AS WE CONTINUE IN THIS MESSAGE, PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE FACT THAT OUR SOLE PURPOSE IN DEALING WITH THIS SUBJECT IS TO HELP THOSE WHO DESIRE TO UNDERSTAND THE SCRIPTURES WHICH DEAL WITH THE GODHEAD. THERE HAS BEEN A GREAT CONTROVERSY AMONG PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH WORLD AS TO WHETHER GOD IS ONE OR WHETHER GOD IS THREE PERSONS CO-EXISTING, EQUAL IN AUTHORITY AND EACH ONE OF THE THREE PROPERLY REFERRED TO AS GOD. WE HAVE TAKEN A TEXT FROM ST. JOHN 1:1, AND ENDEAVORED TO GO THROUGH THE BIBLE SHOWING FROM THE SCRIPTURES HOW FOOLISH IT IS TO BELIEVE THAT GOD WHO IS A SPIRIT IS THREE PERSONS. READ THE MESSAGE PRAYERFULLY, THEN IF YOU STILL HAVE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS, FEEL FREE TO WRITE US AND WE WILL TRY TO FURNISH YOU WITH ADDITIONAL HELP.

For those of you who may receive this issue without having read part one, we ended that part still speaking about the angels and the place they have in the plan of God, endeavoring to show why we teach that God was speaking to His angelic helpers when He said, “Let us make man in our image,” in Genesis 1:26.

THE ANGELS TAKE PART

We are in Hebrews, chapter 2, and we will go back to verse 1 and pick up our thought. If we can show that angels do have a part in God’s plan of redemption and that they are ministering spirits, (HEB. 1:14) ministering to those who shall be heirs of salvation, it should not be difficult to see that they had a part in creation also. Paul, writing to the Hebrew saints, started off in chapter 2 by saying, “Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.” That means when we hear truth, we had better take heed to it and let it start working on our behalf or the day will come when that truth shall slip away from us, but we will still be held accountable for it, as you will see when we read verses 2 & 3. “For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; (That was the word spoken by the prophets of old, which word came to them by the angel of the Lord.) How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation which at first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him. God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to His own will.” Paul is not including himself in this reference even though in another letter we do read where he said, Have I not wrought the signs of an apostle among you? In this particular verse, Paul is referring to the apostles who walked with Jesus, how that God confirmed the word through them with signs and wonders, different miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Then he goes on to say, “for unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. (This is Paul’s own revelation of the part angels have in the plan of God), But one in a certain place testified saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him (MAN) a little lower than the angels.” That was in Genesis 1:27 when God created man, a spirit being, just a little lower than the angels, which were also spirit beings. God said to those angels, “Let us make man in our image.” God is the architect; it is His thoughts that are to be carried out. The angels did not design anything that was to be made; they only helped to carry out the plan of God. You can search the scriptures through and you will find that every time God got ready to change conditions or to make something known to man, there was usually always an angel on the scene. Gabriel came to Zacharias to announce the birth of John. It was also the angel Gabriel that came to Mary to announce that she had found favor with God and that she would conceive in her womb and bring forth a son which she should call Jesus. We certainly do not have any difficulty seeing that angels speak on behalf of God, for everything that Gabriel spoke came to pass exactly as he said it would. There was not one idle word spoken.

DISTURBANCE IN HELL

When Jesus hung on that old Roman cross that day, it looked like His friends had forsaken Him. He sure did not look much like God hanging there, crying, Eloi, Eloi, lamasabachthani? (My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?) But it had to be like that, for God had purposed to manifest himself in flesh, take the sins of man upon that flesh and die like a man upon that old Roman cross to pay man’s sin debt. God wanted men to see a man die willingly, when many of those nearby knew perfectly well that He could speak the word and ten thousand angels would come to His rescue. He could have spoken the word and every one of those Roman soldiers would have been lying dead or He could have spoke that old cross out of existence, but it was necessary that He die like a man to prove once and for all that He was truly man. After all, death is only the process of life being separated from the flesh and the life of that flesh had power to raise the flesh back up from the dead. Nevertheless, moments after His head went limp and fell on His chest, there was a disturbance in the corridors of hell. What was it? The Spirit of life that had stepped out of that flesh hanging there on that cross had suddenly made an appearance in the devil’s prison place. He had come to set some captives free and the devil knew what he was there for. This was to fulfill David’s prophecy in Psalms 16:9-10, “therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; (No! He has come to take it out) neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One (Jesus Christ, the Messiah) to see corruption.” That is right, He will go back and pick up that body of flesh before it has laid in Joseph’s tomb long enough to rot. You say, How do you know that, Bro. Jackson? Matthew 27:50-53, tells us that when Jesus yielded up the ghost, the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom and that a great earthquake shook things. Rocks were flying and graves were opening up. Then after Jesus’ resurrection many bodies of dead saints came out of the graves and appeared to various people in the holy city. Then in Ephesians 4:8-10, we read, “Wherefore he saith, When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, (That was the righteous souls which were held in paradise in the heart of the earth until their Redeemer appeared) and gave gifts unto men. Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things.” Well, what does that prove? We just published an article, titled, Hell is Not Eternal, which explains all this in more detail, but we will go to 1 Peter 3:18-20, and let Peter tell us where that Spirit of life went and what it did during that interval between the crucifixion of Jesus and His resurrection. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: BY WHICH ALSO HE WENT AND PREACHED UNTO THE SPIRITS IN PRISON; Which sometimes were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.” By these scriptures we learn that the Spirit of Christ went right down into the lower parts of the earth, preached the good news to righteous spirits being held captive by Satan, preached the bad news to all those wicked spirits who were in hell to be tormented, and then led those righteous spirits out of that place into a heavenly paradise. Yes, He could have called ten thousand angels, but He died there that day for you and me. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are. That no flesh should glory in His presence. Paul said that to the Corinthians in his first letter to them. The gospel message seems very weak and foolish to the great wise men of the world, but to those whose eyes have been opened by the word of God, it is a wonderful and marvelous story, that one should love us enough to willingly suffer such pain and agony on our behalf. That was one thing angels could not do (die for the sins of mankind). God had to take on a body of flesh and do it Himself to satisfy His own demands. That was the only provision He made for lost man to be reconciled to their God and those who reject that provision are bound for hell. The difference between heaven and hell is believing something, for if you truly believe, you will obey. By the same token, the difference between believing that God is three persons or believing that He is One, is tied up in the question of, Who was He talking to in Genesis 1:26, when He said, Let us make man in our image? If you cannot see angels in Genesis 1:26, you will never be able to understand what Jesus meant when He said to Phillip, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father (John 14:9) or I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Neither will you be able to understand why Jesus would say, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” On the other hand, if you can see that God was talking to angels in Genesis 1:26, then all these other things in the scriptures will open up to you. Things that have seemed so mysterious to you in the past, will become very clear to you.

LET US – WHO?

I said in part one of this message that Genesis 1:26 is not the only place where God said, “LET US,” therefore I would like for you to open your Bibles to Genesis 11:7, where we will find this same language. Before we look at this though, let us look at chapter 3 for just a little bit. Time has progressed since the beginning of man’s history to a point where the man and his wife have both sinned. By this time, they are in physical flesh so that they are able to have physical contact with the earth and its environment and through a choice presented to them by the serpent, they have disobeyed God. In dealing with their sin, God cursed the serpent, put enmity between the serpent and the woman and between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, added sorrow and pain to the woman’s conception and child bearing, cursed the ground so that it would bear thorns and thistles, Johnson grass and horse weeds, and commanded the man to earn his bread by the sweat of his face, tilling that cursed ground. After He had made cots of skin and clothed them, the Lord God said, “Behold, the man is become as one of US . . ., to know good and evil.” Now, Brothers and Sisters, I ask you, Does that in any way rule out the fact that God is talking to His angelic helpers? Of course not! I assure you, those angels knew the difference between good and evil, just the same as God did. That is how Lucifer and one-third of the angels come to be called fallen angels. They failed to remain loyal to God when they were tested. (We have an article on the Testing and Fall of Satan) For more confirmation of whether angels know good and evil when they are confronted with it, let us consider the one that came to Daniel when he had been praying and seeking God for 21 days. He told Daniel that his words were heard from the very first day that he began to pray, but that he (the angel) had been delayed or withstood by the prince of the kingdom of Persia. This prince of Persia was an angel also, but he was a bad angel. In other words, the two angels had been in a fight for 21 days, not two good angels fighting, but a good angel and a bad one, and he said that when he left Daniel, he would return to fight the prince of Persia some more. Therefore, do not try to tell me that angels do not know the difference between good and bad. Those that are encamped about the people of God, which Paul refers to as minsters to those who shall be heirs of salvation, are constantly in a fight with demons (bad angels) on our behalf. You have heard people say, There has been a war going on inside of me for days. If you have experienced such a thing, it was probably because there was a bad thing trying to get hold of you and a good thing trying to keep it from happening. In other words, two angels fighting and you are caught between the blows. Your spirit is affected by it. Try to tell that to a psychiatrist and he will say you are crazy even though he may have similar wars going on inside himself. You do not get this kind of information from a scientific laboratory. Test tubes will not show up this kind of trouble, but it is real anyway.

CHERUBIMS – GOD’S GUARDS

Now God said, “the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever; Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.” If God was three persons, equal in authority, should not this next verse say, THEY drove the man out of the garden? It doesn’t say that; (we are reading in Genesis 3:24) “So HE drove out the man; and HE placed at the east of the garden of Eden (What?) cherubims, (cherubims are angels) and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.” There is not much written about these cherubims, but there are definitely other references made to them and in other scriptures they are portrayed as winged creatures. (As we said in another message, there are different realms of angelic beings, just like there will be of immortal saints in the millennium. Some will invariably disagree with both statements, but the scriptures bear it out.) They are not to be thought of as the type of angels that are ministering spirits to man. The scriptures seem to place these cherubims in a much higher realm. In this particular instance they are entrusted with the responsibility of guarding the way to the tree of life. You will notice, it doesn’t say that they were guarding a gate somewhere, a gate to a certain geographical spot. That is where the church world in general make their mistake. They believe the tree of life is a literal plant life tree, so naturally they picture these winged angelic creatures guarding a literal gate to a fenced garden where the tree of life is growing. When you come to see that God Himself is the only tree of life, then you realize that these cherubims were set to keep man from the presence of God. When God instructed Moses concerning the tabernacle, he was to build a box for the tables of stone. That was called the ark of the covenant and over that ark, in the innermost part of the tabernacle was the mercy seat with one cherub on each end of it with their faces turned toward each other and their wings covering the mercy seat. These cherubims were of beaten gold and the mercy seat was of pure gold, but the point of it is this, God told Moses that He would meet with him and commune with him from above the mercy seat and from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony. This, in type, showed that God still had those cherubims between Him and man, keeping man from His presence. In other words, they are guards, guarding the tree of eternal life, which is the presence of God when Adam sinned, God separated Himself from him. He would not let the man enjoy the pleasures of sin and dwell in the presence of eternal life at the same time, so the cherubims were set between them. Remember, angels are offspring of God, but they are not gods. No angel has ever allowed any man to fall down and worship him.

MAN’S VAIN EFFORTS

We will go to the 11th chapter now, but let me remind you first that God had instructed Noah’s family to, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish or fill the earth.” That was God’s command to them and they truly did begin to multiply, but when we come to chapter 11, we find that they are not carrying out the command to fill the earth, for they are all huddled together trying to keep from being scattered. Verse 1, “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech (this verse does not mean that they were spread out over the whole face of the earth, it only means that all the people upon the earth at that time were of one language.) And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, (get ready) let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and lime for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, LEST WE BE SCATTERED ABROAD UPON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH.” This was what God wanted and they were trying to keep from spreading out over all the whole earth. Their plans were completely contrary to the Lord God’s command; “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded.” God moved by His Spirit to investigate their plans. He had heard what they said, so let us hear what God has to say about the situation. 6, “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, (one in their motive, and one in their language) and they all have one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing shall be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Upon investigation, the Lord found a people so unified in their purpose and motive, that God Himself said they would be able to do anything they imagined to do. Isn’t that good, Bro. Jackson? No, they were disobeying God’s word. God had given a commandment that they should be fruitful and multiply and fill the whole earth, but they all wanted to camp right together instead of spreading out. Brother, if God says move out, move out it had better be or He will tear your nest up just like an old mother eagle. We have heard Bro. William Branham speak about how he has watched through binoculars and learned how the old mother eagle deals with her little eaglets. She will carry food to them until they are old enough to fly, then she will get in that nest, start flapping those great wings, just beating the tar out of those little fellows until they scramble out of that nest to get free from her licking. Then what does she do? She proceeds to destroy that nest. Those little fellows will have to go find their own food after that. They have nothing to come back to. Now she didn’t push them out of that nest to destroy them, it was her way of teaching them to move out by faith. They have no nest to come back to, but they still have mommy’s sharp eye watching over them. God is like that with His people. Ever now and then He has to give them a licking and break up their huddles and cliques, but He never fails to keep His great all seeing eye on them. Let us look at verse 7 and see what God does here to get these people back to fulfilling His purpose. God wants His word carried out regardless of how good your own personal plan may look to you. God said, Fill the earth and these people started building them a tower into the heavens. They never would have moved on from that place, but God said, (verse 7) “Go to, LET US GO DOWN, (not speaking to the son and the Holy Ghost, but to the angels) and there confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech.” It would be mighty hard for a construction crew to build a high tower if they could not understand each other’s language, would it not? God had made a determination of how the situation was to be handled, then HE said, Let US go do it. He did not say, Let us go down and see what can be done about this situation. No, HE, singular, did the investigating and made the decision as to what should be done, just like in Genesis 1. We do not find God counseling with anyone else or anything else about what to do as He would have to do if He had two other partners. No, He makes the determination Himself, then He says, LET US GO DO IT, talking to is angelic helpers. Alright, let us read verse 8, before we move on in the message. “So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.” God knows what He wants done and He knows how to get it done. He does not have to counsel with two other persons of the Godhead or anyone else, but He does allow others of His creation to have a part in the actual process of getting the job done. It is not because God needs help with anything. He did not have any help in the beginning when He was all alone in the Universe and He definitely was all alone, for only He is eternal (without beginning and without an end). Everything else was created by Him. It takes a pretty narrow mind to believe in evolution the way they are teaching it in our schools throughout the land today. I am one hundred percent convinced that God is ONE instead of THREE PERSONS and that He created all things by His word making this theory of evolution just plain childish and silly. I am completely convinced by the scriptures that God is an Omnipresent Spirit without bodily form and that He created a cell of life in Mary for the purpose of bringing forth a man-child into the world free from Adam’s blood line, which blood has death in it. I am completely convinced that God incarnated that Flesh, making Jesus who was already man, both God and man. I know that God did not need a pair of human lips to speak through when He spoke audibly to the prophets of old, nor when He spoke at the Jordan river the day Jesus was baptized by John, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But He did have lips to speak through after that and Jesus made no secret about the fact that the Father was doing the speaking when He instructed His disciples. In John 8:49, He said, “For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.” How did the Father send Him? The Father was in Him. To you scoffers who laugh at such a statement and make fun saying, That makes Jesus His own father. Let me tell you something, you are still without revelation and the day will come when you will have to eat your own words, either through genuine repentance or through the judgment of God pronounced upon you through the lips of Jesus Christ when you stand before Him in the end. I will not judge you and neither will I be personally offended when you make fun of the word of God, for I am only speaking what I see in this precious old black book (the Bible).

DEITY NAMES OF GOD

We are going to take some time now to deal with the basic deity names that pointed to God in the Old Testament. I am not an educated man who can tell you all the Hebrew and Greek words that serve to better express various things in the Bible, but I believe that by the help of God I can point out 3 basic deity names and 7 attributable names that will help you to see that God is ONE. I am not too concerned about the scholars who may criticize my way of saying things. I am only concerned with saying something that will better help the flock of God understand the simple truth of His word. If I, by the help of God, can say something that will help you better understand the Godhead, you will not have to go through the Bible trying to figure out which one of the three persons is doing the particular thing that you are reading about. You will know that God is one and that any time you see the word GOD, you can think O-ûE instead of, Is that the Father? Or is that the Son? Or could that be the Holy Ghost? The first word we want to look at is the word, GOD, in the very first verse of the Bible. GOD is an English word. The Hebrew equivalent is EL, or ELOHIM. EL is GOD, ELOHIM, (STRONG ONE, SELF-EXISTENT ONE) speaks of God from the standpoint of the world in general as in the sense of being creator or the object of man’s worship, while the word JEHOVAH, speaks of Him specifically as Lord God of Israel or God of His chosen people. “In the beginning God (ELOHIM) created the heavens and the earth.” He did not need any help. He is the STRONG ONE, the SELF EXISTENT ONE, but after God created the angels and tested them, those that stayed loyal to Him became His helpers. You ask why? It was because God did not choose to remain alone. He desired to share Himself with something, but in order to do so, He had to create something to share Himself with. Therefore, ELOHIM, points to God as related to creation and time. There is a word used in the seminaries to describe God. That word is OMNIPOTENT. It is a theological term. You will not find it in the Bible, but it means unlimited in power. This self existent one (ELOHIM) is unlimited in power. He is without beginning and has no end. Where did He come from? How did He get there? God is not going to tell us a thing like that. There is no answer to questions like that. He is eternal. He always was and He always will be. That is a great mystery, but I do not have to know any more about that in order to believe that there is an all powerful God in control of the whole universe. Do you? I am glad that He did not have a beginning and that He will not have an end. You can put your faith and trust in a God like that. You do not have to worry about living longer than your God, nor about some other God rising up to take His place. That is why He could say to John, on the Isle of Patmos, I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA, the beginning and the ending. I am He which was and is to come. I am He which was dead and am alive for ever more. Only He who is the Strong One, the self existing one, would be capable of laying His life down for a little moment of time and then take it up again to deal with sin in mortal man. We are going into these deity names that God has been identified by simply to show you that in none of them can be found any trace that these patriarchs believed God to be more than one. We want to try and cover this from the standpoint of why pagans did and believed like they did. We want to see, if we can, why mankind went so many different ways after the tower of Babel in their concept of God. It is pitiful how man forgets God so quickly. All eight souls that stepped out of Noah’s ark that day knew who God was. By the time that old ark came to rest on Mt. Ararat, you can be sure the family talked much about the god that had spoken to Noah to build that ark. Then in Genesis 9:1 we read where God blessed Noah and His three sons and gave them a commandment to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, but a few short generations later, mankind is building all sorts of idols, altars and worshipping demons instead of God. What went wrong? It all lays in the genes, the hereditary traits passed down through their ancestors that had intermarried with Cain’s descendants before the flood. That is how the serpent seed got over on this side of the flood, through the hereditary genes. That is why even in this very land of America, a generation of people that has had respect for God, respect for the Bible and respect for Christian people, can produce offspring from their own loins that are atheistic, demon possessed heathen as far as knowing God.

REINCARNATION

We hear so much talk about reincarnation these days, even to the point where people are put into a trance of some kind and they seem to re-live the life and experiences of someone that lived hundreds of years before. You never hear of anything like that happening to a person that is born again by the Spirit of God. It only happens to people who play around with such things, cultivating the presence of demonic spirits. We have already talked quite a bit about the angels of God that are sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation. I want you to listen close to what I am going to say now!! It would be ridiculous for us to believe that God would send an angel to walk with us in our life time and then when we die that angel would have to go sit in a corner someplace. No! Brothers and sisters, when we die, that angel that has influenced our life and ministered to us goes to minister to someone else right on through the generations as long as time stands. The angel that walked with John Wesley is walking with someone right today. The angel that was with the apostle Paul is with someone right today and so on down the line. Angels do not die and neither do they become old and retire. They remain active and faithful to the purpose assigned to them by their creator. Now I ask you this, If good angels go from generation to generation ministering to the people of God, why would it not work the same way with the bad angels that fell with Lucifer??? Whatever angel we have with us will affect our personality and cause us to manifest certain individual characteristics. I will remind you also that every angel remembers those that he had ministered to in ages past and remembers all about them. I believe some of you are beginning to see already what I am getting at with this thought. On the good side, there is not too much to be said about this beyond this point, but when you take it to the other side where people of the world play around with witches and wizards, horoscopes, fortune tellers, seances and so forth, there is a lot more to be said. These people who supposedly go back in time and re-live the life and experiences of some ancient person, claiming that proves their theory of reincarnation, do not prove anything except that the wicked angel (demon) that lived with that person back then is now living with them. Why could not that spirit which caused someone to live and conduct themselves as they did hundreds of years ago, do the same thing with someone in our generation? The Bible shows the devil to be a schemer and a deceiver and it does not set any limits on how far he can go in his deception among worldly people. Furthermore, all these fallen angels are subject to him and must do whatever he wants done. People who are always fooling around with the devil’s devises are bound to become slaves to them. On the other hand, those who are truly born again do not play around with such things. If they need to know something, they talk to God about it. They will not go to a fortune teller nor a ouija board to find their answer. I would like to say also, I am not presenting this to you as some great revelation that should become a doctrine. I merely present it to you as an explanation of why people are conducting themselves in such demonic and heathen ways. We are living in the last days and the devil knows his time is short. Therefore, he is pouring everything he has upon this generation.

EL IS GOD

Alright, up to this point we have only talked about the Hebrew word, ELOHIM. El by itself means God, but when OHIM is added to it, you have a word that means GOD, SELF EXISTENT ONE, STRONG ONE, (ELOHIM). This is a deity name, but EL by itself which in our English language is translated GOD, can be applied to any god, true or false. It simply means just that, God. We are going to look at the three basic deity names that God is identified by in the book of Genesis. First, we will go to Genesis 14:18. This is where Abraham was coming back from the slaughter of the enemy that kidnaped Lot and the people around Sodom and Gomorrah. He has made a wreck of those kidnaping thieves and recaptured Lot, his nephew and the others and he is on his way back to the very place where he himself had been living. He is heading for Hebron, but as he came near to the city of Jebusites, called Salem in that day, not Jerusalem, but Salem, he is met by a man who brought forth bread and wine and revealed himself to Abraham as the priest of the Most High God, Melchizedek, king of Salem. As he revealed himself to Abraham in this high priestly role, he is revealed through the name EL-ELYON. Remember now, EL is God, but when ELYON is added to it, you have an attribute of deity, EL-ELYON-MOST HIGH GOD. This name is not showing God to be the strong one nor the self existent one, but through this name God is revealing Himself to Abraham as the God who sits the highest of any god. EL-ELYON is not a name that brings out His creative ability, but it brings out His deity as the highest, the loftiest or the greatest of all gods. As for the Melchizedek, he was not a natural, mortal man who was actually a high priest of Salem at that hour. Don’t you thing if there had been anything outstanding or special about this man to have attracted Abraham’s attention, that he would have returned to Salem at other times to see him? I did not say that right. If Abraham had believed that there was such an outstanding priest of the Most High God dwelling at Salem, don’t you think he would have wanted to go there from time to time to see him? In other words, Abraham saw God in theophany form and I believe Abraham knew who he was. Abraham paid tithes to him, but I do not read anywhere that Abraham ever said to Sarah, Honey, I believe I will go back up to Salem and see if I can find that same fellow that met me in the road that day. Would not human nature have caused him to want to do that if he believed such a person dwelled there? I believe so. In Hebrews, when Paul spoke of this Melchizedek, it seemed like there was a great mystery in this. Let us turn to Hebrews 7:1-3 and read what Paul wrote about Him. “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him; To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace; without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.” It seems that Paul got a revelation about this man from somewhere, without father, without mother, without a genealogy. I want you to know that every mortal man that ever held the office of a high priest on the face of this earth had a mother and daddy and he had a beginning and an ending. That ought to help us understand who this man was. Though Abraham did not catch the significance of what was being prefigured here, time has allowed us to look back and see that the very God himself met Abraham in a theophany body and prefigures what was to come from his very loins. From this man’s seed would come forth many tribes of people. From them, God would choose one tribe (the tribe of Levi) to represent Him on earth to the other tribes.

THE TEMPLE SPOT

Many years passed and Abraham’s seed spent four hundred years in Egyptian bondage, but when they were back in the land of Abraham’s sojourning and David was king of Israel, he did a foolish thing causing the Lord to send pestilence upon the land of Israel. In his repentance before the Lord, he was instructed to build an altar unto the Lord in the place of Ornan’s threshing floor. Ornan was a Jebusite and his threshing floor was in the very place where Abraham was met by Melchizedek. David bought the threshing floor, built an altar unto the Lord, offered up sacrifice and the Lord stayed His hand of destruction on the land. Time passed by until Solomon, David’s Son who had succeeded him as king of Israel, was ready to build the Lord a house. He caught the revelation that he should build it on the same spot of ground where David had built the altar on Ornan’s threshing floor. The temple was built on that very spot, which today is called Jerusalem instead of Salem. To carry on through with what was prefigured to Abraham that day, Israel passed through the long period called the law age. Then the very God that had met Abraham in a theophany body, appeared to Abraham’s seed in another body. This appearing was in the flesh of Jesus Christ, who will one day at his 2nd coming, sit in a temple built on that very same spot. The King of all ages will take the throne of David and from that throne He will rule the whole world in the millennium. The King of righteousness, which is the King of peace, will be sitting in a temple built in the city of peace. Salem means peace. This was all prefigured in Abraham’s meeting with Melchizedek. In its former days, Salem was a city of pagans, full of wars and turmoil and it has not been free from such as the city of David, Jerusalem, but there is coming a day when it truly will be the city of peace as its name implies.

EL – SHADDAI

The next deity name that we wish to consider is found in Genesis 17:1. Later we will look at the 7 attributable names which are expressed in God’s plan of salvation, but right now we are looking at names that bring out His deity, His majesty, His position in the universe. When we come to Gen. 17, we find the Lord appearing to Abraham when he was 99 years old and identifying Himself to Abraham as El-SHADDAI, which in our English language is translated Almighty God or GOD ALMIGHTY. This deity name has characteristics involved that bring out the fact that God is liken unto a mother, the breasted one, the nourisher, one that satisfies. This could be the very place where this Women’s Liberation movement got their idea that we should stop referring to God in the masculine gender and make Him a woman. Let me tell you, God never did refer to Himself as a woman. Truly He is one that satisfies. He is a nourisher and sustainer, but Hallelujah! He doesn’t have to be a woman to be that. This name does not speak of His power, nor of the fact that He is the highest of all gods. It simply directs attention to the fact that He is a God that is able to give comfort to something that needs comforting. Isn’t that wonderful to know? In this old world of turmoil and unrest, we many times become nervous, frustrated, perplexed and feel all alone, even to the point where we sometimes act like a little child. You have seen how a little baby does when it gets hungry and lonesome lying in a crib all alone. It begins to fret, scream and cry. It becomes restless, tossing and turning in its bed. Why? It wants to be loved, comforted, nourished and satisfied. When the mother interprets the crying to be that, she will go in, pick it up, feed it, squeeze it to her bosom expressing her love for it and change its clothing if necessary so it will be completely comforted before she puts it back to bed. The very minute it feels mother’s hands slip under its little body, the whimpering begins to taper off. The mother’s touch gives it a secure feeling. That is exactly what is portrayed right here in the name EL-SHADDAI, (the breasted one who nourishes and satisfies). In this old sin tossed world of heartache and trouble where the devil is constantly throwing everything he has at us, we get hungry for God. We need to be nourished and strengthened. Let me tell you, when we cry unto Him, it won’t be long until we feel the tender hands of our God come under us, pick us up and draw us nigh to His comforting bosom. At a time like that, it doesn’t do the devil any good to tell us we are not even saved, for we just ignore him and lay there in the arms of God, feeling His strong hands around our soul and nurse away. At such a time as this, we do not need to know that God is highest (EL-ELYON) and we do not need to know that He is the Strong One (ELOHIM). We are interested in one thing, that He is a God who satisfies (EL-SHADDAI) because we need comfort and strength. What a wonderful God we have? We do not need gods and goddesses of love, fertility, wisdom, rain, sun, moon and medicine and the such like. We have a revelation that our ONE, true God is everything we need. Paul wrote to the Philippians, 4:19, “But my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Those old patriarchs did not have that verse of scripture to read, but they did know that God is ONE and that He created the heavens and the earth and all things therein by His own word and they had complete confidence in their God. The third deity name used in conjunction with El which is derived from ELOHIM (God) is found in Genesis 21:33. EL (God) is revealed here to be EVERLASTING by the name ELOLAM. I am using terminology from the Scofield Bible to express the meaning of this deity name of God. The name EL-OLAM not only means that God is from EVERLASTING to EVERLASTING Himself, but it also carries the thought that He is God over EVERLASTING thing. Have you ever heard the expression, Bring back everlasting thing in there. Don’t you even leave one grain of sand. This illustration comes to my mind because I have heard such uses of the word everlasting from various ones in my lifetime. Nevertheless, we want to understand the use of it in Genesis 21:33, to mean that God is without beginning and without end and that everything that has been created was created by Him. Actually, you cannot separate one of these deity names from the others. They are all pertaining to the one and only God, but were used according to the circumstances of the one who was calling upon Him. ELOHIM (God) places Him in His position in His creation and the other three names we have mentioned are expressions of His deity. These are names that attribute to Him those virtues of deity that belong only to ELOHIM. In other words, He is the only self existent one. He is the only eternal one that is from everlasting to everlasting and He is the most High God of all gods.

SEVEN SPIRITS OF GOD

Now we want to look at the 7 attributable names that are compounded with the word Jehovah to identify God with mankind in redemption. When you get over to Genesis 2:4, in the account of creation, you find LORD GOD for the first time. Up to this point the general term, GOD, has been used, but in Gen. 2:4, we find this term compounded with LORD which takes on a deeper meaning more of ownership and rulership. JEHOVAH, which in the Hebrew is YHWH and pronounced YAHWEH in our English language, is a word that Means Lord. Therefore, the translation Lord God comes from the Hebrew JEHOVAH ELOHIM, JEHOVAH, (LORD) ELOHIM, (GOD) and is used quite frequently after its first mention. We have a lot of people running around in our day with a doctrine built off of their ideas about YHWH. They will say, Pagan Gentiles (meaning anyone who does not agree with them) do not know the name of God. If they did, they would call Him YAHWEH. For the sake of clarifying such a statement, let me say this. It was God Himself that confused the languages of all people when before that, they had all been speaking the same language. I will agree with any critic that God was revealed to the Jewish race through these names or that God revealed these deity names and attributable names to the Jewish race, but you must remember this, while they spoke Hebrew, my ancestors were speaking English. God did not tell anyone that they would have to learn Hebrew before they could get to know Him. He did not tell me that I would have to learn Hebrew in order to find my way home. You call Him whatever you want to, but to me He is G-O-D and known in the Grace age by His redemption name, Jesus, J-E-S-U-S. This is the only name that Jesus ever manifested on earth and we have His own testimony that He had manifested the Father’s name to the men who walked with Him (John 17:6). The Jews believe that Hebrew is the proper language and the English speaking people, in their proudness, believe that English is the proper language. It doesn’t matter one bit to me just as long as I know who He is that is speaking to my heart. As long as I can get my spirit in tune with Him, who is Spirit, it doesn’t matter to me whether I talk to Him in Hebrew, English or whatever. My only concern is in being able to communicate with Him. Hallelujah! I believe He hears me! If you are a Jew or if you are someone who knows the Hebrew, go ahead and call Him, YHWH (YAHWEH) if you want to, but in the English it comes out JEHOVAH (LORD). The bride of Christ is made up of people from around this world and from the percentage viewpoint, I would be safe to say that only a very small percentage of them speak Hebrew. Maybe some of these people ought to go back and read Genesis 1:1 again. It does not say, In the beginning JEHOVAH ELOHIM created the heaven and the earth. It says, In the Beginning ELOHIM (GOD) created the heaven and the earth. I hope you catch the difference. God does not even have the compound word, Jehovah, attached to it in the beginning. Saints, we are just trying to place this word Jehovah, which means Lord or Master. Now the word, Lord, does not necessarily apply to deity. It is a word that can be applied to any man who rules over or is in authority over other. For instance, it is proper for any servant type person to refer to the one who rules over him as, My Lord, or the owners of the house you live in as your land-lord. Alright, I believe we have said enough for you to see that the word, Jehovah, is translated, Lord, in the English language so as we go into the 7 attributable names that deal with redemption, you will find each one of them compounded with the word Jehovah, which means Lord. This is what John referred to in Revelation a number of times as the seven Spirits of God. It does not mean that God is seven spirits. It simply refers to the 7 major attributable expressions of God on behalf of mankind in the process of redemption. There is no need for 7 spirits, 7 gods or anything like that. Everything we need is wrapped up in the ONE SPIRIT, (GOD) who is omnipresent and able to manifest anything necessary in His dealing with man. He is Lord of lords, and He is the Master of ever situation. We see Him as GOD (ELOHIM) in Genesis 1:1, but now we are going to see Him as Lord of every situation as we examine these attributable names. The very word, LORD, is a deity name in God’s relationship to man, but not in creation as in Gen. 1:1 where only the word, God, was used.

JEHOVAH WILL PROVIDE

Remember now as we look at these 7 attributable names of God, each one of them is compounded with the word, JEHOVAH, which means LORD in English. Before I mention the first one of the seven, let me say this, Seven is the number of completeness. Paul said in one of his letters, Ye are complete in Him. Therefore, these sevens are not recorded by accident, they have significance. In the 4th chapter of Revelation when John was told to come up hither, he was allowed to see things that would be hereafter. While describing what he saw, he said, “And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.” Later, as he described the Lamb that came forth and stood in the midst of the throne, he referred to what he saw as a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. We know that such a creature would be a freak of nature, so this terminology has to be looked upon as having a symbolic meaning. We see the same thing back over in the book of Zechariah where Joshua the high priest brought forth the stone which had seven eyes. It was prefiguring a finished work of redemption and that is what you will see figuratively as we consider these attributable names. The first scripture we will look at is found in Genesis 22:13-14. This is where God had called upon Abraham to take his son, his only son, and offer him up for a sacrifice upon one of the mountains which He would show him later. God did not tell Abraham which mountain He had chosen the first day He spoke to him about this, but Abraham started out with Isaac just like God had told him to do. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place that God had chosen. It was right back in the same area where he had met Melchizedek. Do you see how God works circumstances to get His plans perfected? Abraham used a certain rock or mountain peak for an alter. Then later, David bought a parcel of ground from Ornan the Jebusite, because he needed a place to offer sacrifice to the Lord to stay the plague of death that was sweeping through his people. Where do you suppose he built his altar? Right in the same place where Abraham would have offered up Isaac. David later felt impressed to build a house for God, but God said, No, you are a warrior, you have shed blood. I will raise up one from your loins to build me a house. Solomon was the one to build the house for God and he built it right on the same spot that Abraham and David had used for an altar. That is the place where God chose to place His name. In 2 Chronicles 6:6, Solomon said that Jerusalem is the place where God had chosen to place His name. We just carried this on through to show you how God works circumstances to get men to do what He has purposed for them to do, but now we will return to Abraham and Isaac as they journey to the place where the sacrifice is to be offered up. In verse 7 we find Isaac speaking to his father, Abraham, saying, My father, and Abraham answered, Here am I, my son. Isaac then said, Behold the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. He said that out of necessity, walking along there with his heart all burdened down knowing only that God had told him to offer Isaac his only son. Oh how his heart must have ached as he raised the knife to cut Isaac’s throat, but he had faith in God. He knew that the very God who gave him that son by Sarah, when from the natural standpoint it would have been impossible, was able to raise him back to life if need be, so he followed God’s instructions. In verse 11, when Abraham had the knife raised to slay his son, notice who it was that stopped him from doing it, an Angel of the Lord. Isn’t it strange. It did not say, the Holy Ghost said don’t do it, nor did it say, The Father said, Don’t do it, nor did it say, the Son said don’t do it. It was an ANGEL of the Lord that said, Do him no harm, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld they son, thine only son from me. 13, “And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.” 14, And Abraham called the name of that place JEHOVAH JIREH” (THE LORD WILL PROVIDE). There is your first attributable title. He is a provider and provide He did. HALLELUJAH! No doubt, Abraham’s old heart had been pounding like a jack hammer up to that very moment. He had no way of knowing what God would do. He just believed Him and trusted Him fully, believing that He would provide. Abraham already knew Him as ELOHIM (GOD). He already knew Him as EL-OLAM (Everlasting God) also as EL-ELYON (Most High God) and EL-SHADDAI (Almighty God). Now he calls Him JEHOVAH JIREH (the Lord that provides) or the Lord will provide. What else could he say to that little boy when he asked him about the lamb fo the burnt offering? He had waited 25 years for that promised son, and now after such a short time, the one who gave him that son asked for him back and in the most heartbreaking manner. How could he tell that little boy that he was going to offer him upon that altar for a burnt offering to God? How could he have understood such a thing? No, necessity caused Abraham to call God, JEHOVAH JIREH. Many times God has to work circumstances to cause us to give Him His place in our lives. He does not force us to do things against our will, but He will work circumstances in our lives that will make us willing to walk His way.

GOD IS A HEALER

For the next attributable name attributed to God, we go to Exodus, chapter 15, where God is leading the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage. After God miraculously opened up the Red Sea and allowed them to go across on dry ground, the children of Israel became frantic and bitter against Moses because they had not found any water to drink in the 3 days they had journeyed since crossing. Therefore, they murmured against Moses until he cried unto the Lord for help. God showed him a tree, which when he cast into the waters of Marah, they were made sweet. The bitterness was taken away from the waters and now they were drinkable. God chose this occasion to prove the people and set before them a statute and an ordinance whereby He said unto them, “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: FOR I AM THE LORD THAT HEALETH THEE.” This is where God reveals Himself to the people as a healer, JEHOVAH RAPHA, (THE LORD THAT HEALETH) Exodus 15:26. Jehovah Rapha is the second of the seven attributable redemptive names of God that we are going to look at and for number three, we will go to Exodus 17:8-15. Prior to these verses, the children of Israel have been chiding Moses because of a lack of water again. This time God told Moses to smite the rock and there shall come water out of it. The people, in their time of complaining, had said, is the Lord among us or not? It seemed that no matter what God did for them, as soon as things got a little rough again they would begin to complain that the Lord had let Moses bring them out into the wilderness to die. In the last half of this 17th chapter we find that after they had drank water from the rock, their journey was interrupted by an attack from the Amalekites. Moses sent Joshua with chosen men to fight against Amalek, while he stood on top of a nearby hill with the rod of God in his hand. The battle was long and as long as Moses was able to keep his hands raised, the Israelites were able to advance and press the battle, but when he got tired and lowered his hands, they began to lose. This is where Aaron and Hur sat Moses upon a rock and they raised his hands and held them up until the battle was won. In this, God revealed Himself to them as a banner, JEHOVAH NISSI (the Lord our banner). Another of His characteristics was revealed in this set of circumstances. What is that Bro. Jackson? His ability to spark overcoming enthusiasm in His people. Let me give you an illustration. In many of the great battles that have been fought, we have had occasion to notice that much emphasis was placed upon raising a flag (or banner) representing the nation or the movement which was pressing the battle. World War II gives us a good example of that where 5 marines fought their way to the top of Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, to raise the American flag there. Why did they do it? It was a morale builder. It gave those other marines down on the beach a new enthusiasm. There on top of that mountain stood their banner and they had pledged to fight for it. Seeing those Stars and Stripes stretched out by that mountain breeze caused them to be encouraged to fight on with a greater determination to conquer their enemies. This is what was taking place when Aaron and Hur raised up Moses’ hands that held the rod. It was like lifting up a banner. Verse 15 tells us that Moses built an altar and called he name of it JEHOVAH NISSI (the Lord our banner). He is my flag! AMEN! HALLELUJAH! That is exactly what it means, the Lord is my flag. How many of you have determined to follow that banner? Tell me, are you ready to go into battle with Him? You had better be. Time is short and Satan is battling with every evil force at his disposal. There is one thing sure, you will be on one side or the other. There is no neutral territory. I guarantee you one thing, if you will get behind this banner, you will never have to worry about the enemy getting control and taking your banner down. “HE THAT DWELLETH IN THE SECRET PLACE OF THE MOST HIGH SHALL ABIDE UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE ALMIGHTY” (Psalms 91:1) He is our banner, our refuge, our fortress, our deliverer and everything else that we have need of in this evil age. Praise God, Saints, I hope this little message will help some of you who have never really stopped to think about it, to realize you do not have to be on the losing side in this constant battle between the spiritual forces of good and evil. All you need do is make sure you are on Gods side. Then He will be your banner also.

SHALOM – PEACE

We are going into Judges for our next attributable name. You will find it in chapter 6, verse 24. This brings us into another period of time where the Israelites have done evil in the sight of the Lord and He has turned them over to their enemies, the Midianites. When they finally begin to realize the shape they are in, they cry unto the Lord for help and He sends them a prophet. As the prophet begins to cry against them for their failure to recognize and serve God as they should, an angel of the Lord appears to Gideon saying, “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor.” Gideon questions the angel as to whether the Lord is really with them, seeing that their enemies have gained the upper hand, and the Lord looked upon Gideon saying, “Go in this thy might and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites.” Gideon asks for a sign that would assure him that the Lord is really with them and when he received it and realized that he had been talking to an angel of the Lord, he began building an altar to worship God. They had been in a constant state of unrest, turmoil, confusion and oppression, so what they needed most at that time was peace. That is when the Lord spoke and said, “Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die.” Because of that, Gideon called the place of his altar, JEHOVAH SHALOM, (The Lord our peace). SHALOM is a Hebrew word that means peace. It is used as a Jewish greeting and farewell. Many of you have been to Israel and heard them use the word as such. They speak freely of peace, but it is something they have never known much about. They have always been a hated, persecuted and oppressed people, constantly kicked about and standing in need of peace. Peace will settle you, regardless of whether it be in the natural or whether it is just an inner peace that we have because of the presence of the Lord. What did Jesus say to His disciples? “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” The peace that He gives is peace of mind, something that the world cannot give. Paul referred to it as the peace that passeth all understanding, (Phil. 4:7) saying that it will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When you have that peace of God down in your soul, there is no reason to have a worry in the world and certainly no room for fear. But Bro. Jackson, they are always talking about me and persecuting me something terrible. Nevertheless, if you have the peace of God in your soul, and you re not doing anything deliberately to aggravate the situation. Have no fear, for God will eventually send that spirit of peace to put someone in their place. God Himself is that spirit of peace, JEHOVAH SHALOM. Therefore, if He is in you, just surrender up to Him and let Him flood your soul with that inner peace which passeth all understanding. When you learn the secret of how to draw upon that peace, your daily load will be much lighter. The Psalmist (David) knew how to surrender up to this Lord of peace. He was chased by Saul, hated by many of his brethren and he did wrong himself at times, but the Bible says that he was a man after God’s own heart. We will see an example of that in 2 Samuel 24:12-14. This was a time when David had ordered Joab, the captain of the host, to number Israel. In other words, he wanted him to take a census so he would know exactly how many fighting men he had behind him. This displeased the Lord, for He wanted his chosen people to trust in His strength and ability rather than in the arm of the flesh through great numbers. Therefore, He sent the prophet (Gad) to David with a message; “Go and say to David, Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things; (as punishment) choose thee one of them that I may do it unto thee. So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land? Or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? Or that there be three days pestilence in they land? now advise, and see what answer I shall return to Him that sent me.” You believe me, David knew that either one he would choose would be rough, so notice what he did. By the way, this episode is what occasioned the purchase of Ornan’s threshing floor for the purpose of erecting an altar unto the Lord to stay the plague or pestilence brought on by David’s decision. Here is David’s answer to the prophet, verse 14, “And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; FOR HIS MERCIES ARE GREAT: and let me not fall into the hand of man.” David knew he could trust the Lord, but he had no confidence in wicked men. That peace of God in his soul caused him to know that the best way out of any situation was to lean upon the mercy of God.

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

Let us go to Psalm 23, for number 5 of the attributable names of God. Here we will see how David expressed his confidence in the Lord when inspiration struck him. When his enemies tried to assassinate him or through insurrection, tried to overthrow his throne, he would go off and hide in an old cave. He did not want to fight his own countrymen. It was in his heart more to seek God than to fight against his own people. I can just see him as the Holy Ghost moved upon him one day while he was hiding out in an old lonesome cave; “THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD; I SHALL NOT WANT. (Hallelujah, he found the secret) HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN GREEN PASTURES: HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL WATERS.” Praise God! He is really on the right track here, but I am going to stop before I get too far away from the first line, “THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD,” (JEHOVAH RAAH). R-A-A-H is a Hebrew word pertaining to a shepherd or one who watches over a flock. David could think of himself as a sheep in the fold or flock of God. By that he was able to say, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; they rod and they staff they comfort me.” He knew there was a great shepherd watching over his soul. Therefore, regardless of the grim circumstances that he was confronted by, he knew that he could rest secure in Him. Did not Jesus say, “My sheep know my voice and another they will not follow?” He went on to say, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” Why did Jesus talk like that? The Lord (Jehovah) is the shepherd of His sheep and that was the Spirit of Jehovah in Jesus doing the talking. That is why He could talk like that. “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth His life for His sheep.” I have heard Bro. William Branham speak of how the shepherd would put his bedroll right in the doorway to the sheep-fold. Therefore, any old coyote or sheep killing dog would have to come right across his body to get to the sheep. That would awaken him and allow him to protect the flock. That is what Jesus was having reference to in St. John, chapter 10, where He said, “I am the good shepherd,” and so forth. The Lord is JEHOVAH RAAH, (The Lord is my Shepherd).

HE IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS

Alright, we have two more redemptive names to look at. The next one is found in Jeremiah 23:6, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS (JEHOVAH TSIDKENU). Jeremiah, picking up in the spirit, saw what God would do in the last days. Brothers and sisters, we are living in the days that Jeremiah wrote about in this chapter. The Jews have been scattered to the four winds for centuries because of their worshipping idols and for their failure to repent and turn to God when He would send a prophet to warn them. Therefore, that which Jeremiah is writing about here in this chapter pertains to the Jews of our day. Let us read the first 6 verses of chapter 23, down through the verse that calls God by this Hebrew name, JEHOVAH TSIDKENU, meaning THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. “Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! Saith the Lord. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people: Ye have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not visited them: behold I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. And I will gather the remnant of my flock OUT OF ALL COUNTRIES whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; (that is what we have been seeing take place right in our day) and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth, (THAT IS JESUS CHRIST IN THE MILLENNIUM). In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” This is a picture of the Jews of our day, after the Lord has sent the two prophets of Revelation 11:3, and their eyes have been opened as to who Jesus really is. The mercy and grace that God extends to them will cause them to recognize Him by this name, JEHOVAH TSIDKENU, (The Lord our Righteousness). They will no longer say, We have done this, we have done that, and we have not done thus and so. They will recognize that all our righteousness are as filthy rags in the sight of God, and that His imputed righteousness is the only hope for lost mankind. I can just hear those redeemed Jews saying, OH! He is my Righteousness. HALLELUJAH! When those Jews are saying that, the little Gentile bride will be at the marriage supper with her race of life behind her. Not everyone that says Lord, Lord, shall be there. It will be only those who have run well and finished the course, recognizing that it is not by our goodness nor our good works, but by His righteousness. He was made sin for us so that we could be made righteousness in Him. The grace of God has been extended to us, His Spirit in us. Therefore, He is our Righteousness. That is why we sing that little chorus (He is all I need). We recognize that it is all in Him. In Romans, Chapter 3, the apostle Paul had something to say about righteousness. Picking up something that David had said in the Psalms, Paul wrote, in verse 10, “There is none righteous, no not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” He went on to speak of the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. We learn from the Word of God that the only righteousness we have is an imputed righteousness, purchased at Calvary with the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why we must say, He is my righteousness.

THE LORD IS PRESENT

We have one more name to talk about now and it comes from Ezekiel 48:35. This is a prophecy dealing with Israel, not only back in the land, but also living under the Messianic rule of Jesus Christ in the millennium. The nation has been restored to her place in the perfect plan of God and they are in the kingdom age that their forefathers looked so earnestly for. When that day finally dawns and they see that their Messiah is Jesus Christ whom their fathers crucified, then they will refer to Him as JEHOVAH SHAMMAH, (The Lord is present). What does that mean? It means that God is on earth in the form of man, ruling mankind. ELOHIM is restoring that relationship He had with the first man and woman before they sinned. Mankind has lived out almost 6000 years of what is history to our present age, since Adam and his wife Eve conducted themselves in such a way that God withdrew His eternal life giving presence from them and placed cherubims (angelic beings) between them and Himself to keep them away from His presence. You say, Why did He do that? Simply because they had chosen to exercise their will beyond what the perfect plan of God allowed them to do. God had said to them, Do not partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (to eat of the tree is to partake of its fruit) for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Now let me say it like this, GOD IS eternal life. Therefore, to remain in His presence IS TO HAVE ETERNAL LIFE, but to remain in the presence of God one must do the will of God. That is where Adam and Eve went wrong. In effect, they chose the pleasures of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil over the presence of God and mankind has had to suffer the penalty of their choice ever since, but there is coming a day and we believe very soon, that God will again place His eternal presence among men. When we say very soon,, naturally we are speaking of the millennium when God will be on earth again in the flesh of the Lord Jesus Christ, ruling over all the people of the whole earth, but even then it will be another one thousand years before the earth is restored back to the place it had with God in the beginning. As we said in Part One of this message, 1 Corinthians 15:24-28, does not have its fulfillment until the end of the one thousand years of Christ’s rule on earth. We will read it again. 24, “Then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.” We covered this thoroughly in the January 1979 issue, titled, Hell is Not Eternal, but for you who may not have read it let me say, This 24th verse is pertaining to the time when God’s process of redemption will be completed. In other words, at the end of the millennium. That is when Christ Jesus will cease to rule on earth as the King and He will deliver the redeemed Kingdom back to ELOHIM, the ETERNAL SPIRIT from which all things had their beginning. God is one and in the beginning, He only dwell in Spirit form, for He is Spirit. It was only for the purpose of redemption that He created Himself a human body to dwell in among mankind. He created that cell of life in the womb of the virgin girl, Mary, and allowed her to bring it into life through the natural process of child birth, giving him (the baby) a genealogy that placed Him in line to inherit the throne of David. Joseph and Mary took the young child and fled into Egypt to protect his life from the wrath of King Herod who sought to kill him to protect his throne. They later brought the child back into the land of Israel and raised him up to manhood in a little town called Nazareth. Then there came a day when he was beginning to be about 30 years of age that he came to the Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist (the baptizer). That is when John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon Him and heard a voice from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Time moved on to a day when he rode a little donkey into Jerusalem, went into the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of all them that sold doves saying unto them, “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” With doves flying all around the place, money scattered all over the floor and amid the howling protests of His enemies; He began to preach. The lame and the blind came to Him there in the temple and He healed them, while the children cried, “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Whose name did He come in? The name of the Lord. Who was the Lord to them? Jehovah. What name did He come in? Jesus. Do you see how plain it is that the redemption name of Jehovah Elohim is J-E-S-U-S? As we said earlier, J-E-S-U-S is the only name He ever manifested to His disciples, yet He said to the Father, (the eternal Spirit) in John 17:6, “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept THY WORD.” The words that they had kept were the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet He could say to the Father in prayer, “They have kept thy word.”

SEVEN REDEMPTIVE NAMES

Brothers and sisters, I am not an educated man, but God has graciously allowed me to have my understanding opened to receive revelation of His word. Now I am asking Him to deal with each one of you who are seeking such revelation, the same way, for we know that the natural mind receiveth not the things of God. These things must be revealed to every individual by the Spirit of God. Otherwise, they are just words. Once your understanding is opened to receive revelation, you will begin to see that every scripture carries a beautiful key to the furtherance of the revelation of the oneness of God. We have brought out these 7 redemptive names in an effort to help you see that this ONE GOD, (who is Spirit) has revealed Himself to men as the answer to every need they have. He is not limited to any particular geographical area for He is omnipresent, (present everywhere) and there is nothing too hard for Him, for He is omnipotent, (unlimited in power and ability) and He has infinite understanding, awareness, insight and knowledge. He is omniscient. Now notice, I did say that these are redemptive names. None of them reveal God’s deity. That has already been revealed in EL-SHADDAI, (GOD ALMIGHTY). These 7 names are attributable expressions of the one God who is Spirit toward mankind. When Abraham needed a lamb to replace his only son, Isaac, on the sacrificial altar, God provided one. He was revealed in that situation as JEHOVAH JIREH (the Lord will provide) and so on through all the other attributable names. He is our PROVIDER, our HEALER, our BANNER, our PEACE, our SHEPHERD, our RIGHTEOUSNESS and there is coming a day when we can say, in the full sense of its meaning, The Lord is PRESENT. He is already present in the sense of being omnipresent, but when redemption is completed, that presence will be in a much more glorious realm. When fallen mankind needed a Savior, God became that Savior (provider). Sin had entered the human race through the disobedience of one man. Therefore, it was necessary that there be an innocent man somewhere that could take the blame for man’s sin and bear the shame and reproach of the sin penalty on behalf of us all. Where could such a man be found? There was not a man on earth who did not have imputed death dwelling in him, so where would man’s redeemer come from? There was no such scene in heaven as the trinity people portray in their illustrations of what took place. It was not a situation where God, the Father looked over to God, the Son and said, Son, Will you go down and die for the people? We do not have anyone else to send. No, that was not the way it was at all. God Himself became one of us. Son, in this respect, is pointing strictly to flesh. We have already explained how God created the flesh that He would walk on earth in and that flesh being was called the Son of God or the Son of the Highest. The flesh was the Son, but the life of that flesh was the God-life that created all things. In other words, God came to earth in human flesh to save His own. He did not send anyone. He came Himself. To the natural mind this sounds confusing, but scriptural revelation makes this Godhead question clear as a bell. Some have said, The way you explain the Godhead makes Jesus His own father. That is the natural mind speaking. Regardless of how many times you read Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the scriptures, you can never make three persons out of God.

THE FATHER OF JESUS

In the beginning there was no Son of God in the picture and God, being alone, was not even a father. How could He be? Anyone knows that you cannot be called a father until after you have begat life and by the same token, everyone knows that once you have produced or begotten an offspring, you have become a father. When God began to create, He became a father then when He created the cell of life that brought Jesus into the world, coming forth from the womb of a virgin girl that had never had sex relationship with any man. How could this baby be called anything but the Son of God? You must realize also that the Holy Ghost is not another Spirit, different from, nor separate from the sovereign Spirit that dwelt alone in the beginning before He began to create. God is a Spirit and He is holy, not unholy. Therefore, He is the Holy Spirit. Satan is the unholy spirit. We will all agree that God the Father is the father of the child born to the virgin Mary and called Jesus, but have we all noticed that the scriptures reveal He was begotten by the Holy Ghost? Common sense teaches us that whoever begat is the father of the offspring. Therefore, let us look into the first chapter of St. Matthew and read verses 18-23 where we will see what the angel of the Lord told Joseph about this miraculous conception. 18, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: when as His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, BEFORE THEY CAME TOGETHER, she was found with child OF THE HOLY GHOST. (Did you catch that?) 19, Then Joseph her husband (or husband to be) being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.” In other words, Joseph and Mary were engaged to be married, which in those days was just as binding as a marriage contract in our day, but before they began to live together in a husband and wife relationship, Joseph discovered that this young lady was pregnant already. If you will try to picture in your mind how social and moral standards were in those days, maybe you can understand how Joseph must have felt. He was an honorable man and wanted to do the right thing, but regardless of how much he loved Mary, he could not put up with her being untrue to her betrothal vows. Therefore, he began to meditate on how to handle this delicate situation. He had no desire to have Mary put up for public ridicule, but on the other hand he did not feel that he could accept this already pregnant woman as his wife. His decision was that he would privately break the engagement without making any fuss about the reason why. This is when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, 20, “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary they wife: for that which is conceived in her IS OF THE HOLY GHOST. (There! You see! It was the Holy Ghost that planted the seed of life in Mary’s womb) 21, And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for HE shall save HIS PEOPLE from their sins, 22, Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, (notice now) and they shall call his name EMMANUEL, which being interpreted is, GOD WITH US.” For the benefit of you who may still have a problem with this question of whether God is one or three persons, we desire to cover every aspect of the question in the hope that revelation will strike your soul as you read this article. Once you see that God is not three persons, but that these are titles attributed to the ONE true God who is Spirit, and once you see that He does not need to cease being Father of His creation in order to fulfill the office work of the Son of God, you will wonder how in the world you ever believed such a perverted mess for as long as you did. God is one, but He is able to fulfill the office work of Father, Son and Holy Ghost without dividing Himself up into three persons. He is Father in the sense of being omnipresent, self existent Spirit, capable of begetting life, not just because of His ability to begat life, but because He exercised that ability in creation. He became Father when he created something else with life, He became God when there was something that could look up to Him in worship. He became incarnated in flesh only about two thousand years ago, and He paid man’s sin debt when He voluntarily submitted to the agonizing crucifixion on that old Roman cross through Jesus the Christ. The flesh of Jesus was not the Father and I say this only because of the interpretation that some people place on Isa. 9:6, and other related scriptures which we will get to a little later. The God-life in that flesh was the Father and He had no beginning. He is from everlasting to everlasting and He is God over everlasting thing.

THE BIBLE PRESENTS . . .

This Bible presents us with a beautiful story of how a self existent Spirit spoke in the beginning and said, Let there be light, and there was light, and from there went on to speak creative words right on down to include everything that we are familiar with round about us. It tells of how He created the first man and placed him at the head of all His earthly creation and how that man exercised his own free will to disobey his creator and how God, bound by His own word, was forced to separate the man from His eternal life giving presence. Then we have the written record of how God dealt with that man and his wife and their descendants through the various ages in His process of reconciliation, until such a time when the full payment for man’s sin debt was due and payment was required. Then the most wonderful thing of all that we could read from its pages is how God Himself, knowing that man was bankrupt and could not pay his debt, became a man and made sufficient payment to cover all of man’s sin debt throughout every age. He is God. It was His decision and His alone as to what He would do to satisfy man’s sin debt. What could have prevented Him from just saying, Adam, I forgive you for what you have done, just be sure you do not let it happen again? No, He could not do that, for there were attributes in Him (God) that could only be expressed through the process of redemption that He has been working out ever since the day Adam sinned. God knows everything, but how could man ever have known just how great a God he served if there had never been any occasion for God to express that greatness toward mankind? He is revealed to man as the provider in every situation that man finds himself entangled in. That is what we find in those 7 attributable, redemptive names of God.

I AM THAT I AM

Alright then, God became one of us so that He might be in a legal position to pay our sin debt for us. The wages of sin is death. It was man that sinned. Therefore, it had to be man that would die for that sin. God required a perfect sacrifice and there was none to be found. The whole human race was under the curse of sin with death flowing in their bloodstream. That is why God became a man so He could lay His life on the sacrificial atar for helpless mankind. He laid His life down, but He had power to take it back up again, HALLELUJAH! What a God! You may say, Alright, that pretty well covers the Father and the Son part of the question, but how about the Holy Ghost? What does He do? Since we did not all live in the days of Christ and the apostles, there had to be a way for this wonderful redemption story to be expressed in every age. That is the office work of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Christ, which is the same Spirit as the great omnipresent, self existent one, ELOHIM, who in the beginning dwelt all alone. By His Spirit, this glorious gospel is revealed to every generation. Each generation comes on the scene, lives their allotted days and years, and then they die and leave the scene, but the Spirit of God lives on. Some people say Holy Ghost, and others refer to Him as the Holy Spirit, but regardless of which word you use, you are not talking about another person in a trinity. You are talking about the only true God there has ever been. He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, Paul, Peter, James and every other Christian in this old world. Those Old Testament saints such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, looked forward to the day when their God would fulfill His promise and Jesus, speaking to a gathering of Jews one day said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad, (John 8:56-58) The Jews then said unto Him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? (They were striving with Him.) Jesus said unto them, (notice this) Verily, verily I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM.” That statement was not made from the standpoint of the flesh. The man, Jesus, was not before Abraham, but the God-life in that flesh was doing the speaking and He spoke just like He did to Moses at the burning bush. Moses said to God, “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you: and they shall say unto me, What is His name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and He said, thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you (Exodus 3:13-14)” Since we are dealing with the fact that God is one and not three persons, what I want you to see from these two passages of scripture is that Jesus Christ, who is called by trinity people, the second person of the holy trinity, spoke exactly the same words in identifying Himself to the Jews that God (who is called by them, the Father) did to Moses. If God the Father was one person and Jesus, the Son, was another separate person, they could not both be identified by the same name. Are you following me? If that had been the case when Moses said, I AM hath sent me, the children of Israel would have needed to ask, Which one? Was it the Father or the Son? No, those Israelites knew their God was one. They had been taught right. They knew their Messiah would be God. They just failed to recognize Him when He came, because of the meek and lowly way that He came unto them.

EMMANUEL

Let us now go to Isaiah 7:14 where we will pick up Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the birth of Jesus and what they would call Him. “Therefore the Lord Himself (meaning Jehovah) shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name IMMANUEL.” This name translated, means God with us, but when the angel of the Lord appeared to Mary, he did not even mention the name EMMANUEL. He told her to call His name, Jesus. Many of the Spanish speaking people name their little male babies Emmanuel, but in those instances it sure does not mean, God with us. The name itself in the case of Jesus was appropriately applied and the angel of the Lord reconfirmed Isaiah’s prophecy when he appeared to Joseph in Matthew 1:23, but when Gabriel appeared to Mary he said, “call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.” Yes, He was called the Son of God and we have explained why. The Son terminology applies only to the flesh, or human side of Jesus. By revelation we understand that He was none other than God with us. Now, let us go back to Isaiah 9:6 where we will see more details of what this Son, Emmanuel, is to be to the children of Israel. “For unto us (the people of Israel) a child is born, (He was not to be born into a Gentile family) unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and is name shall be called WONDERFUL, COUNSELOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE EVERLASTING FATHER, THE PRINCE OF PEACE.” There is a verse of scripture that you might wonder how any trinity person could read it and still believe in the trinity. That is why Jesus used such terminology as He did at times when He was teaching. Out by the seaside one day He spoke the parable of the seed sower, then He said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Then there was another time when the Pharisees were complaining about the disciples of Jesus eating with unwashed hands and Jesus responded to them by pointing out some of the hypocritical ways that they supposedly keep the law of Moses and concluded by saying, “There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.” Then He said, “If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” It just goes to show that a person does not hear spiritual things only with those natural ears that stick out on each side of his head. If he doesn’t have spiritual ears, truth will pass right through his hearing and he will never catch it. Praise God! I’m glad, and thankful to have hears to hear. Aren’t you? Hallelujah! Isaiah said, His name shall be called Wonderful. Did that mean that people who met Him on the street would say, Hello Wonderful? Do you think they greeted Him by saying, Good morning Counselor? No, that is not what these names imply. We know from the scriptures that He was called Jesus, but knowing who he was (God in flesh) gave those who came in contact with Him the kind of feeling that caused them to go about saying to each other, Oh, He’s Wonderful. Those who received Him and believed on Him had that kind of feeling about Him. Furthermore, when you can truly see that He came in the name of the Father, His name embraces all that Isaiah said He would be called. “His name shall be called wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” How could three persons be called, THE MIGHTY GOD or THE EVERLASTING FATHER? Now let me present the question another way to you who believe in the trinity. How could a prophet of God apply such titles to the second person of the trinity you believe in? Would you not want to know just exactly which one of the three was to be called THE MIGHTY GOD, THE EVERLASTING FATHER, or even THE PRINCE OF PEACE? If you have ears to hear and eyes to see, then this verse alone should open up your understanding. You should be able to see that in this man called Jesus Christ was every attribute and virtue that the Bible applies to ELOHIM, EL-ELYON, EL-SHADDAI and EL-OLAM.

YE ARE COMPLETE IN HIM

Saints, it ought to make your hearts leap for joy to think that your souls are resting in the hands of a God who loved us enough to veil Himself in human flesh and walk along with man in order to set us free from the bondage of Satan. He lived with men, he walked with men, and when the time was right, He suffered and died as a man. The glorious part of it is that He had power to take His life up again and by that same power, He will take ours up again if we go by the way of the grave before the translation. All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, said Jesus to His disciples just before He ascended into heaven that day. Please tell me how He could have all power in heaven and in earth if He was not The mighty God Himself? That is why the apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 2:9-10, “For in Him (Jesus Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power.” We are complete in Him because He is The mighty God and being The mighty God, He is the very God of peace or The God who is Peace.

PRINCE OF PEACE

Let us look at this Prince of Peace terminology for just a moment. Prince always speaks of royalty, a son of royalty. I realize the word is used in a more general way, but we are only interested in the sense in which it is used in these scriptures. The prince, the son of a king, is the king’s ambassador. He is the king’s ambassador of peace. Brothers and sisters, this is a beautiful picture of how God, the great Kingly Spirit, sent His Son (The Prince) into the world as an ambassador of peace. No, this does not make Him another person. We have already made that clear enough for any right thinking person, but we have to say certain things in order to bring out the symbolism part of the scriptures that make it sound like God is more than one, but the evidence of His oneness is overwhelmingly stacked against all of man’s traditions which declare Him to be three persons. This Son of God, called The Prince of Peace, was the Father’s mouthpiece to the world, but like every other prince, He had a name that He was called by and that name was JESUS. When he was growing up playing in the streets of Nazareth with the other little boys and girls, they did not call Him Wonderful, nor Counselor, nor Prince of Peace, they called him Jesus. We will come back to this name, but before going on, let me say this, Do not become disturbed about this Prince of Peace terminology just because you may have read in Matthew 10:34 where Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.” From the standpoint of the world in general, He did not come for the purpose of peace at His first coming. There truly is coming a time when He will reign for 1000 years on earth and that will be a time of peace for sure.

GABRIEL SPEAKS TO MARY

Now let us go to the first chapter of Luke and read the scripture where the angel of the Lord spoke to Mary about her unusual conception. The verse we read from Isaiah 9:6 had been hanging for over seven hundred years and many generations had come and gone before the angel of the Lord appeared to Mary to begin the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. Beginning with the 26th verse we read, “And in the sixth month (the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John) the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.” We have said a lot about angels already, but please note the fact that God sent an angel to speak to Mary about this very important event. It was not that God had to have angels do His talking, but as we said earlier, God created His angelic family to be helpers with Him in His great plan for the ages. Therefore, Gabriel came to her and said, “Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” I wonder if you noticed that in verse 26 it said, God (ELOHIM) sent Gabriel, then in verse 28 Gabriel says, “The Lord (JEHOVAH) is with thee.” This word, LORD, identifies God with man, while the word GOD simply speaks of The Self Existent One or The Strong One. As we read these verses we are made aware of the fact that God, the creator of heaven and earth, has purposed to be identified with man and He has sent an angel to make it known to Mary the instrument through which He would work His plan. Now when Mary saw him, (verse 29) “She was troubled at his sayings, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.” She was no doubt frightened as well as very troubled at hearing such words, and the angel said to her, Fear not Mary: for thou hast found favor with God (ELOHIM). Did you notice how he puts God right back in His highest position in that verse? In his conversation with Mary, this angel had identified God with man in His role as MASTER (LORD) over us and then turned the conversation to place God right back in His identity as God of all creation. I can only try to imagine how Mary felt as the angel continued to speak. What human has ever been prepared to see an angel without being just a little frightened or at least surprised? You just do not go around expecting an angel to appear and talk with you. Everywhere we read in the scriptures that an angel appeared to someone, it always took them completely by surprise. How would you feel if an angel suddenly walked through your door? You would be just like Mary, you would be very troubled in your mind. The angel continued on (verse 31) “And behold, thou shalt conceive in they womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.” This is the son that Isaiah was prophesying about, but this angel did not even mention the name, EMMANUEL, nor counselor, nor wonderful, nor anything like that, did he? “AND SHALT CALL HIS NAME JESUS.” Jesus is our English translation of the word. In the Hebrew, it was Joshua, which actually implies He will save His people. A shorter term is JEHOVAH SAVIOR. All of this is implied by His name. Verse 32, “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: (Son of the Most High God) and the LORD GOD (Notice the compound name, JEHOVAH ELOHIM) shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: And He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” Now I want every one of you who may not be completely settled on whether God is ONE or THREE, to pay particular attention to verse 32. In this one verse Gabriel speaks of Jesus whom you call the second person of the trinity, first as the Son of God, then as the son of David. My question to you is this, If He was with God as the second person of a trinity when God said, Let us make man in our image, (Gen.1:26) how could He be called the son of David and be in line to inherit the literal throne of Israel’s King David? Here is the wonderful thought that this message is all about. The life in Him was not the son. Son, pertained only to the flesh which was called the son of Joseph and Mary. This made Him a descendent, or a son of David, when in actuality the life in him was not the son of David. It was the Father of David. Do you see it? It is such a beautiful picture when you do see it by revelation of the spirit. In other words, the very creator of David (from the standpoint of the spirit) was going to be robed in a body of flesh that would be looked upon as the son of David according to the natural genealogy. HALLELUJAH! No wonder David said in Psalms 110:1, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool;” He was speaking by the Spirit. He didn’t know all that we know about Jesus, so that he could speak from the standpoint of the natural, but the Spirit of prophecy that came upon him knew all about the whole plan. From the physical side, Jesus was the seed of woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David, and the seed of God. The flesh side of Jesus fulfilled all of this. Then when we look at Him from the standpoint of the Spirit, he is the Most High, the Almighty, the Everlasting God, the God of peace, the God of the attributes we spoke of earlier, and he God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and even David. Now do you begin to see why the scripture says that the natural mind receiveth not the things of God? It is because they must be spiritually discerned. To the natural man of the world, this sounds like just so much babbling, but to the spiritual man who is capable of receiving revelation, it is like music to his ears. He loves to sing, “Down from His glory, ever living story, My Lord and Savior came and Jesus is His name.” He came from so high and willingly went so low, (right into the depths of hell itself) in order to lift us up out of the muck and mire of sin and restore us to a right standing with our Creator, then take us to glory. Praise God! Yes! He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there shall be no end. That verse takes us right back to the 9th chapter of Isaiah again. “And the government shall be upon His shoulder.” He will rule the world from a literal throne in Jerusalem for one thousand years, during which time God’s complete process of restoration will be climaxed and sin will be remembered no more. That is when 1 Cor. 15:24, will have its fulfillment. The last enemy to be destroyed is death itself. After that, Jesus will lay down all rule and authority, and return the kingdom to God the Father (the self-existent, Omnipresent Spirit) which created all things in the beginning. Now the angel told Mary that He (Jesus) would reign over the house of Jacob forever and that there would be no end to His kingdom, but you must understand that this only applies to time as long as time is measured. When the millennium comes to an end and the earth enters into the eternal age, then time will be measured no more. This is when Jesus assumes the role of our elder brother. He will no longer be King. He only reigns as King until the earth is completely restored to its original, sin free status.

HOW SHALL THIS BE?

You will notice in verse 34 that Mary reacted as any human would when the angel told her that she was going to bring forth a son. She said, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” In other words, she said, I am not even married, how is that going to come to pass? Then the angel said, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” Brothers and sisters, I know you of Faith Assembly know this, but we are sending this message around the world. Therefore, I want to challenge any trinitarian (three persons in the Godhead) believing individual to explain what the angel said to Mary when she said, How can this be? If there are three persons in the Godhead, and God the Father is the Father of Jesus, why would Gabriel tell Mary that she was going to conceive by the Holy Ghost? As I said earlier, anyone knows that he who begat is the father of the child. Surely, you must be able to see by now that the Holy Ghost, which you call the third person of the trinity, is none other than God, the omnipresent spirit, who, in the beginning dwelt all alone. Therefore, also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. If you make Jesus the 2nd person of a trinity, then according to the scriptures, He would have two daddies. Do you see how ridiculous that is? He cannot be the Son of the Highest, and the offspring of the Holy Ghost, both unless they are both the same spirit. I don’t know why the Pope still keeps on preaching that junk and at the same time claiming to be the successor of the apostle Peter. That is the biggest lie that the devil ever told. You would never have heard Peter preaching such junk as that. Furthermore, I say this, If the Pope wants to be the successor of Peter, then why does he no get married like Peter did? In other words, why does he teach a way of living that is contrary to the way Peter lived? I hope you understand what I am getting at. If he is Peter’s successor, then he ought to believe like Peter. It was what Peter believed that caused him to have the keys to the kingdom committed to him in the first place. This reminds me of a little story I heard. A Catholic priest thought he would belittle the Jewish Rabbi, so he called him on the telephone and said, How about coming over and have a ham sandwich with me? He thought he was really pulling one on the Rabbi, for the Jews do not eat pork, but the Rabbi was just as witty as the priest. He said, I will, when you get married. They both had qualifications to step up to, didn’t they?

TRUTH OR TRADITION

In trying to bring this message to a close, I would like to return to the gospel of St. John where we began the message. We are just going in a great big circle, but not because we are lost. This is one of those eternal revelations that take you all the way through the Bible and then comes right back to where it started to tie it all together. We are not going back to St. John 1:1-5 though. We are going to St. John 5:39-43. Verse 43 is the one we are after, but these others build the thought up to what we want to show. Those Jews that Jesus had been preaching to thought they new everything. They were standing there so full of tradition that they were blind as a bat a far as being able to see truth. They were ready to slay Jesus just because He had healed a man on the Sabbath day. Their traditions were more important to them than seeing miserable human lives straightened out and their bodies made whole. It is the same way in our day. If you cross over people’s traditions for any reason whatever, they are ready to fight. Some of them, while professing to be Christians (Christlike) will get so mad and red in the face that you could almost strike a match by touching it to them. Jesus, while talking to such a know-it-all, hard hearted crowd of people began to say to them (verse 39) “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: And they are they with testify of me. 40, And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” What He is really saying to them is this, You think you have eternal life because you practice a set of traditions you think came from the scriptures, but if you will search those scriptures closely, you will see that every one of them with promise is pointing to ME. They would not come to Him because they had been too blind to see Him in the scriptures. That is why we have been reading many of these scriptures. We want to see Jesus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy, David’s prophecy, Ezekial’s and all the others which proclaim Jesus to be the anointed one, The Christ that should come, Emmanuel, (God with us) Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God and Everlasting Father. That is the reason we can sing the little chorus, He is all I need. When you see by revelation just exactly who He is. Then you do know assuredly that He truly is all you need for all of life is wrapped up in Him. From the scriptures we have read, if those Jews had not been blinded by traditions, they could not have helped but see who Jesus was. They felt so much above Him that they were not about to defile themselves by paying attention to such a common looking person who had no educational degrees attached to His name. He knew their thoughts though and said, “I receive not honor from men. But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.” He was really laying it on them because of the name, neither is Father a name, and by the same token, Son is not a name; all these are titles that belong to the ONE, OMNIPRESENT, SELF EXISTENT GOD who is spirit. God (Spirit) was in His Son (Flesh) manifesting His redemption name (JESUS) to lost mankind, but there came the day when the Son laid down His life for the sins of lost mankind. The life of the Son, which was the Father (Spirit) that was in Him, raised that body back to life and allowed Him to be seen of above 500 brethren after His resurrection. Then He was caught up to heaven and a few days later His Spirit returned to enter into the loyal disciples who followed Him. When the spirit of Jesus Christ (THE HOLY GHOST) returned to the disciples on the day of Pentecost, they had the Comforter with them, even in them, which Jesus had promised before going away. These disciples had grown very attached to Jesus during the 3+ years they had walked together. Therefore, he knew they would need a Comforter when He was suddenly taken from their midst. This very concern for them carried a revelation of His deity as revealed in EL-SHADDAI (the breasted one that satisfies).

TEACHER

Notice as we read this next verse of scripture what the Holy Ghost is to do in the life of a believer. John 14:26, “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, HE SHALL TEACH YOU ALL THINGS AND BRING ALL THINGS TO YOUR REMEMBRANCE, WHATSOEVER I HAVE SAID UNTO YOU.” Is He teaching you all things? That is what Jesus said he would do when he is in your life and without Him you cannot understand spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14). Now, whose name was He to come in? Jesus said, He will come in my name. Right? Alright now, Whose name did Jesus come in? He said that He came in the Father’s name, (John 5:43, John 17:6). Well, what does this all add up to you may say. Simply this, after his resurrection, Jesus gathered His disciples together (Luke 24:46-49) and said unto them after He had opened their understanding so that they could understand the scriptures, “thus it is written and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: 47, And that repentance and remission of since should be preached IN HIS NAME among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48, And ye are witnesses of these things. 49, And, Behold – I – send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be ended with power from on high.” This was said to the disciples just before he ascended up into the heavens and it was said in the very same period of time that Matthew wrote about. He was only with them forty days afer His resurrection, so He did not change His mind about what they were to do after He departed from them. In Matthew 28:18-20 we read, “and Jesus spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19, Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them (that is for remission of sins, same as Luke 24:47) in the NAME of the Father, (what is the name of the Father?) and of the Son, (the name of the Son is Jesus) and of the Holy Ghost: (What is the name of the Holy Ghost?) Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” If you are going to do what Jesus commanded His disciples to do, then you are going to have to baptize believers in the NAME that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost is represented by in this age of Grace and that name is JESUS. On the day of Pentecost when about 120 disciples received the Holy Ghost while waiting in the upper room, they caused quite a stir when they came down into the streets speaking in other tongues and glorifying God. This caused some of the skeptics to remark, These men are full of new wine. That is when the apostle Peter stood up and preached them a short sermon that pierced their hears. He ended it by saying Acts 2:36, “therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. 37, Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, What shall we do?” In other words, what can we do now to be saved? Peter answered, verse 38, “Repent and be baptized every one of you IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST (No he was not confused, he had a revelation of the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the Holy Ghost) for the REMISSION OF SINS, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Brothers and sisters, right there is where it all lays. Right there is the first opportunity Peter had to use the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Please do not be so vain as to think Peter made a mistake in his instructions to those repentant souls. He made no mistake. He unlocked the revelation of how to enter into the kingdom and a perfect God had no need to make an alternate way. There is only one way to enter into the kingdom of God and that way is through repentance and baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Upon your obedience from a repentant heart, you have a promise awaiting you. That promise is the gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the spirit of Jesus Christ, which is the Spirit of eternal life and that is the Spirit of the eternal God (ELOHIM) which was before all things. Oh what a glorious book we have here. It is the word of a Great and glorious God, who is worthy of all praise and all glory. Let us be glad and rejoice in these days ahead while we await our change. Brothers and sisters, it can’t be too much longer. This old Gentile clock is running out of time and Israel’s clock is just about ready to start ticking in that last week of Daniel. I pray that this message has helped to clear up some questions, but if you still have unanswered question, write us. May God keep each of you in His perfect love. Amen