In the height of William Branham's popularity during the Post WWII Healing Revival, William Branham changed his public image to that of a Baptist minister who accidentally stumbled onto Pentecostalism. This version of his image is a fundamental part of his "Life Story" recordings, and as a result, is fundamental to his "Message" cult following. If that story is removed, then all "supernatural experiences", doctrines, and events in his life related to his Baptist back story are then also removed.
In these versions of William Branham's stage persona, Branham claimed to have never heard of Pentecostalism in his early years as a "Baptist" minister. On a vacation without his wife to Lake Paw Paw, Branham allegedly stumbled onto a Pentecostal revival in Mishawaka, IN, just outside of South Bend where oddly, he was asked to speak. When he returned, he tried to convince his wife to join the Pentecostal movement, but his mother-in-law allegedly would not permit her daughter to get involved. Branham allegedly obeyed his mother-in-law, which he claimed to have resulted in his wife and daughter being killed by God during the Ohio River Great Flood of 1937. The deaths of his wife and daughter allegedly shook him enough to convert, and the stories built upon that foundation continue throughout his public ministry as a revivalist and later central figure of his cult of personality. The problem? The "personality" was the work of fiction, not an act of God. In of itself, this seems insignificant. Whether William Branham was Baptist or Pentecostal before becoming what he claimed to be "The Messenger For [The Previous] Age" should not matter, if in fact, he was this "Messenger" and the events he predicted to happen in the 20th Century or before 1977 came to pass. Though it may seem trivial on the surface, however, some of them raise very serious questions as to intent and honesty about certain events that he claimed to be supernatural. When considering the different and conflicting views on the Godhead when speaking to different audiences, they present an even bigger question: Was William Branham even a Christian?
