Participants in the Latter Rain revivals of the late 1940s and 1950s recall seeing “evil spirits” cast out of people as they approached the “healers” on stage. This phrase, “evil spirits,” is critical to understanding the nature of the illness that attracted people to the revivals. While most afflictions in the revivals were given specific terms such as “bladder trouble,” “heart trouble,” “one leg shorter than the other,” and more, seldom were the named conditions categorized as “evil spirits.”

All types of Mental illness in the Latter Rain movement were typically categorized as an “evil spirit,” and the mental health condition was seldom named. It was very uncommon to hear a “healer” proclaim “healing” of “chronic depression,” “bipolar disorder,” “schizophrenia,” or other terms we hear today. Mental health education was taboo, and many mental health issues that people of today would recognize by name were not commonly named. Instead, terms such as “crazy,” “nuts,” or “loony” were used by the uneducated public. Those terms were insulting both then and now, but the label given to people suffering from mental health issues by the “divine healers” was much worse: “infested with an evil spirit.”

Gordon Lindsay, one of the most prolific figures in the healing revivals, moved mental health struggles out of the natural realm and into the spiritual in his literature. When William Branham had a mental health crisis in the late 1940s, Lindsay claimed that it was a result of the “kingdom of hell” attacking Branham. The response from Latter Rain participants was so overwhelming that Lindsay was forced to publish an explanation in the October 1948 issue of The Voice of Healing. Lindsay refused to call Branham’s condition an “illness” and instead responded that it was the result of “exhaustion.” He attempted to be more forthcoming in his book “20th Century Barnabas” by admitting that Branham did, in fact, have a nervous breakdown, but instead of classifying Branham’s condition as an illness, Lindsay spiritualized the struggle with mental health and claimed that Branham was later healed of his “evil spirits.” According to Lindsay, “In no sense was Brother Branham ill from a disease, but was in a state of nervous exhaustion.”

Branham’s “evil spirit,” however, remained until the end of his life. Branham admitted in November 1965, one month before his death, that he had been a neurotic all of his life. This was in direct conflict with his 1953 position. Like Lindsay, Branham claimed to have been healed from what Mayo Clinic declared him to be incurable: his mental health disorder. In the end, the “evil spirits” (unnamed mental health disorder) plagued Branham for the duration of the Post-WWII Healing Revival.

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


Struggle with Mental Health:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/topics/struggle_with_mental_health#_struggle_with_mental_health_ftn2