<TITLE>11. Par 14-15</TITLE>L-14 And coming down along a lane, which many people right here in this building now, that I see, Brother Ryan, for one, setting here, Brother Bosworth, for another one, sitting near, and Brother Baxter is near. I've taken them right to the place; they've seen the place and all about it. People come from Canada, and everywhere, going in there wanting to see that place, know where it's at. And there, One spoke to me from out of a tall poplar tree, that said, "Don't you never smoke, drink, or defile your body, for there's a work for you do when you get older." Why, it liked to scared me to death. I run home. Mother thought I was hurt or something, and--or bitten by a snake.
Then a few days after that, setting... That was my first vision, setting out there under a big silver poplar tree in the front yard, where the tree stands yet today... Standing out there in the front of that place, I seen Something, like yesterday afternoon, I seen Him coming upon me, that I never... I didn't know what it was. In a little bit I moved off, and I looked, and I seen moving up out of those bushes down by the river, and along there came a big bridge, and it spanned across the river. I seen men dropping off of it and losing their lives.
And I went in and told mama. She said, "Honey, you went to sleep."
I said, "Mama, I was not asleep." I said, "I was setting there. I had a funny feeling, mama." I said, "Oh, I'm scared, mama. What's the matter with me?"
She said, "Oh, you're just nervous, honey."
I said, "Mama, something... I don't want to feel this way." And it was Something moving. And just... She wrote it down. And twenty-two years from that time, the Municipal Bridge which spans the Ohio River run across at the same place, and the same amount of men dropped off the bridge and lost their lives, just exactly. From that it would take... Some of these days, I want to set on a tape recording, and tell it in detail, which would take hours, and hours, and hours, to go into the things from a little boy, that I'd see things. I seen the '37 flood coming. I remember, I stood right on Fall's City Transfer Company; many you all acquainted with Jeffersonville, knows where that's at. I stood there and was preaching. I'd become a minister then. Many other things happened along the line, oh, it's numerous. How It would tell me to watch at a certain place, do a certain thing.

L-15 One time while pop was trying to get me to take a drink of whiskey, and I said... They called me a sissy, and I said, "Give me the bottle; I will never be called a sissy."
My daddy said, "You... I raised a bunch of children, but one of them's a sissy, and that's Bill."
I said, "Me, a sissy?" I said, "I'm sick and tired of being called that." And I had taken a bottle, and pulled the stopper out of it, and started to take it up to take a drink; I said, "I will show you whether I'm a..."
The man said, said, "You mean to tell me you're a Branham, an Irishmen, and won't take a drink?"
I said, "Give me the bottle." And I pulled the stopper to take the drink. When I started up, God Almighty in His grace stopped me from doing it right there, or I would've done it.
And I remember as a little lad, then setting in school, and I seen what whiskey had done to my home, how I went to school with no shoes on, no shirt on all winter and my coat buttoned up like this.
I was reading where Abraham Lincoln got off the boat down in New Orleans and during the day of slavery, and seen them taking a great big, burly colored man and his little wife, and his two kiddies, screaming, and crying, and praying. And they was auctioning him off there to breed him amongst bigger women, to bring forth a bigger bunch, healthier, fatter slaves. And that little mother standing there, and old Abraham Lincoln took his off of his head, hit his fist, and said, "That's wrong. That man's a human, just the same as I'm a human. And someday I will hit that with all I've got, if it costs my life." And he did.


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