As we continue on with this message, there is something I want to express and try to demonstrate what we mean. I hope you will listen to what I say. If you do not listen and take heed, somewhere just in front of us, someone is going to lose something and then wish a thousand time they had listened to what I said. These gifts are very important in the body of Christ. The church world has lived for many centuries and decades without the manifestation of the presence of God in the demonstration of His power through any of that. I have heard preachers in the denominational realm say, regardless of the denomination they were associated with, that the gifts of the Spirit were only for the apostolic hour of that first century. You will not find any Bible authority for a remark like that. What causes them to come to that conclusion, is the fact that people in the next generation did not live for God in a way to manifest the gifts earlier Christians had experienced in their lives. God has never taken them out of operation. It is just a matter that every individual Christian has to cultivate the gifts in his or her own experience. Even in that first Age, man had reached such a state as the new generations came along and became part of the body, by faith, through the atonement work of Jesus Christ, that they just simply did not live up to the qualifications of possessing the gifts or being used in any particular gift. They did not cultivate a proper attitude. These gifts only belong to people that are willing to let God have complete rule and control of their mind, their spirit, and their entire being for that matter. The gifts of the Spirit were never to be put on display just for the purpose of putting on a show to entertain people. Neither did God ever intend that people would run a race of competition with each other in the operation of the gifts, like, I have more than you have. We are all what we are by the grace of God. Many of us deserve to be in hell when you consider our former ways, and except for the grace and mercy of God we would be. That is why God Himself deserves all the credit and praise for any good deed we have ever done. It is true that the grace of God has been given to every person, man or woman, and God is not a respecter of persons, that He would show favor to anyone. By the same token though, he knows exactly what you have the capability to live up to. He knows whether you can be trusted to use a gift the right way or not. He knew that, even before you became a believer. Therefore we have got to begin to realize, God has a purpose and a particular objective for every usage. He just simply does not anoint us and turn us loose to let us wander down the road of life doing as we please. I realize the anointing many times, can create an enthusiasm and excitement in the heart of a person, and that is when we have to use sound judgement to keep from abusing the gift. Sometimes they feel like they are being driven into a certain way of doing something, but as you journey down the pathway of life, and as you meet certain trials, tests, and circumstances, there is always going to be something that God will present to you in a manner and a way to teach you something that will help you, that we all might learn together. We in ourselves are nothing, except by the grace of God. It behooves us to always be willing to be submit ourselves to Him and ask Him to guide and help us. I want to read these verses of scripture again, so please open your Bibles with me to 1st Corinthians 12, we will start with the 4th verse. Please pay attention. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Spirit.” (That literally pertains to the way God has distributed the gifts, putting them into your life for the purpose and function that he wants you to be used in within the body of Christ.) And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.” Notice here, that at the time Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthians, there was no such thing as Roman Catholics, Church of Christ, Presbyterians, Unitarians, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Nazarenes, Pilgrim Holiness, United Brethren, nor any other brand you have ever heard of. They just simply did not exist. Remember though, that every epistle in this book was written to a local church body, a group which consisted of local people. They had all embraced the gospel, sooner or later, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. If you knew the history on every one of these churches and the progress of time, sooner or later the spiritual things of God would be manifested within the overall fellowship of that body. The church did not lose this all at once either. It was lost gradually, as they began to be bombarded with false revelations, things that were completely alien to the revelation of God’s word. History proves, that as the old patriarchs of the faith, those that had experienced the manifestation of the Spirit of God in the early days, would die off, a newer generation would come along to fill the gap, but also true to life is the fact that the younger generations do not pick up and hold on to the same things that the older generations had. That is not said to cast a reflection on anyone. It just seems like that is the law of the flesh. As the Church began to weaken, God began to lift some of the things the former generations had enjoyed having access to. The potential for all of it has always been there, but the manifestations have been subject to the proper attitudes and motives of the worshipers. When you go to your dictionary for a definition of manifestation, it means to demonstrate, to put on public display. That is what every one of these gifts, in time, under the right conditions, are sent forth for, to be displayed by the Spirit of God, within the body of Christ. “For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.” Some might ask, Is it possible for a person to have more than one gift? Yes. “To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit. To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit. (Meaning they are all worked and operated by the one and selfsame Spirit, which is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God in the body of Christ.) dividing to every man (or believer) severally (or separately) as He will.” God knows every one of us, and He knows how to fulfill His purpose through submitted vessels. I have a lot of things to say today, but the one I really want to cover first in full detail is the thing that people get the idea we are to use the gift of tongues and interpretation for, which is to pronounce healing to a sick person. That is not in the Bible. Do not sit here in these pews thinking, Well now Bro. Jackson, what about this, or that or something else? God is sovereign of course, but I have Bible authority for everything I am saying. Why would God use the least gift within the body to minister to one of the needs that is most prominent in the body, which is sickness? Why would He use the least gift to change the status quo? It is not that way. You might have heard of cases in years gone by, where certain things were done by this person and so on, but keep in mind, God is absolutely merciful many times, in the face of our ignorance. Many times He will ride over your feelings and ignorance and do something because it is a certain person He is showing mercy to. However when it comes to something that is to portray the body of Christ in its full functioning purpose, it is always operating within the perfect plan and will of God. God will never override His word just to please you or me. When you cultivate the attitude, Well I don’t see why it cannot be a certain way, what is the anointing for anyhow? You are getting off the proven trail. Regardless of what you may think, no gift of the Spirit of God is ever given to anyone to make them do something contrary to the scriptures. Let me say this. As long as you feel that is a possibility, you do not need to be trusted with any of these gifts. You do not need to expect God to trust you with them. Let us just say a certain person has heard about this church, what God is doing here, and they decide to check it out. I grant you, God has been merciful to a lot of people. When I think of all the babies today that are getting sick with this and that, we are going to see more of this stuff as we get closer to the end because it is a sign that the devil is coming forth in all of his power to harass the people of God, because he knows he has just a short time. We are going to need the will of God to get through this spiritual warfare. To get through what we are going to be faced with, we are going to have to fight it by faith, from a Biblical standpoint, to keep our lives in line with the scriptures, instead of being ordered by our feelings. There are three things that affect us as a human being. There is such a thing as sympathy. God help people if they cannot have sympathy in the right way. Number two is mercy. Number three is compassion. People that grow up in life hard hearted, the world almost has to come to an end before it brings them to the realization that they have never been able to show sympathy, mercy or compassion to someone that is really down and out. Therefore when we get to the place that we cannot control any of these things, how do we look upon any certain situation when we do not know what lays behind it. The truth is, many times we just propel ourselves into a look right realm, thinking we are doing right, when we are not doing right at all. Let us just say there was a woman that left home this morning carrying a little baby with a high fever. She intends to go to the hospital with the child, but she comes by here as we begin service. She stands here and tells Bro. Allen and Bro. Bud, or whoever might be standing here at the time, how long her baby has been sick with this fever, and that she wants our prayers. As those words are echoed out over the congregation, you can sit there feeling sympathetic, merciful, and think, Well that poor soul needs a word from God. That is not for you to decide. It never has been left up to us to decide that. It is a known fact that one woman can have a baby with the certain symptoms, it can be prayed for by faith, and in a few short hours God has lifted the fever, while another woman can have another child with a similar sickness, you can pray for an hour, but she will still end up in a hospital and the baby will die. Why do you talk like that Bro. Jackson? Simply because I have seen men sound as though it is God’s will to heal everybody, regardless of circumstances. Up to a point, yes, but beyond that point, no. It plainly tells me in the Bible also, that there is a time to live, a time to die, and so forth Let me see you change that. You will find it in Proverbs. You and I do not know the entire order God moves by, but He does; and you cannot force Him to go beyond the point where He draws the line. TESTIMONIES Several years ago when I was a lot younger, I was doing some repairs on a building. I went to another old building sitting back in the woods that had some good siding on it. I took a wrecking bar and tore off some of the boards. There was no path through the brush, so as I tore the boards off, I would pick them up and take them over the brush to where I had parked the tractor. I threw one board pretty hard and immediately felt a pain hit me in my groin. When night came, I knew I had ruptured myself. That was in the early 1950’s. I had seen men in the hospital that had been operated on, and the way they would swell, scared me. I said, No, I am going to trust God to heal me. I went over to Louisville one night to be in a meeting, thinking I would be healed there. To my surprise, there was a young man that stood up and gave a testimony. He too was a soldier from WW2. He had suffered with a hernia, he told how long. It got to where it bothered him terribly. Him being a veteran, he went to the Veterans hospital to get it taken care of. They x-rayed him, marked his body for surgery the next morning, and waited. That night, while laying in the hospital bed, the Lord came to him in a dream, touched him and said, You will never need the knife for that. When he came out of that dream, he was still laying in the bed, but he felt within his heart that God had done something for him. The next morning came, the interns came in to take him into surgery, but on the way to the operating room he said to the interns, I do not want you to put a knife on me until you have first x-rayed me again. I want to be sure I am being operated on because the surgery is needed. They took him by the x-ray room and x-rayed him, and then came to find out that he did not have a hernia after all. I thought to myself, Well if God can do that for one man, he can do it for me too. I carried that thing around for twenty years and the Lord never did heal it, but it got to where it caused me a lot of difficulty. By that time I heard that the method of operating on hernias was not like it was years ago, so I made up my mind I would listen to my doctor and have the surgery. When I did have it repaired I then thought, if I would have known nineteen years prior to that, that God was going to be merciful to me in that way, I never would have carried that thing around all those years. Outside of some soreness, it never bothered me one bit. That taught me something. You just never know what God has in mind, concerning a certain situation that turns out to be different than what you expect. I grant you, it is hard to stand by and see a little child suffer, but if God can look down and see a ship sinking in the waters, and mothers and children falling into the water and drowning, why did He not show mercy there? Think about it. Yet there has been other instances where God came right on the scene and somehow He would cause a person to find mercy and grace in His eyes; and right in the midst of the turmoil, God would reach down and touch the need and deliver. When the whole incident is all over, everyone knew God was on the scene. That is why I say there is no need of you and me trying to think we are going to change the way God looks upon certain situations. Will God heal a sinner? He sure will. I think back to around the year 1960, when we had a neighbor that got real sick and thought he was going to die. He was a good man, as far as a man of the world. Just like a lot of people years ago, he never went to school very much. I heard he got real sick and they had to take him to the hospital. He was a very emotional type person. When he went to the hospital he said, they will probably carry me out of here in a pine box. He was just that kind of person. Prone to think negative a lot of the time. I felt sorry for him but no particular plans as far as doing anything for him. I went to bed one night and had a dream about him, that I had walked into the hospital room, walked over to his bed and said Arlie, I know you are sick, but I want you to know you are not going to die. You are going to come out of the hospital. The next day I went to the hospital in the evening to see him. I walked in and the minute I came within his reach he put his arms around me and began to cry, saying, Bro. Jackson, will you pray for me, I feel so sick? I had not yet told him the dream I had. I just let him talk for a while. Finally I said, Arlie, you don’t have to believe this if you don’t want to, but I had a dream about you last night. I saw you in the dream telling me this, and I heard myself say to you Arlie, you are not going to die, you are going to get well and come home. You are going to live quite a while yet. That man let out a scream loud enough they could hear him all over that hospital. He grabbed me and started crying and shaking, shaking the bed. That was his way of reacting. In a few days he came home and lived several more years. Every time he would see me, he would say, Raymond, I sure thank you for coming to see me in the hospital. Seeing him live several years after that, is one of the things that let me know God has a way of doing things that we do not always understand, when it serves a purpose in His overall plan for mankind.
HAVING FAITH TO BE HEALED
There are some sicknesses that you do not always have to be prayed for by some person in order to get well. When my wife became expectant with Lois, it was the fall of the year right when my father-in-law and I were baling hay. All of a sudden here came our car across the field. My wife pulled up and motioned for me to come to the car. I went over there and she was crying. She said, I am in such pain I can hardly stand it. I have got to go to the doctor. I drove her to Corydon, to see the doctor. On the way she was in such pain she vomited. When we got to Corydon, I stopped at a pay phone to call the doctor and ask him to meet us at the hospital emergency room. (It hurts me to see people suffer such severe pain like that and know I cannot do anything for them.) We went on to the emergency and by the time we got there, our doctor had also arrived. He came into the room immediately and was in there for several minutes. Finally he came out and said, Raymond, your wife has tubal pregnancy. We have given her something to calm the pain. That is all we can do right now, so we will just have to wait until that breaks, which means she will go into hemorrhaging. Then we will have a surgeon standing by, ready to operate. That didn’t sound good to me. I thought, Lord, why does something like this have to come? He had called the surgeon to standby and we just had to wait. Finally I was allowed to go in to see my wife. I went into the emergency room and they shut the door. It was just me and my wife in there. Sometimes when you think you have no faith, or very little faith, that is when God shows mercy to you. He just tarts doing something inside of you and it takes you a while to realize what is going on. She said these words to me, There is no knife going to touch this body. That came from her own lips, not from me. I took her in there, vomiting, and she was in such terrible pain, so I just sat in the chair beside her bed and waited. She just kept saying, God is going to take care of this. After a while she said, that pain is leaving. I can feel it leaving. Well, I wanted to believe it was leaving, but it was pretty hard to believe the way she was believing, after having seen her suffer like she did. Finally she said, Let’s pray. We both prayed. That is when I said, Lord, don’t let any knife touch this body. Straighten this thing up, whatever it is, and let us go home. We sat there in that hospital room and the nurse came in about every twelve minutes and took her blood pressure. When I first took her in, her blood pressure was way down. After we had been there about forty five minutes, they had taken her blood pressure in those intervals. It was holding about the same. But after about forty five minutes or maybe an hour, she said, your blood pressure has come up a little bit. That sounded good. Another twelve minutes, it was coming up even more. After about forty five minutes more, the nurse said it was almost normal. She asked my wife how she felt. She said, I feel fine, I want to go home. The nurse just shook her head and went out to call our doctor again. Naturally she explained to him what had taken place. That time he came in and said, Mrs. Jackson, how are you doing? I am fine, I want to go home, she replied. Do you mean you have no more pain? Not a bit. Well I thought you would have soon gone into hemorrhaging. Are you sure that pain is all gone? We gave you pain medication, but the amount we gave you would not have taken the pain completely away, it would only dull it. She said, it is all gone. Do you think you feel like going home? She said, Yes. Then he looked at me and said, Raymond, all I know to do is let her go, but I expect you to be back soon. They put her in a wheelchair and took her out to the car and by the time we got home, she was no more in pain, and she never returned to the hospital as the doctor had expected. We had our baby, Lois. The devil knows how to ravage some situations in young peoples lives, but this time God was on the scene to foil his plan of disaster. I have to say, No, it was not because someone of an outstanding ministry was standing praying, that God saw fit to spare us of what was expected. I have to give my wife the credit for touching God. It was her faith and the mercy that God cultivated in her, to help change and erase the whole thing and turn it around. God was glorified, because we both realized it was not through any specific effort on our part, that He saw fit to intervene. As the years came and went, naturally there are always sicknesses of various sorts but we came through all of them. Then as we came to the year, I believe around 1963, Bro. William Branham had already preached the Church Ages. My wife had suffered for several months with bladder infections. This seems to be common with some women. When it would get os bad she would go to the doctor and he would put her on antibiotics. After she would take the medication for two or three weeks, it would straighten up, but it would never last very long. It would not be very long until it was back again. That kept on like that for months and months. We came to that period of time in 1963, and Bro. William Branham was in Topeka, Kansas, in meetings. I said to my wife, Honey, I am going to take you to Topeka, and see if I can get a prayer card for you, to have you prayed for. After telling her that, that night I had a dream. I dreamed I had taken her to Bro. William Branham’s home. I saw how everything was sitting in the house, where Bro. William Branham would sit, where he would ask my wife to sit and so forth. Nevertheless, I just kept the dream to myself. We drove through the entire night to get to Topeka. After we got there, there was such a crowd I could hardly get into the building, let alone get a prayer card. Therefore we came home without her being prayed for, but the next week, this same condition hit her again. I took her to the doctor. He tested her and said, I am going to give you one more particular antibiotic, if that does not work, I will have to send you to a specialist. That is when I decided to trust the dream I had before going to Topeka, so I called Billy Paul and said to him, my wife has had a bladder infection that has bothered her for months on end, is it possible that I could get her in to have Bro. William Branham pray for her? He said, Sure, when do you want to come? I said, we can come this evening if it is OK. He said for us to come on. We went on and Bro. William Branham met us on the front porch, greeted us as we got out of the car and said, Come on in. We stepped into the house and Sis. Branham was in the bathroom combing her hair. There was a couch on one side of the living room and a piano over in the corner. Bro. William Branham had my wife to sit on another couch and he sat down across the room from her and just started talking. Finally he said, you may wonder why I am talking like this, I just want to try to contact your spirit. Then shortly after ward he got up from his seat and took his wrist watch off. He laid his watch on the piano. Then he turned around and said, Sis. Jackson, stand up. He took her by his left hand. He no sooner touched her hand when he said, Yes, you have a very bad case of infection. In fact it is so bad it is just like a circle. It causes your body to secrete acids, it causes you to worry a lot, you take the medicine, it helps some, but your body just keeps kicking this off. I could see his hand during that time, as he watched the sign. He bowed his head and prayed for my wife. After he prayed, he said, Sis. Jackson, sit down. He sat back down in his seat and just then Sis. Branham came into the room and Bro. William Branham started a conversation with her. He said, Mede, you weren’t in here when I prayed for Sis. Jackson, but she has a bladder infection that is really bad. It is in a chronic state, but I believe she has faith that everything is going to be alright now. He said, come here Sis. Jackson. My wife stood up. He took hold of her hand and his hand just stayed normal. Finally he said these words to my wife, You have more faith than I thought you had. That made me feel good. I will never forget when he was praying for her, how his wrist looked when that disease came against the gift that was in his hand. The inside part of his wrist was just like it was puffed by pressure, big purple blotches appeared all over his wrist. He said, I can hear the spirit of that thing just going round and round. When he took her hand the second time, he said, See, it is all gone. In my dream, when we walked out of the house, I heard him say, Sis. Jackson, don’t worry, everything is going to be alright. As we shook hands and was leaving the house, he said to my wife, Sis. Jackson, just believe, everything is going to be alright. You may want to go back to your doctor after about three days and have yourself checked to see how things are going. I remembered that. We left, and by the time we arrived home she was feeling so good. The weekend came, she went through the weekend feeling fine. She said, There is no need of me going to the doctor. I feel fine, but Monday morning came it was different. When she got up on Monday, I had gone to the barn to take care of things out there, and the first thing she said to me when I came back in, was, I don’t know what is wrong, but I feel this morning just like I did before I was prayed for. I don’t understand why it had to come back. I said, get ready, we are going to the doctor so he can check you out. (I realize this, a lot of people have grown up in life thinking you are never to trust a doctor. If that is your faith, well and good, but if you are trying to believe a certain way because somebody else did it that way, you might just bring a lot of unnecessary problems upon yourself because it is not your faith you are following at all, you are just trying to follow the faith of somebody else. That will never be acceptable with God. It is our own convictions that He honors, assuming they are not contrary to His written word.) Well my wife got herself ready and we started to Corydon. By the time we got to the edge of Corydon, she said, The pain is completely gone. I said, well we are going to go ahead and let the doctor check you out anyhow. That is what Bro. William Branham said for you to do. The doctor checked her out and said, Mrs. Jackson, you do not have any trace of infection in your body right now. That was about 1963. She has never had a reoccurrence of that thing since that time. Saints, I am saying these things to try to get the point across to you, that you do not always know how, what, why or when God is going to do something a certain way. Whatever He does, he does it to give you an experience that will increase your faith. He has many ways of bringing certain things to the same final conclusion, but he always has a specific thing to accomplish. AN EXPERIENCE I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER At this time I want to relate another experience I personally had as I kept seeking all that the Lord had for me. In 1957, a man by the name of A.A. Allen, was conducting a series of meetings in Evansville, Indiana. (That was before things began to go bad for him. He was still married at that time.) I wanted to see this man and witness first hand, his ministry. I had received the Holy Spirit some time before then at another meeting. I remember how God had slain me on the floor in a high school building in Louisville, Kentucky. A man by the name of Homer Hall from Cleveland, Tennessee, had prayed for me then. I had never spoken in another language though and I knew how the Pentecostals believed, that if you have never spoken in tongues, you do not have the Holy Ghost. Well I knew what God had given me in that meeting, and I knew how my life had changed from the very time He had slain me on the floor, yes, but I knew there was more that could be had by yielding to His Spirit. I had even wondered at the time, Why am I down here? I had better get up, but when I tried to get up, I could not even raise any part of my body. I felt like the whole world was sitting on the top of me. So I just laid there. It was one of the most blessed drunks any person could ever desire to be on. It felt like I was just raising up off of the floor and spinning in space. I thought, if I could die like this, it would sure be wonderful. It looked like every light in that place just merged together and became one giant light. When we went to that meeting it was not a totally new experience for me. I had been around another church or two, and at times would hear a message in tongues, but when I went to that meeting that night, I saw a manifestation of the gifts, the vocal gifts, that made me realize, this is the kind of people I want to be around. That meeting in 1957, was mainly Assemblies of God people from right there in that area. The tent was a five pole tent that would hold about three thousand people and it was packed full. When we got there that night, we managed to get inside the tent and get a seat on the end of the row facing the center aisle. I felt like, if I could ever get around where the gifts really were allowed to work God would do something for me, so there we sat anxiously awaiting the start of the meeting. Finally A.A. Allen came to the platform and there was already a lot of other preachers on the platform. The preliminaries were over, and when A.A. Allen came to the microphone to address the people he said, It is good to be here together, so let everyone be very reverent. The presence of God is here tonight, and I do not know what He is going to do, but I do know He is going to do something for someone. As he stood there, over to my right, some person gave a message in tongues, and immediately to the left there was another message in tongues. Then from the platform a preacher stood up and interpreted. I said to myself, I am where I need to be tonight. Very shortly thereafter another preacher stood up and gave a prophecy. Then there was another message in tongues and another preacher gave the interpretation. A.A. Allen began to say to the sinners, I know you came tonight expecting me to preach, but there is a presence of God here tonight, and I just want God to have His way. Therefore I am going to give an invitation to the sinners to come tonight. As he started giving the invitation for sinners to come, there was another message in tongues and the interpretation came out, If you came tonight seeking a blessing, believe within thy heart that thou shalt receive, and thy desire shall be granted. I said, That is for me. After the sinners all went back to the tent to pray, he then gave the call for those seeking something from God, saying, If you believe that God is going to do it, come on. I made my way up front. All the preachers came off the platform and formed a line and we just started going through. I was walking down through there saying, Lord, I am here. I believe you are going to do something for me. I remember getting up between two or three people of the first preachers, and I was so drunk I could not stand up. I felt myself falling. I heard a preacher say, Grab him. I fell face down in the straw. Two preachers, one took hold of one arm, the other took my other arm, and they drug me over and laid me down in the straw. I was no sooner lain face down in the straw when it was just like a spring of water opened up in my stomach and there was a feeling began to come up in my throat. When it came out through my mouth, it was a word I did not know. Then it just started repeating. I lay there for about fifteen minutes, speaking in another language. I did not even care who else was around, or who heard me, or what. I just said, Lord, you did exactly what you said you would do. After a while the anointing lifted and I was able to get up. The service was over. I am saying this, because there are some people out here in the religious world who have heard a lot of things about tongues, interpretation, gifts of the Spirit and such. I said years ago, you have never seen the body of Christ in action yet. You just think you have. You have seen preachers with gifts of faith, gifts of healing, and so forth, but that is just one lone man, and he is not working consistently with anyone else. He is an evangelist a loner, exercising a gift. God has used him in his hour, but I have always felt that when the ministry to the Bride Church really get in line with the written scriptures, and everything gets where it functions according to the Bible way, and God’s will is sought after rather than just something for personal enjoyment, you are going to see some things that will startle you, shock you, and yes, shake you. I look back to 1994, when we saw how God dealt with many people, filling them with His Spirit, and allowing gifts of tongues to be manifested. The enthusiasm, the anointing, many times can make you feel like you can do anything you desire to do with this. No, you cannot. Forget it. You are not going to do everything you might imagine to do with it. You are only going to do what you are supposed to do with it, and if you don’t do that, I promise you, if you go on down the road thinking you can, one of these days God will let you do something, and you are going to turn away and hang your head and say, Lord, I will never open my mouth again. I have seen too many go like that, through the years since we were first exposed to the worship practices of Pentecostal people. Years ago, there was a movement called Latter Rain. It basically started in Canada, but in the initial beginning of the movement, it was real. There were testimonies that came from that circle that would really bless you to hear. However as years came and went, and we came into the era of time when the deliverance move was going on, even though the Latter Rain movement had manifestations of gifts and things, they still became stagnant. Why? Because by that time, they had begun to get the idea that they had everything there was to be had, and that they could do anything and everything they desired to do with it. I will never forget, there was a Latter Rain Church in Michigan, that had a woman pastor. I have talked to people that have been there at that time. The church specialized in singing in the Spirit. When you went there, you went to become a part of the, to rejoice in the Spirit, singing in the Spirit and so forth, but on the other hand, they did not want anyone dancing in the Spirit. Neither did they want anyone shouting in the Spirit. What does all this add up to? How can yo take one thing out of the scriptures, saying, This good, and major on it, but you have no time for anything else God might lead someone to yield to? I was young back then, when we went various places to be in meetings, and my soul was thirsting for the things of God. I was in a little meeting in Sturgis, Michigan one time, when one of the women from a certain group came to the meeting that night with a certain agenda. About the time the song service started, suddenly she was on the floor, in the Spirit. She walked around the floor with her eyes closed, and she was going to cast spirits out of everyone there. The pastor said to me, she is from the Latter Rain. I have watched all of these things and I have to say, God done some wonderful things with people in days gone by. He has let them see His grace and has let them feel His power. Yet for some reason or other, they never seemed to learn to exercise very much wisdom with what they had and their movement just played out. Now we are in the year 2000, and one could say, where is the Latter Rain group today? Where have they gone? You do not hear of them anymore. There may be some of the old timers still alive somewhere, but it seems as though they have all played out, and it is all because they got on one track about something they received from God, never allowing Him to direct them in the proper understanding and usage of the gifts of the Spirit. It would be very easy for us to do the same thing, if we are not careful to seek the will of God for our individual lives. Those who have been blessed with being used in the exercise of the gifts, ought always to be sensitive to be led by the same Spirit that gives the gifts. Many just assume that whatever seems right in their own eyes is alright with God, but that is not so. I am sure most of you here today have heard me say. Tongues and interpretation are not to bring healing, nor for casting out oppressing spirits. What does the Bible say about speaking in other tongues? The scripture says it is a sign to the unbeliever. It is a sign gift. The first time I every heard it I thought, Oh, I’m in the house of God, because I was unlearned. When you are unlearned, that puts you in the same category as an unbeliever. One thing is sure though, I knew I was somewhere that God was in action. This right here, (pointing to the chart) James 5:14-15, is something that ought to get our thinking pointed in the right direction. Notice what it says, “Is any sick among you? Let him call the elders of the Church; and let the pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” That is a Bible promised. The prayer of faith shall save the sick. Therefore if we are using something else trying to substitute that, letting something else take the place of that gift, we are not going to get by with it. How many really do understand what I a saying and why I am saying it? I am not here today to take anything from anyone, but to try to give us a scriptural understanding of some things that have bene so terribly misunderstood by so many in the past. There are certain scriptural ways for things to function, and when they are followed properly the body of Christ will shine. Denominational tradition includes a lot of practices you can find no scriptural authority for, but God has a way designed, that will introduce lost sinners to the Gospel of Jesus Christ without the strong armed persuasions of by-gone days. God has His chosen vessels for everything He has determined to accomplish and He leads those whom He will use, so we do not have to sit around and try to figure out how we can do something for God. We just need to be sensitive to His leading and He will see that His purpose is accomplished. Now having said all of that, I want to take you back to the year 1957, as I relate an experience of my own life. Having been out of the Methodist Church, I had seen how some of the Methodist revivals used to be conducted. The spirit would get to convicting sinners and I have seen people get up from their seat, pass through the congregation and go to a certain person their attention was drawn to, lay their hand on them and say, Don’t you want to come tonight? Some would get up and come, but others would just sit down in rebellion, thinking, I wish they would leave me alone. All of that going on in the Methodist Church just kind of put a rebellious attitude in me and I would think, I wish these people would go sit down and mind their own business. That is the way I looked at it. However in the fall of 1957, in September, on a Sunday after noon, we went back to the meetings of A.A. Allen. I felt so good, because God had done something for me. Little did I realize what I was heading for that evening. A.A. Allen had preached. He had given a call for sinners to respond to, and they were being directed to a little tent behind the big tent. That is where they would take the people to pray for them. Women would pray with women, and men with men. As he was giving the altar call, people were getting up all over and going back there. Well I just happened to look to my left, about ten feet away, and there was a man, his wife, and his little girl which was about ten years old. That little girl was under conviction and she was holding her mother’s arm, looking up at her and crying. Can I go? I could understand by the movement of her lips, what she was saying. I knew she was wanting to go in that altar call. Her mother would look to her husband, and he just stood there bullheaded. You could tell he was not from a group of people like this. Let me say this. Why would anyone want to hang around a bunch of Holy Ghost people, just to see what they do? If you do that, something will get hold of you. That little girl kept crying. About that time something began to settle down over me, and a nervous feeling began to build up inside me, and I knew exactly what I would have to do, go talk to that man. Of course the devil will tell you, if yo do he may spit in your face and say mind your own business. Here I am, standing there as nervous as I could be, and that little girl was crying her heart out. The longer I resisted this feeling the worse it got, so finally I got to the place I thought, if I don’t obey this, I have a hundred and twenty five miles to drive home tonight, and I know I am going t go home a very sad man. That little girl would probably go home still crying because she did not get to go forth and give her heart to the Lord. The more I thought on it the stronger the feeling got, so I finally began to realize I had to do something. About that time, something gave me the boldness I needed. I got up out of my seat, walked over there and pointed my finger at him and said, Sir, you are going to be sorry for this. He just wilted. I looked at his wife and she nodded her head, so I took the little girl by the hand and led her back to that tent There was a young woman standing there so I said to her, this little girl wants to find the Lord. By the time I got back to my seat, I was feeling normal again. I just have to say, there is an anointing for everything God wants done, and there is a way that God will sometimes unction yo and make you get out of your seat and do something you thought you would never do. You will not have to say, What is it Lord? You are going to know exactly what it is. That is why I have to say, we have never yet seen the end, as far as what God can and will do in putting together a body of people for His glory. I do believe, as we are approaching the end of Gentile time, and we see world conditions shaping up like they are, and politicians from all nations jockeying for control of something, that God is going to do something very special for and with the Bride Church. I get so vexed in my spirit, when I hear politicians talk so boldly and express the fact in one way or another that they are anti religion. The are against Bob Jones University, they are against Pat Robertson and you name it. Well I do not mean to say that these who are supposed to be representing Christianity should be allowed to do everything they might like to do, because they do not have a revelation of the truth like we do, but at least they represent something that we all represent, which is the fact that Christendom is what has shaped America for two hundred years and ought not be locked out of our schools and public gatherings. It has helped keep our society out of the pit of degradation thus far, but now it is evil spoken of. I never did think that everybody had to be a Christian to be an American, but it would do us well to recognize what Christendom has been in American and to America through the two hundred years of her history as a nation leading right on up to this very hour of time. When I see these politicians accusing each other, I just have to say, they are nothing but a bunch of political gangsters. Look at the money they spend. Look what that could do, if it was taken and distributed to the poor people who are going hungry and half naked. They would rather not think about that. Some of them might have a little trouble with their conscience if they did. When I hear them talking about religion, I have to say, Go on America, the day will come when you will sink in your sins, and the filth you have accumulated will judge you. When you see young people that do sometimes act like they have a little sens, and that they recognize there is something out here that they are trying to reach for, then you have to say, God, be merciful and help these young people find the truth of your word, that they may have a real purpose in life. I have to hang my head and say, it is a shame, that America has taken the route she has. Naturally we all understand that Christendom does not straighten up everything, but it does set a pattern, or example that all would do well to follow. Christendom has always been a role model for people that had any conscience at all, and their lives were shaped for the better because of it. In this day and hour multitudes will sit for hours and watch a football game, but they want no part of anything that pertains to God. Then you hear that some of those players are on dope and someone has to deal with that. We never had any problem with dope in 1938. Naturally there has always been a little of the stuff, but to hear of anyone you knew being on it, was just not there. Politicians tell you crime is down, but I am here to tell you it is not down. They just change the statistics on some things to present a better picture for the records. It would not have to be this way, if they would listen to God’s word. When they took prayer and the Bible out of our schools Satan and his bunch moved in. I grant you, prayer did not make our students Christians, but it presented before them a few basic laws of right and wrong, and that went a long way as they grew up, because their very conscience took heed to that which was contrary. It will keep you out of trouble. Not only do we have a crime problem, but think how disease is braking out to plague and claim the lives of so many. Medical science is trying to create a cure for everything because they want man to live for hundreds of years, but that is not he answer. When Jesus comes back to rule on earth man will live not just a hundred years, but beyond one thousand years on into eternity. The sad thing is, when Jesus returns there will be millions wiped from the face of the earth because they rebelled against Him. They do not want Him here. Those who find fault with God always say, If there really is a God and He is a God of love, why does He do this, that and whatever they can think of? Well time is not going to last much longer, the time when they can ask such questions. Our politicians, those New World Order philosophers, their purpose is, we are going to force the issue. We are going to force the races to intermarry. We want to mix you all up so there cannot be any more blacks, whites or anything except a multi-culture made up of all races. That way you cannot hate each other. That is just man’s idea. Watch what God will do with it. Keep it up, and you will put together a creature that will be nothing but a devil. Such a creature will not know right from wrong. Therefore he will do what he want to do, and what he want to do is for himself, and not to please God. He will not even have a thought about God. Therefore I say, let this teach you something, because there are certain laws in the genetic structure of animals as well as human beings. God has instilled in these genes certain chromosomes. They carry a record of personality traits, things that portray the type person and such like. When I was a little boy growing up, my dad had a cousin who owned a Persian mare horse. There was another man that owned a Thoroughbred stallion. Back in those days a lot of the farmers would breed to a Thoroughbred in order to get a light bodied horse for the buggy. HE bred this Persian mare to the Thoroughbred horse. She had a little colt. It was a horse alright, but you couldn’t run a race with it, and she didn’t have sense enough to plow. You just had a horse. She would never walk straight in the harness with the tongue of the wagon. She never walked straight anywhere, she always walked sideways. If she plowed strawberries, she would take the whole row out. That is that Thoroughbred nature. Watch them, when they come out of their stalls at the race track. The only time they are straight is when they are in the chute. I have to say this, keep it up, and you will come to a world that will stink like hell itself. You defy God’s laws, you change certain things to fit your ideas, and what a mess you are going to have. God’s laws are not subject to God’s laws. You can play around, but you will usually come up with a mess you cannot control.
A HEALTHY BODY FOLLOWS CERTAIN HEALTHY PRINCIPLES
I hope I have not said anything through the course of this message to make anyone feel bad. That is never my purpose, but I believe we are living in a time that God wants the best out of us. There are just things in our living for Him and allowing ourselves to be used by Him, that have to be done in a right way, otherwise instead of doing things to glorify God, we think many times it does, but it does not. It may bring reproach instead. There has been a lot of harm done through the years, by people saying and doing things supposedly in the Spirit, but it was only by their own zealous way of looking at the things of God. We could say, it was just an enthusiastic way of someone wanting to do something or say something, maybe trying to help some situation, but that kind of thing has brought more hurt, and more harm to the individual that needed the help than it did good. Since we are living in the ending of Gentile time, I have to believe we are going to see some things done by the true leadership of the Spirit of God, that will go beyond anything any of us have seen up to this point. Therefore knowing it is going to be over one of these days very soon now, we need to realize there is something up ahead for the Church and prepare ourselves to be an acceptable part of it. God can only accept and approve that which we do by the leadership of His Spirit. The true Church of the living God has been pushed into the background, ignored, and treated like the trash of the earth; and what a time for that to happen, right here when you can see that the overall domestic spirit of America is set to shut up religion entirely. Get it completely out of the nation, saying, we don’t need that any more. It is too outdated. I have to say, poor politicians, the hour is going to come when God is going to shake this planet, shake the whole political system, and then we will see if they still believe like that. I have to believe God has allowed this space of time to come about just before it is all over, mostly for the purpose of testing people. It brings some people closer to Him, and lets other people drift off into nothing ness. Having listened to the news much in the past week, let me say this. When you listen to the politicians, and then listen to the news media, you cannot help but get the tone of the things they are saying and see where it is leading to. There is enough things in existence right now, if you could just see it, to blow this society to kingdom come. We have a spirit in America today, that causes a lot of people to think the only way to get things done the way they think it ought to be done, is for them to start shooting, killing, tearing up, and burning. In all probability, that very thing will happen one day, in a way this generation has not seen before. But when they have killed each other, burned things up, destroyed everything, those that survive, what are they going to have left? They are going to stand and look at the wreckage and say, Where do we go from here? It is a pathetic picture, when we see the whole world as it is right now. I know America, as a nation, is looked upon by people in other nations as a wicked, warmongering nation. There was a time when it was not that way. We are now living in a very trying time though, and we understand that all this is a sign of the end time. One of these days it is all going to be over, but the average person on the streets today, does not have any reason to look at it like this. They are looking for a utopia just up ahead. We have thousands of people thinking that the world owes them something. The world owes you nothing. God did not create humanity to be that way. I think it is a shame, that we have such a generation of people today, people who do not even know the value of anything. Principles of right and wrong are completely foreign to them. They have not a clue, as to what that is. I have to feel like there is a sad hour coming up the road, and it may be sooner than we think. Therefore as I try to finish this message, I want to lay particular emphasis on certain things God is moved by, that far too many believers take too lightly. What I said earlier about speaking in tongues being the least of the gifts in the body of Christ is true. Yet on the other hand, it is part of the body, so that gift cannot be completely ignored. We just have to get settled on what the gift is for in the overall structure of the body of believers. It is one of the gifts of the Spirit of God, so we cannot look upon it as something bad. When this gift is manifested, it characterizes the presence and anointing of God in the midst of those who are present. When these gifts are cultivated to be manifested and operated for the right purpose, they will truly serve God, because to some people the gift of tongues can be as important in their particular life, or to someone else, as any other gift. I want to try to illustrate it this way. The apostle Paul taught that tongues are a sign gift to the unbeliever. The unbeliever in this day could well be an unlearned person, someone from the Baptist, Presbyterian, or something like that. I know, when I first began to hear these gifts in operation, back during the deliverance move of the fifties, the gifts of the Spirit, up until that time, were not even something I had ever heard of. I did not know such a thing existed. Nevertheless when I began to read about certain things, it put a hunger in my heart to experience them. I said, Lord, I want to be part of a people where those things are at work, because if it is a fact that God is restoring His Church back to its original structure, the same faith and all that, then He has a purpose in all of this and I ant to be part of it. I could not hardly wait to get somewhere I felt like I was in the presence of God’s anointing, where He was moving, and manifesting some of these things. I know, many times through the years, how many times there have been people come from other areas, because they would hear about us or maybe come to see a relative, and the relatives have brought them to the service, and God would do something for them. When the service would end, I have had many a person walk up and say, Bro. Jackson, I have had a question in my mind for a long time about certain things, but I could never seem to get the answer, then as you preached almost everything you said in the entire service answered questions I had on my mind. Have you ever asked yourselves, why do we come to church in the first place? I know some have. Do we come merely to rehearse, repeat, or go through some process or form of worship, not even believing God has a purpose in all of it? It ought not be like that. Sometimes it might seem like that to some, but others will truly receive something they need. Sometimes it seems like you are repeating yourself again and again, saying almost the same things you said three weeks ago, but you do not always know who is sitting in the crowd and what each one needs. God may have ordained it to be that way because He wants that person to have their questions answered, and He knows exactly how to anoint the pastor the tone doing the speaking to accomplish His purpose. There could be something preached that some of you have heard a dozen times, but there could be others sitting present that have never heard anything like it. If we are a body of people that really do respect everything about the entire body, then we are concerned about it, that if there are unlearned people come in, they will see by the way you conduct yourself, they way you worship, the way the word itself is exhorted and exalted, the purpose in it, and after a while people begin to make up their minds and realize, this is a people that are strange, but I cannot find fault with them. They seem to know what they are doing and why. All of this is important, therefore necessary. As for the gift of tongues, please do not think just because I said what I did earlier, that they should be put out of the assembly to give over to something else. No saints, we just need to learn to be wise Christians and keep everything in its place. There is a place, there is a time and there is a certain objective that they are to obtain. I remember years ago when Bro. William Branham was still alive, Some people would say, God will not use your own lips to speak to you. For some people, that could be true, but as for me, I have absolutely had the Spirit of the Lord to come on me and God would use my own lips and tongue to speak words to me. It has happened three times in my life. When I say that, I mean this, there are those times that God can use your own lips to speak to you, but He may not always repeat it. He may do it over a period of a long season, maybe do it two or three times and then never do it any more. After Bro. William Branham had moved to Arizona, we got word he was coming in at a certain time and was going to be at the Tabernacle to speak, on the following Sunday morning. I will never forget it. I went into my bedroom to study, and all of a sudden the anointing came on me and these words just came rolling out of my mouth. When it was done, I remembered them and wrote them down. This is what was said, My son, prepare thyself, for in a moment of time when thou art not aware, thou shalt be called upon to give account of the things I have laid upon thy heart, saith the Lord. That was all. I thought, What in the world was that for? I did not even realize God had laid a certain chapter in Daniel upon my heart. You will find it in the chapter where Daniel had been used, to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. When Daniel walked in before Nebuchadnezzar, and finally did get his attention and told him the dream, the meaning and interpretation, I have no doubt it shocked Nebuchadnezzar, because Daniel was so perfectly accurate. That king, no doubt, day in and day out, thought about that. My, that young man must have God in him. The more that pagan king thought about it, the more he must have thought, I must do something to show how much I respect that young man. The Bible says he made a big image. The Bible does not tell you what it looked like. We just know it was a big image that all were commanded to bow down before. I read that time and time again, but I thought, that image has to be the image of something that meant a whole lot to Nebuchadnezzar. He made the announcement, that on a certain day and at a certain time, when all the flutes and everything gave forth a certain sound, everybody was to fall down and worship, looking toward that image. When it was learned that the three Hebrew children, which were fellow brothers of Daniel, had not worshiped the thing, it got them all in trouble. I thought to myself, where is Daniel in all of this? Why did it not get him in trouble? Sometimes you read between the lines, when you meditate upon a certain thing. The longer I looked at that the more certain I became of something, so I said, that had to be an image of Daniel. That was the only way he could have avoided being in trouble like the other three. That was Nebuchadnezzar’s way of showing respect and honor to him for what he had done. He did not see anything wrong with doing that for a man he respected so much. Just look what the other three Hebrew children went through by refusing to bow down and worship before that thing. It got them thrown into a fiery furnace. Have you never wondered why the scriptures say nothing at all about Daniel, in this matter? If Daniel was the kind of dedicated young man the scriptures portray him to be, I cannot see him compromising and worshiping before that thing. That is why I say, the very fact that he is a silent figure in this thing lets you know the image the others worshiped was an image of him. The silence speaks for itself. That is what God was pointing to. We got up early that morning and went to the Tabernacle, therefore we were able to get inside the building that morning. The preliminaries of the service started and everyone was anxiously waiting. The song service and prayer was over. Finally Doc Branham came through one of the prayer rooms at the back of the platform and walked up and whispered something to Bro. Neville. He then turned around and walked out. Bro. Neville said to the congregation, I have an announcement to make. I just received word that Bro. William Branham will not be with us this morning. He made the trip back from Arizona, but he is sick this morning, in bed, and he wants us to remember him in prayer. We all stood and prayed. When we sat back down, Bro. Neville said, I know God is still in our midst and I feel led to call on Bro. Raymond Jackson to come and minister to us. That prophecy was hanging in front of my eyes. I said to myself, well, here I go, reading between the lines. Nevertheless I got up and preached that. I never did hear Bro. William Branham preach on that particular subject, but I heard him at the end of a message one day, say this, That image was of none other than Daniel. I have forgotten which tape it is on, but I heard it. I thought, well he had to hear what I said. This is just a little illustration of what I am saying to you. There are many ways God is leading His people. It depends on what He has called you to be, to do, in the body of Christ. He has His own ways of leading and directing you. It is never to make a big show. The more we try to be concealed, the better it is when God takes an opportunity to expose us, lift us up and make us to be a blessing. I remember another time, just before church order was made at the Tabernacle. Again I was in the bedroom studying. I was just about finished praying when all of a sudden the anointing came on me and these words came from my lips, speaking to me, “Yea, I say unto thee my son, as I speak unto you by my Spirit, that I shall be with thee, to guide thee and protect thee in all the ways wherein I would have thee to walk. I will be with thee when thou art looked down upon by men and thou art rejected by many.” I thought, What is that for? Little did I realize it then, but it was not long until church order was made and I have been called everything anyone could think of since then. As I look back, I just have to thank the Lord, that He can use your own lips to speak to you. That is something you cannot copy. You cannot repeat the same thing again. He had a reason at that time, for doing it, mainly to establish exactly how sovereign He really is, and what He is doing in your life. From then, things continued on, but as the months came and went, Bro. William Branham left here and went to California for a meeting. He was in the process of making a tour. He was to wind up in Canada. That is the time he stopped everything, because those people were following with little medallions that said, Bro. William Branham is the Lord, and they were baptizing in his name. That spirit was starting up and was really getting a hold on quite a few people. When Bro. William Branham left the area, we were under the assumption he was going to be gone for about three weeks. ON this particular Saturday night, I got a call from a friend who said, Bro. Jackson, I just got word that Bro. William Branham is going to be at the Tabernacle in the morning. I thought to myself, What? He is supposed to be in Canada. Nevertheless we got up early that Sunday morning and went to the Tabernacle. There we sat, waiting for him to come in. When he came in, I never felt so sorry for a man in my life. He actually looked like he was very sick. He could hardly talk for crying. Every once in a while he would break down emotionally within and just stand there and look, with his head bowed. That is the day he preached the Bruised Serpent message. He had to say things to his friends that he did not want to say. He had to let them know when they tried to exalt his person, making him the Lord, this and that, that they were wrong to do that. One thing he said, was, I would rather go out knowing that I am a quitter, than to be known as an antichrist. He spoke that morning and again that night. You could not help but feel sorry for the brother, seeing him like that. Here he poured his heart out before large congregations of people, prayed for the sick, standing for hours in different places ministering to those that came to him, yet there is always a bunch of people ready to carnalize something that they can feed their ego on. They really think they are glorifying God in doing it, but they did not realize they were just driving nails in their coffin. That is really what they are doing when they follow such a thought. When the service was over that night at the Tabernacle, and we got home, my wife and I knelt to pray as we always endeavored to do before going to bed, and as we prayed the anointing of the Spirit of God came upon me and I began to speak a short message in another language. The interpretation followed in these words, “My children, I have been with thee today as thou has heard and observed of the evil things that humanity is able to put together to deceive people. It is I, the Lord, that has kept thee and protected thee, my children, so do not stumble at these things, because there are other things ahead. Walk softly and I will lead thee.” I have never had God to speak to me like that since then. Every once in a while I get a letter from overseas or maybe even from somebody in this area, stating their feelings and I just have to say, There has never been a man in all the years of the Reformation, that had an element of people following him, having become so carnal as many of the followers of Bro. William Branham have. The overall religious world has heard about it and they think everybody in the ranks of his following are part of a cult, simply because most of them hear this kind of story, and that causes them to say that he said this, or that. It was utterly impossible for the man to take time to try to straighten up everything that someone got hold of. Instead of him preaching against sin and other things, he would be pointing his finger, trying to straighten up what people were doing and saying that was wrong. I remember in South Africa, I have never seen the brothers, but one wrote me a letter saying, Bro. Jackson, when you preached that message, “I Was A Witness,” that was an eye opener for me. He said, I have been in church for fifteen years, and all we ever heard was quotes and statements that Bro. William Branham had made. This congregation has got themselves believing that they are in the rapture already. They are the word now, in their own eyes. That is all we have heard. He then said, when I heard that message, you will never know what it meant to me. There has been three of us that have left there as of this time. He said, we have decided we are going to stay at home, pray and ask God to lead us and help us. Many have done that. Brother and sisters, I say these things not to brag and lift myself up, but I have to say, it became apparent through the years, after watching some of the preachers that would come and sit in the meetings and then go their own way, preaching whatever came to their mind, that the following of Bro. William Branham are in trouble. I had always thought prior to that time, that we all agreed on and believed the same thing, but it became very apparent that we did not, and it took his departure from the scene, to bring these things out of us. It was not very long after his death, that certain ones began to rise up preaching this, preaching that, having this revelation and that revelation and acting like they knew everything there is to know. Every new person they convert and bring into their crow, becomes another one just like them, because that is all they are converted to. That is all they know. I have to say to you, it is a shame, that after Bro. William Branham toiled, labored, cried and fasted and did all the things he was led to do through the years, trying to fulfill God’s word and be a blessing to the people of God, the Bride of Christ, that so many of them turned out like they did. They all still call themselves the Bride, but may God have mercy on those who have turned so far out of the true way, and turn them back to reality. He certainly cannot accept them as they are, worshiping the man instead of the God of that man. It is so sad to think, that this world of lost sinners has to be affected by such stuff as they promote. I have said many times to people, God built into this message a law, and that law becomes a rule, or a means of elimination. It is a fact, you cannot hear the message this man brought without some drastic change, so if you do not hear it right, there is something in it that will cause you somewhere down the road to detour and leave it. That does not mean you would disbelieve all of it, but when you hit on to something and interpret it the wrong way, you will let it send your life the wrong way also. It is just like throwing a switch on a railroad track. Once that switch is thrown, you will go on a sideline and maybe sit somewhere in a weed pile until you are completely surrounded and hidden, just like an old box car that is switched off of the main track. Just think about this and notice the comparison. The old box car sits there for three years and weeds have grown up all around it, spiders have spun their nets everywhere and one look at it lets everyone know it is out of use. That is the way a lot of Branhamite people have ended up. If I was to say that in their presence, they would say, Bro. Jackson, you have the wrong spirit. That is what makes you talk like that. Well whatever the reason, it is obvious that Bro. William Branham delivered a message tot his generation that set some of the right course and side tracked those who tried to make him more than what God had called him to be. I am fully persuaded that I have been led by the Spirit of God, and that He called me to stand for the right interpretation of the message Bro. William Branham delivered to this Age. I have never tried to say everything exactly like Bro. William Branham said it, because I understand that every individual has his own God-given way of expressing a truth so that it accomplishes its intended purpose. I am fully persuaded of another thing also, that if it had not been for the Holy Spirit leading and guiding me, my human nature is to get along with people, never be contrary, so I might have gone along with the popular flow, rather than stand for the truth like I believe I have. In former times I always felt like I wanted everybody to be my friend, but it is a fact, not everyone is going to be your friend, if you walk with God and remain subject to His leading. Many are going to find fault with you, hurt you and try to persuade you to follow after their thought, but when you know you are being led by the Spirit of God you just have to walk on, alone if necessary, without compromising the truth for something that pleases more people. I have to say also, God, through people of other lands, has vindicated my ministry by allowing some of them to say, Bro. Jackson, you may not know it, but you have the word of the Lord for the Bride of Christ. I never did say that myself. It has been other people that have said it. If other people can say that, and they can feel satisfied in saying it, then all I ask from them is just their prayers as we continue on to the end. I say these things to let you know, I believe with all my heart, that after Bro. William Branham’s death, God let many go here and there preaching and testifying, and some of them did drop off good seed here and there, and a few people have been helped by their effort, but the movement as a whole has taken a wrong turn a long time ago. After a while, even many of those who might have sown good seed in the beginning, took a wrong turn also and eventually ended up on a sidetrack, because a wrong way of trying to say certain things leaves the wrong idea in people’s mind. This message delivered to this Age by God’s prophet messenger, is for the purpose of restoring hungry hearts back to a true revelation of the word of God, so if you use it to try to establish another god instead of exalting the true and living and only God, you are an antichrist instead of a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As I look at this congregation right here I have to say, Saints of God, none of us are anything worthwhile in ourselves, but by the leadership of the Spirit of God we can everyone walk with Him in truth and fulfill His purpose for His glory. When we can realize, that all we are in this life is by the grace and mercy of God, and be thankful that He chose us for such an hour as this, we can live every day with peace and joy in our hearts, regardless of what the main stream of our world society is involved in. I am thankful to be part of what God has made you to be. I have to believe we are a family, and I like being a part of such a family. This family means more to me than all the Jackson’s in the whole part of Clark Country, Indiana. I know this, every one of us have been redeemed from Satan’s slave house by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. After this many years of preaching this truth, some have wrote and said to me, We have never read anything, where you have changed your thought. What we heard twenty years ago, you are still saying today. Well, if it was right then, it is still right today. Why change it? When Jesus went on the road, whatever He said in one place would be the same in the other places. It was the same way with the apostles of old. Whatever they said when they started out, that is what they were still saying when they were leaving this world. When God led me out of the Methodist Church, if I ever saw something I believed, I never wanted to change it, because I believe it has only one basic meaning. It will do us good to accept it and hold on to it. Therefore I am grateful for the way the Lord has led me in life. I grant you, there are preachers out there today that can have it said what miracles took place under their ministry, but is that all God calls a man for, just to major on miracles? I don’t know what the Lord has up the road ahead, but I believe with all my heart there is a little Bride church scattered here and there, that is really concerned about making herself ready to meet the Bridegroom when He comes for her. She is like the little country girl that worked hard on a farm all her life. (I have heard Bro. William Branham tell the story.) A young man went looking for a bride. When certain young girls heard about it, they dressed up ever so beautifully and waited for him to come along, but the little country girl whose dress was ragged, not dirty, was the one he chose, because that man was looking for a bride that had inner beauty also. This young lady was very shy and stood in the background, but that young man took a liking to her. He saw a quality inner that he liked. Unbeknownst to anyone else, he spoke to her and made a promise to return for her. I believe we are just like that. I believe we have been spoken to. One of these days when the time is right, he will return for His chosen Bride. Maybe our garments here do not look so stylish, but I believe He has something He is going to robe us in, that will outshine all of the others. Well when all the other young ladies found out that the young man had chosen that poor farm girl, oh how they envied her. I have to say, we have stayed our distance, we have kept our mouth shut, so much so that most of the world does not even know we exist, but I believe there is an hour coming, when God will open some kind of door to change all of that. We are going to be required to exemplify something to the rest of the world. There are a lot of people out there, walking around, wandering, going from here to there, looking for this, looking for that and never finding anything to satisfy their inner feeling, and God is aware of everyone of them. I believe God can bring them in somewhere, where they will find it. He knows exactly what they are hungering for. He knows what they are looking for. If He can let something take place through the workings of the Holy Spirit, what a joy it is to hear someone say. This is what I have been looking for, for the past twenty years. I believe I have found what my soul has been hungering for, because everything I have heard preached, I have had to say Amen to it, and what I have seen the Holy Spirit do, registers with my spirit. Yes saints, I believe God has a few people out there, young and old, that He has kept back until just the right time, the time when things really begin to come into the final stages of maturity. That is when He will cause them to shine, but He will be the ONE that is glorified and praised. Well I don’t think I can say too much more on this, but I am thankful to God for allowing me to say these things, because I believe it will help some people somewhere. I do pray that what has been said, has been understood the right way. I do not know what lies ahead, but I have to say, Lord, I am here, whatever you have for us, just give me enough strength and energy to deliver what you assign to me as my responsibility. When it is all over, I just want to see a body of people leave this world with Jesus. While the world is wailing and crying, we are going to hear His voice one of these days, saying, Come up hither. When that happens, I want to be ready to rise, to meet Him in the air. Amen.