<TITLE>03. Par 8-11</TITLE>L-8 Now, the night that this picture was taken, when I was at Houston, Texas, at the--at the coliseum, the big Sam Houston Coliseum... I think it seats around thirty thousand people, when they seat the stampede floors. And we'd been in the music hall, where they were having about eight thousand in the meetings. And a minister put a piece in the paper and said that I was a religious devil, and should be run out of the city, and he wished he had the privilege of doing it. And then, Mr. Bosworth brought the paper to me, and--and a reporter was waiting downstairs for my answer. I said... And he challenged me to a--a debate.
Well, I tell you friends, I don't believe the Bible is to be debated. I believe the Bible is the Book that we should live instead of fuss about. And I never was in for debating, but the next day he wrote another large piece in the paper, on the front page, it said, "It proves what kind of people they are; they're afraid to approach their heresy in the light of the Bible."

L-9 Mr. Bosworth come back up and brought it to me again, and said, "What about this?"
Well, I said, "Mr. Bosworth, we haven't got time." I said, "There's at least eight or ten thousand people to be prayed for, and why would we use that night, for we just got a few more nights to be here. Why would we take that night just to fuss with one unbeliever, and he'd have the same attitude, no matter what was said, when he left, as he did when he come in? I've never seen a fuss yet ever bring any good." So I said, "I... Why don't you just leave him alone?"
He said, "But Brother Branham, we're duty bound, as religious gentlemen, to answer his question."
And I said, "Well..."
He said, "He has challenged us to a debate."
And I said, "Well, Brother Bosworth, I--I wouldn't do it." I said, "I--it'd just cause a fuss."
And I never will forget the looks on that godly man's face; he said, "Then, Brother Branham, let me do it."
I thought of Caleb, when he said, "Joshua put this sword in my hand when I was forty years old, and today, I'm eighty, and I'm just as good a man today as I was then." And he proved that he was.

L-10 Well, this young, Baptist minister was only about thirty-five, thirty-eight years old, just fresh out of the seminary. And was a smart man, very smart.
And I said, "Brother Bosworth, it would only cause a fuss."
He said, "If I promise you, Brother Branham, that I won't fuss, will you let me do it?"
I said, "All right, if no fussing."
Well, the reporters was waiting downstairs at the Rice Hotel; and the next day, great big headlines in the Houston Herald, I believe it is, or the Houston Chronicle, and it said, "Ecclesiastical Hair Will Fly." You know how the papers can play it up.

L-11 And so that makes me know now, that we are living on a flower bed of ease, for there was people who would disagree with me on other subjects, as far as the east from the west, but that day, special planes, special trains, big engines roared, cars swept across the--them prairies, and people from miles, and miles around come to the rescue right quickly. They believed in Divine healing, and they come.
So I said, "I'll not even go down to the place, because I don't want to... They will fuss, and I don't want to go down, because I don't like to hear people fuss."
And as it got later in the evening, well, I--I thought I'd better go down. So I put my coat on, pulled it up, and two policemen taken me in, up to the thirtieth row; and I sat down up there with my wife, my babies, and my brother.
And there had the ministers on the platform, and so, Mr. Best, Dr. Best, of the Baptist Temple, he had hired the American Photographer Association to come and take six glossies of him. Said, "Now, I'm going to take that old man Bosworth, and I'm going to skin him with the Bible, and I'm going to take his hide and tack it up on my study door for a memorial to Divine healing."


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