View source for Rattlesnake Mesa

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<div style="float:left;width:24%;padding:.3em 0;margin:2px 2px 0; background-color:#cedff2">[[Prophecy of the Cloud|The Prophecy]]</div>
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<div style="float:left;width:24%;padding:.3em 0;margin:2px 2px 0; background-color:#cedff2">[[Seven Seals|The Seven Seals]]</div>
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According to Rebekah Branham Smith in the "Road To Sunset" article in the Only Believe magazine, William Branham was hunting on Rattlesnake Mesa on March 8, 1963, when his hunting companions heard a loud blast.  After the hunting trip, William Branham said that he was caught up into a constellation of seven angels while hunting on Sunset Mountain, and that these angels formed a mysterious cloud after this event that was photographed in the May issue of Life Magazine.  


==Problems with the Prophecy==

===Location of the Hunt===
William Branham said that he was hunting a number of different locations, including:
*Exactly Northeast of Flagstaff, or Prescott. <ref>And they took that picture, you know, in the sky. And I didn't think much about it, never noticed it.  So it begin to impress me somehow the other day. And Brother Norman, Norma's father here, told me, said, "Did you notice this?" And just as I looked, right there was them angels just as plain as they could be, setting right there in that picture. You see? I looked to see when it was, and it was time, same 'bout day or two before or, day or two after I was up there. I looked where it was at: northeast of Flagstaff, or Prescott, which is below Flagstaff. Well, that's just where we was at (See?), just exactly. (sermon “Come Follow Me” (June 1, 1963))</ref>
*Exactly forty miles north of Tucson, upon Sunset Mountain in the Coronado Forest. <ref>And it shall be Light at the evening time upon Sunset Mountain in the Coronado Forest, forty miles north of Tucson. Get on the map and see if Sunset Peak there. That's exactly where it happened. I never know it till the other day. (“What is the Attraction” (July 25, 1965)) </ref>
Based on the testimony of Gene Norman<ref>Gene Norman’s audio testimony can be found in audio format at http://www.spokenwordchurch.com/testimonies.html.) </ref> and Pearry Green <ref>Videos of Pearry Green’s testimony can be found on Youtube</ref>, William Branham was hunting on Rattlesnake Mesa when the Angels appeared.  Rattlesnake Mesa is about 10 miles north of Sunset Peak.
Technically, there is no place called “Sunset Mountain”, although there is an area called “Sunset” just to the east of Sunset Peak.  Rattlesnake Mesa was also where William Branham returned to in 1964, after which he told of a blast that prophesied judgment for the West Coast.  The cloud appeared north of Flagstaff, around 200 miles away from Sunset Peak.  

===The timing of the Hunt and the Cloud===
Based on the following testimonies of William Branham and his daughter, he met angels while hunting with Gene Norman and Fred Sothman after March 4th, 1963.  
*On March 3, 1963, William Branham preached a sermon called “An Absolute” in Houston, Texas, during which he talks about having to drive back to Arizona that night after interceding for a boy on death row.  
*In the sermon “Trying to do God a Service” (Shreveport, LA, 11/27/65) William Branham says that he went hunting with Fred Sothmann and Gene Norman after he returned from pleading for the life of a boy on death row in Texas.  
*In the Sermon “The Seventh Seal”, preached on March 24, 1963, William Branham says that he was hunting with Fred Sothman and Gene Norman when the Angels appeared.  
*Rebekah Smith (William Branham’s daughter) wrote an article called “Road to Sunset” in the final issue of the “Only Believe” magazine where she confirms that William Branham’s hunting trip occurred from March 6th to 8th, 1963.   

In the sermon “Shalom” (January 19, 1964), William Branham said that the picture of a large, mysterious cloud in the May 1963 issue of Life magazine caught the Angels’ flight (or evidence of the angel’s flight) on camera.  This statement does not seem to agree with the facts as:
*The Angels appeared to William Branham in the morning time.  
*The cloud appeared over Flagstaff in the evening time.
*Life magazine reported that the cloud appeared just north of Flagstaff (but was visible as far as Mexico) on the evening of February 28, 1963.  
*William Branham went hunting after March 4th, 1963. 
Another interesting fact is that there was not just one cloud, but two.  The second cloud is noted in the Life Magazine, and appears in a smaller photograph off to the north-west.  

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[[Image:Rattlesnake Mesa.jpg|240px|thumb|Rattlesnake Mesa, where William Branham was hunting in March 1963.]]

[[Image:Campsite near sunset.JPG|240px|thumb|The campsite at Rattlesnake Mesa]]

[[Image:Sunset Peak.jpg|240px|thumb|East side of Sunset Peak.  [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca3yt1fDDSA Click here to watch the Youtube video our our hike.] ]]

[[Image:Sunset North.jpg|240px|thumb|North side of Sunset Peak, 10 miles south-west of Rattlesnake Mesa.  Its on the map, but its not where William Branham was hunting.]]

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::''And it shall be Light at the evening time upon Sunset Mountain in the Coronado Forest, forty miles north of Tucson. Get on the map and see if Sunset Peak there. That's exactly where it happened.'' [http://www.thefreeword.com/books/2865-L.pdf Sermon, July 25, 1965]

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<div style="border-bottom:1px #B87333 solid; text-align:center; font-size:140%; padding:1px; margin:1px;">The Blast</div>
Gene Norman was hunting with William Branham on Rattlesnake Mesa in early March of 1963 when something strange happened.  Gene said, “''I hunted, oh, probably about a half hour, and that blast went off.  It sounded like it was just right above my head. And, I looked up, and, I didn’t see nothing.  Ah, yeah, I did, I seen something, but I didn’t see the cloud in the form that it shows in the picture.  When I looked up I seen two long streaks like, ah, like a plane leaving a trail. Two streaks, with a great, miles one way and miles the other way. With a spot in between.  A big spot, a space in between it.''

The March 1, 1963 edition of the Arizona Republic Newspaper includes an article called “Shaken Up By Sonic Booms”.  This article tells of multiple sonic booms over the town of Springerville, Arizona that were being caused by aircraft from Williams Air Force Base.  Some of these booms were so loud they cracked windows in the town.  

The Williams Air Force Base was operating F-5 Freedom Fighters and T-38 Talons in 1963, which where both supersonic jets.  Springerville is around 120 miles east of Phoenix, Arizona, where the Williams Air Force Base was located.  Rattlesnake Mesa is around 80 miles south-east of Phoenix.  The speed of sound is 768 miles per hour.  It is very possible that the flight paths of these jets were in transition after the complaints from Springerville.  

William Branham described the same event in a sermon called “The Seventh Seal” on March 24, 1963.  He said, “A little over a week ago I was up way back into the mountains, nearly to Mexico, with two brethren that's setting here, picking…sand burrs off of my trousers leg, and a blast went off that almost, looked like, shook the mountains down.”  There is no mention of a cloud in this sermon.  

If Gene Norman is right, what looked like a plane leaving a trail was actually a plane leaving a trail.

[[Image:AZRepMarch63SonicBoom 001.jpg|750px]]


<div style="border-bottom:1px #B87333 solid; text-align:center; font-size:140%; padding:1px; margin:1px;">The Cloud, the Crater, and the Peak</div>
[[Image:Arizona sunset copy.jpg|right|500px]]

The attached map is near-to-scale, and shows the size and location of the cloud as it would have appeared from space.  From William Branham's testimony, it was morning when the blast hit Sunset Peak, 40 miles north-east of Tucson in Arizona's Coronado National Forest, and a constellation of seven angels appeared from the west.  

It was evening when the cloud appeared just north of Flagstaff, Arizona.  More specifically, the southern edge of this cloud was above Sunset Crater (called Sunset Mountain until 1930), which is 10 miles north of Flagstaff and 190 miles north of where William Branham was located.  In spite of this great distance, the cloud was visible from Sunset Peak, Tucson, and beyond. 


=='''References'''==
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