William W. Freeman - William Branham's Replacement

Rev. William W. Freeman was a Latter Rain evangelist from Missouri that rose to almost overnight fame through advertisements in William Branham's Voice of Healing publication. When William Branham was forced to leave the revival trails due to mental health issues in June of 1948, Freeman was the obvious replacement. Their ministries were almost snapshot replicas of each other.

Both men claimed to have been commissioned by an "angel”, a prophetic ministry, and God’s choice to warn others of the end of the “age”. Though Freeman was not as popular as Branham initially, he would eventually outpace Branham in the revivals. Freeman held revivals with as many as 300,000 in attendance

In July of 1950, Freeman surpassed William Branham's fantastic claims when he baptized "two hundred men, women, and children" in Lake Michigan as 5,000 people watched the ceremony. (Branham had claimed that he baptized five hundred people in the Ohio River in 1933 as ten thousand people watched, though according to the newspaper accounts, only fourteen people were converted in Branham's revival). Freeman estimated that he had converted 12,000 people to the Latter Rain movement in Chicago during the July revivals.

In 1953, Freeman found himself at the center of assault and battery charges when one Richard Schnell and Robert Howard were assaulted by six men during a revival in Chicago. Schnell apparently heckled Freeman during the meeting, angering Freeman. According to Schnell, Freeman and Rev. Orval Ross of Chicago forced him into a small room and began to beat him. This testimony was confirmed by Howard, who suffered fractured ribs. Interestingly, this was not the only fist fight to break out in the Latter Rain Revivals; several people were beaten during a debate between William Branham, F. F. Bosworth, and Rev. W. E. Best in Houston just three years prior.

In 1956, William Branham began prophesying that "1956 is a turning time", and that the healing movement would be over in 1957. This prediction apparently had a severe impact on Freeman's ministry; in 1956 Freeman canceled his overseas revivals, ended his magazine, closed down his ministry, and became a pastor of a church in Chicago.

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

William W. Freeman:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/william_w._freeman