Billy Paul Branham's Impossible God

In the early years of my career, long before Facebook, Tiktok, and other social media sites had the widespread appeal they do now, people sent jokes to each other through email. The joke lists were very popular, especially in the corporate offices. It always brightened your day to start with a good cup of coffee and a few things to laugh at in your email.

Military jokes were common during the war with Iraq. One joke sent around reminded me of the old Beatle Bailey comic strip, where a demanding "Sergeant Snorkel" yelled at "Private Bailey" to fetch the truck, and the inept private struggled. When he got the truck down to the sergeant, the sergeant yelled at him something to the effect, "Not the truck from the north valley, Bailey! I said the south valley! This truck has no engine in it!"

When I read the joke, it was not as funny as some of the others because it was a common joke. I'm fairly certain that I originally saw the joke in an actual Beatle Bailey comic in the Sunday paper, but before that, I had seen it at my grandmother's house on an old black-and-white episode of Candid Camera.

Years after this, I saw the same email going around in a different email chain: the heartwarming, feel-good religious emails. Apparently, someone had also received the same joke email that I received, thought it to be real, and published it in a blog as fact instead of funny. On February 10, 2012, the story was shared to the blog, "The Impossible God of a Young Soldier, which ended with the catchphrase from Matthew 19, "With God All Things Are Possible".

In William Branham's "Message" cult of personality, this phrase is part of the cult's loaded language, and the story continued to grow. Someone in the "Message" cult apparently read the same email, thought it to be a "Message" cult member, and the story quickly spread through the cult -- faster than any email chain could have spread it.

By that time, I was no longer a member of the cult but was still part of some of the cult's email chains before members knew that they were supposed to shun me. Someone began claiming that William Branham's sons were telling this same story, claiming that it was a "Message" cult member that they knew. At this point in time, I actually didn't believe it, because I knew the history of this tall tale. It wasn't until someone shared a video with me of Billy Paul Branham speaking at the Still Waters Children's Indoctrination Camp that I realized there was some truth to their story. Billy Paul Branham was more than subtly suggesting that it was, indeed, a cult member who had this "Beatle Bailey experience", and suggested that the "Message" had the power to create sorcerers who could move trucks with their minds. (Or, as the cult phrases it, by faith).