This is the end of the next two thousand years, 1954. And the Gospel, Jesus said, “The work would be cut short.” For what? “The elect’s sake, or no flesh would be saved,” it would so wicked. So we’re at the end time. And then the seventh, in type, is the Millennium, a thousand years.

54-0513 – William Marrion Branham

He lived through many of the years that he said the world would end. I was born many years after his latest in 1977. His predictions vary from a periodic 50 year jubilee to call the Christians home to a two thousand year cleansing of the Earth, and after each one, we remained. In many instances, the worry and fear of an end time can drive people to their religious centers, praying and dedicating everything in their lives towards the faith that they hope will spare them. Only God knows when the end is coming, and man was wrong, again.

When I fail to build on the foundation of the scripture, or allow a man to tell me I was anchored instead of making sure myself, I get the blind predictions like the above. We know that no man knows the day for Jesus told us that, but we get caught up in the movement around us. We like being a part of something that’s happening now. I know some of it for me was the disconnect that comes from thinking all that God had done was so long ago and I couldn’t take part in it. Being in the Message gave me a sense of being in what God was doing right here and now.

The Old Testament prophet, Elisha, once had the same complaint to God: that there was no one else doing anything for God, that he alone was where it was at. God simply reminded him that there has never been a time that He has not been in control and had people on Earth for his purpose. Without knowing the whole picture, I begin to want something more tangible, more human. Suddenly, a man from my grandfather’s lifetime  said he was hearing the fresh word of God, and I wanted to hear it too.

When most of us left the Message, we were not asked about our standing with God. We were asked how we could disbelieve the Prophet. As we try to find the truth, we struggle most with the random quotes, more upheld than scripture itself. The Bible is plain, yet we get selfish and want something specifically crafted for us, as if we’re more important than all else. That filter is hard to cast off.

Jesus, making it simple as He always did, put it best. Many would come, many “Christs” even. But there is only one thing that will give you peace that passes the ‘understanding’ of men: those precious letters in red in your Bible. When God speaks, He speaks for Himself.

5For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places                                                           Jesus – Matthew 24