William Branham was born in 1909 in a log cabin in Cumberland County, Kentucky, near Burkesville. The first of ten children of Charles and Ella Branham, he was raised near Jeffersonville, Indiana. His father was an alcoholic, and William Branham often talked about how his upbringing was difficult and impoverished, although his claims of poverty have been called into question.

Branham claimed that from his early childhood he had supernatural experiences including prophetic visions. He said that in his early childhood, while assisting his father at a still, he heard a "Voice" that told him, "Don't you never drink, smoke or defile your body in any way. There'll be a work a work for you to do when you get older".

Leaving home at nineteen, William Branham worked on a ranch in Arizona. He returned home when his brother died and Branham began a search for God. He began attending the First Pentecostal Baptist Church in Jeffersonville and was eventually ordained as an Independent Baptist minister Branham claimed that his first exposure to Pentecostalism was in 1936; however, the First Pentecostal Baptist Church which he attended prior to 1933 was "a Holy Ghost church" that believed in prayer for healing and the baptism of the Holy Spirit