Ern Baxter on William Branham, Word and Spirit

I have been re-visiting again the series of interviews Ern Baxter gave shortly before his going to glory. They were called "Life on Wings" and the transcript of the interviews is available courtesy of my old friend Mark Heath. I was listening to the third session in the series which dealt with in particular Ern Baxter's association with William Branham. Dewey Friedel asked Ern Baxter about Branham and some of his concerns with him. Ern answered the question and went on to sum up very well the concern we should still have today for not abandoning either our commitment to the Word of God or our love for the Person of the Holy Spirit.

I have posted the transcript of the section below the video clip in case Ern is not quite clear in the video quality.



Baxter:

Well I would probably say, and I say this without prejudice and I say this with a deep affection for William Branham. I think that Brother Branham probably walked in all the lights that he had, he certainly was not what you and I would call a theologian. He was a man who had some rather strange views of the Scripture. The one thing that kept me at his side was that he had a great love for the Lord Jesus and I felt that any man, who placed the lordship of Christ where he placed it, was a man I could associate with. Many of his other doctrinal views – we controverted again and again. I think as in the Latter Rain and as in Pentecost and as in the charismatic dimension, and many people don’t understand me when I say this because I have been in all of these things, when an evangelical or a non-charismatic criticises Pentecostalism and the charismatic dimension and William Branham, I say, “Woo – now just a minute, I want to talk to you!”.

Because I started speaking in tongues in 1932 and I have never been ashamed of that. I have never opted out of my charismatic dimension while I have been pursuing what I hoped was sound doctrine. And a man coming out of the evangelical realm criticising the charismatic dimension – well I’m going to have to take up for the charismatic. But then having done that, I want to say to the charismatic, “Where’s the Word dimension?”. And one of my deep concerns that I have held almost all my life is that it is the Word dimension that seems to get short changed in the charismatics –

It’s the Spirit dimension that gets short changed in the evangelical realm and my life long dream has been to see these two come together in some kind of permanent union – we’d blow the world into the kingdom of God!".