“THE DEATH OF THE SOUL”
FORWARD TO MY READERS: Dear Readers, It would be hard for me to tell you what a blessing you
folks are, who support this ministry financially.
I do know that because you support, you also keep us in your prayers, as
far as receiving revelation to preach. For
the last several months, I have been physically unable to answer all of my mail.
This letter is being dictated to my secretary and I hope it will be an
answer to each individual who has not received a personal letter from me.
This sermon on two-soul teaching is a rerun of the one preached several
years ago. I feel that it is very
necessary, due to the fact that so many do not know the truth about two-soul
preaching. What I will give you in
the following sermon is the teaching of the prophet as found in the Holy
Scriptures.
Your
Br. In Christ
William
Wood
“TWO SOUL TEACHING” It
has been the experience of this writer that at times our differences are only in
a play of words. By that I mean we
sometimes use different words to portray the same truth.
There is no doubt some confusion in our ranks over the “Two Souls”
and I do not know all the teaching that is going forth.
My desire is to help clear the air.
Dear Bride, we can be wrong at times.
How often I hear it said that, “The Elect cannot be fooled.”
This is the scripture, but remember this only means that we cannot be PERMANENTLY
fooled.
It does not mean that we can’t be on a side road TEMPORARILY. The man who believes he cannot EVER be deceived, is
deceived already.
That is AFTER our New Birth we have two natures.
From our physical, sex birth we only have one nature and it is evil.
From the soul out, the nature of the unregenerate man is ruined.
However, at the time of the New Birth there is a nature in us that DIES.
But the nature, or the “law of sin” that is in our fleshly members
does never die. And so we see that
AFTER the New Birth we have two natures; one in the OUTER FLESH MAN that ever
remains the same, and one in the INNER MAN of the soul that has
been changed. Actually, the Prophet
said the old soul dies and a new one takes its place.
QUOTE: SOULS IN PRISON,
PAGE 7, “Now this,
souls in prison, souls that
are now in prison. Now, the soul of
man is not the body of man, it’s the
soul. And the SOUL IS SOMETHING THAT
IS THE NATURE OF THE SPIRIT. And then when the nature of a man (dies) when he
said, “We are dead,” the
scripture plainly tells us we are dead, and our lives are hid in God through
Christ, sealed there by the Holy Spirit. (Referring
to Col.3:3)
Now it wasn’t your body that died.
It wasn’t your spirit that dies. THE
NATURE OF YOUR SPIRIT WHICH IS THE SOUL.” (End quote)
Please read the preceding quote carefully.
He said, “The soul is the nature of the spirit.”
To me he is saying the soul determines the nature that will be on the
spirit. I believe that after the
seals were opened he taught that the soul is the innermost being; it is the
control tower for the whole man. What
is in the soul flows out and controls the spirit, and the spirit then controls
the body.
“The scripture plainly tells us we are dead---.”
In other words, something died. Then
he said. “It wasn’t your body or your spirit that died, but your old NATURE
died, which is the SOUL.”
Please notice how he uses the word NATURE and SOUL interchangeably.
He declared that the old NATURE died, which is the SOUL.
We have no problem understanding that we had a NATURE change at the time
of our New Birth, but now we hear the Prophet saying it wasn’t CHANGED, it
DIED. God did not overhaul the old
NATURE, or SOUL. He slew it and gave
us a new one by quickening the SEED that was placed in us at our physical birth.
Does not the scripture say that we are NEW CREATURES? (2nd Cor. 5:17)
The old CREATURE, or the NATURE, or the SOUL was not made over, it DIED!
In the light of the preceding quote, let us now look at a
scripture that Brother Branham quoted in connection with the death of our evil
SOUL. Ezekiel 18:4, “Behold, all souls are mine, as the SOUL of the Father, so
also the SOUL of the
Son is
Mine. The SOUL that sinneth
it shall
DIE.” In
the following statement
Brother Branham apparently referred to this scripture.
QUOTE: SHOW US THE
FATHER—SPINDALE, N.C. 56-0422, “But you know the Bible said, “The SOUL
that sinneth, that SOUL shall die.” “Death
means separate.” (End quote)
The Holy Ghost who wrote the scripture made a definite statement, “The
soul that sinneth it shall die.” In
view of the Prophet’s teaching, which declares that our old SOUL DIES at the
time of our New Birth, I can see that this verse has more than one meaning.
The soul that never repents shall die because it was born evil, and since
there is no eternal hell it must eventually die.
Also, the man that does repent is given a new soul in place of the one
that must die at the time of our New Birth, And so, either way we want to look
at it, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”
This makes Ezekiel 18:4 exactly right as the Prophet said.
Why does the OLD SOUL, or the OLD NATURE, have
to die in the one who
repents? Let
Brother Branham explain it to
us;
QUOTE: YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN, PAGES 14-15, “We are all
born in sin and shaped in iniquity; there is not a sound parcel in us.
Our MINDS are bad, our SOUL, is corrupted, our constant THINKING is evil.
Every imaginary thought of a man’s mind is evil.
And also our BODY is weak, our SPIRIT is no-good, WE ARE JUST FULL OF
CORRUPTION. And how could one
corruptible thing bring a good thing out of a corrupted?
In Job the 14th chapter, “Seeing
that a man born of a woman is full of sorrow and trouble----“ and as the
Prophet goes on speaking he said, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
Not one! (Not one can do it.)
(End quote)
This statement explains to me why the OLD NATURE, or SOUL, has to die.
It was evil and had to be destroyed.
If the OLD NATURE, or SOUL, is so completely changed that it no longer
exists, is it not dead? And so the
Prophet and the scripture said simply, “It dies.”
QUOTE C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE 676, QUESTION: Explain the
difference between the SPIRIT and the SOUL?”
ANSWER: “Well now, that’s a hard one-If these eyes, if these hands,
if this body stood here just as it is today—my body could still be here, but
me (the real me) could be gone, what I am. Whoever
I am on the inside of me has gone on. That
part that is the SPIRIT. THE SOUL IS
THE NATURE OF THAT SPIRIT---, First you were mean, evil and (full of) hatred,
and malice, and strife. Now you are
loving, sweet, kind, see the difference?
It’s your NATURE—I’ll call it that.
IT’S YOUR SOUL THAT’S BEEN CHANGED.
THE OLD SOUL DIED, AND THE NEW SOUL, WHICH IS THE NEW NATURE WAS BORNED
INTO YOU, SEE?” (End quote)
Can we see that Brother Branham is using the words SOUL and
NATURE interchangeably? He said,
“I’ll call it that.” (Saying I
will call your soul your nature.) As
has already been stated, we have no problem believing that our old Nature dies,
but some of us have not understood that the soul and the nature were the same
thing. And so we have some brothers
saying the SOUL died, while others prefer to say the old NATURE died.
To me the controversy can be settled when we see that our confusion has
only been a different usage of words that mean the same thing.
Nevertheless, these things need to be ironed out so that we are not
throwing rocks at each other spiritually.
How many times he said, “The soul is the nature of the
spirit.” In other words our soul
is a nature, and this nature overflows into our spirit so that the same nature
that is in the soul determines the character of the spirit.
The spirit in turn brings the body under its control, for good or for
bad.
This helps us to understand the scriptures that teach no fountain
can produce both sweet and bitter water at the same time.
James 3:11-12, “Doth a
fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?
Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries?
Either a vine figs? So can no
fountain both yield salt water and fresh?”
When our Prophet declared
that there is only one of two things in the soul, he was basing it on scriptures
such as the one above. He said there
is either faith or unbelief in the soul. This
is back to the teaching of the INNER MAN and the OUTER MAN.
In the beginning both the INNER and OUTER MAN is defiled.
That is to say the old SOUL, or NATURE could only put forth bitter water.
But then at the New Birth the old soul, or nature, died and
was replaced with the new soul, or nature. It
is at this time that the soul begins to put forth sweet water.
But as the scripture and the Prophet said, it does not put forth both at
the same time.
There it is Little Bride!
When we are born-again, which is the old soul (nature) dying and the new
soul (nature) appearing, this is nothing more or less than the seed of God which
was placed in us at our physical birth, springing into life.
Where the old soul was evil, the new one is holy and
righteous. Where bitter water once
issued, now only sweet can come forth. Please
understand this is not to say that wrong things can no longer come out of the
mouth. We are only saying that when
the outer man controls the tongue at times, the soul is not in agreement with it
by any means, and will
eventually cause us
to repent.
To understand the scriptures that say bitter and sweet cannot issue
from the same fountain, we must again separate the INNER MAN from the OUTER MAN.
We must see that the soul renewed by God has God in it, and can never be
bitter again. And this remains true,
while the outer man is still a cocklebur and at times will spew forth bitter
water. But the inner fountain of the
soul, after its renewal, can only put forth that which is good and sweet.
Why so? Because it is the
seed (soul) of the Creator Himself.
And so we see that man does not have two souls.
He is born with a bad one from his physical birth, and at his new
spiritual birth he receives another soul-nature by a supernatural work of God.
This is why the Prophet could say that we must have the Token, which is
the new birth, or the new nature, or the new soul.
We can be justified and not have the new soul, we can be sanctified
and not have the new soul, we can have the baptism of the Holy Ghost on our
spirit, but not have the new soul. “We
are “None of His” until the soul is changed, as far as going in a
rapture is concerned. That
is why Rom. 8:9 says, “---If any
man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.”
The old soul nature must die, it must be converted, Psalms 19:7,
“the law of the Lord is perfect,
converting the soul----.” If
a thing is converted it is changed
from its original beginning so that it no longer exists as it once did.
Is this not the same as “death” to the original?
It is my belief that this is what our Prophet meant by the death of the
soul. A complete conversion is the
same as the death of the original.
QUOTE: GREAT COMMISSION, EDMONTON AB 57-0804A,
“When you’re sick in your physical body----until this body has been redeemed
it’s subject to sickness again. Exactly
right----But it’s got to die. (The
body has to die.) It’s got to
perish. SO DID THE SOUL HAVE TO
PERISH, THE THOUGHTS. The soul is
the nature of the spirit, and those thoughts and so forth in you had to perish
before the new man could be born into you, to make you a new creature in Christ.
(End quote)
QUOTE: CRUELTY OF SIN JEFF. IN V-25 N-4 53-0403,
“Made him out of the dust of the Earth, now, not in His own image.
He had already made the man. Then
He breathed into him the breath of life and he became a living SOUL.
So the SOUL of man is the nature of the SPIRIT.
Now when you’re REBORN you don’t get a new SPIRIT, you get a new
NATURE of that SPIRIT. It’s the
same SPIRIT, but a new NATURE of it. Amen