Rev. Raymond M Jackson

IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION LATELY, THAT AN AWFUL LOT OF PEOPLE ARE HAVING A PROBLEM DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN LAW AND GRACE. THEY KNOW WE ARE LIVING UNDER GRACE ACCORDING TO THE NEW COVENANT JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF CONSUMMATED IN HIS DEATH BURIAL AND RESURRECTION, BUT SOMEHOW THEY HAVE MANY QUESTIONS AND HANG-UPS ABOUT WHERE LAW ENDS AND GRACE BECOMES THE COVENANT WE LIVE UNDER. IT WAS THE SAME WAY IN THE DAYS OF THE APOSTLES OF CHRIST: THAT IS WHY THE APOSTLE PAUL DEALT WITH THE SITUATION AT HAND WAY BACK THEN. THEREFORE USING THE VERY SCRIPTURES WRITTEN BY HIM, WE WILL TRY TO SET YOUR MIND AT EASE, IF YOU STILL HAVE QUESTIONS ALONG THAT LINE.

We have this chart I will be using as a point of illustration; and We are going to title this message, “Grace is the Better Covenant.” I have a certain reason for this title, because as we make this study through the scriptures, it is a fact that God called the seed of Abraham to be the recipients of something that He knew would be vital to the human race in the ages to come. Before that, man did not have a written law. Many only had traditional ideas as to what had transpired before. Some of them were accurate, but many had been exaggerated and misused and caused much confusion. We know according to the Scriptures Moses wrote, which were the first five books of the Bible, that it is called in the Jewish language, the Torah. They still call it the Torah today. In most cases, that is the book they use for all their religious beliefs and festivities and such. Yet among the Jewish people there are different ideas and opinions as to how to interpret it. When we do come to the advent of Christ, where He came on the scene, we see that He was very open toward the Jewish people. He could see their traditional ways, and how they were so set in their religious ideas they left no room for anything different than what they believed, whether it be right or wrong. He would say to them, You like to sit in Moses’ seat and things like that. Naturally we know that was just a figure of speech, because Moses never left a chair for anyone to sit in. That was just a term meaning, You like to quote Moses, Moses this or Moses that, and you forget that God had many prophets that followed along after Moses had left the scene. Because of that attitude which many still have, we are faced with a condition even today that we want to do our best to deal with. When the advent of Christ came, the Jewish nation of Judaism was so mixed up it was hard to break through that barrier of perverted Judaism to present the New Covenant to them. The seed of Abraham had been the recipients of all that is contained in the Old Testament, but they were so divided there was no unity among them. Some did not even believe in a here after. Regardless of all of that, God still came along with another covenant. It was prophesied by Jeremiah in the 31st chapter, the 31st through the 34th verses, of the book by his name. “ Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.” God did exactly as Jeremiah had prophesied; and the New Testament Church was given birth on the day of Pentecost, right there in Jerusalem, when one hundred and twenty Jews had gone into an upper room, doing what Jesus had told His disciples to do. Out in the streets of the city, here went thousands of Jews, going to the temple with leavened loaves of bread to be burned. They believed they were fulfilling exactly what the Law required of them. Well they were, but they did not have one clue as to what that type was pointing to. Well let us take a look, after two thousand years of the gospel among us Gentiles, and look at the so called Gentile Christian church world. You name it, and there are some that believe it. If you try to convert someone that is not hungry for truth, you just as well go talk to a hound dog, because they are not going to pay any attention to you. They have to have a hunger for God and a desire to know something. That is why it says in the Scriptures, No man can come to me except the Father draw him. I would like for us to go back in the records of time, and look at a man by the name of Abraham. That was his name later, after being changed from Abram, but when you get used to saying Abraham, it is hard to remember to say Abram. We find that God called this man out from all the masses of people at that time. Think of it, there was no Law, there was no set pattern of religion, every man did what he thought he should do, and in his own way. God knowing the human race would definitely need something to look to in the ages to come, lest man be destined to go off into complete chaos and darkness, placed a call upon Abram and set him apart from the rest. He would raise up a people from the seed of Abram, (later Abraham) that would be different from the rest. In America right now, a nation that was absolutely founded by Bible believing men and women that upheld the Bible and its laws that govern society, the moral side as well as the social and domestic side, has now become a nation with a society that does not want God mentioned. We do not want to offend other people that do not believe in God. How pitiful! Don’t mention Jesus in here, because we love everybody, regardless of their religion. That is the common cry. To me, that is plain hypocrisy. If the world was to stand another hundred years, going in the present trend, the day would come when all that is ever written about Christianity would be found in a museums; and certainly not in the hearts of people. We know this, Abraham’s seed eventually wound up down in Egypt for about four hundred and some years, just like the Lord told Abraham they would, so we are going to start with the year approximately 1490 and examine some scriptures. You see here in the 12th chapter of Exodus, verse 1, that God initiated a beginning of something. “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months.” This was the beginning of the new spiritual year which starts in the later part of March and over into April, but does not coincide exactly with the month of April It is called Abib. That is a lunar month, not a solar month. We have a picture of what we call a new moon. Over here is a full moon. I am not going to preach the calendar, but show you this was the beginning of the years. When we can see it in what it is pointing to, this lunar month starts with the new moon. Every day that moon begins to get fuller. When we come to the night of the fourteenth, going into the fifteenth day, that moon is almost full. By the time you pass through the night of the fourteenth day going into the daylight hours, the moon is now full. From that point on, the moon starts decreasing. I explained it in that manner to show you what the Law was in its real purpose. The Law was absolutely a shadow. I am going to say this, If any Adventist, or any Sabbath keeper should get this tape, I want you to know the Law did not do for you what God ordained Grace to do for you. You could keep a Sabbath from now on until you were a thousand years old and you would not be a bit more holy when you are done, than if you would never have started. I hate to say it that way, but we have a Gentile world of people today from every denominational belief, that have certain pet things in the scriptures they will use to build their faith on. Well, I have been taught that all my life, they will say. Sure you were: the Jews were taught like that too. We have Gentile Christendom today that do not even believe the Jews fit into the last day picture. I have news for you, You are going to be surprised one of these days. It is not too long off either. The Church of Christ does not believe the Jews are to come back. They say the Law and prophets were until John, and they close the Old Testament: Then they say, We just speak where the Bible speaks. No saints, they close up part of it. When we come to the advent of Christ, let us compare that to the lunar month. I am going to say it in this way, The first day of the month would represent one hundred years, the second day of the month would represent two hundred years. The third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, multiply it by a hundred years. When we get to the evening of the 14th day when they were to kill the Passover lamb, that brings you to the point where the moon is ready to go into its full disk, completing fourteen, going toward the fifteen hundred years. That goes to show that Christ came right exactly, because He was born under the Law, of a woman under the Law, and He ministered under the Law to the people of the Law. He even preached to the Jews in the synagogue. Then just as the Passover lamb is slain in the evening of the fourteenth day, and they feast on it in the evening time, going into the fifteenth day, because the fifteenth day starts at sundown, so was the type fulfilled. I hope you can see that fifteen days of the first half of the month, equals fifteen hundred years. Therefore when Christ came, He was not born one year too soon nor one year too late. He came right on time. Why would Paul say in the Galatian epistle, “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law?” The Law was not the perfect light, but a type of a greater light to come. Why is that pictured in the 12th chapter of Revelation as John was shown this great phenomenon in the heavens? Did He not see this woman clothed in the sun, illuminated by the sun? Yes, but the moon was under her feet. So when these people want to preach Law to you, I have to say to them, You have not even seen the sunlight, because the sunlight is Grace. There is no need for us to twist the scriptures like that. With this thought in mind, that after fourteen hundred years, God gave Israel a new beginning of time. As He led them out into the wilderness, God took Moses up into the Sinai mountains: First He gave him ten commandments, but following that is other teachings and things, which are called ordinances, statutes. All these other things are how the people, as a whole, are going to be governed and disciplined, how they are to treat one another, and how they are to exist socially with one another. Why? Because God had said, I have called you to be a chosen people. You are to be a light to the heathen nations. God wanted these people to be a particular sort, so that when the nations of heathen looked on, they would see a people that knew how to live for their God, and how to live with one another. That is why you have ordinances, statutes and judgments. If you do this, you are going to be disciplined. Then there were other things, as the dietary law. Do not tell me that dietary law is going to give you the new birth. That is why I said last week, No one living under that Law period was ever born again. The time had not come for that. Righteousness was only imputed because they were obedient to keep the Law with all its sacrifices, festivities and other things, because, the day they stopped participating in those things, there was a penalty. We can say, Israel did not last many years, living under the Law like that. God told Moses, before he died, when he wrote the last volume of the Torah, which was Deuteronomy, He said, I will show you what this people will do after they have come into the land. He said they will go whoring after other gods, they will forsake my statutes and judgments, and I will scatter them to the ends of the earth. He did that. He also prophesied in Deuteronomy that in the latter days, I will bring them back, and I will reclaim them. Now look what the nations are doing. You cannot do that! Well He is going to do it anyway. He has given everybody in the political and social spectrum a chance to look at what He is going to do. They are all speaking out against what the Bible says God will do. It is a shame, but they are just fulfilling other scriptures when they speak against God. I am not going to dwell a long time on each one of these aspects, but I do want to give you a little bit of a background. God chose this nation of people, of which there were many hundreds of thousands of, as they were coming out of Egypt. His purpose was, that through them there would be a great light before the other nations. The Law He gave them was not the perfect thing yet, but was the next thing to it. As long as they obeyed they were in His favor, and some of the things they were required to do were sometimes looked upon and questioned: Why would He have them to do this? So they would learn obedience. Is it not written in the scriptures, Obedience is better than sacrifice, and to harken than the fat of rams. Some people get caught in a rut, I did this, I did that, what else can I do? He gave them the commandments, the ordinances, the statutes and the judgments, then for forty years they wandered. Then we come to the crossing of the Jordan. We have a modern world of atheistic, evolutionist minded people that do not believe a thing the Bible says. They do not believe the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea as a miraculous thing. They think that is some big myth. I have had this article about a year and half: it was written by an Islamic archaeologist. He explored the Red Sea and took pictures of chariot wheels, the remnants of an Egyptian army that was destroyed in that Red Sea. For the sake of the message I will read it. We have a lot of modern people today, that do not believe in the miracle of the Red Sea, they do not believe Jericho really happened, and a lot of other things they cannot believe. Shame on them. If they live long enough God will make believers of them, but it will be too late to do them any good.

READING

“The discovery of hundreds of chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea has provided astonishing new evidence that the Bible was right all along. Moses really did part the Sea and Pharaoh’s army was drowned when the two walls of the water came crushing back together. The chariots were overturned and shattered to bits as if they had been hit by a massive tidal wave, said Dr. Momar Elnazar of Jordan, the archaeologist whose team made the remarkable find. It is really hard to imagine how those chariots could have gotten there to a depth of more than 1700 feet. (You might think, well I didn’t know the Red Sea was that deep. It is a canyon. That goes to show, at one time before the flood, before all this water got here, there was land showing that does not show now, and no doubt there were canyons. That is the reason it was so deep. Let me continue on here.) The wheels, axles, and other remnants of what appeared to be at least five hundred of the ancient vehicles was found partially buried in the mud with the help of a robot controlled mini sub. Analysis of images gathered by the robot sub camera show that the chariots closely resemble those depicted in the Egyptian archives of the thirteenth century B.C. The miraculous parting of the Red Sea is one of the most thrilling episodes in the Bible that has been retold by Hollywood, most memorably in the Ten Commandments, and in Disney’s recently animated film, The Prince of Egypt. After Pharaoh grudgingly agrees to free the Hebrew slaves from bondage with Moses, he had a change of heart and decided to pursue them. The Bible says he took six hundred chosen chariots and all the chariots of Egypt had captains over every one of them. Exodus 14:7. With the Egyptian army bearing down upon them, the chosen people reached the Red Sea and were trapped by the impassable barrier. Then God gave a command to Moses and a miraculous thing takes place. “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the waters to divide and the sea dry land.”

I think that is enough of the story, for the sake of what we are talking about now. When we look at all that is written in the commandments, the statutes, the ordinances, and judgments, there are many things written strictly that have certain types attached to them. If people do not see what the types were implying, then it is utterly impossible many times to teach them what Grace is all about. We know this, that after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, they came to the crossing of the Jordan River, and it too stood on edge until they got to the other side. Then when they encompassed the land, you read in the book of Joshua, how God instructed Joshua to lead the people, how they were to march around that wall. Now Jericho, at that time, was the largest fortified city of all the Canaanites. God could have taken them further up the river to another crossing, and they could have faced another Canaanite village that would not have been half that powerful. But He wanted them to face the most powerful village there was in that period of time. As we stop and think, yes, all of that happened back then, but what kind of type did it set? First, they were told to go around the city one time the first day. I wonder what those guards up on the wall thought. Those people must be crazy, we are not afraid of them. So the first day they went around once, blowing their horns. The second day around, they blew their horns. The third day, the fourth, fifth, the sixth, blew one time. Then on the seventh day, seven times around, and all of that portrayed Israel, because during seven church ages, she would be out of the land, but as the seventh age comes to a close, God will be in the process of bringing them back into the land, that same land, and she will face the world, which now has the strongest military it has ever had. Look at the world crying out today, We can’t allow that little Jewish nation to be there: they are disrupting the economy. I just have to say, Keep in mind, here at the ending of the Laodicean age, we have had a messenger on the scene, that brought to you and me the resounding of all seven messages. That was done in order to get out of this Gentile world, a people that could be restored back to the same apostolic teachings that started out with the Jews. That is why we are not Catholics, we are not Lutherans, we are not Adventists, we are simply born again, Holy Ghost filled, children of God. This Church is going out of here as a supernatural Church. It was born back here that way, but look at the route it has taken. She is going to be restored back exactly like back there. As this seventh age message is encircling the globe, and God is giving the last invitation to the very last Gentile that is predestined to be in this Bride, over here is that little nation of Israel and the enemy with jet planes, tanks, atomic bombs, all of which they could threaten Israel, but one of these days they are going to speak the last threat and that will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Just as those priests in front, made that seventh and last circle around Jericho, all turned and faced that fortified city and gave a big shout, and the walls fell straight out, so will there be a similar miraculous event one day soon. Here, as the seventh Church Age is dwindling to a close, and the seventh church age messenger has come, delivered his message and left the scene, I say to Gentiles, Let us make up our minds: Are we saved by Grace, or are we trying to hang on to a little of the law somewhere? If you are hanging on to any of the law, hanging on to some kind of diet, Don’t eat this, don’t eat that, wash this, wash that, you will still be here doing that when the Bride of Christ has gone to be with the Lord, and Israel will be leaping because victory will be theirs. Jericho came down, and it has never been rebuilt. God put a curse on it. It is pitiful to see Gentile Christendom, doctors of divinity, historians saying, We believe what the Bible says, when you know they went through the Bible like people going through the woods, I like that tree, I like that bush. They build their own landscape, and decorate it to suit their own ideas, but when they come out the other side, they have an altogether different picture. I hope you can understand, that the seven times around Jericho did not mean a thing to the children of Israel, but it was a type pointing ahead, that at the end of seven church ages God will bring them back, right when the Gentile nations are at the strongest militarily might they have ever been. That is why they went to Jericho. They did not choose it, God chose it. They did not choose to come back here when Gentile nations were at their weakest, if they had, they would have come back here about 800 and something, but look now, science, space platforms, all kinds of scientific things floating out there. It is no accident: God planned all of this for Israel to come back, and furthermore He is going to give them that land just exactly like He gave them Jericho. It is going to be a victory for them. Just as it says in the book of Micah the prophet, The nations will see and be confounded. The Bible is right after all. A hundred years ago we did not have television. If what is soon going to happen, had happened a hundred years ago, how would all the nations see it? News traveled slow back then. On the other hand, if something happens tonight, anywhere in the world, you could almost see the entire event.

THE LAW – A TYPE OF WHAT JESUS THE CHRIST WOULD BRING

The Law consists of all the things I have referred to; and as the apostle wrote, it served as a schoolmaster. God promised Israel, As long as you do this, observe my statutes, you keep my judgments, you do this and that, I will greatly bless you, but keep in mind, not one of them were born again by the Spirit under the Law. Righteousness was only imputed to them because of obedience. When we read in Exodus the description of the temple, let us see what it typed. First it was a tent, but let us look inside that tent. There was a partition in there, and a place called the Holy of Holies. When you read the description of that place, you find that it was closed off from the rest by curtains made of fine linen. In that place there was an ark, which was a box made of wood. That speaks of the physical body of Jesus Christ, the flesh part. That box was overlaid with gold, which speaks of the deity of God that was invested in Him. Then those two tables of stone inside the box, speak of the Word of God in Him (Jesus) who became the means of our salvation. My point in bringing this out like this, is to show you that not one of those Jews of that hour were born again. God did not dwell in their hearts, as He does in those who are born of the Spirit. He dwelt in that temple among them. In other words, He dwelt with them, but not in them. He would anoint this one, and that one. He could anoint anyone He had a purpose in anointing, but that anointing was not there as the indwelling Spirit, because He only dwelt in the Tabernacle, in that holy place. Let us see what that pointed to. Later on in the days of King David, we find he wanted to build God a house. Solomon finally built it around about 1000 B.C. It was the most glorious building in all the Middle East. Inside that building was a place called the Holy of Holies, just like the tent. It too had a certain dimension which was partitioned off with fine linen. That fine linen represents a place where God veils Himself. He dwells in the chosen Bride of Christ; which according to the scriptures is arrayed in fine linen clean and white. As we look at all of this you may ask, What is your point? Well my main point is, If we continually look back at that all the time, longing for the ark to come back to the Jewish Temple, then we do not even see what it was a type of. One day Jesus, the man who was the vessel that ark pointed forward to, was invested with the fullness of the Godhead; so that in Him was the very Word of God. He was that God invested man, and He came right on time. When that which had been a shadow of better things to come had run its course, Jesus, who was born under the Law, from a woman that lived under the Law, grew up under the Law, preached within the Law to the people of the Law, but when He hung on the cross, He was the Passover Lamb that did away with the Law, and opened the way for a New Covenant. Under that new covenant, the very Spirit of the Creator comes to dwell in every individual who believes the gospel according to the provisions of the New Covenant; and because the Spirit of the Creator is one with the spirit of His only begotten Son Jesus, those believers can properly confess, I have the Spirit Of Christ, or just as properly, I have the Spirit of God dwelling in me: not to be bragging, but as a confession of belief.

LIVING TEMPLES

Let us look at the Jew of the hour when Jesus lived here. He went to the temple according to the Law. Look at them in their natural human behavior. Every time they got close to that big beautiful temple Herod had reworked, I can see their mouths drop open, Isn’t that a wonderful site? Isn’t it beautiful? What did Jesus say? Tear it down and I will raise it up in three days. What did He mean by that? He was speaking of the temple of His body in which the Word of God now dwells, because what was contained in that building was only a type pointing forward. Since He was speaking of the temple of His body, then He is the chief cornerstone of God’s temple of which you and I are a part of. Did not the apostle Paul write in the Ephesian letter, We are built up into a spiritual house, Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone, and we built upon the foundation, the revelation of the apostles and the prophets, to become a habitation of God in the Spirit. No wonder John saw the Bride of Christ in heaven, married to Jesus, and clothed in fine linen, the same kind of fine linen that enclosed the Holy of Holies. When Paul taught the Hebrews, in the letter he wrote to them, did he not tell them, or show them what the Levitical priesthood could not do, because they constantly had to re-dedicate, re-consecrate themselves, every year? Then he spoke of Jesus Christ, who by one offering of Himself on the cross, (when He was crucified) became the sacrifice that annulled all sacrifices of bulls, goats, turtle doves, and everything else. He pointed out to them, that the blood of those sacrifices could not atone perfectly for sin, but only pushed their sin debt ahead, waiting for the day the blood of Jesus Christ atoned permanently for the sins of the world. (Heb 10:14-18) “For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.” I say this to you, Out of all this Gentile religious world, since God has sent that seventh messenger that went back and picked up every message of every age prior to that, and brought it here and put it all in one message to the bride Church, God is seeking out of all this mixed up Gentile stuff, a people that could truly be apostolic, Holy Ghost filled, living, lively stones built up into a spiritual house, so that we are a habitation of God by the Spirit. As I have said, Under the Law, He did not dwell in them, He dwelt with them. There was three offices He anointed, prophet, priest, and king, but now we are looking to The King of all Kings. At this moment, He is not yet King. He has already fulfilled the prophetic part of His predestinated ministry, He is right now in His priestly office of intercession; and not too long from now He will be on earth as THE REIGNING KING. Of course there are many events yet to take place before He comes back to earth as King of kings, but none of them will be stretched out for years, except the seventieth week of Daniel, a time in which the Bride Church will be in glory at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Rev 19:9 “And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” As the song goes, “I can hardly wait to see Him.” When Jesus arose from the dead, He was not really preaching, He mainly vindicated His resurrection by showing the scriptures that proved to them how it was all written, that He must be crucified, buried, rise again the third day, and after that, He gave them a commission, what to do. He basically told them, Do not do anything until you have been endued with power from on high. In simple terms, That was God in Him, the same that used to dwell in the ark in the Holy of Holies part of the temple, that was doing the speaking. This was God (the Creator)coming down in the midst of those who were ordained to be living stones of the household of God, as we see mentioned by Paul in Eph. 2:19-22. That second covenant that Jeremiah spoke of, that in that day it will no longer be the Law written on two little things over the doorpost, but God said, I will write them in your mind and plant them in your heart, so you do not have to go out the door, turn around, and read the ten commandments. When you have the Holy Ghost in you, it changes your nature. Under the Law, there was nothing that changed your nature: you were considered righteous as it was imputed, because you obeyed the Law. When Jesus came along, He said, I did not come to destroy the Law. Oh Bro. Jackson; if He didn’t come to destroy the Law, then why do we not keep the Sabbath? Notice what He meant, He came to fulfill it. When He came to fulfill it, every aspect of that total Law, the ordinances which say, Do this, don’t do this, and the observances of certain things were only types of what would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. In Christ, none of those things are needed for righteousness. Our righteousness was paid for at Calvary, when Jesus offered the perfect sacrifice for sin, something the Law could never produce. Notice Matthew 5, starting with verse 17, and take a good look at what it says, and then, take a good look at America today. We used to respect the ten commandments, because they gave us direction, helping us know what God was leading us toward. Therefore there is a right way to look at what Jesus said concerning the Law. We do not obtain righteousness by keeping the Law set forth in the Ten Commandments, but when we had them hanging in our school rooms, in our court houses, as well as many other places, at least it allowed young people of America to grow up seeing the moral law of God set forth among them. Though keeping the Law could not make one righteous, it could, and did warn and instruct you, If you do this, or do that, you will have to pay a price. On the other hand, when you do away with it, then the unregenerate person has nothing to remind him that there is a God he must answer to. That is why they now teach our young people, Indulge in sexual behavior all you want to: they see no consequences, but the Law said, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Right? There is quite a difference. They took the moral law contained in the Commandments away from the people, but what did Jesus say about keeping the Law? Under the Law, one might say, I have never killed anyone, I have never committed adultery, but Jesus said you can actually do those things in the sight of God without committing the literal act. (Mat. 5:28) “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Because you did not pick up a club and beat his brains out, when your next door neighbor did you a little wrong, you think you are guiltless, yet you have such anger toward him you say, Oh I could just bash his brains out, what did Jesus say about that? To have hate in his heart toward that man, is the same as if he had actually committed murder already. Under the Law, as long as you do not bash his brains out, you are not guilty of murder. Do you see the difference between Law and grace? The Law did not make the worshipers perfect, but it kept them from becoming ungodly in deeds, like America has become. I am old enough to know: I remember when I went to a one room schoolhouse and little twelve year old girls would carry a rag doll. Today, our philosophers have to teach them all about sex instead of allowing them to act their age. You would never have done that under the Law. Look what we have in America today: We have a society out of hell. Yes, there is a right way to look at the commandments, so I hope you understand me now. Jesus was the end of the Law as far as righteousness is concerned, but the Law is still in effect for the sinner person, because it tells him his nature is not right, because his heart is not right. A person that has been born again does not have to look upon the wall to the Commandments, because the revelation is taken off the pages of God’s written word and engraved in your heart. Your neighbor can smite you, but you say, I am sorry you feel that way, and you go right on without hating him. How many know what I am talking about? It is a pitiful shame that in America and around the world today, so-called Christian church bodies are so mixed up over what the Bible says. To me, it is just as plain as the nose on your face; at least most of what they argue over is.

CONVERSION OF SAUL

When Paul said in the Galatian epistle, I am a Hebrew of the Hebrews, I am of the tribe of Benjamin, as touching the Law, blameless, that was the truth, but look concerning Jesus and His followers, how Paul (who was still called Saul) persecuted the Church, simply because he did not have the revelation of what all of that pointed to. When God struck him down on the road to Damascus and smote him blind, what was he in the process of doing? He was going to get that bunch of holy rollers and bring them back to Jerusalem to be put to death. Little did he know, riding along there, that God would literally knocked him down, in order to get his attention. He heard that voice say, Saul, Saul, is it hard for thee to kick against the pricks? He replied, Who art thou Lord? A voice came back, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom that persecutest. By the time he got through talking with him, he went on into the city as instructed, and in the meanwhile the Holy Ghost had told Ananias, Go out into the street called Straight, enter into a certain man’s house, for behold, Saul of Tarsus is there. He is praying. You know Paul’s testimony after that event. He said, I knew a man above fourteen years ago, whether in the flesh or out of the flesh, I can’t tell, but I was caught up into the third heaven. Then he tells how he went off into Arabia. He was a Jew. He knew the Law. He knew how to observe it in all its rituals and statutes. But this was something he had to get thrashed out in his mind. When he came out of Arabia, he was a changed man. He was no longer teaching the Sabbath. Oh but Bro. Jackson, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath to preach. Sure he did, If he was going to preach to Jews, where else could he go to find them gathered together? Let me use a comparison. If you wanted to preach to Moslems, what day would you go to their meeting place? You would go on Friday. That is their Sabbath day. We must begin to look at these things in the right way. I can see Saul, whose name was changed to Paul, how in the integrity of his heart he was doing what he thought was right. He was that Jew God called to be a light unto the Gentiles, and a means of salvation to the ends of the earth. I believe what he wrote in this Bible. I will defend him with my last breath. He spoke where the Law did not. His ministry started the Galatian church. Who were the Galatians? They were Gaul-asians, out of that barbaric country of Europe. They had migrated over here in eastern Europe, a little settlement. He went among them, knowing they needed salvation. They believed on the Lord Jesus Christ through his teaching. They received the Holy Ghost, as it plainly says. However in the months of his absence, here came one of those half Law and half Grace, circumcision fellows from Jerusalem and perverted their thinking. When Paul heard about it he wrote them a letter: He started his letter, You did run well, who did hinder you? Then he began to teach them what grace was all about. Look right here! Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness, meaning the new birth puts you under grace. There is no such thing as He is going to impute righteousness to you any more because you keep the Sabbath. You are either going to be in Christ or out of Christ. That ark of the covenant was in the holy place, and that has got to be right in here (inside believers). What is written on those two tables of stone has to become a revelation to you. What was on it in the natural, has got to be written right in here by a revelation of the Spirit of God. It becomes a revelation in our heart. The Holy Ghost is in there to quicken it, make it alive to us. That is why we are walking around here, lively stones in God’s building. For two thousand years, that bunch of Law Jews, has been watching us Gentiles, thinking we are crazy. I am not crazy. I am thankful that Jesus did for me what I myself could not do. I was as stubborn as an ox, and never wanted to be too religious. Don’t come at me with a lot of that stuff, I thought. I always believed the Bible was the word of God, and that every home ought to have it, but I did not want to get too close to it. As long as we look at it like that, not knowing what it is all about, it is just a book. One of these days God is going to get hold of you though, and He has a way of working you over. With me, He let me be knocked down out here on this highway and let it appear that I would never be able to open and close this eye except with my fingers. I heard a preacher say one time, that he had a dream in which the Lord was literally beating him with a fencepost. When he came to himself, he was crying. When he looked back upon the dream, he could see why God allowed that, and realized it was because he was bullheaded and stubborn. God knows exactly how to deal with each one of us in His time. You might think, Bro. Jackson, you know God does not do those kinds of things. Well, what happened to Saul? One minute he is on a horse heading for Damascus, the next minute he is laying in the road and cannot see a thing. Who did that? How many know what I am talking about? Saul knew. God knows exactly how to work on each of us. When Saul (Paul) came out of Arabia back among society, he wrote that epistle to the Galatians. That lets you know what that old Jew that used to kill that bunch of holy rollers, is now believing, because as writes this Epistle he is just like them, telling them how to live a better life in this new belief. This leads me to say, The tabernacle in the wilderness was a type, what was offered on the altar was a type, and everything about it was a type. Everything about those offerings pointed to a better sacrifice; and then a New Covenant. When I read what Paul was preaching, in the writings to the Hebrews, he said he would have them to know that the worshipers under the Law, the comers thereunto were not made perfect by the Law. Then certain skeptics will come back at you and say, Why does it say in Leviticus, concerning the Sabbath being forever? Is that not forever and ever, throughout endless ages? No. It does not mean that at all. If you believe it means that, then what are you going to do with the 110th Psalm, the 4th verse, where the prophecy is about the priesthood of Christ, and says, “The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek?” That is my question to you, How will you look at such a verse? Jesus is our High Priest: He is in heaven right now and He has been there for almost two thousand years, but He will soon leave that office and be on earth as King of Kings. Is that two thousand years going to be forever and ever? No. One of these days, and very soon, that anointing is going to come on Him for another phase of what He is ordained to be: He is going to break that last seal, Hallelujah! Then something is going to flow down here to a bunch of ridge runners, clod hoppers, and whatever they have been called, that the world looks upon as nothing, but God does not. They are going to get a revelation inside their soul. Then they are going to begin to look up, because that Holy Ghost inside of them is absolutely going to begin to enlighten and motivate them for what they are ordained to finish among the bride Church. I would have to say, That Church is not going to stay here very long after that.

THE CHURCH TAKES FLIGHT

The Church is soon going to rise from this earth. Why? Because she is robed in fine linen. She has the Shekinah glory dwelling inside, that which was in the ark of the covenant dwelling inside her. I could go on and on like this, but my point is, the Law was a shadow of better things to come. I am going to ask you to turn to the 2nd chapter of Colossians, because the Colossian Church was a Church in its model type, much like the Ephesian Church. What did Paul say to the Colossian church, a model church? He said these words which we will read, starting in the 20th verse and on through the 2nd chapter. “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ (and I thank God, I believe we are.) from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances. (Don’t do this, do this, wash this, eat this.) Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using; (This is Paul talking, a man that used to live like that.) after the commandments and doctrines of men? (God knows we have that same kind today, that like to twist certain verses around so they can use the Bible like a whip, Come here and I will show you how to be a Christian. They become doctrines of men. They like to rule you with a rod of iron, keep you scared half to death, so Paul said,) Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, (all in your mind) and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.” You can read the rest of it. I thank God for His Grace. To me, Grace is a better covenant. It did for us what we heathen Gentiles could not have done ourselves.

DEALING WITH FALSE TEACHERS

In this hour we are living in, we Gentiles know there is not too much more time we will be dealt with, because God will turn to the Jews. Therefore our purpose is to show that this era of Grace that we live in, this covenant of Grace is far superior to the Old Covenant that was given to the Jewish nation, which is referred to as the Law. When we look into the New Testament, the apostle Paul was constantly harassed with some of the false prophets and teachers coming down the road, teaching Christians that had just been converted out of Judaism into the Christian faith. They were either harping on meats, or on Sabbath keeping, or on a holy day, or circumcision, and on and on, they were constantly bombarding the Christians with things negative to the New Covenant. Let us turn to the book of Leviticus. The chart we have is just a means of illustration, like, from this point on, and this is where the Grace Age starts, after the day of Pentecost. From this time, up to the crucifixion of Christ there at Calvary, the Law, the commandments, the statutes, the ordinances, everything that society had to observe, were still in effect. Nobody in this former era was born again. Nobody had the Holy Ghost, because the Spirit of God, the Shekinah glory, dwelt in the Tabernacle in the Holy place, and later in the temple at Jerusalem, in the Holy of Holies. All of that was a type of what was to come later, which was a perfect sacrifice for sin. It is very strange, that people cannot see types and understand why God put them in there. Some things were types, other things were shadows. A shadow is a profile of an object that is illuminated in the light. Anyone would have to be blind, to look at the profile of a shadow of something in front of them, and upon careful examination not be able to determine what it was from. We are going to cover several scriptures as we continue on, and I want to go at it in a fast way. This is the day when people want to look backward to the Law, saying, But Bro. Jackson, what about this? It says, forever, here, what about that? All I can say is, A lot of people do not even know how to read the Bible, so they just read words without even understanding what it is related to. Let us go to Leviticus 23, now, and we will start with the 9th verse. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, (reaping the harvest would be in the spring of the year) then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: (Which means, if I can illustrate it to your understanding , this actually occurred along in the months of March and April, in the holy land area. The grain is in the process of getting ripe, but it is not ripe yet, so you take a cycle and cut down a good size swath of standing grain. Then you take little straws of the same and wrap them around the bundle and tie it. In ancient times, that is the way they made a bundle, and they called it a sheaf. In the natural understanding, it is just a bundle of grain. The next step is to take it to the priest at the temple. There is a place in the general court area where this is all stacked. The court area covers thirty one acres, so it is a pretty big area. We are going to find out what that sheaf was for. To the Jews, it was just a natural thing God required of them, but we have got to see what it is a type of.) And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: (It tells you when he will do this.) on the morrow (the morrow is the next day) after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. ( Keep in mind, this is not just any Sabbath. This is that Sabbath that falls in the Passover season.) And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord.” Alright let us move on down to the 14th verse. “And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever (Right here, is where so many get hung up on the word forever, and say, Bro. Jackson, it says forever. Yes it does, but we are going to find out, when this is all said and done, that forever does not mean throughout eternity, but only for that specific period of time. Well prove it to me, Bro. Jackson, they will say. That is why I read the 110th Psalm, verse 4, to you, because it is a prophecy pointing ahead concerning Christ Jesus, but we everyone know He will not be in the priesthood office throughout eternity. It is simply pointing to Jesus, who is now in that office, but how can He be in that office “forever,” because when Paul wrote his epistle to the Hebrews, he quoted that very verse and speaks of how Jesus is a much better priest than the Levite priest under the law, and that as He has been taken up into heaven He has received a priesthood forever after the order, or the type of Melchizedek. You and I know, He is not going to be a priest for all eternity. He is only a priest for a period of two thousand years, so forever cannot be endless, endless, endless without canceling out a lot of other scriptures. You do not have to have a college education to have a spiritual revelation; without which people go wild; and a great number of them are highly educated. I liken it to a man trying to unwind a bunch of barb wire. After a while it gets around his feet and he is down on his hands and knees, he is trying to get out, but it has too great a hold on him. The more he tries to unwrap himself and get out of it, the tighter it gets inside. Yes, it shall be a statute for ever…) throughout your generations in all your dwellings. And ye shall count unto you from the morrow (which is the next day) after the Sabbath, (not just any Sabbath, it is the Sabbath that falls within the Passover season) from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be complete.” Well seven times seven is forty nine, but notice now, “Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord. Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals; they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord.” Now maybe we can look at these types and shadows. Let us see if it points us to something.

FESTIVITIES OF PASSOVER SEASON

One thing we need to take note of, is the fact that it speaks of the next day after the Sabbath that falls in the Passover season, for we know that in the time of Christ, when He was crucified, the week of days then picks up the Greek names, but before the Babylonian captivity, the Jews never named the days of the week. They went by a lunar month, the first day of the month, the second day of the month, and every seventh day was a Sabbath. After the Babylonian captivity though, they began to give the Greek names, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, to the days of the week. Jesus the Christ was crucified on Friday, but we need to keep in mind, He ate the Passover meal with His disciples on the evening of the 14th day, going into the 15th day, because as we said, The fifteenth day starts at sundown on what we know as Thursday. After He ate with them, He was all night long in turmoil, because that is when He went to the garden to pray, in much agony. As He came out of the garden, the guards arrested Him. They took Him before the high priest. By nine o’clock the next morning, which was Friday morning, He was hanging on the cross. In the middle of the evening He died. They took His body down in haste because at sundown the Sabbath begins, so in haste they buried Him in a borrowed tomb. He remained dead all the rest of that evening, in the night, then all day Saturday into the night. But keep in mind also, there were piles of grain in the temple court waiting to be waved by the priest the next morning after the Sabbath of the Passover. I can see the priests in the temple getting up early. He probably thought, I had better get up and get at it, not even realizing, that was only a type of Christ the firstfruits from among the dead, and He is the firstborn among many brethren. Early in the morning, toward the rising of the sun, here came two sisters with embalming materials. They wanted to get the body and wrap Him. But when they came, they were met by an angel of the Lord who said, Why seek ye the living among the dead? Jesus did not rise on the Jewish Sabbath: He rose on the first day of the Greek week, which is the next day after the Sabbath. What is this a type of? He is the beginning of a new creation that points to complete redemption. That is why that type is what the early Christians used in proving, that Christ being dead to the Law, He constituted a new beginning. It is from that, the apostle Paul, Barnabas, and Iraneas, and those early Christians in that first century of time, as they began to gather, it was on Sunday. They did not gather on the Jewish Sabbath. They gathered on the first day of the week. Yes it is true, while Jesus was on earth, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, because that is where and when He could find Jews gathered together. But the early Christians used Sunday, the first day of the week for gathering together for worship, because it points to the resurrection of a new life, and to a new beginning. Regardless of where you may live over this earth, if you cannot see the types and shadows this points to, you have to be totally blind spiritually. From that day, they count on down and come to the fiftieth day. That is the day the disciples had gone into the upper room to fulfill exactly what Jesus told them to do. He never told them to go into the city and wait ten days. From His resurrection, He was seen among the brethren over a space of forty days, proving His resurrection. Then He took them out over the Mt. of Olives and ascended into heaven. So they go back into Jerusalem to wait, not knowing whether it is one day or one hundred, they just go. The fiftieth day brings them to the next feast. That morning of the fiftieth day is called the feast of Pentecost. I can see in the homes of the Jews scattered throughout Jerusalem, the women kneading this bread. It has leaven in it, which is a type of sin. They fixed two leavened loaves. Each family is to bring these loaves to the priest on that morning. It is the next morning after that forty ninth day, the Sabbath in that period. This is referred to as the feast of Pentecost. When the day of Pentecost, which was the feast day down on the ground level, has come into full swing, up in the upper room, one hundred and twenty disciples, which are Jews, and Jews that know the Law verbatim, but they are not out in the streets, they have no leaven loaves of bread. Actually they are what that bread types, because they are redeemed saints of God still living in a sinful body of human flesh. While those priests were taking leaven loaves, the one hundred and twenty disciples were waiting for the promise, according to the words of Jesus. I can just see the rest strutting through the allies and the streets, going toward the temple. Obedience, that is all that is required. They did not even see what it was pointing to. That is like a lot of supposed-to-be Christians today, that do not see anything. They are just following a routine. Well in Jerusalem that day, here they go, thousands of them, carrying their leavened loaves to the priest. There were some from Rome, from Antioch, from Egypt, and from every nation under the sun, devout Jews, all doing exactly what the Law required. In that upper room, there were one hundred and twenty disciples which were the representation of leaven loaves of bread. Do all of you realize that? Redemption is for your spirit. The Holy Ghost in you is to enable you to control and bring this flesh under subjection. Mortify therefore your members, reckon them dead to sin. Here goes thousands of Jews toward the temple. Imagine all the bread that is to be burned, but it was only a type. In the upper room, at that same time, one hundred and twenty disciples, human beings just like you and me, waited, and all of a sudden there was a strange sound as of a rushing mighty wind. It filled the whole house. It began to come inside those vessels of clay. What is this? This is the beginning of God putting the nucleus of His temple together. That Shekinah glory that used to dwell in the Holy of Holies is now coming into those disciples, fulfilling all those types and shadows. They were some of the lively stones Peter wrote about. The fire of this Spirit is what is accepting these believers. This is exactly why John the Baptist, when they came asking him, Who are you? said to them, Tell those Jews, There is one coming after me whose shoe latches I am not worthy to loose: when He comes, He will indeed baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Just try to imagine, Out in the street, here goes the type, thousands of Jews carrying leavened loaves of bread, but they do not see what it points to. They just think because I get my bread burned, I am accepted. Then, here in the upper room, is the reality of what that ritual pointed to. Here, was the real thing. The Holy Ghost came down and literally consumed those believers. They all begin to speak in another dialect. This experience came upon all of them, so it left no room for comparison of experiences. They were all there together, each a part of one another. They sat there waiting, and finally they got up reeling and staggering under the impact. Why? This is that new wine that God spoke about in Joel’s prophecy, Behold you drinkers of wine, and you drunkards, the new wine is cut off from your mouth. Down those steps they came, reeling and staggering. Some know-it-all’s say, You have got to get drunk if you get the Holy Ghost. We have become a crazy people, dwelling on specific manifestations instead of what God has done and is doing. God has a barrel full of things He can give people, but it is when we get so narrow minded, we have to get on specifics, that is where we get off course. Finally the entire one hundred and twenty Galilean Jews came staggering out into the street. In natural appearance they looked just like the rest of those Jews passing by on their way to the temple, but within, the fires of the Holy Ghost were burning: That made them act different than the others. Imagine, the street was full of devout Jews from every nation, heading for the temple to fulfill the type of what these were already experiencing. In other words, The real thing was taking place right before their very eyes. All of a sudden, those devout Jews from different other nations began to ask, What is the meaning of this? We hear the wonderful works of God spoken to us in our own language. One would say, I am from Rome, I know Latin. One by one they kept conversing like that, but standing by, was that local bunch of Jews that overheard the questions and began to make their sarcastic remarks, Oh they are just drunk on new wine. When Peter heard that remark, that old fisherman, the man that had taken a sword and cut off a man’s ear jumped right into the midst of them and began to preach. He was just as accurate with God’s word as he was with that sword.

PETER’S REPLY TO CRITICS

When those critics began to say the things they did about the hundred and twenty disciples of Jesus speaking in tongues, that pushed Peter into a position he was not necessarily seeking, but the Holy Ghost rose up in him and he began to say, Hear ye this ye men of Judaea, and you that dwell in Jerusalem, These are not drunken as you suppose, seeing it is only nine o’clock in the morning, the third hour of the day. “But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.”Now before going on, let us look at these types we have been speaking of. It plainly tells you here, from the eating of the Passover supper on the evening of the fourteenth day, going into the beginning of the fifteenth day, that was a holy convocation, a feast day, they were to eat unleavened bread. For seven consecutive days they were to eat unleavened bread. Then they came back to the seventh day, which is another holy convocation, it is to repeat that thing again. What did all this type? Here is Jesus Christ, in the natural they have eaten the Passover lamb and they have eaten unleavened bread. But that fifteenth day they are to eat leavened bread, the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and so forth. What is that a type of? All of that is pertaining to the natural Passover. The type points to this, that Jesus Christ was crucified, fulfilling the Law, and we Gentiles were to feast for seven consecutive Gentile ages, eating unleavened bread of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But have we been privileged to eat unleavened bread? No, By the time the Church comes through the first age, the devil was already mixing leaven with the gospel, perverting the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul constantly fought it, some wanting to mix Grace with Law. We still have them today, that do not know what Grace is. They constantly look backward saying, But it said this, or it said that, all because they missed the types. If you cannot see the types and understand what the types are pointing to, that the Law was only a shadow of something better, you are left in confusion. It was symbolized in the moon. I hope people do not want to live under the moon all the time, in the natural. If you do, your crops will not grow. Think about that. No sooner was the first age birthed, and started out with the unleavend revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, with every doctrine and experience in continuity, blending the believers into a unity as the new building, the Church of the living God, the temple of the living God, and then what happened? Satan was able to take a whack at it. This Church had its beginning, founded on the pure revelation of Jesus Christ, the chief corner stone, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, which is actually the eighth day. This points to a new beginning. The Church was born in succession on the fiftieth day, which again is the first day of the week, which is the product of another new beginning. The people that were under the Law were the Jews. Jesus came fulfilling every bit of it, the types, shadows, and all. That is why Paul, Barnabas and Iraneas that had seen the light, never made a law that Christians had to worship on the first day of the week. I have it in the writings of the anti-Nicene fathers. They chose it because of the revelation it pointed to. It was the Catholic Church that made it a law, and they did not do it until many centuries later. Some people think only they know history. With this in mind, I want to re-emphasize the fact that Jesus rose on the eighth day, the Church was born on the eighth day, in the order of that season. The Church was the product of redemption, which now is not out of obedience to the Law, but it is the fulfillment of what the Law pointed to, and it is the beginning of God’s new covenant. ( Jeremiah 31:31-34) A new covenant will I make with the house of Israel, and Judah. “After those days, saith the LORD, (meaning after these days of Law have come to fulfillment) I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” That points to a divine revelation, knowing what all this is pointing to. When Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, speaking to the Jews, not Gentiles, I did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it, that is exactly what He was doing. When you fulfill something, you fulfill its objective. There is no more need for it. What was that objective? The Law given back here, until we come to here, (chart) was to teach mankind, specifically Jews, how to live and conduct themselves in society. They were a selected, or chosen people to be a light to others, Therefore God, through their obedience in observing, or fulfilling all the requirements of the Law, obtained what He had purposed for them: They would be examples of what God required of His people. Keeping the Law did not in any way make them sinless: it was designed to discipline them and mold them into a society of people whose sinful human nature was subdued and kept under subjection. It cultivates obedience, respect and honor to God. That is what all the Law and the statutes did, but it did not make the Jew a Holy Ghost filled person. The Holy Spirit, which is God the Creator, still dwelt in the Holy of holies in the temple. That is why I said earlier, He did not dwell in the people, He dwelt among them. That is what we have to see in order to look at the Law in a proper way. God kept the Law in effect until all it pointed to was fulfilled. On the day of Pentecost when one hundred and twenty Jews, people that knew what the Law was and knew what obedience to it was, all received the promise of the Father that Jesus spoke about, which was the Spirit of the New Covenant Jeremiah prophesied about. After that experience, they no more looked to the Law for righteousness. The apostle Paul, when he wrote his letter to the Hebrews, spoke of the Law as being like a school master, actually to show man what sin is, and what that fallen nature working through this disobedient flesh can cause us to do unless it is kept under control. Let us go to the gospel of Matthew. The Law age had come to fruition. The Law age and all that was typed in it had to come its hour of culmination when Jesus was preaching to the Jews here. He came among this very religious people, and over and over He repeated a certain statement, calling them hypocrites, a generation of vipers, children of the devil and so forth, saying, You like to sit in Moses’ seat, you know the Torah, you can quote it forward and backward, but you neglect the very things the Law was designed to teach you. Many times, after He would tell them what the Torah says, He would then take them to the prophets and they would hang their heads. Therefore when we come to Matthew 5:17, let us see what He really did say and what He meant. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, (taking it away from the human race) or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. (When you fulfil something, you fulfill what it was pointing to.) For verily I say unto you, Til heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The Law could not make them righteous, but Grace came to do for us what it could not do, and to those that accept it, Our righteousness does exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees and the scribes who are still going by a letter of it. Let us look at the commandments, in which there is no salvation or imputed righteousness by keeping them whatsoever. It means God is not going to impute righteousness to anyone from now on, just because they keep the commandments. No one will be accepted in this Grace Age, and given eternal life based on that: Salvation now comes because we have faith in what Jesus Christ accomplished at Calvary and commit the keeping of our soul in the ONE that designed this wonderful plan of salvation. Well then, where does this Law still fit in? It fits in for the natural man that we all were, before grace was extended. Look what happened when they took the ten commandments out of our schools, and out of our court rooms. Man, born a sinner by nature, now has nothing that allows him access to the knowledge of what God wants. That is why it is as nothing, for young kids to go to school with a gun and shoot the teacher, the students or anyone else, because there is nothing to remind them that they are still sinners and need to obey that natural law of God. It points sinful man with his fallen nature to what God requires. In that law, every man should honor a Sabbath, but if you do not see what Grace is, in the New Testament, which only comes through the baptism of the Holy Ghost to those who believe, and puts them in the body of Christ, making them part of His spiritual temple, you can observe all those rituals until you turn gray headed; and it is not going to give you eternal life, because you fail to see what the types pointed to. I do not want to live under the moon age: I want the sun to enlighten my soul: I want to see the scriptures the way God sees them. Look at America today, a nation that no longer wants a law to govern them. Oh no, I want to do as I please, when I please, where I please, how I please, and don’t mention God to me: That is the overall outlook of unregenerate mankind in this hour of time. We still need the ten commandments for that kind of people, do we not? It will never give them eternal life, but at least it used to help discipline them. It shows how to live respectfully in a society.

PAUL WRITES TO JEWS IN DISPERSION

Go with me to the book of Hebrews. Remember, the writings of Paul to the Hebrews, were not to Gentiles. The word “Hebrew” means foreigner. Wherever Jews were scattered in dispersion, they were look upon as foreigners. The Hebrew word means foreigners in that respect. As Paul is writings to the Jews in dispersion, in the 8th chapter, starting with verse 7, notice what he wrote. Was Paul not a Pharisee of the Pharisees? Was he not of the Sanhedrin Court, and knew the Law in and out? As touching the Law, he wrote, I was blameless. He was writing to Jews in dispersion; and the reason he explains it this way is because he knows they know the Law. “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, be saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. (Just look what they had come to; They kept what they wanted to and away with the rest.) For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: (that means you have a revelation of what they mean, how to allow the Holy Ghost to take them and spiritually apply them into your makeup) and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” Concerning the Jewish people I say this, For almost two thousand years, it has been hard for the Jewish people to respect Gentiles, who were to them as heathen dogs, worshiping all kinds of idols, and then, all of a sudden become a people of God. They cannot understand why God took out of our ranks a little nucleus of devil worshipers, cleansed them and filled them with the Holy Ghost, and made the beginning of a new Church. “And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that He saith, A new covenant, He hath made the first old. (He made the first old.) Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” It is old, but the Jews do not yet know it. Do not go to extremes with your thinking, because Paul plainly tells us in Romans 11, that blindness in part has happened to them, so that God could give us those benefits for a certain period. He still deals with them on the merits of the Law. Not because it is still applicable, but as they fulfill it to the best of their knowledge, then God imputes life. Coming on down to the 9th chapter. We pick up more of what Paul wrote. There is no man out here trying to teach Adventism to Gentiles, that can possibly take what Paul says and make him a man standing straddle of the fence, preaching parts of the Law one day and parts of Grace the next day. That just simply does not go together that way. Hebrews 9:6, says, “Now when these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God. (He is pointing them back to the Levitical priesthood.) But into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people: The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience; Which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation.” Keep in mind, this was still in the beginning of this first age, and Paul knew what that word meant, so he was setting things in order. Look at it in the marginal reference. (Reformation:) setting things in order. You pull out of the old all the types, you get the meaning, then you look ahead and you see through Jesus Christ, that He fulfilled every bit of this for righteousness. With the Jew, he comes in from his work with dirt on his hands and he is so hygiene minded, (I am not belittling him.) The first thing he has to do is wash his hands, because he was required under the Law, to do that before he was to sit down and touch his food, and they were constantly reminded to wash the hands thoroughly. It speaks of a way of cleansing. On the other hand, you and I live in a sinful world; our eyes every day, have to look upon a lot of filth. How can you wash your hands to get rid of all that? You cannot. If we have the Holy Ghost in us, then we say, Lord, help me that this inner man is not contaminated with this filthy, stinking stuff that I see the human race about me adorning themselves with. This is a day when our youth are taught, almost from infancy on, to defile the image of the person they are, because the dirty devil, through our modern society, has defiled the mind and nothing is clean or sacred. Yet those same people will take a shower every night and it only washes off dirt from their day’s activities, but come out still looking as dirty and filthy, sin wise, as before they went in there. I hope you understand that all the washing of pots and pans, and hands, and sitting down to eat, was only a type. I can just see some old farmer coming out of the field, especially when he has been working on a combine, and his hands are stained with grease. It was hard for him to get all that stuff washed off. Nevertheless if he is a child of God, inside, he can sit down at the table and pick up that slice of bread and eat that food, knowing in his heart that all is well. He thanks God for it, because inside he has not let anything defile that which God has made pure and clean through the blood Jesus shed at Calvary. I hope you understand what I am talking about, because all of this sets grace apart from the Law. Go to Hebrews 10:1. Paul sums it up like this; “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, (I like that: You just plain do not argue with the apostle Paul, saying, But Paul, what about this? He would say, Just be quite and listen! Did he not say, If any other man, even an angel from heaven come preaching any other gospel than this, let him be accursed. Those who were doing that were narrow minded, could not really explain anything, and no one could explain anything to them. They did not have the Holy Ghost, and did not even know what the Holy Ghost is. They go at everything from the natural concept.) and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. (Born again, Holy Ghost filled. It did not back then and never will.) For then would they not have ceased to be offered? (But every year they had to go back and repeat the same process.) because that the worshipers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.” It pushed their sins ahead for one more year. Each year they had to go through the same process, pushing the sin debt ahead. That is why on that one day, Christ died for the sins of the whole world, past, present, and future. In Galatians 4, starting with the 4th verse, we see another scripture written by Paul to a bunch of Gentile believers, who at one time were barbarian, blood thirsty people, but now are partakers of the New Covenant God promised the Jews. “But when the fulness of the time was come, (Here it was, after 1490 years. When you measure that by each day of the month coming up to the fifteenth day, it was on the evening of the fourteenth day, they slew the lamb for feast, they ate unleavened bread for seven consecutive days: which all pointed to the Grace Age, eating the unleavened gospel, the revelation of Jesus Christ. What we particularly want to notice here, is the fulness of time, the time when God knew the Law Age was full, because it had served its purpose, and He is the one that determined the month of the calendar, and determined the dimension of this Law. Nothing took place ahead of time. Christ was born of woman at exactly the right time.) God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. (We now possess it. I am glad I don’t have to go to the temple and go through a ritual, because that same Holy Spirit, the Shekinah glory that used to dwell in there over the ark of the covenant, over the mercy seat, between the cherubims’ wings, now abides in here, in my heart.) Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, (He is pointing to those Galatians. How is it then, back when you knew not God,) ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods. (You worshiped everything.) But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, (Notice how he is questioning them: how come they listen to this two bit preacher coming down the road, that has told them, You have to observe this, and observe that, watch what follows…) But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all.” You can read the rest of Galatians and you will see the apostle Paul had done his best to get this Galatian church straightened up out of all the entanglements in their mind. When you get out of line just a little, if somehow you do not get straightened out, you will soon be way out of line. Let us go to Colossians 2:9. “For in Him (Jesus) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power: In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, (When you go back to the 17th chapter of Genesis, God looked down upon Abraham and gave him a son through Hagar, Ishmael. God told Abraham, I am going to make a covenant with you, let every male be circumcised, this will be a token. It was a natural thing in the flesh. This could only happen to the male gender. That natural token which was in the flesh was pointing way ahead to another circumcision that no longer affects the flesh, but affects the heart. Let us let Paul do the talking on this.) in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” The poor Jew does not understand how that dirty bunch of Gentile dogs could now be considered by God as clean. Look at them. We have some Gentiles today that are so twisted up in their minds they say, Don’t that Jackson know that when you worship on the first day of the week, you are wearing the mark of the beast and going to hell? You poor, ignorant Gentile that would think like that, you do not even know the devil has got you tied up so tight you cannot even take a deep breath: you do not even know what God’s word is really making so very clear. Just listen, “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, (Blotting out? But I thought we were still supposed to observe them.) which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. (Now I am going to read this part slowly.) Let no man (no man, not even the Pope) therefore judge you in meat, (Do you eat pork? Well once in awhile I eat bacon. Oh, don’t you know that is going to send you to hell? No. There is nothing like that in my Bible. To that kind I say, Why don’t you go peddle your trash somewhere else: I am living under the New Covenant. Here you will say, Oh I can’t be saved if I eat pork, yet out here in the world there are people starving to death. I know that God made all things to be eaten, if it can be eaten with thanksgiving and prayer like the Bible says.) or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, (There are certain days we will observe, but not to make us righteous, just out of respect.) or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” I thank God for the revelation of truth and the indwelling of His Spirit that He has put in our hearts. He has written a revelation and understanding in us, that is the most beautiful picture of what He has brought us from, and has saved us unto. We are looking forward to that day when He is coming to get a body of people that have been made pure and clean and whole, and are complete, because He is in them. “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, (This goes to show how the devil will take some carnal minded men and try to dominate your life and control you.) Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using; after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh.” It goes ahead and speaks of what we really are. There are many more things that could be said along this line, but I think this is enough to give us an overall picture. I have heard people say, Well if you do not have something that you are compelled to do and observe, it is too easy to forget this. Not if the Holy Ghost is inside, because if He is inside, He has said He would write something in our hearts and plant them in our minds. It means when you wake up in the morning and become conscious that this is Tuesday, or Wednesday, the sun is shining, I have certain things to do today, but you automatically know, this day, I want to do the things that please God. You naturally realize there are certain things that you might come in contact with as you go down the pathway of life, but God just wants you to turn away from them. It is just that simple.

WATCHING IT GROW

I want to add a little more to what has already been brought. I am going to take a very familiar text, but I am sure you will understand why. Some people might say, I have heard that so much I am getting tired of it. Well you better get used to it, because from here on out that is all you are going to hear. Turn with me to Ephesians 4. If you do not know what it is, you better learn or you will be left on the outside looking in, like that bunch in Noah’s days. They had laughed at him, That old man has to be crazy: Just look how he acts, and listen to him preach about something he knows nothing at all about. No doubt that is how they felt about Noah, but one day that western sky became black and that wicked bunch began to take notice. The higher that black cloud got, the more nervous that bunch of evil and ungodly people got. After awhile they began to look at one another, I wonder what this is? I have never seen it like this before. After awhile the whole heavens were black. Then here came bolts of lightning streaking across the sky. What in the world is that? It had never done anything like that before either. An hour later it had started to rain. I am titling my thought on this part, “Watching It Grow,” in order to get your attention. Are you thinking, What are you talking about Bro. Jackson? The body of Christ, is what I am talking about. I will be reading a very familiar scripture, written by Paul in the days of the first Church. Starting with the 11th verse, a scripture we have used many times. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; (For what purpose?) For the perfecting of the saints, (all of us.) for the work of the ministry, (That is what we have been called into.) for the edifying (uplifting) of the body of Christ.” (For how long?) Till we all come in the unity of the faith.” There is not one of you in here, from the least to the esteemed to be the greatest, that has already come to the point where you do not need to hear anything else from the word of God. I must say therefore, If I cannot say something to encourage and lift you up, then I have spent my time in vain. I am not wanting to stand up here and say a lot of words that are of no benefit to anyone. One thing we do need to keep in mind though, If there are only a few sitting here today, that have never heard these scriptures explained, the rest of us need to have enough care and concern to want them to hear what we have heard. You can go to a lot of churches today, where there will be preachers that have a vocabulary that would put me totally in the dark. They know how to use their adjectives, verbs, and nouns perfectly, but when they are finished speaking, what have the hearers learned? They have heard adjectives, verbs and nouns used ever so proper, but what kind of picture have they seen? You walk out the door thinking, I wonder what he was talking about? We are here to be edified, built up and made more ready for the journey ahead, so let us think seriously about that. “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, (That means agreement, harmony, seeing the same picture, so we can all function in a proper way. Think of this body in the likeness of a motor car for an illustration. If a six cylinder motor in your car is to function properly, every cylinder has to perform exactly as it was designed to; therefore if one of those cylinders is out of time with the other five, there is going to be a combustion problem: something will likely burst. That motor will cease to run. It is not going to function. There has got to be uniformity.) and of the knowledge of the Son of God, (Here we come to the godhead.) unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (The measure, how do we know what the measure is like? We will not know until it is finished.) That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, (Some men are just like vultures, which specialize in seeing how many they can weed out, to get them following down the road somewhere else, just to listen to them crow.) and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, (Every joint, that means from the least to the greatest, somewhere they contribute something to the growth of this thing. This thing is not made up with just a bunch of preachers.) according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, (from the least to the greatest there has got to be an understanding that we are part of something that is not ourselves. It is the Lord.) maketh increase of the body (collectively) unto the edifying (uplifting, encouragement) of itself in love.” Through the years, I have been in places hoping to see a little of God manifested. After being there two hours, you leave wondering why in the world you went there, because you did not even see any thing that came close to being ordered of the Spirit of God.

FIVE FOLD MINISTRY

With this subject, Watching It Grow, keep in mind, I have read a text written by the apostle Paul, in the hour of time when he knew he was the apostle sent to the Gentiles, but he speaks here that there are others. Let us understand once and for all, that when the Church was born, there in that upper room in Jerusalem, only one hundred and twenty people were of that number: (There are more than that here this morning.) there was not the great plurality of ministers. There were twelve apostles sitting there. That was all the ministry there was. Where were the prophets? Where were the evangelists, the pastors and teachers? As the body in that day and hour grew, God saw to it, that sooner or later, this one would be added, that one would be added, until the first Age had this total ministry. The first Age had it and the last Age will close out with it. Here, this one would come in. It is not for you and I to pick and choose who is and who is not called of God for the ministry. It is God who does the choosing and calling. That requires each of us to be sensitive on our part, that we recognize what the Spirit of God is directing us toward. Not just for the ministry, but every soul the Spirit of God deals with. Therefore we must ask ourselves, What am I wanting to see? With that, if we can be patient and allow God to direct our pathway, sooner or later we will come into the realm of seeing how God begins to reach out into the human race, and pull people in, that He saves. Let us go into the 16th chapter of Acts. There might be strangers come among us with questions in their minds, because they hear things said that sound very strange compared to the way they understand the Bible. They think, All those people talk about is a message, or All those people talk about is the supernatural. They may even say, Well I didn’t see anything. The reason they did not see anything is because they are looking for it in the wrong way. We have to realize, God is not a vending machine, so that you can order up just whatever you desire: He is not going to cooperate with that mentality. He could finish it all in one day’s time, but He has a ministry He has chosen to use. He has a job for each one to do. If it was all to be done in one day’s time, we would be in each others’ way. It would just be a big mess. There would be so much confusion, we would just be running into one another. The world would look upon us and say, Those people really are crazy. No. When God puts something together, He puts it together in such a unique way, that as you and I have sense enough to open our eyes and our hearts, and allow Him to give us the understanding of what He is doing, we cannot help but see the effects of it. It makes us feel glad to be part of something, when at one time we sat somewhere in an old dark, religious hole, and it was the grace of God that reached in there and pulled us out into the glorious light of revelation truth. I was very privileged, to begin to see something beyond where I was. I have to thank God for that.

BEING LED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD

Over in the 16th chapter of Acts, we see the apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey, and he has purposed to go into a certain area of Asia, into Bithynia, but the Spirit constrained him, which means he felt checked. There comes a time in our lives, we do not hear an audible voice, directing, so we plan because we see certain possibilities. Then as we set our mind on that, if God is looking at the same thing I am, and that is not His plan, He has the right to drop a shield before me. You do not see it, but He puts His Spirit around us and blocks us. That thought can still be in our mind, but in ourselves we feel constrained by something, Don’t do that! If we are not sensitive enough to recognize that, then that is also part of our schooling, because we can end up in a mess. As Paul obeyed that, further on in the night he had a vision. He saw this man from Macedonia, another part of that continent across the Dardanelles Straits, saying, Come over and help us. It was actually over in Macedonia, a complete different kind of people, but that was by the supernatural. The Church was born in an upper room by the supernatural. We have to realize, Paul was sent from Antioch by the supernatural unction of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost said, Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work of the ministry. That is not done that way in our denominational world. They do not believe that is the way it should be done: that was for the days of the apostles. Yes, but God is restoring the true Church back to that. If you say, I don’t see it like that, it is because you are in the wrong place. That is why it was necessary for us to begin to realize something God did not announce to the world: “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet,” because He dealt with a little man in the backwoods, way away from the religious circles; and put inside of him an anointing and a gift. He began to deal with him in a supernatural way. When the hour of time came, He had some people somewhere whose hearts were reaching out, Lord, I am hungry for something. When the time came, supernaturally, He began to lead that man to various places. People began to see something in him that could show them the pathway. That is why we today are the affects of what that man was sent to earth to do. Personally, in himself, he did not remain here long enough to see that we all got into it. That prophecy says, He will restore the end time children back to the faith of the fathers. He brought the message that would set that thing in motion. We can read about when it was done in that day, but we do not know all the dynamics, how it affected the people. God has many ways and means. He reaches out there and touches people to bring them to the finished results of what is here in the scriptures. He has many experiences that He can bring us into. We are all in this thing through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, but many times people mess it up. Oh, you can’t mess up the Holy Ghost. I will show you how you can. When I said that, I do not mean to be arrogant. I despise arrogance, when we purposely use it to beat and bring people under submission and make them feel bad. That is not in the purpose of God. Years ago, along about 1953; during the Christmas season, Bro. William Branham had been down home rabbit hunting on Saturday. While he was getting ready to go back home he said, Bro. Junie, (I think Friday had been Christmas day) how about you and your family coming up and eating the leftovers from Christmas dinner with us on Sunday. He said, We need somebody to help us eat the leftovers. We accepted the invitation and went. He had already ask another brother to preach that morning. I knew the man, and I will not mention his name. That young fellow got up in the pulpit and preached. He had a habit, from the time he read his text and started preaching, you never knew who he was talking to. It looked like he took every scripture and turned it into a club. He just beat, beat, hammered and beat. When he was finished, you felt like a bunch of hamburger. That is the way your mind felt. I listened to all that stuff and had respect for the man, because he was supposed to be a man of God. Well when we went to eat dinner after that. Bro. William Branham was a man that always made you feel welcome, yet in the world’s way he was a great man of God, but in the natural sense when you were around him, he made you feel like you were part of the crowd. When you sat at his table you were just as welcome there as anywhere else. All through the evening we sat and talked together. That night he said, Bro. Junie, I want you to preach tonight. We got ready and went back to church. I do not remember my subject, but I preached about 50 to 55 minutes. The service was over and we were in the car going back to the house, when he reached his hand over and laid it on my hand and said, Bro. Jackson, always keep that spirit just like that. He said, The brother that preached this morning is a good man, but nine times out of ten, he is preaching at people, but they are not hearing one thing he is saying, because he is beating at them. He said, There is a time to say things like that, but you cannot live like that all the time. I said, Thank you brother. Well to carry on, Paul followed that vision and went to Macedonia. The years passed, and now we to the 20th chapter of the book of Acts. Paul has been away from Jerusalem a long time. He was a Jew. He wanted to get back home and see that home bunch of Jews. He had not seen them in a long time. In reality, he had been called to be a light to the Gentiles and was not supposed to hang around Jerusalem. Nevertheless he wanted to go home so bad that he just pressed onward. When you read the 20th chapter, Paul’s testimony was this, I go back to Jerusalem bound in the spirit, (Now here we go.) for the Holy Ghost testifies in every city that bonds and afflictions abide me. That was not a committee saying those things. In every little group of those Holy Ghost filled people that were a part of the Bride of Christ, along the way, somebody would raise up and prophesy, or give a dream or vision, Paul, I had a dream last night, so be careful in Jerusalem. Wherever he went, that is what he heard. He was led and guided by that, yet still, that human nature in him caused him to say, I am going to Jerusalem anyway. We come back to the mainland, we are in the 21st chapter now. We see Paul again when someone else came in and said, Paul, please do not go to Jerusalem. Then he came down to Philip’s house. Philip was no longer living in Jerusalem. Listen to me now young people, There is a place for you in the body of Christ, but just as sure as there is a place for you, and an anointing for you, you need to get it out of your head that God is going to make a star out of you. He is not going to make stars out of you. Look at these virgins, these daughters of Philip, they were not thirty eight year old women: I see these young virgins, three of them, from eighteen, twenty, twenty two. They had dedicated their hearts to God. As I see them in that area, they prophesied. What? Yes they prophesied something to Paul. Then he leaves that house and goes a little further. He is having a prayer meeting in another group. Here comes a man that used to be at Jerusalem, whose name was Agabus. He was a prophet. He is only mentioned two or three times in the whole book of Acts. He did not come in and blow his horn. He came in, looked over and saw a cloak over the back of a chair. He picked that up and sat down and bound his feet. He said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, the man that this belongs to will go to Jerusalem, be bound, and suffer many things. The reason I bring this out is to show you, Paul was a human being. He was bound and determined to see that bunch of home folks. He had been away from there for years. Really he would have been better off if he would have stayed away from there. At Corinth, he wrote the letter to the Romans. He had never been in Rome. That church in Rome was not established by any apostle. It was established by some of those devout Jews from Rome that were in the streets of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. They went back home, and became the nucleus that started that church there. When you read Paul’s writings in Romans, some of his last remarks were this, I have purposed to come to you as I pass into Spain. He is on his way home to Jerusalem. I bring this out to show the human side of that apostle. Anyhow when Agabus prophesied that, they all fell on Paul, Please Paul, don’t go. He shrugged them off and said, (Acts 21:13) “What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” He had been warned and warned, but he went to Jerusalem anyway. He said, I am not only ready to suffer, I am ready to die. Be careful how you are ready to die. When he went there, he no sooner got there, they were waiting for him. There is no need for me to take the time to tell you the story, but in a few short days he was in jail. They had to put him there to keep him from that bunch of angry Jews. From then on, they moved him from there to another place just to keep him from that bunch of blood thirsty Jews that wanted to kill him. When he is in that shape, I ask you, Was he ready to die? I don’t think so. How do we know that? Because he was ready to appeal to Rome. He was going to give his testimony to Agrippa, but though he went to Rome, he did not go to Rome as he wrote about in the Roman letter. He went as a prisoner, and he never did see Spain. I bring these things out for one purpose only, for us to understand how this thing grew and got together; and then to realize that whatever happens to us, whatever awaits us down the road, we will do nothing greater than submit ourselves to God, so I ask, How willing are we, to be led by God, and to be used by God under the leadership of His Spirit that abides within us, not knowing ahead of time how, when, where and what He may purpose for us to do, or be. When we come to the place where we are willing to submit completely to His leadership, only then, will we truly be serving God in the proper way. We will no longer try to dictate the terms and conditions.

INSTRUCTIONS ON BEING A WISE CHRISTIAN

I look back a few years when I was privileged to see and hear Bro. William Branham, a little man in this area, and notice how He preached that the Church will be a supernatural Church again before she leaves here. He preached that the Church will have all the gifts of the Spirit in operation. He even said the Church will have all these ministries of apostles and so forth of Ephesians 4. The movement as a whole thinks he ought to have ordained every one of them before he left. He did not, so forget that. I grant you, he did ordain a lot of preachers, but they have already messed up the works by now. Through those years, in this area, came every kind of thing there was in the religious sector, to see and hear and get whatever they felt they could use to their benefit. I am going to bring in some of the things that have happened to those people. I use it only for us to learn by. Please, no matter how young you are, or how old, keep open to the Spirit of God: I am still learning. You come up against an obstacle where you have to make a decision, sometimes you can scratch your head and pray for a week, wondering, What in the world will I do with this, because it is something new, something you never looked for? I will never forget some of the things that came into this area when that man was alive. I want to use that, as I endeavor to make you aware of some things. I thank God for my dreams, because I did not ask for this job. I was a farmer, and I was content to be a farmer. I never wanted to travel the world over. I had already spent two and one half years overseas, in the Pacific. I thought I was finished traveling when I came home. Since then, I have been privileged to travel, and am thankful for the people I have met along the way, young and old, of every culture, and of every race. I appreciate them, and I never get concerned about what color their skin is. I do not look at people like that; and especially in preaching the gospel. I try to see them as a part of the body of Christ. I hope you can understand today, because I hear some say it is hard for the black and white to worship together, due to our cultures being different. Let me call your attention to heaven. When you get to the balconies of heaven and they strike up a song, can you tell me what it is going to be? Is it going to be sung in Hebrew? I see in the book of Revelation where there is one group singing the song of Moses but another group are singing the song of the Lamb. They are two different groups. How many understand my point? It lets me know there has got to be an equilibrium of breaking down in our minds all these racial thoughts. We have got to begin to see each other for what the grace of God has made us to be. That is the only thing that makes up his family. I have seen people come into th tabernacle with satchels full of tracts and things they had written. I have seen some with a beard so long, they looked like you would think Elijah of old looked. They acted like that is what they wanted you to think. They wanted everyone to think they were something great. If they could get you in a corner somewhere and begin to feed you the revelation they had, it would not be long until you would know exactly where they stood. I have seen one a man, when the anointing would get on him, he would give a message in tongues; and me being young in the Lord I thought, Oh my, Lord, this is wonderful. But after he had gone through that, nobody would interpret. Nobody wants to obey the spirit, was the way they explained it. When you grow up thinking that, you think that is the way the Church is to function. I grant you, there are anointings, and when we are young and do not know how to understand all of this, it excites us, thrills us, and causes us to use what we have many times just for the thrill of attention. When we finally do gain some understanding of what the Holy Ghost is in us for, we begin to realize that everything that He leads us to do will in one way or the other be beneficial to His purpose. In order to be beneficial in that way, we have to come down to earth with a head on our shoulders that will know where we are and why we are there. That is the truth, brothers and sisters. The Church was not put together by so much of this demonstrating in the Spirit, as it was by being led by the Spirit in everything that was done. All these things have a part in a worship service if they are understood properly and used in the right setting, but when individuals come down the road of life and go through all their emotional demonstrations just to try to make you feel, Oh the anointing is really on them, listen to me saints! after a while, those who have a revelation of God’s purpose begin to get tired of it. It is nothing but a show that points to the person, and no one ever really sees Jesus Christ in any of it. There are only nine gifts in the body of Christ, so please remember that. However you received the Holy Ghost, that is God’s business how He gave it to you. But it is what you do with what you receive that counts for something worthwhile; and what you allow that Spirit to do with you: that is what makes the difference. Oh but Bro. Jackson, I believe that sooner or later we will all come out alright. I have seen people make a wreck of themselves while others thought that. They are not alive today to tell their own story, so I will tell a few things at this time. In the 1960’s before Bro. William Branham passed off the scene, when he had the dream, seeing the driveway markers removed, he saw a covered wagon with a team of horses hooked to it. He was taking his belongings and loading the wagon. He had his family with him in the wagon, he picks up the line, speaks to the horses and heads west. He kept that dream to himself for a long time. When I had the dream about the rock, (I am not going to retell it.) I did not realize there were five others in the area that had dreams related to the same incident. One came and told Bro. William Branham this, another one came and told him that, and it all pointed to the same thing. The Holy Ghost gave the dreams, but I want you to know what has happened since then. One of the young men, after this was all over, in the months that followed, he ran all over creation. He ran around with every young girl that would pay any attention to him. (I am not mentioning names right now.) He left his family at home, he never took his wife with him. He brought reproach upon his whole family. He is dead now and cannot re-live his life, so that is the testimony he left in the mind of those who knew him. Another man came and told Bro. William Branham, I had a dream about you. As he told the dream, Bro. William Branham told him what the dream meant and instructed him, you go do this. When the entire incident was over, what does the young man do? He had another dream, in which he sees a church with Ichabod written over the door. From that, he got the “false” revelation that God is not in any church house any more. He came here one Sunday morning during service and put a tract he had written, on every car window. Later he stood at the end of the lane and personally passed them out. That led him to another “false” revelation. (You can have an inspiration, you can have an experience, but if you do not know how to bring it back to the Bible, you are heading for a wreck, just as sure as you are who you are.) It was not very long until he got the idea that the time has come, that man and woman should no longer live together intimately as husband and wife. A few young families split up, because of him teaching that. One young man that brought his family here from the west coast, came to our home, sat in our yard and cried, Bro. Jackson, this is what that man has done to my wife. She refuses to be a wife to me anymore, so we no longer live in the same house. That is what that man did, and it was all because of a dream he had. Do you know what happened to the man? He never went into any church houses again, always into the homes. One day he had a massive stroke and died. He was cremated, so what does that tell you? God makes NO place for cremation. There was a sister in the tabernacle, that when she and her husband first met Bro. William Branham, she was one that had a dream about Bro. William Branham going away, and who he was and all such. Well, two years after Bro. William Branham’s death, her husband withdrew from the deacon board. They soon left the tabernacle and went to an Assemblies of God church. He became a deacon there. Then he was re-baptized in the titles according to Matthew 28:19, another false revelation. After awhile the pastor of that Assembly died, so then what did they do? They left there and went back to the Church of God, right where they came from when they first met Bro. William Branham. When you receive the Holy Ghost, do not act like the whole world has to stop turning just to watch you. I will watch you, and I will see where you are three years from now and what you are doing with yourself. Whatever God gave to you, was not given so you could put on a show before others. What if every person who receives the Holy Ghost conducted themselves like we see some doing? How would anyone ever learn anything about the will and purpose of God? If we cannot see Jesus Christ in you, with the humility this experience is supposed to bring, your manifestations are not worth a dime. I am not trying to be abusive: I am trying to let some people know that it is one thing to have an experience, but it is another thing to know what to do with it. I do not want to be out here on the road blowing my horn, just to get somebody to watch me. I like to be a part of some people that know where they are going. From here to the end of the earth, (so to speak) I want to know that we are part of a family that is growing, increasing in number and in the stature of the Lord. It is going to get more pure as time passes. After awhile it is going to get to where you will not want to break up and go home. I don’t know about you, but I like to be among that kind of people, people you feel at home with. You feel you are part of them and that is how it should be. Out in the world, you are not part of what is out there, but you are part of something in here. You may be black and I may be white, but inside we are the same. Our tongue is the same color. I am not big and you small. I know we are all what we are by the grace of God. If I could take what God has given me and use it to encourage all of us, when it is all over and we are on the other side, I do not care what I am. I just want to be able to see God’s kingdom; and everybody there happy. I do not have to have some big halo over my head. I want to see all you young people there, just as happy as happy can be. I think many times of individuals that came into this area for one reason or another. From the east coast area came one young man.( This was back in the early 1960’s.) This young man went to Florida just to see Bro. William Branham in a meeting there. While there, he became acquainted with a Mennonite boy from the northern part of the state. They wound up having to share the same hotel room. They were going to the meetings to hear this great man of God preach. Then as they saw and heard how God displayed His power, they go back to the hotel, filled the bath tub full of water and re-baptized each other in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, so they could say they had been buried in the name of the Lord Jesus. Each one had an experience; and a vision in that hotel room, Jesus came to them and spoke to each one in His independent way, concerning the end time, His soon coming and so forth. This set them on fire. They went back to the meetings the next day. They both gave their testimony on the platform. They came home all fired up. Through the months that followed, the one young man met a man from Chile, a young fellow, and another young man from the east coast. They were like the three musketeers, they were here, then they were there. They came to our service one night: I finished preaching, we had a prayer line and prayed for different ones. These three were sitting on the front. This one particular young fellow got up and began to shake. After awhile he slowed down and opened his mouth and oh, what came out, Yea I say unto you hypocrites, you stiff necked, you hardened of heart, how often I would have rebuked you, on and on he went with this vocabulary of negative, nothing edifying. I thought, Lord, what do we have to listen to. He went on and on, after awhile he stopped and got the other two and they walked out. I said, well, I will say something to the church. I said, look, I don’t approve of this, don’t let it bother you, I really don’t know who they are. I found out later the one that did that showing off, was the one in Florida with the Mennonite fellow. After awhile one of the fellows came back in, Bro. Jackson, would you come out here and talk to this man. I thought, what in the world am I going to say to him? Why don’t you talk to him? I went out anyway and sat down. They began to explain to me what they thought he ought to do. Well I explained to him a few things and tried to caution him how he ought to be careful. He never came around anymore, but he looked back at the experience he had in Florida, and thought he was a great mouthpiece of God. Wherever he went, if people would invite him into their home to eat, and if he was asked to say the blessing, watch out! He would start out, O Father, here we sit today with the abundance of everything we have, but look at those poor saints in India, he would go on for fifteen minutes in India, then he would go to Africa somewhere. It would take him thirty five to forty minutes to say the blessings. The story was in New York, a city bus driver, a big fellow, I knew him. He got off at noon time and went to a restaurant. The bus driver only had a half hour to eat. One said to this young fellow, would you ask the blessing. He started that long vocabulary of words, directly that bus driver grabbed him by the hand and said, brother, I didn’t come here to hear you pray for everybody in the world, I have to go back to work in a few minutes, now shut up while we eat. That is the truth. He is the one that told it to me. That is the way he was. Every where he went, he was the all important mouth piece. He had a revelation, you have to listen to me. Do you know what happened to him? God finally gets tired of that. He and his wife were walking in a park one Sunday afternoon. He saw a gang approaching. He told his wife to run. When they found him, he had been stabbed and beat to death. Bro. Jackson, if he had the Holy Ghost, I don’t think God would let that happen. Don’t kid yourself. God gets tired of this nonsense. When are supposed to be full of the Holy Ghost, then let us act like it. He is in there to guide you into all truth. Let us learn that there is a proper time for everything, and also a time to just keep quite. We do not have to do something every time we feel the anointing presence of God. Some times He just wants to bless you. Everything manifested in the assembly has got to be for the edifying of the body. Going back to the man that had all the revelations about Ichabod, and this and that, he never would darken the church house door again. He used to ask, Where is that humble Jackson that I used to talk with? There comes a time God separates you from that kind of person. When he died, he died of a massive stroke. I am not here to put on a show. We are all here to be part of something that God is doing in this hour of time. When God puts an experience in us, He may let us go for a good long while, just enjoying the newness. Sometimes He will even let us make blunders, and we will stumble and fall down. Oh Lord, why this and why that? It is a maturing process. I read in the 3rd chapter of Matthew, the Son of God came to the river of Jordan, and a man by the name of John baptized him. John had already announced, There is one coming after me whose shoe latches I am not worthy to loose, and when He comes, He will indeed baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. One day here came this stranger walking down the river bank. He did not have to be told when to go, He knew. When He came walking down the river bank, John looked up and said, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. As Jesus stepped on out into the water, there was a short conversation. All the multitude heard what these two were saying. John took Jesus and lowered Him in the water. When he brought Him up out of the water, immediately the heavens were opened. What a display! A beautiful white dove came fluttering down and lit upon the shoulder of He whom John baptized. The Holy Spirit entered this man at that time. A voice from heaven spoke out, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Read Isaiah 40:5, It says, “And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.”) Jesus, the Son of God, left there filled with the Spirit in the full measure. He went into the wilderness and for forty days and nights He fasted. When forty days had passed , here came the devil. He came to Him in a vision, taunting Him, If you be the Son of God, I know you are hungry, so make these stones into bread. He could not only have turned them into bread, He could have absolutely fed the whole world by that means. Remember saints, Jesus did not conquer him by personal remarks. He said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” You have to bring your testimony and experience right back to the scriptures. “It is written.” Let us keep it there. That shut him up on that, but here he came again. He gave him another vision. It is eighteen miles from where that experience happened to the temple at Jerusalem. He took Him up there, and on the walls of the temple was a huge tower. Look down there, if you are the Son of God, he was actually taunting Him to commit suicide. He threw scriptures at Him. Jesus did not say, You dirty devil, I had an experience at the river I will never forget. No. He said instead, “It is written.” That shut the devil up on that, but the test was not over yet. Satan gave Him another vision. Satan knew exactly, what Jesus was destined to be, so he showed Him in a vision, the whole world and the beauty of it, and the material benefits and said, If you will just fall down and worship me, I will make you King right now. Did Jesus say, Were you down at the river? Did you hear what was said down there? No. He said, “It is written.” Let us all be sure we keep it, “It is written.” All of this had an affect on Jesus and it will have an affect on you too, when the devil is allowed to hit you in that way. After forty days He was hungry, He was weak already, but after the devil hit Him like that, I can see Him emotionally, how inside, He is like a trembling wreck. Oh Bro. Jackson, Jesus, the divine Son of God, could not have been like that. Yes, He was, because angels came and ministered to Him. They did not come with buckets of water and McDonald hamburgers. They came and touched His Spirit. By the time they got through calming His spirit, his nerves and emotions were back to normal. He was able to walk out of there. The Bible is full of testimonies we can all learn from, if we will just pay attention. The least one in here can be just as great in the eyes of God if you approach this written word right in your times of conflict. Regardless of what some may think, we have not seen the end yet. As God gives us our individual experiences, if we conduct ourselves in a proper way, we learn to grow in wisdom, and in the knowledge of the Lord, and begin to know who we are, what we are, and how to play our own little part in this great plan of God. God knows exactly how to reach out here and bring another instrument into the functioning of the body. As each one learns to discern their anointing, God is able to use them from time to time, but not necessarily every time they come into an assembly. Some learn quicker than others. It seems that some never learn. Years ago, a sister brought a neighbor lady that normally went to a Pentecostal group down in New Albany. Well some of these Pentecostal groups will speak in tongues, shout and run the aisles, first one, and then another for three hours and then they are ready to go home. This is the way they go on for about three hours, and they have been to church. Oh the power of God was wonderful. Then they go home, not knowing one thing about the word of God or what His purpose for them is. I have preached in a place like that, so I know. I went there in the afternoon, and for an hour and half, all they did when they would stand up to testify, was say a few words and all of a sudden down the aisle they would go, back up the aisle speaking in tongues, jumping up and down and screaming. When that one finished another one would hit the floor. You have to watch this display for about an hour and half. (I was just learning back then, because they even had a woman preacher.) The woman preacher finally said, Bro. Jackson, will you come and preach now? I got up with my Bible, and there went ten of them out the door heading home. In my heart I thought, Why don’t I just go home too? They don’t want to hear what I have to say, they came here to play their little game and go home. That church does not even exist today. It had its existence for about three years, came in fast and went out in a storm. However when this sister brought her neighbor lady to church with her years ago, I have always tried to give way in respect to the Spirit when it would move on someone in a decent manner. It seemed like any time the atmosphere would get to a certain place, this woman would start out speaking in tongues. It sounded like a message to be interpreted, but about the time she was ready to quit speaking in tongues, she would start screaming and crying. For about two minutes that was all she did, scream and cry. She tried to give the impression, This is really the anointing of God that makes me act like this. That happened twice. The third time she came, I said to her, Sister, I respect you as a Christian, but if you are going to give a message in tongues, I don’t want to hear you screaming and crying any more. She never came back again, but about a year and half later I got a nice letter from that lady. She had moved to St. Louis. In a church out there, evidently that pastor really gave her a working over, because she thanked me, and said, Bro. Jackson, I will never forget what you said to me that night, it means a lot to me today. Gifts are beautiful when the vessel knows what to do with them. Some people think the whole world has to stop turning to watch what they have. You don’t have any more than a little kid, all you have is a big head, you just want the world to stop and watch you. Do you know how to be noticed in the Lord? Be little and be nothing, then when that mouth opens, the words that come out sound uplifting because God is using a vessel that knows what humility is, and sees in you a love, and that you do not try to be a show piece. You just want to be part of the body of Christ, with each member contributing according to that measure of grace that God has bestowed. God will honor that. It does not matter if it is a little thirteen year old girl, if she knows who she is, what she is, and why she is where she is, she can stand to her feet, give a beautiful message in tongues and sit down, never acting like she is a star to be honored. God did not make us stars. We are only a part of something He is putting together. I would hate to think that all of a sudden my thumb got the idea, I am on the wrong hand, I am in the wrong place. There goes my thumb through the air looking for a socket it can fit into. God wants to see all of us as a part of something, each a part of Him, all working together in harmony, where we can see each other and love each other, not from a carnal love but a love that bonds you together. You want to be a part of something, not just looking for personal attention. You are looking for where you can feel at home, feel loved, and feel part of each other. In thirty some years, I have seen something growing. The devil has done his level best to tear it up, to sow discord, to confuse, to blacken the picture, but without success. I look in the faces of these young people, you see little ones born, one day they are a baby and you wonder if you will live long enough to see that little fellow walking. After a while he is walking, then later he is saying Hello Bro. Jackson. A brother and sister here, brought their two little boys; and before they got here they said, We are going to see Bro. Jackson. I am not that important, but Jesus is. Little children at that age have that much interest, but do not forget, Jesus was walking down the road one day and there was a crowd of people following Him, They came to a place where He realized they had walked a long distance, and it was very hot: Jesus therefore sat down on a rock and here were his disciples. There were two or three women that took the occasion to bring their little children up and ask, Will you just bless my little child? I see Jesus reach out and take one of those little fellows and sit him on His knee. There is Peter, and James watching, and there is John, Oh, that is a waste of time. At our convention a few years ago, when the meeting was over that night, here came two or three little fellows to the platform. Some of us reached down and picked them up. This preacher from another area remarked, That is a no no with me. That is why he does not have any in his church. Those mothers brought those little fellows to Jesus; and His disciples were opening their mouths, This don’t look proper. Except you receive the kingdom of God as a little child, simple, honest and unafraid, you shall not enter in. If you treat the little ones with respect, when they grow up they feel they are part of the group and they will want to stay with it. If you think Jesus did not watch little children, you are wrong. Jesus took a big crowd out of town one day. Dinner time came, (He knew what He was going to do.) they stopped on a grassy area. There were no McDonald’s, no Burger King, or White Castle burger places around. He mentioned to the disciple, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Philip answered, “Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.” He just asked the question to prove to prove them. One said, There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? Jesus always watched the little things. Some of you should watch the little things. What does that little boy have to do with a big crowd? Jesus knew. Let me tell you about this little boy. His name might have been Samuel. He had met this man called Jesus the day before. He tagged along with the crowd to see what the man was doing. He saw Jesus come through the village preaching. He watched this man pray for some sick people. There was one particular case, when Jesus walked over and touched him, he saw a complete change come to that person. That little boy might have been twelve years old, he went home and said, Mommy, I saw a man today. Mommy, I just had to cry. I saw him touch an old woman, and she got up and threw her cane away. Mommy, can I go follow Him tomorrow? The mother thought, I would rather have you follow him, than a bunch of the kids around town. So mommy thought, He will probably be gone all day, so I will fix him a lunch. She took five little buns, like hot dog buns, and she fixed two little fishes. She said, Here Samuel, you take this lunch, but remember to come home tonight. Well here he went across the country to find that crowd of people. He blends in, he works his way up front because he wants to hear what that man has to say. Jesus took them way out there to that grassy area. There He stopped. When Andrew said, There is a little boy here who has a lunch, but among five thousand people, what good is that? Jesus said, Go get the little boy. I see little Samuel being led by Andrew up through the crowd, when he stood in front of Jesus, Jesus looked down and said, Sonny, would you let me have your lunch? Sure. Jesus got twelve disciples, took five little buns out of there, with two little fishes, for five thousand hungry people. How is He going to divide this up among this bunch? He looks up and blesses that little boy’s lunch. Peter, come here. He took one little bun and broke it in two. Here Peter, here Andrew. The five little buns became ten pieces. Then He took the two little fishes and gave it to the other two. Then He said, Now go and distribute it. I see Peter standing there with that little piece of bread, not big enough to put in your shirt pocket. But when he walked over to where that first person was sitting, thinking, Well I cannot give him the whole thing, but the minute he broke off a piece, here was a big chunk of bread. The further he went, the more excited he became, because that little piece never did get any smaller. He would break a piece off, here was a big chunk. I can see them all getting excited now. It was the same thing with the other disciples. You have to keep in mind, they were holding the item in one hand, but breaking it off with the other. Right there, is where it got multiplied in size. The original remained the same. There they were, sitting there on the ground, eating every bite they wanted. Naturally some took seconds. Some wound up with their eyes bigger than their tummy and began to throw some on the ground. Jesus saw it all over the ground and said, Now go pick up the fragments. Well, they started out, but by the time Peter got to end of the first row, his hands were full. There was a lady sitting with a basket. Can I borrow your basket? By the time he was done the basket was full. I wonder how a thing like this could be? It started out with a little boy’s lunch, but when they got finished picking up the left overs they had twelve baskets full of fragments. That is greatly multiplied over what they started with. It was all from one little boy’s lunch. Let us look back at the little boy. That little boy ate all he wanted too. The real blessing was, he had shared what he had with the man of God. As he sat there, no doubt in the front row, he had something to tell mommy when he got home. I can see tears in his eyes, Mommy, I am so thankful you gave me that lunch this morning, because we went five miles out into the country and all they had was two hundred pennies, and all the people were hungry. I saw that man take that little sack and divide the loaves and fishes with the disciples. I sat down on the ground, and when they came to me, I ate until I was full. Then I watched the disciples with baskets, picking up more than they started out with. Saints I cannot get that little boy out of my mind: I believe he probably lived a long time and remembered that as long as he lived. He probably thought, I am glad I went to follow that man. Only the Lord knows what might happen in our midst one day, if we can just be patient to wait upon the leading of the Spirit of God. We may feel that we have nothing, but if it is only to bring a sack of something, when it gets into the hands of God He will bless it and make it a blessing. Brothers and sisters; when Bro. William Branham died, I thought, Well, I will just preach my little sermons and do the best I know how. I had no way of knowing what was ahead. I say to you, my brothers, I am so thankful for each of you, and I am glad to be part of a family such as we are, and to know that one of these days it will all be over. For thirty some years I have seen this work grow from a very small beginning to what it is now. They have come here from just about everywhere. Why? All I can say is, There had to be something bring them. I just have to say, I did not start what we are witnessing: God set it in motion. Whoever we are, and wherever we go, let us be sure we look for something God is doing that we can be a part of. God is not going to have lone stars traveling from here to there: He is going to have people that can grow together with others. Amen.