30 YEARS IN REVIEW - branham.org...2011/03/30 · Brother Joseph, Sister Rebekah, and Brother Billy...
Transcript of 30 YEARS IN REVIEW - branham.org...2011/03/30 · Brother Joseph, Sister Rebekah, and Brother Billy...
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30 YEARS IN REVIEW
LETTER FROM BROTHER JOSEPH3
WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM37
Dedicated to the ministry of God’s prophet, William Marrion Branham.“But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.”
Revelation 10:7
Catch The Visionis puBlisheD By Voice of GoD RecoRDinGs, inc.
Voice of GoD RecoRDinGsp.o. Box 950
JeffeRsonVille in 47131 u.s.A.
[email protected] . www.branham.org
CONTENTS
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When i started Voice of God Recordings thirty years ago, i never would have thought we would reach the year 2012. Although we believed it would only be a few days until we saw the lord return, we held strong to Brother Branham’s words, “If I knowed He’s coming tomorrow, and I was a farmer, I’d put my crop in today, sure. If He made me a farmer, I’m going to stay right at my duty.” We kept planting the seeds all these years, fully expecting the lord to return, but he just kept growing wheat.
We started with five employees and three rented rooms in the little town of Jeffersonville, indiana. Brother Branham set an example for us by never asking for money, no matter how bad things looked. i must admit that there were quite a few times when i didn't know how we would be able to make payroll that week. But each time, the lord provided just enough for us to get by and he continues to provide for all our needs.
The lord placed a burden on my heart to set up overseas offices and libraries, but we
could barely make the bills at home. i also wanted every believer to have access to all of Brother Branham’s sermons, but one cassette library cost thousands of dollars and an enormous amount to ship. Against all odds, he continued to open the doors and we continued to move forward. little by little, and country by country, we set up a network of distribution centers, offices, and libraries where believers could gather to hear Brother Branham and read his books.
over the years, we saw the once-impenetrable soviet nations open their borders for shipments of books and tapes, and now we are even printing in some of those countries. Technology moved forward with modern printing presses and duplication machines. cassettes gave way to Mp3 files, where the complete Message library comes in a tiny package of DVDs. Recently, we were able to give the entire world access to Brother Branham’s Message from our website, both in english and 50 other languages. We’ve started a
worldwide youth ministry called Young Foundations, and built a youth camp north of Jeffersonville. We now have 80 employees in Jeffersonville, more than 200 employees overseas, 53 foreign offices, and thousands of libraries, serving about two million believers worldwide.
i know that this work has not come without sacrifice. year after year, believers like you have put their shoulders to the grindstone to help send God’s Message around the world. The prophet isaiah said, So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. My friends, we can all look out across this crop of wheat and see that our labors have not been in vain. We will soon see the harvest that we all long for. until that time, we’ll work till Jesus comes.
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Brother Joseph, Brother Billy Paul, and Brother Jackson Silla (top and right) during the first trip to Kenya to establish lending libraries in 1984. Nairobi marked the first of thousands of VGR lending libraries.
Brother Fred Sothmann (above) proofing reel-to-reel tapes to find the best master and/or missing audio. This process has continued until today. We are constantly finding new sermons and missing portions.
First employee picture taken in 1984 (opposite page top left).
Top row: Helen Borders (now Helen Mullen), Mindy Quick, Rebekah Smith, Joseph Branham, Bobby Watson, Fred Sothmann, James Maguire.
Bottom row: Carl Schaeffer, Nathan Jones, Paul Branham, Fred Sanger, David Branham.
(opposite page top right) Brother Joseph in Kenya, 1984.
(opposite page) Brother Joseph and Brother Billy Paul during the first trip to Africa. Brother Obadiah Kamwati (behind Brother Joseph) was the first VGR librarian.
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(above) Original VGR building in the Quartermaster Depot. We started by renting three rooms in this building.
(right) Brother Joseph and Sister Helen Borders. Sister Helen also worked as a secretary for Brother Branham.
(below) The old Olivetti 351 electronic typewriter was state-of-the-art in those days, and there was no one better at writing than Sister Rebekah Smith.
(above) Brother Joel Watson preparing a shipment to go to Africa. We duplicated cassette tapes until 2009, when we completed the switch to CDs and DVDs.
(below left) Brother Joseph speaking to a crowd at Easter about the “new” overseas lending libraries.
(below right) M bags were how we shipped material before pallets and containers. There was little protection for the contents, which led to many of the books being damaged during shipment. Now, the volume of material is so large that we use 20’ and 40’ sealed containers for much of our overseas shipping.
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Employee picture during the late 1980’s.
Brother Joseph, Sister Rebekah, and Brother Billy Paul in Kenya during one of the first overseas trips.
(from left to right) Brothers Mike Pister, George Wenger, and Richard Sacher working on the press in 1994 (opposite top left).
(opposite top right) Brother Nathan Jones and the Tapeboy, Brother Jim Maguire in the duplication room. We call him “Tapeboy” because Brother Branham did: “Well, this is the tape boy sitting here, Jim Maguire.” 63-1130E GO, AWAKE JESuS
Brother James Jones in the typesetting department in 1986 (opposite middle left). The Kurzweil optical reader (foreground) cost $42K and the Varityper type setter (left side of the picture) cost about $36K. With the IBM personal computer, there is about $82K worth of computer equipment in that room. A simple desktop computer and scanner can do most of this work today.
Brother Joseph and Brother Roy Roberson (opposite middle right), a personal friend of Brother Branham and long-time trustee of VGR. Brother Joseph was interviewing Brother Roberson about his experiences with Brother Branham.
Brothers Joseph, Tim Gary, and Jim Maguire (opposite bottom) with footlockers that would be sent to Kenya. Each locker was packed full of cassette tapes, which were to accompany Brother Barnabas Kariuki back to Kenya. We did not know there was a 70lb limit for luggage before we arrived at the airport. When we arrived, the counter clerk laughed and said they were far too heavy to send. When he weighed them, each locker registered 70lbs on his scale. The lockers weighed in excess of 120lbs each.
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Brothers Matti Honkanen, Heino Buitenkamp, Joseph Branham, Gerald Buitenkamp, and Carl Schaeffer in front of the European Office in Holland in 1993 (above left). Brother Matti and Brother Heino risked their lives to smuggle the Message across the Iron Curtain. After the fall of the Soviet union, we began printing Message books within Russia, ukraine, and uzbekistan so we could get as many books as possible inside those countries while the doors are open.
(above right) Brother Billy Paul at an Easter Open House.
(below) Office in Kinshasa, Congo.
For years, the Message books were brought to Bolivia (above right) in baggage on airplanes. Our distributor, Juan Tarqui, worked for the airlines and was able to get packages onto commercial airlines. These packages did not need to go through customs, and shipping was free. Brother Juan picked up the packages and brought them to our office, where they were distributed to believers. The demand is much too high now for this method, but it was a great blessing while it lasted.
African believers carrying a new shipment into their library (above left).
(below) The Indian work started in 1985 with the help of our current office manager, Brother Joel Paramanandam (not shown). We sent the first 40’ container to India in 1993, and that is when the work began to grow quickly. Today, there are about 100,000 believers in India, and we are translating into 10 different languages for that country alone.
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(top) VGR has donated hundreds of bicycles to missionaries like these at a uganda library.
(left) Believers come from far and wide to visit VGR libraries.
(above) It’s always an exciting time when newly-translated Message books are delivered.
(top left) Each VGR office and library has its own staff of employees. The librarian reports to the VGR manager in that country, who reports to the Missionary Department in Jeffersonville.
(top right) These believers in Bolivia just received a set of newly-translated Spanish sermons.
(left) This young man in the Central African Republic was given a solar panel, cassette player, tapes, and books to bring back to his family and church.
(below) Nicaragua is a rural country and the poorest in Central America, but it has more Message churches than any other Central American country. Many of the churches are high in the remote mountains, and cannot be reached by truck.
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Each library has a librarian that is in charge of keeping the sermons in stock. Some libraries have their own building, and others are small rooms like this one (left).
The Lighthouse Project changed the way VGR distributes material. A full cassette library was rare because of the thousands of dollars it cost to send all those tapes. Now, a box of CDs, an MP3 player, and a few boxes of books (above) give access to all of Brother Branham’s sermons. Just a few years earlier, a small church would have no hope for such a blessing.
The hundreds of Message books that are included in the package are shared by the believers. They take these books home, read them, and then bring them back for others to enjoy, even at a church of this size. (below)
The first obstacle a new believer in prison usually faces is a way to be baptized. All too often, they can’t find a pool deep enough, or if the prisons have a baptismal, the chaplains frequently refuse to baptize them properly. The believers fill large trashcans, barrels, or anything else they can find with enough water to be immersed. These are inmates at a prison in Argentina. They are baptizing in a basin that is normally filled with acid. They were burned, but their wounds healed, and they are now following the end-time Gospel. Every month, we send out hundreds of books to inmates all over the world.
Brother Jerry Amalong felt the pull to the Mexican people at a very young age. He had no material from Brother Branham to pass out, so he used videos and tracts from T.L. Osborn. Then he said that Brother Osborn got his start from a prophet named William Branham. Decades later, Brother Amalong is still talking about Brother Branham, except now he has plenty of the prophet’s books, CDs, and videos to give to the people.
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(opposite top) Offices serve a very important role in the work at VGR. First of all, this is a place that the local people can find Brother Branham’s material. It is also where the shipments are received and repacked to go to the subcenters, libraries, churches, and home addresses. This is the initial construction of our office in Kinshasa, Congo. We have since moved to a much larger facility.
(opposite left) A pastor in Bolivia passing out newly-translated Message books to his congregation.
(opposite right) A young sister in Mexico carrying her grandmother to church.
There are more than 7,000 islands in the Philippines, and there are thousands of believers scattered throughout these islands. Brother Jeremiah Villagracia (below) is tasked with making sure these people are receiving regular shipments of Message material.
(left) Brother German Calva, (with his hand on the truck) travels about 4,000 miles during each distribution trip through Central and Southern Mexico. The Mexico City office serves the largest number of people of any office in Latin America. There are 25 churches in Mexico City alone.
(below) Motorized vehicles are still a luxury in many parts of the world. These believers make do with what they have, carrying boxes of material for miles in this hand-pulled cart.
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Brother Matti Honkanen once smuggled Message books into the Soviet union from his home country of Finland. In the mid 1980’s, a Russian man traveled 800 miles to visit a Pentecostal Church in Leningrad. He was going by faith that someone in that church might have heard of a prophet that once spoke in Finland. He stood up during service and asked if anyone knew a man named William Branham. Brother Matti was on a missionary trip to Russia at the time, and was in that very congregation. The man became an important contact in Russia.
Brother Matti (top left) and the first container going to the formerly Soviet countries after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The shipment went to Finland first, where it was then sent to Russia and Lithuania. We now print Message books inside Russia, ukraine, China, Indonesia, and India.
Brother Emmanuel Djedouboum (top right) has been distributing Brother Branham’s Message to believers in the staunchly Muslim country of Chad for years.
Ministers’ meetings like this one in Angola (above) are vital for the distribution work. We explain that our main objective is not to preach any doctrine, but to get the Message into the hands of God’s people. We are usually greeted with love and a burning desire to help in any way they can.
A fire broke out in the Quartermaster Depot (above) late in the evening of January 15, 1992. VGR employees rushed in to protect the Message material in the warehouse. We arrived at about midnight, during the heat of the blaze. We quickly emptied the warehouse, but the fire was put out before any VGR property was damaged.
The magnitude of the work is amazing when you consider churches like this one (right). There are about 10,000 members at this Congolese church, and each person needs access to Brother Branham’s Message.
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Brother Joseph and employees at the dedication of the new VGR property in 1998. We moved into the building the following year.
This drawing was made on the back of a paper placemat over breakfast with an architect. Brother Joseph described the vision he had in his mind for the building, and the architect sketched as Brother Joseph spoke.
The 67,700ft2 building is located on 73 acres of land. It is framed with steel girders placed on 6” of concrete in the office area and 9” in the press wing.
Over 90% of the material produced at VGR is given away free of charge. We have shipped material directly to 172 of the 194 countries in the world, and missionaries are actively smuggling the Message into most of the countries that we are not able to ship to. We’ve duplicated about 9 million cassette tapes, 19 million MP3 sermons, and more than 150 million Message books over the past 30 years.
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We printed 103,000 copies of The Mother Opossum and 91,000 copies of Footsteps Of The Prophet children’s books in eight languages. Clockwise from top left: young believers in Honduras, Philippines, Ghana, and Nigeria.
Every church in Honduras (left) received a large package of Message books, a full Spanish MP3 library, two MP3 players, children’s books, a 16x20 framed picture of the Pillar of Fire and another of Christ at 33, and a bookshelf. The project has moved to the rest of Central America, where every church has either received this package or will soon receive it.
The Malawi Tapeboy, John Katyale (above), has baptized more than 3,500 people. How does he get them to believe? He goes into a village and plays a tape. We’ve printed about 4 million Message books in the Chichewa language that Brother John and others like him can leave with the new converts.
The CTV Tour went through the united States, Africa, Europe, and Mexico. This is the Tour at Durban, (right) the same stadium Brother Branham packed to capacity in 1951, when 30,000 “blanket natives” gave their hearts to the Lord Jesus.
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The office managers are vital to the Lord’s work. They grew up in their country, so they know the ins and outs of the distribution process. They also have the greatest burden for their people. Brother Barnabas Kariuki (above) found two pages of a Message book in an outhouse. He read those pages over and over, until years later, when he met a man that had more Message books. He was then introduced to a pastor that had 400 tapes in his library. He never turned back. He has been a VGR distributor in Kenya for more than 27 years.
There are about 800,000 believers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We send an average of ten 20-foot containers from our Headquarters in Jeffersonville every year to meet the growing need of the believers. The containers arrive at the port in Brazzaville (left), Republic of Congo, and they are taken by truck across the Congo River into Kinshasa. They are then unloaded at our office and repacked for distribution throughout the country.
(top) Brother Gerald Buitenkamp grew up in a family that risked their lives smuggling Message books and tapes across the Iron Curtain, into Poland and East Germany. Here, he is witnessing to a shepherd in Morocco. Over the past few years, we have broken ground in the Muslim countries of North Africa (top right) and the Middle East. Although the doors have opened slightly, many of these places are still very dangerous for Christians.
(above) These young men are enjoying listening to Brother Branham on a phone. Technology has allowed us to place the Message on the internet, which opens the doors for anyone who has an internet connection to hear or read all of Brother Branham’s sermons. Smart phones give people access to the Message anytime and almost anywhere.
(right) The Table has all of Brother Branham’s sermons. It also has most of the books Brother Branham mentioned, Bible audio, Brother Branham’s books, Brother Branham’s videos, and the Message Search program in English, French, and Spanish. Now, if you have a home computer and printer, you are a distribution point for anyone who has a desire to receive Brother Branham’s Message.
We are constantly looking for missing sermons and better audio of the sermons we already have. Brother Branham wanted his tapes to be the highest quality, so we have gone through tens of thousands of reel-to-reel tapes to produce the most accurate transcriptions and best audio possible.
Printed first translated
Cub Corner Magazine
Published first issue of
the new Catch The Vision Magazine
Lighthouse package
delivered to every known
church in Ghana and
Nigeria
Every known church in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast,
Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger,
Senegal, and Sierra Leone received
a full French Message library and MP3 player
Established office in
Monterrey, Mexico
Launched redesigned
www.branham.org website with all of Brother Branham’s
sermons Easter Open House included 100th year commemoration of Brother Branham’s
birthday
Printed first CTV newspaper
1981 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 1990 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 2000 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 2011 .
Duplicated 6 millionth cassette
PublishedHere I Stand
Established offices in Windhoek, Namibia;
Nelspruit, South Africa
Erected new 6,000 sq ft warehouse
for additional storage,
USA
Duplicated 1 millionth
Spanish cassette
Released The Table in MP3 format with 1,177 sermons
Translated Message
into Danish, Tsonga, Uzbek
Established offices in
Limbe, Malawi; Penco, Chile
Catch The Vision Tour began: USA
Purchased new digital
audio duplication
system
Duplicated 7 millionth cassette
Launched newly-designed
website
Established offices in Barquisimeto,
Venezuela; Kimberley, South Africa; Lima, Peru
Duplicated first foreign MP3:
Russian
Duplicated 1 millionth
French cassette
Released version 2 of The Table
Translated Message into Chitumbuka,
Creole, KyaNgonde,
Lingala, Tshivenda
Established office in Kampala,
Uganda
Translated Message into
Burmese
Launched Young Foundations
Department
Translated Message
into Bengali
Duplicated 8 millionth cassette
Hired 60th employee,
USA
Local believers constructed new office in Harare, Zimbabwe
Catch The Vision Tour traveled to
Europe
Established office in Juárez,
Mexico
Catch The Vision Tour traveled to
Africa
Catch The Vision Tour travels to
Mexico
Duplicated 11 millionth
MP3 Message
Hired 70th employee, USA
130th employee, overseas
Established offices in Lusaka, Zambia; Manila, Philippines;
Niterói, Brazil; Pavlograd, Ukraine
Sent 40-foot container filled with 156,922
cassettes to India
Established offices in Bogota,
Colombia; Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Translated Message into
Sinhalese
Translated Message into
Albanian, Lithuanian,
Tagalog
Established office in Vilnius,
Lithuania
Duplicated 4 millionth cassette
Translated Message into
Cebuano, Serbian
Quadrangle sold at auction
Established offices in Espoo, Finland;
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Translated Message into
Bulgarian, Swedish
Produced first CD:
Be Certain of God
APRIL 6:Purchased 75 acres in Jeffersonville for
new VGR International Headquarters
Duplicated 5 millionth cassette
Translated Message
into Latvian
Offered The Voice Message software
7,000 people attended dedication for new International
Headquarters
Established offices in Johannesburg,
South Africa; Navoi, Uzbekistan
Hired 40th employee,
USA
First Catch The Vision
publication
Built new recording
studios in Africa and India
Dedicated new European office
in Nieuw Buinen, Holland
Began construction on
new building
Launched www.branham.org
website
Largest foreign printing endeavor:
150,000 French copies per message
Purchased Harris web
press capable of printing 52,000 32-page books
per hour
Purchased Heidelberg 6-color press capable of printing 44,000 covers per hour
Moved into new building
Hired 50th employee,
USA
Founded Voice Of God Recordings:
5 employees
Filtered first tape
Purchased state of the art
Infonics cassette-duplication system
First combined Spoken Word
Publications and VGR Easter Open
House
Published first sermon index
book
Duplicated first foreign-language sermon: Spanish
Built sound studio to begin
filtering and recording in-house
Brother Joseph, Brother Billy Paul,
and Sister Rebekah traveled to nine
African countries to establish lending
libraries
Received non-profit
status
Began sponsorship program for
overseas libraries
Established first lending library
in Nairobi, Kenya
First sermon translated,
recorded, gapped, and duplicated in
VGR studioTranslated Message
into Kiswahili,
Tamil, Telugu
Representatives sent to South Africa and
Zimbabwe to establish libraries
Translated Message into
Chichewa, French, Hindi,
Korean, Marathi, Polish,
Punjabi
Began distribution in Durban,
South Africa Vision For Africa video released
Modernized typesetting
department by upgrading Linotype machine (7 books yearly) to Varityper (96 books yearly)
Spoken Word Publications
merged with VGR
Translated Message into
Afrikaans, Bemba,
Portuguese
Established office in Montreal, Quebec, Canada for French
translation
Translated Message
into Chinese, German, Korean,
Zulu
Established offices in Kinshasa, Congo; Madras,
India
Weekly production
record: 11,340 tapes
duplicated
Berlin Wall came down enabling
access to communist countries
Translated Message
into Czech,Shona, Xhosa
Established office in Cape Town, South
Africa
Translated Message into Asante Twi,
Ateso,Italian,
Romanian,Russian,Slovak,Tswana,Ukrainian
Established offices in Lagos, Nigeria;
Durban, South Africa
Implemented digital audio technology
Translated Message into
Kannada, Luganda
Established office in
Mexico City, Mexico
Duplicated 2 millionth cassette
Translated Message
into Finnish, Malayalam,
North Sotho, South Sotho
Translated Message
into Dutch, Hungarian
Established offices in Abidjan, Ivory Coast;
Nieuw-Buinen, Holland; Satu Mare, Romania;
St. Petersburg, Russia
Translated Message into
Oriya
Duplicated 1 millionth
foreign cassette
Utilized new word-processing
technology for tape inserts, labels, and
letters
VGR offered tapes on monthly plan
Began ongoing research to locate the most complete and highest-quality tapes. VGR started
with 1,058 sermons
Expanded operations to 3rd floor of Quadrangle
Began establishing
overseas libraries
Printed first Witness
publication
Established office in Harare,
Zimbabwe
Hired 10th employee,
USA
Began distribution in Cape Town, South Africa;
Lusaka, Zambia
2nd major expansion: occupied
entire Quadrangle
building
Purchased ATF web press: increasing
production from 8,000 to 34,000 32-page books
per hour
Purchased McCain Saddle Stitcher
increasing VGR’s ability to collate, staple, and
trim books
Hired 20th employee,
USA
Shipped first crate: India
Shipped first solar
tape recorder
Began distribution in Mozambique
Hired 30th employee,
USA
Shipped first container:
Kenya
Sent representatives to establish offices in Bujumbura, Burundi;
Kigali, Rwanda
Began distribution in Uganda
Representatives traveled to Finland
and Russia to develop distribution system
Duplicated 1 millionth cassette
This timeline represents major milestones of Voice Of God Recordings throughout our 30 years
Representatives traveled to Argentina,
Brazil, and Chile to establish distribution
system
Purchased new audio editing and filtering equipment; started digitizing all audio
24 new sermons
released on cassette
22 new sermons
released on cassette
Upgraded audio editing and filtering equipment
30thanniversaryvoice Of God recordings
1981-2011
Translated Message into Indonesian
Soviet Union collapsed,
opening the borders to Message material
Helen Borders celebrates 40 years of service. She started by assisting her husband, Roy Borders, with Brother Branham’s
campaign scheduleBegan printing Message
books in Ukraine and India
First French MP3 CDs
Printed The Mother Opossum
children’s book
Launched www.youngfoundations.org
website
Began printing Message books
in Russia
Began first wide-scale
humanitarian effort in earthquake-ravaged Peru
Sent humanitarian
aid to Zimbabwe
after economy collapses
Full French library and MP3 player delivered to every known church in Togo
and Benin
Began printing Message books
in China
Sent out the 4,000th Lighthouse
package
First overseas youth camp in Peschiera del Garda, Italy
First Cub Corner Magazine
Shipping Department set record by
shipping well over 1 million pounds of Message material in
one year
Purchased 47 acres north of
Jeffersonville for a youth camp
Began project to deliver a full
Message library, and much
more, to every known church in Central America
Printed 100th Anniversary
Scofield Bible
Sent humanitarian aid to Philippines
after three typhoons devastate country
Jim Maguire celebrated 50 years of service
Discontinued cassette tapes
Massive earthquake sparked
unprecedented humanitarian effort for believers in Haiti
Hired 80th employee,
USA
5,000th Lighthouse
package sent overseas
Printed French
translation of the C.O.D.,
largest printing project in VGR
history
Began printing Message books in Indonesia
Printed The Mother Opossum
and Footsteps Of The Prophet
children’s books in 8 languages
Sent humanitarian
aid to a refugee camp in
Swaziland
First youth camp at Still
Waters for local young people
Released version 3 of The Table
Message eBooks available through Amazon
and Apple websites
24 new witnessing CDs in CDA
format
Barge sank on Congo River, destroying
350,000 French Message books
Launched www.stillwaterscamp.org
website
Local churches pulled together
and began construction of VGR office in
Blantyre, Malawi
Printed 150 millionth Message
book
Distributed a full French or English
Message library and MP3 player to every
known church in Cameroon
Four large-scale youth camps at
Still Waters. 128 young
people attended each camp
www.branham.org added thousands
of translated sermons
The Holy Spirit powerfully visited the young people around the bonfire at the Still Waters
camp
Translated the Message into
Kaonde, Kirundi, Lozi, Malagasy, Norwegian, and
Ovambo
Brother Joseph asked believers
around the globe to observe
Quiet Time on Saturday mornings
Duplicated the 19 millionth MP3 sermon
Duplicated 4 millionth CD
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Brother Joseph watches as a new Ford pickup is loaded into a 20’ container. The truck was sent to Honduras, where it has delivered tens of thousands of pounds of material to the believers in Central America.
Vehicles are animportant part of the overseas work. Notice the spare tires on the roof and winch on the front bumper (left). The African roads are rough, so our vehicles must be ready for the task. This Land Rover has carried Brother Des De Fortier (not shown) thousands of miles through the roads of Mozambique.
Brother Keith Herne (in front of the Land Rover) is a gifted missionary who has introduced many souls to the Message. He started working for VGR in 1989, and now manages the work in South Africa and Namibia.
Easter is the highlight of our year. This is when thousands of believers converge on Jeffersonville to recharge their batteries and have a little time of fellowship with old friends.
The dedication of the new building during Easter 2000 was our largest gathering, with more than 7,000 people. We had over 5,000 people in 2009, in commemoration of Brother Branham’s 100th birthday.
Easter 2000
Easter 2000Easter 2009
Easter 2009 Easter 2009
Easter 2009
Easter 2009
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(opposite page) Although we have always done humanitarian work among believers, the first large-scale effort was in 2007, when a magnitude 8.0 earthquake shook Peru. We immediately sent representatives from Jeffersonville to assess the situation and help with the effort.
(below) The next large project was in Philippines after three typhoons devastated that country. Brother Jeremiah Villagracia, VGR Office Manager in Manila, was out delivering food to believers within hours after the hurricanes subsided.
(top and left) The largest project to date has been in Haiti, after an earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of people. We immediately sent a team to organize a relief effort, and the work has continued for almost two years. One of our distributors in Haiti, Brother Guy Contave, is standing by his destroyed house in Port-au-Prince.
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Where is that one that's going to sow that seed for that end-time church? Where is that ripening seed, that promised Elijah? And immediately after his days shall the great tribulation set in and burn the earth.
And then at the return of the church and the Bride, the Bride and Christ shall walk out upon their ashes in the Millennium, when the earth is purified by fire. And there they shall reign. And the heathens that's never heard the Gospel shall be raised in that time, and the sons of God will be manifested. If he's to reign, he's got to have something to reign over; he's got a domain. “And they ruled and reigned with Christ,” and Christ ruled, with a rod of iron, the nations. Then the Gospel…Then the manifested sons of God with the authority just like He had when He was here (See?), there will come the Millennium in that reign (See?), upon the ashes.
So I've watched for something. Has it slipped by us in humility and we've missed it? Is it gone and the church is left in her sins? If that be so, then it's later than you think. If not, then there's coming one with a message that's straight on the Bible, and quick work will circle the earth. The seeds will go in newspapers, reading material, until every predestinated Seed of God has heard it. None of them will come unless the Father has drawed them, and every one the Father has drawed will hear it and come. That'll be the predestinated Seed will hear the Word.
Then when that takes place, it'll be a gathering together. And Jesus shall appear, and there will go the Church from all over the earth like that, with the resurrection, going up.
Will it be like John came, and even the elected disciples didn't even know it? They said, “Why saith the scribes that Elias must first come?”
He said, “He's already come and you didn't know it.” But said,
“They did what they said they would do unto him.” His message was so quick, look, to all of Israel, and it only happened in one little pla-…two–two little spots: just below in Jerusalem and there, or down at Aenon, where John went up to baptize; and right down at the river where he was baptizing, the river dried up. Just six months, and the whole introduction of the Messiah come right in. See?
Have we overlooked something? Is it later than we think? This is a heart-to-heart talk now. This is, just tonight, just to…Yeah, it's just–just us talking here. Is it later than you think? Was that actually that message there at the river that day? Has it slipped by, and the people has missed it? Is that it? Then it really is later than we think. When will it be? I don't know. Might be tonight. Might be another fifty years. I don't know when it'll be; I'll just keep on going on as I am now.
62-0527 Questions And Answers
Brother Joseph started the Young Foundations ministry in 2006 to help our youth build the strong foundation that they need to carry the Gospel into the future. Young Foundations organizes events such as banquets, camps, field trips, and even raking leaves for elderly people around Jeffersonville. (previous page)
Construction began on the Still Waters youth camp in 2010, and the first event was held later that year. There have now been five camps with young believers from around the world attending.
Brother Gordon Tutani (right) has been a VGR office manager in his home country of Zimbabwe for more than 26 years now. He has recently played an important role in youth camps by leading songs, baptizing, and encouraging young people in a way that only “Brother G” can.
The young people at Still Waters were so impacted by Quiet Time (below) that Brother Joseph wanted to share it with the entire Body of Christ. In October of this year, he asked believers around the world to observe Quiet Time every Saturday at 7:00am, Jeffersonville time.
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