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Chapter 20 – Gifts Of Healing Plus

By Evangelist F. F. Bosworth

For more than thirty years during great evangelistic campaigns, I have over-worked, praying for the sick and afflicted. During fourteen years of this time, we conducted the National Radio Revival during which time we received about a quarter of a million letters, most of them containing prayer requests from sick and suffering people who could not have recovered without the direct action of the Holy Spirit in response to the “prayer of faith.” We have received multiplied thousands of unsolicited testimonies from those who have been miraculously healed of every bodily affliction I know anything about, including leprosy. To God be all the glory because these results are impossible to anyone but Him. As a result of these miracles, many thousands have been joyfully converted, whom we would have missed had we not preached the healing part of the Gospel once a week in all our evangelistic campaigns.

Because this healing ministry has required labor beyond human strength, we have prayed, oh so earnestly for God to raise up more laborers to help in this so greatly neglected phase of ministry. And during the past two years I have often wept for joy over God’s recent gift to the Church of our beloved brother William Branham with his marvelous “Gifts of Healing.” This is a case of God doing “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20), for I have never seen or read of anything to equal the healing ministry of William Branham.

An Angel Appears
On May 7, 1946, an angel who had spoken to Brother Branham in audible voice at intervals from his childhood down to the present time, finally appeared to him and, among other things, told him that Christ’s Coming was near at hand, and the Heavenly Messenger said: “I AM SENT FROM THE PRESENCE OF ALMIGHTY GOD TO TELL YOU… THAT GOD HAS SENT YOU TO TAKE A GIFT OF HEALING TO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.”

On Page 1291 of the Scofield Bible, Dr. C. I. Scofield, D.D., in his footnote on Angels says: “Though angels are spirits (Psa. 104:4; Heb. 1:14), power is given them to become visible in the semblance of human form (Gen. 19:1 and many other Scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments). In Exod. 23:20, God said to Moses: ‘Behold I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way and to bring thee into the place I have prepared.’ And in Gen. 24:40 we read, ‘The Lord… will send His Angel with thee, and prosper thy way.'”

This is exactly what God has done for Brother Branham. He does not begin to pray for the healing of the afflicted in body in the healing line each night, until God anoints him for the operation of the gift, and until he is conscious of the presence of the Angel with him on the platform. Without this consciousness, he seems to be perfectly helpless.

Two Signs Given
Now notice, that God not only sent an Angel to be with Moses, He also gave him two perfect miracles as signs and proofs to the people that God had appeared to him and commissioned him, under divine guidance, to be their deliverer (Exod. 4:1-31). The first sign was that of Moses’ rod becoming a serpent, and the second sign was that of putting his hand in his bosom and having it become “as leprous as snow,” etc. God said to Moses, “It shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, they will believe the voice of the latter sign.” (Exod. 4:8.) In the last three verses of this chapter we read that when these two signs were repeated “in the sight of the people, the people believed… and they bowed their heads and worshipped.”

Just so, in addition to sending an Angel to be with and to prosper Brother Branham, He has also given him two perfectly miraculous signs which have served to raise the faith of thousands of the humanly incurable to the level where the “Gift of Healing” operates.

Supernatural Diagnosis
The first sign: When the Angel appeared to Brother Branham, he told him how he would be able to detect and diagnose all diseases and afflictions; that when the gift was operating, by taking the right hand of the patient he would feel various physical vibrations or pulsations which would indicate to him the various diseases from which each patient was suffering. Germ diseases, which indicate the presence and working of an “oppressing” (Acts 10:38) spirit of affliction can be distinctly felt.

When the afflicting spirit comes into contact with the gift it sets up such a physical commotion that it becomes visible on Brother Branham’s hand, and so real that it will stop his wrist-watch instantly. This feels to Brother Branham like taking hold of a live wire with too much electric current in it. When the oppressing spirit is cast out Jesus’ Name, you can see Brother Branham’s red and swollen hand return to its normal condition. If the affliction is not a germ disease, then God always reveals the affliction to Brother Branham by the Spirit. This first sign usually raises the faith of the individual to the healing level; but if not, the second sign does.

A Seer
The second sign: The Angel told him that the anointing would cause him to see and enable him to tell the suffering many of the events of their lives from their childhood down to the present time. He even tells some their thoughts while they are coming to the platform or before they came to the meeting. I heard him say recently to a mother bringing her little girl, “Lady, your child was born deaf and dumb; and as soon as you discovered she could not hear, you took her to the doctor,” and then he told the mother exactly what the doctor said. The mother said, “That is exactly right.” The great audience hears all this over the public address system. Brother Branham actually sees it enacted and pushing the microphone away so the audience won’t hear it, he tells the patient any un-confessed and un-forsaken sins in their lives which must be given up before the gift will operate for their deliverance. As soon as such persons acknowledge and promise to forsake the sin or sins thus revealed, their healing often comes in a moment before Brother Branham has time to pray. These statements by the Angel are verified in the Branham meetings nightly before the eyes of thousands.

Thus the great audiences witness nightly over and over again three distinct types of miracles. The first two do not heal the sufferers, but only serve as signs to raise the faith of the afflicted to the level where the “gift of healing operates for their deliverance.” Of course, these two miraculous signs are possible only while the anointing of the Holy Spirit is upon Brother Branham for this purpose.

MORE THAN “GIFTS OF HEALING”

No doubt, a few Christians here and there, during the Church Age, and some at the present time have been endowed with the “Gift of Healing” which is listed among the nine spiritual gifts in the 12th Chapter of I Corinthians, each of which is defined as “The manifestation of the Spirit.” (I Cor. 12:7-11). There should be laymen in every church thus endowed.

But Brother Branham is a channel for more than the mere gift of healing; he is also a Seer as were the Old Testament Prophets. He sees events before they take place. I asked him, “What do you mean? How do you see them?” He replied, “Just as I see you: only that I know it is a vision.” Just as clearly as one sees material things around them, Brother Branham, while in prayer during the day, sees in vision some of the principal miracles before they take place that night. He sees some carried in on ambulance cots, or sitting in wheel chairs, and can describe how they look and how they are dressed, etc. While being shown these miracles in advance, he usually becomes, for the time, unconscious of things going on around him. Not once during the more than three years since receiving the gift have these revelations failed to produce perfect miracles exactly as he had already seen them in visions. At these times he can say with absolute certainty, “Thus saith the Lord,” and he is never wrong. He told me last week that he simply acts out what he has already seen himself doing in the vision. The success of this phase of his ministry is exactly 100 per cent.

Looking At The Unseen
When the gift is operating, Brother Branham is the most sensitive person to the presence and working of the Holy Spirit and to spiritual realities of any person I have ever known. Under the anointing, which operates his spiritual gifts, and when he is conscious of the Angel’s presence, he seems to break through the veil of the flesh into the world of spirit, to be struck through and through with a sense of the unseen. Paul wrote (II Cor. 4:18), “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Paul’s words here indicate that we are now living in two worlds at the same time–the world of sense, and the world of spirit. The world of spirit surrounds, enspheres, and interpenetrates the world of sense. Both worlds occupy the same space at the same time. The material realities which we see with our natural eyes, exist in the midst of the far better realities which are unseen by the optic nerve. The Scriptures teach us that the superior “eternal” realities compass us now. What sights might every one of us see at every moment of our existence, at every turn of our path, had we anointed eyes with which to see them! “The seen” exists in the midst of “the unseen;” the “temporal” in the midst of the “eternal.”

Paul says, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” While filled with the Holy Spirit, our spirit and God’s Spirit are blended into one in the same way that the ocean and the bay are one because the ocean flows into the bay. Then it is that the glorious spiritual realities gain the ascendancy and become the most dominant. We see truth and spiritual realities through God’s eyes. At such times future events seem to be present like a preview of a coming motion picture attraction. Jesus said, “The Spirit will show you things to come.”

Miracles Seen In Advance
During the Fort Wayne meeting a lady came into the healing line carrying a child which was born with a club foot with its leg in a plaster cast. The moment Brother Branham saw them, without stopping to pray for the child’s healing, he said to the lady, “O yes, will you do what I tell you to do?” The lady answered, “I will.” Then he said to her, “Go home and get that cast off, and when you come back tomorrow night, bring the child, and she will have a perfect foot.” The microphone carried these words to all in the great audience. It took them more than an hour that night to get the cast off. When the lady brought the child the next night, the child had a perfect foot and was wearing a new pair of little white shoes and was walking. The doctor X-rayed the foot and found it perfect. I asked Brother Branham the next day why he passed the lady and the child through the healing line without praying for the healing of the child. He answered, “It wasn’t necessary, for in a vision in the afternoon I saw the child healed.” It would make this article too long if I should relate many other cases much more wonderful in detail than this case. This phase of his ministry alone would furnish matter for a book.

In the 5th Chapter of St. John, Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work… The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise, for the Father loveth the Son and showeth him all things that Himself doeth.” What did Jesus mean? Of course, Jesus was a Seer as were the Old Testament Prophets. He saw His miracles before they happened. He saw the man which had an infirmity 38 years who could not get into the pool when the Angel went down and troubled the water. Jesus came to him and said to him, “Take up thy bed, and walk.” Jesus saw Lazarus raised from the dead before he performed the miracle. He said to Nathanael, “Before that Philip called Thee, when Thou wast under the fig tree, I saw Thee” (John 1:48). He saw where the ass colt was tied without being there, etc., etc. And the in-dwelling Christ is now perpetuating His works through human instrumentality according to His promise for this age: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also–because I go to the Father, and whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son’ (John 14:12, 13).

The Pull Of Faith Is Felt
In the case of the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and was made whole, Jesus said, “I perceive that virtue is gone out of me” (Luke 8:46). When this became known, we read in Mark 6:55, 56, that “whithersoever He entered into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought Him that they might touch but the border of His garment: and as many as touched Him were made whole.” Thank God that some virtue is still flowing from the in-dwelling Christ into the bodies of the sick and afflicted, and they are made whole.

The two sign miracles which God manifests through Brother Branham to raise the faith of those in the healing line to the right level, are given also to raise the faith of the afflicted in the audience to the same level. This faith draws the same virtue from the in-dwelling Christ Who is operating the gift, and heals those sitting in the audience. It makes no difference whether it is your diseases being supernaturally diagnosed, or the person’s in the healing line, the signs are the same, and have the same effect on those sitting in the audience. Why should the signs be repeated for each individual who has already seen them? Moses did not repeat his two signs for each individual Israelite. A thousand could witness the demonstration and be caused to believe at the same time. Faith at the right level in any part of the great audience pulls on the virtue in the in-dwelling Christ Who is operating the gift; and this can’t take place without Brother Branham knowing it. He feels it as distinctly as you would if I should pull on your coat, and knows the direction it is coming from; and he even points out the individual whose faith is touching Christ.

While praying for those in the healing line in the Flint meeting, he stopped, and pointing up toward the second gallery to his right, said, “I have just now had a vision of a lady dressed in a blue suit wearing a striped waist. She has just been healed of a cancer.” The woman sprang to her feet and with great joy said, “I am the lady.” Her faith did for her in the second gallery what faith was doing for those on the platform.

A young lady was carried into the meeting on a cot. She was dying of leukemia. Both at Johns Hopkins and at the Mayo Clinic, she was told that everything possible had been done and that there was no hope of her living. Her mind had begun to give way. I slipped off the platform to her cot and told her to be praying that God would lift her faith to the healing level and that it would either operate the gift or pull Brother Branham down to her. I watched her lips moving in prayer and all at once Brother Branham felt the pull of faith, jumped off the platform and went to her cot, prayed for her, and said, “In Jesus’ Name arise from your cot, receive divine strength and be well.” She obeyed and with hands uplifted and with tears of joy and worship flowing down her cheeks, she walked back and forth before all the people and down the aisles. Her sister told me afterwards, “My sister is wonderful.”

In the great Fair Park Auditorium in Dallas a few months ago, one night when the orchestra pit was full of stretcher and wheel chair cases, while Brother Branham was busy praying for those in the healing line, he kept feeling the pull of faith from his right which finally stopped. When he got through with those with whom he was dealing, he pointed to a man on a cot in the orchestra pit, and said to him, “Man, get up, you have been healed about five minutes.” He got up praising God. His wife came to him and they threw their arms around each other and wept for joy together. He had been brought from Chicago in a dying condition with his lungs being eaten up with cancer. He was healed and came to the next meeting in Fort Wayne a few days later to give his testimony. He has attended two other meetings since. I could go on reciting many pages of similar healings of those healed while sitting or lying on stretchers in the audience without Brother Branham ever touching them. All were healed in Peter’s shadow without his touching any of them.

No Hard Cases
There is no such thing as a hard case with God. A lady from Greece who had no opening in her throat entered the prayer line. She could not swallow a single drop of water or any kind of food. As soon as Brother Branham prayed for her she drank a glass of water and ate a candy bar. A night or two later in that same meeting nine deaf mutes came in the prayer line and all nine were healed.

Those born blind receive their sight. After praying for one totally blind man, Brother Branham said to him, “Walk to the pulpit and put your finger on that preacher’s nose.” He walked straight to the minister and pulled his nose, causing the audience to laugh.

A very noted missionary from Palestine in the last stage of T.B. was brought from Yakima, Washington, in an ambulance to the Civic AuditoriuM in Seattle, Washington. The government paid his plane fare home. When he was commanded, in Jesus’ Name, to arise and be well, he did so, and two days later he was doing manual labor around his home.

Mass Healing
Just as an altar-call or invitation to sinners follows an evangelistic sermon, so after the supernatural diagnosing and healing of those in the healing line, the invitation is now being given to those in the audience who are prepared to receive healing to come or be carried forward to be healed or saved physically.

The healing of one at a time on the platform is only preliminary to the main healing service. It is only an object lesson sermon, so to speak, to all in the audience who need the benefits of the healing part of the gospel.

Just as a hundred sinners may respond to the invitation of an evangelist and experience the still greater miracle of the new birth in mass, so it was amazingly demonstrated a few days ago in the Louisville meeting that the sick can be healed in mass by the gift of healing. Brother Branham ventured on this procedure there, inviting those on cots, those in wheel chairs, and the crippled to be brought forward first, and then those who could walk on their crutches and those suffering with cancer and other diseases to come toward the front and stand behind the stretchers and wheel chairs. As they began to surge forward, their faith began to pull on the healing virtue in the gift, and the healing demonstration was beyond anything yet witnessed in a Branham meeting. While on their way forward, Brother Branham pointed rapidly to one after another saying, “Christ has healed you.” The people threw their prayer cards into the air, threw down their crutches and those who could not stand or walk sprang to their feet, some of them jumping and praising God for joy. The demonstration was beyond description. One boy in a chair who could not stand or walk, l saw him spring to his feet praising God. A few minutes later, I motioned to him and asked the crowd to make way and let him through to the platform. He walked to the microphone and fairly preached to the weeping audience. The gift operated for mass healing just as it had already done in the healing line where they were healed one at a time. The wife of the pastor of the Church of The Open Door phoned me the next morning that several members of their church were healed in this mass healing service the night before.

Sinners Surrender In Mass
And the best of all, sinners are thus brought under conviction for sin and want to be saved. In Rom. 15:18, 19, Paul speaks of making “the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God… from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum.” I have seen as many as two thousand sinners in a single Branham service spring to their feet in tears to give their hearts to God. No wonder Jesus said, “Into whatsoever city ye enter–heal the sick that are therein.”

Invitations From Across The Sea
Quoting Psa. 68:18, the Apostle Paul said in Eph. 4:8, “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.” The news of this divine gift to the Church, in three short years has traveled around the world, and many urgent calls are coming from foreign lands and from missionary stations across the seas. Many of these have recently come from various sections in Africa. Some sufferers have been flown over the waters from other countries to the united States to be healed. When Brother Branham visits mission fields I believe there will be the greatest spiritual awakening the Church has witnessed since the first century.

A Man Sent From God – Page 180

Before closing, I feel that I must say to those who read these lines, and are unable to attend a Branham meeting, that you can be healed, too. Thousands have been miraculously healed through their own prayer. God desires your healing more than it is possible for you to desire it. Jesus died to make it possible. Calvary makes everything promised legally your personal property. “Every whit whole,” is God’s will proved and demonstrated to multitudes.