After what witnesses describe as a long battle with cancer, Billy Paul Branham has died. He passed on October 19, 2023, at 3:33 am.

Billy Paul was at one time a person that I knew and respected. Even from a small child, I was always around him and knew him as "Brother Billy". He worked very closely with my grandfather at the Branham Tabernacle, and I am told by relatives that even after my grandfather strongly condemned the Branhams for what grandpa and his team of deacons alleged to be theft of church property and misuse of funds, Grandpa remained very close to Billy. I am told that even after starting his new church, my grandfather continued private meetings with Billy Paul. Grandpa and Billy were always very close.

Though I did not realize the significance of it at the time, when my father was attempting to grow a "Message" community in Kansas, Billy came to help. Dad ran newspaper advertisements headlining Billy coming to town in big, bold letters, "Son of a Prophet". Billy also helped grow and excite the youth at churches near us in Kansas, and we often traveled to see him. In those years, the timing of William Branham's Los Angeles Prophecy was strongly tied to Billy's age, and those of us who attended his meetings all knew that the final destruction of Los Angeles was just around the corner. Billy frequently repeated William Branham's words to him, "you won't be an old man until sharks will swim right where we are standing." As we traveled around to hear him speak, we'd hear Billy Paul proudly exclaim, "I'm not an old man yet!" Over time, as Billy's age began to show, that element of the story began to fade from the memories.

I had a much deeper connection to Billy, however. Billy Paul was my friend. He was also my foundation in many ways. My maternal grandfather traveled from Georgia to Kansas and gifted me my first guitar. I suddenly found myself at the center of a family controversy; William Branham was not consistent about his extra-biblical rules concerning musical instruments. He had strongly discouraged my grandfather from stringed instruments, and Grandpa (not fully understanding that the piano was a stringed instrument) strongly forbade instruments that had visible strings. My father rejected the gift and I was very discouraged. Like me, Billy Paul was a lover of music-stringed instruments or not. My private conversations with Billy encouraged me and over time, at the protest of my father and encouragement from my mother and grandfather, I began collecting stringed instruments and learning to play them. When I sent Billy a cassette tape of some songs that I recorded as a one-man-band, four-part harmony quartet, Billy Paul sent me a letter expressing how much he enjoyed it. My mother framed it, and until I left the "Message" in 2012 that letter from Billy hung on my wall in my office. I can thank Billy for the music that I produce in my videos today; without him, I would have suppressed what he considered to be my "musical gift