Why did the Visions fail to change men’s religious ideas?
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
Why did the Visions fail to change men’s religious ideas?
There are four main reasons why the visions and their ‘fulfilment’ failed to achieve their goal:
- The visions were not made public in 1933.
- Some of them were not made public until after they were supposed to have been fulfilled.
- It was never clear (at least until after 1966) precisely what the seven visions were.
4:#The prophecies that actually were about future events have never been fulfilled.
In order for the visions to be taken seriously, it was imperative that they be accurately recorded and immediately published.
There is no independent evidence that the visions were known and understood in 1933. This meant that when Adolf Hitler's armies began their Polish blitzkrieg in 1939 people weren't saying 'oh, but this was all predicted in 1933. What is going on?'
There is no independent evidence that their content was written down. But It was obviously William Branham’s responsibility to advertise the visions since they were not given just to be forgotten. The possibility, then, needs to be considered that there was a written list but that it was not published because its content did not agree with later events.
It is difficult, probably impossible, to explain the failure to publish in 1933. It is difficult to explain why he claimed that there had been a wide distribution of the content of the visions when there is no evidence that the Christian world, let alone the secular populace knew anything of them. It is difficult to explain why this world-shaking knowledge was pigeon-holed from 1933 until it was first mentioned, in part, in a sermon in 1953.
It is therefore quite understandable that these momentous revelations had no effect on men’s views – they were not published, they were not known and there were no expectations. It seems that an opportunity to demonstrate the power of God was lost, that the purpose of giving the visions in the first place was frustrated and that William Branham was 'disobedient to the heavenly vision'.
That is, of course, if there were visions in the first place. If there were not then there are other questions to answer!
Footnotes