A Baptist Scribe
Hears a Pentecostal Prophet!

By Lennard Darbee

Six years ago, as a Baptist evangelist, I sat in the Tacoma ice arena with 5,000 others, goggle-eyed at the ministry of Rev. William Branham. He did not ask the sick the nature of their affliction, he told them and, at his word crossed eyes straightened, goiters disappeared, the deaf and dumb both heard and spoke. A young man who refused to bow his head as demons of epilepsy were being cast out was himself seized in the gallery and fell to the floor in an epileptic fit! It was Mark 1 all over again : “And they were astonished at his doctrine : for he taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes.”

Now the scribes certainly knew the Word, but this man, Branham, was ministering more than the Word : That mother weeping, while her hitherto deaf and dumb son for the first time said, “Mama!” The glory on his face when the organ was played! That did not speak of Greek participles. They kill, but this refreshed and I became convinced that this man was a prophet of God. A scribe tells what he has read, but a prophet tells you what he has experienced and therefore knows. The curse of fundamentalism has been that the scribes have been too long in the saddle. They will lie for the miracle of yesterday, but will absolutely repudiate the one of today. Why? Well, the miracle of yesterday is in the Book and they know the Book, but the miracle of today has to do with the living Person, and with the Person they are not familiar. While the world on the outside has been starving for the Word of God, we on the inside have been starving for His presence. In I Cor. 4 :20 Paul writes, “For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.” The soul, then, is not nourished by the Word alone, but by the presence and power of the living God —and this was it. Signs, wonders, miracles! Oh brother! After such a demonstration who could ever again be content with a mere exposition?

From that meeting I went forth walking on air, determined to press on into the vast resources of God! Hours a day were spent in prayer and churches across the nation reported my campaign as their greatest. In Chicago alone I preached repeatedly in the great Moody Memorial Church and held the great union tent meetings of the city. John R. Rice was printing my sermons in The Sword of the Lord and things seemed to be moving nicely, but I could not keep from thinking of Branham. With Peter, he might have said, “This is that," but I could not. With my ministry I had to say, “This is different!” There were no signs following—and God has always given His people signs : Abel, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Isaiah had signs. David waited for the going in the mulberry trees and, in the economy of God, signs have always accompanied deliverance whether under Moses or Joshua or Samson or Peter or Paul, “And these signs shall follow them that believe.” No signs— no deliverance!

This article was published in the September, 1956 issue of The Voice Of Healing magazine.