Salvation Is By Faith, Part 3

Rev. Raymond M. Jackson

FOR THE BENEFIT OF KEEPING THIS THOUGHT CONNECTED TOGETHER, WE WILL DROP BACK AND PICKUP THE ENTIRE PARAGRAPH WHERE BROTHER JACKSON WAS TELLING ABOUT THE STARTING OF THE ADVENT TEACHING, AND ABOUT A WOMAN NAMED ELLEN WHITE THAT CAME INTO THE PICTURE.

LOOKING AT IDEAS RUNNING BACKWARD

The Advent teaching was started in the years 1831 to 1844 by a Baptist man by the name of William Miller. None of the denominational people at that time, had ever talked about the urgency that man could be approaching the period of time of the soon coming of Christ. Though they were Baptists, they began to be called Adventist, because they were talking about the second coming of Christ. The Sabbath day had not come into the picture yet. In those early years they began to calculate from Daniel’s writings, that Jesus should appear sometime in October 1844, but we know He never came then. Discouragement began to take hold of many, but the movement kept on. We come then, to a time when a young woman named Ellen White, married a young man by the name of James White. He was also a Baptist Adventist. She, being a Methodist, had already had an unusual experience. After she married James White, she began to testify and speak openly about this experience. I say this with respect to every human being, but in an experience one time, she was supposed to have seen a great vision of the fourth commandment. Immediately, they started saying, Well we have got to respect this and get back to keeping the Sabbath. From then on, along with the Advent teaching, they started adding back the fourth commandment. It tells in their testimony, that through the following years, she became a well known speaker. She had close to two thousand visions and dreams and experiences that she would tell. They looked upon her as a prophetess. That Seventh Day Advent teaching went the world over. It was not long until she began to mix some of her teachings along with the Levitical diet, meat and so forth. I have to say right here, Down through the years of the Reformation, just as sure as there was a Calvin, and as there was a Knox, and a Huss and Swingley, Satan would bring up his counterparts to run along with the message of God’s ministry. As God caused the Reformation to restore truths of His word, the closer we do get to a dispensation wherein God is going to be working specifically to prepare a people for the catching away, Satan is going to work much harder preparing his messengers to try and pervert truth. People who are not walking in a revelation of the word of God are easily drawn away to whatever seems to be more exciting. God does not get hold of anyone and just simply force them to accept a revelation He has given them access to. No. Just like there is something in you that causes you to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, there is also something in you that enables you to accept and cherish a truth he is revealing from his word. That something in you that enables you to walk with God is faith. You accept your salvation by faith and you walk with God by faith daily. Let me take you to the writing of the apostle Paul to the Roman assembly; and notice what he says about faith. He was writing about the faith of Abraham and Sarah while they waited for the promised son that was to be the heir of Abraham. Go to Romans, chapter 4, to start reading. Rom 4:13 “For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Rom 4:14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: Rom 4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. Rom 4:16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, Rom 4:17 (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Rom 4:18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. Rom 4:19 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb: Rom 4:20 He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. I realize I have talked about many things in this message, but it all comes forth from the title I gave this message, “SALVATION IS BY FAITH.” I will continue with showing you how a lot of non scriptural teaching got started in the era of grace. Back in the 1800’s the international Bible student movement started. They too saw the scripture of the soon coming of Christ. They lost all sight of the gospel of salvation though. Out of Jeremiah, there was a certain passage that stated how that thy people in that day shall be called by a new name. That is where they came along with Jehovah’s Witness, which we still see today. They printed their literature and passed it out to all who would accept it. I have a lot of it at home, which has enabled me to know enough about them that I can speak of what they believe and look forward to. When I was a little boy back during the depression days, a lot of country churches were closed. I remember the time when some of the early Jehovah Witness preachers began to come around through the country playing gramophones with some of the sermons that early Jehovah Witness teachers had preached. They passed out their literature. As time went on they got the idea they were the 144,000 of Revelation, chapter 7. They lost sight of what the scriptures actually say about the 144,000 servants of God, and they have no revelation of the ministry of the 144,000 Jewish men, in the time of the great tribulation of the last half of the seventieth week of Daniel’s prophecy. God will not reclaim the children of Israel as they want to believe, that they are going to be the children of Israel. On and on the myths just keep going. I just wanted you to know, it is not only Adventists, the Jehovah Witness and Christian Science that are way off track concerning the scriptures, there are many others out there in this twentieth century, because they have sprung up on every corner around the globe. I do have to say as we get closer to the end of the age, God has already gotten a people together, that are in the process of being washed and made ready for the Bridegroom. That is why He chose a little man who did not have an elaborate education, to begin this end time wrap up. I have in my files, a sixteen page report from a man who investigated all Bro. William Branham’s teachings. He shows where he made a mistake here and a mistake there, but when he was finished, to him, Bro. William Branham was not a prophet, but that was the extent of all his investigating. How could such a man prove Brother Branham was not a true servant of God? I have to be so thankful, that God let me be born in an area where I was privileged to be introduced to him. No sooner did I see and hear him my first time, I said to myself, If the words spoken at the Ohio River were true, this is that man that is going to fulfill Malachi 4:5-6, the part for the last time. When I went to see him, and heard him preach, I just thought, It takes a hillbilly to understand what a hillbilly means at times. I never did sit there listening for the adjectives and how perfect the nouns were pronounced. If you can listen and get a thought and follow that thought, it will lead you to the object. He introduced me to a Bible that no Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Jehovah Witness ever could have done. He made Jesus the Christ stand head and shoulders taller than any of them. I am thankful I was privileged to hear it first hand. Different historians have calculated different dates for the time Jesus was crucified. Some will have Him crucified 30 A.D. Others have Him crucified April 31 A.D. Well I have the last, which is the calculations of a British scientists, calculated in this age of the computer. They calculate every equinox going right on back, and when they put it all together, April 3, 33 A.D, is the date they settled on. Let us see if Jewish history will verify that. This is a Jewish history book that is used in England. This is what they taught Jewish students from, back in 1800, in England. As this writer is covering that period of time of Jewish history, and the Romans in the A.D. period, he says, “It was under the rule of Pilot that the events narrated in the New Testament occurred. Yeshua, called Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth, became noted as a teacher of doctrines. He was accused of blasphemy before Pilot and condemned and put to death by the Romans, in their year 3801 or 33 C.E.” The common era is abbreviated C.E. That is what I accept, because if a Jewish history can coincide two thousand years later, I have to say there has got to be some truth to it. That is why I have to say, I am not going to stand here on this pulpit and say something when I do not know what I am talking about. It will get you in trouble eventually, if you do that. I have shared this with you, my brothers and sisters in the faith of Jesus Christ. I am thankful to God today that we know what truth is. You will never convert the world. Those that are determined to disbelieve, we have to let them help themselves, because this gospel and doctrinal teachings of the Bible are accepted only by those who have the faith to do so. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith. To the Bride of Christ around the world, wherever they are, I say this, We have a truth to cherish, so let us embrace it with a steadfast faith and not let the devil take anything away from us.

CONTROVERSIES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

You can see the chart up behind me: it is a big one. I made it very large so it brings time down into the different categories of what we are going to talk about. I really need your prayers, that we will be able to condense this and put it in a picture that you can understand. I will say this, Christendom has been mixed up on the godhead for centuries. There are many of them still mixed up because they do not have a revelation, they are looking at the whole thing from a natural concept. There have been a lot of men, which were supposed to be educated, doctors of theology and such that have written their ideas about Jesus, the Son of God, who He was, where He was before He was manifested upon earth in human flesh, because they say, He was the WORD by which God created all things, and on and on they go with theological ideas. If you read through all their material and studied some of it, it is enough to make you crazy. I have to say, A true revelation does not come to any of us by our education, regardless of how great it may be. The Spirit of God gives a simple revelation and an understanding to those who will receive it, regardless of our educational background. God has a way of concealing Himself, because, first off He is not a person, He is a sovereign Spirit being, without form, invisible, and He is everywhere. You could get in a rocket and go a million light years in space and say, Lord, do you see me, and He would say, The eye of the Lord is upon His people. Because before you were there, He was already there. A few weeks ago I preached a message, because, for a long time Christians have looked back on the creation in Genesis and then treat the whole thing as irrelevant to anything for us today: they are just not interested. Before it is all over with and we get out of here, as Christians, you are going to be glad you knew something about former times. God is not done with you yet, if you are predestined to be in the bride of Christ. This planet that you and I are on right now, has been here for millions and millions of years. I will say at this time, Jesus Christ did not exist back then: He had no part in creating anything as some believe. We can say, Yes, He was in the mind of the Father, the Creator, before all time, but He is sure not a Creator out there creating at the Father’s command. When the apostle Paul refers to God the Father being the head of Christ and that Christ is the head of man and that man is the head of the wife, that is true headship. We have no business trying to take the Son of God and put Him up there with the Father when the Creator (The Father) was creating, which is actually making Him equal with the Father in creation. That is not the picture we get from the scriptures, and after all, why do we read the Bible, if we are not willing to accept what we find written within its pages? The entire context of the scriptures is written so as to hide the spiritual truths from the wise and the prudent, as Jesus said in Matthew 11:25, “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”

LOOKING BACK, TO GET A CLEAR VIEW OF REALITY

I want to, by the help of God, show you a scriptural picture. To start this, I would say to you, We have taken time itself, which this dark line right here on our chart represents, and the last Ice Age as it is closing out, because its condition was definitely because of the judgment of God that was brought on the prehistoric world after Lucifer and his helpers had corrupted the entire environment. How long that Ice Age lasted, we do not know. We do know from the scriptures, that somewhere in the process of God’s time, He created the heaven and the earth as we read in Genesis, Chapter 1, verse 1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” I want you everyone to take note of the fact that there is a period after earth. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, period. That is way back down the line from where Adam and Eve came into the picture. It then says, The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. That is as Genesis 1, begins to pick up the scene to go forward. What do we see next? It says, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The word deep is not referring to a hole in the ground: it is how all space appeared. All was dark, no life, nothing to see except darkness, but there was no one to see it like that except God Himself . There is a reason why He is going to move upon the waters. If there was darkness on this planet, what promoted this darkness? The sun planet was out there somewhere; and so was the moon, but if darkness was upon this planet, something had taken place, so that the light from the sun could not penetrate what was preventing it. I have studied from the National Geographic magazine, and they have portrayed it like this, They have discovered through the earth and its different cycles, that at one time there was a perfect climate on this planet. A perfect God that has a perfect plan in motion for this planet, set everything in perfection to start out, because they now find fossil bones where there are glaciers and life is not very prominent. At one time it was like a tropical climate there. Now some would say, What does all of this have to do with salvation being by faith? All of this took place before any of us ever had the chance to believe anything, but if we are not able to believe all of which is written in the scriptures, how can we exercise faith to believe only that which pertains to our personal salvation and daily walk with God? By the help of God, I am giving you a little look at what took place upon this earth before our present era was brought to where we pick it up. Therefore we will have to say, Somewhere in the prehistoric world, most of this planet was basically land, with lakes and rivers that circulated through nature. With a perfect climate, where was all the water? It was out in space. It was out there as a vapor barrier. That is why, around this planet there was a vapor barrier a few miles out, and the sun, as it shined upon the earth was filtered, so that the ultraviolet rays which are actually what warms the planet, was filtered, to keep a perfect climate. This vapor is what filters the sun and keeps it from becoming too hot. We will say, for millions and millions of years, somewhere, as God had created His angels and set them in authority, I have to say, Every angel was perfect in his original state. When He started creating the animal kingdom, I have no doubt life was very small, microscopic, in its makeup. For millions of years this planet had to hang here and exist with the different cycles that processed and began to break down the substances. Because it was the process of creating what was eventually to become soil. Dirt just did not come about over night, if you study the makeup of different soils on this planet, it will reveal a lot as to how it came to be that certain substance. As the earth began to become more acceptable to the different forms of life, God the Creator began to feed, slowly, the different forms of life and they came about in cycles. I say, the angelic beings were all designated a certain amount of authority. They were to govern laws of reproduction, plant life, animal life, marine life and so forth. It was their duty to function in that way. God is a God that likes to share Himself with something He has created. You are going to see, when I finish this message, that when the little Bride of Christ leaves here for a little period of time, you are going to be changed, given an understanding beyond what you now have, and we are going to come back and God is going to give us some authority to assist Him in whatever the future is, that is to take place on this planet. He will be sharing authority with those who have believed and overcome in their life span on earth.

THE JUDGMENT AND RESTORATION OF THE PLANET EARTH

Right now I want to say, As the Spirit of the Lord looked upon the deep, it was total darkness. As I studied National Geographic, I discovered that whatever kind of judgment God let this planet go through, it just simply rocked it a few degrees out of harmony with the sun. This is automatically going to create a climatic change on the planet. Cold begins to creep in. It also changed the perfect 360 day cycle of rotation. Animal life began to deteriorate. In some places it died within a few hours. Other places within a few days. Other places, as the cold kept getting worse, it eventually brought about death to the whole planet life. Once that has happened, this cold position the planet is in, all this vapor was exposed to a cold condition. National Geographic describes it like this, The vapors began to freeze and become frost. How many know what I mean by that? They have taken pictures of the glacier areas over the North Pole. Sometimes it just looks like they are looking down on a big cloud. It was not raining: that is how the cold temperature has caused the vapors to be as a frost. That condition hung around this planet for undetermined eons of time. It was not that there was darkness out there in space, it was that there was darkness on the planet, because that is the primary object. Then, when God’s Spirit began to move upon the face of the waters, He was definitely moving upon all this vapor, this frost like curtain that surrounded the entire area of this planet. As He does that, He begins to separate the waters from the waters to make the distinction between that which was to be the results. Let us read a few verses from Genesis, chapter 1. We will start in verse 6. “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. (7) And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. (8) And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. (9) And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. (10) And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas: and God saw that it was good.” There was a certain amount of the waters He was going to let stay with the planet, and there was a certain amount He was going to put back out there where it is supposed to be; and that is exactly what He did. After awhile then, all this frost then began to be the vapors in the air, which begin to dissipate and go back into a fine mist and vaporize. At the same time, that which was still on the earth began to settle into lakes and river streams. Still, there was a lot of ice all over the globe. It was going to take centuries for it to melt. Christendom, as we have known it to be, has actually been stupidly telling people that this planet was made in six twenty four hour days, but the Bible does not support that. We are absolutely convinced that each (what we refer to as creative days) were a thousand years each. The Bible does support that. Let us just look at 2nd Peter 3:8, and be assured that this is the word of God also. “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Therefore we are going to say this, once God sets in motion to separate the waters from the waters and to divide them and to cause the firmament to come into a reality, that means the air space above. Then the evening and the morning were the first day. I have to say Brothers and Sisters, That first day, based upon what we learned from the apostle Peter, was a thousand years. Of course I realize, immediately, the denominational Christian would say, Well now, the Bible does not say that. They are right about that, but know also, that the Bible does not say it is twenty four hours either. Let us now go to Genesis 2. All through these six days, you can read the different stages of things that God has brought about in His line of creation. But when He ends the sixth creative day, He records there, that He has created animal life first, and then man life last. Is that not what we see there? Well we are going to find out that animal life and that man’s life was not yet here on the planet in a body of flesh and bones. Once He has created these things on the sixth creative day, then it says God has finished His work, and the seventh day He rested. He refers to it as a Sabbath. Now that is the first time in the Old Testament that the word Sabbath occurs. The word Sabbath does not occur any more until we come into Exodus. Here is where God makes a mandatory law and gives it to Israel to observe one day out of the week of twenty four hours each day, and seven days. Now let us see what it says about this process of creating. Verse 1, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.” So actually, through these six creative days, God was absolutely setting every law that is going to govern life, plant life, fowl life, marine life, animal life, human life, and angelic beings in that period of time are designated into this realm. I will have to say, those angels were assisting God through all this process. When we come down here and He has finished all of that, in reality, there is not one thing walking or crawling on the planet. Why? Because it has taken this six thousand years for the planet to gradually be brought back closer to the sun, so that it is warming up. However the planet had to get warm enough that there would be plant life once again. It created a habitation that plant life can survive, and there had to be enough of this on the planet to afford the beginning of whatever God had planned. After all that had been accomplished in those six creative days, God then has a Sabbath day, a day of rest, before he did anything else. That was the seventh day; and it lasted a thousand years. When we come to the close of that, we have seven of what we call creative days in line, but the last one was a day of rest. We then come to where we read in Genesis 2, to get the rest of the creating story. After that time (the first seven days) it says in the 4th verse, “These are the generations.” Now anybody knows you cannot use generations in referring to days of twenty four hours. That is foolishness. Generations is talking about a man’s life span. Do not look at it from your life span because seventy years has been allotted to you. That is not what it was back there. “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created. (Let me take this word created and say this, He is not speaking them into existence, He is redeeming them. He is reconciling them. They are already here as an object, as material, so He is simply bringing them back into a relationship of usefulness, to use them once again. We can say this, He is recreating or redeeming them because He is going to use them again for a specific purpose.) in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth.” I hope you everyone see how this all adds up, the planet has definitely got to get warmed up, all this ice has to melt, run off, and eventually vaporize and go back out into space where it is supposed to be.

GOD FINISHING HIS CREATING PROCESS

As the redeemed planet does become warmer and warmer, it is habitable for the oncoming purpose God has now redeemed it back for, so let us go on to verse 7; and see what comes next. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” To set the record straight I want to say, God was not some old man making mud balls. He definitely took some dirt and some water. He had a perfect design and plan in His mind, how He wanted to shape this vessel. I am saying to you, when He has formed this in the physical stature what He has wanted, He sees a perfection. He has designed every part of that body. It is more than just some mud. When He breathed into this vessel of clay He called man, he became a living soul. (That is a figure of speech.) That spirit man that He created on the sixth day, that was part masculine and feminine, God had already instilled in their conscience the mentality that was eventually to be activated. Notice, when He had created them, He gave them a promise, or we could say, command, Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth. That was in their conscience. Be assured, that when He made this vessel of clay, and I want to stress this, It was more than Him just breathing through the nostrils. It was the Spirit of God imparting to that little vessel the spirit life that He had already separated from Himself for that purpose. Adam was already a spirit being with a conscience, with an intelligence, with a commission to get ready to do something. Therefore when God imparted that into that vessel of clay, it was not something small that had to grow: He made that man in full stature. When God imparted that spirit, masculine and feminine into that vessel of clay, the eyes opened, and it suddenly breathed, this spirit man in the image and likeness of God. He blinked his eyes for the first time. Now he is conscious of his presence on this planet. He is no longer a spirit being somewhere in the spirit world; and he does not have to ask, Oh my God, where am I? He already knew where he was, and he knew he had been created for a purpose. The point is, That man was the first form of life that could breathe, and that could talk, could see, and could move at will. He was the first creature alive on this planet, breathing and in full control of his being. He did not have to say, Where am I and what am I supposed to do: he already knew, because he had been created with a conscience and given a command. God did not want that man walking around all over the earth without an environment, so there is a certain spot on the planet that God said, I am going to take a little bit of heaven and put it right here. He did not make a garden and put a wrought iron fence around it. He looked down on the geological earth, here is the Nile River, here is the Euphrates and the Tigress, and several hundred miles. God said, There is where I will put my garden. So He brought a little bit of the spirit world right down to overshadow this area and in that spirit world they could see angels. Adam was now living in the presence of a spirit world but in a natural world, and God is going to keep company with him there. God then says, It is not good that man should dwell alone, so what did He do? He just simply continued on with His great plan.

GOD MAKES ADAM AN HELP MEET

We continue to read on and find that what He made following that, was bodies for all the animals he had created in spirit form. Now some will say, But I thought they were already here on that sixth creative day. Their spirits were, by a law of reproduction already spoken into existence to be ministered in time by angelic beings, but Adam was the first to have a physical body as God began to give bodies to all of his created beings that were to live upon this redeemed earth. Every one of these physical beings, He brought to Adam and said, Adam, what do you want to call it? We are not looking at time in the natural sense of hours. Days have come and gone. God has created these beings and one by one, Adam named them. Then when the animal kingdom is finished, God still said, It is not good that man should dwell alone. I will make him a helpmate. Well these animals were helpmates too, so the first surgical operation ever performed on this planet, God sent an angel and gave Adam an anesthetic. Adam went to sleep. How long he lay there, I do not know, but God, by His divine power, began to move on that body. He not only took a rib, He took some meat with it. As he separates that, He formed, not by accident, but He formed by design, a female body. That body was made in perfection just as much as the masculine body was. God knew exactly why she would have breasts, knew exactly why she would have all the other organs a female body has, because by His design they have a certain function. Sisters, do not think I am saying something out of season. I have been in the South Pacific where they all went naked. After spending three months there, we were so sick of looking at naked people, we longed to see people wearing clothing again. That was in the 1940’s. They did not go naked in America back then. Those poor creatures did not know anything different than what they were doing. The only kind of plant life that grows on those islands is coconut trees. There is not much animal life there, but quite a lot of sea gulls. Some of the older women that were married and had children, might have been seen wearing a little pattern made from the inside of a coconut shell. They would hang that over their genital area. All the younger women would just walk around stark naked. I have heard men say it would be so good to get home and see women wearing clothes. Sixty years later, an awful lot of them are trying their best to take off as much as they can get by with. That is the truth and you everyone know it. When God was through designing that body of Eve, she blinked and opened her eyes, and I assure you, she did not have to say, Where am I? She looked over and saw Adam; and when he saw her, he did not need to say, My goodness, where did you come from? That is the way carnal people like to look at things, but Adam was fully aware of all that had taken place. He immediately knew, This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. From now on, you are going to be called woman. He also knew exactly what she was destined to be and he said, You are going to be the mother of all living. I like the way the word of God is written. To hurry the point along, the time came for God to start His law of reproduction. Adam was the authority of it, but we know it is going to be through the woman’s body that this season is going to set up. That is why the devil inspires people to do and say things to try to cast a shadow over truth. I want to get back at some of the critics of Bro. William Branham. They try to tell the world that Bro. William Branham said that Eve had a relationship with the devil, because such as that like to degrade and belittle the truth of what he preached. That creature that was made of the animal kingdom that was called the serpent, physically he was much like man, and he could be a replica of the Neanderthal man that was more or less the last evolutionary stage the atheists refer to, of man back there. How many realize that? We must be aware of the fact that the Neanderthal man did not have a soul. When he died, his carcase went into the ground and his flesh rotted away; and that was the end of him forever. When we consider serpent seed that is out here in the world today, we are looking at something different. When this serpent (Adam’s servant) was inspired by Satan, the devil, Satan put in the serpent’s mind to do something to try to wreck God’s entire plan and purpose in creating man. The Bible says he, (the serpent) was more subtle (sly, tricky, clever and so forth)We can read it in Genesis 3:1, and see exactly how he is described. “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.” That is why he knew exactly how to approach Eve and eventually seduce her. When he came to where Eve was, he just simply strikes up a conversation with her, knowing how to get an answer from her. Please understand when you read the scriptural account of this event, that this did not all happen in just one day’s time. It probably took the serpent quite a while, in a very beguiling way, to finally entice Eve to listen to him. Once she did listen and give in to him, and they have committed this act, (Sure it reads like they are just eating some kind of tasty fruit, like an apple, but that is because God hid the truth from the wise and prudent of this world. That is the way God has hid a lot of this through centuries of time, just by referring to it in a way that only the very Spirit of God Himself could reveal the true meaning to His chosen vessels.

DISOBEDIENCE OF ADAM AND EVE

When Eve came to Adam with her new revelation, I can just hear how she explained all of this to him. Adam already knew it was wrong, but I can just almost hear her saying, Honey, please, you will see what I mean. Days went on. Finally Adam gave in to her and partook of what the serpent had introduced to Eve, which was an intimate act for pleasure, instead of just for bearing children to replenish the earth as God had commanded, and God was more or less forced to deal with them in a drastic way. When you read how God judged the serpent, then He said to the woman, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. You realize they would still bear children and replenish the earth, but not according to God’s perfect plan. The woman would never again know the exact time to have that intimate relationship only for the purpose of repopulating the earth. The act has been for pleasure ever since then, and the children were born without that longevity of life benefit they would have had, if their parents had not disobeyed the Creator’s command, which was, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” After speaking to Eve, God then said to Adam, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” Notice this, Because you hearkened. When you hearken to someone, it means someone has to be around there just talking to you, like, Come on now, be friendly, this is OK. So evil was presented and God’s first man and woman on this redeemed earth submitted to the temptation and brought the Creator’s plan of correction to the forefront. From then onward, the serpent has had to crawl, or wiggle along on the ground to get where he wants to be. From then on, Eve would have much sorrow and pain in childbirth; and Adam would have to start doing all the work, because God took the arms and legs off of his servant. The days of the serpent doing all the work ended right there. In the first day (one thousand years to each day) of our existence here on earth, which was really the eighth day, because God had used six days in redeeming the earth from a former judgment, and then rested through the seventh day, so when He gave physical bodies to His creation, that was on the eighth day, God was forced to introduce another plan for His human creation. All of that took place in the eighth day, which was actually our first day, but notice what I have written above that day on our chart back here, showing that from here to there, that is the eighth day, and we are heading for another eighth day just as sure as you are sitting here right now. I am going to show you where the Adventists and all their Sabbaths are going to wind up, which is somewhere they will not want to be. I have studied every scripture in this line. so I will have to take you through it fast. When evil is brought, God is compelled then to bring some kind of curse. Remember: He had already told Adam, The day thou eatest thereof, ye shall surely die. When you read the account you will have to conclude, that if those days were literally days of twenty four hours each, then Adam should have died within that first day of twenty four hours. “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Do you see anything there? We know God keeps His word, so how come Adam lived almost a thousand years? Genesis 5:4 “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.” That was just seventy years short of one thousand years, and he died. If you believe God is faithful to keep His word, then you will have to agree with me, that those creative days, were days of one thousand years each. All of mankind back then, lived almost a thousand years. Therefore we can say this, As man began to propagate, he lived almost a thousand years, but none lived beyond one thousand years. Methuselah got close, but did not make it, Genesis 5:27, “And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.” When evil was introduced on the planet, it has been stalking man ever since. Sin was brought on the planet, but it had started out with a clean slate. There was no sin present before Adam disobeyed His Creator. No sooner does God curse the man and drive him out of the realm of heaven, and death becomes a part of every human afterwards. He did not drive him out of a fenced garden spot, as some believe: God just lifted that little bit of paradise from where He was and Adam stayed right in the same place, in the Middle east, which is known to be the cradle of civilization. Therefore though death was imputed, death did not follow immediately. If we study it, we can see enmity begin to come into the animal kingdom as well. From then on, as we come on through time, sin, wars, murders, bloodshed, lying, cheating and stealing is present and man just gets lower and lower and lower. We come on through time until finally there was a judgment. That was the flood of Noah’s day. Scientists are trying to prove there was no ark, but I say, There absolutely was an ark. If the Bible said so, that settles it: there was a boat and it was not some fancy fishing boat out on the Euphrates river. I watched a program a few weeks back. This guy was supposed to be a historian. He was going to prove to them he could tell us what the boat actually was. Somewhere along the Euphrates valley, they found by excavating, some old clay plates, writings of ancient people that tells about all the commerce and trade that went on in that area. It told how there were fishermen that ran up and down the Euphrates and Tigress. He tried to explain how this was some story that had been magnified out of proportion. I do not have time for people who are trying to prove that the flood of Noah’s day was just a magnified tale. Therefore I did not watch that very long until I turned it off. The point is, this planet that you and I are now living on, from this point, the first day of our first man’s life’s existence, as it is progressing through time, sin has led to an imputed sentence. Man is moving on forward. The years are coming and going. Here is the flood which was caused by a judgment of God upon sinful mankind. Then God starts the cycle again. Through the flood, then we come on down to the call of Abraham, and God sets a type and so forth. Four thousand years later, we have the birth of Jesus Christ. There was a specific reason why Jesus was brought forth to earth at that time. Every scripture I have read in the Hebrew setting fails to show that Jesus ever created anything, yet there are those who insist that He was standing or sitting right along with the father; and that He was doing the creating.

REVEALING A LOVE LETTER TO THE BRIDE OF CHRIST

If you will turn with me to Revelation chapter 3, verse 14, we will see something that is very meaningful. Just think of it, all the gospels and the book of Revelation were written within the first generation of Christendom. John was the last apostle of that hour of time. God gives him this unique prophecy, which literally is a love letter that God has given to the Bride Church to be, to be carried down through time and understood here at the end time. Much of it has never been understood through all of that time. Theologians have pondered here and pondered there, but all they ever came up with was a group of theories. They have written all kinds of articles about it, but I have to say, God held the mystery of it until it was time for bride believers to understand what it actually contained, what it really is saying right here at the end, to the very people the world religions have looked down upon. God knew that here at the end He would have a Bride people of a generation which He would impute a revelation to giving an understanding and specific knowledge of what He Himself is about to do. A few weeks ago I was preaching along this line; and on the last Sunday night, as I read this, I remember reading it just as I was ready to close. “And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.” If you go back and get the message, I made a few remarks, but no sooner had I sat down and dismissed myself from the sermon, Tim began to lead with a song, and while sitting there, it was just like the Lord flashed a light in front of me, What did you just read? The beginning of the creation of God. Immediately I knew in my mind Jesus was the beginning of another creation. His birth was the beginning of it, so that is why the apostle Paul could say in Romans 8, that God has predestined and chosen us to be adopted sons and daughters of His through Christ Jesus, His begotten Son. Then when we see Paul in 1st Corinthians 15, he refers to Him as the first fruits from among the dead. So two thousand years back, to four thousand years, God brought His only begotten Son, who is to become the beginning of a new family. Remember, what God promised in Jeremiah 31:33, when He said, A new covenant will I make with the house of Israel, after those days. That was pointing to the dispensation wherein the Holy Ghost would be poured out upon a number of believers. The Holy Ghost was poured out first upon the Jews; and then later given to the Gentiles, after the nation as a whole rejected that great gift. This great move of the Spirit of God is what constitutes, or fulfills the promise of a new covenant. It first had to be forerun by John the Baptist, who was literally ordained to be endowed with that Spirit of Elijah that would forerun the first advent of Jesus Christ on earth. John introduced the time for it and Jesus Himself who was the MESSENGER of this NEW COVENANT inaugurated, or set it in motion. Then on the day of Pentecost here came the Holy Spirit; and the covenant was fully in effect. When Jesus arose, He was taken up to heaven where He continually intercedes for all that shall ever be heirs of salvation. That left the Jews as sole beneficiaries of the NEW COVENANT that was the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31; and it stayed among the Jews until God saw fit to move among the Gentiles with it. When He did turn to the Gentiles, it was not long until the Gentiles were the guardians of this good news. The Jews no longer held exclusive rights to it. It is eventually the beginning of a new creation, but it is going to come about in such a slow process, the devil is going to fight it tooth and toenail. In those years from His birth onward to His death, which was thirty three and one half years, He was ridiculed and despised, and then He was crucified. In that thirty three and a half years, He lived as a man. He ate as a man, walked as a man, and even though they threw all kinds of accusations at Him, as a man misunderstood by the multitudes, yet He had this testimony, He was the faithful and true witness. He knew exactly why He was here. He never claimed to be a Creator of anything. It is not I that doeth the works, it is my Father that sent me, and again my Father that sent me and the words that I speak to you, they are not mine but His. He never claimed to create anything, but He was the beginning of something. That is the part I like, He was the beginning of something. And how the devil, through centuries of time has fought it. Look at theologians and doctors of divinity, (which I call doctors of ignorance) that have expressed their theories about His life and purpose in the plan of the Father. When Jesus spoke all the things that He did, He knew exactly, that He was on this earth for a purpose, He was sinless, He had done nothing wrong to be justly accused of anything, yet the angry mob did it anyhow. He knew He was going to be the beginning of His Father working through Him, to reach out here to lost mankind and redeem some of them back to Himself. Jesus did not make the choice. He (the Father) did. You are chosen by God through Him. He is the door, the gateway to all that the Father has prepared for true believers. He furnished the life, the flesh, the blood and everything needed to be the material, or the means by how God has brought about redemption for you and me. Yes Brothers and Sisters: He was as the scripture said, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I want to emphasize this, It is not this old creation back here, nor that which followed on after the flood, but a new creation coming on down through here when God has put His only begotten Son here on this earth to be the beginning of a new family. God secretly, mysteriously, started a new creation, slowly redeeming, saving, cleaning up a new generation of people, all at the same time that killing, lust, murder, and all of that keeps going right on. No wonder, not only in those thirty three and one half years that Jesus had to put up with the harassing devices of the devil, always accusing Him and trying hard to kill him, but He was able to keep His head and shoulders above all of that until the appointed time of the Father. That made Him the faithful and true witness. Then when He was willing to die in our place, He tasted of death for everyone that would ever believe and trust God. I will say this, Adventist, whoever you are, He did not just go to sleep. He left that body there, and that body was wrapped in burial clothing and laid in a tomb. That which is laid in a tomb knows nothing. Here is the important thing to catch from this, because from that body of clay, that which was the man abiding in that clay, the spirit being, that which was the Son of God, when He left that body of clay, here He comes down into the pit of hell to fulfill another purpose. As He walks through the corridors of hell, there is Abel. Cain had murdered him. Do you mean he was in hell, Bro. Jackson? He sure was. But hell at that time had a place called paradise, which was where Abel and all the righteous of former times was kept. All the time that body of Jesus was in the tomb, He (the spirit man) was down in hell preaching to imprisoned spirits. You read it in the Epistle of Peter. It fulfilled exactly what the Psalmist said, as David of old declared that he could look forward and see the day that Christ would pay the price for his redemption. And David could say, Psalms 16;9-10, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. 10For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” My flesh shall rest in hope, because He will not leave my soul in hell. David also said, Neither will He allow the Holy One to see corruption. That lets us know, He (Jesus) did not hang there and die, and remain dead for seventy two hours. Not in Israel. I have asked two different undertakers about this. I said to both of them, Let me take you back to Israel, at that time of year that Jesus was crucified, you have a warm climate. I said, Tell me this, How long would it take that body to start showing mortification? They both said in a matter of a few hours mortification sets in. First the body will start bloating, that is the gases that break it down from inside. I said, then to me, that is exactly why the Psalmist said, thou will not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption, meaning, His body will not go into that state of mortification. The word of God will always back up every promise. I knew that God’s word is true. So when Jesus did come forth, He has now paid for these souls and those righteous souls, He took them out of there, and for the space of forty days, periodically, He appeared here, and He appeared there. Those dead saints did likewise. Oh, they did not have to come into town like a gang. They would just simply appear to different people, and during that time this was noised around, so it becomes written later. Then the day that Jesus took His living disciples and went up on the Mt. of Olives and they watched Him ascend into heaven, every one of those resurrected saints went to heaven. That is why Paul could write in Ephesians what he did. With that in mind, if we would look at the gospel very carefully, God’s new creation started and God gave that early Church enough insight to recognize it, and had the devil not been allowed to get in and twist this and twist that, church history would not read like it does. Only God Himself knows how the devil’s instruments have done that through the various church ages. Nevertheless we realize, that for the last two thousand years, the living element of true Christendom is existing as the remaining select people that God has been calling out of all this religious mess of confusion, while death and everything else is running rampant. The planet earth is literally being devastated. Look at the filth that is seen everywhere, and at the graveyards, the battlefields, the dope dens and all such. You almost surely think, What a terrible mess this planet is in? But I have to say, Regardless of all of that, there is hope lying ahead. Because of His love for us, God sent a little man a few years ago that had a vision for the Bride of Christ. He began to bring out of the book of Revelation how to get back in the Bible, get our minds settled in it and know what God is saying and what He is not saying. When He took His little man to glory, He did not leave us here to wander aimlessly again, groping at the scriptures in the dark, in ignorance, surmising this and that. He has brought us to a time now, that He is going to start putting us together in unity, joint by joint, member by member, until He sees perfection in the Bride Church. That is when we will leave here. We are going to see a picture form inside us, that is going to create joy, peace of mind and happiness like we have never known before. It will be a living, walking understanding inside of us. As we come close to the closing of six thousand years, the gospel has already gone around this planet, but look what else has also been going on, on this planet. Wars, turmoil, diseases, heartache, broken homes, and look how little children are treated. What a world! Do you want to live in a world like this for the next two hundred years? I don’t, not with politicians running the show like they are doing. That is why I have to say, They look at us and think we are a bunch of silly fanatics. Well we are going to wind up being the smartest, most intelligent people alive on this planet. When we see the stepping stones of what leads to the rapture and the week of Daniel coming up, we know we are coming down to the closing of this six thousand years. The Bride Saints will soon be taken out of this old world; and the Jews will have their revival, but there is still a move of the Spirit of God before that happens, that will reveal the rest of what the Bride Church is to know before she takes her flight to be with Jesus. He has already come and taken the Old Testament saints up from where they waited in paradise, for the price of their redemption to be paid. Yes, He is soon going to come and take His Bride saints up. Then He is coming back, to do what? He is going to minister judgment upon this planet like it has never seen before. It will be much different than what the flood did back here in Noah’s day, because this time He is saving a great number of righteous mortals that will pass into the Millennium to repopulate the earth. He has already got out of the Old Testament period those other saints that have gone up. He is taking His Bride saints next. The Bible tells us in Matthew 25, when Jesus comes back, He will gather all nations before Him. What is that for? There will be a judgment. And out of the judging of those nations, there is going to be an element of those mortal people like there are right now, that are ready to show mercy to people who are being persecuted, without religious attitudes influencing them. They are going to pass into that next age. They are the people that the Bride of Christ along with the Old Testament saints, are going to rule and reign over. I do not have time to go into what kind of government that will be, but there are enough scriptures in the book of Revelation, to answer that for you, especially to the church of Thyatira, where He promised them, To him that overcometh will I give power over the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron. That being true, it lets me know He is not only coming to be King of kings and Lord of lords, but He is also going to give to His Bride a share of that rod. I want you to know, that the seventh day is not yet the perfect day, but it is a day of rest to the earth. It is a day of rest to the soul of the people. The wicked are all gone and there is nothing but righteousness going to rule and reign. That is where our hope must rest, in the faithfulness of God to fulfill all His written word. That is our assurance. This planet, once this era starts, is going to look like a battlefield, because God’s wrath is going to destroy billions of wicked people. When God cleans house, He will clean it completely. Knowing that, I assure you, I want to be on the winning side. That is why He is going to take a little Bride up to the marriage supper; and then He is coming back with all His saints. In the fulfillment of that sixth seal, mountains will shake, islands will flee away, some coastlines will sink and others will rise. Cities will disappear. When God shakes this earth as it says in Isaiah 24, we will read four verses, 3-6, “The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left,” so we know the earth shall be burned and few men left, but there is going to be an elect number spared, and God knows how to separate them out from all the rest. That is why, prior to that time, there has to be the everlasting gospel preached. There has to be a short era in here also, just before the week of Daniel sets in, of a miraculous warfare, which denominations do not even believe in, yet all the scriptures are written right there for them to read. When God executes these things and puts them active down here in this earth, there is going to be a lot of college kids throw their books away and make the decision, I am waiting for Him. As I have told you before, I have never been against an education, but when you want to take it an hang it on a wall and judge me by that standard, I will say to you, If you do not know God, you don’t know anything. When that Bride comes back, she is going to be in an immortal body. When those Old Testament saints come back, they are going to be in immortal bodies. They are not going to be in the ruling capacity that the Bride will be, but remember, the Bride will be made up of every race that is on this planet. When we are gone to the marriage supper, it is not to see how much turkey we can eat. There is definitely going to be a spiritual table set before us. It is going to be things we can consume in our souls, that is going to equip us with a knowledge and an understanding of what our responsibilities are going to be when we do come back to this planet with Jesus. Because, when the heavens open and there He shines, as we see in Revelation 19, we see the nations prepared to fight Him. Why will they do that? Because every politician, with all their own ambitions, will be against God having any sway in anything, so they are ready to fight Him with all their modern technology in weapons of warfare. What will happen when an F-16 goes against God’s laser beam? God has a laser beam some people do not know anything about what it is like. Out of His mouth goes a sharp two-edged sword, that with it He should smite the nations and He shall slay the wicked with the word, the sword. The wicked will die, they will be slain, killed, destroyed, from one end of this planet to the other, so to speak. What a rotten mess. When God does set up that kingdom, I want you to know, Bride, you will not be sitting there in bodies that have arthritis, crippled joints and all such as you may have now. You are going to be sitting there in an immoral body invested with power and authority and you have a wisdom instilled in you and a knowledge, so you will know exactly what you are looking at, and you will know exactly what to do. I will say this. The Millennium reign, which we know is a thousand years, that is God’s day. I have to say, When He put man here, that was the eighth day in that line, but when we get through here, (chart) it is the seventh, and that is when the planet is going to rest. When we come over here, (at the end of the Millennium) these nations now are multiplied. You know what the book of Revelation says, at the end of the thousand years, Satan is loosed for a little season. Why? God would be an unjust God to take all that element of people that has been born in a time when there has been no temptation, no evil to harass them. The devil is loosed to allow those people to be able to make a choice as to which way they will go. The Bible says he will deceive a great multitude. As he does, it will be because God has allowed him to deceive and mislead as many as he can. We all know how that effort ends up, therefore I want you to know, There will never be another war, no more atomic bombs, and no one else deceived after that, so the Bride just stands back, the King just stands back, and leaves all of them alone until Satan has made all his rounds. When it looks like the devil has them right where they are supposed to be, just wait until they make a move to come against the Bride’s headquarters, which is Jerusalem, the place where the King is. That is where your headquarters will be. Instead of you having to use anything against all of that, the eternal Father is on the scene, When he says enough is enough, then Fire comes out of heaven and devours all those who have aligned with Satan. What a day! Then John saw a great white throne, and Jesus takes that throne and the Bride is lifted up here with Him. All the saints are with Him. Down here on this earth all those wicked bodies that have been laying there, coming right on down through time, the sea gives up the dead. Every grave gives up the dead. Death and hell gives up the dead that are in there, which is where torment is, and all are judged according to their works on earth. That judgment is only for the wicked of all ages; the righteous have all been judged already, and found to be righteous. Remember, all the unrighteous stand before the great white throne to be judged; and every saint of every age is going to look at their counterpart, if you know what I mean, as those wicked stand there to be judged. I hope you understand what I mean. You may have gone to church with some of them and sang the same songs, making the same profession of faith in Jesus Christ, but you had the genuine and they did not. You will not judge people that lived five hundred years ago. You will judge those relative to your own dispensation and period of time you lived in. Do all of you understand that? Then when that is cleared, one more thing is yet to be attended to, because down in the bowels of hell, is a category of angelic beings that have been chained there for thousands of years. That is because they did something back here before the time when God cursed that planet. He chained them down with everlasting chains, never to let them loose any more on this planet. They did something so contrary to the true purpose of God, that He does not want them to ever be around tormenting you, and yet we realize there are multitudes of other evil spirits that have been allowed to be here. So when hell gives up those fallen angels, all these evil spirits that have been running loose have to be dealt with, so what did Paul say to the Corinthians? Know you not that ye shall judge angels? This is the last category of judgment. Every living thing is going to be able to look at those devils that came to them in their generation by whatever tactics they used to create environments that misled them, or would have, if they could. The Bride is going to execute judgment. Now my brothers and sisters, let us see how the apostle Paul wound this thing up after dealing with it. Let us go to the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians. The Corinthians were all confused about the resurrection and so forth. He explained it to them in a very simple way. In the 20th verse, we find this, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, (Why? Because He is on the High Priest’s throne.) and become the firstfruits of them that slept. (Meaning He is the first to be resurrected from the dead.) For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. (He conquered both.) For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming. Then (coming on down toward the end) cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.” That is what we are talking about. Here is where this kingdom is perfected in its final stages, just before she passes off into the eternal age. The seventh one is not the end, it is just to prepare things for the eternal age. Here, is where worlds without end comes in. Eternity. Therefore when Christ has ruled through the Millennium with His immortal saints, they put out a law, authority, power, and they have bound every spirit that would hindered nature, plant life, animal life and everything. Now the kingdom, the earth itself, has all been redeemed, has been cleansed by righteousness, by the righteous rule of Christ and His redeemed. Therefore when all those fallen angels are cast into the lake of fire, what comes next? For that we look at Jesus. Then shall the Son say, Here Father: is the redeemed kingdom, I have done what you wanted me to do. When He returns everything back to the Father, He is then my elder brother. He will always be there. He has been a wonderful Saviour. Paul puts Him in the last place, the eighth day. Now you Adventists, I know what is in some of your mind’s, so go with me to Isaiah 66: I want to give you something to take home and sleep on. In the Epistle of Peter it speaks of a new heaven and a new earth, and Isaiah spoke of this new heaven and new earth, and so did Bro. William Branham. I have it written here in his message, God in Creation, he referred to those creative days as being a thousand years each. He used the Epistle of Peter, where Peter said, one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Then when I had that experience I mentioned earlier, when the Lord shook my mind by asking, What did you read? It made me realize Jesus was the beginning of a new creation. That is all it took. Bro. William Branham, in his message, “And Knoweth It Not,” Jesus the Christ was created by the Father to be the beginning of a new creation. Do you not see how He has scattered these things down through time, and how we have treated them like a little bird went flying by. Now let me read in verse 22, “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, (I like this. Bro. Jackson, is there still going to be a Sabbath day? Won’t it be the seventh? And it shall come to pass…) that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, (Well a new moon in that day will only be every thirty days. Are you going to separate the Sabbath from that, to something else?) shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.” Does that mean I have to leave and go there during the new moon, and then I go there on the Sabbath day too? You are getting this all messed up. Saints listen to me: How many know what I am reading? He has restored a perfect climate by then, a perfect solar structure which is measuring time. I have to say, There will be a new Sabbath, but it will not be according to days: it will be according to the dispensation from one new moon to the next, and from one Sabbath to the next, shall all flesh come before me. Does that not answer a lot of things? What has He done? Through that thousand years, much of the earth here, is still covered with a lot of water. But through this He is slowly redeeming the earth. No wonder, in Revelation 21 and 22, we find John saying, And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and there was no more sea. Praise the Lord! Our work is just getting ready to start. How many know what I have been talking about. We are part of a kingdom and it is God’s third kingdom, for God does things in three’s. I hope this makes sense to all of you. Amen.

Excerpts from April 2004

PUT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

THIS MESSAGE IS GOING TO BE VERY DIFFERENT THAN MOST OF WHAT WE HAVE DEALT WITH IN THE PAST, BECAUSE WE NEED TO KNOW FOR SURE WHAT PUTTING ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST REALLY PERTAINS TO. WE ARE ADMONISHED IN THE SCRIPTURES TO DO THAT, SO WE NEED TO KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO GO ABOUT IT. IF TIME IS AS CLOSE TO THE COMING OF THE LORD AS WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE IT IS, THERE IS VERY LITTLE TIME LEFT FOR DRESSING OURSELVES SPIRITUALLY, THE WAY BRIDE SAINTS ARE GOING TO HAVE TO BE DRESSED TO BE ACCEPTABLE TO THE BRIDEGROOM WHEN HE COMES. PUTTING ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE OUTER GARMENTS WE COVER OUR FLESH WITH, NOR THE WAY WE CUT, OR DO NOT CUT OUR HAIR, IT PERTAINS TO HOW WE ALLOW HIM TO MOLD US WITHIN, IN HIS OWN IMAGE. WHEN WE ARE RIGHT ON THE INSIDE, WE WILL NATURALLY REFLECT IT ON THE OUTSIDE. THAT IS WHAT OUR LORD IS MOVING US TOWARD DAY BY DAY, IF WE HAVE DETERMINED IN OUR HEART TO FOLLOW HIM IN THE WAY OF TRUTH. YOU WILL FIND THE TEXT FOR THIS MESSAGE IN ROMANS 13:14, SO LET US OPEN OUR BIBLES TO THAT SCRIPTURE AND SEE WHAT THE LORD WILL LEAD US TO SEE.

There is something going on in America today that is very disturbing, even though we know that what we are seeing is foretold in the written word of God. It is just that knowing how the American society was sixty and seventy years ago, it is very sad to see what it is turning into in this hour of time. I just have to say, If we really do know the Lord, let us do everything within our power to submit our will to Him, to let Him mold our inner being and make us the kind of Christians He will be coming back for. That is why we are going to talk about putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, is what the scripture says, (Rom 13:14) “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provisions for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” That is a very short, but most important passage of scripture. How are we going to put on the Lord Jesus Christ? What does it involve? Does this involve just a certain type of clothing? Does it pertain to a certain way we cut our hair, or does it pertain to not trimming our hair? Should we let the hair grow as long as it can possibly grow? In the religious systems of America today, we have had all of that preached from the pulpit, but this particular scripture speaks of none of that. Our outward adornment means very little, if our inner being is not properly adorned, spiritually speaking. Denominations have had their day of teaching their dress codes to portray holiness, but the truth is, our outward appearance can be very hypocritical.

The country that you and I have been born and raised in, is going to be gnawed to pieces in the foundational structure. Of all the nations in the world, this was one nation that God founded and established on Christian principles, using Christian people from the old world of Europe, those who had experienced the Reformation in Europe and knew what had been accomplished in the restoration of truth. God honored them. Therefore very slowly, this nation was cut out of the wilderness. Over a period of time, our society became governed by a system of government that wanted freedom. They did not establish any certain type of belief, but they believed as long as it was concerning Jesus Christ and that God was to be Supreme, that would be the essence of every person in America. Over a period of years, practically every branch of the Reformation found its roots in America. No matter what their attitude was about the external look of holiness, most all of them had a look that far superceded most of the holiness movements of today. They grew up to have a respect for what they visualized in the word of God, that which requires a holy appearance, and believed Christians should present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. I am not standing here today, just to touch on these external things. I first want to say this, True holiness is not depending on what you may have hanging in your wardrobe. Let us get that part straight, concerning what the book (Bible) says about holiness. You can go to your wardrobe and put on this, put on that, you can go before the mirror, comb your hair, and say, Well I look holy now, but what about the inner you? Is it holy? That may be the way some people look at holiness, but that is not the entire picture of true holiness. The true spirit of holiness begins to deal with the inner you first, that which is the real you, (called the inner man) that man that thinks, that man that can get jealous, that man that can hate, that man that can talk one time positive, and another time negative. In other words, True holiness which is within, naturally expresses itself outwardly without hypocrisy.

WHAT SAITH THE WORD OF GOD?

I am going to read a few verses that I want us to think about. When we read the text, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ,” The writer was not talking about going to the wardrobe to do that: He was talking about going to the word of God, because in the word of God, we find the apparel that we must put on if we truly have been born again. The new birth has nothing to do with your fleshly body. However proper spiritual attire will affect the fleshly man in a sense, but not until that inner self is born again. That inner man has got to have contact with God in His saving grace, before he can experience anything concerning spiritual attire. There is where we are going to find everything this text pertains to: right in the word of God. Turn with me to Romans 8, at this time. This is a chapter that deals with the works of the flesh, the lusts of the flesh and so forth, which is concerning the natural man that we are from birth. Then it goes on and talks about the spiritual man, the inner man. Therefore do not go away from here and say that I said nothing about clothing. I have seen people put on certain things that would give them a very holy appearance to the natural eye, but underneath that cloak, they can be just as aggravating as the devil himself, and you can hardly tolerate their very presence. That is the truth: I have seen it over and over. I am going to begin to use some examples after awhile, that will show you what I mean by that. Paul writes in the Roman letter, (chapter 8, verse 1) “There is therefore now (present tense) no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, (Being in Christ Jesus, is not determined by how you put your clothes on, it is how you were put in there by the new birth and the receiving of the Holy Ghost. That is what puts you in the mystical body of Christ. In the King James Bible we find the following words.) who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (These last words were added by the translators, which speak of how we walk when we truly are in Christ Jesus, but certainly were not meant to be a condition of our salvation as it sounds here.)When Paul wrote this, it really did have an affect on early Christendom, how they lived, how they walked and conducted themselves. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Now as I read that, some people make remarks, Well I have heard that before: I wish he would preach something else. I am not pointing the finger at anybody this morning, but I ask you, Let’s be sensible. First, Are you living in a way that you need not hear anything from God’s word about proper conduct as a Christian? How many epistles did the apostle Paul write? Actually 14, and in most of them he mentions something about the Law. The Law was the biggest problem of early Christians in their day. You everyone know that. Why? Because somebody out of the rear ranks of the Law, was always wanting to come along and put their ideas about the Law into Christianity, mixing it with Grace, putting it on the Christian people as a must. Paul constantly had to deal with that. When we get a true picture of what Paul was dealing with concerning the Law, what it was for, what it was applicable for, and how the grace of God is now beyond the law, you have an altogether different picture of what the Christian life really is. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak (Weak because it could not do what grace does) through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” Therefore God heaped upon Jesus the reproaches, the sin, all of our faults and wrong doings, and a totally innocent man who did no wrong Himself, paid the full price for the sin of all mankind; and grace is there for all who will accept it. He died in your place and in my place. “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Those words belong there in verse 4, but not on the end of verse 1.) For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh.” We see this more and more in the modern Christian ranks of this hour of time.

REVELATION SETTLES ALL CONTROVERSY

If we are ever going to look at the scriptures right, we have to have the Holy Spirit inside, because there is no such thing from the standpoint of the Bible, that you are saved one day and lost six months later and need to get saved again, as some believe. I will challenge anyone to show me that kind of picture in the Bible. You were only born into this world physically, one time. However you may have been sick many times. Is that not right? Well why can we not see the spiritual birth in the same reality? Don’t you think the devil can hit your spirit being hard enough at times, that you get very weak, disheartened and even disgusted, so that you walk around with your head hung down and appear as one who has lost something precious? When you are asked, How do you feel? You reply, I feel terrible. Well you look that way too, when you begin to let your inner feelings have the preeminence on the outside. My point is, If you were ever really born again any time before then, birth only happens one time. If the word of God is preached correctly to you, sooner or later the Lord is going to send something along to heal that sick soul, and you are going to come out of that sickened condition; and you will not have to be reborn spiritually, as some believe. A lot that has gone on in the holiness realm of religion; and much of what was called salvation, was really just another attempt to reform and follow a set of rules. An evangelist will come along and have a few days of meetings; and yes the Spirit of God begins to move on a few people; and this psychologically affects a lot of other people, so that there is a lot of physical action in the altar call. You can hear, This one and that one got saved again. I say, No. They did not; if you are talking about a genuine experience of Holy Ghost salvation. If what anyone receives, is not the grace of God that gets down in the heart and does a work referred to in the scriptures as a new creation, that begins to put that person on a pathway of life where they are going to do everything in their power to live for God, but when a trial hits them, they feel lost again. In such cases, you just have to know they have been converted to religion only. That is why many times in the old holiness realms, the same people that were supposed to have been saved three years ago, have been saved six times since then. There is no such thing possible, biblically. I am sure all of you sitting here today, know that, but many people beyond these walls will hear this message. That is why I have to say, When you put on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are going to do it because you have become dead to self and alive in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is your inner being that controls the deadness to self and submits to the leadership of the Spirit of God. Your inner man gets to the place he no longer feels like he has to live to satisfy this outer man. I dress the same way today, that I did fifty five years ago. I did not grow up thinking it was acceptable to go to the church house looking like a bum. I grew up in a generation of people that had respect for a place of worship. When going to the church house, we went there feeling like we were going into the presence of God, and back then you wanted to look your best at such occasions. However I am not just talking about the mere clothing side of things: I am talking about an attitude of decency and respect. I have seen old farmers come to meetings wearing clean overalls. They did not have anything better to wear, so we are not talking about that: We are talking about what is in control of our inner self. If it is the Lord Jesus Christ, we will want to dress our outer self as clean and proper looking as we possibly can of course, and we will not feel like keeping up with the styles makes us anything special. Neither will we feel like what we have to wear, because it is all we have, makes us anything less than special in the eyes of our Lord. I want to emphasize the fact, that when we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, we are dealing with something that dresses the inner man. We are putting on those virtues that portray moral excellence and spiritual maturity, which in turn leads to being more like Jesus. That is what the apostle Paul was getting at (Eph 4:13), when he said, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” We do not gain that stature instantly: We acquire it by accepting proper teaching and allowing it to little by little enable us to take on the mind of Christ. We have to know how He was before we can be like Him. That is the part we many times struggle with. Coming down through life, if you really let the Lord Jesus Christ get into your life and do that wonderful transformation work in your inner being, sooner or later you are going to begin to see yourself reflected in the scriptures. Just as you go before the mirror, to see how you are going to part your hair and fix it in the back so the cow lick will lay down, so does the word of God allow you to view your inner self, to see what changes need to be made. We can say this, When you stand before the mirror of God’s word, if you are reading it right you will see your inner self as you really are, whether it be good or bad. That should be our aim as we read and study the scriptures, to take a good honest look at our self and allow the word of God to show us what is still missing; and then show us how to apply it to our spiritual growth. Possibly, you have never thought of it like that, but when you approach the word of God the proper way, you are looking at yourself, and seeing the way the Lord wants you to see yourself. If you really let Him into your heart, no matter how long ago it was when you gave your heart to Him, sooner or later He is going to give you an understanding of what He wants you to be, whether you are a man or woman, if you listen carefully, He is going to show you exactly, from the scriptures, what He wants you to look like, both inside and outside. That is where you say, Lord, I see many scriptures that I do not understand, so I ask that you help me, that from these scriptures I may learn how to apply the virtues of your image to my life also. Jesus, in the final analysis of everything, became the fulness of God, having all His divine attributes dwelling in Him. In the human vessel of His Son Jesus the Christ, God bestowed the fullness of Himself, that He might be displayed before all humanity in the time His Son would remain on earth. Therefore after Jesus was baptized, He left the water possessing all the attributes of the great Creator, because God, being a sovereign Spirit, came down to Him in the form of a dove and filled Him (Jesus) with Himself. No. That did not mean God was nowhere else after that, because He fills the entire universe. I know it is difficult for the human mind to visualize this, but by faith we accept this as a fact. We could never find words in the known vocabulary of mankind, that could completely explain God: We just have to be thankful for the revelation He imparts to us when we truly seek Him with our whole heart. He enables His true children to explain the Godhead, which for centuries has been a total mystery to educated minds that think they see three Gods in the scriptures. The truth is, one can never understand very much of what is written in the scriptures until they have a true revelation of the Godhead. When God (Spirit) filled His Son with Himself, He did it in order to be able to demonstrate His very own attributes working through that vessel of flesh. That is why Jesus kept saying, over and over, It is not I that doeth these works, but Him that is in me. Another time He would say, I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. Does that mean that Jesus could not talk like any other man? Absolutely not. He sure did talk about natural things. I say, that many times as He walked down the road with his disciples, there would come up many natural conversations, and Jesus had a way of expressing Himself that really meant something. The reason I bring this in, is when we study about the man Himself, I see a man who knew how to talk when certain things needed to be talked about. He was not a man of ill temper, even though He got disgusted one time with a bunch of religious characters in the temple, because they had turned the temple into a place of merchandise for their own profit. He got angry at that and rightly so. If we are genuine Christians, born again of the Spirit of God and filled with His Spirit, and honestly desiring to have our inner being made like unto our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, God will honor our desires and enable us to take on that image. Even then though, there are certain things that can come along, which will irk us to the point that we sometimes feel like using a whip on certain ones, but we have to be careful what that thing is, that we see. For instance, when we see this conglomeration of religion out here in the world, the kind of example they are setting for young people, going down the road of life propagating a life style that can never glorify God, and some of what you have to witness is enough to affect your heart and make you feel angry, simply because it does not glorify God in any way.

CHECKING THE SCRIPTURES

Open your Bible to (2nd Peter, the 1st chapter and 3rd verse.) “According as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, (That is what it is all about; having the indwelling of the divine nature of the living God, abiding in you.) having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. (Excess of this and that, living in a society, that if for some reason, (and I hope it does not come to that) our economy was to collapse like it did in 1929, I would feel sorry for a lot of people today, that would not know how to cope with primitive means of survival. They have lived for the last thirty five or forty years, when everything seemed to be come easy, go easy: We have all enjoyed and been thankful for modern day conveniences, but just suppose we had to do without them and go back to the way we lived seventy years ago. Would you know how to get by? I saw on the News last night, that one of the old steel towns in the east, now that the steel company has squandered their means and ready to sign bankruptcy, all the money that has been withheld from the employees’ paychecks to pay for health benefits and pensions for retirement, is lost. Here are thousands of people having meetings and asking, What are we going to do? People had very few of those benefits back in 1929 and on for a few years, if you know what I mean.) And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; (That is speaking to those who have the Spirit of Christ abiding in them. There is no more of this thinking, that you are saved yesterday, so you sit down and coast the rest of your life. That pertains to some who have that, (I will do it tomorrow) attitude, but never study the word of God and ask Him, Help me oh Lord to understand your word, that I may know how to walk with you through life. There has to be a growing process in you, whereby you little by little take on the knowledge of God. You only get that through studying the scriptures.) And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. (Love is translated charity in the King James Bible. When we are adding these virtues to our spiritual life, this is putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.) For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now that rips this thing all to pieces, saved yesterday, back slide six months later and need to be saved again. He said, It makes you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful. That does not mean you will not have certain things thrown at you by the devil, that will cause you to become disappointed and feel bad, but none of those things can cause a true child of God to lose their salvation. When you have those days that you feel a little depressed, that is the devil’s business, to throw something at you that will affect you like that, but keep in mind, If you have the Spirit of God in you, He is not going to let you sit there for thirty years, rehearsing how hurt you are. Do you understand my point? How do I know that? Because, if you see to it that all these things are added to your experience, it makes you that you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. “But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.” Meaning you will never return back to your lost state. You may allow Satan to side track you for a while, but you will never cease to be a child of God. Why do I say that? Because, if you have truly been born again, you are alive for eternity. If such a person allows Satan to get him or her into a position where the body of Christ will be affected by it, God can just take the breath of natural life out of you to halt it, but your born again inner man is alive for ever. Such a person will lose rewards, but will not be destroyed with the wicked. I speak that by the authority of what the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian Assembly concerning the man that was living with his father’s wife in an illicit relationship; an by the revelation that we have of God’s great salvation plan. (1 Cor 5:5) “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” You can read the entire setting, but we will not read it all now. When you are alive in Christ, then there is spiritual food to take in, and that is how we grow. We grow in the knowledge of the Lord and we learn by the various things of life. In a lot of the church circles today, the real individual walk of the believer, has been pushed into the closet: Everything is done to fulfill a program. God is not interested in our manmade programs: He is interested in cultivating a dedicated and enlightened life in all of us.

PERFECTION BELONGS TO THE BODY OF CHRIST

I want to take a different approach to this subject for a few minutes now, so let us look into the 4th chapter of Ephesians, verses 12, 13 and 14. I realize this is a very familiar scripture to most of you, but I want us to look at these words very carefully. I want to say a few things in an effort to clear up a lot of things in the mind of some people: especially as to how other passages of scripture are to be read and applied. An awful lot of times, people that do not have an understanding of what those scriptures really apply to, will come with questions they throw at you one right after another, like, Well explain this, and what does this mean, and what does that mean? First I want to say this, Always remember, perfection is for the people of God, not for the so-called-church out here in the world of religion. I will say it again, Perfection belongs to the body of Christ. This has to become a reality to every one of us, so much so that we will look at it as an absolute fact. I am not going to read the 11th verse, because we have read it so many times you everyone should know it by heart. Therefore let us go directly to verses 12, 13 and 14. There has got to be a ministry in these last days that will accomplish what God has said right here, that we are moving toward. Keep in mind, This epistle was written by the apostle Paul, the man that wrote about half of the New Testament. He came out of his experience with the Lord with a revelation of what God is after in this age of grace to Gentiles. As he looked back through the years since Christianity started, he could see that from the day of Pentecost when the Church was born, right on through to the hour of his experience, that God had set in the spiritual body of believers all over the known world at that time, chosen men that were set aside to fulfill these types of ministries described in verse 11. He describes the purpose of it, that we will eventually become a mature people, that will truly bear the image and nature of Jesus Christ. The Church was on the road to that, but as it passed out of the first age of time and the old saints were all dead, Satan had gone to work on the carnal mind of those who were left to propagate the faith; and gradually the revelation in the people began to deteriorate; and as it did they began to lose interest, and as the true revelation slipped away, naturally the picture those scriptures portrayed became very blurred. That is why I can say tonight, When we say that God sent a messenger in these last days, we know his purpose was to call this end time body of believers back to the faith and revelation of those apostles that walked with Jesus. I am not saying these things to make you think that I cannot preach something out of the Bible without referring to him, but every time I read Revelation 10:7, I know that the finished picture lays in the fact of how we heard what he preached, and how we allow God to apply it to our inner being. “For the perfecting (Of everybody? No. It is for the perfecting of the true saints of God.) of the saints, for the work of the ministry, (It is to give the real minister something to do. God will not allow men He has called to this purpose, to just sit back somewhere enjoying their retirement. No. Every one of them is going to be busy right up to the end of Gentile time when the rapture takes place.) for the edifying (uplifting, upbuilding, encouraging) of the body of Christ: Till we all (The term we all, does not apply to the denominational church world of religion all around us: It literally pertains to those that God has chosen and called to be a part of the living Bride of Christ. Neither is it pointing to those that are dead and gone on. God will deal with them on the merits of what they had in their lives during their lifetime, but the living element of the bride are definitely going to be dealt with to finally reach a place of spiritual perfection, living and walking in unity, seeing the scriptures the same and thinking alike on how they are to apply. It takes that to make the body really exemplify Christ in the manner God purposed it to, so, Till we all…) come in the unity of the faith, (The faith, not a faith, so here is the part I wanted to get to.) and of the knowledge of the Son of God, (A lot of people would think, Well we understand the godhead: Certainly we all see that alike. I say, Do we? There are verses of scripture in Paul’s writings, (especially in the King James Version, because the translators were Trinitarians) that if people do not somehow come to know the difference from some other source and know what Paul meant when he worded certain things the way they are, I have to say, Some of those verses of scriptures really cause one to ponder. It is just the way those Trinitarian translators slanted things toward their understanding, because of a trinity concept of God in their mind, that causes many problems. Therefore we who desire truth have got to come to an understanding, that when Paul wrote something in one epistle, he meant the same thing in another, regardless of how the translators worded it. It is our responsibility to pick out those instances in his epistles, and compare them to where he dogmatically and flatfootedly laid down exactly what he meant, and if we can hold it that way, we will always come out on top: We will not be confused, and we will know exactly, that Jesus the man was not God. He never was, because He was born and God was never born: He (God) is a sovereign Spirit that is from eternity to eternity the same. He always was and always will be. We will also know that Jesus Himself, never had part in creating anything, except in the mind of the great Creator Himself, that created all things with His only begotten Son in mind. That was because of His foreknowledge, knowing what His created man would do, that would cause him to need a Savior. We have got to separate the thought, God, what He is, what He did do, and then, who Jesus Christ really is and what He became in the plan of God, and how God was manifested in and through Him, not in a limited measure, but in the fullness of all His attributes, so that the works and words of His only begotten Son Jesus, expressed and demonstrated the mighty power that He (the Father) is. Therefore, wherever Jesus went, when He spoke under the inspiration, it was God the Father speaking; not the person of the man that sovereign Spirit abode in. There is a knowledge of the Son of God that absolutely caps out everything else, when we know definitely who He is, and what He became for you and me. That helps us to see ourselves in other scriptures. We are all moving toward the point of perfection; perfection in what way?) unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” When we look at the overall body of believers, in the mind of God there is an image of these believers that God is moving us toward. When we do reach that place of completeness and perfection, the mystical body of Christ is not going to be a mystery to us. However to the world it is all a mystery. It is how Christ is revealed, lived, and demonstrated in and through us. Therefore I want to say this, Through the years of time, people have had arguments about the godhead. They will specialize on one certain verse of scripture, trying to prove their point. When you read the Bible, the way certain things are worded, it would sound like Jesus Christ was the one that created all things, but a true revelation causes us to know He did not create anything. Take verse 9, in the 3rd chapter, and notice the wording. We well pick up verse 8, also, because it leads you into verse 9. This was written by the apostle Paul; a man that had a revelation beyond question. Eph. 3:8 “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; (9) And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things (This verse should end right here, but the Trinitarian translators added the last three words.) by Jesus Christ.” I have checked in different other versions which were literally translated from ancient eastern manuscripts; and those last three words are not there. I am sure you can see how adding those three words to that verse can confuse a lot of people who try to study the Bible. When you know for sure that Jesus Christ is not the Creator, that verse raises a red flag. Hold on! Why does it say that? Jesus Christ never created anything! Let us read this again. I know what the Hebrew and Aramaic translations both say, but I am reading it straight from the King James Bible that I use. Paul was writing to the Ephesian believers, (Eph. 3:9) “And to make all men see what is the fellowship.” There is a joy in fellowshipping with people when we all believe the same thing, having the same understanding. There is nothing that can be any more troubling, than when somebody begins to have questions, or rather misgivings about something they read in the Bible. They can become so concrete in thinking like that, you might hear a brother, or a sister say, But I don’t see it that way. We put up with this kind of thing all the years we were in denominational groups, but now that we know better, we must move beyond that kind of attitude. We have had theologians poke this idea down our throats, Well you might see things a little different than Bro. So and So, but you do not necessarily have to agree on everything in order to fulfill God’s requirement to love one another. That is the way they paint the picture, but that is contrary to the revelation God has given His Bride Church here at the end time. Such attitudes as we have just described, is why you will not hear any denominational preacher today, preaching about unity. It is not in their revelation: They just accept the literal wording of whatever they are studying; and when you do that with some of the translations, you can really end up in confusion. If truth is not in your understanding, you have a hard time standing a lot of things, because certain people are able to throw some of these verses at you and say, Are you saying the Bible is wrong? If your own revelation is not solid, some of these things can shake you. What I must say to you is this, The Bible moves us toward one thought, because God’s purpose is perfected in that way. Therefore if we can first separate ourselves from the confusion about the godhead, and settle it in our own mind, the difference between Jesus the Son of God and the Father (which is Spirit without a physical form) we can always separate the person of the Son from the two thoughts that cause a problem. When I speak of two, I am not talking about two gods. However you do have to realize there are two intellects incorporated in the one human body. Jesus the Man had all the attributes of a man: The Father which descended upon Jesus the Son when John baptized Him that day, also had His own sovereign intellect, so when He took up His abode in the body of His Son Jesus, both were incorporated in the same vessel of human flesh. The Father, which is Spirit, joined with the spirit of His Son and they became ONE SPIRIT, but the Son still retained a separate identity as pertaining to the intellect. Otherwise He could not have properly said, (John 5:36) “But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.” In another verse we hear Jesus say, (John 9:4) “I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” God Himself was not speaking these words: The man in whom the Father dwelt, was speaking. Notice these next two verses. (John 10:37) “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. (38) But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in Him.” They became ONE, as pertaining to Spirit, but each intellect had a separate identity. When those same lips spoke the words of this next verse, that was not the Son doing the speaking, because the I AM that spoke to Moses was long before Jesus was born. Notice, (John 8:58) “Jesus said unto them, (The words came from His lips.)Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I AM.” When God spoke to Moses about sending him to deliver the children of Israel from bondage, Moses said to God, When I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is His name? what shall I say unto them? Here in this next verse is how God answered him. (Exodus 3:14) “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” Those ancient Jews knew God was not to be thought of in plural terms, as so many people came to think of Him going through time. Search the scriptures: He has always been ONE, never three. Amen