God's Generals: William Branham Order Printed Copy

Author: Roberts Liardon
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About the Book

"God's Generals: William Branham" by Roberts Liardon is a biography that explores the life of William Branham, a prominent figure in the Pentecostal and healing revival movements of the mid-20th century. The book delves into Branham's early years, his ministry, and the impact he had on the Christian faith. Branham's unique approach to healing and prophecy, as well as his struggles and controversies, are highlighted in this detailed account of his life.

Brother Yun

Brother Yun was born in February 1958 in the province of Henan. His original name was Liu Zhenying (刘振营). Brother Yun became a believer at the age of 16. Soon after he became a Christian, God called him to be His witness in the west and south. As he was obedient to the calling, he eventually became a witness of Christ not just in the western and southern parts of China, but throughout China and in the nations beyond China as well. Brother Yun was born into a poor family. His family’s financial situation took a turn for the worst when his father became ill with an asthmatic condition that led to lung cancer eventually. His life got worse when he became a Christian as he suffered severe trials and persecutions. In the midst of suffering for the Lord, however, he experienced miracle after miracle, which helped to strengthen his faith. HOW BROTHER YUN BECAME A BELIEVER In 1974, Brother Yun’s father became ill with lung cancer. His mother, who had been a Christian for many years but had become spiritually cold after the expulsion of Western missionaries during the Cultural Revolution, felt a deep sense of desperation because if her husband had died then, it would leave the family in dire straits. She thought of committing suicide. One evening, as she was lying in bed, she heard a voice saying to her that Jesus loved her. In tears and in repentance, she rededicated her life to God and gathered her family to pray for her husband. The next morning, her husband got better and as a result, everyone in the family, including Brother Yun, put their faith in God. HIS HUNGER FOR THE WORD OF GOD Brother Yun was 16 when he became a Christian. Soon after, he started hungering for the Word of God. However, his family did not have a Bible. He began asking his mother who Jesus was. In response, his mother would tell him that Jesus was the Son of God and that He had recorded all His teachings in the Bible. Brother Yun wanted a Bible and his mother recalled that there was a man in another village who had one. So she brought him to see the man. The man was too afraid to show Brother Yun his Bible. So he suggested to the latter that he could pray and ask God for one. Brother Yun decided to fast and pray for a Bible. For the next 100 days, he ate only one bowl of steamed rice everyday. One day at 4am, after fasting for 100 days, he saw a vision. In the vision, he was walking up a steep hill and trying to push a heavy cart at the same time. He was heading towards a village where he intended to beg for food for his family. He struggled greatly as he continued his climb uphill. The cart was about to roll back and fall on him when he saw three men walking down the hill in the opposite direction. One of them was a kind old man and he was pulling a large cart of fresh bread. When the old man saw Brother Yun, he asked him if he was hungry. He said ‘yes’ and started crying. The old man then took a red bag of bread from his cart and asked his two servants to give it to Brother Yun. As he put the bread into his mouth, it immediately turned into a Bible. Upon waking up, Brother Yun began to search for the Bible. His search, however, was in vain. All of a sudden, he heard a faint knock on the door and someone was calling out his name. Immediately, he recognised the voice – it was the same voice he had heard in the vision. He quickly opened the door and standing before him were the two servants he had seen in the vision. One of them held a red bag in his hand. In this red bag was a Bible. It was later that Brother Yun found out the names of the two men. One was Brother Wang while the other was Brother Sung. They were sent by an evangelist to give Brother Yun the Bible. The evangelist, who had suffered terribly during the Cultural Revolution and had nearly died while being tortured, had received a vision from God. In the vision, God showed him Brother Yun’s house and the location of his village. He was asked to give his Bible to Brother Yun. However, he did not obey God until three months later. Brother Yun began to devour the Word of God. Even though he could hardly read, this did not deter him at all. When he had finished reading the entire Bible, he started to memorise one chapter per day. In 28 days, he had memorised the Gospel of Matthew. Then he went on to memorise the Book of Acts and so forth. OBEDIENT TO THE CALL OF GOD One morning at 4am, Brother Yun had a dream. In the dream, God asked him to be His witness in the west and south. In the same dream, he saw a young man from the south coming to his house. And so at daybreak, he told his mother to expect the young man’s visit and to ask him to wait for him. Then he sat off to a village he had never heard of in the west. The people in this village had been praying for him to visit as they had heard about how he had prayed for a Bible and got it. When the meeting at the village concluded and Brother Yun got ready to leave, the villagers refused to let him go. So he stayed on and recited to them the first twelve chapters from the Book of Acts. After that, the villagers finally let him go. From the village to his house, it could take up to 2 hours to walk. Because he did not want to make the young man from the south wait too long, he decided to run home. All of a sudden, he found himself entering his village without any apparent time lapse. What should have taken him a few hours took him just a few moments. It was as if God had supernaturally transported him back to his village. PERSECUTIONS AND MIRACLES IN HIS LIFE Brother Yun was arrested by security police numerous times and was thrown into prison three times for sharing the gospel in communist China. When Brother Yun was arrested the first time, he was only 17 years old. At that time, he was ministering at a meeting far away from home. After he was caught, he was thrown into a freezing cold prison cell. There was no heat in the cell and his winter coat had been thrown into the snow by the security police who had caught him. He began to sing Psalm 150 aloud. The more he sang, the more he was filled with joy. Gradually, his frozen hands and feet regained feeling and he no longer felt cold. During his first imprisonment in Nanyang, Brother Yun felt that God wanted him to fast without food and water until he could see his family again. This fast lasted 74 days, which was humanly impossible but yet was made possible because he chose to obey God. During those times when Brother Yun was in the hands of government officials, he was repeatedly beaten and tortured with electric batons. He was also kicked and trampled upon. Furthermore, he had needles being jabbed underneath his fingernails. Once, Brother Yun was paraded through the streets with a red cross tied behind him for half a day. When night fell, he was locked and left alone inside a large interrogation room. The wooden cross was taken off his back but his hands were still tied up. All of a sudden, the rope that was used to tie his hands snapped by itself. He immediately walked out of the interrogation room and walked through the courtyard in the midst of onlookers. Nobody stopped him or said anything to him. It was as if God had blinded their eyes and they did not even recognise who he was. Because the front gate was locked, the only way Brother Yun could get out was to climb over an eight-foot high cement wall. He climbed up as much as he could manage. Then he looked over the wall and saw that there was a ten-foot wide open tank directly below. Suddenly, he felt as if someone had lifted him up and thrown him over. He was thrown so far that he did not land in the tank. Brother Yun’s 3rd imprisonment was a very dark period in his life as the prison guards in the maximum security prison were determined to prevent his escape. So they beat his legs to cripple him permanently. They had him beaten up everyday, even in his crippled state. One day, God instructed him to escape from the prison. This was confirmed by a brother-in-Christ. Thus, on May 5, 1997, he miraculously walked past dozens of prison guards and out of the maximum security prison. It was as if he had become invisible to the guards. He did not realise that his legs had been miraculously healed until later. Throughout all the horrendous and painful experiences that Brother Yun went through, the word of the Lord kept coming to him, encouraging him and strengthening his faith. BROTHER YUN’S MINISTRY Brother Yun eventually escaped China and sought asylum in Germany in 2001. Since then, he has been continuing his ministry from there and has spoken to congregations internationally. He has founded “Back to Jerusalem” Movement and has been sending missionaries out from China to share the gospel in the least-reached nations. Brother Yun’s life and ministry have impacted many lives. Thousands of people have become Christians through his ministry. It is thus inevitable that fellow Christians have allowed themselves to be used as instruments of wickedness to attack his reputation. The co-author of The Heavenly Man, Paul Hattaway has aptly put it this way, “Many of the great Christian leaders throughout history have been the subject of brutal attacks from other Christians.” AFTERTHOUGHT Brother Yun’s childlike faith and his prompt obedience to God’s call are exemplary. It is incredible that he has remained faithful to God despite the tremendous suffering and persecutions he has gone through.

the sluggard in me - four lies that lead to lazy

Come, follow closely, and gaze for a moment upon a rare creature in his native habitat. There he is, drooling upon his pillow an hour before lunchtime, creaking over the bedsprings like a door on its hinges. “How long will you lie there? When will you arise from your sleep?” his mother shouts from the kitchen. Quiet, now: she has roused him. Here he comes, stumbling into his chair, and begins to feed. “What’s wrong with a little sleep, a little slumber?” he mumbles between mouthfuls. A dozen handfuls later, however, he stops, his hand submerged in his cereal like a sunk boat. He breathes heavily, chin against his chest, and begins to snore again. Meet the sluggard (Proverbs 26:14; 6:9–10; 19:24). He is a figure of “tragi-comedy,” Derek Kidner writes ( Proverbs , 39): comedy, because the sluggard’s laziness makes him ludicrous; tragedy, because only sin could so debase a man. The image of God was never meant to yawn through life. Yet those who are paying attention will also see something more in this tragi-comic sloth: themselves. We all have an inner sluggard, counseling us to sleep when we should rise, rest when we should work, eat when we should move. “The wise man,” Kidner goes on to write, knows that the sluggard is no freak, but, as often as not, an ordinary man who has made too many excuses, too many refusals, and too many postponements. It has all been as imperceptible, and as pleasant, as falling asleep. (40) We don’t need to look far, then, to see the sluggard in his native habitat. We only need to hear his “excuses,” “refusals,” and “postponements,” and then listen for their inner echo. ‘I need just a little more.’ A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest. (Proverbs 6:10; 24:33) The words sit in the mouth of the sluggard more than once in Proverbs. They are, perhaps, his motto, his favorite response to the wisdom of the diligent. “Early to rest, early to rise . . .” they tell him; “A little sleep, a little slumber . . .” he answers. “An ordinary man becomes a sluggard one small surrender at a time.” Sluggishness often hides beneath that eminently reasonable phrase “just a little more.” What harm could a little do? What’s one more snooze cycle? What’s one more show? What’s one more refreshing of the timeline? Not much, in itself: but much indeed when piled atop ten thousand other littles and one mores . They may seem like “small surrenders” (to use a phrase from Bruce Waltke, Proverbs , 131) — and they are. But an ordinary man becomes a sluggard one small surrender at a time. How do the wise respond? They know that diligent Christians are not a special species of saint. Like the sluggard, the diligent daily face unpleasant tasks. Unlike the sluggard, the diligent speak a different motto: “A little labor, a little energy, a little moving of the hands to work.” Instead of building a stack of small surrenders, they build a stack of small successes — taking little step by little step in the strength that God supplies. Over time, how we handle little is no little matter. Little drudgeries, little tasks, little opportunities: these are the moments when the sluggard gains ground in our souls, or loses it. ‘There’s always tomorrow.’ The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing. (Proverbs 20:4) Often enough, “just a little more” achieves the sluggard’s purpose. But if, for some reason, his conscience should protest, he has another word at his disposal that rarely fails: tomorrow . Autumn was the season for plowing and planting in ancient Israel, and summer the season for harvest. We don’t know exactly why the sluggard took it easy while his neighbors plowed their fields. Maybe the difficulty of the task daunted him, or maybe, as the King James Version suggests, the season’s chill deterred him: “The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold .” Either way, he no doubt fell asleep on many autumn nights warmed by the thought, “There’s always tomorrow” — until one day he woke up in winter. When the sluggard finally arrived at his chosen tomorrow , the time for plowing and planting had escaped his grasp. How often have we too discovered that tomorrow is too late? The conversation we should have initiated yesterday proves more awkward today. The essay we should have begun last week overwhelms us this week. The forgiveness we should have sought last month feels harder to seek this month. Autumn has passed, winter has come, and opportunity has slipped through our fingers. The wise learn to take the farmer’s view of life: when the time comes to plow, a farmer pays more attention to the season than to his feelings. And when the time comes to tackle our own difficult tasks, the wise do the same. ‘I would be putting myself at risk.’ There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets! (Proverbs 22:13; see also 26:13) Indulging a bad excuse is a little like feeding a pigeon: give bread to one, and twenty more will soon coo at your feet. Bad excuses breed bad excuses — and even worse excuses over time. And so, when a friend, family member, or boss refuses to entertain the sluggard’s littles and tomorrows , he takes more radical measures: “Haven’t you seen the lion roaming the streets? I’ll die!” Did any sluggard ever attempt such an excuse? Maybe. “Laziness is a great lion-maker,” says Charles Spurgeon. “He who does little dreams much. His imagination could create not only a lion but a whole menagerie of wild beasts” (“One Lion: Two Lions: No Lion at All”). For our own purposes, however, we can consider a tamer version of the sluggard’s beast: “I would be putting myself at risk.” To our inner sluggard, a scratch in the throat is cause for a sick day, a little tiredness is reason to nap instead of mow, and a long day at work is justification for skipping small group. After all, our bodies and minds need the rest, don’t they? Care is required here, of course. Some people really do work their bodies into the dust, forsaking the rest God gives and “eating the bread of anxious toil” (Psalm 127:2). The sluggard, however, is prone to label as “anxious toil” any work that meets with inner resistance. He forgets that overcoming such resistance is part of what makes diligence diligence . God made our bodies to bend and strain, our minds to crank and labor, our souls to strive and press. The lion called “Lazy” will counsel us to avoid the strain, but diligence will slay the lion. ‘What do you know about the pressures I’m under?’ The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. (Proverbs 26:16) Confront a sluggard in his sluggishness, and you may find that he has a penchant for euphemisms. “He has no idea that he is lazy,” writes Kidner on Proverbs 26:13–16. He is not a shirker but a “realist” (13); not self-indulgent but “below his best in the morning” (14); his inertia is “an objection to being hustled” (15); his mental indolence a fine “sticking to his guns” (16). ( Proverbs , 156) Our own sluggishness, then, often appears in our defenses against the charge. Once, as a single man, I told a mentor, “I need more time to myself.” “You don’t need it,” he responded. Immediately, I raised the drawbridge, manned the ramparts, and launched inward mortars against the attack. What could he, a husband and father of three, possibly know about the pressures I was under? The self-defense is laughable now, but back then, wise in my own eyes, I couldn’t accept that much of what I called “alone time” was better labeled “sluggishness.” The sluggard sees his own work as the hardest work, his own excuses as the best excuses, his own diversions as the most reasonable diversions — no matter what his friends, wife, or pastor may say. But the wise learn to develop a self-distrustful posture. Rather than responding to requests or challenges with an inward Don’t you see my burdens? they remember their proneness to folly, and learn to call the sluggard by his real name. The Christian and the Sluggard Between the Christian and the sluggard, Spurgeon says, “there should be as wide a division as between the poles.” He’s right. “Christian” and “sluggard” go together like “husband” and “playboy,” like “judge” and “thief”: the latter destroys the integrity of the former. “In Christ we find our pattern for work. In Christ we find our power for work. And in Christ the sluggard dies.” And why? Because Christians belong to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was not sluggish. He was no workaholic, of course: he could feast, rest, sleep, and develop deep relationships. But oh did he work. In the Gospels we find not the sluggishness but “the steadfastness of Christ” (2 Thessalonians 3:5): the diligence of one who never entertained “just a little more” or “tomorrow,” but worked while it was day (John 9:4). He plowed in the autumn cold of life, forsaking every excuse not to save us. And he never cried “lion!” though he walked into the den (Psalm 22:21). Therefore, the apostle Paul can say to the sluggish, “Such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work” (2 Thessalonians 3:12). In Christ we find our pattern for work. In Christ we find our power for work. And in Christ the sluggard dies.