BOOK 2: The Young Man and His Desperation

By Owen Jorgensen

"As a young pastor, William Branham struggled to understand his peculiar life. Why was he the only minister in town who saw visions? When God first called him into nationwide evangelism in 1936, he refused, only to pay dearly for his mistake by losing his wife and daughter to tuberculosis. The visions continued. Ministers told h

• Language: English
• Publisher: Supernatural Christian Books LLC
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781955401616

Book preview

CHAPTER 13

MYSTERIOUS STAR REAPPEARS

1933

WILLIAM BRANHAM preached in the Missionary Baptist Church a scant three months when he and Dr. Davis had a falling-out. Dr. Davis wanted Bill to ordain several women as preachers in the local assembly. Bill flatly refused.

What’s this? Dr. Davis fumed, indignant at the nerve of his subordinate. You’re an elder in this congregation, the pastor reminded him. It’s your duty to uphold the bylaws of this church.

Dr. Davis, in all due respect to the Baptist faith and everything that I have been ordained into, I did not know it was Baptist doctrine to ordain women.

Nevertheless, that is the doctrine of this church.

Billy asked, Sir, could I be excused, just for tonight?

No. It’s your duty to be there.

In one way Bill felt Dr. Davis was right. As an elder, he should support everything the local church did. Billy had this chilling sense of being trapped into something his conviction told him was wrong.

Would you at least answer some questions for me?

That I’ll do.

Could you explain why, in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul said, ‘Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak’?

Certainly. The doctor’s demeanor swelled with smug confidence. In those days all the women were sitting back in the corners, gossiping and popping off, and Paul said, ‘Don’t let them do that.’ See?

To Billy that explanation didn’t line up with another Scripture he had read. Then explain to me 1 Timothy 2, (Billy flipped through his Bible until he found the passage) where Paul said, ‘I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.’ Now, Dr. Davis, I don’t say she wants to do anything wrong; but she’s actually deceived in it. Therefore God does not want her to be a preacher.

Dr. Davis frowned. Is that your personal opinion?

That’s the Scripture’s opinion, to my way of seeing it.

Young man, for that you could have your license taken away from you by the Baptist church.

Billy slipped his wallet out of his back pocket. I’ll just save them the trouble and give it back right now. It’s best I get rid of it, because I can see it’s going to be a burden to me.

No, no, Brother Billy, let’s not be too hasty about all this.

On that weak note of reconciliation, the dispute ended. Since neither would back down from his position, they both agreed that Bill should go his own way and start his own work for the Lord. A firm handshake cemented their decision, and the two men parted as friends.

Bursting with dreams and enthusiasm, Billy rented the old Masonic Hall in Jeffersonville and started holding Sunday services. On the first Sunday just a handful of people gathered to hear him preach, but from there his congregation increased by a soul or two each week. Billy shared his faith constantly, witnessing to new faces he met while on his job, and to old faces he had known all his life. Because he invited so many people to church, there were always new people trickling in to his Sunday services. Out of these visitors, a few would accept Christ as their Savior and start attending Bill’s meetings regularly. Little by little his congregation grew.

Each new convert placed a little more demand on his time, but Billy didn’t mind. In fact, he liked it. After so many years of rejection, at long last he had found love and acceptance—both from Jesus Christ and from this small group of people who looked to him as their pastor. Finally he had found his niche in life, his purpose for being alive; and he intended to give himself to the cause of Christ wholeheartedly.

In June of 1933, Billy rented a large circus tent set up on an empty lot in Jeffersonville, planning to hold a two-week revival. The Sunday before his revival meetings began, as he was preparing for Sunday school at the Masonic Hall, he fell into a trance unlike anything he had previously experienced. He could see the world spread like a tablecloth in front of him, and it seemed as though he was somehow connected with the on-flow of time. He saw soldiers with olive-colored skin marching in unison, bayonets gleaming on the tip of their bolt-action rifles; then he saw these soldiers attacking a black-skinned group of people, who fought back with spears, pitchforks, and scythes.

A voice spoke from behind and to the right of Bill, out of his line of sight. It was the same voice that had spoken to him out of that poplar tree when he was seven years old; a deep, resonant voice saying, Benito Mussolini will invade Ethiopia and take it. The poorer country will fall at his steps. Italy will then try to invade other countries but will fail, and Mussolini himself will come to a disgraceful end.

The scene changed. Bill saw an army of men dressed in drab green uniforms battling soldiers dressed in gray. Bill could see army tanks and explosions and a vast network of concrete bunkers, cannons, machine gun nests, and barbed wire. The voice behind him explained, From Germany, the young Austrian, Adolf Hitler, will draw the world into war. America too will go to war, and in the process Franklin Roosevelt will be elected to a fourth term as President. Germany will fortify herself behind an extensive wall of concrete, and America will pay a tremendous price in lives to break through this wall. But Germany will be defeated and Hitler will come to a mysterious end.

Again the scene shifted. He saw Europe spreading out as a map before him, and he saw national borders altering and reforming into new political sections. The voice said, There are three political ideologies struggling for dominance in the world today: Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. The first two will come to nothing, but Communism will flourish. Watch Russia, the King of the North.

A fourth time the scene changed. The war in Europe turned the color blue and faded back into history. In its place Bill witnessed tremendous advances in technology sweeping over the globe. Among other marvels, he saw cars with streamlined curves like eggs, traveling down an elaborate highway system. He even saw a car without a driver. The people inside were turned away from the front window, concentrating instead on a game of amusement while the car electronically guided itself down the road. The voice made no comment, and the scene shifted a fifth time.

Now Bill saw women with long hair and wearing long dresses, marching with placards, demanding the right to vote. When that right was granted, he saw them elect a young man as President of the United States. Then Bill watched the women cut off their hair. Some of the women put on pants, while the others shortened their skirts and made their blouses skimpier until their coverings were about the size and shape of fig leaves.

For a sixth time the vision altered. Bill watched as there arose in the United States a beautiful woman, elegantly clothed. But despite her lovely features, there seemed to be a hardness about her that defied description. Great power was given to her and she dominated the land with her authority.

The voice to Bill’s right urged, Look once more. Bill turned slightly to view a seventh and final spectacle-the United States stretching before him in chaotic ruins. Craters pitted the ground, and smoking piles of debris blackened the air. As far as Bill could see, the land was empty of human beings. Then the vision faded away.

Bill sat for a long time, numb and dazed. When he could make his fingers work again, he picked up a pen and started scribbling down the seven visions, pondering their meaning as he wrote.

Mussolini will attack Ethiopia... That would be an unexpected turn of world events. Bill knew something of Mussolini, a man often in the news. Mussolini had been the totalitarian dictator of Italy since 1922 and was widely regarded as Italy’s national savior. He had brought order out of chaos to a country impoverished by the World War, stabilizing Italy’s economy and restoring its dignity. His social reforms had been carried out without losing the support of either the industrialists or the landowners. Public figures all over Europe and the United States acclaimed Mussolini, sometimes comparing him to Caesar, to Napoleon, and to Cromwell, because of his great success in transforming and governing his country. Why would Mussolini risk his good name to invade such a backward land as Ethiopia?

As for Adolf Hitler, just last January Germany’s President, Paul von Hindenburg, had appointed Hitler to the office of Chancellor, bringing the Nazi Party to the forefront of German politics. But how could he draw the European nations into war again, after the last war had been so destructive and demoralizing? No one in the world wanted another war. Still, his visions had never yet been wrong.

Bill did not understand world political forces; but he did read the newspapers, and so was aware that Mussolini’s Fascism was gaining support in Asia and Latin America. Fascism rejected the idea of individual freedom, believing instead that the state should regulate all national life; and holding the idea that the state should be led by one dynamic personality, who would dictate with supreme authority. Bill knew almost nothing about Hitler’s Nazism, which had not been much in the news until recently. He did know something of Russia’s Communism, with its lip service to workers’ rights and its strangling central government run strictly by the Communist Party elite. Of all the forces struggling in Europe at this time, Communism seemed the least likely to dominate. But then again, the visions had never before been wrong.

And those cars he saw! So slick and streamlined. How vastly different they looked from the box-like automobiles driving the roads in 1933. What marvels must lie ahead, if science and technology could invent such magnificent machines! But those accomplishments would be offset by the corruption of values in the world, exemplified in the vision by the moral decay of women. And what of that cold-hearted beauty who would someday dominate America? Would she be an actual woman, or did she represent a power? Perhaps a women’s political movement, or a spiritual movement. Bill wrote in parenthesis, Perhaps the Catholic church. And finally, there was that awful destruction. It looked like America’s days were