What were the Seven Visions?

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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

1. Mussolini
2. Hitler
3. Three ISMs
4. Scientific progress
5. Women and morals
6. Powerful Woman in America
7. America destroyed

The Prediction
The sequence of the visions
Two views of the Seven Visions
Summary of the discussion

What were the Seven Visions

It may seem peculiar that this section is headed, ëWhat were the visions?í rather than ëThe visions wereí but determining exactly what they were, turns out not to be problematical. There are five avenues that can be explored:

1. The original written record made immediately after the receipt of the visions.
2. Affidavits from those who attended the 1933 meeting in which the visions were first detailed.
3. Copies of those records, made subsequently, for newspaper articles and wider dissemination.
4. The recorded sermons in which he spoke of the visions.
5. William Branhamís book entitled ëAn Exposition of the Seven Church Agesí (the Church Age Book).

The original written record

There are no existing, original records of the seven visions of 1933. This is astounding and akin to the situation with the Book of Mormon where the original golden tablets from which it was translated were claimed to have been returned to the angel Moroni.

The world is asked to believe that the Book of Mormon is based on a divine utterance and a supernatural record, which is not available. As regards these visions the world is asked to believe that there was a divine utterance but the records are also, not available.

But William Branham claimed that a written record was made!

• I've got it wrote, old yellow paper still waiting in a Bible. I saw the end time coming.
• Yeah, I know that, see, just exactly what's wrote on my book of prophecy in 1933, that would take place
• I've got it wrote out here in the Bible. Just like laying yonder in the cornerstone, that what would take place in the last days; and everyone knows what that was; it's been just exactly the Word. It will be just this way

If the visions were real then the fact that all of these documents, yellow pages, prophecy book and Bible, do not exist today or, at least, have not been published, is unbelievable.

It is not as though this was a small matter - seven visions, seven prophecies which would prefigure the coming of the Lord in the Rapture and the end of the church ages. One would have thought that recording, copying and publicizing these climactic claims would have been the order of the day. One would assume that the content of the visions would be documented and available for review in a wide variety of formats ñ but no! There are assertions of, but no evidence of, any attempt to secure the content of these visions.

Following William Branhamís death, none of these records were produced by the family or executors.

This means that the primary record of the content of the visions is missing and that secondary records need to be found to attempt a reconstruction.

Affidavits from the 1933 meeting

William Branham claimed on many occasions that there were people in the congregations who were present in the meeting that he held in 1933 on Meigs Ave in which he explained the visions and the 1977 prediction e.g. in reference to that meeting:

And here comes around and shows. And then I predicted. I never said the Lord told me that, but, standing that morning in the church, I said, ìThe way progressÖî I got back to one end of their wall, and run to the other end of the wall. I said, ìThe way progress is going on, Iíll predict that the timeÖI donít know why Iím saying it. But I predict that thatíll all happen between right now, 1933, and 1977.î

He is talking about the 1933 meeting. But there are no testimonials from that meeting of what he said about the visions. There is no list of the visions or details of their content. Again, we are asked to accept that there were visions and that they were related to a congregation, but with no corroborating evidence.

Copies of the original record

William Branham also said that he had made copies of the vision statements for later publishing:

• Itís already in print and went out around the world
• I was on my way to Sunday school, and when I was getting my Bible, a vision came before me; and I was stopped in the floor. And here was what it said. It's on yellow paper. Will be printed in the "Herald of Faith" right away, because most all of it is fulfilled

Here he claims that a general distribution of the visions was made via the ëHerald of Faithí newspaper, that some written statement was prepared and disseminated ëaround the worldí and that some record was placed in the cornerstone of Branham Tabernacle. No copy of the ëThe Herald of Faithí has been found that contains an article with a list of the visions. He claimed they were in print and had been distributed ëaround the worldí and yet no one has found even a single tract or booklet that contains a description of the visions.

Are we to believe that copies were made for a newspaper and for tracts but that somehow, they didnít make it into print? Are we to believe that tracts were sent around the world but that none exist today?

Not only does this close off any chance of obtaining corroborating evidence of the visions from copies made for publishing, it introduces a severe credibility problem as regards the visions themselves and why he said that these copies existed. We need to pause here ñ there are no written records, no verbal affidavits, no acknowledgment of their enunciation to a congregation in 1933, but he claimed that all of these existed. How could he claim all of this without providing the corroborating evidence?

William Branhamís sermons

A main source of a description of the visions are in the recorded sermons. When making reference to the visions in a sermon it would be expected that his description would always be consistent ñ after all, the visions were only received once, there were no additions and no updates. And yet in the sermons, one is presented with partial descriptions, with descriptions that contain conflicting information and with changing detail.

Here is one example of his descriptions of the ëHitlerí or ëWorld War IIí vision:

And in 1933 whenÖthe vision of the Lord came to me up here and predicted that, Germany would rise up and have put that Maginot Line there. Many of you remember. And how they'd be all fortified in there, and the Americans would take a great beating right there at that lineÖNow, you remember; that's THUS SAITH THE LORD."

I'd like to read you a prophecy that was given... This one first. I speak this in the Name of the Lord. The president which now is, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Now remember, this is twenty-eight years ago.) will cause the whole world to go to war. (Now, look what happened now.) In...President Franklin D. Roosevelt took America to England's tea party. That's right. Germany never picked on us; we picked on them, throwed the whole world into a war, to cause a world war."

How many remembers that vision, here in the church? Sure. Said that, how Öeleven years beforehand, it said that "We'd go to war with Germany, and Germany would be fortified behind concrete," the Maginot Line. It happened just that way.

I seen it, thirty--1931. Seven things happened. I got it right on paper here with me, wrote it in 1931. How that I said, "This President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, he will cause all the world, help do it, send the world to war." Hadn't come to war yet, during times of depression. I said, "Another thing..." And my mother, a square-back Democrat, if she didn't look at me hard when I said that. I said, "I don't care if there's a Republican or if he was a Socialist or whatever he is, this is THUS SAITH THE LORD."

1933, the Holy Spirit came one morning and told me seven things that would take place before this nation was destroyed. One of them is that. It's on old paper there at the church, many has looked at it. How that we would go to war with Hitler and they'd... How Germany would fortify and build a Maginot line, or the Siegfried line, I believe it was, eleven years before it was ever thought of. ÖMany, many years before it happened perfectly on the dot. And it's never failed, and it won't fail, because it's THUS SAITH THE LORD.

How that the Americas would go to war with Germany, they'd take an awful beating at a place called, a great line where there would be concrete fortified in there, I believe it's called the Siegfried line. And there's one called Maginot, I believe that was the French. Was that right? And the Siegfried line was the German line. And the Lord let me see that, eleven years before it was built. And they never would admit getting a beating on it, the Americans wouldn't, till they almost sunk the complete army. When they went in there, the Germans had their guns just trained right out on that fleet, and let it get right in there, and almost sunk it. And I seen that, eleven years before the line was ever--ever a foundation was ever poured for it, or anything, the Siegfried line.

What could be made of this? During the war where did the Americans take a beating, was it at the Maginot or Siegfried fortification? Who caused the world to go to war, Hitler or Roosevelt? Were the Siegfried Line guns ever trained on the American fleet?

This sort of scatter-gun approach to the facts of the visions gives no confidence that you could ever know, from the sermons, what the 1933 prophecies were. Relying on what was said in sermons could only lead to confusion.

This point alone would make it very difficult to determine what a vision actually was because you would have to search all sermons to make sure that you had found every reference. Then you would need to collate all of the information before you could sum it up. You would need to repeat that process for each vision. And then you can be sure that if 10 people did this that there would be five different versions of what had been said!

It would have just been much easier to elucidate, if the vision had always been quoted straight from the original record!

This one example can be multiplied for other visions. The sermons do not provide a reliable list or a reliable description of the visions because they are inconsistent and contradictory. If you assume that one account is correct then you are always in the position of having to explain another account and so on.

The arguments presented in the ëCritiqueí section will also demonstrate the impossibility of confidently constructing a list of the visions and their content from the sermons.

ëAn Exposition of the Seven Church Agesí ñ William Branhamís book

This is the last possible source of a description of the visions. Fortunately, it suffers from none of the drawbacks and uncertainties of the other four sources.

The book was written by William Branham with assistance from a friend and co-worker, Lee Vayle, to summarise fifteen messages he preached in December 1960 which addressed the Seven Church Ages and other topics in the book of Revelation. These sermons have been published as a series entitled ëThe Revelation of Jesus Christí.

The list in this book (in the chapter ëThe Laodicean Church Ageí) should be an accurate record of the 1933 visions because the original written records of those visions would have been available to ensure that the list was correct. Further, they are unambiguously and succinctly stated and ordered and there are seven (and only seven) unique visions. It would be obvious, therefore, from this work, what the visions were, how many there were and their order and timing.

A book is quite different from a conversation or a sermon as regards the weight of its propositions and arguments. It has been authored over time and there is ample opportunity to make sure that basic information is correct. If one assumes that the original records of the visions were available in the 1960s (and why would they not be!) then it would have been a simple task to ensure that they were correctly transcribed into the text of the book.

William Branham was the author of this book. It contains his name alone as the author. He noted in the sermon ëI have heard but now I seeí (27th Nov 1965) that Gordon Lindsay was ëdoing a great job, printing, printing my book now - The Seven Church Agesí.

William Branham is therefore responsible for its content and for the accuracy of its list of the Seven Visions. It is interesting to note that the web sites that are the main supporters of the William Branham ministry such as The Voice of God Recordings at branham.org all quote the Church Age Book version of the visions as if they constituted the original list. In fact, their choice of the book as the source of the vision descriptions demonstrates the difficulty of proposing another list made up from the sermons. Any such list would have immediately been called into question.

The visions documented in the Church Age Book ought therefore to be definitive. This list was authored by William Branham and if it is not correct then there is little basis for deciding what the visions actually were. In fact, considering the time that elapsed from the original sermons in December 1960 to when the book was published, after 1966, there could be no excuse for a failure to ensure that the visions were documented as originally recorded. Therefore, there is no room, today, to say that in some way these particular vision statements are inaccurate or incomplete.

This also means that any new or any changed detail suggested in sermons post 1933 would have to be viewed as additional to the originals, with the obvious question ñ how could there be additions to the visions unless there were additional visions!

Note also, that if you prefer another list ñ say the one in the ëLaodicean Church Ageí sermon itself or that in ëThe Seventieth Week of Danielí then further lists of variations to those lists could be highlighted and would need to be explained in the same way that departures from the Church Age Book list need to be explained.

This is the point; if there was an original list then it was unique and definitive and not able to be changed. Whatever list you might derive from the sermons as representing the original, you have to settle on something and then you have to accept the variations in other sermons and attempt an explanation. You cannot avoid the inconsistencies that arise whichever list you choose.

But the most likely list, the most reasonable source of a definitive list is the Church Age Book. If there were original written records then it would have been mandatory that they were faithfully copied into the text of the book. To have done otherwise would have been a gross abdication of responsibility. To have published a book with such important information and not to have ensured that it was the correct information would have been a dereliction of duty. With that said, here is the list of visions as stated in the Church Age Book:

Name	From the Seven Church Ages
Prediction	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.
1 Mussolini	The first vision was that Mussolini would invade Ethiopia and that nation would ìfall at his steps.î But the vision also said that Mussolini would come to a horrible end with his own people turning on him.
2 Hitler	An Austrian by the name of Adolph Hitler would rise up as dictator over Germany, and that he would draw the world into war. It showed the Siegfried line and how our troops would have a terrible time to overcome it. Then it showed that Hitler would come to a mysterious end.
3 Three ISMs	The third vision was in the realm of world politics for it showed me that there would be three great ISMS, Facism, Nazism, Communism, but that the first two would be swallowed up into the third. The voice admonished, "WATCH RUSSIA, WATCH RUSSIA. Keep your eye on the King of the North."
4 Scientific Progress	The fourth vision showed the great advances in science that would come after the second world war. It was headed up in the vision of a plastic bubble-topped car that was running down beautiful highways under remote control so that people appeared seated in this car without a steering wheel and they were playing some sort of a game to amuse themselves.
5 Women and morals	The fifth vision had to do with the moral problem of our age, centering mostly around women. God showed me that women began to be out of their place with the granting of the vote. Then they cut off their hair, which signified that they were no longer under the authority of a man but insisted on either equal rights, or in most cases, more than equal rights. She adopted men's clothing and went into a state of undress, until the last picture I saw was a woman naked except for a little fig leaf type apron. With this vision I saw the terrible perversion and moral plight of the whole world.
6 Powerful woman in America	Then in the sixth vision there arose up in America a most beautiful, but cruel woman. She held the people in her complete power. I believed that this was the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, though I knew it could possibly be a vision of some woman rising in great power in America due to a popular vote by women.
7 America destroyed	The last and seventh vision was wherein I heard a most terrible explosion. As I turned to look I saw nothing but debris, craters, and smoke all over the land of America.

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