I WANT TO SPEAK ON SOMETHING IN THIS MESSAGE, THAT HAS BEEN ON MY HEART FOR A LONG TIME. I HAVE A GREAT DESIRE, THAT WITH THE HELP OF THE LORD, TO BE ABLE TO CLEAR THE MIND OF MANY WHO SEE IN THE SCRIPTURES, INSTANCES WHERE THE WRITER SPEAKS OF A MYSTERY. THIS PARTICULAR MYSTERY SPEAKS OF THE FACT THAT GENTILES ARE TO BE FELLOW HEIRS WITH THE JEWS, ALL OF THE SAME BODY, FOR WE ARE ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS. JEWS THROUGH THE AGES OF TIME PAST, COULD NEVER HAVE IMAGINED SUCH A THING AS GOD CARING ABOUT WHAT THEY WERE PRONE TO REFER TO AS GENTILE DOGS. WELL GOD HAD THE ENTIRE PLAN IN HIS MIND BEFORE HE EVER STARTED TO CREATE ANYTHING. FOLLOW ME, AS WE LOOK AT A NUMBER OF SCRIPTURES; AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE WORDING, BECAUSE YOU CAN JUST SKIM RIGHT OVER A LOT OF SCRIPTURES AND MISS THE CENTRAL TRUTH THEREIN.
I am just trusting the Lord, to give me words that will make the main point of this message clear to all of you. I am giving this message the title, “The Great Mystery.” I have a particular reason for using this title. It is all mentioned in the New Testament part of our Bible. I will try not read any more scripture to you, than I feel is absolutely necessary, lest by much reading I lose the interest of some. I just want to try and read to you, something that will give you a little insight and catch your interest, so you will study your Bible to get the entire picture. We are here at the ending of time, so we should all have one purpose; and that purpose is to yield to the Spirit of God in a way that will make us a part of that great mystery. When I say that, people will ask, What are you talking about? It is all in the scriptures and we will read it. Open your Bible to the epistle to the Ephesians, first. We will read from the 1st chapter, starting with the 3rd verse. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ. According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace; Wherein He hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to the good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.” I am now going to go back and give you a few scriptures coming along through time. This mystery was something spoken of by the prophets in the Old Testament. They were there for the Jewish people to read if they chose to do so, the people to whom the Law had been given. All these things were written in the writings of the various prophets and so forth, but the Jewish people that read them did not know what any of it was pertaining to. I will give you one instance: As God called Abraham from the land of the Chaldeans, He told him to come out and go into a land that He would show him. As he did, He showed him this great landscape and made him a promise, All of this will I give unto thee and thy seed. In another place He said, In thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Abraham did not know what that was pertaining to. Again He said, I will make you a father of many nations. Well, all along the way, prophets picked up on this, but none of them knew what it meant. In Ephesians 3, which I will not read this morning, the apostle Paul said that this great mystery which had been hidden to men in ages gone by, God had made known to him. Therefore I will say this, To wind the whole thing up in a nutshell, he was talking about that dispensation wherein God would move among the Gentiles to take out of the them a people for His name. Hosea also prophesied it in the 1st chapter and 10th verse. “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God.”This prophet had two children born unto him: The birth of these two children would speak of how God would deal with the children of Israel, basically the tribe of Judah. Between the two, there would be a period of time when God would not deal with Judah. In that place, which meant that period of time, it was said, I will call them the sons of the living God. All these things give a little picture here, and a little picture there, coming on down through time. Still the Jewish rabbis and priests did not know what it was pointing to. When we come to the ministry of John the Baptist, he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, but in Matthew 3:1 we hear this prophet coming on the scene and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Still those Jews of that hour did not know what he was talking about, but he was announcing a dispensation of time wherein God was going to change the order of events. He was no longer going to be dealing with Israel on the basis of what the Law says: He was going to be dealing with the Gentile people, but starting first with the Jews, and revealing a new covenant. As we come on along with these scriptures, we can see that Jesus came along later, backing up what John had said. Again He said, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then, way before the Holy Ghost has fell, before Jesus was crucified, we find in the 13th chapter of Matthew, (Matthew was the only one that recorded these seven parables of Jesus in the chronological order that they were spoken.) that Jesus spoke like this, Again, the kingdom of heaven is liken unto such and such. What was Jesus actually saying? He was giving you seven parables, way before the book of Revelation was ever written, showing that in this dispensation of time called the kingdom of heaven, the Church would go through seven different and distinct stages. That seven parables was the way Jesus informed the disciples of what the kingdom of heaven would become through process of time. Then we notice, when He comes to the seventh one, the seventh parable brings in the very age of time we are living in. He tells all about this seventh parable, how a net was cast into the sea and so forth. When it was brought in, men gathered of every kind and began to sift, sort, and throw back (likening it to what fishermen do). After WW2 came to a close, starting about 1948, God had a little man in this area that He had commissioned to carry a message for this age of time, a message that would go around the world to prepare the way for the coming of Christ. At that time, the denominational realm of professing Christianity was all shaken over the affects of the war. Parents out of every system had sent sons to the war, and many of them never came back. By the time we came through that early stage, it seemed as though God began to anoint preachers and evangelists of every description and there was a great outpouring of healing and so forth. However I am bringing Bro. William Branham out as the number one point, because it is of utmost importance that we understand exactly, what part this man did play in fulfilling the scriptures. I realize you cannot get the denominational world to open up and accept anything from his teaching, because they have already determined what they are willing to believe and closed the books on everything else. They will not accept any more truth, or as we could properly say, any more light. They want God to just keep on repeating what He did yesterday, going right on back to their beginning. That is why you have hundreds and thousands of people today, sitting in church house pews of denominational congregations somewhere, and their pastors are going through a rigamarole to give them a little sermon, but ninety percent of what they hear is just plain tradition, what they have been hearing for the last one hundred years. This generation among them, knows no more today than they knew twenty years ago. God is constantly revealing present truth, which is only for our day and hour, as the apostle Peter referred to in 2 Pet 1:12, when he said, “Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.” God is revealing many things in this hour of time, that former generations had no need to know, because they would not be alive to witness and be a part of this end time fulfillment of prophecies. Therefore those who refuse to accept any more light cannot possibly be a part of the end time bride of Christ. That is why I say, There are thousands of people across America and around the world, which have religion, but do not have Holy Ghost salvation. I realize there will be people who resent me saying that, but God did not start the Church two thousand years ago, just to make it a group of people bound up in tradition like Judaism was. That is why Jesus said to His disciples, “Upon this rock, I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” He was referring to that solid rock of revelation. A revelation cannot be taken away from you, so that is why the gates of hell cannot prevail. He was certainly not talking about Peter’s name, or anyone else’s name. He was talking about a divine revelation and nothing else. It is how scripture comes off the written pages and becomes alive to us, that amounts to a revelation. When you truly see it, you rejoice, and it is no longer just something written: it becomes a reality. You testify to it, you defend it; and many have even died for it. Coming on through the 1950’s, and approaching the 1960’s, that seventh parable began to fade out. Those men who had been anointed for a certain hour of time began to take their equipment home, store it or sell it and just settle back into that same old formalistic routine of religion. That brings our thinking to the years 1960 through 1963. That is why we have it on the chart back here.
LAODICEAN PROPHET MESSENGER-REVEALED
The little man I mentioned, that God had ordained for this Laodicean Age, a man from this area, was the prophet messenger God would use to restore and reveal truth that had been lost to the Church coming through that long Dark Age period of time when Catholicism ruled in spiritual matters. He did not come through man’s school of learning: He did not have a bachelor degree of anything: All he had was a sixth grade education and a head full of common sense. He knew it took the anointing of God to accomplish anything God would accept. His lack of man’s formal education is what many times, when people try to read his unedited sermons, causes them to say, What was that man talking about? I have said many times, If you do not know how a hillbilly talks, you might never know what he was talking about. He used terminology that a lot of educated people have never come in contact with. You just have to understand the man’s makeup, and what he was looking at. That is why I thank God that I was allowed to sit and hear what he had to say. I understood his examples and uneducated terminology. Therefore as I continue with this message I will be saying a lot of things that I have carried in my heart for many years. When I am finished, you are going to know that I have said things I have never said before. In fact, I think it is about time that some things be taken off of paper and put into some human hearts. We realize this, as we go back to the hour of John the Baptist and study the scriptures, the Jews of that hour did not expect anything like they heard from him, but what he said was ordained of God. Likewise, as God’s prophet messenger to this age came upon the scene, neither did the Gentile Christian people, fifty or sixty years ago, expect God to do anything like He did through the ministry of that little man: they just thought God would move in His particular way in their denominational systems. God is not obligated to do things according to the expectation of people who are all wrapped up in man made traditions. He just tears their traditional ideas all to pieces. When John came on the scene two thousand years ago, he had a strange message. It touched the heart of a strange people, but it was rejected by those who thought they were the main spokesmen for God in that hour. Many of those people of that hour, had gotten so tired and worn out with the traditions of the priesthood, they just stopped going to the temple, to go through the same rituals over and over again. I call them social, religious drop outs. They got tired of the tradition of things. That is about what denominational religion has driven many people to today. It is just a continuation of a lot of tradition, having no inspiration or revelation to cause any expectations in those who attend. You hear the same old thing, even though it might be spoken by a different person, it was and is still the same old pattern of religious tradition. Saints: That furnishes no food for the soul. Those rituals have no nutritional value for the soul that hungers for something that will bring about spiritual growth. God is not bound by men’s traditions: He has vessels He can use, when it is time to reveal something further to the Bride Church. He had a prepared vessel ready to forerun the first coming of Jesus Christ, but only a small number of those Jews which heard him, actually received the message of John the Baptist. When John came upon the scene, it was not long until people began to say, This man has something different. That is why he did not go into Jerusalem: He never did go into the temple area: He just went out into the wilderness, to a spot where the main crossroads intersected at the Jordan River. There, he caught the people as they traveled back and forth. When they stopped to hear this man, they began to hear something that opened their spiritual ears and made their heart’s glad. Certainly not everyone, but some did receive his message. They began to get off their camels, horses, or whatever they were using for transportation, and got baptized by this strange man. No. They did not understand everything they heard, but they obeyed to the extent of their opportunity. The main thing to remember, is that John was only preparing the way for what would confront them later. He was preparing those Jews to come face to face with their Messiah. What part did he play in the line of prophetic scriptures? He was the first part of the fulfillment of Malachi 4:5-6. He foreran the great day of the Lord, by fulfilling the part where the heart of the fathers was turned to the simple faith of children, so they would believe when He (Jesus the Christ) came upon the scene to introduce an era of time, teach His followers from the written scriptures; and then willingly submit to a cruel mob that hated Him and allow them to have Him nailed to that old cross at Calvary. That is where He (Jesus) paid the total price for the redemption of all lost and sinful mankind. Well what about the second part of those two verses, where the heart of the children is turned to their fathers, before Jesus returns to earth to smite it with a curse? That is where the prophet messenger to this Laodicean Age (William Marrion Branham) came into the picture. God used him to reach out into those denominational systems of religion and draw out of them, those who would rejoice to hear the truth of God’s word. He took all of those various scriptures that denominational religion had adopted as their theme, those which they had built their particular line of belief upon, put them all together and presented them to the Bride Church, saying, (my words) All of these scriptures belong to the true Church of the living God. Predestination, eternal security, sanctification of the believer, (genuine holiness) the just shall live by faith, expectation of the return of the Lord Jesus to carry His chosen Bride to heaven for the marriage supper, all of that belongs to those who make up the bride of Christ. There is to be no separation into denominational groups: Unity is the theme that closes out this Gentile Age of time. We must all see the same thing, because the revelation of God’s word does not give believers a choice, to pick out what part they are willing to believe to dress themselves for the Bridegroom. No. White linen belongs only to those who see the same thing and obey it, and that is all Jesus is returning for, so do not allow yourselves to be deceived by anyone who would teach otherwise. Some have said, Well, I don’t believe we all have to believe exactly alike, but that is a LIE: The scriptures teach us that we do; and we have presented those scriptures to all of you many times. As you read these two verses from Malachi, just remember that it took two men, almost two thousand years apart, to fulfill both parts of those two verses. Much of what you will be faced with later on in your Christian walk with God, will be hinged upon your acceptance of the revelation of those two verses. If you reject that, you will have some rough road ahead. Let us read them now. (Mal 4:5) “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: (Mal 4:6) And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” The denominations can look back today and say, Oh yes, that was John. Well sure it was: no one is denying that, because all the related scriptures back it up. Where they have trouble though, is when they read further, and see that this same prophecy prophesies that he (Elijah) would return again in the ending of time. Do not tell me that is referring to the Elijah in the 11th chapter of the book of Revelation either, because we know it is not. The Elijah anointing in the 11th chapter of the book of Revelation, is not for the purpose of returning the Jews back to their apostolic fathers. He is going to open them up to a revelation of something that is far beyond that: Those early disciples of Christ had no need to know all the things that God has revealed to us in this last hour of time. The majority of those Jews two thousand years ago, did not receive what John delivered to them, but that Elijah anointing that comes upon the scene in Revelation 11, will open up something for those who will receive it, that will be strictly for that hour of time. For right now though, let us look again at what God is doing for Gentile believers here at the end time. When it says that he (the he that has the Elijah anointing) will turn the heart of the children back to something, who are the children? Well I am glad I can say, I am one of them. I do not care how old you are or how young you are, you are one of them. You may have gotten hold of it later, but you are still one of those children among those that have been turned back to the original apostolic teachings. That is why, when God began to send forth men in the Reformation, He knew there had been about five hundred years of losing the apostolic teachings, because the system of Catholicism had perverted and traditionalized everything those original apostles taught, until people had lost all contact with what the scriptures say and mean. This is exactly why there was nobody that had faith in God alone: their faith was in the system that dictated to them; and it is almost like that still today. You hear, Well I am a Methodist, I am a Baptist, this and that. I don’t care if you are a Methodist: I also was a Methodist, but nothing dictates that I have to keep on being a Methodist. Actually the first time I was baptized, it was in a Church of Christ church. That is the system of religion that says, We speak where the Bible speaks and keep silent where the Bible is silent. Well they say that, but that is not so: They interpret everything to fit their own traditional, manmade ideas. They became another part of the church of the antichrist. They are full of unbelief, they argue, they debate, they deny anything of the supernatural; and just the same as deny that the power of God can do anything. I say to you, The Church that started out on the day of Pentecost in an upper room, was a Church all through that first generation of Christendom, that believed in and experienced the supernatural power of God. God manifested His power in many ways, and through many people, as He moved to establish those believers in the teaching and example ship of Jesus and His apostles. As you read the parables, what kind of Church do you find that He is coming back for? Is He coming back for a Catholic Church? No! A Baptist Church? No! Why? Because none of those denominational systems of religion are founded upon the solid rock of revelation Jesus referred to. Those that are so proud of the fact that they are separate from Catholicism, were everyone founded upon a certain truth of the word of God, but that one truth is as far as they would ever let the Spirit of God take them. They have just stood there and dried up. They each, only have part of something that they have lifted out of the original structure of Christianity; and most of them do not even have a true revelation of the lone scripture they have established their belief upon. All of God’s undefiled word belongs to the entire body of true believers. None of it is to be laid aside and counted as immaterial, not needed any more. You and I know for sure, that every little blade of anything, comes from an original seed, whether it is rice, wheat, corn, barley, or what, just as an example. When you see that little grain, you recognize what it is, and that is because God has put in it the spirit and germination of life. Nobody plants rice just to get a bunch of fodder. Nobody plants wheat to get a bunch of straw. You everyone know that. That is God’s law of reproduction. His law of reproducing the first church works the same way: The end time harvest is to be as pure as what it started out as. The devil went to work on later generations almost two thousand years ago, to take away a little here and a little somewhere else, and finally, the original apostles were all dead and the second generation of Church leaders did not hold a line on God’s word, like the first generation did, so because of that, Satan was able to send his ambassadors here, there and everywhere, perverting the original teachings, a little at a time, being so sly that the Church leaders were caught sleeping on the job. That is how he robbed the Church of the pure revelation she started out with and eventually brought on almost total spiritual darkness.
TRUE LIGHT RETURNS TO THE CHURCH
When each generation began to have less and less of the pure revelation of God’s word, they naturally fell into Satan’s trap and begin to lean on manmade tradition. Mankind is so prone to fall for tradition, if you give them enough, they will just fall asleep with it. God does not fall asleep though, so He began to stir the spirit of revelation in certain chosen men and give them a taste of truth; and pretty soon the Reformation was under way. The re-kindled truth was very scattered for a long time as the various men came upon the scene preaching what God had revealed to them, but in process of time, God sent a prophet to this generation to collect it all together and present it to the Bride Church. That is what the five fold ministry has been working forward from in these last thirty some years. Perfection is coming into view; and the bride is making herself ready, getting dressed up in a pure revelation, which will eventually produce a beautiful, white linen robed bride for Jesus. I just have to say, His Church is not something that is theologically put together with fragments of man’s traditions. When the Reformation started, God began to give back truth that the Church had been denied for centuries of time, a little here and a little there. First Lutherans, then here came the Calvinists. Out of this came the Baptists, and the different movements, hard shell, deep water and so forth, because the old timers had a lot of different names by which they identified themselves, even though they were all Baptists. Then, here came the Presbyterians with their doctrine of predestination, (what is to be will be). The Methodists and Church of God soon began to say that doctrine was out of the pit of hell. Be careful saints, the apostle Paul wrote about predestination, and I just read that this morning. Every one of us were predestinated before the foundation of the world, that in the end we might be conformed to the image of His (God’s) Son, not through the medium of a system or tradition, but by divine revelation, which allowed us to begin to see who this Son really is, what His character and spiritual image is like, and that we can be conformed to it. As we move along here, out of the Church of England came John Wesley, preaching holiness, and the apostle Paul wrote in Hebrews, (Heb 12:14) “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” On and on this Reformation went, but it was God’s process of restoring, giving back to His Church a little truth each time some hungry soul reached a point where God could use him for that purpose, and each time there would be a deeper revelation. The sad truth of it, was that none of the systems of religion that sprang forth from these movements ever moved on very far with what they had. Finally, right at the dawn of the twentieth century, 1900, here in America, God began to move upon certain ones and fill them with the Holy Ghost. Who were those that received this experience? It was just simply some hungry people out of the various systems of religion, Methodists, Baptists and so forth. However when they received this supernatural manifestation, they soon realized God was restoring something they had read about in the Bible. Was that the end of it? No. It was just another portion of what God was going to restore to the Church. Those were very exciting times for those who were receiving or witnessing those experiences. Likewise coming on down toward the end of the 1940’s God already had a man on the scene, that He was going to use in a mighty way. He lived right here in this area; and I myself was raised up not too far from here, about nineteen miles from here, out in the hills. I did not know this man back then, nor had I heard of him. Nevertheless right in this area, down at the Ohio River, God spoke supernaturally to him, saying, As John was sent to forerun my first coming, thou wilt take a message that will go around the world, and will prepare the way for my second coming. There were old timers standing there that day, at that baptism, and many of them heard and saw this great manifestation. The reason I am saying these things this morning, is because, all along the way of time, God was beginning to prepare the stage for the next phase of something He was going to do to restore His Church to its original identity. When we leave here in the rapture, we are not going to leave here as a cult: We are not going to leave here as a bunch of divided individuals either, one saying one thing and another saying something different about the same thing. I gave my heart to God in the Methodist Church in 1950. I was content to grow up and be a Methodist because that was all I knew at that time. I knew nothing about receiving the Holy Ghost, nor about speaking in tongues nor anything else of the supernatural. If you had the Holy Ghost or a Pentecostal experience and would have walked up to me and said, Well you don’t have anything, I would have said, What makes you so smart? I do not say that to brag, but there comes a time when you cannot allow yourself to be wishy washy about the things of God. I knew what God had done for me. In my heart, I was hungry. On a February morning in 1952, I was getting ready to get on my tractor and go to work, but I first sat down on the couch and picked up my Bible. I am not one of these kind that will pick up my Bible and say, Now Lord, you speak to me today, and then open it up just anywhere. However when I picked it up that morning, for some reason, it just opened up to the 1st chapter of Luke. I sat there and began to read what it opened up to: you can read it later, if you wish. I read where Zacharias had gone into the temple to burn incense, which was his custom, but while in there, he saw the angel of the Lord come to him and speak to him about his wife, that she was to conceive and bring a son into the world. Just to sum it all up, the angel of the Lord told Zacharias that his son would turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. (Luke 1:17) “And he shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, (As I was reading that, I noticed that it did not continue like that same scripture in Malachi 4:6 did, but rather finished by saying, “and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”I thought, For some reason or other, God had laid that upon my heart, that the angel did not quote all of Malachi. So I turned back to Malachi 4, and read it. He had a reason for stopping right there, because John absolutely fulfilled only the first part of that two part fulfillment stated in verse 6. That is why we can pick it up in the beginning of the New Testament. Nevertheless when I saw that, and then turned back to read the rest of that verse, which says He would send that spirit of Elijah to turn the heart of the children to their fathers, I then realized, We are living here in the last days, and at that time the thought came to me, If we really are living just before the second coming of Christ, He will send that spirit of Elijah again, to finish what the last part of verse 6, says. That was in February 1952. I read that verse again and said, Regardless of how many preachers I hear preaching the second coming of Christ can take place at any time, He will not come on the scene until He has sent that Elijah spirit again, to turn the heart of the children to their fathers. Little did I realize, that God was leading my pathway right to something I needed to hear. That same summer of 1952 in the month of August, Bro. Glenn had come down home to do some squirrel hunting: I had just eaten my dinner and was going back to work, but as I stepped out on the porch, he came walking through the yard, so we talked a while. As he started talking with me, for some reason he felt led to testify to me about Bro. William Branham. He told how he had been in South Africa, and was being brought home, and that he had a sickness from being over there, having gotten himself out of the will of God by listening to that bunch of preachers that persuaded him to go. I listened with great expectation.
HOW MY ENTIRE LIFE WAS CHANGED
As I listened to Bro. Glenn tell of Bro. William Branham, his words were registering with my understanding. Then he told the incident that took place down at the river in 1933. I knew right where that place was, because that is where the ferry boat used to dock, before the bridges were ever built. When he told me of that incident at the river, no, I did not hear an audible voice, but something inside me said, If those words be true, then this is that Elijah that was to come. That same week he told me Bro. William Branham was to have a meeting in Jeffersonville. I was privileged to go. I had never seen the man before, but when that little man came out on the platform and chose his text, “The Call of Abraham,” and brought that straight on down through the New Testament, covering justification, sanctification, and the receiving of the Holy Ghost, I knew I had heard something different. When he stopped preaching that night, and they dismissed the crowd, (I know you have heard this before. but I have a reason to bring it out in this manner.) I walked out to my car, and deep inside something said, That is that Elijah. He never prayed for the sick or anything, he just preached. It was what he preached, and the way he preached it, drawing out such a beautiful picture, that convinced me, There is that Elijah spirit. Little did I know, from that moment on, that I would be privileged to meet this man and have fellowship with him. Bro. Glenn came out and took me back into the church house to introduce me to him. Yes, you could talk inside the building back then. I am saying these things to say this also, When he made church order, he never made it to fit the scriptures, he made church order to correct an error of misconduct and misuse of things of the Spirit of God. When Bro. Glenn brought me back into the tabernacle, there were still people standing in the aisle, talking and having fellowship. He took me up on the platform, where Bro. William Branham was standing, talking to about six or seven others there on the platform, in the building you are not allowed to talk in now. We stepped up behind him and Bro. Glenn introduced me to Bro. William Branham. He said to me, I hear you live on a farm in Harrison county. I said, Yes sir, I do. He then asked, Would you care if I came down to hunt on your place? I replied, Come anytime and help yourself. I was given his life story book at that time. I had him autograph it for me. Then I went home, feeling like I was floating on a cloud. Here, I had met a great man of God, but I only heard him preach one message. Nevertheless the way he brought it out, he made Jesus of the Bible stand head and shoulders taller than any doctor of divinity I have ever heard; and I have heard my share of them, from Wilmore, Asbury, and many different ones that were in Louisville back in the early 1950’s. Well the next morning, when I opened my eyes and looked out the bedroom window, there sitting in the barn lot was his car. That was the beginning of my personal relationship with this man; and I wanted to tell of it in this message, for the benefit of those who had never heard me tell it. (I will cut this part short.) Through those years following, I was privileged to hear him, talk with him, hunt with him; and we were privileged to be invited into his home and have meals at his house. He and his family ate at our home also, during those years. I thank God I was privileged to sit in his presence when he preached the Church Ages. Practically every major message that he preached in the latter 1950’s, at the Tabernacle, I was there, because I wanted to hear what this man had to say. Then I began to have various dreams about him and tell them to him. When I would tell him the dreams, he would later refer to them in certain messages. When I told him the one about the rock, that is the one he referred to when he preached the seals. It happened on an October night in 1962, when we were still at the church in Clarksville. I had asked him to come and preach at Faith Assembly. He came on Thursday night and preached. I had already had the dream about walking in the countryside and seeing the rock. As the service was over and we were dismissed, a car had pulled up out front, with a sick person to be prayed for. They had found out that Bro. William Branham was there, so they came and asked if he would come and pray for the sick person. He went to the car and prayed for the person right there in the car. At that point, I felt this was the opportunity for me to tell him the dream I had. I said, Bro. William Branham, I have had a dream about you. We went to his station wagon and got in. I told him the dream. (It is all in print already, so there is no need for me to tell it again at this time.) I will just tell what I told him.
TELLING BRO. BRANHAM MY DREAM
I said, Bro. William Branham: you had a bar like they use in rock quarries, and you saw the first layer of this stone, like there was a crevice in it, so you picked up the bar and jammed it into the crevice, which raised that whole lid of rock, so you slid that layer of rock off of the base. As you did, there in the top part was the words engraved, (like you would see on a tombstone) The Rock of Revealed Truth. I said, Bro. William Branham: When you laid that bar upon that rock, you said, Stand by this; and then you turned and started making your way through the crowd and started walking westward. I was looking at the rock, but every once in awhile, with my side vision, I saw you going over the hills and through the valleys, continuing on in a westward direction. As you kept walking west, I watched you. After awhile you went completely out of sight. (The reason I am telling this now, is because of what else I will say later today.) I say to the entire world, As I talk this way today, I am preaching not only to Australia, the Philippines, India, as well as many others, so I am preaching to you as my brothers and sisters in the Lord. I stand today, not ashamed of what God has allowed me to do in these thirty eight years, going on thirty nine, since Bro. William Branham left the scene. I turned and watched him until he disappeared over the last summit; and when I looked back at the crowd gathered there, all of a sudden everybody began to raise their heads and say, Where did Bro. William Branham go? Where did Bro. William Branham go? It seemed like there were thousands gathered around this rock; and all of a sudden there were screaming voices all around, screaming, Oh, Bro. William Branham! Where did Bro. William Branham go? They began to break up and go back in the same directions they came from, still screaming, Oh Bro. William Branham! Where did he go? Sitting there in the car in October 1962, which was when he was preparing to leave this area and move to Arizona, somewhere around the first of the year, which would be 1963. Here is what he said, Bro. Junie, when this all takes place, (He picked up his Bible and said), Stick with this word, because they will go after everything, preaching everything. Then in the seals messages, when he referred to my dream, I think about three times, he never put that last part in there. That was left out of the picture. Nevertheless I can honestly say this, Since 1965, when he was killed in that automobile crash, that is exactly what those who followed him everywhere he went, have all done, just gone after every carnal thought. They used to have a deacon by the name of Banks Wood. After some of the carnal things began to develop, he got sick of the entire mess and decided to get out: He could have come here, and he did come a time or two, but then went back to a denominational, trinity assembly. He was a building contractor, financially capable of going to all of Bro. William Branham’s meetings at his will. He bought a house next door to Bro. William Branham over on Ewing Lane. He lived next door, and had close contact with the family, but when he left the Tabernacle, where did he go? He went right back to where Bro. William Branham’s message called people out of, feeling that he had to go to a big church. He went to the Assembles of God in Louisville, Kentucky, pastored by Bro. Waymond Rogers. Then when Bro. Rogers died, the last I heard, he had gone back to a church his wife had come out of, the Church of God. On and on, this kind of picture developed, simply because they had no revelation: They just followed flesh, having a head knowledge of what Bro. William Branham had preached, but unable to apply it to their life and walk in it, because of being void of revelation. I could tell you of many things that fit this pictures, things that some of those celebrities did after Bro. William Branham’s death, what they taught, and where they are at today. I do not do this to belittle people, but to help those who will hear me and take heed to the error of their ways. Do you not find it very strange, that they had a revelation when he was alive, but when God took the fleshly attraction away from them, and they had no flesh to hold on to, they went every which way, teaching whatever comes into their mind? I can thankfully say this, My revelation did not die when God took away the man He used to open my understanding, and I am very thankful for that. I remember how a lot of that bunch, (some of them from Canada) moved here, just to be near him, to be able to travel with him. Every time you went to one of his meetings, they were there. They had the financial means to do whatever they chose to do, so they chose to hang onto his coat tail, believing they could gain some favor with God that way. It was out of that category of characters, that some began to make their medallions, (William Branham is our Messiah). Then they began to baptize in his name. On and on went that perverted picture, as Satan captured their mind. When I look back, I have to say, Thank you Lord, that you kept my eyes open and did not let me fall into that Satanic trap. It was not because I am a good person: It was the grace of God, watching over a vessel He could use at a later time.
CARNAL MINDED MEN DO CARNAL DEEDS
When Bro. William Branham preached the Church Age messages in December 1960, I sat there in every one of them and heard exactly what he said. That is why I can hold this book up and say, This edited edition of the Church Ages, which was edited by Dr. Lee Vale, has things in it that Bro. William Branham had not even taught at that time. He took so long editing it, that he was able to inject things Bro. William Branham taught later on, and make it as though they were in those Church Age Messages. I have read it several times; and having sat there and heard what he said in those messages, I know Lee Vale inserted a lot of what was taught later. In the original Seven Church Ages booklets, some things in here that Lee Vale has inserted, definitely were not even in the original sermons. That is why I will say to any preacher, I am glad that the men that wrote the New Testament did not have that kind of attitude. They endeavored to keep what they recorded in continuity, so readers later on could follow the true progression of the events of His ministry. In the spring of 1963, Bro. William Branham told the experience he had, the vision, everything, and it is all in this book. It shows and portrays the spiritual impact of God’s Spirit in dealing with him to go west, when he moved there, and that from the west, he would come back here to preach the seals and give all the testimonies about the Lord telling him, This is the third pull. For thirty eight years, going on thirty nine years, all I hear from the echoes around the world is these characters saying Bro. William Branham is going to come back from the dead. Bro. William Branham is going to do this, Bro. William Branham is going to do that. I have kept my mouth shut, because they were the ones that said, Raymond Jackson don’t believe the message. I believed the message that God anointed him to deliver to this generation: I just did not believe all the things they thought they got from his messages. That is why I can say to Billy Paul, Joseph, and all the Spoken Word people, I believe the message he brought; and I have allowed the Spirit of God to give me a revelation of that message, but it is very obvious you never did. I admit, you fell heir to the material things of his ministry, but you sure did not fall heir to the anointing that was upon him, and that is very sad. You might think, Bro. Jackson, be careful what you say! Well I say to you, The time has come for me to say, Let’s stop this thing of putting it off, and putting it off, waiting for Bro. William Branham to return to finish something! He is not going to return to finish anything you are expecting! Do you not know, that when the children of Israel began to complain as they journeyed in the wilderness, that God let them wander around out there for forty years, until the complaining generation died off? Is that not right? Well we are in the thirty ninth year, since Bro. William Branham’s death. Next year will be the fortieth year. It is not going to be ten more years, nor five, until Jesus comes for those who are ready to go with Him. If God has sent that man for a purpose, that purpose is already in application. I will say this to anybody that wants to criticize, God has used Bro. William Branham’s image to come to me in dreams all along my pathway since his death. Never did I make him my God or Savior, never have I baptized in his name, but from the scriptures, I can see the part he fulfilled in the plan of God, because it opened my eyes and caused me to study what he said, from the standpoint of what is written in the Bible. When I study his messages, it makes me get into this Bible for vindication. That is where I want to be, because what he said here and here is going to put you in the Bible, if you look at it right. You do not have to memorize all of his exact words in order to receive a revelation of what he taught. I stand in no one’s way of reading this, so do not come around and tell me you have a separate revelation of his messages, because if you do not have the Holy Ghost revealing it to you, your revelation is no more benefit to you than watching a cat chase a mouse through the woods somewhere. God has been revealing present truth, and those who love it are very thankful. They are not living in the past, hoping for something that will not happen. Now having said that, please allow me to say what has been going on through these almost forty years.
ABOUT MY HORSE DREAM
When Bro. William Branham passed off the scene, I thought, What are we going to do now? Many of us said that. However, before he passed off the scene, in the year 1964, I had the dream about the white horse. (I am not going to tell it again, as it is already in print.) I saw him coming through the sky on a white horse, and watched that horse come down to the ground right in front of where we were sitting in our car. He said, You, get ready, and then he said, Prepare yourself for the work you have been called to do. The third time he said, And if you believe these words, a powerful horse will be given to you, to carry you in the calling whereunto you are called. On August 1, 1965 I had the chance to go to the Branham Tabernacle and tell him that dream. When I told him the dream, he said, Bro. Junie, something is getting ready to happen. Think of that saints! In August, 1965. He said, Something is getting ready to happen: I don’t know what it is, but when it does, you will have a work to do. He took me over to a picture that had just been painted of Elijah in the fiery chariot, being translated to glory. Some woman had just painted it and given it to him as a gift. He said, That is a beautiful picture. I said, Yes, it sure is. Then he came back and picked up his Bible again and said, Bro. Junie, I know what the horse is, but he did not know what my calling was: The horse is the power of the word. Well the power of the word, means authority to handle it, nothing else. August 1965, I left there knowing what the horse was. I told him, the horse I saw standing after he rode away, was a little smaller. No, it was not a pony. I have raised horses for several years, so I know what the difference is between a large horse and a smaller horse. I will say this as humbly as I know how, to Billy Paul, Joseph, and all the rest of the Spoken Word people, When Bro. William Branham was alive and spoke of my dreams, yes, you printed them, but when God took him off the scene, my dreams did not amount to anything worthwhile to any of you anymore. You pay no attention to any of them, and I know why: It is because they do not glorify the prophet. God did not mean for him to be glorified, but he was supposed to be respected and honored as a servant of God. That is our feelings exactly. We take nothing whatsoever away from what God called him to be and do, but we do refuse to worship him, like many of you have been doing. I say these things because God is not going to let you stay here forty more years and wonder, and quote, and build this and that, about something you should have had mind enough to know what was being talked about, but do not. God has a time table He goes by, so we have to move with Him according to what He is doing.
GOD LEADS THROUGH DREAMS
After Bro. William Branham’s death, I began to think, What in the world will a fellow do, now that he is no longer with us? That is why I say, In March, 1966, I had made up my mind, I will stay here in Faith Assembly, stay at home, keep my mouth shut and mind my own business. I thought that was the right thing to do, but one night later on, I saw myself in another dream, out on the farm working. In the dream I was digging post holes and repairing a fence, when Bro. William Branham came walking up to me from the right side. He looked at me, pointed his finger and said, Bro. Junie, I want you to go speak for me. I looked at him and said, I won’t do it. He asked, Why? I replied, They won’t listen to me. Again he said, Bro. Junie, I want you to go speak for me. I again said, No. Why? They won’t listen to me. The third time he again said, Bro. Junie, I want you to go speak for me. I saw myself take a piece of paper out of my pocket, and write on it the title of seven sermons. Then I said, If I can preach this, then I will go. He took that and looked at it. A smile came on his face and he said, Perfect. With that, he handed it back, and walked away. When I woke up, I did not know what those seven subjects were, but I want you to know, over the coming months a thought would drop down into my mind and a picture began to form. That is why I am saying to you, When God sent Bro. William Branham, what was he to do, scripturally speaking? He was to deliver a message that would turn the heart of the children back to the fathers. Who are our fathers? Those who stood for the undefiled word of God in that first century of Christendom. The main ones were Peter, Paul, James, John, Matthew, and many more that we need not name. What those disciples of Jesus wrote, is what our faith is anchored upon. You can read it in the epistles that Paul and Peter and the others wrote. There, is where our faith is anchored, Time and circumstances through the centuries following, absolutely took that original, apostolic truth away from us. We still had little glimpses of it, but there were certain things about each one of them that allowed carnal minded people to push everything to the extreme. Eventually the true word of God became fragmented, giving those who desired to do so, the opportunity to use the word of God to further their own purpose. The truth that was restored through the Reformation period, was scattered around in all the denominational divisions that called themselves Christians, but God had a plan to restore all of it to the Called out Church. In process of time, He sent a prophet messenger to this age, to do what no other man could do prior to that time. God does everything according to His own time schedule.
GOD’S PROPHET MESSENGER TO THIS AGE
When God’s prophet messenger to the age of Laodicea came on the scene, he took the doctrines of the New Testament, and began to put them back together as they are in the Bible. All scriptural doctrines belong to the same body, without divisions. When he began to show that the Bible doctrines all belong to the true Church established by the apostles of Jesus Christ, you could not help but see where predestination had a definite place in the plan and work of God. While the denominations would say, Oh anything like that is out of the pit of hell, and Jimmy Swaggart wrote that in his magazine, those who love truth accepted predestination as something that works because of the foreknowledge of God. When Jimmy Swaggart wrote, that predestination was of the devil, I said this to a friend of mine, Watch out, something will happen to him: God will lower his platform. It was not long until it happened. Respect for him and his ministry, was diminished in very short order. I am not telling you that Bro. William Branham explained every little detail of the various doctrines he mentioned in his sermons, but I will say, He brought the framework of the major things that we were to be turned back to, and I include myself as one of those New Testament children living here, almost two thousand years after the advent of the apostles. I was certainly one that wanted to get back to what they believed and taught. I heard that little man say ever so many times, The gifts of the Spirit will be in the end time Church. Well that sounded like something I wanted to be a part of. When he preached the Church Ages Messages, and selected the men that he could look upon as the messenger to each age, it was because he had studied the history of those men and seen how the Holy Ghost supernaturally led them, and directed them to teach and deal with the things that they did, in their particular hour of time. On the basis of that, the end time Church would absolutely have the gifts of the Spirit, along with the ministry that would be needed to lead them in the ways of perfection. We find that vindicated in Ephesians, chapter 4. In the year 1963, Bro. William Branham preached the six seals messages. He never brought you the revelation of the seventh seal, even though many argue that he did. I have three different writings at home from different persons throughout the message, throughout the world. One said the seventh seal was this, another said it was that, and another said something else. I just have to say, The seventh seal has not yet been opened, not even touched. Why do I say that? Because Jesus Christ is still sitting there on the mercy seat with the seventh seal still intact on that scroll, just waiting for the right moment when that seal can be broken. The strict Branham following, those who will admit that it has not been opened, will say, Well the prophet has got to come back to do this and this and so forth. No. The prophet will not come back before the resurrection of the other bride saints; and when he does come back, the bride will already be perfected and ready to go with the Bridegroom. You would think, that after almost thirty nine years beyond his death, at least some of those people would realize God is not going to send him back just to please their perverted ideas. Well Bro. Jackson, what do you think we are going to do? God has already raised up a ministry to fulfill the rest of what he brought forth to get us on the right pathway. Well where is it? It is looking you right in the face, if you will just open your eyes and ears and recognize it. You can read in those books until you are gray headed, and all you will know when you are finished, is that the prophet said thus and so. I must ask you who are guilty of that, Where does that put you in the plan of God for the end time? I will say as kindly as I know how, William Marrion Branham came on the scene, precisely when God wanted him to, he delivered the word of God that he was ordained to deliver at that hour, and did precisely what he was supposed to do. He touched the godhead, he touched water baptism, sanctification, the oneness of God, the Millennial reign of Christ, and all the other basic teachings of the New Testament, but his calling of God, was not to teach every detail of what he restored back to the Church. His primary calling was to focus our attention back to the Bible, rather than upon man’s creeds. He reached back into Genesis and picked up what happened in our garden of Eden, and we learned that Eve did not eat an apple off of a plant life tree. That tree of knowledge did not grow out of the ground, no more than the tree of life did. We know the tree of life did not grow out of the ground because the tree of life is in paradise today. Where is paradise? It is in heaven now and has been ever since Jesus was resurrected and ascended. I want you to know saints, That the two trees in the midst of the Garden were two spiritual Laws. If Adam and Eve had obeyed the Creator and never disobeyed, they would have procreated children from the law of the tree of life, never to die and never to know the feelings of guilt and shame. Eating of, or partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was a matter of having sexual relations for pleasure instead of only for the purpose of reproducing themselves, like the rest of God’s creation does. How did Adam and Eve know there could be pleasure in the sexual relationship? Satan inspired the serpent (Adam’s Servant among the animal kingdom) to seduce Eve; and Eve having learned this, could not let Adam rest until she had persuaded him to partake likewise. Maybe you think this is plain talk, but that is what happened and we everyone need to know it. This knowledge opens up our understanding to many things in the bible, that would have remained an unsolvable mystery to us otherwise. That tree of life is only a symbol of a basic law. Nevertheless, I want to read something to you from the Seals book. I am going to read this and I say to Billy Paul, Joseph, Spoken Word, all of you, It is one thing for you to boast about how much you have printed, but you do not know a thing about the Spirit that inspired what you are printing, to be spoken in the first place. In the Seals book, you find where Bro. William Branham was asked a question; and it is on (page 494), so I will read it.
READING FROM BOOK
Listen to this,“Would the Bride of Christ have…Would the Bride of Christ have a ministry before the Rapture?” (This was his reply?) Sure. That’s what’s going on right now. The Bride of Christ, certainly! It is the Message of the hour–the Bride of Christ, Sure. She consists of (Listen to this.) apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors. Is that right?-That’s the Bride of Christ. Sure, She’s got a ministry, a great ministry-the ministry of the hour, it’ll be so humble.”
What is humbleness? If you are not looking for the right thing, you will never see it. Do you know what I mean? If you are not looking at the right thing, and if you do not have a revelation of what to look for, you will never see it. In our natural state, we have certain ideas, Well it has got to be like this, so you put it over here, you put it over there, but it is right down here in front of you. I want to say this, After Bro. William Branham’s death, I always wondered, what that job really was, that I was to do. Oh yes, God guided me in the ministry: He has showed me by His grace, to go on, and those things that I wrote on that little piece of paper in the dream, those seven things, but that did not give me the entire answer. In time though, God gave me a divine revelation, how to place every one of them right back in the scriptures. Not in the quotes of the books, but in the Bible itself.
TRUTH ABOUT GOD’S MINISTRY
Let us now pick up this part about the ministry. I say this to the Spoken Word people, the world over, wherever you are, You have lived for thirty eight years, going on thirty nine years since Bro. William Branham’s death, still looking for him to come back to pamper your flesh. You can go on down the road of life quoting what he said, but I ask you, What are you going to do when God takes it off the pages and puts it in men’s hearts? I challenge you, Is what he delivered to us still truth? What are you still looking for him to come back from the dead for? Evidently you do not really believe what he taught: All you want is the flesh man himself. If you were interested in truth, you would respect present day truth. Regardless of your unscriptural expectations, He is not coming back to finish up anything other than to take on his immortal body and be transported to glory. I say that with sternness, because it is Thus saith the word of God! God has never raised up anybody that has been dead for nearly forty years, to finish any kind of ministry. He raised up His Son in three days and nights, and that was not a full three days and nights of seventy two hours. Jesus brought Lazarus forth from the dead. He had been dead for three days. His sister said, Behold, he stinketh. Nevertheless I want you to know, No Bible can show you where He is going to bring back a prophet after he has been dead going on thirty nine years, just to please your unreal expectations. I say to you this morning, around the world, whoever you are, You may have book cases full of quotes and things you hold dear, and you have used them like a baby would a pacifier, but a pacifier does not put protein in the blood stream, nor carbohydrates in the digestive system. You know it. I don’t say these things to offend, but it is very apparent, that as long as you can hide behind his books, you feel justified in saying, But the prophet said. Sure, he said it, but let us permit God to take it off the pages and see how God puts it in the hearts of people. What are you looking for? Professor Fosdick? Do you think that is the kind of ministry God is going to use? No sir. Bro. William Branham himself, said it would be a humble ministry. He only had a sixth grade education, and I just have an eighth grade education, and I want to say to my brothers and sisters, I have been called everything under the sun, but I do not allow that to move me. I say this to my friends in the Spoken Word, You have not hurt me, but in the eyes of God, you have hurt yourself. I am ready to stand before the God that created me, and the Lord that died for me, to save my soul, and stand in the presence of your prophet and my prophet, and let us see what he testifies and says about me. I heard and received the message that man delivered to this generation of Christendom, and it pointed me back to the word of God. Since his death, God has used Bro. William Branham’s image to come to me in dreams, to guide me in certain things. I appreciate that, even though you educated, religious big wigs say, That is spiritualism. Well to you, it might be, but I challenge you, asking you this, When Jesus took Peter, James, and John upon the mount of Transfiguration that day, what did they see? They saw a vision. God brought the images of Moses and Elijah before them: not the literal men, but the image of Moses and Elijah, and they were seen talking to Jesus. If He could, and would do that at that time, Why would any believer not allow God to do the same thing today, using His prophet to this age? I am constantly amazed at some of the shortsighted attitudes I come in contact with, but I just leave all of that in the hands of my heavenly Father: He is the ONE in charge of His plan for all of us.
GOD’S WAYS ARE ALWAYS PERFECT
When the year 1967 came, I had been to some different places, to some of the old places where I had been in some meetings before, ministering to people who used to come to the Tabernacle. I knew them, all of them. However I got to the place where I became so discouraged; and it was because, everywhere I went, all they were doing was throwing quotes at me. But Bro. Jackson, the prophet said so and so. But Bro. Jackson, the prophet said this and that. That kind of attitude caused me to walk for many days wondering, What in the world is that job I am supposed to do? Then one night I went to bed; and during my sleep I saw myself in a dream, walking out to our mailbox. I took the mail out of the mailbox, sorted through a lot of enveloped and everything like most of us get, and then I noticed one particular envelope that really caught my eye. I came into the house and cut the flap open: The envelope looked like an envelope you might get from the court house with an official document of some kind inside. When I reached in and got the folded article and opened it up, it was a beautiful, printed, minister’s license. As my eyes looked at that, I read, be it known unto you, (That was how it started out.) Raymond Jackson, being called of God according to such scriptures, and on down the line. When I looked down at the end where it was signed, William Marrion Branham, August 1, 1965. I thought, That was the day I told him about the horse dream. He never told me what the work was, or the job, he only told me what the horse was. When I looked across the top of this document I received, there was the word “Apostle.” That dream came two years after Bro. William Branham was taken in that automobile accident. I have made mention of it, but you know, through the years of printing, I have never stressed that, because I have always felt, Lord, I can accept what you have said, but time will tell the story. I will not have to go around announcing what God has called me to be. All I have ever said, wherever I have went, was, God has called me to stand for a ministry of men that will raise up out of the rubbish of all this confusion, to fulfill Ephesians 4. They will see what I am looking at, and together, one day, they will lift up their voice and begin to preach the same thing I am preaching. Not word for word, but with their own words, they will preach the same revelation. I can say this Faith Assembly, Around this world, God has raised up another generation of preachers that love this truth. Some of them are older men, but wherever I have gone, I have had more than one man say to me, Bro. Jackson, you are truly an apostle sent from God. I do not say that to brag, (I have nothing to brag about, except the grace and mercy of God.) but I will say this, The time has come, that I will not take back anything, because time and conditions, along with the things we have printed through the years, necessitates that I say something of this nature now. If I do not take this stand now, I feel like there are some innocent people who have simply been looking to and trusting a lot of flesh for their guidance; and trusting in the flesh of man will not bring any kind of perfection. Saints of God, Listen to me, Do not put your trust in human flesh: It is imperative, that you put your faith and trust in the word of God. You will receive the word of God through men He has chosen, but be absolutely sure that the man you are listening to, knows what he is talking about. That is why, when I saw that little man the first time, I said, There is a man that knows what he is talking about: I do not want daylight to be seen between us: I must hear what he has to say. I felt that way then; and I never changed my mind. I was not unaware of the fact that he made dual statements about certain things, but I began to realize, God ordained him to make these dual statements for a specific purpose. Why? Because God knew there was going to be a generation of people that would make a god out of him: At the same time, there would be those that would receive the actual revelation, and others that would take the carnal side and just follow his flesh. That is why I can truthfully say, After thirty eight years since his death, God has set the ministry in place. It is just a matter of time now, God is going to put His little Bride together in total unity. I say to the Spoken Word people and all the rest, You quote Malachi 4, that he was sent to turn the heart of the children back to the fathers, but you leave it there. I am not going to leave it there! God is going to see to it, that every word that little man preached, is going to turn everyone who heard it to something. Some will be turned back to that apostolic faith. That literally means, that the Church he was sent to, to get them out of religious systems, is going to wind up with every aspect of the faith that those apostolic Church Fathers had invested in them. They will baptize just like the early ones did. They will be a ministry just like the early ones were. They will be led by the Spirit of God. They are not going to run up and down the road quoting God’s prophet messenger. They will live and preach what God reveals to them. First was John the Baptist, then Jesus, then what was the next order? The apostles. It was not the evangelists that started it: It was the apostles that started it. You everyone know that. It was the apostles that wrote the scriptures of the New Testament. All these other ministries fell right in line behind them. I say to you, That is exactly the order of our day. If you cannot recognize an apostle, then how are you going to recognize a prophet, a New Testament one? Or a preacher? Or an evangelist? For thirty eight years, it has been every man for himself. For thirty eight years, innocent souls have suffered because of that. Ewald Frank of Germany did a wonderful work, but he left no provision for God to have anyone else: Then he got married again. On and on these images have gone throughout the ministry that was pushing Bro. William Branham. The minute you think you are the only one, God has a way of eliminating you. Well, Bro. Jackson, are you the only apostle? No sir. I say that emphatically! Well, tell me who the others are. If you are one who cannot recognize them, it is none of your business who they are. When you have to know everything before you start believing anything, the bride will be gone and you will be left here. You have got to see something by divine revelation, if you are who you think you are. For thirty eight years of time, I have stood for an end time ministry of men; and God has absolutely raised them up in different areas, one by one, until they are in place, with groups of people following them. To me, it is simply another generation of people, a generation of believers with a revelation of what the prophet messenger brought to this age, and they have it in the right way: Now we are standing at the end of this age, waiting for God to finish the whole picture. We have a profile, but the finished picture will be more glorious than what we see as mortals.
WHO ARE YOU GLORIFYING?
I have a lot more to say while I am on this message, so I ask you to pray for me, that I can say it in a right way. I respect people, but there comes a time, you have to respect God and His word first, before human friendship. What I have preached, I preached from the bottom of my heart, with honesty and sincerity. I have a lot to say during this time, while I will be preaching on this subject, and it can easily stir up a hornet’s nest. I have already received one letter, and I do not know who the man is, but evidently he heard what I had to say this morning, and disagreed. By the time I do finish the message, I do not know where I am going to keep all the critical e-mail I will get. I have thought many times, There are men sitting at home, and all they know is what Bro. William Branham said: They do not know a bit more about what the true Church is to look like, than a monkey in the jungles of Africa. They are sitting there, conceited, self-centered, having no fellowship with anybody except those who think like they do. For thirty eight years, men have propagated, published and put together a lot of unscriptural ideas that would make the end time Church look worse than it did when it was in Catholicism. That is because it is not a church that has been built upon a ministry being restored according to revelation of God’s word. All they want is one man, to be the central figure of what they stand for. The only man I will exalt as a central figure is the Lord Jesus Christ. I also sat under the ministry of the man many of them worship, but what I heard, was that man exalting Jesus Christ. I heard that loud and clear, and I will never forget it. I am telling these things, especially concerning the dreams, because through the years, as things came against me, the dreams encouraged me to press on. Little did I realize what was going on, and why God kept propelling me along in that way. Please believe me though, I am not telling any of this to glorify my flesh: I give all glory to the God of mercy and grace that saw fit to save my soul and direct my pathway. Because I do not exalt the prophet, making him the Messiah, I am accused of not believing his message. That is totally wrong. I believed the revelation he delivered to this generation; and because I did, and because I did accept him as God’s prophet messenger, I have done my very best through these thirty eight years, to defend his ministry, his character, and the things he brought out of the word of God, that no other man had. I have done my best to stand for what his ministry was supposed to do, how it was to turn us back to the same apostolic faith that we see demonstrated in the book of Acts, so that we also may have our feet planted upon that same solid foundation that theirs was established on. I am totally convinced, that this end time Church should be believing the same foundational doctrines the New Testament Church was founded upon, and that the end time Church would be a supernatural Church; and not just a bunch of carnal individuals, sitting at home playing tapes and waiting for the day when their prophet would come back from the dead to lead them. That condition has gone on for so long, it is sickening to hear some of the ideas that come from their deceived hearts. I am not standing here just to run others down, nor to lift myself up, but I am sure of this one thing, There are a lot of people hanging on to their relationship with God’s prophet messenger, that will have to give account to God one day, for what they were privileged to hear and what they did with it. I want to read some scripture to go along with this, because it is all about this great mystery. I have titled this message, “The Great Mystery,” so open your Bible to the 3rd chapter of the book of Ephesians. The apostle Paul refers to this mystery in the letter to the Romans, as well as in the letter to the Ephesians. Actually this mystery that Paul had been given the revelation to explain and expound upon, bringing it out into the open, is the true Church, which is referred to as the body of Christ, and also referred to as the family of God, and different other ways. It is all within this time referred to as the kingdom of heaven, that God cut the Jews off because of their unbelief, and turned to the Gentiles with this beautiful message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Within that kingdom of heaven period, the Church goes through seven distinct stages, which we refer to as the seven church ages. There is also what is referred to as the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not in reference to time, but rather to what He puts inside of believers. That is because the kingdom of God is inside of you, if you are a true believer. By His sovereign grace, He put His very Spirit inside of you, making you and me, and all who accept His word of life, temples of the living God. He (God) is the ONE that dwells in mansions, and His truly redeemed children are those mansions of John, Chapter 14. We are not to look for a mansion ourselves, but we do become a mansion, or temple of God each time He fills one of us with His Spirit, or literally fills us with Himself. John 14:2 “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” The house of God is His redeemed children. That is where He dwells. Where did Jesus go, to prepare a place for us? He did not go into heaven with a hammer and nails to build mansions: He went to Calvary with a blood offering, which He offered to the Father for all who believe His gospel unto eternal life. With His own blood, He redeemed us; and each time someone accepts that redemption, God moves into another mansion. It is as simple as that to us now, but to everyone before it was explained by the apostle Paul, it was a great mystery. Now we can see that this Spirit in the body of Christ, actually quickens truth to your heart and through these vessels of clay, another likeness of Jesus Christ can be reproduced; not in the same image of His physical statue, but in the character and spiritual attributes that Christ portrayed when He was here on earth.
HOW WE REPRODUCE
We are going to start reading here in Ephesians, beginning with the 1st verse of the 3rd chapter, to see what the apostle Paul wrote concerning this mystery. “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation (not by theology, but by revelation) He made known unto me the mystery; as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ, Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” Now notice right there, how the apostle Paul, (who was writing this) is telling you and me that God had made known to him the mystery, how to understand it, what it involves, what it consists of, and that this mystery is fulfilled by God sending apostles, based upon the things that the Old Testament prophets had written. As for as these critics that rebel against truth, no doubt I will set their nests on fire, because they have no knowledge whatsoever of what Bro. William Branham was actually fulfilling in much of his ministry. They see the man, but not much of anything beyond that: I saw something that the man was talking about; and that is the part that I want to be a part of. “That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel: Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of His power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things. (Now notice, that in the King James Bible, it says, who created all things by Jesus Christ.) The words, by Jesus Christ,” were added by Trinitarian translators that believed Jesus was with the Father helping Him create all things. Those three words are not in the original manuscripts, so do not think I am blaspheming, when I say they were added by the Trinitarians. In the Hebrew and Aramaic versions, who created all things, ends that verse. God did it all, without the help of Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, that was only born into this world two thousand years ago. He was in the mind of the Creator from before the foundation of the world, and many things were to be wrought through Him, but He had no part in creation. I pray that you everyone understand and accept that explanation. Anyone who does not accept this explanation, can easily verify it by getting hold of the original texts and reading it themselves. When you get to talking about these things, many times this is what causes the godhead message to be misunderstood by some. God is reconciling the world to Himself by Jesus Christ, He is saving lost souls of the world by Jesus Christ, but Jesus had no literal part in creation itself. In reality, it is God’s grace that has been imputed through Christ Jesus, that we have access to. God the Father, (which is a sovereign Spirit without bodily form) did not give His life in payment for our sins. Jesus, the Son of God, gave His life. He became the means for you and me to be reconciled back to God, the One that took your and my place at Calvary. That is why we are talking about the great mystery. That mystery is built on a revelation and understanding of all the Old Testament prophets. When Paul brings it out of the Old Testament and puts it over here in a revelatory structure, it begins to become a picture in the heart and mind of the redeemed, how that the Gentiles which had always been looked upon as heathen in days gone by, are now part of the family of God, because of God’s extended hand of mercy. The Jews could not understand it, even though God said to Abraham one day, I will make you a father of many nations. You can read that in the 9th chapter of Romans, where Paul is writing to the Romans, explaining to them, that in that space of time where God would no longer call the Jews His, there, they would be called the children of the living God, meaning the Gentiles. Afterward then, He would return to the Jews and reconcile both the ten northern and two southern tribes, and again place them in the promised land, after He has come to us through a dispensation of time to save out of the Gentiles a people that would bear His name. With this thought in mind, I want to say, God sent a humble man to this generation, a man that was not a doctor of divinity, but spoke many things in such a country fashion that the educated people who heard him did not understand what he was saying. His message was, Get back to the word of God, but many of that kind just became so disgusted because of his terminology, that they totally rejected him as a man of God. They would say, What is that man talking about? Many times, as you read his sermons, you see uh, well, and he would start saying something and jump to something else. That was just his way, so if you did not know how to understand a hillbilly, you might not even know a thing he was talking about. I am thankful to God, that He used this humble man to speak some wonderful, and very deep things, but He hid it from the wise and prudent and revealed it to the simple, the humble, the ones that are willing to listen and say, Dear God, please help me understand what I am supposed to understand. When I look back at that period of time after the death of Bro. William Branham, I did not realize why God kept pushing me and urging me to go on. I can look back now and say, It was the grace of God that kept me pressing on, because everywhere I went it was nothing but criticism and accusations, He is not in the message. When you face that constantly, yet in your heart you want to be everybody’s friend, after awhile it takes a toll on you. I simply could not understand, If we are all Christians, why is there so much animosity everywhere I go? As I look back now, I understand that the animosity was coming from carnal minded people who were, and still are void of revelation. They just hang on to the fact that Bro. William Branham was God’s prophet messenger to this age, without having a revelation as to the purpose God had in calling him to that ministry. His ministry did not do for them, what it did for those of us who received by revelation what he preached, and understand why he preached it.
MODERN DAY IDOLATRY
Coming into the year 1967, everything under the sun was being propagated by men within the overall following of Bro. William Branham’s ministry. You could hear, He is the white horse rider of Revelation 19, he is the Messiah the Jews were looking for, he is the absolute, everything he says is infallible and all such foolishness as that. That is why all such can be called idolaters, because they have become worshipers of a mortal man, attributing to him that which belongs only to God the Father (a sovereign Spirit) and His only begotten Son Jesus, the Christ, which is the ONLY PERSON of the godhead. The unadulterated Word of God is infallible, but that terminology cannot be attributed to any mortal man that God calls to preach or speak forth HIS infallible Word. Anything Bro. William Branham spoke, containing a revelation of God’s Word, that is infallible, but anywhere he spoke to you in a human term, that is not infallible. That is why I have said many times, God allowed, or permitted this man to speak many times in dual terms about the same subject. He might preach something, and six months later, say something just the opposite of what he preached while under the anointing of the Holy Ghost. This very thing, is what makes a lot of the educated preachers say, You cannot understand what he is talking about. God knew what He was doing, when He ordained this man for the ministry he fulfilled. He was a prophet: we know that for sure, because God used him in that capacity. God knew there was going to be people in the end time, that would only look at the human side and worship the man, but that does not keep those who have a revelation from honoring him for what God anointed him to do. Those who worship his flesh, never see a thing he was trying to point them to. They have all kinds of excuses for looking to him as they do, because they can see that he was a prophet, but God will not accept any of their excuses for becoming idolaters. Gentiles had never had a prophet before, so it literally stupefied many people. I was privileged by the grace of God, to see the man both as a brother in the family of God; and also as a prophet messenger to this age. Many times I heard him say things, and later heard him say something just the opposite, but God gave me grace to deal with it in my life. For instance, I knew the man long before he ever preached the seventy weeks of Daniel: I believe it was in the year 1962, that I came to know he was a man that believed there were only three and a half years left of the 70th week of Daniel. Well at that time, that never bothered me, because I had never made a study of it. Then when for one entire week he dealt with the subject, the seventy weeks of Daniel, he proved by the scriptures, that there is still one full week left to be fulfilled. All along the way, he emphatically showed that there is seven years yet to be fulfilled of that prophecy. I took that and went to God in prayer concerning it. I fasted and prayed as I sought the truth. I have the same history books that he had. When I carefully studied this for a period of time, I came up with the conclusion, yes, there has got to be seven full years of that period left. Then, in March and April 1963, when he preached the seals, he goes right back to that three and one half years that he formerly believed and just left it that way, that there are only three and one half years left to the Jew. I tell you saints, this set some minds in a spin. I am not going to elaborate on that though, but I do want to say that God ordained that for a reason, knowing there would be some people absolutely blown away. Some people might ask, Why do you say that Bro. Jackson? Keep in mind brothers and sisters, that when certain ones came to John the Baptist one day, questioning him, because the priests at Jerusalem sent them to go ask him who he was, he plainly told them. When you read this account in the gospel of St. John, John the Baptist told them, I am not Him, I am just the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make His paths straight and so forth. He said, but lo, there is one standing among you somewhere, when He comes on the scene, (notice how John, who was the forerunner of the first advent, that forerunner said these words) He will indeed baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Did he not say that? Well Jesus did not do that while He was still walking on earth among them. That was actually fulfilled after He had finished His three and a half year ministry in person, been crucified, resurrected and ascended into heaven, where He was seated on the right hand of the Father as the High Priest, the Mediator, the intercessor for you and me and all who believe and accept His word. Therefore when John said, who will indeed baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, whose fan is in His hand, what did he mean? Well saints, for two thousand years, Jesus has not been here in person, baptizing people with the Holy Ghost and fire, so how do we look at that? We have to realize, that is part of His intercessory work. He said, I will pray the Father and He will send you another comforter to do such and such. Well what about the part that says, (Luke 3:17) “Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and will gather the wheat into His garner; but the chaff He will burn with fire unquenchable?” We have to realize that this means Jesus will still have, at the end of the age, the authority to separate something, and relegate it to designated places. He will do it by causing certain things to be said down here on earth, not Him in person, but He will use the words of men or a man, to set winds of doctrine blowing, that will do the separating. Only God Himself knows, that when Bro. William Branham made all those dual statements about certain things, how people who were void of revelation on how to take those things and put them back into the context of the word of God, would take them and build them into a revelation of their own thinking, regardless of how carnal their ideas might be. Those winds have blown all over this world in the years since Bro. William Branham’s death, just blown, and blown and blown. They have separated people all over this world, dividing people and causing them to break fellowship, break friendship, and hold grudges, all because of things Bro. William Branham said, things that could not be properly understood without the Holy Ghost leadership. I have said for years, If you did not have the Holy Ghost leading you, somewhere one of these statements would hit you and send you off somewhere. That is why people have taken his quotes and things and without knowing how to take them back into the scriptures, which he came to restore us to, back to the faith of the fathers, they have gone ever which way. This seals book, will not take you back to the faith of the fathers: It is the book of a man, that tells you how to get back into the Book of all books, the Bible. Even though some will not respect what I have said, it is still true, that the seals book is not the faith of the fathers. It tells you something of what the faith of the fathers was, and there are revelations written in it, but that which we need to take hold of for sure, is right back here, in the book Bro. William Branham preached from, the holy Bible. He got his revelation of those seals, only after studying his Bible and seeking God for what He would have him to say. After his death, it seemed like every time I turned around, especially those first three years, it was nothing but criticism everywhere I went. Why? Because I refused to make Bro. William Branham my God. I express it like that, because so many of them believed like they did. They rejected me, but God did not reject me. Praise His holy name!
EXPERIENCING GOD’S LEADERSHIP
In 1967, toward the end of that year, there was a place in Missouri I had been going, usually twice a year for a meeting. They had called me and wanted me to come for a fellowship during the weekend of the holidays, between Christmas and New Years. I had planned to go, because this was planned weeks in advance. Just a few days before that time, I had a tooth that began to hurt. I went to a dentist, and he was going to fill it, but when he drilled into it, he saw that it was abscessed. It would do no good to fill it, so he had to pull it. I came home thinking everything would be OK, but when I woke up the next morning, evidently that infection had already spread down into my shoulder. As time drew closer for me to go to the place in Missouri, I kept saying, Lord, this soreness in my shoulder, the way it is hurting, how will I be able to go? God allowed this to keep me from going, because He knew what it would turn into. I have always tried to keep my word, when I would promise something, but God saw fit to keep me out of a trap. I went to sleep very troubled the night before I was to get up the next morning to leave, because my shoulder was hurting so terribly bad. I thought, Lord, I don’t know what to do. Well to show you the grace of God on my behalf, I had a dream during the night. In it, I saw myself arrive out there, and go into the home I had been in many times before. I saw myself walk into the house, then into a certain room where I saw five chairs sitting in a semi circle. When I saw them, I knew the other preachers had been sitting there, and that I had been the topic of their conversation. I thought, I know exactly what they have said. Just then, Bro. William Branham walked in, (in my dream, in 1967) and He said these words to me, (He always called me Bro. Junie.) Bro. Junie, they will no longer receive you here, go south. I looked at him and he again said, Bro. Junie, they will no longer receive you here, go south. When I woke up from that dream, and my shoulder was still hurting so terribly, I realized there was no way I could drive out there, so I called those people and told them what had happened with my tooth. I used that as my excuse, but I knew from that moment on, that I would never be invited back to that area again. I have not been either. I have asked myself many times, Why was Bro. William Branham’s image portrayed to me like that? What was God doing this for, two years after his death? I will say to you here and now, In all the years since then, that has been God’s way of leading me to make a stand for truth, and to testify to the truth the man brought to this generation, and to do it scripturally, in a way that He (God) could vindicate it. Moving on into the year 1968, I began to go to South Carolina and those places south of our area. There, is where people began to accept my ministry after those trying times. I do not say that everybody did, but a lot of people began to accept what I had to teach; and from there God made the way. All along the way, I have met the critics that would say, But Bro. Jackson, why this and why that, and what did the prophet say about this, and why did he say so and so? At that time it was pretty hard to deal with, when you had all these accusations and critical remarks thrown at you. Nevertheless as I look back, I can see now, that God was slowly guiding me and directing me. At no time back then, did I ever see myself, my ministry, becoming a world wide thing. As time went on, I just kept going where God would open the door for me to go. As I look back, whenever I got to a place I felt hard pressed and discouraged, God always sent that man’s image to me, to encourage me. The reason I say this, is because all along the way, I have never desired to be looked upon as a big person. I have never desired to be known the world over. That was never in my thoughts: I just purposed in my heart, to do what God led me to do, and when I have done it, I just wanted to be able to sit down and enjoy being a part of God’s great family. However after being allowed to go around this world four times, and after being in every major area of this world, I cannot fail to realize God has more for me to do than what I formerly envisioned. In 1969 we started printing the Contender. At that time, I never even thought of it as being a magazine that would last a long time. I felt like I had a few things I would like to put in print, and of course that was those seven messages I have mentioned from time to time. Over the period of weeks and months, little by little, God gave those things to me by divine revelation. Those were the first things that were put in print. During the thirty five and a half years of printing, we have printed many articles; and God has put this paper in every nation on the face of this earth, and in places I could never have gotten into in person. God has seen fit to get it into those places somehow. It is interesting to hear some of the testimonies of how certain ones got hold of the Contender through the years. I have received many letters from different places where the Spoken Word people had already been there, and already had groups of people formed, so when the Contender would get there, many would set up against it, speak evil of it and use it for purposes other than reading, even to wrap Spoken Word Books in for shipping to other places; and that is how a few people received their first copy and was able to write and request it. Others in those same groups would take hold of it, read it and study it. Over a period of years as they really began to see what the Contender was dealing with, I have received letters from individuals that would say, Bro. Jackson: you have made the teaching of Bro. William Branham easy to understand: We now know what he was talking about. Thank you for straightening us out. In all these thirty some years, you do not know the number of letters I have received from different parts of the world, wherever the doctrines and the teachings of just quotes of Bro. William Branham has been received, and how they would thank me for helping them understand his teaching and his calling of God. Those Spoken word Groups grew very fast for a while, but after so long they began to get very discouraged. Without any further guidance, many of the groups began to disintegrate, simply because one would get this idea, and another would read and get a different idea, and others getting their private interpretations of his messages, so when nothing became stable, they would just give up. In other areas, where people received the Contender, they were becoming stabilized, simply because the Contender helped them understand those things they could not understand just from reading Spoken Word Books and listening to quotes. Those people have written to me and said, Bro. Jackson, some of the message people are coming to us now, and we are able to help them, because the Contender makes things so plain. I just have to thank God for that. He is the One that has led me through these many years.
A WORD TO THOSE WHO WILL RECEIVE IT
I want to bring in something at this point, because it fits right into my line of thought. I know from the Spoken Word standpoint, how this rubs them, because I get letters and calls that reveal their thinking. The e-mail I received from a critic this afternoon, lets me know what they believe I am doing. They think I am out here trying to condemn and run down the message of Bro. William Branham. The truth is, I stand firmly for what he was and what he delivered to this age. I will not do it now, but when I am finished with this message, I will have something to say to those who condemn me and my ministry. When I end this particular subject, I will endeavor to speak to you that have sent your critical remarks, because you have not heard me right. I know what kind of people you are, that you are blind, self centered, one sided, and that all you want to do is sit in the road with your feet crossed and keep innocent people under your spell. You do not pray and ask God to help you, because your mind is already made up. Well I have a little prayer that just fits you. When you go to bed at night just pray, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, O Lord I pray it is not too late. That is just about the way some of them preach and pray, because I know, that if they ever really get serious about praying and studying the Bible, God will show them something more than what they see right now. I have always said, If God gives you the Holy Ghost, He is not going to let the devil keep you ignorant forever. Jesus said this, speaking to those who followed Him, (John 16:13) “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come. (John 16:14) He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.” That applies to anyone who seeks God with his or her whole heart, if their motives are pure. I say to all of you, This walk we have walked, this battle that we have fought, has not always been easy. I have said everywhere I ever went, from Norway to Africa, to India and the Philippines, By the grace of Almighty God, I am standing for the truth that man brought to this generation, until God raises up a ministry that will fulfill the ranks that the man spoke of. He fulfilled his part and did it humbly, and did not pick out one by one, those who would follow the leading of the Lord to lead the Bride Church to perfection. The Holy Spirit does that. All over this world, there has been another generation of people dealt with since his death, young people that were not even born in the 1960’s, and some not even in the 1970’s. I thank God, that some of them have been born into families right here in this congregation. They have grown up here, they only know what we have stood for and preached to them. I would have to say, If they had to put up with all this nonsense, like a lot of other young people in some places, they would know the heartache that goes with this message, and the confusion that it can cause, but God has spared them. There are some people born into this world, that are content with just anything they hear: They wonder why there are problems that come with walking with God. The true Christian faith has always been faced with a battle. When you see how the apostle Paul wrote the different epistles, many times he wrote concerning the things that a particular church had been going through. He would always write things to encourage them, and to admonish them. He always instructed them on how to avoid certain things, and especially how to deal with certain teachings, because it was the devil’s business back then, and always has been his business to upset Christians, even confuse them and throw their mind off course, if given the chance. As Christians, we need to stay on guard at all times, lest he get us off the foundation of our faith. Anyone can become discouraged at times, but we have a sure foundation that will enable us to withstand all the storms of life and claim victory over them all. The devil has always tried to wreck every work of God: That is his business, but as the years have come and gone, God has always guided me by sending me a dream at the precise time I needed it. Looking back now, I can see why, because God was using that man’s image to push me on, to fulfill the ministry that He (God) had called me into. You have never heard me say that I am the only one, but I can say now, Yes, God called me to be an apostle, and you that are sitting out there listening, that want to criticize and say, Well if you were, you would have this and that. I am going to read you something later, to let you know that God has done this in such a humble way, He has left you hypocrites sitting on the sideline, because the very man you have confidence in, said it that way. That is why I said this morning, It is one thing for Bro. William Branham to have said the Bride will have a ministry, and that it would be the ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers; and it was yet another thing when he said it would be so great and so humble. It will not be put on TV, radio or anything else just for a show: God will keep it in the background while the other element is running ahead, sowing their seeds. Think of the multitudes tonight, that are still looking for Bro. William Branham to come back from the dead. No wonder the denominational writers speak of the followers of Bro. William Branham as being a cult. I did not start it: that bunch of characters out there started it. No matter what anyone may say, I will still defend the man’s name, what he preached, why he preached it; and I will not hesitate to remind you of the mess some of his closest followers have made out of what he stood for. That bunch that is forever criticizing me, do not even have a clue as to what that man contributed to the perfecting of the bride of Christ. No. It is not going to be quotes from his messages, that will enlighten the bride Church: It will be the revelation the five fold ministry has received from the Spirit of God, as they have taken those things he opened up to this generation and sought God for the fullness of what he pointed us to. That is why I am thankful to God today, that He has allowed me to meet people that have seen what we are talking about. That is why I appreciate every one of you, my brothers and sisters, young and old alike. You have trusted in something, or you would not be here. God is just about ready to wind this thing up; and many of you hearing my voice right now, will live to see the end of God’s dealing with the Bride Church. What a day that will be!
READING FROM THE SEALS BOOK
I have quite a few places marked in the seals book, that I want to read to you as we go along. I want to talk about this thing, the third pull, that Bro. William Branham spoke of. I am on page 559, actually starting at the bottom of page 558, the last paragraph, where he is explaining how God dealt with him in the mountains, as he was getting ready to come back here in March and April 1963, to preach on the seals.( I sat there when every bit of this was preached.) This is one reason we have this chart up here behind me. The chart goes way back, starting with the apostolic hour. This mystery has come all through the ages, but when we come to that era of time, that is when God started the unfolding of the third pull. That is why the element that followed his flesh, still believe he has to come back and finish the third pull, the tent ministry, and also to preach the trumpets and the vials, to tie all the loose ends together. Do any of you think God has just been waiting around for thirty eight years, doing nothing whatsoever, waiting for a time when He will resurrect Bro. William Branham to finish a ministry? There, are your trumpets and vials right there. (pointing to chart) They have been preached, put in print and sent the world over, years ago. Never, has any critic rebuked me for it. Let us read.
“Remember, Satan will try to impersonate! He’ll try to impersonate everything that the Church will do. He’s tried to do it. We’ve noticed it through the antichrist; (meaning through the Dark Ages) but this is one thing he cannot impersonate. (What about that? What is there about it, that makes it so hard to impersonate?) There’ll be no mimics to this, see, because he don’t know it! (Meaning the devil knows nothing about it.) There’s no way for him to know it. It’s the Third Pull. He just knows nothing about it, see. He doesn’t understand it.” He is talking about the third pull. He is in the mountains, he tells about it back here. We will go to page 562, near the bottom of the page. “Oh, what a day we’re living in-what a great thing. See the mystery and secret? The Third…Standing there, when this left me, something just come to me and said, “Don’t fear.” Now, I didn’t hear a voice–like on the inside of me spoke. I just tell you the truth, just exactly what happened. (He is talking about what happened up in the mountains.) Something hit and said, “Don’t fear. This is that Third Pull.” I want to say at this time, The Third Pull, had nothing whatsoever to do with divine healing. Let us get that settled. Now we go to page 564. “And in Sabino Canyon, (That is where he was.) He said, “This is the Third Pull.” And there’s three great things that goes with it, and one unfolded today…(He was talking about this, after he was back here.) or yesterday, the other one unfolded today, and there’s one thing that I cannot interpret because it’s in an unknown language. As I stand right there and looked right straight at it, and this is the Third Pull coming up. And the Holy Spirit of God…Oh my! That’s the reason all Heaven was silent!” Now everybody becomes mystified at the way God speaks to him in such a supernatural way, this great man of God. I have to say, He was a prophet; and that is the way God dealt with him. That is why those people sat there so mystified. I can say this, After he preached those six seals, they do not know a bit more about what the Third Pull was to be, than a dog knows about making lollipops. I know they despise to hear me say this, but I want to agitate them a little bit, for the way they have agitated a lot of people around this world, with their head strong, set in concrete ideas that are not worth the breath it takes to speak them. They sit in the road trying to control the whole thing; and they know nothing about it. God sent that man to turn a people back to His God’s) Word, to become a supernatural Church; not a bunch of dead people, holding quotes, quotes, quotes. You who are called to be in the bride, are to be a reproduction of the same kind of people that knew what it was to talk to a true and living God, and to have a true and living God living in their heart, a God that can lead you, guide you, and direct you. Is it not written, As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God? It is essential, that we be led of God. We still have much more, before we finish this message.
