The word for our day?
Here is a quote from a message follower:
- Jesus Christ is the Word for our day. God always uses man to bring His Word. That's a scriptural pattern.
Is this correct? Is that what the message of William Branham is? - the word for our day?
What William Branham taught
William Branham believed that he had the "word for the hour" and that people could not be saved outside of his message:
- The anointed Word of God being vindicated before any man that’s born to be a son of God, with the predestinated germ into him for this hour, he’ll see God’s Message as sure as there’s a God in Heaven. Martin Luther saw It for his. Wesley saw It for his. The pentecostal saw It for his. Now what about you? Uh-huh. They went into a denomination. Here is the Word condemning it; telling you what we’re to have today, and just exactly Malachi 4 and all these other promises for the hour. What do you see? What are you looking at? Amen. Here we are. The real, genuine eagles hear. “My sheep know My Voice. A stranger they’ll not follow.”[1]
- No matter how much education, and how kind, how much you speak with tongues, how much kind, gentle, and everything you are; unless you accept that Word of the hour, when It’s manifested before you, you’re in the same predicament. That might sound crude, I don’t mean it that way, but it’s Truth. Just, just believe It, see. [2]
William Branham did not believe that all believers in Christ would go in the rapture. Only those that followed him go go in the rapture:
- Will all borned again believers go in the rapture? No, just the remnant, just the remnant, not all born again believers. The Bible said, “And the rest of the dead lived not for a thousand years,” and then they was raised and separated, the sheep from the goats. Not all borned again will go in the…according to Scripture.[3]
What the Bible teaches
William Branham's understanding of the "word for our day" was that a person must believe that William Branham was a prophet and if you don't believe that, then you don't have the Holy Spirit.
However, that is complete and utter non-Biblical nonsense.
The message is simply a type of Christian conservativism which has been repeated throughout the history of Christianity. Its adherents say they are founded on scripture but their faith is really based on the "inspired" teachings of an "inspired" teacher.
A lot of people like this because it's simple. They don't have to think. They just have to believe what the "inspired" teacher says.
But that is not the Bible.
2 Peter 3:15 - Look on our Lord’s patience as the opportunity he is giving you to be saved, just as our dear brother Paul wrote to you, using the wisdom that God gave him. This is what he says in all his letters when he writes on the subject. There are some difficult things in his letters which ignorant and unstable people explain falsely, as they do with other passages of the Scriptures. So they bring on their own destruction.
Peter says that some of Paul's teachings are hard to understand.
The writer of Hebrews states in chapter 5 that " it is hard to explain to you, because you are so slow to understand. There has been enough time for you to be teachers—yet you still need someone to teach you the first lessons of God’s message. Instead of eating solid food, you still have to drink milk. Anyone who has to drink milk is still a child, without any experience in the matter of right and wrong. Solid food, on the other hand, is for adults, who through practice are able to distinguish between good and evil.
We need to be adults. We need to think and consider and ponder Godès word. We need to examine what WMB taught very carefully and compare it to scripture.
We have done that which is why we no longer follow the message of WMB.