Rev. William Marrion Branham

Independent Ministry

   1909 ~ 1965

 Reverend William Branham was born in 1909 in a dirt-floor log cabin in the hills of Kentucky. Branham carried his prophetic message of healing and deliverence to the far corners of the earth. A mystic from his youth, he reported divine visitations at ages three and seven.  After a personal healing, he felt called to preach and became an independent Baptist. In 1933 he preached to three thousand people in a tent revival in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and later built Branham Tabernacle there.

He attributed the death of his wife and baby in 1937 to his failure to heed the call to conduct revivals in Oneness Pentecostal churches. Branham reported that throughout his life he was guided by an angel who first appeared to him in a secret cave in 1946. He was given the power to discern people's illnesses and thoughts.

Branham filled the world's largest auditoriums and stadiums. In contrast to the caricature of the image-minded evangelist, he lived moderately, dressed modestly, and boasted of his youthful poverty. This endeared him to the throngs who idealized him. He was self-conscious about his lack of education, but the simplicity of his messages had world-wide appeal.

By emphasizing healing and prosperity and neglecting his Oneness theology Branham was able to minister in Trinitarian Pentecostal circles as well. Branham's insistence that believers baptized by a Trinitarian formula must be rebaptized in the name of "Jesus only" is a view still shared by a large number of Pentecostals today. But other teachings placed him on the fringes of orthodoxy. His doctrine of the "serpent's seed" taught that Eve's sin involved sexual relations with the serpent.

Branham proclaimed himself the angel of Revelation 3:14 and prophesied that by 1977 all denominations would be consumed by the World Council of Churches under the control of the Roman Catholics, that the rapture would take place, and that the world would be destroyed . He died in 1965, but many of his followers expected him to be resurrected. Audio and Video Recordings of Reverend William Branham are available in our Audio Library.