Souls that are in prison now.

William Branham.

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Souls that are in prison now.

And then I was out hunting one time, which seems to be a second nature to me, to love to hunt. And I was out hunting with a boy, Jim Poole, a lovely kid; (I think his boy comes to church here, little Jim. A fine family of people. I knowed the Pooles. Jimmy and I slept together and lived together since we were little boys in school.... We're about six months apart in age) and Jimmy let his gun go off and shot me through both legs, real close to me with a shotgun, and I was taken to the hospital and there-laying there dying. (No penicillin or nothing in those days). And they had a rubber sheet under me, and I know that night, they were going to operate the next morning. They just took and cleaned off the wound, and big pieces of flesh blowed up, and they'd take the scissors and cut it off, and I had to hold a man's hands... and they had to pry my hands loose from his wrists, when they got through. I screamed and cried, holding onto-like that, and them cutting that part of the leg off. I was fourteen years old, just a boy.

And that night I tried to go to sleep and they ... I woke up and something splashed. And here was blood, nearly a half a gallon, I guess, had come from them veins. And they'd taken an x-ray and they said the shot was laying so close to that artery on either side that just a little scratch would cut it right in two and I'd start bleeding. “Well,” I thought, “This is the end of me.” I put my hands down like this and raised it up, and the blood running down my hands, it was my own blood I was laying in. I called-rang the bell. The nurse came, and she just soaked it up with towels because there was nothing they could do.

And the next morning, under those weakening conditions, (they didn't give the blood transfusions in them days, you know) they operated on me. They gave me ether. And when I... The old ether-I guess you remember, it's the old anesthetic. And under that ether, when I came out... I was coming out of the ether after eight hours. They had to give me so much, they thought I couldn't... I wouldn't wake up. They couldn't get me awake.

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When I came out from under that ether, there was something happened to me there. I've always believed it to be a vision. Because I was so weak, they thought I was dying. She was crying. When I opened my eyes to look, I could hear her talking, and then I went back to sleep. Woke up two or three times. And then I had a vision then ... and then about seven months later I had to go and have shotgun wads and greasy hunting clothes taken out of my legs that the doctor didn't get it. So I had blood poison, both legs was swelled up and doubled back under me, and they wanted to take both legs off at my hips. And I said, “No, just come higher and take it off up here.” I just couldn't stand it. And so finally, Dr. Reeder and Dr. Perdyl from Louisville, performed the operation, and cut down in there and taken it out; and today I've got wonderful legs by the grace of God.

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Now, in this time, as I had this vision and thinking that I had passed from this life into torment. And seven months later, here at the Clark County Memorial Hospital, I had the second operation. And that time, when I come out, I thought I was standing out in the west. I had another vision, and there was a great golden cross in the skies, and the glory of the Lord flowing off of that cross. And I stood with my hands out like this, and that glory was falling into my chest. And the vision left me. My father was standing there looking at me, when the vision came.

I've always felt... All the people that's knowed me all these years knows I've always wanted to go west. You know how it is. It's always been something to the west. But because an astronomer told me one time, the same thing, that I should go west... The stars, when they cross their cycles and so forth, I was born under that sign, and I'd never be a success in the east, I'd have to go west. And last year I took off west to fulfill what a lifetime's desire has been, to do it.

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After the vision struck me, and I was so weak and I'd lost all that blood, and I thought I was sinking into an endless eternity-many of you have heard me tell this before-and sinking into an endless eternity. First, I was going through like clouds, and then through darkness and sinking on down, down, down. And the first thing you know, I got into the regions of the lost. And in there I screamed, and I looked and everything, there was just no foundation to it. I could never stop falling-for eternity... looked like, I was going to fall-there was no stopping nowhere.

Then, what a difference it was from the vision I had here not long ago of being in Glory with the people, [Death, What then?] the contrast. But in this, as I was falling, I finally-I screamed for my daddy. Of course, being just a kid, that's what I would do. I screamed for my daddy; and my daddy wasn't there. I screamed for my mother; “Somebody catch me!” and there was no mother there. I was just going. And I screamed then to God; and there was no God there. There was nothing there.

And after awhile I heard the most mournful sound that I ever heard; and it was the awfullest feeling. There's no way-even a literal burning fire would be a pleasure to the side of what this was. Now, those visions has never been wrong. And it was just one of the most horrible feelings I ever had, and what did... I heard a noise, sounded like some kind of a haunted affair. And when it was, I looked coming, and it was women, and they had green stuff, you could just see their face, and they had green stuff under their eyes, and their eyes looked like-run back like the women today paint their eyes. Run back like that and just their eyes and face, and they were going, “Uh, uh, uh, uh.” Oh, my! I just screamed out, “Oh, God, have mercy upon me. Have mercy, oh God. Where are You. If You'll only let me go back and live, I promise You to be a good boy.” Now, that's the only thing I could say. Now, God knows, and at the day of judgment, He'll judge me for that statement. That's what I said, “Lord God, let me go back and I'll promise You I'll be a good boy.”

And when I got shot, I had told lies, I had done pretty near everything there was to be done, only one thing that I say ... I might as well just clean it out while I'm right here now. And when I looked down and seen I was half blowed in two almost ... I said, “God, have mercy on me. You know I never did commit adultery.” That's the only thing that I could say to God. I'd never accepted his pardon and all these things. I just could say, “I never did commit adultery.” And then they taken me out there, and then in that, I cried, “God, be merciful to me. I'll be a good boy, if You'll only let me go back,” for I knew there was a God somewhere. And so help me, those weary creatures all around-I'd just been a new arrival. The most hideous, horrible, ungodly feeling in that.... Looked like great big eyes-big eyelashes out like that, and run back like a cat. Like-back like this, and green stuff and like it cankered or something, and they were going, “Uh, uh, uh.” Oh what a feeling! Now, when I...

Then in a moment's time, I'd come back to natural life again. That thing has bothered me. I've thought, “Oh, let it be that I'll never go to a place like that. No other human being will ever have to go to a place like that.” Seven months later, I had the vision of standing in the west and seeing that gold cross coming down upon me. And I knew that there was a regions of the damned somewhere.

Now, I never noticed it too much until about four weeks ago. The wife.... Never thought of it in this terms. About four weeks ago, the wife and I went down to Tucson to do some shopping, and while we were sitting.... The wife, we went in downstairs and there was a bunch of sissy-like boys had their hair ratted, (you know, like the women does), and bangs combed down here in front, and these real high trousers on, kind of-I guess the beatniks or ever what you call them. And they were in there, and everybody was looking at them, and their heads was that big like the women that wear these here “waterhead” haircuts, you know, and they were down there.

So, I went upstairs, and I sat down and when I did-there was an escalator, (it was in J.C. Penny's store) and the escalator bringing the people up. I really turned sick at my stomach seeing those women come up there; young, old, and indifferent, wrinkled, young, and every way, with little bitty shorts on; their filthy body and those sexy dressed women with those great big heads like that, and here they come, and one coming right up that escalator was just coming right up like that where I was sitting back in a chair-sitting there with my head down,

And I turned and looked. One of them coming up the steps was saying (Spanish speaking) to another woman-she was a white woman speaking to the Spanish woman. And when I looked, all at once I was changed. There I'd seen that before. Her eyes (you know how the women are doing now, painting their eyes, just recently) like cat, you know put it up like this, and wearing cat glasses and everything, you know, with eyes up like this. And that green stuff under their eyes. There was that thing that I seen when I was a child. There was the woman just exactly. And I just got numb all over, and begin to look around, and there was those people mumbling, you know, going on about the prices and things in the building.

Looked like that I just changed for a moment. And I looked and I thought, “That's what I saw in hell.” There they was, that canker. I thought because they were in hell what made them that way ... a greenish blue under their eyes. And here was these women painted with greenish-blue, just the way that vision said about forty years ago. (About forty years ago, is what it's been. I'm fifty-four, and I was fourteen.) So about forty years ago, and that's the number anyhow of the judgment.

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I thought then as I noticed them cankered looking eyes on them women. There were the Spanish, the French, Indian, and White, and all together, but their great big heads, you know, bushed up, with that combs, the way they comb it back, way big, and then comes out. You know how they do it, fix it like they do it. And then, them cankered looking eyes and the eyes with the paint, they run back like a cat's eyes; and them talking, and there I was again, standing there in J.C. Penny's store, back in hell again! I got so scared, I thought, “Lord, surely I haven't died and You've let me come to this place after all.” And there they were making ... just around like that ... in that vision like you could just barely hear it with your ears, you know. Just the mumble and going on of people, and them women coming up that escalator and walking around there and that “uh-uh,” and there was them green-funny-looking eyes, mournful.

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Souls that are in prison now.

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

Hebrews 9:27