three or four people gathered around the cars helping people calling the calling for the ambulance and man on the side of the street there was probably like 12 people standing there watching this event and you're like wow okay yeah no i didn't hear about that let's say maybe a few hours later you're you're at the bank and you're standing in line and you notice a few lines over there's this same man and he's talking to somebody and you can overhear and he's telling this person what he saw and he says that wow there's this big accident did you hear about the accident people are like no we didn't say well man this this happened just just just a while ago um this bus ran through the intersection and plowed right into this car man this this little child was throwing the car and landed on the street oh it was horrible there was about 20 people surrounding the car trying to help the people that were stuck inside and there were 200 people standing on the sidewalk watching it was an amazing terrible tragedy well i was very different from the first story that he told it kind of makes you wonder can you trust somebody who has gotten all these details wrong or to put it this way if if this man were to go to court and testify to what he saw would you trust what he said when he gets all these details wrong you might think maybe something happened but you wouldn't be able to trust what he said because his details changed say he tells the story several times and each time he gives different events different amount of people come different kinds you can't trust someone like that so we're going to see with william branham there's some things that he might be consistent on but there's enough problems with what he says that i think should shed some kind of question mark whether we should trust this man for instance how many people were baptized so they have the revival service three thousand people were in attendance they go down to the river so branham can baptize those who were converted how many were baptized in 1950 he said that 130 people were baptized now we get this number from this book william william branham a man sent from god this was written by gordon lindsey gordon lindsay was a contemporary and a friend of william branham and in fact most of the book are quotations right from branham and so in this book it said 130 people that's a lot of people going down to the river to be baptized well that same year branham said there were hundreds of people that came to be baptized now i don't know about you but when you hear the word hundreds what does that mean well definitely more than 100 probably more than 200 at least were baptized so that's a significant jump from 130. but we go forward five years and then william branham said there was two to three hundred people were baptized and then in 1955 uh the same year just a few weeks later he said there were 500 people who were baptized now 1960 1963 these other quotes yeah he re he he stays on this idea of 500 but in 1964 he says there were 1 000 people were baptized that would have been an amazing event to see but it kind of makes me doubt kind of should make us doubt what was going on because his story kept changing and this isn't the only part where his story changes as he was baptizing people came and stood on the riverbank to watch and as he tells the story these numbers change now this first 1950 date from from the book they don't mention how many people are on the bank there's nothing wrong with that but in the the other 1950 quote here it says thousands were on the bank watching this so what does that mean at least 2 000 people were on the bank watching we go to 1955 and now he says there's hundreds there were there were hundreds of people instead of thousands just uh just a few weeks after that he says now that there are seven to eight thousand people were on the bank nineteen sixty he says three thousand nineteen sixty three four to five thousand in 1964 he claimed that there were ten thousand people standing on the bank watching the baptism now that revival that started all this there were only 3 000 people in that so there were 3 000 people at the revival service and now there's 10 000 people watching 1000 get baptized that's a little hard to believe when we see how often his story changes makes us wonder what we can really trust now remember what what else branham said about this is that the newspapers got a hold of the story and it packed into the newspapers it was in the associated press it went into canada but where are these newspaper reports you can go into archives and researchers have done this and have looked to see where all these press reports he said on the front page of these papers they would have this event that happened but as far as it's ever been seen that's only been found in one newspaper the jeffersonville evening news june 2nd 1933 was this tiny little newspaper clip it says 14 conversions are reported in a tent meeting conducted at 8th and pratt streets by the reverend william branham now remember his story it was the 17th person he was baptizing when the light came down newspaper said there were only 14 people baptized total branham's story doesn't quite line up with what was said in the newspaper the next thing that i want to look at is the 1946 commission remember 1946 is when his healing revivals took place and what started this was a visitation that he had with an angel now just like with the baptismal service when he tells the story there are some things that are consistent with what he says and the consistencies are uh william branham was he was getting very concerned about all these different spiritual things that are happening in his life like the light over his bed and there are there's many others and it was concerning to him um so he he goes off uh into a room and a light appears to him and through this light an angel comes to him and then this angel speaks to him and this is what the angel says he says if you'll be sincere and will get the people to believe you there will be no disease stand before your prayer not even to cancer but how will people know this how will he get people to believe him well there would be two signs given that would vindicate the ministry of william branham the first one would be healing what branham would do is he'd take his left hand and would hold the right hand of the person who needed healing and his hand would vibrate and different diseases different problems would cause a different kind of vibration letting him know exactly what they needed to be healed from and then he would heal them now the second thing the second sign to vindicate his ministry would be knowing a person's heart he could tell the person things about them that there's no way william branham could have known he had never met this person before but he was able to do this as a supernatural sign from god to vindicate his ministry and get people to believe him so those are the consistent things in his story there's problems with it though when did this happen would be the first one question i wanted to ask when did this visitation with the angel occur well in 1947 one of the first times he talks about it he says a little over two years ago now look look at the date here this is november 2nd 1947. a little over two years ago subtract two years from 1947 what do you have 1945 is when this angel supposedly came to him but later he says it was may 7 1946 and this is the normal date given for when the angel came to him but what's interesting is just three weeks earlier he said it was may 7 1947. so he gets confused on what year this really actually happened the next question is where did this happen not only when did it happen but where did it happen in 1947 again this first time that he talks about it he says that he was in his home and these these dates or these sermons that i'm giving you references to these aren't the only times that he talks about it these are just a sample of some for instance in 1953 a short video is made called the 20th century prophet and it has him and his wife are in their home a couple gentlemen come and talk to him and he tells them about this visitation from this angel and in this story he says that he was in his home so he says this several times he's in his home but other times he says otherwise in 1953 he says that he was in a cave in 1955 he says he was in a log cabin now this is important because depending on where he says he was changes so many other details down the road for example our next question is where did the light come from so he's in a room whether it's in his log cabin cave or in his house and then he sees the light and remember then the angel comes forward through the light well where did the light come from in the 1947 account he said that he thought it was a car when he first sees the light and in this account he he gets up and he goes to the door he opens his door and he looks out and he doesn't see a car and realize that this light is not coming from a car however in 1950 when he sees the light he he says well i knew it couldn't be a car and the reason why he knew it couldn't be cars because in this story he's in his cabin which he says is over a mile from a road so there's no way a car could be up there so it's interesting that he points out that it couldn't have been a car whereas before he said he thought it was a car so where did the light come from another question was what was he praying so again looking back at his story he's troubled by these supernatural signs that have been following him throughout his life he goes to a room and before the light comes to him he prays but what does he pray well in 1955 he gives a prayer of fear and repentance before god because he's concerned about these things that have been happening to him and this is what he says his prayer was like i don't want them things to happen to me please god don't never let it happen no more i love you i don't want to go to hell this is a man who is feeling angst and pain and fear over these supernatural signs however very interestingly four years earlier when he's describing this event instead of fear and repentance he's given a prayer of praising god in his prayer he says it was something like oh great jehovah how wonderful you are how i love you how i love you oh how wonderful very different he tells the stories over and over the details start to change in that early 1947 account he doesn't say anything about a prayer he says that he's reading his go-filled bible then he then he heard something and then he saw the light now i can grant possibly he's reading this gofill bible and then started to pray but that's not what he says if you go to 1947 november 2nd and you read what he has to say it doesn't sound like you could fit a prayer in there he's reading his bible he hears something and then he sees the light so was he even praying at all we can't be sure but this is the event that kicked off the healing revivals he would have up to 35 000 people come out to to hear him speak and to heal people i mean look at this this picture is staggering the amount of people that would come out more people would have come out to see him at this time period than any other speaker ever so his popularity just soared and of this first year of ministry or so this is what branham says it says if some 35 000 definite cases of healing was done in my services by jesus in 1947 alone that isn't just what someone testified that's been held that's doctor's statements 35 000 people healed and they had doctor statements to be able to show this where are these doctors statements i don't think it's right you could just throw out a statement like this and have nothing to back it up i'd like to see even 10 percent of 35 000 doctor statements but there are none that they don't have any so he's making a claim and is not able to back it up next point i want to deal with is something happened in 1950 i call this branham's 1950 pillar of fire a very famous pitcher was taken of william branham so in the beginning of 1950 he goes to houston texas and he's going to speak in the city auditorium for seven days and in houston's coliseum for eight days and when he's at the coliseum he's at the podium and he's speaking and a photographer comes up zooms in on him and takes a picture above his head is this thing we call the pillar fire what was this pillar of fire that emerged in this picture branham called it several different things over time uh at one point he says that it was the logos or the christ that was above him another time he says uh it was the angel of the covenant which was christ the son of god the logos that came out of god another time he said just plainly it was god and then he says it's the holy ghost angel of god the same spirit that was upon christ which is interesting because before he said it's christ and now it's the same spirit that was upon christ lastly he he says that it was jehovah now some of these terms are interchangeable with brandon and i'm going to maybe try to unpack some of them in the next video when we talk about doctrine but enough to say he said that this thing was many different things well branham and his crew wanted to verify this negative that shows the light above his head because they saw this as proof and vindication of his ministry that this light that he talks about that was with him all his life actually appears in this photograph and he thinks maybe his enemies are gonna try to say like oh that negative was doctored it was changed you can't trust it so what they did is they go to this guy named george lacy and they give the negative to george lacy and ask him to examine it william branham claimed that lacy was the head of the fbi of fingerprint and documents so somebody very much qualified to be able to tell us if this negative was true or not or if it had been changed lacey concluded according to branham that the light struck the lens and that's how the light got on the lens branham then claims that a copy of the picture after george lacy verifies that this is true that this light struck the lens branham says the copy of the picture is in washington dc in the religious hall of art with a note under it the only supernatural being was ever photographed in the history of the world there are problems with this story first of all just some factual examples lacy didn't work for the fbi uh he was like more of an independent guy he was very much qualified to do what branham's organization asked him to do however he didn't work for the fbi he wasn't head of the documents and fingerprints division none at all so lacey didn't work for the fbi and the fbi was never even involved and lastly there is no religious hall of art in washington dc now from what i understand there this picture is in washington dc but it's not up on a wall anywhere brandon's team wanted to copyright this picture and when you copyright something from what i understand the the government's going to keep a copy of it in a file somewhere in washington dc so there is the picture there but it's not hanging on a wall and it doesn't say that it's proof of a supernatural being that was photographed now lacey's report is reproduced in this book here by william branham called footprints in the sands of time and near the very beginning of the book when you open it you can see this is a reproduction of what's in his book this is george lacy's report and it begins with explaining that this negative was given to him to verify its authenticity he talks about the procedure that he goes through to to verify it and then he gives his conclusion he says i am of the definite opinion that the negative submitted for examination was not retouched nor was it a composite or double exposed negative further i am of the definite opinion that the light streak appearing above the head in a halo position was caused by light striking the negative and message believers read this and think hi see this is proof is proof light struck the negative that light was there above his head well to tell you the truth that's not really the question that we have but we're not asking well what did the light really strike the negative see that that's that's how it always works is lights when you have an any image on a negative we know that the shutter opens on the camera whatever light is out there comes and it strikes the negative negative leaves an imprint there and that's how it gets there so yeah we'll agree there was a light there but the question is where was the light and what was the light now i want to give a thanks out to a guy named john kenneth who is a researcher who's helped me some and point me into the right direction with a few things that i've been researching here and uh this this example i have for you here came from on his website somebody uploaded this picture of william branham which you can see it's the same picture but it's been photoshopped and it's been photoshopped to show you what it would look like if that light was exactly was actually directly above branham's head it was directly above his head look at the picture on his shoulders would have been lit up on top of his head would have been shining and on the podium if that light was actually there it would make a difference in his surroundings compare that to the original picture his shoulders are dark his head is dark the podium is dark now some people might say well well it's it's dark there because it was a supernatural light no that doesn't work if it was a supernatural light and didn't reflect off things how did it strike the negative if it struck the negative it would have struck other things as well so this photoshop picture of branham shows that light wouldn't have been directly above his head it was there but where was it in relationship to where branham was this is a picture of paul mccartney and he's in the very same houston coliseum that branham was and you can see above mccartney's head there's lights and nobody's going to think oh look at there's more pillars of lights now they're floating over paul mccartney not at all you're not going to think that because you can see in this picture you can see in the background it has the stadium scenes you can see people in the stadium seatings which gives you an idea that those lights are way way above his head so those lights are nowhere near him they're way up there but it's still very different looking than the one with branham because it was one in branham it's it's not this clear little circle like we see with paul mccartney is it the reason for that is when a photographer sets up his camera he can he can set it up to where everything will look like it's in focus like in paul mccartney's or he can set it up to where he focuses and directly on his subject and things in the background will start to look a little blurry now if you look at william branham just over his shoulder there's a person in the background a figure of a man and it's a little blurry the reason is that the photographer was focused directly on branham things in the background were blurry this man in the background is blurry and this light if it came from the ceiling looking at how tall that ceiling is that light was far away and would have been far more blurry just than the man in the picture still you may not be convinced as i think maybe you shouldn't be because look how small those lights are with paul mccartney compared to william branham well there's a reason for that it depends on how you frame your shot and how this is lined up let me show you another picture from the houston coliseum these wrestlers were there at the coliseum and this picture was taken and look above this man's hands let's zoom in on this it almost looks like this wrestler's hand is going to hit the light but we know from that other picture with paul mccartney that light is way high up in the air there is no way his hand is about to hit it but you can see how that light looks so much bigger than it did with paul mccartney the reason is the way the picture is framed the way it's lined up it makes it look like it's bigger he's not right by it and the same thing with william branham that that pillar of fire above his head was most likely from the light that was on the ceiling in the houston coliseum next thing i want to look at branham's 1963 commission i didn't mention this in the quick historical overview of his life but in 1963 he receives another commission where some angels come to him and tell him something but before we start with the 1963 commission the story actually starts in 1962 branham receives a vision about what was going to happen to him in 1963. and he's explaining here what happened in his vision he said now i know this is a vision and i know that i'm at tucson arizona now he's not saying that he's in tucson arizona at the time he was speaking he's saying in his vision he was into tucson arizona and then in his vision he says a blast come forth and here comes seven angels from eternity the angels were in a pyramid made in a form three on a side and one on top and they dropped from eternity now there are several important things about this vision and what he says here first in his vision he says this happens in tucson arizona there would be a blast and there would be seven angels and these seven angels would come to them come to him in a specific form in this pyramid form three on each side one on top these are the important things to remember also look at the date december 30th 1962. so 1963 is just right around the corner so we go a few months forward and william branham is in arizona and he's hunting javelina hogs he's with other people there's other hunters with him but he goes off on his own at one point and this is his explanation as he goes off on his own he says and that morning i was standing there picking cockle burgers off my trouser leg and the blast did just exactly the way it said i assume he means the way the vision pointed out the blast happened that way i must have jumped away off the ground and just above me was the angels of the lord so these angels come to him and one of the angels speak to him the angel said that the time was at hand for these seven seals which held the seven mysteries of the entire bible was sealed with these seven seals basically he's pointing to revelation chapter 10 verse 7 branham is being commissioned to be the angel or the messenger that opens the seals and he's going to go back to his church in indiana and he's going to preach on these seals so after this angel speaks to him these seven angels rise up into the heavens and they make this very mysterious formation in the sky which you can see in this picture here this picture was taken on february 28 1963 and this cloud formation we'll call it was above flagstaff arizona and we know this to be true because it was in many magazines one of them particularly i want to point out is the life magazine on may 17 1963 and this is the picture that it had it had several pictures and this is one of them february 28 1963 and in the life magazine it quotes dr james mcdonald who is a meteorologist at the institute of atmospheric physics in tucson arizona and dr mcdonald is completely baffled by this extraordinary cloud formation he says in the article that that it was 26 miles high was 30 miles across and he said it was a lot higher and bigger than a cloud should be so what was this it was higher than clouds could possibly be and he also said it was too high for a jet plane and he had looked and saw that there were no jet planes flying around in arizona at that time that they could have even done this so what was this well according to branham this cloud formation represented two different things he said now here it is the same time i was there see the pyramid of the cloud so branham sees in this cloud some kind of a pyramid shape because i was standing just below this see the distinctive angel on the right-hand side see the pointed wing of it so he's still maintaining that this cloud formation is actually the seven angels who are forming this pyramid shape and and take note that he says i was standing just below this this is the same time i was there he said i don't know if you can see a pyramid form in this i'm going to get back to that later but he claims this is in pyramid form but there's another significance to this a few years later branham described the significance this way he said and the very picture of that seven angels being lifted up turn it to the right-hand side which let me do that we turn it to the right-hand side and there is the face of the lord jesus looking down to the earth again do you see jesus's face in this cloud well let me show you how message believers see the face of jesus in this cloud this is the face that they see this is a painting by heinrich hoffman and it was branham's favorite of jesus branham said that whenever he uh saw a vision of jesus this was how he looked like in the painting behind her coffin and this is the face that's in the cloud and this is how this works so there's jesus's face represented in the cloud now one thing that makes it look like it doesn't really fit very well you might notice is the cloud is kind of like overlaid over the top of jesus and there's a reason for that according to branham this is what he this is what he how he explains it there's a white wig that they used to wear put a wig on and wear it as a judge england still does it when he got supreme authority jesus is the last of the authority he's supreme authority so what branham is telling us is that the white wig that the judge wears in england represents that that judge has supreme authority and that's why jesus has the white wig in this visual example that he gives to the world on february 28 1963 i've said a lot about this let me give a quick summary to make sure that we're on board here so in 1962 branham has a vision and in the vision he's in tucson there's a blast seven angels come to him but then in 1963 he's out hunting javelinas near tucson there's a blast seven angels appear sounds just like the vision they ascend they form a pyramid and jesus and branham is directly below these angels and this cloud formation he's right there underneath it there's problems with this story first of all the 1962 vision there's some contradictions what i what we looked at before was december 30th but one week earlier december 23rd 1962 he gave a different story about what his vision was he says and it looked like in a form of a pyramid like two on each side with one in the top came five of the mightiest angels i ever seen in my life and i thought now a death angel would be one five would be grace so now he say in the beginning he said there were five angels and it wasn't like he's saying well maybe there was five maybe there were seven he's very specific in fact in this talk he says five times that there were five angels and it's important to him because five the number five represents grace so which is it were there five angels or were there seven angels in his first vision now jumping a few months forward he says that he was hunting but he wasn't hunting on the date that the cloud was there remember the cloud was there on february 28th well heavily in the hunting season didn't start until march 1st you might think okay what's the big deal that's only one day earlier february 28th why couldn't have he been hunting just one day earlier than hunting season well that's considered poaching to to hunt when it's not in season and branham is a former game warden and he took poaching very seriously in one of his talks he compared poaching to murder so there's no way he would have been out there poaching because that was incredibly wrong what time of day did this whole thing happen when did those angels come to him and ascend up into the heavens well what we read earlier he said and that morning i was standing there picking cockleburst it was in the morning angels come to him tell their story and they rise up that's not when the cloud was over arizona this is the life magazine article here and it tells us when the cloud was there 6 10 p.m this picture was taken in prescott now this is not where the cloud was the cloud according to the article and according to dr mcdonald was over flagstaff this is just where the picture was taken this picture was taken at prescott the cloud was only visible for about maybe half an hour in the evening branham said it was in the morning but it was clearly in the evening when this came well there's a problem with that another problem was branham wasn't under the cloud he said in what we read earlier and here's another one he said i was standing right under the cloud when they took the photo well really you were standing right under the cloud when you took the picture then how do you explain other things that you say in 1965 he said science took the picture all the way from mexico as it moved from northern arizona where the holy spirit said i would be standing 40 miles northeast of tucson so he's standing 40 miles northeast of tucson that's that's close enough to being in tucson that's the closest big city so there's nothing wrong with that that he's not right in tucson because remember that's what the vision said he would be in tucson but the cloud is not in tucson the cloud is in flagstaff now you may not be familiar with the geography of arizona but let me show you so here's flagstaff in arizona and i i tried to make the cloud picture here look like it would be about the right size if it was 26 miles high 30 miles across and this how this is how far away tucson is all the way down here over 200 miles away so if branham is in tucson how can he say he was right under the cloud that was 200 miles away you can't have it both ways he couldn't have been right under it first times that he sees the life magazine he looks at the life magazine and he says i i look to see when it was meaning he looks to see when was the date on the magazine that said when was the cloud formation there i looked to see when it was and it was about a day or two before or a day or two after i was up there i looked where it was at northeast of flagstaff or prescott well that's just where we was at see just exactly do you see the problem a few problems here he said it was a day or two before or a day or two after so he wasn't there according to what he's saying at this point on june 1st when he's looking at the magazine for the first time remember the magazine came out just a few weeks earlier he's looking at the magazine for the first time and he admits he wasn't there when the cloud was there he was there maybe a couple days before or a couple days after and he also says flagstaff or prescott well that's just where we was at where was he supposed to be tucson where was flagstaff 200 miles away second thing is the shape of the cloud remember he said see the pyramid of the cloud there's there's no pyramid shape in this cloud now i can you can kind of maybe force a triangle upon this and say like well there's maybe a triangular shape but that's not really what the shape of the cloud is and a pyramid is not just any kind of shape very distinct angles on a pyramid then they're all exact and all perfect this is closer to the angles of a triangle from a pyramid there's no way you can get that to fit inside or outside of this cloud formation and then also we have the picture of jesus with the whig and branham's claim that this wig represents like the judges in england that the judge has complete supreme authority and that's why jesus has it to to to emphasize that jesus has supreme authority that's not why the judges wear the wig because the lawyers wear the same wig so it can't be symbolic that the judge has supreme authority because other people are wearing the wig also if anything it's to show the law has so thor has authority not the person wearing the wig so that doesn't work either so the next thing we need to ask is well then what was the cloud where did this come from you know the message believers like to point out that dr mcdonald in the life magazine article was totally bewildered he had no idea where did this come from where was this this strange cloud formation what caused it what occurred it's higher than clouds can be there it could have been smoke from any kind of aircraft there were no aircrafts around arizona at that time he did his homework he couldn't find it but in a weather-wise magazine just weeks after the life magazine we learned that he found some more information says here a few weeks after the life magazine article dr mcdonald theorized it could have been from a thor missile that was detonated over vandenberg air force base in california so much further away than he was originally looking at but he couldn't be certain at this time because this thor missile that was detonated the whole information about this it was all classified so all he could do is gather information from maybe eyewitnesses and from newspaper reports that saw the event but he didn't have anything solid a few years later it was declassified and the information was available now dr mcdonald never commented on it again and most likely the reason was is that dr mcdonald was interested in this really strange naturally occurring phenomenon but after it was shown to be smoke from this thor missile it was no longer of an entry and he didn't comment on it interestingly enough the thor missile when it detonated was at the same height as branham's cloud and then it blew across northern arizona though we don't have dr mcdonald commenting on it his wife betsy mcdonald she gives a comment on this in 1996 in this letter uh she says here just to the person who brought the declassified materials to her she says thank you for sharing the declassified department of defense documents you secured from the united states air force concerning the unusual ring-shaped cloud observed over northern arizona february 28 1963 so we know she's talking about branham's cloud she said these documents confirm the scientifically acquired conclusions of my husband dr james e mcdonald that this stratospheric cloud was caused by the explosion high in the atmosphere of a thor missile fired from vandenberg air force base in california it's no longer a mystery it actually by the time she wrote that it hadn't been a mystery for a long time but it's perpetuated through message believers all the way up until now so back to a question that i asked before when i gave the example of a guy coming to you in a coffee shop would you trust william branham in a court of law to be able to tell what happened on these different events that he talks about where where was he when the cloud formation was he right under the cloud formation was he in tucson and it was in flagstaff was it the morning was it the evening was he with hunters or was he by himself praying so many different accounts to his story i think it makes it hard to believe that anything happened at all so that ends this video in the next video as i said we're going to look at some of branham's teachings and try to explore in the mind of branham what he believed and what he taught others thank you

Channel: Tim Martin

Views: 1,247

Rating: 4.4871793 out of 5

Keywords: William Branham, Cloud, Vision, Visitation, 1933, 1950, 1963, Pillar of Fire, Bible, Cult, Message, Message believers, apologetics, error, lie, Laodicean messenger, Baptism, Voice of God Recordings

Id: Zfa8ALXH5lU

Length: 50min 21sec (3021 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021