We are continuing the thought we were dealing with at the end of last issue. This element of the Branham movement that has disgraced the name of the very man they look to as God, will take Luke 17:30 and try their best to convince you that the Son of man mentioned in that verse is Bro. William Branham. Well I want to state emphatically, that he was not the Son of man of Luke 17:30. That verse belongs to none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. However you can look at the literature the Spoken Word Publications puts out and you will see, that they have Malachi 4:5-6, Luke 17:30, and Revelation 10:7 on it. Malachi 4:5-6 and Revelation 10:7 can be attributed to Bro. William Branham; but when you try to give him Luke 17:30 you have gone too far. Spiritual blindness is a terrible thing. Unless God reveals a thing to us by His Spirit, all we can do is apply our own carnal ideas. Your denominational church systems are full of that kind of thing; but you would expect those who sat under the ministry of God’s prophet messenger to this age to do a little better than that. It is as I said earlier, The movement as a whole saw something that they knew was God in action; but they cannot get it straightened out in their individual minds so they know what goes where. They have run the world over for 26 years spreading their ideas far and wide; but all they have accomplished above the fact that Bro. William Branham was the Messenger to this age, is that they have caused more confusion than there is out here in spiritual Babylon. Many of those preachers have had a lot more money to operate with than I have had; but I will have to say, We have given the people something that has helped untold numbers of them better understand this message; while all they have done is promote idolatry. That is all you can call it, when people worship God’s creation instead of HIM, the Creator. I respected Bro. William Branham and his ministry as much as anyone could have; and I readily admit that there were times when one would feel just like they were sitting under the ministry of Jesus Christ Himself; but there has never been a time that I felt I should worship him as God. Neither should anyone else who has the Spirit of God in them.
THE VOICE OF REVELATION 10:7
I feel that we should open our Bibles back to Revelation 10:7 and be sure we understand what that verse really pertains to. It is right to say this scripture pertains to Bro. William Branham; because his ministry truly did fulfill it; but there is a right and a wrong way to use it. That is what I want to talk about. We are living in the Laodicean Age, the last age of Christianity, the last generation of time allotted to Gentiles. That is why, as we read here in this 7th verse we need to know how it applied to him. “But in the days (it means, in that period of time) of the voice of the seventh angel” Let me stop right there, before reading the rest of the verse, and explain the terminology. The word voice, does not mean the articulating sound of the vocal chords. It does not mean that, yet it took that to put in motion the word and thought of God. In this instance, the word voice, applies to his message, and not to his actual vocal sounds alone. It is important for us to make that distinction; because the sound of his actual voice ended 26 years ago, yet his message is still sounding back and forth around the world even today. You find in the book of Acts how the word voice, is used in the same context that I am speaking of; and certainly we all understand what this pertains to. Notice how the apostle Paul used the word in this setting. (Acts 13:26-27) “Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent. For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them (the words of the prophets) in condemning Him.” In their synagogues on the Sabbath day, those Jews had the voice of their prophets according to the apostle Paul; and that is the exact same terminology that you find in Revelation 10:7. Therefore we understand that the word voice, does not pertain to the articulating sound of the man when he was actually alive; but rather pertains to his message delivered to this age. These are the days of that voice to many who are just now hearing it for the first time. Let me read the whole verse now, so you can see the context of the thought. “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” That does not mean, when he began to preach back in the early 30’s. It means, when what he had to say really began to be published and made known throughout the world as it still is today. The mystery of God is spoken in the singular and you can read it in Ephesians 3. It speaks of that interval of time called the Grace Age that God has given to the Gentiles. The prophets of old prophesied about it, but did not understand anything about it. The apostle Paul spoke of how God had made known unto him the mystery of His will, which in other ages, back in the Old Testament writing prophets era, it was hid to them. They wrote about it. They prophesied of it; but did not understand what they were talking about. Therefore in those days when this man’s message is being heralded and projected throughout the earth, this mystery concerning the Age of grace, (this Grace Age given to the Gentiles) should be finished. Naturally we notice the word should. How many times do you suppose people have been hung up on that one little word, should? Yet we know God is perfect in His language, and even caused the translators to use the right word, so it is not a wrong translation. It means this, It was not while the man was still alive that the mystery of God was finished. It is while his message is in the earth being heralded back and forth that the mystery of God should be finished. It is a progressive word. Not everyone heard it at the same time. As the message itself takes time for it to be heralded and published and preached and proclaimed, then the word should is applicable to whatever time it takes for that to be heralded. It is progressive because it just keeps on moving forward. Let me use this illustration of what I mean. I have blueprints to start a new house. (I am only using this as an illustration) I have the contractor. He has promised to come the week after next. According to the plans, the material, and everything involved, I would say that in three months he should have the house completed. I hope that helps you understand how you have to use the word should, in this instance. That is what it means. When his voice begins to be preached, proclaimed, because it was utterly impossible for the one man to go to every nation on the face of God’s green earth, this pertains to the message which indeed can go throughout the earth. However once it is set in motion, recorded, and now it is printed, this old testament mystery those old prophets wrote about should be finished. God Himself is the time keeper; and He has allowed time to last long enough for every predestinated soul to hear the message of his personal salvation; and when God sees that last Gentile soul come in, there will be no more mystery for any of them concerning this great plan of salvation. Who knows, that last soul may be in India, or it may be in Russia; because the message is there now. But wherever that last soul is, when that last one is brought in, you can rest assured the Spirit of Him that sent the man to set this era of time in motion will know that it should be finished. It will culminate right on schedule, right in the plan of God. That is exactly how we have to read that verse of scripture. Therefore I have no quarrel with anyone who wants to use Revelation 10:7 on their literature. My disagreement is with the interpretation many people put upon those certain scriptures. They try to make the Bible fit their warped ideas, if they even use it at all. Listen to me saints, I am not picking on individuals; I am only trying to expose the devil. Sometimes it is necessary to mention certain individuals when you are identifying antichrist and idolatrous beliefs and teachings; but my primary object is to lead you into a true revelation of the word of God, and help you identify the spirit that is behind all of this false teaching. God is not the author of confusion; and He hates idolatry; therefore when He sees innocent souls being pulled into that kind of things, He gives them a chance to recognize the error of their ways. After that: if they still persist in going the wrong way, there are other ways to deal with them. You can be sure of one thing though, He will not lose one single predestinated child of His.
WHAT THE FAN IN GOD’S WORD IS FOR
Let us look at some words spoken by John the Baptist, beginning in Matthew 3:11. This element of the Branham movement that loves to pervert the true revelation of God’s word, completely ignore this scripture. If Revelation 10:7 is pointing to William Branham, and I assure you it is, I want to show you something that cannot be ignored as you hear the message of that prophet messenger. Here in Matthew 3, is John the Baptist, his counterpart, preaching at the Jordan River two thousand years ago. While John was preaching, it created such a stir up in Jerusalem, it got into headquarters and got the religious leaders all stirred up. They began to send scribes out to hear him, and question him. God ask that man who he is. It put a question in people’s minds. He was shaking things; and headquarters did not like it, so here came their spies listening and asking questions. John to those that were questioning him. “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: (John was talking about their Messiah that would soon make His appearance; so notice what he said HE would do) He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: (That part of the ministry of Jesus was not even fulfilled until after He was crucified, resurrected and ascended into heaven; and there is yet another work to be done, mentioned in that same few words. This is what I want you to see.) Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven to take up His mediatorial work, here came the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to start the baptism John was talking about. The Holy Ghost baptism has been taking place throughout the entire age of Grace; but the 12th verse speaks of something we want to watch. “Whose fan is in His hand, and He (meaning Jesus) will thoroughly purge His floor.” That verse is applicable for the day and time we are living in. Furthermore it is only applicable in the fashion I am going to point out to you. It is not what the religious people of the world are saying that constitutes the fulfillment of this verse: it is something God, by His Spirit, in the person of William Branham, set into motion by allowing him to say certain things a certain way, so certain people would get certain thoughts they could run the roads with. It was the Lord’s way of causing things to be said from the lips of this man that would be taken so literally they would consider them to be infallible; and they have made them, Thus saith the Lord: when in face, they were just comments made by a mortal man. They say, It is the word of God; but I say, many of his statements they have said that about were just comments from the natural person; and never meant to be Thus saith the Lord at all. When Bro. William Branham made the statement about the various visions he had, concerning things leading up to the end of time and the coming of the Lord He said, I predict, because of the way things are progressing, that by the year 1977 all these things will be fulfilled and the Millennium ushered in. Many of those people began calculating the time for the coming fo the Lord simply because he said that. They would not even allow him to make a simple statement from his own human thoughts without them taking it to be the infallible word of God. He never did say, Thus saith the Lord about that: he only said, I predict. I am accused of not believing the prophet, simply because I have refused to jump upon every word he uttered as though it was Thus saith the Lord; but in spite of all of that, I am thankful to God for the spiritual insight to see some things as they truly are, so I do not have to depend upon people like that to interpret the prophet’s message for me. I have said before, and I will say again, Look: the man was a prophet. I am a personal witness to that fact. But please, for goodness sakes, let the man be a man. I hope you understand what I mean by that. Naturally he is no longer with us, so apply my statement to that of the time he was in our midst. If you do not allow such a man to be a man, you are heading for trouble; because the Bible proves that Elijah of old was a man. The Bible proves that John the Baptist was a man. Likewise time itself is proving that William Branham, though he truly was a prophet to this age, was a man subject to like human feelings about time and conditions and things like that, just like any other man; and should have been allowed to speak of how he perceived certain things as a human being without someone making more out of it than they had any right to. Those people are so blind spiritually, they will not admit they made a mistake even when time itself runs out on their projections. They are unable to look at spiritual things in a balanced manner. Let me just say this, Time is running out for us Gentiles. They are not going to have another twenty six years to put together quotes and statements from Bro. William Branham’s sermons. As this judgment is intensified, we are going to see something take place that will bring a lot of this foolishness to a chaotic set of circumstances. God knows how to purge His true Church. He will not take it to glory with all of that hanging on to it. Remember the words of the apostle Peter in 1st Peter 4:17, “For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” If Bro. William Branham’s message was ordained of God to turn the heart’s of this generation of believers back to the revelation of our apostolic fathers, and again I assure you that this is exactly what it is supposed to do: why would anyone who has the Holy Ghost dwelling in them try to rob God of His glory and deify His faithful servant? That is a question a lot of people have refused to give an answer to.
WHAT OUR SPIRITUAL FOREFATHER’S BELIEVED
We have taken our text from the 24th chapter of Matthew; which is the words of Jesus as He spoke to His disciples shortly before His crucifixion, leading up to His departure from the earth. He has been giving them a categoric outline of signs and events of things that would transpire through the ages, leading up to His second coming. Then, as He approached this particular point in time, which is right at the end, He projected this thought into a question. “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom His Lord hath made ruler over His household, to give them meat in due season?” We must realize that after almost two thousand years of the age of Grace and the gospel being preached, Jesus knew that Christianity would go through a lot of trials and upheavals; so He gave believers something to watch for, something that would be a sign of His soon return. Not everyone sees these signs the same way; but the true called out Church of the living God will. Along that line, I would like to clarify something new people coming into our midst may hear us say about denominational Christendom. It strikes them strange, that we have such distinction. Why is all this fighting going on? Why does it have to be like this? My answer to that would be, You are in the same shape, mentally, that I was. Too many people have been raised up in some kind of religious background, that causes them to just assume as they see the picture in the world at large, that this is the way Christianity, normally, has been. It is only when people begin to get a hunger in their heart’s as a result of the stirring of the Spirit of God, and there begins to be questions arise in their hearts that causes them to indulge in a more serious study of the Bible, that they see things worded a certain way, that causes them to wonder, Why is this worded like this? It is from that point, that God is able to show you a few things that mark a definite difference between those who are walking with Him in truth, and those who are just following some denominational religious program. These are things that God can use many times to begin to deal in your life. If you look at the Christian faith through all the centuries of time, it started in a great conflict, a great battle; and it will wind up in a battle also. It is man’s nature to always try to find the easy way to follow something, a way that does not put anymore responsibility on his flesh that necessary, or on his mind. He is a social creature. He does not like to have his social structure disturbed. Whatever he feels he is part of, he never wants it to be broken up. However I believe we will all acknowledge the fact that this is not the Bible way. Jesus was always breaking up little cliques while He ministered on earth in physical flesh. He is the one who said, A man’s enemies are they of his own household. Not that we are supposed to go about trying to make enemies out of them, it just turns out that way. When you personally try your best to live and walk with God, you will find you are faced many times with enemies you never would have thought would be your enemies. They just simply do not understand you: therefore without premeditation, they become your spiritual enemies. It is a human trait, to turn against things you do not understand. Only the Spirit of God in us, can rid us of those inherited traits. Your former friends and your family are all against you, because they do not understand what is affecting you. Why did you leave the clan? Why did you leave the congregation? Why did you do such and such? To them, it is a terrible thing that has happened to you; but the angels of heaven rejoice whenever a predestinated child of God begins to take his leave of denominational religion, to follow truth. It is necessary for us to understand the Bible, as well as the history of Christianity, and realize that if we walk with God here in the end time as we see the age and conditions just as Jesus said they would be, we cannot be a part of everything that carries a religious label. It is already as it was in the days of Lot; so what Jesus said about that has already come to pass. It is here. The liberal world wants it to stay that way. Yet they want it without all the drastic side effects, the diseases, and such like that go with such a careless way of life. You just simply cannot have both. Departure from God’s ordained way has a price to pay. Jesus knew the overall religious picture would become a very confused thing here at the end of the age. Therefore it would be necessary for God to send something, which we acknowledge was a prophet messenger, someone that had a true, divine revelation right from heaven, as it is portrayed in the word of God. That man would be anointed to say things to the church world, which would constitute the beginning of God by His Spirit, pulling people out of the systems of religion and bringing them back into fellowship with His Word. In doing so, He (God) knew conditions would prevail that would cause an element of people to be attracted to this thing, that would not go all the way with what they heard. Within that element of people would be individual persons that somehow or other were not ordained to see this apostolic truth in the true scriptural balance. Therefore they would wind up playing a role, a role that makes it essential for us to recognize what is taking place. Only at the end of the age, could our text scripture be applied in its true purpose. ONLY WISE SERVANTS ARE ABLE TO GIVE THE CHURCH MEAT IN DUE SEASON. “Who then is a faithful and wise servant.” The word servant is spoken in the singular, but the scripture on down will prove that we should understand it to be applicable in the plural. (The rest of that verse) “Whom his Lord hath made ruler over His household.” The Lord’s household in a true application is His bride Church. Naturally we know by now, that this does not apply to everyone who claims to be of the bride of Christ these days. The faithful and wise servant He has made ruler over His household has to be understood as the true end time ministry that feeds the flock what they have spiritual need of, to dress themselves properly for their flight to the marriage supper in glory. The apostle John wrote, (Rev. 19:9) “And He saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” That is the true bride, dressed in fine linen clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints. You will not find any perverts nor liberal minded people in that setting. They will all be right here on earth in that great tribulation hour that is to come upon all that are left behind when the bride takes her flight. Yes saints, this faithful and wise servant terminology can only be applied to a man called of God to preach the gospel in a true apostolic revelation, and this parable is only in effect here in the end time wind up of Gentile time. He has been set in charge, he has been given a responsibility. God obligates him then, to be responsible for giving His people what is referred to as meat in due season. “To give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his Lord when He cometh (meaning when he cometh in the rapture) shall find (that person) so doing. Verily I say unto you, That He (the Lord) shall make him (that individual man) ruler over all his goods.” That is in the Millennium, the thousand year reign, that such a servant is made ruler over his Lord’s goods. I realize we have already said much of what I am saying now; but this is a lengthy message, so we need to keep our main thought and purpose at the forefront. Just bear with me, and you will see a lot of your questions cleared up by the time we are finished. (Verse 48) “But and if that evil servant (during that same period of time, not ten years later, after the wise servants have been here fulfilling their purpose) shall say in his heart, (not publicly) My Lord delayeth his coming.” In his heart, he will have an inward, secret feeling, My Lord was supposed to be coming back at such and such a time. He is delaying His coming. This goes to show that in a process of time, this evil servant will begin to give up what he has been feeling in his heart was the truth. He begins to say in his heart, My Lord delays His coming: so as he thinks like that, My Lord delays His coming, he has to do something, and this is what he does, begins persecuting those who have held faithful to the word of God all along, without setting dates for the Lord to come. Watch, “And shall begin to smite his fellow-servants.” That word fellow-servants, is what lets us know this scripture applies to more than one man in both the wise and the evil categories. If there is more than one wise servant, who is the opposite of the wise? The evil. There are more than one of these fellows also. Who is it that the evil servant is speaking against? It is the wise. Therefore we can see that the evil servant is speaking evil against not just one person, but against all who are like him. Then, as he begins to speak evil of the wise servants he eventually goes a step farther, so notice the rest of that verse “and to eat and drink with the drunken.” This does not necessarily mean he immediately goes back to the beer joints and becomes a drunkard. It means spiritually speaking, that in process of time God will begin to push him out of the realm of fellowship he has been privileged to be brought into in the days when he allowed truth to pull him out of denominational bondage; and he will have to take up sanctuary with the lesser element of religious people again: because he has nowhere else to settle himself down. That is exactly what we are looking at in this parable. Furthermore, as I have already stated, these scriptures I have read to you were never meant to be fulfilled or applied back in the Dark Ages, nor anywhere in the Reformation period before the age of Laodicea. It was not time. What sets these scriptures in motion, is the fact that there was a point in time, and naturally that would be in the age of Laodicea when God knew that the universal Christian community was drifting fast toward anarchy, apostasy, and spiritual destruction. Therefore God, by His own Word, was obligated to fulfill a prophecy mentioned in Malachi, to send forth a man who would have a ministry that would far exceed any ministry that the reformers, coming out of the Dark Ages, have ever had. In doing so, God, through this man, would do things by His divine power that would get the attention of a lot of people world wide. He would say things by His Spirit concerning a revelation of truth, that would be a drawing factor, a means for God to open the eyes of a lot of spiritually blind people. You might say, to sound things on the ears of those that would have an ear to hear, and cause them to be turned around, and begin to journey, spiritually speaking, back toward the framework of the same faith that the apostolic fathers had. Our spiritual fathers are not the reformers. Our spiritual fathers are the spiritual leaders who believed what was later written in what we call, The New Testament. This is why we have the drawing here, the Holy Bible, called the Holy Word, which is what the Bible is. The devil, through the centuries of time has done his best to get Christianity out of it. You can have the book, but be out of it, spiritually speaking. If you do not believe what is written in it, or if you are not willing to adhere to what it presents, it is a worthless book to you, just to lay around and collect dust. As my own personal attitude always was, growing up in a Methodist home, I never wanted to be a religious fanatic. I had heard of too many people getting so religious it caused them to cut their hands off, pluck their eyes out, and a lot of things like that. You know how some people interpret a certain passage of scripture. I said, God forbid that I ever get around that kind of people. It is dangerous. That is why I always said, Yes, the Bible is the word of God; but do not get too close to it. Respect it for what it is, but never get too wrapped up with it: because you can become a fanatic. Well I want you to know, the distance between fanaticism and spirituality is about the breadth of a hair. I want you to think it over. It is just about the breadth of a hair. You have to have a spiritual mind to know how to understand that. The general trend of world religion is so carnal, so without any true God inspired purpose, when you begin to talk to them about basic truths in the Bible, truths the first century Church believed, they act as though you are talking to them in a language they do not understand. That is the way the religious world is. Some people think it is only these denominational systems of religion out here in the world that persecute true Christians that walk with God in a revelation of His word; but I want to assure you that most of them could not care less what you believe. They are the one’s who promote this saying, God to the church of your choice; but go to church. There are a lot of tare bundlers out here in the ranks of religion these days. They will stoop to any level to get you under their spell; but it is mostly for material gain. They are not feeding the true Church of the living God. Those who come to my mind are like the scribes and Pharisees Jesus spoke to in such a rebuking way, in the 23th chapter of Matthew. Notice, (23:13-15) “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Does that not sound like what a lot of so-called preachers are doing today? That is the picture out in denominational Christendom; but we are looking at another picture to see the evil servant of this parable.
SPIRITUAL REVELATION VERSUS HUMAN CARNALITY
We have certain booklets back here on the wall. They contain sermons preached by Bro. William Branham through the years of time. Through the years since his death, there seems to have been a spirit rose very quickly, to begin to monopolize the mind’s of people, and bring those people into some kind of subjection to certain ideas. This movement that was brought about by this man, was not a movement that was in a position to continue on, as other movements have in centuries gone by. It is true that within it there were a lot of preachers; but these preachers, came from every denominational background there is on the face of this earth. They saw, and heard a man preach. They heard with their natural ears, the things he said: but like I have said many times, If they did not see or hear it with the Spirit of God in their heart, nine times out of ten, they heard it wrong. A lot of them that were not there to see or hear, but have read or heard the tapes since then if they did not have the Spirit of God in their lives to teach them, and instruct them concerning what they were privileged to read and hear, many times they received it wrong. Please, my brother or sister that would eventually get the tape or the printing of this message, or the video, I am doing my best to give every person the benefit of a doubt. I say again, they could have heard or read it wrong, because the religious world in general is evidence that many read the Bible wrong. If every preacher of every system of religion read the Bible the same way, with the same spirit, you would not have a denominational Christianity on the face of the earth today. You would have an element of people that all believe one and the selfsame thing. Just try to tell me it is not that simple. However we know the devil is not content just to leave something alone, that God has done in that fashion. It is the devil’s business always to disrupt and confuse something God has done. Therefore I am saying this day, that just as Jehovah Witnesses have done, just as Christian Science people have done, the Seventh Day Adventist and all the rest that have read the same Bible, and all got a different picture to project their own teachings and formulate their own belief from, there is that element that has done the sermons of Bro. William Branham the same way. They will all claim, I believe the Bible! When you confront them. Sure they do, just that part that they carnally perceive and understand. They do not comprehend it through the mind of Christ, brought about by the Spirit of God in their lives, that is so necessary, if we are to receive the right revelation of what we read. It is a carnal motivation that most of them are moved by. Behind it all, it is Satan seeking to take a gouge at, and disrupt something God has done. If that is not the pattern, you can rest assured, the picture of true Christianity, as it started two thousand years ago, would never have changed. If the devil was not determined to thwart the plan of God somehow, by scrambling and perverting the word of God and confusing people, then you can rest assured, Christianity would have continued on in the same level of spirituality and understanding that it started out with. If we could have had over 1900 years of Christians all believing the Bible the same way, just think if youc an, what the Church would be like today. It would no doubt be much higher up, spiritually speaking, than what we perceive it to be today. Nevertheless God’s plan of redemption is moving right on schedule; and not one of His predestinated children will fail to make it in. That is the assurance we have from the word of God; and that is what our faith rests upon: the faithfulness of a sovereign God, to perform all of His word from beginning to end. Praise His name! As we look at the overall picture, it was necessary for God to send a man anointed with His Spirit, to get Christianity back on the right track; and naturally he was doing to preach. This man’s ministry was ever so unique: and through the humbleness of the man, the Spirit of God Himself was demonstrated, or perhaps I should say exemplified, which means, put on display. It was characterized through a man that lived such a simple life he would never have been man’s choice for such an office as he held. If you would have met him on the street, you would never have seen him as an individual to be compared with Bob Shuller or Billy Graham, or any of that type of preacher. He lived and walked just as simple as any average person could. On Sunday morning, yes, you would see him in the pulpit with a suit on: but the next time you saw him you might see him downtown with a pair of blue jeans on, looking like he just came in from the farm. That is just the way he was. You never would have known him as a man who had such a unique ministry as was demonstrated over and over again from coast to coast, and in many other parts of the world. The uniqueness of his ministry did startle a lot of Gentiles. As I have repeatedly stated before, Gentiles as a whole, and it matters not what race they are of, (for we are all Gentiles outside the Jewish race) are a very foolish people. We are a foolish, silly people, in our natural makeup. Either we are so set against something of God that we make a fool of ourselves, or if God does something to open our eyes and turn us around, we are prone to become so enthusiastic we just run blindly after the instrument He used, and are ready to deify, idolize, and even worship that instrument, just like we see portrayed in the New Testament. Think of the time when Peter was led by the Spirit of God to the house of Cornelius, who was a Greek. The minute Peter walked in that house, what does the Bible say took place? Cornelius fell prostrate on his face to worship Peter. That is the way pagans were, ready to deify anything or anyone. Peter, being a Jew, and knowing no human flesh was worthy of such adoration said, Rise up, we are men just like you are. When Paul and Barnabas were in Asia Minor, which is the country of Turkey, and there had been a miracle done through them, what were the Gentiles there ready to do the next morning? They were ready to offer up sacrifice to them, believing the men to be gods that had come down to them in human form. What did they do, when they saw what was taking place? Let us turn to the 14th chapter of Acts and read how those two men of God responded to what was taking place. “And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, the gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people. Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out, And saying, Sirs, shy do ye these things? We are also men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein.” Would it have been worse for them to worship Paul and Barnabas, than for these foolish Gentiles of our day to worship Bro. William Branham? Either one is idolatry in the eyes of God. IDOLATRY IS AN ABOMINATION TO GOD. Anyhow the actions of those pagans caused Paul and Barnabas to rent their clothes in disgust, or to show disapproval. No. They did not strip off naked as some imagine: they just merely tore their clothing as a token of disgust and disagreement with what was taking place. It was their way of expressing an attitude of rejection of that type of reverence from them. Any true man of God would respond in similar manner to such spiritual ignorance. The only thing is, Bro. William Branham was not around to reject their worship of him, when it finally came out into the open; but God sees it all; and they will ever one have to stand before His judgment to be judged for their idolatrous ways. Some of you may feel that I am being too hard on those who do such things; but I assure you, I am not doing anything a true servant of God should not do in a situation where the idolatrous practices of some, affect the lives of others that are just innocent victims. I have asked the lord to help me say some things wisely, that I feel should be said, I know, that in due time this message will fall into the hands of a lot of people, minister that have psychologically been against us. They have spoken evil things about us. I do not speak against what they are doing just for the sake of being jealous of them. I speak against their motives, and things they propagate by saying they are believers, when it is so obvious that they are not believers of the revealed word of God. I just have to say this, You were not a true witness of what God’s purpose in that man was. Every true witness that ever saw and heard this man, will always keep his feet on the word of God. The wise servant is a man that will walk with God with a level head. On the other hand, the evil servant is a character whose head just flops around loosely because he does not know where to anchor his attitude and motives. I have in my hand a book. This book is referred to as the Revelation of the Seven Seals. Bro. William Branham taught and preached this series of messages in April 1963. I was a witness to what was said. Some of you sitting here today were also witnesses to what was said in those messages: because you were there in person. I was present to hear every word he uttered in that series of messages; and I did not hear one thing that would cause me to think I should worship him. What I heard him say, made me even more determined to worship the God that used him to speak like that to us. I heard him preach every word of it; and I am thankful to God for the revelation of His word I received myself, as I sat there. It has kept me from being caught up in this foolishness that has been going on for the last 26 years since Bro. William Branham’s death. Like I have said before, This book has been taken by many people in the 26 years since his death, and has been esteemed to be their Bible. Others have taken it and said, we equate, or make it equal to the Bible. If Bro. William Branham could be here in person, one of the first things he would do is slap at the spirit that propagates such as that. He would cry out against it saying, That is not what I preached. He would plainly tell you, What I said in here was ordained of God to show you how to get your faith anchored back in the Bible, the only book that has stood the test throughout the ages. It was meant to give true children of God an understanding that would settle their spiritual soul upon a revelation of the word of God. Anyone that would say of the seven seals book, This is our Bible, we believe everything he preached from 1963 on is thus saith the Lord, is spiritually blind and probably without hope of ever seeing the book for its true, God ordained purpose. Any man that will try to interpret what he said through the years of time, when there are many other sermons there, represented in those booklets, or by those booklets, does not know how to actually understand Malachi 4:5-6 in its last day fulfillment. This book has statements in it, that rightly understood can clear up things that have always been a great mystery to those that would study the Bible. I sat there, and others in here did too, when they were preached. As I listened to those statements, in my mind I came to a conclusion, Those statements, if and when they are rightly understood, can give you a balanced picture of what is written in this book called the Bible. That is why when I heard him preach on the subject of the Serpent Seed, and he said what he did about the serpent, how he seduced Eve, and that the eating off the tree of knowledge of good and evil was exactly that, I said, That makes more sense than anything I have ever heard. However I did say to myself, Until I know what the tree of life was, I will never preach it: because the tree of life has to also be an act of some kind. I knew it had to be an act that is fulfilled in the plan of God, outside of what Satan, through the serpent, used it for. I am going to point you to a book, the book entitled Marriage and Divorce. I was there when it was preached also. In that book, which was preached after this, he said this, In the original, it was God’s design to speak life for man into existence, bypassing the sex act. It is in this book, Marriage and Divorce. If you were here three weeks ago, when I was on the other subject which I titled, Genesis, I was using the statements he made in here. Through the years that I was privileged to sit and listen to this man, I began to come to this understanding, God ordained this man to talk like this at times; because somewhere up ahead He is going to use this to bring about a separation between people, as time draws toward the end. As I analyzed these, and as I analyzed that, I looked right back to Matthew 3:12, where John the Baptist prophesied, “Whose fan is in His hand and He will thoroughly purge His floor.” When Jesus went away two thousand years ago, and was taken into glory to be seated on the right hand of God the Father, keep in mind, Right then, is when His mediatorial Priest work started. The Holy Ghost was sent. Mankind has been under a dispensation through the ages of having access to receive this Holy Ghost baptism, and with fire. But notice at the ending, when this kingdom age is beginning to climax, it is then we understand that from the hands of Christ, while He is still in His mediatorial work, there was somehow or other that a fan appeared. We read the scripture, but how are we to understand how this fan is to operate? It said He will thoroughly purge His floor. I used the parable the other night where Jesus, I believe it is the second parable, about the tares and so forth, how they got in, but it said leave them alone. At the end of the world, what would He do? He would send forth His angels. Angels are spirit beings. Keep in mind though, angels have to have earthly vessels to work through. Preachers, doing something that help carry out the plan of God. It said He would gather out of His kingdom, or separate the tares from the good grain. One of the explanations was, that they would first bind the tares in bundles to be burned. Is that not right? When we think of the farmer, as he goes out with the old fashioned binder, when he cut the wheat down, he would have straw and everything all cut down together. What then? When all of that was hauled in, and they put it in the old separator, called, the threshing machine, the straw, the ripened weeds and everything else all go out the back end, out through the blow pipe into a stack. But the seed, which is the product you are after, as it drops down and goes over the shaker sieve, there is a wind that is set just right for what it is designed to do. That wind will lift the chaff. What is the chaff? The hulls and every other type of microscopic substance that is attached to the seed. Just keep in mind as we transpose that into the spiritual application, “whose fan is in his hand.” The word fan is applied to something man made. In this sense you have to have some kind of material to put together, to weave such an item as a fan. His floor is none other than His Word, if you understand what I mean. Therefore God, in order to try you and me, will let the devil throw things against us, just to see if we are going to allow those things to get us off of His Word. In so doing, He is going to fan you with every kind of idea and teaching. The purpose of it all, is to see if it will cause you to leave the true revelation and go after some other type of idea that gives you a lesser feeling of pressure, persecution, ridiculement, and let you hold on to all your old friends. There is not another message in the earth today, that this fan is any more beautifully portrayed in than the teachings of William Branham. Yet these various statements were made through a process of time, over such a long process of time a lot of people ignored the fact that they did not all match up right and just paid no attention to it. I will say this again though, The evil servant will capitalize on every statement the man made. That is why he will take the out of context statement over what was said in the anointed message in the Seal book: about how man was to be multiplied on the face of this earth. He will quickly remind you that the prophet said they were supposed to be spoken into existence. Sure, he said that. I remember when he said it. I also know that in here, he also said, Before Adam could know Eve as his wife, the devil, through his instrument the serpent, had already defiled her. What do you think he was saying? Why did he say that? What do you think he was trying to project to people? That was telling you, if Eve would have run that serpent off somewhere and waited, there would have been a time that the law of God that was to operate from the tree of life, would have set in motion in her body; and she would have gone to her husband Adam and said, It is time for us to begin multiplying. In that particular period they could have come together for the purpose of conception and bringing forth a child that would have been born in the very image and likeness of God. Adam himself was created in the image and likeness of God; and his offspring coming into the world through the tree of life would have also been in the very image and likeness of their creator.
IS THE FAN STILL IN OPERATION?
We cannot dwell too long on just one thing; because we have a lot to squeeze into this message. We are looking at how the fan in Christ’s hand is working, even though HE is not here in physical flesh to use it. In this Seal book, Bro. William Branham said there was just three and one half years left, of the seventy weeks of Daniel; and he was not even preaching on the seventy weeks of Daniel when he said that. He just dropped it out there: “There is only three and one half years left of the week of Daniel;” and on he went. That is just about he way he threw it in. However right here is the original message, when he took different Sunday’s to deal with it in detail, you find a different picture. In this message he emphatically laid out by a chart drawn to show that there is yet seven years left to the total seventy weeks of Daniel’s prophecy, seven years left for the Jews. I was there when he preached it; so I do not have to take second hand reports of what he said. I paid close attention to how he brought it out. Therefore if I was to take time now, to go back through the years and bring out of the various sermons, all of this type of statements, I could show you how God willed this man to speak like that for a specific purpose. I have never used the terminology that he made a mistake. I believe these dual statements he made were ordained to fulfill a purpose of God. The purpose for them as I see it, is that at the end time, these statement would be put together by an element of men who were void of a complete revelation, some in part, while some others would take them all; and in the end lead an element of the following right out of the Bible. Some of these men preach from these statements putting such pressure on certain individuals, that they are eventually led to a place where they just lay their Bible’s aside and try to live by the statements alone. These are the ones you will hear, saying, This is my Bible for this day and hour. This is the word of the Lord for my day. Yet when I use illustrations like this to help people see the truth of what is taking place in so many places, I am accused of trying to get people to turn away from Bro. William Branham’s message, and even accused of not allowing my congregation to read the sermon booklets. No brother, sister, I am not guilty of that. However I will say, If you cannot read them being guided by the Holy Ghost, you will surely read them wrong. It matters not, how much education you have, without the Holy Ghost guiding you as you read his sermons, you will read them wrong every time. Why do I say that? Simply because you are going to read various statements from time to time spoken opposite of each other; and without the Holy Ghost to teach you how to line them up with the scriptures, you will have no way of knowing which statements line up with God’s word, and which one’s do not. The only people in the end of the whole subject, that are ever going to read those booklets right, are people that have the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of God; and when He is allowed to guide you, you will not be trying to make two opposite statements both mean the same thing. That is just plain foolish; yet there are a lot of those people today that will tell you, I believe both of them; because the prophet spoke them. There is no need for me to say any more along that line at this time; for people who are wise do not need to be beat to death with something in order to see it the right way. I am going to say this though, All of you who will jump up and down saying, That Jackson is talking against the prophet, trying to make himself some kind of authority, had better ask yourselves, Who has caused all of this confusion about the prophet’s message around the world for the last 26 years? You cannot blame me for it. You can scream to the high heavens, Jackson is not in the message; but you cannot challenge what I preach with the Bible. All you can do is use certain statements made by Bro. William Branham, statements he just threw out at times, without explanation, and without being a vital part of what he was teaching on, and that is what I am endeavoring to clear up for those who have ears to hear. The apostle Paul, in second Corinthians, made some statements because of the pressures of the hour he was living in; and I am compelled also to state in certain ways how God has dealt with me. God dealt with that apostle in dreams and visions, or revelations, which he used to compare and analyze himself in the eyes of his critics. That is for a purpose, that a man may be established in what he believes and teaches. I will say this also, Personally, I was a witness to what this man you try to make more than he was, said. I sat under the man’s ministry long enough to analyze it. Not to find fault, but to understand what the Spirit of God was doing through him. Never did I criticize, I just analyzed. To analyze, means you observe, you listen, you pay heed to and examine. You do everything within your heart to understand, is there a human part to this man? I can say beyond any shadow of doubt, There sure was; but it did not detract one iota from what God called him to be, and to do, in this age of Laodicea. There is one thing sure though, God will never have two Messiahs for people to look to. It matters not, how much you saw the Spirit of Jesus Christ exemplified in William Branham, nor how much his ministry resembled the ministry of Jesus the Son of man, there is absolutely no way he (Bro. Branham) could have been the Son of man of the scriptures. He himself made it very clear that he was just A son of man. You must understand, Jesus the Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of God, as man, was perfect. He was absolutely sinless. Therefore what made His life attractive was the God of heaven that was in Him, and when the God of heaven came down and incarnated Himself in Him, it made the man that was born perfect, sinless, and without any guile, the very Messiah, the anointed ONE all Jews looked for. He then became the Savior of lost mankind, by His sacrificial death on that old rugged cross at Calvary. However when God, here at the end of the age, re-exemplified that same character and likeness of Christ in a Gentile man, I plead with you, Do not try to make that man (William Branham) the Messiah. What God exemplified through him did not make him “the” Son of God. He emphatically stated, I am “a” son of God. Through the years, as many of his followers began to see how Christ was exemplified in that man, they began to say, He is that prophet. Meaning the prophet Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy 18:15. “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken.” I can say this, in St. John chapter 6, when Jesus took the multitude out into a desolate place, and fed them there with five loaves and two fishes, that element of Jews sitting there in the grass, eating of that miracle food, finally began to get a revelation, This is that prophet. Don’t you think so? They were right. That was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He was that prophet Moses promised the children of Israel God would raise up unto them from their very midst. That promise belonged only to the Israelites. No Gentile should be playing around with it. What a lot of those certain people are doing, is nothing short of playing with the word of God. You are going to get in trouble. That prophecy in Deuteronomy does not have a compound fulfillment. It belongs only to the Jewish nation. That prophet (Messiah) was perfect, sinless, without any trait of a fallen nature. That is the one Moses was prophesying about. On the other hand, the prophet to this age, the man so many want to deify, was not perfect. He was not sinless. He was a sinner that had to be saved by the grace of God, just like the rest of us. While it is true, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God was in him in a measure, and through that measure he exemplified much of the same likeness and qualities of Jesus Christ, that by no stretch of the imagination could ever made him equal to the prophet Moses spoke of. When anyone begins to deal with things like this, it literally sets that element on edge. They become hostile and say, You are absolutely blaspheming. Well I beg your pardon. I know what I am doing; and if I fail to do it, then somewhere later on God will hold me responsible. When you are a witness, it means you saw something, you observed it, and in my case I was not attracted to it just to be a spectator, as many of that element that followed him were. Spiritual spectators can go home and forget what they saw and heard; but I want you to know, I did not forget what I witnessed. It changed my life completely.
PERSONAL TESTIMONY
I am going to tell a little of my testimony. There are people sitting in this congregation today, that knew Bro. William Branham long before I did. Even many years before. I did not know him as a child growing up. However it is not how long anyone knew him that makes the difference. When I did get acquainted with him, I knew I needed to hear as much as I could of what he had to say. Let me say this though, When I see these people carrying around those pictures of the baptismal scene at the Ohio River, and see people going down there to the end of Spring Street where Bro. William Branham was baptizing when God spoke to him, it makes me wonder, What do they expect to get from all of that? There is nothing wrong with looking at the location; but if any of you think there is anything sacred about that place, you are as blind as Catholicism. That is how they do. They build a church building or some kind of memorial in every spot they know of anything with any spiritual significance taking place. Well I happen to know something about that old water front. In the year 1929, I was not very old. The picture you have seen of Bro. William Branham standing in the water in the year 1933, baptizing people, when the Spirit of God spoke to him like it did, is not more sacred than any other picture. A lot of them still think that spot is sacred. That spot is not sacred. That place was there before that ever happened. It is still there. Why was it a particular place that he baptized? It was because practically every preacher on the Indiana side of the river used it for that purpose. That was the old ferry boat wharf. It was a water front. The street came right off the level of town and just went right down the river bank. When I was a child it was bricked off, right down into the water. There was no transit bridges over the Ohio River back then to drive a car across. I have told before, how in the year 1929, my father took us on a trip to Louisville. I was very young, so it was terribly exciting to me. As he drove the old Model T. Ford down Spring Street, right down this water front bank and parked, there were other cars as well as horse drawn wagons sitting there. What were they waiting for? The ferry boat to come from the Louisville Kentucky side. Later I could hear that old thing chugging. It came right over and docked, exactly where you see Bro. William Branham baptizing those people, in the picture. I remember watching those horses and wagons as they drove them onto the ferry boat. I remember the other cars also. Finally Dad drove the old Model T on. As a child, this stuck in my mind; because just as we got out in the middle of the river, the water being a little choppy, those horses got scared. Every man on that ferry barge rand and grabbed a horse and helped hold them until that ferry boat docked on the Louisville side. Now I realize I am just telling natural, carnal things; but I get so sick and tired of hearing about people traveling from the ends of the world, coming here to take pictures, thinking these spots are still sacred. Why do they condemn Catholicism for doing what they themselves do? All of that is spiritual ignorance. When I read in the life story book, shortly after I got acquainted with Bro. William Branham, about the Second Street bridge, (we call it the Clark Memorial Bridge) it brought back childhood memories. I remember when the bride was built. I was a small child. That bridge was started from both sides of the river. From the Louisville side starting at the end of Second Street, and from the Indiana side; and the construction crews met in the middle. I remember when we used to go down and visit my uncle and aunt that lived in Jeffersonville. They would take us down there on Sunday afternoon, just for a little sight seeing trip, to look at the progress of the bridge work. Bro. William Branham had seen in a vision, the bridge being built; and how many men would fall to their death, as they labored on the construction of it. When the bridge came together in the middle of the river, I was still a child, but I remember hearing it said by my uncle, how it came out in the paper that the engineers who drew it out were so perfect in their work, there was only one rivet hole that lacked a fraction of an inch matching up; and had to be modified to finish the connection. What virtue is there in this? Not one bit. The bridge is not sacred at all. It was just that the Spirit of God showed this man in his younger years of life, how progress in that area would come about; and how God would use it as a sign to him as he was being instructed and guided, coming along in life. God has a right to deal with a man in this manner, without these places, things, or objects becoming sacred items in the whole category of religion. When the bridge was dedicated, we were there to witness it. I have never seen so much fireworks. Well I believe I have said enough about the bridge, and also Spring Street. All of that was excitable; but there was not one thing about any of it that has any spiritual virtue for the next generation. Neither the bridge, nor the Spring Street baptismal location. God was dealing with a man who lived in this area. He had ordained this man to be something to this Gentile, Laodicean Age. God used these things as means to speak to him, to direct him, and to use him. It is a wonderful thing, that God allowed many people to be personal witnesses of so many of the things He did through that one little vessel; but just going back to view the spot after all these years has no spiritual virtue whatsoever. I have said all of this just to let you know, I am not ignorant of the are of Jeffersonville, Indiana; nor of the things God has done in this area. I was born and raised 19 miles out in the country from there. When God saved me, and began to bring me to an understanding of how precious this book is, this is what I like to spend my time with. I cannot get close enough to this book. (The Bible) When I look back to my younger years, and think of how I used to feel about it, I appreciate the grace of God even more. I had respect for it; but I felt like people should not get too serious about some of what is written in it. I now know better than to blame the Bible for some of the things we have heard of people doing as a result of reading it. This book will literally talk to you, if you will let the Spirit of God, who is the author of it, deal with your heart and life like He wants to. You will read it and know it is talking to you: because God, the Spirit that inspired the writing of it, will cause certain things to stand out, and become so obvious to you, you can truly say, He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, just like it says. After I married and moved down to Harrison County, it was after that, when God saved me. The wreck that left this scar on my forehead had already happened. As many of you have heard me say, in the month of February 1952, from the time He had saved me, I began to have such a hunger for the reality of the contents of this book. I could not even go to the field to work, nor anything else I might need to do, without first sitting down and reading a verse or two of scripture. I have told it many times; but I will never forget that one particular morning. I do not remember which day of the week if was; but I took my Bible and sat down on the couch to read; and it just literally fell open to Luke, chapter 1. I began to read. I am not going to quote it all; but in that chapter I read how Zacharias the priest had gone into the temple to offer up incense and so forth. There the angel Gabriel had appeared to him, and spoke to him. When the angel Gabriel was speaking to Zacharias about the birth of his son, a son which was yet to be, and by his wife that had never yet brought forth a child, the angel also told him the child was to be given the name John. Then he referred to Malachi 4:5-6, in the first phase, or we will say part A. The angel told Zacharias his son would go before the coming of the Lord in the power and spirit of Elias, which was Elijah, to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Then he stopped quoting; and just left it right there. When I read that it was like this just stood out: The angel stopped quoting that prophecy, without finishing it. I then thought, If we are living in the days just before the second coming of Christ, God will send that spirit of Elijah again; because He will have to turn the heart of the children to their fathers; and at that time, I did not know what children really meant. I thought it was something that would deal in the juvenile sense. We were beginning to have a lot of juvenile problems in the American society. I thought this was a moving of God’s Spirit to make sons and fathers get along good together. Well it is a proven fact, that this has not happened. This is a spiritual thing. We now know what those scriptures pertain to. Nevertheless when I read that, I closed the Bible with the assurance in my heart: I do not know when, I do not know how, and regardless of what some may preach, Jesus Christ is not coming again until the second part of Malachi 4:5-6, is fulfilled. He may come for me tonight, He may come for some of you in the morning, or tomorrow night; but He is not coming to this earth to take His people to glory until first that spirit of Elijah returns to finish that commission. I knew it. I did not say so in the Methodist Church; because I did not know where it would belong; so I just held it in my mind, One of these days, somewhere, somehow or other, God is going to fulfill that scripture. The fall season of 1952 came; and I still felt that way. Then one day when I had just finished eating dinner, my wife’s first cousin, Bro. Glen Funk, who had been squirrel hunting came by home. We began to talk; and at this time I am going to ask Bro. Glenn to give you in his own words what he said to me about Bro. William Branham, how he had been in Africa, about the little boy in Finland, and such; and how he told me Bro. William Branham was back home and was going to have a meeting and so forth.
TESTIMONY OF BROTHER FUNK
I really count it a privilege to stand for the Lord. If I can take any pressure off of Bro. Jackson, then let it be so. Before I was born, my mother prayed that I would serve the Lord. After WW2 came along, I went over there; and during that time I made a vow to the Lord. Lord, if you will just take me home, I will serve you. When I came back, I started going to church at the Branham Tabernacle in the fall of 1947, but I really did not get too wrapped up in anything until 1948. I went to the altar and was saved, and baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins. Not long afterwards I received the Holy Ghost. When I got a touch of that, I never was the same anymore. It made me want to go tell others. The Lord knows how backward I had always been. I never wanted to say anything to anyone. A few years after I was saved, Bro. William Branham asked me to testify in a New Year’s Eve service. Do you think I would? I slid down in my seat. He said, Do you have a testimony brother? I said, No sir. The Lord convicted me on that for sure. Then I would go down to my uncle’s, which was Opal’s Dad, (Opal is sister Jackson) and he said to me, Bro. Jackson is preaching some in the Methodist Church. The Lord laid it on my heart right then, that if I ever see him, I will tell him about the Lord, what I have heard and seen. So like he said, I went down there hunting, and when I came back in we struck up a conversation. I just told him about the deal down at the river, about the Lord calling Bro. William Branham to forerun His second coming. Then I told him about Africa. There was so much went on over there, it would take an hour to tell it. Then from there to Finland and all that happened there. I told Bro. Jackson, I heard something I never heard in my life. I enjoyed it so much, I thought maybe you would be interested in it. I said, He is going to be at the Tabernacle before long. I don’t remember what date it was. But I said, I would like for you to go hear him. I thought if he liked to preach in the Methodist Church, let him hear this preacher and see what he thinks of him. You know what, Bro. Jackson was like me. He got a taste of it, and it was so good, he came back for more. I thought, now we are living in the day we are getting our meat in due season. I thank God to be living in this day that we are getting meat in due season. We are one of the most blessed people on the face of the earth. That meat is something you are going to need. You are going to need that meat for this journey that lies ahead. I thought, Not only do we have meat in due season, we are in the present day truth. I want Bro. Jackson to know I appreciate him from the depths of my heart. I did Bro. William Branham too. When I met him, I thought, I have never met a man like that before. He could call you out of the congregation, tell you what was wrong with you, and all like that. He even called me out one time and told me about my mother. Another time he went down home, my Dad was always nervous, and he got so irritated one time my mother couldn’t stay with him for awhile, so she left for a week or two. My brother and sister wanted to put him away, down at Madison. They didn’t talk to me. They went to my mother, she was the go-between. When she told me that, do you know what I told her: I will not sigh papers for that, but I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll get the prophet of God to come and pray for him. He will be alright. You know, the night he was supposed to come down there, (Bro. Branham, was always in a hurry, always tied up.) My Dad called me three times before we got there, wanting to know if we were coming. Yes, Dad, I am coming, just wait a little while. When he went out there, Bro. William Branham walked in, went over and shook hands. My Dad went over and sat down, Bro. William Branham sat down by me, he talked to him for about five minutes, then said Let us just kneel and pray. We prayed and my Dad was alright after that. My brother never said a word about it. He was normal in every way. All that nervousness left him. He wasn’t irritated after that. He and my mother got along just fine. So I just thank the Lord to be living in this day and hour, and for the fact that I am privileged to hear this word. It is THE Word. When Bro. Jackson read that word smite, in his text scripture, it don’t mean smite with your hands. It don’t mean to smite with a club. It is just this thing right here, (pointing to the tongue) it is an unruly thing. That is what condemns you. You will give account of every word that you speak. I just thank the Lord that what we hear in here is the word of God. You know, this just came to me, Don’t speak evil words because you might have to eat them. When you eat them they might be bitter. Speak good words, and when you eat them they will be sweet in your soul. So I thank God that we hear the sweetness of the word of the Lord. (Bro. Jackson says) Thank you Bro. Glenn. May God receive all glory, honor and praise.
OUR MISSION – OUR PURPOSE – AND OUR METHOD
I want the people to realize we are dealing with this message because of the lateness of the hour we are living in; and we are seeking to put some things together for the benefit of those who will read the paper or get the tapes, that they may know we are not just a people sitting here at the end of Potters Lane, ignorant of what God did in these last days. We are a people that have been ridiculed and talked about in the worst way by the overall movement. Yet in spite of all of this, I do not say these things because I want them to be talked about or ridiculed. I am looking at something that I know, as a minister, God called me to say something about, to help keep some things straight. They may say I have no more right to say what I do, than they do; but for 26 years I have seen what some of these statements have done; as men have compiled them and put them into a teaching of their own. I have witnessed the confusion it has brought about. It has distorted the picture that is really portrayed in the Bible. Therefore being a minister called by God, by His grace, not by man, I am compelled by time and the circumstances that prevail, to say these things; hoping it is not too late to help some people somewhere. I will say this, AS we think of the straw, the tares, just look at the ministries of Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Bob Schuller and that type. All of that fits right into the World Council of Churches. They are preaching Christ, but they are doing it without a revelation as to how to bring people back into Bible truth. They have a story out of the Bible, they have just the fragments of a plan; but what they preach will never perfect a bride for Jesus Christ. They put it out there and it looks like they are winning thousands of souls to Christ; but actually they are not. They are just helping bind up all these denominational bundles of straw and tares, that Jesus said would have to be bundled at the end time. Keep in mind, what Billy Graham, Bob Schuller, Oral Roberts and that type have to say, does not affect you and me. The dealings of God have to come closer to us than what they are able to bring it. That is why we look at the thing John called, the fan in Christ’s hand; because the fan is not what blows the straw out in the pile. No. While it is true that on a threshing machine, it is wind that takes it out there, but it is a different portion of the wind than what is running off the shaker sieve. That grain that goes over the shaker sieve, or the shaker shoe, is wind that has to be set precisely by the man that knows how to set the machine. That wind lifts the chaff, the dust, the stuff you cannot handle with pitch forks. It lifts that chaff. That is why many times when you get around some people, they will open up and start talking and say, What has the Lord shown you? Look, they will take you to a book, take you to this, take you to that. If you start listening, giving your ear to them, before very long your mind is away from the Bible. They are taking you from book, to book, to book, to book. It is just the way they compile it, putting it together to suit their own purpose. It all becomes a fan in the hand of Christ. As for these others, God knew Bob Schuller, Billy Graham, and all of that type, would not walk in the light of this truth. Yet every last one of those men had an opportunity to know Bro. William Branham. What more can you say? I would not say they are not serving a purpose of God; for we know the tares have to be bundled by someone; and God’s five fold ministry to the bride of Christ is certainly not the one’s that will do that job. What we need to realize is, that there has to be instruments to fulfill all prophetic scripture, the good and the bad. God does not force anyone to fulfill the bad part any more than He does to fulfill the good part; but by His foreknowledge He certainly know who will do what; and when. We every one have a part to fulfill in the overall plan of God. That is why I have asked certain ones of the older folks of this congregation to give a few words of personal testimony. I want you to be able to see God in His people. These people saw and heard with their own eyes and ears, just like Matthew and John and others that gave us the writings of the New Testament; so I want you to have the benefit of first hand reporting.
TESTIMONY OF BROTHER CREECH
I have people here with me that were witnesses of Brother Branham’s life and ministry long before I ever became acquainted with him. We have one brother here in the congregation, Bro. Creech, that knew this man many years ago, long before I even came into the picture. This man knew Bro. William Branham back in the earlier days of his life. God has put the truth of what this man stood for in our hearts. This is our way of telling you, Look, we are not ignorant of what God has done. We are eyewitnesses of this very thing. Bro. Creech, Come on and say what you have upon your heart to say. (Bro. Creech speaking) I count it a privilege to live in this day and hour. I never once thought I would ever hear a man like Bro. William Branham. My parents were church going people, but they were denominational people. They were good people; but they did not hear what we have been privileged to hear. I came to New Albany, and after I was up here a little while, on Thanksgiving Day of 1940, I went to my mother-in-law’s place at Milltown, Indiana. Bro. William Branham was there. He seemed to like me right form the start, and I liked him. He had a lot of problems though, his wife had died, and the people he associated with had began to turn against him. They tried to rule him. That is what they tried to do. He had nobody. Brother George DeArk had passed away after the 37 flood. They were ministering brothers. I never did know George. I knew his brother. I knew his mother, and his dad; but I never did know Bro. George. When he passed away, Bro. William Branham had nobody to associate with, and he and I became close buddies. I never will forget when I moved up town. Just before I moved, (I moved in October and got acquainted with him in November.) I came up there with a hurting ulcer. I don’t know if any of you have had them or not; but they are about as painful as anything you can have. I went to the altar one time and he prayed for me. My wife and I just had one child back then; and we ate hamburgers on the way home. That ulcer never bothered me any more after that. Bro. William Branham and I were real close. We associated with each other almost every day from then on. In my work I could pass by and pick him up and drive him here and there while he was doing his work: patrolling the power lines for the Public Service Company, watching for trouble that could interrupt electric service to their customers. We spent a lot of time together that way. Another time I remember, I had become unhappy with the way things were done at the Tabernacle when Bro. William Branham was away. When he went out on evangelistic work, everyone left there desired to be the boss. I guess you could say, I just got plain disgusted with it. Bro. William Branham would always say to me, Brother, that man is just not right, or he does not belong there, or he does not belong here; so that stayed with me. He was a man that never tried to tell anyone what to do; rather he was a guy that always wanted to help you if he could. All of that just kind of stuck with me, and it bothered me, so I decided that this kind of thing was not for me. I just simply felt like I could not take all of that: going in there and knowing how Bro. William Branham taught, and how he tried his best to build a house of God in spite of all of that, so I left. I didn’t stay away. I would go and come every once in a while. Well one night I went there, and again I had to go to prayer. I went up to him; and before I ever said anything to him, he looked me right in the eye and said, Brother, Satan has desired to sift you; but I have prayed for you. That is why I am here today; because he prayed for me. Time went on for years and years and years, and I never could quite get it all together; until one time when Bro. Jackson was ministering and opened it all up to me. From that time on, those things never bothered me any more. Bro. William Branham and I always stayed friends. The year he went out to Arizona his last time, he called me up and said, Brother, are you going to be at home? I said, Yes. Well I would like to come down and talk to you a little bit. I am getting ready to leave. He then said, I have to take the kids to church and I will be down there. Then I will have to leave in time to pick them up and take them back home. I hadn’t seen him for quite a while: He had been over in India. He had a lot of things to talk about. When he got there, he said again, I have to leave here in time to take the kids home; but time just slipped by and he realized church was over with; so he had to call the church and get Billy Paul or somebody to take them home. He stayed at my house until about 11:30 PM and I never got to see him any more. Before that time though, after I got tired of running around, I knew there was no one else that could preach the gospel like Bro. William Branham. You would like others, but you just wouldn’t fall in love with their doctrine, like you would with what he taught. It was in the year 1957, in November, (I had forgotten about this until yesterday) I got acquainted with Bro. Jackson. Then I went down to Bro. Jackson’s church, in the old building where all the smoke would fill the room. We too have been friends since 1957. I appreciate Bro. Jackson from the bottom of my heart. If you knew Bro. William Branham, all he talked about was Bro. Junie (Bro. Jackson) and Bro. Neville. Bro. Neville took care of the Tabernacle when Bro. William Branham was away; and that is why the Tabernacle is in such a pitiful shape today, they turned him down. I really believe Bro. Neville died with a broken heart because of the way those people over there treated him. As for Brother Jackson, God has given him grace, and the revelation of His word, enough to keep us striving for the final goal all these many days. God bless you. (Bro. Jackson says) Thank you Bro. Creech. There are other that are going to give their testimony before we finish this message; because I want those who hear the tapes or that get the video tapes to know, we are not here just trying to put something together, something prefabricated. This is real life. I just want people to know there is an element of people here that were witnesses of some things God did in these last days. God has led them to be where they are today; and they are living witnesses; even though there is little ever said of what each individual saw and heard.
GOD VINDICATES TRUE PROPHECY
When you read the book of Acts, you read details about individual characters in the early church. Well we are just giving you a chance to hear of some things God has done since then. Take Agabus for instance. His name is mentioned only twice in the Bible; yet he was an individual that stood up in a meeting and prophesied concerning the future. Once of a great drought, and again of what was destined to happen to the apostle Paul: how the Jews at Jerusalem would bind him, and so forth. Nothing else is written of him; but these two particular events are recorded, which gives us a little insight into how the first age Church functioned. (Acts 11:28) “and there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.” That gave believers a chance to be watching for the signs of it: therefore they were not caught completely unaware of what was coming down the road of life. Again Agabus prophesied; and this time it concerned one individual. (Acts 21:10-11) “And as we tarried there (in the house of Philip the evangelist) many days, there came down from Judaea a certain prophet, named Agabus. And when he was come unto us, he took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” In other words, they have condensed the whole record of various things that took place; but if you and I had been there at Antioch that day we would be able to tell various details of what took place in those gatherings. He probably stood up and said something like this, Brothers and sisters, I saw in a vision a few days ago, that a terrible drought and such like is ahead; and he probably gave quite a few details of what he saw, yet it was sufficient for the writer of the book of Acts just to mention it as he did saying, And this was fulfilled in the days of Claudius the Roman emperor. Therefore just because 26 years have come and gone since the death of God’s prophet messenger to this age, do not endeavor to diminish anything from what he gave a Thus saith the Lord to. We all know what some of those who followed after him have done with some of the statements he uttered from the standpoint of human feelings. Our human feelings do not obligate God to bring about what we speak of, as what we feel may take place. Yet if He anointed some human vessel to speak something by the Spirit, you can mark it down: it will come to pass. Only God Himself knows the doctrines and things that have been projected by various individuals who took every word Bro. William Branham uttered after a certain date and gave it out as Thus saith the Lord. Well time itself has proved to most of us, that NOT every word he spoke was Thus saith the Lord. He had the same privilege of making human observation on things as any of us do. On the wall back there, is a newspaper printed in the month of April 1982. It has a picture of Willard Collins and Billy Paul, and an article underneath their picture’s. The contents underneath the picture is all about that particular year they were having this meeting at the Parkview High School in Jeffersonville. The article states that there were about thee thousand people gathered there. Many had come believing Bro. William Branham was going to be raised from the dead. Pictures were taken of a mass of people out at the cemetery by Bro. William Branham’s grave. Why would I read this to you? I am certainly not reading it just for the sake of humiliating anyone; rather to show you how Satan will use something that is done and said, and built it into a spirit. Please remember what our text scriptures say about that evil servant, or about those evil servants, for they are many. They will say in their heart’s, My Lord delays His coming. You have never heard Bob Schuller, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts or any of those men predict, or give you any kind of indication as to when they thought Jesus should have come, have you? However just as soon as God sent this man we are talking about and worked through him in the manner He did, and allowed him to say some of the things he said, it left people to speculate first of who he might be; but others began to project the thought, he is the Messiah. Some would say, He is the Lord disguised in human flesh, or he is the Word, and so forth. Most of you have probably heard it all; so what I want to impress upon you, is that all of this is projected by a spirit of Satan sent forth to cause confusion and discord among people who desire to walk with God. The devil knew there were carnal minded people he could use to project these things in a way to create chaos among those who recognize the fact that we truly did have a genuine prophet of God walking among us. What I really want you to take heed of is that the reason these evil servants even have an occasion to say, My Lord delays His coming, is because they have been indulging in something they have no scriptural authority to do in the first place: setting dates for His return. I will never forget October 1968. Bro. William Branham had been dead almost three years. In another state lived a certain man and his wife and son; (I knew their name and everything) and he got the idea from something Bro. William Branham said, that if the lord had not come by a certain date, I will know I have missed it; so I am going to take a shot gun and blow my wife and child and myself all to pieces. Well October came, and the Lord had not come, (and still has not come) but I never heard anything about that man blowing his head off with a shot gun. Can you not see that spirit of the devil in such evil servants? My Lord delays His coming. Why would anyone say that? Simply because they have such little respect for the word of God they are willing to go beyond anyone’s scriptural authority and do what the Bible absolutely gives us no authority to do. Before very long others begin to set dates also; and their dates have passed without the Lord’s return; but do you think they will admit they were wrong? I have not heard of one. Saints, I do not mind telling you they were wrong; and if I hear of anyone else doing what they have been doing, I will be quick to tell you they are wrong also. They had dates set from 1970 in November, then 1971, then 1973, 1977, then another one in 1982, when certain planetary bodies were to line up a certain way. The year 1982, was going to be a year of great catastrophic turbulence and all such like, according to some of them. These men made those predictions and none of them came to pass; so what is left for them? None of them come to pass. Why do these men do this? All because of the fact that God had a man in the earth which had said things he had every right to say the way he said them. Human speculation is acceptable as long as no one tries to make it more than that. We have all expressed our thoughts about things we felt were possibilities, based upon things we would see taking place in the world; but most of us have never gone to the extremes these evil servants have, in making their projections. Anyone who tries to make every word that man uttered Thus saith the Lord, is in the camp of these evil servants. The man had a right to say certain things, but nobody else had a right to set dates and take these statements, calculate and compile them into some kind of revelation as though they really had something to tell. That is why their dates came and have gone, and we are still looking for the Lord’s return. His return is a sure thing. You can depend upon that; but you cannot project a date for it to take place, especially when there are still prophecies of the Bible to be fulfilled before it can happen. I have already told you how even the day Bro. William Branham lay in the Coots Funeral Home, some were calculating and projecting the thought that he has to rise from the dead, to finish the work he was ordained to do. I was approached in the hallway, by one preacher of the movement. He said, Bro. Jackson, he has got to rise. I said, No, he will rise when the rapture comes. He said, No, he has got to come before then. I said, No he won’t. He said, There are too many things left undone. I said, God allowed him to finish everything he was supposed to do; and then He took him. He will not come back up until the rest of the dead saints come forth. I want to say at this time, The Branham family has never publicly stated that they believe in the early resurrection of Bro. William Branham. In the article hanging back there, Billy Paul and Willard Collins both deny that they believe that. I am going to read what is said as the journalist, the writer from the Courier Journal, writes this. One man they interviewed, (his name is Miguel Roman of New York City) said yesterday afternoon as he stood beside Branham’s grave and marble pyramid monument in Eastern Cemetery, a short distance from the school, I have coming here five years and I know he will come back. I will keep coming here each Easter. Leaders of the Branham sect, a bedrock fundamentalist group say (Notice now) they don’t endorse or encourage the resurrection talk; (Listen to this) though I am not saying some people don’t believe that, said Willard Collins, pastor of the Branham Tabernacle on Penn Street. Then as the writer goes on down here, he tells of an instance where Bro. William Branham was out in Illinois in prior years and such like, and as he comes to a conclusion, he goes back and picks up the subject at the time of the funeral saying, “When 700 people came to town for Branham’s burial, (I was right there also.) April 11, while in town for the services, the Rev. Pearry Green, pastor of a Tucson Arizona tabernacle that was a member of the Branham sect, talked openly of the resurrection belief. All along, local leaders of the Branham sect repeatedly said they don’t believe any of that; and today Collins says, It is just not true at all, regardless of what you have heard.” Saints, that is the statement Willard Collins made back in 1982; but I do not hear of any of them doing anything to discourage those who do believe in an early resurrection for Bro. William Branham. However I will not try to tell you exactly what they believe; but I will say this, If I believe something I will tell it to your face. I have no other reason. If somebody comes in here and wants to write an article and they are from the Courier Journal or the New Albany or Jeffersonville paper, you tell them to come and talk with me. We put our name on everything we have ever printed or preached; and I am not ashamed of any of it. I have nothing to hide. As we go on with this message, I am going to challenge this entire movement. Oh yes, it will bring a lot of criticism, and cause a lot of shots to be fired; but I tell you, There is not another preacher that was a witness to this man’s ministry, (and I want to say this as humbly as I know how) that has backbone enough to stand against all of that foolishness and say what is right and what is wrong. I do not have millions of dollars to play with, like some of these people do. I never have had a lot of money to use in my ministry; but I have always said, Whatever God gives me, I will use it for His glory. Therefore if He puts a revelation in my heart of something that I can see in the Bible, I will preach it from the house top. I will never come to you and talk to you about some secret revelation God has given me, and not have the nerve to put it out to the public There are no secret revelations as far as the Bride Church is concerned. Revealed scripture is for all of the true body of Christ. It is only hidden from carnal minded people who do not know what to do with a revelation. I realize there are times God will say, Wait just a little season, it’s not time yet, then release it; but there is one thing sure, I will never deny what God allowed me to see. That is why as we go along with this message, I am going to challenge this entire movement. As I come down to the end, my closing remarks are, If you believe I am wrong, and that I have done the man’s message a disgrace, (It matters not where you live, what country you are in, nor what kind of influence you have, build your platform, and build it high. Then you get up on it and tell the world how wrong I am. The day your prophet comes back to fulfill to the world, and to you what you have said he would do, standing on that platform, I will be there too, and I will apologize to you. But when time itself proves that he is not going to return, and your platform falls to the ground, please remember, I told you so. The last prophecy in the Bible that pertains to what will take place in the last days, we read it in Isaiah 52, verse 8. Mark it down in your Bibles: “Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion.” You know the preachers of this Branham movement, how they each have their own little interpretation: if they all even tried to sing in harmony, it would be one of the most ridiculous songs anyone ever heard. It would start a dog to howling. It would be like Mamma sang bass, and Daddy sang tenor. They are no more in harmony than a bunch of ducks quacking. They use their money to run their programs, to exploit, to propagate and influence; but we do not have to do that if we will just bide our time and walk with God in the way of truth. I thank God for the man I saw and heard, as he made this book come alive to me. He showed me the way to walk with God.
MORE ABOUT GOD’S PURGING FAN IN THE HAND OF CHRIST
I want to take you a little further with this thought of the fan in the hand of Christ; and how with it He will thoroughly purge His floor. We are wanting very much to put out a message that will show some people something that is working in the movement claiming to be following the message of truth delivered to this age by God’s prophet messenger. At least, maybe we can show you how to look at things that have been said in Bro. William Branham’s ministry in the years gone by, things I know are true, if looked at the right way. In the mail today, I received a booklet from a man I never heard of before receiving the booklet. This man publishes a booklet entitled, The Revelation of the Seven Thunders of Revelation 10. After seeing how he used a certain quote I thought, Anyone who believes that, will be cut completely off from what was said in here about the thunders. Again I must say, We are not using this message to attack anyone, or to dig at anyone in particular except the devil. We only desire to give you an opportunity to hear the message of Bro. William Branham from the standpoint of a people in the earth today, that are reaching out to God for truth. They are only interested in the revealed truth of God’s word, no matter who God may use to make it known to them. People who love truth do not need to hear it from a recorded sermon of Bro. William Branham; they can receive it from anyone God chooses to use. Therefore knowing that there are still people in the world today who are reaching out to God for truth and reality, and that they are going to keep on reaching, searching, until they find it, gives me encouragement and a reason to do what I can to help them find it. It is a pitiful shame, that through the years so many people have misunderstood the man God used so mightily, in this twentieth century. They listened to how he preached, and yet took so many things completely out of context, without knowing scripturally why he said some things a certain way. This is why I feel that our text scripture, though seemingly insignificant, carries such a stark reality for us, if we read it with Holy Ghost vision. Years ago, who would have given very much though to a scripture speaking of a wise servant, or a foolish one? There are multitudes of people today that believe in Bro. William Branham’s teachings that are represented through those various sermons in the printed booklets, yet they seem to place such little importance upon the book he got those messages from. Most scripture is not even interesting to that element, simply because their idea is, that everything they need is all wrapped up in those messages. As I have said before, If they could only realize that what John the Baptist said in Matthew 3:12, about the fan in the hand of the ONE coming later, after him, is literally the very statements they spend so much time whipping people with, they might take heed to a scripture like we are using for this message. John said, “Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor.” Do you actually realize what that means? Thoroughly purge, speaks of the fact that He will bring it right down to the last little speck and then He will get rid of it. God is going to have a people so pure and clean through the process of washing by His word, and by the blood of Jesus, that they are actually prepared to be the Bride people that will rule the earth in the Millennium. Those quotes so carefully prepared for worldwide distribution will never produce that kind of a bride for Jesus to come back for. Those quoters will read Malachi 4:5-6, to establish the authority of the prophet they want to preach about; but then they leave the Bible almost completely, to push a series of statements men like Peter, Paul, James, John, Matthew, Mark Luke, nor any of those apostolic fathers would have anything at all to do with, if they could come back. I will read it again, just for the sake of keeping it fresh in your mind’s, and for the sake of the thought I want to project to you. They are foolish and evil servants. It is just that simple. The very fact that they try their level best to cram every statement Bro. William Branham made down the throats of anyone who will listen to them, proves they are themselves without revelation of what they are trying to teach; for you cannot take two contradictory statements about the same thing; and give it out as Thus saith the Lord. God does not speak with a forked tongue like man is so likely to do. That is the very reason why I try so hard to impress upon you the fact that God’s true ministry in this end time will all have the same revelation of the scriptures. The end time Church could never be led into perfection, until God had a universal ministry all speaking the same revelation from the scriptures. Nevertheless just having the true revelation available to us, does not guarantee that everyone who claims to be a preacher or teacher of the word of god has it straight. Bro. William Branham delivered a message to this generation, that true Holy Ghost led men can take and digest, and all get the same revelation from; but within the framework of that message was a lot of statements carnal minded men void of the leadership of the Holy Ghost have taken and used to whip people with; and within all of that, the fan in Christ’s hand has been doing its work. These dual or contrary statements have been heaving people into the air; and many of them never do land on the true revelation of the word. They are just simply fanned away. God’s predestinated children, though they may at times be tossed around, will always eventually land with two feet upon the revealed word of God. Therefore through that very process, the threshing floor of the Lord is being thoroughly purged. When people get offended by truth that is preached, we are not required to run after them and drag them back. That is how this fan is working; so learn to be sensitive to what the Spirit of God is doing; and you will not be found interfering with some purpose of God.
THE SPIRIT OF ELIJAH – THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS AND THE CHILDREN
Let me read the prophecy of Malachi. It was prophesied by Malachi, four hundred years before the advent of Christ, concerning this two fold coming of the spirit of Elijah. It was on John. We brought that out as clear as I know how; and most accept the part John the Baptist played in this picture, without very much being said. The part that seems so hard for a lot of people to understand, is the fact that somewhere in the end time, that spirit would come again on another man. I will read the whole thing at this time. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers (That is the old Judaistic, orthodox, Pharisee, priests and scribes, and such like) to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Those Jews that were leaving Judaism, to go out and hear him, that would later become believers and receivers of the finished work that was to be accomplished in Christ Jesus, were the fathers of our faith. That is why it says, he would turn the heart of the fathers to the children. It was the fathers, these ecclesiastical big shots, that got so curious: What is going on down at the river? They sent the scribes, Pharisees, elders, always key men in high places, to the river to investigate. I tell you brother, sister, if you want to get in trouble with God, just listen to that type of figure for a while. They will get you in more trouble than you can get out of any way soon. First off, they appear to know it all, and most of the time they know so very little about true spiritual values. To the river they went, to see what all the excitement was about. Arriving there they saw a lot of their congregation getting baptized by John; and later they saw them following the man John did not feel worthy to baptize. Those people that would be going like that, were destined to be the children of the old Jewish orthodox teachers and such. However those children of that first age, are the very fathers of the faith we hold so dear to our hearts. That two fold coming of the spirit of Elijah has been separated by a time span of over 1900 years; but both phases of it have now been fulfilled; and we are the last generation on earth to partake of the benefits of this great move of God in the dispensation of grace. What we have looked at so far was John’s part of that Malachi prophecy. That leaves the second half to be applied to this Laodicean Church Age. We are the very generation Jesus said would not pass away until all those things He was referring to would be fulfilled; and Bro. William Branham fulfilled the second half of Malachi 4:5-6; for it was his message of truth that turned the hearts of the children of this generation back to the faith of those who heard John and walked with Jesus. “And the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” That had to happen before this dispensation ended; or there would not have been the kind of Church left on earth, that the Bible tells us Jesus is coming back for. Our hearts have not been turned back to that of some denominational bishops we have been affiliated with. No. It means back to the apostolic church fathers who were the ones that wrote the New Testament. For the sake of illustration, we will divide this book into two parts and say, This represents the Old Testament, and this the New Testament. Therefore the things we read in the New Testament are the writings of the fathers of the Christian faith. The New Testament is the word of god that contains the precepts of God’s new covenant He gave mankind, the covenant that was perfected at Calvary. However we find that through time, the devil working against that covenant has caused man through the ages to lose the true understanding of it; so God knowing this would happen, already had a provision for the restoration of it; and had it announced in the writings of the Old Covenant. Every time the devil could get people to lose the understanding of a certain scriptural point, he would always insert a substitute of some kind of tradition to take the place of what was lost. This is why when we analyze the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, there are hardly any doctrines of the New Testament taught by them. Therefore knowing that the Catholic Church through the centuries of time did away with the true revelation of God’s word, this should help us better understand why Protestantism, which actually is the daughters of that old mother church system brought about by the Reformation, coming out of the Dark Ages, could never teach Bible doctrine like our apostolic fathers did. God did not give it all back to any certain Protestant movement. As God dealt with each movement, He would give them a truth. Not the whole truth, but a truth such as Luther received, That the just shall live by faith. Calvin and John Knox, got the revelation of eternal security and predestination. Then we came to John Wesley and sanctification, all gotten right out of the same scriptures the devil had been perverting for 1500 years. I was thinking a lot about John Wesley today. John Wesley was in the Church of England, which had broken from the Roman Church some century before that time. When God dealt with John Wesley and he began to see the doctrine and teaching of sanctification in the scriptures, truth that had been right there all the time. He went back to the old church where his father used to preach. He knocked on the door; and when the pastor came he asked if he could speak to the congregation that morning. That pastor had already heard about John’s “new” revelation and the things he had been preaching to the coal miners; so he was not overjoyed to see him there. The words were said, We do not want anything to do with that teaching of yours, here in this place. The door was shut in his face. He turned away hurt. What did he do? He went out into the cemetery where his father was buried; and got on top of his father’s tombstone, looked up into the sky and said, the world shall be my parish. On horseback he rode, him and George Whitfield, preaching what God had revealed to them, through the mining towns, the country villages, and wherever they found ears to listen, just like circuit preachers you have known years ago. They preached hard and a revival broke out in England. George Whitfield was the man that brought the Methodist gospel to the new world. It was picked up by another man, Asbury was his name. That is who the Asbury college is named after. Down next to Asheville North Carolina, as you are coming out toward the Cherokee Reservation, there is a memorial on the side of the road paying respect to him. It tells how Asbury, from that point on up and down the Appalachian chain, rode mules and preached the revelation that John Wesley had preached in the mining towns and villages of the English countryside, Remember, that is why I said, Truth has always been faced with conflict. When you think it will be something people will readily accept, they do not. Man is very strangely made up when you think about it. He is a very strange creature. Most of them just want enough religion to give them a feeling of security, not really caring much about whether they hear it the way God meant for it to be heard, just as long as it makes them feel good. All the rest of what is written in the scriptures can just go sailing right on by. Well regardless of what other generations have done with the word of God, there has to be an element of people here in the end of this age, that have ears to hear the true revelation of scriptures people have fought about in generations past, and be willing to live accordingly, ready and willing for the Spirit of God to lead them, even if it does bring persecution from the other elements of religion. Truth has never been popular with the masses of religious people.. Through the Reformation, God restored more or less one major Bible doctrine at a time; but here in the end time we realize, we cannot stop with just one little thing. We have got to go on all the way with God. So as this man was sent in our generation of time to do one specific thing, to turn the heart of the end time Christian believing children back to the attention of what their apostolic Christian fathers taught, they have a call of God to receive the complete revelation of truth the bride Church must have, in order to dress herself properly for her Bridegroom. As for the ministry of Bro. William Branham, every message he ever preached was derived from only one source, the holy Bible. Therefore, whether it is this book, the Seven Seals book, or booklets of this nature, (and there are hundreds of others) the main source for every topic he dealt with was his Bible. Out of all he preached and said through the thirty some years he preached, not one thing did he ever say or preach with the aim of giving you and I another Bible. That was the farthest thing from his mind. That is why when he preached something, and preached it to be truth, the next Sunday he would not bring a copy of his own sermons to preach out of. He always brought this. (THE BIBLE) It is very strange how he could get a thousand, eleven or twelve hundred sermons through the years, out of this Bible, (and if he was still here, he would still be preaching out of it) but when God took him from among us, all of a sudden those followers begin to proclaim, The faith has been restored. We no longer need this. That is why I keep repeating, It is one thing to have heard audibly or verbally what the man said, but if you and I did not have the Spirit of God in us, leading us, and opening our spiritual ears, we may have heard it wrong. Hearing it wrong is no disgrace, if we are correctable; but if we heard it wrong and are not subject to be corrected, nine times out of ten we are destined to go astray, and miss the point altogether. This is the thing I am trying my best to do, show people why that prophet came, why it is important for us to recognize the purpose in his coming, and how to analyze what he preached, taught and said to see if what he said was designed to put us back in the scriptures, which is what that Elijah was to do. I will guarantee you one thing, he preached enough to put any true child of God back in the scriptures; but God also allowed him to say enough to fan any chaff far away from HIS good grain (the bride of Christ). The movement as whole are literally against Ephesians 4. You know what Ephesians 4 is about, the five fold ministry the apostle Paul said was for the perfecting of the saints. (Ephesians 4:11-13 “and He (the Lord) gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: (13) Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of (Who?) The Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” They are up and down the road, across the land, around the world, telling everyone who will listen to them, that God fulfilled Malachi 4. He surely did. I certainly do not disagree with that; but we have to understand, that if that man’s teachings were ordained of God to point you and I back to the faith of our apostolic, Pentecostal fathers, it is certainly not the man William Branham himself, that is going to take these restored truths and perfect the Church, bringing it into the final state of unity it must be in before the return of the Lord. It will be the ministry of Ephesians 4, that takes what God used him to restore to us, and leads the Church the rest of the way. Bro. William Branham’s ministry was in fact to take what the other men God had used in the Reformation had stood for; and present the whole package together to the end time Church; and that is exactly what he did. That is the only scriptural ministry established by the word of God for this hour of time; and that is absolutely to be the means by which God will perfect the Church. Here is the one other thing. There could not be an Ephesians 4 ministry, until after there had first been a Malachi 4, ministry. God has this whole thing worked out perfectly. We just have to find out how to flow with the moving of His Spirit in order to be led into perfection.