Some Interesting Merchandise from Voice of God Recordings

The following are screen captures from the Voice of God Recordings website, illustrating some of the merchandise they provide to believers who follow William Branham’s ministry. This is the organization under Joseph Branham, William’s son, and is the major distributor of Message recordings, transcribed sermons, the life story of William Branham (written by a believer), and other materials. Those “other materials” contain some pretty interesting stuff:

The story of the mother opossum was one of William Branham’s favorites. At a low point in his healing ministry, the opossum crawled up to his door. She was wounded, infected and dying, and had several babies clinging to her back. He ignored her for a few days, but she didn’t go away. Eventually, he prayed for her as he would for a sick human being. She immediately was healed and trucked herself happily back to the woods with her young. William Branham held her up as an example of perfect maternal love: she had been so unselfish as to give her life for her babies, and God had rewarded her with life so that she could continue caring for them.

I have a lot of problems with the moral of the story: it teaches women that their lives only matter if they have children, and that wishing to survive for one’s own sake is selfish. I think our culture needs to do away with the cult of sacrificial motherhood this story promotes. Not only does it prevent mothers from seeking the help they need, it also teaches children that their mothers exist to serve them.

Forsberg’s full WHAS11 interview

Those who have followed my comments on the WHAS11 Lousiville story on William Branham and the Message will be interested to see the full interview of David Forsberg on facebook here. Forsberg is a Message believer from Norway who was interviewed during a visit to Branham’s grave for Easter 2012.

Forsberg’s views on Branham’s resurrection are a little unclear, but the extended footage seems to indicate that he holds a more moderate view of resurrection similar to the one my church preached. In other words, Branham will rise from the dead when all of the other Christians do for the Last Judgment, but not in his own, special resurrection. This is the more common view amongst Message believers, although my church did encounter a few radicals who believe that Branham will rise first to finish his work (“I’ll ride this trail again” is a line they take as prophecy) and then usher in the general resurrection.

Forsberg’s comment about the grave being similar to the empty grave of Jesus at Jerusalem was an odd comparison, but in this context probably means that it’s a special place that Christians visit without expecting to find anything miraculous there.

Oh, “Brother.”

When I was a kid, I had a really hard time with titles. I felt awkward calling people “Aunt Sarah” or “Mr. Smith,” possibly because my parents never bothered to use titles in front of me. They called their friends and relatives by their first names, and that felt natural to me. Whenever I heard other kids refer to my mother as “Mrs,” I thought of this scene from Anne of Green Gables:

“What am I to call you?” asked Anne.  “Shall I always say
Miss Cuthbert?  Can I call you Aunt Marilla?”

“No; you’ll call me just plain Marilla.  I’m not used to
being called Miss Cuthbert and it would make me nervous.”

Recommended Reading: A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?

A recent article on Religion Dispatches takes on the question few people bother to ask after failed apocalyptic prophecies: what happens to those who have invested their whole lives in the belief in an immanent Second Coming? With admirable sensitivity and sobriety, Tom Bartlett describes the aftereffects of Harold Camping’s end-of-the-world prediction for May 21, then October 21, 2011. Here is an excerpt:

May 21 believers couldn’t afford to doubt either. Whenever I met one, I would ask: Is there any chance you might be wrong? Could someone have miscalculated, misunderstood a verse, botched a symbol? Just maybe?

I asked this question of a believer in his mid-twenties. He started listening to Harold Camping’s radio show in college and immediately went out, bought a Bible, and immersed himself in it. After graduation, he took a job as an engineer at a Fortune 500 company, a job he loved and a job he quit because he thought the world was ending. He wrote the following in his resignation letter: “With less than three months to the day of Christ’s return, I desire to spend more time studying the Bible and sounding the trumpet warning of this imminent judgment.”

He would not entertain the possibility, even hypothetically, that the date could be off. “This isn’t a prediction because a prediction has a potential for failure,” he told me.

“Even if it’s 99.9 percent, that extra .1 percent makes it not certain. It’s like the weather. If it’s 60 percent, it may or may not rain. But in this case we’re saying 100 percent it will come. God with a consuming fire is coming to bring judgment and destroy the world.”

Eagle Cry Radio Cries Some More

The Eagle Cry Radio logo, complete with disembodied eagle head and Branham’s microphone.

Joseph Branham’s reactionary letter to the WHAS11 news story on William Branham and the Message has been reprinted on the website of Eagle Cry Radio, an all-Message internet-based radio group. Their headline is “Bro. Joseph Branham Responds to Local News Report About the Message Being a Cult.” Funny, because the actual news report never called the Message a cult. Freudian slip?

Joseph Branham’s Reactionary Letter

I was alerted to Joseph Branham‘s written response to the WHAS11 news story on his father, William Branham, by a drive-by commenter who thought her comment would be lost in moderation. On the contrary, I’m quite willing to engage with the contents of the letter. In summary, it charges that the news story was biased, that quotes were taken out of context, and that the whole thing unfairly represented Message believers as a weird cult. You can read the full letter here. I’m going to respond to it, piece by piece, below.

“Prediction” vs. “Prophecy”: Nitpicking to Salvage a Lie

1950s self-driving car concept sketch. Branham claimed to see this very image in a vision.

In the WHAS11 News coverage of William Branham and the Message, they aired a video clip in which Branham is seen vehemently voicing his prediction that the Second Coming of Jesus will happen in 1977. How do Message believers reconcile this claim with the fact that we’re living in 2012? By conveniently latching onto one word and spinning it out into a doctrine of its own.

“We have exactly – listen! – seventeen years left,” Branham said, in a definitive tone of voice.

My church taught that William Branham was human and fallible, except when he was “under the annointing” as he preached. On such occasions, he was filled with not only the Holy Spirit, but also the “spirit of Elijah,” which was never wrong. The result of this doctrine is this: Everything Branham predicted would happen was his fallible human self guessing. However, everything he prophesied was God speaking through him. His 1977 claim falls under the “prediction” category (because it was wrong). This means that it was a “mistaken human assumption” that can’t be used to discredit Branham as a prophet. Other statements that haven’t been proven wrong yet (although some have been proven plagiarized, such as his self-driving egg-shaped car vision) are described as “prophecies,” which means they are absolutely true and can be used as evidence that Branham is a prophet.

Norman Bel Geddes concept car from 1939 New York World’s Fair, “Futurama” exhibit. More here.

Basically, you’re not allowed to call Branham a liar. If he said anything wrong, he did it by himself and it was an honest mistake; but if he said anything right, it was God vindicating his ministry.

The WHAS11 Louisville News story on William Branham and the Message: a review

I am very impressed with Mr. Wasler’s coverage of the Message on WHAS11. It could easily have been a sensationalist piece, focused on the “horrible exploits of the Branhamite cult.” Instead, it was a balanced and accurate portrayal of a large segment of the Message population. Not all Message believers accept the doctrine of Branham’s resurrection. My church did not, nor did the churches we associated with on the East Coast, although we knew a few couples who did. One couple actually left our church over the relative lack of attention we gave to the prophet as a person.

It was validating to see the actual video clips of Branham talking about women. Two years ago, I wrote “Hello, Miss Dog-Meat” as a response to one of the quotes features in the video. I’m glad that the editors decided to let Branham condemn himself with his opinions on women rather than risking Message censure by paraphrasing them. I’m sure they will still argue that the quotes are “taken out of context” somehow, as if there’s a possible context in which they are not egregiously anti-women. (“Some women” is still “women,” y’all.)

Mike’s experience resonates with me and with the ex-Message friends who watched the video with me. The isolation from “the mark of the beast” (ordinary people), the assertions of Branham’s prophecies being true against all proof, the insistence that Branham is “just a messenger” while collecting and reproducing relics from his life… that’s all completely accurate.

I was astounded to hear that Voice of God Recordings has a net worth of nearly $110 million. One of the most vehement arguments Message believers make against the accusation that Branham was a fraud is that he never made any substantial money from it. (I wonder now, how much money did his “staff” make?) This blows that claim out of the water. When I was in church as a teenager, I was told that Voice of God Recordings took a loss to make the books and tapes and that they only charged for shipping. They claimed to be an absolutely non-profit ministry, mailing materials all over the world while meeting printing costs through the pockets of their own staff and unsolicited donations from believers. Without that cred, there is literally nothing left to separate the Message from organizations like the 700 Club and Benny Hinn except doctrine.

All in all, I’m excited to see the Message subjected to fair, dedicated research and presented in a way that allows Message believers to make their own points while demonstrating exactly what is going on behind the scenes. Well done, WHAS11!

Breaking: William Branham on the news

A friend just sent me a link to WHAS11 News, a Louisville program airing a special about William Branham and the Message of the Hour:

11 News @ 6pm: I-Team Investigates William Branham

A Message-believing sect has also been accused of child abuse and molestation in Germany.

Groups like Seek Ye the Truth are now attempting to defend the Message against the charge of being a “cult” by asserting their Biblical orthodoxy. I’ve already written an assessment of the Message against standards for diagnosing cultlike behavior. “We’re not a cult” is often one of the first things a Message believer says when a potential convert looks at them askance for mentioning a modern prophet.

It’s my opinion now that “cult” is not a particularly useful word for understanding coercive religious groups. I don’t deny that Message believers are Christians when I look at their actions. Their ability to defend Branham using Bible passages means less than nothing to me. What matters is how they treat one another and outsiders. A cult is not a creed, it’s a way of living. In any case, I’ll be watching that news story tonight (provided I can figure out how to get a Louisville station nowhere near Louisville.

[UPDATE: As a reader has pointed out below, Seek Ye the Truth is not a Message organization. It appears to be a conservative Christian group that argues against Branham through Scripture. I drew my former conclusion from its posts on the WHAS11 News facebook page, linked above. A written synopsis with embedded video of the news coverage is now available here.]

Christian Zionism and the Holocaust

My church was obsessed with Israel.