Anointing Leads to Healing Faith

Reverend William Branham was one of the great healing evangelists of the 1940’s and 50’s. Through him the Lord did astounding miracles for individuals from the ministry platform such as curing blindness, paralysis and deafness and raising up the terminally ill. Along with these miracles, there were multitudes of spontaneous healings in the audience.

Branham believed that the miracles and spontaneous audience healings were two different kinds of healing. Branham taught that sudden miracles were due to ‘The Anointing’, and were provided by the Lord to build peoples’ faith in God’s power to heal. When people in the audience had enough faith, they could receive their own healing. The Anointing and personal Healing Faith were the two means by which people received healing in Branham’s ministry.

Branham experienced the Anointing as an Angelic presence. Reportedly, he would not minister if he did not perceive the Angel to be with him. Others could sometimes see a light around him, and a photographer in a Houston meeting captured this light on film.

F.F. Bosworth, himself a well-known healing evangelist and author of Christ the Healer, documented many of Branham’s healing miracles. He gives us some insight into how this remarkable ministry operated in his chapter, ‘Gifts of Healing Plus’ in the book William Branham A Prophet Visits South Africa.

“On May 7, 1946, an Angel appeared to William Branham and 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 peoples of the world.”  Much like Moses, Branham questioned this mission because he was a plain spoken and simple man, so the Angel gave him two signs that he might be prepared for his work.

“The first sign that the Angel gave him was the ability to detect and diagnose all diseases and afflictions.” Bosworth writes: “When the Gift is operating, Rev. Branham is able to pick up the right hand of the patient and feel various pulsations and physical vibrations that indicate to him the diseases from which the patient suffered.

“Germ diseases, which indicate the presence and working of an oppressing spirit (Acts 10:38), can be distinctly felt. When the afflicting spirit comes into contact with the Gift, it sets up a physical commotion like that of taking hold of a live wire with too much electric current in it. Sometimes the agitation would cause Branham’s own hand to shake and turn red. When the oppressing spirit is cast out in Jesus’ Name, you can see Brother Branham’s hand return to its normal condition. If it is not a germ disease, then God reveals the nature of the affliction to him by the Spirit. This first sign usually raises the faith of the individual to the healing level; but if
not, the second sign does.”

The second sign given by the Angel was what today we would call Words of Knowledge. In this sign, the Anointing would cause him to see, and enable him to tell the sufferer many of the events of their lives even their private thoughts. For example, he said to one lady, “Lady, your child was born deaf and dumb.” Then he told her exactly what she did when she had discovered this, and she said, “You are exactly right.” After that, the child received perfect healing.

Bosworth writes, “At other times he tells the patient of their unconfessed sins which must be given up before the Gift will operate for their deliverance. As soon as the person forsakes their sin, healing comes often even before Branham has time to pray. These statements are verified in the Branham meetings nightly, before the eyes of thousands. However, these miraculous signs are possible only while the anointing of the Holy Spirit is upon Brother Branham, and are not ends in themselves. They only serve as signs to raise the faith of the afflicted to the level where the Gift of healing operates for their deliverance.”

It is a person’s own faith that pulls the ‘virtue’ or healing power from the Lord. The purpose of Branham’s miraculous signs was to raise the faith of the sufferers so that they could pull down their own healing. 

Bosworth writes, “Faith at the right level in any part of the audience pulls on the virtue of the indwelling Christ, who is operating the Gift. And this cannot take place without Bro. Branham knowing it. He feels it just as you or I might feel someone tugging on our coat. He knows the direction it is coming from and even turns and points to just the person whose faith is touching Christ. He would often startle audiences by calling out, ‘The lady with a blue striped shirt has just been healed of cancer,’ or ‘the lady on the cot has just been healed of leukemia.’ He was invariably correct.”

Bosworth wrote of Branham that he was more than a healer he had the gifts of a ‘seer’. “Just as the prophets of old could foretell the future, Branham would often see a vision of his principle miracles before they took place. His accuracy in these foretellings was 100%.

Bosworth writes that one time at a meeting in Fort Wayne, Rev. Branham saw a lady coming into the auditorium carrying a baby with a club foot wrapped in a plaster cast. Because Branham had seen the miracle earlier, he called out to the lady, telling her to go straight home and take off the cast and that the child’s foot would be perfectly well by morning. She came back the next day with that child wearing normal shoes, completely healed. The family doctor later did X-rays that showed the healing to be complete. On another occasion he saw a vision of a young accident victim being raised from the dead. Three years later it occurred just as he had foreseen it.

“The Apostle Paul wrote (2 Cor 4:18) ‘We do not look 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.’  These words indicate that we are now living in two worlds at one time the world of sense and the world of the Spirit. Both worlds occupy the same space at the same time, but the world of the Spirit surrounds and pervades the sense world. With our eyes, we can look and see the material realities around us, but our eyes cannot see the far better realities of the Spirit world. Thus, the seen exists in the midst of the unseen.

“Paul says that he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. When 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. At these times the glorious spiritual realities gain the ascendancy and become the most dominant, and we see truth and spiritual realities through God’s eyes. At such time future events seem to be present like the preview of a coming motion picture attraction. Jesus said that ‘The Spirit will show you things to come.’” 

Branham was a man full of compassion and love teaching that healing is part of the Atonement just as is the forgiveness of sins, and that what the Lord will do for one person, he will do for any. Our job, if we would seek healing is to raise our own faith level up to the point where we can pull this glorious gift of healing virtue into our lives, as we ourselves are pulling on the garment of Jesus. Branham taught that it is not our general beliefs, but our personal expectations that open the doorway to the supernatural.

Bosworth ends his chapter on Branham as follows: “If you are unable to attend a Branham meeting, that need not hinder you from being 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 which God has promised you personal property. ‘Every whit whole’ is God’s will, proved and emonstrated to multitudes.”