FOREWORD
The
sermons in this book are the result of truths gleaned from what is, without a
doubt, the most significant Bible Message of our modern times. I refer to the
sermons preached by the Prophet, William Marrion Branham. He has brought his
hearers step by step down through the Church Ages to this present hour. His
sermons will draw you closer to God, as you see God’s Love and concern for His
Children, and how He has watched over His Word to perform it over the past 2000
years. You will see a sweeping view of Church history, with staggering proofs of
what God has done in our day.
Focusing on the
basic issues of the Christian walk, Brother Branham’s sermons will unveil
before your eyes the work of the Holy Ghost in His last day Bride, as He
produces in them the character and the faith needed to leave in a Rapture. Our
world is very near a great crisis. Some recognize this, but only a few
understand the details of what God has prophesied is about to happen. There is a
tremendous amount of comfort in the fact that God has explained these things in
His Word, ahead of time, and then revealed them to His Last Day Prophet.
No matter how
hard the winds of adversity may blow in the days ahead, there is one who has
promised to keep us safe through it all, our Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you want to know what is ahead? Would you like to know how to prepare to meet
it? May I plead with you to study God’s Message as it was preached by the
Prophet, William Branham? This little book contains only a few sermons of my own
that came from the vast storehouse of God’s Message given to the Prophet.
Often we hear
it said, by those who do not have revelation of God’s program, “I do not
believe in prophets for today.” This statement shows forth woeful ignorance of
God’s plan to send Prophets ever since the days of Moses. When God, Himself,
spoke to the Israelites from
God heard the
request of the people, and from that day to this, He has sent prophets to speak
for Him. Amos 3:7, “Surely the
Lord God will do nothing but (before) He
revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.” When we hear a
person say, “I do not believe in prophets for today,” it reminds us of a man
drowning in the ocean. A ship passes by and throws him a life jacket, but he
cries out, “Get that life jacket away from me, I do not believe in life
jackets.” God has thrown the modern day churches a life jacket in the form of
His Word Prophet, but they cry out, “Get away from me with this talk of a
prophet. I do not believe in prophets.” Be careful, dear friend, if you
persist in this attitude, refusing to investigate, God will sooner or later heed
your request, and your ears will be stopped up for good.
The sin-loving
multitudes in the churches today are terrified at the thought of living the
holy, sanctified life that Brother William Branham preached, and so they soothed
their fears by denying that God still sends prophets. Many of the ministers, who
were interrupted in their way of sanctioning sin in the church and seeing their
money gains endangered, were enraged and rallied to come against this solitary
figure who stood so boldly against their wrong doings. Yes, this restorer of
truth had bitter accusers to face; some charged him with being a star-gazer, and
of the Devil. Others accused him, as some had accused Moses, of supposing he was
the only one God spoke to. But, even as in the days of Moses, these rebellious
ones learned, and are still learning, that God did choose to use this voice.
Though Brother
William Branham had been moved by the Spirit of God into his ministry of
restoration, he was not to finish the work without severe conflicts. The
reproaches of his enemies, their misrepresentations of his purposes, and their
malicious talk against his character, came upon him like an overwhelming flood.
Even so, the One who had ordained him as a prophet from his mother’s womb
constantly raised up a standard against the false accusation.
Again and
again, Brother Branham declared, “The work God has called me to, cannot be
effected by the counsel of man, it is the counsel of God, who has taught me by
an Angel and by visions.” Now this mighty prophet is taking his rest, but
there is a vital lesson to be learned by those who feel led to continue his
Message. The truths God revealed to the Prophet, and now is revealing to the
Bride, will stir the enmity of Satan, and of men who are in the churches of
Satan. So, in the conflict, something more than intellect and human wisdom is
needed. There must be an infilling of God’s Spirit into our inner-most soul.
This is far more than what some had in Pentecost. It is not just a temporary
anointing on the spirit to speak in tongues and operate some gifts. It is the
nature of God, Himself, imparted to us, which in turn, supplies us with
spiritual strength and revelation with which to repulse every attack of the evil
one! To enter this life or death conflict without this New Birth is to be
overcome. Jesus said to the great church leader, Nicodemos, “You
must be born again.” (John 3:7) This is more than human intellect
and wisdom; it is God in human flesh.
When his
enemies appealed to church customs and the traditions of the Elders, the Prophet
met them with the scriptures. In the Bible were arguments against their teaching
that they could not answer. Therefore, the slaves of denominational systems
clamored for his downfall, even as the Jews had clamored for the downfall of
Jesus. He is a heretic they declared, it is a sin to allow him to come into our
churches and confuse the people. But Brother Branham did not fall prey to their
wrong spirit. God had a work for him to do and Angels from Heaven were sent to
watch over him.
Brother
Branham’s teaching, which has been rejected by the masses, nevertheless, has
attracted the attention of thoughtful minds throughout the world. From his
sermons came beams of light called revelations
which have awakened a group of people called The
Bride of Christ. A living Faith has now replaced the dead formalism in which
many of these had been held. The Word of God, by which Brother Branham tested
every doctrine and every claim, was a two-edged sword, cutting its way into the
heart of every honest man.
Across the
earth, there has been awakened a desire for righteousness and spiritual growth
as has not been known for ages. The eyes of some people, whose eyes had for so
long been directed toward human theology and reasoning, were now turning, in
repentance, to the crucified Christ. This wide spread interest aroused still
further the anger of the denominational leaders. But God’s Prophet refused to
leave the position in which God had placed him. His challenge was, “Come and
bring your Bible and stand with me, and disprove, with God’s Word, what I
teach.”
This writer
makes no claim to having the knowledge or the anointing that held God’s
Prophet as a solid rock before the hordes of Hell. But, it is our calling to
help God’s Bride to a better understanding of what has already been brought.
Forty years of study has revealed how very little we know of the Message God has
sent, nevertheless, we struggle to share the revelations we do have.
As for this
writer, I have never seen nor heard of a man who preached Jesus Christ as did
this humble, uneducated Prophet, William Branham. Because of God’s Message
through him, we now know that the denominational systems of the world are
anti-Christ in nature. True, God is calling some out, but the masses have
already rejected the Message of Christ for this age! From God’s Message
through this Prophet, we also know that a Pope of Rome will be the anti-Christ,
and that this great, harlot church has denominational daughters, who are even
now joining back up with the Roman Church Mother.
Friend, if you
are one who desires a popular religion, and if this little book has fallen into
your hands, I know the arguments that are urged against those who dare to preach
so-called “New Doctrines.” You say, “Who are these unlearned and few in
number people? Are they not of the poorer class, yet, they claim to have the
truth! They claim to be the chosen people of God, but they are deceived!” You
say, “How greatly superior in number and influence are our denominations. How
many great and learned men are in our churches? How much more power is on our
side!”
These arguments
may have a telling influence upon the unregenerate in the Church world, but they
are no more effective on God’s little Bride than they were against His Prophet
of our age. If the sermons in this book move you to desire more of God’s Plan
for our end-time age, I urge you to seek out the Prophet’s own sermon books
and study them diligently and prayerfully, comparing them with God’s Word.
Those who open their hearts will never be sorry they did so, for it will have an
eternal effect on each one. Amen!
INTRODUCTION
In November of
2004, it will have been nine years since our first monthly sermon was sent out
by way of a small mailing list. During that time, we have published six books,
four of which contain sermons that have already been mailed to our readers, in
the form of monthly sermons. At this time, July of 2004, book number seven is
almost ready for the publisher. It too will contain sermons that have been
previously mailed as individual, monthly teaching.
Again and
again, we have returned to the messages of one who had mastered the spiritual
secret of unbroken fellowship with his God, our Brother William Branham. As has
been our goal from the start, we have sought to fit the teaching of the Prophet
into the Holy Scriptures, and not isolate scripture in an effort to make them
fit his Message. In so doing, we have only followed the Prophet’s own
instructions. He said, “If I ever tell you anything that does not fit the
overall Word, don’t you believe me, you believe the Word.”
There are today
thousands who profess to be Christians, who can give no other reason for their
belief, other than that they were so told by their religious leaders. They have
no testimony of a day and hour when sins were forgiven, nor of the infilling of
the precious Holy Ghost. They seem to overlook the Savior’s teaching
concerning the experience of the New Birth, and place full confidence in the
words of their ministers. The following statement is not being made to condemn,
but rather to set forth a little understood truth.
Here is the
statement. Many ministers, in these last days, have only chosen the profession
of minister out of their own natural mind. Some of these men are Christians, but
unfortunately, some are not! Even though some have been saved, this does not
prove they are called to the Ministry. No doubt, some have chosen the pulpit to
escape manual labor and as an easy way to make a living. How can we trust our
souls to these men unless we know for certain they are carriers of God’s
revealed truths?
A lack of moral
courage to step out of the beaten paths of “Religion,” causes many to
content themselves with the husks of denominational teaching. By their refusal
to investigate for themselves, they are becoming hopelessly fastened by the
chains of error. Some see that the modern day events brought to pass through the
ministry of a Prophet do actually fit the scriptures, yet they allow the
opposition of the clergy to turn them away from truth. These deluded souls dare
not think differently than their paid ministers. Therefore, their eternal
destination is placed in the hands of the pride and prejudice of another.
Many are the
snares that Satan is allowed to use in leading people astray, but without
question the most deceiving of them all is the leadership of unsaved clergy!
Ignorance of God’s Word becomes sin after God has made every provision to
bring us His truths.
The provision
we speak of is the sending of a proven Word-Prophet, with “Thus Saith The
Lord” for all who have ears to hear. What a burden is brought to bear on the
hearts of those who have been enlightened, and who strive to share life-saving
revelations with those still walking in darkness. All around us is suffering and
misery and our hearts are grieved as the multitudes go on with their efforts to
arrive at truth with out the aid of God. They only become more entangled in the
snares of Satan.
We are living
in the most solemn period of this world’s history. The destiny of Earth’s
teeming millions is about to be decided. Our own well being and the salvation of
other souls, depends on the preaching and witnessing of the true Gospel.
One part of
this true Gospel is to be found in Revelations 18:1, 2, 4. “I
saw another mighty Angel come down from Heaven, having great power, and the
earth was lighted with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice,
saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of
devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and
hateful bird. And I heard another voice from Heaven, saying, Come out of her My
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her
plagues.”
Do we dare to preach
who this great
In
other words, this woman (Church) had daughters that had their start in her and
then at one time came out and PROTESTED her anti-Christ doctrine. Every
denomination had its start in the Roman Church. During the great reformation in
Martin Luther’s day, many protested and came out, receiving the name of
“Protestants”. Sad to say, but in this hour they are one by one returning to
the Mother Harlot, the Catholic Church.
In the
preceding scriptures, the terrible condition of the religious world is
described. With each rejection of Truth, the minds of the people have become
darker, their hearts more hardened, until they are entrenched in error. But
thanks be to God, we have a most glorious promise in John 7: 17. “If
any man will do His Will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of
God….”, saying that if any man will obey God and walk in all the Truth that
God has given him so far, then he will continue to be shown more and more Truth.
C
H A P T E R 1
HOW
FAR
SHOULD
GOD
BE TRUSTED?
The
question needs to be asked in our Message Churches, “Can we trust God too
much?” Is there such a thing as going TOO FAR in the matter of trusting God?
Do we have any scripture where God ever rebuked any of His Saints for trusting
in Him too much? When the physical lives of His people were at stake, and it was
their choice to either maintain their testimony or turn back, were they ever
rebuked for laying their life on the line? How far should our Creator be trusted
anyway? Is there a place, or a time, when we have gone far enough in our trust
so that it would be scripturally right to stop trusting? Where does the Bible
say the line can be drawn? Or, is there such a line?
These are not
idle questions that can be read and then easily forgotten, but they are of
utmost importance! In view of what our Prophet said about our Faith needing to
be made PERFECT we must, with all honesty, answer the above questions
personally.
QUOTE:
PERFECT FAITH, PAGE 33, “I did this for a purpose, I am working out
something. It’s taking this charge of faith and going right back to begin, and
come in, see. To kind of raise faith in a bracket where you have never noticed
it that way before. Not just “A” faith but a PERFECT FAITH, built up
in here (the heart). And watch a perfect God with a perfect heart, keep a
perfect promise, by His perfect Word, which is sharper than a two edged sword,
and a discerner of the thoughts of the heart. And what? We are coming now to the
perfection, because the people has to come to this in order for the Rapture.
That’s what is holding it away right now, is waiting for the church to come
into that PERFECT RAPTURING FAITH” (End quote)
QUOTE:
PERFECT FAITH PAGE 24, “When Satan tempts us we are to resist him IN A
PERFECT FAITH, in a perfect Word, like Jesus did. The Word of God is perfect. We
are to have PERFECT FAITH in this perfect Word.” (End quote)
Our Prophet was
only teaching what Paul taught!
I Thes.
3:9-10, “For what thanks can we
render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes
before our God; night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face,
AND MAKE PERFECT THAT WHICH IS LACKING IN YOUR FAITH.”
Paul said that he
had been praying night and day that he could visit these Thessalonians, so that
he could, by further teaching, make them PERFECT in their Faith. In all ages,
God has seen fit to lead His Bride to places of laying their life on the line
for His sake, but he had also brought them one step at a time to the place where
they, “Loved not their lives unto the
death.” (Rev. 12: 11) Their Faith was a thing of steady growth.
Jesus said in Luke
22:23, “I prayed for thee that thy Faith fail not.” A Faith that never
fails is one that never finds a place to stop trusting, and here the Lord prayed
that Peter would come into this Perfect Faith. James said, in James 1:6-7,
“But let him ask in Faith, nothing
wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and
tossed.” Verse 7, “For let
not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.”
Our Prophet, William
Branham, spoke of how God tested Abraham to that final point (of plunging the
knife into the heart of his beloved Isaac).
QUOTE:
POSSESSING THE ENEMY’S GATES PAGE 7, “Then if He let Abraham be tested
to that final point, He’s got to test you and me to that final moment,
that time of decision when everything is away from you. You have to stand alone
there. Hallelujah! That’s it!” (End quote)
And Brother
Branham received more than one test to that final point himself. Let him tell
about when the Lord took his wife and baby.
QUOTE: AND
KNOWETH IT NOT, PAGES 25-26-27, “I said, ‘Doc, I ain’t got no more
strength. Couple hours of calling for my baby, Sharon, run her out there…Just
to see her in spasms—it wouldn’t stop. They put a needle in the spine; they
punctured it, brought the sign up—tubercular meningitis…..
I said,
‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘You can’t see her. She’s dying,
Bill.’ I said, ‘No, Sam, not my baby.’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ He said,
‘Don’t even ask for her, Bill, if she would ever live she would be
afflicted. She would always be drawed up, and she would be afflicted all of her
life.” He said, ‘She’s got meningitis. Don’t go around her. You’ll
just kill Billy by doing it.’
I said, ‘Sam,
I have got to see her.’ He said, ‘you can’t do it, Bill, I forbid you.
Now, you know how much I think of you. You’re my buddy and everything; how
much I think of you and how much I believe you, Bill, but don’t go to that
baby. If you do that, that meningitis is on her. She’ll be gone in a few
minutes, and we’ll bury her. Bill, I just feel so sorry for you.’ He called
the nurse over and gave me some kind of medicine. He said, ‘I don’t see how
the man’s standing up.’
I stood there a
little bit. He brought the medicine in and I sat down in the hall. He said,
‘Sit,’ and the nurse said, ‘I want you to drink this, Brother Branham.’
I said,
‘Thank you, just set it down there a minute.’ When she left, I poured it
over in that spittoon; set the glass back down. I said, ‘Oh, God, what have I
done?’ You’re a good God. Why did you let her die and letting me holding her
two little arms like that; begging Him for her? Why did You let her go?
There’s Billy laying there dying, and here she is dying! What have I done?
Tell me! Well, I might as well go with them.’ I opened the door and no nurse
was there and I slipped down in the basement. That was before the hospital was
fixed. Screens, no screens, on the windows hardly; flies on her little eyes. Had
a piece of mosquito bar, we call it-netting- put over her face. I shooed the
flies off; laid there. Her little eyes, she was suffering so hard ‘till they
were crossing.
Then, Satan
moved up by the side of me, there. He said, ‘Did you say He was a good God?’
I said,
‘Yeah, I said that.’
‘Did you say
He was a Healer? Well, why did your father die in your arms over there, and you
called him a sinner….calling for his life. Why did your brother die in your
other brother’s arms, out there, and you standing in the pulpit preaching a
few weeks ago? Then why didn’t He answer you? You said He loved you. He saved
you.’
You couldn’t
tell me there’s no God because I already seen Him. But he was telling me, He
didn’t care for me.
He said,
‘There lays your wife; your babies will be there pretty soon. Your daddy’s
buried. Your brother’s buried. Your wife’s going to be buried, now,
tomorrow, and here’s your other baby dying. He’s a good God. He’s a
Healer. You made a sap out of yourself. What did it do?’
It was
working from the outside, now, to this first man.
‘And you were
liked amongst the people; but what are you now? A religious fanatic.’
That’s right.
I was. See, these things begin to move together. The outside reasoning and the
Spirit moving these things together. ‘That’s right, Satan.’
‘Then, did
you say He was a Healer?’
‘Yes,
yeah.’
‘And you
begging and crying and the people telling you it wasn’t so, that you’re all
off the line. Your own turns you out for this. Your own
‘Yeah.’
‘Your daddy
buried; your brother buried. Your wife lying there to be buried, and here’s
your baby just about 15 minutes longer, and she’ll be gone. And He’s a
Healer? Your own flesh and blood; one word from Him would save the baby’s
life. ‘He’s the Healer,’ you said. The people tried to tell you. Their
preachers told you, you were all messed up; you were all insane. You’ve become
a religious fanatic, and you said He loved you. Could He love you?
Everything he
was telling me was the truth. Everything that he would say would fall right in
line. See, here? I was just then about ready to say that, ‘That’s the way He
has to act, then I won’t serve Him.’ Just as I said that there was
something came from somewhere else. Way down on the inside said, ‘Who are you
to begin with? The Lord gave, and the Lord taketh away.’
See,
that’s that inside man. Don’t reason at all. I looked back and I
thought, ‘How did I get on Earth? I came from a bunch of drunkards. How did I
get here? Who gave me life? Who gave me that wife? Who gave me that baby? Where
did my wife come from? Where did my life come from?’
I said,
‘Though He slay me, yet I’ll trust Him.’ I said. ‘Get away from me,
Satan.’
I laid my hand
over on the baby, I said, ‘
The Word of God
shall never fail. It’ll triumph no matter what that is. Then I knew there
was something inside of all these things…something inside of all emotions,
everything else like that; there was an inside man that held in that hour,
nothing else could have done it. Every reason, everything that they showed,
everything proving it was wrong, and I was in the wrong, but the Word of God
that was predestinated before the foundation of the world, held on the inside.”
(End quote)
To the
Prophet’s natural mind, it seemed that he had gone far enough in trusting God,
but the Holy Ghost that lived in his soul came to his rescue and strengthened
him, showing him that there is never a right place to stop believing. The
Prophet is now with his family that passed on before him, but even before he
moved into that dimension himself, he knew that God’s “NO” in answer to
his prayers was the right way. To Perfect Faith, God’s “No” is just as
good as His “Yes.” Though our hearts be broken, and our lives seem not worth
living, we can stir up that real Faith and know our God is “Just” in
all that He does.
The more we
catch the revelation of His total Perfection, the more we will trust in His
judgments. He has never made a mistake; he has never done anything, nor allowed
anything, that will not work together for good to those who love Him. The Tie
Post that the Christian life is fastened to is “Trust in God.”
Gen. 18:25,
“…..Shall not the Judge of all the
Earth do right?”
Psalms 19:8,
“The Statutes of the Lord are RIGHT.”
Psalms 111:7,
“His works are faithful and Right.”
Psalms 119:75,
“Lord…..Thy Judgments are RIGHT.”
Psalms
119:127-128, “Therefore, I esteem all Thy precepts concerning ALL THINGS to be
RIGHT, and I hate every false way.”
Pro. 4:11,
“I have led thee in the RIGHT paths.”
From these
scriptures, and many more that could be listed, we see that whatever He has
willed to come to pass is the absolute perfect way. The thoughts of man can
never improve upon the way our God handles the circumstances of our lives.
Someone may ask how we explain all the evil we see happening in the Earth. The
answer is we don’t attempt to explain it! We just take His word that promises
that it will all work together for good to those that love Him and trust Him.
(Rom.
Without Faith
in God, the unbeliever accuses Him of many things, but the Believing Bride
trusts Him in all matters. If not now, they soon will, because He is giving them
many opportunities to do so. One trial over, and with our Faith strengthened by
having seen Him deliver us from the hand of the fowler this makes way for a yet
more severe test, until at last we understand that there is no circumstance that
can separate us from His great Love. (
How far can we
go in the matter of trusting God? The answer is, “We can go as far as He
requires us to go!” It is not for us to REASON with God about His Word, it is
our business to believe it and obey it. When God ordered Abraham to offer his
son as a sacrifice, Abraham had much room for “reasoning and arguing” about
that command. To Abraham’s natural mind, it was not in line with God’s
promise which said, “In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” Surely, the
question was in Abraham’s mind, “How far can I go in the matter of trusting
and obeying God?” We can know that the enemy brought that question. The Bride
must answer it.
We can thank
God today that Father Abraham decided that there was no right place to stop
trusting his God. He obeyed the command and left it up to the Lord how He would
keep His promise! His choice earned for him the title “The Father of Our
Faith.” Over and over in the scriptures, God has shown us that it is perfectly
safe to obey Him, even when we cannot understand. Joseph continued to love and
trust His God while he sat in a dungeon for several years, falsely accused of
rape. Do we suppose he understood what God was doing? I think not. To understand
everything is to do away with the element of Faith.
Paul, crawling
out on the shore after a terrible storm had wrecked his ship, was bitten by the
most poisonous snake on the island. After all he had been through, don’t you
suppose the thought was brought to him, “This is the final blow, now you will
die!” But Paul knew that even then there was no right place to stop trusting
his God. So, he flung the reptile off into the fire and kept walking and
trusting.
How far should
the Three Hebrew Children go in their trusting the Lord? They had refused to bow
to the false image. They had heard the death sentence concerning the fiery
furnace. They had been bound and were being carried toward it. Do you believe
they were praying as hard as they ever did in their life? Put yourself in their
place, they were human just as we are. We know they were praying for the Lord to
stop the men from actually throwing them into the furnace, but they suddenly
found themselves sailing through the air towards its open door. Was this the
time to cast their Faith aside? What if they had done so? Then the flames would
have devoured them in a moment! With their lives on the line, they found no
place to stop trusting!
When Daniel
refused to stop praying according to the king’s law, he was sentenced to the
lions den. Don’t you know he was praying, “Lord, You wouldn’t let them
throw me in there would you?” How would you have been praying? But, he was
lowered into the pit just the same. What if, on his way down, he had decided,
“This is far enough to trust the Lord.” Then he would have been devoured by
the lions. How far should we go in trusting our God? As far as He requires! We
will never loose by it, even if He takes us out of this world.
Gideon was told
by the Lord to take 300 men and attack an enemy army who were camped in a
valley, the number of which were like grasshoppers for multitude, and their
camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude. (Judges
In the days of
Queen Esther, when King Ahasuerus had made a decree to kill all the Jews in the
land, Esther put her life on the line for her Jewish people. Disobeying a strict
law of the King, she appeared before him without having been called. The penalty
for such an action was death, unless the King chose to grant a pardon to the
guilty person. Standing in the court in the king’s presence, and without his
permission, Esther waited. If the King accepted her presence, she would
intercede for the Jews, if he rejected her bold intrusion, she would die. She
had decided to go al the way in trusting the Lord. Her testimony was, “If
I perish, I perish.” (Esther 4:16)
Stephen,
accused of blasphemy, nevertheless, preached the Holy Gospel to those disputing
him. At the end of his long discourse to them, he took his life in his hands and
said, “Ye stiff-necked and
uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your
Father’s did, so do ye. Which of the Prophets have not your Father’s
persecuted? And they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the
Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murders.” (Acts 7:
51-52)
For his
obedience to the Gospel, they gnashed on him with their teeth, and stoned him to
death. Did he go too far in trusting his God? No! For his faithfulness, he
looked up, even as the stones fell, and saw the Glory of God, and Jesus standing
on the Right Hand of God. (Acts
In the
scriptures, we find story after story of the Elect and Called of God placing
their lives on the Altar for the Lord’s sake! It was God’s choice to
confront them with such decisions. Was He asking them to go too far? The carnal
mind concludes that such treatment is unjust, but the spiritual mind knows that “All
His precepts, concerning ALL THINGS are RIGHT.” (Ps. 119:128)
How far has the
modern church come from “The Faith that
was once delivered unto the Saints?” Listen to the testimonies of some who
are in our glorious Message, and we see that they suppose the most dangerous
thing that can be done is place their total being in God’s Hands. No Friends,
that is not the most dangerous thing. Far more dangerous than that, is to be
found placing some part of our lives into the hands of men.
Jer. 17:5,
“Thus saith the Lord, cursed be the man
that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from
the Lord.”
James 1:8,
“A double minded man is unstable in all is ways.”
Ps. 118:8,
“It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.”
Isa. 2:22,
“Cease ye from man, whose breath is in
his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?”
How far should we go
in the way of trusting the Lord? There must be no stopping place for the Bride.
Let the rest reason and falter, but let the Bride, “Love
not their lives unto the death.” (Rev. 12:11)
C H
A P T E R 2
THE
GREATEST NEED
IN
THE
CHURCHES
TODAY
Without question, the greatest need in the churches today is the
infilling of the Holy Ghost! Those of us, who are old enough to look back and
remember 65-70 years ago, know well enough that Spiritual Power in the churches
has decreased year after year. In spite of huge sums of money spent on great
buildings, in spite of thousands of new workers, and in spite of all the fleshly
activities, spiritual power has waned.
Why? Because, there is a grieved and quenched Holy Ghost in our midst.
The Gift of the Holy Ghost to an individual is the crowning Mercy of God. The
foundation of Christianity is the Holy Ghost sent to indwell the individual. It
is this Spirit of Christ in the people that elevates Christianity above every
other form of religion. This is the central element; it is the vital need of the
soul of man. There is no spiritual good brought to any of us except by God’s
Spirit. This same truth applies to those who sit in Message Churches and believe
that God sent an End-Time Prophet. We must have the Token!
The flood gates of heresy are broken up in
We can get so occupied with trying to convince the people of a Prophet
that we forget that they first need to have the Holy Ghost Teacher. When He
comes in, He will lead them into all
Truth. How often have we changed the thinking of some precious people, so
that they can see intellectually, that God sent a Prophet, and then when they
line up with the teaching we indicate that this BELIEVING has placed them in the
Kingdom. But, this intellectual believing can take place without the Holy Ghost life!
Can we face the solemn fact that the greatest need in our Message
Churches is the Holy Ghost? If we could somehow convince 50 times more people
that Brother William Branham was God’s prophet, the churches would be no
better off spiritually unless God should grant a fresh outpouring of the Holy
Ghost. No church is strengthened by the increase of its unconverted members.
Countless books and tracts of the Prophet have been distributed world-wide, and
God knows we are not against that, but are the church members more Christ-like
now than a few years ago? Has the standard of personal holiness been advanced?
Are they more separated from the world than the last time we visited them? If
not, then we can only conclude one thing, they do not have the Holy Ghost Token!
There is a grieved and quenched Holy Ghost in our midst, and until the
people seek His infilling there will be no improvement. In
In verse 17, Jesus said, “He
dwelleth WITH YOU and shall (at a later time) be
IN YOU.” In verse 26, Jesus said, “I
will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.” Here He made
reference to the Upper Room, where He would come back to Earth in Spirit form,
and actually enter into the hearts of the 120. In verse 26, He said, “The Comforter is the Holy Ghost….and He shall teach you all things,
and bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.” In John
15:26, Jesus said, “But when the
Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of
Truth…He shall testify of me.” In John
But,
in spite of the Lord’s repeated references to the Holy Ghost Spirit, it seems
that His teaching on the subject is met with much neglect and perverted ideas
about what the New Birth is. Multitudes in the denominations have set out to
serve the Lord without having had a new nature placed in them. And may I
respectfully say that some in our beloved Message have done the same thing! Why
do some, who believe that God sent us a Prophet, fail to believe in Holiness and
separation from the world? The answer is simple; the Holy One has not yet taken
up His abode in them! If He was there, He would teach them the truth about His
Holiness Laws and separation from the world.
Without the infilling of the Holy Ghost, a Justified Christian will
remain worldly. Sins forgiven and believing the End-Time Message does not
necessarily mean the Holy Ghost has come in. In Acts 19:2, Paul asked
some believing Disciples, “Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?” They
replied, “We have not so much as heard
there was such an experience.” Today, a Message Believer has heard that
there is a Holy Ghost, but too often is told that if he believes the Message, he
has Him. Dear Friends, that is only a part of the proof needed in order to know
we have a new nature. Religious knowledge, even if it is concerning God’s true
Message, is not at all the same as Spiritual Life. A Prophet said, “Without
that LIFE, we cannot be Bride and go in the Rapture!”
How desperately we need to get back to the old time preaching of
Salvation. Do we suppose that we are so good natured within ourselves that we
are easily persuaded to become Christians? If this were true, then there would
be no need for the Holy Ghost to put forth His mighty power, to do for us what
we can do for ourselves! If Salvation consists merely of believing I am lost,
that Christ loves me and died for me, and that all I have to do is accept Him as
my personal Saviour and rest upon His finished work, then any man can be saved,
at any time, by exerting his own will power.
It is true that we must accept these powerful truths, but many a good
person has mentally accepted these truths, who are not converted. Why is this?
It is because in many cases there was no supernatural working of the Holy Ghost
to bring a heart-felt CONVICTION. Man tries to make Salvation something he can
do for himself, but the Lord God has planned it otherwise! That is why the Lord
Jesus said, “No man can come to Me except the Father (by His spirit) draw
him.” (John 6:44)
Dear Friends, it takes more than just a decision of our own will to
become a Christian, though that is part of it. Without the Holy Ghost doing His
work, we all have minds that are “Enmity
against God,” (Rom. 8:7) and “There
is none that seeketh after God.” (Rom.
There is no better proof of the New Birth than when one believes the Word
for his age, then lives a holy, clean life, separated from the world. And there
is no better proof that one is not yet converted when he loves the world and its
programs and bypasses certain of God’s Laws.
QUOTE: DEMONOLOGY PAGES 78-79, “Like a little baby. I noticed my
little baby back there, his mother trying to put his little jacket on him this
morning. He wanted to get his little arm in the sleeve. He couldn’t put his
arm in there, he don’t know how. You’ve got to guide his arm in there, but
he’s just beating all around it, he never gets to the sleeve. He knows he’s
not in the sleeve.
And so do you know you’re not right with God, when you’re still
backbiting, lying, doing everything. You can’t be right with God, I don’t
care how many churches you belong to, until your soul becomes converted.
Brother, that’s old fashioned, but that will boil down and put soup in your
soul. Right!
Try to put his arm in, he’s got to have someone to direct him in, how
to put his arm in. Then when he gets his arm in the jacket, he knows he’s
alright. That’s the way it is with ever Born-Again Christian. When he really
gets into God, he watches his life with God’s Word, and he realizes he is
lined up with every bit of it. He’s got long-suffering, gentleness, meekness,
power, faith, love, joy, peace. He ain’t tossed about like the troubled sea.
He ain’t worried about every little thing. He ain’t jumping here and there,
like a bottle stopper on a windy ocean. He is set. His heart is pure. His
thoughts are pure. His intentions are pure. His alternative (motive) is
right…..All Hell can’t move him, he’s lined by the Word of
God………he’s abstained from the things of the World, they’re dead to
him, he don’t want them anymore . Why,
you couldn’t make a Holy Ghost girl put on a pair of the ungodly looking
clothes, and get out there for nothing. No Sir!
CONT. QUOTE: “Now there is no need to go and tell her she is
wrong, because she won’t believe you, because that’s all she knows. That’s
her joy. The woman puts on those little things to get out of the evening, just
when their men come home…..and tell me that’s right? Woman, I don’t mean
to say you’re evil. I don’t mean to say you’re immoral. But, you don’t
realize, Sister, that’s an unclean spirit that’s got a hold of you.”
CONT. QUOTE: PAGE 79, “Your church puts up with it. Your
preacher is afraid to say anything, afraid that you won’t pay in your tithes
any more. That’s the reason. That’s the trouble. My goodness! How you going
to preach to a bunch of buzzards, less you get them converted and right with God
to begin with? They’ll root their nose in dead stuff all the time. What you
need is a dumping out, an old fashioned revival sweep from coast to coast, and
get men and women right with God…….If you love the world or the things of
the world, the love of God is not even in you.” (End quote)
According to a Prophet, and the scriptures, where many have gone wrong or
that is to say “missed Salvation,” is that they have given a mental assent
to the Scriptures, supposing that a man can make himself a true believer
whenever he pleases. In doing this, the supernatural element of the Holy Spirit
is many times not waited for. But, salvation God’s way is much more than just
mentally agreeing with scripture. The soul has to be supernaturally quickened by
the Holy Ghost, and made aware of its awful lost condition. We must realize that
nothing we can do on our own, without the Power of God working in us, can bring
us to that Divine resting place that we call Salvation.
The Faith we need for the saving of the soul is a Diving Gift, delivered
by the Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph. 2:8-9) it is not a work that the creature can do
for himself. It is “The operation of God.” (Col. 2:12) The same God that commands
us to believe, (I John
Cannot we see, Dear Friends, how impossible it is for a person, using
only his own will power, without the supernatural work of the Holy Ghost, to
place in himself the Nature of God. The New Birth is the Nature of God coming
into the soul and the Lord Jesus Christ is the only person who can accomplish
this greatest of all miracles. It is very true that He is grieved by our
supposed “SELF ABILITY” to “Receive Christ as our Personal Saviour.” Do
we really believe the words of Christ when He said, “No
man can come to me, EXCEPT the Father which has sent Me draw him.” (John
6:44) When we come to the place of truly believing this statement, then we will
understand that until the Spirit of God CONVICTS us, we cannot even repent, and
without true repentance there is no forgiveness, and without forgiveness we are
still in our sins and have not even been Justified.
In the statements above the Prophet said, “There is no use to tell her
she is wrong (for dressing immorally) because she won’t believe you, because
that’s all she knows.” How many times have we been discouraged by trying to
cause a lost person to see and admit their sins? We have used our own words and
arguments without results, and the lost person continues blindly in their lost
condition. There is only one way to win the lost to Jesus Christ, and that is to
preach His Word that will convince them they are LOST, and then trust in the
Word to CONVICT them for remaining in that state.
The Word of God is Spirit and Life. When read out of the book, or quote
it, the Spirit of Life flows out of the Word. Though we do not understand it,
there is power in His Word to convince of sin, then convict of the same. Our
duty is to preach the parts of it that pertain to salvation, then pray and
believe the Lord that His Word will never return void. It will both save and
condemn, but it will not return without accomplishing God’s will for it. It is
not our place to condemn the lost sinner, God reserves that time and place for
Himself. We are to pray for the ability to love them in their rebellion.
A Prophet said, “Love is the strongest force on Earth.” Is that not
what pulled you and me out of the muck and mire? Love lifts up, and draws and
pulls the sinner, while to condemn him drives him further into the mire.
In our quest for the souls of men, we must have more, much more, than
just enticing words of our own in order to pull them away from the world they
were born into. It does not enter into the lost sinner’s mind that he should
be in the world, but not part of it. They are not strangers in the world; they
love it, with all its shiny baubles. They greatly desire to be accepted by its
society. They want to have its treasures stored up for themselves, ready to be
used to satisfy the lust of their flesh. Their treasure is not above, as is that
of the Born-Again man. They are of the world, and therefore, this world
satisfies them.
These things being true, we will not be able to change them, apart from
the supernatural workings of the Holy Ghost. Unless the Lord places His Spirit
in them, they will always prefer the world ahead of spiritual things. The things
that we preach and witness of, such as everlasting life, peace in our hearts
from knowing and obeying Jesus Christ, Divine Healing and all our material needs
met, by One who is invisible to their blinded eyes, seems to them to be fairy
tales.
At the same time, if they should be told of a great business opportunity,
in which they are certain to make a fortune, or of a way they can be honored by
the world’s society, they are at once all ears. In their unredeemed state,
these things are worth seeking after, but the things of God are of no importance
to them. So, we should be able to see what we are up against in trying to bring
them to Christ apart from the power of the Holy Ghost. They cannot be talked
into leaving the nest of the world for such far away things as Heaven and peace
with God.
In some places, even in our Message, we have apparently decided that if
we can’t get the people to Christ the old fashioned way, the New Birth, then
we will take them in the new fashionable way, which is on the grounds that they
believe in our Prophet, go to church two or three times a week, live as good as
you can, support your pastor financially, and above all, believe every word
Brother Branham said, and you are ready for the Rapture.
But, you can do all these things and still not have the LIFE that comes
with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, Himself, is LIFE. In HIM is the Faith to
believe all His Word. In Him is the ability to separate from the world and its
KNOWLEDGE and live holy, clean lives. When He comes He makes you to be a radical
to those around you who do not have Him. Does not the scripture say that the Mal.
4:5 Prophet was to restore the Faith of our Book of Acts Fathers? This is
His promise, and we say again that the greatest need in the Message Churches
today is the Holy Ghost. It was the Holy Ghost in the Prophet who spoke the
following statements through his mouth.
QUOTE: GOD OF THIS EVIL AGE, PAGES 20-21, “And the world today
is dedicating themselves to the knowledge which came by Satan, and man’s day
is glorified, not by the Word of God, but by the knowledge that he has. Now
think, let that soak in. and when you play this tape back, ON THIS POINT HERE,
STOP FOR A WHILE AND THINK. His works are exalted above God’s Word and
manifested works. The wisdom of Satan which he gave to Eve at the
beginning….now listen, don’t miss this. The wisdom of Satan is exalted to
the Throne of Worship in man, above the vindicated Word of God for the hour. Our
churches prove that by their seminaries, schools of learning, that’s learned
more than God’s Word knows about it, they think. And there, Doctor so and so,
and Teacher so and so, and Professor so and so has exalted their own knowledge,
so-called, from Satan, truth above the vindicated promise of God, made clear
right before them. And man fall for it. See? (End quote)
QUOTE: GOD OF THIS EVIL AGE, PAGE 23, “Now, we know that
Satan’s gospel is a Gospel of Science and Progress. He preached it in
QUOTE: GOD OF THIS EVIL AGE, PAGE 24, “And notice, he preached
that kind of a scientific, social, educated, progressive gospel to Eve, and
Adam’s bride believed it. AND HE HAS SUCCEEDED IN FILLING THE SO-CALLED BRIDE
OF CHRIST, THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND ADAM, WITH THE SAME ARGUMENTS. THAT’S
RIGHT. (End quote)
Yes, it is true, even in our beloved Message many have believed Satan’s
gospel, neither will they confess that they have been deceived. When the Third
Pull Message is preached, only one here and there believes it, and is pulled out
from the mass of so-called Message Believers. There is coming a day when the
line between the regenerate and the unregenerate will be clearly drawn. The
catching away of the regenerate will settle the question forever! The Born-Again
will leave, and those without the Oil will go into Tribulation. (Matt. 25:8)
The new plan in some Message churches seems to be to bring the world and
its programs into the Church. In this way, we can include a far larger number
that many are believing will be raptured. But, God’s way has always been to
sever a people from the world, and separate them unto His Word. God’s plan has
not changed; He is still calling those whom He did predestinate; a people who
will bring Him Glory by perfect Faith in His Word. And we say clearly and
definitely, that without the Holy Spirit coming in to transform the soul, such
faith is impossible!
C
H A P T E R 3
HE
THAT BELIEVETH
ON
HIM
IS
NOT CONDEMNED
John 3:17-18,
“For God sent not his son into the
world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved.” Verse
18, “He that believeth on HIM IS
NOT CONDEMNED, but he that believeth not is condemned
already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only begotten son
of God.”
What
a powerful and wonderful word that is in verse eighteen. Notice
the text; it does not say that on the Day of Judgment we will not be condemned.
It does not say, “He that believeth SHALL NOT be condemned, but it
says, “He that believeth IS NOT condemned!”
He that believeth is not condemned NOW! From the moment we first
believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, we were NO LONGER CONDEMNED! If we should
live 100 years believing in God’s plan of salvation, we would still not be
condemned! God’s word is not limited by time as man counts time, His word is
eternal.
To believe in the Cross and the sacrifice made there, is to be out from
under condemnation in the Eyes of our God. Past
sins, present sins and future sins are gone.
We stand before God as though we were without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing.
QUOTE: INVISIBLE
But you say, “I still sin!” Yes, that’s true, but our sins are not
laid to our charge. Rom. 4: 8,
“Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute (Charge) Sin.”
Our sins were laid to the charge of Jesus Christ. Does the Bible say they
were? “For He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew No Sin, that we might
be the righteousness of God in Him.” (II Cor. 5: 21) NOW, in the present
tense, “He that believeth on him is not
condemned.” God would
never lay our sins on the Lord Jesus, then turn around and charge them to us
also.
In our worldly courts of law a verdict of “Not Guilty” means the
prisoner is at once released and the charge is removed from the records.
This is exactly what the gospel teaches about the court of Heaven! It
says, “He that believeth on him is not
condemned.” The moment we believe on Him, the not guilty verdict is handed down, and we are free from
condemnation. Of course we
understand that, “A pardon is not a pardon unless it be accepted as a
Pardon.” A verdict of “not guilty” is held out to every Believer.
A Prophet said the Lord Jesus Christ became our Judge, our Attorney, and
our Jury, and asked, “How can we lose the case?” He watches for those who
believe in the plan of the Cross and the shed Blood, and pronounces them, “NOT
GUILTY!”
In Lev.16: 5-10, we read the story of how God commanded the priest
to bring two goats, and one of them was to be a scapegoat.
The high priest laid his hands on the scapegoats head and confessed the
sins of the people. The sins were
then gone from the people and laid on the head of the goat. The goat was turned
loose into the wilderness, to be seen no more. What a glorious type this is of
our sins being laid on the Lord Jesus Christ! Were there then any sins left on
the people?
Do we believe this was the
plan of God for the Old Testament Saints? Do we believe it only typed the New
Testament plan of our sins being laid on the Lord Jesus? Do we believe that
before the foundation of the world, God saw every sin we would ever commit and
laid them all on Jesus Christ? It’s true friends, that is the word of God.
Our sins were all transferred to Christ and then God drew his great sword
of justice and slew that Holy Thing that was born of Mary.
Though He was innocent in His Holy Person, He had agreed to have our sins
laid on His precious head. The Father then punished Him as though He were the
guilty one.
He’s suffered for six, long, terrible hours, one second at a time,
until every sin of all his Elect had been legally paid for. Only then did He cry
out, “It is finished.” He’s suffered until every stain of sin had been
paid for. Now, it is a fact that our
sins could not have been laid on Him, and yet remain on us also. They cannot be
in two places at the same time! Our sins could not have been carried to the
Cross and yet remain on us.
As soon as a man believes on the Lord Jesus Christ his sins are gone from
him forever. They are blotted out
forever. This does not mean we no
longer have to repent; a Born-Again Believer walks daily with a repentant heart.
He cries out for forgiveness when convicted. (Notice, the word here is convicted not condemned.)
“He that believeth on him is not
condemned.”
What
if a man had owed ten thousand dollars and a representative had come from the
business to collect. But, the man who had owed the bill produced a receipt
showing the bill had been paid. The receipt had been signed by a co-owner of the
business, and was legal in all respects. Then
it would be evident that there had been a mistake made on the books of that
business, or else they had set out purposely to cheat. Is not this exactly what
the enemy tries to do to a Born-Again Christian? He well knows that our sin-debt
has been paid, yet he brings us a bill for them in the form of condemnation.
This is a deliberate attempt to try and cheat the Believer out of his
justification.
But, thanks be to God, the Word of Promise remained steadfast, “He
that believeth on Him is not condemned.” A
word of warning at this point, we do not say that we will not FEEL the fiery
darts of condemnation. The Lord allows them to be fired at us, but we are
told not to believe the feeling of condemnation when it comes.
I John 3: 19-21, “And
hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him.
For if our heart condemns us (And, it often will when the enemy
comes), God is greater than our hearts,
and knoweth all things.” Saying
God is greater than the feeling of condemnation that the Devil brings, and that
we must ignore it, for He that believeth
on him is not condemned.”
Though
we still commit sin, our debt was paid before we were ever born and our receipt
was signed in blood by the Lord Jesus Christ.
He reached into his spear-torn side; got some blood and wrote,
“Pardoned” by our name in his book. The
scripture says God has cast are sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7: 19)
If they are in the depths of the sea, they can’t be here on us too. Isa.
38:17, “For thou hast cast all my
sin behind Thy back.” Jerm. 31: 34, “I
will forgive their iniquity,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
If
God says He will not remember our sin, that means they are gone for eternity. Ps.103:17,
“But the mercy of the Lord is from
everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto
children’s children.” Again He says, “As
far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from
us.” (Ps. 103: 12) So we see that when we believe in the plan, and the
Blood of the Cross, we are no more sinners in the eyes of the Lord.
We are accepted as if we ourselves had kept all the Law.
We are still sinners within ourselves, but we are washed in the Blood of
God. The promise of righteousness is
not just for a period of time, it is for eternity.
There is not one single sin in God’s book against those that “Believe
on Him.” Eternal, or everlasting redemption, has been obtained for us. Heb.
9:12, “Neither by the blood of
goats and calves, but by His own blood he entered in ONCE into the
Do we suppose that this holy state of being out from under condemnation
is for those who are able to keep the law constantly? Or, perhaps it is only for
those who are able to do so to a very high degree?
Not so at all, in fact, just the opposite is true.
The provision of the Blood was made because God knew that no man But
Christ could ever keep His Holy Law, and so He declared, “If
righteousness come by (keeping) the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” (Eph.
2: 21) Righteousness comes by faith only!
We are still sinners within ourselves, but we are washed in the Blood of
God! Only the Lord knows how long
are days will be, but our justification will last unto our last day, and then on
into Eternity. If we could live as
long as Methuselah, it would still be written in the Word, “He
that believeth upon him is not condemned.” Our Prophet said, “We will
come up the same way we went down.” One meaning of this is that all who died
without condemnation will come up without condemnation, and all who died under
condemnation will come up still under condemnation.
Only those who died without condemnation will appear in the Resurrection
we are now waiting for. Those who died under condemnation will not come up until
the Second Resurrection, and will have to appeal their case to the White Throne
Judgment. We cannot be half condemned and half accepted. There are no white-
blackbirds, no drunk-sober men, and there are no half-saved sinners!
When we believe on him we are totally righteous. God’s Word is either
true or false. Not only does God say our sins are gone, they are gone!
How can the Judge, who came down Himself and paid such a terrible debt,
ever look upon us as unforgiven? How can God not save those whom He has justified?
(Rom.
When we ask for more faith, I wonder if we realize we are asking for more
tests of the same. If we have been given an abundance of faith, we will need
every ounce of it before the Lord is finished with us.
We will not have an ounce of it to spare.
God does not give us faith so it can lay up and rust.
But, when our faith is exercised by hard trials, that does not mean we
are under condemnation. We
will have many hard trials, but the Word remains constant, “He
that believeth upon Him is not condemned.”
We
will be buffeted daily but we are not under the curse of the Law.
We mean by this, that we are not cursed when we fail in the Law. We are
delivered from the curse of not being able to keep all the Law.
When we speak of being without condemnation, we are actually giving the
definition of true Bible faith. I John 3: 20-21, “For
if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all
things.” (Our heart will condemn us, God will allow the enemy to fire his
darts of condemnation at us, but He says He is greater than any feeling of
condemnation that can come to us. His word is still true no matter what our
emotions are telling us.
Verse 21, “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, THEN HAVE WE CONFIDENCE TOWARD
GOD.” This is one of God’s definitions of faith. It is to be standing
before Him, trusting in the verdict that He, Himself, has handed down to us from
the high courts of Heaven, “He that
believeth on Him is not condemned.” If we are not condemned, it is because
He has given us the faith to believe we are not guilty in His eyes!
We always see ourselves as being guilty, and we fall on our knees and
repent, and this is what we should do. But,
in the midst of our guilt, God’s plan for our justification never falters or
fails.
Our Christian faith can get very low at times, but the Lord never looks
at us except as He sees us “In
Christ.” Rom. 8: 1, “There
is therefore now no Condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, Who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Believing the Word)
If we are not condemned, it is because we have been declared not guilty,
and if we are not guilty in God’s eyes, we are no longer in line for
punishment. Punishment follows judgment and is for the unrepentant and lost
sinner. Judgment is the end of grace
for those who hardened their hearts and will not come to our lovely Lord.
To receive punishment is to feel the wrath of God, and this can be
terrible indeed. But, for the
Christian who is Born-Again, and believes on Him, he is therefore not guilty, he
is to understand the difference between judgment and chastening.
Chastening is given in love, with the thought of correcting the Family of
God.
Pharaoh, after many warnings and having an abundance of grace offered
him, yet hardened his heart, and was destroyed in the
We cannot make the Word lie. If our sins are forgiven and done away with,
and if God has cast them into the sea, and if He remember them against us no
more because He laid them on Jesus and punished him, then He would deny His own
words should He punish us also. Thank
God He will always correct His Own, with much love, but punishment is reserved
for the hard, unrepentant hearts. The
chastening rod is as much a gift of Grace as the Blood of the Cross
that saves us from condemnation.
What kind of people should we be who have the revelation that we are not
condemned? Should we be grumblers
and complainers? Should we be
cast down with long faces? Should we be without joy, robbed of it by Satan? He
can make us feel that we are being mistreated. A favorite trick of Satan is to
cause Christians to see God’s chastening as punishment for sins that were long
ago paid for. If he can
convince us that our Father is angry with us, then we fall back under
condemnation.
What if a man over in the Arkansas Sate Prison at Tucker, who had been
sitting in his cell on death row, were to suddenly have his cell door swung open
the day before his execution, and the guard handed him a pardon signed by the
governor? Let’s suppose he knew he
was guilty of the crime as charged, but the governor, believing he was a changed
man, was giving him another chance. Would
the man sit in his cell with a long face lamenting some things he had lost by
being imprisoned, or would he jump from his cell with a heart full of joy and go
his way?
And, is this not exactly what has happened in the lives of God’s Bride?
We were sitting in the prison house of condemnation, condemned over the
charges that we knew in our hearts we were guilty of. Then God sent His
Messenger who taught the word in such a way as to show us that, “He that believeth on him is not condemned.” the door of the prison
has swung open, why do we sit there as though we are still guilty?
Why do we refuse to look upon the Brass Serpent that was raised on a
pole? Can we see that the serpent on
the pole was a type of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?
The serpent represented sin, and when God laid our sins upon Christ, He
became sin for our sake. So, the
serpent on the pole represented our Christ, who was raised up on the cross,
showing that He was being judged for our sin.
In Numbers Chapter 21: 5-9, the people of
Friends, there is not one of us who has not been bitten by sin, but with
repentant hearts we look to our Christ on the Cross, and all who look in such a
manner shall live! In what way shall we live?
Is it that only the soul shall live, or is the whole man included in
God’s promise of life? We ask again, how shall God punish those whose sin He
has already borne? How shall He not hear our prayers of repentance and save our
physical bodies, just as He did the Israelites so long ago?
Certainly there comes God’s time for each of His Chosen Ones to depart
this life. When this time came for
Aaron, he climbed
When the time came for Moses to depart, he climbed
May God grant us the revelation that, “He
that believeth on Him is not condemned” and then show us every privilege
that this blessing entitles us to. We
ask it in Jesus name, Amen!
C
H A P T E R 4
TRYING
TO
BELIEVE
GOD
How very
often have we Christians heard the testimony of other Christians as they
struggled with their Faith and made the remark, “I am TRYING to believe
God.” And perhaps most of us, at some time or another, have made the same
statement. But I want to say to the Bride of Christ that there is a place in
Christ to which He is leading us, where all TRYING to believe God will be in the
past. In fact, when we reach this place in our spiritual growth, it will
actually be wrong for us to say, “I am TRYING to believe God.”
You may be
thinking that this TRYING is exactly what we should all be doing. But, I repeat,
there is a place where our Lord is taking us so that when we arrive it will
actually be wrong to make such a statement. It is hard to receive help from the
Lord as long as we are TRYING to believe Him. For the promises are for those who
are ALREADY BELIEVING Him, not to those who testify that they can’t. Believing
does not come by TRYING, but it is based on solid, scriptural information
(knowledge) concerning Him who is to be believed.
Let me tell a
story that I believe will help you see the point I am trying to make. At this
time of the year in
Let’s suppose
that a Brother from our church should come to my office just now (one that I
know is Spirit-Filled, honest and trustworthy) and tells me how a tornado had
just passed through Gillett (a small town 12 miles south of DeWitt) and that
every building had been blown away and every person killed. I would no doubt be
shocked. But, if he should go on to say he had passed through the town only
minutes after the tragedy and had seen the dead bodies and destroyed buildings,
then I would have some solid information to base my belief about the tragedy on.
Now let’s
suppose that my first cousin, who is a crop duster pilot, drove up and said he
had just flown low over Gillett and witnessed the terrible scene. Further, just
as these two witnesses finished their testimony, the phone rang and the Police
Chief, who is a personal friend of mine and also a trustworthy person, gave me
the same report. Would I look these men in the face and say, “I am TRYING to
believe you?” No! I would now have reliable information to base my belief on
that Gillett had indeed been destroyed. There would be no TRYING to believe.
Because I know that these 3 men are truthful, I would accept their testimony at
once.
Now when our
God declares that He, “Watches over His Word to perform it,” (Ps.119:106) I must
either believe Him at once, or doubt His integrity and honesty, and to doubt Him
is to make Him a liar. Can you imagine taking the word of earthly Brothers, whom
have proven themselves trustworthy, then looking the Author of all Truth in the
face and saying, “I am TRYING to believe you.” Is it really all that hard to
believe our God whom we know to be the Fountain of all Truth? Or do we just have
trusting Him confused somehow with trusting ourselves? Do we not have the
revelation that our God is a True Witness? It is the easiest thing in the world
to trust a person whom we know to be trustworthy. There is no struggling, no
trying. Is not Jesus the Greatest of all such persons? He is the source of all
Holiness. From Him every honest person on Earth has received what Truth they
have. Let every man be a liar, but our God be the Truth! Surely we, as
Born-Again People, know that our God has total wisdom, total knowledge, total
power, and that His very nature is
Love. We know that He can never make a promise and fail to keep it. We know He
has never done a single person wrong and that He cannot lie.
We have before
said that belief is based on knowledge,
and this carries over into the spiritual realm also. Common sense, or Horse
Sense, is needed in religion as much as anywhere else. When the Holy Ghost comes
in, He will lead us into all truth. (John 16:13) May I say that a great part of
the truth that the Holy Ghost will teach us concerns the Faithfulness of our
God? This revelation is given to every person who receives the Spirit of Christ.
He imparts to us the KNOWLEDGE that our God is Perfect in all His ways, and that
there is no failure in Him at all. This then, is the Knowledge we must have in
order to BELIEVE in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we earnestly and
respectfully, and with patience, hear the Gospel, one day we will discover that
we are believing it, through the work of the Holy Ghost upon our mind.
Experience plays a part in our believing also.
Brother Charles
Spurgeon told the story of a native in
Have you ever
had a good friend that has ventured to place a foot on the River of
The Water of Life (the Word) and you know that the Lord did not let them
drown, but fulfilled His Word and brought them safely across? If so, you are
blessed in that God has allowed you to see such Faith, so as to encourage you to
do the same. We are commanded to believe our God and all that He has promised.
This command, or authority, is not from some minister, but from God, Himself! He
bids us to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we must pray and seek His
revealed Word until we can obey Him.
Experience is
one of God’s ways of helping us come to Faith. There is no hope for us outside
of Him. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no matter what it is we are
needing, He is the source of our help. Ps. 118:8, “It
is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” Matt.
11:28, “Come unto Me, all ye that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” In this last verse,
we are actually commanded to come unto Him with every sort of problem. Do we
fear to come in Faith?
I read another
story of a man who worked in a certain factory and who had a desperate need for
salvation and healing for his body. Being a foreman in the shop, the owner had
often spoken to him about the Lord and how he should turn to Him for help. But
the foreman feared he would not be received by such a Holy God as he had been
told about. One day the owner sent a note around to the foreman, “Come to my
house immediately after work today.” The foreman did as he was told and
knocked on his boss’s door. Answering the knock, the boss asked rather
gruffly, “What do you want John, troubling me at this hour? If your work at
the shop is done, what right do you have coming here?” “Sir,” said the
foreman, “I have a note signed by you saying I was to come here.” “Do you
mean to say that just because you had a note from me that you dared to come to
my home and call me out after business hours?” “Sir, I do not understand
your attitude. It seems to me that since you sent for me I had a right to
come.” “Come in John,” said the boss, “I have another message I want to
read to you.”
He read Matt.
11:28, “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest.” Then he asked, “Do you think that after such a message to you
from Jesus that you can be wrong in coming to Him? The foreman at once saw the
lesson his boss had intended to teach him, and believed in the Lord Jesus. He
was saved and also received healing for his body. So do all men have good authority for coming to Jesus Christ, no matter
how desperate the need, nor how long-standing it may have been. The Lord bids us
come to Him and trust Him. When the circumstances are black as
If we could
only enter into the Spirit and see into the mind of our God, we would no longer
doubt His good intentions toward us! Jerm. 29:11, “For
I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace,
and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” But let us return to the
title of the sermon, TRYING TO BELIEVE GOD.
In preaching
the fact that a Born-Again Person should not have to TRY to believe God, I have
been told, “It is not the Lord that I don’t trust, but myself.” In making
this statement, the people seemed to be thinking that their own imperfection was
an excuse for doubting the Word of God. Friends, this is a trap of the enemy.
Never in the Scriptures are we told to have confidence in ourselves. True Bible
Faith does not look at self and its failures, but at Jesus Christ and His
Perfection. Phil. 3:3, “For we
are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Jesus
Christ (because He is perfect and has no flaws in His character) AND
HAVE NO CONFIDENCE IN THE FLESH.”
To look at God’s
Word and doubt something He said because we ourselves are not perfect, is to
show our lack of understanding the Word. Never will this flesh of ours be
perfect! On Rapture day it will still be making mistakes and the enemy will
still be using it to try and make us disbelieve the Word. Then where will the
people end up who wait to believe something God said until they have attained to
perfection? They are in grave danger of entering into tribulation!
The truth is we
are PERFECTED by Faith and Faith only. Bible Faith does not depend on this flesh
being perfected, but rather on Jesus Christ who was born perfect and remained
so. When the Bible says we are Justified by Faith in Christ, it means to leave
our flesh man completely out of the picture. Rom. 5:1, “Therefore
being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ.” Notice the scripture does not say we have peace with God because
we have risen above all sin in our flesh! But it says we have this peace
through, or because of, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did live above all sin in His
Flesh!
Our peace is
based on the fact of His perfect life, lived in our place, then given as the
Perfect Sacrifice. When we say we must leave the flesh
man completely out of the picture, you understand that we speak of keeping
him under the Blood of Christ. This is done through moment by moment repentance,
as we have need to do so. THE CROSS HAS MADE THE WAY FOR US TO FOREVER KEEP THE
FLESH OUT OF THE PICTURE. OUR GREAT POINT IS THIS; WE HAVE NO SCRIPTURAL EXCUSE
FOR NOT BELIEVING THE WHOLE WORD OF GOD. God’s plan included the imperfection
of our flesh, yet in this state we are told to have perfect faith in Him.
Back to the
statement that so many make when confronted with their error of TRYING to
believe God. They say, “Oh we trust God, but it’s ourselves we don’t
trust.” I have some tremendous news for you Saints of God, Jesus Christ paid
with HIS FLESH, so that we do not have to disbelieve because of the failures of
ours. Col. 1:21-22, “And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by
wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled IN THE BODY OF HIS FLESH THROUGH DEATH,
to present you Holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight.”
With our flesh
man out of the picture, because we “Reckon
him to be dead,” (Rom.
QUOTE:
PERFECT FAITH, PAGE 24, “When Satan tempts us we are to resist him in a
Perfect Faith, in a Perfect Word, like Jesus did. The Word of God is perfect.
We’re to have Perfect Faith in this Perfect Word, and resist Satan.”
PAGE 28,
PARAG. 159, “……The Word made flesh! Hallelujah! The Word operating in
human flesh, by physical signs. By material signs, by scriptural signs,
perfectly, TO BRING TO YOU A PERFECT FAITH FOR A PERFECT RAPTURE.”
PAGE 33,
PARAG. 184, “……Not just (a) faith, but a Perfect Faith, built up in
here (the heart). And watch a Perfect God with a Perfect Heart, keep a Perfect
Promise, by His Perfect Word, which is sharper than a two edged sword, and a
discerner of the thoughts of the heart. And what? WE’RE COMING NOW TO THE
PERFECTION, BECAUSE THE PEOPLE HAS TO COME TO THIS IN ORDER FOR THE RAPTURE.
That’s what’s holding it away right now, is waiting for that Church (Bride)
to come into that Perfect Raptured Faith. I’m looking for it. It means a lot
of shaking down for me, it means a lot for you, but together we’ll make it, by
the Grace of God. Amen!
PAGE 20,
PARAG. 114, “And so when a man lives by Faith, and walks by Faith, I mean
substance Faith, he is isolated from the entire world and becomes a new creature
in Christ. There, now you’re getting into Bride material. See! You’re
getting into rapturing condition now. That means for each one of us, not just
the Pastor now, Deacons, Trustees, that means for the Laity, every individuals
walks in a world with God alone.” (End quote)
Perfect Faith was most certainly included in the teaching of the Prophet.
Does his teaching conform to the Word? Indeed it does. Many scriptures teach
that we are to become PERFECT in FAITH, but not one states that we can become
perfect in our FLESH. Gal. 3:2-3, “This
only would I learn of you, received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by
the hearing of Faith?
Verse
3,
“Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the
Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the FLESH?”
The
implied answer is, “No.” We are never made perfect in our flesh. Yet we have
many scriptures that state we must become Perfect. Then if we can never be made
perfect in our flesh by keeping the Law, what is the meaning of the following
scriptures?
Matt. 5:48, “Be ye
therefore PERFECT, even as your Father in Heaven is Perfect.”
John 17:23, “I in them, and thou in Me, that they may be made PERFECT, in
One, even as we are One.”
I
Cor. 2:6,
“Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are Perfect, yet not the
wisdom of this world, nor of the Princes of this world, that come to naught.”
II
Cor. 13:11,
“Finally Brethren, farewell, be PERFECT, be of good comfort, be of one
mind, live in peace, and the God of Love and Peace shall be with you.”
Philip.
Col. 4:12, “………that ye may stand PERFECT and complete in all the
will of God.”
We cannot throw
these scriptures away, they are the Word of God, but can you see that they do
not mean that we can ever be perfect in the flesh?
Then in what way are we commanded to be PERFECT? There is only one way for us
who were, “Made subject to vanity” (Rom.
Rom. 5:1,
“Therefore being Justified (made
Perfect) by Faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So many scriptures
teach that we must reach PERFECTION, and we only quoted some of them, how can we
deny the Word? Are we beginning to see that it will take this PERFECT FAITH in
order to be raptured? The Lord has made a way for His Bride to reach this place
of PERFECT FAITH. It is through the ministry of the five fold offices, Apostles,
Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers.
Eph. 4:12-13,
“For the PERFECTING OF THE SAINTS, for
the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the Body of Christ. Verse
13, “Till we come in the UNITY OF
THE FAITH (a Perfect Faith) and of
the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a PERFECT man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ.
We have before stated that Common Sense, or Horse Sense,
is needed in serving God as much as anywhere else. But, there is a tendency to
overlook this common, or natural, sense when we set out to be Spiritual.
Friends, this should not be so! If my precious wife of 59 years should promise
me a certain gift for my birthday, I have every right to look forward to and
expect that gift to be forthcoming! My expectations are based on the fact of her
integrity and honesty. I would not find myself TRYING
to believe it would be given.
We must
understand that this same kind of simple TRUST
is all that our God expects of us. Call it what you will, natural ability,
spiritual ability, faith, or just simple trust, when applied, our Father will
receive it with joy, and nothing will keep Him from meeting our expectations. Amen!
Do you trust Him even as far as your most trustworthy, earthly friend? Let me
say again, it should be the easiest thing in the world for a Born-Again
Christian to trust his God! Let us blow away the smoke screen of our own
failures by repenting moment by moment, as we have need to do so, and then go
right on trusting our God, refusing all condemnation.
One of the main
keys that opens the door of Perfect Faith is our choosing to trust our God in
the midst of our many failures. We need to see that our failures are all the
more reason to trust Him, and not at all an excuse for loosing Faith. Failures
produce a need for Faith, the more we fail, the more must faith be exercised.
The Cross made provision for every repented of failure. Amen! Let us then trust
Him!
C
H A P T E R 5
THE
SALVATION
OF
THE
SOUL
Since the days that Jesus Christ walked this earth, the doctrine of The
Salvation of the Soul has always been, and remains today, the most important
subject that can engage the mind of man! In days past, before the advent of
God’s Prophet, William Branham, not many of us really understood what was
involved in soul salvation. The New
Birth, or the soul’s salvation, was thought to be many different things. Some
supposed it was church membership, along with water baptism. Some thought it was
just the correcting of some doctrine that we had wrong. Still others had the
idea that it was just changing some bad habits and doing better by turning over
a new leaf in our book of life.
Having come out of Pentecost in the mid-sixties, this writer, along with
many others, thought that the New Birth was an anointing on our spirit that led
to speaking in tongues and the working of other gifts. But, to our dismay, those
who were truly seeking God soon learned that this was only a temporary thing
that faded out when the service was over and the music had stopped. The Spirit
of the Lord would fall in our midst in a service where the people were
worshiping the Lord and we had a great time with our
This is not at all to say that some people did not have the real New
Birth, we know some did. But, we also know that the majority did not. They only
had a temporary anointing on their spirit, which was later overcome by the soul
that had not been slain and replaced with God’s own Soul. Therefore, the inner-man,
the old Soul, continued to rule the spirit and in turn the spirit ruled the
flesh. As this writer sees it, this was the situation in Pentecost when God sent
His Prophet to correct those who desired the real move of God in their lives. We
had so many things wrong.
Many of us, including this writer, had preached that the soul was eternal
and that it never died. The scripture that declared “The
Soul that sinneth, it shall die,” (Ezk.
They will die when God slays the old one and replaces it with His own, or
else they will be destroyed in Hell later. Please study the following quotes
carefully:
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)
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.
You take two men, stand them together, they both look alike, and one of
them is a sinner, and one of them is a Christian. One man says I’ve got a
spirit the same as you have. See? But one of them is different. HIS SOUL, HIS
NATURE IS DIFFERENT. HE HAS BEEN CHANGED.” (End quote)
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)
QUOTE: GREAT COMMISSION,
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.
It goes without saying that the Prophet and the scriptures teach that
man, without help from God, is totally corrupt. This is the reason that he must
be changed from the inside out. The innermost part of man, the soul, must be
changed, for before the change it is spiritually DEAD.
QUOTE: YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN, PAGE 14-15, “First we reckon
ourselves sinners, and worthy of condemnation. And we are all born in sin and
shaped in iniquity, there’s not a sound parcel of us. Our MINDS are bad.
Our SOUL is corrupted, our constant THINKING is evil, every imaginary THOUGHT
of a man’s mind is evil, a sinner, and also that our BODY is weak, our spirit
is no good and we’re just full of CORRUPTION. And how could one
corruptible thing bring another good thing out of a corruptible? Let me say
this, that in Job, the 14th chapter, he said, “Seeing
that man born of a woman, is full of sorrow and trouble, yet he cometh forth
like a flower, he fadeth away.” And as the Prophet goes on speaking, he
said, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one!”
You stick your bucket down into the well and pull out a bucket of water,
and it’s stagnant, it stinks. You look in it, and it’s muddy, and little
worms is in the water, there is no way at all to put your bucket back and get a
clean bucket. THE WHOLE WORLD IS CONTAMINATED. AND THE WHOLE SOUL, MIND, AND
BODY OF MAN IS CONTAMINATED WITH SIN. HE’S BORN IN SIN, PHYSICALLY SHAPED IN
INIQUITY, AND COME TO THE WORLD SPEAKING LIES. SO THAT HIS OWN SOUL IS
CONTAMINATED, NOTHING GOOD.” (End quote)
Eph. 2:1-5, “And you hath
He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sin; Wherein in time past ye
walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the
power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our
flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature
the children of wrath, even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his
great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened
us together with Christ. (By grace ye are saved.)”
John
6:44,
“No man can come to me except the
Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (We
are dead until he quickens us.)
Rom. 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin;
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”
“DEAD”
is a strong word, but it is one God chose to use. Before the changing out of the
soul, we are walking dead men. The Bible says that the woman who lives in
pleasure is DEAD while she liveth. In the parable of the Prodigal Son that the
Lord told, the Father said, “This my
son was DEAD, and is alive again.” Many a church-goer will not accept this
sentence about themselves. They may confess that they are not what they should
be, and could stand some improvement, that perhaps they are a little wild at
times, but DEAD? No! No that is too strong; we should not speak to them like
that! They declare that we go too far in making such a statement. But, we must
preach what we read in the Bible, it doesn’t matter how we feel about it!
It’s what God says about it.
At a funeral, we have often seen family bend over the coffin and kiss the
departed love one. But, there is no response from the one in the coffin. We
understand this, because the loved one is dead. But, do we understand that there
can be no response toward God from those who are still dead in their soul? They
are dead while they live, and so Jesus said in John
We should now begin to see that unregenerate man is not just leaning to
one side and needs to be propped up. He needs more than just to change his
doctrine from some denomination to the Message. He needs more than an education
in the scriptures and the Message. He needs more than to just change some of his
bad habits. Good moral men can do all these things and still be unchanged in
their soul. All men must be changed in the inner-man, the soul.
In Mark 10: 17-21 is the story of a moral man who was unchanged in
his soul. By his own testimony he still needed Eternal Life, although he had
apparently done a very good job of keeping the Commandments. The Lord did not
deny his claim, but told him that his money stood between him and Eternal Life.
When we have laid our all on the altar, then the Lord gives the New Birth.
Justification is the first step, which is sins forgiven. Laying our all at the
Lord’s feet is next (Sanctification). Then the last stage of full Salvation is
the changing out of the soul, which Jesus called the New Birth. At Justification
and Sanctification, the Spirit of God is “with” us, but the New Birth is the
Spirit of God changing out the old soul that came from Lucifer, to the Serpent,
to Eve and Adam, then to us. We were born with a soul that was lost!
Contrary to teaching that is going forth in some parts of the Message, we
still come into full Salvation through the three steps mentioned above. In
February of 1965, Brother Branham was still teaching this.
QUOTE: WHO IS THIS MELCHISEDEC, PAGE 22, “The stages of..of the
eternal purpose He had in His secret has now been revealed. Notice, there is
still three stages to perfection. Just like He redeems the world; same way He
redeems His Church. He redeems the people in three stages. Now look, first is
Justification like Luther preached; second, Sanctification like Wesley preached;
third Baptism of the Holy Ghost. That’s right! Then comes the Rapture! (End
quote)
It is very true that the
experiences of Justification and Sanctification cause a definite change in our
thinking, but even so, this is still not
the Seal that is promised in Eph. 1:13. “In
whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your
Salvation, in whom AFTER that ye believed ye were SEALED with that Holy Spirit
of promise.” This Seal is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ moving into
our inner man, slaying the Old Nature
(soul) and taking up His abode in its place. The Great Creator actually places a
portion of His own Soul in us. This is a great mystery, but it is the answer to
how our God stakes out His claim in us. He gives us His own Eternal Nature, and
this Nature is a new Soul which then, from the inside out influences the whole
man. Please study the following quote.
QUOTE: FAITH IN ACTION,
But even with a portion of God’s own Soul in us, we still have that “Law
of sin which is in our fleshly members.” (Rom.
We see then, that from all that has been previously stated, that
preaching the Gospel of full salvation has two main parts. The first part is to
convince lost man, whether he be in the Church or out, that he was born into
this natural world lost and separated from God! This is a very humbling and
distasteful message to the natural man, for he thinks highly of himself, and
loves to hear that which builds him up.
Nothing pleases him more than to listen to that which lifts up human
nature and applauds the natural state of man and his abilities. He loves this
even though the whole Bible declares that unregenerate man is fallen far below
his ability to help himself, and not only this, but common sense observation of
the world around him, and his own miserable failures, put his boasting to shame.
Science tells of the so-called “Steady Progress” of the human race, but the
figures show quite another story. There is more death today from incurable
diseases, and the steady progress of science, than in any other age in history.
We were warned of this by our Prophet William Branham, in statements such as the
following one.
QUOTE: THINGS THAT ARE TO BE,
What’s science preparing for you? More death? That’s right Sputniks
and everything going up, and all these things that’s scatter death and
everything across the earth. Don’t look to that; turn your head higher than
that, towards Heaven.” (End quote)
We are to understand then that the overall proof of man’s spiritual
deadness and depravity is to be seen in the fact of his turning away from God
and His Word, and “Leaning to his own understanding,” the thing that God
straightly warned us against. It needs to be deeply impressed on our minds that
as far as natural wisdom is concerned, man’s lost condition is beyond help.
When the Disciples asked Jesus, “Who
then can be saved?” (Matt. 19:26) He replied, “With
men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” A deadly
disease was passed into the blood stream of man in
If man is incapable of coming to the Lord unless he be called (John
Our duty then is to preach, “Whosoever
will, let him come and drink of the Waters of Life freely.” We must never
preach to sinners that some can come and some cannot. All who want to know God
and serve Him may come. You ask, “What about Election?” That is a scriptural
fact, but it is out of our jurisdiction, that is God’s business, and we must
leave it in His Hands. Man is a responsible creature after his call, and all
must choose for themselves whether to serve God or Mammon! Jesus said in Matt.
13:15, “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of
hearing, AND THEIR EYES THEY HAVE CLOSED, lest at any time they should see with
their eyes, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and
I should heal them.”
The
second part of preaching the Gospel of Salvation is to show how God’s Lamb,
Jesus Christ, has come and lived a sin-free life, then gave Himself as the
perfect sacrifice to pay for our every sin. Therefore, a verdict of “Not
Guilty” has been held out to everyone that believes God’s plan of the Cross
where God’s own Blood was shed instead of ours. The sin-debt had to be paid,
and the One who made the Law of Sin and Death could then choose the method of
payment. He chose to make Himself a flesh-body like unto ours, and in that body
He suffered the full penalty for us all. He is absolutely satisfied that the
full debt was paid because He paid it Himself. Amen!
C
H A P T E R 6
THE
CREATOR RULES
WHAT
HE
HAS
CREATED
This is what
could be called a Five Star Sermon. In the military world, a Five Star General
is the highest ranking officer. In the spiritual world in the End-Time Message
brought by our Prophet, William Branham, this writer considers the Sovereignty
of God Teaching to be a Five Star Doctrine. The teaching that our God is in
absolute, full control over all that He has created, is as necessary to the life
of faith as breath is to life in the flesh. When breath leaves the natural body,
physical death is the result. When the revelation of God’s supreme control
over all He has created is lacking in the Christian’s makeup, there is a void
in the soul that can only be filled by doubt, fear and unbelief, and eventually,
death.
Although the
scriptures and the End-Time Message are very clear concerning this doctrine, it
is very often not properly understood. There is far too much preaching and
testifying to the power of the enemy. Even Spirit-filled Christians, who have
not been taught concerning God’s supreme ruler ship, sometimes walk in fear
and dread of the evil one. This should not be so! Why should God’s obedient
and repentant people be afraid of an enemy who has been so completely overcome
and stripped of his power, and free moral agency? There is only one answer to
this question, it is because we have lacked the revelation of God’s total and
complete ruler ship over all that He has created, and this includes His
ruler-ship over Satan and all his demons.
Therefore, it
is the purpose of this sermon to place before the people the sound, scriptural
doctrine of God’s sovereign control over Heaven, Earth, and Hell. In 1996, we
printed a monthly sermon entitled, “The Sovereignty of God” and it was later
placed in our Volume One of the DeWitt Tabernacle Teaching Series. However, from
conversations with Message Believers around the nation, the need is clearly
evident for much more preaching of the same. There is nothing so restful to the
mind and soul as the revelation that our God, Himself, sits on the throne as “The
Governor of the Nations.” (Ps. 22:28) “Working
all things after the counsel of His own will.” (Eph. 1:11)
Our hearts
rejoice daily as we keep before us Brother Branham’s teaching on God’s
control, and then read it in the scriptures for ourselves. It has caused us to
see the truth of the scripture that says, “The
Lord has made all things for Himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of
evil.” (Pro.16:4) We now understand that things that in the past we have
given Satan credit for, has in reality, been our God controlling the boundaries
of evil, bringing to pass His own will on the earth. This revelation allows us
to face the trials, heartbreak, and suffering that often confront us in daily
life with absolute trust in Jesus Christ, who has promised that, “All
things are working together for good to those who love the Lord, and are the
called according to His purpose.” (Rom.
The great
problem is that many Christians are serving a God whom they suppose is still
trying to defeat His arch-enemy, Lucifer. They suppose that God has good
intentions, but somehow lacks the power, knowledge, and wisdom to carry them all
out. Some seem to think that the Lord is still at war with Satan, and that He
wins some battles, but looses others. But you may say, doesn’t it look as if
this world has been taken over by the evil one. That depends upon whether or not
you are looking at God’s Word, or the worldly circumstances! The Word speaks
as follows, “And all the inhabitants of
the earth are reputed as nothing; and He doeth according to His will, in the
army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the EARTH; And none can stay His
hand, or say unto Him, what doest Thou.” (Dan. 4: 35)
Isaiah, the
Prophet, said, “The Lord of Host has sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so
shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” (Isa.
14:24) David said, “All the ends of the
Earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord. And all the kindred of the Nations
shall worship before Thee. For the Kingdom is the Lord’s, and He is the
Governor among the Nations.” (Ps. 22:27-28)
Jehoshaphat
testified for the Sovereignty of His God and, “Stood
in the congregation of
Our modern day
prophet, William Branham, declared our God to be, “The Majesty that controls
every circumstance, both in Heaven and on Earth, and who is so high above all
that he has to look down to see Heaven.”
QUOTE: THEN
JESUS CAME, PAGE 17, “He sits tonight as the Majesty, He looks down on
Earth. There is not even a ripple can come on the water without him, it’s by
His permission. The sea can’t move, a leaf can’t move, a bird can’t fly
(without His permission). He is above all principalities and powers……He is
so high until He has to look down to see Heaven.” (End quote)
Dear Friends,
this is total control over all His creation! Where did our Prophet get this
teaching? Matt.
Moses said to the
Israelites that God was going to go through the land of Egypt and kill all the
first-born, both of man and beast, then added that this great God was in such
control of what was to happen that, “Against
the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue against man or beast;
That ye may know how the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and
Israel.” (Ex.11: 7) Israel was a type of the Bride of Jesus, then how much
more does this promise of God’s complete control apply to Her! Not even a dog
can bark at us without His permission.
We do not
intend to imply that our God always keeps us from all things that are meant to
crucify the flesh, but we do state with the authority of God’s word to back it
up that nothing touches one of His Elected ones unless He has ordained it for
our own good. This is to make certain that He keeps His promise wherein He said,
“He that hath begun a good work in you
will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:6) We are to
believe His Word where He said, “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me. I
girded thee, though thou hast not known Me. That they may know from the rising
of the Sun, and from the west, that there is none beside Me. I am the Lord, and
there is none else.” Verse 7, “I
form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do
all these things.”
Our God is not only
in charge of the good things that happen, but according to His own testimony He
is also in charge of the evil things that happen. Do we believe His testimony?
This writer came out of Pentecost, where I was taught that all good was from the
Lord and all evil was from the Devil. This teaching was wrong and put a fear of
the Devil in our hearts. Come to find out that God’s Prophet led us back to
the true revelation of the scriptures and restored our faith in Jesus Christ.
Scripture after
scripture testifies to God’s absolute control over all things, human beings,
devils, animals, insects, weather and even inanimate objects such as the nuts
that held the Egyptian’s wheels on their chariots. (Ex. 14:24-25) He caused an
iron axe head to swim at the words of His Prophet, Elisha. (II Kings 6: 5-7) God
proved His total control over the weather in sending plagues upon
At God’s
command, fire and brimstone fell from Heaven on
The
Disciples with Jesus on the
How can any
student of the Bible doubt God’s supreme control over all that He has created?
It seems to this writer that our Lord took special care to show us in the
scriptures that, “All things are of Him, by Him, and for Him.” One testimony
after the other fills the old black book showing how He sends forth His word
upon the earth, controlling every circumstance with His total power. Ps.
147:15-18, “He sendeth forth His
commandment upon earth; His word runneth very swiftly. He giveth snow like wool.
He stretches the hoar frost like ashes. He casteth forth His ice like morsels;
who can stand before His cold? He sendeth out His word and melteth them; He
causeth His wind to blow, and the waters flow.”
It is God, who gives
the life-giving rain for the crops, and it is the same God that sends floods to
destroy the crops Amos 4:7-10, “And
also I have witholden the rain from you, when there was yet three months to the
harvest. And I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon
another city. One piece was rained upon and, the piece whereupon it rained not
withered.” Verse 8, “So
two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water, but they were not
satisfied; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. I have smitten you
with blasting and mildew when your gardens
and your vineyards, and your fig trees, and your olive trees increased, the
palmerworm devoured them, yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. I
have sent unto you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt; your young men have
I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; And I made the stink of
your camps come up in your nostrils; Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the
Lord.”
Do we not understand
then, that our great God governs all these things? They fulfill His sovereign
pleasure, bringing to pass a plan He had in His mind before creation. Brute
beasts obey His voice, as when a dumb ass spoke and rebuked the Prophet Balaam.
He ordered the lions not to touch Daniel, and then ordered them to devour his
enemies. He commanded a great fish to swallow Jonah, and then commanded it to
vomit him out again. A fish following orders from the Sovereign One, brought a
coin to Peter for tax money. So as to fulfill His own prophesy, he made the cock
to crow twice when Peter denied Him.
Now the
question arises, “Does God control the actions of all men both good and
evil?” He is either ruling over all things, including men, or He is being
ruled over! To suppose that our God is being ruled over at times, just does not
agree with the Holy Ghost that lives in us. It is absolutely unthinkable that
any created being, be it man or beast, could ever be out from under the control
of the Creator. No Dear Bride, the actions of good men, as well as those of
evil-doers are under His control. Ps. 37:23, “The
steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delighteth in his way.” Pro.
16:4, “The Lord hath made all
things for Himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.” Isa.
45:7, “I form the light and create
darkness, I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things.” Pro.
21:1, “The king’s heart is in the
hand of the Lord, and as the rivers of water He turneth it whither so ever He
will.” There is a most powerful scripture in Ps 76:10, in which the
Lord testifies concerning His complete control over evil. “Surely
the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou
restrain.”
He says, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise me.” Let’s examine the
first half of this powerful verse first. By “the
wrath of man” the Lord means the evil thoughts and plans a man makes in
his heart to disobey the Word of God and do evil. The Lord will see to it that
it all fits into His overall plan for the good of His people. Then He says, “The
remainder of wrath will He restrain.” In other words, if an evil man
devised a plan for evil that God chooses not to use in His overall plan for
good, He will stop those plans. He will keep that evil from happening.
The Bible is
full of such examples, but we will give two of the most outstanding, proving
that the most lawless of people on Earth are entirely under God’s control.
Unknown to
Pilate, he was playing right into God’s hands when he was willing to please
the people rather than God by delivering the Lord Jesus to be crucified. Mat.
27:26, “Then released he Barabbas
unto them, and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified.” Though
unknown to himself, Pilate was carrying out the secret plans of the most High.
Was it not also
the case with Judas, when he betrayed the Lord to the Jews? It would be hard to
find a more extreme case of evil being made to conform to the overall plan of
the Great God. Luke 22:1-5, “Now
the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover. And the
Chief Priest and Scribes sought how they might kill Him, for they feared the
people. THEN ENTERED SATAN INTO JUDAS SURNAMED ISCARIOT, BEING THE NUMBER OF THE
TWELVE. And he went his way and communed with the Chief Priest and Captains, how
he might betray Him.”
Was then the evil
man, Judas, beyond the control of His Creator, even after Satan entered into
him? Neither by hook nor crook could the Devil and Judas together, disrupt
God’s great plan of Salvation! Nor any other of His plans for that matter! If
then the Arch Enemy of God (Satan) working through Judas, was only able to bring
to pass the plan of God, can’t we see that God has overruled the plans of all
rebels in order to say to us, “All
things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are the called
according to His purpose.” (Rom.
Cannot we then
fall on our faces and worship this Great God who never at any time is out of
touch with His Creation, and who is constantly controlling all peoples and all
devils for the furtherance of His own glorious plan? Ps. 2:1-3, “The
heathen may RAGE and the people imagine a VAIN THING, the kings of the earth may
SET THEMSELVES and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and
against His Christ, saying, let us break their bands asunder, and cast away
their cords from us.” But does this worry our Sovereign King? He watches
from above and overrules every action of men and devils that does not conform to
His own plan.
Haman built a
gallows for Mordecai, but was hanged upon it himself. Jonah rejected the plan of
God to go to
A crow is a
scavenger bird, whose every thought is for his own food, yet God commanded the
ravens to bring Elijah bread and meat twice a day! (Kings 17:4-6) Men and beast,
fowls of the air, and worms and insects do His bidding! How safe we should feel
under His watchful care!
C H
A P T E R 7
PEACE
AND REST
FOR
THE
BRIDE
In the midst of
Satan’s Eden, and while the Bride of Jesus Christ is being made to pass
through the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, there is a peace and a
rest reserved for Her. This rest is contained, for the most part, in two major
revelations that our Lord gave to the End-Time Prophet, William Branham. In this
sermon, we want to touch on both these powerful truths, and pray that the Holy
Ghost will tie them together. Revelation number one is the teaching on the
Sovereignty of God, and revelation number two has to do with God’s Elective
Love.
Since our last
monthly sermon dealt with God’s total Sovereignty, we will ask you to review
it in connection with this one, and with this sermon deal mostly with God’s
Elective Love. If the Lord will be gracious and reveal both these powerful
truths to us, it cannot help but move us into the place of peace and rest that
we speak of. When we understand that our God is in control of every detail
concerning His Creation, ordering every circumstance that touches our lives
according to a plan He made before the world was, and add to that the revelation
that He also decided who He would love before He ever created, then the result
of these two powerful revelations bring a Faith that cannot be overcome.
This would be a
Perfect Faith, would it not? And, is this not the place that the scriptures and
the Prophet say we must reach in order for the Rapture?
QUOTE:
PERFECT FAITH, PAGE 28, “He is here, He does this to create a perfect
faith. I feel Him. I know He is here now. I know that His Spirit is here. I know
that He knows all things, Amen. And I know He wants to do something, to create
the perfection of faith in the people……..The word made flesh. Hallelujah!
The word operating in human flesh, by physical signs, by material signs, by
scriptural signs, perfectly. To bring to you a PERFECT FAITH, FOR A PERFECT
RAPTURE.” (End quote)
Col. 1:27-28,
“To whom God would make known what is
the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in
you, the hope of glory:” Verse 28, “Whom
we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may
present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.”
Since we know that
the perfection spoken of here does not refer to the flesh, then we must conclude
that it speaks of perfecting the Inner Man, our character, which includes our
Faith. Let us now look at revelation number two, the fact of God’s Elective
Love. Brother Branham taught that the proof we need concerning the fact of
God’s Love, lies in the truth that He elected (decided) to love us before He
created the world.
QUOTE:
ADOPTION – PART TWO, PAGE 46, “There you are, entering into this
Promised Land. How do we get into it? We are predestinated to it, the church, by
the foreknowledge of God. Has been predestinated to what? To His honor, by His
grace, to the glory and worship and glory of God. Papa, sitting back there in
the beginning, self-existent, nothing around Him, wanted something to worship,
so He foreordained and predestinated a church, and before the foundation of the
world, and put their names in the Lamb’s Book of Life when they was slain
before the foundation of the world, that they might appear to His glory and to
His praises at the end of time, when He will gather all things in that one Man,
Christ Jesus. Whew! Glory! That’s it. That’s just…..And that’s it right
there, my Brother, Sister. Don’t you never move from that.” (End quote)
In the
preceding quote, the Prophet points us to the fact that God decided who He would
love in the beginning, before there was an atom or a star. Then he said,
“Don’t you ever move from that.” Or, “Don’t you ever forget that the
proof of His loving you is that He elected to love you. We know that God never
changes His mind once He has made a decision. His decision to love those He
elected is an eternal decision. That is why the Holy Ghost could say in Rom.
In our daily
walk before God, there are many things the enemy points to trying to use them as
proof that God no longer loves us. But, because of the teaching of a Prophet, we
know better. Our sins and failures, our wretchedness in this flesh, are all
things the Lord saw BEFORE He chose us as His Beloved. He saw the end from the
beginning, and after that He chose those He would love with an eternal,
everlasting love. The powerful revelation is this; God cannot be made to change
His mind concerning His love for the Elect. It is forever settled in Heaven.
QUOTE:
ADOPTION, PART 2, PAGE 46, “God, by His election grace, called you. God by
His election grace, sanctified you. God, by His election grace and His power,
baptized you and put you into this
Now, let’s
ask the Lord Jesus to help us tie these two powerful revelations together.
First, we are to understand that our Great Jehovah controls everything that He
has created. Nothing that happens in Heaven, on Earth, in Hell, or anywhere in
between is ever beyond His full control. Everything is moving according to the
plan He made before Creation. How could it be otherwise, since He has promise
that, “All things work together for
good to those who love the Lord, and who are the called according to His
purpose.” (Rom.
Revelation
number two is the fact of God’s choosing to love a certain group of people, a
people that He saw in His Mind before Creation, and that this love was, and is,
unconditional. It had not one thing to do with any merit He saw in them. As He
looked, He saw “no difference in the clay.” (Rom.
Some will
question His choosing of those to be saved, while others were not so chosen.
But, those who question God are those who do not really know Him. Those who know
Him understand that He can do no wrong. There is no degree of sin in Him.
Whether we understand it or not, He can do no wrong, He has never done a wrong
thing. The revelation is that our God is perfect
in Love, Power, Knowledge, and Wisdom. Therefore, while we don’t understand
it, we accept the fact that He chose some to love above all others, and that it
was not wrong for Him to do so! It was not wrong because the Perfect God did it!
We read what He
declared in Eph. 1:1- 8 and believe it. Let’s read, “Paul
and apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at
Yes, it is
eternally true that our God and Father has chosen some, out of His millions of
created people, to be a peculiar people unto Himself. The preceding scripture
declares that He made this choosing, “Before
the foundation of the world.” They also declare that “HE
MADE US TO BE ACCEPTED IN THE BELOVED” (Made us to be accepted by
Himself). They tell us that His choosing was according to His own good pleasure,
meaning that there were no circumstances outside of His own will that caused Him
to choose them. He tells us that it was the “RICHES
OF HIS GRACE” that motivated Him, and that alone.
Now, we will
state the powerful revelation found in the doctrine of Election, and try to do
so in simple terms. To have been elected
by God means that the most powerful force in the universe, God’s love,
surrounds us at all times. We are enveloped in it, and nothing can penetrate it
that would not be beneficial to us spiritually. To have been ELECTED by God
means that He will, “Finish the good
work He has started in us.” (Ph. 1:6) It means that He will see to it that
we leave this Satan’s
It means that
having seen the end from the beginning, God saw every sin and failure we would
ever make, and after that, chose us to receive His love, throughout our life
here, and on through Eternity. Having been elected means that nothing can ever
change God’s mind concerning the love He has for us. (
Once we see
that God’s love for us is a choice He made before the world was, and that He
has sworn to never change His mind concerning it, then we begin to rely on, and
lean on that undying love. It causes our love for Him to greatly increase, and
the scripture comes to pass in us that declares, “Love
casteth out fear.” (I John 4:18) Verse 19, “We
love Him because He first loved us.” In looking at Election we must
consider the Cross, which is undeniable proof that He gave His own life for us. Isa.
49:16 says, “Behold, I have graven
thee (Bride) upon the palms of My
hands……” The nails that the Romans drove into His hands, to hold Him
on the Cross, also engraved our names there.
Look at Him
hanging there between Heaven and Earth. Sharp, poisonous thorns pressed down
into His scalp and brow, cramps tearing at the muscles in His arms, legs, and
chest, and His bones out of joint. His heart was like wax because of the
terrible pain, and His strength was dried up like a potsherd. His tongue was
glued to His precious jaws from loss of blood and the thirst that results. (Ps.
22:14-17) Yes, look at Him hanging there, and never again doubt the Love that
held Him there. He could have called the Angels to set Him free, but He had
Elected a people to love and He was proving that Love with His last breath. Can
we do less than devote every part of our life to Him?
Putting our two
revelations together, we have every reason to put our all in the Hands of our
Redeemer. He has total power and is constantly in control of all things that He
has created. Do you believe that, in connection with our health, he is in
control of every cell in our bodies? If he has the hairs of our head numbered,
then He also controls everything about this human frame of ours. He controls
every sickness and pain and controls the degree of it all. Submit to God, resist
the Devil and we will be healed.
It is His Godly
love that compels Him to exert such control and watchful care over us. In all of
our frailties, impurities, and failures He has never once stopped loving us. He
cannot change His great Mind about it. That would be to violate His own Word,
and that will never happen! How safe are we then Bride of Christ? We are as safe
as if we were already with Him in that other dimension. All that remains is for
us to play out our role here in Satan’s
This is the
assurance that the Faith coming from these two revelations has given us. We are
perfectly in the Hands of Him who controls all things, and who is guided in
exercising this control by an Eternal Love that will not fail. This means that
we are constantly receiving exactly what we need, in the right amount, in the
right places, and at the right time.
We will close
with this thought. God’s Elect Bride Children were born “Children
of wrath even as others.” (Eph. 2:3) And if God had done nothing more than
come down in a flesh body and die for us, leaving us sinners to decide, on our
own, to serve Him, then all of us would have been lost, because every man born
of woman by sex is at enmity with God (God’s enemy). (Eph. 2:12)
Therefore, a special work of the Holy Ghost had to be done in our heart.
God had to COMPEL the Bride to come in. (Lk.
Had we not been
COMPELLED (moved upon in such a way that we would not continue to resist), then
we too would have been among those who were “CALLED” but not chosen. (Mat.
22:14) The great point is this: since God put forth His special effort (power)
to see to it that His Wedding Supper would be furnished with guest, and we (The
Bride) are those guests, how can we not trust that He will most certainly
“Finish the work He started in us”? (Ph. 1:6)
God is
sovereign in the exercise of His power, and as “The
wind bloweth as it pleaseth,” so the Holy Ghost COMPELS whom He pleases to
be the Bride of Christ! Therefore, the most important question on Earth is this,
“Do you know you have been called, and have you answered the call?” If you
can honestly answer “Yes” to these questions, you are among the most blessed
people on planet Earth. If not, then fall on your knees and repent of all your
sins, and be baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts
C
H A P T E R 8
THE
SAME SEED
In 1962,
God’s Prophet, William Branham, preached two sermons entitled, “The Spoken
Word is the Original Seed.” It took most of one day for him to preach them,
one in the morning and the other the same afternoon. Both together, were about
six hours long. In these two messages, he made some astounding statements that
this writer believes has led to a powerful revelation. It concerns finding out
who we are in God’s spiritual realm and has to do with the fact that scripture
says, “Every seed must bring forth of its kind.”
In the first chapter of Genesis, the Holy Ghost said that every seed was
to reproduce “after its own kind.” This
order of God was repeated eight times, and included botany life, all beast, fish
of the waters, and human life as well. In Gen. 1:26, God said, “Let
us make man in our Image, after our Likeness….” That is to say, “Let
us make man after our own kind.” And we know from the Prophet’s
Message that this first creation of man was in a body called a Theophany. It
was a body like God’s own Theophany Body. God’s Seed produced offspring
“after God’s Kind.”
Before God came
down and was made flesh in the womb of Mary, and before the Holy Ghost came to
live in the hearts of men, the Bible teaches that God came down in some kind of
a body and walked and talked with men. Our Prophet said that the body that God
appeared to Abraham in was a Theophany.
QUOTE: IF
GOD BE WITH US. PAGE 10, “It was God, it was a Theophany. A man in the
form of God, like appeared to Abraham back in the wilderness, and He looked like
a man.” (End quote)
Gen. 3:8
tells us that in
QUOTE:
SPOKEN WORD IS THE ORIGINAL SEED, PAGE 18, “The Bible said, ‘Let
every seed bring forth its kind.’ Now when God said that, that settles it.
It’s always settled. Let every seed bring forth of its kind.” (End quote)
There are many
different kinds of seed, and the Bible says that the very first seed of any kind
was a WORD that God had spoken. God spoke the word GRASS and grass appeared. God
spoke the fruit trees by NAME and they appeared. He said let there be LIGHTS in
the firmament, and the Sun, Moon, and Stars appeared. He spoke and the fish and
the beast of the earth appeared, and God saw that all this was good. But, He was
not through with His Creation. He had been working toward creating His
masterpiece, a man with a body made in His own Image.
In creating
this man, God used the same method that had brought the rest of creation into
being, He spoke, and that Seed Word produced a man. That man was like his
Creator because the Seed that produced him was God’s own Seed, and every seed
will produce after its own kind. God’s own Seed produces God’s own kind! So
God created His own kind in Theophany Bodies in the beginning. (Gen. 1:26)
God’s Seed
produces God wherever it’s planted. When the Holy Ghost overshadowed the
Virgin Mary and planted God’s Seed in her, it produced Jesus Christ, who was
God in flesh. When God said in Gen. 1:26, “Let
us make man in our Image, after our likeness,” there appeared God like
beings in Heaven, with bodies like their Father, the Creator. God’s Spoken
Word Seed produced Son’s of God with bodies like their Father. It was a law of
God and so it could not be otherwise. Some of these Son’s of God were created
to fall and follow Lucifer, but some were “ELECT ANGELS” who would not fall.
(See I Tim. 5:21)
Following the
rebellion of Lucifer in Heaven, and his being cast out along with the angels who
chose to follow him, the time came for God to place His true Sons on Earth, to
be tested and tried. Perhaps Lucifer had another conversation with the Lord
concerning these faithful Angels, much as he had with Him about Job. Lucifer
declared that if God would open the hedge and let him in to test and try Job, he
would curse God.
Is it too far
fetched to believe that Lucifer declared to God that if He would let him test
and try the Elect Angels, he could cause them to follow him also? At any rate,
that is what the Lord did. He took a seed out of the original creation of man
and placed it here on Earth in the new-born flesh bodies of His Sons. They were
to grow up and be put to the test to prove they would not follow Lucifer, but
overcome him with God’s Word.
QUOTE:
C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE 340, “Notice now, when man was separated from the
Theophany and put in flesh, he wasn’t just altogether there (in flesh); part
of his being was still a Theophany. (End quote)
QUOTE:
C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE 344, “That’s the way we are here, we came from a
higher being (a Theophany). In the beginning we were in the Image of God. The
veil of darkness keeps us from knowing it now, but Jesus told His disciples He
was with them before the foundation of the world, see! We were……..and if
this earthly tabernacle be dissolved we have one already waiting. Then we move
into this Theophany, what we once lived in.” (End quote)
The Bride of
Jesus Christ have in their flesh bodies a part of God Himself, that was taken
from their original created bodies called a Theophany. This “Part” we speak
of is a Seed of God that was placed in them at their physical birth.
QUOTE:
C.O.D. BOOK, PAGE 341, “We are both natural and supernatural.” (End
quote) I Cor. 15:44, “There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.”
QUOTE:
C.O.D. BOOK, PAGES 20-23, “He made the man and the woman before they was
ever formed out of the dust of the Earth, and then God made man, NOT in His own
Image. This body (of flesh) is not in the Image of God, this body is in the
Image of Beasts. Jesus told His disciples that He knew them before the
foundation of the world, before the world was ever formed.” (End quote)
God allowed Lucifer to enter the human race through the Serpent, into
Eve, then into Adam, and from Adam into every human born of sex. Our flesh
bodies are the result of the sin in
When God’s
time came, He watered that Seed and it sprang into life. We call that the “New
Birth.” It amounts to our God slaying the old soul and replacing it with His
own Soul (a portion of His own Soul). THE BREATH-TAKING REVELATION IS THAT THERE
WAS NO DIFFERENCE IN THE SEED PLACED IN THE VIRGIN MARY, AND IN THE SEED PLACED
IN EVERY PREDESTINATED SON AND DAUGHTER OF GOD! We know that the seed in Mary
produced Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh.
Do we not also
know that the Seed placed in us was to do the same thing? Gal. 4:19, “My
little children, of whom I travail in birth again UNTIL CHRIST BE FORMED IN
YOU.” God’s Seed, His own Seed, is all of one kind, and it can only
produce after its kind, and its kind is God. (The Bride is not God, so as to be
worshipped, but they are OF HIM, born-again spiritually of His Seed.) I Peter
1:23, “Being born again, not of
CORRUPTIBLE SEED, but of INCORRUPTIBLE, by the Word of God, which liveth and
abideth forever.”
We were born physically
by corruptible seed, the seed of our earthly father whose blood line was
corrupted because of Adam’s sin. But, at our spiritual birth, the
INCORRUPTIBLE SEED OF GOD that had been placed in us beforehand was quickened
into life, and the glorious result will be “Christ formed in us.” Can we not
see then that the seed we received at our physical birth was of the same
source as the seed placed in the Virgin Mary? It was God’s Seed, and
therefore can produce nothing less than God!
Who are we then
in our INNER-MAN? We are truly Sons and Daughters of the Great King. King Jesus
lives in these flesh bodies! To be called “Sons of God” is not just a
saying, it is a scriptural fact. With this revelation continually in our
thoughts, how then should we conduct ourselves as we take this Creator King
Jesus from place to place in our daily walk? No doubt some questions have come
into your minds concerning what we have said about there being no difference in
God’s Seed, in that wherever it is planted, it can only produce God. For
example, you may ask, “If I have the same seed that was placed in Mary (which
produced Christ, who was literally God), then why is it that I cannot live
totally above sin, as my Lord did? This is a fair question, but not one that
cannot be answered.
The answer to
this question has to do with the TIME the Seed was placed in Mary, as compared
to the TIME it was placed in us. The Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary BEFORE
she knew a man. Therefore, the blood in her Son Jesus was not from the lineage
of Adam, but from God Himself, and the Bible says, “The
Life is in the Blood.” (Lev. 17:11) At our physical
birth, this Seed of God was placed in us AFTER our mother had known our
father. Therefore, our blood-line was contaminated because it was from the
lineage of Adam.
Through the blood-line then, our Lord Jesus was ENABLED to live above all
sin. Not that He was not tempted like as we are, but that He had in Him the ABILITY,
through the Blood of God, to overcome all sin, and it was the plan for Him to do
so. He was to be the REDEEMER, and as such, He had to be a sin-free
sacrifice. We were to be born needing to be redeemed because of what our
first parents did in
Could not God have placed His seed in us BEFORE our mothers had
known a man? Surely He could have done so, He is God. He does whatsoever pleases
Himself. But, His plan was to be a Saviour and a Redeemer, and if we had been
born of a Virgin also, this would have defeated His plan to show forth that
powerful Love that had before time had no proper way of expression. We would
have needed no Redeemer.
Aren’t you glad, Dear Bride that we know, according to the Prophet and
the Word of God, that there is nothing “out of cater?” “The
creature (us) was made subject to
vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in
hope.” (Rom.
Heb. 2:14, “For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He
also Himself likewise took part of the same, that through death He might destroy
him that had the power of death, that is the Devil.”
And so God’s Great
Plan was to subject His Sons and Daughters to flesh bodies, in which they could
not keep His Law perfectly (Gal. 2:21), but He would also make the Captain
of their Salvation PERFECT through sufferings, in the same kind of a flesh body.
Heb. 2:10,
“For it became Him, for whom are all
things, and by whom are all things, in bringing MANY SONS unto glory, to make
THE CAPTAIN of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
Heb.
Paul said, “Christ
is being formed in you.” Gal. 4:19, “My little children of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be
formed in you.” (It takes the Seed of God to form God in us.)
Did our Prophet
actually teach that we are of the same seed (in our spiritual man) that produced
Jesus Christ?
QUOTE: THE
SPOKEN WORD IS THE ORIGINAL SEED, PAGE 30, “If you want a life of God,
start with the Word of God…….And if that is the fullness of God in you, then
the rain that’s falling will produce exactly what’s in your garden………FOR
IT IS THE SAME SEED WORD OF GOD. God’s Son was His example seed….The
very life that He produced (in Mary), that same watering Spirit of the Holy
Ghost will bring forth the same kind of life, doing the same thing He did. IF
IT’S THE SAME SEED. SON OF GOD SEED WILL BRING FORTH THE SON OF God SEED.”
(End quote)
QUOTE:
SPOKEN WORD IS THE ORIGINAL SEED, PAGE 31-32, “And a real seed of God is
an absorbent for the Spirit. All denominations is took out. All unbelief is out,
and when the Holy Spirit comes into that germ of life that’s laying there,
it produces another seed, just exactly. Another Son of God is born. Amen! Another
amateur God, Son of God.”……When God and his Word becomes one
(Hallelujah) that’s when God’s Spirit waters the Seed of God, the Word of
God. It produces God; and it’s not the individual, it’s God. For what?
You are dead, you’re not yourself anymore. You reckon yourself dead, hollowed
out, waiting for the seed germ. Then what is it? It isn’t you anymore, isn’t
the man, it’s God in the man. It’s the Seed
Word like the beginning Spoken Word.” (End quote)
Friends, our
Father God is still in the process of revealing to us who we actually are! We
are so very much aware of our sins and failures in our flesh man, that we are
slow to understand that God is still producing HIMSELF in flesh bodies. Not that
our flesh is of God, but our innermost being, our NEW SOUL is of God, IT IS GOD.
When our mind can comprehend this most powerful and glorious fact, it is then
that our devilish flesh will be made to bow down before this God that is in us!
It is then
that, by Faith, we will be enabled, as was the Apostle Paul, to keep this flesh
body under. Our struggles to overcome satanic flesh will be over, and we will
simply rely on the God who is in us to do it for us. All He has been waiting for
is for us to realize that we will never, on our own, be able to do it. This
makes Him more precious to us than ever, realizing that He has made all of His
mighty power available to His own Seed.
As this truth
seeps into our minds, other great revelations will emerge. For example, we will
see that God will bless even the things that we touch. The Apostle Paul, in
reading the Old Testament scrolls, learned that whatever the Prophet Elijah
touched was blessed. (The staff that he carried sent to be laid on a dead boy).
From that example, Brother Branham said Paul learned that he could send cloths
from his body and see people blessed and healed. So did the Prophet of our age
make use of this powerful anointing.
But, we must
remember that this anointing is not something we gain by being Holier than some
others. It is something God has done by placing His own seed in us. We had
nothing to do with that Seed planting; it was not given because of any good He
saw in us. We have it simply because He chose to manifest us on Earth as one of
His attributes. Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are. (James
5:17) Paul rebuked the people who would have offered sacrifices unto him and
Barnabas after seeing the man at Lystra healed, saying, “Sirs,
why do you these things? We also are men of like passions with you….” (Acts
14:8-15) Peter said in Acts
3:11-12, “Ye men of
We do not gain this
anointing by living a perfect life in our flesh. We have it because God saw fit
to place His Seed in us and then quicken it, resulting in our being given a New
Soul. Why do we wait any longer then, Bride of Christ? It is time for us to move
forward, with the knowledge that we are the anointed of God, even while we still
live in an imperfect flesh body. Let us walk every hour with a repentant heart,
dropping every sin into the Blood of God, while we do His works.
The anointing
that is on us will cause souls to be saved, devils to be cast out, and people to
be healed. Is this not the Bride Revival that the scriptures and the Prophet
said would come? Let us walk with a new faith, expecting devils to tremble and
manifest themselves to us, even as they did to our Lord when He was here in His
own body. He is here now in our body, not a different Christ, but the same one
who cast these devils out 2000 years ago. These devils have known who we are
ever since that Seed was quickened in us, and now that we are finding out who we
are, they will no longer be able to hide from us.
We know they
are the reason people can’t get through to God to receive the Holy Ghost and
to be healed. We cannot give the Holy Ghost, nor heal a body, but the Prophet
said we can bind or cast out the Devil spirits that are keeping them from it.
(See Page 14, paragraph 30 in the Demonology Book.)
May God move us
straight into the End-Time Revival. May His work then be completed through us,
and may you come for us quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen!
C
H A P T E R 9
COMMUNION
AND
WATER
BAPTISM
“God’s
Types of Being Dead to Sin”
In our Message Churches, we take communion ever so often,
and we should, but it can become just a routine we go through. Perhaps we do it
just because the rest of the people in our church do so. Many, I am sure, do so
because the Prophet said we should. It is possible to think of it as a chore
that we must do, and so we endure it, and get it over with until the next time.
But in this sermon, I want to show that taking Communion is one of the most
important types in the Bible. This is true because it types our being “DEAD
INDEED UNTO SIN.” (Rom.
When the revelation of what Communion is about comes and we realize that
as we partake of its emblems, we are testifying that we KNOW WE ARE FREE FROM
SIN, then we are in a true spiritual sense doing it, “In
true remembrance of Him.” (Lk.22:19) To truly remember Him and His
sacrifice as we take Communion causes the scripture in Mat.26:28 to come
alive to us. “For this is My Blood of
the New Testament, which is shed for many for the REMISSIONS OF SINS.”
When
we take of the emblems (The Bread and The Wine) we are suppose to be testifying,
by an outward act, that we understand I John 3:9, “Whosoever
is born of God DOTH NOT COMMIT SIN, for HIS SEED (God’s Seed) remaineth
in him and HE CANNOT SIN, because he is born of God.” We are testifying
that we believe
To
take Communion with the full revelation of its spiritual meaning is to testify
that we believe, and know, that we are in the group that the scriptures in
To
take Communion with the full revelation of its meaning in our hearts is to stand
with the Apostle Paul and say, “There
is therefore NOW NO CONDEMNATION to them which are in Christ Jesus (Born
Again) who walk not after the flesh, but
after the Spirit.” (Rom. 8:1) We should be testifying to our REDEEMER that
we truly believe we have been redeemed. That is to say, “Saved from our
sins.” We are testifying to the enemy that we know he no longer has anything
with which to condemn us, our sins are gone!
We are not saying that we have no more
sin in our flesh man. We, as Paul, see a law in our members, warring against the
law of our mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin which is in
our members! (Rom.
When we take Communion, we declare that we understand that “By
His own Blood He entered in once into the
Paul taught that it is possible to take Communion UNWORTHILY. One way to
be unworthy is to have unconfessed sin in our lives. Another way to be unworthy,
is to suppose that you are worthy in your flesh man. I John 1:8, “If
we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Verse
9 “If we confess our sins He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.” We are all guilty of sin, and the only way to be out
from under its bondage is BY FAITH IN HIS PLAN. Therefore, to go to the
Communion Table supposing we have pleased Him in our flesh man is to take it
unworthily.
To go to the Table trusting in our ability to keep the Law well enough,
so as to become worthy to take Communion, is to be “Guilty
of the Body and the Blood of the Lord.” (I Cor. 11:27) How so? Because we
can never keep the whole Law, without breaking any part of it, and to break one
part is to be as guilty as if we had broken the whole Law. (See James 2:10)
And so, we come to take Communion dropping our sins into the Blood of God one
moment at a time as we have need to do so. We come believing that His Blood has
made us worthy as we constantly repent.
Paul declared in I Cor. 11:29-30, “For
He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to
himself, not discerning the Lord’s Body. For this cause many are weak and
sickly among you, and many sleep (are dead).”
Failure to discern, or understand fully, why the Lord Jesus gave his Body on
the Cross, is to be “Guilty of the Body
and the Blood of the Lord.” In other words, it is failure to believe that
His Sacrifice has truly left us SINLESS in His Eyes. To take communion while
still under condemnation because of some sin, or sins, that we have committed,
is failure to believe God’s Word in II Cor. 5:21, “For
He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that WE MIGHT BE MADE THE
RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM.”
To
take Communion worthily is to believe with the Apostle Paul that we have been “Crucified
with Christ, nevertheless we live, yet not we, but Christ liveth in us, and the
life that we now live in the flesh we live by the Faith of the Son of God, who
loved us and gave Himself for us.” (Gal. 2:20)
To take Communion is to testify that we are standing on the revelation
that we were IN CHRIST when He was crucified, and that we died with Him, and
being DEAD we are freed from sin. (Rom. 6-7) Perhaps a parable will help us to
see this powerful truth in the way that our Lord wants us to see it.
A certain man had committed a terrible crime, and having been arrested
and placed in jail, he was awaiting trial. But, while his attorney gained more
time to prepare his case by having his trial postponed, the man grew sick and
died. Following the usual procedure, he was taken to the funeral home, embalmed
and laid out in a casket. Upon hearing of the man’s death the prosecuting
attorney gathered up his evidence and law books and went to the funeral home.
Standing before the casket, he proceeded to read the laws the dead man had
broken and quoted the penalties he had come to enforce.
But, was not this prosecutor very much out of place in that he was
confronting a DEAD MAN with his crime? The man in the casket had gone beyond the
prosecutor’s jurisdiction. The law had, by reason of his death, lost its hold
on him. Now, Bride of Christ, in like manner because we were IN CHRIST,
and died with Him at Calvary, when the Accuser of the brethren comes to read the
laws to us that we have broken (and we may well be guilty), we are to understand
that we have passed beyond the jurisdiction of this Accuser by reason of our
death.
The
circumstances of our daily lives will many times show that we are indeed guilty
of certain sins, but our moment by moment repentance, as we have need to repent,
brings to pass Rom 8:33-34 for us. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s Elect? It is God that
justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that
is risen again, who is even at the Right Hand of God, who also maketh
intercession for us.”
And
so, we say again, on the authority of the Word, that Communion is all about
being DEAD and FREED from all sin. It is our symbolic act by which we are saying
to our Father, and to the Enemy, “I believe I am DEAD TO SIN, I believe I AM
FREED FROM SIN. It is something our God has already done for us, and all He asks
is that we believe it. The Devil knows its true, and he trembles as he sees the
Bride coming into this revelation.
We do not argue with Satan, stating that we have no sin; we confess our
sins, then testify that they have been dropped into that great tub of bleach and
destroyed. We love the Prophet’s story that compared the sin-destroying Blood
of Jesus with a drop of ink in a tub full of Clorox Bleach. The ink is forever
gone. The most intelligent scientist cannot discover it again. The Devil and his
whole host of demons cannot bring again our sins, once by Faith we drop them
into the Blood of our Redeemer. Satan fears the Christian who has the revelation
of what
Not that we are righteous in our flesh, not that the flesh has been
perfected, but that we understand the Plan of God in that He allowed us to be
born in sin, and unable to keep His Holy Law Standard perfectly, so that He
could show forth His powerful Love through becoming our Redeemer. This was HIS
PLAN, Dear Bride, and not something man had a part in.
And since it was formed in the Mind of God and carried out by God,
Himself, how do we suppose it can ever fail?
How do we suppose the Devil can find a loop hole in God’s Plan, and how
dare we allow him to place us under condemnation because of our failures!
God’s declared Word is forever true!
WATER BAPTISM
Along
with Communion, Water Baptism is another great type of all that we have said
above.
Water Baptism symbolizes our death to sin. When we are placed under the
water, we are to understand that this is showing forth, in type, our death. By
being placed under the water, we are symbolizing being put in a grave, and we
are to understand our Gracious God will not charge sin against a man who is,
“DEAD IN CHRIST.”
When the full revelation of what Water Baptism is about comes, we will
realize that from the moment we come up out of the water SIN WILL NEVER BE
CHARGED AGAINST US.
Of
course, we are to understand that again this is a thing of Faith. In ages past,
many good people have been baptized without this revelation having come. It has
been lost sight of in most modern churches. But, now we have come down to the
Bride’s time to leave in a Rapture and God has promised to restore all that
the different denominations have lost. This restoration has to do with sending
the Faith that was once “Delivered unto the Saints.” The truth about Water
Baptism in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ is a part of this restoration. To
be buried in type, in a watery grave, and coming up freed from all sin forever,
is no small revelation! It is God’s Love expressed in all its power and glory!
Before someone misunderstands, we are not teaching that the water, of
itself, does away with our sins. We do not baptize in water for regeneration or
conversion. To be put under the water does not save us. We must have an
experience with the Lord wherein our sin load is lifted, then we are
candidate for Water Baptism. Another great truth needs to be taught concerning
our baptism in water. After Justification (sins forgiven) and after Sanctification
(a life laid on the altar) we are in line to receive the Holy Ghost.
In Acts 2:38, Peter gives the correct formula for receiving the
Holy Ghost. “Then Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized every one of you in
the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the
Gift of the Holy Ghost.” The first step toward receiving the Holy Ghost is
to truly repent. Then when you know your sins are gone, you must be baptized in
that Name that is above every name, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is then, at the
time of your Water Baptism, when you have complied with God’s formula, that
the scripture says, “You shall receive
the Gift of the Holy Ghost.”
If we would teach the new converts this scriptural formula, then the
strain of seeking and searching for the Holy Ghost would be done away, and when
they come up out of the water, the Holy Ghost would fall on them and fill them,
even as God said. We receive the Holy Ghost by faith, in the same way we receive
anything else from God.
John the Baptist rebuked those who came for baptism before they had
repented and had a change of attitude toward sin. Water Baptism is an outward
sign that God has done an inward work in the heart.
Many have been delayed, or even missed receiving the Holy Ghost Baptism,
because they are waiting to become more acceptable to the Lord in their flesh
life. This is a grave error. If we should live a hundred years in our flesh
bodies, there would still be “No good
thing in it.” (Rom.
No Friends, we do not EARN God’s Gifts of Grace, for then they would no
more be Grace, but God would OWE us something, and if He owed us something,
Grace would be done away with! (
And while we are on this subject, I feel the Holy Ghost crying out
against another terribly wrong doctrine that has come into our precious Message.
God does not wait until we have believed His End-Time Message and received the
revelation that Brother William Branham was the scriptural End-Time Prophet,
BEFORE he will send the Holy Ghost. Just the opposite is true. God sends His
Spirit to REVEAL these powerful truths. Just an intellectual knowledge of them
is all we have without the Holy Ghost to REVEAL them to us.
Some are teaching that we are not Born-Again until AFTER we receive the
End-Time Message. That is to say, we do not receive the Holy Ghost until AFTER
we receive the revelation of the Message. They say that the Lord waits until we
have it all figured out for ourselves, then He will give us the Holy Ghost,
which is the New Birth. Precious Bride, this is not the scripture! May I just
remind you of some scripture that destroys this teaching?
John 16:13, “Howbeit,
when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth….”
Then how do you teachers say that God waits until we believe all these things
BEFORE He sends this Spirit of Truth, which is the Holy Ghost, which is the New
Birth? Again, John 14:6 says, “I
am the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE.” Yet, some say that we must come into
this truth BEFORE we have His Life, then He will send it. It is most amazing how
the enemy can cloud the minds of us all, and it takes the Holy Ghost to
straighten us out.
In I Tim. 2:4, the Bible says, “Who
will have all men to be SAVED (given the Holy Ghost) and
(THEN) to come
into the knowledge of the truth.” We do not see the truth and then get
saved, but we get saved and then see the truth! Thank God for a merciful Lord
who has not left us on our own until we can find out these powerful truths, but
He has given us the Holy Ghost in order to show them to us.
This writer has been told that he did not have the New Birth until after
I came to the Message and believed it. They said I could not receive the Holy
Ghost (the Word) that is needed today, back in Pentecost. I grant you that many
who supposed they received it in Pentecost did not. They only received an
anointing on their outer man. But, if we try to say that none received Him, the
Word, back there we miss the truth.
This writer received Him, the Word, while in Pentecost, then two years
later this same Holy Ghost led me to God’s End-Time Message. I did not need a
different kind of Holy Ghost to teach me the Message. There is only one Holy
Ghost, and He does all the teaching and revealing. When you receive Him, no
matter when it was, He will lead you into all truth. We may not have all the
truth at this time, but if we have Him we are certain to arrive at that place.
That is to say, we will have all we need to go in the Rapture.
I would ask the teachers of this wrong doctrine to remember that without
the Holy Ghost, which is the New Birth, that we are “Dead
in trespasses and sins” until we have been quickened. (Eph. 2:1) Our
spiritual eyes are blind, even so blind that we cannot come to God unless He
draws us. (John 6:44) Yet you say, “When we see the Message we are then
Born-Again.” Then may I ask a question? What about the people who believe the
Message, but show no signs in their life of having separated from the world and
its programs? It should be evident that their belief of the Message did not, of
itself, change their hearts. But you give this belief as proof of the New Birth.
My Friends, it is not belief of the Message that is proof of the New
Birth, but rather a Godly life. It is walking in obedience to all the Word we
know. It is to repent when we get wrong, and keep on keeping on. It is to love
and trust the Lord Jesus, no matter what He sees fit to put us through. Many
Message Believers are not yet doing this. May God help up to receive the genuine
Holy Ghost so that we may have, not just an intellectual knowledge of the
Message, but a revelation of it.
On the Day of Pentecost, when Peter was asked by the 3000, “What shall
we do to be saved?” He did not say, “Wait until we teach you all the things
Jesus taught, and if you receive it you shall receive the Holy Ghost!” But he
simply said, “Repent and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ…….and you
shall receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost.” That is still the formula for
today. Amen!
C
H A P T E R 10
DELIVERED
TO
THE
TORMENTORS
There
is a much overlooked parable found in Matt. 18: 21-35 that our Lord Jesus
spoke and one that is drastically important concerning the matter of Faith. It
has to do with the faith that we Christians need that will bring us our miracles
in times of stress and trouble. After we have had the powerful revelation that
we are truly Believers, and knowing that we are accepted by the Lord as such on
the grounds that we have simply made the CHOICE to believe, there is yet a great
obstacle that stands in the way of most of us, and it keeps us from receiving
the Supernatural Faith that God must send in order for us to claim our miracle.
We have taught,
in times past, that all Born-Again people can believe God, and that we do so
based on the revelation He gives all Born-Again people, which revelation is that
He is a Perfect Person in every respect. He has a Perfect Love for His people
and can therefore be trusted with our very lives, both Spiritual and Physical.
We have also taught that even though we have this Perfect human trust in our
God, this is only the first step in receiving the Supernatural Faith that brings
a miracle.
This
Supernatural Faith must be “Delivered to us today, as it was once delivered to
the Saints of Old.” (Jude 3) There is a channel through which this miracle
working Faith must flow, and it must be kept open. If it becomes clogged then we
know the flow is restricted. Our human unbelief is one thing that clogs the
channel, but knowing that our Lord watches our DECISION to believe rather than
checking our emotions, will set us free as Believers.
This brings us
to the other great obstacle that must be removed from the channel through which
God’s Faith flows. IT IS AN UNFORGIVING SPIRIT. In the parable mentioned
before, Peter had apparently been having a problem with a Brother, or Brothers,
which prompted him to ask the Lord, “How
oft shall my Brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?”
(Matt. 18:21) Peter must have thought that to forgive a man seven times in a row
would be stretching his human grace quite thin. And most of us would think the
same.
But, the
Lord’s answer was to show us clearly that human grace must give way to God’s
Supernatural Love. Our human love can never forgive SEVEN TIMES SEVENTY. (Matt.
18:22) As the parable unfolds, we see a man forgiven by his master for a great
debt, which had reached to 10,000 talents. The man’s wife and children and
other possessions were saved because of the Kings forgiving heart. But, then the
same servant took a man by the throat who owed him only a very small debt, and
because the man could not pay at once, he had the man cast into prison till he
should pay the debt. I would, at this point, ask you to remember that this
parable is about we Christians forgiving each other on an hourly basis, and
keeping all grudges cleared from the channel through which God sends His own
Faith. We can say without any doubt, that this is God’s way of keeping peace
in His Church between His Children. There is great recompense of reward when we
forgive each other all our debts. It is, in true fact, the saving of our own
souls, for if we forgive not our Brother, then our own sins are not forgiven!
(Matt 6:14-15)
By refusing to
forgive others and thereby retaining our own sins, we face a terrible
consequence. Let us read it in the scriptures. “Then
his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant. I
forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me. Shouldest not thou also
have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? And his
Lord was wroth, AND DELIVERED HIM TO THE TORMENTORS, TILL HE SHOULD PAY ALL THAT
WAS DUE HIM. SO LIKEWISE SHALL MY HEAVENLY FATHER DO ALSO UNTO YOU, IF FROM YOUR
HEARTS YOU FORGIVE NOT EVERY ONE HIS BROTHER THEIR TRESPASSES. (Matt.
18:22-35)
This writer has
been made to wonder if the sin of unforgiveness has not hindered many of us, in
times past, from receiving the desperately needed Faith of God! Generally
speaking, we Christians do not usually commit adultery, fornication, or
blaspheme God, or steal and lie, but I fear that we are often guilty of holding
grudges against others. When this is true, then we ourselves are defiled before
our God because our own sins are unforgiven! When the Lord sees that He cannot
forgive us, due to our unforgiving spirit, this means He cannot send His Faith
into our defiled hearts. The channel is clogged.
All of us still
have “A law of sin in our members” that
likes to rise up and condemn others. We were born with that fault and the New
Birth does not automatically do away with it. We must overcome it, and that
means we have to keep putting that spirit down. In our daily walk we come into
contact with people, and we see what we consider to be faults in them. For every
seeming fault we see, there is a need to forgive that person. Rarely do we see a
person who is living their life as we think they should. Therefore, there is a
need to forgive them for not fitting into our mold.
It is most
amazing how the smallest thing in a Brother or Sister can become a large grudge
in our hearts, as we continue to hold them by the throat, refusing them the
right to “Work out their own salvation
with fear and trembling.”
Brother Branham gave
a great teaching on forgiveness. He said that “FAITH IS BASED ON
FORGIVENESS.”
QUOTE:
PERFECT FAITH, PAGE 4, “And now, we're going to turn to Mark, St. Mark,
the 11th chapter of St. Mark. And we're going to begin to read about the--the
22nd verse of the 11th chapter of St. Mark. And many of you know this Scripture;
it’s very familiar. It was the Scripture I was thinking on, Brother Russell,
when He spoke to me and said about those squirrels. And….That was just the
very Scripture I was thinking of. It's always been a puzzle. He said, "If
ye say"; not "If I say"; "if you
say!"
Now,
let us read: .... Jesus answering said unto them, “Have faith in God.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain,
Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his
heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he
shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever you desire, when you pray,
believe that ye receive them, and you shall have them.
And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have ought against any: that
your Father also... that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you
your trespasses.
But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven
forgive your trespasses.”
Now, faith is
based on forgiveness then. And then, as we said this morning, trying to get the
church into the place to where we could really see apostolic times moving among
us, that's what we all hunger. And it's just laying right at the door. We see
it, but we want to see more of it. We want it such a flow that it'll--it'll be a
help to us, us flow out to others.” (End quote)
Let us review
what the Prophet said in the above quote. Faith, the Supernatural Gift of Faith,
that must be delivered to us or we can never have it, the kind of Faith that
brings miracles into our lives, and the lives of others, will only be sent to us
as we keep all grudges toward others out of our hearts. He said this kind of
Faith is only delivered to those who keep the channel into the heart cleaned
out. When he said “Now Faith is based on forgiveness” he made reference to
our forgiving each other, so that our Lord can also forgive us.
I would like to
share a story from the book, “THE REAL FAITH” as written by Brother Charles
Price. It has to do with a woman whose channel of faith was stopped up by an
unforgiving spirit.
A
WOMAN’S STORY
BY
BROTHER CHARLES PRICE
How well I
remember a woman who came to the meetings some years ago in need of healing and
prayer. She seemed to be such a noble character, and her family loved her
devotedly and dearly. One night we prayed for her in the Name of the Lord Jesus,
and she went away seemingly happy. She said she was standing on the promises of
God; but she was not healed. As the days went by, two of her daughters came to
see me, and begged me to pray again. As a matter of fact, they were almost
hysterical in their anxiety and desperation. They loved their mother, and they
knew that God was their only hope. They asked me to anoint her once again. I
did!
Never shall I
forget the pleadings, the importunities, and the frantic cries of those dear
people as they stormed the throne of grace. They tried to believe; but it seemed
to be all in vain. The poor, sick woman brushed the tears from her eyes as we
sang, “Jesus breaks every fetter,” and went away from the meeting without
any evident answer to our prayer. Two days passed. Then she came early, before
the service, to the office door. Here was a different woman! Her face was
illumined by the glow of the glory in her soul.
“You have
been healed!” I said.
She smiled, as
she answered, “No, not yet; but I shall be tonight. I have been prayed for
publicly, and I believe my Lord wants to touch me by His power in the service
tonight, so that all may see that He is faithful.” There was no strained,
tense atmosphere; no struggle; but rather, sweet and beautiful rest in the Lord.
Then she told me her story.
Broken and
crushed---almost in despair—she had gone home. She had come to the end of
herself and she knew it. As she knelt by the side of her bed and prayed, she
sobbed: “Dear Jesus, I have tried so hard to have
faith and I can’t. I have failed, dear Lord, and yet I do believe in your
promise and your Word. Brother Price has tried, and he has failed. The people in
the meeting have tried, and they too have failed. Where can I go? What can I do?
Speak to me, Lord. My only hope is in
Thee.”
Then before her
came the thought of a woman who had succeeded her as the teacher of a young
people’s class. Deep in her heart there had developed a feeling against that
woman who had won the hearts of the young people, where once their love and
affection had been showered upon her. Was it envy? Was it jealousy? She knew
not; but she did know that with the passing of the months the feeling had become
intensified. Now she thought of her. She saw then the true
condition of her heart. Perhaps she heard the Master say, “And
when ye stand praying, Forgive.”
This very
afternoon she had spent an hour in prayer with that woman, and God put in her
heart a deep and beautiful Christian love for her. Sweet hour of prayer!
Wonderful place of Communion, where we talk to God. And in which God talks to
us! The wounds are healed! The envy melted away, and the Love of Jesus flowed
in. when at last she arrived home, she told the family at the supper table that
she would be healed that night. She knew it; but she did not know how
she knew it. The consciousness of it was as real as life itself. There was no
doubt about it. There was no intercession. That had been a work of the past.
There was no agonizing and pleading. It was done; and yet it was not! That is
the paradox of faith. Then she said to me, “My Brother, do you know what Jesus
has done?”
“I know that
my Lord doeth all things well,” was my reply.
“He has given
me His faith,” she said, “Honestly, I do not know the moment I received it;
but, praise His name, I know it is here.”
And it was.
That night the heavenly breezes blew. That night the Christ of the healing road
touched, with the power of Omnipotence, the sick, weary-body of His needy child.
That night a cancer was melted by the touch divine. A mountain was moved by the faith
of God which had been imparted to a sick woman by the Lord of Glory
Himself.” (End quote)
And so, we see
that FORGIVENESS is another great command that our Lord has given us. It is His
way of holding our feet to the fire, so to speak, and keeping peace in His Body,
the Church. The warning that He has given us is very real, and I do believe we
see His judgment in operation in our midst more than we have realized. He has
said that He will, “Turn us over to the
Tormentors until every debt is paid.” That is to say, until every grudge
be forgiven!
Both small and
large things must be forgiven. How often do we have need to forgive someone who
will not believe our glorious Message? Every day we have to forgive the
thoughtless words and deeds of others, and pray they are forgiving us for ours.
Grudges build up in our hearts and we don’t even realize it. I have talked
with people who are still holding things against people who are dead and gone.
Of course the dead ones are no longer being harmed, but the living one is in
great danger from the Tormentors. We know who the Tormentors are don’t we? The
Lord speaks of the enemy of our souls, the Devil. The fact that a person is dead
and gone does not relieve us from the responsibility of forgiving them!
Now, what is
our part in forgiveness? First, we need to see that we are not at all saying
that the person we are forgiving is not guilty. Quite often they are! But, are
we not wrong many times, sometimes daily? Forgiveness on our part is a simple
DECISION to do so. We must not judge whether or not we have forgiven by an
emotional test. We cannot control our emotions, but we can CHOOSE to obey God
and forgive. When the Lord sees our heart felt desire to forgive He will sooner
or later cause our emotions to fall in line with our decision. It is then that
the gracious feeling of Love Divine floods our heart. Do not worry if this
lovely feeling does not come at once, just hold fast to your decision and the
Lord will certainly do His part.
When the full
revelation of what our Lord said concerning turning us over to the Tormentors
strikes, we will be afraid to hold a grudge. I wonder how often an unforgiving
spirit has separated us from that flow of Grace that we call Faith. If in times
past we have been delivered into the hands of the Tormentors, because of an
unforgiving spirit, may we now repent and clean out the channel so that His
Faith can flow unhindered!
There must come
a time in our Christian walk when we understand that even though we have learned
how to trust our God (We simply choose to believe, and He accepts our choice.),
there must still be Delivered to us His own Supernatural Faith. We can only have
this real Faith as He gives it! We may have won the battle in our struggle to
Believe, and we may now understand that God has accepted our choice to Believe
and calls us such, but we must also know that this human trust is not yet real
Faith that brings us our miracle.
Most of us have
thought that our human believing, or trust, is all that was needed, but does not
experience itself prove that there is something still lacking after we have
believed? It is very true that we must first believe,
but we must also know that after we have Believed we must expect God’s
Supernatural Reward, which is His own Faith imparted to us. Heb. 11: 6, “But without Faith it is impossible to please Him. For he that commeth
to God must BELIEVE that He is, AND THAT HE IS A REWARDER OF THEM THAT
DILIGENTLY SEEK HIM.”
And so, we see
that the Word says that our Believing will sooner or later be REWARDED with
God’s own faith. Friends, this is meant to take all the struggle out of our
minds. We can simply Believe Him with our human Faith, then wait in humble
prayer for Him to send that real Faith, which though it be as small as a grain
of Mustard Seed, will move our mountain. When we see this, we will no longer
foolishly expect our own human trust to be all that’s needed.
We may not be
aware of the actual time that this real Faith enters our hearts. The floor may
not shake, nor the lightening flash and the thunder roll. We may not experience
goose bumps on our flesh, but it could be that we just become aware that we
know, that we know, that our God is taking care of our problem. If there have
been disappointments and failure, they have been on our part, and not on our
Lord’s. He wanted to make it so easy, but we have made it hard.
We are very
close to the end of this world as we have known it, and we have been promised a
Bride Revival before the Rapture. I can see that the restoration of the
revelation concerning Believing, and then The Real Faith, will play a large part
in bringing this Revival. Of course, we know that it will be a revival of the
Bride only; the others have already had theirs.
The great truth
to remember is that we can Believe a
promise, but not yet have the real Faith to see it fulfilled. No man can work up
this faith, it cannot be manufactured. We can never Believe
hard enough to see our miracle. So, we just simply keep Believing as we look up to the One who imparts His Faith. He will
not disappoint us. With the channel cleaned out, we will sooner or later
experience that Knowing. That is what real Faith is. Amen.
C
H A P T E R 11
HEALING
FROM WITHIN
In the message “The Greatest Battle Ever Fought” Brother Branham
said, “The mind is the gateway to the Spirit.” Those who have faithfully
studied his messages know that Brother Branham started out believing that the
innermost man is the Spirit. Later, the Lord showed him that the innermost man
is the Soul. If you recall, he drew a circle and put the Soul in the center of
the circle.
So we have the Outer Man (the flesh man, which includes the Mind), then
the Spirit, then the Soul. We also know that the New Birth is the changing out
of the Old Soul that we were born with, and having it replaced with God’s own
Soul. I won’t go into detail about the teaching of the New Soul, because that
is not the subject of our sermon. I will just give one statement of the Prophet
then you can study the rest for yourself, in our sermon “The Death of the
Soul” in Volume One of our Teaching Series.
QUOTE: FAITH IN ACTION,
I want to establish the fact that our innermost being is the Soul, and
that when the Old Soul has been slain and replaced with a portion of God’s own
Soul, then we have God, Himself living on the inside of us. This is what the New
Birth is! We are made a New Creature. God has taken up His abode in us, and is
running the ship, so to speak, from the engine room, or from our innermost
being, the Soul.
Our subject is “Healing from the Inside Out.” That is to say our
healing comes from our innermost being, which is the New Soul, which Soul is
God! God in us produces Divine Healing; it starts from the Soul and works its
way out into the outer flesh-man. That is why the Scripture says in III John
Verse 2, “Beloved I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in
health, EVEN AS THY SOUL PROSPERETH.” The Soul must prosper first, then
Divine Healing comes forth from the Prospered Soul.
You may well ask, “If the New Soul is a portion of God’s own Soul,
then what need does it have to prosper.” I want to give some statements
Brother Branham made that will explain this. If the Bible says the Soul has a
need to prosper, then we must believe what the Word says. The revelation has to
do with what the word “PROSPER” means. In the teaching Brother Branham gives
on the subject, we will see that the Soul in us truly does run the ship (from
down in the Engine Room), but God in the Soul waits for orders from above, from
the one who is steering the ship (THE MIND). If we can catch the revelation in
the Prophet’s parable I will give below, we will see that the man “SITTING
UP HERE” that he made reference to, is “THE MIND.” The man in the
Pilot’s House is the MIND, and the Man in the Engine Room is the SOUL, who is
God in our New Soul. It is truly the Man in the Engine Room that runs the Ship
(God in the Soul), but He takes orders from the man in the Pilots House. (The
Mind)
The Scripture says in Pro. 23:7, “As
a man THINKETH in his heart so is he.” The MIND must make the decisions
about what we believe! When the mind has decided to believe the Word of God, it
must send the message (The Word) on down the channel into the Spirit (Some call
the Spirit the subconscious mind). Until the Spirit has also been washed by the
water of the WORD, there will be doubts there, and these doubts are passed on
down into the Soul. (The Prophet said there is one of two things in the Soul,
doubt or Faith.)
The great revelation then is that we can wash out all doubts and fear
from the Spirit and the Soul by THINKING WORD AND QUOTING WORD. Once the MIND
has accepted the WORD as FACT, this information must be passed on down into the
SPIRIT by this procedure, thinking and quoting Word.
“As a man THINKETH IN HIS HEART SO IS HE.” All Born-Again people know
that all Word of God is true. That is to say we know it in our INTELLECT. IN Mark
The
WORD meditated on and spoken and testified about, will always, when continued
in, wash all doubts, fears, and unbelief out of the Spirit and Soul. This is the
meaning of the Scripture in III John Verse 2, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in
health, EVEN AS THY SOUL PROSPERS.” Only one thing prospers the Soul, and
that is God’s Word! The Word enters the Spirit and Soul through the gateway of
the MIND. (See “The Greatest Battle Ever Fought”, page 20.) From the MIND it
passes on down into the Spirit and Soul.
For years the Church has underestimated the POWER IN THE WORD, perhaps
because we don’t understand HOW it works to drive out fear and doubts. We
don’t have to understand it, just know that it does, and begin to use it. Now
we will give the Parables in which the Prophet taught the truth stated above.
QUOTE: INNER MAN, CHICAGO 53 1212, “There is a Conscious and a
Subconscious. If we start overseas by ship, and there’s a man SITTING UP HERE
(in the Wheel House), he is the one who gives the orders. The man who goes down
in the ship (the Engineer in the Engine Room) down here, well, He doesn’t see
where He is going, but He just takes orders from above (Saying the Soul takes
orders from above). Well now, he says ‘Steer to the left or to the right, or
give the engine more and that (more power or less power) or whatever it is.’ HE
JUST WORKS BY ORDERS.” (End quote)
Please notice carefully what he said here! The man in the Engine room,
the Man in the Soul, God, JUST WORKS BY ORDERS. He only works as we BELIEVE. Do
you remember the teaching on how to believe? We believe by simply making a
DECISION to believe, and God honors our decision, even while doubts are being
fired into our minds by the enemy. (Read Matt. 4:1-7 where the enemy
fired doubts into the mind of the Lord Jesus, but that did not stop Him from
believing. He just answered the doubts with Word. We must do the same thing and
understand that God is still counting us as Believers!
CONT. QUOTE: INNER MAN, “But way down in the midst of us, here
in the heart, is the subconscious, and it takes orders from up here (from the
conscious mind).” (End quote)
Then, as we have said above, the subconscious mind (the Spirit), when it
has become convinced of the promises by the Word being continually passed down
into it, it will send this message on down into the Soul, and the Soul is
PROSPERED, and its power (God’s Power) is released into the whole man.
QUOTE: EXPLAINING HEALING AND JAIRUS, WOOD RIVE, IL 54-0216,
“For instance, like a man goes overseas. I’ll stop here just a minute (to
explain). We’re going overseas and we get in the ship. Now the man that really
runs the ship goes down into the bowels of the ship, the Engineer. BUT HE TAKES
ORDERS FROM THIS MAN UPSTAIRS (the Conscious Mind). Well, what if he gives
orders, ‘Two knots to the left.’ And the man down in here turns two knots to
the right. (What if he said,) ‘Straight ahead.’ And the man down here in the
ship runs backwards? But you see, they’ve got to be in harmony. You’ve got
to be, or the ship will never move…….But you’ve got to be in perfect
harmony with the will of God, the WORD of God. Your first conscious (your mind)
with the Spirit of God, all that move together, and everything just clears the
way, and you move out (The ship moves out.) You’ve got to do that.” (End
quote)
QUOTE: EXPLAINING HEALING AND JAIRUS,
QUOTE: EXPECTATIONS AND WHAT LOVE IS,
He will send down word, “Two knots to the left.” Now the man down
here (in the Engine Room), He don’t see where he’s going, it’s just the
Engine…….That’s the way at the Church, you’re going this way and that
way. Yet now when the man up in the crows nest says, ‘Straight ahead,’ (and)
the man here in the bottom (in the Engine Room) says, ‘Straight Ahead,’
she’s going to move.” (End quote)
I pray we can see what he is trying to tell us. When the conscious mind
and the subconscious mind, and the Soul are all saying the same thing, or when
they have been rid of all doubts by being fed the pure Word of God, then
God is going to move to send us our answer.
CONT. QUOTE: EXPECTATIONS AND WHAT LOVE IS, “When God says,
‘By His stripes you were healed.’ (And) The man receives in his heart, says,
‘By His stripes we are healed.’ The subconscious acts back (and says), ‘by
His stripes we were healed.’ (Then) Look out. Something’s going to take
place. You’re going forward. Nothing can stop it then. You’re in full
harmony. And not a wave, I don’t care what kind of waves would come; it’d
never be contrary to your faith. (It would never move you from your faith.)
You’d just move right on through. That’s right.” (End quote)
Now, to take an overall view of what Brother Branham is teaching in his
parables about a ship and how it is run, we will make the following statements.
The conscious mind of a man is what gives the orders for the control of the man.
What the conscious mind receives, and believes, is passed down into the
subconscious mind, or spirit. From the Spirit, then the Soul receives either
Faith or doubt. Pr. 23:7, “As a man thinketh in his heart (Mind) so is he.”
How
drastically important then are the thoughts that we entertain in our mind. What
we think will eventually find its way out of the mouth in the form of words, and
the Scripture says, “Death and life are
in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit
thereof.” (Pro. 18:21)
If the Mind is the Gateway to the Spirit and the Soul, and if we end up
speaking the thoughts that we allow to remain in our mind, then can’t we see
what the Scripture means that says, “As
a man THINKETH in his heart (Mind) so
is he?” We can never rise any higher than the thoughts we entertain, and
the words we speak. Therefore, we are to, “Attend
to God’s Words, and incline our ears unto His sayings, we are not to let them
depart from before our eyes, and we must keep them in the midst of our heart,
for they are LIFE to those that find them, and HEALTH to all their flesh.” (Pro.
4:20-22)
When we learn to control our thoughts, we will also be controlling our
words. To control our words and only speak in line with what God’s Word says,
then we are passing the right messages down the channel into the Spirit and on
into the Soul. God, who is the Holy Ghost, who is in our Soul in the form of the
New Birth, waits for the right kind of orders to come down the channel to Him
before He can move to help us. In more simple words, He must wait until we are
BELIEVING in both Mind and Spirit. Then help comes from the Soul outward.
Our Prophet taught us that it is our responsibility to win the BATTLE OF
THE MIND. There is only one way to win this battle, and that is by carefully
attending to the thoughts we allow to remain in our minds. All negative thoughts
must be cast out, so that they do not pass down into the Engine Room. (II Cor.
10:5)
QUOTE: THE GREATEST BATTLE, PAGE 20, “Your mind either accepts
it or rejects it (the truth of the Word).
That’s it friends. God, let none of them miss it. See? It’s your MIND
that opens up the door, or closes the door, and listens to your conscience (sub
conscience mind that doubts), and listens to your memory, listens to your
affections (emotions and circumstances). But, when your mind closes itself to
these things, and let God, the Spirit of His Word, come in, it blows the rest of
the stuff out. Every doubt is gone, every fear is gone, every (wrong) feeling is
gone. There’s nothing standing there but the Word of God, and Satan cannot
battle against that! No Sir! He cannot battle against it. Now we know that’s
truth.” (End quote)
A good way to think of the functions of the conscious mind, the
subconscious mind, and the Soul is to think of them as a garden. We are the
gardener, and we are planting seeds of thoughts into our subconscious mind all
day long, by the thoughts we entertain in the conscious mind. We may not even be
aware of the fact that this is what we are doing, but the seeds we plant are
based on our habitual thinking. Think of our subconscious mind as a plot of rich
soil that will help all kinds of seeds to sprout and flourish. If we plant
thorns, can we expect to gather grapes? If we sow thistles, will we harvest
figs? Every thought entertained is a seed, either good or bad. That is why it is
a matter of life or death that we take charge of our thoughts!
Start now to sow seeds of peace, happiness, goodwill, and health. Think
with conviction on these things, forming in your mind a picture of yourself in
perfect health, with peace of mind, loving your enemies as yourself, and
prospering in every way, and your Soul will prosper by your right thinking.
Accept these things fully in your conscious mind. Continue to plant these good
seeds and you will reap a bountiful harvest of the same kind of crop.
When our mind thinks correctly, according to God’s Word, when you
understand the truth of His Word concerning what He wants for you, then these
seeds planted in the subconscious mind, or Spirit, will pass on into the Soul
where God lives, and untie His hands so He can start to work. Most of us, with
out realizing it, have habitually planted wrong seeds, and also without
realizing why, we have reaped the wrong kind of harvest. But thanks be to God,
we can change the kind of seeds we have been planting and change the harvest we
have been reaping.
Never finish a negative statement, but change it immediately, or else you
have planted a thorn tree in your garden. Be sure we think like this, “Whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
of a good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, THINK ON
THESE THINGS.” (Phil. 4:8)
We have seen where the Prophet said we are like a Captain navigating a
ship. We must give the right orders or the ship is wrecked. We must think the
right thoughts and pass them on down into our Spirit and Soul, which governs all
our being. “Only Believe” is the Law of God for our lives. Believing is a
thought in our mind. Do not believe anything that does not agree with God’s
will for us. He may test us and try us, but His final word is “Many
are the afflictions of the righteous, BUT THE LORD DELIVERETH HIM FROM THEM
ALL.” (Ps. 34:19)
QUOTE: GREATEST BATTLE PAGE 15-16, “There’s got to be
something happen inside ……It can’t be artificial, it’s got to be
real. And there is only one avenue that that can come down, and that’s by the
way of FREE MORAL AGENCY COME INTO YOUR SOUL BY YOUR THOUGHTS. ‘As a man
thinketh in his heart so is he. If YOU say to this mountain, move and don’t
doubt in your heart, but believe that what you have said will come to pass; you
can have what you said. You get it? There you are, see? There’s the battle
ground. If you’d get that started first (correct our thoughts). We’re so
anxious to see things done, we’re so anxious to do something for God.” (End
quote)
God has a “Law of Faith.” Jesus spoke it when He said “According
to your Faith be it unto you.” (Matt. 9:29) God’s Law, as expressed by
the Lord Jesus, insists that we BELIEVE we are going to be helped. At this
point, I would like to give you some food for thought. In almost every land
there are shrines at which healings take place. I read a story of a young girl
who worshipped at the feet of a forty-two foot tall statute of Buddha. She had
brought two oranges as an offering to him. She chanted her prayer, asking that
her voice be restored, which she had lost. Candles were lit, incense was burned,
and her prayers were offered up. It was also said that the girl had fasted in
preparation for the visit to the statue of Buddha. The result was a conditioning
of her mind to the point of believing. Her voice was restored there at the
shrine. Did Buddha heal her, or was it her believing?
Catholics who worship the Mother Mary, and bow before her statue, have
been healed of many kinds of diseases. There are certain pools of water, where
people who bath in them are healed. In our own nation, people who have been
given sugar-coated pills, by doctors carrying out an experiment, have been
healed of diseases.
In mid-evil days, it is recorded in the history of medical science, that
people who became convinced that a mixture of fly dung and ground up antelope
horn cured certain diseases, were healed when they took this terrible dose.
My question is, did Buddha heal the girl? Did Mary heal the people? Did
the water in the pools heal the people? Did the sugar-coated pills heal the
people, or did the fly dung heal them? Do the dishonest preachers of today, who
are only after the money, heal people? Some who attend their meetings are
healed! We can’t say that many of these people were not healed, because
doctors’ reports have confirmed it. Knowing that the above remedies do not, of
themselves, heal people, we come to the conclusion that there is an underlying
principle in all these cases. The principle is simply this; they all BELIEVED
they were going to be helped.
Therefore it was not the remedy itself that healed, but their FAITH
in the remedy. How much more then can we bow before our Lord Jesus Christ, with
full confidence in Him, and receive our healing? “He
sent His Word and it healed them.” (Ps. 107:20)
C
H A P T E R 12
GOD’S
ELECTIVE LOVE
One of the main problems that the Bride of Jesus Christ is having in
these evil days is failure to understand God’s “ELECTIVE LOVE.” Therefore,
the purpose for our sermon is to show that God’s decision to love,
justify, sanctify, and glorify His Bride will stand throughout all Eternity.
There is nothing the enemy can do to change God’s mind concerning this. Not
even the sins and failures of the Elect themselves will change His mind, for the
whole of Creation stood before Him, and was open to His view before He created,
and after seeing it all, He chose those whom He would conform to His Image.
Before the first star He decided who He would love.
His decision is final, as He planned it, so shall it be, as He has chosen
us, so shall we be with Him throughout Eternity. Isa. 14:24, “The
Lord of hosts has sworn, saying, surely as I have thought so shall it come to
pass, and as I have purposed (planned) so
shall it stand.” Verse 27 “For
the Lord of Hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it, and His hand is
outstretched, and who shall turn it back.” He has sworn to love us!
His love for us did not start here on Earth, but rather in Heaven, in His
mind, before there was an earth! We have been taught that God does not change
His mind, and the Scriptures, when properly balanced, bear out this truth. Heb.
13:8 “Jesus Christ the SAME yesterday, and today, and forever.” That
is to say that our God is of the SAME MIND through all the yesterdays, and even
until today, as well as through all the tomorrows. Mal. 3:6, “For
I am the Lord, I change not….” It is true friends, the thoughts of God
can never be changed, and they need no correcting, for they have always been
perfect!
Now what I wish to do is apply this powerful truth, which is that God
does not change His mind, to the subject at hand. If God DECIDED to love His
Elect before they ever appeared on Earth, then that decision was final, and is
still in effect today. We need to understand that no person, no circumstance,
and not even our own failures, can remove us from under the canopy of that Love!
How masterfully did the Holy Ghost state this in Rom. 8:35-39, Verse
38 says, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life (with all its
failures) nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers (of the evil one), nor
things present, nor things to come…..shall be able to separate us from the
Love of God.”
The
love that God has for His Elect cannot be diminished, and the fact of our being Elected
is, in very fact, proof of that Love. But we must hurry on to say that this
love of which we speak has promised
to crucify this flesh body we live in. This promise is just as true as His
promise to love us. His love is always corrective, it cannot be otherwise. As
long as He sees our need for it, so shall we receive correction.
Troubles, trials, and tribulations are no sign that His love has
departed, rather are they signs that it is being applied. This sinful nature in
us that was not destroyed by the New Birth must be crucified. That is to say,
“KEPT UNDER” by the power of the Holy Ghost in us. Therefore, His love leads
us into tribulation, and holds us up while passing through it. Tribulation
worketh patience and patience holds us steady for more tribulation, and
tribulation keeps the proud flesh under. This is crucifixion.
Those who have been called and sealed in have been sealed
into this love that can never forsake us. It will not fail, it cannot fail
because it is God (God is Love). Oh how the enemy would have us believe that God
looks upon us in wrath because of our sins and failures. But we go back to the
Word in John 3:18, “He that
BELIEVETH on Him IS NOT condemned.” As Believers we are never again to be
PUNISHED for our sins. We will be CHASTENED on account of them, as a Father
corrects his wayward child, but we will not be smitten for our sins as God
smites the unbelieving criminal, who willfully and continually breaks His Laws.
Chastening is a far different thing from the Judgments of God that falls
as a result of his wrath. Chastening is done with the intent of correcting, and
it is always a result of God’s Love, not His wrath. Our trials and testing,
and our sorrows do not come to Believers as punishment for sins, though we may
well have earned such. They come to us in the form of God’s Love. We do
understand don’t we, that because of the Cross we are “Holy
and WITHOUT BLAME before Him in love.” (Eph. 1:4) We understand that
because of the Blood of God that was shed for us, we are “Accepted
in the Beloved.” (Eph. 1:6) To be without blame and accepted is to be
loved.
Knowing these things then, we can know
that God can never again punish us for our sins, seeing that He, Himself, made
full payment for us. We must remember this when sore trouble comes. The enemy
will say, “You deserve what you are getting, and he may well be correct, but
his motive is to cause division between us and our Father by making us believe
He is angry with us. If we follow this line of thinking, we will conclude that
God cannot be angry and love us at the same time, and the enemy will have
succeeded in driving a wedge between us.
The rod of His chastisement is as much a Gift of His love as is the Blood
of the Cross! Chastisement is not a matter of what we have earned and deserve.
It comes to us out of His love, on the grounds that we need it. Never, since we
have BELIVED, has a law stroke fallen on us. Since we BELIEVED, we are out from
under the Law’s jurisdiction. Rom. 7:6, “But
now we are delivered from the Law, that being dead wherein we were held, that we
should serve in newness of Spirit, and not in the oldness of the Letter.” The
Law of Germany cannot touch an American citizen while he lives under the
protection of the American Government. Old Testament cities of refuge were types
of being safe in Christ today. We are preaching the Love of God, which must not
be confused with His wrath that falls on unbelievers. We have left
A word of warning here, do not fail to strive with all that is within you
to keep God’s Holy Laws. His Grace has not gone so far as to free us from our
efforts to keep it, but only to forgive us, and not slay us, when we fail in
some point of it. Jesus said, “Think
not that I come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets; I am not come to destroy,
but to fulfill.” (Matt. 5:17) Jesus came and fulfilled the Law by keeping
it in our place. Knowing that, because of our fallen nature, we could never keep
His Holy Laws perfectly, He did it in our stead. But, never did He intend for us
to ignore those laws, but we can run to Him for forgiveness when we have failed
in some point of it. In this way, we are out from under the Law as far as the
death penalty is concerned, but never loosed from our efforts to try and keep
it. “Shall we continue in sin just
because Grace abounds?” (Rom. 6:1) In other words, do not turn Grace into Disgrace by
purposely ignoring God’s Laws. Know also, Dear Bride, that man’s laws, that
do not contradict God’s Laws, are also to be obeyed. (See Rom. 13:1-5)
Do we have weakness in our flesh? Do we sin in spite of all our efforts
to keep His Laws, and does the enemy attack us daily with his fiery darts of
condemnation? The answer to these questions is, “Yes.” But none of these
things separate us from God’s Love “For
He that BELIEVETH IS NOT CONDEMNED.” (John 3:18) We cannot be loved and
condemned at the same time! We can be CONVICTED because of His corrective Love,
but never condemned. Friends, these are not my words. Had I written this, there
would be men who would tear my words to pieces at once, and perhaps be right in
doing so. But John
Jesus Christ has borne the death penalty on our behalf. Look into His
Word and see Him hanging on the Cross. You will never see a greater sight. You
will never behold a greater Mystery. The Son of God and Son of Man nailed there,
bearing pains unexplainable. The Just dying for the unjust, to leave us a legacy
of peace, to bridge the uncrossable gulf between us and Holy God. It was the
innocent One made Guilty, the Holy One condemned, so that He could report, “He
that believeth on Me is not condemned!” The Blessed One made a curse, to
bring us out from under the curse of the Law.
In John 14:27, our Lord was about to die, and ascend back to the
Father’s throne. But, before He cries out “It
is Finished”, He makes a will
which He has left to His Believers, and this is what is written in the will:
“Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you.” Is this last will
and testament valid? It is true that a will is not in force while the one who
made it yet lives, but this God-Man died and set His will in motion. In our
natural world, a will is often contested, and even overthrown in a court of law,
while the one who made it lies helpless in a grave. But our Will Maker rose from
the grave, and now He lives to see that every Believer in the Will receives of
His promise. The blessed legacy that was left is His Peace, and that is ours as
we come into the knowledge that He will never again condemn us. He had rather
die than condemn us, and that is exactly what He did!
If God has punished Christ in my stead, he will not punish me again. Our
peace has a solid foundation upon which to stand, a foundation of facts, that
show that the Blood of the Holy One was shed, and that now there has been
“Remission of Sin.” We are now within our rights to claim the most peaceful
calm that a mortal can know. Not only is this our right, it is our duty to claim
it, or else the death of our Will Maker was in vain.
But, you may say, we suffer troubles like other people who are not
Believers. We come into sicknesses, suffer heart break from loss of loved ones.
We have our goods spoiled, and are often in the valley of despair, even as
others. Yes, this is true, yet though we are cast down, we are not destroyed,
for we know that the Hand of our God has controlled our circumstances. We know
that He has not led us thus out of His wrath, but has in love ordered our steps.
You ask, has God really ordered our steps, or is the enemy disrupting my life
that I supposed had been placed in the Hands of My Father God? I answer with the
Words of Jesus, “According to your faith be it unto you.” (Matt. 9:29) Do you
believe that the Creator controls all the creatures He has created, or do you
suppose that one of these created beings called Lucifer has usurped the
Creator’s authority, and toppled Him from His throne?
Hear the Word of the Lord and believe it Bride of Christ. Dan. 4:35,
“And all the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing and He (God) doeth
according to His will, in the Army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the
earth, and none can stay His hand or say, what doest Thou.”
Who then will challenge His decision to love His own children? What Child
of His can read the scriptures that tell of His six terrible hours of
unutterable pain on the tree, and doubt that He did it to turn aside the penalty
from us? If He died to turn it aside, then how dare we to think that it is not
turned aside? The wrath of God against sin is a terrible thing. Moses asked, “Who
knoweth the power of Thine anger?” Yet, when we hear our Lord Jesus cry, “Why
has Thou forsaken me?” and see Him draw His last, short, breath, and His
precious Head slump forward on His tortured chest, we can know that this Christ
had suffered the full force of this anger.
As our Prophet said, in so many words, “If God, Himself, died to
fulfill His own Law of Sin and Death, what more could be done?” The great wave
of His powerful Love swept over our swamp of filthy sins and carried them away
into the “
If by ONE man, Adam, sin and death passed upon all men (Rom. 5:12) and we
had no say in the matter, but were born “Dead
in Trespasses and Sins,” (Eph. 2:1), then it is every bit legal in God’s
eyes that “By the Righteousness of ONE (Christ Jesus) the Free Gift of
Justification unto Life be given.” (Rom.
All that we are asked to do is believe it and receive the pardon. If we
have been drifting toward the deadly falls because of condemnation, will we not
now jump into this Life Boat and be pulled to shore? You may say, but I have
nothing at all to offer this Great Saviour. Oh but you do, you have all that He
requires you to bring, and that is your sins. Men who are escaping from a raging
fire will leave everything behind them, even their clothes. Jump for the Life
Boat people, just as you are. Bring all your sins and fall into the boat. He
will never cast you back into the raging torrent; you will be safe throughout
Eternity.
Repentance is not a thing that God measures by time. It lasts all the
while we are here, but it continues into the Eighth Day, where time is no more.
We simply repent moment by moment as we have need, and the bitterness of
repentance is mixed together with the sweetness of forgiveness, leaving peace.
We know from the Bible that the Lord God gives this Peace to the most
unlikely people. If you have fallen into the deepest of mire, and are still
there at this moment, there is still hope. Saul was a murderer of God’s
Children, David took a man’s wife and had the man slain, Peter denied Jesus
three times, after swearing he would never do it. Two thieves on the Cross
cursed the Lord, and then one suddenly repented and ended in
What a privilege to have such a Gospel to preach, and how privileged you
are to be hearing it. For those who have gone the deepest into sin, and who may
have remained there for many years, have you a desire to be forgiven? Then come
to Him and ask and you shall receive. Amen!
For over twenty years we have published a weekly sermon in the newspaper
here, believing that the Lord holds His Ministers responsible for more than just
those in the four walls of our own church. Recently, we felt pressed by the
Spirit to address a need seen in our local Churches that is urgent indeed. It
has to do with worldly dress, immodesty, and nakedness among the women in the
churches. The following sermon was published in the DeWitt Era-Enterprise.
I would like to say that some of our Message Churches have not altogether
escaped this worldly trend, and for this reason I wanted to reproduce the
article in this sermon. I pray that it will not be received as condemnation, but
rather if the need is there it may convict. It was written to mostly unconverted
people in the Churches, and if you think it to be sharp, remember it was
intended to shake some awake. May it do the same where needed in our own
churches.
“COMMON
SENSE
MODESTY”
My, how times have changed in the last 70 years. Seventy
years ago, as a 9 year-old boy, I can remember a generation of people who had
not waxed so evil as the one I now see in many teenagers and young adults. When
I was 9, and being taken to a local church in DeWitt, I saw a people who
believed in morals, and in modest dress styles that are called “prudish”
today. Young people were “ladies and
gentlemen” and they dressed the part. Even if Christian modesty was not
practiced at home, it was most certainly respected in the church.
Now, 70 years later, one must keep his eyes on the floor in front of his
pew or expose himself to a display of feminish flesh that was once only seen in
houses of ill repute. Recently, I visited in a certain local church and
witnessed such a display, as the women and young girls twisted and wiggled their
way to their pews, and some even up to the platform. Their short skirts, and
tight pants, and low, low cut tops left little for the imagination.
We see this sort of thing daily on our streets, but when did immodesty
and nakedness creep into the church? How is it that pastors didn’t notice? Was
it complacency, or do the pastor’s wife and family dress the same way? How
could we, as a Christian nation, have degenerated so far in such a short time?
Seventy years ago women would have been arrested for being downtown in such
attire, and much mores so had they dared to show up in church that way.
I challenge you church-going people to look again at what God’s Word
says concerning modesty. I know many of you had not had an experience with the
Lord, but I appeal to your common decency. Are you so blinded as to not know the
sin you are guilty of? It has to be one of two things, either you are
unconverted and don’t know the Lord, or you are overriding his convicting
Spirit.
How indecent will you dress before you consider it wrong?
How tight is too tight, how short is too short, how low is too low? Come, dear
people, let us reason together, and see what God’s Word says about it! I
Timothy 2:9-10, “In like manner also,
that women adorn themselves in modest (decent) apparel
with shamefacedness and sobriety……..which becometh women professing
godliness….” Does this describe your wardrobe, or is your clothing
purposely provocative, intended to entice men? Matthew
C
H A P T E R 13
DEPARTURE
OF
A
PROPHET
In December of 1965, God saw fit to take home His Prophet, William
Marrion Branham. Many were his enemies as he crossed our nation and the nations
of the world, preaching the soon coming of the Lord. But, it was not only to
preserve Brother Branham from his enemies and to give him rest, that God
withdrew His tired and faithful servant.
There were precious results to be brought forth that few, if any,
understood in those dark days of his departure. As men rejoice in the freedom
which truth brings, they are inclined to lift up those whom God uses to break
the chains of error. Satan seeks to divert men’s thoughts and affections from
God, and fix them upon human agencies, to honor the mere instrument, and to
ignore the Hand that directs them.
The work that God would do through His earthly servants is often retarded
by this spirit coming on the supporters of God’s true messengers. Our Lord
desired this message and this work to receive, not the impress of man, but of
God. The eyes of men had been turned toward Brother William Branham as the
expounder of truth, and so he was. He was removed that all eyes might be
directed to the eternal Author of all truth, Jesus Christ.
Brother Branham’s death was a matter of great concern to his family,
friends, and followers. Inquiries concerning him came from all over the world.
His enemies boasted that God had removed him to stop his false doctrines, but
they were soon to learn that his absence accomplished a work which his presence
would have failed to do.
After a few years of silence following Brother Branham’s death, other
laborers began to feel new responsibility. Now that their great prophet-leader
was removed and God had poured healing balm into their grieving hearts, they
pressed forward with new faith and earnestness to do all in their power so that
the work, so nobly done, might be continued.
His enemies, who had seemed pleased at his death, were now more agitated
by his absence as the message he had brought was reproduced and distributed
throughout the whole earth. The established religions saw with discomfort that
his teaching against their walls of separation was not dying out, but rather,
was intensified through his followers. Though at first content at the death of
William Branham, they now sought to cast shadows of doubt concerning his life
and ministry.
The wildest rumors were circulated in an attempt to discredit him and his
message. Those who had been enraged against God’s prophet when he was alive
were now filled with concern at his death, as they saw increasing numbers join
the cause of that heroic man who had at such fearful odds defended the Word of
God. The message was constantly gaining in strength. The seeds that God’s
prophet had sown sprang up everywhere the soil was found to be right in a human
heart.
But God also allowed Satan to move, who now attempted what he has tried
in every other true move of God, which is to deceive and destroy the people by
sending them a counterfeit in place of the true message. Just as there were
false Christs in the first century, so there arose false prophets in this
century. A few men, deeply affected by wrong spirits, imagined themselves to
have received special revelation from Heaven. They claimed to have been divinely
commissioned to carry forward a work only started by William Branham.
In truth, these men were undoing the very work which he had accomplished.
They rejected the fundamental principle of the message, which is the Word of God
as the all sufficient rule of faith and practice. For that unerring guide they
substituted the changeable, uncertain standard of their own feelings and
impressions. By this act of setting aside the great detector of error and
falsehood, God’s Word, the way is opened for Satan to control minds as best
pleased himself.
But even this seeming disaster is a part of our Lord’s Master Plan. He
was not surprised or disappointed at the turn of events following His
prophet’s death. Before the foundation of the world, He had made a plan, and
as in the life of His Son, He saw His plan completed, so in the life of our
Brother William Branham was His plan completed.
What a monument to our God’s power and faithfulness are these words of
scripture in Daniel 4:35, “And
all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing, and He doeth according
to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and
none can stay His Hand, or say what doest Thou.”
The
preaching of Brother Branham had caused some people all around the world to feel
the need of reform, but now some really good people are being misled by the
pretensions of these new, self-made prophets. It is true that there are spirits
of no ordinary kind on some of these men, but what spirits are they? Many in the
message, especially overseas, now wonder what course to follow. On the one hand,
let us beware of quenching the spirit of God, and on the other of being tricked
by Satan.
We still have God’s Word, which declares, “By
their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruit of these new prophets soon
becomes apparent when the minds of the people are diverted from the Word, or
else prejudice against it. The men who think themselves competent to lead the
people succeed only in bringing them to the brink of disaster; to leave the
written Word is disaster.
The opposition of the denominational churches had not caused
the followers of the Message so great concern and distress as they now
experienced from the professed friends of it. From these professed friends, have
now risen its worst enemies. The very truths that have, in the past, brought
peace to troubled hearts have now been made the cause of confusion in many
places.
In bringing the world the last day message, Brother William Branham had
been urged forward by the Spirit of God, and had been carried beyond himself. He
had, by no means, purposed to take the position that God gave him. He had been
only the instrument in the hands of infinite power, as God revealed Himself
through human flesh. He had said, I had rather face God as a quitter than as one
who caused the people to think more of a man than they should. And he did at one
time quit the ministry for this reason. Never-the-less, God’s plan cannot be
changed and he was compelled to finish the work he had started, though he often
trembled for the results of it.
The true doctrines, as taught by William Branham, have not caused any
evil, but throughout the world today many are charging him with the flagrant
error now being taught by some so-called followers. The work was not his, but
God’s, and God will not allow it to be corrupted by superstition or
fanaticism. His called ones will see it aright.
The generality of these men who teach error are men of hasty and violent
temper, who while claiming to be especially illuminated from Heaven, will not
endure the slightest contradiction, or even the kindest correction. Taking upon
themselves supreme authority they require everyone, without question, to
acknowledge their claims.
May God in His mercy preserve us from teachers who know not
how to be humble and repentant themselves, and who forget that reform should
begin first with themselves. Many of these teachers are ambitious to obtain
position and influence, and are unwilling to be second to anyone.
A very grave danger is seen in some of the teaching that is leading
people to throw off the restraints of all civil authority, and to break away
from all control, thus giving vent to their prejudices and passions. While
history clearly shows governments to eventually become anti-Christ when left so
long, yet it is the Christian’s duty to obey the laws of the land, so far as
they do not contradict God’s Word.
And this was the doctrine of God’s prophet, William Branham. His
teaching has not been the cause of the rebellion we are now seeing in some
supposed message followers. The work of Heaven should not be degraded by being
classed with this fanaticism. How often are censure and reproach cast upon
God’s true servants because they stand fearlessly for truth. Often men who are
agents of Satan are praised and flattered, and even given the highest seats of
influence, while those who should be respected and followed are left to stand
alone, under suspicion and distrust.
Counterfeit holiness and make-believe sanctification is still doing its
work of deception. Under the guise of the End-Time Message, it exhibits the same
spirit of error as seen in the days of our Lord Jesus. It diverts minds from the
scriptures and leads men to follow their own impressions and feelings rather
than yield obedience to the laws of God.
Fearlessly, did William Branham defend the gospel from the attacks that
came from every quarter. The Word of God in his mouth proved itself a mighty
weapon in every conflict. With that Word that had been entrusted to him, he
warred against every man-made teaching in the denominational world. Even the
rational philosophy of the great scholars lay bent and broken before this one
with a seventh grade education.
Each of the opposing church groups was, in their own way, setting aside
the Holy Scriptures and exalting human wisdom as the source of truth. True
Christianity was to be found in God’s prophet, William Branham, in that he
received the Word of God as the great treasure
house of inspired truth, and the final test of all inspiration.
Many ministers in nominal churches are now very alarmed that the common
people who follow Brother Branham’s teaching are able to discuss with them the
precepts of God’s Word and that their own ignorance is regularly exposed; the
weapons of their carnal reasoning being made powerless against the Sword of the
Spirit. The systems have summoned all their power to stop and put down God’s
message, but the more they resist, the greater becomes the desire of God’s own
to know the truth. The more the systems condemn the prophet, the greater is the
anxiety of the elect to know what he really taught.
William Branham’s message was welcomed in the hearts of the poor, the
humble, and the outcast, for these, the Bible becomes a new book. The study of
the scriptures in the light of God’s revelation to a prophet, is working a
mighty change in the minds and hearts of these simple people.
Happily, William Branham had persuaded his people that their faith ought
to be founded on the oracles of Holy Writ. Now, in these last hours before the
coming of the Lord, crowds gather to hear the truth preached by those who have
been enlightened through his ministry. Most of these men have not been to
man-made schools of theology. One is reminded of John the Baptist who came out
of the wilderness, uncouth to the church world in his informal dress and strange
food, yet he knew who Messiah was, while the high priest knew not the Christ.
The painful ignorance of some great educated ministers has been made
apparent as their arguments are met by the simple teaching of God’s revealed
Word. Women and children, lay members and secular workers, following the
prophet’s teaching, have a better knowledge of the scriptures than do the
learned doctors of divinity.
These humble people have found in the message food for their souls, and
have turned away from those who so long fed them on the worthless husks of human
tradition.
Yes, the death of God’s Prophet, William Branham, was ordained of God,
even as was his life. Though many questioned the way in which he was taken, and
many followers wondered at the timing of God in taking him. His death was as
much a part of God’s plan as had been his life, or else we must believe that
God was out of control for a season. Truth is, our God has never for an instant
been out of control, and all things are working together for good to those who
love the Lord and are the called according to His purpose.
Now, while this great servant of Christ enjoys rest from the terrible,
hard, burdens he experienced on earth, his message burns like fire in the hearts
of those ordained to hear. Gone are the sounds of his footsteps from the
churches of America where a precious few let him come, but his voice is still
heard by tape recording as he pleads for repentance and warns of a soon coming
judgment.
Dear Friend, do you know the Christ that this mighty prophet made so real
to those who heard and saw his ministry? He broke the Bread of Life to hungry
souls, in that he lifted up Jesus Christ before them as above popes, kings,
presidents, and the mighty men of Earth. He did not seek glory for himself, but
hid behind the man of
The above tract was written by Brother Wood some ten years ago. Having
rediscovered it in the files, it was thought to be even more needed today than
then. We are living in the most solemn period of this world’s history. The
destiny of teeming multitudes is now being decided. This earth’s time, as we
have known it, is so close to being over that a man’s decision against serving
his God could well be his last chance. Our future life in eternity depends on
the decisions we make today. Tomorrow could be too late.
Also, the salvation of other souls depends upon the course that we
Message-Believing Christians are now taking! Every follower of Christ should
earnestly inquire, “Lord, what will Thou have me to do?”
We must study the Word daily for ourselves, for the danger of false
clergy is all around us, both in and outside of our beloved Message. With the
many scriptural warnings against such, we wonder why the people are so willing
to commit the keeping of their souls to the clergy. Today, there are thousands
of religious professors who can give no other reason for the points of doctrine
they hold, other than that they were so taught by their religious leaders.
They pass by the Holy Scriptures as if it were a book of fiction and
place full confidence in the words of their ministers, many of whom have not
been born-again themselves! When Jesus of Nazareth came to preach, the common
folks heard Him gladly, but the Chief of the Priesthood and the leading
religious men were determined to condemn and destroy His teaching. Though they
were baffled in their efforts to find fault in His life, and though they could
feel the divine power that flowed from Him and heard the wisdom of His mouth,
yet they encased themselves in prejudice and rejected the clearest evidence of
His Messiah-ship.
These enemies of Christ were men whom the people had been taught from
childhood to reverence and trust. “How is it,” they asked, “that our
rulers and learned scribes do not believe on Jesus? Would not these pious men
receive Him if He were the Christ? And, they also rejected Him in order to
follow their clergy.” It was the leadership of such men, holy, educated, and
trusted, that led the Jewish nation to reject their Redeemer.
The spirit that motivated those priests and rulers is still on Earth
today motivating preachers who make a high profession of knowledge and piety.
They refuse to examine the scriptures concerning the special truths for our day.
They point to their numbers, their wealth, their education and popularity, and
look with contempt on the small, unpopular groups who stay with the truths that
Paul taught, regardless of the cost.
A lack of moral courage to step out of the worn trail of religion is
again binding the masses with chains of error. When God sends to men warnings so
important that they are proclaimed by the same Pillar of Fire that came to Saul
(Paul) on the road to
But, God will have a people on Earth who will maintain the Bible truths.
The opinions of learned men, the creeds, and decisions of ecclesiastical
councils will not sway them from it. As numerous and as different as their
doctrines are, not one of them should be regarded as having the full truth. The
very fact of their great popularity stands as spiritual evidence that they are
wrong! Never has the truth of God’s Word been popular with the worldly
religious groups. Before accepting any doctrinal teaching, we should demand,
“Thus saith the Scriptures” in its support. Amen!