Author: Charles Paisley

Several years ago, a website called SearchingForVindication.com published a copy of a newspaper article about William Branham’s June 1933 tent meetings. The newspaper article was the first I ever saw to give any details about the baptismal service that is so famously known to message believers. 

According to William Branham, on a Sunday during June 1933, he was baptizing at the river. According to his accounts, this was the first time he ever baptized anyone. Just after baptizing his seventeenth convert, a supernatural experience occurred. A mystical light descended from heaven over William Branham and a voice said “As John the Baptist was sent to forerun my first coming, so you have been sent with a message that will forerun my second coming.” William Branham explain that this happened in front a large crowed. In some stories he said there were as many as 10,000 witnesses. He also explained that the event was reported in newspapers around the United States and Canada, and he quote the newspaper article saying, “a mystic light” appeared over him while he was baptizing.

Modern Serpent Seed teaching developed within the British Israel movement. The movement began in the late 1700s and asserted the Anglo-Saxons were the descended from the lost tribes of Israel. At first the movement had very few adherents. But by the 1890s, the group had grown in popularity. Their beliefs crossed denominational boundaries and found varying degrees of acceptance by members of primarily Anglican, Methodist, Pentecostal, Adventist, and Baptist groups in the English speaking nations.  

Messages believers are nearly unified in their belief that William Branham’s sermons on the seven seals are the most important messages of his entire ministry. He and his followers believe the revelation of the seals were hidden from the church prior to his ministry, and that the true understanding of the seals could only have been revealed through his ministry as God’s special endtime prophet.

William Branham told his followers that he had a mystical experience where he was met by seven angels who instructed him to return to Jeffersonville, Indiana where he would receive the revelation of the seven seals. He told his audiences that as the angels left him, they ascended into heaven and formed a cloud that was photographed and published in Life magazine and other publications in the United States. These events occurred on February 28, 1963.

Fundamental to The Message of William Branham is the belief that Jesus Christ descended from heaven in 1963, and returned to the church in some form. The form in which he returned varies between different sects of his followers, but the fact that he returned in 1963 is a universal belief. That belief is intimately connected to the cloud pictured in this article.