ALMOST HOME ---------------Chapter 5 (part)

Chapter 5   - THE LORD WORKS IN WONDROUS WAYS
I said one day to our pastor, "I have a notion to ask William Branham to come to Shawano for some meetings."
He said, "Branham is a worldwide evangelist - thousands and ten of thousands come to his meetings. There would be no chance for him to come to a little town like this.”
But when Brother Branham went to Chicago to hold meetings, I decided to ask him anyway. But the first night his campaign manager announced that nobody should bother to ask where Brother Branham stays, or ask for any personal interviews.

"Well," I said, "there goes my plans. I can't see him either.” But Jesus came on the scene again, and told Brother Branham that I had come to Chicago to see him - to ask him for some meetings and that the campaign manager wouldn't let me see him. Brother Branham told the manager to call for me and tell me that he wanted to see me. This was something completely different!

The next day a call went out over the loudspeaker requesting Ernest Fandler to come to the campaign manager. He told me then the name of the hotel and the room number, where Brother Branham was.

When I arrived at Brother Branham's room he already knew what I wanted, and said that he would be glad to come for some meetings in Shawano. So if he was willing to come, I was willing to do all I could, and spent hundreds of dollars for advertising that- “The Blind See, the Deaf Hear," and I wasn't afraid anymore either to say it.

Many people got saved and healed at those meetings. The last night someone brought a blind woman to the prayer line. As she stood there, I went over and looked in her eyes. There were no eyeballs. Her eyes were half-closed and there was just a little white there. She was the last one in the prayer line and I was kind of hoping the meeting would close before she got there to be prayed for because I had advertised that the blind would see, but I didn't expect something like this. When we got to Brother Branham, he said: "Here is a another blind woman, everyone bow your heads."

Then he prayed weeping a little, "Jesus, Blind Bartimaeus came to you and you gave him his sight. You are the same yesterday, today and forever. This poor woman is totally blind for forty (40) years. I pray that you will give her her sight."

Then he said: "Now, Satan, you are exposed. You cannot hide now. I charge you, Bllind spirit to leave her, in the name of Jesus Christ." Then he said to her: "You're are healed now, but don't look yet." A little later, he said, “Touch my nose." When she touched his nose, she looked around and started screaming. I saw that she was perfectly normal and told her to go to the chairs and sit down for a while.

The next day, I asked Branham to have lunch with us. He accepted the invitation, smiled and told me that God had told him a year ago that he would eat at my house. No wonder it was so strange in the beginning there in Canada when I was hesitated to telephone that day, God wanted me to meet Brother Branham.

I had an old tape recorder which I used to listen to tapes of Brother Branham's messages and recordings of miracles that happened in his meetings. While I was in a little meeting, the missionary asked the people to pray for a tape recorder that was needed, so everyone started to pray. Then came that small voice again, saying, "Give yours, " but I didn't want to hear that. I was getting low on funds and the tape recorder was the dearest thing I had. Then the scripture came to me where it says if someone asks something of you, and you have it, don't pray for him, give it. When they got through praying, I said "I've got one, you can have it." Everybody praised and thanked God, except me - I was minus my tape recorder!

Sometime later I went to Jeffersonville to visit Brother Branham. The first thing he did was to give me a beautiful tape recorder, worth much more than my old one. The Lord surely must have told him that I no longer had my recorder. He is so wonderful, there are no words to describe His goodness, but I try to please Him, and keep His commandments, and forgive everybody as God forgives us.
If people don't agree with me, it's perfectly all right, just so we don't get disagreeable. While I was working at the foundry, every time I talked to the men there about the Lord, a certain man would come over and break it up. "The Catholic Church is the only church that is right," he always said , and he made me shut up every time he came around . He made me angry many times. Then one day, a fellow told me that the ten-year-old son of this Catholic man was in hospital dying. He told me that one kidney was completely gone and the other one was almost gone. Normally I suppose I would have said: "That's what you get when you try to fight God,” but I felt sorry for the man and his son. The next day I went to the Catholic hospital to see the boy. He was in bed looking helpless. I asked his mother if she would mind if I prayed for him.

She said: "Several priests have prayed for him already. There isn't any hope, but it's all right if you want to pray for him."
After a short prayer I said: "He is going to have two new kidneys."
About two weeks later, this man came and confessed to everybody what had happened. He said: "It was Ernie's prayer. My boy got two new kidney and the doctors don't understand it. Now he is out playing ball with the other boys again.” Then he asked if I would pray for him, too.

I believe that God honored my prayer because I forgave this man, in spite of the way he had treated me. In the Lord's prayer, it says, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." We ought to let nothing get in the way to keep us from forgiveness.

In the big coliseum in Houston, Texas, they had a debate about whether God still heals people today. William Branham was to have a big salvation-healing campaign there. Some ministers were against it, and put it in the newspapers that they wanted to challenge William Branham to a debate. They wanted to prove that God does not heal today, but Branham said: "This is not something to argue about, but to believe."

Then his campaign manager took that challenge and Brother Branham sat back in the audience. But when the ministers who were against healing realized that they were losing the debate, according to God's Word, one of them asked, "Let this healer come up and heal somebody."
Branham's campaign manager, said: "He is not a healer because he preaches divine healing, anymore that you are a saviour because you preach salvation."

At about that time, the Holy Spirit came over Brother Branham, and he had to go to the platform. Someone had brought a boy to the platform who had never walked - he had had polio. Branham picked him up. The boy's arms and legs just hung limply. While Brother Branham prayed, a photographer took a picture of him and the boy. Suddenly a supernatural pillar of light appeared above Branham's head, showing that he was with William Branham. When the film was developed, it showed the bright "halo" above Branham's head which thousands of people have seen with their own eyes. When that photographer, who also was an unbeliever, saw this supernatural phenomenon, he said: "God be merciful to me!"

At the same time the picture was taken, and this great light appeared, the little boy disappeared from Branham's arms and went walking down the plat-form. The young lady who was playing the piano, “The Great Physician now is near, the Sympathizing Jesus,” saw the little boy walking for the first time, and started to scream. She ran away from the piano, without finishing the song, but the piano finished the song by itself. About 500 people ran to the altar to receive Jesus Christ as their saviour because they had seen the wonderful works of God.

(editor: please note the above account linked two separate meetings as one. It is therefore not a first hand accound, but third person. The crippled boy and amish girl playing the hymn :The Great Physician Now is Near" could refer to the Fort Wayne, Indiana meeting, one of the first healing campaign), that Brother Branham spoke about :-

PERFECT.FAITH_  JEFF.IN  V-6 N-11  SUNDAY_  63-0825E
172    The Great Physician! Where's that sister from down in--in Tennessee, Sister Ungren, or Downing? "The great Physician now is near."
173    I'll never forget that, in Fort Wayne that night when that little Amish girl or Dunkard was setting there, playing that, "The great Physician now is here," hearing that little boy was healed, she jumped up, the Holy Ghost fell on her, her pretty hair fell down across her shoulders, and the piano never missed a key. "The great Physician now is near, the sympathizing Jesus." Supernatural power moving them piano keys, playing "The great Physician now is near."

I had invited many people to the meetings. Then when I asked them later why they hadn't come, they usually answered, “We are Catholics,” or, “We are Protestants,” or whatever church organization they had joined. That is too bad. There is a church you have to belong to in order to have eternal life, but you can't join it. You have to be born into it. It is called the body of Christ, and Christ is the head of it.

Jesus said, “Ye must be born again!” I advise everyone to go to a church that knows what it meant o be born again. You might be persecuted a little, but you won't mind that 1,000 years from now. The scriptures say in II Timothy 3:5, “Having a form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof, from such turn away.” Assemble yourself with those who believe the full Gospel, especially now as you can see the Day of the Lord drawing closer and closer (Hebrews 10:25), We know the end time is near. All the signs show that it can't be many more years. Drought, earthquakes in many places, Just as Jesus said would be at the end time, are happening. Perilous times will come, according to God's Word, and cause men's hearts to fail for fear.

Peter said long ago, before they knew anything about atomic bombs that the elements would melt with fervent heat,. This can happen here now, anytime. The scientists say that in 1982, nine planets will line up and cause such a pull that the earth will literally shake. The Bible says that the earth will rock to and fro. Revelation 16:18 says, “And there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great” We know that we are near the end because so many things are happening which the Bible said would come to pass before the coming of Jesus Christ to this earth the second time.

The disciples asked Jesus, “When will the end be?” Jesus told them that that generation which would be during the time that the fig tree buds would not pass until all would be fulfilled. Well, it budded in 1948. Israel became a nation after 2500 years, and according to Job, in the last verses, a generation is about 35 years, ro 1948 and 35 are 1983. No man knows the day or hour, Jesus said, but He also said that the day of the Lord will not catch us unawares. We will know the season, Come to safety while there is time yet. Jesus said, “”He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.” He is only a prayer away. (editor's note: When the prophet referred to "this generation shall not pass away ...." He was referring to the Israel nation, being in position in their homeland, this generation or this strain of people, the race shall not be annihilated or dislodged from their land again and will witness the Coming of Christ) 

[THE.PATMOS.VISION_  JEFF.IN  ROJC 69-130  SUNDAY_  60-1204E

  243    Then a hundred and forty-four thousand Jews to gather on Mount Sinai... Where Israel has become a nation itself, the oldest nation in the world, the oldest flag in the world: has their own nation, their own flag, their own army, their own money, and everything else. They are one of the members of the leagues of the nations, because they are a nation. Jesus said they should never be cast away until all things is fulfilled.
The mysterious of how that bunch of Jews, persecuted everywhere, and turned out, and run out, and throwed out, like the church down through these ages of rejection, and yet Jesus said, "When you see the fig tree putting forth its buds (that nation returning back to be a nation again), the time is at hand, even at the door. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled." This strain... This people shall not pass away. Hitler tried to kill them; Mussolini tried to kill them; Stalin tried to kill them, everybody else, but they will never be a-blemished or banished from the earth; they will be a people and a nation standing yonder. Amen.]

On one occasion, I took a train from Chicago to Los Angeles in regard to some business. William Branham was there, holding meetings. I wanted him to know that I was coming, so I prayed there in the train while I was still in Chicago, 2,000 miles away. God showed Brother Branham right then that I was coming. He told Demos Shakarian, Minor Arganbright, and some other Full Gospel Businessmen that they would meet me Saturday morning. At the breakfast meeting, after Brother Branham introduced me to those men, they said they had come there to meet me and that they had known that I was coming. I said, “No one knew that I was coming. I am a total stranger here and I don't know anybody.”

They asked, “Didn't you have an appointment with Brother Branham?” Then I remembered my prayer in Chicago. It was answered.

A few months later Brother Branham had meetings in Zürich, Switzerland. His son, Billy Paul, one night called me and said that I should come up to the hotel room. He said, “ Dad wants to talk to you.” Then Brother Branham told me just the way God had showed him when I had prayed in Chicago. He told me that he had seen me there sitting on the train, Bible in hand, the sun setting in the west, praying that God would let him know that I was coming to Los Angeles. How could I ever doubt again, when God is so real? The Bible says, “Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, nor can your heart imagine what your Heavenly Father has prepared for them that love Him.”

to be continued....Chapter 5 and 6 (end)