The One Fact That Isn't A Fact
This article responds to David Courchaine's sermon "Spiritual and Logical Clarity," streamed July 22, 2026, in which he raised the case of Donny Morton while defending William Branham. It is part of our series of responses to Message followers, alongside our other responses to that sermon on Congressman Upshaw, the Finland boy, and the brown bear vision. The case itself is documented in full on our Donny Morton page and in our response to Jesse Smith.
The One Fact That Isn't a Fact
David Courchaine's complaint about the critics of the Message is that we do not look at the facts.
In his July sermon, he said his real issue with the case against Branham is that "I can't even logically make it make sense." Then, to show what he meant, he raised the case of Donny Morton. And in doing so he did the exact thing he accuses everyone else of doing. He gave one fact, and it was the one fact that isn't a fact.
Let's look at the evidence.
What he said
Here is Courchaine's entire treatment of Donny Morton, in full. He said the critics point to
"Donny Morton, the kid that Brother Branham said had a vision and pronounced them healed... and then he died two months later."
And then his answer:
"But did they mention that they died of a completely different disease? No."
That is the whole defense. The boy did not die from the thing Branham failed to heal, Courchaine says. He died of something else. So the healing was not really a failure.
It sounds like a fact that changes everything. It is not a fact, and it does not change anything. Here is why.
The excuse is Branham's own, and it was answered long ago
The "he died of a different disease" line did not originate with David Courchaine. It is William Branham's own excuse, word for word in substance. Branham said a nurse left a window open, a draft blew across the boy, and "the baby taken pneumonia... not with the disease, with the pneumonia killed the baby."
So Courchaine is not reporting a fact the critics missed. He is repeating the prophet's own explanation for the failure, as though no one had ever examined it. We examined it years ago. It does not hold. David Courchained failed to do his research.
Donny Morton was a four-year-old boy with progressive meningitis and subdural hygromas. He weighed twenty pounds. He had already been turned down by the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. After Branham prayed for him, he underwent four brain operations. The pneumonia that took his life set in because his body was utterly broken down by the underlying brain disease and those surgeries. The pneumonia was not an unrelated illness that wandered in through a window. It was an opportunistic infection, the kind that finishes a body already dying of something else.
Calling that "a completely different disease" is like saying a man did not die of his cancer, he died of the infection he caught while dying of his cancer. Technically, you can say the words. They explain nothing.
Even granting it, the prophecy still failed
But set all of that aside. Grant Courchaine the pneumonia. Grant that it was, in some narrow sense, a different illness. The prophecy still failed, and here is the part he never addresses.
Branham did not say "this boy will improve." He did not say "this boy will get good medical care." He said, on tape, across at least twelve recorded sermons, that the Holy Spirit had spoken "THUS SAITH THE LORD" and the child "got well." He said "the boy was made normal." He said "the power of God unfolded that child and made him well."
If God Almighty declared a child healed, an open window cannot kill him. A draft cannot undo the word of the Lord. The moment Branham blames a window and a nurse for the death, he has admitted that his "Thus Saith the Lord" could be cancelled by a cold breeze. That is not a word from God. A word from God does not lose to the weather.
So the "different disease" defense does not rescue the prophecy. It exposes it. It concedes that the healing was fragile, revocable, and ultimately undone, which is exactly what a failed prophecy looks like.
What he did not mention
Courchaine accused the critics of not looking at the facts. So let's list the facts he did not mention while defending Donny Morton.
He did not mention that the boy died. He said "died two months later," but Donny Morton died on November 1, 1951, just under five months after Branham pronounced him healed. Even the timeline in the one-sentence defense is wrong.
He did not mention that Branham claimed the boy "went right straight from that meeting and bought Donny his first pair of shoes, and he wore them the next day," or that the boy "could run, meet his daddy." Neither happened. The child's muscles were so atrophied he needed further surgery just to begin rehabilitation. He never walked. He never ran. He never wore those shoes.
He did not mention that Donny Morton's own sister, Denelda Clayton, contacted us directly and stated it plainly:
"What William Branham said about my brother, that he was healed, that he wore the shoes that my dad bought him, or that he came running to my dad after he was prayed for, none of it was true."
And he did not mention that Branham told the story two different ways. In one version, the "miracle" was a vision sending the father to find a surgeon, "the only hope that you have... is that operation." In another, it was a straight divine healing with no surgeon at all. Both cannot be true.
None of that made it into Courchaine's account. He gave one detail, the prophet's own window excuse, and left out the death, the shoes, the sister, and the contradictions.
The pattern
This is the same move we have seen from Courchaine in every part of this sermon.
With the Upshaw chapter, he examined a footnote and never mentioned the story changing in Branham's own words. With the Finland boy, he examined the speed of a car and never mentioned the mayor's certificate that no one can produce. With the brown bear, he described a bear that no eyewitness ever saw. And here, with Donny Morton, he repeats Branham's own discredited excuse and never mentions the dead child at the center of it.
Every time, he looks hard at one small thing and looks away from the thing that matters. Every time, he examines the critic and gives the prophet a pass.
He said the problem was that the case against the Message does not make logical sense to him. But he never actually tested it. He picked up the prophet's own excuse, repeated it in one sentence, and moved on.
The honest question is the same one it always is. Donny Morton was declared healed by "Thus Saith the Lord." Donny Morton died. A four-year-old boy is not a footnote. So what do we do with another "Thus Saith the Lord" that failed?
Footnotes