William Branham was born on a farm near Burkesville, Kentucky, not far from the place where Abraham Lincoln was born approximately a hundred years before. No one is sure of the exact date because no birth records were kept in Kentucky in those days. However, it is believed he was born the sixth day of April 1909 and weighed only 5 pounds. His mother was 15 years of age and his father was 18. The first day of his life something very unusual happened. After the midwife had washed him and placed him by his mother she went to a window to open the shutter. There was no glass in the windows in the Branham house in those days and the air and light was regulated by the opening and closing of the wooden shutters. Dawn was just breaking over the fields, sending a few rays of light into the room.
With this light came a small circular halo about a foot in diameter which shown with brightness above the bed where the mother and baby lay. This halo has since been seen by thousands of people and is no doubt the same one that shows in the photograph taken in Houston, Texas, during the January 1950 campaign. When the midwife and parents saw this halo they began to cry; they were afraid and did not understand what it all meant. Not until many years later did those who knew about the halo understand that God had His hand on this man for a great ministry to the people of the world. Religion in any form was not taken into consideration in the Branham family. His grandfather had been a Catholic but his mother and father apparently gave no thought to Christianity. But because of the unusual incident that happened at his birth, his mother took him to a neighborhood Baptist Church
This was his first visit to the church and the last one for many years. In the early fall of 1909 Kentucky experienced one of its worst snow storms. At this time William Branham’s father was away working in a lumber camp where he was stranded because of this severe storm. Soon the supply of food and fuel at their home began to run out. His mother would go outside and bring in anything she could find to burn in order to keep her child and herself from freezing to death. They never had much food on hand and when their meager supply was gone, she could feel that her strength was leaving her. Help would have to come shortly if they were to live. Finally she became so weak that she realized if she went outside for more wood she might not be able to return.She took the baby and wrapped him the best she could and put him to bed, waiting for death to come and take them both. They would have died had it not been for a saintly old neighbor of theirs who became strangely concerned about the Branham household.
Upon investigation, he found there was no smoke coming out of the chimney. Although the snow was deep, the elderly man made his way to the humble clapboard shingled cabin and found that the door was locked from the inside. He realized that there must be someone inside and seeing no sign of heat in the cabin, he broke in. He was startled by what he saw when he entered. The mother was near death because of cold and starvation. He prayed that God would spare their lives and not permit this young mother and child to pass from the world this way. Quickly he gathered firewood and stayed there until he had a good blazing fire which soon warmed the humble little two room home. Next, he secured food for the mother and child and soon they were on their way to recovery. Not long after this the Branham family moved to Utica, Indiana, and the following year to a farm five miles out of Jeffersonville, Indiana, two miles from where he now lives. His early life was marked by tragedy, poverty and misunderstanding.
Some of the most vivid memories of William Branham’s youth are pertaining to the poverty in which they were forced to live. His father worked for a wealthy farmer for seventy-five cents a day. He recalls seeing him come home with his shirt stuck to his sunburned back so that his mother had to take the scissors and cut it loose. Their humble home was a little two room cabin with dirt floors and the kitchen sink out underneath the apple tree in the yard. The first time that God spoke audibly to William Branham was when he was about seven years old. He had just enrolled in a rural school a few miles north of Jeffersonville, Indiana. He came home from school that afternoon and was intent on joining the rest of the boys in some fishing. But as young Branham was about o leave, his father called him and told him that he would have to carry water for his moonshine still. This of course was a disappointment to him because as a boy he was very fond of hunting and fishing. But he realized that since his father told him to carry water, he’d have to do as he was told. While carrying the water, he stopped to rest under an old poplar tree half-way between the house and the barn. Suddenly, he heard the sound of wind blowing in the leaves. He looked around and realized that it was a still, sunny, warm day. Listening more intently, he noticed that in a certain place, about the size of a barrel, the wind seemed to be blowing through the trees. Just then a voice came out from the trees saying, “Never drink, smoke or defile your body in any way, for I have a work for you to do when you get older.” This frightened him and he ran to the house.
Crying, he fell into the arms of his mother who thought that he had been bitten by a snake. He told her that he was just scared and did not tell her about the wind blowing through the leaves nor about the voice. His mother put him to bed thinking he was suffering from a nervous shock. Whenever possible he would avoid going near that tree, choosing rather to detour around the other side of the garden. Two weeks later as he was playing on the banks of the Ohio River, he saw a vision. He noticed what appeared to him to be a bridge coming up from the Kentucky side of the river, over towards Indiana. As the bridge was progressing towards Indiana, he saw sixteen men drop from the bridge into the water. He went home and told his mother about this but she said that he had been sleeping and had a dream. But young William Branham knew that he had not been sleeping or dreaming. Yet he did not understand what he had seen. Twenty-two years later the Municipal Bridge was built between Louisville, Kentucky, and Jeffersonville, Indiana, over this exact spot. During the construction of the bridge, sixteen men lost their lives. God was speaking to the young man and laying the foundation for him to have faith in the things that God would show him in the future years. He was conscious of the fact that there was somebody around him who seemed to always want to talk, but he, having been warned by his mother of spiritualism and demon powers, was afraid and always tried to ignore it.
To add misery and sadness to poverty, his father became a drunkard. William recalls how one whole year he went to school and never owned a shirt which he could wear. He remembers how at school he sat and looked at the other children who had clothing and began to realize that liquor had stolen from his family the necessities of life. He read about Abraham Lincoln, who as a young man got off a boat down in New Orleans and saw the white people auction off a large Negro, separating him from his family. His wife and child were there crying, as the man was being sold as if he were a horse. Lincoln realized this was wrong and vowed that some day he would do something about it even at the price of his own life. In like manner young William Branham sat there in school and thought of the poverty that his family was experiencing because of liquor. He said that this was wrong and he was going to do something about it some day, even at the cost of his life. He has not forgotten his vow, for even to this day he does and will continue to do everything he can to enlighten the people as to the damaging effect of liquor and tobacco. One Sunday morning at the age of ten William Branham was with his father and a neighbor down by the Ohio River.
As they were walking there along the banks, his father took a bottle out from his back pocket and, after taking a drink, handed it to his neighbor. The neighbor took a drink and handed it to young William Branham who said, “No, sir, thank you, I don’t drink.” The neighbor answered in surprise, “A Branham and an Irishman and you don’t drink?” “No, sir!” he still insisted. His father replied by saying, “I’ve got four boys and one sissy,” the sissy being William who had just refused to drink. This cut very deeply into his tender heart, for he was conscientious and desired to do that which was right. Here his own father had called him a sissy when he had turned down partaking of liquor, which had been such a source of grief and poverty in their own home. This was more than young Branham could take and he said, “Hand me that bottle and I’ll show you that I’m a Branham and that I can drink.”
He took the bottle and started to put it up to his mouth. As he did, again the familiar sound of the wind came. He was reminded of the time when the angel first spoke to him telling him never to smoke, drink, or defile his body in any way for he had a work to do when he was older. He had not been thinking of this and when he heard it, he became frightened, dropped the bottle and started to cry. His father said, “See, I told you he was a sissy.” He may have been a sissy in the eyes of the world but God was speaking to the boy. God was preserving him for something great in the future, something through which he would not only be a help to his neighbors and to the people that knew him but a help and a blessing to millions of people around the world. This incident is the most disheartening and bitter experience of his early life. Feeling that he was not understood and suffering from an inferiority complex, he did not have many friends. He was very shy of girls and did not like them. Boys did not seem to understand him. Instead of associating with people, he would much rather take his gun and dog and go out hunting. For an example, the young people of the neighborhood had decided to have a surprise birthday party on him but he found out about it. The early part of the evening before anyone came, he got his dog and went out coon hunting and didn’t return until about ten o’clock. He thought the party would be over by then and everybody gone home. Instead he found out that everyone was still there playing games and apparently enjoying themselves. As he looked in the window and saw them, he decided that he didn’t want to go in. He wouldn’t feel at home; he wouldn’t enjoy himself there with those people. So he decided to go out to the barn and sleep for the night.
Source; A Prophet Visits South Africa. Julius Stadsklev
Copyright © 2020 Restored Faith Tabernacle
