This chapter about prophets is being written because of the belief by a group of Christians that God has sent a prophet to us here in the twentieth century. That man’s name was William M. Branham who was discussed in a previous chapter. I’m not going into this man’s complete life story; because there is a book on that in existence, but I’m just going to touch on a few things that happened in his life, just to set the stage for this chapter.
From the time of the birth of William Branham, a number of supernatural things occurred that confirmed God called him into the ministry. One of these events occurred in 1933 above the Ohio River in Jeffersonville
Then in the year of 1946, he reported that an angel of God visited him and said that he was to take a ministry of divine healing to the people. Along with that commission, he was given some supernatural gifts that were manifested in his services for many years and were effective in validating his call of God.
Again in January of 1950, while brother Branham was addressing a group of people in Houston , Texas
William Branham’s ministry was very effective, with thousands of conversions and healings being documented. The working of God’s power through him was so great that some of his followers believed that he was Christ, having returned again to the earth.
William Branham’s ministry continued until December of 1965, when he was involved in an automobile accident and subsequently died as a result of his injuries.
Most of William Branham’s sermons were taped and are being distributed, both in tape and book form and are the basis of what is known as “The Message of the Hour,” which his followers use as a basis for their church doctrine, similar to the basic doctrines that other churches use to identify their respective groups, faiths, or denominations.
William Branham did not consider himself to be a prophet because of the type of ministry that he had. He said, “I do not regard myself to be a prophet of the Lord. A prophet doesn’t operate the way I operate. A prophet isn’t an evangelist and an evangelist isn’t a prophet. If He did call me to be His prophet, then I’m certainly not holding the office of one.” Many times he said to his people, “Many of you people believe me to be a prophet. I do not say that I am. You said it.” He also said, “There never has been on the pages of history, a Gentile prophet. It would be contrary to the Word.”
Nevertheless, many people testified to the fact that many of the prophecies of Brother Branham did come to pass. Many times he told people, who he did not know, things about their past lives and their futures that were verified to be true. So whether Brother Branham knew or admitted that he was a prophet, his followers without a doubt believed it to be so.
But how can we determine if a person is a prophet of the Lord? The only way to be sure is to look back into the scriptures to see what God said about the first prophets and how they operated.
The following scriptures should tell us something about a man that has been ordained to be a prophet of the Lord.
Num 12:6 “And he said, Hear now my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream.”
Deu “When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor comes to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: you shall not be afraid of him.”
Jer 28:9 “The prophet which prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the LORD has truly sent him.”
Ezek 33:33 “And when this comes to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet has been among them.”
So first of all, God said that He would speak to His prophet in dreams and visions. Then He said that if what the prophet spoke came to pass, it would be the sign that it came from the Lord. But if what the prophet said did not come to pass, you would know that the Lord did not say it, and the man should be considered a false prophet.
In 1st Samuel 9:9, it says that a prophet was once called a seer. A seer is a person that can see things that occurred in the past, in the future, and in the present heart of a man. The scriptures to verify this description are as follows.
Samuel told Saul that he would be able to tell him what was in his heart.
1 Sam 9:19 “And Samuel answered Saul, and said, I am the seer: go up before me unto the high place; for you shall eat with me today, and tomorrow I will let you go, and will tell you all that is in your heart.”
John “Nathanael said to him, when did you know me? Jesus answered and said to him, before that Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
Mat “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
So, a true prophet of the Lord is a seer, a person that the Lord speaks to in dreams and visions, and the words that the prophet speak are proven to be true, whether about the past, present, or future. According to the scriptures, this is the test, and the only test, of a true prophet of God.
But a prophet is not infallible. He is subject to making a mistake if he doesn’t stay with God’s Word. This doesn’t make him any less a prophet, just a man that follows his own spirit at times instead of being sure what the will of God is and staying with it.
One example is with the Prophet Moses. Without a doubt, Moses was the greatest prophet on the pages of history, outside of Jesus. But Moses failed to follow God’s Word one time and was punished for it. Even so, he was still a true prophet of God.
Deu 32:51 (God said to Moses) “Because you trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah‑Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel
Then there was the prophet Balaam, the son of Beor, who disobeyed God and taught false things to the people.
“But I have a few things against you, because you have there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.”
God used prophets to speak His words to the people prior to and during the time the Bible was being written. The people had no other way of knowing what the will of God was for them. But since the Bible has been written, and we have God’s Word before us in written form, the need of having a prophet before us is less than it was then.
Even so, if there is something new that is not covered in the Bible that God wants us to know, He will send a prophet to us or give the gift of prophecy to someone just to convey His message to us. For the scripture teaches us that God will not do anything new until He reveals it to a prophet.
Amos 3:7 “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, unless he reveals his secret unto his servants the prophets. “
But one thing that God will never do is to contradict something He has already told us and is recorded in the scriptures. No matter whom the person is, a priest, prophet, or an angel from Heaven, if they tell us something that does not line up with the scriptures that God has given us; we should not believe what that person has said. Just as the Apostle Paul said … there is only one faith, and that is based on the gospel given to us by God. Everything that God says will fit in with those things He has already given us. The Word that God gave to the prophets and apostles is complete and truth and cannot be improved upon because God does not change, and His Word should not be interpreted by man.
Gal 1:8 (Paul said) “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that, which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. (1:9) As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preaches any other gospel unto you than that you have received, let him be accursed.”
Eph 4:5 “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, “
James 1:17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with who is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. “
Mal 3:6 “For I am the LORD, I change not”
2 Pet “Knowing this first that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”
So just to kind of summarize what we have learned about a prophet and what we should expect from him, according to the Scriptures:
1. A prophet of God receives God’s Word through dreams and visions.
2. When a prophet of God tells us something about the future, it comes to pass.
3. God reveals the secrets of man’s heart to His prophet.
4. When a prophet gives us something new that God has said, it will line up with what God said previously.
5. Prophets are not infallible; they are subject to making mistakes like any other man.
In today’s church world, there are many different faiths. These different faiths are the result of the acceptance of different doctrines brought about by man’s misinterpretation of the scriptures and relying on teaching other than the Bible for the foundation of their faith.
Just to give a few examples, the Catholics believe that the church’s authority supersedes the Bible. The Jehovah Witnesses allow the Watch Tower
All of the people in these different groups believe in and use the Bible, but they allow someone else to interpret it for them. This is what is causing so much division among the churches today. The scriptures in the Bible, as God gave them to His Prophets and Apostles, are complete and true. Only because man has set his hand to translate these scriptures into other languages and endeavored to interpret them, have so many misunderstandings occurred.
So what about William Branham? Was he a prophet of God? Could he have been a prophet and just not recognized it since his ministry was different from that of the olden prophets? Or could he have been just what he said he was an evangelist with a gift of prophecy?
William Branham knew what his ministry was. There was no doubt about what the commission from God’s angel in 1946 was for him. Just as Brother Branham said in March of 1963, “My real ministry is on divine healing.”
He knew that God did not call him to be a church pastor, yet he did perform some of the functions of a pastor. He knew that he wasn’t called to be a teacher, yet he did teach. He knew that he wasn’t called to be an apostle, but like an apostle, he was sent out to minister as the apostles of old were. He knew that he wasn’t called to be a worker of miracles, but some miracles were performed through him, and he doubted that he was called to be a prophet, yet he did prophesy.
Yes, William Branham’s prophecies were very accurate. Some will say that none of his prophecies ever failed to come to pass. Yet the question arises, then why are his followers so reluctant to believe all the prophecies that he made? Why are they so reluctant to believe especially those that have not yet come to pass?
Brother Branham made some statements that his church just would not accept. Just as he made some prophecies for the future, which they did not want to believe. So they shut their minds to them, saying that they were not actually prophecies from the Lord.
Just to make one example—his church was convinced that he was the seventh church Age Messenger. (These church ages are covered in the chapter on Revelations.) But when they added his name along with the Messengers of the other six church Age Messengers, he had it removed. Brother Branham did not believe that he was the Messenger to the seventh church Age, for he said to his church many times, “There is a Messenger coming after me, he has the last message.”
During the last few years of his ministry, Brother Branham said, “God has promised Malachi 4 for this last day, and Malachi 4 has not been fulfilled.” He continued to say again in March of 1963, “There is to be a coming of the true spirit of Elijah, we may be laying a foundation for it now.” He went on to say, “Maybe this ministry that I have tried to take people back to the Word has laid a foundation; and if it has, I’ll be leaving you for good. There won’t be two of us here at the same time. But I have been privileged by God to look and see what it was ... unfold to that much ... Now that is the truth.”
In August of 1965, Brother Branham said, “I’m only building. The hour is close at hand when you’re going to see something happen, when something is going to take place. And all this background here has only been laying a foundation for a short, quick message that will shake the whole nations.”
Then in November of 1965, just a few weeks before his death, he said, “The very word prophet means that he is a revealer of the Word of God. And that’s why today we’re in such a need of this great person that’s supposed to be sent to us in the form of the prophet Elijah, because it’ll be the revelation of God made known to us by vindication.”
Throughout his ministry, Brother Branham kept telling the people, time after time, that someone was coming after him with the last message for the Age, but the people would not accept it. They just ignored what he said as not being a prophecy. They were convinced that Brother Branham was to forerun the second coming of Christ, just as John the Baptist was a forerunner to His first coming.
But Brother Branham kept telling them, the angel that met them on the Ohio River said that it was “his message” that would forerun the second coming of Christ. If Brother Branham was to forerun the second coming, as John the Baptist did His first coming, then Christ would have returned before Brother Branham died, just as He came the first time, before John died.
Jesus said in Matthew 17:11 that Elijah shall come and restore all things. This compliments what the prophet Malachi said concerning “turning the heart of the children back to their fathers.” The doctrines taught from the Bible have become messed up over the past hundreds of years and the restoration is the restoring of the original understanding of the scriptures.
Just as Brother Branham said in June of 1963, “And the last gift being added in the Laodicean Age, which is the Seventh angel’s time to preach, at that time that they would be a lot of things that was misconstrued down through the Ages. The last message is supposed to straighten that all up, to bring these things to one faith, one Lord, one baptism.”
Then, just a few weeks before his death, Brother Branham knowing that all things had not been restored, said, “Now we are closer than it seems to be. I may be building a platform for somebody else to step on. And if I’m laying a foundation that another shall stand upon, grant, Lord, that soon it’ll happen, that the Word might be fulfilled.”
According to Brother Branham’s own words, the time of the restoration had not quite arrived, but it was close. Just for comparison, look at where I outlined the end of the Gentile Age in the chapter on “The Times of the Gentiles,” somewhere near the year 2000 AD, by the scriptures. In March of 1963, Brother Branham said that he thought Jesus would return in or about 1998. Then in November of that same year he said, “The work will be over in 36 more years and Christ would have to come by that time.” Brother Branham spoke this in 1963 and 36 years from 1963 would take us to 1999.
Thank God for Brother Branham, his life of dedication, and his ministry that was anointed by God. Not only did he succeed in bringing most of the Bride of Christ together, he also built a foundation upon which the last Messenger will use to prepare the Bride for the soon coming of Christ. Our faith must increase, and it will when those seven thunders begin to sound and the final revival begins.
But here is the most important question for this day. When this new Messenger arrives, the one Brother Branham prophesied of, will the people accept him? Will he be accepted by the people to build upon the foundation that Brother Branham laid? The answer to that must be yes, if the people believe all of Brother Branham’s prophecies and if the people are dedicated to put God’s Word above everything else. God said that before He would do anything, He would reveal it to a prophet, and that is what He did.
The restoration must take place before the return of Christ; Jesus said so. And according to Brother Branham, it is not complete. If the faith of the people is to be restored to the faith of our Apostolic Fathers, if the heart of the children is to be turned back to the Fathers, we must accept the inspired Word of God exactly as it was given to them and not as it has been taught down through the years.
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