The Eighty Percent Doomsday Prediction
Religious conmen, often boasting the most ridiculous and exaggerated claims, frequently point unsuspecting listeners to statistics of their own invention. The casual listener, not engaging in critical thought, will willingly accept these "statistics" as fact without verifying them, and then help spread false truths. William Branham, who used religious conman John Alexander Dowie as his prototype, was no exception to this rule.
Religious conmen, often boasting the most ridiculous and exaggerated claims, frequently point unsuspecting listeners to statistics of their own invention. The casual listener, not engaging in critical thought, will willingly accept these "statistics" as fact without verifying them, and then help spread false truths. William Branham, who used religious conman John Alexander Dowie as his prototype, was no exception to this rule.
Researchers have noticed that by searching the term "eighty percent" in William Branham’s transcripts, there is an instant 70 results.[1] Apparently, Branham did not even take the time to adjust the numbers of his bogus claims from which to build his religious doctrines. Though Branham also used other invented percentages in his statistics,[2] he seemed to favor the number "80" for statistics that he invented.
Listen. You talk about a fifth columnist, a cigarette-smoking mother is the greatest fifth columnist America's got. Doctors claim that they can't even raise their babies like normal. It's nicotine poisoning will kill the baby 'fore it's eighteen months old. Eighty percent of them die. That's government statistics.[3]
Branham made many unusual claims using these invented statistics throughout his ministry. He claimed that eighty percent of the population was sick, and medical science was making money off of them.[4] Eighty percent of the participants in his healing revivals would be healed in his healing revivals within one hour.[5] Eighty percent of the people in his revival would NOT be healed because they do not know what faith is.[6] Eighty percent of Jesus' ministry while here on earth was focused upon "divine healing" — just like William Branham claimed to focus upon.[7]
The most interesting of these boisterous claims came during the time William Branham focused his attacks on those wishing to socially integrate the public school system. William Branham claimed that eighty percent of the children in Arizona schools were mentally retarded, and as a result, the end of the world was coming. In fact, Branham put a generational date on this doomsday prediction: the end of the world would come before the next generation.
Look at this teen-age insane! Why, we had a…I told you the other day, they was taking an analysis there of the schools in Arizona where I live, and eighty percent of the children in school is mentally retarded. What will their children be? We can't have another generation. We're at the end. Jesus said these things would come.[8]