Preservice Comments

Be Like Children

 

1.         Happy to see all you folk here and, as I say, trust the Lord’s blessed you this last while and continues to bless you as time is getting shorter. Now, I was just thinking tonight, the last day or so, concerning the Lord in his appellation or how he addressed his disciples—how he talked to them and placed them in the community of that hour, the kingdom of God which was upon earth. And over here in John 15 we find Jesus saying something quite amazing. In the verse 14, he said, “You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you.” And, you know, they sing this song,

“Friendship with Jesus,

Fellowship divine,

Oh what blessed, sweet communion,

Jesus is a friend of mine.”

2.         And that is a very nice song, but it doesn’t really come forth as a Scripture. The Scripture doesn’t say here that if you are one who is a pretty good student, and you’re good at praying, and you feel you have this blessed communion… Like “I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and a voice I hear sounding on my ear,” you know, and the Son of God is talking to me, and I’m talking to him, and we have this wonderful relationship. And on grounds of your feeling and sentimental thoughts you sing:

“Friendship with Jesus,

Fellowship divine,

Oh what blessed, sweet communion,

Jesus is a friend of mine.”

3.         Well, you’re wrong. He said if you do my commandments. So, friendship with the Lord is doing the command of God. And that’s very simple when you understand that friendship with the world is absolutely against God. And Bro. Branham, what did he say? “One word off is Satan’s kingdom.” And, you know, many people still don’t realize it. They’ll tell you, and all the theologians, I’m sure, and everybody that’s the least bit versed in or not even necessarily steeped in Scripture, will tell you that Satan one time led in the worship of God. So, if he led in the worship of God, he was created to lead in the worship of God. And, of course, what did he do? He said, “I’ll exalt myself above the most high, and I’ll be up there, and I’ll be the one that gets the worship.” And of course, you know at the end time that he’s going to demand worship. But until he is incarnated and demands worship, he’s going to be what he always was, which is leading in worship.

4.         Now I realize that even when I say that, it kind of rings hollow to me, and it really will be bitter Epsom salts in the mouths of those who will come against it, because they say, “Well Satan couldn’t lead in the worship of God.” Well, I want to ask you; who is? Who’s leading the Roman Catholic Church? Who’s leading the harlot’s daughters? Who’s leading in the Buddhists’ temples and the Muslims’? Come on now, answer my question. And the god of this world has blinded the eyes of the people. Well, if he blinded them, what has blinded them? How did Eve get blind? Well, she listened to the devil’s word. Satan’s word blinded her with, and opened her eyes to, pleasant perversity—the pleasures of sin or unbelief.

5.         So you have this idea here that this friendship with Jesus is a lovely time of worship, and I have no problem with that. And it’s a great time of, you know, getting together and singing his praises; and I have no problem with that. And it’s a great time of speaking in tongues and prophesying and, maybe, just right on the button every single time. Bro. Branham mentions that. He never had it though in his church, but I’m not saying it’s not available. It is, but certainly gifts are on the mantlepiece as it were. I mean I’ll go right along with it, but I’ll still go along with the fact that that picture of the supernatural—nine licks of fire at the altar—are all nine gifts, and he had them all. Every one: tongues, interpretation, prophecy, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, discerning of spirits; right down the line, every single one.

6.         And yet, it says they’ll come in that day and say, “Lord, we’ve cast out devils, we’ve prophesied in your name, spoke in tongues, we did all of these things just like Mark 16 said. Hallelujah, you’re the same yesterday, today, and forever,” that’s Heb 13:8 and is not Mark 16. It’s Genesis 18. See now, we wouldn’t know that except the prophet told us. So we’re not wise in our own conceits as though we learned something ourselves, got it ourselves. We got it from the man that God ordained to be the vessel for this hour and the living Word of God made manifest, and God made manifest in flesh. And those are statements no one but us would ever believe.

            So, you know, they can’t believe that Satan’s leading in worship. What does the Bible say: they’re going to come in that day and God says I never knew you; depart from me you that work iniquity. And they won’t tell you that iniquity is from the beginning when Satan was handling the Word, and he changed the word of it.

7.         So what’s friendship with Jesus? Well, we are just got to knuckle down to it: you’re a friend of him if you listen to his commandments and obey his commandments. Now you’ve got to listen first and understand, or you certainly aren’t going to obey them. Now there’s such a thing as obeying a lot of things that God said with a wrong motive, a wrong understanding, a wrong division of Word, and it’s not going to work, because you’ve got to worship in spirit and in truth. You’ve got to have both.

8.         So, “Friendship with Jesus is fellowship divine” is good, but go all the way. You know, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have friendship—fellowship, one with another. Bro. Branham said fellowship is two men in a ship or a boat, which is a very simple explanation. How can two walk together except they be agreed?

            So you have here the perfect picture that Jesus said that all Scripture, a hundred percent, goes with it. If you’re going to walk with him, you have to listen to him, and to listen to him is to listen to his Word. And the Bible said that if you don’t turn your ear away from hearing my Word, I’ll certainly keep my ear in tune with your lips; I will hear your prayers. Fellowship. Kinship.

9.         So okay. Friendship with Jesus is right here on the grounds of obeying his commandments, “whatsoever I command you.” Now remember, the great commandment that came forth after Pentecost was, “Repent and be baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

10.       So let’s go a little further now; and we’re going to go to John, and we’ll see something else in here, which I think is very, very interesting, and we can apply it today. What I’ve said now is across the board for Seven Church Ages as to the unidentified specific. And why I say unidentified specific, is because it just cuts right across and fellowship with him is obeying his commandments, walking in the light of His Word, which is a matter of conduct. And that’s goes without saying for Seven Church Ages. But we’re going to get a little deeper now, and we’re going to take something that goes across the Seven Church Ages but becomes ultra-specific at this particular time.

11.       So, Jn 21:3-5: Simon Peter saith to them, “I go fishing.” And they say unto him, “We go also with thee.” Now I want you to notice, this takes place at the time of Jesus’ resurrection—he’s risen from the dead—and the time of his ascension. Now remember that Jesus is raised from the dead, and the proof is the fact of God Himself down here now with the same ministry that Jesus had when he was here upon earth in the flesh before his death, proving His appearing to the Gentiles. And He’s here until He takes us up in the ascension. Right? When that spirit that’s in our midst becomes incarnate to us, we crown him King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And that spirit is God; shout, voice, trump. Right? And the voice is the raising people from the dead and the trumpet is the calling to the Marriage Supper. Right?

12.       So, all right. Here’s a period in there that is just like ours, and Peter says, “Let’s go fishing. I don’t think I can take any more. I know he’s here somewhere. It’s been attested to. But now we’re left in limbo, and so we just go fishing.” Well, that’s pretty good, because Bro. Branham said, “You and I are to just plant potatoes and hammer nails and…” you know, do haircuts, for the men, not for the women, and, you know, iron pants—long pants for the men but not for the women. You’re not with those things, you know.

            And so, there’s a point here that though Peter was right, he was still wrong. He was impetuous again. And he was sort of just throwing his hands up. Okay well, he shouldn’t have done it, but anyway going fishing’s okay. Now watch, this fellow’s a leader, and so a lot of folk go with him. Now I’m not saying this is bad. I’m just drawing a parallel. You follow me? The Bible doesn’t say this is bad. “We’ll go with you,” they say.

13.       Now somebody says, “What is this promise of His Presence, now?” What are you going to do? You going to go along with them? Well, some will I suppose. I don’t know. You’ve got to answer the question now. As for me, I can’t, because I’ve been fried in oil already. You don’t have to boil me in oil any more. I’m crystallized. I’m crisp to the point where I can’t think anything else.

14.       Now, if I don’t make it, that has nothing to do with God and His Holy Word, because what He’s doing is sovereign, and He’s doing it apart from me. I believe He’s doing it for me and with me, the same as you believe. So we’re going on.

(3b)      They went forth into ship immediately and that night they caught nothing. (Now see where you’re going to end up? You’ll have nothing. Nothing. Now God’s gracious, and these were real disciples, so He’s going to get them back.)

(4)        And when morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not it was Jesus. (Now, you’ve got that right today. People don’t know that Jesus is back here in the form of the Holy Ghost, which simply means that God Himself is come down to put all things under the feet of Jesus—God manifest in human flesh once more.)

(5a)      Then Jesus said unto them, children (Now it’s not ‘friends’; it’s ‘children’.) have you any meat?

15.       Now, back that when Jesus was thirty to thirty-three and a half, which we believe he was in those years of his leadership of the disciples, he calls them ‘friends’. And, I have no doubt, but I don’t know--I got this feeling that Peter was older, and I got this feeling that there were people older than Jesus, although Bro. Branham quotes Josephus in saying he looked fifty-five years old or so. He looked like an old man, and he could well have done that, because Isaiah said there’s no beauty as we behold him, and nothing to make us desire him. So, he was a rather strange fellow perhaps, and very odd, unusual, you know, like prophets are. And he said, “Children, have you any meat?”

16.       Now being older, and this is in his resurrection. This is no longer in the human flesh where he was associated with those same ones born of a woman like he was. But, of course, theirs was natural birth; his was supernatural. He called them ‘friends’, but now, completely reverting back in a glorified body to his former pre-incarnation, you might say, going back where he was before Abraham—he was that beginning one—he now calls them ‘children’.

17.       So, what I’m looking at is this man, thirty-three and a half years old, calling these people (apart from that time from the resurrection to his going up, down back to that area) ‘friends’. But now in this area where he is ready to ascend—and it’s in the hour of the resurrection (he is resurrected); and also, we note that others rose with him (we haven’t come quite that far yet, but we’re in this period—parallel)—he says to them, “You are ‘children’.” Now the point is, he’s calling these older people ‘children’, though it could well be that one of them might be old enough to be his own father. We don’t know how old they were.

            Now, I was in Jeffersonville when Bro. Branham stood there in a meeting on a Sunday morning. And I don’t know how many of you remember old Daddy Wright, but maybe you’ve seen him; I don’t know. He that time was very slight, very ill. His body was so racked with cold that he would sit out in the car to let the sun warm him up. And that morning as a frail little man… (Mitch [Oden], were you there that morning, do you remember? Can’t remember. Okay.) This frail little fellow with his hair almost like feathers and white, with a shawl on him, stood before Bro. Branham for help. And here was a man, hardly fifty, looking at a man I think was eighty, and it just looked like a father talking to his son. And I thought, “How strange.” This man, like a child, eighty years old, perhaps. And he talked to him, and Bro. Branham prayed for him. And that impressed my mind; and this is the first time I’ve really talked about it.

            But I can see Jesus in the resurrection attain to his full maturity as a man, ready to take his place in the kingdom of God in heaven and, then subsequently, on earth. And he stands before these people ready to provide every thing for them as a father would do, and they could be older than he. And he called them children at that particular time, the time of the Resurrection preparing for the Millennium.

18.       Now let’s go to Matthew 18 and check this out about children. Now, in Mat 18:1-4:

(1)        At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

            Now we’re in that parallel position with the Father Himself; and He, in the Pillar of Fire, is right here somewhere on earth. Don’t make any mistake about it. He hasn’t gone back to heaven as far as I know, although heaven is just an elevated place, and a matter of what you might call a dimension. I’m not going to argue the point, whether heaven’s way up above the sun a billion miles. I don’t see it. I can’t go by people’s visions and things. I only can go with the vindicated Word of God brought by a prophet. And I don’t know whether Bro. Branham ever said that he was caught up and went way above the sun and the stars, the moon, to utter blackness and then hit brilliant light. I know he talked about a certain fellow doing that but Bro. Branham didn’t say that’s a hundred percent. So, I’m not going to worry about, you know, the point of God is. I believe that He is right here on earth in the Pillar of Fire. He hasn’t left us. He hasn’t gone up to come back, to go up and come back and so on. He is right here somewhere. He could be right in this building for all I know. I don’t expect it, because I look at myself, and I say, “Well, I wouldn’t be able to attract that great attention.” But He’s somewhere here on earth.

19.       So that time, now, Jesus, the anointed one in whom God was dwelling, said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

(2)        And Jesus called a little child unto him and set him in the midst thereof ,

(3)        And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, (that’s born again, full of the Holy Ghost) and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

(4)        Whosever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

20.       Now, in the seventh church age, this is where those who are waiting for us to be made perfect, and we are made perfect. We do not even die. I’m eighty-six now, and I don’t have any hopes of dying. It’d be nice to have, you know, both sides of the equation. But, as far as my health is concerned, which is not the best; but as far as my vitality’s concerned, I have tremendous inward vitality. I got a bunch of loose bones and knuckles and joints and can’t keep up with it. And that’s all there is to it. And you know, I can think rapidly on my feet. I seldom forget anything, especially when it comes to what I’m talking about here in Scripture. I can degress. Over fifty years of preaching, I’ve never lost my way six times in deviating. So I have a lot of vitality, you know, as far as I’m concerned, and I’d like to have a few spare parts that I could trade in. But what I’m trying to get across to you is that we are in an hour, in an age, which the Scripture distinctly tells us in 1 Jn 3:1:

(1)        Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: (that’s the born ones of God) therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knoweth not him.

(2)        Beloved, now are we the born ones of God, and it hath never yet appeared what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

21.       Now this is the time, actually approximates what Jesus is doing here in Matthew 18, the time of the kingdom. And It says, who is the greatest? And, if you haven’t seen the pushing and the shoving and what’s going on soon as Bro. Branham died: “Who’s going to be the great one?”

            One self-appointed leader divided up the world. He’s split the world up into about four or five places. He was going to have America, and Galdona was going to have South America, and Ewald Frank was going to have Europe, and this fellow, Sidney Jackson, was going to have Africa. I think they forgot New Zealand—I’m not quite sure—and Australia. No, he gave Reg Searle Australia and New Zealand. But there was a jockeying all the time, and they’re still jockeying: “Who is the great one? Who knows this, and who knows that?” In other words who is shining? See? You’ve got an exact parallel.

22.       Now, he said, “Except you become as a little child.” And then he says, “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Now what humbling did this little kid do? Why he just heard the voice of Jesus and came right up to him. He let Jesus have his way in his life. And this Jesus was God manifest in flesh. Now, you’ve got to be converted, born again, and be like a child; which means you don’t know anything, and you’ve got to be taught. And if you think you know something, you’re wrong, because you don’t know, as a child, unless somebody teaches you.

            Of all the animals—the mammals—we’re the dumbest. At least animals have instinct; we don’t. Did you ever notice your cats? I’ve got a couple of cats, and I never noticed before. Now if I go outside, “Kitty, kitty, kitty.” Cross the floor? Ho, ho, no, no, no. They’ll go to the nearest wall. They’ll go right against that wall so that nothing can pounce on them. They go around the wall. What about mice? You don’t put your trap out on the floor; you put your mouse traps along the wall. Animals have instincts. They know things. We’re just dumb—stupid. We’ve got to be taught.

            So therefore, except you become as a child and can be taught in the presence of God—because this is the presence of God—well, where you going to be? You’re not a little child.

23.       Well now let’s go to Rev 3:14:

(14)      And unto the messenger of the church of Laodiceans write; these things saith the Amen, the faithful, the true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;

            Now God beginning to form Himself in human flesh was turned down flat in the body of Jesus. Will He be turned down flat when He comes in the body of a prophet? And the answer is yes! Yes! The prophet with God in him, will be the presence of God. Not that the prophet’s God, but the presence is there. And when the prophet is gone the presence is still here. Now, he said here:

(15)      I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot.

(16)      So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I’m going to spue you out of my mouth.

(17)      Because thou sayest, I am rich, increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, miserable, poor and naked and blind.

24.       Now, I want to ask you a question. Where are the children of God in this hour? You’ve got your answer: sitting right here. I don’t believe there’s one person here that’s puffed up. If you are and I am, we’d better look out. If we think we can’t be taught, like I had some here for some time: like I was challenged by one man, he said, “Furthermore Bro. Vayle, I don’t agree with your teaching of the last two Sundays.”

            And I said, “What’s to agree, I own the pulpit?” And my answer’s a stock answer. “You think you’re going to tell me something when I don’t even let God tell me anything?” Now that’s not really true, but I want to get my point across. I have it very hard to listen to God, if indeed I could hear Him. Should I listen to anybody out here then in the congregation, or anywhere in the world when I’m in this pulpit? Forget it! I know my lesson not to get out from behind the Word.

25.       How can the Laodicean age be qualified as children and inherit the kingdom of God? Can’t do it; can’t do it. The only ones that are going to be children are those in the presence of God, and He sets us all in front of Him. Yes He does. He sets us all in front of Him. He calls us His sheep, calls us by name, and all come in front of Him. And I’m going to tell you one thing: the sheep will hear the voice, and they’ll be like little children. They’ll be humble and sweet, and they’ll say, “I want to learn; I want to hear.”

            When I study the messages and hear Bro. Branham, I have only one thing in mind: I want to learn. I have to learn, if I’m going to teach and help you, which maybe I can’t. Maybe I’m not even doing it and never have. But I’m telling you my intent. My intent is not to know something for the sake of knowing something that I might have an upper hand on somebody, that I might be somebody I’m not; no way, shape and form. I really want to know. I really want to know. I believe I’m one of the children of God.

26.       The next thing, how well do I qualify as His friend? I don’t think I qualify as a friend near as well as I qualify as a child who wants to listen and to learn the things of God. Because I’ve known all my life, even though I believed I was surely full of the Holy Ghost, that I wasn’t like these people here: rich, increased in goods, and have need of nothing. In fact, when I was in Pentecost and I heard a Pentecostal preacher say, “I’m proud I’m Pentecostal.” I almost ducked under the carpet on the floor. I never heard of such going on.

            Then I heard a man when I was with Bro. Branham preaching for him up in New England, Connecticut. In fact, it was, and he literally was preaching this wonderful sermon. He was a former FBI guy. And they were all so happy they had him, because he was a big wig. And his sermon was this: I’m a Pentecostal. I like being a Pentecostal. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pentecostal? Won’t you come join us and be a Pentecostal?

            Now I’m not lying to you. I’m not lying to you. That’s all it amounted to. Why don’t I say tonight, “Would you like to be a Branhamite?” Forget it! Would you like to know the truth about God’s prophet in the end time? I’ll be glad to tell you. I’m happy to show you vindication and show you how the Bible stands out, that we have a God, and we know Who He is. Now the big thing is: we are born ones of God. Absolutely. We’re baptized with the Holy Ghost, and we certainly know we are children.

27.       Now, the Bible distinctly says to repent. Now He says here,

(18)      I counsel you to buy gold tried in the fire, you may be rich; and white raiment, and may be clothed, and the shame of your nakedness will not appear; and anoint thine eye with eye salve,

            Now that Scripture is pretty wrong right there; it’s sounds as though you’ve got the eye salve. You don’t have it. The Pentecostals think you’re baptized with the Holy Ghost. They’re only anointed. Now that’s the actual Greek. Says here in the English translation, “Listen, you’ve got it; now use it.” No, no, no, no, no. You haven’t got it. Come and get it. That’s why Bro. Branham kept telling, “Come receive the Holy Ghost, come and be born again.” Now listen,

(19)      As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: (Now that has to do with Hebrews 12, which is teaching) be zealous therefore, and repent.

            The zeal of this hour is to kick out of your brain and my brain every thing we ever knew. Kick it out. If you have retained your old doctrine, you are wrong—wrong as wrong can be, because nobody in this church right today, can stand beside me here, having read the books that I have read and been through what I have been through and know what I know, from spiritual experience piled on experience plus the Word of the living God. You have to take out of your brains that you thought you ever knew and did know, examine it, and you’ll come up understanding you had flaws in every single thing that you thought you knew. Because the prophet was here to correct the error.

28.       My little sermonizing tonight is this now: how do you stack up as a friend of Jesus? How is your friendship divine? If it’s divine, it means you’re walking with him, and no two can walk together unless they be agreed. But Jesus promised that agreement, and I believe we have it tonight. The only thing is now to obey what he said, and Bro. Branham talked a lot about that in the “Token,” where he said what we should do. He didn’t excoriate people. He just said now these are things to do, and he meant that we should do them.

29.       So here we are as friends of the best of all, though, in what I’m looking at above every single thing is being that little child that Bro. Branham said would be the great one. And I’m not trying to be great. I’m just saying what God said about it. If you and I really want to be positioned, and we have that right, to seek God for His utmost as we give Him our utmost by getting out of the way. That is to get, number one, the greatest battle in the world starts in the mind, to get that mind under control of the Word of the living God, until Word upon Word is piled in that mind and the doctrine is so clear that all we can do is think in terms of the reality of the revelation, which has been vindicated, and nothing else remains in our understanding.

30.       So here we are as children in the Laodicean age, I believe with all my heart. And we are now literally set in the midst and the presence of God. You can say what you want, but He is here. And who is here? Now, let’s be very honest, if Jesus had come and not been the tabernacle of God, even though born of a virgin, would he have been efficacious and fulfilled the plan of the Almighty sovereign God? By no means would it have been done. Because God had to be in him, reconciling the world unto God Himself. You reduce Jesus to a prophet otherwise—to a good, fine man. And don’t see the true Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and see the fullness of the Godhead. But when you see that, you begin to realize now, the little child brought in; become as a child and repent. Get every thing out of your minds that you ever thought you knew. Nail yourself down to the Word.

31.       If we are getting the truth from this pulpit, and I believe we are or I wouldn’t be here, you better be assured. I am so happy for our young children who are growing up in grace and truth, and spirit and truth, and you will know that truth is the twin of the spirit and of grace. You only have three of them: grace, spirit, and truth. And truth is two parts of the whole. Huh? Now then, tell me that you judged the truth by the spirit; you’re still wrong. You can only judge the spirit by the truth. And you can only judge grace by the truth. When you study your Scripture, you’re going to find every place in the Bible: grace and truth, grace and truth, grace and truth. And you’re going to find spirit and truth and spirit and truth and spirit and truth.

32.       So what is the major part of the whole message and the whole plan of God and every thing that has to do with God? It’s truth. I am the way, the truth, and the life: the reality. And no man can come to the Father except by me. And here we saw Him who was that truth. Remember, there’s only one true God. And there’s only all-wise God, and that’s all there is.

33.       So that’s a little thought I had tonight, and I’ve taken my time . And I hope you understand the hour in which we live and understand a little more of some of these things are in the Word of God that are very, very plain and very, very precious. And remember, we not only can aspire to it, but it is required that we do become it, because that is a part of the image. We are those who know the Word, and knowing the Word, now we can obey the Word. And remember, His Word is not grievous to bear. For he said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.” And there he said “You’ll find comfort and peace in your life.” For he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

34.       You hear so many people complaining all the time, and yet the truth of the matter is, when you get as old as I am, and you look back, you will find that your complaints were stupid. They were worthless. They were not worthy of you. And you say, “My, it was really wonderful. Look what He did and what He’s doing.” Oh, the consequences of being born again and a born one of God, are amazing and wonderful. And we’ll be praising Him for a great while—well, all eternity. We’ll be praising Him, because there’s no record of the lamb ever being off the throne. And there’s no record of the Pillar of Fire being not above the throne. And there is no record of you and I and the born ones of God being anywhere but in the New Jerusalem, the new heavens and the new earth.

            Well, the Lord bless you, if I don’t come back… [Laughter] [Bro. Vayle returns to the side room as the song service continues.]

Godhead – Q&A #5

The Strong One Bound by an Oath

December 2, 2000

 

            Thank You for Your grace and mercy that have been extended to us, and that You’ve given us the truth in this last hour, which we have hid in our heart that we might not sin against You, Lord, and also we know the truth should make us free according to Your Own Word, which truth we have in the ultimate. So therefore, we believe now it is the ultimate freedom, whereby we shall be taken out of this earth, having our bodies purified, as well as our hearts, our souls, our minds, and those intrinsic things within us.

            We pray, Father, You’ll help us to be true friends of Yours by walking in the light, and not deviating from it, no matter what it costs to just obey You, and walk in that truth. And, Heavenly Father, help us also to realize that the children of the Kingdom are in this last hour being brought to the height of Your perfected Word, and that is those things which could not happen till this time except for Your Presence has now happened, and here we are at this last hour. Help us to walk in that, Lord, and not forget it, because we know that that is the way to please You. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

1.         Before we go to take some more questions and answers, I want to just bring to your attention that, as I have on previous occasions, that what you learn as the fundamental basis, and the fundamental basic truth is very, very important, because if you don’t have the foundation right, you can’t have the house right. It’s like Jesus said, “The man that didn’t listen to the Word of the Lord, and come to grips with It, was like a man building his house upon the sand, and when the winds came and the rains descended, and the floods broke forth upon that house, it was washed away,” because it was built upon sand. You see, sand is meant to be what it is, so you have to realize that what is there: you have a choice, and you can have the right choice, or you can make the wrong choice.

            Now he said, “The one that listens to the Word and obeys It, and is very cautious to take heed to It, is like the man that built his house upon a rock.” And you notice the same thing happened: the winds blew, and the rains came and the floods descended, and it couldn’t dislodge the house, because it was built upon a rock.

2.         Now the rock also was there from the beginning, and it had its purpose. And of course the one who realized the purpose of the Word said, “Well, this is what I want, this is the revelation, and I’m building on it.” And he built his life according to his revelation, and it was the revelation of God, the Solid Rock. He’s called ‘a Rock’, and those that took the shifting sands, of course, their house went with the shifting sands.

            Now rocks don’t shift. You could have an earthquake, and perhaps you could dislodge stones, but the Lord doesn’t mention earthquakes. He mentions floods, and He mentions winds blowing. And He said that the house wouldn’t go down, because it was properly foundation based.

            In other words, what I’m saying: there’s a basic understanding all the way through from Genesis to Revelation, where Genesis is the seed chapter, the sowing chapter, and of course the Book of Revelation is the harvesting chapter, where all these things are made manifest. And Bro. Branham said, “There’s two books that Satan hates more than any other books of the entire Bible,” and that is the beginnings of it all and the consummation of it all. So he hates the Book of Genesis and the Book of Revelation. And Bro. Branham also said that all the secrets are out and we know the secrets of the devil; we know also the truth of the Living God.

3.         Now, saying that, I want to take you back to the very beginning in Gen 1:1. It says: “In the beginning God…,” and of course It talks about ‘creating’. And then in Jn 1:1, It says, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then It says, [Jn 1:3] “All things were made by him; and there’s nothing made that he didn’t make.” It tells you that very, very plainly.

            So as we look at this, we say now: according to the Book of Genesis, according to these seed chapters of the Bible, what is the basic revelation that we have concerning God? Well now the fact of the matter is that the basic truth lies in the Hebrew, where the words are used, like ‘El’, which means ‘powerful’; and then ‘Elah’, and ‘El Elah’, and ‘Elohim’.

            And in the first chapter, you’ll find in there that God created the heavens and the earth; and then It says, “The Spirit of God moved, and God said…and God saw…and God divided…and God called…and God said…and God made…and God called…and God said…and God called…and God said…and God saw…and God said…and God made…and God set them…and God said…and God created…and God saw…and God blessed…and God said, “Let the earth bring forth.” And God made the beasts and God saw it was good, and God said, “Let us make man in our image,” and God created He them, and God blessed them, and God said, “Be fruitful and multiply,” and God said, “Behold, I’ve given every herb,” and God saw everything there.

4.         And then again It says in Genesis 2: the seventh day God ended his work, and God blessed the seventh day; and then in verse 4: the ‘Lord God’—you have now a deviation. Now all the ones that I read to you are based on ‘El’, ‘Elah’, and ‘El Elah Elohim’. That’s God, and He is known as the ‘Strong One Bound by an Oath’. That’s the actual meaning of, and the basic meaning that you start with is ‘Covenant God’. You don’t get carried away with other particular definitions, or you might call ‘further descriptions’, or ‘further revelations’, or depths of understanding, until you really come to grips with the fact of the basic, such as: what did God make everything out of?

            Well, the theory is not so ancient, maybe fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, or whatever it was. They figure that the specific unit that’s most prevalent would be hydrogen. So perhaps everything was made out of a block of hydrogen, which we don’t believe that; but what did God start with? What was His building block?

5.         Now there’s no place that you can go in mathematics, in history, in philosophy, in biology, criminology—I don’t care where you go—till you come back to theology. You find you’ve got to start somewhere. You’ve got to start with the basic building block, and you never forget that that is basic to the whole theme if it lasted through eternity. For instance, if water is H2O, you’ve got to start with H2O, two of hydrogen and one of oxygen. And you can’t do it any other way. If you make water another way… You can, of course, come up with a heavy water, another form, but you simply have to have your building blocks; and water is going to be H2O, period, until God changes it.

            So when we talk about God, we start with the basic, and the basic thing is this: the Strong One Bound by an Oath. That’s exactly where you start. Now you don’t start with ‘Lord God’, which is Jehovah-Elohim until God is now in the realm of creating man.

6.         Now It says: [Genesis 2]

(4)        …In the day the Lord God made the heaven and earth, (That’s the days.)

(5)        And every plant of the field and the earth…the Lord God had not caused a rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. (Now notice the key in there is ‘Lord God’ and ‘man’, because you already know that God created the heaven and the earth. It doesn’t say ‘Lord God’, It said ‘God’.

            And also It says here:

(5)        …The Lord God had not caused it to rain… (Well, God already had made the rain and everything else. It was there. Now watch. The key is:)

(7)        And the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

            Now here we find that God, as Jehovah-Elohim, Elohim being the ‘Strong One Bound by an Oath’, and Jehovah is the ‘Self-Existent One’. So the Self-Existent One now forms man. It tells you here the Lord God plants a garden, He made everything to grow, the rivers were there, and they named the rivers. And It says here: “And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it.” Now here we’re talking about ‘man’, because the history of man is in here.

(7)        For the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

            So now the Self-Existent One, Who has no beginning and no end, solitary, all alone, Elohim, Who is the Strong One Bound by an Oath, is now associated with His child, Adam, right here, as Self-Existent One, Father and son.

7.         So what I’m looking at here is: the Self-Existent One breathes into this man’s nostrils the breath of Life, and of course you know that God does not breathe—when it comes to air—because He hadn’t even created an atom, so how was He breathing before? So that would be stupid to think that this is air.

            This is the breath of God, which is definitely the Holy Spirit…”Breathe on me, breath of God; fill me with life anew.” So what it is: it’s God breathing into man His Own breath of Life. And believe me that God does not have to breathe, because He’s self-existent. It’s within Him. So what’s He done? He’s put His Life within this man, this lump of clay, which of course brings the whole thing into the perfection which God wanted, which is now ‘body, soul, and spirit’. And so from here on, you find always the association. And the scholars are one hundred percent right on it, and Bro. Branham confirmed it, that the relationship of God to man is the Jehovah-complex, which we find nine. A brother thought he had found a tenth, but it was merely another name for God, is all it was, a description. You have the nine pertinent ones, of which we have record, you know, like: healing, “I am the good Shepherd, the Healer, the Peace, the Banner,” and you know, “Our Sanctifier…Sanctification, Our Righteousness,” and all down the line.

            So we find then that God, in relationship to man, is revealing Himself in His relationship in this particular area of the nine complexes (or even more correctly, ‘attributes’) that are found in Jehovah—God relating to man—His family.

8.         Now this is particularly interesting on the grounds of Iraneus, who said, “God, being a Savior, it was necessary to predestinate a man who’d be a sinner, in order to give God the reason and purpose of being.”

            And that’s exactly what Paul says in Ephesians 1: He does all things according to His Own purpose and He works out His Own purpose, and He does it exactly how He wants it done. And Paul goes further, in Romans, when he knows that people are arguing against predestination, he said, “Who are you, o man, to reply against God. Can the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?” [Rom 9:20]

            Because man will always ask the question, “Why would God do this?” Well, it’s none of your business! Let’s face it: people don’t even want other people, friends or their relatives, poking their noses in their business. What is it Ann Landers said? “M-Y-O-B— Mind Your Own Business.” In great big block letters—MYOB. That’s a good thing to put on the wall. When you come in my house: MYOB. That doesn’t mean ‘My, You are Officially Beautiful’, or something. That means, “Mind Your Own Business.”

9.         But you see, when we look at this in the beginning, we can see the thread of predestination; we can see the family of God; we can see why God allowed the sin: man to fall into error in order to give Himself the reason and purpose of being. So if God, as I explained before, the essentiality and the intrinsicality: the ‘essentiality’ is what it is, and ‘intrinsic’ means it’s thoroughly true. There’s no deviation. There’s no taking away. There’s no adding to it so that in any way it’s diminished or contaminated.

            Now you know the little boy coming in and taking a great big slice of the cake that you wanted for company: he hasn’t contaminated the cake. He’s just diminished it. So with God, you cannot diminish or contaminate. So that’s why the essentiality of God remains exactly as it is, and the intrinsicality. And I use that all the time, and I’m familiar with it; and I like it, because it makes me realize that God, being God, what’s He going to do about it except being God?

            I mean, you don’t get angry about this piece of paper being a piece of paper. It’s just a piece of paper. And I’m reducing God now to the elements of nature in order, as Bro. Branham said, “To understand continuity and to understand God,” because you can see God in nature—absolutely see Him in nature. Everywhere you see God. He doesn’t diminish Himself. He doesn’t add to Himself, although David said, “The heavens cannot contain Him,” [2 Chr 2:6] and people think God is getting bigger and bigger. I don’t buy that. God is God, and He’s going to do what God should do, and if He’s all wise and all powerful, and He’s Love—that’s your three right there, not Father, Son, and Holy Ghost…you know, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost—you have God in your three’s. And what more would you want?

10.       So God now is telling you: “I am the Powerful One, Bound by an Oath,” and if He is that, can He help being that? Now that’s something that’s very difficult to put to you and to talk about, because when we’re dealing with God, you’re dealing with Him Who wasn’t made, Who wasn’t created, He was there.

            You say, “How did He get there?” Now your mind’s goes into oblivion, which is next to insanity!

            Well, the point is this: if you were asleep at night, and you didn’t know it, and I opened your door because you left your door open, and I put a beautiful, great, big watermelon on your table…the watermelon’s there…you don’t know how it got there, but it’s there! And it’s there to eat ‘cuz it’s yours! What are you going to do?

            “Well, I wonder…”

            You’d go crazy wondering.

            God is infinite and you can’t tap Him, like I’m talking about watermelons, but I’ve got to reduce it to your understanding where you see: “I have my satisfaction; I am satisfied with God, that He does what He’s got to do, not as though He’s impinged upon, or got some kind of a conscience. He could have all of that, but He’s God! And He is intrinsically, essentially, what He is, and He’s not going to change! And when He tells me that He is all wise, omniscient, and He’s all powerful, and He’s Love, and He’s got me and I’ve got Him.” Hey! If that isn’t the best of everything, I don’t know what is.

            You say, “But Bro. Vayle, these other…”

            Now listen: you’re missing it! Jehovah, Healer, Redeemer, Peace, Shepherd, Banner, Sanctification…right down the line. Are you going to miss God? Yes! If you miss that, and you turn on that and get angry and say, “Oh, I don’t believe that. I don’t want that.”

11.       Well, I’ll tell you what: you’re not a child of God, and I’m not either. Now we might misunderstand for a while, and in misunderstanding, we’re forgiven, but we are not children of disobedience. We are simply disobedient children, and he must correct us. Why? Because He’s our Father, and you and I know the Father must be head of the house, and there must be a leader, and the children must be corrected. And the correction is by proper teaching. That’s where children get right off on the right foot, and they learn the consequences of wrong or going against the Word by paying the penalty. And that doesn’t mean you bop the daylights out of them…you just show them it doesn’t pay. Because the Bible says, “He that suffers in the flesh ceases from sin.” In other words, there’s a penalty…there’s a suffering.

12.       So immediately when you see Jehovah-Elohim, you see God as the Father of the family of the race of gods, because the Life is God-Life, and you can see in nature there are thousands or millions of kinds of lives. There are thousands of butterflies. It’s butterfly life. But those butterflies have produced the same butterflies for six thousand years. And there’s animal life, and it’s done the same thing. And now you know animal life is extinct. There is… What is there? The red-faced money, they say, has disappeared now. And they say there’s hundreds of species disappearing every single day.

            Now if that doesn’t prove there’s no eternal hell, and proves annihilation, I don’t know what does. Where has that life gone? Try to bring it back.

            You say, “Just a minute. I believe I can do it if I can get DNA from the body.” Then the body and the life are the same thing. I don’t care if the life is in the body—it’s the same thing.

13.       They’re trying to get DNA right now to bring things back. Will they be able to do it? Good question. Under the right conditions? Absolutely, by cloning. Will God allow it? Don’t ask me. I don’t know, but they’ll come awful close to doing it, which is the secret of life.

            And they’re doing things right now. They’re finding of the stem cells. They didn’t know it until recently, the stem cell is a good thing. It develops all the other cells. Now they’re finding for Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer, that you can get cells from the marrow and they can put that in you, and it goes to your brain, and some cells develop now. They’re finding wonderful things, and the point is: what I’ve said all along about “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” you’ve got the same thing. You won’t have life without a body. And except where that body is, that life, and that life is the body. And that’s why when you come back in the resurrection, you’ve got your body, because ‘resurrection’ means to ‘bring back’.

            Like Bro. Branham dropped his handkerchief, and he said, “If I drop my handkerchief,” and he said, “and it comes back an animal,” he said, “that’s not resurrection.” Handkerchief go down; handkerchief come back. You go down, you come back; I go down; I come back.

14.       So we’re looking at this fact of God in the beginning. So God in the beginning is basically, absolutely what He always was, without any creation, without anything whatsoever. So He is the Strong One Bound by an Oath. That’s why you find implicitly that God is the Word, and God is not just the Word, as a description, because Logos means that the expression must contain the expresser, or what is to be expressed. You don’t separate them…and so is God. However God is manifested, that is absolutely God. It says, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then you’ll find: from that there comes forth the Rhema, which is God speaking. But first of all He writes It, then He speaks It. Because what He speaks comes into existence, and has to come to pass. That’s when Bro. Branham had THUS SAITH THE LORD. Only God could do that. Anybody else…people lie about it. One fellow was questioned by a guy that turned on this message very, very badly, and he asked him; he said, “Did you ever have THUS SAITH THE LORD?”

            And he said, “Yeah.”

            And he didn’t have THUS SAITH THE LORD. You can’t have Deuteronomy 18. I stand on that, and I’ve been in Pentecostal circles long enough to know that. See? They don’t understand that you’ve got to come in the Name of the Lord and say the thing, and maybe it will come to pass. It isn’t something passing, and then you say, “That’s THUS SAITH THE LORD,” because you could prophesy, but you don’t say THUS SAITH THE LORD. Your prophecy can come to pass, that was THUS SAITH THE LORD.

            That’s like Balaam. Balaam never said, THUS SAITH THE LORD. He said, “I’ll go to God and find out what’ll happen.” And it happened. But he didn’t know it was going to happen. It happened, and then he said, “Well, that’s what it was.”

            See? That’s a big difference between him and Moses. Old Balaam was truly a prophet, but what kind of a prophet was he? Well, he was fine for the Edomites and whatever they were.

15.       So we see then, that God here from the beginning is not Jehovah—Elohim, though it’s true He is actually Elohim, the Strong One Bound by an Oath, and so therefore, He is now able to do, and does do what lies within Him, all those nine attributes and more which is absolutely coming forth from Him in a Message to you and me, as He goes into the Rhema, from Himself as the Logos. Then after It’s written, It can be spoken.

16.       Now the word ‘oath’ in the Hebrew is ‘something sworn’. It’s taken from the root word ‘to seven oneself’; in other words, to repeat the thing seven times. See? Seven is perfection, and perfection doesn’t mean it’s perfect, as though it’s wonderful in the sense of pure wonder. It means it’s completely finished. Only God works in seven’s, where there’s a true perfection where you can’t add or take from it. Now if I gave an oath, and that oath was supposed to be right, I’d have to repeat that thing to you seven times in a row, and when I said it seven times in a row, I’m bound to it. And if I don’t deliver, the consequences are mine. The penalty is going to be taken.

            Now in the Greek it comes from the word ‘fence’, like hence, ‘a limitation’, so when you use a fence, and you’re using an oath, it means you build a fence around it, and that’s that. It’s locked in. It’s over. It’s like when you sign a contract, and you have it recorded legally and properly, according to the land: it’s locked in; it’s fenced in.

17.       Now, however, you don’t find the word ‘oath’ too much. Where the Bible tells us distinctly the Strong One Bound by an Oath, you’ll find that as you progress, which you do in the second chapter, as you go from Elohim to Jehovah-Elohim, and the Book of Isaiah is just loaded with ‘Lord God’, which is Jehovah-Elohim, you will find there that it goes to covenant.

            Now an oath and a covenant is pretty well the same thing, but in Gen 6:18, which has to do with the destruction of the flood. God says over here:

(18)      But with thee I will establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.

            So God says, “I will establish my covenant with thee.” In other words God has a covenant, and that covenant is established, which means that God is going to guarantee absolutely that Noah, his wife, his sons, and their wives, are going to go through the flood. He has a covenant with Noah; God is allocating His Word to and for Noah and family and no one else. Two parties. Later on He puts in a covenant of the rainbow.

18.       Now in Heb 12:24, which is the Greek, so-called… I could never figure out how the Bible got into Greek, when It was Aramaic, and It’s still Aramaic over there. Okay, Heb 12:24:

(24)      And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

            And notice It said, “Jesus the mediator of a new covenant.” So now here’s a covenant evidently between God and somebody else, and you’ve got Jesus as the mediator. So now Jesus stands between whoever else is in the covenant, which is God’s children, really. He stands there as the surety, mediating it, which means that positively, through him, you have the ability to receive from God what God has set forth.

19.       Now in my own thinking about an oath or a covenant, I think an oath is a written or oral declaration of intent that affirms and confirms the article, or articles, of intent, and not only so but may contain provisions that ratify or annul the proffering proposition, and furthermore may be binding only upon one person as to its favorable disposition, and not upon the other, similar to a bequest left in a will, where one person makes a binding testament upon himself, and the recipient is advantaged apart from himself or his conduct and is only to present himself as the benefactor and receive the gift.

            Now that’s not language of a lawyer, that’s my own language, what I feel is correct when you deal with a covenant God. Now Bro. Branham used the term ‘Covenant-keeping God’. I thought that was actually Scripture, but I can’t find any Scripture. And other people have used it also, I’m positive. But He is the covenant-keeping God because He’s the God of the covenant, the Strong One Bound by an Oath, the Strong One Bound by a Covenant. So now you could use an oath in this respect: God would say, “Look, I am determined to do so and so. I will do so and so. I swear it. It’ll be done. And it’s done.”

20.       But the covenant, to me, goes a little better in the sense that, though it’s the same as an oath, in the long run and the short run, we are more prone to accept the word ‘covenant’ because it really means a ‘cutting’, where years ago they would cut an animal and walk between the pieces, like when Abraham took those animals and laid them all out, and the birds came at night—had to shoo them away—and then a burning furnace came, and God came down: the cutting of the covenant.

            And the cutting of the covenant also is like salt, and with blood, and those things which… You’ve heard of them. And, you know, years ago I had a lot of interest in it, and I used to preach on it, and thought it was great stuff. You know, nowadays, we’re way, way beyond all those things. We’re in the realm of reality where God is, and God has come down, God moving, and we’re knowing the things of God and the shadows disappearing, and reality has come into full view. We’re in a place, brother/sister, so billions of miles beyond, because time and eternity have blended.

21.       Anyway, as to the covenant then, usually we think of it in terms of where God is saying, “Come now, let us reason together,” saith the Lord. And when you use that term, people think you can reason with God. Now that’s not true at all. God is saying, “Come now, I will reason with you, and you can reason back, and you will find that I am right, and I am doing the right thing, and I’ll make a covenant with you. So all you’ve got to do is accept it.”

            You don’t find that man enters a covenant. You start in the Garden of Eden, the very first covenant was with Adam and Eve, in the spirit form, when He said, “Now look here.” And they got in the body form, later on. He said, “Now of every tree that you may eat, you’re to be fruitful and multiply. And you’ll take dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air, and the animals and everything else.” And then He said, “Now you’re in the Garden of Eden here, and my covenant with you is now, that you can’t eat of this one tree, but you can eat of all the other trees.”

22.       Now the trees that they did eat of came out of the ground, and they were good to eat. And this tree could not have come out of the ground, because it would kill you. So that blows to smithereens anybody’s idea that they ate something. Hogwash! They did something! And if you read the Book of the Songs of Solomon, you will find a hundred percent to your satisfaction, if you’ve got one ounce of brains or intelligence, that sexual intercourse is described as ‘eating fruit’, period.

            Now see, that’s opens the door to serpent seed, and everything else, and puts the whole thing in perspective. So the covenant, as I said here, and Isaiah is saying, “Come now, let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;” and so on. [Isa 1:18] The idea is: God is saying, “Look: come, let us reason,” and what It says the reasoning is there is: “Don’t you understand that I know you’re a sinner, and you know you’re a sinner, but there’s a way for you now, and the way of escape is by the sacrificial blood of an animal until the Blood of my Son eradicates all sin, because It will scatter sin until till there be no evidence, and therefore no one can be called a sinner.”

23.       Now that’s what God said to this party. Now let’s face it: the sheep will hear the Voice and follow, but the serpent seed never will; they never have. When God opened the covenant to Adam, and no doubt to Eve, and then the son, Abel… They all had to have the same covenant, because in the garden God had to kill the animals to give the skins to Adam and Eve. And so outside the garden the same thing took place. And what happened? They say they were the obedient children of God. They came to the covenant of the sacrifice of blood. As Bro. Branham said, “It was blood the first time; it was blood all the way through.”

            So that’s what I’m saying: if it’s Elohim in Chapter 1, the Strong One Bound by an Oath, it is the One in Revelation 22, but with a complete revelation to us, from Him to us, as it was not in Genesis 1. And you’ll notice in Genesis 1 man was not there in the form of a ‘needy one’; he was a spirit-being who have no needs. But in Genesis 2 he comes into a form where there’s need, and God, being what He was, He had to have this man who needed salvation, who needed a Shepherd, who needed this—right down the line.

24.       And so outside of the garden, as I was saying, Abel took the blood sacrifice, because he was an obedient Son in disobedience.

            You say, “How can he be an obedient Son?”

            Because he came properly by his father and mother. Cain did not. And because Eve had said, “I’ve gotten me a man from the Lord,” little old Cain was just stupid enough to believe it. And as Bro. Branham said, “Even a harlot could say that: ‘I’ve gotten a man from the Lord’.”

            Why? Because the principle of propagation was entered into and therefore, she got a man by God, because God gave the grounds for it.

25.       So now Cain would not believe that he was serpent seed—no way, shape, and form. And so what did he do? He was a child of disobedience—not a child of obedience who was disobedient. He was a child of disobedience who flagrantly spit in the face of God. And when God said, “Where is your brother?”

            Well, he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper? What have I got to do with him? He’s big enough to take care of himself. What? Am I going to change his diapers? Get out of my face.”

            And God said, “Just a minute now,” He said, “your brother’s blood is crying from the ground.”

            Well, he said, “So what? He got in my hair.”

            Cain tells you by his action he had no definitive human soul from God. He had no conscience. He was a beast. And at the end time there’s going to be nothing but natural, brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, because the Bride’s going to be out of here, the wise virgin, and the foolish virgin will be out of here, usually by death, if not all by death. And the 144,000, I believe, will also be killed. So you’re going to see what’s going on.

            Again, at the beginning, the Strong One Bound by an Oath, which is God and His Word, and God is in His Word, and God is His Word. That’s exactly Who He is. The Jews understood that, and they took it from the Psalms and various places exactly what we believe today on that particular ground.

26.       So that’s what I wanted to bring across to you tonight concerning that. Now let’s go back a little bit here, and we’re going to see something which is very interesting. It has to do now with Adam having been breathed into him breath of lives, in the plural there, and he became a living soul. So if he became a living soul at that time, when the breath of God was breathed into him, the breath of God must have brought him a soul. That’s just natural to believe.

            Now you’ll notice there’s a reversal with Adam than there is with us. He had already a spirit, and he was put in a human body and God gave him the soul, and that soul he was to propagate: the lives that God gave him, because that life was in his body, and that life was in his body in order to propagate. That’s why God put life in the female dog and the male dog so they could propagate. He put the life in the male butterfly and the female butterfly so they could propagate, and the whole thing is propagation. “Be fruitful and multiply. I’ve given you the means to do it, so do it.”

            So all right here now, this is for propagation, because he’s in this body. He’s going to propagate. Why? Because the Scripture distinctly says that Adam was a Son of God, and in the genealogy every single one in the genealogy came from God, the life of God. That’s why Bro. Branham could say, “God took the soul of Jesus, and gave it back upon us,” because it is the life. So, as we look at the life here, he became a living soul, the breath of lives were in him.

27.       Now let’s go a little further.

(18)      And (It said) the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.

            And the word ‘helpmeet’ means ‘I’m going to make him one of his species, or one like him’. Now see in the garden, the beast was not like Eve or Adam. It was beast, animal, period; and it mated with her, because the bodies were so close, but it couldn’t produce the life, or the soul-life. It couldn’t do it. It didn’t have it; it was animal life.

            So animal life went to her flesh and brought this creature out and put enough of the human element in it to be very, very close to the human and still propagate, and not be sterile, as most hybrids are. So how close was this missing link? You better believe it was a whole lot closer than these stupid scientists and anthropologists who think we came from monkey would try to lead us to believe. In fact, if a monkey could talk, he’d disown man. You know that as well as I do. At least those idiots out there that… They’re natural brute beasts. That’s all they are. They’re animals. They think like animals. And they want to vaunt themselves so high.

28.       Every time you turn around it says, “There’s no respectable scientists that believe in God. Oh, brother! Where do they get that? You can’t pick up a magazine or any place but where the scientists are talking about God. Who was the guy…Joseph…was it Sabin? Yeah, I think he was editor of one of the big magazines, and he said he was taught in school there was no God and taught evolution. Finally, he said, I just woke up when I was twenty-some years old, I guess it was, and he said, “Where is the evidence? There isn’t any.” He said, “Forget it. There is a God Who created.”

            The respectable scientists! Find the scientists that reject God. They’re a bunch of stupid little jerks running around, mouthing off.

            They’re just like these guys in the media: you can’t pick up one guy that comments today on the events as they are. He’s got to have a political plug to hold onto—Democrat or Republican or Nadar or something else. You can’t read one of them that’s honest. They are a prejudiced bunch of liars, and if they’re prejudiced, what do you think Satan is? If he isn’t prejudiced, you’ve got another thought coming.

29.       Well anyway, It says here: “I will make a help meet for him;” in other words, somebody like him. Well, now how’s He going to do it? Well, He says here, “It’s not good that man should be alone.”

            Now here’s where the theologians come in, and they’re pretty smart, but they’re not smart enough. I never knew this until I heard a fellow named Dr. Monroe talk about this, and he said, “Do you know what the word ‘alone’ means, where it comes from?”

            And I’m listening, because I just read you… Didn’t I read you what It says, “alone here.” Didn’t I read that? No, I didn’t read it yet, did I? Let me tell you what ‘alone’ says:

‘Alone’ is ‘separation’, ‘solitary’, ‘apart from, by application, but not direct, as a part of the body, like a branch of a tree’. Figuratively, it could mean ‘the chief of a city’, like he’s the alone, big shot, but it really means in the Hebrew: ‘separation’, ‘solitary’, ‘apart from’. (It’s the same idea in the Hebrew and the Greek.)

30.       Now in the English the word ‘alone’, when you look it up in a big dictionary, like I’ve got a whole set of volumes… I’ve got about twelve great big, thick ones like this. Just thousands and thousands of words that don’t mean a hill of beans most of the time. So the guy said it comes from ‘allone’, a-l-l-o-n-e, and he said it means ‘all in one’.

            So I say, “I like that,” but I’ve got to check it out, because I’m not that gullible, because I’ve never heard of it. So I go to my dictionary, and it says ‘alone’, ‘separated’, and so on, ‘by itself’, ‘solitary’, and then it says ‘allone’. And that’s a theological term, meaning ‘all in one’, which is three gods in one.

            Now this Dr. Monroe… I like him. He’s a black fellow from down in Nassau. He’s good. I’d like to meet him and talk with him on this Message. He is good. And he said, “Look,” he said, “it’s all in one, and that’s what Adam was.” And he said, “All was in Adam, and Eve was in Adam.” Now that’s correct, see? all in one…all the human race…man, which is genetic, a species term, which is true. “Let us make man”…

            Now look: God made all the fish, all the this and that. Everything’s out. Now He said, “Let us make man.” So you’re dealing in species. So the human species is man. It is not a term denoting gender. Now man could mean ‘male’, but I don’t believe in this case It’s talking about a male, period, because the point is: He called ‘their’ name Adam. They’re two in one.

31.       Now He said: “Everything—this specie. He didn’t quite put it as I do, but I’ve got the idea: it was all in this body. And you know He’s right, because It says, “As in Adam, all die, even so in Christ all are made alive.” Every single child was in Adam, and if you don’t believe that, how come Bro. Branham quoted that Abraham was a great, great, great-grandfather of Levi, and he was the great, great, great grandfather of Levi, then he was the great, great, great grandfather of Issachar, and let’s see, Benjamin and Joseph and Reuben, and the whole twelve bunch of them.

            So if Levi, one of the twelve, was in the loins of Abraham, I want to ask you a question: where did Abraham get them? He got them from his daddy. Do you want to look at the genealogy? I could read it to you. Let’s do that, if I can find it over here. I like having a good time when I go into Scripture. If it’s not loving, and if it doesn’t make you happy, and doesn’t make you wake up, then we’re not interested. Okay.

32.       Now we’re talking here about the generations of Abraham to David and we go back, and It said: Joseph was in Jacob and Jacob was in…that’s Mat 1:13…He was in Eleazar. Matthew was in Eleazar, and Eleazar was in Eliud. And then up here It goes further back now, and let’s go back to the place of where It says here now; and It says [Mat 1:3]: “Judas begat Phares” and Phares came from Judas, and Judas came from Jacob, and Jacob came from Isaac, and Isaac came from Abraham.

            So now you’ve got them all the way to Abraham, and that’s what he had to go because he was not only the greater Son of David, as Jesus, but he was the only also that was supposed to be like… Paul speaks of him as the Seed that was promised to Abraham…and he said, “Seed” in the singular, which was Jesus Christ. And so it was.

33.       Now what have we got over here? We go on over here in the Book of Luke, we’re going to find this, and we go to Lk 3:38, and It says:

(38)      Cainan, which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.

            Now if you’re going to follow it conclusively, you have got to realize that Adam was not only created, but he was actually a seed of Almighty God, and in Adam was placed every single Son of God, that is born ones…pardon the expression ‘sons’, it’s born ones of God, children of God—the born ones. Every born one was in Adam, and remember: before that it was in Jesus the Christ, and before that it was in God. Trace it right through. Bro. Branham said, “The first Man: God; second man: Jesus; third man: Adam”…came right on down.

            I’m quoting that a little bit not perfectly with what Bro. Branham said, but the understanding is there, that God was the first One, Jesus is the second. And you’ll find that right in Scripture. It certainly was, because Jesus was in God, positively, because God birthed him. The Bible says so. And then It tells you, “We were in Christ Jesus.” And so it came right on down. That’s why the Bible said, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image,’” and Jesus was the image of God. And so “Let us make man in our image,” exactly true. That’s why Jesus could come forth exactly as a human being, he looked like one, but he wasn’t a human being like Adam and Eve and those… No, no, no, he was different. No, he was different, but he took a part, but he was in that likeness. See? Right down the line.

34.       So this man was sure right on what he was saying, but he was doing it from the Trinitarian aspect of a dictionary meaning, theological dictionary meaning, or dictionary theology, and then he also caught the light here of where it was in Adam.

            Now I wonder if I was ever talking to that fellow, if I ever get to him, which I don’t suppose I ever will…he could understand serpent seed…might be. I often wonder why there aren’t more Black people in this Message…it may be…well, it all boils down to…let’s face it: to predestination. There could be a whole lot more out there than I realize, because there could be a whole lot less White people than I realize, or any other color, you know. You just don’t know. It’s a matter of just simply guessing. 

35.       This is what I wanted to bring out at this particular point as we go back, and it was Jehovah-Elohim, Who was doing this. So the minute that God brought a man forth who would fulfill the Scripture of Ephesians 1, He had to stand there already as Jehovah-Elohim in order to receive His Son, whom He thoroughly predestinated. And remember: Bro. Branham preached on that in “Leadership,” or some message in the last series out in California just before he passed away. He preached a tremendous sermon on predestination: how if you as a human being, as the father, mother, especially a father, would want everything for your coming child…you would have everything exactly right because it was in your power to do so, and if it wasn’t in your power, you’d do your very best to make the absolute perfect position and everything that would be good for that child. “Well,” he said, “would you believe anything less of God?”

36.       So It says here: [Ephesians 1]

(3)        Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Now that’s the Father of Jesus Christ.) who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places:

(4)        According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world…

(5)        Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself… (And then:)

(8)        Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

(9)        Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to the good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself. (There you are right there. Now if He purposed all this within Himself, He had to have it before there was ever a man brought on this earth, and there He stood right there with the Jehovah complex.)

            So getting you settled on what I’m talking about, go back always to your basic: what is the first basic foundation stone concerning the teaching of God? He’s not Jehovah…El, Elah, E-l—that’s strength. You see that many places in the Hebrew, and then it comes up ‘Elohim’. Now at the same time, you’re going to find the Trinitarians want to boggle you with the Hebrew, because the word ‘Elohim’ is in the plural. So they’re going to tell you and me that this is the mystery of one God in three persons. That’s why they get mixed up in Jn 1:1, but it’s not so. But as Terry Sproule brought out, having looked it up, and I looked it up myself, turned to the word ‘Baal’, the god Baal: that also is in the plural, and it’s merely one person.

37.       So don’t get all carried away with a bunch of hogwash, because somebody tries to make language what it’s not. The fact of the matter is: there is only one God, period. It’s all through the Bible, and it could be that somebody made a boondoggle on interpretation, but here’s the thing: I have seen the concordant people and the Catholics; they have deliberately attempted to change the Bible. They aren’t smart enough: it betrays them down the road, and you can get it right in spite of them. You can get even Dr. Knox. He’ll tell you right there, and that’s one of the most brilliant translations I’ve read of the New Testament. The Book of Acts is as moving as a wild West story. I mean it’s the most moving, dynamic piece of literature you’ll ever read in the Bible, the way that man wrote it. And when he gets to 1 Corinthians 3 on the word ‘hay and stubble’, he said, “Well, it’s where we get our purgatory.” Fire that is supposed to clean out the dross. No doubt to them it means, ‘cleansing, or paying a price for sins by a fiery punishment’.

            Hogwash. They’re not smart enough to change it. You could change the Bible fifteen different ways, and there’d be a hundred other ways it tells the doctrinal truth. As I’ve said before, and I stand by it: you cannot take one doctrine, period, and not end up with the centrality of Christ, understanding what? sin, predestination, election, regeneration, sanctification. There’s nothing, not one subject can you take in the Bible, but what you will end up exactly right back in the center. And you’ll come right back to God with every revelation of real truth. And I’ll tell you one thing: there’s no way you can change the Word of God or deceive the Elect—no way can you deceive the Elect. Let them try it. Let the devil try it, he can’t do it, there’s no way to do it.

38.       Well, it’s nine-o’clock, and I promised myself I would let you out early. All right, lets bow our heads in prayer.

 

            Heavenly Father, we thank You for the time we’ve had together here concerning what we are dealing with in this subject. And we believe, Lord, to understand the truth as it is, just to understand the truth about You, Lord, what You’ve said about Yourself and what can be garnered from understanding what has been given us, helps us, Lord, to be profitable, and we know that we are because, given this understanding, we stand in greater assurance. And in my own particular case, Lord, I believe that I love You more and am more appreciative of what is true than ever before. And it dawns on us all, I believe, that this is so helpful, as Your Own Son said, that man who builds his house upon the rock, having heard the Word of God, and believed it, and being attentive to it, will never be carried away by the floods that descend upon this earth. No matter what happens, we are safe and secure. We thank You for it, and we glorify Your Name.

            May each one in Your Presence tonight, Lord, be blessed within soul and within their bodies, Lord, as never before, knowing that You are their God, and You are all-sufficient to them. And we just have to, Lord, look to You and we know there are no disclaimers. We are under the blood, full of the Holy Ghost. We know, Lord, that Your heart is open to us, for You even said that You’re more willing to give than we are to receive, and that is a shocker in itself. But we know it’s true, Lord. We know there’s something in here that must get out of the way, so the floodgates of grace can open upon us. We who say we want them, who love them, we know, Lord, Your Word is true and we are not true. There’s something, Lord, that needs to be removed and that is within us and it is not within You, Lord. And so may we walk in more fellowship, obedience to You, until Your Word is completely fulfilled having listened to the prophet and gone the way that he went, which is down that path of life, more and more consecrated, and more and more dedicated to You. And we know, Lord, that is by Your Word. So we thank You tonight for Your Presence and goodness, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.


Communion Service

 

1.         Now, there are not too many passages, you know, concerning the Communion. But just reading again from John 13,

(1)        Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

            And, of course, we know that Jesus had to go back to the place where he was previously with God, but, of course, with a far greater glorification than he had before he left. And you find that’s written in Hebrews 12 that:

(2)        Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who with the joy that was set before him endured the cross, and despised the shame, now has set down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

            And, you’ll notice also that with this glorification there came a change in the priesthood, from Levi to the tribe of Judah. And, of course, that brings to pass the full type of King David sitting upon the earthly throne where he was the prophet-king. So Jesus, now then, goes from prophet to king, the great prophet-king.  

2.         And at this particular time we know that with the descent of God, when the book was taken out of the hand of the Father, and the seals were torn off, and the book handed back to the Father, the Father left the throne, and the Son is on the throne, while God is putting all things under the feet of Jesus, which He’s doing now by, first of all, bringing the church into subjection, because spiritual headship is here. And as the head was raised from the dead, the body must also rise from the dead in order to join the body; which it will, because if the head is ascended, then the body has to ascend, because the body must be where the head is. And we’re talking now not about a head as though, if we have a headless body, we’re a bunch of headless people running around. We’re talking about the pyramid, the Bride pyramid, where it goes up in the Rapture and joins with the others who have been taken up to the throne, somewhere, somehow. In the Psalms, you know, It tells how those first fruits, in the time from Abraham and different ones rose when Jesus rose, the graves opened, they ascended on high when Jesus ascended on high. They sing this song of “Who Is This King of Glory,” and they sing mighty wonderful hosannas about that.

3.         So anyway, he knew he was going to go back there: [John 13]

(2)        And supper being ended, the devil having now put in the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him; and

(3)        Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God;

            Now, I suppose there are different ways of looking at this, and you can look at it in two different ways. And knowing the Father had given all things into his hands, that’s one thing where God had placed everything in the hands of Jesus for the fulfillment of His plan. On the other hand, at the same time, God opened the door for Satan to take over. And you have a greater problem here than when the devil came to Jesus after the forty days of fasting, and said, “Now if you be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread. If you’re the Son of God, jump off the temple here and make a big display so people will know who you are. Or,” he said, “fall down and worship me, and I’ll give you a short cut. You can have all the kingdoms as of now.” Now, the door is open again for Satan to come. And he entered into Judas, and now there’s going to be the big betrayal.

4.         So all things are really in the hands of Jesus. He’s got to meet Satan, the Father leaves him in the garden of Gethsemane, and he knows he’s going to go back to God. He knows what lies ahead of him, because God has already said, “I’m going to give you greater glory than you already had.” And so he understands this now. He doesn’t only have the knowledge from the pre-incarnation, but he has a knowledge now, in him, that is greater than the pre-incarnation where he now goes into glorification. And you know something? We have a pretty good knowledge of that ourselves if we’d just sit down and think about it.

5.         And he said, [John 13]

(4)        He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.

(5)        After he poured water in a basin, began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. And

(6)        Then cometh Simon Peter: and Peter said unto him, Lord, do you wash my feet? What are you doing?

(7)        And Jesus said, what I’m doing you don’t know now, but you’re going to know after a while, just let it ride.

(8)        And Peter said, “You’ll never wash my feet.” And Jesus answered, “Well, if I don’t wash you, you’ve got no part with me.”

            Now how do you like that? You see, there’s a covenant again; you don’t argue with God. You find out what the covenant is. That’s the thing: find out if there is a covenant. Is there something in here that is useful to me? Well, let’s face it, God is everything to His family. Everything. You can’t find anything He’s not to His family, this great powerful One of love and wisdom. And so, you come to Him in a right spirit; that’s humility. And like a child you want to learn that there’s nothing that God will withhold from you.

6.         I use to have a little thing I used to do, and I should get back to it. When I used to need healing, I’d take a book by Daddy Bosworth and start reading on healing. Just read and read and read. And say, “This is so. I understand. Now I’ve got it.” And then get up and I was fine. I backslid. You know, I don’t work in that realm in my ministry, but that’s no excuse not to have healing. You people here don’t have to work in any ministry at all except being good wives and good husbands and take care of your family, give a good testimony, live a decent life. You’ve got it all. Nobody lacks anything. Let’s face it.

7.         So he said, “Look, I’ve got a covenant here, and you better realize it, if you want to be a part of the covenant.”

(9)        And Peter said, Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head.

            Now he’s going to wallow in it. Well, healing is children’s bread. Are you going to make it the cake and the beef and the stroganoff and everything else? You know, people; they go hog wild. Well what do they go hog wild for? Just take it the way it is; believe it the way it is. The minute you start to trying to improve on the revealed Word of God, that’s gnosticism. And pretty soon, you’ll hear female voices. Not that you haven’t heard them already, but this is going to be worse than ever.

(10)      Jesus said to him, He that is washed needs not save to wash but just wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. (Of course, he’s speaking of Judas there.)

8.         Now he said, you’re already clean, that’s why you just need to have your feet washed. Don’t talk about a bath from the head down. “Oh, Lord, from the top of my head to the sole of my feet, just go over my whole body, rinse me down and wash…” “Oh, shut up.” The covenant is from God’s side. Are you going to listen to the covenant, “Come now, let us reason together,” saith the Lord? “Though your sins are scarlet, they’re red, you’re in a horrible mess; you can be white as snow. Do you want to listen to me? I’ve got something for you.” Everybody thinks God wants to take something from them. All He takes from us is sin, and it’s awful fruit. Then He gives us true gifts from above.

9.         You know, the word, in the Bible—the dedication? It means to come with empty hands, wide open, to get something. Everybody thinks dedication: “Here I am God, take it, here I am God, take it.” God say, “Shut up and sit down, open your paws, what’ve you got? Nothing. Well, I’m going to give you something.” Huh? Woman say, “Oh, I’m dedicated to God, hallelujah, called to preach.” Hogwash! Dedicated to God? My foot. Dedication is only one term: Word, Word, Word. Huh? Get me under the hose Lord; wash me all down. No, you’re born again; the mediator’s there. Confess your sins; he’ll forgive your sins. He’ll help you.

10.       (11)      He knew who’d betray him; therefore he said, you’re not all clean.

(12)      So after he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and set down again, he said, “Know ye not what I have done to you?”

(13)      You call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for I am your Master and Lord. (“I’m not denying it,” he said. “You know that, and I know it. I have the authority to prove it.”)

(14)      If I then, your Master and Lord have washed your feet; you also wash one another’s feet.

            Then what is this a picture of? It’s a picture of people know we’re all sinning. Like Bro. Branham said, “Backslide a thousand times a day, sin a thousand times a day.” There’s none of us not a mess. Our thoughts speak louder in heaven than our words. “Oh, oh, hallelujah Jesus; love you Lord Jesus;” and then say, “Boy, I’d like to stick that guy next to me.” You don’t have to say it. That speaks louder in heaven than your ‘hallelujah’ and ‘glory to God’ does.

11.       So what Jesus is saying here is: look, foot-washing is a sign amongst the brethren and the sisters here, because the widows had to wash feet, women wash feet and men was feet, absolutely. It’s what you should do. It’s the sign… Look, I’m sitting here as a sinner redeemed by grace entirely fallible. I’m tested. I do wrong. I do sin. I confess it. I’m no perfect person here; no better than you. I’m like you. You’re like me. I wash your feet. You wash my feet. We pray for each other, because we sure need it. That’s what you’re doing. That’s what we are all doing.

12.       What do you think Jesus is doing as intercessor? Interceding to keep us all and in fellowship. Bro. Branham called us messiahettes. So you could call us, right now, little intercessorettes, because that’s what it’s all about. Looking at people and say, “Well, if you have hurt my feelings, thank you, it’s all right, I forgive you; and I hope that if I’ve hurt yours, you forgive me.” It’s a matter of just washing it out. You know, it’s wash them right from between your toes: all that malice and grub—the dust of malice.

13.       Bishop Pillai taught us what it was, when Jesus said, “Shake the dust off your feet.” People thought well, if they shake the dust off, but it had nothing to do with that. It means the dust of malice. Get rid of your hatreds, your angers, as you walk the road with people. You know, and people do walk together. The Bible tells you to walk together. It said if one person walks alone, and he falls down, he can’t get up without help. So two people need to walk together, and then there’s somebody to help you up.

            Like two people sleep in a bed, one’s cold, the other can warm you up. If you stay there by yourself, you just freeze, unless you pile on the blankets or something. The Bible’s full of little homely things that just make you perk your ears up and realize that these are simple principles of life.

14.       Now he said,

(15)      I’ve given you example, that you should do as I’ve done to you.

            He said, “Look it, every one of you have made a mess. He said, “Peter, you’re messed up right now.” He tells them, “The crowd is accusing me. They’re after me to get me. I haven’t done any wrong. What about you boys? When they go after you, remember; you have done plenty wrong.” See?

15.       So we’ve got a little picture here of what we’re looking at. So he said, “I’ve given you an example.”

(16)      For I truly say the servant is not greater than his Lord; neither is he that is sent greater than he that sent him. (So, if Jesus did it, and he’s the perfect one, we’d better do it too. Foot-washing is a legitimate commandment, absolutely, of God.)

(18)      I speak not of you all: I know whom I’ve chosen: that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me. See?

(19)      Now I tell you before it come to pass, when it come to pass, believe that I am he.

(20)      Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receives me. (Did Jesus send Bro. Branham? Did God send him? Yet to receive Bro. Branham was to actually receive Jesus Christ. To receive Christ is to receive God. Because he says right here:) He that receiveth whomsoever I send receive me; and he that receiveth me receives him that sent me.         

            So therefore, when Bro. Branham came on the scene, absolutely proven sent by God, and they turned him down, they turned down Jesus, crucified themselves to the Son of God afresh, and they turned down God.

            “Well, you see, God didn’t send Bro. Branham or he’d a come to us.”

            Ha! That’s the proof that God did send him. He wouldn’t send him to a bunch of cutthroats, denominational people.

            I made a note here: Jn 14:12:

(12)      Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to my Father.

16.       So that’s foot-washing. Foot-washing? Cheer up. forgive everybody; they’ll forgive you. Take it in your heart to say this is the time that I wash it all away. Get rid of it. The dust of malice is washed off through the Word of God, because I’ve applied the Word of God to my life. I’m washing feet, and I’m doing this, and I’m taking the emblems the same way, because it’s commanded of me to do so. I do it with all the malice gone, all the angers gone, anything I’ve got against anybody. Just let it go; forget it. You aren’t going to remember it anyway when you get to heaven. So ain’t much use hanging on to it, because you can’t take it with you. So tonight’s the time to do it. Let’s rise at this time. The brethren come forward.

           

            Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this privilege of partaking of these emblems and washing each other’s feet knowing, Lord Jesus Christ, this represents Your great sacrifice. And yet, at the same time, it represents the fact that you absolutely pleased God, your Father, and you gave Him perfect satisfaction, so there is no other sacrifice. There is no other way. This is it, and we confirm it knowing that even doing so now, we shall meet with You and partake again on the other side, and we appreciate that.

            And also in foot-washing, we know is time to get rid of all little petty things and any angers or resentments and anything else, Lord, that we may have as we walk this life, especially the dust of malice, because we know that that is absolutely a horrendous thing, and just be content within ourselves with You and with our brethren and our sisters and walk in the light and give each other preference and stand there helping and blessing as we ought to, because, Lord, You also gave us that example, and even warned us, when people curse, we are to return by blessing. How much more then should it be fulfilled as the prophet himself said, “You who love this message, this Word, how you ought to love each other,” and we do. And we know that we do because our love, shed abroad in our hearts from You, reaches to each other and brings that circle closer and closer together. And we find this lovely unity of the spirit as we have here tonight, and we rejoice with joy unspeakable knowing now as this little commemoration service carries on, Father, and is completed, it is well with our souls. We thank You for this. Help each one, Lord, to go through in faith, under the blood, full of the Holy Ghost. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.