Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

18

THE LATTER RAIN

MOVEMENT

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18-19 (KJV)

I SAT WITH A GROUP of fellow ministers in the large meeting hall at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose, California. I was in my late twenties, a young pastor newly arrived in San Jose in 1959 to start a church. We ministers were cooperating in an area-wide meeting with one of the most famous traveling ministers of the day, William Mar rion Branham. His fame in Pentecostal circles was phenomenal. He was known as a man with a ministry of healing and the ability to "call out" the circumstances and diseases of people he had never met. Many con sidered him a prophet. The atmosphere of the meeting was charged with expectancy. Sitting in the front row of the ministers on the platform, directly behind the speaker, I had direct exposure to one of the most amazing religious meetings of my life. William Branham was an uneducated country Baptist minister. He did not speak well and his messages were not always as clear as they might be. But in spite of these shortcomings, he seemed to convey the dynamic presence of God, especially when he ministered to people.

286