Nobody had a green checkered shirt. And I said, "It'll have to be a green checkered shirt, or the vision will not be complete ....."

Lee, I just happened to think of another one that... See, I'm trying to think of something that there's men living right here that was present, can see it, and all about it.And about a--a year before this happened, and about... Before my--my mother went away, you know, I was given a vision one day of being a hunter, you know, and hunting for game. And I--I seen an animal I'd--I'd never hunted before. It looked like a deer, only it was many times bigger. And I went to get that animal.
And there was a man with me that--a couple of little fellows that had a... One of them had on a green checked shirt.
And so I thought I'll--I'll go get that animal. It's a marvelous animal. So I started after it. And on the road, I--I met a--a female and a little baby one of the same type of animal. Only, it looked like a deer. But I--I'd never seen a deer like that. And I've hunted all my life.
And I went over and got the... and shot the animal. And was real close to it, got real close to it and shot it. And when I did, I seen a little hand measure the horns. And it was exactly forty-two inches, exactly, forty-two inches.

On my road back, bringing my trophy out, I met a--a great silver-tipped grizzly bear. And this bear, I shot with one shot and killed it. And I was studying about my rifle being too small before I shot it, because it's just a .270. It was a hundred and thirty grain bullet. So I shot this animal, and--and this bear, and skinned him out.And--and so then about a... And the vision left me. 

And about a--a month after that, I was down in Kentucky, and Brother Arganbright called me and wanted to give me a hunting trip to Alaska, and said if I go up there for the Businessmen and have a meeting...
I told him I had a vision of killing a big grizzly bear.
He said, "Well, I've got it all fixed up to take you on a grizzly bear hunt." He said... And so I... "And also moose hunting."
And I said, "The thing that I got wasn't moose," I said, "because a moose has paneled horns. And this had horns like a deer." And so it... not panels. So... but in spikes...
So I--I said, "Well, it sounds very good. But let me pray first."

And that afternoon, into the woods I went, and prayed. And it looked like all the time that it'd get farther away from me.So then about a--a month after that, Billy Paul handed me a letter from a friend by the name of Harvey Southwick. He's called Bud Southwick. S-o-u-t-h-w-i-c-k, Southwick. And he's a class-A guide on the Alaskan highway around Muncho Lake. His home is in Fort Saint John.
And the spring before that, I'd been up there on a hunting trip with a Christian brother named Eddie Byskal, which is a great man influenced... great influence in the Canadian ministerial group.
And we'd been up there. He was a... Eddie was his--this man's pastor. And on the road back in, the waters got us cut off back there, and we couldn't get in to hunt. So, we just had to lay in the--the tent.
And it was at the time of year that the midnight sun is about shining that high up. It's right on the Yukon. And it would hardly would get dark at night, just a little gloomy looking, and then be day again.

And the waters got so terrific we couldn't go any farther, so we had to head back. And during this time, this man, Bud, had not received the Holy Spirit as yet. He'd just been a believer. So, Eddie was telling him about my ministry, about visions and so forth.He said, "Oh, my. I've got a brother that's got epilepsy." He said, "If I could only get him with that, I... with that boy."
And so then, I come into the tent. I'd been out looking around, glassing, late in the afternoon. And so Eddie asked me. He thought if they could get a chance that we could get the boy into one of the meetings, and maybe the Lord would show a vision what to do for him. Well, he kept talking about it, constantly.
Well, I was trying to relax from such. So I just went away and didn't say anymore about it. And Bud kept constantly asking Eddie, wondering if the Lord would help him with his brother.
So, on the... About the third day, we started out. And one of the horses got down in some mesquite. And then I... We helped get him out. And I was riding what they called the drag. That was behind the... all the whole trail of horses. And the horses are not tied together, so they'd went out into the woods. And I'd help chase them back in line again.

And I saw a vision of this young boy. So I spurred up my horse and went up in front, around the string, that is the string of horses. And I got up there and said to Bud, the brother of the man that had epilepsy; I said, "Mr. Southwick, the Lord Jesus has showed me a--a vision of your brother. Now, this brother has had this epilepsy since he was a little boy.""That's right."
And then, I said, "Your brother looks such and such. A young man with..."
"Yes, that's exactly right."
"Now," I said, "now, you send and get him. And don't doubt this. You send and get him down at Fort Saint John, bring him up here. And--and when he falls into one of those epileptic spells, jerk his shirt off of his back and throw it in the stove, and say--in the fire, and say this, 'I do this in the Name of the Lord, according to what Brother Branham has told me to do.' And it's THUS SAITH THE LORD, the spell will leave him."
And so Bud anxiously sent and got his brother and brought him up. And he'd have maybe five or six of those seizures a day. And so Bud was out of the house at the time when his brother arrived. And his wife, Bud's wife, is a very fine Christian woman and filled with the Spirit of God, a little woman, mother of five children. And so this boy fell in one of his seizures in--in the little old shack they were staying in.Well, he usually gets violent when he'd do that. And the little woman would run, 'cause she was afraid of him. But her being a Christian and believed the Word, and believed It with prophecy just the way it should be done, she just straddled him and jerked his shirt off his back. And there was a old salamander there, burning. And she threw it into the fire, crying, and said, "Brother Branham said to do this in the Name of the Lord."
And the spirit left him and had never come back on him yet. And that was over a year after. He never had one spell afterwards.

And then, I got a letter from him (Now, to my story.) after I'd come back from Kentucky, that invited me to come hunting. So when I prayed over that, was like I kept getting closer to go up there to see Bud.And then when I... We went up there to--to go on this hunting trip, Brother Fred Sothmann went with me. And I'd drawed it on the windshield exactly how long them horns would be, and had told it, and how big the bear would be and what kind it would be, told it before hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and drawed it out on paper, just the way it would be, how the animal would be in a panoramic, and I'd have to go over some snow to get to it. And there'd be more with me. But I'd be the one that got the animal with the forty-two inch horns. And on my road back, I'd kill this silver-tip grizzly bear.
So when I got up there, I... We're way from the cities now. We're around five hundred miles from any city up on the Alaskan highway. The closest real city is Fort Saint John, which is very small. There's a little place in between there, called Fort Nelson. But it's just kinda a wide place in the road. And it's a few little buildings, the Hudson Bay. And perhaps you've been there yourself, Lee.

And but when I met this Bud, way up there from nowhere, I told he and his wife that vision that night."Well," he said, "such an animal, we don't have here. And we don't have very many deer. They're very scarce." Said, "maybe it was a caribou. Did you ever hunt caribou?"
I said, "No. But doesn't a caribou have panels?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Well, this didn't have any panels. It looked like a deer."
"Well," he said, "the first place," said, "we're not... we're going to hunt sheep. So we won't be in any bear country, nor..." and said, "We're going up high, too high for that."
I said, "Well, it may be some other trip. But it's going to happen, because the Lord never has showed me anything that's ever failed yet."
So about three days back, we were walk on the mountains spotting for some sheep. And we found some. And on the road back down... So we'd have to go the next morning to find to where the sheep was. They was too far away for us for that day. So we a...
 

 And on the road back, little Eddie Byskal fell in the--the river and got wet--a little creek we was crossing.And by the way, that's down there at the camp that there... at the Southwick trailer, there was nobody had a green shirt. Eddie didn't have one. I didn't have one. And Blain, that's Brother Bud's oldest boy, who is a guide too. He didn't have one, nor Bud didn't have one. Nobody had a green checkered shirt.
And I said, "It'll have to be a green checkered shirt, or the vision will not be complete. It'll be some other time, or somewhere else."
And so Eddie fell in the water that night, come back and got wet. He had to change clothes.
Early the next morning, way before day, we went to the top of the mountain, and on... to find the--the sheep. On the road up, we passed... Me seeing my first time, a wild caribou cow and calf. I should've knowed the vision right then. But I didn't.
 

 We got off the top of the mountain. There was no sheep there. We stayed there and--and looked up over the mountains. And being Christians, we talked about, wondered if it would be that way in the great millennium to come.And--and so Eddie had tipped over the other side of the hill, and he had found a bull caribou. And he shot it. And we heard the gun go off. And so we went over there. And he shot it, and we butchered out the caribou. But it had right nice webbed paneled horns on it.
So then we had our lunch. And we went on up to kinda the top of the hill, which was about a couple, three city blocks. And we'd butchered the caribou down by a little spring like, that was running down by the side of the mountain there. And we got some--some water to drink after eating our--our meal.
We went to pick up our saddle horses. And when we did, the... Bud said to me; he said, "Brother Branham, them sheep might've went over this mountain." Said, "You like to climb; would you like to climb over it?" Said, "We'll get back about ten or eleven o'clock tonight to the base camp." Said, "If you feel like climbing."
I said, "Oh, I love to do it, Bud."

So we was going to go over the mountain. And while I was standing there looking, and he was instructing the boys to take my saddle horse and his saddle and pack Eddie's caribou meat on it, and go on back to the camp. And we'd--we'd come back over to see if the sheep was over in that... in the other ravine, or other side of the mountain, and then come back down that night. We had to go up through some snow.And while I looking around, I picked up my glasses. And believe it or not, exactly around that panoramic and looking right at me was that animal laying on the bank, about a mile from me.
And I said, "Bud, here, take these glasses. What is that animal laying?"
"Oh," he said, "Brother Branham, it's a big old caribou looking this a way."
And I said, "Bud, look at his horns."
He said, "Yeah, he's an odd one."
I said, "That's exactly the way... And here's exactly the panoramic and snow, and just the way the animal is supposed to lay."
Now, he said, "Well, the Lord has give it to you."
I said, "Yes."
"Only thing," he said, "but wasn't there to be a bear too?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "What about a man with a green shirt on?"

And none of us had noticed, but Eddie, and his wife packing up his clothes, had put a shirt in the--in his duffel bag. And there was Eddie standing, getting wet the day before, changing his clothes, had put on a green checkered shirt that he didn't know he had.And I said, "Looky here. What does Eddie got on?"
And they all begin weeping and shouting because of seeing that.
I said, "All right, go on down. Take the boys." They went on down.
They said, "No, we're going to wait here."
And Bud said, "Well, Brother Branham, it'll be almost totally impossible to get to that caribou, 'cause he's looking right this way. And we're way up to summit of the mountains where there's no trees or nothing, just simply caribou moss and that's all." The highest thing ever would be a blueberry bush, which would be about four inches high, or five at the most--of inches. And so they're just a little patches on the mountain. And so he said, "He's bound to see you."
And I said, "But Brother Bud, the Lord Jesus has give the animal to me."
He said, "Well, he's an odd one. Never seen one like that."
So we took off. He said, "Well, can I go with you?"
I said, "Sure."
And we walked right up to that caribou, within about thirty-five yards, and I shot the caribou. And there was three of them laying there. The rest of them had big panels, and this one had them freak looking horns.
Well then, we looked back with the glasses. And the boys were--had their arms up waving to us that they had seen me get the caribou. So they went on down to pack the horses and come out at the bottom of the hill. We got into small timber again, about two miles below the mountain--or down the mountain.

So while we were skinning him out, Bud said, "You know, Brother Branham, you said these horns was how long?"I said, "Forty-two inches."
He said, "In my saddle bag, I've got a tape measure." He said, "They look to me like they're about ninety."
I said, "No, they're--they'll be forty."
He said, "Now, according to what you told me, before we get back to that boy with that green shirt on, on your road back, you're going to kill a nine foot silver tipped grizzly."
I said, "That's THUS SAITH THE LORD."
He said, "Brother Branham, I can see every inch of the mountain from here down and all around. (You can see for miles in there.) And there's not a spot of anything nowhere. Where's that bear coming from?"
I said, "That's not for me to question, Bud. That's the Lord's Word." I said, "Remember, He's--He's always God, and the... He keeps His Word."

So when we got the--the trophy off of the--the--the cape, and the horns and things from the caribou, then we started down the mountain. I'd packed my gun awhile, and then Brother Bud would pack the horns. And--and the horns would just about reach from my shoulders down to the ground, and the--with the head of the caribou made it weigh about, over a hundred, a hundred and fifty pounds. And we had an awful time, both of us small men, trying to get it down the mountain, just kinda slide it down easy as we went down.Now, the timber started. The little scrub timber, the little... Oh, I guess it's spruce, little spruce trees run about two or three foot tall. And then some of them would get up around five or six foot tall, just little patches.
And Bud stopped. He said, "Brother Branham, if we're going to get that bear, he'd better be showing up, hadn't he?"
I said, "Bud, I believe you doubt that."
He said, "Brother Branham, how could I doubt it? This has been a full year, more than a year since my brother, you told me what to do about him. And he hasn't had an epileptic fit from that time since."
And I said, "He never will unless he starts to unbelieving, or starts to acting to the world again." And then, course, "Go and sin no more or a worse thing will come upon you."

So he said, "I... What I'm trying to think about, Brother Branham, I can see five miles, every spot that there is. And with these glasses, I can see beyond that. And there's no bear nowhere, and no place for one to come to."I said, "Brother Bud, have you forgotten, my precious brother, that He's still Jehovah-jireh? Remember the ram that come into existence when Abraham had need for one, because it was the Word of the Lord? This is still the Word of the Lord. See? When God told me I'll kill a silver tipped grizzly bear before we get back there, I will get that bear, THUS SAITH THE LORD."
Said, "Brother Branham, that--that's faith."
I said, "No, it ain't faith. It's believing just what God says. It never has failed, and it ain't going to fail."
So he said, "Remember, we're only about a thousand yards from that boy with the green shirt on now. We can't see them yet, but they're down in that hole there. And we... when we get down there."
Said, "No matter how far it is away from you, or how long it is, God can create a bear. He created the first one. And He's still the great Creator, Jehovah-jireh."
And we went on about another hundred yards, two hundred yards, maybe a little more, and set down again to rest. And this time, I'd been packing the rifle. Now, it's a little .270, very small rifle for bear hunting, so then--with a little hundred and thirty grain bullet.So we set down to rest. And then we was something about three or five hundred yards, something like that, from where we would meet these fellows there in that timber.
We looked around again. We'd been talking as we'd been coming down.
Said, "Brother Branham, that old bear had better be showing up, hadn't it?"
I said, "Bud, why would you question that?"
He said, "I'm not questioning it, Brother Branham." He said, "But, you know, you know." Said, "I... Maybe I don't live in the cycle you--you live in." He said, "I--I just can't hardly understand how it would be."

And just then, I turned to look over on the hill. I said, "Bud..." He had the glasses around his neck, because I was going to pack the horns. And--and he was going to pack the rifle. And I said, "What's that sticking right up there in--on the hill?" He turned his glasses and looked. It was getting along about six o'clock, or five o'clock in the afternoon then, the sun getting low.He said, "Oh, Brother Branham. So help me, it's the biggest silver tip I ever seen in my life. It's about a half a mile up the mountain from where we come." He said, "Brother Branham, where did he come from?"
I said, "I don't know."
He said, "I've watched that mountain everywhere, both of us. And there sets..." He said, "It's a silver tip. I'm looking right at him. And that's..." Said, "His big silver tips a blowing like that, the hair on him, blowing across his back. And that..." He said, "It looks like a big cow setting there, or something."
And I said, "He doesn't see us, does he?"
He said, "No."
I said, "Well..."
He said, "Brother Branham, I don't believe you have to get closer to him. Just shoot him from here. The Lord's done give him to you." He was half a mile away.
I said, "No. According to the--to the vision, I shot him close to--pretty close to me."

So we started--laid the horns down and started up the mountain. Well, we climbed over a little coolies and so forth till we... That's little ditches and things, until we were within about, oh, somewhere between three and five hundred yards. And that was the last one.The first at about--about seven or eight hundred yards, Bud said, "Brother Branham, can you get him from here?"
I said, "I was closer than this, Bud."
He said, "I'm afraid he's going to see us, and he will charge right down the hill."
And I said, "Well, Bud, I have... I have seen this. I--I seen him in the vision; it's the same bear." And I said, "Me, I'm going to get him."
"But," he said, "Brother Branham, don't you think that that little .270, that little hundred and thirty grain bullet is kinda small?" Said, "I've seen them run right in on a--a big Weatherby magnum, smash them right in the chest, and they just keep on coming."
I said, "Bud, the Lord gave me the bear." Said, "If I had a B-B gun, I'd still get him. See?" I said, "'Cause the Lord has give him to me."

He said, "Well, Brother Branham, did you ever shoot a grizzly before?"I said, "I've shot many bear, but not a grizzly. I've shot brown, and black, so forth, but not a grizzly."
He said, "Brother Branham, you shoot him right in the back and break his back so that he can't get up. Well, that's the way you shoot a grizzly. That's the way we shoot them up here."
So I said, "Bud, according to the vision, I shot him in the heart."
Said, "Oh, Brother Branham, he's right straight up the hill." Said, "He will just come right down the hill. Even if you blow his heart out of him, it wouldn't stop him."
I said, "But Lord... But according to the Word of the Lord, I shot him in the heart. I remember shooting him in the heart."
Said, "Well, Brother Branham, if the vision said you shot him in the heart and you got him," said, "I'll stand by your side." But said, "I'll tell you, if it wasn't that vision, I sure wouldn't stand."
I said, "Well, you stay here if you want to."
Said, "No, I--I'm going along."

So when we got within about three hundred yards, or something like that, I said, "We'll raise the head up over the hill." I said, "There he is." And I put a shell up in the chamber in then. I said, "All right, Bud."And so when I raised up, the grizzly saw me. And he started to make a charge. And when he did, I shot him right smack in the heart. And before I could get another shell in the gun, the grizzly, charging towards us so hard, within about fifty yards, turned end over end stone dead.
So Brother Bud looked at me and his face, and had it's white around the mouth. He said, "Brother Branham, I didn't want him on my lap."
And I said, "Neither did I, 'cause he'd be rough company."
And we went over there. He got up and I kept him covered. Throwed blocks on the bear and it was dead. And we went over there: perfect, exactly the way the vision.
He said, "Now, Brother Branham, when we got down to where them boys are, and if these caribou horns measure forty-two inches, I'm going to have a screaming fit."
I said, "Well, you might as well have it right now, Bud, because that's exactly what it is."

So we went on down to the... to there. And I said, "Then when Eddie..." He was standing there screaming, and shouting, and crying. And Blain was running towards us, a shouting also.And when we got down there to where it was, I never said a word about it. And Bud just walked over to his--his horse and pulled out of the saddle bags, pulled out his tape measure.
And I said to Eddie in a small still voice, or a small voice, I--I said, "Watch. Blain will put his hands right around the horns, 'cause in the vision a little hand was holding the tape on the horn, as I told you down at the camps last night, and--a few nights ago."
And he got the measure. He said, "Come here, Blain. Now, hold this tape."
And he held it. And right exactly, point blank, exactly forty-two inches on the horns.
He said, "Brother Branham," said, "where will I be a year from now?"
And I said, "Bud, I can't tell you that." I said, "We who see visions, and are honest with it, can only say just as He tells us to say. And only thing I know, He said this would happen.

WMB -  Audio letter to Lee Vayle [64-0500]
 [This text was transcribed off an audio "tape letter" from Brother Branham to Lee Vayle concerning the manuscript for the "Twentieth Century Prophet" book. It was recorded in Brother Fred Sothmann's house--Ed.]