How many Visions?
This is an essay analyzing William Branham's Seven Visions of 1933. It was written by a former message follower.
Click on the links below to go to a specific section within the essay. You are currently on the topic below that is in bold:
An Introduction to the Analysis of the Seven Visions of 1933
What were the Seven Visions?
How many Visions?
Why were the Visions given?
Why did the Visions fail to change men’s religious ideas?
A Comparison of the 1960 Sermon and the Church Age Book
A Critique of each Vision
- Mussolini
- Hitler
- Three ISMs
- Scientific progress
- Women and morals
- Powerful Woman in America
- America destroyed
The Prediction
The sequence of the visions
Two views of the Seven Visions
Summary of the discussion
How many Visions?
The first problem that is encountered is that when the 100+ sermon references are examined, it turns out that there are more than seven visions that are associated directly with the visions of 1933. Here is a list of the vision topics which were claimed by William Branham himself, in various sermons, to have been received in 1933 which related to the end time (and which, therefore, would constitute the ‘1933 visions’):
- Franklin D Roosevelt
- Mussolini
- Hitler
- Three ISMs
- Egg-shaped cars
- Scientific progress after World War II
- Women and morals
- Women electing the wrong man as President
- Powerful woman arises in America
- America destroyed
Items 1, 5 and 8 are not included in William Branham’s own list in the Church Age Book. Franklin D Roosevelt is not mentioned, neither egg-shaped cars and though the vision ‘Women and Morals’ does include a comment about women and the vote it says nothing about them electing ‘the wrong man’ (John F Kennedy).
The fact that we immediately have additional visions and additional detail would seem to be impossible if these visions were truly sent from God. An attempted explanation is that each vision was actually the sum of everything he described over the period from 1933 up to 1966.
For example, the vision statement under the heading ‘Scientific progress’ was that driverless cars would be invented and an additional statement was that cars would be shaped like eggs – it is claimed that the original vision actually included the two predictions. But then it has to be conceded that the Church Age Book rendering of the vision is incomplete and that on many occasions he was guilty of quoting only a part of the vision (when he mentioned one but not the other)
But William Branham’s statement in the Church Age Book book concerning the visions that he lists is unequivocal:
- The Laodicean Age began around the turn of the Twentieth Century, perhaps 1906. How long will it last? As a servant of God who has had multitudes of visions, of which NONE has ever failed, let me predict (I did not say prophesy, but predict) that this age will end around 1977. If you will pardon a personal note here, I base this prediction on seven major continuous visions that came to me one Sunday morning in June, 1933. The Lord Jesus spoke to me and said that the coming of the Lord was drawing nigh, but that before He came, seven major events would transpire. I wrote them all down and that morning I gave forth the revelation of the Lord.
- The first vision was that Mussolini would invade Ethiopia and that nation would “fall at his steps.” That vision surely did cause some repercussions, and some were very angry when I said it and would not believe it. But it happened that way. He just walked in there with his modern arms and took over. The natives didn’t have a chance. But the vision also said that Mussolini would come to a horrible end with his own people turning on him. That came to pass just exactly as it was said. The next vision foretold that an Austrian by the name of Adolph Hitler would rise up as dictator over Germany
- etc
- Church Age Book 1966
Notice that he says ‘I wrote them all down and that morning . . . the first vision . . . the next vision . . . etc. The readers will assume (as they have every right to) that the list he then gives of the visions is what he wrote down ‘that morning’ in 1933. And these statements include driverless cars but say nothing about egg shapes. It is not possible to maintain that the original vision did include egg-shapes otherwise his statement is simply false.
In the section which critiques the visions, the approach is taken that the Church Age Book version of the visions represent the baseline and comments over time are compared with these. Looked at in this way all of the statements about Franklin Roosevelt, women electing the wrong man and egg-shaped cars have to be seen being additive to the original visions. But they also have to exist within the framework of the Seven Visions because William Branham claimed that all of these additions were shown to him in the 1933 visions.
The argument that he considered these three ‘extra’ visions to be a part of the original seven is demonstrated in the statements that he made about them in the sermon ‘The Laodicean Church Age’. Here is one example:
- that five of those things has (out of the seven) - has already taken place about... How many remembers that vision here in the church? Sure. Said that how that even Kennedy would be elected in this last election. How that women would be permitted to vote. How that Roosevelt would take the world to war.
Of course, again, taking this approach raises the question of the completeness of the Church Age Book list. It cannot be complete if this additional content is accepted as part of the original. But if they are not parts of the original then where did they come from?
And remember, if you prefer another list then exactly the same criticisms will apply. This is a major problem for anyone trying to accept that these visions were sent from God.