IT SEEMS NECESSARY AT A TIME SUCH AS THIS, TO TRY TO ESTABLISH IN THE MIND OF TRUE BELIEVERS, EXACTLY WHAT THE SCRIPTURES SAY ABOUT CERTAIN CONTROVERSIAL MATTERS THAT HAVE PERMEATED THE RANKS OF CHRISTIANITY. I JUST ASK THAT YOU WOULD PRAY FOR ME AS I GO INTO THIS SUBJECT, BECAUSE IT IS NOT MY DESIRE OR PURPOSE JUST TO HURT OR DEGRADE THOSE WHOM I BELIEVE TO BE IN ERROR. MY EARNEST DESIRE, IS THAT EVERY PERSON WHO CLAIMS TO BE CALLED TO THE MINISTRY, WILL GIVE FIRST PLACE TO THE VINDICATED WORD OF GOD, EVEN AT THE COST OF HAVING TO SAY, “I WAS WRONG!” GOD IS THE FINAL JUDGE, REGARDLESS OF WHAT ANYONE BELIEVES AND DESIRES TO HOLD ON TO. WE ARE LIVING IN AN HOUR WHEN GOD IS GOING TO REVEAL THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE SETTLED IT IN THEIR HEART’S TO WALK WITH HIM AT ANY COST, SO LET US LAY ASIDE OUR TRADITIONAL IDEAS AND TEACHINGS, AND OPEN UP TO WHAT GOD DESIRES TO REVEAL TO US IN THESE CLOSING HOURS OF GENTILE TIME.
As I go into this message today, I just simply want to title it, “What do the Scriptures Say?” I was given a part from a magazine some time ago, that I will be reading from as we go along. Much of what we are going to be dealing with in this message, is the Seventh Day Adventist’ belief. They have taught that man is just created out of the dust of the earth, and God has just breathed into him the breath of life, and only then does he become a living soul. They say, that when man dies, the breath leaves the body and the spirit that is life itself goes back to God, and the body goes into the ground just to rot and decay away, and that there is no such thing that the spirit and soul, going to either heaven or hell. I want everyone to realize, I am not here merely to belittle anyone’s belief. I do thank God for what He has allowed me to see and understand through the years of my life though; and I desire to help as many as I can. The Gentile world today is filled with people of all kinds of beliefs. When you say anything about certain things they believe, they say, Well that is what the Bible says! Sure, they can say the Bible says that, but how far are you willing to take that verse of scripture and go through other parts of the Bible. Remember, the Bible is a big book. It has many, many verses of scriptures. In fact, it is so big, and covers so much time and space, it would be almost like traveling out west, to try to immediately understand it all. You could spend a day traveling through the state of Texas and still be in the state of Texas. It reminds me of the poem on a postcard that I have at home: It says, The sun has risen, and the sun has set, and I am in this God forsaken Texas yet. (Those are not my words: That is what it says on the postcard.) It definitely is a big place. Well they believe that death is the end of it, until there is a resurrection. On this page, are many scriptures they use trying to prove their point. I am going to use some of them as we go along. I will say this, The Seventh Day Adventist teaching, is something like the Jehovah Witness. The Jehovah Witness’ have their origin going back in the later part of the 1800’s.They started out much like what is called the International Bible Students. As time came into the twentieth century, actually in the later part of nineteenth, there was a teacher of theirs that rose on the scene by the name of Judge Rutherford. I know much of what he taught. Well a Jehovah Witness man came by our house one day while I was working outside. (I have always said, If they come around while I am on the outside, I will not run into the house to avoid them. I am not ashamed or afraid to meet any of them.) As he came up, he introduced himself, and I likewise introduced myself to him. Then I said, Now before you even start, I know what you believe, because I have in my bookcase some of the literature that was put out by Judge Rutherford years ago. He asked, Did you know him? No, but I sat and listened to him. I began to review some of the things that they believe, then I began to tell him some of the things that I believe and he sat and listened. He was a young man, and I treated him as I would want to be treated. I said to him, I will never walk away from any of you, because, if I do not know enough about the Bible to stand here and talk, then I would be ashamed of myself as a Christian. God did not call you and save you just to leave you ignorant of the true revelation of His word. Somewhere along the line He is going to require you to begin to learn something about why you are here, what you believe and why you believe it? Are you sure that what you believe is truth? Can you go into the Bible and vindicate it? The Bible many times, is also like going through a huge forest: If you do not know your direction, you do not know where you will wind up. On the other hand, if you begin to develop a picture in your mind of what your faith is based upon, what it constitutes and what your end picture is going to be, then you will begin to understand how to read certain scriptures that confuse so many. True revelation of God’s word is a precious thing: Only when you know the truth, can you have that perfect peace in your inner being. As long as you have unanswered questions, you will always be subject to a certain knawing sensation inwardly. Therefore because we are seen and heard on the Worldwide Web, and because we have colleges and universities hooked on, and probably many wondering, What kind of people are those of Faith assembly Church, I want to say, Well, as I have said many other times, we are not like the Waco Texas Cult you have heard of and read about: We are not people that desire to harm anyone anywhere. We have no high explosives stockpiled, waiting to blow up the White House or anything. We are true, genuine, Bible believing Christians. We believe what the Bible says, regardless of whether the president likes it, and whether the mayor likes it, we believe it like the early Church in the book of Acts believed it. They did not have the New Testament teachings written into a book like we do today, but they had a true revelation of the things Jesus taught; and as God moved upon them, some of them were led to record what they believed, so that future generations would have something to align their lives with. Much of what was written in the Epistles, was written to correct error in the assemblies where antichrist teachings had drawn some away from the truth, but regardless of why it was written, we are privileged to have it at our disposal; and God has a ministry that is ordained to preach it the correct way: even the Old Testament scriptures that present types and shadows of things to come. Yes, we believe what the Bible says. We believe this Bible teaches that Jesus Christ who came upon this earth two thousand years ago, right on schedule according to the will and purpose of God the Creator, and was crucified because of His teaching, is coming the second time right on schedule; but only the great Creator Himself knows the exact time. The people of the world we live in today are not ready for His return. In fact, most of them do not even want Him to return to earth. As proof of that, the Bible says, (and these are the words of Jesus, found in Luke 18:8.) “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” He is not going to find many with very much faith. The 19th chapter of the book of Revelation, plainly tells you that when the heavens open and Jesus is seen coming to earth with that great white linen robed army of His, the kings and the beast and all the men of the earth are gathered together to make war against Him. That is why I say to all of you of atheism and such, You are going to be in that crowd and you will not be given another chance to believe the word of God and be saved. You may boast of your weapons of high technology and such, but none of that is going to be worth a dime to you in that day. Why? Because, out of His mouth goes a sharp two edged sword, (The word of death to the ungodly) and He is going to smite the earth dwellers who oppose Him. The wicked will be slain with His word. Death will be instantaneous. It is not going to be propagated by a disease. Every wicked and ungodly person will be subject to His wrath. I am thankful to be on His side.
SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST BELIEFS
As we come back to the Seventh Day Adventist belief, I want you to know that I have the history of it; and I am going to be bringing it down step by step, but at this time, we are going to deal mainly with the question, What is man? Is he just a piece of clay out here walking around? What does the Bible say man is? I am going into Genesis 2, for that answer. On this page of their book where they have used many scriptures to establish what they believe, here is where they start the beginning of man. Verse 7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” That is where they start man’s beginning, but that is not where the Bible starts man’s beginning. It is written here in their advertisement, but we must ask ourselves, What does the scriptures say about man’s beginning? That is what we have to go by. If we are only going to go by these scriptures they use trying to prove their point, we are going to miss the true revelation that is written so plainly. I am going to show you what the Bible says about man’s beginning. Turn back to Genesis 1:26. Right here, is where we find man in his original beginning. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, (a spirit being, without a tangible body) after our likeness.” There is nothing said of how He formed him out of the dust of the earth, because this was long before the flesh part came into the picture. This creation of the man as a spirit being took place on that sixth creative day that you read of in Genesis 1. (Only a spirit being could be in the image and likeness of God, because that is what God is, a sovereign SPIRIT. He has no visible body. Those six creative days were not days of twenty four hours as some believe. I will dispute that with any doctor of divinity or anyone else who wants to try to push that twenty four hour day idea. There are a lot of educated religionists today, that have a traditional belief in their mind, and will say, Well that is what the Bible says. Yes it does say day, but are you open to any further understanding of how God looked at time? Let us hear what the apostle peter wrote, concerning days with God; and he went so far as to say, Don’t be ignorant about this! Listen, (2 Pet 3:8 ) ‘But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Why do you suppose God led Peter to say that?” It was to give a clue to those who are led by the Spirit, so they could understand what terminology like that means, because at the end of that sixth day when He had already created this man in His image and likeness, God observed a day of rest. I want you to know, God is not a person, as some are so prone to believe. I expect that to give some people something to scratch their head about, but they need to face the reality of what the scriptures really do say. He is not a person, because when you look up the description of a person, it is an object that has a form, it has a shape, it is tangible. On the other hand, God is invisible, He is not tangible, because He is SPIRIT. He is not composed of anything that is matter. He is a Spirit being; and the only body He ever dwelt in, except theophany bodies momentarily, was the body of His only begotten Son Jesus. God is not limited to one spot in space, His presence fills the universe, because He is a supreme Spirit being, a life giving Spirit . He is all wisdom, He is omnipresent, meaning everywhere. He is omnipotent, all powerful. Omniscient, because He knows everything, He knows the past, He knows the future, He does not live in the past, and He is not living in the future, because everything else that has life got that life from Him. He dwells, not lives, among all of His creation, and He dwells IN those who have answered the call to this great salvation plan and have surrendered their lives to Him to fulfill His purpose in them. He knows everything from the beginning to the end. That is God. He needs no help with anything, so who or what is God talking about here when He says, Let us make man in our image? The Seventh Day Adventists believe in a trinity, so naturally they have Jesus in on the creation of all things; and literally, Jesus was not in the picture at all until two thousand years ago, except in the mind of the Creator. I ask you, Why do the Seventh Day Adventist people rebuke the Catholic Church for believing in a trinity, when they themselves believe in it? My point is, Only that which the Bible will vindicate, should be adhered to as fact. I am not pointing my finger at any individual person that is a Seventh Day Adventist: I am pointing my finger at the things they uphold as being the cardinal truth they base salvation on. You cannot do that. I am going to go slow with this, because I want all of you to be able to understand my points. When God said, Let us, (Genesis 1:26) I want you to know first of all that Jesus was not standing there, but there were spirit beings present that God was going to make man in the image of, or more properly, in the likeness of, because there were no tangible beings in that picture. There was nothing else present, other than the angelic beings. No matter how you want to look at it, angelic beings were somewhere in the process of time, created by God to assist Him. Not that a sovereign Spirit has to have help, but that is how God chose to do things. They had to have been created back in a prehistoric era, because all the angelic beings back then, that were actually created to assist God and to serve Him, were put on earth in that prehistoric hour to be tested. They were tested and some of them failed. That is why it says in (Jude 1:6), concerning the angels that kept not their first estate, that they are chained in darkness, and also in (2 Pet 2:4), we find this, “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” which actually shows us that some of the angels sinned and God separated them from the righteous angels. Jude and Peter both wrote the same thing. The angels were not created in our beginning: they were already here; and that is what God created us in the likeness of, because they are spirit beings. I know many people reject this truth, but when man was created on the sixth day of creation, he was created as a spirit being only: no flesh was involved in that creative act. Those righteous angels that God was speaking collectively to concerning the creation of man, were spirit beings that the man was created in the image and likeness of, and God being a super Spirit being Himself, He could say, Let us make man in our image. You find in the scriptures, that man is made a little lower than the angels. That is what it says in the Psalms, and also in Hebrews, speaking of man in general, and of Jesus. God crowned him with glory and honor and set him over the works of His Hands, which is His earth. Yes saints, Adam was given dominion over all that God had created upon the earth, but let us look at man in that original beginning, in Genesis 1:26. In His image we see there, and God is a Spirit, so man must come from that which is God, a Spirit. God took of Himself, and once He separated that from His own being, He gave that individual, we will say, a separate identity and called it man. Then we see the word likeness. Well God is all wisdom, so we have to believe He made the man in a little resemblance of that. He gave him a certain wisdom. He gave him knowledge, in which is the five senses, see, hear, taste, smell and feel. You can say, But that is in the flesh. No that is not in the flesh, because, when the spirit leaves that body it is dead: you can burn it and it will not utter a sound. Is that not true? All these senses and attributes that point to your individuality, is what helps make up your image and likeness of God. You were actually made to be a miniature god on this planet. I want to say this to the Seventh Day Adventist person, When God, on that sixth creative day, made man, he was the last thing that was made, but he was made a spirit being, without a tangible body. Incorporated in the knowledge He imputed into the man, was a capacity of knowing and understanding the commission God gave him. God said, Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth. He did not say that to Adam when He put him in flesh, after He (God the Creator) had rested on the seventh day, which was also a thousand years. He said it to him when he created him as a spirit being, one thousand years before he ever even had flesh to dwell in. Now we must let the Bible talk to us some more. Let us not just take certain things and paint a huge thing and then put all the rest of what is written in a closet. I am not pointing my finger at the individual person, but if anyone is concerned about having eternal life at the end of this present earthly journey, they want to be sure that they have absolutely surrendered their faith, their life and will to God, that God can mold them into the vessel that pleases Him.
GOD’S DAY OF REST
As we continue on with this picture we are putting together, the next day after the sixth creative day, was God’s Sabbath. Where was man, that spirit being that God had created, while God rested from all His work? He was not on earth: He was still in heaven, in the presence of God. Then be sure you catch the point: God rested the seventh day. I want to say to every one of you, and I pray you catch what I say: On that seventh day of God’s creation, which was His Sabbath, there was not a living thing crawling or walking on this planet. Everything had been spoken into existence as a spirit life, with whatever potential God had delegated to it, but there was nothing in a tangible body yet, because God was still letting this planet warm up, coming out of that long, dark, Ice Age. It took all that time for this planet to be slowly brought back into its intended relationship to the sun, letting the glaciers melt, rivers form, and lakes establish. By the time God’s Sabbath was over, the planet earth was finally warmed to the point that plant life was growing and it was able to function and give off oxygen and all the other things that physical life can exist in. That is the way you have to look at it, if you ever intend to understand what is written in this book (the Bible). That is what the scriptures bring out, if you will allow it. I realize it is not worded in the words I have used, but we have to realize that when the man left the presence of God, so to speak, God had taken of the elements of the earth, clay, and shaped a body for him to dwell in. Now I ask you this, as we look at what He shaped for Adam to dwell in, When He shaped that body of clay, do you think that body looked anything like the Creator? How could it? The Creator is, and always has been a Spirit. Yet the Seventh Day Adventist are teaching that this was the beginning of man. No, I must differ with that: simply because the beginning of man was in Genesis 1:26-27, long before he ever had a body. He was a spirit being, he had knowledge, he had certain attributes, but he had no tangible body. All of those attributes gave him the identity of what he was going to be. In that makeup, was his soul, because the soul is what actually makes up his individuality. That is exactly why some people are born with certain likenesses, and others are born with other likeness. I am not talking about the evil side: I am just talking about the natural side of those that God put here to function and fulfill His purpose. When God saw that there was not a man to till the earth, (It was not that He did not know where this spirit man was.) the time had come for him to be put on this planet, so God formed his human body from the very soil of the earth. This body was going to bear the image and likeness of a lot of the other animals. Right? Do not ever tell me that God is shaped like this or shaped like that: A Spirit has no shape, so keep in mind as you read Genesis 1:26-27, that image and likeness used there has nothing to do with flesh. It is the spirit of the man, that is like God. Can you see that? Then, when you come to Genesis 2:7, there, is when He forms a body for the man. He can give that body any shape, any likeness He desires to, so when we actually see man we have to say, He was made just a little higher than the animal kingdom that would be under him. That makes common sense to me. With that in mind then, think about the female counterpart. In many ways you would have to say she is just like the man, except for the feminine and masculine qualities of their makeup. The female side of what is referred to as man was also created in the presence of God, up there in heaven, because, when He created the one, He created man and female in His image and likeness, but they were both incorporated into that one body. Therefore when we follow this all the way through the continuity of the Bible, there is no such thing, that God just breathed into him the breath of life and that is all that man is. If that is all you can see there in the first two chapters of Genesis, I would have to say this, You are saying that God Himself is nothing but a puff of breath, because it plainly tells us the man was created in the image of God. Let us read that again: This is important to a proper revelation. ( Gen 1:27) “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” If you only look at man as what you see walking around out there, then tell me how he is like God, because we cannot see God walking around in a tangible form. Far too many people who profess to be Christians, have a tendency to think of God as a person. Therefore I will say again and again, as many times as you need to hear it, GOD IS A SOVEREIGN SPIRIT: He is not a person. He is in the midst of all of His creation. In other words His presence fills the universe. He created another spirit being and called him man. Then after He rested on the seventh day of creation, He formed a body for that spirit to dwell in, a body that would have physical contact with all the animal kingdom He had created, and He gave the man dominion over all of that, so when you read Gen 2:7, you have to allow your spiritual eyes to see more than just the actual words of that verse alone. Notice, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Gen 2:8) And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. That is when the man began to function as a person, able to express feelings, emotions and so forth, but I must stress the fact, that when the breath of life leaves this body of clay, the spirit, which actually is the person, does not just cease to exist: it returns to its former estate, a spirit being without a body of flesh, abiding either in the paradise of God, or in hell, crying out for a drop of water to cool that burning sensation of torment. Surely you do not think Jesus spoke those words of (Luke 16:22-24) just to be talking: They absolutely give you a preview of where a spirit being goes, once it leaves the human body it has resided in. “And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried; (Luke 16:23) Notice now, And in hell he (the unbelieving rich man) lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. (Luke 16:24) And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. Does that sound like the spirit and soul of man just ceases to exist when it leaves the body of clay? It is foolish, to refer to yourself as a believer of the Bible, the Word of God, and then just disregard scripture that is so essential to a proper revelation. You can build a doctrine on just about any thought you may have, but will the word of God vindicate it? I absolutely assure you, that God did not just breathe oxygen into a piece of clay and call it man: (just a figure of speech of course) What He did was place the man He had created in that body of clay, because, until that time, that spirit being He had created was still up there with Him, without the ability to fulfill the commission given him, to be fruitful and multiply. When He placed that spirit in a body, right then, is when his soul, which is part of the spirit, became active. The soul and the spirit are inseparable in humanity, because the soul part of the spirit of man is what experiences emotions, feelings, conviction and so forth. That is why I say they are inseparable. We have a lot of people today, that take that and want to run wild with it. Well when you start doing that, getting so technical about it, wanting to know exactly, what part of the spirit is your soul, you are doing it with a wrong motive. Why would anyone have such an interest? You cannot see the spirit, so I am saying, When God took that little vessel of clay, however long He was in the process of molding it, and placed the spirit of life in it, He knew exactly what He had in mind. When it says He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, that is just an expression to convey a truth. God has no hands; and if He did, a spirit cannot be handled with hands, so what better way is there to express what God did, to get the spirit of life into that body of clay? He imputed that spirit life into that body of clay and then the soul incorporated in that spirit that came from God, became alive in its earthly surroundings. Right then, is when the soul with all the senses became earth oriented. I do not believe Adam, when he awakened, said, Well where am I now? He knew exactly where he was. He knew that he had been created for that purpose and to that function, because God gave him his commission while he was still just a spirit being, without an earthly body to carry it out.
KNOWING WHAT BELONGS WHERE
Some who read the first two chapters of Genesis, never really get the process of creation straight in their mind. They will say, Adam was the last thing God created, just leaving it that the entire animal kingdom was walking and crawling around on earth before the man was created to rule over them. Well that is right as far as it goes, but when you realize that Adam was the first living thing that began to walk on this earth after Genesis 1:2, you have to admit that the initial creation did not manifest any of those living creatures upon earth until after God took his day of rest and then began to bring them forth in literal bodies, Adam being the first to receive a body. After God molded a body for Adam He then said, It is not good that man should dwell alone. One man, on what looked like an empty earth, with a lot of foliage and stuff growing, but not another moving thing anywhere, and then, is when God said, I will make him a help mate. He started making bodies for all the animals, the fowl and all; and I do not believe He did all of that in a day of twenty four hours. There was time involved. Not that it had to be, but the point is, you do not hurry God. He has a plan, He has a purpose; and He has plenty of time, so let us just let Him carry it out His way. Well He created all the other animals, from the least worm and on, (All these worms are important in God’s plan.) but none of them were suitable for a help mate for Adam. As for the worms, some people say, Well I don’t see any good in any of them. You ought to study a little about agriculture: then you would see a benefit of having them around. Every worm out there functions for a certain purpose. There is microscopic life out there in that soil, and it has to be there. If you did not have microscopic life, which is life that you cannot even see, the soil would not be in any shape to grow plant life in. It is out there for a purpose: In this present phase, earth has been inhabited for six thousand years, so if it were not for that microscopic life in the soil there would be so much rubbish left over from all those years, you could not get through it. That is exactly why last years leaf crop is soon decayed and returned right back to mother earth. That is the cycle God has ordained. The microscopic life as well as all the worms, all have a part to play in that soil recovery process. There is no need for us to dwell on that, so let us continue on. I can read these various scriptures that the Seventh Day Adventist have put out here, which causes them to say, What is the spirit that returns to God at death? The body without the spirit, (They have it breath.) is dead. They have James 2:26, the spirit of God, the breath which God gave him is in the nostrils. Brothers and sisters, that is only when I am breathing oxygen. If you did not have that oxygen, you would not last long, but it is the spirit of life in you that causes your body to take in this oxygen. I pray you everyone realize that. I only have an eighth grade education, but I have sense enough to know this, Oxygen in this earthly life, is as important to this body in the renewing of itself, as you eating a piece of bread and digesting it; and it goes to help rebuild the elements of the flesh. Really though, my point is this, God did not just breathe oxygen into Adam’s nostrils to cause him to become a living soul. That is just an expression to call attention to the fact that God imputed life into that body of clay. I believe all of you sitting here know that already. With what we have said in mind, let us go on with this. The question is, What is the soul? They give this answer, that a soul is a living being. A soul is always a combination of two things: body plus breath. Well now I have to say, Breath is not a spirit. How many realize that? When you say that is what you are, then you just as well tell me that God is nothing but a puff of air, because man was made in His image and likeness. I am not degrading, but the point is, When they take that approach, they are just trying to prove their side of the argument, when the truth is, The spirit is life itself, and the Bible is full of proof of that, but not one verse of those scriptures have they used. Well I am going to use scripture. I would like to ask and answer, Where did the Seventh Day Adventists start? What was its origin? Back in 1800 and something, there was a man named William Miller, a Baptist preacher, that I suppose we would have to say dates this present movement. Back then, the denominations, whether Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, or any other of them, that for centuries never taught the second coming of Christ. When they came through the long Dark Ages of Catholicism, and then the Reformation started, man had lost his knowledge of practically everything in the Bible pertaining to the first advent of Jesus the Christ, as well as His second advent. They were all taken up in rituals and ceremonies of various sorts. In fact, there was a time when it was more important for thousands of people to keep the traditions and just look at certain scriptures and say, Nobody understands: we are not supposed to understand: we are supposed to believe what the church teaches. Saints: Christianity did not start out with that kind of outlook. Christianity started with every individual having an experience, a personal experience with Jesus Christ, as ordained according to the grace of God. They had that individual understanding of how that grace was imparted to them through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the fact that He had given His life to that purpose. That is the way we must look at it. Well coming into the middle of the 1800’s, in 1831 to 1844, William Miller a Baptist preacher who had been a former army captain in the war of 1812, came into prominence. He launched the great second advent awakening. The word advent means coming. There was a first advent, the coming of Christ the first time. The second advent is pointing to a second coming. He launched the second advent. It was an awakening which eventually spread throughout most of the Christian world. It went like a house afire, because denominations prior to that time had said very little about the coming of Christ. They did not know what to say: They did not know how to take the scriptures and really bring it out, that the time was getting close.
“Doctrinally, Seventh Day Adventists are heirs of the interfaith Millerite movement of the 1840’s. Although the name Seventh Day Adventist was chosen in 1860, the denomination was not officially organized until May 21, 1863, when the movement included some 125 churches and 3,500 members.”
During that period of time, others within the movement calculated a specific date when Christ was going to come. They took a certain scripture in the book of Daniel, in the 8th chapter. With this, October 22,1844 was approximately when Jesus would appear, but when He did not appear at that time, some of the followers fell away in despair. Many of them fell away into disillusionment, but as a whole they kept on going. A short time later, there was a young girl in a Methodist church, that had an experience. There is nothing wrong with an experience, if you know how to handle it. She was seventeen years of age; and after she had that experience, they began to take her to different places in the Methodist Church circle, also the Baptist Church, and so on. In the Advent movement there was a man by the name of James. He became an Adventist Baptist, believing in the second coming of Christ. As these two young people meet, they take a liking to each other: they fall in love and get married. As they become engrossed in the Adventist teaching that the second coming of Christ has to be soon. I hate to read all of this because it tells how many experiences she had. I want you to know, there is a real Holy Ghost experience for every true born again child of God, but as we go along the Christian life, we are required by God to take a look at what we have experienced, what we have felt, what is it causing us to look at. Do we know enough about the Bible to know how to acquaint ourself in the Bible. It is one thing to say, Oh I had an experience last night, I did this and did that. That is well and good, but what are you going to do with it. It has to lead you to something more than just a succession of experiences. These experiences are not just to be thrown away. So with this marriage between these two, during the first few weeks following their marriage, James and Ellen gave earnest study to a forty six page tract published by a man named Joseph Bates. This really began to become the cardinal teaching that formed the Seventh Day Adventist background, where they really began to push it hard. In this experience, which happened April 3, 1847. Ellen White was shown in a vision, the law of God in the heavenly sanctuary with a halo of light around the fourth commandment. That is what the testimony says. I am bringing this in to give you an outlook toward this, what this vision was, what was this testimony she saw, and what is it going to lead to? Because, if you do not know anything about the Bible, and if you do not know how the God of this Bible looks at certain things, what happened to them can happen to you or me. If you do not have respect for the Bible, the devil can blow something up so big you will interpret it completely out of scriptural continuity, and it becomes a one track route. That is exactly what happened with them. I am not saying this to belittle: I am saying it to warn those who would be wise. It all started with the advent teaching, the soon coming of Christ, because when time moved into the 19th century, or 1900 and something, that was right on schedule. That is why we printed the article dealing with all the prophecies that have been fulfilled in the last one hundred years. This is the last days. They were right on schedule, to begin to tell the world Jesus is coming soon, but they did not know how to take that scripture in Daniel and interpret it to the right point. Ellen White had the vision, and when she began to tell it, this immediately turned them back to Exodus the 20th chapter: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. I say this with respect to every human being of the Seventh Day Adventist movement: I have read their literature. That in itself was enough to get every Adventist looking at the entire ten commandments. From there on, it was the Sabbath, and after awhile it became, According to Leviticus, don’t eat this, don’t eat that and so forth. All you have to do is go to the internet, you can get every bit of their belief printed out for you. I am not saying this to belittle the people, but the time has come, that Jesus is coming for a Church that is not made up of all kinds of beliefs, but every member grounded and standing in unity upon the one true belief. It is people that have been brought out of that, washed by the water of His word, and made to become one in Jesus Christ, just like it was in the early age, that will be ready to meet the Bridegroom when He comes. Ellen White was a very busy lady. It states that she had, in her years of life, over two thousand dreams and visions. All this circles around some parts of the Law, teaching certain laws of Leviticus for health benefits. I am not going to condemn that, but I will say this, When you go into some of these God forsaken countries where they are so poor they do not have a morsel of anything to eat, how can you teach, Don’t eat this or don’t eat that, unless you take a truck load of food along to give strength to your teachings? That is why Paul could say, For God has created everything to be eaten, if it is eaten with thanksgiving and prayer. Do not tell me I don’t know what the Law says: I do know what it says. I also know, that from 1491 when the Israelites made the exodus out of Egypt, it was in the Sinai wilderness, there from the mount, that they received these commandments, or these laws. Those laws were given at a time when the human race on this earth was pagan, living in total ignorance. They did not know one day from another. Therefore through this, God was teaching the natural minded man, that there are certain disciplinary things He wants the human race to begin to exemplify and subject themselves to. That is why the children of Israel were the first people to embrace such eating habits, or values. We have to realize, that as long as that Law was applicable, God imputed life to that Jewish person based upon their observance of it. It demanded a lot of things without variableness. We have to keep in mind though, as we pick up the epistles that Paul wrote, (which were fourteen in all in the New Testament, more than all the rest put together.) That he shows exactly how and where the law applied.
PAUL-CHIEF APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES
It was the apostle Paul that showed exactly what place the law had in the plan of God. Let me use this figure of speech, because actually, it is just like a document, and he put a stamp on it, Cancelled. In Rom 3:20 we read this, “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Rom 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness, which actually means salvation. Why? Because He fulfilled every type that the Law was pointing to. The Law was from its beginning to the advent of Christ, applicable and necessary. However the Jewish race did not even see the types and things that it was pointing to. Then when the Messiah did come along to fulfill all the sacrificial things that were offered there, that was all pointing to Him, did that religious bunch of Jews even recognize it? They did not. They were still looking backward to the Law, and the prophets, and holding to the Torah, which is the first five books of the Bible. As for all their other prophets, most of them could not have cared less what they had written. Some did, but most did not. That is why the Jewish nation is in the shape it is in today. God is gathering dispersed Jews from far and near and bringing them back to the land of their forefathers for this end time wrap up: yet the Jehovah Witness people will tell you that God is not going to regather Israel. The Seventh Day Adventist teach the same thing. How can they be so blind? It is every bit right here in their writings. I just have to ask, What are all those Jews doing back there? I had a Jehovah Witness say to me one time, But they are not true Jews: they are all mixed up. I said, Don’t kid yourself: There might be a lot of them all mixed up, but God knows where that genealogical line is, what it will take to get them back there; and He is in the process of getting all back in the land, that are supposed to be back there to fulfill His purpose. They are scattered out there among the human race and He is going to bring them back, just as sure as you are sitting there. With this in mind let me say this, We are living in a day and hour after God has sent us a man to get our mind out of the tangled web it has been caught in. He was not a religious leader like the world would expect, a big doctor of divinity and well known historian, that would come on the scene and teach us. No, but when the time was right in the twentieth century, God sent a man to fulfill a scripture of prophecy, and not one doctor of divinity in all the denominations will verify it, or in any way confirm that he was such a man. They are all just like the Jews of old: When God sent His Malachi 4, prophet in the days before Jesus began His ministry: did they believe it? They did not. They thought John was a very crude heretic. That is why the public officials were not long in having him arrested and put in jail, then beheaded. Basically the Gentile church world of today, has done to the Malachi 4, prophet, exactly what the Judaistic leaders did back then, except for the way he was killed. A drunk killed him in an automobile crash, but Gentile church leaders have crucified the image of this man, his name and his ministry. No wonder one of the last messages Bro. William Branham preached was, “I Indict This Generation,” for crucifying, not of the flesh, but the revelation of Jesus Christ. When God had given them something to see, hear and believe, they just closed their eyes to it and found fault. All through this page I have been reading from in this little book that was given to me, they use all the scriptures that speak about the body dying, but to them there is no hell, and the spirit does not go anywhere except back to God that gave it. Brothers and sisters: How are we going to reconcile that to what Jesus said? Turn with me to Luke 16; and let us read the very words He spoke.
FACING REALITY – SUFFERING TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES
One day when Jesus was eating at the table of one of the chief Pharisees on the Sabbath, some of that bunch of Judaistic Jews watched every move He made; and when He healed a man on the Sabbath they really came down on Him, but He began to speak to them in parables and when He reached a certain point He said, (verse 19) “There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. (We have a lot of them all around us. We have thousands that do not believe in life after death in any way. They are taught that in schools, and all of that comes with the spirit of atheism that is engulfing our society at large.) And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: (That is logical.) moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. (Sure, this is a parable, but it is not a tale to deceive anyone: it expresses a truth.) And it came to pass, that the beggar died, (According to the Adventists, his spirit just went back to God, not being conscious of anything.) and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: (Look at that: he was carried by the angels. They did not just carry his body out there and bury it: human beings buried his body, but the angels took his spirit and escorted it into the presence of Abraham.) the rich man also died, and was buried; (His body was placed in the ground also. Right? Listen to these next words though.) And in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment (Where is that? The Seventh Day Adventist believe it does not exist anywhere after death, that all of this is just a myth. No saints, that life remains in existence, but cannot be seen by the natural eye; and before Christ arose from the dead, the spirits of both the wicked and the righteous existed in a place in the heart of this earth called hell. It was referred to as torment, or Hades, where the wicked went, but the part of hell referred to as paradise, is where the righteous spirits rested. Notice.) he lift up his eyes, (Well then, there is no wisdom nor device in the grave, the dead know nothing, we are talking about the body, but in hell he lift up his eyes, so that goes to show that the five senses are not parts of the body: they are parts of the soul, see, hear, taste, smell and feel, because the spirit of that rich man was in torment. He could still see, and he sure could feel.) being in torments, (the body was not in torment, it was just rotting away, but the inner person, or spirit and soul was in torment.) and seeth Abraham afar off, (That is in another part, so listen carefully, because we know Abraham was not in heaven: he was in another part of hell called paradise. Hell, at that time, was as I just stated, a place in the earth which consists both of torment and paradise. That is why before Christ died on the cross, no dead person, no matter how righteous they were, went to heaven, because the atonement had not paid for that. The righteous spirit went to the paradise part of hell; and the wicked went to the torment part of hell, so the rich man was in hell. Hell was a place of imprisonment of the spirits. We will back that up with the writing of St. Peter, a little later. That is why Christ went down into the lower parts of the earth when He left His body of clay, which Paul picked up in Ephesians 4, and He (Christ) preached to the imprisoned spirits.) and Lazarus in his bosom. (So Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham, in a place called paradise. Which was not in heaven, at that time.) And he (the rich man) cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; (Now this man was very conscious of his surroundings, and where was he? His body was laying in a grave not saying a word, laying out there somewhere in a cave or some place of burial, but this which is crying out to Abraham, is that spirit man that incorporates the soul, and he feels the flames, the misery, but he can see with his sense of sight, the old man he kicked many times as he stepped out the door. Look at him now, resting in the arms of Abraham. Oh yes! Let him dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. No, the natural tongue in the grave is decaying, that is what we have to realize. There is no wisdom nor device in the grave, the dead know nothing, they do not even think, but wherever that soul is, in the spirit, there is where the knowledge and conscience and all the senses are.) for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” Saints: To me that is very clear. It can be looked upon as a testimony, that the spirit of the righteous is in bliss, but the spirit of the bad one is in torment. Therefore you cannot say, as the Seventh Day Adventist say, that there is no wisdom nor device in the grave and call that the end of the story. The dead body out there in the grave knows nothing, but that which dwelt in it is still very aware of circumstances. That is just another case where they use the scriptures wrong. It is true, the body does not know a thing, but that piece of clay has never known anything. That in itself, has nothing whatsoever to do with how and where the departed spirit which is life, is. In that body, is how the spirit man which is made in the image of God, is able to function in his earthly surroundings. Notice now,“And beside all this, between us and you (This is Abraham talking back to him.) there is a great gulf fixed: (It is not a gulf between heaven and hell, it is a separation between those two parts of hell where imprisoned spirits of the Old Testament era were kept, a place for the righteous and a place for the wicked.) so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him (Lazarus) to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. (Scripturally, this is proof that there is a place called hell, which is a place of suffering for the wicked.) Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” At this point, I want to say something in this light. We just received a large manuscript from a man in Phoenix, claiming he knew Bro. William Branham from way, way back. He went through all the tapes, messages and books, where he has taken statements from Bro. William Branham’s messages and tried to set forth a true vindicated revelation that Bro. William Branham is coming back from the dead to fulfill the rest of the third pull; and that he is going to preach to the Bride saints and give them the revelation of the seven thunders for their final departure from this earth. I want to say at this time, and I say it with all respect to everyone that has ever really believed in Bro. William Branham, that he was God’s messenger to this age, that if Jesus said here, that those five brother would never have believed though one came back from the dead, this movement would not get better if Bro. William Branham did come back from the dead, because they are already locked up, and have been for almost thirty eight years. No saints, God is not sending Bro. William Branham back to straighten up this terribly mixed up movement that claims to be following his message. When God took him off the scene, it caught a lot of those people with a spiritual attitude that had not let them know where they were at that time; and they still do not know where they are. They saw a man, a very humble man of God; and as long as they thought that man was going to be with them, what did they care whether they learned anything or not, just so they could follow the man. If he said jump, they would just jump. If he said pray, then they prayed, or sing, they would sing, but when God took the man out of their vision, it was like he had brought them to a big river and taken the bridge away. I hope you understand my point. The reason I say this, and please listen carefully how I say it, The Bride of Jesus Christ had better begin to have an ear to hear and an eye to see the truth that is laid out before them. This goes beyond memorizing what you hear, because you have to know how it is to be believed, how it is to be applied in the heart and in the every day walk of life, because God is going to have a little Church walking on the face of this earth, with every member perfectly in accord. They are going to see eye to eye and they are going to be in perfect agreement scripturally. That little Bride of Christ is going to put that old spirit of tradition to shame. Therefore if we do not wake up and get our revelation straightened out and understood, we are going to be just like a lot of other people that do not understand the Bible and just look for the nicest element of human flesh they can get behind and follow. Scripturally they will not know north from south, or east from west. They are going to follow that flesh, because that is all they know to follow. We have to have the Holy Spirit inside us, in order to get our lives straightened out. That Holy Spirit inside of us is what is going to teach us and enable us to take on the mind of Christ. That takes you right back to Romans 8:14 “ For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” He will teach you and show you things to come. He will bring to your remembrance everything that has been written in the Bible to benefit true believers. He will take every mystery out of it and let you see the true picture. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. That is pure and simple. If it was that way in the beginning, it is going to be that way in the end. I have to say, The little Bride of Christ, with the ministry God has put among them, are going to be a living testimony of the Spirit of God, and the revelation of truth. They are going to walk hand in hand, in perfect agreement, and there is going to be a joy in their hearts that few Gentiles have ever known.
DREAM AND TESTIMOY
I have something here, and I hope you do not think I am doing this to exalt anyone. There is a young lady here, which my grandson Chris met several months ago. She was with the Seventh Day Adventist, because that is the way her parents had brought her up, especially her father. I do not say this to belittle anyone, but to make you aware of something. It will go on the tape for all to hear. In fact, if her father would hear this tape, I want him to know that I say these things with proper respect. When the young lady began to come here with Christ, I knew she was an Adventist, and that she had been raised from a child up in the Adventist teaching. Later, for three Saturday’s over a period of time, she came and spent about two hours each time asking me questions, for me to explain certain things. She would ask me this question, When we die, what happens to the real you? I explained to her the best I knew how. I referred her to Psalms 16:10, where Jesus went into hell and preached to the imprisoned spirits. I said to her, If there is no part of the being that is a spirit that goes somewhere, then what did Jesus go into hell to preach to? I prayed all along, Lord, help this young woman understand what we are trying to explain. Well this is a testimony of how God dealt with her: She had a dream, and this is what she told me.
THE DREAM
“I awoke on Friday morning around 2:30 out of a scary dream February 14th. I was feeling tormented and afraid. A voice was saying to me, (It was the devil.) “I have you now Jana, I’ve got you.”(You know saints, that is the way the devil has us when we are in scriptural ignorance, no matter whether you are a Catholic, a Methodist, or what. I know a lot of people that do not even believe in the second coming of Christ: They are Nazarene and Pilgrim Holiness. You cannot even preach the second coming of Christ to them. They believe in holiness: They will not wear this, they will not wear that, they will not do this, and they will not do that, but try to talk to them about the soon coming of Christ, and you would just as well try to sell them a brand new fifty thousand dollar car sight unseen. They are not interested in anything like that. How many understand what I am trying to say? You have to have God dealing in your life, or you are never going to go any further than what you were raised up to believe, whether a Catholic or what.) I was very disoriented and confused. The voice was very evil and wicked sounding. It was as if there were someone right beside me. It sent chills through me. I suddenly fell back asleep. I again began to dream. (Here is where God began to change the picture.) I saw myself lying there with the blanket wrapped around me just like I fell asleep earlier that night. In the dream I was above, looking down on myself lying on the couch. (Here, is the real person.) I then heard a voice saying, “This is you.” I looked on the floor beside the couch and my Bible was lying there beside me. I had been reading it before I went to sleep and laid it there. I saw a hand very strongly flipping through the pages as if it were in fast motion. Then the Bible fell open to a certain page and the hand pointed to a specific chapter and verse. It was moving so fast I could not tell which chapter or verse. Though I did not remember which book of the Bible it was pointing to, I awakened in the dream, (Notice, she awakened in the dream.) and Corinthians was going through my mind. A voice said, “Don’t forget the Bible.” I then felt my spirit leaving my body. It raised up out of my body and knelt beside the couch where I was lying. ( This goes to show, that there is another part of you other than just the body of clay? There really is.) I could now see two images of myself, the one lying down and the other kneeling beside it. The image that was kneeling on the floor was transparent. I could see through it. (Sure you can see through it: it is a spirit.) I could still feel my body lying on the couch but I could not move. It was as if I were paralyzed. My spirit was kneeling down praying and crying with its hands folded. I could feel its hair lying on me. I looked on the floor at the Bible again, and then looked back at myself on the couch. My spirit then stood back up and entered my body again. I saw the words Holy Bible ,in very large size and heard a voice saying, “This is important, believe it, the Bible is beside you on the floor, please do not forget about it: you left it beside you, and it is the truth.” The pages began to flip faster and faster until it was a blur.
The scene changed, and I was standing in my room. (This is all in a dream.) I could hear Chris reading out of the Bible. He said my name and told me to come in and sit beside him. I walked into the room and he was sitting on the couch and looked very excited. Then I saw the Bible close up again. I read the words Holy Bible. Chris began trying to explain something to me, saying he understands something he was confused about before. He was being very serious about what he was saying. He began telling me about God and that I have to trust and believe in what He says in His word. The Bible then began to flip to certain pages on its own. A voice told Chris not to forget the Bible. Chris said that his grandpa was preaching about the truth and that he understood it. I began to feel very comforted and peaceful and happy and excited. I heard a voice say “What you are hearing is the truth, go to church and believe.” (Now here is another part I will read before we stop.) The scene changed again and I was in the church I used to go to. (Listen to this. This is how God looks upon these old religious ideas.) I could see some of the people that went to the church with me. I could hear crying from everywhere. They were saying they needed help. The people looked old and miserable. Some looked as if they were dead. Their bodies were all beaten and scratched up, so were their clothes. Their skin looked burned. I felt very afraid. I could see the outside of the church and it looked abandoned. (This is a picture of the old denominations, they are dead.) The windows were all broken out and the doors were locked.”
The doors to those old systems are locked to a true believer, because there is no Holy Spirit revelation that is going to lead you back to those old systems. How many understand that? I did not read that to glorify any person’s flesh, but God knew exactly how to deal with the inner being of a person that wanted to know truth. I just have to say, I am glad God is still a God that knows how to deal with your spirit and soul. Therefore in this day and hour we are living in, let us not say, Well I am this, or I am that. You are either a child of God filled with the Holy Spirit, and a revelation of truth and understanding of what God wants your life to be, or you are just another natural minded human being walking on the face of this earth, wandering around like animals that are lost, knowing not where you are going. The true and living God is a God that is going to be very real and near to us as we choose to walk with Him in a true revelation of His word. He is not finished giving dreams: He knows exactly the state of your mind and heart; and He knows exactly how to speak to you, to get you to understand what He wants you to do and how He wants you to walk from now on. I want to say also, I am not picking out any Seventh Day Adventist to belittle or make fun of them. Neither the Jehovah Witness. The Jehovah Witness people for the past number of years, has thought that by believing in the Millennium and the second coming of Christ, this makes a believer out of them. Jehovah Witness: Listen to me! If you do not open your eyes and read this Bible right, you can go straight to hell believing in the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ, because you have bypassed the scriptures that tell you, You must be born again.
HIS EXPERIENCE – THEN SOME ADVICE
Several years ago, a Jehovah Witness man stopped by our house, and started out with this and that. I plainly said to him, Sir: I know what you believe: I believe in the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ also. I believe in the second coming of Christ, but you Jehovah Witness’ do not do what the scriptures say you must do. You must be born again. When I said that, it made him angry and he said, Oh, I know what you believe, and he took his briefcase, and back to the car he went. If you talk to them like the Christians in the book of Acts, that is the response you get from them. Do you know what I mean? Christians: Listen to me: you do not have to run and hide when they come to your house. Take a little time and learn something that you can say back to them. You do not need to be insulting, if you speak to them of what you believe and stand for. If you have just been sitting around, going to church and going through the motions, and you do not have anything you can say to those who peddle what they believe door to door, then maybe you do need to go somewhere and hide, because they know more than you know. If you do know what is written in the Bible you carry to church, you have a right to use it, so just present the truth to them and leave the rest in the hands of God. My point is, I do not attack a Catholic, a Jehovah Witness, a Seventh Day Adventist, or any other denomination any more than a Methodist or Church of Christ or whatever. There are thousands of denominational people around us that have religion, but they do not have Holy Ghost salvation, and a knowledge of the plan of God. They do not know what a genuine Holy Ghost, truth believing person knows: They have a traditional belief in the head and they are ready to get very angry, argue, and even insult you if you do not allow them to present their entire spiel. If you cannot open your mind to the scriptures, to see what various writings apply to, and how they are beneficial to your life, then you do not know what you ought to know. God expects bride saints to grow in the stature of Jesus Christ the Bridegroom, and be ready to give an account of what you believe and why? That does not mean every person should be able to explain every scripture, but you should have some revelation that causes you to stand where you stand. As we continue on, let us open our Bibles to the 115th Psalm. I said earlier, when I referred to the article I have here, that the Seventh Day Adventist use every scripture in the Bible that speaks on how the dead know nothing, the dead don’t do this, and there is no wisdom nor device in the grave, and so forth. They try their best to bring out the idea that when you die, that is it, that there is no consciousness or memory of existing anywhere else. They deny the fact that if you are righteous, you die and go to heaven, or if you are wicked, you go to hell. They say it does not exist. But I am going to give you the other side of the Bible that they don’t even look at. Here is a scripture they use, the 115th Psalm, the 17th verse. Who wrote these words? David wrote them and said in the 17th verse, “The dead praise not the Lord, (The Adventist say, Amen, that is right.) neither any that go down into silence.”Meaning death. Now I ask you, Is that as far as we are going to go with the subject? If you take all those verses that deal with death, that it is the end of the flesh, so there is no wisdom nor device in the grave, and the dead body knows nothing, and you go no further, then you are being robbed. Any person who only feeds on one line of thought, and they get every scripture out of the Bible to justify that thought, that person does not have Holy Ghost salvation: He or she only has religion. I have to say again, You do not have salvation, you only have religion. You can take that negative part of the Bible, and you can memorize it, quote it word for word and impress a lot of people, but you do not have eternal life. If that is all you see: you only have religion. It is time to wake up, if you are ever going to. I have had good Catholic neighbors for years: I have worked for them, and they have worked for me. There is nothing wrong with the person: it is the religion that holds the mind and the spirit of the person, and keeps it locked up. If a person never has a hunger for anything more than what they have, that person just remains locked up spiritually speaking. Most every prisoner has a hunger to get out of confinement, but there are a lot of people shut up in the various denominations, that are not hungry; they are contented with what they have. They sit in there and go through the rituals and ceremonies and traditional programs and say, I believe what this says, I believe what that says, but that is not salvation: that is just religion and God will have no part of it. Do you understand my point? If you are like that, God did not put you there: the devil did it. When he sees something in your life that lets him know you do not have a spiritual attitude about you, and that you have no desire to learn truth and compare different things of the scriptures, nine times out of ten, he can derail you somewhere, because it is just like throwing the switch on a railroad track and diverting the train from the main line. As for where we go when death takes us from the scene, we looked at Psalm 115, so now let us look at what David said in, (Psalm 16, verses 9-10) “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. (10) For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” The same man, David, wrote both of them. The Adventist say there is no memory after death, there is no conscience, just your spirit goes back to God, and your body goes into the ground, but they have not considered the whole picture. They have interpreted it to suit their ideas, but the same David that said what he did in the 115th Psalm, also said something in the 16th Psalm, 9th and 10th verses. Let us look at that.
DAVID’S HOPE
We will read two verses in the 16th Psalm, verses 9-10, which reveal the hope David held in his heart. He was looking at the hour when he knows he is going to be dead and in hell. Keep in mind, that in the Old Testament, when the person died, the righteous did not go to heaven because the perfect sacrifice had not yet been offered for atonement. As we said earlier, He went to a place in hell in the heart of the earth called paradise. The wicked went to hell also, but in another place called torment. That is where Jesus, in the 16th chapter of Luke, told about. Here, David was talking about the same place Jesus spoke of in the parable, saying, “Therefore my heart is glad, (He had a revelation of something way back then.) and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. (That is not his body talking.) For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” He is not talking about the body that is in the grave, and he is talking about his spirit and his soul, down in the heart of the earth in that place called hell, but not in torment, because his expectation was, he rested in hope, down in paradise. To me, that is as plain as the nose on your face. I am going to start with this 8th verse. “I have set the Lord always before me: because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” Nothing is going to destroy this, nothing is going to deter me from believing like this. When you see something to put your faith in, it gives you something to look forward to. You do not look forward just to the grave, you look forward to the fact that you are conscious somewhere, and God has made provision for you to enjoy that somewhere, and you are not in torment. “Therefore my heart is gland, (He can rest with this hope.) and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. (with the assurance) For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell.” (Who is talking? David. He is not talking about the grave, he is talking about his soul in hell.) neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” (Prophesying concerning Jesus) Adventist: please, I have talked to many undertakers about decomposition: Jesus was not in the grave a full three days and three nights, which is seventy two hours. I say that because Jesus was crucified in the month of April, when it is warm over there. In seventy two hours the body goes through a chemical breakdown, then the gases begin to build, the body starts to decompose. Mortification sets in. David had the promise, thou shalt not suffer, or allow my Messiah to see corruption, mortification. Hallelujah! Go on and argue: you can go to hell arguing about that, because you still have to face reality sometime. The point is this, One day, you will stand before Him in judgment and meet Him. Now, did Jesus go to hell? He sure did. So that proves that there is such a thing as the spirit of man going to hell. Furthermore what did Jesus die on the cross for? Do you think it was just to give that body of clay something to hope for, when it cannot hope? It is dead: there is no wisdom nor device in the grave, but if the spirit that kept it alive here on earth is somewhere, conscious of its surroundings, then it is that spirit that incorporates the soul and has the hope. As we have already said, The spirit and soul are inseparable. When God took of Himself, Spirit, which is life, and imputed into it certain attributes that make up the soul, and that became the individual man He created to have dominion over the earth; and those imputed attributes are what makes him think like he does, that was God’s plan. Therefore when death takes that spirit out of that body, that spirit is absolutely alive somewhere, whether in paradise or torment. Otherwise the words of Jesus are of no significance and if you take that attitude I have to ask, Why do you even read the Bible? I choose to believe that Jesus had a purpose in everything he spoke to the people who followed Him, so the parable we just read, lets me know the righteous soul goes to paradise and the unbelieving soul goes to torment. Now with that in mind, I will read this verse again, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One (which is the Messiah) to see corruption.” He will not be in that grave seventy two hours, that body of His, which was taken down in haste and was not embalmed, but wrapped up and stuck it in the grave, (which was a cave.) or else His body would have been subject to corruption. Let us just see what happened then when Jesus did go into hell. When we take that and go to 1st Peter, you must keep in mind that these epistles were not written by Gentiles. They were written by Jewish men who had a revelation. Let us see about this Holy One, where David said, Neither will thou suffer or allow thy Holy One to see corruption. Notice what the apostle Peter said about it. 1st Peter 3:18 “For Christ also hath once (Where? On the cross.) suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison.” Where was the prison? In hell itself. So when He went to prison, what was His purpose? He preached unto the spirits in prison, in hell. Remember, the wicked and the righteous were all there; only one element was in paradise and the other in torment. How much clearer does anything have to be, to satisfy those who truly believe the scriptures are the inspired word of God? These scriptures let us know, that even though the body of Jesus was up there in a grave, a tomb, the spirit of life that had dwelt in that body had gone down into hell to preach to souls in captivity. He preached to those spirits, that according to Peter’s revelation, were disobedient. “Which sometimes were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing.” That period of time came to an end; Listen now; during this long period of time, while Noah was building the ark, there were a lot of people around; and they knew very little, because there was no law written, but even though there was nothing written, something was guiding their conscience; and as Noah preached to those people of that hour, many of them died believing in something, yet not understanding what it was all about, but they knew that something was coming. Some of those people were good, that is according to the best they knew how to be, and they died. Others paid no attention, they died also. The one group went to torment, the other went into that place of paradise, never understanding what this was all about. That is the ones that Jesus went to preach to. Let us read on. “Wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. (That is at the end of that period of time.) The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” My point is this, When Jesus went down into hell, into that place of paradise, and preached to those people that were righteous, yet not based on how they had kept a law or anything, they were just guided by their conscience, by something that kept them from being so wicked, He revealed to them something they had never known, concerning what God had done for them. Listen carefully, When Jesus, on the third day, did rise from the dead, meaning His spirit came out of hell and was reunited with His body, (You can find this in Matthew.) He rose from the dead, according to what David had expressed; and that fulfilled exactly what Paul was talking about in Ephesians 4. Now He that ascended, meaning went up, is the one that descended first. He went into the bottomless pit, down into hell itself, and then to do and accomplish everything for all that had believed, to fulfill the hope that had been held. He overcame death, He overcame hell and the grave, because the grave was where the body was held. Therefore when He did that, He accomplished what Paul expressed in Ephesians 4, He led captivity captive, those that had been in captivity by Satan down there, the atonement has been made for their souls, so He took out of paradise those captive, righteous saints, and brought them up in a resurrection and they were reunited with their bodies. When He ascended on high, and those resurrected saints went with Him, that was the first phase of the first resurrection. He conquered death, He conquered hell, and the grave. That is where Paul got his revelation in Ephesians 4. He that ascended is the same one that descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He preached to those righteous spirit, that had been held captive in paradise; and then He took them that were captive of Satan, out of captivity and they became captives of His. He took them to glory with Him. That is the first phase of the first resurrection, which will be a total of three phases in all. For many that were in the graves came forth and appeared in the cities after Jesus had risen from the dead. Therefore you have to get the Psalms, you have to get Ephesians 4, and you have to get Luke 16, and Matthew 27, all lined up, to get a clear picture. If you only take one scripture and go to seed on it, you will wind up in the closet somewhere, wondering, how do I get out of here? That is why I say, Do not just take one verse of scripture to try to prove something: you take it all, because there is an answer to every bit of it. The final conclusion is, Paul said Jesus descended first, when He gave up the ghost on the cross, then man took the body and laid it in a tomb, but His spirit went down into paradise, into hell itself, into the lower parts of the earth, where He preached to those spirits. Then when it was time for Him to rise from the dead to fulfill the scriptures which state that He suffered, He tasted death for every man, He took all those righteous souls out of paradise, so literally, He conquered hell, because that part of hell no longer holds anything. How many understand? That part of hell no longer holds any righteous spirits captive, because they were resurrected and taken to glory. What does that leave in hell? Only the wicked. Why did He take the righteous spirits to glory? Because His atonement, the shedding of His blood, had made the way for it, so He took up with Him. I like that. I know this for sure, if I die before Jesus comes for His bride, you can bury this body wherever you want to, but that grave is not where my real spirit self will be. It is going to be with my Lord. There is a hope in believing in Jesus Christ, that He conquered death, and hell, and the grave. That is our hope and our assurance. We have a lot to look forward to. We do not want to just get hung up on one line of thought that someone throws before us. Some people read a verse, a thought comes to them and soon turns into a doctrine, and without ever comparing scripture with scripture, others grab hold and hit a cold trail. That is not the way God ordained His truth to be perpetrated. He has ordained that certain chosen vessels be those to whom He reveals hidden truths.
THE GRAVE IS NOT THE END
Since we have been speaking of the resurrection, let me carry it right on through, right into the book of Revelation. Bro. Jackson, are you saying all those righteous saints back then, when Jesus went down into hell into paradise and preached to them, were taken up with Him? They sure were. When you read in Matthew where it says that many bodies arose and were seen by many, (Mat 27:52-53) “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.” naturally the writers were writing about those that were in the graves in and around Jerusalem. Some people are so narrow minded they cannot see what is so clearly seen by those who have eyes to see. They will say, Well Bro. Jackson, that was in Jerusalem, but there were a lot of Old Testament saints buried in other places. Brother, why will you put yourself in somebody’s junk yard? When Jesus went down there, He did not go just for two or three, He went down there for the whole bunch: He died for the sins of the whole world, So He brought all of them out, whether black, white, or whatever they were. He brought all of them out of there, and all of them went up. As He was restored back to His body, those others began to appear in the city and were recognized by many. It should be understood, that this was familiar people that had died before the people in Jerusalem, so they knew them when they came forth. That is why they knew that something had happened. That did not mean that some of those old saints that had been buried two or three hundred miles away, came into Jerusalem: They were all taken up though. The point is, He conquered paradise, that part of hell, for a purpose. So when He took them up, from then on, as we enter the New Testament era, the Grace Age, He made a way for every born again Holy Ghost filled child, that when his spirit leaves that body of clay, the body will go in the ground just like anybody else’s body, but the spirit of the righteous person goes immediately to glory. It does not go down to paradise, because paradise does not exist anymore. It goes to heaven. You Adventist may say, Well I do not see the scriptures like that. It is because you are not reading your Bible: You are just reading parts that seem to support your traditional teaching. Since the New Testament age started, there have been many testimonies; and I have read many of them of different eras of time, where people in times of serious illness have been allowed to die for just a temporary period, and God let them see the glory world. When they were allowed to pass out of that body, they knew that they were dead because they could look back and see their body lying there. They would see themselves entering that beautiful realm where the spirit life of others who have passed on is now dwelling; and that place is not fifty million light years beyond Mars: It is just right out there in another dimension, that nothing tangible can touch or penetrate. Therefore regardless of what others may say, that is where the righteous spirits of those who have passed on during this Grace Age, are. That is what brings us to 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, where Paul, the only apostle of the New Testament era that taught about the rapture, described the event. He had a full revelation, that when the time came that the early Christians, or the middle age Christians, or any of them of all the era of Grace would pass on, they awaited a time when they again would be reunited with their body. This is what he wrote in his first Epistle to the Thessalonian Assembly. Notice, (1 Th 4:15-17 ) “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” That was written by the apostle that wrote 14 books of the New Testament, the apostle to the Gentiles, called out of Judaism by the Lord specifically for that ministry, so by what authority could anyone reject what he taught? This is not the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to rule and reign on earth as King of kings and Lord of lords: It is His secret coming for His Bride Church. He already has the Old Testament saints up there, in their glorified bodies; and this second phase of the first resurrection takes the bride saints; and the third phase at the end of the week of Daniel will complete the first resurrection. The first resurrection (which is in three phases) has life, but the second resurrection, at the end of the Millennium, is a resurrection of the wicked dead: It has no life: That resurrection is strictly for the purpose of pronouncing judgment upon those who have rejected God in their lifetime. I hope that is clear to all of you. Those Old Testament saints did not come up out of the graves, enter in the same kind of mortal body that they lived in before they went into the graves, walk around a few days and then die again, to be found somewhere and buried again. No. He brought them out in a glorified body and took them to glory. For He that ascended is the same that descended first. (Eph 4:10) “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill (or fulfill) all things.) He led captivity captive. When He went up, He fulfilled Psalm 68:18. Who is prophesying this? David himself. He had seen exactly what Christ would do as He would come to fulfill that beautiful hope he had. “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: (Those that were in paradise, He has taken them captive, and moved them to heaven.) thou hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” When you take that to Ephesians 4, Paul plainly tells you, He that ascended is the same that descended first.
GIFTS AND CALLINGS OF MEN
When Jesus ascended, what did He do? He sent back those gifts and callings that caused God to set in the Church, first apostles, secondly prophets, then evangelists, pastors and teachers. (Eph 4:11) “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, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: (For how long?) Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (Why?) That we henceforth (or from then on) be no more children, (or as children) tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, (who teach man made traditions instead of a revelation of the scriptures) and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” Yes, to deceive those who do not have enough concern for the care of their soul to search for the truth of God’s word. The ministry God uses is Gifted men, called out for service by the Holy Ghost, and not those who have gone through schools of theology, to be more religious. How many know what I mean by that? They are men that have been called by God, chosen by God, taught by God, and men who do not have to be approved by Dr. So and So of some Denomination man has designed. The point is, These men that have been set in the Church with gifts and callings given only by God, (the great eternal Spirit) were not called and placed until Christ had ascended into heaven, where He has sat as our intercessor for almost two thousand years. Everything that is worthwhile in the plan and purpose of God, is all a work of the Holy Spirit, accomplished by men chosen for that specific ministry. I am truly grateful for that, because it bypasses all the good intentions of religious mankind; and goes right to the thing ordained by God Himself. When Paul said, that at the coming of Christ for His church, the dead in Christ, which are all laying there from the beginning of the Grace Age, shall rise first, and then we that remain alive shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he was speaking by revelation. I am compelled to believe, from a logical standpoint, (and please notice how I say this), that the changing is instantaneous. However that does not mean, Boom, and you are gone. How many understand what I mean by that? I believe, that when that moment comes, Christ is there in mid air, not on earth, and the world in general is not going to see Him. That is to be a secret event, as far as everyone except the bride are concerned.
FOOLISH THINKING V/S REALITY
Do you know saints, that there are denominational philosophers that believe, when the rapture takes place trains are going to be heading down the rails, and away goes the conductor, there goes the engineer, and the train is going to wreck. An airplane with four hundred and eighty six passengers on it, all of a sudden the pilot goes, the co-pilot goes; and the plane is out of control and headed for a crash. All over this planet, that is the way they portray the rapture. No, no saints, it is not going to be that way. How many understand my point? When the rapture takes place, the world in general is not going to know that anything has happened. I believe that with all my heart. Did Paul not say, The dead in Christ shall rise first? First! Remember that! Then we that remain alive will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. I believe we are going to see some of those dead ones that are raised up first. You might think we are going to need a revelation for the change. All you will need is to see aunt So and So, that died three years ago, ten years ago or whenever, Look, there she goes! Hallelujah! I know something is on the way! If that don’t make you get ready, then something is wrong with your mind, or you are looking for the wrong thing. There comes a time when we need to have our mind settled on things more important than all the material things we are so concerned about. That does not mean they will be here walking around for two or three days and will have a ministry of some kind. That is very foolish, to think like that. I do believe with all my heart, that there is a reason for those dead saints to come up like that, but they are not going to go through the factories and create chaos. I believe they will appear to those that really are watching and waiting for the coming of the Lord. When they see uncle So and So, or a brother that has been dead a year and half, Hallelujah! Now I know He is coming for me! Do not try to tell me something will not get you excited! Together with them, Hallelujah! They are not going to run off and leave you. Together we are going to rise, to do what? To meet the Lord in the air. He is not going to be down here. We are going to meet Him in the air. But Bro. Jackson, what if we had already made plans and arrangements to go visit Uncle Jim and Aunt Lucy? Well go on! You had better be ready to leave at any time and leave all else behind. The dead in Christ shall rise first. That is foremost: then we that remain alive, after we have seen some of them, will go up with them to meet the Lord in the air. You are not going to be out here crawling around on your hands and knees, looking for some kind of evidence that might cause you to change your ways and get ready: It is going to be before your very eyes. Together we are going to rise to meet the Lord in the air, in a glorified body. That is why Paul had the revelation of the rapture; and none of these denominational preachers are able to get the picture right, because it is an event they are not going to need to know anything about. Those who believe God is three persons, are not going to have any part in it. Neither are any of those who love their denominational brand of religion more than they love revealed truth of the word of God. That is just plain and simple. Most of those people only read what they see in the book of Revelation. The apostle Paul explained the rapture: The apostle John did not say a thing about it. Do you know what John did see though? He saw all those tribulation people, and he saw them come up. When those tribulation saints rose up, both Jews and Gentiles, it was John who said, This is the first resurrection. Why did he not say something about the rapture? He saw the rapture, at least the affects of it, because in the 19th chapter of Revelation, he saw the bride returning to earth with Jesus. Paul saw them go, John saw them coming back, and then John saw the other ones coming up at the end of the tribulation of the week of Daniel, and when those came up he said, This is the first resurrection. In other words, That completes the threefold part of the first resurrection. God does things in threes. How many realize that? That is perfection; and completeness is seen in sevens. The Old Covenant saints, the Bride Church saints, and the tribulation saints, all together make up the people that Jesus suffered and died for. I read an article the other day; and I knew the guy was shooting at me, because I have said there is going to be three parts to the first resurrection, and that there is no way you can change it, because God does things in threes. That is His plan, His process. That is why justification, sanctification, and glorification is all the finished and complete process of God redeeming a human soul. When we can see that it took Christ to do every bit of that, we lose that self-righteous attitude. That is why, when He died on the cross, it accomplished a threefold purpose, He suffered, the just man, for the unjust: He bore the sins and iniquity of the whole world. God placed it all upon His body, upon the shoulders of a just man. Then He suffered on the cross in pain and died in agony, crying out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Oh how it must have torn His nerves to pieces. Nevertheless God, that great eternal Spirit, let His Son suffer, the just for the unjust, that all mankind might have a way back to God. He hung there; and when His head slumped over on His chest, those watching knew He had breathed His last breath, but that was not the end of the man. There is much more to the story. As the spirit leaves that body, He goes down into the heart of the earth, because that which is composed of matter cannot penetrate the earth, but that spirit could go there. He preached and testified to all those saints down there. Then when the hour arrived, in order that His body not be subjected to mortification, He was raised by the power of God; and came forth through that body, picked it up, and it started breathing. Then He was seen of about five hundred men over the space of fifty days. First He is here, then He is somewhere else, but all those Old Testament saints had been resurrected; and they were waiting out there for Him. They had already made their appearance to some of the living. That caused it to be a testimony that the writers could write about. Do not ever think that all those Old Testament saints were out here running around in the streets of Jerusalem for fifty days, talking, Hi, how are you, and all that. They were right out there waiting for Him. They had made their appearance, so that was all that was necessary. How many realize that? Remember, God does not create a show for anybody to commercialize. It is always to fulfill some purpose. Therefore they were out there in the realm of glory, waiting. The day that Jesus ascended, He was taken up in clouds. No, it was not coming up a rain storm: They were clouds of glory that engulfed Him. The Bible tells us that with the trump of God the dead in Christ shall rise. Then we shall be changed in a moment, and together we will be caught up. In (1 Cor 15:52) Paul tells of our change, using the term, in a moment. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” Will it be when the west is dark, and the lightning is striking and the thunders are booming? Is that the way you see it? No. We are going to be caught up in clouds of glory: It will not be storm clouds. It is the power of God, how God can visually make it evident. He will engulf the redeemed people, so that they are hidden from the view of earth. How many understand that? We have a blessed hope, a blessed assurance that when the Church is gone, that fulfills Paul’s revelation, and all those other saints that are pictured in that great tribulation period over there in John the revelator’s writings, were seen by him when they came up. They are shown in Revelation 20. The dead in Christ, come up. In the 20th chapter, you see the bride saints on thrones, with judgment given to them, but you also see the tribulation saints that have overcome during the tribulation of the week of Daniel, because they refused to accept the mark of the beast; and John expressed it like this, “I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. That is when John said, This is the first resurrection. In other words, It was John who expressed the fact that this completes the first resurrection, the first part, the second part, and John closed it out showing the third part, and saying, The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Why? Because the rest of the dead are the wicked dead, and they are in hell, in torment until the thousand years have expired. How many realize that? That is where they are. My point is, We have a blessed hope. All that saints have been hoping for, praying about, and thanking God for, through all the years, for these last two thousand years, we are the generation that is approaching the very end of it all. I am thankful to God, that this Bible will talk to you if you approach it in the right way. God can cause His Spirit to take these passages of scripture and bring them out in a revelation to you, so that it becomes a picture to your soul also. You do not have just the word of someone else, because He can let you see yourself walking right in that picture, understanding the benefit. I thank God every day, that I do not just have religion, but a genuine salvation experience in my soul. I would not want anything less. I have salvation. I know that my Redeemer lives; and I am looking forward to all that goes with such a privilege. I love what Job said, (chapter 19:25 – 27)”For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.” All of God’s redeemed have their own particular, personal experience. Praise God! Hallelujah! I love the end of it all. Continued next issue.
MY SUPPORT OF BROTHER JACKSON
Many have spoken and others have written, expressing their confidence and support for Brother Jackson as a man who is led by God, supported by God, and called of God to stand in the gap and hold a line on revealed truth in this hour of atheism and all out ungodliness. Well Brothers and Sisters, and whoever may read this, since I sometimes have difficulty getting my mouth to say what my mind and heart really wants to express, I feel led to take a little of the extra space I have left this month; and try to express on paper, what I truly feel in my heart, concerning the character, the morality, the fairness and ministry of our pastor, Brother Raymond M. Jackson.
My wife and I have sat under Brother Jackson’s ministry for over 33 years now, since September 1970. Before coming to Faith Assembly, we were in fellowship with the Southern Baptist People for 14 years. We received the Spirit of God in June1967, in a small prayer meeting held by good friends of ours, while still going to the Baptist Church. We stayed in the Baptist Church a whole year after that, trying to share what we had received with them, but after about a year, we realized they did not want any part of what they referred to as, That old holy roller religion, so we finally left there in May 1968, and started attending regularly, an Assemblies of God Church. We enjoyed the fellowship there, until sometime in 1969, when we received water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ: Then we became, as they chose to brand us, Jesus Only People. We did not know much about religious brands at that time, but we knew our baptism was the right thing to do. Well during all that time since June 1967, we had been going to Charismatic meetings four to six times a week, looking for something to fulfill a great desire to get closer to God and find the truth, because there was always a lot of different ideas on scripture in all of those gatherings. Finally, because of the insistent urging of a young couple that was attending Bro. Jackson’s church at that time, we went. When we went in there on that September morning in 1970, we knew we had finally found the right place. The Spirit of God witnessed that to us, and from that day until this day, we have never gone anywhere else looking for what we were looking for when we went there. God is so merciful to hungry hearts. We have gone a few places out of respect for other ministers in fellowship with us, but God has fulfilled our spiritual hunger right here at Faith assembly, sitting under Bro. Jackson’s teaching.
During the years we have been coming here, we have seen many people come and go. Many of them were preachers, who, when they first came to Faith Assembly, would testify of how thankful they were that God had led them there; Then after a period of time, each one that has chosen to go another way, supposing that God had revealed something to them that Bro. Jackson would not agree with, have gone away and joined ranks with those who have always had in mind to destroy Bro. Jackson’s ministry and influence. They always accuse him of not being in the message, referring of course to the message of truth Brother William M. Branham was called of God to deliver to this Laodicean Age. Well, my heartfelt conviction, is that he has been the only man on the face of this earth, that has taken what Brother Branham taught, aligned it with the written word of God that the Elijah Ministry was supposed to restore us back to; and then sought God for a revelation of those things that were introduced by the prophet, but never fully explained. I will not go into all of them because of space, but I ask you to think seriously, Who has God given the revelation to about the prehistoric era, that Bro. William Branham mentioned, but did not explain? Did you hear it before Brother Jackson taught it? What about the two trees in the Garden of Eden? Who did God first give that revelation to? Brother Jackson was the first man that ever taught it as we now understand it. I say the same thing about the seventieth week of Daniel. Brother Jackson was the first to take a concrete stand on the fact that there is yet one full week left for God to deal with the Jewish people. I need not say any more along that line: You have all heard Brother Jackson speak of the seven subjects he presented to Bro. William Branham, (in a dream) that he would preach on, if he preached for Bro. William Branham, as he had asked him to (in the dream). He has preached on every one of them and we have been privileged to sit and learn from each of them.
My reason for writing all of this, is because there are probably people on our mailing list that would ask, Why do we not hear Brother Turner stand up and testify of how he feels about Brother Jackson’s ministry and leadership? My wife and I want the world to know, that it did not take us very long to know in our hearts that Bro. Jackson has an apostolic ministry. At first we just looked at him as one of many apostles in the Bride Church, but as the years passed; and as we witnessed how God always enabled him to correct error, we became convinced that God had called him to be more than just one of a number: He holds the line on truth, like a chief apostle would be responsible to do. He has stood and held for a true revelation against many of those he had much respect for in prior years. He does not rush to judgment, but when others present ideas he knows in his heart is not scriptural, after being sure they have heard the truth on the subject, he does not fail to confront the error, lest it affect the body of believers who want to know the truth. As for me and my house, we have made up our mind to stand for truth; and to stand faithful to Brother Jackson as he presents and defends truth. Our prayer, is that these words will be received in the way we humbly desire that they be. God Bless All Who Love truth.
Brother Louis B. Turner