Excerpt from The Myth of Orthodoxyby Brandon Gilvin |
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It was a rainy morning in Odumase-Krobo,
the kind most of the residents of this small Ghanaian
village avoid. But
it was also a rainy Sunday morning, which meant that
there was church. I was on holiday, visiting
my sister as she finished up some research for her
Master’s
thesis in Ghana. Her friend and colleague Michael had
invited us to come to his church, so we met him at
the main road and jumped into
a crowded minibus taxi that would take us to the church.
As we rode to church, Michael handed me a book—a biography of
an American evangelist named William Branham. |
Photo credits: Brandon Gilvin |
During the service,
we sang many of the same hymns my sister and I used
to sing in the small
rural church we had grown up in. But instead of the
slightly out-of tune piano
from my childhood, the hymns were backed by the strumming
of an electric guitar. And most different of all from
my childhood were the pictures
a procession of elders brought into the sanctuary and
hung for the congregation to face. To the left of the
pulpit hung a portrait of
a light-skinned, auburn-haired Jesus; to the right a
copy of a photograph taken by William Branham of a
cloud that was shaped like the face
of Jesus—a miracle, I was told—one of the many divine
events that Branham had experienced throughout his life. |
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