WE WERE DEALING WITH THE FOURTH PARABLE OF MATTHEW 13, TOWARD THE END OF OUR MAY ISSUE, BUT I FEEL THAT THERE ARE SOME THINGS ABOUT THE THIRD PARABLE THAT I DID NOT GET INTO THE MESSAGE WHEN WE WERE DEALING WITH IT, SO THAT IS WHERE I WANT TO BEGIN AS WE CONTINUE ON WITH THIS MESSAGE ON THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

I covered some of that third parable and then went on to the fourth, but since there are things in the third parable that I did not touch on, I want to go back to Matthew 13:31 and look at some other things that we need to consider. I had an e-mail sent to me awhile back, asking where to find history dealing with the Nicean council. They wanted to know when it was held and what was accomplished. The man that questioned it, said he had searched and never been able to find any historical data that really verified it. I have it here with me, so that is why I feel led to go back into this third parable and bring it out so people can read from the pages of history: They can have it before them. I realize a lot of modern histories used in our schools, no longer have much of this in them, because our modern educators say these things are irrelevant. They are not important to them, but much of it is important to us. That is why I have always tried to bring in certain historical facts to substantiate what we are saying, when we begin to deal with certain subjects like this. In order to do so, I have to go to some old histories that were put in print years ago. You do not find them on a bookshelf anywhere, but there are a few people around that have them. That is how I get hold of them. With that in mind, I would like for us to go to the third parable, in Matthew 13:31, at this time. “Another parable put He forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed”, (We notice in the first parable He spoke of a sower sowing seed, the second parable was about seed being sown, then tares springing up. This again, is about seed being sowed, but it gives a different profile. When Jesus did that He had a good reason, because the term kingdom of heaven, pertains to a dispensation of time. The kingdom of God is not a dispensation of time: it pertains to what God does inside the individual person: That is why He said, It is within you. We have to have this period of time called the kingdom of heaven, as a time for God to accomplish this process of putting it inside of us. The two go hand in hand together, but they are not the same thing. When we look at this third parable and find Jesus saying, it is like unto a grain of mustard seed, He is referring to it in the past tense, to the part of this period of time when it would be likened unto that. The second parable shows, that after the apostolic hour is gone from the scene, responsibility began to fall upon another generation of the ministry. The coming generation of men for the ministry, did not have the perfect understanding that the ministry of the first apostolic hour did. That made it much more convenient for Satan to come along and begin to inject certain adverse thoughts in their mind’s, so error was injected into their thinking until it permeated their entire Mideast. There has always been that category of men running up and down the road of life, looking for honor. You hear them say, I have a revelation: I need to tell it. Every true revelation has to correspond with and actually link up with the Bible picture the first apostles painted. A true revelation will never mean one thing to one man and something else to another man. The word of God does not work that way. Of these seven parables, only Matthew recorded them in the order they were spoken. Other writers did mention two or three of them, but they never touched on the others. This goes to show, God saw to it that each man wrote certain things that really stood out in his own understanding. In this case though, Matthew heard all seven of them and recorded them in the order Jesus spoke them. These seven parables illustrate, and run parallel to the seven churches in the early chapters of the book of Revelation. Just think of it, how long before John was given this vision he wrote here in Revelation, Jesus was telling all of this way in advance, that the time would come when the kingdom of heaven would go into and through these different stages. We see here, that He says, the kingdom of heaven would be like a grain of mustard seed, which is very small, so we have to go back to the very beginning: How many were in the Upper Room? A hundred and twenty. Just imagine, a hundred and twenty people in an upper room, that have been told to go there and tarry, (or wait) for something. In comparison to the numbers of the world’s population of that hour, what can anyone expect a hundred and twenty people do? Ten days later, when the Holy Ghost fell, out of the Upper Room came a hundred and twenty people speaking in other dialects and languages. Out of different areas of the old Roman world, gathered together at that time of the year, were many Jews from different nationalities. This was the beginning of a small nucleus of people, under the influence and inspiration of the Holy Ghost, God was speaking through them in that supernatural way. We realize when we read in the book of Acts, what took place, how it was manifested, and how that became the very beginning of the Church, because on that day, the local Jews that had never been anywhere and only knew one dialect, heard them speaking and found fault, but here were Romans that knew Latin, Jews from Egypt that knew the Coptic tongue, and so forth and they everyone heard and understood what was being spoken. There were many dialects represented in these Jews gathered out of every nation, but what was so wonderful, was that they began to hear these Galilean Jews speaking in the language of the people they came from. That is why they asked the question, What is this? We hear the wonderful works of God in the language wherein we were born. Well when the question was noised about, and the home bunch made their comments, Peter took the cue from that, because he was God’s spokesman of the hour. When he stood up to speak he said, This is that which was prophesied and told you by the prophet Joel. He began to preach his first message right there. When he was finished speaking, three thousand people had one question, What must we do? Notice how Peter answered them. He said, (Acts 2:38) “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Acts 2:39) For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.” When I look at that, I have to look back a number of years, because I was raised up in the Methodist Church: my wife was too. For many years, I was not very eager to be very religious. My philosophy of thinking was, I don’t want to get too religious: There are too many people that go crazy because of it. I even said, I don’t want to go crazy, I just want to be seen as a good fellow, honest, kind to my neighbors and not ever curse: Going to church, to me, was more or less to present yourself to be seen as a good individual. I did not have a deep spiritual drive in my heart, but just an idea about how one should live. Sometimes when you see truth and know what truth is, how important it is, it is very hard to relate the importance of certain things without saying something that might hurt somebody’s feelings. What I mean by that is, too many times we grow up in life with the attitude, my grandfather grew up as a Baptist, I grew up as a Baptist, my folks were Baptists, so it is good enough for me: Why should I seek anything else? They all preach Jesus. This is a common attitude in this part of the twentieth century. We want to lay this on our genealogical background. Many times we say, Well dad raised me right, and he was a Methodist, my mother was a Methodist, and they were good, loyal, faithful people you could not find anything wrong with. Keep in mind, that when you are not hungry for God, you will use a lot of excuses to justify yourself. You will water it down to fit your own human ideas, because you are going about taking care of your spiritual life just like you are looking for a bargain in a store: you are looking for something that will fit neatly in your pocket, because you like the way you are. We need to look at it from an important standpoint right here: If what I am saying makes sense, why did Jesus always say things that hurt the Pharisees? The Pharisees said many times, that Jesus had a devil. I wonder what He said that caused them to say that? You will never find in any of His speeches, that He was patting the Pharisees on the back. Neither do you find Him patting the Sadducees on the back, nor any of the various branches of Judaism in that hour. Quite the contrary, He was always rebuking them. Many times when He would rebuke them, He would say, You like to sit in Moses’ seat. What did He mean by that? They like to quote Moses. You know it is utterly impossible to sit in Moses’ seat. That is a figure of speech. You like to quote what Moses said, but is there not something else in the scriptures? Sure, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. They are basic and important, but when we are looking at it, living two thousand years after the advent of Jesus the Christ, should se say we just take what the Torah says and that is all that is necessary? I have to say, The New Testament was written by Jewish apostles that had already had the Torah explained to them, and Jesus also went into the Psalms to teach, so we need all the scriptures. When He came to His disciples that night, after He was risen from the dead, and He asked them for fish and honeycomb. He ate it before them, to prove that they were not looking at a ghosts. After He had eaten those things to prove His resurrection, He saw that there was still some doubt, some fear in their minds, so what did He then do? Did He just go and quote Moses’ Torah? No, He began with Moses, but He then came through the Psalms, picking up every scripture that pertained to His birth, where and so forth, and then comes on down through the prophets and explains them. It took this for that bunch of disciples sitting there, to see the reality of the hour of time they were living in. Denominational Christendom has done the very same things. I never want to say anything to make some sensitive, innocent person feel bad, but when you know that you have a short time, because we are living in the end of time, we do not have a lot of years left to play around and ask people, Do you understand, I hope you will not be offended at me. We do not have time to go into all the explanations! It is important that we begin to understand who we are and why we are here, and most of all what God has done for us. I do not want anyone to ever think I am trying to say I know it all. NO. I do thank God though, for the day He began to deal in my heart and put a hunger in me that I never had before. When He did, I began to realize the importance of the scriptures, the written word. If I though the first five books of the Bible were all that we need, I would just throw the rest away. I am afraid that is what some people have done, especially a lot of Orthodox Jewish people. They are ready to quote the Torah, they are ready to quote Moses. Well, up to a point they are, but keep in mind, when those other prophets came along and wrote the sacred scriptures, and it contained prophecies of things yet to be, it is important that we begin to open our eyes and allow our minds to let God begin to explain to us where we are in time. At the time Jesus spoke here, about the kingdom of heaven being like unto a grain of mustard seed, sure, two thousand years ago it was a small nucleus of people. What could they do, being so few, in the world at that hour? We will find that one hundred and twenty, in a few months time, opened up the gospel to a lot of people. The first day they witnessed there were three thousand that believed, a few days later there were five thousand. From then on the Lord added daily to the Church such as should be saved. Then it was not long until god began to deal with Peter. WE see what took place at Cornelius’ household. Later He dealt with Paul, who was Saul at the time. He was a Jew. He belonged to the Sanhedrein court, an educated man. The Catholic Church, for fifteen hundred years, have tried to make the world believe the clergy, their priesthood, were to live in celibacy. The world in general believed that lie. Peter was a married man. The pope of our day says he is the successor of Peter. That is a lie also. If he is the successor of Peter, then why does he not believe like Peter believed? Paul was a Jew, and we are aware of what he wrote in 1^st Corinthians, chapter 7, and so forth, but remember, I had an opportunity in 1968, in the month of October, to talk to a Jewish rabbi in North Carolina. I asked him, What was the qualifications for a man that was on the Sanhedrein court? What was his marital status? He said the Sanhedrein court is no longer in operation, but we believe that in the times that it was in operation, every man that sat on the Sanhedrein court had to be a married man. Notice how Paul writes in Corinthians. He said he would to God that they were like him. But remember, if he was on the Sanhedrein court and had been a married man, it is because his wife has either died or when God dealt with him and brought him into the plan of salvation in this new revelation, she left him and wanted no part of it. Because when you take Paul, in that area, how he explained the importance, how the man owed his wife certain respect, and the wife owed her husband certain respect, how can a single man that has never known intimacy, really relate to those conditions, and how can he advise a single man or a single woman? When you read that, you read it as though this is coming from a man that has had the experience and knows all about it. When I asked that Jewish rabbi this question, he said, This is why we believe this, because he acts as a judge, or a mediator between conditions in the family, with individuals within the home, and in order to be involved in those things, he has got to know what goes on in the home, what is required in the line of respect and so forth. If he has no children, how can he tell someone else how to raise his children? How did he learn? Looking back now at this parable, this grain of mustard see, in those first few months, it grew rapidly. Then it came to the Gentiles. Even though it was like unto a grain of mustard seed at first, by the time we come into that third church age of time, to match the parable, we can say Christendom has grown. It said, it is a small seed, but it becomes a great big tree. Keep in mind, it is not a tree like a willow tree with a big trunk. No, it is like a giant vine that keeps climbing and climbing. That is what it is likened unto. Let me read it again, because it is important. “But when it is grown, it is the greatest (or biggest) among herbs, and be cometh a tree, (not like a willow tree) so that the birds of the air lodge in the branches thereof.” Many preachers, through the denominational realm, have said, well this is representing sinners coming for repentance to be saved. That is not so. You are not even looking at the parable right. If this seed grows, what is it composed of? It is made up of people, is that not right? So the fact that it grows to become a great big tree tells me it is people becoming a part of this kingdom. But the birds represent an altogether different kind of spirit. This is people of the world leadership, politicians with worldly ideas. This is exactly what took place in the third church era of time. To prove that, I have histories here to back it up. Christendom in the first century, down through the second parable and second age, were martyred by the hundreds and thousands. The Roman hierarchy tried their best to get rid of the Christian belief, but it seemed as through the more they were persecuted, the more they were martyred, the more that joined their ranks, so the time came that the devil would pull a trick on them. I am reading to you from the pages of early European history. This is what it says about this new religion.

“The new religion certainly helped to soften and refine manners by the stress which it laid upon such Christian virtues as humility, tenderness, gentleness, by dwelling on the sanctity of human life. Christianity did its best to repress the very common practice of suicide as well as the frightful evil of infanticide. It set its face sternly against the obscenities of the theater and the cruelties of the gladiator shows. In these and other respects Christianity had much to do with the improvement of ancient morals.

In 313 A.D. Constantine and his colleagues issued the edict of Milan, which proclaimed for the first time in history the noble principal of religious toleration. It gave absolute freedom to every man to choose and follow the religion which he deemed best suited to his needs. This edict place the Christian faith on an equality with paganism. The conversion of Constantine is one of the most important events in ancient history. A Roman emperor himself, a god to the subjects of Rome, became the worshiper of a crucified provincial of his empire. Constantine favored the Christians throughout his reign. He surrounded himself with Christian bishops, freed the clergy from taxation, and spent large sums in building churches. One of his laws abolished the use of the cross as an instrument of punishment. Another enactment required that magistrates, city people, and artisans, rest on Sunday. This was the first Sunday law. (A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from a young man. He asked, where can I find historical data that will substantiate and verify the Niacea Council. He said he couldn’t find it anywhere. At that time I didn’t have time to do research. But I am going to read it to you right from the pages of this early European history. Constantine ordered this Niacea council. So let us read.) “Significant of the emperor’s attitude toward Christianity, was his action in summoning all the bishops in the different provinces, to a gathering at Niacea in Asia Minor. It was the first general council of the church. The principal work of the council of Niacea was the settlement of a great dispute which had arisen over the nature of Christ. Some theologians, headed by Arias, a priest of Alexandria, maintained that Christ, the Son, having been created by God the Father, was necessarily inferior to Him. Another Alexandria priest opposed this view and held that Christ was not a created being, but was in all ways equal to God. The council accepted this argument, condemned Arias as a heretic, and framed the Nicene creed, which is still the accepted summary of Christian doctrine.”

This was in 325 A.D., but let me say this, Neither of these men were an original apostle. They represent leadership of generations later. I am looking at conditions right now within the movement that many of us are all part of, following the message of Bro. William Branham. Why was it necessary, at a time like this, for God to send a messenger to the Laodicean age? All you have to do is take a look at Christendom among the Gentile world. We start out with Catholicism, then we have Lutheran, Anglican, Episcopalian, right on down the line to Baptists, through Methodists, Church of God, Pentecost, all these denominations. Can we say that represents true Christianity as it started in the Bible? Absolutely not. Why is it like this? I have always said Gentiles are crazy people. Just give them a little light and they go crazy with it. Instead of letting that light guide him, he turns around and looks at it. How many know if you take a powerful flashlight and look at it very long, you know the affect it has on you? Lay it down, how far can you see? You cannot even see three feet in front of you because that light dilates your eyes and takes them out of focus with reality. That is what we are looking at here. I have to say, that is why it was necessary for God to send a prophet messenger to this Laodicean church age, to present a message and show people, by the divine leadership of the Holy Spirit, how to get back into the scriptures, the sacred writings, not only of the apostles, but going back into the Old Testament, back into the Torah, bring in all these things and the picture they convey, bring them into reality and what they are really pointing to. Having lived here in this area all my life, I was privileged to sit under that man’s ministry for thirteen years. Preachers came from all over the United States and from all the world to listen to him. Since God took the man off the scene, there have been men rise up claiming to be something, and they have twisted this quote and twisted that quote. They have added to and taken away, and they are just as bad off today as some of those that were in that hour of the Niacea council. That is the truth. Let me continue on and give the full record of this thing.

“Though thrust out of the church, Arianism lived to flourish anew among the Germanic tribes of which the majority were converted to Christianity by Arian missionaries.”

That is what that history says about what Constantine was instrumental in doing. Then we have another history that touches on him also. Constantine lived when there was great competition within the royalty, because Rome at that time had two capitals, Rome and Constantinople. There was a period they had one man in Constantinople and one man in Rome. Constantine was at Constantinople, but he could see and recognize the weakness this was bringing within the total empire territory. This is ancient history by Bloss, (Spelling) you cannot find it in a book store anymore.

“There were thus six competitors for the empire and a scene of contention followed scarcely paralleled in the annals of Rome. Maximilian quarreled with his son and was put to death. Galariaus died not long after, which reduced the number of aspirants to four. Constantine, at the head of a powerful army, marched toward Rome. During his journey that famous change took place in his religion, which resulted in the overthrow of paganism and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire. One evening while employed in meditation upon the conflicting opinions which agitated mankind, he sent up his prayers to heaven for divine direction. As if in answer to his prayer, a luminous cross suddenly appeared above the declining sun, airing the inscription, in this overcome. The same night a vision confirmed the miracle and Constantine became a convert to Christianity.”

Let me say it like this, he became like a big vulture and he was the first one to come and light in the branches of this big tree. In another history I read, it elaborated on this experience he has just had. After having received this vision and seeing the sign of the cross and the word, by this thou shalt overcome, he carried out his own baptism. He took many of his troops and made a speech to them, saying, We will paint the sign of the cross on all our shields. That sign of the cross on the shields, is on the Knights of Columbus, on the coat of arms in the Catholic writings, everything. As he carried out this baptism, a royal standard was made to resemble that scene in the sky, and carried before him as an ensign of victory and celestial protection. I will not read the rest of it because it tells of the conflicts he had, but I had to read that, because, when he was victorious, it was then that he began to realize the controversy that was going on within the ranks of Christendom. That is when he took the authority upon himself to do something about it. Remember, the Niacea Council was not called by any one particular priest or clergyman. It was called by Constantine, a Roman Emperor. He wanted to somehow put this problem to rest. That is why other histories will tell you how many bishops from different districts took part. Some were never recognized. Therefore they did not stay: They just left. When they tried to get rid of one error, which Arias was the projector of, they went too far the other way. It just goes to show, none of them had the divine leadership quality and revelation to interpret the sacred scriptures correctly. Therefore when the majority voted about the method of baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, they felt justified to go to Matthew 28:19 and baptize according to titles. That was the beginning of the Niacea Council teaching, wherein they set in motion Matthew 28:19, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, (which is titles and not a name) and kept that ever since. Father is not a name, Son is not a name, and Holy Ghost is not a name. It is three titles of what God is. That is how the Catholic Church became the great organization and authority on religions. She was the first big vulture, that came and took refuge in that tree, and from then on it has been generals, politicians, great men of stature that are recognized first. All of this came about between 313 to 325 A.D., and then shortly afterwards Constantine left the scene, but it had been established already, and from then on, so called Christianity began to be more and more just a system of religion, a means for the different kinds of birds, especially politicians. It went like that until the eighth century, when Charlemagne of Germany came on the scene. He was the first ruler that really began to project the sovereignty of the pope. Charlemagne was head of troops all over Germany. He went from city to city, village to village, with armies, compelling subjects to accept Christ, or face execution. In other words, it was a forced religion. IN this, you can see what the grain of mustard seed grew to, by the time we get to the third age. As it was the beginning fo the birds lighting in its branches, and from then on, Christianity became a mixture of worldly politicians, as well as true believers. That is how we have to see that third parable, what it really portrays. That really marked the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church. Notice, the first parable was about seed. The second parable was about seed. The third parable was about seed. When we come to the fourth parable, it is not about seed: It is a total different picture. Let us read the parable.

THE FOURTH PARABLE

Go to Matthew 13:33. “Another parable spake He unto them: The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, (Notice, years before the book of Revelation was ever written, the Father enabled His Son Jesus to look down through time and see this diabolical, Roman Catholic spirit, what it would become, and what it would evolve out of. He put it in a small parable, The kingdom of heaven, a period of time, is like unto leaven. Most women know what leaven refers to: It is something that changes the structure of flour and the mixture you will make bread out of. It is like unto leaven.) which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, (He hit the nail right on the head.) until the whole was leavened.” How can we come to that? You have to go back into history and know what you are looking for. After the Niacea Council, here is the first doctrinal change. Water baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is out. It is water baptism and the titles. True recognized Christendom at that hour began to embrace this. What constituted this Nicaea Council, was because of bishops, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome, five major Christian centers. They are in the competitive shuffle trying to become the biggest, the most power and so forth. The bishop at Rome contested and held the idea that since the Roman world is ruled from Rome, then universal Christendom should be ruled, or governed from Rome also. That began to knock the other bishops out of the role. As each one came on the scene, the bishops in Rome began to push for superiority, recognition. By the time we come to around 500 A.D. not only has the Niacea Council and the creed thereof been fully accepted, it has become the very foundation stone of religion. All the other bishops were more or less put in the background. The bishop of Rome had sovereign authority. They then began to change other things. Here is how we have to look at this: First of all, what is this word leaven? It is the teachings of the Catholic Church. The teachings of the Catholic Church did not originate in a year of time. It was a slow process. Well, what are these three measures of meal? It is justification, sanctification, baptism of the Holy Ghost, all three phases or steps of what constitutes a personal experience of the new birth. Every believer is justified by his faith in the atonement work of Christ at Calvary. We are justified by faith. That is the beginning. Sanctification is how we, through the blood of Jesus Christ and the revelation of the truth of the word is applied to our inner being. That is what begins to clean the person up from the inside out, not outside in. A few months back, we printed the doctrine on holiness, what it is and what it is not. This world is full of people professing holiness, but most are as blind as a bat concerning revelation of God’s word. For instance, I have been privileged in the past number of years to have a little dealing with Amish people. There are some of those Amish people, when you look at them in the person they are, they are good people. They are kind. Their women wear the same style dress. You do not see Amish women going out for looks and styles of the world. They have used the same style of dress since 1450. Look at the men. The same style pants, the same style shirt and hat. Those Amish women do their best to grow their hair as long as it will grow. However when it comes to other things in the Bible, they are blind. They will not even talk to you of anything different. In other words, they are right, and you are so wrong, you have to be in error. That is why they will not have curtains over their windows, because that is a style of the world. They will not have electric lights in the house. They use the kerosene lamp. Anything that is modern, to them, it is of the world. On the other hand, if they have relatives in a settlement in Florida, and there is a neighbor with a nice twelve seat van, He goes to the neighbor, What would you charge to drive us to Florida? (I am just using an example.) He will name a price; and you will never hear that Amish man say, I will go to the bank and see if I can borrow money. He will pull it out of his pocket, ready to pay. All denominations are just as guilty as that. They are hung up on certain things and the rest can go to the dogs. It is a shame: Amish and Mennonite people present a sad picture. They believe in holiness, but a lot of the other things in the world, they will not touch. I could talk for an hour about some of the things they will and will not do, but they do not know a thing about the coming of Christ, and they do not even care to know: It is irrelevant to them. You can bring that right on over to Pentecostal holiness. We have Pentecostal people that are just as blind as a bat also. All they know is Acts 2:38 and Acts 2:4. They do not want to know any more. That reminds me of the little song, If you believe in Acts 2:4 and you don’t believe any more, there’s an Eye watching you, you’ll have trouble at the gate, about Acts 2:38. Well, these things we are talking about were slow in developing. We can see how the Catholic Church slowly mixed in a little bit here, which error. Error eventually became a creed, or dogma. After a while sanctification became indulgences, or penances. They set a price on these things. From what was the baptism of the Holy Ghost in the initial birth experience to the real believer, over here it is confirmation. We have studied all the catechisms, and what do they accomplish? I have the history of the Roman Catholic Church and they plainly state, there is no salvation apart from the holy Roman Catholic Church. That is absolutely a big lie of the devil. When this woman is used, Jesus is looking at the Roman Catholic Church because every time a church is mentioned, it is referred to in the feminine gender, not the male gender. He saw the Roman Catholic Church, how it would start out slow, but through time it would gradually put a little of this in, put a little of that in, and after a while she has laid the groundwork for all her creeds and dogmas. I can stand here and refer to some of these creeds, and you will see how pitiful it is, how the Catholic Church has put this dogma over the mass of humanity wherever she has ruled. That is why, as you look back before the Reformation started in 1520, Europe was walking in darkness. Everybody was Catholic. No doubt there were times that individuals began to have a hunger for more reality of something, but the Catholic Church would not let the light shine through to them. When men would begin to rise up and contest the Catholic Church, they were usually martyred, because the Catholic Church would not tolerate anything like that. You did not stand and contest the Catholic creeds and dogmas. They were the first ones to institute infant baptism, and we know there is no such thing as infant baptism in the Bible. We could go on and on with things like this, because the Catholic Church took the gospel completely out of the realm of salvation and brought it down to a carnal level where everybody that was a part, a citizen of a nation, fell under her spell. She worked her way into every situation to influence and gain control over all the people. Everyone in that nation, had to be subject to the Roman Catholic Church or they wound up being martyred. That is why, when you look at the whole of South America, South America was discovered the same time North America was. In the years to come, the Catholic Church, out of Portugal and Spain, began to go that direction. I am not pointing the finger at any Spanish person, but it just goes to show you the power of that Catholic Church. Wherever that Catholic spirit was upheld and embraced, and the natives of that country was told to embrace it, those countries have remained in poverty. They have become third rate nations. Look at the whole of South America. When the Reformation started, it took about a hundred years for it to get a foot hold in Europe, and then around 1600, God opened up the way for those early converted Christians, due to the Reformation starting, to begin to make their way into the new world. I therefore assure you, it was no Catholic spirit that made the United States of America become a great nation. At the time of the American Revolution, when our early founding fathers fought the British Empire for freedom, of the population in the United States only 33,000 were Catholics. They were a small minority. That is in history. They had a very weak influence in the manner. That is why Jesus said also, Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, showing this, that if you put God first in your life, seek Him first, walk with Him, then all these other material things that are necessary for a total society to benefit by, God will see to it that they have them. May I ask this, to back up that, In the light of the success in progress of the world, where do you get most of the world’s modern inventions that mankind today are enjoying? Where were they invented? I assure you, the Vatican had nothing to do with it. You have never read where a pope had a patent copyrighted.

That is why I say America owes its heritage much to the Reformation that was started in Europe, causing God to bright the beneficiaries of it here to this new land. It is a shame we now have a political system that has sold this nation down the river and rejected God. I hope you everyone see what this woman really is. It points to how Catholicism, from 500 A.D., right on up through 1500, enjoyed a thousand years, of growth, and of changing their dogma. Remember, in 500 A.D., there was no such thing as, Hail Mary. They had not even conceived the idea that Mary rose from the dead back then. It seemed as though every few centuries the Catholic Church would come up with something that might give them a little more authority over society: They finally came up with this idea that Mary had risen from the dead. Wherever they buried the body of Mary, the mother of Jesus, it remained there until decomposition was concluded. Can you convince the Catholic Church of that? No, because that is part of the leaven that she has leavened the gospel with. When we see things that were concocted during that time period, we can see why it is said that Satan has his Millennium already, a thousand years of spiritual darkness in the old world. In fact, the Catholic Church in that hour, was against a lot of education. Young people today, that have gone to college and studied to be school teachers, do not ever think that getting a fine education was really an important thing back in the dark centuries of time. It was not. The Catholic Church was against a lot of it. It was usually the royal families, the rich, the very elite, that went on to get an education. Many of the lay people were just left to be ignorant. Yes saints, the woman in this parable was absolutely the beginning of the power of the Catholic Church. The longer it went, the more powerful it became. The priesthood became so corrupt, I have not time to go into the details of what history declares concerning what some of the priests were involved in, and especially the popes coming down through time. When we see this woman, how she took leaven, the leaven ins the creeds, the dogmas, the rituals, the ceremonies, all the things she instituted to replace the truth the original Church stood for and taught. Bro. Strom men, after he came back from his trip, stood right here and made mention of a city he had gone to. After they landed in Manila, they went to Angeles City, right where the Clark Air Force base was. There is a little story told, and it is true: During the early years before the Spanish American war, the Spanish were the ones that discovered the Philippines, they went there and helped to populate those islands. Some of the Spanish crossed with the Filipino bloodline. The Spanish language became the predominant language among the people. The power of the Catholic Church became so dominant in the Philippines: I have read in history, how the clergy was so crooked and cruel, and how they were used. I have read how, if a man got his eye on another woman, (The Catholic Church does not allow divorce and the marrying of another woman.) so what the Catholic Church became guilty of, that man could go to the priest and go through the process of confession, and say, I found my wife being unfaithful: (an outright lie) I found her with another man. That priest could have her arrested, put in jail, then many times she was never heard from again. The power of the Catholic Church had a way of liquidating them. This went on and became so predominant, the people in the Philippines began to cry out against it. Even some of the Politicians began to see the crookedness, the slavery that people were subjected to. That is when the United States entered the Philippines and started the war. Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders had their beginning during that time.

I was in the Philippines in WW2, when this story was told to me. During that invasion, at that time when the American forces were in the Philippines, Angeles City was not a big city. It was more like a small town. The military set up a camp. There was not even an air strip because we did not have airplanes. One evening, there were two soldiers at this camp that wanted to go into this little town on a pass. To return though, they had to take a little trail through the bamboo and tall, wild grass, just like a jungle almost. The two soldiers were walking one behind the other, and when they got t a certain spot in this narrow trail, a big python raised up and grabbed the first one. His buddy had no gun, but tried to fight it off until he realized it was utterly a vain effort, so he ran back to camp and told the officers what was happening. A group of men with guns came into the brush, but by the time they reached the spot where it happened, the man was dead. The grass had been wallowed down where he had tried to fight. Those pythons have a way of wrapping around you, stretching your bones and breaking every joint. The man’s name was Clark, so they named that army camp, Camp Clark. It was just a military camp then, but later on, as the airplanes came along and the military realized the importance of the location, they built an airstrip, so what was once just a small military camp, became an air base. After WW2, when we had to go and liberate the islands from the Japanese, it was not many years then until the Filipinos began to condemn the American system and complain about our presence there, so here is what happened. Just a few miles from Angeles City, a volcano erupted. (I have pictures.) The ash from it was so deep on some of the airplane hangers, it crushed the roofs. The officers quarters that had gas stoves, electric ranges, refrigerators, everything was covered with ash. The American government pulled out and let the Philippines have their own independence. Their economy is no better today than it was years ago. I just told that to show you, it was the Catholic spirit that got us involved in the Philippines just before the turn of the century. The Catholic Church was the woman Jesus so vividly described. Justification by faith, sanctification through the blood, and glorification through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which are the three measures of grace, yet it all constitutes one true born again experience. The Catholic Church ritualized every bit of it and made all of it into a moneymaking ritual.

THE FIFTH PARABLE

I will now read the fifth parable here in Matthew 13, and deal with it. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; (This means there will be a period of time like unto this which He describes, in the overall period of grace.) the which when a man hath found he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.” Imagine, at the time Jesus spoke this parable, there was not a thing in the world then, that would even indicate what such a thing was to be, because the Church had not even had its birth yet. It did not come into being until on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost was given. It was quite some time before the Church would reach such a likeness as was illustrated in this parable. It is a very small parable, but it is important that we understand in time, what happened and what God did, as well as what part a man would play that likened it in this manner. We have just dealt with the parable portraying a period of time when the true revelation of the word of God would be treated like unto a woman which took leaven and hid it in three measures of meal, (which was in the hour of Satan’s millennium, from about 500 to 1500 A.D., a thousand years of time when Satan ruled the old world) until all of it was leavened. The whole Roman Empire was influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. The older it became in that period of time, the darker Europe became. There was no advancement, no technology, so no inventions. They entered that period burning candles, and came out doing the same. They went in riding horseback, and came out doing the same. They went in riding ox carts, and came out doing the same. As for architecture, all those things remained the same. It is accurate to say, The Catholic Church cannot claim recognition in anything that pertains to man’s modern inventions. IN fact, she was against things like that. She was the instrument that caused multitudes, during the feudal system, throughout all the old world, just to exist on bare necessities. The wealthy ruled the land. They made up mainly the leadership of the church. They supported the church, but the church in return supported their political motivations. The Roman Catholic Church in reality, has never been, nor can it be an instrument of salvation. IT is absolutely a little bit of Christianity and a lot of paganism mixed together. The world in that dark hour of time, was submitted to and held under the sway of that pagan spirit. Nevertheless these parables prove that God was not going to let this period of time linger on forever in that particular state. It started out as a sower sowing good seed, a perfect example and likeness of what the Church, in time, should have remained always to be. Nevertheless, even though it did not remain like that, God would still have a way to return it to His foreordained purpose. As soon as it passed out of one generation into another one, things would change, so when you come to this woman in the Dark Ages, which was The Catholic Church, you come to a parable that illustrates how we look upon the Reformation. I want to say something at this time, to our Jewish friends in Israel. You will hear me refer to Martin Luther: I know the Jewish people have a very anti-Luther attitude because they think it is impossible for God to use a man like that, and allow him to be so fortunate as to be used to restore true faith. I want to say to the Jewish people, I am not saying anything about Martin Luther in any way as to exalt his flesh, or to prove he was superior in any certain things, but I have history here, that tells the part he played, so we have to deal honestly with it, just like the others. As we come to the hour, again the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field. What does that mean? It goes to show those things that were basic, very important, upon which we build salvation, our contact with God, that true belief has become lost through the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. I have the book, “The Glories of the Mother Church.” It gives all her cardinal teachings, her traditions and such. In there, it states there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic Church. We have seen the old world stooped under that for so long, its people having to abide by that, what a shame. If there was any education in that hour, it was much like parochial schools have been in years gone by. They were taught the catechism of the church and all those things, with a little bit of arithmetic and literature thrown in. The truth is, the so-called church ruled, dominated the whole social structure of the Roman life. It was impossible for a man or woman in those dark hours of time, to really know what it was to have a personal relationship with God and not have to look toward the church as means of salvation or contact with God. We know the original gospel preached by the Jewish apostles, was the simple plan of salvation, how it was to be embraced, how it was to be believed, what the benefit from it would become, and how the person would benefit by it. It goes to show, after a thousand years of the long dark ages, there has been something lost. Yes, it is through the teachings, the traditions, and things the Catholic church has done, that we know she claims to be the medium between God and man. We also know the Bible teaches no such thing. The true Church is made up of those that have received God’s plan of salvation. We therefore want to take a look at this period of time. All this proves that God will not allow the word and the truth that he once planted in the hearts of men to be exemplified in the world, be forever a hidden thing while people go on stooped in tradition.

However before I go any further here, I want to bring in something I saw in Mexico a few years ago. We have been in Mexico a few times. It is a completely Catholic dominated society which extends on down into South America. At the time we were there, we stayed in a hotel that stood on a little hill. On the same level with the hotel was a Roman Catholic church, built like an A frame building. The church is called the Miracle of Guadalupe. I will not try to explain the miracle, but once every year there is a time when people out of the mountains and far regions of Mexico, come to worship Mary at that church. There is a piece of copper welded together that portrays the miracle, how this particular nation at one time saw the virgin Mary appear in a halo of light. This metal thing is build just like the vision that was seen. To show you the power of the Catholic Church, this celebration lasted for a number of days. Up on the hill where the hotel and church were, there was a hundred and eighty seven steps from this high level down to the street level below. They came by car loads and bus loads. For several days they came, at any and all hours of the day and night. They would get out of those buses and cars, Catholic influenced and controlled people, to worship there. In all probability, many of them came from the far regions in the mountains, and this is probably the only time they ever get out of the mountains. When they got out of the vehicles, they always had a bouquet of flowers in their hand. My wife and I watched from our room. Once they started up these steps, they would get down on their knees, going through the actions of penitence. Proceeding from the street level, to the summit where the church was, there are two separate levels. You go so many steps, then there is a level, like a resting place, then it starts again. Day and night they came by the thousands. They were on their knees, some would crawl up those steps, then stop and go through all the sign makings, hail Mary, and all such. Thousands of them came during that number of days and I thought to myself, Those poor souls have never had the gospel preached to them. All they have learned is just the ritual and tradition of the Catholic Church. That is all they know. They are made to believe, as long as they fulfill the ritual and ceremony of this act, they are secure. Up in the main courtyard approaching the church, they had roulette wheels and all kinds of gambling devices for the people to participate in. That was how the church would get their money. The people would play those things and buy all sorts of relics. They would climb so many steps, then do the ritual of prayer, climb more steps, and do the same thing again. I just thought, Those poor people are bound in darkness. They know nothing of what faith really is. They are told they have to have faith in that system. I just thought, God, have mercy. I said, Lord, thank you, that you let us be born where we were not brought up under such traditional ignorance. That is the Catholic Church; and it is all over the world like that. If you go to South America, it only gets worse. There is no need of anyone saying, Oh but you are talking about my church. I am not talking about your church. I am talking about a devilish system of religion that has held the souls of people captive. You and I know Jesus Christ never taught such foolishness as that. Neither did the apostles.

With that in mind, I have to say for the sake of the Jewish people that will hear this, We as Gentile people, some of which came out of the Catholic Church, are very thankful to God not to be imprisoned in any of that old tradition today. After all these hundreds of years the Catholic Church now claims to be the mother church of all churches. They are not the mother church. They never were the mother church. They are a hybrid of ancient paganism, with just a little bit of Christian teaching to justify their claims. Catholicism is to true Christianity, what Islam by Mohammad the prophet, became to Judaism. It is a counterfeit religion. Think of it, political leaders of the world recognize it as a justifiable religion. It is not a true religion at all. It is absolutely a hybrid religion, just a fake. The hour is coming when God will prove it. Buddhism is in the same category. Why do you say that, Bro. Jackson? I have their books. I have Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Islam, and all the others. Basically I know what they all teach and it is nothing God is going to honor. When God gets through with what He is going to do in the Middle East, the whole world will know that there is only one true God and only one way to approach Him. Now, this treasure, actually, after a thousand years of control in society, what humanity was able to believe and not to believe, proves that by the time we come to 1500, the social structure of Europe was bound by the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, from the least to the greatest. They were made to believe there is no salvation outside the confines of the Roman Catholic Church. Having been in Madrid Spain, as well as the ancient capital, Toledo, I learned that there in Madrid is the third largest cathedral in Europe. When you go to that Catholic cathedral, they tell you when they started building it, and how many years it took, that it took close to two hundred years, that the Catholic Church and the people of the nation were in the process of building this church. To show you how the subjects look to the church as their sanctuary, as the means of their salvation, up along the walls of this place is a dome. When you stand under it, I do not remember how many feet it is to the center, but along this wall they can point out to you the royalty of Spain back there in the middle ages, coming up tot he time the church was completed, and how they loved that Catholic system so much, their dead carcases are placed up there in a coffin. They thought that much of the system. As you walk along down on the marble floor of the same great domed room, you come to a certain place and find big brass plaques, polished, with the names of those who are buried underneath the floor of that cathedral. What does that tell us? Those people believed so much in the mother church, they wanted their bodies to rest in the sanctuary of that Catholic system. You and I know, that it is as far fetched as daylight from dark. Nevertheless thousands of people believe that.

Well by the time this kingdom of heaven, this period of time has come, through 1000 A.D., and on into 1500 A.D., God looking at the whole mess, sees that it is time He causes something to break forth, to begin to restore back to accessibility, the individual right of every person, to find faith in God alone and to know from a personal relationship, what it is to have faith in God, outside of having faith in the pope, faith in the church, faith in the priesthood, faith in the system. That is exactly what history declares began to go on. We have a lot of people in denominational churches today, that do not know one thing about the Reformation. They are ignorant of the fact that there ever was such a thing as the Reformation. Had I not heard this man that taught these things right in this area, me being a Methodist, I would have just believed the same thing. It was the ministry of that man, that brought me out of obscurity, out of the background of tradition, as he began to use the Bible to expose the things of tradition and show the importance of every individual believer having something to hold on to, so he can honestly say, I have found faith. It is faith in God and His plan of salvation, His plan of redemption for every believer. When the hour of time came, God’s Spirit began to cause people to question those old hand-me-down traditions. They began to get hungry for the truth of God’s word. Many of us can look back and say, Thank God, He sent us a messenger to help us find reality. As we were privileged to watch this messenger and listen to his simple preaching in his hour of time, the effect that his life and ministry began to have on Gentile Christians, proved for sure that God had already begun to put a hunger in hearts of people. They were reaching out in prayer, praying for something to satisfy the hunger in their hearts. They did not necessarily know what it was, but they knew there had to be something more for them; and felt that God was going to do something for the benefit of their hunger and yearning. When Bro. William Branham was raised up and anointed by the Spirit of God, and cam on the scene teaching some of the things he taught, of the people that had a chance to hear him, many times the husband and wife would be sitting together in the same meeting. They would look at one another and say, Isn’t that what we have ben talking about lately? Many times these things became the program of the day. With these things in mind, we go back to that period of time. I have here in my hands, what the ancient history tells.

One of the first men that stood out in this time was an English man by the name of John Wycliff. He covers the period of time from 1320 to 1384. Out of the church of England, as he began to analyze the scriptures, this is also why the Catholic Church in that long dark age period, did not approve of the individual family having a Bible. They said only the priests know how to interpret it, therefore let him be the only one that has it. They would say to the average Catholic family, You are not supposed to have a Bible in your home. You do not need it. Only the priests are able to interpret it correctly. Nevertheless this man by the name of John Wycliff began to see the things that were missing in their teaching, and the value of those things. (Keep in mind, the parable is talking about treasure.) We are not dealing with seed any longer. We are dealing with treasure, something that has value. People can go all over the world and buy the rosary, the prayer beads, all the things people use in idol worship, but this treasure cannot be bought with natural dollars. Having been in the Holy Land several times I have noticed, that whether it is the church in the Garden of Gethsemane, or some other religious site, those Catholic priests are always on hand when Catholic groups appear. The minute they enter the door, a priest will meet them with a good supply of small candles. The purpose is, he is selling them a little candle about so tall, which he will light and set on a shelf. They feel like that burning candle is a perpetual prayer that is being sent up to God by such means. He sells those little candles for so much money, but the minute that group is gone, one of the caretakers comes through and snuffs the light out. The next Catholic group comes along and buys the same candles that were sold to the previous group. This goes on and on, it is repeated over and over again and again. That is the way the Catholic church believes. Their faith is in the ritual and ceremony. Saints! That is not the treasure! It has nothing at all to do with the real treasure. Our faith is not in that carnal junk. Our faith has got to be in something that has far more value than those trinkets. I am going to read it from this little history book I have, so those who hear this will know exactly what is written. This is early European history. It is not in print any longer. He taught a belief similar to what the Wahldeans (spelling?) had.

“John Wycliff, master of an Oxford college and a popular preacher, he too appealed from the authority of the Bible. (In other words, he was taking it out of the church and putting it back in the Bible.) With the assistance of two friends, Wycliff produced the first English translation of the scriptures. Manuscript copies of the work had a large circulation until he government suppressed it. Wycliff was not molested in life, bu the Council of Constance denounced his teachings and ordered that his bones should be dug up, burned, an cast into the stream. Wycliff had organized bands of four priests to spread the simple truth of the Bible through all England. They went out, staff in hand, clad in long gowns and preached to the common people in the English language. Wherever an audience could be found, they not only attacked many beliefs and practices of the church, but also demanded social reforms. For instance, they declared all wars were sinful and were but plundering and murdering the poor to win glory for the kings. They endured much persecution for heresy. Their work nevertheless lived on in England and Scotland. (Listen to this.) Which was the beginning of sowing of seeds of the Reformation. The doctrines of Wycliff found favor with Anna of Bohemia, wife of King Richard II. Through her they reached that country. Here they attracted the attention of John Huss, a distinguished scholar in the University of Prague. (He was a Catholic priest, studying at the university, a young fellow.) Wycliff’s writings confirmed Huss in his criticism of many doctrines of the church. He attacked the clergy in sermons and pamphlets and also objected to the supremacy of the pope. The sentence of excommunication pronounced against him did not shake his reforming zeal. Huss was finally cited to appear before the council of Constance, then in session. Relying on the safe conduct given him by the German emperor, HCSS appeared before the council only to be declared guilty of teaching many things evil, scandalous, seditious, and dangerously heretical. The emperor then violated the safe conduct. No promise made to a heretic was considered binding. HCSS was allowed to be burned outside the walls of Constance.” (A martyr.)

We can see by this, that something was in the making. It goes to show that in the parabolic meaning, was that somebody was looking for something. What were they looking for? They were looking for simple faith, how to have faith in God, believing in God through His word. Not being bound by tradition and rituals and ceremonies, as the believers in Catholicism were. Real faith, that which the apostolic Christians once had, had become lost in the world at large. That is why Jesus, in one parable, said, The field is in the world, and that is why the kingdom of heaven, that period of time, was like unto treasure hid, or lost in the field. Nobody really knows how to go looking for it. However, here, we see young men who were learned men, not hillbillies, but learned men of their hour, not only theologians, but they were learned in the political and social teachings of that hour. So the hour had come, that if this treasure is going to be accessible to anyone, and if it was eventually going to be restored back, so that the individual person in that hour could see it and with joy receive it, somewhere there had to be somebody come on the scene as an instrument in God’s hands. To my Jewish friends, I am not repeating because I want to agitate anyone. Please try to understand, that even though I am a Gentile, I am not ignorant. I have sense enough to know when I read written history, that you will never find anywhere that the Catholic Church, in that entire period of the Dark Ages, ever commended the Jews for anything. In fact, practically every priest looked down upon the Jewish people. They looked upon them as though they were the off scouring of the world, and ought not be allowed to exist. I do not try to justify or explain why a society thought such a thing, but I have to say, the important thing of the hour was, something had become lost to the human race and God wanted it to be restored. Wycliff had his try, and HCSS had his. There was another man mentioned along that same time, Zwingli, and they were all martyred. However they laid the groundwork for a later work. They sowed the seed marking the beginning of what God was going to do.

We now come to a man by the name of Martin Luther. He was a German. Again I say, He was not a hillbilly: He was not some back woods man that got converted, like we have in America today, that know very little of anything: He had studied for the priesthood, so he was educated. Hew as going through all the learning that the Catholic Church could give him. Martin Luther reached a point in his life when something began to disturb him. He did not have peace and confidence and inner happiness. When you have found Jesus Christ as your personal savior, by faith, through studying the word of God, it brings you peace of mind. It puts you directly in contact with God. That is hwy you can say, Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I bring my needs to your throne of mercy and grace: Lord, look upon me and help me. At that hour, Martin Luther, educated as he was, was looking for something that would give him true peace in his heart. I will take the rest of what I want to say to you from another history. Martin Luther had spent months on end, searching and studying. He studied everything that Catholicism made accessible to him. Finally he reached the point in his life when he knew nothing else to do, so he prepared himself to go through a long series of penitence. There is a Catholic cathedral where thousands upon thousands have climbed the steps doing penitence. The steps are worn until they appear polished. At the top of the steps on a landing, there is a sculptured statue of the virgin Mary. There, is where the worshipers crawl to, upon hands and knees, crying, kissing the floor, the steps, doing penitence, trying to put themselves in a humble position before God. Martin Luther was climbing those steps for the same reason. Of course we do not know what all he was praying, but I can imagine he was saying Heavenly Father, in the name of the virgin Mary, this and that: you know how they pray. He was in the process of reaching the top of the steps, reaching for the feet of the statue, the feet which have been kissed until they are almost worn away, by people trying to find peace with God, because the Catholic Church has always insisted upon putting faith in the system, when you and I know the Bible tells us salvation is by grace we are saved through faith. As Martin Luther was in a position where he was about to reach out and kiss the feet of that statue, all of a sudden, from the balcony of glory, an audible voice echoed out, Martin Luther, the just shall live by faith. As that echoed down into the depths of his soul, he knew God had seen his hunger. He was searching for reality and God has spoke to him in a supernatural way, and he has believed it, so let us look at that parable. It is like unto treasure hid in a field, so the field is the world at large. That is why these different men were willing to lay their lives on the line. It is evident they were all in search of the same thing, something that would satisfy the hunger of their soul.

Somehow God saw fit to use this man Martin Luther, to press forward with this issue protesting the teaching of the Catholic Church. I know all about Martin Luther’s dislike for the Jewish people, but keep in mind, the entire Catholic system was against the Jewish people. When you point the finger at one man for something you must point to all of those who are like him. Why did God use this man? Because He saw in him a determination, that no matter what the pope said, or the church said, he would stand against it. In the parable it says, like a man that has found this treasure in a field, so I ask you, Did he stand up on a hill and shout, Hey, come here everybody, see what I found? Does the parable bring it out like that? No. It said he hid it. He did not tell anyone about it. He went and sold all that he had, because he knew it would cost him something to be able to purchase that field. Let us look at Martin Luther. When he realized God had answered the longing of his soul, those words, the just shall live by faith, he found it. It was a revelation. It was an experience. He went back to Wittenberg Germany. He is acting strange now. It says in histories, he shut himself away from society for many days. The people began to think, maybe he is afraid. He is afraid the same thing will happen to him as what happened to other reformers. But one day, after he had been hid, with the doors shut, not speaking to anyone, suddenly he appears in the streets. He acts strange. Her had some parchment in his hand. He was not talking to anyone: He just walked down the street toward the church house in Wittenberg Germany. They began to follow him. What is he going to do? They see the parchment in his hand. Let me illustrate it like this. Here in Indiana and Kentucky, many times a farmer comes to a place he is getting ready to return and he is going to have a sale. He can pick up a pencil and piece of paper and write down all the things he wants to sell. He takes it to a printer somewhere and they print him a sale bill. Notice, on such and such a date, at such and such a time, there will be an auction held on such and such a farm, the estate of so and so. Following, is a list of items up for sale. AS the people began to follow the strange acting Martin Luther, he goes to the church house and walks up the steps to the front door and tacks this big sheet of paper on it. What is on that paper? He is selling all. He is denying and laying down everything he has learned in Roman Catholicism.

Martin Luther protested the teachings of the Catholic Church

He wrote 95 thesis, and exposed it. After he tacked it on the door, he then turned and looked at the people and said, Look, see what I have done? Everyone began to gather around and read. From then on Martin Luther began to preach faith in God. He portrayed an act of grace. The Catholic Church condemned him, but for some reason at that time, the king of Germany rallied to his rescue. The king of Germany told him, We will protect you, we will be with you. It goes to show, there had come a time when even certain political men were ready to embrace what God was going to do. This great treasure, Martin Luther found it, after it had been lost for so long. All those things he had learned prior to that time, were the traditions and teachings, and the creeds of the so-called-church. Those were the things he put on public sale. When the people saw him do that, that was the beginning of what is known as the Reformation. It started in 1520.

THE FIRST PRINTING PRESS

Gutenburg invents the printing press and begins to mass produce bibles

In 1450, a man by the name of Gutenberg came up with the printing press, and later on went to work printing. Not long afterwards, Martin Luther was known all over Europe and even into Asia, as his teachings began to go out. You can pick up history that will go right along with that. He had found the treasure that had been lost in the field (the world) for so long. From the apostolic hour of time until that hour, true faith in God had been lost. It had not even been talked about. There were none that understood, or that even had a reason to say, What is it? How does it work? Somehow Martin Luther received an experience that changed his life. When he began to preach it, that made this treasure accessible to the listeners. His teaching began to go all over Germany. It went to various regions of Europe, which was followed quickly by other reformers, John Calvin, and Knox. That is why it took Luther, followed by Calvin, then Knox, to open it up. They each one embraced a certain teaching of the Bible that helped build back faith in God. Knox taught predestination. Calvin taught eternal security. Any true dedicated Baptist know that when it actually comes to a solid foundation of faith, they have a good foundation because they teach just like it would be in the Bible, once saved always saved. The question is, How many of them were really scripturally saved? Correct doctrine is one thing, a living reality of that doctrine is quite another. I will phrase it a different way to clarify the thought. If you are ever biblically born again, by the Spirit of God, you will never need to be born again, ever again. Do not come to me saying, But suppose they smoke? Well suppose they do? That does not make them spiritually unborn any more than just sickness alone makes the natural person physically unborn (dead). Let us just take a little baby born healthy. Then three years later it has pneumonia and almost dies, but pulls through . Did it actually die? No. It looked like it could but it did not. That is why I say, If a man or woman has ever truly been born again by the Spirit, which is the way the Bible demands, you will never need to be born again. There can be periods in your life when you become so weak, so discouraged, and the devil beats you down until you reach a point where you feel like you are nothing, but that is why the scripture says, For whom the Lord loveth, He chastens and scourgeth every son of God. HE will give you a whipping. Come on, son, get up and get moving, but HE will never cast you out of the family.

If you are like some of these church goers, without chastisement, those who say, Well I am never whipped: I don’t know what chastisement is. Watch out! It might be you are just an illegitimate child, a bastard, never born again by the Spirit of God. You belong to a church instead of the Lord. It is just that simple. That is why John Calvin taught this eternal security of the believer. Knox comes along with predestination. Of course he had his extreme trends attached to it, but the doctrine of predestination is a true Bible doctrine. However when you start saying, What is to be, will be. That is true only because God knew it: He did not cause it. There is nothing that overtakes God, without Him knowing all about it all the time. There is no such thing as, God made one to be saved, and another to be lost. That is not a merciful God. He made all to be saved, but He knew that not all would accept salvation. Predestination is a doctrine of the New Testament, and so is eternal security. That is why it tells you in the epistles of Peter, if you add to your faith virtue, knowledge, so and an so forth, if you have these things, it makes you so that you will neither be barren, and that you will never fall. When you have found faith in God to be the means and avenue by how you approach God and God is allowed to complete His work in your life, then there is no such thing as being saved today and lost the next day, and have to be saved all over again. For the last fifty years we have had evangelists across America, that have preached a gospel like that, but it is just as weak as can be. They come, they draw crowds by the thousands. Yes the thousands will go to the front and be prayed for, but three years later you may not be able to find even one of them still going to church. Nevertheless, here and there is that lone individual that stands out so vividly, because when God spoke to them, He did not let them go back and sit down in an old cold church somewhere: He kept on dealing with them. That is what the Reformation was, when they found that treasure, faith itself, then God added predestination, eternal security, because it took these other two doctrines to embrace and fortify that framework of faith. When people can understand these teaching of the Bible in simplicity, the devil does not have a human life to play with. It is sad, that so many people believe those individual doctrines of the Bible only separate them. That is why I have said many times, you can be a good Baptist of the system, you can believe the doctrine in that framework, but if that doctrine has never left the doctrinal side and become an experience in your mind and penetrated your heart, you just have head religion. You just have a mental experience. It has to affect the inner being of the person, in order to be a true experience of salvation.

Well I believe we can see that the kingdom of heaven covers a period of time when something has been lost, (faith). After a thousand years of Catholic teaching, the whole Roman world has been stooped in ignorance. Their church buildings were full of the relics, and the worshipers were fed rituals and creeds. When Martin Luther came along and God used that man to begin to lay out faith, my, what a revelation those people had. Why wouldn’t people come by the thousand, wanting to embrace what Martin Luther taught? Now I can have faith in God, I don’t have to go to the pope anymore. Keep in mind, hundreds of years, thousands of women went before the confession booth and poured out the secrets of her heart to a renegade priest behind a curtain, wanting her to expose all the secret things she has done in her life. Did Jesus ever ask anyone to do such a diabolical thing? You know He never did. Only God needs that kind of repentance expressed to Him. That is why I say, it is better to go out in the woods somewhere, fall on your knees and lift your hands to heaven and say, Heavenly Father, I am troubled, I have done a lot of things. You do not have to tell the city mayor, the police department, you just tell God about it, because He is the one that is going to hear it, and if He needs to amend it, He will do it. That is why true faith is a treasure. It was the beginning of many things that were so important in that hour. The Catholic Church as a whole embraced and taught a lot of things that I am sure the Jewish people could not accept, but just remember how Martin Luther was used. That is not the whole of the Church at all: It is the beginning of a restoration process. God used what the man taught. It was the beginning that led to other things later on.

THE SIXTH PARABLE

Holiness - the pearl of great price — John Wesley

We can now go on to the sixth parable. These parables are short; and they are not about seed any more. “Again the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, (Notice, Jesus so vividly, and so beautifully illustrated a period of time when the kingdom of heaven would go through a manifestation of things that would be characterized this way.) seeking goodly pearls: (Now again, here is two parables, the treasure hid in the field, and a merchant man seeking goodly pearls. A merchant man is a man already in the business of dealing in something. Right? But while he is dealing in that, whatever he has to sell, he has his eyes open, looking for a treasure, one of great value. Pearls are white and clean. This is exactly what we are looking at when we look at John Wesley and his message of sanctification.) Who when he had found one pearl of great price, (What did he do? He did just like the other parable.) went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” These two parables bring out much of the same characteristic. There was the selling of something, to be able to purchase this pearl of great price. So he sold all he had and bought that pearl of great price.

Now we move further on up in the Grace Age. We have come out of the Dark Age period, where there is the woman with her leaven in three measures of meal. We see the man looking for treasure. He found it in a field. Then, here is a merchant man. He typifies something in this period of time. We have to take a look at John Wesley. He was raised up in the Church of England. According to writings about him, he studied to be a minister, a missionary. He studied all the theology of the Episcopal Church. There came a time when John Wesley got on a boat to be a missionary to the American Indians in Georgia. Let us compare that to this merchant man. It is like unto. Jesus is reaching out here, looking at a man that is selling little pearls. He is selling something of value, but in the process he has his eyes looking constantly for a special pearl somewhere.: if I ever find it, I must have it. This is the testimony of John Wesley. He came to America; and on the way over, his whole heart is set upon wanting to share his theology of salvation with the American Indians in Georgia. When he got to the state of Georgia, how ever long he stayed, every opportunity he had to try to preach the gospel to the American Indians, it seemed as though everything was all washed out and every opportunity failed. Everything he tried to say just went against deaf ears. After a short period of time he became so discouraged, because he realized the American Indians did not want what he had to sell. He was on a boat going home; and on this boat he meets a group of Moravians. They were part of the Reformation too, but history does not give them much recognition. This boat was caught in a storm and John Wesley got scared. He thought the boat would sink. He heard these Moravians praying and watched their attitude and how they prayed and how they were so content to be able to trust God that He would bring them home. John Wesley’s testimony goes something like this, I came to America to convert the American Indian, but I go back home to England, and who will convert me?

He no sooner got back to England, he met a group of friends that had been having a prayer meeting at a place called Aldersgate, Just a little place where people like to go and separate from the establishment to pray. There the power of God began to move. Some friends invited him. It was at this meeting that God gave John Wesley an experience. God dealt with him in the light of certain scriptures. He was already a theologian. He knew the scriptures as far as the mental knowledge of them. God revealed to him, John Wesley, without peace and holiness no man shall see the Lord. That was the same kind of experience to him as what Martin Luther had experienced climbing those steps. When he saw the scriptures, without peace and holiness, it became such a burning revelation in his life he had to share it. It was the beginning of John Wesley becoming the great evangelist we have all heard about. On horseback, he rode from one end of England to the other. He went to the coal mining towns. In the coal mining vicinity, it was known many times the coal miners would run evangelists off, because they did not want to listen to them. One testimony was, John Wesley rode into a group of miners: One of them hit him and knocked him down. He was so persuaded that God led him there to preach to those miners he would not give up, so a big bully among them walked up and stood beside John Wesley and looked at the rest of the miners, Don’t any of you ever touch this man again. He beckoned to John Wesley to rise and preach.

From there on, John Wesley became one of the greatest known, horse back riding evangelists the world has ever known. He found that pearl, something pure. It was a revelation of how the Spirit of God, through the word of God, once it is all inside your heart, will cause you to leave the bear bottle alone, you will leave the foul language alone, and it will clean you up every other way. It will sanctify you. (Set you apart) John Wesley had tuberculosis that at times would attack him and he would cough. One time he was coughing and bleeding. He was getting ready to cross a river. He had coughed and bled so much, he literally dived off the horse into the icy cold water of the river, to cause the blood to stop. These are experiences written about John Wesley. Shortly after his experience at Aldersgate, he went back to the church where his father had preached. (He too was a clergyman.) He asked permission of the pastor of that church to preach on Sunday morning. He told the pastor who he was. This man in the Church of England had already heard about him. He was already looked upon as a heretic, a renegade. The man said to him, We don’t want what you have to say: you will have to move on. He went out into the cemetery where his father was buried. He stood on his father’s tombstone and made this remark, The world will be my parish. That was the beginning of the long career of preaching, without peace and holiness, no man shall see the Lord.

As his ministry grew, the Holy Ghost worked with him. There are many testimonies where he had big meetings and people would be hit by the power of God and fall out in the floor in a trance. They would haul them home in buggies. There was another time when a woman who had been to his meetings, and was pregnant, went into labor to give birth to a baby. (In those days the self righteous, religious people out of the Church of England, like to persecute him and the people that sat in his meetings.) Back then they didn’t have all the modern technology. They called the doctor. The doctor did everything he could to help the woman give birth, but for hours she screamed in agony. The neighbors were called in to pray. Some were crying, What are we going to do now? The doctor has done everything he can do. Somebody said, Let’s get John Wesley to come and pray, because they knew he had prayed for people and god would touch their need. When they got to where John Wesley had been staying, they found that he was not there. Then suddenly somebody said, They took aprons and handkerchiefs from Paul’s body, so they went to the barn and got the bridle of the horse John Wesley had been riding. They laid that across the body of the woman and shortly she gave birth to a healthy baby. These are written testimonies of John Wesley’s ministry.

There was another time John Wesley was preaching and people were falling out in the spirit; and a certain critic came in just to watch. As he sat there, he was condemning this and that. When the service was over that man went home, but late in the night that man fell into great pain. They called the doctor. The doctor gave him all kinds of medication, but the pain got more severe. The man was on the floor in agony, crying for help. The p0ain was so excruciating he could hardly stand it. They went and got John Wesley. He came and prayed for the man and God delivered him. That tells me, when you think you know so much that you are ready to condemn everything you do not understand, be careful, you might be poking your finger into something you will be sorry for. That is what that man did. He came to the meeting, he saw people falling out under the power of God, not screaming in agony, but with a look of peace. They were happy. Nevertheless this man went home to condemn what he had seen. God let the devil get hold of him. That is exactly what God can let the devil do many times. That is a picture of John Wesley.

When he found this pearl of great price, it was a wonderful revelation to him. Without peace and holiness, no man shall see the Lord. When he began to ride across England into the coal mining towns, into the countryside, evangelizing all over England, they believed his message. A friend of his came to America to preach. There is a certain place when you come out of Asheville North Carolina into the mountains, you see a plaque on the side of the road, (I do not remember the man’s name) but he rode a mule up and down those mountains preaching the same message John Wesley preached in England. He taught it all up and down the Allegheny Mountain range. That brought the Methodist teaching to the new world. We see these two parables, we see what they produced. Did they produce the true Church? No, they were just a stepping stone in time, as God restored to accessibility certain teachings that were necessary in order to, in the end, bring the Church over here in the end of Gentile time, back to the gospel that was preached in the first Age. It has to be just exactly like it was when it started out, in the beginning. It took this process, through time, for it to be restored. We can say, these two parables became a living reality, but it took simple men that were dealt with by the Spirit of God, and how they characterized and carried the gospel that fulfilled it for the end time Church. The seventh parable belongs to the time we live in, so se want to take a good look at it.

THE SEVENTH PARABLE

Drew near to shore and gathered the good into vessels but cast the bad away

We want to go into the seventh parable now. It is the one that portrays this age of time we are living in. It coincides with the Laodicean church age that is mentioned in the book of Revelation. Matthew is the only writer of the apostles, that recorded these in the order Jesus spoke them in. Think of it, Jesus, well in advance, many years before the prophecy of Revelation would even be made known, is telling that the kingdom of heaven, this period of time, would go through seven specific changes, wherein it would affect the kingdom of God, which is in the hearts of people. That is why the kingdom of God is something inside of you. It is what God does for you, inside of you, as an individual. The kingdom of heaven is a period of time when this work of God is taking place. We have covered the other six, John Wesley being God’s instrument in the sixth one, and showed what it accomplished in the realm of religion.

Now we are going to read the seventh parable and focus on God’s instrument in the time it speaks of. “Again, the kingdom of heaven (that period of time) is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto Him, Yes, Lord.” Notice, He has given them one description of this kingdom of heaven, but when He asked them that, and they said, Yea, Lord, then He adds something. “Then said He unto the, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” That goes to show it is an addition of something that would take place as the first part of the parable is fulfilled. We want to deal with that. The church world in general has never understood these parables. I have heard preachers on radio broadcasts, that will use one, always for some kind of salvational story, but they never seek the historical background, where it applies in time. This seventh parable, as it is applied to this age of time, the Laodicean age, how did all this unfold? For us to get into that, we must realize there is definitely going to be a prophet messenger manifested in this era of time, to fulfill that parable. That is why we are looking at it from the standpoint of a scribe. Israel knows a scribe was not just any old Tom, Dick or Harry that would come along. He was a man authorized to do something. Legally, he was the only man that was allowed to take the scrolls, to write them. If a parchment becomes old, he is the only man that is experienced, schooled, and trustworthy in what he writes, putting ever dot and tittle right where it is supposed to be. That is called a scribe.

When we bring it into our dispensation, it is not talking about somebody that is rewriting some worn out scroll. It is somebody that is authorized to interpret that which is already written. The Bible was not written by Gentile preachers. Even the New Testament was written by Jewish apostles that came to the Gentile people. During that period of time, they are the ones that wrote the New Testament epistles, which constitute the new covenant that God said He would give. In order for us to understand, I have never heard a denominational preacher say that God, in these last days, would send the spirit of Elijah again. Back in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, when we had some of our major doctors of divinity, with radio broadcasts, never did I hear one of them say, that in the last days God will send us that spirit of Elijah again. But I have to say, when we do know what this seventh parable is talking about, what it is implying, who is to benefit by it, it is necessary that we understand, there will be that spirit of Elijah come again. Why do I say that? First, let’s look at it in its first coming: That gives us a historical background. We go to the book of Malachi, the last chapter. We notice Malachi was the last prophet in the last dispensation of time Israel had just before the advent of Christ. Here in the 4^th chapter, 5^th and 6^th verses, small in number, not very large, but oh, the impact it has on people that can know what it is talking about. God said, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet (Notice the wording) before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” There is two comings right there. I have to say to every doctor of divinity, no matter where you came from, or what denomination you are of, there are two comings of this Elijah prophet. The great day is one, but the dreadful day is just ahead of us. This is when God will cut everything off that has not met his plan. Now if he is to come, what will He do? “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers (Who are the fathers he is talking about? I used to think they were our genetic fathers. That has no genetic meaning at all. The fathers here, pertain to how Israel, the society in the religious sector, looked upon their leaders, their elders.

You have read in the book of Acts where Paul or some of those men that were contested, were given an opportunity to stand before the Sanhedrein or some of the priests and they would say, Men, brethren, and fathers. Fathers of the belief, the men they look to for understanding, enlightenment in spiritual matters. He shall turn the heart of the fathers…) to the children.” (This was John the Baptist.) Who were the children? They were not genetic offspring of these fathers. It is the children, the younger generation that is going to be dealt with by this prophetic manifestation. The manifestation brings attention from the fathers, but the beneficiaries are the offspring, or the younger generation that is affected by His coming. We can find, all we have to do is turn to the (1^st chapter, 19^th verse of St. John.) “And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask Him, Who are thou? And He confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.” You go ahead and read the rest. Already John was at the river Jordan, he was baptizing people from both sides, as they traveled. He met them at a crossing place. People that had been over, as they came by here, they could not help but see this man. What is he up to? He is baptizing. The natural society asks, Why do you do that? He said, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (The dispensation we have been talking about.) Those new converts, those who were baptized, become the children of this new faith, this new experience. By the time they got into Jerusalem and started spreading the word, there were many people there. In the day’s of the first advent of Christ, just before this manifestation of John, if we could look at the historical background of Israel at that hour, there had been so much apostasy within the religious sector, and a lot of the Judaistic people had absolutely lost interest. A lot of society was living in a state of apostasy. They did not care anymore. They fulfilled certain things at certain times of the year. The rest of the year they did as they pleased. The point is, People had lost interest and that is why the prophecy was pointing to that hour of time.

God knew the people needed to be awakened before He send this great and glorious event of the coming of the Messiah. That is exactly what conditions are, here in these last days of Gentile time: Just look at the TV preachers: They are Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostal, this or that. They are proud of it. The sad part is, they do not have a revelation that gives anyone a picture of what is ahead. They are asleep spiritually. They are bound up by traditions. I do not say that to hurt anyone, but they are so full of traditional ideas, they could not care less what anyone else believes. That is why that spirit of Elijah had to come again. When we look at it in its first advent, the appearing of John at the river, it created a lot of commotion. He did no miracles, but it was the way he quoted the Old Testament scriptures, that really awakened people. Hey were going to become the children of the new faith that is getting ready to be set in motion. When the head officials in Jerusalem heard of this, they sent priests to inquire. In other words the big shots themselves were too self righteous: They did not want their faces seen in public, investigating. The priests they send were also called fathers, Go ask who He is, and what is He doing? Read the rest of John’s answers and see why he was out there. The point is, it was important to send that spirit of Elijah. This was not Elijah literally, it was just the same anointing that God had placed on Elijah of old. That spirit has always been a God identifying spirit. It was that anointing that was on the prophet Elijah, that was on John the Baptist, another Jew of that generation. This is proof beyond the shadow of a doubt, when we see in the scriptures, that God is to send Moses and Elijah, two prophets in the end time, not the prophets Moses and Elijah of old, but two Jews of this day and hour, with that same anointing. God never sends a man from the past, to do a future work: He would be out of his season. The human side of him would not know how to relate to the changes of time. The anointing of God is what does the work. He just uses a vessel of clay to work through.

When we look at this, John the Baptist came preaching, and we do not know how long he preached before he made the wrong statement and told Herod, It is wrong for you to have your brother’s wife. That got him put in jail. He had already baptized Jesus. Jesus has gone into the desert and fasted for forty days and nights. He comes out and goes back to Nazareth. He, His mother and disciples, were invited to Canaan of Galilee to a wedding. There, is where Jesus did the first miracle. John was already in prison. It was not long until John had his head cut off. There is not much need for me to go ahead with the first advent of that two fold prophecy of Malachi, but it did constitute the beginning. It awakened an element of people that were baptized for remission of sins, to be recipients of this new dispensation that was going to be set in motion. These are those that followed Jesus through the three and one half years of His ministry. It was this element that God uses to bring about the birth of the Church as the kingdom of heaven opened up. For two thousand years, once the gospel came to us, we Gentiles, have carried this gospel, having had God’s grace poured out upon us. The original truth was preached to us by Jewish apostles, our forefathers, some of whom were converted out of paganism, because, it is the fact that those early converts to Christianity were already proselytes to Judaism. No doubt their lives had been affected by Jews that had lived in their vicinity that they had close contact with. Many early Gentile converts were proselytes in that respect. It took the ministry of Jon to set the whole thing in motion, because he was a forerunner sent by God. He was the one that opened the way, by enlightening that generation of what was on the way.

From that hour of time, society came almost two thousand years, to the period of time when WW2 was fought. What did WW2 do to the world? It brought much devastation from the standpoint of the natural. Europe was laying in shambles when it ended. Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and many of the islands of the sea were devastated by that war. Giant battleships, aircraft carriers and many others were sent to the bottom of the oceans. Human lives were lost by the thousands. IT was a war that will never be forgotten. They still show movies about it. Books have been printed about it. However if you are going to live in the past, you will never see what is going to be in the future. The past is back there, but the future is just ahead. I can hardly wait until all that the future is pointing to, gets here. We are going to be recipients of its benefits. If God lets that heart in your bosom, keep on ticking, you will see with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, things are going to excite you, and maybe even scare you. For at least fifty years now, it almost looks like God has just said to the human race, You want it, go ahead with your way and see what runs into. I have to say, Just look what the scientists have come up with. In October of 1929 when the stock market crashed, they did not have all the technology to keep up with it like they do today, so a lot of people did not know such a thing was in motion until it had been three weeks in the past. Just look at it now: There are people that just live day to day to know what the stock market is doing and what it is likely to do. If it falls ten points, they are ready to have a heart attack. If God was to let time go another fifty years, the day would come, that the voice of Christendom would be gone from America. Medical science will dominate the scene.

Let me take you into an emergency room. There has been a terrible wreck on the highway, and here are five people brought in. Three are dead. Two little children are barely breathing. They are dripping with blood. As they are brought into the emergency room, the doctors and technicians are looking the situation over. Save his leg. Save his foot. We need those eyes. They are ready to dismantle a corpse salvaging every usable organ, if they are permitted. There is virtually nothing they cannot do. I hope you catch the point. There is nothing medical science will not do eventually, because they have God out of the picture. They want to create life on this planet, where one generation can live forever, at the expense of others who cannot change the situation. I have to say, We are at the end. All signs point to it. When the Bible said, He (God) will send that spirit of Elijah again just before the dreadful day of the Lord. That is the day of wrath just ahead. That is the day when He cuts the wicked and unbelieving, getting things ready for only the righteous to live. Before that though, (Mal 4:6) “he shall turn the heart of the children to their fathers, lest (or before) I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Not those ancient children that lived two thousand years ago, but the end time generation of children. Well I am a Methodist, you might say. I was once a Methodist until God showed me the truth of His word. One day I sat in front of a man that made this Bible talk to me. When I walked out of there I said, That man makes this Bible make more sense than all the rest of these educated preachers put together. I stayed on in the Methodist system for a period of time, but when I realized I was never going to hear this truth in there, because they will not allow it, my wife and I moved out. How do you know they would not allow it, Bro. Jackson? In those early years when I was still in the Methodist Church, felling that God had called me to be a minister, (The student pastor of the Elizabeth area, when he and his wife would go back to Louisiana where they were from, he would leave the churches in my charge.) I had been studying predestination and I could see it just like the sun breaking through on a cloudy day. It was light to my soul. I stood up in the Methodist church and preached predestination. Guess what? In less than a week, here came the Sunday School superintendent: Bro. Jackson, we know you are a good man, but we believer there are some things, that if the Methodist church don’t believe, we should not preach them. That struck me a hard blow. It made me feel like a smart aleck. I thought a long time about that. Yet I thought to myself, It is in the Bible: Peter preached it, Paul wrote about it. If they could preach it and write about it, I am going to do the same, whether they like it or not. It was not three weeks later, that some men of the church asked the district superintendent, Since the student pastor was going to leave and go somewhere else, would Brother Jackson be allowed to be the pastor. The district superintendent said, No, the state has voted and we have passed a resolution, that in order for a man to be pastor over a congregation of people, he must have a complete school education, plus at least two years of college or bible school. When they told me that, inside of me, it was like I had been struck with a knife. I went back home that evening and went to the barn to pray. I said, Lord, it is in your book. If that is what it takes to be a preacher, then I will never preach again, but I will honor your Word wherever I have an opportunity. That was the night the Lord came to me in a beautiful dream and put His arms around me. He never said anything, but it let me know, there was something radiated from His being down through my soul. I thought, Oh, if I could just die like this, it would be wonderful. Now I know there is something else. That was the beginning of the Lord leading my wife and I out away from that Methodist spirit. We were ready to say goodbye to our parents. I have to say, When your parents mean more to you than Jesus does, you are not following the Lord. I say that respectfully, but HE is first. He will not take second place in your life. You cannot cut Jesus up and make Him a Baptist to one bunch of people, a Methodist to another bunch of people. No. You have just a little portion of scripture over here and think you have it all. The only way you will get it all, is to get back in the book and accept reality.

That is why there had to be a last day prophet come on the scene. While the politicians of our society were trying to figure out what they could do to rebuild our infrastructure after the war ended in 1945, there was a little man in the Jeffersonville, Indiana area, that the religious world did not even know, but they would. His name was William Marrion Branham. I was raised in this area, but I had never heard of him. In 1947 God spoke to that man. You would have to read his life story to see what God said to him, and how it began to affect his life. By the time we come to 1948, the very year that Israel was born as a state, this man was well on his road to being known all over the United States. By the time we come to 1948, and on into 1949 and 1950, he was known all over the United States and Canada. God had anointed him. He was a prophet. How do you know he was? You could not come into his presence with some sneaking plan. He would have looked at you and said, I saw you when you were in the basement planning this. I believe it was around 1949, that two Church of Christ fellows heard about Bro. William Branham’s meetings and of the people being healed. These two self righteous men made a plan. The one was to pretend to be sick. The other was sitting in the balcony. This man got a prayer card for the prayer line. When he stood before Bro. William Branham, Bro. William Branham looked right at him and said Sir, the Lord doesn’t show anything. The man had written on his prayer card, all that he had wrong with him, but it was a lie. He said, But I have it written on this card. Bro. William Branham looked at him and said, Sir, God don’t show me anything. Oh but there is. Bro. William Branham turned away from the man, looked up in the balcony and pointed his finger at the other man and said, You, and that man right there, planned this. Now, Thus saith the Lord, the things written on this card will fall on you! They did. That man’s wife followed Bro. William Branham to California, begging him to come back and pray for him. Sure, we have religious characters today, that say he was a false prophet. If you feel that way, to you he was, but another element of people knew he was an eye opener, an awakener. We have two today that have their feet stuck in politics, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. They claim to know so much. They know more about politics than they do anything else. This little man, by the time we come to 1948 and 1949, there was a move began across the United States. We look back and call it the deliverance move. God began to anoint preachers. When they began to hear about this little man with a gift of divine healing, and telling people what was wrong with them through a gift of discernment, they all began to get the same revelation, that divine healing was back in the picture. I remember the hour. I can stand here and name dozens of them. Some of them, I was privileged to hear. I went to a few of their meetings. I can recognize some of the healings that took place in their ministry. What was ta ministry back then? It was affecting thousands of people.

I have been to some of the big tent meetings. I think it was around 1957 in the month of October. There was an evangelist back then, named Gayle Jackson. (He was not related to me.) He came out of the home of an undertaker. I understand, after he left the field, he went back to undertaking. He came to Evansville Indiana for meetings. The Church of Christ in Evansville, Indiana opened its big mouth and spoke against divine healing. With my own eyes, I saw five deaf and dumb mutes that had sat in an Assembly of God church down there, that had been prayed for by A.A. Allen, and different other healing evangelists that used to work with the Voice of Healing. They were not touched by any of them. On this particular night though, they were sitting in the front. Through the week, on the radio, the Church of Christ had attacked divine healing, said it was out of the pit of hell, and that there is nothing to it. Gayle Jackson did not preach but about fifteen minutes and then said, I feel a leading tonight. He then asked those five deaf and dumb mutes to come up front, but first I want to give a call for those needing salvation. The tent was full. Out in the parking lot they were leaning on their cars, looking inside. When Gayle Jackson said, all you that want to find Jesus Christ as your Savior, get in here. It sounded like a cattle stampede. They came under the flaps, down the aisles, running. He made a universal prayer for them. He told the workers to take them back to the prayer tent and pray with them until they broke through and found themselves forgiven of their sins. Then he turned and said, Now let’s form the prayer line. Five deaf and dumb mutes stood in the prayer line. The first one that came up to him, Gayle Jackson looked at him and through the hand signs ask, How long have you been this way. He indicated, all my life. He was a young fellow. Gayle Jackson just put his hands over his ears and prayed for him. He did not stand there and pray but about 30 seconds until he said, In the name of Jesus Christ, open this man’s ears. He took his hands off and ask, Can you hear me? Repeat after me. He took a simple word, say this. The young man tried to say it, naturally he stuttered trying to repeat it. He got him to say the word. Then he told some of those from the congregation with young man, Take him and teach him words and what they are. The next one came up. He prayed for him and took his hands off. Nothing happened. But he prayed for him again, just a simple prayer, In the name of Jesus Christ, leave this man! He asked, can you hear me? Three in a row heard and spoke. He said, that Church of Christ is nothing but an antichrist. That was in a public meeting in Evansville, Indiana.

When Jesus spoke this parable, “Again the kingdom of heaven is like a net.” What is a net? It is what fishermen use to catch fish, right? Think what the 1950’s became. By the time we came on through 1957, 1958, 1959, many evangelists came along. Tommy Osborne’s ministry was born out of Bro. William Branham’s meetings. More than one man was born out of Bro. William Branham’s meetings. God anointed them. There were dozens of them, that were basically all Trinitarians. Wherever they went, wherever they set up in meetings, here came the Methodists, here came the Baptists, even Catholics came. If any of them said they were saved, they usually became a Methodist, a Baptist, or a Presbyterian. Now watch, At the ending of that parable of the net, you begin to see where they sat down. The is exactly what fishermen do. The fishermen do not separate their fish on the boat. Not in those days. In those days, they gathered their fish and came to shore. There, is where they would sit down and pour out their catch and sort. Every fisherman knew every fish he keeps, has got to meet a certain qualification, or it will not be bought on the fish market. So they cast the bad back into the water. This is truly a picture of what has taken place in America and around the world. When we come out of 1959 into 1960, through the 1960’s this thing began to taper off. I have to say, This one little man, by then, is no longer preaching salvation and divine healing. IN December 1960, he stood in his own tabernacle and preached the Seven Church Ages. Now something else is taking place, while out in the evangelistic field they are still casting the bad back. They come to the meetings, flock to the front, are prayed for, and they go right back to the gambling tables, and to the alcohol bottles. But this little man was a scribe, God anointed him with a message.

By the time we come to 1963, God has given him a revelation to start preaching the seals. I remember, in 1955, in one week at the Tabernacle, he was going to start a series on the book of Revelation, especially the 1^st chapter. When John turned, to see the one that was speaking to him, he saw Jesus girt about the paps with a golden girdle. In 1955, when Bro. William Branham started that, he said, See there, that is the Church, because she is girt about the paps, the breasts. After two nights of preaching, he got a call from a pastor in Chicago, that wanted him to come for a meeting. Bro. William Branham turned to Bro. Neville and said, Just take it and go on. He never did return and pick up, continuing on the book of Revelation. That was in 1955. I sat right there. When we come to 1963, and after God has dealt with him in a supernatural way about preaching the revelation of what the seals are, he was out in Arizona, when God spoke to him in a supernatural way, and then comes back here. If you get that seventh seal book or the tape, you will find he has not said one thing there, about that one that John sees, as the Church. It is Jesus Christ as High Priest, girt about the paps with the breastplate the Urim and Thummin. From there on, the picture was different. There are some of you in here that have the idea, that just because I preached in years gone by that all this great multitude was all foolish virgins. Then back in the fall meetings when I preached what God has showed me lately, Oh, he was wrong. Be careful, talking like that: There is an eye watching you. I remember a man that sat in that Tabernacle, who was a deacon. That man would not listen to any other preacher except William Branham. He had the money to go to meetings. All he could talk about was William Branham. Guess what? When William Branham died, that man’s house was full of tapes and books. But when God would not resurrect William Branham to pacify his ego, in less than three years, he had sold everything and gone back to an Assemblies of God church in Louisville. He got rid of all his tapes. I have to say these things for your benefit. Don’t ever think you know a whole lot. The apostle Paul, when he said what he did about young Christian women, that they remain single, because time is short, look what he wrote to Timothy later, when he was in jail and knows his head is going to be cut off. He would that younger women marry, bare children, be keepers of the home. The Bible has the answer for all your questions if you look at it right. I say that with respect, knowing it is true. I have never told anyone that I know everything. I do not. What I know to this point, is only by the grace of God. If there is something in this book that I have not read correctly, if God leaves me alive and I have been wrong here, before I leave this world, he will have me correcting it. We do not always receive the complete revelation on something that is still off in the future: Sometimes we are just given a profile of it. There use to be a piano player at the Tabernacle years ago. She had been healed. She sat there and played. In less than five years she was re-baptized. Be careful who you make your god. Do not attempt to carry your god around in your pocket. It has to be a revelation in your heart and soul. Whatever we need to know, God will reveal it when we need it: I am confident of that. This little man we now was a prophet of God, began to preach the revelation and truth of God’s WORD, instead of just majoring on healing the sick. When he did, God was already putting a hunger in the hearts of the people. That is what He did to me.

In February 1952, I had a habit, while we were still in the Methodist church, that after I went to the barn and milked the cow, feed the hogs, and came back to the house and ate my breakfast, I would get my Bible and read some scripture. On this one particular morning, as I opened the Bible it opened exactly to Luke 1. I looked at it and began to read. Luke 1 is all about Zacharias the priest, married to his wife, having not had any children. It has come his turn to go into the temple to minister. HE did not go into the Holy of Holies: He went in where the table of shewbread and those things were. It fell his lot to burn incense. While he was in there, Gabriel the angel, came and spoke to him. The angel told Zacharias he would be the father of a son. He told him what that son would become, and told him also how he would fulfill a certain scripture. The angel did not quote all of Malachi 4:5-6. He said, He will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, amen, and the spirit of wisdom to the just. He left off the last part. That goes to prove it was not for our day. That morning, as I read that I said, That angel did not quote all of that. I turned immediately to Malachi 4:5-6, and read it. There it is. I said right then, while I was still in the Methodist church, Before Jesus Christ comes again, that spirit of Elijah will come again. I did not know who he was, and had not seen anyone I thought might be.

That was in February 1952, but in August 1952, my wife’s cousin came down to squirrel hung. When he came in, he stood in the yard talking awhile, and he began to talk about Bro. William Branham. When he got through talking about Bro. William Branham and all that had taken place, he did not know it, but something was saying inside of me, If those words be true, then this is the Elijah that is to come. Later that month, I was privileged to go see and hear that man. When that little man stood that night, he took the call of Abraham out of Genesis, and when he was finished, he was in the book of Revelation. That is what made me walk out of there that night and say, That man makes Jesus of the Bible stand head and shoulders taller than anyone else. From then on, I can see myself as one of those little kids, I wanted to know what my fathers really taught in the Bible. IT wasn’t long until I began to understand, I know why Matthew said this, I know why he was the only one that recorded the parables in order. So the warfare was on. By the end of 1952, my wife and I were well on our way out of Methodism. That is why I say, in the net, a lot of people were affected by different aspects of it. All they saw was divine healing, all they heard was salvation, but they did not see or hear anything that would draw them closer to the Lord: They did not understand the deep things of the scriptures. That is why, eventually it was the angels that came along. I can see them sitting around where these preachers have compromised.

As I said earlier, Gayle Jackson was used during that period of time as a mighty instrument. He brought deliverance and healing to a lot of people. I heard later, that as that anointing began to life, he went back to the undertaker business. A lot of evangelists just went back to the things of the world. That is why, as that net era began to fade in the background, angels are already on the scene. They are going to use preachers that have compromised with the world and refused to make a change in anything, to bundle tares. During that period there was one little man who stood in the crossway and lifted up a torch light. Around this world today, there are some good fish. They have heard the cry. They have heard the voice: They have read his word, which was, Get back to the Biel. This seventh parable is in full force now: When we passed the deliverance hour, and the net is no longer the picture, we come to the hour when we have to look and recognize that same prophet. HE was a scribe, because he began to bring out of the Bible, things new and old. The first thing I heard was serpent seed, what took place in the garden. Oh, that is out of the pit. Go on you Baptists, hang yourselves: No one will force you to receive the true revelation of why we need a savior. Go on you Methodists, choke on it. You Pentecostal are just as bad. By the time we came to 1963, the scribe was to bring out of his household: it was a position he held, and he was not formerly educated for it: God called him to it. He brings out of his household, meaning his storage place, things new, new revelations, and old truths. That is exactly what his ministry consisted of. When he brought the revelation of those seals, showing what those four horse riders were, how they have been applied in time, in the past, the big shot preachers rejected it.

I remember 1965, after the accident, when God has taken him off the scene, how some reacted. Nevertheless those messages gave you and me an understanding of what the white horse, the red horse, the black horse, then the pale horse rider was, and here came Billy Graham with his booklet of the four horsemen later on. He is just like the Jehovah Witness, has the same spirit: When it comes to them, they are for tribulation. If you look back you can see in history right where they fit their time frame, because in tribulation those horses will not be riding. The only horse that will be riding then, is the pale horse, the fourth, and you are affected by his message. That is what is putting us together around the world. That scribe’s position will stay right with us, because there is an eagle spirit, and we are still living in the eagle hour. That eagle watches over God’s Word. When It is time for you and I to know something, that eagle flies a little higher. We are not following robins, nor are we following quail. There is an eagle supervising this whole scene for us. He flies higher than the rest will ever go. I am so thankful, that we are not sitting under Dr. Fosdick, in some Bible school somewhere. It had its hour, but that is all in the past. This is an age and a time, when there is an eagle schooling us. He will not school you in traditional lies: He will school you in the truth. That is why Daniel 12 says, In that day the wise will understand, but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand. Who are the wicked? That bunch of educated know-it-all’s out there. You cannot wake them up, regardless of how hard you try. Shake their bed and they just fuss at you. You are talking about my mother. A true child of God, if he is asleep, he wants to be awakened. He will never fuss at you. This scribe spirit is going to be in the Bride element. There is not one verse of scripture in the New or the Old Testament, that is beneficial for our growth, our progress, our understanding, and our enlightenment, that we will not know before we cross over the divide and go out of this world into that world to come. This is the assurance of that seventh parable. It is being fulfilled. You and I are the beneficiaries of it. Some of you no doubt were affected in years gone by, by the deliverance move, but thank God, when things began to settle down, compromise, cool off, you eventually found yourself right with the good fish. That is the purpose of the whole thing. I am thankful God is still God and knows what He is doing.

When I think how there have been men out of the deliverance hour, when Bro. William Branham was still alive, Tommy Osborne, Oral Roberts, men like that, that were instrumental in that great hour of deliverance, and how those men began to compromise and sit down, but Bro. William Branham was different, because something kept leading him on. He brought the revelation of those six seals. Sitting in the movement, sitting at the Tabernacle, now they are saying, Oh yes, all seven seals were revealed. I have to look at you and say, You are a fish that need to be thrown back in the water. You have been out of the pond too long. You did not hear it right. In the last half of his bach. plainly said this much about the seventh seal, Seeing therefore that it is not revealed, let us take what we have and go on until the hour comes, and those seven thunders will bring the revelation of what that seventh seal is. Read it. Some of the educated characters that followed him have taught, that the seven thunders are the Stature of a Perfect Man. I have to say, If you have not grown any further than that by now, you never will know what the seven thunders are. The plural word, their, in the day when those seven thunders utter their voices, that is not pertaining to virtues or seven stages. “Their,” is a plural pronoun. It is speaking of something that is living. You do not use their, or see it used in the Bible, the way some of you want to use it: “Their” is not a word used in that relationship. It pertains to something that is alive, either angels or human beings. The Bible language is one thing, but your and my language can be almost anything. If we are not careful, we will wind up saying something we did not mean, because we did not know what we were talking about. I had this dream, and I am not telling it to make myself anyone important, only to show you something. Little Edith Wright had been sick all her life. She had polio. Bro. William Branham said many times, if God ever showed him, he would stop everything and come, no matter what. When we were in Cuba in December 1957, I had a dream one night. I saw myself in a funeral home. As I walked over to the casket, I picked up a card that said, Funeral services will be conducted by Rev. Raymond Jackson, on such and such a date, for Edith Wright. I thought to myself, Could that dream be true? From 1957 until we came to 1964, I thought to myself, I don’t see how it could be like that. I carried that dream from December 1957 until 1964, seven years. WE went to bed one night, later the pone rang, when I went to the phone it was Edith Wright’s mother: Bro. Jackson, I wanted you to know little Edith just passed away and she requested you preach her funeral. Bro. William Branham had already moved to Arizona, and was in a meeting, and not able to come. The dream was true. I conducted the funeral services. Bro. William Branham was not there. God knows all about what is ahead. In my mind, I can forget a lot of things, dates, years, but God never forgets anything. As we went back to bed that night, I told my wife, That is seven years to the month. I went to sleep again and saw myself in that dream about being given a white horse.

MY WHITE HORSE DREAM

I am going to tell this horse dream I had, and show you how a lot of “big mouthed” people like to look at things. I saw myself and my wife in a car, and she was driving. I knew we were going somewhere to a meeting where we had never been before. As I was sitting relaxed, on the passenger side, I looked out toward the east and saw a little speck high in the sky. It seemed like it was coming slowly toward me. As I looked at it and it came closer, I could see it was a man on a horse. I thought, My a man on a horse, I must be seeing things, so I turned away. I thought, I will take a look again. When I did, the man on the horse had come down, and was standing on the earth, right in front of us. I said to my wife, Pull over and stop. I want to watch this; There is a man on a horse. When she pulled over and stopped, the horse was about twenty feet off the road, about fifty feet in front of the car. Bro. William Branham was sitting on this white horse, dressed like a western range rider. He turned in a saddle and pointed his finger at me and said, You, get ready, prepare yourself, if you believe these words, a powerful horse will be given to you to carry you in the calling whereunto you are called. With that, he pulled the reign and that horse took back to the sky. I watched that horse until it went completely out of sight. That was in December 1964.

On Sunday August 1, 1965, I called Billy Paul and told him I would like to tell Bro. William Branham a dream I had. He said, You can see him Sunday morning. We went to the prayer room where he was, and told the dream. After I had told him, he said, Bro. Jackson, something is getting ready to happen, I don’t know what it is, but when it does, you have a work to do. Then he changed the subject, looking at the wall and he said, See that picture? I turned to look. There was a beautiful picture that someone had painted and sent to him. It was Elijah in a fiery chariot, leaving, just like the Old Testament portrays it. He said, Isn’t that beautiful? I said yes. Then he looked back at me and said, Bro. Jackson, something is getting ready to happen, I don’t know what it is, but when it does, you have a job to do. His Bible was laying there on a little stand, so he walked over and picked it up and said, Bro. Jackson, when it happens, you stick with this word, stick with this word. That is what his life and ministry was all about. Get back to the Bible. That was August 1, 1965. He never did tell me what the job was. WE cam on into 1968. I had another dream. In that dream I had received an item in the mail, dated August 1, 1965. IT told me exactly what my calling was. There have been men, whose big mouth’s, have said, because they think they know it all, you can see who runs things in his home: His wife was driving. When he gets out of the car to try the horse out, this shows he accepts the message for awhile, but he goes a little distance, then he comes back. They still believe that. I have to say this, I thank God for the way HE has led my life. I wouldn’t compromise to please this bunch of people for anything in the world. Like I have said before, Bro. Saucedo told me, I like the way you say this, You don’t butter my bread and you don’t tie my shoes. I know, if you are going to be anything for God, be that. Stop trying to please people. There are people in this world, all they do is go down the pathway of lfie looking for everybody they can talk about, trying to show the world how much they know. Well, I don’t know anything, but I am thankful to God for what HE has showed me and allowed me to see. Because I refused to compromise, there are people all over the world that have benefitted by it. I say, Lord, my whole life, whatever is left, you use it. This seventh parable describes this hour of time so specifically, it leaves little to your imagination. That scribe spirit, to an element of people, is brought out of theological tradition, it is brought out of darkness, things that are new revelation. The Bride is to know that. When I look back to last fall, when we preached the message, “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth,” to me, it took time. It took traditional ideas and removed them all, and put everything in continuity. It gives us a true picture of what time is. I know one day, when Bro. Turner was editing this, he called me, and we were talking. Yes, it is one thing to see this great multitude in the seventh chapter of Revelation, starting in the 9^th verse, who they are and where they are. When we begin to realize that their lives were all taken way back here in time, yes, they have white robes, we both agreed and said, For people to look at it in the right way, yes the robes are the same, but we have got to understand also, that the time factor is altogether different. Where they died, where they were martyred, when we read in the scripture we just read, we will say, the visible word, but if we don’t catch the picture by divine revelation, how to understand it, we give it a meaning to fit our own carnal, logical thinking. Then when the time comes along that we do see its true application, it changes it altogether. That causes people to say, Well, why did you say it the other way? Because it wasn’t time for it to be completely understood back there. That is the way we have to look at it. WE are living in the closing hours of the seventh church age, and I am thankful to God for allowing me to see and hear what I have been privileged to. There has been a lot of spiritual warfare, conflicts, accusations, things to try and destroy your image, your objective and purpose, but I say to my brothers and sisters, whoever you are and wherever you are, I am just a human being. There are a lot of things I do not know yet, but if God lets me breathe andmy heart keeps beating and allows me to keep my mind simple and sensible, then I say, Lord, use my mind for whatever purpose. If there is something in this book that we are still in the dark about, before we breathe our last breath, and before we cross over and are changed, we are going to understand it exactly. To me, that is why Daniel 12 says, In that day the wise shall understand. Who are the wise? It is not the man with the college education: It is that man that God has been allowed to teach and the woman that has been allowed to be schooled by the Holy Ghost, and out of the book you get a picture, it is in your heart, it is in your spiritual mind. You cherish it. You love it. You are ready to walk to the ends of the world with it. You know beyond the shadow of a doubt, there is no other meaning to it. It is just as simple as that. I am glad we see what this seventh parable pertains to. This is the era of time it is all going to close, and God is going to wrap up the whole thing. According to that chart over there, we are getting close. I beg you though, Please do not think that chart gives you until the last minute to prepare yourself to meet the Lord: Forget it. It could be a year to a year and a half off. Furthermore He could come any moment for any individual among us. One thing is sure, it is not ten years off, because everything is moving right on course. The dream that gave me that, was also the dream that allowed me to see these young people, how they lay on eh floor speaking in tongues. If that part is true and God, out of His word, lets us see the profile of the scripture that leads to this coming of Christ, then the rest of it is true also. I do not attempt to state the day, nor the hour, but I have to say, We are moving toward a period of time, of a year and a month, otherwise God would not have put that in the scriptures, After two days shall He revive us. When you figure the two days out, what they are, where the time starts, then we are on the right road. Just think of the religious world today: They do not even talk about that. The yardstick in the scriptures means nothing to them. They read it and look over it. That is not in the Bible for men just to play with: It is for our learning and enlightenment. Therefore I pray this is enough to let you know we are living in the closing hours of the seventh church age. God is doing among His Bride people, exactly what He said He would do. The gospel is soon going back to the Jewish people. The things I have said here, I want the Jewish people that listen to this to know, I am not saying these things for them to think that I am some smart, educated person. I only have an eighth grade education, but I assure you, I am not going to stop and go back to school, just to please any certain element. God has been my school teacher for forty some years, and I am convinced He has done a good job. May God bless all who love His Word.. Amen.