Florence Nightingale - Her flesh had all left from her cheeks, her jaws were sunken in, and her forehead here-it just looked like a dead skeleton

And friends, I've seen lots of sights. I've seen people when their face would be eat with cancer till it'd be down here in their neck. They'd have to put a little trough here to pour their liquid in their throat here, with just the teeth and the bones, the meat eaten from it. And sights in India! I've seen lepers lay till there was not even enough for them to raise their hands, and stubs of ears, and no nose, and just turned out white, like a white wart turned inside out. Little children and everything eat up with leprosy, laying piled on top of each other. Seen little children laying starving, by the hundreds of them, through the streets, and their little bellies swelled out from starvation, a poor mother laying by them begging for one penny to help that person. That's the reason I can't...If I could beg, I could beg for them. I don't want nothing when I know of human beings that Christ died for is suffering like that. And there's hundreds and hundreds of them tonight everywhere around the world, and there they are in that condition.

        But when I seen Florence Nightingale, she was laying there with a sheet over her, and she could hardly move her lips. Her flesh had all left from her cheeks, her jaws were sunken in, and her forehead here-it just looked like a dead skeleton laying there. The skin had dried up. That cancer had eaten her in that condition. Just taken the blood from her.

           And she kept trying to say something I couldn't understand. And the nurse got down, and she said, "I want to shake his hand." And so the nurse had to raise up them bones and put them in my hand. Why, it was just like taking ahold of a skeleton. Her arms were probably a couple inches around in here. And her ...she wanted me to see her body. And they raised up that sheet, it would break the heart of anyone. Even the ring in the hip was sticking like that, just about that much from being together through here. And her legs was all blue, and I asked what that was. Her legs was probably up here near her hip about that big around. And I said...Well, here it is in the picture, where it was taken, see. And you can see what she was then after about six weeks later. And so I looked, and he said they fed her glucose until her veins collapsed.

            And so then ..."Oh," I said, "my! You are a Christian?" And she let me know "Yes." And she got down again, the nurse, to see what she was going to say. And she said, "Have Brother Branham to ask the Lord to let me die." See, she just hung on till there was nothing to hang on for anymore, nothing to build to. Said, "Ask Brother Branham to ask the Lord to let me die."

             I couldn't do that. She looked like she was a fairly young woman. So I said, "Let us pray."

            And if anybody's ever been in London, you know it's one of the most foggy places in the world. When it gets foggy, you have to feel your way around almost. It was real foggy that morning. And that's why William Cowper could not commit suicide. He couldn't find the ocean. When he wrote that famous song, "There is a fountain filled with blood," he couldn't find the place to jump in. The cab couldn't get to the ocean for him to commit suicide, drown himself.

             And as I knelt down to pray, the first thing, I started off prayer like this, I said, "Almighty God, creator of heavens and earth, author of everlasting life, giver of all good gifts." And when I got through with that there was a little dove flew from somewhere and sat on the sill of that window, and he was just about that far from my head. And the little fellow was restlessly walking back and forth, going, "Coo, coo." You know how they go. Well, I thought it was a pet at the house. I just thought it was a little pet dove. I'd just been in England about twenty-four hours, or hardly that long, and I thought it was a little pet dove. So I just kept on praying.

             I said, "Heavenly Father, this poor woman laying here a-dying, and she's asked me to pray that You would take her life because she's beyond herself, like, and she's nothing to build to. But, God, You are still creator. You are still God." And this little dove seemed to be so restlessly. And the rest of the ministers who was praying with me seemed to stop. And then as I kept on praying, when I said, "Father, I pray that You'll be merciful to her. And if You are going to take her life, and not let her live, then let her go in ease. Let her go to be with You now. But if it be Your will that You're going to let her get well, then, Father, let her get well," and when I got through praying, I said, "Amen."

              And the little dove took off through the fog again. Well, as soon as I stopped praying, the minister by me, he looked over at another minister, and said, "Did you notice that dove?"

I said, "What was that dove? Was that a pet?"

              Said, "No, it wasn't a pet." The minister said, "It was just a dove that acted funny."

           And I started to turn and say to Mrs. Nightingale, I started to say, "Well, I thought it was your pet." And when I did, like that, something said, "Thus saith the Lord." Oh, my, there, over almost her casket where she was laying, there was a vision of her walking along down the street. This is the picture of it right here, how she was a little later. That's what I saw in the vision. Then it come, "Thus saith the Lord, you're going to live and not die." And when I said that I thought, "Them things are so supernatural." I don't understand them. I don't know what they mean.

              And I walked out. I believe it was Brother Baxter said to me, "How could she live?" Said, "God will have to create a new woman."

          I said, "Well, He's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all." And six months from then, after two letters before that, here come the picture, perfectly normally healthy. Can't find a trace of cancer, and she's back nursing, and been nursing for a long time.

            Here some time ago it come up a dispute between a writer of a magazine in England. Said, "It was a very unscrupulous thing that this woman ...that was a false testimony." I happened to have in my files her own testimony. I sent it back to Mr. Stadsklev. He photostatted it and sent it over, and she got ahold of it. And then she went to this man writing the magazine, said, "Who said this testimony wasn't right?"

          See, that's where you have it. When you've got their own testimony in writing, you have it there, see.

           And then the man wrote me back a letter of an apology, that he said, "I taken somebody else's word for it."

           I said, "Don't never print nothing, sir, upon the basis of somebody else's word, because you see what you've done here now, see." I said, "Don't never do that."

             But the testimony is absolutely the truth. We would not print it unless it was the truth. See, it has to be that way, stated that it's true. So you see, the same God was with Florence Nightingale there is the same God that's right here. He's the same One, and the only thing...You don't have to wait to be prayed for. The only thing you have to do is just believe that the work is done.

            If you're a sinner, you don't have to wait for an altar call. Right where you're sitting..."While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on them that heard the word." They were ready. It's a condition of the heart. It's a condition of the people.

 Thirsting For Life, Phoenix, AZ USA, March 4, 1960