Question 23 (ABM) - Can we ignore the plain reading of Deuteronomy 18:20-22?

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The following are a series of questions and answers between one of our editors (referred to as BTS) and an anonymous Branham minister (referred to as ABM). This series of Q&A relates to William Branham's prophetic ministry. The full text of this question and its answer is below.

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Complete list of questions

Q&A relating to William Branham's Credibility

Q&A relating to William Branham's Doctrine

Q&A on the current status of the "message"

Question 1 - The Municipal Bridge vision

Question 2 - The Billy Graham Prophecy

Question 3 - The Brown Bear Vision

Question 4 - The Roosevelt prophecy

Question 5 - The coming of the Lord

Question 16 - The Vision of the Plum and Apple Trees

Question 17 - The Mystery of the Empty Cornerstone

Question 19 - The Marilyn Monroe vision/prophecy

Question 20 - The Vision of the Meetings in South Africa

Question 22 - Are there any true prophecies that were clearly fulfilled?

Question 23 - Can we ignore the plain reading of Deuteronomy 18:20-22?

Question 23 -Can we ignore the plain reading of Deuteronomy 18:20-22?

Dear ABM,

There are some issues in your most recent response that I will follow up with at a later date. I am aware of the street preachers in Ontario as I know one of them personally. In my view they are mentally unbalanced.

I respect you not wanting to compromise your anonymity and am not asking you to do so.

This is a follow-on to question 21 & 22 but deals with the scriptural problem of the failure of William Branham's prophecies.

God speaks plainly about the status of a prophet in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 18:19-22:

I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed. (NIV)

Speaking in the name of the Lord when God did not really speak was a capital offense.

William Branham agreed with this when he stated:

...here was the test of a prophet: if a prophet prophesied, and that what he said come to pass, then hear him. But if it don't come to pass, then God hasn't spoke. That's all. So don't--don't fear him. That's right. "If there be one among you who's spiritual or a prophet, I, the Lord God, will make myself known unto him in visions, speak to him in dreams. And if it comes to pass, then I--that's Me speaking." Sure, God ain't going to lie. You know He can't lie there's nothing in Him to lie. (62-0407 - The Signs Of His Coming)

According to the Old Testament, a prophet was to be heard and obeyed. To ignore the word of a prophet would lead to divine judgment - God would hold the disobedient to account.

Given the serious nature of failure to obey the prophetic word, it is critical to distinguish between true and false prophecy. In addition, the criminal nature of false prophecy is stressed by the imposition of capital punishment for the offender.

But in order to know whether to obey the word of a prophet, and in order to condemn a false prophet, criteria was laid out to differentiate between true and false prophets. In some cases the distinction was easy - when a prophet spoke in the name of other gods, he was not only a false prophet, but he was also guilty of breaking the first commandment, and therefore was deserving of the death penalty. Since he is a fraud, you need not be afraid to punish him or to ignore him completely.

The more difficult case would be that in which a prophet actually spoke his own words, but claimed to be speaking the words of God, and therefore—among other crimes—was guilty of gross presumption. Since the people would rely on the instructions of prophets for vital matters, they needed criteria for identifying prophets that were not truly from God.

The criteria for distinguishing the true words of God are expressed very succinctly in two clauses:

(a) The word is not true — the word supposedly spoken by God through the prophet was not in accord with the word of God already revealed and it was therefore automatically suspect, or

(b) It did not come to pass — this is where the prophetic words were predictive in nature. Discerning the truth of the words would lie in their fulfillment or lack thereof.

The criteria represent the means by which a prophet gained his reputation as a true prophet and spokesman of the Lord. The failure of a prediction to materialize would show the prophet to be false. However, people could hardly suspend judgment about the authenticity of every prophecy until its outcome was clear. Those who received instructions from a prophet had to decide immediately whether or not to follow them. So in practice, the credibility of a prophet could only be tested in the long run, after he or she had established a record of accurate or inaccurate predictions.

The criteria for establishing whether a prophetic word (prediction) is true or false are stated negatively, as it cannot be reversed to imply that if a prophet’s word came true, he was necessarily a true prophet for that reason alone (Deut 13:1–5). The test for matters which the prophet said would come to pass in his lifetime is fulfillment during the lifetime of that prophet.

Over the course of a prophet’s ministry, in matters important and less significant, the character of a prophet as a true spokesman of God would begin to emerge clearly. And equally, false prophets would be discredited and then dealt with under the law.

This is what happened in the ministry of the prophet Samuel, In 1 Samuel 3:19-20, the Bible says:

As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him, and everything Samuel said proved to be reliable. And all Israel, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord.

Micaiah declared that his claim to speak for the Lord would be disproved if his prediction of Ahab’s death in battle did not come true. We also see this in the case of Moses. Even when he disobeyed God, God still confirmed the word of Moses because Moses was a prophet:

He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” (Nu 20:10–12)

Even in disobedience, God backed up the words of Moses.

But he failed to do that for William Branham.

Petty silliness?

You have referred to our concern with several of William Branham's failed prophecies as "petty silliness."

We must disagree. When William Branham claims to be a prophet, states that God spoke to him, and then the prophecy fails, this is a serious problem. It is not silly and it is not petty!

William Branham said that the Brown Bear vision was "Thus Saith The Lord."

Your best defense of this failed prophecy was "this will be fulfilled when Bro. Branham is resurrected."

With respect, how would Deut 18:19-22 ever have had application if a prophet could state that his vision had not failed but would be fulfilled by him after the resurrection. I am of the view that such explanations (and we have heard them previously) are completely opposed to scripture. There is ZERO basis in scripture for this. "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. (Heb 9:27)

The basic assumption, the presupposition of those in the message, the thing that you believe is true without having any proof, is that William Branham is a prophet. But we actually stopped and said to ourselves - "Can we prove William Branham to be a prophet, based on the facts alone, without any presuppositions?"

We tried to prove the message to be correct but ran into so many problems that we were forced to conclude, on the basis of the facts alone, that William Branham was not a prophet (opposite to what he claimed). We did not want to arrive at that conclusion. Leaving the message cost us the majority of our friends. It was not something that we did lightly.

When we started our examination of the message, there were no problems on our "problem shelf." But three years into our research, we had encountered so many major problems that there were problems falling off the shelf. The shelf was full and we left the message.

Given the choice between friends and the truth, I chose to follow the truth, even though I knew it would cost me virtually all of my friends.

Bad or misinterpretation?

William Branham stood under the municipal bridge in Jeffersonville and pointed out to Pearry Green the section of the bridge that fell into the river. Pearry Green related this story to me himself and when I questioned him as to the historical probllems with William Branham's statement, he exclaimed, "The prophet of God would not have lied to me."

But what he related to Pearry Green was a lie.

How can I trust William Branham's biblical interpretation when he can't even interpret a vision that he said God supernaturally gave him. How can I trust a man to help me find the truth when he lied to a man about a vision that God supposedly showed him and was part of his vindication as a prophet?

I can't!

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias has been defined as “the tendency to selectively search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions or hypotheses.” This bias may be manifested in a number of ways.

First, people will search for and gather information selectively. Psychological experiments have found that people tend to test their hypotheses in a one-sided way, by searching for evidence that is consistent with their current line of thinking. Rather than working through all the available evidence, people tend to focus on information that supports their preexisting hypothesis or belief. The other side of this tendency is that people give less attention to or discredit information that does not support their pre-existing views.

Confirmation bias may also be displayed in people’s tendency to interpret evidence in a way that supports their preexisting position. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to the handling of ambiguous information; psychological studies have shown that people are more likely to interpret ambiguous evidence as confirming their preexisting beliefs than disconfirming of them. It can also be seen in the way that people tend to take hypothesis-confirming data at face value, while subjecting disconfirming data to considerable scrutiny.

An interesting example of confirmation bias is the thinking of conspiracy theorists; for example, those who believe that the United States Government was behind the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. These people characteristically focus on the “evidence” that supports their position, and they interpret it in such a way that it fits the conspiracy they have built in their minds. On the other hand, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence effectively concluded that the belief of the CIA and other members of the Western intelligence community that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to the second Gulf War was heavily influenced by confirmation bias.

Researchers have shown that the effect of confirmation bias is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. In both instances, people are more likely to be resistant to change. Therefore, we would expect this bias to be a significant factor when it comes to biblical interpretation or your belief that William Branham was a vindicated prophet, which is often dealing with issues that are emotionally significant and involves deeply-held beliefs.

Confirmation bias influences message believers in a number of ways. When interpreting Deuteronomy 18:19-22, message believers will seek (consciously or unconsciously) to confirm an understanding of the meaning of the passage that will not be negative to William Branham. In other words, they do not approach the text from a neutral standpoint, looking to weigh up all the different possibilities before deciding on the “correct” understanding. Instead, they come at the text from a “slant,” focusing on the textual evidence that supports their preexisting understanding that it could not possibly disqualify William Branham.

Confirmation bias is also evident in our discussion. I will readily admit that I had it when I was "in the message." Message followers have a tendency to search for passages that confirm their preexisting theology (i.e. supporting the message). (The preceding discussion is based on Aaron Chalmers, “The Influence of Cognitive Biases on Biblical Interpretation,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 26, no. 4 (2016): 470–472.)

I do not believe anyone in the message sufficiently objective to understand this. I personally had to deal with this. I did not want to believe that William Branham failed the test of Deut 18:19-22. It is evident in all my discussions with message followers that cognitive bias is present in their view of the scripture as it relates to the message.

This is simply an observation, although I do not believe that you are likely to recognize this.

The tapes have been altered

You stated that "the subsequent spoken word books created from the tapes, did not line up with their (Junior Jackson and Orman Neville's) memory of Branham's sermons or with original recordings of the services which they themselves possessed." The problem is that this cannot be verified and, honestly, we must state that we do not believe this to be true,

The reason we can state this is twofold:

1. David Mamalis, who threatened Spoken Word Publications (now Voice of God) with legal action over the tapes being in the public domain, published his own set of message books based on the tapes he had. These do not significantly disagree with those that have been published by Jeffersonville.
2. Neither Junior Jackson or Armand Neville published their set of tapes. It would be quite easy to publish their "version" of the tapes on the internet as MP3 files but this has never been done. As a result, I cannot take this criticism seriously.

As a result, I must conclude that Deuteronomy 18:19-22 requiries William Branham to be viewed as a false prophet.

Disobedience to God

With respect to the vision of the African visions, you stated that:

God can show someone a possible future for them, which is contingent on them obeying him. One example is Moses. In Exodus 3:14-17 God plainly says that he was going to take Moses into the promised land. But he failed to obey God, and God did not fulfill to Moses what he offered. (Was God lying to Moses when said he would take him to the promised land? God did not even mention a contingency when he spoke the promise to Moses.)

With respect, your reading of the passage is entirely incorrect:

God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.” ’

God was not speaking to Moses, he was speaking to the people of Israel. And this scripture was fulfilled when Joshua took the nation of Israel into the promised land.

In Moses day, William Branham would have been sentenced to death when he went to the Yukon and the vision failed. He tried to excuse himself that it related to disobedience. But if a prophet could be excused from Deut 18:19-22 by disobedience, how would this scripture ever have been applied?

This is not petty silliness. This is a man who spoke presumptuously in the name of the Lord.

The message interpretation of Deuteronomy 18:19-22 nullifies the word of God, making it of no effect.

Shalom,

BTS

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