William Branham and False Doctrine
Did William Branham teach false doctrine?
The average Christian who is not grounded in a balanced understanding of God’s Word, God’s ways of doing things or the type of life that God wants man to live, can be susceptible to false teaching. Why is this? Because the false and counterfeit tend to be so much like the real that only those with a keen knowledge of scripture and spiritual discernment can tell the difference.
Characteristics of False Doctrine
Consider the ingredients in rat poison. When you read the label on a package of rat poison, it reveals that less than 1% is poison, and the more than 99% is tasty, nutritious food for the rat. However that 1% is enough poison to kill the rat if he eats it for a short period of time. Most of the rat killing food must be real food and appealing to the rat in order to get him to accept and eat the part that is poison.
False doctrine must have enough biblical truth to sound biblical in order to entice a Christian to accept the false part. It can be 99% accurate Biblical truth, but the one percent false can be enough to kill the spiritual life of the person who believes it and begins to practice it.
False doctrine is:
- Plausible. If false doctrines didn't hold together at all, they would never be accepted.
- Based on scripture. No one would follow a false doctrine, if it didn't have some basis in the Bible. The problem is that false doctrine is only partly correct, it is not wholly correct.
- Divisive, creating disunity. [1]
- Self-centred and self-serving. False teachers boast much about love to God, but they wholly fail under the test of love to men.[2]
- usually reductionist in nature. The greatest heresies do not come about by straightforward denial. They happen when an element which may even be important, but isn’t central, looms so large that people can’t help talking about it, fixating on it, debating different views of it as though this were the only thing that mattered. They mistake part of the truth for the whole truth.[3]
- Reductionism leads to a preoccupation with one thing — the monomaniac or fanatic is the result. The fanatic is a person with little empathy, humility, or humanity. Consider the suicide bombers of our day as the exemplary fanatics. Such people are “radicalized” by over-focusing on a reductionist Jihadist ideology by which all else is subsequently measured. They become radical sectarians, losing all meaningful relationship and perspective. [4]
- May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, superficial relationships, so that you will live deep within your heart. (Author Unknown)[5]
William Branham’s message as an example
Message preachers may seem to teach the same as an evangelical would on being born again, baptized in water, living a sanctified life, second coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead. They believe they are a successor to the Pentecostal Movement in early 1900s, so they include the baptism of the Holy Spirit in their teaching.
But they add false teaching; that believing that William Branham is the messenger to the last church age is essential for being in the “Bride of Christ” and that accepting the “message of the hour” is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. After believing and following this doctrine for a while, believers of William Branham’s message start trusting in their belief in William Branham as their guarantee of heaven instead of whatever amount of Biblical truth is included with the false teaching. Jesus no longer becomes the central truth and salvation but the belief that “God sent a prophet”.
False teachings can also be compared to counterfeit money. It has to look and feel like the real government printed money in order for people to accept it as real money. The counterfeit is made up of the same things as the real—a certain type of paper, colors and designs, etc. It looks and feels so much like the real thing that it takes those trained to recognize the counterfeit to realize that it is not genuine. There can be no counterfeit unless there is the real in existence. For example, no one would accept a thirteen dollar bill because there is no government produced thirteen dollar bills. There cannot be false Christ’s unless there is a real Christ, false prophets unless there are real prophets alive and active in the world.
How many errors does it take on a counterfeit bill to make a bill fake? How many non-biblical “message” doctrines have to be added to the Bible to make it a cult?
Jesus told His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees … then the apostles understood that Jesus was talking about their doctrine.” Mt. 16:6–12. Jesus used the illustration of leaven (yeast) to show how one false doctrine can affect the whole of the rest of the doctrines of a person, local church or denomination. It only takes a minute amount of yeast to permeate an entire loaf of bread.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatian and Corinthian Christians about a doctrine that some were introducing into their midst that would put them back under the law and cause them to “fall from the grace of God” thereby affecting their entire Christianity – “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” Gal. 5:9.
Some say it is just one person sinning in the church or it’s just one teaching that is questionable. One person sinning or one doctrine that is contrary to God’s truth, nature, and character can have a devastating effect on any group of people.
Listen to Paul’s admonition to the Corinthian Church from the Message Bible:
- ’’Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that. Yeast, too, is a ‘small thing’ but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this’ yeast’.” 1 Cor. 5:6.
A sin or a false doctrine is no small thing to the Lord. The NLT translates this scripture:
- ’’Don’t you realize that if even one person is allowed to go on sinning, soon all will be affected.”
We can see from all of these scriptures that one sin or one false doctrine can affect the whole assembly just as Achan’s one sin affected the whole nation of Israel.
The spirit of error in a church is like the minute amount of yeast that invades the dough for the loaf of bread. It is like the cancer cell undetected and unchecked that brings death to the rest of the members of the body.[6]
Strange doctrine and false doctrine
There are false doctrines that can move a person or organization away from the mainstream of God’s true Church. There is also what the Bible calls various and strange doctrines, Heb. 13:9 “Do not be carried away with various and strange doctrines.”
The Old Testament talks about putting away strange gods and not to make offerings with strange fire. Some other translations use the word “Profane” and “unholy” for the word “strange.”
- ’’“But Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, placed strange fire in their censers, laid incense on the fire, and offered the incense before the Lord—contrary to what the Lord had commanded them! So fire blazed from the presence of the Lord and destroyed them.” Lev. 10:1, 2LB; Nu. 3:4; 26:61
No doubt Paul used the word “strange doctrine” based on the story of what happened to Aaron’s two eldest sons who offered “Strange Fire” in the incense offering. God had Moses consecrate Aaron’s four sons to the Priestly ministry to offer animal sacrifices and incense offerings. There were some sacrifices and incense offerings that only Aaron was to offer. Aaron’s four sons were to perform the sacrifices and offerings that the Levites were not allowed to do. Their sacrifices and offerings were to be done at a specific time and in a particular way. The two older brothers took fire from the common area and not from the special place consecrated for that purpose and offered an incense offering that Moses had not commanded them to offer. The “strange fire” offering was contrary to God’s will and way for when and how it was to be done. It was so offensive to God that He killed them right in the Sanctuary as they were making the offering.
Characteristics of cults
A “Cult” is a distortion of biblical Christianity and/or a rejection of the historic teachings of the historic Christian church. A cult, then, is a group of people polarized around someone’s interpretation of the Bible and is characterized by major deviations from orthodox Christianity relative to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, particularly the fact that God became man in Jesus Christ, that Jesus is Deity and the biblical view of the Godhead.
The majority of the “Christian” cults such as, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, and the Christian Universalist Association originated from a minister who was originally a part of a mainline Christian denomination. Doesn’t the message of William Branham share these same characteristics?
All of these cults claimed divine revelation for their beliefs and several claimed supernatural visitations of Jesus or heavenly angels. All the founders come across as wholly dedicated to God with an intense desire to get answers, to know which denomination has all the truth, and if not, what other truth there was to be revealed. Doesn’t the message of William Branham share these same characteristics?
Like all of these other cults, doesn’t the message become a counterfeit of the Holy Spirit bringing the Church to the restoration of all truth and ministries of Jesus Christ. (Acts 3:21; Eph. 4:11–15).
The majority of the strange and false teachings of the 21st century are an extension of the Christian cults that were formed during the Church Restoration time of the Holiness Movement. The warning to present day ministers is the fact that most of the ministers who founded these cults were one-time members or ministers of Holiness Movement churches.
How is the message different?
Footnotes
- ↑ R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1963), 752.
- ↑ Robert Tuck, I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude, Revelation, The Preacher’s Complete Homiletic Commentary (New York; London; Toronto: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1892), 315.
- ↑ Tom Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 13-28 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2008), 137–138.
- ↑ Hirsch, Alan; Nelson, Mark. Reframation: Seeing God, People, and Mission Through Reenchanted Frames (pp. 49-50). 100 Movements Publishing. Kindle Edition.
- ↑ Ken Gnanakan, Biblical Ethics: Ecological Responsibility (Bangalore, India: Theological Book Trust, 2004), 102.
- ↑ This section was based on Bill Hamon, How Can These Things Be?: A Preacher and a Miracle Worker but Denied Heaven!, (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image® Publishers, Inc., 2014), 169–170.