The May Company: William Branham Cult History

The May Company was at one time the second-leading upscale department store in the United States. It was founded in Leadville, Colorado by David May in 1877, moved to St. Louis in 1905, and began to spread through the nation in large cities with a customer base that could support its higher prices. It eventually merged with Federated Department Stores, now Macy’s Incorporated) in 2005. It was in the elite shopping district in Los Angeles that William Branham issued a failed prophecy to his son, Billy Paul Branham. He told Billy, “I may not be here, but you won’t be an old man until sharks swim right where we are standing”. The building is still standing today, with no sharks swimming, and has been repurposed for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. I had the opportunity of visiting the building in 2023.

There are many interesting details about the failed prophecy. Billy Paul Branham, who was born in 1935, has far outlived what William Branham would have considered to be “old” at the time, outliving William Branham himself. In retellings of the prophecy, Branham added additional details of the alleged vision, claiming that Capernaum — which has never been under the sea — was submerged under the Sea of Galilee. Many people, however, do not consider the fact that Branham was shopping in the elite shopping district of Los Angeles. Branham claimed to have “never taken an offering in his life”, and used the stage persona of a poor, humble, Kentucky bumpkin transplanted in Indiana — not the persona of a person who would shop in stores that many of his followers could not afford to even enter.

This, apparently, was the case even from the early days of his ministry. In 1947, for example, a lost-and-found advertisement was run in the Jeffersonville Evening Newspaper for a missing pair of alligator shoes. Apparently, Media Branham lost her expensive shoes near the local Kroger store.

You can learn this and more on william-branham.org

Alligator shoes:
https://william-branham.org/site/resource?key=ca09549f-7edb-4c4c-b2b6-24d1a48900a6&parent=william_branham

Acts of the Prophet:
https://william-branham.org/data/topics/los_angeles_prophecy/publication/acts_of_the_prophet_los_angeles_billy_paul_branham.jpg

Los Angeles Prophecy:
https://william-branham.org/social/research/topics/los_angeles_prophecy