Red Herring Arguments
There is no question that some of William Branham's prophecies failed. That is, they were never fulfilled.
Examples of this are many, but include, among others:
Explanations for the Failed Prophecies
Cognitive Dissonance forces message believers to deal with these in a variety of ways. But in order to end the cognitive dissonance, they have to make these issues unimportant and capable of being ignored because that is exactly what they do with these problems, ignore them.
The following are some of the explanations provided.
Jonah prophesied against Nineveh but it was not destroyed
The problem with this explanation is that it is done without a knowledge of scripture.
God told Jeremiah:
- At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Jeremiah 18:7–8 (NASB95)
So God has clearly outlined the conditions under which a "Thus Saith The Lord" prophecy will not come to pass. But those two conditions do not apply to ANY of William Branham's failed prophesies.
The real problem, the Biblical problem, with William Branham's unfulfilled visions is Deuteronomy 18:22
- When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. Deut 18:22(NASB)
Even William Branham himself agreed with this being the Biblical standard.
The Bible has errors and people believe it. So if the mesage has errors, it's the same thing
An example of this is the reasoning given by Voice of God Recordings ("VoGR") in Catch the Vision, 2012, Volume 2.
The first thing that VoGR tells you is that you shouldn't reason with the Word of God. The next thing they do is to apply flawed reasoning to the issue. But I thought we weren't supposed to reason?
Message believers are so disparate for an explanation that this flawed reasoning was immediately copied by a few well known message ministers such as Ed Byskal and Vin Dayal.
Here is the argument:
1. The message has mistakes in it. 2. The Bible has mistakes in it but we believe it. 3. We should believe the message even though it has mistakes.
The problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that the "problems" in the Bible are the same as the problems in the message.
But guess what? They aren't the same. They are quite different.
The two examples of Biblical "errors" that VOGR gives are:
- Every Gospel tells the resurrection story differently. How can the Bible be true if a story this important is different in all four accounts?
- Paul's story of his conversion experience differs between Acts 9 and Acts 22. How can you believe the Bible if it can't get its facts straight on whether Paul companions heard the voice or not?
Differences in the Gospel Accounts
There are a number of explanations for the differences in the stories between the Gospel accounts, the simplest being: There are 4 different people telling the same story. Who in their right mind would expect them to be exactly the same?
Differences in Paul's Conversion Experiences
Message ministers don't understand Greek. In fact, they like to mock those that study it (for example, listen to Vin Dayal's sermon of January 13, 2013). For them, perhaps ignorance is bliss. But if you were a non-English speaker, how could you really hope to understand what William Branham is really saying if you don't speak English? And what if the translator was translating into your mother toungue but using language from 400 years ago? Do you understand that there might be a bit of a problem?
But for those of you who might be curious, here is something to ponder.
Acts 9:7 (KJV) states, “The men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.”
Acts 22:9 (KJV) reads, “And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.”
These statements seem contradictory, with one saying that Paul’s companions heard a voice, while the other account says that no voice was heard. However, a knowledge of Greek solves this difficulty.
The construction of the verb ‘to hear’ (akouo) is not the same in both accounts. In Acts 9:7 it is used with the genitive, in Acts 22:9 with the accusative. The construction with the genitive simply expresses that something is being heard or that certain sounds reach the ear; nothing is indicated as to whether a person understands what he hears or not.
The construction with the accusative, however, describes a hearing which includes mental apprehension of the message spoken. From this it becomes evident that the two passages are not contradictory.
Acts 22:9 does not deny that the associates of Paul heard certain sounds; it simply declares that they did not hear in such a way as to understand what was being said. Our English idiom in this case simply is not so expressive as the Greek.
This is very clear in a modern English like the NASB, where VoGr's problem with the Bible suddenly disappear:
Acts 9:7 (NASB95) - The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.
Acts 22:9 (NASB95) - And those who were with me saw the light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking to me.
References
Josh McDowell and Don Douglas Stewart, Answers to Tough Questions (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1993)