Stewardship #5

According to the Job Description;

Jesus as Michael;

Jesus’ Warning About Gifts

March 1, 1997

 

                                                           

            Shall we pray. Heavenly Father, we’re so grateful for Your Presence, and we feel that Presence, some might say like electricity, and we know Lord it’s perhaps more like the breeze that blows stiffly across the city that is smog covered, and the smog all rolls out to sea, and the city is breathing the fresh air that you want us to have. And we feel therefore, Lord, You’re breathing upon us, and giving us the oxygen of life, the life of the Word of God, to give us the strength, to give us the understanding, to give us all those things that we need in this last hour. And we know that that is true, because there is nothing missing, for that which is perfect has come, the perfect revelation of the Word, given to us, and we know it on the grounds of vindication, because it follows exactly how the Bible was written. And so we are very fortunate people, standing in Your Presence tonight, Lord, and we just pray now that Your Word shall have free course, as many say, and be glorified. That nothing will stop it from going forth, not our spirits, or spirit of the enemy, or anything whatsoever as we humbly bow before You and ask for Your help, and believe we’ll receive it. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. Amen.

            You may be seated.

           

1.         Now we’re actually into “Stewardship”, [ ] number five, tonight. We had a little message in there on Mark 16 and the two spirits, and we’ll also just talk a certain amount of that also. But, because of the fact that I did not intend to make such a detailed and prolonged study of this subject of stewardship, I neglected to carefully plan every segment so that we could have as clear an account of the subject as is actually in the Word, wherein we see stewardship from the top, meaning the Kingdom of God in heaven, to the bottom, which is the Kingdom of God on earth.

            Now there’s much that I would have actually made in a note form to take a series had I been so aware of the particular subject. But I did not look into every facet, or we would have had to start, of course, with the heavenlies to go into the Kingdom from the top, down to what is on earth today, to actually trace what’s in the Word and to trace the history. And the truth is that until I started to teach on the failed stewardship of Adam’s accountability to God, it had not crossed my mind as to the scope and revelation that lies in our subject matter. And that’s very true, because starting with the stewardship of Adam, it went on, and it keeps growing on, so that we begin actually to see that what we’re dealing with is literally the whole Bible.

            Oh, some years ago I mentioned that the Bible is actually a record of God dealing with man, and man’s response to God, how that man is dealing back with God, and, except for the grace of God, there would be a complete failure on the part of man, and there has been that failure. But in the measures that God has allowed we have been able to come up to the place where God wants us. So, it’s all a matter of grace.

2.         Now the basic revelation or spiritual enlightenment of the subject to my thinking, gives us a better understanding of the inflexibility, or of inflexible predestination, and flexible choice, which Bro. Branham and most theologians (not all, but a lot of them) have called free moral agency, or as Bro. Branham has said, “God put Adam to a free moral agency, and therefore, He must do that for everybody.”

            So God gave Adam a choice, and thus it is written over here in Genesis 2, concerning that choice, in verses 16 and 17.

(16)     And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

(17)     But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day (of the) eating thereof (dying) thou (dost) surely die.

            Now we know that Adam died just short of a thousand years. And Bro. Branham made that comment, not particularly toward Adam, but the fact  [that] a thousand years is as a day with the Lord. And no man ever lived that out. And we’re just coming to that time when we’re going to have that particular thousand years on earth here, which is a time period. And even though it’s blended with eternity, we’re still waiting for the eternal.

3.         Now, so therefore, God gave Adam a choice. Now He already had given him an office. And the office was that he was to literally be the supreme ruler of the universe under Almighty God. And God just handed it to him gratuitously, and He said, “Here it is; now you are to work with it.” And there’s no doubt in my mind that there are certain things that God said to Adam that you don’t find recorded here in the Word, but you begin to see them on the grounds of the history of what has taken place.

            So He said to Adam, “You have the right to eat of all the trees in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and, if you eat of it, in that day you will die.” And, of course, the woman was included in this. And you can find that over in [Gen] 1:26-27:

(26)     And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

(27)     So God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

            And, of course, you’ll notice he created him, and then, he put ‘the them’. And ‘the them’, of course, you have masculine and female. And Bro. Branham said, “That was only there on the grounds of propagation.” And so what you see there, “He called their name Adam.” And it’s all a matter of looking at Adam, the born one of God, or [the one who] is called the son of God. The Greek makes it plainer: the born one of God.

4.         So all right. The woman was included in this by virtue of what was said over here, God talking to His Only-begotten Son. Now notice carefully, that neither Adam nor Eve had anything to do with who and what they were and what position of responsibility they were given by God. Not one thing. Not a thing. They didn’t have one thing to say about it. They didn’t have a choice in the matter. There was no argument. There was no deal cut. This was an absolute sovereign act and a sovereign dictate. They had no choice whatsoever in the matter. They were predestinated to it. And you can see that, of course, by Gen 1:26,27, they were predestinated to it. Absolutely.

            So absolutely by God Himself, in conjunction with His Son, we see what occurred, and was to occur, in Gen 1:26, and then, was repeated to Adam so that he knew who he was, what he was, what he was to do. He was given plenty incentive. He was given lots of motivation. He was given that capacity.

            Now, so there, they had no choice, because they were part of God’s thinking. They were His thoughts, His plan, His purpose. They were predestined. In other words a set destiny of who, what, and for what purpose. And they were made privy to none of that! They were only told it. So it’s a very sovereign situation we see here. And they were made actual bondservants, or slaves, if you will.

5.         Now Paul, the apostle, called himself a bond slave too, and, of course, we know that Paul called himself a bond slave of love because of the love of God. And you’ll find that most people who study the Word, will concur with that, that we are slaves and love slaves of God, and we love it, as the apostle Paul tells us: those things that we once loved, we now hate; and the things we hated, now love.

            And I’m sure that most of you sitting here tonight, having a Trinitarian background even worse than mine, because I was sitting on the fence between the two, and I couldn’t make head or tail to what the real continuity of the doctrine was, because I knew there was only one God, but I really was trying to confuse my mind about the other issues. But I hung onto the fact that no matter what, there’s one God, and you’re not going to get rid of that Son, because there’s no way that you can go to the Father but by the Son. There’s no way the Son did anything, except God did it through Him, and today, of course, we have a very clear understanding. But the understanding wasn’t so clear there.

6.         Now, so we find here that we are actually bond slaves according to God’s plan and purpose. And that goes all the way through creation, as well as into sonship. So, what we’re looking at, then, is a real understanding of Romans 9, and it’s in the light of the stewardship, wherein God actually gave each one an office, gave him a position, and we can see predestination carried all the way through. Now we might as well read, take our time here. We begin at verse 1.

(1)       I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing witness in the Holy Ghost,

(2)       That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

(3)       For I could wish myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: (Now that’s like Moses. But a little different.)

(4)       Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

(5)       Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

(6)       Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:

(7)       Neither, because are they the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.

            So, there you got the premise here, the start of issue, and one is a genuine issue, and the other is evidently an intrusion. Now it has to be an intrusion of some sort, because as you view life, and life is categorized, all the way through from every single type, from even diseases, bacteria, of molds, and fungus, and yeast, and everything else. You can put them under a microscope, and you can actually find out, by examining the form, and the action, exactly what that is. Now you can’t do that with a human being, because we found what happened, and we describe it tonight as the one lump: the one lump condition. So right here it tells you that these two children were in Abraham, were in Isaac, now coming right on down through with Rebecca, we’re bringing forth these two children.

7.         Now:

(8)       That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

            Now you’ll notice right in there, there’s something said in there very, very clearly. One is not a product of the flesh, though it comes by the flesh. The other has to be a product of the flesh and coming by the flesh. So you’ve got a very, very strong statement here and it tells you that:

(8)       …(those) of the flesh, are not the children of God: but the children of promise are counted for seed.

            Now, right there again you notice that there’s a seed that has to do with promise, which is a word. That’s why Bro. Branham positively called us seed, called us a part of the Word, called us a part of God.

(9)       For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. (And that was never said before. That’s why he had a son by Ishmael; the thing messed up.)

(10)     And not only this; but when Rebecca also conceived by one, even our father Isaac;

(11)     (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) (Now notice election is a calling, and it said here the One Who calls is the Elector. And now he said there’s one that is of Him; the other isn’t.)

(12)     It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.

(13)     As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

(14)     What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.

8.         Now he’s going to start talking about that. Is there unrighteousness with God? You’ve got even twins now, and one is loved, and one is hated. But he already explained to them that one is a promised and the other is not promised. One is Word by covenant; a part of the Word, the other is not. And it all comes by the flesh, there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no way, shape, and form. And, of course, your average, ordinary person that believes in predestination will simply tell you on the grounds that God simply foreknew: “He knew, it was nothing definitive, there are not two lines.” But there are two lines. And the two lines were in one lump, because It says right here. And people don’t like that. It’s very confusing, it’s very annoying, it’s very unloving, very unkind, it’s very mean, it’s very terrible that anybody should believe that stuff, because God wouldn’t do that. No, God wouldn’t do that; He couldn’t do that. Nope.

9.         (14)     What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.

(15)     (Now he says:) For he saith to Moses, (now he’s going to clear himself on that charge in 14, by going to 15.) I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. (Or as they say in another translation, “I will compassionate whom I will compassionate.”)

(16)     So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

(17)     For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up,

            There’s a predestinated clause here. Now the purpose of God has an end to it, because there’s nobody can stop God in His purpose. There’s no way you can stop Him. If God’s got a purpose, just shut-up and take it. If He wants to send you to hell and burn you, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to have to shut-up and take it anyway. The people that mouth off are always the ones that can’t believe. They’ll raise a big stink about this.

            And you’ll get your woman preachers, and they’ll tell you, “Well you see what that is, that’s your two natures in there. Heh, heh, heh, heh.”

            Oh God. And you wonder why I’m not all sweet and all light, and all love, and all gooey, gooey? This is the stuff that just tears me to pieces and makes me angry. Angry, because they don’t believe what God said! This man Paul is vindicated. This is God talking. See? Now William Branham came just like the apostle Paul did, which is absolutely marvelous.

10.       (17)     For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

            That’s the same thing he said about the Gospel! It’s the same thing he said about the Gospel: through every creature, throughout the whole earth. And remember, when the woman that anointed Jesus, he’s going to be known through the whole earth. This Message goes out the same way. There’s got to be something there. See?

(18)     Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

(19)     Thou wilt then (say) unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

(20)     Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? (Or why have you set me here for this particular purpose? Why do I have this particular position? Why?)

            So you’ve got predestination here, just one hundred percent. And it goes all the way back to God. All the way back. And in one place you have birth, and the other place you have creation. And that’s the whole thing you’re looking at. And then, of course, we know that creation got mixed up with birth. In other words creation began to spread itself to the position where to which it was not entitled. The intermingling…

11.       Now:

(21)     Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump…

            Moses and Pharaoh. Cut them to pieces, put them in a test tube. There’s no difference. No difference at all, when it comes to the one lump. And that one lump, of course, took place back in the Garden of Eden. And the last true human being disappeared when Noah died, after the ark settled on the earth, and there were no more true human beings. It was all one lump.

12.       When God took Israel into Palestine He could have bred them back to human beings. He said, “Don’t you dare marry anybody outside of the people here. I’ve killed them all off. You can go in now. I can breed you back by proper marriages. And you kill everybody in the land, and don’t you dare marry anybody, or have any woman or any man outside amongst your own selves.”

            What do they do? Did opposite. That’s why Bro. Branham said in “Marriage and Divorce”, “God will create again, but not by sex.” Sex would do it. All God has to do is match this one, and match that one, He gets those genes in perfect order. He gets the human genes; throw out the animal genes. You have a perfect individual again.

            Dr. Kelly said it would take eight generations to breed the Americans back to health. Hah! You can’t even do it in eighty generations, because nobody’s going to live that long, and nobody wants to be healthy. They got a junk food taste, and a junk food appetite, and a junk food body, and that’s all they want. And they got a junk food religion, and that’s, you know, French fries, greasy hamburgers. Bologna: you know what that’s made of, don’t you? Heart, liver, lungs, pancreas, not to mention diverse things that never did belong to a cow, horse, or a pig, or a dog. You know, you can’t deal with people anymore. See? So that’s why God’s going to have a resurrection.

13.       (21)     Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?

(22)     What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

(23)     That he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,

            Now you notice verse 22, if that were properly translated from the Greek, it would show that these people actually prepared themselves. Now what does that mean? If they’ve prepared themselves, they positively then went against the position and authority that God gave them, and did on their own what they should not have done.

            Now don’t tell me that they don’t know better, because Paul said to the Jews, “The Gentiles who by nature are heathen Gentiles, they do the things that God commanded you to do, and you’re not doing them, and they’re doing them.” Showing that there is a conscience there that God deals with. The Bible said, “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord searching the inward parts of the belly.”

            So what you’re looking at here is the truth of predestination, right down the line, where you have predestinated sons, and you have also in the predestination on creation. Because starting with Satan in the garden, preparing themselves coming all the way down here, and there is a Word that God has spoken concerning all of it, and each one has a light. Of course, it’s the truth where their conscience is now seared with a hot iron. But the conscience is still there.

14.       (23)     That he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,

            Now there’s where you get your picture today as you had in the days of Jesus, when John the Baptist came to make ready the vessels that were prepared; to make ready the prepared people. Now God has got a prepared people. There’s no two ways about it. A hundred percent purely predestinated in the line coming through the flesh, which is different from a line that is also coming through the flesh. And one is distinctly prepared of God, “Jacob have I loved; Esau have I hated.” And there’s nothing you can do about it. Absolutely nothing you can do about who and what you are.

            As Bro. Branham said, “If you didn’t have representation back there, you haven’t got it now, and there’s no way you can get it.” See?

            That’s why they say, “Well, if the Bible then say, ‘Why doth he yet find fault?’ ”

            The point is: they didn’t have to do what they did! They weren’t forced to. Even the child of God wasn’t forced to. As the old song said, “He does not compel you to go against your will, He just makes you willing to go.” And that’s the truth. And those that are completely adamant and will not change as a child of God, God will remove from this land, and as He removes, coming up in whatever resurrection they are placed in, first or second, they’ll find themselves completely bereft, when they could have had so much. We’ll see these things as we go along.

15.       Now we notice at least two particular principles here.

                        One: the principle of birth.

                        Two: the principle of position.

            In birth we see Jacob and Esau: twins. In birth we see Moses and Pharaoh: twins. Now the Hebrews did not look like the Egyptians. You can get the ancient woodcarvings and so on, and you’ll see they don’t look alike. Doesn’t make one bit of difference. Cut it in pieces, the flesh would test a hundred percent the same, because it’s one lump. And it’s one lump under God Who is sovereign, and never gives up His sovereignty. He does what He wants when He wants to do it, and He never asks anybody. And that the Book of Isaiah tells you, “With whom did I take counsel?” With nobody. Who’d they ever ask? See? “Come, now let us reason together,” saith the Lord. What does that mean? “Come and listen to me. And I’ll show you what is right. And, if you can reason unto righteousness, you will come with what I am telling you, you’ll agree. Behold I stand at the door and knock, same thing, you’ll let me in, we’ll agree. We’ll have a good time supping, communicating. And I’ll show you the principles and the way of life. Get you out of this mess here.” So God’s sovereign.

            So two things: birth and position. Now there is nothing that either of these four, the two sets of twins, could do about who and what they were. They were born. And nobody says to his parents…  How would you even know your parents? “Now I want to be a girl, I want to be a boy. I want to be an accountant. I want to be this. I want to be that. I want to be the other thing. I want this gift. I want that gift. I want this thing. I want that. This position; that position.” Nope, nothing to do with your birth. Not one thing they could do about it, and not one thing anybody can do. But examine the position. So we talk about position.

16.       And we go to Heb 12:16-17.

(16)     Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

(17)     For (you) know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

            Now in other words here, there is something you can miss, and there’s nothing under heaven—there’s nothing in the plan of God that will ever give it to you. So you blow, you throw away, disregard, hold in contempt, refuse to listen to, understand, accede to, acquiesce, and move on with God, He moves on without you. I don’t care what position you have; how great you are or anything else. God will do everything He can to hold you and mold you. But there is an element here in the willingness of the individual. And the ability of the individual to conform to what God desires. You see?

17.       Now we go also to Heb 11:20, and It says:

(20)     By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.

(21)     By faith Jacob, when he was a-dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, (on) his staff. (And so on.)

            So in here we find there is a position. There are certain things that are granted us. And with that granting there is a responsibility. And the responsibility has to be adhered to, and under no condition can that responsibility be changed, or the laws regarding that responsibility be changed, and a man stand right before God. That’s the thing that started in heaven. That’s where the devil went plumb off.

18.       Now he’s a created being. But see, watch where this whole thing starts. It starts with the created being. John distinctly tells us, and Bro. Branham brought it very clearly, the seed of God cannot sin, and sin is unbelief. Now that person however, is committed to an office and a trust, and therein he can be at fault.

            How much is practiced by a certain guy that said he started to pray and fast three days. But he told the congregation, “Well,” he said, “I went on then for twelve days.” He said, “You see, I didn’t get an answer.”

            That man is telling you something. He’s telling you, you can twist God’s arm by praying and fasting. He said, “In spite of the fact of the prophet telling us we should only pray and fast three days, I did twelve.”

            In other words he couldn’t listen to the prophet that said, “Pray and fast three days, then you leave it there!”

            Why didn’t he leave it there? Why didn’t he leave it there? [Why didn’t he] turn his back and walk off and say, “God it’s in your hands; it’s out of my hands?” No, he’s got to pray and fast twelve days, and twist God’s arm. A.A. Allen, the same way. Get in the closet, throw away the key, he came out, but he never came out victorious. He died a drunk. Yeah. You better watch these things, because these things are given for our admonition, [so that] we might learn by them and know the things that Bro. Branham taught us.

19.       So all right; we saw a position—position all the way through the Bible. Stewardship—granted a certain place by God.

            God said to Abraham, “You’re going to have a child by Sarah.”

            Now Sarah gave up, just like Adam listened to Eve, and he listened to Sarah. I can’t understand that. His wife Sarah had everything that the Egyptian girl had. Why would he want to? Now you men know what I’m talking about, and you women. If you can’t, my God, I’m going home. Forget it. He blew it!

            He said, “It’s by Sarah.”

            And God rubbed his nose in it. He rubbed his nose so hard he even had to lie about Sarah, saying, “That’s my sister.”

            He thought the king might kill him for it, because God brought her right back prettier and more beautiful than that little snippet from Egypt. And look what they got out of it—Ishmael! Still got a thorn in the flesh there in Israel [with] Arafat coming in. What does he know about God? Or anything else? [He] says he does; [it] doesn’t mean a thing. He’s not after the flesh. But I’m going to tell you something. God had to bless them, and God had to bless Esau on the grounds of what those men did. And they messed with the position that God gave them.

            See, you get a preacher out of line; see what happens with the church. You get deacons out of line, elders, other people out of line; see what happens. There’s a sacred trust given in these positions.

20.       Now also, we see the principle of birth and position here also in Heb 11:23-29. It says here:

(23)     By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.

(24)     By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; (Now watch, he’s right alongside of old Pharaoh there now.)

(25)     Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

(26)     Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures (of) Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.

(27)     By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.

(28)     Through faith he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them.

            Now there is as the Bible tells us, Moses was a servant faithful in his house! That’s over here in Hebrews 3.

(2)       Who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house.

            There was a faithful man; he went right by it. But watch: [Hebrews 11]

(29)     By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land:

            Why? Through the sprinkling of the blood and the protecting power of Almighty God, Jehovah-Elohim Himself escorting them over by a cloud by day, and a Pillar of Fire by night. [He] escort[ed] them over. What does It say here?

(29)     They passed through the Red sea: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned.

            See? Both in position. Both foreordained. Both predestinated. But two different lines entirely, by reason of the fact that one comes down from the seed of God, and the other comes down from a creation. Because that’s what we’re looking at.

21.       Now, look over here in Ex 4:29-31:

(29)     And Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel:

(30)     And Aaron (spoke) all the words which the Lord had spoken unto Moses, and did the signs in the sight of the people.

(31)     And the people believed: and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and (they) worshipped.

            Now that’s what happened with a vindicated ministry. And over here in Ex 5:1-5:

(1)       Afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.

(2)       And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.

(3)       And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, (and) with the sword.

(4)       And the king of Egypt said, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people (you know, allow them to get away from working)? get you unto your burdens.

(5)       And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.

(6)       And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters (you know they have to make brick without straw, and so on.)

            Now over here in Ex 8:16-19:

(16)     The Lord said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt.

(17)     And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man, and beasts; all the dust of the land became lice throughout the land of Egypt.

(18)     And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not: so there were lice upon man, and upon beast.

(19)     Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord said.

22.       Now here is a man in position to let Israel go. Here is a man that God had raised up, in his lineage, to be a shelter unto the Israelites. But what does he do? He kills the little children. There’s nothing he won’t do. He’s absolutely a beast. And yet he knows better. This man has a position. He’s predestinated. He had nothing to do with the fact that he’s predestinat[ed], who and what he is. But he has a responsibility before God, because all earthly government has a responsibility to God on the grounds that government is ordained by God, and it doesn’t matter what kind of government it is.

            Now you can say, “Well, the democratics are ordained by God.”

            The communist [system] and dictatorship is just as ordained by God. There’s nothing you can do about it. Government is ordained. And the devil, of course, being the power of the universe, the kingdoms of this world, which are going to be taken away from him, has been allowed that privilege to control. And God, because He [God] did it, is behind it. And God has taken full responsibility and will continue to take responsibility, because it’s His, and He’ll bring it to a proper end.

23.       Now notice the two human roots of the twins in Gen 4:1-5, which we understand, of course, is serpent seed where Eve actually brought forth two children of two different forms of life. And here you got it right now, where science can go ahead and take the DNA or the nucleus (Call it what you want. I don’t know what the scientists call it, because one says one thing, one another. Call it DNA.) and put it then in an egg, and this now, when it’s close enough as it was in the garden, you could actually take that and fuse them, and bring forth individuals—entities, (That’s what I call them, ‘entities’.) and the life is not the life that was in the egg at all. It’s another life in there. But that egg is alive in this sense, that it’s raw. It can be joined to it. If it were dead, it would be rotten; [it’d] go away. So there’s a life there. So you can actually take the physical part and bring it together.

            And that’s what they’re arguing right now. There’s a soul in there. So how would it be if science begins messing with human cells, what will that soul be? Well, I say forget it, that’s a bunch of hogwash, that’s been dealt with in the first four chapters of Genesis. And revealed to us through Jesus Christ in John 8. “You’re of your father the devil,” He said. Brought it right on down the line. These guys just don’t know anything. See?

24.       Now we go back before Genesis 1, and we see the original principle of predestination and free will, or free moral agency, wherein we see stewardship in the very original. But, before we go to the Old Testament, we want to go first of all to Heb 8:1-5.

(1)               Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;

(2)               A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. (Now this is all of God. See?)

(3)               For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: (that’s an office. And you have to be a special man to do it.) wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer.

(4)               For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law:

(5)               Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, (said God to Moses,) that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed thee in the mount.

            So what God did, He showed Moses what was going on in the heavens, which I said is from the top: the Kingdom of God in heaven. Then you come on down here. And when Moses was given the revelation, it was copied exactly from the Kingdom of God in heaven, and then put in the humanistic form down here, in order that the children of God in human form, and in animal form, what it actually is, mammal form, would have to worship.

25.       Now this tabernacle made by Moses was according to a heavenly pattern that was instituted by God Himself. Now here is the Lord’s Prayer on this subject in Mt 6:10.

(10)     Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done (on) earth, as it is in heaven.

            So we’re going to have it eventually. But you have to remember, then, you’ve got to go back way, way, even beyond the creation of man, if necessary. And go way back to the very heavenly pattern that is there.

            So we see Mt 6:10 is the same as Heb 8:1-5. There’s actually a pattern in heaven. There’s actually something that God laid down. There’s actually something that God wants to have and will have. See? That also is predestinated. And that form must come to pass at a certain time. In the meantime, you see these other things going on, where the Kingdom of God was upon earth, as Bro. Branham said, “God’s headquarters upon earth was the Garden of Eden.” And what came in there? Sin came in there, the same as it came up above. As the Bible said, “Thou wast in Eden.” We’ll get into that as we once have previously.

            Now there was a pattern set in heaven, and it came to earth in God’s earthly headquarters, the Garden of Eden. But as that pattern in heaven was broken by Lucifer, so it was broken by Lucifer in Eden. See?

26.       Now let us just get the original again, as we have two times already, and showed you on the board. So all right, number one: we’re going to go to Isa 14:12. [End of side one of tape one.] [ ] It says:

(12)     How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! (This fellow that’s a very outstanding creation, actually a cherub, and he is an angel of light. As we can see from Ezekiel.) how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

(13)     For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the (earth):

(14)     I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

(15)     Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. (Now, of course we find that in the Book of Revelation.)

(16)     (That they may look) narrowly upon thee, (and so on to verse 13.)

(13)     I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:

            So you go to Job 38:1, and It says:

(1)       Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,

(2)       Who is this that darkeneth my counsel by words without knowledge? (Oh that’s a good one. He said, “You’re just talking up a storm, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have any knowledge of Me,” He said, “I’m going to just let you know something now.”)

(3)       Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

(4)       Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

(5)       Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?

(6)       Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? (In other words the earth hangs upon nothing.) or who laid the corner stone thereof;

(7)       When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

            Now, we’re looking at those stars, are we not?

27.       So, we go to Heb 11:12, concerning Abraham.

(12)     Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, (as) many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.

            And with that we go to 1 Corinthians 15, which is on the chapter of the Resurrection, and remember, you can’t resurrect anything that wasn’t there to begin with. And, if there’s something there now, that wasn’t there before, then, it’s a replacement.

             So all right, let’s go ahead and take a look at that. In verse 41:

(41)     There is one glory of the sun, and another of the moon, and another glory of the stars: (and) one star differeth from another in glory.

            And It’s telling you of the position of the stars, the saints, the preexistent ones that were in Him, a part of His genes, a part of His thoughts, a part of the Word, a part of God. And they were in that purpose and plan of Almighty God, and they had to be there before there was even one atom, or any creation whatsoever, because it was all of God. And so there you see it. So, that’s where the great start of it is. And the devil said, “I’m going to exalt myself above that.”

28.       Now let’s go ahead and take one more verse here about stars. And this is the very interesting one, because it’s found over here in Jude 13. And this is about these people that are the serpent seed; the Cain’s, and the Balaam’s, and the Korah’s, and the Dathan’s, and the rest of them. And It says here:

(13)     (They are) raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars…

            They were up there too! They are the created ones balancing out the uncreated ones, balancing out the born ones! So what I want you to see, there’s two systems in the human flesh; there are two systems in the universe; there are two systems under Almighty God; there’s two things going on now. They’re twins! And one is of God, which is birth, and the other is of Satan, which is creation. And the intermingling of the satanic program, with flesh, which God had created in the animal, which could actually propagate itself in the human form in Eve—and bypass Adam entirely.

            And you can do the same thing right now in a test tube! You got a little micro-dish. You know right now you could take an animal, put it with a human being, clone it, and pretty soon they’ll be able to take two different substances. They’re doing it now with plant life and insect life. No problem! No problem! Why? Because the principle’s there! Didn’t God say to Adam, “Take absolute control over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air”? How are you going to do it? Just call them in, you could, but there [are] laws of genetics laid down there. And you can cross them successfully by science. That’s where you get breeding of livestock and certain things. See?

29.       Now you come to the place where you could create anything at all. I don’t mean create in the sense—well, you create in the sense man is doing something beyond himself, but he always has to take that which is here. That’s why I can never understand who people want to start with materiality, and they say, “Well, all it was, was material. There’s protein there. Ah-hah! We’ve got some H2O; that’s going to bring life.”

            Hogwash, those idiots know the theory of spontaneous regeneration was thrown out of the cupboard years and years ago. There’s no such thing.

            Remember, years ago they took some hay, and they put it in their bottle, and they saw little things crawling around, and they said, “Ah-hah, spontaneous generation!”

            And somebody said, “Hogwash.”

            Finally, some guy that wasn’t a scientist, or at least he had an ounce of brains, which scientists don’t seem to have… That’s right, they don’t have it. They got an illusion of grandeur, and something from the devil, in their noggins up here. That’s how Eve got fooled. [It] was right in the noggin up here. [It was] right in the brain. And that’s how the early church got deceived. Right there. And so that’s how the whole thing goes.

            And so somebody said, “Well we better just go ahead and boil that hay.”

            So they boiled the hay, and they sterilized the jar, and they put a cover on it. Nothing. Well the spontaneous generation’s down the tubes. Just stick with nature!

30.       Well, did you people eat turkey fifty years ago? Well, I guess some of you did, well, even seventy years ago; but let’s get it down to seventy-five years ago, [and] make it a little narrower. Remember, the turkeys didn’t have very big breasts. Then they got the big-breasted bronze. Then they started getting in the white. But the bronze is better than the white; [it has] better flavor. They breed them that way. They could breed a chicken, right now, so big he can’t stand up on his legs. And that’s not taking the DNA, or the RNA, or anything else. They just recently bred dogs back to the age of the Inca’s—a purple dog without hair on him.

            So, I told you [that] God could have done that to Israel. They didn’t stand still for it. That’s why Bro. Branham said in “Marriage and Divorce”, he said, “God will create again.” But he said, “Not through sex.” Forget it. Oh, that’s wonderful what God’s going to do.

31.       Now, let’s go over here to Ezekiel 28. And in there It says in verse 12:

(12)     Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, say, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

            Now this fellow right here we know is not the king, it’s a picture of the devil and the antichrist that’s to come on the scene. So all right.

(13)     Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; (see the king of Tyrus wasn’t.) every precious stone was thy covering, (he was like a high priest, but he wasn’t a high priest, but he certainly led in the worship of God. And then he said he was prepared, he was created.)

(14)     (He was) the anointed cherub that cover(s); (and he’s called the covering cherub.)

            Now, if you go through the Scripture, you’re going to find that the cherub may not be, but I think is, the highest form of spirit creation that there is. Now the seraphim is also noted. And the seraphim is likened unto a fiery serpent. And it could be the seraphim and the cherubim are related. It could be even they’re the same thing, but I kind of doubt it. But I do believe the cherubim is the highest form, because the high form, Satan, being a cherubim, allowed him to lead in the worship of Almighty God. Because that’s what he was doing.

32.       Now also It says:

(15)     (Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

            Till you begin changing the Word! Till you begin changing what? You began changing the system laid down for your position! What’s the first thing you go to get a job? They hand you a sheet and you have a job analysis right there. Then, [ ] they give you a job description. And you’ve got to do what that paper says, because that’s the way it is. That’s all based upon the heavenly pattern that comes right down here. There’s a job description! There’s everything that’s ordained of God on the grounds of whether it’s created or whether it’s by Sonship, and those are offices, which are stewardships—absolute stewardships of accountability. And at the end time every single person is judged according to his stewardship. You can’t be judged whether you’re a son of God or not, because you are or you aren’t! There’s no way. But you can be judged, were you faithful to the place that God put you?

            Now, where [are] your woman preachers? Yeah. Rebellious as the devil themselves! Seed of the serpent. But they’ll worship God. Sure they will! I’ll show you a Scripture for it; don’t worry. [How much time we got? About a whole half tape? 40! We had a turn over here, and you didn’t tell me.] All right, well, we’ll keep going. You were the cherub, the covering cherub.

33.       So therefore, we see that he was in my understanding, from Scripture here, he sealed up the sum. If he sealed up the sum, a cap was put on it, as a created being, an entity, at the time Satan was set forth to be that leader in the worship. So, in my understanding he’s absolutely the top one of a created being—a created spirit.

            Now thus, God as worshipped in the beginning, gives us a glimpse of what it should be and will be upon earth, in spite of Mt 15:9 and Mk 7:7, which started in heaven, and we saw in Ezek 28:15, which was “Thou wast perfect. Everything was exactly right. You’re the right one for the position. You’ve filled it. And you’re doing a great job, until one day you begin to break the job description that was given to you.” See? What did Cain do? Same thing. Offered the first fruit, instead of the blood. Wrongly divided. Threw out the job description.

34.       I preached a long time ago; I was so upset about what’s going on amongst some of the preachers that called themselves believers in this Message. I took sermon after sermon on what was required in the Word of God with stewardship of pastors. Do you think anybody gave two hoots and cared two bits about it?

            Let’s go to Matthew 15. Well Matthew 15 to Mk 7:7 is the same thing. So Mat 15:9 is good enough. It’s a clear condemnation that explains everything that happened in heaven. And It says then in 15:9:

(9)       But in vain do (they) worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

            So what happened? It wasn’t that they threw out the Word of God. It was that they parodied or paraphrased, or gave their own understanding and interpretation. So, that it got so bad under the Pharisees, especially the Pharisees, that they counted the number of nails, or what you had, and they say in the soles of your shoes, lest you were carrying too much weight on your feet, and working on the Sabbath. And they hated Jesus for healing a man on the Sabbath. Yet Jesus said, “You are allowed to pull an ox out of the ditch, and do a good turn to somebody that needs it. You can even go to the field and eat wheat, but you can’t steal it. If you’re hungry.”

            Oh they say, “No, no, no, no, we’ve got the pots and pans, everything our own idea.”

            “In vain do you worship Me! Your worship and your service is vain, because you didn’t stay, as I’ve often said, keep the Word within the framework of the Word!”

35.       So it’s Word, Word, Word, Word.

            Not long ago Bro. Pete Klassen was dealing with a fellow, and the man got very sarcastic.

            He said, “Oh yes, it’s always the Word, the Word, the Word.” 

            Oh! Listen, it was the Word that made it all. It’s the Word that sustains us all. It’s the Word that gives us life. It’s the Word that condemns us. It’s the Word that justifies. It’s the Word, Word, Word, because the Word is God! And that man says he’s got the Holy Ghost. I’m going to tell you something: you can be anointed by the Holy Ghost and not have the Holy Ghost. You may wonder why it is that a person must be born again, and it takes the Spirit of God to come upon him to do it.

            You say, “Well if the man is seed in the first place, or the woman is the seed, she’s got the soul from God, she’s got that part of God, that is Holy Spirit, why do you need it?”

            All right then. Eve came from Adam; she had the very same life Adam had. That same thing was in her egg. But I’ll tell you what; she had to have a further infusion from Adam, that life, to bring forth that child. And so with you and me. It takes an infusion from God. I want to tell you something: you can clear anything in the Scripture, understand everything, if you follow this Message and open your heart. You[‘ll] get your answers. I’ve pondered that for years, but I got my answer this week.

            Now that’s what Jesus said, and it started back here in Ezek 28:15. “In vain do you worship Me,” He said. Now worship then, should be pure and according to the Word, and worship in vain is when people take what the Bible says what God said, and they bend it or they pervert it, so it becomes a perversion. And that’s a spiritual adultery. Exactly what it amounts to. So all right. Now, I mentioned a while ago here that we’d already talked about this and put it on the board concerning what we saw from the very beginning here. If I can go over this quite rapidly, we’ll maybe get somewhere here.

36.       All right, we’re going to start at the very top here, where it is Spirit. That’s God—Spirit. Now it’s undefined to begin with. You don’t even have to call it holy. Because what is holy, unless there’s something that’s unholy. See? So it’s holy in the first place, because there’s nothing there but that one. And that can be w-h-o-l-e, whole, and h-o-l-y, holy. Because you can’t accuse God of anything under any consideration: “Who art thou oh man to reply against God. Who are you Satan to come and say something?” Or anything else.

            But under there now, we have then, we have over there, which is love, because God is love, and we have omniscience and we have omnipotence. I’m just abbreviating those, see? We have them there. Now that’s under the Holy Spirit. He’s love, there’s… God’s in three. He is love, and He’s omniscient, omnipotent, and if He weren’t love, you would have a very dangerous person there. Because total power and total knowledge without total dedication to truth and a positive nature, which is welcoming and keeping, you got problems. See? All right. So it’s welcoming because God wants you to worship, and it’s keeping, because He’ll keep you. Everything about this is beautiful. So all right, under here, then, we have the same one. It’s a Rhema-Logos God; He’s a Rhema-Logos. That’s Rhema-Logos Spirit.

            Now, He’s also faithful. That’s in Deuteronomy; He’s the faithful God. And what’s He faithful to? His covenants. So therefore, you cannot talk about God being faithful outside of the Word. Then, the minute that you pervert the Word, He’s no longer faithful! You’re stupid. Yeah. You fooled yourself. Women preachers. Pentecostals. Neo-Pentecostals. See the whole thing? Now let’s keep moving.

37.       All right, with that, then, we have “Predestinating God.” I’ve abbreviated that: “Predestinating.” And that’s according to what we haven’t read, but it’s in Romans 8. And it’s all based upon love. It’s in Ephesians. [Ephesians 1] “In love having predestinated us. Whom He knew, He also called, whom He called, them He justified, whom He justified, them He glorified.” It’s all under predestination. See? So you got it right here.

38.       Now here’s what we’re looking at in the very beginning, before there’s a speck of stardust—before there’s anything. Because God cannot change, and He cannot be changed. As Bro. Branham said, “He never has had one thought since.” Whatever He did the one time can never be changed. It’s got to be in continuity.

38.       Now over here, (And we’re looking at worship.) we’re going to see over here, then, from this coming from here, which is we see God, Father. Now actually, before He is God, He’s got to have someone to worship Him. Now Bro. Branham said, “A light formed, before there was a speck of stardust, before there was a breath of wind,” and then he said, “before there was an atom,” which he should have said in the first place, or a molecule, or there’s so many things you could say, as you go down, down, down, which is almost… Can a microscope finally find it? I don’t know.

            So, you get way down here, He has to be a Father. And at the same time He is a Father, then He automatically becomes God. But remember this, the Scripture said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And the reason It always puts in there, God before Father, is on the grounds that this is a Son, and He’s subservient to the Father, and the