THIS IS GOING TO BE A MESSAGE THAT WILL COVER MANY PHASES OF THE FAITH WALK OF THE TRUE BELIEVER OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. IT WILL DEAL WITH TRUTH VERSUS TRADITION, SHOWING HOW GOD MOVES THE TRUE BELIEVER FROM PHASE TO PHASE IN HIS OR HER FAITH WALK, TO DELIVER THEM FROM DENOMINATIONAL TRADITION AND CONFUSION INTO THE GLORIOUS LIGHT OF REVELATION AND UNITY. THE MESSAGE STARTS OUT WITH ALL THE MUSICIANS PLAYING “WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS,” BUT EACH ONE IS PLAYING IN A DIFFERENT KEY, TO ILLUSTRATE THE CONFUSION AMONG PROFESSING BELIEVERS OF THE GOSPEL, WHEN EACH ONE SEES THE SAME SCRIPTURE JUST A LITTLE DIFFERENT THAN WHAT A TRUE REVELATION PRODUCES FOR THOSE WHO LOVE TRUTH AND UNITY, SO NOTICE HOW PASTOR JACKSON INTRODUCES THIS MESSAGE ON THE MORNING OF 07/01/2001, AND CONTINUED ON IT FOR MANY SERVICES. HE TITLED IT “GETTING THE BRIDE READY.” 

I have an illustration for you this morning. Turn in the songbook to page 336, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” If something does not sound right to you, sing anyway. (This is where everyone plays in a different key. What a sound! An illustration of confusion.) I would say there is something wrong with that sound, What do you say? We are a people that have been brought out of different denominations, and all have a little different view of certain scriptures. Look at the world scene of Christendom today, they are assembled in different places. There is only one textbook they all use, this book I am using, (Bible.) but in the ears of God, it all sounds to Him, just like we sounded singing that song. Everybody in his own frame of thinking, feels like he is right. I have heard old folks say, I have been a Methodist all my life, my grandpa was a Methodist, I will be a Methodist until I die. Another would say, I am a Baptist, I will be a Baptist until I die. On down the road of life, churches have assembled on Sunday morning, and opened the textbook of Christendom, all reading from the same epistles written by the apostles of old. Yet they interpret the meaning that puts a whole congregation, the universal world over, out of tune with God. It is not God’s fault. It is not the fault of His WORD: It is the way well-meaning people have interpreted things to fit their own nature. There are many people today, that would not change from the way they believe, no matter what they have opportunity to see and understand in the way of light on the scriptures, because their security is that system they are tied to. Keep in mind though, that the early Church was known only as Christians: you can not look back and say they were Methodists, Baptists, or anything else along that line. No. They were Christians. They all had all things in common, and they all abode with the apostles’ doctrine. Many of those professing Christians of today, could quote the same verses of scripture just like they are written, all from the same Bible, yet they are all out of tune, out of harmony, and make no sense at all. What they teach does not blend to make those who believe the teaching blend into one belief. There is nothing more disgusting, after all the beautiful music and singing we heard this morning, than to try to sing something when we are all out of tune. Will you agree with me? There is nothing enjoyable about it. It is downright disgusting. Many people will say, It is hard for the black and white to get together because they do not sing alike, and their music is not alike. Well I will ask one simple question, When we get to glory, can you tell me what kind of music we are going to hear? Think seriously on that. What type of songs are you going to hear? What is the melody going to be like? I am sure that two thousand years ago there was no music on earth to compare with what we have today. None of the melodies of the songs we sing are alike. I have been in India where all they have is drums. I have been in Africa where all they had was sticks with notches cut in them. The point is, somewhere there is a common ground when this thing does reach its end and we are raptured to glory, we will be in tune. The first thing is going to be the scriptures, the Word of God. I hope this illustration has helped you understand the necessity of unity. It is disgusting to try to sing something when you do not know which key or tune to get in. Applying the word of God in our lives is exactly the same way. How can we walk together, if our vision is not the same? 

EVERY BELIEF MUST HAVE A SCRIPTURAL FOUNDATION

If you have your bibles, turn to Ephesians. The starting of this message today, is not necessarily as we see in the chart up here. My purpose is, as we go from service to service, this message will blend in and start feeding in on that same line. I have in my possession books written by different well known evangelists and preachers, doctors of divinity, all expressing this or that. When you look at it all and try to read it and digest it and bring it together in a common picture, you become confused because one is saying one thing, another something different. I have a book at home, written by a well known evangelist, titled, “Scriptural Proof that the Rapture will take place in 1988.” Well saints, we are still here and this is 2001. The point is, it does not matter whether you are a doctor of divinity, a historian, or what, when you deal with something like this it comes down to the bare facts: there has to be a divine revelation, inspiration from God, that shines a light upon the scriptures, especially in a prophetic sense. We can dig back in history, we can do all these things: We can put together what looks like a beautiful picture, but time comes and goes, and it is just another written book that has no true meaning whatsoever. When the apostle Paul wrote Ephesians 4, (and think how many times we have read it), it was meant to be understood the same way by all. I do not mean to make this sound repetitional, but we have got to become a people that knows what it did say, and what it did not say. I realize we have strangers with us today, so I pray that I can say these things in a way to make this have an enlightening affect for all of us. I was a stranger to this truth myself at one time, and I heard a lot of things that put questions in my mind. Coming out of the Methodist Church, I began to see in a little glimpse, There, is something that I have never been taught. I want to find out what it is because I am hungry for God. When the apostle Paul wrote these verses, he had a specific meaning and objective. The hour is upon the Church for these scriptures to mean exactly what they say to all of us, whether the church world sees it or not, it does not matter to God, it is still the truth, and it will prove to be a fact. Any farmer knows, if you plant corn, you are going to reap corn in the end. You do not plant it and reap it the same day. However when you plant corn, you will reap corn in the harvest. If you plant wheat, you are going to reap wheat. If you plant rice, you will reap rice. Whatever the germination is of that grain, you reap the same. The true, unadulterated word of GOD was planted in the days of the early Church. That is the seed all true children of God will be harvested from in the end of this Age. We have come through history and time when it has produced all the stalk growth, the blades and so forth, and there comes a time when on the top of all of it is a finished head. There is where you look for the fruit that was sowed in the beginning. That is exactly where Christendom is today, weighed in the balance: Some will look like the seed the apostles sowed almost two thousand years ago and others will not. Which do you suppose the reapers will harvest for the Father whose purpose we are here to fulfill? There comes a time that Jesus referred to as the end of the world, when there will be a Church harvested from this sea of confused religion. Gentile Christendom today is just as confused as Judaism was 2000 years ago. They could gather in their synagogue, quote the prophets, read the scrolls, but they did not learn one thing from what they had read. That is exactly what we see among Gentiles who profess to be Christians even yet today. That is why it was necessary for God to send a prophet messenger to this Age. A lot of people have taken the things he said and interpreted them wrong, and brought reproach upon the very objective we are supposed to press toward. When the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4:11, “And He gave some, apostles; (They had them in the first age.) and some, prophets; (They had them in the first age: read it in the book of Acts.) and some, evangelists; (also in the book of Acts, as well as the epistles) and some, pastors and teachers.” All of that can be found in the book of Acts. That is what the first Church started out with. What was the objective of it? “For the perfecting of the saints.” What does the word perfecting mean? It speaks of bringing something to a state of maturity and preciseness. Bro. Steve Yahraus runs a machine shop in Corydon, Indiana. Let us look at this for a comparison. Industries communicate with him: They want bearing housings for a certain type of finished product. Those bearing housings have to be bored to a precise finish in measurement. You cannot just bore a hole through a piece of metal and say, Here you are: It has got to be precise. If you bore it too large the bearing will flop and soon wear out. It is strange, when it comes to natural things here on this earth, there are some things that even nature itself tells us. Well, when nature produces a finished product that looks so precise, you say, That is beautiful, but when it comes to Christendom and you really begin to preach some things that are truth, they say, Well that is just the way he looks at it. Those are the remarks you get many times. They want to find fault, just because they hear something different from their way of looking at the same thing. Some of them sound like a bearing inside of an old housing, flop, flop, flop. Shoot a little grease in it and see if you can quieten it down, it still goes flop, flop. After awhile one pieces goes that way and another piece the other way. If God was to take His Church today, as it is, it could not function in a way to fulfill His purpose. There are so many voices, so many educated, intellectual doctors of divinity projecting their ideas, the revealed truth has an up-hill struggle. What a shame. Some of the arrogant words they use to express a divine point is a shame. It is ridiculous. These five types of men are not a bunch of fellows that say, Well I feel led of God to preach. It is one thing to be called to preach, then it is another thing to learn what to preach and how to preach it. When Jesus questioned Peter in the gospel of St. John, the first thing he said was, Peter, lovest thou me? Peter said, Yes Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. Then feed my lambs. Notice He said lambs. Then the next two questions He asked was, Peter, lovest thou me? He said, Yea Lord. Then feed my sheep. He asked the same question again, and again said, Feed my sheep. Now let us analyze the whole statement. People in the past have just read it and though lambs and sheep are all the same. No saints, they are not the same. A lamb is a lamb. I raised sheep for seven years: I have had sheep that would give birth to triplets. Sheep only have two nipples. Unless they are a heavy milkers, one of the lambs is going to be left out of the feeding picture. Here, is my point, you do not just fix up a bunch of ground feed and expect that little lamb to eat it. He does not know to eat it. All he knows is, he wants a nipple somewhere that he can get milk from. When I first started going with my wife, her father raised sheep. While I was going with her, he gave me a little lamb to take home, because its mother had one too many too feed. I took it home: I knew you do not feed lambs ground feed or hay, so I fed it milk. If a man is called, he has to have sense enough to know who he is talking to, what he is talking about, what he hopes to obtain from it and speak accordingly. The first thing I did was to get a bottle with a nipple made to feed lambs. That little lamb ran around the barn lot all the time, but when its feeding time came, I fixed that milk and here it would come. It would drink it all down. Then later, as days and weeks passed, it slowly began to nibble on green stuff. It learned what it had access to. That green stuff was to be eaten. I kept on giving it milk, but as it grew, and as it began to eat grass, after awhile I was able to take the milk away, because it had learned to eat sheep food. Its system had adjusted to that. The point is, there is a difference between lambs and full grown sheep. I use that to illustrate the point I want you to understand. It is the same way with verses of scripture. There are verses of scripture that are for adult, grown up, Christian people. There are scriptures intended for little lambs that have just been saved by the grace of God and know nothing about the scriptures, because they have never heard anything. We have a generation of youth today, that have not heard anything: Therefore they know nothing of the grace and mercy of God. My point is this, If God says in His scripture, He is going to perfect a Church, the Church did not obtain perfection in the early age. It was on the way, but the way the devil came against it, everywhere they preached the gospel, those apostles were martyred, beheaded, slain somehow and terribly mistreated. This opened up to the little congregations to be attacked by the devil. When we read in the book of Acts, in the various epistles, we see that those apostles that stayed alive, those ministers that were truly alive in that hour, saw what the devil was after. They wrote precisely, how to defend the Christian and how to tell the Christian to defend their faith, how to hold on, stand fast and press on. That is why verses of scripture were written so precisely. When you begin to expose somebody today for a lot of their wild teaching, then somebody throws a letter back at you, Bro. Jackson, you are doing harm, you are committing a sin, you are attacking this brother to destroy him. I just have to say, If you believe that, you must have not even read the Bible. Then they say, But that brother speaks so sweetly, and he was not attacking you. No, but look what he teaches. Look what he is preaching. That is not from a revelation: He is preaching something I would not even feed to the dogs. Most of the time, in your denominational realm today, they do not even care what they teach, just as long as they can get someone to follow them. Well, he sure does have a good education, and he sure knows how to use big words, and has such a sweet spirit. Yes, and that is why he has a hook in your tongue and will not release you. You are just like a sucker fish: They grab the bait and swallowed it down into their intestines. If you get that hook out of there, you have to tear his inward parts all to pieces. When you read the book of Galatians, that church was established by the apostle Paul. For quite awhile that church was in harmony and unity with other congregations. Eventually though, here came one of those self righteous, lone wolf preachers: he has a revelation that out-does everybody else. All it was, was circumcision, but by the time he got through, that congregation was writing to Paul, Please help us: we have big trouble. Paul wrote back, You did run well, who did hinder you? What happened? Did he say, Now go get that fellow and fix him a nice meal, sit down with him and say, Brother, come on, help us out of our predicament. No. He said, I would to God he was cut off. Well, but that was Paul, that is not you. If the church is to reach perfection in the end time, there is going to be some men in it that will speak just as he spoke, with the same determination. I am going to read the 12th verse, for the precise, perfect, working in harmony of the saints, for the working of the ministry, for the edifying, building up of the body of Christ. Whatever preacher comes, no matter what his position is, he does not have to be a repetitionist, but his thought, his revelation and his overall teaching will be just the same. There will be no variation or difference. The objective behind it from God is, till we all come in the unity of the faith. Not the Catholic, not the Luther, nor the Presbyterian, not the Baptists, the Methodists, and on and on down the line. But it is the faith that was once delivered to the saints, to have the same, exact, precise understanding. That we can talk like it, think like it, act like it and live like it. To the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, mature, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. How can Christ really be seen in the fullness of His attributes, His character, His spiritual image, when you look at it portrayed today by all the denominational confusion. Well to go further, a couple weeks ago when I was using this, maybe some got bored. I hope you will not be bored this morning. Open your Bibles to Isaiah 52. This is the prophecy the apostle Paul referred to when he wrote his epistle to the Romans, in the 10th chapter, verse 15, wherein he said, How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publishes peace, that bringeth tidings of good, that publishes salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth. Read how Paul used that. That prophecy in the beginning of the apostolic hour went in motion. How beautiful upon the mountains, on the hills, in the desert, in the valleys are the feet of the man that dares to forsake all and come and preach the gospel. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. You had to have a vision. You had to see lost people, lost mankind. Go tell him. That prophecy has been hanging there. It has been precise. That prophecy does not hang there unfulfilled throughout eternity. Somewhere it will run to its prophetic course and then be fulfilled. Then we pick up the one in the 8th verse of Isaiah 52. “Thy watchmen (When that prophecy was spoken, it did not refer to every Tom, Dick and Harry that might have preachers itch. That watchmen terminology is precise. It is speaking of the ministry that will help to clean up, finish, and bring the Bride of Christ to maturity. They are not out here preaching Catholic, Lutheran, Methodists, Baptists, this or that. They have come out of everything like that because they have seen the true revelation of God’s word. Thy watchmen….) shall lift up the voice.” How many know what the word shall means? I looked it up in the dictionary this morning. In the natural usage it has many meanings. Shall has a positive meaning. It is not conditional. After the trial is over and the jury has brought in the verdict, you hear the judge say, You shall hang by the neck on Tuesday morning. He said shall, he did not say maybe, hope so, or we will think about it. Shall is positive. How many catch the meaning? The term watchmen, pertains to the revelated ministry in the end time. That is the ministry strictly to the Bride of Christ that have a vision for the Bride. They have a calling for the Bride. They see the scriptures alike because God has taught them. They did not go to a seminary. They did not go to Bible school. God Himself has brought them through the school of knocks and bangs, criticism and ridicule. They have to take it: If they do not, they do not graduate. Listen to my illustration. I have a stick in my hand. Every one here is a musician. You have learned to play different instruments, but you have never played together as an orchestra: You have come from your little bands, your little circles of musical outfits, but to bring you together and say, We are all going to play together now, some have bass horns, some have trumpets, some have clarinets, some slide trombones: There are violinists, and a set of drums: The conductor, one lone character, is standing before this mass of people: In front of you is the sheet music with notes. Watch the conductor: Everyone is looking at him. All have their instruments in their hands ready to make a sound. The conductor gives the signal: The notes are played. Watch the professional orchestra. Watch the conductor. With a stick in one hand, he lifts it, that means he is lifting certain musicians, they play louder. Then when he does this, (hand motion) that means others go lower. They all not only learn how to read the music, but they read the signs as well. Not all of them are there to play at full pitch at the same time. On each line of the song, certain instruments are leading. The others are giving the background. My point in this illustration is, if we are young Christians, there are a lot of things we do not know. Then we have to be willing to show patience until that student learns how to read, how to watch the signs, and know where to come in, when to fade back. If they cannot do this, sooner or later God will put the student in a position they will have to spend a lot of time to learn it. You do not just sit in the chair and fold your arms, and go slipping and sliding into glory without learning what it is to be a Christian. You just do not write your name on a piece of paper and say, There, it done. You go down the road of life, you know all about corn, all about cows, all about these natural things, but when it really comes to the Lord’s work you know very little. You stand in need of some schooling. Perfection is when we all look at it alike. These watchmen shall, (shall), not maybe. They are going to have sense enough to know how to teach a student, how to teach a lamb, how to instruct someone a little slow in understanding, how to be kind, how to be generous, because we are all going to be cultivated in the partaking of the fruit of the Spirit. The end results are, it brings the Church to a positive state of perfection, so that when God looks upon the scene, He hears all of us saying the same thing, we see the same things, we see them alike. That one word, shall, is positive. It is not maybe. Now let us turn to another scripture that is a prophecy, especially dealing with us in this hour. Turn to Revelation 10. We are starting with the 5th verse. This is concerning a prophecy, the outlook of it for the last days, when God is moving in the earth to fulfill, to collect, to bring to an end, to inform the people that are to make up His Bride. “And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth (That is none other than Jesus in angelic form.) lifted up His hand to heaven, And sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer.” Right there, is another word you could stumble over: It is not shall, it is (should). I looked up what it means in the natural usage. It has almost the same meaning, but it gives different illustrations. In the prophetic sense, should is progressive. Let me put that in carpenter’s language. A man hires a contractor. He has the blueprints for a house to build. The man who wants the house built, says to the contractor, I am looking for a man who can put this house up in six months. Can you do it? Yes. Will you sign that in an agreement? Yes. So they write up a contract, I hereby sware that this house shall be put up and finished in six months time. But if the contractors all tell him, We should have it up in six months, providing weather conditions do not interfere, you can see how should is progressive. That word here, does not mean it is going to be guesswork. “But in the days of the voice (notice days, plural, not one day, the word voice is one) of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God (You find that in Ephesians 3.) should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the prophets.” Should is used twice. It lets us know in the days when the voice, or the message that was brought by this man who fulfills this role, when it is being printed, it is broadcast, it has gone over the world, the mystery should reach a climax. Again I say, It is not conditional, not knowing when. God knows exactly when. However it goes to show, when you read it, you have got to realize there is an interval of time God is going to let every bit of that sink in, be digested and declared. He is not going to sound that man’s voice one day, and the next day it is all over. How many catch the point? When we are reading scripture, sometimes one lone word in that scripture gives you the key of how to apply it and use it in instructing God’s people. The language God uses, no matter what language it is interpreted in, God is precise. God does not just throw something out here and say, Take it and see what you can make out of it: He does not do things like that. He is exact. When we begin to realize there is a people today, that God is dealing with, then we have got to begin to see in the scriptures, how these various prophecies are applicable. I cannot help but believe, as God is dealing with people all over the world to get them ready for the end time wrap up, that He is going to tolerate anyone hanging on to their denominational feelings about the scriptures: We have to get all of that out of the picture. Let us get ourselves sold out to God, saying, Lord, you are the one that saved me. You bought me with a great price. I realize you purchased me through your shed blood on that old cross. Lord, your word is the answer to all my needs: Please help me understand it, that I may follow because of a revelation. Saints I want to bring your attention to some things going on today. I was in the Methodist Church for years, but the first time I was baptized , it was in the Church of Christ. I know all about the Church of Christ, what they teach, like, We speak where the Word speaks. No they don’t: They do not even believe Israel is to be regathered in the last days. They think the Old Testament was all fulfilled before the advent of Christ, all because Jesus said, The Law and the prophets were until John: They believe that ended the Old Testament. No, we must remember that this pertains to righteousness, and the means of our salvation. You can keep the Law today, you can keep the Sabbath and all those things, but that will not save you or make you righteous: It just makes you religious. That is why the Jews today, have never understood why we Gentiles accepted Jesus Christ as the Saviour. They had the scriptures, they ought to have known, but they had no revelation. He walked right among them. They condemned Him. They said, Away with Him. So is it today in our denominational church world. Christ, by divine revelation, is causing His word to come alive. It is one thing to have been saved in the Methodist system, but I do not owe that system anything. I owe everything to the grace of God. With this in mind, I would like to take us into a little thought for your enlightenment. 

GOD’S PROPHET MESSENGER TO THIS LAODICEAN AGE 

I want to speak of a man whom we believe was God’s prophet messenger to this Laodicean Age. His name was William Marrion Branham. This man was the only man this side of the Reformation that ever stood before masses of people from different denominations and dared to point his finger and say, Let us get back in the word of God. Then he would preach and teach what the scriptures really meant. He took every doctrine the Reformation restored in the different denominations, which was faith by Luther, predestination by John Knox, Calvin preached eternal security. Then here came John Wesley with sanctification. Then here came the Pentecostal movement, restoring the gifts and manifestations of divine healing and such. What do we have from all of that? In these last days, notice, all of that has produced denominational leaves and branches, sprouts and so forth. This man’s message took every doctrine that was restored and put it right back in the Bible, to be understood the same way by all believers. I have a lot of his books. To every one in here, I know a lot of men who sat and heard what this man preached: They have traveled all over this world with bundles of books under their arms, quoting the prophet, the prophet said this and the prophet said that, but they never open up the Bible to see how that lined up with the scriptures. Everything that man taught and said, was to either get you back into the scriptures to the true meaning of what was taught and give you a revelation of how to understand it, or God caused him to say something that was going to take you down the road of life and shoot you off of the main track, just like a railroad track, off behind a warehouse somewhere. There you will sit, with weeds growing up all around you, with cobwebs and spiders to finish blurring your vision and your end will not be pretty. Having said that, I now want to go into my reason for saying it. The point is, There would be no perfection if God had not sent a man in these last days who did not cater to any one particular denomination. Let us use the point, If that man had never been sent, no man with just an outstanding ministry of healing or anything like that would have led the Church to perfection. Also, if you did not have a man today, standing up trying to tell the denominational church world, It is time we get together and iron out these differences we have about the meaning of certain scripture, you could not expect perfection, for these are the things that have divided us. When Martin Luther was used to take the first step out of Catholicism and all of its traditions and errors, if the Lutheran people would have kept on walking with God, and not organized by drawing up articles of faith, then when John Knox came along, they would have all moved on into what he was teaching. Then when Calvin came upon the scene, they would have moved right into what God had revealed to him. John Wesley came out of the Church of England, preaching sanctification, and they would have moved on and embraced that. That is how it should have been. All these things that have been in the Bible all along, would have been understood. While people die off, new ones would fill the gap, but the movement would go on, gaining more and more light. It would never have produced these systems of organized religion. Man is guilty, in that it seems like he can stand just so much light, then he wants to organize. I remind you, that is precisely what the Jewish people as a whole did in the first advent of Christ. You hear them say, We believe the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the Bible, written by the prophet Moses. That is what contains the Law, the statutes and ordinances and all. They have memorized it. They know it by heart. They have certain days they gather together and discuss the Torah, but do not forget, after they came into the land, it was not long until they began to sin. They began to go contrary to the statutes and ordinances that God had given them to live by. Then Samuel comes on the scene with his ministry. Finally the whole thing went from that type of prophet to where we come to Isaiah, and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, Zephaniah. All these men prophesied in different periods of time to different generations of Jewish people. They spoke of the Messiah that was to come. They gave almost precise pictures of how to identify Him, but when the time came for the Messiah to come on the scene, just think, the entire nation was blind because of their traditions. They were very religious. They were very strict. They wanted people to know, I believe the Torah, I believe the word of God. We have Gentile denominationalism just like that today, I believe the Bible. They believe at it, but they do not believe it, because, if they did they would take a good look at themselves and say, What I have been believing, is not what that means at all. We have been in those denominations, we have followed after those traditions, but Praise God, that is behind us now. Since that little man came and left us a truth that opened our eyes, we have left those systems of religion to follow God in truth God used that man to exemplify the meaning of following a revelation. He poured his heart out. He cried and wept before people. People sat there mystified, but then most of them turned away. A lot of people think, Well I don’t see anything wrong with being a preacher: they have it easy. I know a certain man who also knew this little man I have been talking about: He is one of those kind of preachers who is a loner. He will not work with anyone because noone sees the scriptures like he does, and no one believes like he does. He starts down his way of life. He has his own revelation, his own ideas, and his own interpretation of everything. He has written a lot of things; and I still have practically everything he ever wrote. I have read them, and in the later years I noticed that he began to stress certain points as to their meaning. That is when I said in my heart, Brother, you are heading to the weed patch. He was married to a wonderful wife who died six or seven years ago. There was nothing wrong with it, if eventually he decided to take another Christian woman to wife, if she also be in a position to become his wife. Well after printing all these things he had taught, he then went to the Philippines and preached them to the people over there. When the people heard what he said, knowing what we had printed, they immediately saw error in his teaching. A division developed and pretty soon afterwards I began to received letters, telling how the man had taught error, things contrary to what they had studied through the years. It so happened, in less than a year, (Now listen carefully.) sitting in his congregation, was a younger man and his wife who had begun to have a marital problem. They began to counsel with him. This preacher, which legally there was nothing in the scriptures that said he could not have another wife, because his wife was dead, but in counseling with this couple, the devil saw to it, that in separate counseling with the wife, things were said that caused her to leave her husband and this preacher took her to wife. If you know anything about what the Bible says, you know that is not scripturally OK. Therefore I am going to ask you to turn with me to St. Luke 16:18, and we will see what the scriptures say about this. 

SCRIPTURAL ADULTERY 

As we look at this scripture, keep in mind that this verse and this statement recorded by Luke, is not the only thing Jesus ever said concerning the subject of adultery. “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: (Now let us hold it right there. The preacher had not put his wife away, she was dead. The point is, he takes the wife of another man sitting in his congregation. In this case, it was the woman leaving the man, then the preacher taking her for his wife, so listen to the rest of this.) whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.” Now look at the situation very carefully and let us go to Matthew 19. Here is where Jesus speaks of it in the fullness. We are going back in time to two thousand years ago. Keep in mind it was the Jewish nation that had received the Law. One of the commandments was, Thou shalt not commit adultery. When you read Deuteronomy, Numbers, and Leviticus, and all the ordinances that went with those laws, it plainly tells you in Deuteronomy 24:1-4, If a man has taken a wife, (We are under the Law now, and this is written in the Torah by Moses.) and it comes to pass that he learns of uncleanness, unfaithfulness on her part, then Moses permitted the man to write the woman a bill of divorcement. Read it yourself. But why? Moses knew that most of those men were too bull headed to forgive. Now just let that sink in. I want you to notice how men are today. Let us take what Jesus said. Did they not bring a woman to Jesus, tempting Him? Look at this bunch of rascals. We caught this woman committing adultery. You did? Are you sure you did? Yes. Where is the rascal you saw with her? Come on, there is no way Jesus would have said or done what He did if He had not known the whole story. They only picked on the woman. That is the way people are today, twisting the meaning, they say this or that. Jesus knew that was a bunch of rascals there before Him, so He just stooped down and began to write in the sand. I can almost see what He wrote in the sand or dirt: Rabbi Benjamin, Priest Simeon, and who knows what, because I believe He began to write names of others who had been with her. It was what they saw him write that made them turn and say, I’m getting out of here, things are getting too hot for me. What then? We look at the poor trembling woman: You say, She is nothing but an old dirty rag. Well excuse my language, but I have to say, Where is the bastard that was with her? Does anyone want to say anything different? That is what he was, a snake, a rascal that was no better than the woman. Under Levitical Law, if a married man and a married woman are illegally having relationships, what does the Law say? Stone them to death. Oh would God do that? Yes He would, but that does not mean you save one and kill the other. Through centuries of time, mankind has collected certain statements from the scriptures and put together a makeshift code for the society to be governed by, but they have perverted the entire concept of why those scriptures were written. After saying all of that, I want to get back to the brother that erred. The brother I have reference to, if it had been a sister in his congregation and her husband had been dead, she is free to be married. She could have been married to him. Or if there was a woman there that had never known a man, never been married, he was free to marry her, but when he took another man’s wife away from him, I have to say, Scripturally, that preacher is living in scriptural adultery. In the country of Germany, there is a man living likewise: I preached years ago, in his church. He came to America one time while Bro. William Branham was still alive. After Bro. William Branham’s death, that man went back to Germany and began to preach the things that God brought through this man, to restore truth, to bring people out of the systems, to bring them into continuity with the scriptures, and therefore into unity, where we can all sit together, no longer Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, or such, but we sit as Christians; all believing the same thing. When the iron curtain was still up, he was successful in getting behind the iron curtain into east Germany, going into homes and spreading the truth. He was able to put together a large congregation, one of the largest in all Europe. He wanted to take these books of Bro. William Branham and translate them into the German dialect. He met a young lady, a Christian girl from Canada. He asked her, Do you know the English language in its correct form? She said, yes. He asked if she would come to Germany and translate for him. She went to Germany and for months she took the English that Bro. William Branham spoke, and wrote it in the precise English structure. This pastor was then able to take it and translate it into the Germany dialect. Over the period of months, there were times his wife, I believe she was from Austria or Sweden, would go back once in awhile to visit her relatives. Evidently in her absence, this gave the preacher an opportunity, so he began to present himself in a tempting way to this young virgin sister. Over time he convinced this young girl to have illegal relationship with him. Here he is, a preacher and a married man. This went on for quite some time, but God had a way of revealing it. Therefore I am saying, Faith Assembly, be careful what we do, because if we go do something wrong, one of these days God will give somebody a dream that will reveal it. One day an elderly sister that lived behind the iron curtain part of Germany, called that preacher and said, Brother, I have had a dream: I need to talk with you as soon as possible. He went to talk with her. That sister looked at him and asked, Have you been committing sexual relations with that young woman? It hit him like a ton of bricks. He hung his head and said, Yes. She said, I saw it in a dream, and if I were you, I would get this made right. His wife, at that time, did not know a thing about what had been going on. He came back home and was supposed to have apologized to the young girl and sent her back to Canada, so she would no longer be a temptation to him. He got under conviction and eventually admitted it to his wife what had happened. She stayed with him. Then he had to stand before his congregation. The whole congregation went into an uproar. There was quite a squabble, but eventually things began to settle down. I remember when his wife came to this country, she just wanted to get away and think about it. She traveled to different places and congregations just to have some freedom to think about things. She went back to Germany and was content to go ahead and be his wife, but in a process of time, he somehow began to think that he had not really done a lot of things wrong. It led to a lot of questions. It led people to start asking her a lot of questions, controversy, different opinions and attitudes sprung up. It was not long until his wife could not stand the pressure any longer, so she just left. Now under the Law, according to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, if the man became aware of some uncleanness or unfaithfulness on the part of the woman, this applied. However if it was because of hardness, bull headedness, stubbornness, which is the way some men start looking at things, that is another story, so what did he do? He takes a piece of paper and writes, I divorce you: That makes it a legal statement, so take this and go. Under the Law, back in that culture and society of that hour, how is that woman going to make a living? Listen to me. They did not have public work places. They did not have welfare. Let us read the rest of this is Deuteronomy. They leave this woman with the legal divorcement paper, and if somebody else sees her and thinks enough of her, it says in Deuteronomy 24, she may go and be another man’s wife. That is what the scripture says. Read the rest of Deuteronomy. But if for some reason, it comes to pass that the second husband becomes displeased with something he feels she has done, or not been truthful with him, or he dies, she is a free woman to be married again, but she cannot go back to the first one. Did you read it? That is what it says. That is why I said, When God made a law, and society is going to spare the guilty ones, then he does not make one person a victim of circumstance. That person still has to live, eat, sleep. That person has to be responsible and allowed to obtain a livelihood in life. Well this man in Germany, after it becomes evident his first wife has left him, then he begins to get a revelation from a message Bro. William Branham preached on Marriage and Divorce. I was there when Bro. William Branham preached it in February 1965. This man takes from that framework to write a message of his own. He printed it, not only in English, but in German. He has sent it all over the world. He has justified his second marriage and has written accusations and condemnations that portray his wife as the villain. He has sent this all over the world. I have to say, We have men in this message today that are as low down as a snake. One of my neighbors the other day, was telling me that in the little town of New Middletown, there are two churches, a Methodist and United Brethren. In the last few years there have been four preachers. They have been divorced and remarried, more than once. One of them had been dismissed from the church, but he wound up being the district superintendent. I think he was on his third marriage. He said, Something was said the other day in the congregation, about it and someone said, Well they are all doing it. My point is this, The denominational world is all like a bunch of little chicks. The rain has stopped and they want to venture out into tall grass. The old mother hen goes through the hole in the fence. Here the little chicks are all lined up, following mommy through the hole in the fence. That is the way a lot of church people are. They follow the preacher through the hole in the fence. They do not even care what the Bible says anymore. Everybody else is doing it, so it must be OK. Saints I hope you understand what I have said, and what that kind of behavior is going to lead to. It is leading some to calamity. Denominational divisions is one thing, but scriptural uncleanness is something altogether different. Those who are true Christians are going to put away all this divisional foolishness and get their lives straightened out and lined up with the scriptures. That does not mean God is not merciful, but He asks people to repent and get lined up with Him and get in position where they are supposed to be. When we do that, His mercy is there. 

TRUTH MISAPPLIED 

We are on a message we have titled, “Getting The Bride Ready,” so I want to get back and deal particularly with the watchmen. Bro. William Branham came and brought a message, and since 1965 when God took him off the scene, men have been left to give an account of what they saw and heard. We can truly say, Many have gone in many different directions with different ideas and revelations. It saddens me to think of it, because I came to known many them as we sat there listening. Most of them had a far greater education than I, so from the natural it would look like these same men ought to have been able to put a better picture together than what they have. As I look back, I have to say, All that I am, and all that I ever will be, is by the grace of God. As God has dealt with me in life, in respects to this revelation of truth, I have purposed that my life will be at His disposal, to do with as He see fit. It will not belong to any mortal man. If it means my name means nothing to the masses, so be it. I leave all of that in the hands of the Lord. I am going to deal with something I touched on in another message, because when we wrote the article where I made mention of, the brother in Georgia, Ben Howard by name, I received a rebuttal letter from a certain man, making it appear that I was trying to destroy this man. He was assuming that I was challenging him, because Bro. William Branham had said that a high priest was to marry a virgin. I remember everything Bro. William Branham ever said about it, because I sat there and listened. I did not sit there just to let it go in one ear and out the other. I sat there to learn. It gave people the impression that all preachers were supposed to marry virgins. I will have to say, When you go that far you are standing on the edge of a cliff. That has nothing to do with the Old Testament. If you know anything about the Old Testament, keep in mind that there were more than one priest. There was the high priest, which the scriptures say was to marry a virgin. That was to set a precise type of the Messiah that was to come, that God would give Him a Bride and Jesus the Messiah would be a virgin Himself in that divine relationship, and He would only be married to one virgin word Church, a virgin word product. It has nothing to do with the natural, physical sense of virginity. Because of that, many people took the idea that because the prophet said preachers were supposed to marry virgins, they should get rid of their present wife and marry a virgin, so they began to do that. By doing that, we would have to assume that they had not married a virgin to start with. Then they turned around and married a younger woman. Do you see what they are guilty of now? They are living in adultery. There is nothing in the gospel of Grace that will cover that. This man wrote me a second time, criticizing me because I had exposed Ben Howard, saying he had not married a virgin. I had nothing in mind like that. Needless to say though, The man is definitely living in adultery with his new wife, because he married another man’s wife. If you take that back to Deuteronomy, the 22nd chapter, starting about the 22nd verse, you can read there, how anytime there is a marriage vow on the part of any one person involved in this illegal physical relationship, it is called adultery, because there is a marriage vow involved. It does not matter whether it falls on behalf of the man or the woman. Read the 22nd chapter of Deuteronomy, and see what it tells you there. Then when we come to this brother named Ewald Frank of Germany, he takes the book Marriage and Divorce, which I have, and I have it all marked so I can easily find the pages that refer to the these important things such as this. He brings it out like this, Marriage and Divorce was one of the great mysteries that can be ranked along with that of the seven seals. I have to say, because I know what Bro. William Branham said in this, This man twisted all of that to make it justify his own act and conduct, because he turned around and committed an illegal relationship with a virgin girl. Through his own stubborn misconduct, misbehaving, then trying to justify his action, he only exposed his wife and belittled her. No woman has to take that kind of abuse in a public sense, from a stubborn man that wants to go all over the world preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, especially when he is living so contrary to the image he is supposed to be exemplifying, which is that of Christ. His little wife tolerated him until it became unbearable. Then she decided she could not take his abuse any longer. I do not blame her because she left him. He turns around and marries another woman. Then when he is asked by a man, a man that has communicated with us through the years, and who thanks us for what we have printed, Can you say that when you had relationship with a virgin, that you were not committing adultery? He answered, No. Well that is a lie, because he is desecrating the marriage vow he had sworn to with she who was his legal wife. Let these statements soak in saints, because the devil is still hot on the trail of every true child of God, ready to deceive you if you allow him to put thoughts in your head. When Isaiah 52:8, says, Thy watchmen in that day shall see eye to eye, there will be no man putting the Bride together that has twisted and distorted something Bro. William Branham said, just to please his own carnality and his own transgression. Imagine two men, each man has spoken, has written a book entitled, their revelation of the book of Revelation. I have read it. Some of the things are accurate, but when it comes to other things, they are as inaccurate and contradictory to each other as daylight and dark. Yet they are putting them out here for people to read and believe. That is why Ben Howard went to the Philippines and deceived those people. I was sent a rebuttal by Bro. Villagonza, as though I was trying to destroy him. Raymond Jackson is not going to destroy anyone. If any man is destroyed, it will be because he destroys himself. By what means? By his own conduct and the twisting of the scriptures and the revelation of them, just to suit his own purpose. By that, he will deceive many people and in the end self destruct. If Ben Howard and Ewald Frank cannot preach it the same, then at least one is in error, but the truth is, they are both in error. We have got to be people with sense enough to know how to look at a situation like this and judge it by the scriptures. I know what Ewald Frank said about this, but what he said is far from what Bro. William Branham said in his book. I sat there when he spoke what was written in the book. I had to digest it myself, because when I was first saved, I had the same old head strong idea about marriage and divorce just like all the rest of the denominational people did. I thought to myself, Anyone who has ever been divorced, there is no way they can be married again. I was head strong about it. A certain brother in this area, which I knew when he was in his sinful life, and would get drunk and very mean, then come home mad, walk in the kitchen, open the cabinet, take the dishes and throw them against the wall. He had a fit, we could say. His wife would just cringe in the corner somewhere until it was over. In all those actions, she never raised her voice one time to say, I am going to divorce you. She just took it. It went on until God got hold of him one day, broke him down in repentance and turned his life around. He heard about Bro. William Branham and started going to the Branham Tabernacle. This all took place the same year my wife and I started going there. I am saying these things because this message is going to go out to the ends of the earth. Remember brethren, It matters not whether you are in the Philippines, Africa, India, or where, Raymond Jackson is not going to try to destroy any man. I do not care how sweet they talk to you, if they have come into your midst preaching error, something not consistent with the Bible, I will expose that any time I find it so. The apostle Paul did: He named names, so what is different? When he scolded the Galatian Christians, saying, Ye did run well, who hindered you? he then said he would to God that such a man was cut off. Tell me what he meant by that? In the Thessalonian letter, he mentioned some names for what two men taught. So do not say I am trying to destroy someone, just because I expose his deceptive ways. I am not out to do that: I am called to stand for the truth of God’s word. If any man is destroyed, it is because he destroys himself by the error of his own doing. I was just like everybody else, so stubborn it was hard to yield, but when the truth did break through in my understanding, do you think I am going to allow error to be shoved off on the saints of God without exposing it? Well getting back to this brother, After he gave his heart to the Lord, surrendered his life and started going to the Tabernacle, what did his wife do? The minute he gave his heart to the Lord and the Lord changed him, so he no longer came home drunk and broke the dishes, she left him. Did you hear what I said? She left him. The brother cried, he wept and wept. He lived like that for months, and for a few short years he had no home. He slept at our house many times. My wife washed and ironed his clothes. Finally he felt led to move to California. While out there, he met a woman whose husband was dead. They were attracted to each other and were married. I did not hear about it until they came back here. When they came back here, he wrote me a note, saying that he was married. Just like all denominational people, I thought it could not be so, and that he was headed for hell as sure as 2+2= 4. I could not see how any Christian person could even think like that. That is the way I was, just so stubborn, so bull headed about it. 

HOW TRUTH WINS OUT 

God has His ways of dealing with us. The brother that had married, took his wife and talked with Bro. William Branham about their situation; and Bro. William Branham showed them a passage of scriptures in the Bible, in the New Testament and said to them, Read this and pray: Whatever God tells you, then you rest assured that God looks upon you, He loves you, and you should never pay any attention to what anyone says about you. That brother hurried to tell me what the prophet had said. I sat and listened to that, and I must say, I felt like a whipped dog with my tail tucked between my legs. I thought, It cannot be so: it just simply cannot be like that. (A lot of people are as blind as a bat, they fly upside down most of the time.) After he left, I got under conviction. I want the world to know what Raymond Jackson used to be like. I went on a fast. I took my Bible to my study room. I read every verse of scripture in the Old and the New. When I came to 1st Corinthians 7, here was what the brother told me, I started looking, I started reading. I got closer to it. It got closer to me. After awhile it got inside me. After awhile I said, Why could I not see that before? I had that old denominational spirit on me: That is why. When the truth finally got inside me, I thought to myself, That is what Paul taught two thousand years ago, but it has been lost. It has been shoved in the background. It took a little man like that to bring it out of hiding. Go to 1st Corinthians 7, and let us read it. Always remember, That man did not come giving you another scripture outside the Bible: Everything he said and taught was to put you back in the Bible with the right vision. He showed how you and I should read each verse of scripture and the example, the illustrations, and the types and things it is related to, before we try to tell anyone what it was about. Saints, I kneeled by the side of my bed and read this over and over. The more I read it, the more it got inside of me. The apostle Paul said to the Corinthian church in 59 A.D., “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” Who is talking? Paul. This is one of the reasons in 1968, in the month of October, I asked a Jewish rabbi in North Carolina, What is the requirements for a man to be on the Sanhedrein Court? He said, we have no such thing as the Sanhedrein Court today, but it is traditionally believed by all the rabbis, that in the days when the Sanhedrein Court existed, he mentioned the number of men that had to be on it. He said it is believed that each man had to be a family man, that nobody sitting on the court could be a single man. Then he stipulated why. Here is the requirements, because the Sanhedrein Court had to be equipped to know how to deal with all the social and marital problems, things that come up between man and wife, between parents and children, or between neighbor and neighbor, and so forth. He said, if a man is not a married man, if he is not a family man, he does not know how to relate to problems between man and wife, or between parents and children, or such. To me, that sounded like it made sense. This made me feel that what I had been reading was making sense. This man is no longer a married man, Paul was no longer a twenty eight year old man or a thirty year old man. He must have been moving closer to forty years of age. He was a man that had been married, probably had a family, but either his wife had died and he never saw the need to have another wife, or else, because of his conversion on the Damascus road, when he did eventually come back to Jerusalem and began to communicate with his wife, who was Jewish, there is where he may have ran into a brick wall. If you do not know socially, and culturally, as well as traditionally how Jewish people are when one leaves the faith, it was a very serious time. In many cases, when a son or daughter would become of age, and if for some reason they go off into some other realm, sometimes the father will disinherit that son or daughter, and have a big celebration and treat them as though they are dead. They never mention their name any more, so do not look at the Jewish culture back then and think they thought like we do. They did not. Let us continue with what Paul is saying here. In the 2nd verse he said, “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, (That is two people who are not married, having a relationship.) let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. (Notice, it goes both ways. It is not ninety-ten, it is not sixty-forty, it is fifty-fifty.) Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: (What does it men by that statement? Let the husband render unto her in intimate relationship. Keep in mind, when Paul started talking about fornication here, he did not wind up talking about raspberry jam. He stuck to the same thought all the way through. That is the way you have to read what Paul said, and what he meant. Let the husband render unto the wife due intimate respect.) and likewise also the wife unto the husband. (Due intimate respect.) The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. (In common sense, that means they each belong to the other. In our society I have heard it said on the News, a man and his wife get into it, if either one would ask the other for intimate relationship, no, I am not going to touch you any more. Modern society today tells you that the other one has no right to insist or to beg. They tell you your body belongs to you. That is not what Paul said here. You know it. Right? How many agree? Paul said,) Defraud ye not one the other, (do not withhold) except it be with consent for a time, (Let us see what the consent is about.) that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. (Meaning lack of self control.) But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. (Now notice, here is where he said, Be like me.) For I would that all men were even as I myself. (That is, as he lived then, not as he had lived in earlier years of life.) But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. (I will never forget how, during those days, I had read, and read, and read. I had to have an answer. I felt humiliated.) I say therefore (Who is he talking to? The Corinthian Christian Church.) to the unmarried and widows, (That means their husbands are dead.) It is good for them to abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. (Now he is not speaking like that for everybody: He is speaking for a certain category.) And unto the married (He is talking about Gentile, married husbands and wives in the faith, that are sitting in the Corinthian church) I command, yet not I, but the Lord, (because he is getting this by reading Deuteronomy as the type,) Let not the wife (That means a believing wife.) depart from her husband: (I want to say this, We have a lot of religious people that are married, but let one in that household step over the border to accept this truth and all hell breaks loose. You are going to find out one of these days that not many out there in that religious world that are married, are even Christians, they just have a religious idea. They are living under pretense, but they are no more born again than a hound dog. There is no such thing as people living half born. How many understand my thought? There is no such thing. You either are or you are not born of the Spirit. If you are really born again, you are not going to sit in that old dead system forever. Your heart is going to get hungry. One day you are going to have an appetite they cannot satisfy. You are going to search, you are going to ask questions until you get some right answers.) But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, (Notice who he is talking about.) or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. (That is the first example in this revelation Paul is talking about. This man and this woman have been saved under Paul’s ministry. They both sit in the congregation. They are legally married. They both testify they are believers, so their marriage is obligated, and neither one can separate from the other. It is compulsory.) But to the rest (There is another category.) speak I, not the Lord: (In other words, he does not have any place in the Law to get the type, so he is counseling based upon what his understanding is of Grace now.) If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, (You can apply that in our modern day to many illustrations. Here is a young couple married in the Baptist Church, married in the Presbyterian Church, married in the Church of Christ. They lived two or three years together very happy, but God gets hold of one of them and when that one begins to see the light of truth, it opens a hunger. They start searching. The more they get, the more they want, but then the unbeliever, and it does not matter whether they are in the Methodist or Baptist, or what church, and they can be decorated like a soldier off the battle field, but if his or her little religious inclinations causes him or her to look at the other and say, If you go to that church, if you believe that rotten stuff, I will leave you, I will have nothing to do with you. Let us look at the illustrations here, If any brother hath a wife, notice that he said a brother. That makes him a believer, does it not? If a brother hath a wife that believeth not, so notice what he says), and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.” It literally means this, Here sits a brother, he loves this truth, he is doing all he can to live for God the best he knows how. His heart hungers after the truth of God’s word, but for some reason the wife, maybe she came a time or two with him, but could not agree with what she heard, so she says, Honey, I cannot believe like that, but I am not going to stand in your way, so you go on, I want you to be happy and satisfied. I want you to feel you are doing the right thing, but right now, I just do not feel like that. I will be a good wife, and I will keep our home. That is what Paul was talking about. Let not that brother put her away just because she does not believe. Love her, care for her. These are the things that really began to come out of the book and get inside of me. “And the woman (Now he reverses it, so it is a two way street, not just one way.) which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.” He says, Honey, I am the bread winner, I love you, I love our children, I will do my best to care for you and take care of our home. There is nothing that says the woman, just because he does not believe, should ignore him and treat him as nothing. Watch how Paul looked at this situation. “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife (vice versa) is sanctified by the husband: else (otherwise) your children (would be looked upon) unclean; but now are they holy.” Back under the Law, what did God say as they were on their way through the wilderness to the promised land? It shall come to pass after you have come into the land that I have promised you, you each one will be settled in your various places, you will not give your sons and daughters to the inhabitants, neither will you take them to be husbands and wives to your children, for they will lead you astray. But the children of Israel, little boys and little girls, grew up obligated to be under the penalty of what the commandments said. That is why there were two other things that went with it, statutes and ordinances. Therefore a Jewish man married to a Jewish woman, having children born to them, Jewish descendants, through the Law, God looked upon them, their marriage was clean, their children were clean. But when one reached out and took a Canaanite, a Moabite or any other woman, or vice versa, by the Law, many times the children were looked upon as illegal children, born out of wedlock. When you look at the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and see how many came back from Babylon to rebuild the city, the walls and such, there came a time of revival when Ezra stood before the multitude. There were many Jewish men there that had brought Babylonian wives back with them, along with children. When he read the stipulations of what the Law said, all that had Gentile wives, had to send them home. That is why Paul said this. He is taking a type from the Law to bring it over here to the era of Grace, that if a man is a believer, his wife is an unbeliever, or vice versa, if a woman is a believer and her husband is an unbeliever, they have children, let them remain firm and raise their children. Therefore through the eyes of the grace of God, God looks upon the marriage as sanctified. The children are looked upon as legally born children. Now we come to the next verse. This is what hit me. I want to say, Here is the book on Marriage and Divorce, when you read it, Bro. William Branham did not even refer to it. He said, There are things I could say, but I cannot say them openly, because people would take it and misuse it. Now listen carefully. “But if the unbelieving depart.” That means one is a believer, the companion is an unbeliever, and it does not matter if the believing one is the husband and the other is the wife, or vice versa, but if the unbelieving depart, after the wife has been going to church two or three weeks, the husband put his foot down. Look, if you are going to keep on going to that holy roller place, I don’t want to be associated with you. Now make up your mind, if you are going there, I am going to leave. If the unbelieving depart, (I never saw this, so I thought, Well if he goes, the other one has to stay single the rest of their life. That old denominational picture was so big you could not see past it. But as I read here I saw for the first time, “But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart.” What? What did he start out with? How to avoid fornication. Now we have come to a big question, if the unbelieving departs, what is the other going to do? How are they going to avoid this thing? Paul is not switching the subject. He still has the same thought in mind. Listen carefully. “But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister (That means, if she or he is a believer.) is not under bondage in such cases: (In one translation it says, No longer under moral bondage.) but God hath called us to peace.” Well if He has called us to peace, how can the one that has been left, avoid being tempted to have fornication, or commit it. That is why I say, Paul did not start out talking about how to avoid it, then wind up changing the subject to some other thing. He is keeping right on the line. When he said moral bondage, it means Satan, by taking the unbeliever out of the picture, has created a situation that the believer now has become victimized, so how can they escape the second verse, what Paul talked about? They are free because they did everything under Grace that Grace requires. They lived an example. They showed love. They showed respect. They did not step over the line by fussing and creating all kinds of problems. When I saw that, there was a great load lifted from my soul. I said, No longer is that believing partner compelled to remain single the rest of their life. They are not under bondage to that kind of law any more, because they became victimized by what the devil, through the unbeliever, has created. Only God knows how many people through the years have suffered in their homes. I have known some that have suffered. That drunken man came in, cursed, kicked, slapped, knocked around, and the poor soul was afraid to do or say anything because she thought, I am bound to this creature for life. Or it could be vice versa. Some women can become a wild cat. That is what happened to this brother I was telling you about. When he was like a lion, tearing the house up, she cowed in the corner, but when he came home crying, and saying that God had delivered him from that kind of spirit, she was not going to have a man going to church. Isn’t that something? That is the kind of world you live in today. When I looked at that, a brother or sister is not under bondage, what kind of bondage, I thought? It is moral bondage, and in such cases we must realize, God hath called us to peace. I am thankful God did give me peace. It was like a load went off my soul. I saw something I had never seen before. I saw what Paul meant, but the Catholic Church had lost it. The Lutherans had lost it. Denominations of every sort had lost it. It took a messenger here at the endtime to bring it out of its lost state. He did not write another verse of scripture. God just gave him a revelation of how to take scripture that had been written for two thousand years and put it back in perspective. Let me finish it here, where Paul asks the believer a simple question. “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? (What is he talking about? Sister, look at the situation that has been brought upon you, you have lived with him, you have put up with him, you have been slapped around, you have been cursed and so forth: You have done all you can do. You have tried your best to be an example, but he did not see it, and did not want it. So how do you know you will save him by staying with him another year. Let him go, and when he goes, forget about him. Do not run down the street begging him to come back.) or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife? (See? It is vice versa.) But God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk.” I want to wind up with what Paul said, God hath called us to peace. If the devil has wrecked your marriage under situations like these, how can you avoid the temptation of what Paul started talking about. If you are going to live in peace, you have got to be free, that your mind can be relaxed and focused upon the Lord, not worrying about everything you talk about with a person of the opposite sex. How many understand the picture? That is not in Marriage and Divorce. Now I will give you another true example. The man in Germany, you read this one and you assumed that as you read between the lines, that it left you free to go after another woman. Back in the early 1950’s there was a young lady in Chicago, I know her name, but for the sake of the message I will tell this and not mention her name. We know her, she was in our church in New Albany years ago. We met her many times at the Tabernacle and talked with her. In her early days she was married, but as a young girl she had an alcohol habit. She eventually became an alcoholic. Becoming an alcoholic, this began to bring about a detrimental situation between her and her husband. It finally got so bad her husband left her. She had a job, but she was on her own. In the later part of the 1950’s Bro. William Branham was in Chicago in a meeting. This young lady had a very close friend that heard about Bro. William Branham and his meeting. She went to the meetings. When she saw how Bro. William Branham preached and how the gift operated, she came back to this young lady and said, Look, there is a man in this city, that is having meetings here, and he has an outstanding ministry. Alcoholics are being delivered. I would like for you to go. The young girl said she would go, so she went. Her friend got her a prayer card. This young lady now, by the time the preaching is over, Bro. William Branham has called the prayer line, the young lady came before Bro. William Branham, and he looked at her and said, You are an alcoholic. She said, Yes. He asked, Do you believe me to be God’s prophet? She started crying. Bro. William Branham prayed for her. She said, That very night that spirit left me, and I never had a desire to touch a drink any more. I left that meeting and went to my home, and from then on all I ever wanted to do was to go to church. She found a little church to go to. In that church, God filled her with the Holy Spirit. It went on a few months after that. She had talked with her husband, but he did not want anything to do with her. In her own self she felt like she would be a single person the rest of her life, but she purposed in her heart that she would live for God, be a testimony of His grace and how He delivered her from alcohol. She had a good job. She lived for a long time like that. This brings us into the 1960’s just after the Church Ages were preached in December 1960. At the restaurant where she would go with some of her friends to eat lunch, she was sitting there at dinner time. She noticed a young man sitting at a table by himself. She thought he looked familiar, that maybe she knew him, but she never said anything. The next day she went back to the restaurant, the young man was sitting there again. This time, she thought, I have to know that man. When she was leaving she asked him, Do I know you? She asked his name. When he spoke his name, she said, Oh yes, we went to high school together. They started talking. She came to find out, from WW2 he had spent twenty some years in the Navy. He was now retired, but he had never married. They started eating together on their lunch hour. She began to feel an attraction toward him. Over a period of weeks she felt, Now wait a minute, I am letting myself get attracted to this man, and I do not know that I am scripturally right in allowing this. She did not want to get involved in some sort of trap. I remember the time. She came all the way from Chicago to Bro. William Branham’s house. She said to Bro. William Branham, You know my life from beginning to end, I have nothing to hide. She told him the story about the young man. That is why Bro. William Branham made reference there were things he could tell people in private interviews, but he never said what it was, because he knew people would twist it. Bro. William Branham took this sister’s Bible and opened it to the 7th chapter of 1st Corinthians and showed her the scripture we have read. He said these words to her, Sister, read these scriptures prayerfully. Prayerfully. Because if I told you to do something, the devil would run you around the mulberry bush. On the other hand, if you read these scriptures prayerfully, then act according to what God has told you, the devil cannot torment you the rest of your life. When she read these verses, then she got the picture of what the apostle Paul was talking about. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God hath called us to peace. How in the world can you have peace when you are trying your best to live according to the word, and yet to avoid the temptation of what Paul started talking about? That sister went back to Chicago. In a short period her and the young man were married. When Bro. William Branham preached the Seven Seals in 1963, they sat there in every service. These are things I happen to know, that are not in the Marriage and Divorce message. There is no need of this man saying that when Bro. William Branham preached this, this is one of the greatest mysteries that has been revealed since the seven seals. It was God putting light back on truth that had been lost. But here this man has done lost his leadership image because he went contrary to the scriptures, and so did the other man. How many understand what I am talking about? That is why I say, I am thankful to God that He allowed me to be born in an area to hear this little man that brought truth to us. I did not sit there just to listen and let it go in one ear and out the other. I sat there to learn. That is why I say, In Marriage and Divorce, he said certain things about the intimate relationship and then when we take the book, The Spoken Word is the Original Seed, which I have also marked, you find two different statements from the same lips that are contrary to each other. They are both spoken by the same man, but they are contradictory the one to the other. That is why I have said many times, There has never been a man this side of the Reformation that spoke in dual terms like this man did, but if you will study it prayerfully, you will see how he made a statement in one sermon that you could take right to the Bible for vindication. That is what he put you onto. The other one, you cannot take to the Bible, because there is nothing there to attach it to. That is why I say, God willed the man to say certain things just to take some away. I have said this, In this truth, there is a law of elimination. It is a pure truth. You cannot twist it. You cannot justify the flesh with it. It is going to cause our flesh to be crucified and brought under subjection to the divine will of God. Therefore I hope that from what has been said, we can get a picture of the watchmen, because they have all got to be examples of a dedicated walk with God; not of a life of error. None of this is to belittle or pull people down, that have been married before they came to the truth or into the family of God. It is talking about leadership. That is the thing the devil has been fighting so hard against. I am thankful to God for every brother and sister that sit in this congregation. I never look at a double marriage to belittle anyone. I remember when God, in that room, caused this book to start talking to me. I needed it. I was in a mess. I was in a corner. I could not understand, how that man could tell this brother such things. That is why I had to go on a fast. I said, Lord, I have to have an answer. I do not want to go down the road of life condemning people, and wind up being wrong. I am thankful to God for His Word. Thy Word, O Lord , is a lamp to my feet and a light to my pathway. I thank Him for it. I have been talking about watchmen as we looked at all of this. There are a lot that want to be watchmen, but if I was to mention publicly, the men that I have known in years gone by, that divorced their wives, simply because they thought Bro. William Branham said in Marriage and Divorce, that they had a legal right to do so, then went and married a younger woman, just because they thought they were supposed to marry a virgin, you would be appalled. They are adulterers of course. That is ignorance and error. It is blinded. The Bride is not going to be put together by such leadership. That is why leadership has got to come back into the image that Paul taught right here. I hope all of you have understood what has been said, because God is not using every fellow who might like to preach, to lead the Bride Church to perfection. 

WORKING IN UNITY V/S WORKING ALONE 

As God dealt with Bro. Bud about the urgency of the coming of the Lord, I want to say right now, I feel it is my job to deal with the preachers of this hour of time. That does not mean I am going to go around pointing my finger in the face of any of them. You know that prophecy in Isaiah 52:8 is very short, but it means exactly what it says. That was spoken almost eight hundred years before the advent of Christ, but it is looking right at our hour of time. When it said, they shall see eye to eye, let us ask ourselves, What causes preachers to be different? You hear them say, Well I don’t think we have to see eye to eye on everything. I challenge them, Brothers, you that hear my voice, by video, by audio tape, or however you hear it, if you went to an architect and had him to draw you a set of plans for a new home, let us just say that the home would cost you a hundred and sixty thousand dollars: When you go to a contractor and agree with him to come and build that home, he signs a contract that he will build it for the sum, but let us just say he begins to let different work out to sub contractors, the framing and such, and each crew decides to change a little something they do not agree with, how would you feel about that? All those subcontractors have got to be able to see the framework and the finished look of this house as they study the plan or it will not be built according to the original floor plan. The finished product will not be according to the floor plan agreed upon, if every crew sees the blueprint a little different than the ones before them. The wall plan, the room plan, the plumbing, everything must be allowed for by all. Preachers: What would you do if one contractor would come along and do his particular job, but in one area, he changed something he did not like? Then another one would come along and do the same thing in a different area. Would you tolerate that? You know you would not, so what makes you think God is going to tolerate having His perfect plan for the Bride of Christ changed to suit every fancy? God is not going to tolerate this nonsense in these last days, of preachers wanting to be different, strictly for self glorification. You may say, Well, I do not think you are the only one that can have a revelation. That is what many have said, that ended up on God’s scrap pile later. Why don’t you tell Paul you have as much right to receive a revelation as he had? Having that right is one thing, but seeing a different picture is quite another. We have a lot of people today, that have run here and there, from the four corners of this earth, supposedly testifying, preaching about a prophet that was sent to this age and claiming to have some special revelation on what he taught. Well Sirs: I am preaching his message, the message he was anointed to present to this age of Laodicea. Before it is all over, there is only going to be a few people that have understood it in the light of what the Bible actually teaches. I challenge every denomination that has drawn up their beliefs and stood so staunch upon them all these years. Why does the Lutherans still remain to be Lutherans? Why do the Calvinists still remain to be Calvinists? The Presbyterians still remain to be Presbyterians. Why? They everyone can be traced back to the teachings of a reformer. Why did not each one move on, move up with the next one? It just goes to show, there are some people, you can only show them so much light and any more blinds them. They just turn away from anything else and are content to just sit down and say, I am this or that and I will die this way. When you look back at the original apostolic Church that you read about in the book of Acts, the Church which sprang out from there to many other areas, the Church all the Epistles were written to, you cannot say they were all permitted to have their own opinions as to what the scriptures taught. Those apostles did not tolerate it. That was the problem in the first age. When Paul came back to Antioch and there had been certain ones that had come up from Jerusalem and taught the people saying, Except you be circumcised you cannot even be saved, that was enough to set the whole thing in an uproar. It was not long until Paul went to Jerusalem to talk to Peter and the elders. You can read about it in the book of Acts. Each movement today says, Well we preach the word. You have taken out of the word, certain verses of scripture and certain chapters, which you specialize in, and the rest can go to the trash heap. That is how it appears. Let me get back though and try to finish this subject about Marriage and Divorce. The question is, What does it involve, and what kind of image does it portray? What I am going to say is not touching just anyone that has been married twice. What I am touching is this, When preachers will resort to such tactics as we have described, and still say they have a right to be married again, even when they have a divorced woman somewhere still alive, what makes them think they still have a right to preach, they have evidently not been studying the same Bible I study from. You know you have forfeited your right to preach. What did Paul mean when he wrote the epistle to Timothy and to Titus, talking about a bishop, and an elder, as well as a deacon when he said, Let him be the husband of one wife? In the hour that Paul wrote that, there was much polygamy going on in the world. Therefore when Paul said that, it covered everything. Why? Because the preacher himself, in the midst of a society that has allowed the devil to mold their social and moral picture into that kind of an image, once the man was called by God, he was called to be an example, an influence over the rest. It did not make him any better, but it did make his person and his marital life an example. The purpose of it was, that as young people came along and joined, and became part of the body of Christ, they would begin to discipline themselves and take heed to how they looked for companionship. This is a day when the world is suffering over this thing of man and woman, young people especially, being loyal to their marital vows. You hear from congressmen, all kinds of politicians, how they have proved to be unfaithful to their spouse. The world has drifted into an era of not caring. They do not even have a mind to study the person and realize what that can be leading to in days to come. There are young people that think, Well she is pretty and she has a good shape. Young man, if that is all you are looking at, you are as blind as a bat. The devil is going to laugh at you. If you cannot study the character and principals of the person, how she talks and walks, how she portrays herself and what she likes to talk about, you have no business getting married. 

HOW I MET MY WIFE 

Before I went with my wife, my sister had already introduced me to two friends of hers from the school in Henryville. They were good girls that came from good families, but that is the end of the story. This was at the close of WW2. Women had begun to move out of the home into the public workplace. (I am not trying to belittle anyone: That is what our society has come to and the devil caused it. It seems like it takes two incomes any more to keep a home going.) Neither of those girls that I dated a couple of times turned out to be my type. The first one wrote me a letter and said I did not need to come back anymore. That was alright with me. I guess she failed to see anything in me that interested her. That was perfectly fine with me, because at that time, I did not see much in her that I was interested in. Do you know why? All she talked about was her job, her money, what she was going to accomplish. I was wanting a wife suitable for a farmer. The next one I went with was a farmer’s daughter, but she got a job working for an insurance company in New Albany. I went out with her five times. What do you think she talked about? Her job was all she was interested in. She was looking forward to a career. She wanted to work her way up the ladder of success. Well I wrote her a letter, saying that I would not be back. Finally my sister arranged my first date with the girl that became my wife. I was too bashful to ask for a date. My sister called her and asked her to go out with me. When I met her, she talked my language. She looked at the same things I was looking at. I could see that she was ready to be a farmer’s wife. She knew how to gather eggs from the henhouse. She knew how to drive a tractor. She knew how to pick and can beans, and peaches. All this was my kind of language. Do you blame me? It was not long until I asked her to marry me and she said, I will have to think about it. She has been my sweetheart for fifty three years now. I had only gone out with her about three times when I knew she was the girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She was not talking about a career. She was not talking about all the material things she was wanting. I could see immediately, that she just wanted to be a farmer’s wife. That was what I wanted her to be. Let me say to you young men, You are living in a world right now, in a time when the devil can really take you for a ride you will never return from. You hear it in the News all the time. You young girls, please, do not grow up to think you have a career to live for. You have the privilege and opportunity to walk with God, so live for God and let Him establish your life on something worthwhile. We have but a very short time left, so let us do our best to find our way into the will of God. I remember the story Bro. William Branham told one time, where the famous rancher out west sent his son to college in the city. He was a wealthy boy. When he was coming back home, they got all the neighbor ranchers and their daughters to come and celebrate. They put on a big shindig for this young man. They had a dance, a supper and everything. He had a chance to dance with all the fine ranch girls. Later on, he decided to take a walk down by the old corral where he used to go. He slipped out of the crowd and walked down to the old corral, and just stood there meditating for awhile. On his way back to the house he saw a young girl come out the back door. She had something to throw into the trash, so he walked over to see who she was. She was dressed in an ordinary print dress and was wearing an apron. She was hired to be a servant, to help prepare the meals. This well to do ranch boy took one look at this little girl and immediately saw that she was not dressed like all the others out front, so he asked her name. She told him and he then asked, May I walk you back to the house? She said, Yes. They talked for awhile and he asked, May I write to you some time? She answered yes. The end result was, he saw something in a humble little girl who had been hired to be a servant, that he liked. She was faithfully fulfilling her job. She had not been invited to come out front with the well dressed guests, but she was the girl that boy picked to be his wife. The next time he came home, their engagement was set. It is not careers, it is not how they look, it is not how pretty they dress, it is not their shape, but a desirable character that makes the difference. You have something inside, that can talk to you if you will listen. There is character to consider and there is principals and outlooks, all of which must be considered when choosing a wife or husband. What are they looking at? What are they wanting to follow? Who do they want to be like? What do they talk about? Does their talk interest you? All of that goes with it. There are a lot of young people getting married today, and six months to a year or two later, they are in the divorce courts. They build a new house, they go in debt, but they never really have a home, because the wife wants more. What she has is not nice enough. I want this, or I want that. Young girls, did you know, If you ever find the one that God ordains for you, and He brings the two of you together, I promise you, you can learn to make life so happy. You may not have a Cadillac to drive: You may not have a two hundred thousand dollar house, but it is what you see in each other that makes the difference. It is how you look at each other, how you walk with each other, how you think with each other, and how you learn to help one another. You can build a love that becomes inseparable because God has molded it together. Whomsoever God joins together, let no man put asunder.

WRECKED LIVES 

I preached on the subject of Marriage and Divorce, all because this book was sent to me from Germany. He was a well known preacher, that over a period of years became famous preaching Bro. William Branham’s message in Europe. He went behind the Iron Curtain and different places, risking his life to preach. When it came about in time, that he was unfaithful to his wife, for a period of time she tried to remain with him, but the image that he portrayed of himself in allowing himself to be unfaithful to her, created a picture, an environment that was intolerable. She began to realize she was living in an environment that could only get worse, because she was being looked upon as the cause of his unfaithfulness. It was not her fault at all. It was that preacher himself, that allowed Satan to lead him astray. Everywhere he went, he had to blame her. It was just like this preacher I have heard about a few years ago from Canada. He got hold of Bro. William Branham’s message and away he goes, down the road of life preaching something he did not understand properly. He was a fire ball. Every where he went, he preached that Bro. William Branham said the woman is supposed to obey the man. Then he would use his own wife as an example. He thought he knew the man whose message he was preaching, but he did not know Bro. William Branham at all: He was only reading about the man. Why do I say this? I was given some of the tapes where he had preached. He would stand before a congregation of people and expose his wife, saying, If it is pouring down rain and I tell my wife to go sweep the sidewalk, she is supposed to obey me. Preacher: you are as a first class fool. My Bible tells me in the book of Ephesians, Husbands, love your wives, even as your own body. I am not going to take a hammer and hit my thumb just to show off to anyone. That would hurt. I have hit it accidently plenty of times, but never on purpose: It hurts too much. I love my wife, so why would I want to hurt her in a public display of ignorance? Husbands, love your wives, even as your own body. (Think seriously on that.) even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it. We are going to learn something here now, I pray that we will. As the apostle Paul taught marriage in the Bible, to the minister that feels called to be a bishop or elder, this was done that he might exemplify Christ because Christ is truly the virgin groom that is coming for a virgin bride, a Church made virgins by the redemption work of Christ. Christ is not coming for a bride, with the bride knowing He has been married to some other system before. He is coming to be married to one particular Church, not a dozen different systems that may be called “The Bride of Christ.” He is to carry that exampleship, for all that will ever look to Him for the way they are to conduct themselves. That is exactly why many of these so-called preachers of this message are missing the mark: They heard the message, but they just simply did not get it. In former years, when Bro. William Branham was alive and ministering, I have seen many of these preachers come and sit there listening to this man preach, just totally mystified by what they were hearing. They sat there with their mouth’s gapped open, educated men with doctors of divinity degrees, looking like they were really drinking in what they were hearing. You would think, that when the time comes that God would turn them loose, they would just simply set the world on fire. It has been just the opposite: All they have done is confuse, distort, twist, form clicks, create divisions and everything else that is contrary to sound doctrine. I want to ask people, Before there ever was a prophet in this Laodicean Age of time, did we not still have the Bible? Here is a young man called to preach in the Lutheran Church, so he goes off to the seminary and is taught the Lutheran doctrine. He closes his eyes to everything else, regardless of what he hears. Here is another man in the Baptist Church, that is called to preach. What does he do? He goes off to their seminary and reads from the same Bible, but he gets the Baptist doctrine instilled in him. Can you tell me how this came about? Human ignorance. That is all you can make of it. The church is not put together by human mentality. We have to have an understanding spiritually, what it means, and what it does not mean, in order to properly minister to the bride of Christ. We cannot say as the denominational leaders would say, Oh that is of the devil. When the apostle Paul wrote it, and when the apostle Peter wrote it, when James wrote it, it all summed up to portray the same picture. That is why it says in the book of Acts, And they all continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, or teachings, going from house to house and breaking bread and having all things in common in their fellowship. It is going to return to that, but the number will not be as great as some think. Now you might want to jot down some notes as we continue on here. I have these scriptures written down so I will not miss any of them. Take 1st Timothy 6:1-3, Titus, which only has one chapter, the 5th thru the 7th verses. Paul exemplified in these two writings of his, to these two different men who were followers, or students of his ministry, that this was the qualifications. We know that God sent a prophet in these last days. I know the denominations do not believe it, but I am thankful to God for calling me out of that denominational system and allowing me to sit and listen to this man as he painted such a beautiful picture, and not only listen to him, but also to watch and study him. I did not sit there to memorize: I sat there to listen to what he said, and to what he meant and I just trusted God to enable me to retain it as a revelation. You can tell better what a man said, when you know what he means, and you know how he conveys his message. I have in my possession, the revelation of this man from Germany, a well known preacher, on the subject of “Marriage and Divorce.” After his wife became so hurt by all the humiliation he put her through, she was forced to leave him. She simply could not stand the environment being created by him, making it look like she was the cause of him being unfaithful to her. Immediately after she leaves, he gets a revelation that God justifies him to take another wife, so that is what he does. Here is his message. He even tells how God spoke to Bro. William Branham to go up into the mountains in Sabeno Canyon, and how the angels came down. Here is where he got his message. He almost makes it equal to the mystery of the seven seals. The way he wrote it, it causes another well known preacher in Europe to say these words, Anybody that believes the seventh seal has not been broken is antichrist. I have to say in response to that, There, is another foolish man: He is no better off than the Baptists who read the same Bible the Lutherans read. He is no better than the Methodists who read the same Bible the Baptists read. They are all alike. To such a man I say, You are ready to twist everything because your education has blinded you. Sure you can read what the man said, but if you do not know what he meant you are all messed up. If you did not know the man, that in itself is going to keep you from reading between the lines and analyzing what he did say. In this book, is the man’s revelation. He chooses another wife, first of all. To me, he is living in adultery, because he created the situation that caused his own marriage vows to be violated. You know what Jesus taught about it in the New Testament, as He took His thought on the whole thing from Deuteronomy 24. Like in one of the last messages we printed, I mentioned the preacher from Georgia, what he had done, and because I mentioned his name, I received an e-mail letter criticizing me, saying, Bro. Jackson, you are criticizing this brother because he did not marry a virgin. Listen to me! I speak this as plainly as I know how: I have not said one thing against him just because he did not marry a virgin. That had nothing to do with it. I spoke against him because he took another man’s wife. I have to say to the man that wrote the letter, If you are not careful, you will tear up a lot of things you will never be able to put back together. I was looking at his exampleship, based upon that which the apostle Paul portrayed in Timothy and Titus’ writings. If he would have taken a woman whose husband was dead, then that preacher would have a right to marry her if she was a godly woman. The preacher lost his wife by death, so there was nothing to keep him from being married again. However he should never have taken another man’s wife, and to make it even worse, he took her out of his own congregation. Talk about disobedient conduct, that is the height of it. Come on now, you who claim to be called of God to preach, let us see eye to eye, and sing together. That is what God requires. Nowhere did Bro. William Branham ever endorse such stupidity as what we are seeing out of some in this day and hour. While we are on the subject, the apostle Paul taught very plainly in 1st Corinthians 7, all about the subject. We have already covered it earlier in this message, so I am not going to repeat it, but I do pray that you who have people sitting under your ministry will seriously study what those apostles of old wrote. I want to say to my listeners, My name has taken a beating, but as I have said before, I say again to those who find fault, You do not tie my shoes and you do not butter my bread, so I am not going to lose any sleep over what you have said about me. God’s grace has been good to me. He gave me a sweet wife to live with me on the farm. She has driven a tractor in the dust. She rode a corn planter for me when needed, so I have a lot to be thankful for. I look back on that era with much thanksgiving. That is why I will defend her and never humiliate her. I will not lead her into a public place, then make her shine my shoes. What kind of man is that who does such things ? I shine my own shoes. The only time my wife has ever had to do that is if I get all tied up in something that occupies my time, and she sees they need it, then she picks them up and shines them. Any other time, I do not expect her to do that job. I do not look for opportunities to put her to work. When Bro. William Branham preached Marriage and Divorce, he said a lot of things that caused a lot of people to take certain things out of context. Therefore I want to read one of them to you. This is not about Marriage and Divorce, but he brought this in as he was explaining certain things about it. This goes right along with Serpent Seed. All your denominational people say, That teaching of Bro. William Branham is out of the pit. Come on preacher, when you deny the fact that the serpent was not a snake hanging in a tree, but rather a two legged creature standing there, you really present a ridiculous story. You have Eve communicating with a snake. He could talk, and he was not a snake. I ask you, Why did he talk to Eve? I challenge you! What was his purpose? He questioned her on the eating of the fruit of every tree, did he not? You read in Genesis what she said. Then he responded with words like this, Oh, but that don’t mean that! We have people who are supposed to be in this message, that are just like that, always saying, That is not what he meant. I am saying, It is what he meant. I am saying this to every denominational type person, Why do you read your Bible and then turn away from what it really says? When that serpent stood there, he was a creature that looked physically much like Adam. He was the highest, and the most intellectual form of the animal kingdom. God created him to be a servant to the human that was made in the image of God. Do not tell me God made that animal kingdom in its original, and left a true servant out of the picture. That serpent had wisdom. How come he could talk? It was not the devil on him that made him talk. God gave him the vocabulary and the ability to use it. When he got through talking to Eve, the scripture says she ate of the forbidden fruit, but a better translation would have said, she partook. We know what happened: she was enticed to have a sex act with him strictly for pleasure. Some say, That idea is out of the pit of hell. I say, Come on you educated men, will you please tell me what got our educators of this great nation so interested in sex education, when we were always known as a nation that was taught the principals of Christendom and the moral laws of God’s ten commandments? You put sex education in our schools and turned many students into devil-like creatures, homosexuals, deviates who are without any moral convictions whatsoever. You desecrated the human race in America. Now you wonder why a woman will take a butcher knife and stab her little two year old son to death. What caused that mother to think like that? You have a lot to stand before God and give an answer for. Because of your devilish teaching, the devil gets into these people and drives them berserk. We have senators and congressmen who have not been faithful to their wives. They are as ornery as ornery can be, yet they wonder what has gone wrong in our nation. Every day, a dad, a mother gets mad at each other and portrays a terrible image before their little children. They create hell in the home because they are not able to put up with each other, and end up killing the children. They do not have sense enough to know how to raise them, and a lot of that is because they were robbed of the privilege of knowing how to raise them right, because of some silly law that has been passed by our blinded lawmakers. Then when somebody from the realm of true Christendom speaks out publicly you hear, We don’t need that kind of talk around here. Even in Israel, the Arutz News reported on one statement made by a politician in Jerusalem, who said, One thing is sure, when we do get together and try to negotiate and bring about a peaceful era, we cannot mention the Bible and say it is our heritage, and that the Bible says God will restore thus and so: We can’t bring that out. Saints, that should tell you the world is headed toward a brink of chaos. I have to say, Never before, has there been a nation on the face of God’s green earth that has taken its young people, brain washed them, twisted their minds, perverted their thinking and turned them loose on society like we are seeing today. If you say anything about gays and lesbians, they think you are a radical. No, I am not, I am just saying what the Bible says and I believe it means what it says.