I remember Brother Cleveland saying to me, "What you preached tonight is what Bro. Branham preached.   I've been in his meetings."

"Where is this William Branham?   I need a friend about now.   Since I've been preaching this, my family has left me, my friends don't want anything to do with me, and I can't get a revival anywhere. The radio station wants to cancel.   If anybody, anywhere, believes what I've been preaching, I want to meet him."

He said, "Well, Bro. Shelley, he's gone."

"I've waited a solid year and surely I can wait until he gets back," I answered.   "Just call me when he comes back from the meeting, and I want to meet him.   He could probably help me.   They all think I'm crazy.   If he preached this, he would know the Scriptures more than I do, to help me teach the people.   I want to meet him."

He said, "Bro. Shelley, the Lord took him."

You forgive me for what I said.   "Just as I thought!   You tell me there's somebody that could help me, and now I find out the Lord has taken him."

He said, "Brother Shelley, I have some of his tapes in the car.   Would you like to hear them?"

I said, "Oh my, would I ever!"

He gave me some tapes, and then my deacon said to me, "Come in.  Shut the door!   I've got something to tell you.   He told me some things about Brother Branham that I later found out were untrue.   I did not know at the time that His ministry had become controversial among the organized denominations.

I didn't want to hear anything more about it.   I had enough problems of my own.   I felt as if my life was falling apart.   My radio program and our church school were suffering because of the revelations that I was preaching.   I just packed those tapes that Brother Cleveland had given me in a little paper bag and put them high on a shelf in my office.

One day I was sitting in my office, very discouraged, when my eyes fell on a brown paper bag on the shelf.   The Spirit seemed to say, "Your answer is in that brown paper bag."   (That's when I should have realized that this was the fulfillment of what I had looked for since I was ten years old.)

I said, "Lord, I'm going to listen to those tapes.   If there's anything on there to help me, I want to know.   But if there are things on them that will cause me more problems, I'm not listening to them anymore."

I was weeping and crying.   I took out one tape.   It was called The Spoken Word is the Original Seed.   That made sense to me.   I wanted to hear what he said.   I thought I'd been crying before, but when that prophet of God began to talk, I wept uncontrollably.   I reached over and cut the ringer off the phone, locked the door to my office, and wept and cried and listened to every word.

It was like life to me, and I received more revelation.   I ran to the house, and I said, "Mother, I've heard the voice of God today speaking out of a tape recorder.   I heard Brother Branham, but it was almost as if his voice was in the background, and God was speaking louder than he was.   I don't know how to explain it, but there was a voice within his voice speaking to my heart."   My mother didn't know what I was talking about.

I asked Bro. Cleveland for more tapes.   "I think something's happening to me."

"I hope it's good," he said.

"There is a voice inside of this man's voice talking to my heart."   He said, "Praise the Lord! Bro. Shelley, you don't know it, but people all over the world say that very same thing."   I didn't know it.

The first thing I wanted to do was tell my granny and my hometown that God had kept his promise in Malachi 4:5-6 that the spirit of Elijah had returned to the earth and had anointed a prophet to our generation in a powerful way.   I also wanted to share with her that the spirit of Elijah was still in the earth to anoint the Bride of Jesus Christ and to empower her for the final harvest.   Somebody had given me a video of Brother Branham, and Bro. Cleveland had loaned me a film.  I drove to Columbus, Georgia, to share them with my Granny.   She had a monitor hooked up to a VCR.   She was very sick with cancer.   We had lived on divine healing, didn't go to doctors, didn't take aspirins, and there she was dying, and I could hardly understand it.   I went in the house, and I said, "Now granny, I didn't come just to be with you.   I came because the Lord God sent me here to share something with you."

Tears were running down my face.   "Granny, I'm so afraid you're going to think that I am crazy.”   I started slowly.

"Now Granny, do you remember when I preached about Malachi 4:5?"

"Oh yes, I remember," she answered.

"Well, I was right."

"Prove it!" she replied.

"Let me get over to that monitor, and I'll show you.   Just get ready.   I’m going to show you a film. It's called The Deep Calleth to the Deep, and the man you're going to see is anointed with the spirit of Elijah.

She said, "What in the world has happened to you?   You've never followed anything like that.   All your life you've gone against the flow.   If you thought the people believed something that wasn't right, you'd go there and tear down that doctrine with the Word, never fearing the consequences. What is wrong with you?"

I explained that I had learned so much from these sermons, and I believed that they contained truths that would prepare a people for what God desired to do in the last days, revelations that would help the Bride make herself ready.   I wanted her to know that the man was just the vessel, like all of God’s servants through the ages.   She knew that I did not believe in following or lifting up a man.   It was the messages that I had fallen in love with.

I almost got the shock of my life.   She asked, "Would His name happen to be William Branham?"

I was so surprised that she even knew his name!

"Granny, how did you know?"

"Let me see the film, and I'll tell you."

I put the film on.   She and I both wept the whole time.   I know everybody gets blessed about different parts.   I love the part where there was a man who came through the prayer line, but he did not come for healing in his body.   Brother Branham discerned that he came asking God for revival in his church.   I am so blessed when I see the man's reaction as God revealed the real reason he came for prayer.   It caused his faith to be lifted to a higher level.

That is what I am believing for, hallelujah!   I'm looking for the Bride's revival, and it will never break out in the midst of dead dogmas and creeds.   God will send an overcoming portion. Hallelujah!

She told me, "I was in his meetings in Birmingham.   He preached A Trial and Spiritual Amnesia."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.

"Son, there was something in that meeting so godly, so holy.   I knew I didn't have words to describe it, so I never told a soul.   Steve, I saw him when he turned his back and told the people the secrets of their hearts.   I heard him explain as he spelled out their names, but it scared me because I didn't understand.   Now, I've seen what is going on in your life, I feel the witness of the Holy Ghost.   I believe that you are right.  This means that God has wonderful things ahead for His people.”

“Hallelujah!   Let's go to church and pray."   So off we went.

I was down in the men's prayer room, when I heard water running.   "Oh, she's cleaning up," I thought.   "Let me help her."   I went by the baptistery.   "Bless her heart, she wanted me to clean the baptistery for them to use.”

I went to her.   "Granny, why didn't you tell me you wanted me to clean up?   I would have worn my blue jeans."

She said, "I don’t want you to clean it, I want you to baptize me in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ."

"What about your hair?   You know you've got it up, it will get..."

"I don't care about my hair.   Put me under, son!   Hallelujah!”