The Brown Bear Vision: Difference between revisions

William Branham shot a silver-tip grizzly bear while hunting in British Columbia in May of 1961.  In a sermon called “Presuming” in June 1962, William Branham tells this story and then says, ''“Now, I'm going back into the country, that you might know, when I come back next year. I'm going to get a brown bear that's almost twice that size. You see if it's right or not. …God's perfect and never fails.”''  A month earlier, in a sermon called “Possessing All Things”, William Branham said that the vision of the brown bear was '''''“THUS SAITH THE LORD.”'''''  

William Branham returned to British Columbia in late July 1962, preached six services on Vancouver Island, and then went hunting in northern British Columbia but did not fulfill the vision at that time.  He returned to British Columbia again in October of 1964 with Pearry Green, but did not fulfill the vision at that time either.  When William Branham passed away on December 25, 1965, the vision had never been fulfilled.

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|''And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?’ <br> — when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, <br>if the thing does not happen or come to pass, <br>that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; <br> '''the prophet has spoken it presumptuously'''; <br>you shall not be afraid of him. ''  ~ Deuteronomy 18:20-22

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April 1, 1962, in the sermon "Wisdom versus Faith":  

People who believe that William Branham is a true prophet explain away this vision in the following ways.   

#Some claim that he will rise from the dead to fulfill this vision.   

There are a few problems with these explanations:

William Branham died in 1965, and a large stone pyramid now sits on top of his grave in Indiana. He is not raising from the dead just to travel to British Columbia to shoot a bear.   

''“God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon”'' the people of Nineveh (Jonah 3:10) because they repented.  Applying this scripture to William Branham’s life might make sense in the context of the vision of the destruction of Los Angeles (although there was no mass-repentance in L.A. as there was in Nineveh).  However, this scripture does not work in the context of the hunting vision, as it would mean that the brown bear repented of its evil ways.   

:''So I, in these thirty--going on thirty-two years of ministry, I have tried to stay true to the Word. I don't know of one thing I've ever had to alter on, because I just read it out of the Bible, said just what the Bible said, and let it go like that. And so I haven't had to take back or rearrange, because I just said it the way that the Bible says it. And I find out, if God has spoken anything, then we must go with that Word in order to make It be fulfilled. We seen that, as I told you last night, of a vision just recently (See?), that it... I had to be there, and warning to be there, and telling me six months before to be on that spot, and stand there, and saying, "Go down there (three times) with them." And I just walked on with the other men. And the vision passed right through exactly, God's part; and I was left standing. So we want to remember; you've got to stay on the Word, just stay right with the Word. And where the Word leads, you go right with the Word, then It'll bring you out all right. I'm sure.<ref>COUNTDOWN_  JEFF.IN  V-11 N-3  SUNDAY_  62-0909M</ref>

So what will you do with this failed vision?  Will you succumb to [[Cognitive Dissonance|cognitive dissonance]] and trivialize an obvious wrong?

People are sometimes confused by the story about the vision of William Branham shooting a grizzly bear with that of him shooting a brown bear.  William Branham told the vision of shooting a grizzly bear several times.  The first time that he tells the story of this vision was on October 1, 1961, five months after he had shot the grizzly bear.   

:''About two months ago, or hardly that long, I was woke up one morning. I believe, I'm not sure... I told it to most of the church. There's many here has heard me tell this before it come to pass. And in the--a vision I saw, that I'd saw a great animal, looked like a deer. And it had great high horns. And it was... I had to go around a side shale, like this, to get to it. And it was a very famous animal. It was a great trophy animal. And there was a man that I saw that had on a green checkered shirt. And then on the road, after I'd got the animal, I'd heard a--a voice say that, "Those horns are forty-two inches high." That's about this high. And it was a mammoth animal. And on the road back, I saw a great huge silver-tip grizzly bear.  Now, that's the famous bear. There's four in the grizzly family. One is the silver-tip, which is the famous. Next is called, the native name, kadish, which is a black with a round ear; the second. Third is the regular grizzly, which is between black and brown, a huge bear. And the next is the Kodiak, which is only found on Kodiak Island and--and western Alaska; he's great, mammoth, biggest of all bears, but he's a grizzly. But the silver-tip is black, and the white is on--the silver is on the end of the tip of the hair. He's the famous one, very high-strung, ill-tempered bear. I shot the bear with a heart shot, killed him.''<ref>William Branham, October 1, 1961, ''It becometh us to fulfill all righteousness''</ref>

In May 1961, on a hunting trip in Northern British Columbia, William Branham shot a silver-tip grizzly bear which he stated he prophesied in advance, although this prophecy was not recorded on tape.   

:''You may be wondering among yourselves, “How can we tell the difference, whether it was GOD who spoke or not?” Here’s how: If what the prophet spoke in GOD’s name doesn’t happen, then obviously GOD wasn’t behind it; the prophet made it up. Forget about him.''<ref>Deut 18:21-22 (The Message)</ref>