I want to say a few words before I actually start dealing with our subject for this message. Much of what you will read in this article, you have read before in other messages, but I have purposed to approach these various points from a little different standpoint, in order to give every Christian person who reads it, a chance to question their own thinking. Just ask yourselves, Why do I believe what I believe? Then, after you have come to an accurate conclusion, if you find that you are just following some person, and do not have a revelation personally, please realize that you are walking on dangerous ground. I do not want anyone following me, unless they know why they are doing so. We have seen the results of such blind faith in other incidents through the years. One such incident involved over souls that followed a certain man to South America, and then wound up in national headlines when they were piled on top of each other, dead, because the vision of the man they were following reached a dead end. No one could deny the fact that the grace of God had touched the man’s life in former years, but he got another vision, and many souls that were in bondage to him, had to pay the supreme price, because they followed him with blind faith past the point of no return.
WHY DO YOU BELIEVE?
Brothers and sisters, let me assure you that we are living in a day that God will test every person who stands up to testify that they love the Lord Jesus Christ. You are going to be tested as to why you would make such a statement. What is such a love based If God should allow time to stand long enough that some of you would be brought into a court of the land on the basis of the belief in Christ Jesus that you hold, do not think that it will be sufficient just to say, Well, Bro. Branham said so and so, or Bro. Jackson said this and that. Remember, 2000 years ago when those early Christians went to the arenas, and to the chopping blocks to have their heads cut off, they did not go just because Peter had said such and such, nor because James, or Paul, or someone else had told them something; they went because they had a revelation in their soul that no amount of threats or danger could erase. If you must die because of something you believe, then that is not in vain. That is why I am encouraging everyone of you to make every possible effort to understand why you believe what you do, and determine in your soul whether it is worth dying for or not. I am not telling you not to follow anyone, I am impressing upon you the importance of having a revelation in your soul as to why you are following. Keep your eyes upon Jesus Christ, always remembering that He is the one that redeemed you from life of sin and corruption, but at the same time be conscious of the fact that He is not going to send angels to teach us the word of God. He has called, and anointed men for that purpose, and it will remain so until the end, but He expects every true child of God to pray and study, and gain a revelation of what they are being taught. If any of you are ever approached with the question, Why do you listen to that Raymond Jackson? Just be sure your reason is anchored in a revelation of the word of God that I stand for. Those early Christians had a revelation of God’s word in their soul to the point where it mattered very little to them whether they lived for Jesus, or died for Him. That is the reason Paul could say, TO die is gain, but for your sakes it is better that I live. He had reached the place where the only important thing to him was to be found constantly abiding in the will of God, and that is what God is bringing His endtime church back to, that same faith and dedication, and He is using human vessels to lead His people to that place. Therefore let me say this, I am preaching this message mainly to give some preachers out on the earth a chance to either open their eyes to the reality of God’s word, or go on in their blinded state without excuse; so may God help all of us in this crucial hour.
FROM BEGINNING TO END
We are going to start in Genesis, and by the help of God, we will end up in Revelation. Genesis gives us the story of creative acts that started the cycle of life upon this planet, and Revelation lets us see where it is all leading to. In between the two books there are many critical questions to be answered, and that is what we will endeavor to do as we deal with the message. I am titling it, “In Search of Eden,” and the message itself will allow you to understand why. For six thousand years man has been on a journey through time. That journey started in the Garden of Eden, and ever since the day that God drove Adam from the garden, man has sought to find his way back into it. We will look at some of what has affected man’s journey, as he traveled through time, back to the garden, and we will climax the message with his arrival home in chapter 21, of the book of Revelation. This message is for believers, yet I realize that there may be some sitting among us who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord; so we just pray that there will be something said that will cause them to realize their need for such a relationship.
GOD’S WORD DEMANDS ACTION
Open your Bible to Genesis 1:27, where we will begin to deal with the man when he was first created. So God created man in His own image, in the image Of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them. Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish Of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” From those two verses we are able to see that while they were yet spirit beings, before they ever had a physical body, God gave them a command. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and have dominion, and so on. From that command, there are two things that stand out. First. Be fruitful, and multiply. That became an obligation, a responsibility. It was the spoken word of God. It was a mandatory law, and it demanded action. Now God is not on earth today, in the sense that He is still here speaking mandatory laws. Everything we see going on is a result of God speaking way back then. Once God speaks something, it becomes mandatory law, and the law itself demands action. The action on the part of earthly creation, will bring forth the objective of God, and that objective is revealed in the second thing that we want to point out. What is it? REPLENISH the earth. Not just PLENISH, which means to fill up, but REPLENISH, which means to fill up again. Now this is not Adam’s words. This is God’s own language used here. He is the one that knew the planet earth, where He was going to put the man, had at one time already been populated with life, and He had determined to have it repopulated. This very language proves beyond any shadow of doubt, that God is the very source of all knowledge and wisdom. From Him, came all of the scientific knowledge that natural man is so proud of. Yet it seems that the gap between science and religion grows wider in every age. While spiritual religion is dedicated to the task of keeping alive the concept of God as a creator, and of a spirit world: science is dedicated to disproving those beliefs: yet it seems that they are constantly making discoveries, that to the spiritual mind establish even more so, that there has to be an intellect behind all of what science attributes to mere chance. Science more or less follows along the line, Or pattern of Cain, and religion runs along the Abel and Seth line, and every bit of it had its origin right here in these creative acts of God. I will just have to say, God knew that man would follow the trend that he has, and that is why He concealed the fact that there was a prehistoric life upon this planet. He had it recorded in such a way that only the spiritual man can discover the truth of it all. Those who refuse to accept the authority of the scriptures could never know the truth about the many things they are uncovering, and dating back millions of years. In other words, just to put it in very plain words, religion easily makes a place for science without compromising, but science cannot fit a belief in God, and creation into all of their theories. Naturally there are a lot of people who believe that science is outsmarting those who believe in God, but the true believer knows that God is allowing all these scientific discoveries for a purpose, and he is not alarmed by any of it.
MAN’S FOOD
Alright now, verse 28 has another command. These commands were given to the man and wife before they ever had physical bodies to carry them out, but once God placed them on the planet, earth, in their physical bodies: they knew they were to multiply and refill the earth, and they also knew that God had commanded them to SUBDUE it, and have dominion over all the rest of His creation. That included all the fish, the fowl of the air, and everything else that had life and moved about on the earth. Then He told them that every herb bearing seed, and the fruit from every tree yielding seed was for their food, and all the green herbs was for the animals, and the rest of His living creatures. That would be for these plenishing of the physical bodies. In other words, these two spirit beings had perfect understanding of what their roles were to be once they were placed upon the earth. In chapter 2, verse 7, the man is given his physical body, and verse 8, says, “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden: and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.” In other words, beautiful fruit trees. Also beautiful vegetative plants. Brothers and sisters, those seeds were already in the ground from a former time when the earth had all these things growing. They were just lying dormant. It is a scientific fact that seed can be shut up where they are kept away from oxygen, moisture and heat, and they will keep for centuries of time. Freeze them, and keep them frozen, and their germination will last until they are thawed out. When they opened the pyramid Keops, which is thousands of years old, they took grain out of it, and some of the universities took part of it, and planted it, and it grew. That lets me know that all God had to do was warm this old planet up, bringing it out of its chaotic, frozen-Ice Age, where He had judged the prehistoric world, and it automatically began to sprout forth from those seeds that had been lying there all that time. The first verse of Genesis tells us that, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” but there is no way for us to know just how many million years there was, between verse 1, and verse 2, where the Spirit of God began to move upon the face of the waters. There is no doubt in my mind that this without form, and void state of darkness, was the result of a former judgment of God upon the prehistoric world. We have explained in other messages, why we believe the earth was God’s testing grounds for His angelic creation in a prehistoric age, and how He judged it, and froze it up for so many million years, until verse 2, of chapter 1, where He began to bring it out of that frozen state. Therefore we will just say, God was getting it ready to test man whom He has created in His own image, and after His likeness. Believe me, He was not doing anything in ignorance. Nothing that the man ever did was any surprise to Him. That is why the Bible says, “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” (Acts 15:18) It just takes time to manifest it all. From what we are going to bring out in this message, I believe every one of you should be able to see where the doctrine of predestination fits into the plan and purpose of God. You should also be able to see more clearly, why mankind stands in need of a Savior. The sad part is the fact that the door of salvation is soon to close, leaving countless multitudes on the outside to face God’s wrath.
MOSES WROTE BY REVELATION
Let us read the rest of verse 9 now: “Out of the ground God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food, “but notice the rest of that verse. “The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. “The last half of that verse takes on a mystical veil. The average church goer reads right on through it, without ever discovering that the natural plant life trees are only those mentioned in the first half of the verse. They never even stop to think about what the tree of life actually is. Anyone who knows that the tree Of life is not a natural plant life tree, certainly ought to realize that the tree of know not be a plant life tree either, but sad to say, most of them fail to see any difference. Brothers and sisters, how many of you realize that the first five books Of the Bible were written by Moses more than a thousand years after the flood? This story of creation had never been recorded before that. Therefore that lets me know that Moses had to write this record from a revelation that God gave to him. Whatever knowledge men had before that had just been passed down orally, and the only thing that men knew this side of the flood, was what Noah’s family had passed on to them. I am persuaded that if you could have watched Moses, after he had been chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of bondage, you would have seen him at various times when they made camp to rest, sitting somewhere by himself, using a rock for a desk, writing down the revelation that God had instilled in him. I am sure also, that if we knew all the details of what transpired from the day God began to speak, there in Genesis 1, we could write many volumes of books, but when God inspired Moses, he just condensed the revelation into a few short books, and much of that is written in a sort of mystical language. On the surface it all appears so natural, but behind many of those phrases lies a truth that can only be known by revelation, as it is with these two trees in the midst of the garden. Be sure you keep those two trees in your mind as we continue on in the message.
GOD RESTED
Remember now, God took six days for all of His creative acts, and on the seventh day He rested. Man has been on his journey through time for six thousand years, and it appears that he has just about reached the end, his journey through time is just about finished; he is almost home. In order to get our thoughts together, let me remind you that the Bible says, a thousand years is as one day with the Lord. Also let me remind you that the 6 days of creation were not just 6 days of 24 hours each. It was not until the 4th creative day, that God brought the planets into alignment so that there was a way to mark off a 24 hour period of time. Nevertheless, in six creative days God finished all His work, and He rested the seventh day from all His work, and even though to Him everything was a finished work, there was not yet man nor beast on the earth in physical flesh. He had created man in spirit form, He had created animals, fowl and all sorts of creeping things in spirit form, and He ended all His creative acts, and rested, but from that very moment, all of that which He had spoken became an action. He looked upon all that He had made and saw that it was very good, and while He rested, His creation began to take on form. During this time the planet was slowly being brought out of its frozen state of darkness by returning it to a relationship to the sun. As that ice began to melt the excess water began to vaporize and return to the atmosphere above land to appear and make way for all those seeds that had been frozen in it, to begin to shoot forth. All they needed was for the sun to warm up the ground. I saw a minor confirmation of that in Norway when we were there. The winters are very cold and the extreme temperatures of freezing and thawing make it impractical to use concrete for their sidewalks, so they use asphalt because of its elasticity. But I noticed as we walked along that there were little raised places ever so Often, and I asked Bro. Strommen what caused it. He replied, That is where little seeds have sprouted, and they are trying to force their way through. I thought, Praise God! When the sun gets that kind of life warm enough, it has to start expressing itself. Each day, it looked like they raised up a little more. I just thought to myself, Before long, there will be a little weed or something burst out through those places. That asphalt absorbed the heat and just pushed it into the ground even more, giving even more strength to those little sprouts below.
A FAN SEPARATES
Men have read this creation story all down through the ages, and many of them, or most of them, we could probably say, have pictured God out there with sacks of seed, a hoe, and a shovel planting a garden. I do trust that I am speaking to some people who know better than that. Brothers and sisters, every revelated person understands that God was not in a physical form planting a garden, but perhaps many of you have never given any thought to exactly what happened. God just caused His presence to begin to shine upon a certain area of the earth that He had chosen as the place of the beginning of all that He has commanded. His very presence brought about the necessary conditions for His garden to begin to sprout and grow. Now this pertains to all of the plant life that was growing there, but not to the other two trees that are mentioned in verse 9. When you read that verse, pay particular attention to the word ALSO, and you will understand better, that these two trees were different from the rest. I can say, by the authority of the word of God, that neither of these two trees were from the rest. I can say, by the authority of the word of God, that neither of these two trees were trees of plant life. It is definitely hidden from the natural mind, as to what these two trees were because of its mystical wording, but God wants His end time believers to know the truth about what happened in the Garden of Eden. As we deal with this message, I intend to bring in various statements that the prophet to this age made in connection with these trees. By this, I hope to show you where many precious people get off course, and end up completely out of the scriptures trying to believe every statement that he made. I will have to say again, something that I have said many times, You may have sat under Bro. Branham’s preaching for 30 years, but, if what you heard did not put you in the Bible, you did not hear the word of God. You just heard something that satisfied your carnal thinking, and you are void and destitute of a revelation. Since God knew there would never be another messenger, and separation would follow his message as we approach the end of the age, He ordained that there should be a separating fan within the framework of his message. Therefore I say to every one of you, If you allow that fan to separate you from the Bible, the very book where Bro. Branham got every message he ever preached, you definitely are not a foreknown seed of God.
THE RIVERS OF EDEN
Let us get back to our search for Eden now. Verse 10, “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became into four heads.” Now if you were to look at a map of the area we have under consideration, you would immediately come up against an obstacle. Because you would not see that geographical area laid out as it is pictured here in the Bible. Just remember, you are living 4000 years beyond the flood, and you must accept the fact that the flood changed somewhat, the layout of the terrain, but the identities of those rivers are still in the earth today. When Abraham came into Canaan land: there was no Dead Sea, so there have been changes since the flood also. While Abraham was living between Hebron and Beersheba, judged Sodom and Gomorrah by opening up the earth and sinking them, raining down fire and brimstone upon them. (The fire and brimstone was probably a volcanic eruption.) Since that time, there has been a Dead Sea. God uses earthquakes and such like as means of judgment many times, and the results of those changes serve a purpose of God in something else. When this old planet reels and rocks one day, under that great display of God’s wrath according to Revelation 16:18, I want you to know, it will not just be Los Angeles, California, that will be affected. Louisville, Ky, Chicago, Illinois, Indianapolis, Indiana, the rest of them will feel that earthquake. There has never been one like it before, since men have been upon the earth. The cities of the nations will fall. The islands, and the mountains will disappear, and I am persuaded that there will be land appear that has been obscured from the sun for centuries upon centuries of time. Therefore, when this old planet moves out into the millenium, the topography, the geographical layout of it will not be anything like it is now. You might say it like this; With the stroke of God’s hand, He judges a sinful generation, buries them, and prepares the land for a righteous people to step out upon. That is why we realize that this description of these rivers here in Genesis will not match any map that you can find around today, but let us examine them a little. This river went out of Eden and parted, and became four. First let me say, the word Eden here, simply means, beginning of God’s creation, or paradise of God. Actually paradise belongs to the spirit world. Man has sought various ways to achieve a paradise, but to no avail. You can plant beautiful trees, shrubs, flowers and make a place ever so beautiful and restful, but it is God’s presence that makes it paradise. Eden was where God had chosen to place His presence; it was paradise. Verse 11, “The name of the first (river) is PISON: that is it which compasseth the whole land of HAVILAH, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good; there is bedellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is GIHON: the same is it that compasseth the whole land Ethiopia. ” If you were to look at a map to see where the land of Ethiopia lies, south of it lays in the plateau part of North Africa, and the headwaters of the Nile drain that area of Ethiopia. It drops on into what we call, Upper Egypt and to Alexandria and into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is a river that civilization sprang up around, and it lies over to one extreme side of Eden as it was in the days Moses was writing about. Verse 14, “And the name of the third river is HIDDEKEL: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria.” That is the ancient river called Tigris. It flows right down through the old Persian territory and empties into the Persian Gulf. “And the fourth river is EUPHRATES.” It lies between Syria and Iraq. This is the river that flowed through ancient Babylon. These two rivers (Tigris & Euphrates) are very wide as they go into northern and central Asia. They drain the high mountain regions, and as they get close to the Persian Gulf, they almost come together. It creates a gigantic valley, going into the Persian Gulf. They do not actually run together, but looking at a map, they appear to.
UNIVERSAL PARADISE DELAYED
What we have now is the Nile for the furthest boundary on one side, and the Tigris on the other. Look at a map and get this geographical area fixed in your mind, and then we will go to school for a little while. If they ever taught you anything about the beginning of civilization, where man in his civilized form had his beginning, they usually took you back to the fertile crescent. Recorded history goes back to those areas we have just described. Between the Nile and the Tigris you will find a gigantic area of earth, in which you will find much desert country, but that is the very area where God first placed the man He had created. Right there is where God placed His presence in a very special way. Man was put there with a command to repopulate the earth, and to subdue all the rest of the creatures that had been created, and have dominion over them. Historically this area is referred to as the fertile crescent, for the history of mankind upon earth traces back to that very area. That is why you read in different geography books about the ancient civilization in the Euphrates valley, along the Tigris river, and along the Nile. The only thing is, all of what you read about, refers to this area as a desert or semi-arid country, and we know that it is, but I do not believe it was like that six thousand years ago. If sin had not entered the picture the Middle East would not be a gigantic semi-arid desert country today. It would be a beautiful country, with all sorts of vegetative life, and an animal kingdom walking in perfect harmony with each other. Man in the glorious image and presence of God would be ruling just like God commanded him to do in the beginning. Brother, if not for sin the paradise of God would still be here. You would not have any desert in South Russia, Neither in China, nor in southwestern United States. The whole earth would be one gigantic Garden of Eden. That was God’s purpose, but man whom He entrusted the whole thing to, after He got it started, disobeyed Him, and that disobedience has ea God’s paradise throughout the whole earth, to be delayed for a few thousand years. But rest assured; He will still have it. The millenium will restore us back to that original state.
GOD’S CREATION MATERIALIZES
Brothers and sisters, up to this point, we have endeavored to get your attention focused on two or three main points that will help you better understand what the plan of God for mankind was, and what area of the world it all started in, and how God actually activated what He had spoken. Now we have some other points to work into the message, that I believe can help a lot of confused souls, if they will just allow it to do so. My only reason for preaching, or printing a message like this is to try and help some precious believing souls to see the reality, and the necessity for getting their experience with God back into the Bible, and in line with revelated truth. Men have searched the world over for the Garden of Eden that Adam was driven out of, but they will never find it this side of the millenium. The kind of place they are looking for does not exist today, but I am thankful that there is enough recorded in God’s word that we can know the general geographical area, that, in the beginning was called the Garden of Eden. Now we all know that Adam and Eve were driven from something, and that has left many huge questions in the minds of men; What kind of a place were they driven from: Where is it today? Is it a beautiful place to look upon? Is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil still there? What about the tree of life? Why does Genesis 1:27 say that God created the man in His own image, and 2:7 says He formed him from the dust of the ground? Brothers and sisters this is the kind of questions that were constantly hurled at Bro. Branham, and many times his answers to them did not match what God had previously anointed him to bring forth in a message. Nevertheless he was the prophet of God to this age of Laodicea, and the word of God that he taught should lead every believing soul back into the Bible that man had gotten out of. As for the tree of knowledge of good and evil: I remember one time when Bro. Branham said, “That tree was the serpent.” I remember the man in His own image, and 2:7 says He formed him from the dust of the ground? Brothers and sisters this is the kind of questions that were constantly hurled at Bro. Branham, and many times his answers to them did not match what God had previously anointed him to bring forth in a message. Nevertheless he was the prophet of God to this age of Laodicea, and the word of God that he taught should lead every believing soul back into the Bible that man had gotten out of. As for the tree of knowledge of good and evil: I remember one time when Bro. Branham said, “That tree was the serpent.” I remember also, that he said, “The tree of life was Christ.” I thought to myself, Christ in what form? We know from the scriptures that God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone: I will make him an help meet for him.” That is when God formed from the ground every beast of the field, every fowl of the air, and so forth, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. He had already spoke it, and now He is acting to manifest the physical part of His great plan. This makes Him creator. That is why we call Him Father. It was one thing for Him to say, “Let there be. Let there be. Let there be,” but it took the rest of His plan of creation in order to place that spirit man on the earth in a physical body. He formed the serpent’s physical body from the same substance that He formed the man from, and I want to assure you right now, that the serpent was not a snake. That serpent walked upright just like the man in the line of God’s creation. He was in the same general physical likeness as the man, with an intellect that allowed him to communicate with God’s human creation. The very reason your scientists and evolutionists spend so much time looking for the missing link between man the highest form of animal life, is because they do not believe what is written in verse 14, chapter 3. There God said to the serpent, “Because that hast done this, (seduced Eve) thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” He was taken from the head of the animal creation, and placed at the very end. Now of course, there were snakes, already, but they were not serpents, and yet man is so prone to refer to every snake he sees, as a serpent. Scientists have evidence that there was once a creature that stood in the gap between the human family and the present animal family, and that is where they derive their strong argument for evolution. They believe man evolved from some higher form of animal life, all because of certain things they have found in the earth’s crust. God has confused them all, simply because He did not have Moses write everything about the prehistoric world. However, there is enough written for the spiritual man to put the pieces together by reading between the lines. That is an advantage we have because we believe the word of God. We do not have to deny the fact that they are finding fossils which they date back millions of years, because we know there was a prehistoric world. We know there was a prehistoric creature that walked upright like man, and we are sure that over a period of possibly millions of years, there was a process of evolution working on that creature. Has it not been so in the six thousand years since Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden? Adam did not know one thing about melting iron, nor building an airplane, nor a steam ship, but just look what man has done with the elements of the earth in the past few years. Then consider the advancement in man’s physical structure. This is all a law of God once He sets something in motion. Look at all the different breeds of cattle, horses, dogs, cats and so forth. All of this has evolved from one pair of each that Noah saved from the flood. Let me be quick to point out, that the serpent was not the prehistoric man though, lest some of you start thinking in that direction. We will just say that the serpent was in the likeness of the prehistoric man. But we must realize that when God brought this earth out of its void state of darkness, there was no existing animal life on it. The serpent was given to Adam no doubt, as a servant. This is why he had an intellect, and the ability to talk to Adam, and to Eve, as we see in chapter 3. “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it; neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.” Knowing what you know about this incident, can you possibly imagine a big old snake hanging from an apple tree, talking to Eve like that, as most of the religions portray it? They think I am crazy when I say that the serpent was in the form of a man, and that he seduced Eve sexually, and that this act was what constituted the partaking of the forbidden fruit, yet they feel very sane in their concept that a huge snake talked to her, and coaxed her into eating an apple that was able to make her very wise, and cause her to realize that she was naked. I ask you very plainly, if the tree of knowledge was an apple tree, then what kind of tree was the tree of life that was also present in the MIDST of the garden? Whatever the tree of life was then, it is still that today, so where is it? Saints! What is the tree of life! What do you eat to obtain eternal life today? You say, The word of God. That is exactly right. Let me ask you this then. What constitutes the eating of the word of God, if it is not obedience to what it says? Now do you see what I mean, when I say that if the tree of knowledge of good and evil was a plant life tree, the tree of life would have to be a plant life tree also? Do you see where that will put you, if you try to believe that? In order to obtain eternal life, you would have to find out where that tree was growing, and then be able to partake of its fruit. Saints, I believe you can see by now, that the tree of knowledge was not the serpent, and neither was it an apple tree, but rather, a law of God in connection with the command given to Adam to be fruitful, multiply and replenish. Sex for pleasure was against the will of God, and Satan used the serpent to introduce it to the woman, and she then persuaded Adam to partake of the act for pleasure, rather than just for the purpose of reproducing themselves with off-spring. I am saying all of this in order to get your attention, and help you see that the tree of life was God’s perfect law, that was to regulate the reproduction activity of His son and daughter, whom He had given the command to. Had they obeyed God’s word, Adam and Eve would have had sex relations only for the purpose of bringing children into the world. If sin had not entered the picture they would have known exactly when to have relations for that purpose, just the same as God’s animal family still does. The relationship for that purpose would have been holy, virtuous and pure in every respect, without any knowledge of sin, without a lust, and there never would have been any of this uncontrolled desire for each other, as we see between male and female today.
LAW OF LIFE VS. LAW OF DEATH
There are a lot of so-called preachers running around from place to place teaching people who will listen to them, that sex was only a means for God to test the obedience of His human family, and that He did not intend for them to replenish the earth through this act. They claim that Adam was to speak his offspring into existence, and we all know they got that idea from a statement Bro. Branham made to that effect. How foolish can a person be? Why did Eve have a womb in the first place, if she was not supposed to conceive and bear offspring? A woman certainly does not have to have a womb, just to have sex relations with a man. I hope you sisters realize that I am not just saying these things trying to be vulgar. It is necessary for me to use a certain amount of plain language, in order to remove all doubt as to what I am talking about. You have seen what people do with statements that are not expressed in detail. Just like the statement Bro. Branham made about the tree of life being Christ: you could not say that the statement was wrong, but neither could you say that it fully explained the tree of life. That is why I said, Yes, I will agree with that, but in what form was it Christ? We think of Christ as a man, but was it a man standing there in the Garden of Eden, that was the tree of life? If that is what it was, then Eve would have needed to have a relationship with Him in order to bring forth life. Do you understand that? In order for this statement to hold up: you must think of Christ as the Word of God, as it is expressed in St. John 1:1-4, and 1 John 1:1-2. When you understand these scriptures, then you also understand that the tree of life was not a man, but a spiritual law. Then you will understand that the tree of knowledge was not the serpent, but it was also a law. In other words, we can say it like this: God placed His son and daughter in the Garden of Eden, and provided them with everything their hearts could desire, but remember, they were created in the image of God Himself. That meant they could exercise their own will. Therefore God placed in their midst two spiritual laws, a law of eternal life, and a law of death. To obey the word of God was to eat from the tree of life. But to disobey the word of God was to eat from the tree of death called the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now to take all of the mysticism out of what God said to them, just suppose you had been listening, as God spoke to them, and you might have heard words something like this, “Adam: you have all these fruit trees growing here that you may eat from whenever you choose, and you are to dress the garden and take care of it, but your main purpose is to multiply and refill the earth. Therefore, when the woman’s cycle comes around you should have relations with her for that purpose, but only then, and only for that purpose. If you partake of this relationship for any other reason, you will surely die. I leave this command with you. This is my will for you.” If Moses had used plain language like this, modern religionists never would have seen an apple tree in the garden, but it was written like it was so that only those who have a revelatory Spirit within them can know the truth. All others will have to be left to perish with their theories. If they want a snake hanging from an apple tree limb, talking to Eve, and persuading her to eat one of his delicious apples that could make her wise like a god, knowing good and evil, God will let them have their theories, but they will never be caught up in the rapture and escorted to the marriage supper, believing such nonsense as that. Most of these people are so blind to reality, they do not even know the difference between the devil and this serpent in the garden. They actually accuse us of teaching that Eve had a sex relationship with the devil, simply because they read in the Bible where Satan is referred to as, that old serpent.
CAIN — SON OF THE SERPENT
Brothers and sisters of Faith Assembly, I realize that you understand this, but please bear with me; this message will fall into the hands of some who have never heard these things before, therefore they need more clarification than you who have followed this message for years. Now for this reason, let me stress the fact that the serpent was NOT the devil. He was part of the animal kingdom that God gave to Adam, but he was intelligent, he was informed, and he stood next to Adam in physical similarity. I am sure he knew all about pumpkins, watermelons, squash and such like. In other words, he was endowed with earthly knowledge, earthly wisdom. That is why his offspring turned out to be the inventors of the first evil things that ever occurred upon earth. Yes the serpent had offspring. Cain was not a son of Adam; he came out of that relationship the serpent had with Eve. If he had been Adam’s son, he would have been recorded in Adam’s genealogy, and he would have been a son of God like Abel and Seth, and Seth’s offspring, and he would not have committed murder. Cain was a son of the serpent who had allowed Satan to take control of his mind and inspire him to contradict the word of God in his efforts to seduce the woman. That caused his offspring to have attributes of one that the Bible calls a murderer, and a liar, SATAN, the devil. Some people think that little encounter the serpent had with Eve was just a little ten minute thing, and then it was all over, but I am persuaded that it took him many days to break down Eve’s resistance. Remember, she was a daughter of God. She knew what God had commanded then, and I do not believe she was easily led astray. I can see that old serpent watching for every opportunity to approach her, and work on her mind. Finally, he got her to thinking, maybe God is withholding something from us that we could benefit by, and she gave in to her seducer. Once she had yielded herself to him, she discovered that this which God had forbidden them to partake of for this cause, was pleasurable, and desirable, and pleasant to the eyes, and so forth; therefore she offered herself to Adam with sufficient persuasion to cause him to go against what he knew to be the will of God also. Now it truly did open their eyes to the knowledge of good and evil, but that was not to their benefit like the serpent had claimed it would be; it was to their hurt. After that experience, they became ashamed of being naked, and tried to cover their nakedness by making little aprons out of fig leaves. Then they hid themselves from God when He came to fellowship with them in the cool of the day.
THE SERPENT SEDUCED EVE
Denominational religious people get very upset with you when you say that the forbidden fruit was a sex act for the wrong purpose. They get real stern about it, and say, But the Bible says that they ate the fruit. How did they eat of it? Was it with their teeth? If they sinned with their mouth, why did they put the aprons over their loin section? Why did they not cover their mouth? Furthermore if they ate fruit from plant life that brought about sin and death, then redemption would have to come by the same means, so how did blood get into the picture? They were naked from head to toe, yet when they realized they were naked, they only covered the loin section of their naked bodies. Why? I say the answer to that is very obvious; they covered the part they had sinned with. God called out, “Adam; where art thou?” Adam answered back, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. Who told thee that thou was naked? Have you eaten from the tree whereof I commanded thee not to eat of? At that moment Adam passed the buck, so to speak. The woman whom thou gayest me to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. God said to Eve, What is this that thou hast done? She answered back, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. Now that word beguiled, means deceived, enticed, lured and in the Strong’s concordance it actually gives it, as one of its meanings, morally to seduce. By lies and misleading words, he enticed her to do something that God had told them not to do. God did not even ask the serpent WHY he did that; He just plainly said, “Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. God took his arms and legs off, and made him a snake. I have been asked many times. Bro. Jackson: Did the serpent have a mate? If so, what happened to her? He surely did have a mate. It was God’s purpose that every species of His creation replenish itself, male and female would come together just for that purpose, and the serpent was no exception. Therefore when he was cursed, his mate went with him. Otherwise you would have had two creatures upon earth without a mate, and unable to reproduce another of their kind. But Bro. Jackson, that does not seem fair. Nevertheless it is in continuity with other judgments that God has imposed. Take the case of Achan, in the 7th chapter of Joshua. When he sinned, the whole tribe of Israel had to suffer shame at the hands of their enemies. Then when the thing was traced to Achan, not only was he stoned to death and burned with fire, but everything he had was destroyed including his family, all of his sheep and oxen, and everything of his tent and all. You just do not question the wisdom of God in these matters. But I say to you in the name of Jesus Christ, The female serpent went with her mate in the curse. Is there still serpents on the earth today? Others will ask. Absolutely, but they are out there someplace, in the reptile family. How do I know that? From the word of God of course. Let me first read Genesis 3:15, to get the rest of what God said to the serpent when He cursed him. Then we will read a scripture from Isaiah, that should finish answering that question. As God continued speaking to the serpent he said, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between THY SEED and HER SEED; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Does that mean that the serpent went ahead and pregenerated himself? Yes, but we will read Isaiah 65:25, which reaches all the way into the millenium, and you can see it for yourself. Now we all know this scripture is dealing with the millenium, so notice what it says. “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, (now that has not happened yet, but it will) and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: (All the lions we know of, have to have meat for their diet, but there is coming a day when they will chew grass and so forth with the cattle of the fields.) and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountains, saith the Lord.” Did you get that? In the millenium, the curse will be lifted off of everything but the serpent. But he will still be here, and he will still be in the reptile family. That much is made clear from this scripture. Then we know that if there is still going to be serpents in the millenium, he had to have a mate, right? Eve is the only one who could have made the difference in the way this story reads. When the serpent approached her, if she had just said, I know what God said, and I know what He meant, so you get out of here and leave me alone, the serpent would still be an upright creature as he was then. Also, Adam and Eve would still be as they were then. That law of the tree of life would be producing sons and daughters of God through the sex act, but there would never have been any X-rated movies like we have down here on the highway. Neither would there have been any need for a jail, nor police officers, nor welfare programs, nor any such like.
ANGELS BECAME DEMONS
We are covering a lot of ground in this message, but there are a lot of statements floating around out here, that are causing confusion among precious people who do not want to be confused. Therefore if we can provide scriptural answers to their questions, they will no longer need to battle confusion. When they read Bro. Branham’s message on marriage and divorce, and find where he said, that sex was not the original means for reproduction, it was the spoken word, and then they read where he was talking about how women use their bodies as a cesspool, and said, the sex glands were put in the human body for reproduction, all they need do is hold both statements up to the mirror of God’s word, and see which one reflects back a true image. Common sense teaches us that both of those statements could not possibly be right. Why do you suppose Adam prophesied like he did, when the Lord God presented the woman to him? (Gen. 2:23-24) “And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (Listen to this) Therefore shall a man leave his FATHER and his MOTHER, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Then verse 25 says, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Now Adam did not have a mother, Neither did he have a human father. Neither did Eve have a father and mother, but nevertheless, Adam did give this prophecy. It became the spoken word law of God. Every little baby that came into the world would have a father, and a mother. Not only in the human family, but in every family of all God’s creatures. The difference was, that it was only the human family that was going to be tested. Therefore the devil did not need to tempt the animals to go against the will of God. It was not the animals that stood in the place Lucifer at one time occupied; it was this man (Adam) that God had created. Brothers and sisters, in the prehistoric world when the Lord God used this planet to test His angelic family, Lucifer had dominion. He was in control of everything then, just like God commanded Adam to be, when He placed him in the garden. But Lucifer sinned against God and had his authority stripped from him. He was cast out of heaven and stripped of all his privileges simply because he failed the faithfulness to God test, and now, here he is in the Garden trying to get Adam to fail God also. He was only a spirit, and he knew Adam could never be taken over by him; therefore he conceived the plan to gain control over the serpent; then he would have a body that he could work through. We do not have much in the Bible to put the prehistoric picture together with, but there is enough, when the time is right, for the Holy Ghost to help you get it together, to let you know that God’s present creation dwelling on earth was not the first. When you take what Isaiah said about Lucifer, in chapter 14, and put it with what Ezekiel said in chapter 28, and with the various statements made by Jesus, John and Jude and others throughout the Bible, you get a pretty good picture of what happened in the prehistoric world, and also what happened in the Garden of Eden with this present creation. This fallen prince Lucifer, is trying to get back in control of the planet he once ruled. According to Isaiah, Lucifer became puffed up in his mind and set his sights on taking the very place of God. In all of his scheming and planning he managed to get one third of the angelic family to side with him, and he caused his animal kingdom to begin killing each other as his spirit got off on them, until the whole thing had to be judged by God. That judgment is what caused the earth to be without form and void, as it says in Genesis 1:2. God destroyed all the physical creatures that were upon the earth, and He cast Lucifer and his cohorts (those other angels that had sided with him) out of heaven. Instead of being helpers with God, all those angels have become demon spirits, helpers with the devil who is also called Satan. Regardless of what you call him, he at one time was Lucifer, the anointed cherub, chief of all the angelic family of God.
WE MUST CHOOSE
Saints, I hope you can see that this old earth is God’s testing grounds. That is what it was in the prehistoric age, and that is what it remains to be even today. Right this very moment there are people making choices that will determine their eternal destiny. Where are they? Scattered throughout this planet earth of course, Why are they making such choices? For the same reason Adam and Eve made their choice. Every individual upon the face of this old earth has the same two trees in their midst that Adam and Eve had, and they have to determine which tree they will eat from. Great multitudes are choosing the tree of death, but there are always some in every generation that choose the tree of life. It is just like God told the children of Israel one time, “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you this day: and a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known. (Deut. 11:26-28) God has a ministry in the earth today that is placing that choice before mankind. Will you believe the word of God, obey it, and live eternally, or will you reject it, live for the world, and doom your soul to be cast into the lake of fire? You could never blame God, when the choice is given to you with the end results of each choice clearly announced, if you make the wrong choice and have to suffer the consequences. Adam and Eve could not blame God for their fate, for God told them ahead of time that they would die if they disobeyed His commandment. One thing that thrills my heart the most is how accurate the word of God is. I do not rejoice over any one’s calamity, but I do rejoice over the fact that God is not washy washy. Whatever He says: you can stake your life upon it. Earthly parents have a tendency to threaten their children, “If you do such and such, I am going to whip you.” The child many times just goes ahead and does as he or she pleases, and never gets the promised whipping. But God is not like that. When He says something, He means it, and He never fails to carry through with it Because of that, when Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, they caused a death sentence to be passed upon the whole human race. You say, How could that be fair, when only Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the first place? That is very simple to explain, when you know how offspring carry the genes of all their ancestors. God imputed death to the first couple, but from that time forth, every little baby that was born into the world carried that death in its inherited nature That did not mean that they were hopelessly doomed though, for God had already provided a way for their redemption, it just simply meant that they were not born into the world free from the penalty of sin and death, as they would have been if Adam and Eve had not sinned. Through animal sacrifices man’s hope of redemption was kept alive until such time as another Son of God allowed Himself to be nailed to an old rugged cross to completely settle man’s sin debt with God forever. The price is paid for man’s redemption, but every individual still has a choice to make in the matter, that is just as serious as the one Adam and Eve was faced with. Will you believe that the shed blood of Jesus Christ settled your sin debt with God. and will you now walk in newness of life following the revealed will of God, or will you continue on in your old ways, and be eternally damned? That is the question. There is no sense looking for the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve was put out of, any other way. You accept God’s provided way of redemption, and live in the revelated light of it, and that will guarantee your entrance into that garden. Unregenerate mankind will never find such a garden upon earth, for as I have said many times before, Great armies have tramped right through the geographical area where Adam and Eve once lived, of, any other way. You accept God’s provided way of redemption, and live in the revelated light of it, and that will guarantee your entrance into that garden. Unregenerate mankind will never find such a garden upon earth, for as I have said many times before. Great armies have tramped right through the geographical area where Adam and Eve once lived, but the presence of God is no longer there, to make it a paradise as it was then. Saints let me impress upon you the fact that it is not a geographical area of this planet that we should be longing for, but rather, for the continual presence of God. The Spirit of God is a universal Spirit. In this present hour, He is no more present in one geographical location than He is in another. That is why I do not believe true people of God will be looking for a particular little spot of the earth to wait for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Any revelated Christian knows that when He comes, He will gather His chosen ones from the four corners of the earth, so to speak. This is why there will be some in the field, and others in the bed asleep; it will be daytime on one side of the planet when He comes, and it will be night time on the other side.
THE CURSE FOR DISOBEDIENCE
Brothers and sisters, there is still a lot of confusion among those who follow after the teaching of Bro Branham, simply because certain ones grabbed certain statements he made, and they never did take the time to weigh them against the various other statements he made on the same subject. For that very reason, you have dozens of versions of what the man taught. Those who truly did hear what he taught are using their Bible to carry on the message he delivered to this age, while all the rest are still wrestling with statements from Spoken Word books. I am persuaded that when he said the tree of life was Christ, he was thinking on this line. If Adam and Eve had carried out this same intimate relationship under the law of the tree of life, (just for the purpose of bearing offspring instead of just for pleasure) then every little baby that was born under that law would have come forth with perfect life, and would have walked in fellowship with God, as Adam did in the beginning. In other words, the baby that Mary gave birth to. in the manger at Bethlehem two thousand years ago, was the baby that every woman would have birthed under the law of the tree of life. Looking at it from that stand-point, we could truthfully say, The tree of life was Christ. God, through supernatural intervention, caused Mary to give birth to a little baby that had no inherited death in its makeup, and that child grew up to be revealed as the Son of God. But not everyone received such a revelation; some looked upon Him strictly as the son of Joseph and Mary. As a matter of fact, most of them did. It was the same way among those It was the same way among those who heard Bro. Branham. Many of them will hang on to the statement, that sex was not the original means for life, but they never consider the fact that he also said, sex glands were put in the human body for reproduction. Nor do they care that he said a number of times, Before Adam could come to Eve, she was already defiled, For goodness sake, people, if you have any perception at all, surely you know what he meant by that statement. Before Adam could come to Eve for that sacred relationship, she had already committed an act of fornication with the serpent, a sex relationship strictly for pleasure. It was time for Adam to come unto her, or she could not have conceived, but the serpent had their minds on the act strictly for the pleasure of it; Rather than for God’s intended purpose of reproduction. That is why God put a curse upon the woman’s female organs. Notice what He said to the woman, after He had cursed the serpent. (Gen. 3:16) “Unto the woman He said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” In other words, because of that curse every woman has increased periods, and they are accompanied by emotional disturbances, pain and discomfort that would never have been present under the law of life. Women would not be having these periods every 28 days, if not for that curse. Neither would they have all that physical frustration. Let us rejoice about one thing though; when we get to Revelation 21 and 22. there is no more curse; redemption is completed.
GOD WITHDRAWS HIS GLORY
God did not curse Adam’s body because of his disobedience; He cursed the ground, saying to Adam, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying. Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is ; the ground for thy sake; in sorrow t shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and I thou shalt eat the herb of the I field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. ” God then made coats of skin and clothed the man and his wife, but He could no longer allow them to remain in a position where they could partake of the tree of life, now that they were partakers of the tree of knowledge Therefore the Lord said, “Behold, the man has become as one of us, (God and His angels, not God in three persons) 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.” Now here is the picture As long as they were allowed to remain in the presence of eternal life, (God) the woman would know exactly when that law was to work in her body, (I have a reason for saying this) therefore God drove them from the garden, and placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life Natural man has always pictured in his mind these huge winged creatures guarding a gate to a literal garden, where they imagined would be two giant trees standing in the middle of it, one the tree of life, and the other the tree of knowledge, a tree of death. Saints, please notice the wording here God did not drive them out of the geographical area between the Nile and the Euphrates; He just drove them out of His presence. or removed His presence from them. Adam is to till the same ground he was taken from, so they did not go anywhere. They remained right there. the difference being that God’s glory was no longer with them. They could no longer see into the spirit world. They became earthbound. The cherubims were not guarding a gate; they were guarding THE WAY of the tree of life. God had already told the woman that from then on her desire would be to her own husband. In other words, they could have that relationship for pleasure. but God would not allow them to know it for pleasure on the one standpoint, and it still be for life on the other. You cannot live in sin and eternal life at the same time, so the cherubims were keeping the way of the tree of life. From that day until this, no woman has ever known exactly when she could conceive, by her own physical makeup. That is the reason so many of them continue to get in trouble. all the time. In the New York news, I heard that a doctor had invented a little gadget that, once it is perfected, it could be worn just like a wrist-watch, and it would let the woman know exactly when she could conceive. I just said to myself, Doctor, you are tampering with a law of God. Just about the time you get that thing perfected, God will knock on your door, and say, This is the end. They want to perfect a scientific egg, and a gene. They want to be able to regulate life; not only when it is to come; they also want a certain specimen of it to come forth at their command. That would make the man and woman free sex agents, and their off-spring would be controlled scientifically. Brothers and sisters, Satan has really taken a slap at this sacred relationship God ordained in the beginning. All of this just serves to let us know, we are at the end; God cannot allow this trend to proceed much farther. He will not allow man to defeat His universal plan of redemption, but He will allow many of them to think they have outsmarted Him before He judges them.
STUDY FOR TRUTH
Saints, I realize that many of these statements are repetitious, but before I end this message I want to be sure every true child of God that reads it, has read enough to settle their minds on questionable ideas and opinions. I want every brother and sister to study for truth like they have never studied before. This way, you will have peace of mind and joy of heart, and there will be nothing in your mind that can be identified with a cult. I despise to even think of cults, for they become prisons to those who join them. If I ever have to stand up in a courtroom to give an account of what I teach, I want to be able to say, It is in Genesis. James, Revelation, and through the whole Bible, and you have the audacity to tell me I cannot preach it. Then I will say, Why do you use this sacred book to take your vows of office, if the contents of it are so objectionable? I want the world to know that I stand for the contents of this blessed old book, from cover to cover. There is nothing in it that I have to avoid, nor hide from. If it is taught right, I believed right, and obeyed, it will guide us to glory, right into the presence of its glorious author. The Bible had been used for many different things down through the ages, and many of those who handled it could not have cared less about the truth it contains, but to the true children of God, it Is food for their souls, more precious than all the material wealth of the whole world. Certain people of our day, claiming to be preachers of this end time message of truth, have been heard to say, The Bible contains the message for Paul’s day, but the Seven Seals book contains the message for our day. Some of you may have heard statements to that effect, also, but let me tell you this, You will not find plurality of statements in the Bible, like you will in the Seal book. You will never find where Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, nor any other prophet of this Bible ever prophesied something one year, and came back the next year saying something different. I do not say these things to belittle Bro. Branham, but dual statements in his ministry were a reality, and they need to be faced and dealt with. We have a right to know the truth. Maybe some of you think I say too much about this, but if I do, it is because of all these characters running back and forth, quoting statements W promote their particular view-point, and claiming that every word Bro. Branham uttered after April 1963, was Thus saith the Lord, and I know he still made statements after that, that are different than the ones they quote. We are going to read some of them from the seal book in a few minutes, but first I want to call your attention to something in the 3rd chapter of the gospel of John, something Jesus said to Nicodemus.
MULTIPLIED SORROW
Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a theologian, a doctor of divinity of his day. But he came to Jesus one night, and said, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” Notice what Jesus said to him without even acknowledging his remark. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Now why would Jesus say such a thing to a man such as this, if it was not birth that got this whole thing off course in the first place? We are still dealing with the question, What is the tree of knowledge that Adam and Eve partook of? Jesus’ words to Nicodemus point right back to what took place in the Garden of Eden that separated God and man in the first place. Nicodemus said, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” To me, if there was nothing else to look at, this alone would point to the fact that it was a birth that got man off course, and out of harmony with God. The apple tree had nothing to do with it. It also lets us see that the tree of life is associated with a birth as well. Therefore that should get rid of any thoughts some of you may have had about natural plant life trees, called, the Tree of life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But to you who already know this, and your problem is trying to believe every statement Bro. Branham uttered, let me say this, There is no way you can do that. You cannot believe that Adam was supposed to speak his children into existence as Bro. Branham said at one time, and at the same time believed that Eve had a womb from the very time God separated her body from Adam’s and she had those cycles whereby she could conceive, before they sinned. We have already read the scripture, but if you will turn back to Genesis 3:16, we will prove that she already had those cycles in her body. Notice now, what God said to the woman after he finished dealing with the serpent. Verse 16, “Unto the woman He said, I will greatly MULTIPLY thy sorrow and thy conception: in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband. and he shall rule over thee.” Did you catch it? In order for her sorrow and conception to be multiplied, she would have to have such periods already. You cannot multiply something that does not even exist. In other words, under God’s perfect plan there never would have been any overpopulation in the world. He would have kept it regulated. But because of sex for pleasure and multiplied periods in the woman’s body, the world is grossly over-populated. The very act that got Adam and Eve and the serpent in trouble with God, keeps the whole world in trouble constantly. People are starving to death as well as dying with every kind of disease imaginable. Do not misunderstand my statement now. God only imputed death to them for their disobedience. That death sentence did not carry tuberculosis, cancer, heart trouble, and all those diseases that are so common in our day. Neither did it include lying, cheating, stealing or any of those things. These all came much later after the Cain’s line and Seth’s line began to inter marry. The point I want to emphasize though, is that God MULTIPLIED the woman’s periods. I will never forget the dream that God gave me, back in the year 1966. That is when this thing was really opened up to me. I had always said, I will never teach the serpent seed, until I know beyond any shadow of doubt, what that tree of life was. Then I had the dream of Genesis 3:16, and right there it was. It let me see that the woman’s one period, before the curse, would have been for life under the perfect plan of God. By yielding to the serpent, Eve gained the knowledge that sex could be pleasurable, and then Adam, but they had to suffer the consequences of their disobedience.
WHAT BROTHER BRANHAM SAID
Now we are going to read some of the statements that Bro. Branham made concerning this. On page 198 of the seal book he said, Look, the natural woman — Adam’s bride — before he came to her as a wife, fell for Satan’s scheme against the word of God by reasoning it. Before Adam lived with Eve as a wife, (in other words, before they came together for the purpose of reproducing themselves to fulfill God’s command) Satan beat him there. That is right. This was in the message dealing with the second seal, on March 19, 1963. On pages 241 and 242, he touched on the same thing in dealing with the message on the third seal. Notice now, what he said. Now there was a natural bride in the Garden of Eden. (Do you remember last night? that natural bride.) She was Adam’s sweetheart, not yet his wife; because he hadn’t known her yet as a wife. Just like Mary was Joseph’s wife, but he had never knew her yet. She was found with a child. See? Now, before Adam knew his wife, she was just a bride to him. All right. And we find out that God. . .she fell in the Garden of Eden because she failed to hold to God’s word. Brothers and sisters, you can plainly see where he put the emphasis; before Adam knew her, she was defiled by the serpent who had caused her to reason with the word of God. On page 242, he said, Don’t ever try to reason God’s word — just believe it! So she stepped out from there and before Adam ever got to her for a wife, she was already defiled by Satan! Statements like this have caused people to accuse us of believing that Eve had sex relations with the devil himself. Saints, the devil is a spirit. You do not have a sex relationship with a spirit. He only said that, because it was the devil working through the serpent, that caused him to do what he did. What you need to see from these three paragraphs is the fact that before Adam could come to his wife in that sacred relationship for the purpose of reproducing life, Satan had inspired the serpent to seduce Eve strictly on the basis of the pleasure that could be derived from the act. That is where the knowledge part comes in; they did not know anything about the pleasure part, before that.
WHY THEY HAD SEX GLANDS
Let us go to page 452, and read what he said about the sex glands while speaking about life in the new world, in immortal bodies. The female and male sex glands are all. . .They are all the same. There’s none of it no more. There’s no sex glands at all — not at all. You just think of yourself without a sex gland. (Notice now) The reason they were put in us was to repopulate the earth, you see. That will be enough for now. By that, we can see that his true revelation was not that Adam would speak his children from the ground, but there are some who love to hang on to such an idea for one reason or another. I wanted to read these statements which were made in the messages on the seven seals, mainly because a certain faction in this following claim that Bro. Branham actually only came into his true church age messenger and prophetic calling when he preached on the seats. From then on, according to them, he straight-previously taught differently. Brothers and sisters, to me, he was the messenger to this age from the time God first anointed him and he began to preach the gospel. These same people who claim he just entered his prophetic ministry in 1963, are always ready to show the film, The Deep Calleth to the Deep, when they have an opportunity. That was made in Washington, D.C., I believe it was the year 1954, and he stood right there on that platform and asked those people, Do you believe me to be God’s prophet? Of course he was God’s prophet. He was God’s prophet from start to finish. God continued to reveal things to him from His word, all through the years of his ministry, a little here, and a little there. That lets me know that no one sermon he ever preached, carried the full message he brought to this age. All along the way, he brought out little details from the word of God that fit together into a true revelation to the person who is able to be led by the Spirit of God. But on the other hand, in those same sermons, he would make statements that seemed completely contrary to what he had previously preached. Not just once or twice, but over and over again and again. That is why I say, If you are not one who knows how to pray and study, and be guided by the Holy Ghost, you would be better off if you did not even read the Spoken Word books. For without the Holy Ghost to guide you, how will you handle all those dual statements that you come across, as you go from message to message? God allowed him to utter many things, that I am persuaded to believe, was for no other purpose but to feed carnal minds that just wanted something to run with. His message was to the world; therefore he had to feed many types of people, but every statement that God inspired him to speak to the true seed of God, will one way or another, lead them right back to the Bible. While we are on this particular trend of thought, let us go to page 19, in the Marriage and Divorce mes-sage he preached Feb. 21, 1965. Some of these words are very plain, but they leave little doubt about what he was bringing out. In talking about the human makeup of the woman, he says, She is designed alone for filth and unclean living. A dog can’t; no other female can. It’s just the woman that can. A dog or any other animals — once a year, and that for her babies, not for sexual pleasure, but for her babies! But a woman is designed for any time she desires. A dog can’t, a woman can. Brothers and sisters, Is that not what I have been teaching? Why do the animals not use the act for pleasure? Because they do not know to. They only know that the relationship is to bear offspring. If they knew, they would, but they do not know. That just goes to show, their conscience is clean, even though they are only animals. When that time comes, it doesn’t matter where they are, but when it is over, the male goes his way, and the female goes her way. She conceives by that, to fulfill the command and law of life God placed in His creation. Brother Branham used these animals as a comparison to the degenerate woman who is just as plain with herself as they are, but the difference is, she sins, using the act for pleasure and profit, while the animals are only fulfilling God’s law of life. This thing of sex for pleasure became a hereditary knowledge passed down from generation to generation among the human race. Because of that, the devil has used the woman for every kind of perverted act imaginable, and degenerate man is lower than any form of animal. They will stand in line for hours for a chance to use such a woman. Animals do not live like that.
REALITY OF REDEMPTION
Bro. Branham goes on to speak of how the woman was not in the original creation, how she was a by-product of man. If she had been in the original creation, she would not have done such a thing, no more than the animals which were in God’s original creation. God created male and female of every species except the man whom He made in His own image. The reason for this was, that man was going to be tested to see whether he would stay shielded behind the word of God. Therefore Satan had to be allowed to attack the weaker of the two, and the weaker one was the woman, because she was not of God’s original creation. You say, But why did God do it like that? It was to set a type. God did not want a family of robots, doing only what they were told because they had no other choice. He wanted a family that would do what they were told because they chose to obey of their own free will. Does that rule out predestination? No. Predestination is hinged upon God’s foreknowledge. You are predestined because God in His great mind can see the end from before the beginning. He designed His human family so they could sin if they chose to. Then those who choose to obey Him, bring joy to His heart. He took Adam’s bride from his side, to set a type of the bride of Christ that would be taken from His side through the elements of water, blood and Spirit. Redemption was a reality in the mind of God before He ever created the man that would need it. You must see that this is all a beautiful plan of God, to fill the world with sons and daughters that love Him, where by their own free will, they love Him, and obey Him. It does not matter to Him that it will take 7 thousand years to do it, in this manner. What is 7 thousand years, compared to time without end? Certainly God could have had the world filled with obedient children, immediately, if He had created them so they could not possibly disobey Him, but where would be His honor, His glory, His joy? Furthermore they would not be in His own image and likeness, if they had not been given a will, and the ability to make choices. Therefore He took Adam’s wife out of his side and set a law in motion whereby they could reproduce themselves through natural birth. By the same token, a bride is being taken from the side of Christ Jesus through the elements of redemption, and that is what constitutes the new birth. Praise God! That which we lost through our first birth, we gain back by a second birth, in God’s process of redemption. Hallelujah! Praise His name! Not only was the man and woman created to reproduce themselves, and to repopulate the earth, they were also to subdue it, and rule it, and that is why they had to be tested. The animal kingdom did not need to be tested; they were put here for the sons of God to rule over. Paul had something to say about that in his epistle to the Romans, chapter 8, and we will start with verse 18. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” The millenium will restore everything except the serpent, and we have already read that scripture in Isaiah which shows that he will never be restored to his original state.
THE WOMAN — A FRUIT TREE
Let us read a couple more paragraphs from this Marriage and Divorce message while we have it here. On page 35, we will pick up paragraph 3. Every man that is born of a woman is born in death as soon as he comes, but when he is born into the creation of God, he cannot die! He’s from that other tree (OTHER TREE) that was in the Garden of Eden, Christ. Eternal life comes by that tree. Now this is the very statement that caused me to say, Yes. But Christ in what form? I knew, Christ as a man was not in the Garden of Eden. You just simply do not say, The tree of life in the Garden of Eden was Christ, and just leave it hanging like that without further explanation. Christ Jesus, as a man, did not come into existence until He was conceived in the womb of Mary, some 2000 years ago. Christ was that very life that was manifested in physical form from the virgin womb of Mary, and that is the life that Eve would have conceived and brought forth, had she not sold herself before the time. Therefore the tree in the garden was a spiritual law; they both were. One for life, the other for death. Now, let us finish Bro. Branham’s statement. After saying, Eternal life comes by the Tree. He goes on to say, “Oh,” you say, “she was a tree?” Sure. What He said was, “Thou shall not take of this tree.” God said it in Genesis, back there. “Thou shalt not take of this tree.” Why, the woman is a tree. She’s a fruit tree. You’re the fruit of your mother; the fruit of the womb is you. That’s right. And then the fruit of the Tree of life that was in the Garden of Eden, is Christ. Through the woman came death. Through the man, in the original creation, came Life. To be born of woman is death: to be born of Christ is Life. Get the idea? Now you see where the goddesses went to. don’t you? Brothers and sisters, I read from those two books in order to get Bro. Branham’s own statements into this message. Any of you that have these books may read them for yourselves, and take notice of when those sermons were preached. We could have went right ahead and read where he turned right around, and said, God’s original plan was by creation, not by sex. But that is one of the statements that so many have grabbed hold of: therefore our interest is to reveal those statements he made on the other side. Any way you look at it though, he still made dual statements after the year 1963, when some claim he spoke nothing but, Thus saith the Lord. I do not do this to belittle my dear departed brother, for I am ready to tell the whole world that he is the one who put me back into the Bible. But I am accused of not preaching the message that Bro. Branham stood for, so in my own defense, I have read to you from his own sermons, enough to prove that he had in his mind the very same things I teach, and have published, concerning that tree of life. That is why I have said, If a few of those people who claim to know so much about what the prophet taught, would read those books right, we would not have all of this confusion in the message.
Nevertheless, God is washing the little bride of Christ by the washing of the water of His word. She will be clean, free from man’s traditions, ready to meet the Bridegroom when He comes for her. Praise God! It thrills my soul, to think that God will perfect a people in spite of all this carnal mess of confusion, apostasy and idolatry.
GOD’S SONS DEFILED
We are going to leave the Garden of Eden now, on a little journey through time. Outside of the garden, two sons were born, Cain and Abel. Both of these sons were the very fruit of the womb of Eve, but only one of them was a son of Adam. Cain’s father was the serpent; he was never listed in the genealogy of Adam. I know, a lot of religious people scoff at the mere mention of such a thing, but it is a fact just the same. Even if there were nothing more to consider, just reading Adam’s genealogy should tell them something. Cain was the first one born of those two boys, and all the rest of the genealogies of the other sons of God, their firstborn is always the one mentioned, so I ask you, Why was Cain never mentioned in the genealogy of Adam? You can go to the 5th chapter of Genesis, and the very first verse tells you that it is a book of the generations of Adam, but it picks up with Seth, the son who took Abel’s place, and gives the firstborn of every one of them, and how long they lived, and that they begat other sons and daughters, but Cain is not mentioned. Why? Ask yourself, Why was Cain not in Adam’s genealogy, if he was his firstborn? In chapter 4, you will find that Cain has his own genealogy, and not too far down the line another man was killed. It was also Cain’s line that instituted the practice of polygamy. It was his man Lamech, the man who first had two wives, that also killed a man in self defense, and confessed it to his wives. All of this should help us see a little something if we will open our eyes, Cain being the son of the serpent could not be included in Adam’s genealogy, but he was begetting another line of offspring over there in the land of Nod, and that line had to be accounted for in this historical record, for after so many generations they began to intermarry with Seth’s line which was called, sons of God. There have been many projections from the minds of people about what happened in chapter 6, where Moses says that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair: and they took them wives of all which they chose. It is foolish for anyone to think that these sons of God mentioned here were angels. That would be completely out of harmony with the scriptures, to have angels coming down to earth, marrying earthly women, and raising families. On the other hand, to believe that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, and the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain is perfectly in harmony with the rest of the scriptures. Did not Luke (the gospel writer) trace the genealogy of Joseph (who was known as the father of Jesus which was the Christ) all the way back through Seth and Adam, and end by Adam being the son of God? That in itself does not prove anything except that it is in harmony with the scriptures to refer to Seth’s line as the sons of God. You may say, But they were also men. Yes, but remember this; Moses was distinguishing between two lines of people which were upon earth as he goes into chapter 6. Notice, “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they choose.” Moses moves from that statement, right to what God had to say about the situation, and then goes on to describe a condition that existed as a result of that intermarrying. Verse 3, “And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Before they began to marry those Cainite women and beget children by them. Seth’s line did not have any of those evil and wicked attributes in them. They had inherited death from Adam, but in every other way they were clean, and they were sons of God, because Adam was God’s son. Therefore for many generations, there was one line of mankind multiplying upon the earth that had no evil among them. But Satan was not satisfied with what he did to the children of God through the serpent. He plots to take another slap at God’s program, by causing the sons of God to become entangled with worldly women. These women had in their genealogical makeup every evil attribute that could be found among Cain’s descendants. Therefore when they began to marry the sons of God, and bring forth sons and daughters unto them, those children had, by inheritance through the genes, every attribute of both their father and their mother. From then on things began to change drastically. It seemed that the evil outweighed the good, until, by Noah’s day, his family that went with him into the ark, were the only ones fit to be saved. All the pure blood sons of God had already passed off the scene, because of the death sentence imputed to Adam when he disobeyed God. The cherubims had guarded the way of the tree of life, and because of the evil influence of these descendants of Cain, the whole human race just drifted further and further from God until He finally declared that He must destroy all of them. Only Noah found grace in His eyes. He allowed Noah, his three sons, and their wives to be spared from the flood of destruction. All the rest perished.
LONG RANGE PROPHECY
By the hour of the flood every human soul carried attributes of both seed lines. That is evident from the fact that Noah had brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and so on, that perished in that flood. If Noah had been free of all those evil attributes, so also would his brothers and sisters have been. Therefore they would not have perished, and neither would Noah have been found drunk later, after the flood. Now you may ask, How far were they, from the Garden of Eden when they became so corrupt that God had to destroy them!” They were still in the same general area. Earlier in the message when we established certain boundaries, using the Nile River on one side, and the Euphrates, and Tigris on the other, we did it from the word of God. This is where civilization sprang up from. It is known as the Fertile Crescent. This is the same geographical area that Adam and Eve were placed in when they were first given physical bodies. What they were driven from, as we have already stated, was the very presence of God. (God’s presence IS paradise.) So they were driven from His presence and stripped of their accessibility into the spirit world. They became earthbound creatures. To dwell in God’s presence is to have eternal life; therefore He would not allow them to live in the pleasure of the tree of knowledge, and continue to dwell in His presence both at the same time, so the Garden of Eden that so many have searched for does not even exist today because God’s presence is not there to make it that paradise it was then. But even though they were outside of that paradise of God, all those sons of Seth’s line did call upon God. Sometimes, as we read the scriptures we have a tendency to think of certain events one right behind the other, but we should take note of the fact that hundreds of years elapsed between the time Enos was born to Seth and the flood of Noah’s day. Now we do not know exactly where chapter 6 falls into the picture, but until the Seth line became corrupted by that inter-marrying between the two lines, they continued to worship God. Nevertheless Enoch, the father of Methuselah who lived to be 969 years old, during his 365 years upon earth, prophesied of God’s judgment upon mankind. Jude spoke of that in verse 14, where he wrote, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. Enoch had a revelation in his bosom, that God would judge ungodliness, and he walked so close to God, that God took him, without him tasting of death. He was sixty five years old when Methuselah was born unto him, and the very name he gave that child contained a revelation. The name METHUSELAH, meant, when he is gone, the end will come – Now you can figure it out for yourself by the scriptures, but Lamech and Methuselah both died just before the flood came. Enoch, no doubt talked much with God about all the ungodliness that he saw taking place, and he probably felt that God would soon judge the guilty ones, but God waited almost 700 years after He took Enoch, before He sent the flood. God let all the other righteous ones pass off the scene before He destroyed the world, leaving only Noah and his family alive to repopulate the earth. We think of Methuselah, only as the oldest man that ever lived, but the reason he lived that long was because he had to live out all the years that his name implied. That name had been given to him by God, through his father Enoch.
NOAH —RIGHTEOUS IN HIS DAY
Enoch had watched his fellow brethren take wives from that Cainite line, and he had witnessed the ungodliness of those people; therefore I believe this caused him to look up. God: What are you going to do about this? God gave him a revelation, and he prophesied of judgment, but he did not know when it would come. Then, when his son was born. God gave him his next revelation. When he is gone; it will come: so he named him Methuselah, but he still did not know when it would come, for Methuselah lived 669 years after God called Enoch up to be with Him. Nevertheless the prophecy hit right on the mark. Lamech died five years before the flood. He was Noah’s father, and he was Methuselah’s firstborn, but Methuselah died when Noah was six hundred years old, and Noah was six hundreds years old when the flood came. Can you see how true prophecy never fails? God let Enoch know what was coming, but He did not give him any dates that he could mark on his calendar. It is the same way today. We know what is coming, and we know that it is not too far off, but we do not have any authorized dates that we can mark on our calendar. Some are setting dates, but they have no authority to do it, and I am persuaded that God will not allow any of their projections to be accurate, for His very word has told us that no man is to know those things. The closest you can pet to those things is Genesis 6:3. get to those things is Genesis 6:3, where God said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” God spoke to Methuselah’s grandson, and told him to build a boat. He told him how large it should be, where to put the window, where to put the door, and every detail of how to construct it, and then He told him why he was having the ark built. In 6:17 we read, “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.” He went on to tell Noah what to take with him into the ark, of the animal kingdom, and so forth, and just one week before the flood rains came, God told Noah that in seven days the rain would begin, and that it would rain for forty days and nights. But Noah was ready; he had done exactly according to what God had instructed him to do. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, because he was a just man, and perfect in his generation. He walked with God. Does that mean he was a full blooded descendant of Adam? No. It is very easy to see that he was not. But he was righteous in his day, even though he had fallen attributes in his genealogical makeup.
METHUSELAH DIES —FLOOD COMES
One young man came and talked with me for about two hours, trying to convince me that the prophet said the serpent seed came over in the ark through Noah’s wife. I want to straighten that up in your minds before we finish this message. I was asked the question one time, Don’t you think Noah was a son of God? I said, Yes. Then don’t you think this serpent seed had to be in his wife? I said, No more than it was in Noah himself. How do you get a thing like that? It is very simple, if you have ever studied genetics, and I have. I have raised a few horses, just for the novelty of it, and I like to know a little something about breeding, and genetics, and that sort of thing. That is why I say, As the events of chapter 6 began to materialize, those mixed marriages injected fallen attributes into the genetic makeup of the sons of Seth line. Satan had bred up a line of people that carried these fallen attributes, and here, he managed to get them crossed into the sons of God line. These attributes carry certain spirits in them, and those spirits are adversaries of God. They produce evil. Now I believe these mixed marriages had their beginning somewhere in the days of Enoch’s life on earth. It troubled him greatly. He could see the condition getting worse and worse as he watched Methuselah get older and older. No doubt, in his heart he thought, Methuselah will be going just any time now, and God’s judgment will come. His concern caused him to draw closer and closer to God, as perversion and all sorts of ungodliness just continued to get worse. At age 365 years, God took him out of it, but He allowed conditions to become completely rotten before He finally judged it. Then let me say also, Somewhere before Noah’s time, either Methuselah or Lamech, one or the other, or maybe even both of them married one of those Cainite women, a woman that was not a full blood descendant of Seth. For just as I said earlier, If Noah had been a full blood descendant of Seth, then why did he have brothers and sisters that perished in the flood? If Noah had descended from a man and woman whose genetic line was pure, then all his brothers and sisters would have been full blood descendants of Adam also, and they would have been righteous also, and would not have perished in the flood. Now saints, Listen to me. God was not comparing Noah to Enoch his great grandfather, but the Bible does say that he was a just man, and perfect in his generation, and that he walked with God. We know that Noah had a little of that serpent seed trait in him, but compared to everyone else around him, he was a just and upright man. He walked with God, and did everything God told him to do. Verse 5, in chapter 7, tells us that. Besides that, there is (on top of Mt. Ararat) the remains of an ancient boat that testifies to the fact that Noah obeyed God. Men have been waiting for many many years to take a good look at that old boat. I do not know if God will ever allow it or not, but I will say this, If He does, some of these skeptics will have to change their tune. They will not be able to treat it as a myth anymore.
A STRANGE BOAT
Saints, just think about that ark Noah built, for a minute or two. When God told him how to build it, the plans did not call for a pilot house, neither a rudder, nor an engine room. It had no steering wheel, no port of departure, nor port of entry. It was not built by a seashore, it had only one door, and only one window, and that window was on top, looking straight up. No wonder all those other people thought Noah and his sons were crazy; who ever heard of such a thing? We all know the truth about it, though, do we not? It did not need any of those things, for God Himself was the pilot. He let that thing drift out there for months before He guided it over and rested it on top of Mt. Ararat. He told Noah and His family to go forth from the ark, and He told them what to do, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” But He did not have to tell them where to go; for when they came out of that old boat, after being in it for over a year, they came right back down into the Euphrates valley, the very geographical area where Adam and Eve were. As we said before: that is where all civilization sprang up from. You would have to say that Noah was a man that had some patience also, for they stayed in that ark for more than six months waiting for the ground to dry up, after they came to rest upon Mt. Ararat. One thing is sure enough; when a man is truly following God’s instruction, there is never any reason for him to be over-anxious, and get himself all worked up into a lather. When the time is right God Himself will cause everything to fall into place. Take the coming of the Lord, for instance. People have said, If So and So had done this and that, Jesus would have come a long time ago. I understand their thoughts, but that is not right. He could not come for His church until every predestined soul whose name appears on the book of life had heard the gospel and come into the sheep fold. We are looking for certain prophecies of the Bible to be fulfilled, that must be fulfilled before Jesus comes, but God could not let them be fulfilled until every person whom He had foreknown, was in. Even the apostle Paul looked for the return of Jesus Christ, in his day, but God had foreknown some sons that would not even be born until the Twentieth Century, so no matter how hard those early disciples prayed for His return, He could not return until those Twentieth Century sons were in. So do not allow yourselves to court the idea that the rapture is overdue because someone failed to do his part. When God wants something done, He will keep raising up men until He gets the job done, no matter how many of them fail to go all the way through with Him. He placed Adam and Eve upon earth with a command, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Then we find Him, more than 1600 years later, giving that same command to Noah and his three sons and their wives. Adam and Eve did multiply, but their whole program got off course, and the whole earth became so corrupt that God just erased the whole picture from His great black-board, and took a new start. What is 1600 years of time to God? He will have the earth filled both with man and beast, according to His great plan, even though many men have failed to carry through to the end in the thing God called them to do.
SERPENT SEED SURVIVES FLOOD
Now a careful study of the scriptures will reveal to you that Noah’s three sons had a mixture of those characteristics and attributes that existed in the whole human race just before the flood. Everything you see in mankind today, got there through those three sons of Noah. In other words the whole world has been populated by those three sons of Noah. When Paul stood at Mars’ Hill preaching to the Athenians, he told them how God had made the world and all that was in it, and that such a God had no need of anything that was by the hands of man. He went on to say that He had made of one blood (the blood of Noah) all nations of men, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. In Genesis 9:18-19, we read these words. “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Now those sons had the same revela-tion that Noah had. Do not try to tell me differently. They knew why they were in that boat, but just like Isaac, they had no control over those hereditary at-tributes that would come forth in their sons. Just look at all the different races of people in the world today, and try to realize, they all came forth from those three sons of Noah. Then realize that from those various races of mankind, God is perfecting a people for His name, a righteous people; they have the love of God in their hearts. While at the same time, many of them have brothers and sisters that are serpent seed. You say, How can that be? It all started in Genesis, chapter 6, ; when the sons of Seth’s line started marrying those Cainite women and begetting sons by them. Up until that time, all of Adam’s descendants were genuine sons and daughters of God. The only flaw in their makeup was a death sentence. But as we said earlier, when children were born from those mixed marriages, every one of those children carried hereditary traits of all of their ancestors on both sides. We have already established the fact that Noah was affected likewise. Therefore his three sons also carried in their genetic structure, – attributes from both lines of humanity. Their offspring were just as likely to be murderers, as they were to be righteous. That is how the serpent seed survived the flood. The only difference is, there is no more full blood seed line on either side. Every living soul upon the face of the earth carries attributes from both lines in his genetic structure. You look at a Title new born baby, there is not one evil thought in it, but give it a few years, and it may grow up to be a devil. Brothers and sisters: I am glad there is no way to tell about that, when they are little babies, for I love them all, and a lot of them know it. You can see them, after service, make their way up here to see me. It is sad to see what the devil does with some of them, later; But that is a fact of life, and we all know it. We just have to pray for them, teach them right, and leave the rest in the hands of God. Now we will never be able to get all that I want to say, in one issue of the paper, so we will just hold the rest until next month’s issue where we will deal with various phases of man’s journey through time, as he searches for the Garden of Eden that God drove Adam and Eve out of Man came from a garden, and he is going to a city. Praise God! Brother! It looks like a city on the outside, but on the inside it is a garden. We will get to that in the last chapters of Revelation, the Lord willing. Amen.
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