Last month we brought you the first half of an interview published in the August 1956 issue of Faith Journal Magazine in which Brother Branham was interviewed by a Brother Bigby. In this month’s Lifeline, we are pleased to bring you the balance of that interview as recorded and published in that magazine with photographs taken during the interview. We trust this issue of Lifeline will be a blessing to you.

Brother Bigby: “Do you plan to have a magazine of your own any time in the near future?”

Brother Branham: “Brother Bigby, I am not sure about that. As you know, I started a paper once, The Voice Of Healing. To give you a quick answer, I would say, No. Many people are trying to get me to start my own paper, and ect., but I am not very much of a businessman myself. I am an uneducated person, and I could not edit a paper, and I would have to get someone to do that. I am not interested in trying to do too many things at once, because I am thankful that I have common sense enough to know the end of my capabilities. Actually, I am not capable of editing and publishing a paper. I have tried to keep my ministry small, so that I could get into places where other brethren, under their great financial setup, could not go. I have always tried to go to the ‘little man’ and help him.”

Bro. Bigby: “Under what type of local setup do you think a church best flourishes in the ‘move of God’?”

Bro. Branham: “Local sovereignty. The sovereignty of the local church is very apostolic to me. Each church should be sovereign in itself. It should not have ties that would tell it which way to move. That is one reason I was a Baptist, because of the sovereignty of the local church, and I think it is very successful, and very good, especially now.”

Bro. Bigby: “Brother Branham, are you looking for more results in this great revival before Jesus comes? Do you think that there will be more supernatural revelations, or do you think that this which is on now, and which has produced a world awakening will continue to broaden until it produces greater results, or will there be something new?”

Bro. Branham: “I think that what we have now (and scripturally speaking, as I try to approach everything as scripturally as possible), if you will recall in Matthew 10, where the Lord gave His disciples power to heal the sick and cast out devils, to raise the dead and to cleanse the lepers, and we find them miserably defeated on a case, a few days later, of the epileptic boy. Then they asked Jesus, ‘Why couldn’t we do it?’ They had the power to do it, but Jesus told them, straight from the shoulder, that they could not do it because of their unbelief.

I think that when God separates the church and brings the true gifted (now, we must be honest with ourselves, as you know there is much impersonation of spiritual gifts, which has caused a lots of trouble) ministers together, there will be more miracles. And when the questionable works are manifested the same as Jannes and Jambres, and I am not condemning those people, I am only saying that they are just hungry children, trying to do something that they have not been commissioned to do. They are so anxious to do it and so zealous to work for God, that they have an impression to do instead of a revelation or a direct commission from God to do it. And their ministry has failed so that it has caused fanaticism. Their ministry has failed to the extent that it has caused fanaticism to be produced. And the on-looking world point to that.”

Bro. Bigby: “Do you think the ‘gift movement,’ as we know it, is coming back into harmony with the Scriptures?”

Bro. Branham: “I see so much prophesying over people and telling they have gifts, and we find that it just doesn’t work that way—it never has and never will. The individual knows in his heart what they are to do. I think so many times of our prophecies, they will say to hungry-hearted children, ‘Oh, you have a gift of so-and-so, and you must be this, that, and the other, isn’t that right?’ Why sure, that is the hunger of every Christian, to do something for God. But God is the One to make known this gift.

I believe the hour has come, or will soon come, when God will vindicate His gifts. Like in Hebrews 11:4 where God says, ‘God testifying of his gifts.’ Certainly God has these gifts, and they are alive in the church today, but we have carnal impersonations, and we have many who try to feel that way and who try to make any gift of God work. It works sovereignly itself, you see. It is not what you want it to do; it is what God does with it. For instance, on the platform and in the meetings, I have prayed many times for God to show me something, even things that I need for myself. I can’t make it work. It isn’t I that works the gift, it is the Gift that works me.

Some brethren have gone a little to the deep end. But I do believe that what the church needs today is a coming together of ministers in brotherly love and the gift of teaching on how that these gifts come and how that they operate sovereignly in the church. I think that is the greatest needed thing. But each denomination has its own ideas, and they have drawn walls of segregation, and brethren seem like they can’t get together, and some of them are indifferent. Of course, we realize that they are indifferent, and they feel that they are right, regardless of what anyone says. To me, that is very good proof that there is something wrong. When we are not willing to come and sit down and reason together.”

Bro. Bigby: “So, you do believe that there is a corrective in the move of God’s Sprit today.”

Bro. Branham: “Yes.”

Bro. Bigby: “Do you think the members of others churches who God has filled with the Spirit and led into the move of God should stay in their churches and bring testimony to them?”

Bro. Branham: “I think that each individual, feeling his own leading after being born of the Spirit of God, should be led by the Spirit of God, in what to do. I do think that would be a great thing there, if a fellow so felt led to stay in his denomination to give testimony to light, and then, if he feels that he should come out from among such, then let him go the way the Holy Spirit would lead him."

Bro. Bigby: Thank you very much, Brother Branham. We appreciate you taking up this time with us, so that readers of Faith Journal may know your views on these matters.”