Rev. Raymond M Jackson

I have already said, It has been a long time since I preached a message that I want to give as much attention to how I would say certain things, as I would this particular message that we started last Sunday. I know, across the internet hookup and wherever this goes, there are a lot of old time Pentecostal people that will say, you have to be wrong Bro. Jackson. I have met many, some are good friends, wonderful people, but I have to stand here today and defend something that I know is truth. I will challenge any doctor of divinity, regardless of who he is, or how much Greek he knows, how much Hebrew he knows, this or that, to prove me wrong. As I said last Sunday, we are titling this message, “Evidence-What is it?” The first thing most old Pentecostal people will say, well it is speaking in tongues. If you heard what I said last Sunday, speaking in tongues was a manifestation of the Spirit of God on the day of Pentecost. No one will deny that. You are saying that is a proof of having the Holy Ghost all through time. I have to retouch on some of those events and things I have said to let you take a look at the day and hour we live in. Keep in mind, in the 2nd chapter of the book of Acts, when the apostle Peter stood in the midst of the 120 and said, quoting the prophecy of Joel in the 2nd chapter, this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, it shall come to pass in the later days that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, old men shall dream dreams, young men shall see visions. Upon my handmaidens and servants will I pour out of my spirit. I will remind you that hold to an evidence, just show me in Joel the 2nd chapter where tongues were even mentioned. Well where did Peter get what he said? He takes it from Isaiah 28:8-9, for with stammering lips and men of other tongues will He speak unto this people, and yet for all of this, they will not believe. You will find the apostle Paul speaking also in 1st Corinthians the 14th chapter, that tongues was a sign, he never said a thing about an evidence. That is your own concoction, out of your own English way of saying things. Not only that, they say initial evidence. Well when you put the two words together, that is like in a court today, where is the smoking gun? Now I will grant you that when we look at the total picture of the early Church, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit was manifested in and through the body of believers. Not only was tongues evident, prophecy was also evident. The reason I am going back to this is because I want to ask this, what was the Holy Spirit given for? To let you speak in tongues? What is the purpose of it? First it is life. Who is the origin of it? God Himself. God takes of Himself and gives you a measure of Himself, because He is the only source of life there is in the universe. The Holy Ghost is not a byproduct cooked up. It is absolutely the Spirit of life, which is God Himself. He divides Himself (so to speak) among the body of believers. Paul also wrote in 1st Corinthians 12, from the 4th verse down through the 7th, as he described the manifestation through the gifts, in the 7th verse he said, but the manifestation, the manifestation means to put on public display. The manifestation of the Spirit of God is given to every man to profit withal. So we are saying this, in the initial onset of the Church, keep in mind, that original 120 had already followed Jesus. I don’t say that they all followed Him for three and a half years, but the most followed Him for the biggest part of that period. Then when we do come to the Gentiles, He gave them more or less the same type of manifestation. But what else is the Holy Spirit supposed to do? First, He is supposed to lead you. Jesus, in St. John’s gospel said repeatedly, He will teach you all things, He will bring to your remembrance all things whatsoever is spoken to you. He will guide you into all truth. So He repeatedly states, that the main objective of the Holy Spirit is not only to give you life, but it is to teach you to have an understanding of what the Word of God declares. Then it is to guide you, how you as an individual is going to be used in the particular service that God has ordained for you within the body of believers. Therefore He is a leading Spirit. Otherwise the apostle Paul would not have wrote this in Romans, the 8th chapter, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. That literally means, you don’t just up and take the words of certain groups of people because, well I feel you should do this, and I feel that you should do that, I feel that you should say this. We have had enough of that through our denominational circles, people depending on someone else for spiritual leading. Sometimes, yes, God will honor it, but most of the time God wants the individual to depend on Him for leadership, what to do, where to go and so forth. Also, the Holy Spirit was give to you to teach you and instruct you, to show you what God wants to develop in your life, such as character and conduct. This is why the apostle Paul, in many places, would speak, put you on the Lord Jesus Christ and give none occasion to fulfil the lust of the flesh. Know this though, you do not put Him on in one day. You gain the knowledge of what the character of Christ was like, and that God wants to develop that in you. We just have to realize though, that the Holy Spirit was not given to the Church just so everyone could speak in tongues and then go sit down somewhere and bathe your soul in the sunshine of God’s love, and never learn anything more. Paul then said in Ephesians 4, verse 30, grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. That literally means exactly that, do not grieve Him that is in you to teach and lead you. You are admonished to learn what is in you, and learn what He wants to do in you and through you. There is a lot that the Holy Spirit has to do inside of us, to get us in a place where we can be led. I will say also, God is in the process, and has been in the recent number of decades, of gradually restoring His true Church back to its original identity. I am going to prove to you today, that not all tongue talkers are going to be in the Bride of Christ. When you start saying that speaking in tongues is the evidence of having the Holy Ghost, I will say to you emphatically, It is not! There are a lot of Trinitarians, and also a lot of oneness, Jesus only people who declare that tongues is an evidence, and when you ask the oneness, what about the Trinitarian side? You hear, oh they are going to hell. Why are they going to hell? Is it because they spoke in tongues? Well, they have a devil. I say to that, They no more have a devil, than you Jesus only people. You think you have the evidence, and what you call evidence is just a sign of His presence. How many know what I am saying? Do not say that just because some group spoke in tongues, they are all going to wind up with white robes of fine linen. They absolutely are not. I will say this, when we do reach the end of this message, in conclusion, I am going to say, there is going to be a lot of tongue talking Pentcostals on both sides of the fence, that are going to wind up as foolish virgins. There are a lot of Methodists and Baptists and Catholics that have been going to the charismatic meetings, and that have also spoken in tongues, shouted and danced. They are going to wind up in the tribulation as foolish virgins. Why? Because they will not let the Holy Spirit teach them anything. That is why I say this morning, the Holy Spirit did not come into you just to give you a gift to go on down the road and brag about having it. He comes into you to lead you. He is not going to lead you, and teach you how to be a good Methodist or Baptist. All that He truly dwells in, are going to learn how to be a good, genuine Holy Ghost filled Christian. Now we can say this, in the first age, the Holy Ghost filled the believer. As I said last Sunday, let us lay aside this old terminology, well he has the baptism of the Holy Ghost, because that term was only used by John the Baptist to make a point. It never was used by the apostles in the book of Acts. Look it up, and you will see that it never was used like that as believers were added to the Church. They were filled, or the Spirit fell on them, or they received the Spirit. That is the terms used that you see in the book of Acts. It was never said, that they received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Sometimes it is hard to explain to people when they use term, but if you receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost, you have got it. You might have received an anointing, but that does not mean you received the whole thing of being filled with the Spirit. In the early Church, every dynamic attribute that the Church was required to have was manifested. It filled the believers. The manifestations of that Spirit was in the body, in the individual believers, in order that the Spirit could minister to the body of Christ collectively. It built character in every one of them. It was a teaching Spirit in every one. It led the believer in service. He is the power of God in you, to help you overcome your troubles, your problems, and your every day encounters that might serve as something to make you feel bad. Although God had put in His Church all those attributes, what did Jesus say in Matthew 24, when one of the first things His disciples asked, was, what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world and so forth? His first remark was, Beware of false prophets, or false teachers. Let no man deceive you. The Church had not even gotten into the middle of the first age, when here came the deceivers with false revelations. They did not say that they were not Christians, they did not come down the road and say that they were infidels and pagans. They came down the road claiming to be believers in the Lord Jesus, filled with the Holy Ghost, but they had a strange revelation, every one of them did. As we look to these things, the apostle Paul was constantly addressing the local churches that he had established through the epistles. Let me establish this in your mind first, that every epistle Paul wrote, he wrote for true believers. He wrote half of the New Testament. Not one of those letters was written to produce foolish virgins. You everyone know that is true. Paul had one picture of what the body of Christ is, and what it should look like. He specifically wrote of what the body of Christ was to consists of. So his main message in every epistle was for the believers that were filled with the Holy Ghost, led, taught, and motivated by Him. In other words, these are the requirements, beware of deceivers, false teachers and all self willed know-it-all kind of characters. Nevertheless after awhile somebody would come along and upset the foundation of some of those churches. Do you know why they were able to do that? Because there were always some that were not yet grounded in the faith. I say to everyone of you this morning, when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, and you trust that Spirit to lead and direct you, (I am going to say something, and I want to say it kindly, and wisely.) for goodness sakes, know who you are listening to. Regardless of what kind of education, and what kind of experience they have had, and how nice they look, and how they comb their hair, learn to listen to what is said; and then learn to watch the actions of that person. Sometimes it is not what they teach, it is certain actions that begin to give an indication of something that is not quite right. Some may say, Well, I don’t’ see anything wrong. There are a lot of young people today, that never see anything wrong in anything. Please, brothers and sisters, I am not saying these things to hurt anyone, but to put you on guard. You can sit there in those pews and say, you are just a mortal man like everybody else. That is true; and that has been said for the last thirty seven years. I wish you could read some of the letters I get from overseas. I received a very nice one the other day from a man overseas: I have never seen him, but he wrote, Bro. Jackson: I have been receiving your Contender for, he told me how long. He told me what the little groups of the Branham followers have been through over there in his country. Then someone came along one day and gave him a Contender. He said, I looked at that and thought, that makes more sense than anything I have ever heard. He said, so over a period of time I have been getting it. He said, Bro. Jackson, you are my father, that is the way he said it. You have established me in the Bible, you have put me on the foundation of what the apostles taught. May God bless you. Well, I can say this, when you have the Holy Spirit, it is not going to lead you to sit down and listen and open your ears up to anything and everything you hear. You are going to have inside of you a certain convicting feeling. You have to have a knowledge of what this really says and how a man’s actions go with it. The apostle Paul said, be an example of the believer in word, and in deed, that is your actions, how you conduct yourself. It is one thing for me to get up here and say a lot of nice things from the Word of God, but if I go out of here and you see me conducting myself in a social manner that does not become a true Christian character, you have a right to question me. On the other hand, if all you want to do is run up and down the road, well I don’t think Bro. Jackson can be right in everything, Who are you helping? I have to say this, if you want to criticize me like that, help yourself. The devil knows exactly where you said that, when you thought that, and one of these days he will hit you between the eyes with a haymaker. He is going to leave you senseless somewhere, because you have never made up your mind on anything. That is why I said years ago, when as yet I did not have the filling of the Holy Spirit, I was a Methodist. But in the month of February 1952, you have heard me say, God sat me down, because I had a habit, every morning before going to the field or anything, I wanted to read something in the scriptures. I read in St. Luke the 1st chapter, and just by reading there, something within me said, if these words be true, He is going to send the Elijah spirit again before the second coming of Christ. I was so happy I could have told you Pentecostals to go jump off a cliff. How many Pentecostals have I heard say, that is not in the Bible. It is in the Bible! You can say, oh that was for John the Baptist. Well yes, that was the first advent, but that is sure not the second advent. Next, he will turn the hearts of the children, who are the children? They are the Holy Ghost filled believers of our day. I say to you bunch of supposed to be Gentile Christians, supposed to be filled with the Holy Ghost and yet you cannot be taught anything. He will either turn your faith back to the faith of the early Church fathers, or you are out of the picture. That is more than just speaking in tongues. That gives you a revelation from the beginning to the ending of this book, what the Church will look like as she faces the end time. As I sat there on that February morning, when I got through reading that, I turned back to Malachi 4, I read verses 1, 2, and 3. I saw right there, that at that time, that angel who was speaking to Zechariah in the temple, quoted Malachi for the first advent, that was John the Baptist. But the last part of that prophecy, he never touched at all. That is when something said inside me, that if we are living in the days just before the coming of Christ, He will send that spirit of Elijah again. At that time I did not know who, where, when, or how. Then in the month of August I was introduced to Bro. William Branham. I had been invited to come to the Tabernacle to hear him for the first time. When I got up to leave that night, I had never yet shaken his hand. He had never yet spoken a word to me. But something inside me said, this is that man. I walked out of there going toward my car with the thought in my mind, and you could not have stopped me for anything in the world. After that first service, Bro. Glenn had grabbed me and said Bro. Jackson, I want you to come here: I want to introduce you to Bro. William Branham. I thought, me, just a little country farmer, I am not even worthy to be introduced to such a great man that has been around the world. When Bro. Glenn took me to meet Bro. William Branham, I saw a little man standing there, and we were introduced to each other. That was before church order had been made. This was in the fall of 1952. He was standing there talking with about six or seven other people. The service was over and people were leaving. Bro. Glenn led me up on the platform. Bro. William Branham turned and looked at me. I say this, when I left there that night, I said, the devil is not going to see daylight between me and that man. I learned not to worship his flesh like many people do, but I learned to respect the things that he said about the Word of God. Believe me, I have heard A. A. Allen, Oral Roberts, Velmar Garnder, W. V. Grant, and many others, but of all of them, not a one of them, to me, could compete with this little man. He made Jesus stand head and shoulders taller than any other man ever had. I will say this, hoping I can solidify some people, know what you believe and why you believe it. Do not believe anything just because you heard me say it. If what I am saying cannot be confirmed from the Bible, you should go somewhere else. On the other hand, if you can find vindication in the Bible, then listen and pay attention to me. I do not say these things to be arrogant. I say this because it is time we believers should stop playing around, running all over creation with the heebie-jeebies, the can’t-be-stills, the gadabouts, the run-arounds, and not know who or what we are going to listen to. I say that with respect, because it is the Holy Spirit that is going to teach you, if you really do get it. He is going to teach you things that are absolutely right, He is also going to teach you that some things are wrong. He is going to put a caution in your heart and mind, what is wrong and what is right. When these false teachers begin to come, keep in mind they were already on the scene by the middle of the first age of Christendom. Here they come, one teaching circumcision, another one teaching some part of the Law that everyone should keep. What an argument. Over a period of time, that caused a lot of confusion. That is why the apostle Paul in his Epistles, constantly warned the Church, beware of these kinds of things, because it is by grace through faith that we are saved. Not the observance of a day, or keeping of some ritual or festival or any such thing. The early Church was founded on a true revelation of the Word of God. Then, by the closing hours of the first age, the first major doctrine of the scriptures that the Church began to lose, was the revelation of the godhead. You will find that verified in the little epistles of John, in the second epistle of John, which is only one chapter. At that time in 90 A.D. the apostle John was saying these words in verse 7. “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. (You have to understand, John is referring to this because he is a Jew, he knows exactly the revelation of God being manifested in the flesh of Jesus Christ His Son.) This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, (or taught) but that we receive a full reward. Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, (That is referring to the godhead.) hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.” In other words, when you have the true picture, you know good and well that the Holy Ghost in you is the gift of God, but He is in you to produce the character of Christ. “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, (or this teaching) receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed.” That is how the early Church conducted themselves. Later on there could be heard from some, well I don’t see anything wrong with him. He is so gentle and kind, and what he says sounds right. He speaks with kindness, and that Jackson is arrogant. Well here are some young people sitting on the front row, that have been here all their life. Have I ever looked at you and said something mean? How many know what I am talking about? When you say something with a sound of authority, then some will say, now it could be like this, you know. Take for instance, if I come along saying something so nice, now it could be that way, a little more or a little less. I have heard these doctors of divinity from Asbury, Wilmore and others, that can use smooth language and terminology, that can lose you in their fancy words. When they are done, you have sat there, scratching your head, what did he say and what did he mean? I have listened to many of them. To my brothers and sisters, believers in the Lord Jesus Christ I say, I do not mean to make my voice sound arrogant or harsh, but in trying to speak with authority on certain things I know what I am talking about, it may seem that way to some. When I know exactly what I am looking at, I am hoping to express it in a way that people can learn. By the time of closing of the first age, the churches had become an open battlefield at times, because the older guards of the true revelation had passed from the scene. As the congregations lost the revelation of the godhead, by the time of going into the second age, it was a big argument, rather than true worship. That is why I said the Church became a battleground. Here came teachers and philosophers, one after another. Coming through the the second age, going into the third, and by the year 325, the doctrine of the trinity became a widely accepted teaching. That is when Constantine, the emperor of Rome, had seen the Christian world at that time in such disarray, he was the one that called a meeting of all the bishops from all universal Christendom. Many of them that came from different places, wound up giving voice to those that stood for the trinity side. When the doctrine of the godhead became trinity, then they stopped completely, the baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it became a practice of baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which is not a name at all, just three titles. From then on, coming on through the third century into the fourth century, it was one thing after another. The Church just went further and further in losing the original doctrines it was founded on, and by the time of 500 A.D. the devil had brought the foundation of Christendom down to a pagan foundation. By that time the bishops all over the universal Christian world were fussing, who is the greatest, who has the most authority? Christendom was represented in five major centers, but they finally all settled on the fact, if the Roman world could be ruled from Rome, why should the Church not be ruled from Rome also? That gave the bishop that sat at Rome the authority. From then on we can say this, that began to be the beginning of what we call the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t say that to belittle any Roman Catholic, because we have ex-Catholics sitting in here. They know what I am talking about. I say these things with respect because we have all been made subject to different things as we made our way to where we are now. But I have to say, in these last days, God is not coming for a Church made up of everyone still believing like they did when they were out in the charismatic realm. A few years ago there was a moving of the Spirit in Toronto, they called it the Toronto blessing. It was ministered by Catholic nuns and laymen. People were going there from many places. Also up at the Indiana University of Perdue, they had another moving of the Spirit, that has been several years ago. That is Catholic. There has been a lot of people touched by these charismatic moves, but they come right out of it believing in the blessings, the sensations, and how to worship, being to cry, and weep. You cannot teach them anything about the foundation of the gospel of Christ. They feel that they have everything they need and have no desire for anything beyond that. If you start talking about doctrines, they say oh doctrines divide. Doctrines are supposed to divide. Doctrines are supposed to divide the tares from the true seed in due time. The true doctrines, when you put them together in their right proportions, are the framework around which you build your individual faith, then you are founded upon none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. By the time of 500 A.D. there was no longer anyone baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, because all had adopted a trinity godhead. From then on the doctrine of eternal security of the believer, and the predestination of the true believer, were all counted as things that had come from a bygone era. The further and deeper they went into the Catholic era, the more carnal their belief became. Sanctification of the believer was gone. It was not long until those of the Catholic system could still chew tobacco, use their snuff, drink alcoholic drinks, use vulgar words, just as long as he said Hail Mary so many times, and made the sign of the cross. I have seen them today just exactly the same way. One time when we were in Israel, there were several from Canada and from here that went with us to Israel. Coming back on a giant 747, we were coming into the New York area. There was a big storm in that area, that reached up high in the air. They gave us warning of the bad weather conditions, so if the plane gave some rough ride, quivering and such, they did not want us to think anything of it. They put us in a circling pattern over the New York area. All the planes were lined up. The pilots had to take their turn coming down to land. One had already landed down below that had closed one runway. This only left one runway for all the rest to land on. We were flying along, every once in awhile the wings would vibrate, as we would hit a rough spot. Then just outside the plane was a terrible bolt of lightning, it turned the inside of the plane green, the plane felt like it had hit a rock mountain. I could not help but notice all the Hail Mary’s and the crosses. I had never seen anything like it. I am not making fun of the Catholics, just giving you a report. I just thought, my, that really makes them aware of something. Finally, when we had landed, I saw some people walk off the plane, that looked like they were taking in a deep breath for the first time since we encountered that storm. So tradition has affected so many people in life, their life is molded around it. They cannot walk out and look up and just say thank you Lord, for the sunshine, thank you for a good breakfast, a good meal, and for your bountiful blessings.

STRAIGHT TALK

You can find various opinions about the right and wrong of some worship practices, so I want to help you look at time. I want to remind some of the Pentecostal’s who think speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of receiving the Holy Ghost, that it was not always like that. I am going to bring you through the time just before the Reformation started. I have read in history of the 14th century, when there was a minority type of people in Europe, the Huguenots and Waldenses, which were not of the elite, wealthy people of Europe. They all belonged to the system, but the Catholic system was out to get rid of everything they considered to be heresy. These Huguenots and Waldenses began to feel that because of the things they believed in, sooner or later the Catholic Church would round them up and martyr them. That did happen to some of them. In some of the histories I have read, a manifestation of prophecy was given in the midst of some of those groups. God used this as a means to verbally tell these people where to go and what to do. I would have to ask, was that a mistake on God’s part? Do you think it was? No. It was not, and to me, that was just as much evidence as anything else, when you are looking for evidence. That was how those people managed to escape the clutches of that terrible tyranny the Catholic Church brought against them, coming on through time, just before 1900. I remember the testimony of a man named Demas Shekarian (spelling ?) He used to be the president of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Association. We went down to Alabama one time to be in a meeting where Bro. William Branham was speaking. Demas Shekarian was a descendant of some of the Armenian Christians that had been filled with the Holy Ghost back before the turn of the century. In that period of time, just before the dawning of 1900, the Holy Ghost moved on these Armenian people also. They not only began to prophesy, they were also having visions. Nothing was said about them speaking in tongues, but there was a fourteen year old boy among them, the Holy Ghost came upon that boy, and for hours he sat under the influence of this vision. He wrote a prophecy, and drew a picture. In this prophecy it told there would come a certain time when these people would be persecuted. When this time comes, you will flee this area and make your way across the continent of Europe to the western side of the coast. There you will board a ship and sail into the new world. Once in the new world, you will eventually make your way across land and settle in the western part of the new world. After the prophecy had been given by that young boy, that group of Armenian Christians, filled with the Holy Spirit, remembered this. Then one day here came the Muslim army right into Armenia. That was before the Russians took over. A lot of the other Christians had been slaughtered by them. If I remember the testimony right, the group his mother was in, some of the relatives, they were all in the middle of a street, as a group, kneeling down, expecting to be killed. They were praying. The commander of the group of Muslims, came riding up on horseback, looking at them. They were weeping and praying with their hands in the air. The commander motioned to the men, leave them alone. When they all rode off, this group remembered that prophecy that had been given a few years prior, so very slowly, they made their way across Europe. They all eventually made it to the new world, made their way to California and his relatives were in the Azuza Street meeting when the Holy Ghost was poured out upon them. I want to say this to the Pentecostal people, knowing that many of them came out of the Nazarene’s, that at one time used to speak in tongues. The original place at Azuza Street was the beginning of a Nazareen revival. Many of them were Methodists, Baptists, and so forth that came there. Then the Nazarene’s dropped it, they wanted nothing to do with an element of people that was going to speak in tongues. Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit was poured out, and many of them did speak in tongues. I met some men who knew some of the old timers, and they said there was a lot of fanatical things that went on there just as well. Some people who were supposed to be running in the Spirit fell and broke their wrists, or a finger, or an arm, trying to walk the backs of benches. Some were in the Spirit and some were not in the Spirit. So I have to say, there is nothing wrong with running in the spirit, if you are in the Spirit. I heard Perry Green say one time, I was running, but when I turned the corner I slipped and went down on my side, it knocked the breath out of me, and I have never run since then. Well that is why I have to say, know that you are in the Spirit and you will never have to say you will never run again. I hope you everyone understand what I am saying? Is that putting a damper on anybody? No. It only means I am putting the truth out here to guide you. I am saying to you, The Holy Spirit, down through time has manifested Himself in many different ways. Back in the time of the Methodists and Baptists, back about 1825, in eastern Kentucky, there was a group of Methodists and Baptists that got together to have a community revival. They did not know what God was going to do. No sooner had they started, that the power of God began to slay the people, they would lay on the floor for hours, then someone would haul them home while they were like that. This went on in John Wesley’s meetings. I am asking the Pentecostal’s today, who hold to this evidence thing, what was that, that made them lay on the floor for hours, so they had to haul them home? Some will say, Yes, but they did not receive the Holy Ghost. How do you know they didn’t? The Holy Spirit has got to be in there first. The Bible says in Acts 2, they heard a sound like the sound of a rushing mighty wind. They heard that first. Have you heard that? I have. Then they saw cloven tongues like fire sitting on then. Well I have not seen anything like that, but I have felt it come inside. They were all filled first, and, is a conjunction, then they began to speak in tongues. So I am saying, when we are living after a thousand years of Dark Ages of Christendom, and Christianity going through all that turmoil and confusion, God has His own way to restore His Church. You and I are not going to set the pattern, the time, the place, when, what or where. He has already determined what He is going to do. I have read of a man who was before John Wesley, George Whitfield was his name. Some of the same manifestations went on in his revival meetings all over England and Europe. Then came John Wesley. These manifestations did go on in John Wesley’s ministry. They would just fall out on the floor in the Spirit, and later, someone would pick them up and haul them home. I have ask, what was wrong with them? Some would say, well it could be the Spirit of God, but they didn’t get filled. Well I have to say they got filled with something. William Cary followed along after that, and then George Mueller, Charles Finney and Dwight L. Moody. You read the records of those men. There was a constant manifestation of the Holy Ghost in their meetings, where people were slain in the Spirit. Even the sick were prayed for and were healed. I am just saying today, when God starts restoring His Church, He has already restored manifestations of His Spirit, which bear witness of what He is going to do, and when He does it, He will do it the way that pleases Him and never will He ask me, can I do this, or not? He will do what He wants to do, with whoever He wants to. When time did move into the 20th century and God gave the Pentecostal experience, that was God restoring the manifestation of gifts. I will say to the Pentecostal systems today, on either side of the fence, you cannot say that they baptized at that time in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I know they did not. They were all Trinitarians. As they received these experiences, speaking in tongues and things like that, they started going out to different parts of the world preaching this experience instead of the Gospel. All of a sudden, and I have read the testimonies, God was going to begin to restore baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, but there was no man coming across the country with this revelation. I have read the testimony of men, how they could be sitting at a breakfast table with their Bible open, meditating, praying before they go to work. Maybe an audible voice, or maybe God would just cause them to open up to Acts the 2nd chapter, and when they would see how the early Church baptized, either that would come right out at them and they would look at it and see it so vividly, or at other times, I have read the testimonies of different persons, an audible voice would say, will you take my name? When they would hear that, they knew that meant they had to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many times they would go to a friend and relate it to that brother. That brother would see it, and they would baptize each other. Brother Spoehr who lives in Wisconsin, has an old magazine that the oneness people had put out there in the beginning of their meetings. I have read the story. Up in a certain place in eastern Indiana, this man from out west was called to be in their meeting. He too was a Trinitarian. The pastor had asked him to come. The meeting had lasted about three weeks. A lot had received this experience. But at that time, they were all Trinitarians. On the day they were going to have the baptism, they were all down at the river. The pastor and the evangelist are standing, getting ready to baptize a certain person. A supernatural voice spoke to this evangelist, bury that person in my name. The pastor heard something, but he did not distinguish what it really was. He looked at the evangelist, what was that? The evangelist said, nothing. Again the voice said, bury that person in my name. Then the pastor heard it and asked, what did He say? The evangelist said, I will tell you when we get back to the house. He went ahead and buried all of them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. That was recorded in this article in the oneness magazine. When they went back to the house, sitting around the table, then the pastor asked the evangelist, what did He say down at the river? The evangelist replied, He said to bury them in His name. The pastor said, then let us study this. They went to the book of Acts, and every place they saw baptism performed by the early Church, it was done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the pastor said to the evangelist, then you will re-baptize every one of us. I have read many testimonies of that hour of time, around about 1908 into 1912, among the Trinitarians, God would speak to a man, or a family, that would cause them to follow water baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. What was God doing? He was restoring the proper way of baptism. Listen carefully, they still do not yet have a true picture of the godhead, but they do have a picture of water baptism. Out of that change, came mainly the old oneness teaching, that Jesus was God. Well that was good for its day, at least He was not the third person of a trinity, nor the second, but the only person of the godhead. As time passed, the Trinitarian side stayed trinity. Let us look at this now, both sides had an evidence experience, but only one group received a revelation of proper baptism, not necessarily of the full godhead, but at least on the part of baptism. All this time, each group has sat on their side of the denominational barrier, or the fence. The oneness say of the others, oh they are going to hell. I Just have to say, the trinity are not going to hell any quicker than the oneness are. The oneness have got to the place you can not teach them anything. They have no further insight into what the Holy Spirit is given for than the other faction has. They denominate and form their organization, they have written their bylaws, and there they sit. They will not budge, they will not change, I know what I believe, they will say. I have to say, yes, you believe just like the Baptists, not the same things, but you are just as stubborn as the Baptists or the Methodists. When the time came for God to raise up a man to fulfill that spirit of Elijah, I can see a little man, he was a Baptist, but God gave him an experience. Through his younger life, I read the story of how God would speak to him from the trees, and bushes, and the Pentecostals think it is crazy, just nonsense. Well, it was a bush on fire that God spoke to Moses from, but they think God does not work that way any more. I have to say one thing, you are not going to find him speaking from the top of the Statue of Liberty, I would rather think He would speak from the roof of a barn somewhere, than from some elite kind of setting. He did manifest in both ranks of Pentecost, speaking in tongues, some of them did, some of them prophesied. I am saying this, when you see each denomination in their particular setup, they have not come to the fulness of the truth? They have not allowed anything beyond what they already have. When God used that little man, and gave him an unusual gift of divine healing, wherever he went, there sat the Trinitarians and also the Jesus name people. One time when Bro. William Branham was in Topeka, Kansas, we went to the meeting. They had a Jesus name pastor, he was one of the pastors of the Topeka group that helped sponsor his meeting. He knew this Trinitarian Assembly of God man, they both lived there in the same city. One night this Jesus name pastor got up and said, I told my friend, I believe in one God so much, I use three in one oil to anoint. That is the way some of those denominational characters are. Nevertheless, I have to say, they have themselves all hemmed in, locked in, and you cannot budge them. Then here came this little man, (Bro. Branham) I never did hear him stand and say, yea I say unto thee, I am Malachi 4, come quickly. Never were any words said like that. It seemed like God manifested His power in and through the man in such a simple way, people that really did have the Holy Spirit leading them, working in them, began to study this man. They could not help but see something unusual going on and thought, I need to take hold of some of the things he has taught. So I can say this, down the road of life he came, finally he began to touch a little on the godhead, and on water baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus.

PERSONAL TESTIMONY
OF BROTHER JACKSON

I was sitting there in Bro. William Branham’s meetings, just a little old Methodist from down in Harrison County, God had already showed me in 1952 that the spirit of Elijah is coming again, and I was a Methodist. The first time I went to hear that man, oh my, it just changed my whole perspective about how I looked at things. After I was introduced to him, he started coming down home to rabbit hunt and squirrel hunt. I thought, if I could get this man in Rogers Campground Methodist Church, we would have a real revival, we would turn the old church upside down. That is the way I looked at it. So I would ask him, but he would just say, Bro. Junie, I will pray about it, if God leads, I will come. One Sunday morning, I was sitting about the third seat back from the front, and in his message, he brought in the Holy Spirit, and said, it is for every one of you, even you Methodists, and he looked right at me. Now some people would take offense at that. I didn’t, I just thought, I want everything God will give me. It was not long until I could be found in the barn praying, in a cow stable. I will say this for the sake of the evidence people. I went with Bro. Glenn across the river to a high school building in Louisville, that was in the early spring of 1953, in the month of April. When I heard that evangelist say, I am going to be praying for those that really want more of God in their lives. If you are here and you want more of God in your life, you fast a meal the day you come. Well, I thought if one meal would do good a whole day would be better, just like the old Indian, all three will do better. So when I got in that line, I didn’t know what to expect. I was a Methodist. But I expected something to happen. I was about the third one up in the line, I heard the words come out of his mouth, Lord, you have your hand upon this young man’s life. He just touched me on the top of my head. Something came into my head, it went right down through my feet and I just fell at his feet. Here I was, laying on the floor. That old Methodist thought came to me, now you don’t look right laying here like this. I thought, I will get up, but when I put my elbow under me, I just strained and pushed, I couldn’t move. The thought came to me, if God has his hand on me, then Lord have your way. About that time the power of God began to surge through me, it felt like I had been hooked up to a huge electric current, that is the best I can describe it. It was going through my whole being, I thought, if I could just die like this. I am ready to go to glory. I tried to open my eyes and all I could see was one great big light. Laying there on the floor, I felt so helpless. Finally someone said, you can get up. I thought, get up, I can’t even move. Bro. Glenn took hold of my arms and helped me to my feet. I stood there wobbling. I can say to the Pentecostal evidence people, no, I didn’t speak in tongues, but I am going to tell you, if you had been standing there with your fingers pointing to me, well you haven’t received the Holy Ghost, I would have felt like saying, you go jump in the creek, because something has sure set me on fire. I say that only for the sake of saying, the Spirit of God is the power of God, it is God Himself. He can come to you any way, in any form He sees fit, to meet your need. I began to pray, Lord, just let me speak in tongues, somewhere, somehow, and I promise I will never preach it as evidence, because I could see the falsehood of it. It went on until the fall when I was in another meeting. I went on Saturday night just to be prayed for, my prayer was Lord, you do something for me, let me speak in tongues or something. I will say to those who believe in the evidence of speaking in tongues, when I got in that line, there was a line of preachers on each side. By the time I got up where the preachers were, that drunken feeling started taking hold of me, I began to stagger, I had no control, I fell forward. To big arms grabbed me and drug me, with my head hanging down, and laid me down in the straw. This was in a tent meeting. The thought came to me, I will feel like I did that other night. No, I did not, but when I had laid there about a minute, it felt like something began to swell up in my stomach. I thought, what is this, it was like a rock coming down a tube. When it came out my mouth, it was a word. Those rocks just kept flowing and those words just kept flowing. Here I am laying face down in the straw, talking in another language. I never felt like I was electrified or anything. I lay there probably about seven or eight minutes, talking in another language, when I got up from there, I did not stagger back to my feet, I walked back to my seat. I came home thinking, God, you have let me speak in another language. I sure didn’t feel like I did that other night when I was over there in the high school. But I know now, so I can say this, from that experience, I began to pray Lord, if this is to be followed, let it be a gift in my life. There is an old barn down in Harrison County, at a place where we lived for nine years, and there was an old oats bin in there. Some wonderful experiences happened to me in that old oats bin. Remember, it is not how pretty the place is, it is the condition of your heart. In that oats bin, I have said this, if the neighbors would have come into that barn at any time, they would probably have run off in fright, thinking some guy has got out of jail and is carrying on in there. I liked to pray in the oats bin because there was liberty in there. When you get the Holy Ghost, why shut Him up in your life, why don’t you let Him lead you? Stop this thing of saying, I have it all. It is only a beginning in your life. He wants to show you something, while He is perfecting His Church, pulling it out of systems, giving them their individual experiences, He is going to have a Church here in the end time that will look just exactly like the first one. But He is going to leave some Pentecostal tongue talking, Charismatic tongue talking, denominational people sitting where they are. They don’t even care where they are, just as long as they can speak in tongues. That is why I say, we have looked back at the foolish virgins and said, that is the Methodists, the Baptists and Presbyterians. But now, this late in the day, look at them, they are out there in the Pentecostal groups just as blind as blind can be. You cannot teach them anything. They don’t want any more. Anything that goes beyond their denomination, is of the devil. Thank God for what He has done for His Bride and for how He is going to put it together. Everything that is going to be, will be exactly the way He wants it. But there is one thing sure, our mind is not going to be twisted up, distorted with all kinds of evidence, this and that, trying to argue with somebody. I am not belittling anyone’s experience, please do not think that. When you look and see an element of people scattered all over the world today, they are the product of a hundred years of Pentecostal teaching. In the last number of years when God had sent a messenger to help us get our belief, our faith straightened up, many times I have heard that man say, the Church will have every gift in it, He will restore all things. When people will insist, you have to speak in tongues as proof that you have the Holy Spirit, then I have to say here in the end time, especially you that are in this message, believing this message, if you want to insist that tongues is the initial evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life, what is your explanation of all these elements of people out here in the Pentecostal circles, trinity, oneness, and so forth, as well as in the charismatic circles, who do not claim to belong to any particular organization, but they are claiming that they have received the Holy Spirit? They have been blessed by speaking in tongues and so forth, but if you talk to them about other things of truth, they are ready to hang their head and say that is not so, I don’t see it, don’t tell me it is necessary. That is how that denominational spirit has totally convinced them that they have all they need.

WHAT THE THRESHING
IS TO ACCOMPLISH

Saints I have to believe, that we are in the day and hour when God will soon begin fulfilling what we read in Jesus’ seventh parable of Matthew, chapter 13, that in this end time, just before Jesus comes to take His Bride, it will be just as that parable shows. He will separate the true grain, which is His seed, His Church, His body, His Bride, from the tares (the make-believers). Let us come to a realization, tares are not beer drinkers, dance hall, honky-tonk runabout kind of people. We are going to find out that some of these tares are professors, they claim to believe and have everything they need. That is not the gospel St. Paul preached, you know it. Before I bring this message to a climax, I want to ask, Are any of you sure that the apostle Paul taught the initial evidence of the Holy Ghost was speaking in tongues? They will say, oh yes. Well I am looking at the 14th chapter as he wrote to the Corinthian church. When we read in the book of Acts how Paul spent several months there establishing this church, there is nothing said in the book of Acts, how many of these people received the Holy Ghost while he was there. But when reports came to him later, there were problems, how the Corinthian saints wanted to mis-use the gifts and so forth, which was the only church that compelled Paul to write an article dealing with these things. Paul did establish the fact that the manifestation of the Spirit of God has been given to every man, we are going to find that in the end time Church, every person in it, the Holy Spirit is going to manifest Himself in and through that person in some manner. We are going to find out that dreams and visions, prophecies and those things are going to begin to become more important. Let me read a few verses in this 14th chapter. Verse 1, Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks mysteries. But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the Church. That should be enough to convince any true believer. Bro. Allen gave me an article this morning from the newspaper. I mentioned Thursday night, President Bush, along with Blair of England, Putin of Russia, and the world leaders, as well as the U.N., are all behind this thing called the Roadmap of Peace for the Palestinians and the Jews. But in this article it plainly states, Arial Sharon and some of the higher officials in the Israeli government has found twelve things in this roadmap that they disagree with. If their disagreement with this does not please the ones who wrote it, they have already said they will walk out of the negotiation process. I have to believe we are approaching an era of time, that once it is set in motion, you or I are not going to change the agenda of anything. God is going to fulfill something in His word. We have got to be wise enough to know what we are looking at, what is going on and how to prepare ourselves for the event of our catching away. I believe there are some things God is going to do for His Church, and in His Church. But we have to have an understanding as an individual, what our place is in it, what part am I to function in all of it? God is not going to leave you here, ignorant. Sooner or later you are going to know. He is not going to whip you and compel you to do something. You are going to want to be something in His hands that He can use. Sooner or later that Holy Spirit in your life is going to be allowed to manifest in a way that you will recognize. Situations will necessitate it to be that way. It is the way each member begins to minister their little part to the overall body of Christ. When the apostle Paul was seeking to correct the misusage of some things we are looking at in this message, he laid it out exactly as it should be. I have thought a long time about this, so I ask the critics, are you sure that the apostle Paul taught an evidence of the Holy Ghost? Did he? Did he really say they all had to speak in tongues first, before anything else could be added? I can say this, I have already seen some things manifested by the Spirit of God, and they did not come through people that spoke in tongues. In this 14th chapter of 1st Corinthians, did you catch what Paul wrote? “Follow after charity, (which is love. Because love is absolutely the peak of your character, and without that, all these other things amount to very little. You are just a tinkling cymbal and a has-been. Paul spoke of that.) and desire spiritual gifts, but rather (Look that word up in the dictionary and see what it implies.) that ye may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue (Paul is not belittling it: he is just putting it in its proper perspective.) speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him.” On the day of Pentecost, that one hundred and twenty talking in other languages were understood. That is why those devout Jews from every nation under heaven, with about sixteen different dialects asked, what is this? We hear the wonderful words of God, or works of God, in the language wherein we were born. They understood it. That is why Peter, we could say, had the proper revelation of Isaiah 28:8-9, that with stammering lips and men of other tongues, other languages, He would speak to this people, and yet they would still not believe, That is the home bunch, but those from other nations did believe. Out of that element from other nations that came there on that feast day of Pentecost, there were three thousand of them that rushed forward. They had seen, and they had heard the power of God in action. God had, through these different dialects spoken unto them, and opened their eyes, but the local bunch did not see anything. That is why it was just stammering lips to some of them. Others just said, they are drunk. The prophecy in Joel did speak of that, hear ye this, ye drinkers of wine, and you old men, for the new wine is cut off from your mouth. The new wine was the Holy Ghost. I will finish reading the rest of that scripture. “But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the Church. (He is not doing away with tongues: but rather putting everything in its proper understanding. I am looking seriously at this other scripture. I am asking you evidence people, why don’t you read this. If the apostle Paul is a man that really believes in the evidence, what you believe is the initial evidence of the Holy Ghost, the speaking in tongues, there is no way he could have gotten around it in all these three chapters. He could have said, you did well when you received the Holy Spirit, by speaking in tongues. He could have said something like that. But let us listen to what he did say.) I would that ye all spake with tongues, (Think of that, I would that you all, (Did you catch that?) he knows that some of them have not.) but rather that ye prophesied: (But some would say, yes, but he has to speak in tongues first before he can prophesy. Paul would have taught it like that if that is so, if that was a fact. Paul would never have gone around the initial evidence, if he had believed like that. He would have put the evidence first and then all these other things secondary.) for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the Church may receive edifying.” That satisfies me, but there are always going to be some that will say, but I still believe you have to speak in tongues. That is one thing Paul dealt with in the first church age. That puts a question on the fact, did he ever teach an evidence? I do not believe he did, because he is the one that really laid the foundation for the Gentile Church. I grant you, Peter, at Cornelius’ house, is the first Jew that brought the gospel to the Gentiles. But that was just a household, but what we have been looking at, is a church that Paul established by being there for several months. When he first went to Corinth, he went into the Jewish synagogues. When he got permission to speak and say something, he did. He began to testify and witness about Jesus Christ. Some of the elders said they wanted nothing to do with that. Paul, when he walked out, just wiped the dirt off his feet. He was going to leave there, but the Lord gave him a vision and said, you stay here. I have many people in this place. So he went right next door and acquired the use of a building. Just imagine. Paul stayed there for several months and preached. There were Jews that became converted and there were Gentiles that were converted. That is why we have to believe Paul was there long enough to teach everything that was foundational, doctrine, conduct and character to an element of people that knew how to entertain the Holy Spirit in their lives. I am using that in the light of what I have already said in these messages. We do know this, the godhead was one of the first major doctrines, or revelations that the Church lost. It was replaced by a trinity, three gods. Then baptism in the name of Jesus Christ was replaced by baptizing according to Matthew 28:19, using three titles instead of the only name ever used by the early apostles. As time went on, by the time you come to the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, the devil had stripped the Church of the experience of the Holy Spirit dwelling inside the believers. The gifts are gone, and the major revelations and doctrines and the foundation of the faith of the person, is gone. By the time you get to the middle of the Dark Ages, the Roman Catholic system began to change. The overall picture of what the gospel was to produce, when you begin to study backward in the history of what happened, by the Catholic system of teaching, they wound up teaching, there is no salvation outside of the Roman Catholic Church. That is in their written creeds. Faith was gone. Not only faith in the Lord for salvation, but the world was plunged into utter spiritual darkness. They believed the Roman Catholic Church was the only system a person had to belong to, and that you had to believe what they taught in order to be saved. That is the way it went for the remainder of that long period called, the dark ages.

COMING INTO THE
REFORMATION

Coming into the time just before 1500, there were people that began to have a hunger and a thirst for something more. As they would endeavor to look into the scriptures, the Catholic system tried everything they could, to take the written Word of God from them. They compelled them to bring their Bibles, and pile them in the streets and burn them. They said the scriptures were only for the priests to read and learn from. Nevertheless, there was still an element of people that inwardly, something kept burning in their heart’s. That is why I mentioned the Huguenots and Waldenses. There were also the Moravians, then came the Mennonites and the Amish. Do you want to know why they still dress like they did in the 1400’s? That is the way they did in the old country, Europe. Their idea is, they want their homes to be just like they were then. It is a pitiful shame. They have the same lifestyle, they believe they have done it in order to serve the Lord. But they are as blind and ignorant of truth in other things, as anyone can be. It is a shame. Well coming on through time, you come to Martin Luther. When God began to deal with Martin Luther that day, he was climbing the steps of an old building, to kiss the statue of Mary up there. That statue had been kissed so many times, they say the imprints of the feet were almost wiped away. However while he was crawling up there in an act of penance, he heard an audible voice, like it came down through the corridor of heaven, Martin Luther, the just shall live by faith. That echoed into his soul. It startled him. That is why he went back to the place where he dwelled, and locked himself away for many days. The people that had admired him before, wondered what was wrong with him. One day when he came out of his dwelling. He had a long sheet of paper with ninety five things written on it. He walked down the street toward the old church at Wittenberg Germany. A crowd of people followed him. What was he up to? He went to the front of the church building and tacked this piece of paper on the church door. He turned and looked to the people and said, look, see what I have done, here I stand. When they began to read, there were ninety five things listed, that he had found wrong with the Roman Catholic Church. The people at that time, thought Martin Luther would be excommunicated or martyred. But at that time the king of Germany said to Luther, don’t worry, I will protect you. He protected him, threatening to use military force to defend him. That was the beginning of what we call “The Reformation.” From Marin Luther we come to John Knox, then George Fox. Each one of those men were feeding into this faith in God, a doctrine of the New Testament. The history declares how these men would go to extremes, but we have to understand, God was interested in restoring a truth in each case. If the Holy Spirit is going to deal in your life, and if you had lived then, whatever the hunger in your heart was, God would deal with you on the basis of that. God honored those men. Those movements spread across Europe into England. These revivals were what set off several years of contrary bickering back and forth. There was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the leadership of those men’s lives. All you have to read is some of the autobiographies of those men. God had to give them an experience, which gave them boldness inside to stand up against the pressure of the hour. That is why those reformers were not hillbilly preachers. They were educated men. Many of them had already learned to be priests, but when the Reformation started, they came out from that. That is why it is pictured like that in the book of Revelation. When you come to that beast, which had the face of a man, it is the wisdom of men that God puts in men down here, to combat the wisdom or the intellectual learning of political men. Those men had to constantly contest the power of the political structures and the system of the nations of that hour. The Holy Spirit moves on, but some people who profess to be believers, do not. They are satisfied with what they have already.

DOCTRINES DIVIDE

During the time we were talking about, eternal security came into the topic of argument, so you could take the Armenian people, the Methodists, the Nazarenes, all them out of that, because they said, doctrine is out of the pit of hell. We know it is in the Bible, but they will not accept it. I will say to you, how many times do you think, physically, you will ever be born into this world? You were conceived in your mother’s womb by your father, nine months later you were born. You are destined to live a quality of life, it is up to you to make out of it what you will. Do you understand my point? Many times you can be sick, break your leg, you can be handicapped, you can lay in bed, but you are still alive, you are breathing. Do you understand why I am saying this? If you have truly been born again by the Spirit of God, the old devil can hit you with a lot of disappointments and discouragement, causing you to stumble. That is his business. But if you have the Holy Spirit working in your heart, greater is He that is in you, than He that is in the world. You don’t just go to church somewhere to have it said, well I am a believer and get on the bandwagon, ride six months, then the first trial that comes along, it blows you off. There you are, right back with the same old crowd. You haven’t been born again. Don’t tell me you have. You might have had your mind changed for awhile. When something comes along that really convicts you of your rotten sins, it makes you begin to feel like you want to get somewhere to get this burden lifted. From then on, you want to begin to grow and find out, how can I serve the Lord more willingly. When God dealt with me like He did, to get me saved, I will never forget it. Sure, there have been disappointments, but there has never been a disappointment where I wanted to hang my head and walk away, and say, I leave it all, I don’t want anything to do with it. I have always known this world has nothing to make me feel happy, only disappointments, disillusionment. You will find out the same thing. The point is, when we come to John Wesley’s hour, John Wesley was out of the church of England. He began to pick up, more or less, the Armenian type belief, because he saw the extremism in the Knox teaching and George Fox teaching. Finally John Wesley came along with sanctification. Because up until that time, these men had established a doctrine and faith in the Lord, bypassing the system of the church. When we come to John Wesley’s hour, he capped this with the fact, we are going to leave the beer alone now, we are going to watch where we go, what kind of attendance we give to other places of meeting and such. That is why his major teaching was sanctification. Keep in mind, there was an experience in the Holy Spirit that went right along with John Wesley. I have a book at home that tells of some of the things that took place among the people were brought there in wagons, buggies and so forth. In those meetings, people would just be sitting there and the power of God would come on them, they would roll out in the floor, on the ground, whichever the case might be. John Wesley kept on preaching. Don’t tell me the Holy Spirit was not working, because some of those people had to be hauled home while they were like that. That is written. They did not come there drunk on alcohol. I don’t think they had taken an overdose of dope either, because they didn’t have such stuff back then. I have to say, there was a manifestation of the Holy Ghost that worked right along with those men. That is why I read those men’s names this morning. As we come out of the closing of the 1700’s, we come all through 1800, every one of those men that picked up the message kept the torch light burning. The power of God, the Holy Spirit, made His way into those groups of people. I know how the denominational system that had come out of those backgrounds are today. They don’t think that is necessary. That is exactly where they missed it. They no longer live a sanctified life, they are just as worldly and conformed to the world patterns as can be. That is why, down in Elizabeth, they built a brand new building. My wife was reading the paper the other day, they are going to have dances on Saturday night in that new church building. They need a dance about as bad as I need a possum to play with. Now that is just a figure of speech, if you understand what I mean by that. That is the modern church world today, their way of keeping their young people, by keeping them entertained. If the Holy Spirit cannot entertain you, then I have nothing left to entertain you with. You go on and get drunk, you go on and get intoxicated on dope. Real soon, you will be staggering around and you will wind up in a hospital somewhere, beating the walls. I hope the politicians are listening tonight. If the politicians in America, after WW2, would have thought the same about the things that were beginning to creep into America then, that the predecessors before them did, they would have shot every one of the dope peddlers as they entered the United States’ border. They would have gone looking for them, they would have shot their boats out from under them, they would have shot their planes out of the air. But no, some of these politicians and even police officers, played the game with them, a two handed system. So between the politicians and the law officials in high places, they are guilty of allowing this devilish thing to get into America to the degree it is, and now you have a dreaded disease and wondering how you are going to get rid of it. You are not going to get rid of it. You don’t want to get rid of it, you just want to make it look like you are getting rid of it. I will tell you one thing, when Jesus Christ comes, He is going to get rid of all that mess. Out of His mouth will come a sharp, two-edged sword. He will whack you everyone dead. That is what the Bible declares. He will slay the wicked. Their dead bodies shall lie from one end of the earth to the other. I saw today on the News, more cases have occurred in China of this dreaded disease that is running rampant. They don’t know what to do or how to control it. Well the Bible speaks of that, pestilence in diverse places, these are the beginning of sorrows, heartaches, frustration, things that make people want to pull their hair out, all because they want to out smart God. God is not going to let them outsmart Him. When we come to a time between 1800 and 1900, across this nation there were little revivals springing up among groups of Baptists and Methodists. We have the family tree of my wife’s background. One of those old timers, back in 1800 and something, received the Holy Ghost. They said, at times you could go where he was, whether it was in the cornfield, or outside working, you could hear him having a shouting spell. When he did, he would dance, going in circles, slinging his hands. They gave the nick name to those people, fire baptized Baptists, baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire. They would tell how their hands felt like they were on fire. They were made fun of by the nominal believer. But if in their midst, someone got sick, it was not long until they would make their way to that old fire baptized Baptist and ask him to pray for their loved one that was sick. That is the way it is today. They like to sit in those cold, dead systems, content with Sunday school and all their decorative pins, until they look like a soldier that has come home from a war. The only thing is, those war hero’s have purple hearts, but these in those systems, have a heart for anything the devil introduces, if you can understand my explanation. Nevertheless, the religious world today is sick. If you turn on TBN, you see modern evangelists standing there, having a group prayer over some TV satellite they want to get in operation, and that is supposed to be the angels that fly through the midst of heaven with the everlasting gospel. I would rather see a man on a bicycle, riding thorough the heavens, than to believe a thing like that. Do you understand what I mean? That is the way they hoodwink people. The reason I am bringing these things out is, when we try to pin God down to one little thing, you are trying to tell me God has done such and such, and He cannot change His way of accomplishing His ultimate goal. That is why I said last Sunday, yes I believe what happened in the Upper Room and in the streets later, was exactly the way God wanted to manifest Himself two thousand years ago. He was fulfilling Isaiah 28:8-9, as well as Joel. The two were together. When He came to the Gentiles, He gave them the same experience. But by the time the Church has been stripped of all its major framework of faith and doctrine, God is not ignorant of where the Church is today. He sees the sincere heart of many. He knows exactly what He is going to do when He starts restoring what has been lost. I just ask you to take a look tonight, at all the Lutherans all over the world today, they are still Lutherans, they have faith in God and that is all they have. They are just as dead as the old system of Catholicism they came out of. Then when we look at the Baptists, and the Presbyterians, they are the same way. Each generation had a few people that moved on with God. That is why, when we come to the dawn of 1900, here came the baptism of the Holy Spirit or a Pentecostal experience of speaking in tongues, the gifts of the Spirit, along with divine healing. Now people are saying, He is restoring the evidence. I have to say to that, if you have the evidence, you will not stay away from Malachi 4. They can chain you to a stake, but you will bust loose some way to get to Malachi 4, because He that is in you, is greater than he that is in the world. He will lead you into all truth. He will bring to your remembrance all things, whatsoever I have spoken unto you, said Jesus. He is not going to let you sit there in that dead system, ignorant of His purpose in your life. This is a fact, this is truth, come and walk in it. But no, I have all I need, some say. That is why we move from 1901 to about 1908, when God came on the scene and began to deal with individuals about taking on the name of Jesus in water baptism. My, the arguments, the conflict they received from the trinity Pentecostal people, that they were beginning to move out of. What a battle was setting up. Nevertheless, God spoke to them supernaturally. They accepted it. As they did, more people came to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. But still the old trinity side just sat there pointing their fingers and saying, this is of the devil. Well it was not long until they became quite a few in number, and they began to say, no they are going to hell, because they have been baptized the wrong way. Now we have come through a hundred years of both sides of this Pentecostal experience with the evidence. Can you look at them tonight and prove to me that they have the Holy Spirit leading them? You will have to agree, they received something. I have to say, they just received an anointing, a touch of the real thing. But they did not receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit in them with His many attributes. What they have does not mold character in them. They have a few doctrines they go by, and just look past all the rest. Then when those things they have, begin to get old, they begin to slip and slide away from them. I can say for sure, when God sent a messenger to this age, he came at a strategic time, to lay down a truth, and those that have been foreknown and predestinated by God, He deals with their hearts. He has given His own experience to them. First He puts a hunger there. They do not just stop with Acts 2:4, or Acts 2:38, and they certainly do not stop with John 3:16 or John 5:24. The deeper they go, the deeper they want to go. There is something inside of them, teaching them, drawing them, pulling them. They want to know the perfect will of God for their life, bypassing anything and everything else, knowing they are not in this race to please a bunch of others, but to please God, by following the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why I would have to say tonight, when God, from around this world, has this little Bride Church weeded out of all the systems, He leads them into a true revelation of His Word. Some have come out of the Catholic Church, they have seen the light. They have let God transform them into a new faith and a new understanding of what true faith is. They have come out of the Baptists, they have come out of the Lutherans, they have come out of Pentecost, out of this and that, because they see a truth in the scriptures. They want that to be alive in their lives. When they do, they do not want you to call them a Methodist or Baptist, or anything like that any longer. We just want to be called born again, Holy Ghost filled believers. We make up the body of Christ around the world. We don’t have an organizational headquarters. Our headquarters is in heaven. That is why I can say, saints, hold fast to that which God has given you, because there is a crown up ahead, in time. We are going to receive it one of these days. When that day comes, when the Lord is ready to come for you, to catch you away in that glorious event of the rapture, there is going to be tongue talking Pentecostal, Trinitarians, Jesus only, Jesus name, charismatic, all left here looking at the TV, preaching the second coming of Christ, and don’t even know the event of the rapture is near at hand. When Bro. William Branham preached the seals in 1963, can you mention to me any preacher in the denominational circle that has ever touched them. I am sure they heard about it. I had a man to tell me several years ago, after Bro. William Branham’s death, Tommy Osborne, a man that had an experience. After having seen Bro. William Branham pray for the sick and seeing how God healed the sick, he went to prayer and fasting. God gave him a gift of faith. He went to India and different places in Indonesia. Miracles after miracles were done in Tommy Osborne’s meetings. When Bro. William Branham died, the seals had already been preached, somebody gave Osborne a copy of the seals tapes and told him he should listen to them. Here was the report, he went on a fast and played these messages. When he came off the fast he gave these messages back to the person and said, I don’t want anything to do with them. He is still a Trinitarian Pentecostal today, just like he was then. Yet he has taken up along with the charismatic element. I say these things tonight, not condemning the man, but knowing he is not leading the Bride of Christ. He is just another person used by the angels of heaven to help bind the tares. Don’t forget it. A lot of these religious people today that you see out there, are not seed of God. Some of them are tares. It is not for you and me to go around lifting up their skull to see if they are a tare or a true seed. Time and conditions will prove exactly what they are. That is why He said in that seventh parable, He will send forth His angels in the end time and will separate the tares from the true seed. First He will bind the tares in bundles. That is why today, they are not ashamed to belong to a system. We know it is unscriptural, because early Christendom did not start out as a bound together organization. This is the only book that contains our articles of faith and as far as I am concerned, it is the only book we need. I have to believe those that really are foolish virgins, that tribulation period will prove exactly who they are. They will accept martyrdom rather than to deny their faith in God. Don’t sit there saying, well they are all good people. Why did Jesus not say so? Why did He make such a boisterous statement? He will send forth His angels and gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and will bind them in bundles. (Not foolish virgins, but tares)For what purpose? To be burned. I did not write it. Jesus said it. You and I should not try to pick out and judge the end results of who we think is a good one or not. If they have no revelation leading them, if they have no hunger or thirst in them to draw them closer to God, I have to say something is wrong. A lot of people will say, oh but they are good people. That is the human way of looking at it. I would like to think our standard could be good. I have to say also, this don’t mean, if you think they could be tares, that you go down the road of life snubbing your nose at them. They are human beings just like you are. You treat them like you want yourself to be treated. Did not Jesus say make friends of the unrighteous mammon, so that when you fail somehow, you may have a refuge to go to. I have seen a lot of supposed to be Holy Ghost filled people, snub their nose and say, who wants to talk to that old sinner. Don’t act like that. You could be in his shape if it was not for the mercy of God. No matter what his lifestyle is, don’t treat him like you are making fun of him, treat him like a human being. I know this to be a fact, I have seen a lot of people who have come into this message, and to hear them talk, they were better than anybody else, they would not even speak to anybody who was not of them, but when they would get in need, they would want somebody to help them. I have heard them say, I am living by faith. That kind do not want to work, so they stay at your house as long as they can, until finally you say, maybe you had better get going. Years ago there were two guys that came into this area teaching like that, talking like that, they were living by faith, believing the message. They were not teaching things that Bro. William Branham said. They were just traveling. One of the last places they went to, this man lived out in the country on a farm. They went to his house. He asked them in and gave them a meal and a bed to sleep in. The next morning at breakfast, he was ready to go out and dig fence post holes. He asked them, I have to do some work today, I have to dig some fence post holes, would you help me? Well, we are just waiting on the Lord, we are living by faith. Well that taught him enough, he let them know they had better hit the road. I am thankful to God, there is a right way to look at this book, and there is a right way to look at the life God has helped you live. While you are in this world, don’t snub your nose at everybody in the world. That does not mean you have to have a twenty four hour conversation with them, but if necessity does come along, you can treat them like a human being. You can be out on a highway and have a flat tire. You might be in a situation where you would not have a jack or anything to fix it. One of these worldly men can come along, who has just been drinking beer, but he sees you sitting by the roadside, so he pulls over and says, let me help you. Don’t it make you feel good when somebody comes along and sees you in your predicament and helps you? He goes back to his car, pulls out a jack, and here he comes, jacks the car up, it isn’t long until he has the spare on and you are on your way. But he was nothing but an old worldly man. How many understand my point? I just think I will let you go home and think about that. I will leave you with the thought, some out there, will always say, tongues is the initial evidence, but I have to say, the Bride of Christ is going to have every gift, every attribute and quality that is of the Holy Spirit in that body of believers. It is going to build character, it is going to be by a revelation and an understanding of God’s Word. That is why Ephesians 4 says, God has set the ministry of five in the body to minister until we all come together in the unity of the faith. Isaiah 52:8 does not sound like a bunch of men going this way and that way agreeing on nothing. They will lift up the voice together and sing, because they will all see eye to eye. It is going to really take the Holy Spirit and not some kind of evidence to make that happen. There is a bunch out there claiming to be of that ministry, but you and I know tonight, they do not see eye to eye. They will argue with you. They have their bandwagons that they ride, but they are not going to agree with you. If the Holy Spirit is in you, leading you, He is going to cause you to say yes and Amen to every scripture in the Word of God. May God bless all of you. Amen.

Rev. Raymond M Jackson

THIS IS A MESSAGE THAT BROTHER JACKSON WAS VERY CAREFUL TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING IN A WAY THAT SHOULD OVERRIDE ALL THOSE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS THAT HAVE CAUSED BELIEVERS SO MUCH TROUBLE THROUGH THE YEARS.

Brothers and sisters, I am undertaking a message today, that I have never preached one like it. I have been asked many questions down through the years, and I have tried never to offend anyone that believes in the old Pentecostal evidence of speaking in tongues. I have felt that one of these days God would give me a message, and I would not just be using Acts 2:4, but I would be using a lot more than that. Any of you that take notes, do so, because we are going to give you a Bible picture of this. The title of it is, “Evidence, What Is It?” I looked up the word “evidence” in the dictionary. Evidence, what does it mean? Number one, it is used as proof, the second, it is something that tends to prove a point, it helps to establish the thing in question. There are a lot of scriptures we can use. I have enough to tell you, that this is a day in the old Pentecostal realm, and I am not belittling the old Pentecostal realm, they had their day, but the Pentecostal move that started at the turn of the century was not the end of what God was going to do for His Bride Church. I am going to ask you to turn with me to Matthew’s gospel. Many times we have adjusted to the tradition of asking, Have you received the baptism of the Holy Ghost? I received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, he received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, they received the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and on and on. I want to prove to you today, when we come to the book of Acts, that the word baptism of the Holy Ghost, was not even mentioned. Now Bro. Jackson, don’t shock me. Where did this word, baptism, come from? It comes from Matthew chapter 3, verses 11. We have become an element of people, at this closing hour of time, that are prone to carry a lot of tradition of what we have been taught through the years. Many times we never stop to actually compare it with the scriptures. Where did this word “baptism” come from? The word baptism means to be immersed, whether applicable to the Spirit or to water baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we turn to Matthew 3, which is when the Pharisees sent out people to ask John who he was, and this is what he said, “I indeed baptize you with water (and he did, he immersed them, he did not sprinkle them) unto repentance: but He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” That is the first time the word baptize, in that term, is mentioned. Verse 12. “Whose fan is in His hand, and He will throughly purge His floor, (That is at the end time.) and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” We could actually say it is only mentioned one time in the chronology of the Bible because all gospel writers refer to the same incidence. Let us see what each one said. We will go to Mark, chapter 1. It is the same event, it is not a different event, this is just the way Mark records it. When the same ones came to ask John who he was, he began to explain who he was, and when we come to the 8th verse he said, “I indeed have baptized you with water: but He (meaning the one that shall come after me) shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.” It is not two different events, it is one and the self same time. But we want to prove that each recorder of the gospel is referring to the same period of time. Let us go to Luke, the 3rd chapter, we are in the 16th verse. When Luke records how they came to ask John who he was, “John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” Now let us go to the gospel of John, 1st chapter. The reason I am reading this is to let everyone know, each one of these gospel writers, wrote it in the same term John spoke it. When they asked him who he was, verse 32, And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. (He is referring to Jesus the Christ) And I knew Him not; but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.” That is the last we see of that word being mentioned. When we go now to the book of Acts, when the Holy Ghost fell upon those disciples on the day of Pentecost, none of the writers in the book of Acts refered to it in that term. The reason I am looking at it from this standpoint, is because we must first find out what they did receive. Did they receive some byproduct of God? No. What is the Holy Ghost? It is the Spirit of God the Great Creator Himself. That Spirit dwelt in Jesus in the fulness of all His attributes. When we go to the 2nd chapter of Acts, here is where we begin to hear what really did take place on the day of Pentecost. My purpose this morning is not to mislead anyone, but when I look at the world of religion today, in the Gentile realm, there are thousands upon thousands of people the world over who do speak in tongues. The sad truth is, the greater percentage have no revelation whatsoever, pertaining to what God is doing for His Bride today. You could not get them to darken the door of this place. They think we are fanatics, that we are a cult, that we are all wrong. Yet they can brag, I have spoken in tongues, which they think is the initial evidence of being filled with the Spirit of God. We are going to look at this and see exactly what did take place on the day of Pentecost, and what did God do by manifesting the tongues in the manner He did. We have a lot of traditional things we have carried around, that are not of God. Pay attention as I read this, “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.” What put them in one accord? It was the fact that the one hundred and twenty sitting there in the upper room, had all been taught by the man called Jesus. They remembered, to the best of their knowledge, precisely what He had said. They were sitting there, all in agreement, as to what had been taught by Him. “And suddenly there came a sound from heaven (so this was manifested by a sound first, they heard something) as of a rushing mighty wind, (they did not guess at it, they heard it) and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, (It affects the sight also.) and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, (Why did the writer not say they were baptized with the Holy Ghost if that is the way we are supposed to use the term? How many catch the point? We are going to read all these scriptures, pertaining to the various groups where this event took place. Many times when you use the term baptism, meaning to immerse, yet you come out with the fact that they did not receive everything, because they got no revelation whatsoever. Yet we have used the term immersed, if you get immersed, you get wet. You know that. I am not trying to use these things to catch somebody, but to wake us up to the fact of how the Bible is written, and of what God did do? When they saw those cloven tongues of fire, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, it does not say they were immersed with the Holy Ghost. The word (and) is a conjunction, it connects what has happened first, with something else that followed.) and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” This was the choice of God, which was that very Spirit that had come inside their vessels of clay. There were a hundred and twenty disciples sitting there, they heard something, then they saw something. I have to say, when the Spirit came inside those vessels, they also felt something. Why did they come into the streets staggering like drunk people and were actually referred to as drunk people? And they began to speak in other tongues. Verse 6, “Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, (or confused) because that every man heard them speak in his own language.” Now brothers and sisters, please give me your attention, this event had never been manifested in the history of Israel. You know that. No where in all of the history of Israel, had this kind of event ever occurred. Just imagine, a hundred and twenty people coming out of the upper room, staggering like they were drunk. That is what the home bunch said, oh, they are drunk on new wine. I will have to say, there was a certain amount of physical demonstration in the staggering, drifting around. When they began to ask the question of the apostles, what is this, seeing we hear the wonderful things of God spoken in the language whereunto we were born. There were Jews from Rome, they knew Latin. There were Jews from Greece, that knew the Greek tongue. There were Jews from Egypt, that knew the Coptic language. Wherever they were from, about sixteen different nationalities around Israel, they all heard some of those local Galilean Jews speaking in that language where they had been born and raised up. That had never happened in the history of Israel, prior to this time. I will say, it has only happened periodically in many places throughout time, and God has done it to bear witness, as a confirmation. I am going slow, because I want to weigh my words. I just do not want anybody coming and asking me a question later. We are going to study every scripture that pertains to this experience, and learn exactly what it is that we receive. When we go to Acts the 8th chapter, this is where Philip went down to Samaria. Many of the Samaritans became believers, and accepted the Lord in baptism and so forth, but it plainly tells you this, but the Holy Ghost had not come upon any of them. When that word got back to Jerusalem, they sent Peter and John to Samaria to pray for those people. I will start with the 15th verse. “Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: For as yet He was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received.” It does not say they were baptized. In acts 2:4, they were filled, here they received. It is talking about one and the self same thing. The reason I am doing this is to tear down tradition. Many times when everyone thinks that everybody has received the baptism, they come up short on a revelation, then I have to say, did they receive the baptism? Were they literally immersed? When we begin to study the scripture, what all the Holy Ghost was to do for you, we are going to see that a lot of people come up short. That is why so many are out there today, believing they have all they need. Look at the charismatic move the world over. Then there are a lot of Pentecostal people that say, oh well, they just have a devil. They no more have a devil than you have had a devil. They just got a little taste and they think that is all they need. I have to say, it is going to take more than just a little taste of the Spirit for anyone to wind up in the Bride of Christ, clothed in fine linen, and restored back to the same biblical picture that the early Church started out as. When we turn to that 17th verse, it says, “Then laid they their hands on them, and they received (didn’t say they were baptized) the Holy Ghost.”

GENTILES RECEIVE
HOLY GHOST

Let us go to the 10th chapter of Acts, in the 44th verse. Peter is at Cornelius’ house. He still looked back and could not understand why God had given him that vision when he was at Joppa, to come up here. Cornelius had sent these men, so Peter has gone. We have a lot of ex-Catholics in here, you know what I am going to say now in this respect. No sooner did Peter and those that were with him come into the house, and that household of Greeks fell prostrate on the floor. Now if Peter was the first pope, do you think he would have said what he did? What did he say? Rise up we are just men like you are. Peter did not go for that heathenism and idolatry. He set an example for those popes that have been in office down through the centuries of time since then. Peter opened his mouth to speak, still wondering, Lord, why did you lead me here? It was all a mystery to him. He just began to preach Jesus to those Gentiles. In the 44th verse, “While Peter yet spake these words.” He did not have to ask, do you understand? It was while he spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on them. It was not written, have you received, have you been filled? It fell. The reason I am saying this, let us stop using traditional terms, what it is, what it is not. Many times that is confusing, when you say the foolish virgins received something. I do not mean that they receive another spirit, I do not mean that they received a clod in their pocket, I just want to say, if we get the tradition out of our minds, we ought to know what we are talking about. I say this, because of a long letter I received from the Philippines. I could tell he was a nice, educated fellow. Over and over he was trying to say, what do you mean by your phrase, they received something. If we are talking about the Holy Ghost, we are still talking about it, whether it is filled, fell, anointed, or what. How many understand? “While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell (it didn’t say they were filled, immersed, baptized, or what, no, it fell on them) on all them which heard the word. And they of the circumcision (the Jews that were with Peter) which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. (Poured out) For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God.” It was necessary in the beginning of the church age, God had a specific reason that tongues would stand out as an audible sign, that He had given His Spirit to these people. You will hear me explain this, and understand it by the time we get finished. Now let us go on to chapter 19. 1st verse, “And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, (they had become believers by the ministry of Apollos, but Apollos did not have the revelation that Paul had.) He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? (He did not say, have you been baptized with the Holy Ghost, did he? I am not trying to be fanatical, but to be practical. Let us learn how to use the terms.) And they said unto him, We have not so
much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? (He was not talking about the Spirit: he was talking about in water.) And they said, Unto John’s baptism. Then said Paul, john verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on Him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost (It does not say fell, it came) it came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied.” I have a specific reason for reading these individual words. I now want to say something, so I am going to go back to the other parts of this 18th chapter. Brothers and sisters, the time may come your way, so do not just sit in the pew and listen to a sermon, then go home and say, my, that was a wonderful sermon. I ask, Could you explain it to anyone? Did you learn anything at all? It is important that we learn who we are in life, and why we are what we are. I have heard this saying, well a woman is not supposed to preach. That is a fact. But does that mean she is to follow her husband like a puppy dog. Let me illustrate how that would be, the wife is supposed to follow her husband, but keep her mouth shut. So he is going here and going there, and she is following along, but an issue comes up, and she just stands there, listening. I have a reason for saying this. We are going back up to the 18th verse in the 18th chapter. “And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila; (a husband and wife) having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow. And he came to Ephesus, and left them there: (Who did he leave? Aquila and Priscilla.) but he himself entered into the synagogue, and reasoned with the Jews. When they desired him to tarry longer time with them, he consented not; But bade them farewell, saying, I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem: but I will return again unto you, if God will. And he sailed from Ephesus. (Let us go to the 24th verse) And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man (Notice now, he was a Jew well instructed in the scriptures of the Law.) was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, (Now, you denominational preachers, listen to this.) they (not one, they) took him (Took who? Apollos.) unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.” Now that is common sense. Sisters, when you meet somebody in the pathway of life, and they do bring up a subject, they are hungry to know something about, and if you feel in your heart that you have light on certain scriptures and what they mean, then don’t let that old saying, women are not supposed to preach, prevent you. No, you are not to preach, but you can give testimony to truth you have heard. God will help you. It is pathetic, here is Aquila and Priscilla, (they) took him, yes but I don’t think Priscilla said anything. Aquila did all the talking. You can never prove that. They, both, invited him, it means both of them have been brought up under Paul’s teachings and affected by it. They have a revelation and understanding, so each one of them knew exactly how to say certain things to help Apollos see the truth. That is where Apollos got straightened out. But a woman is not supposed to preach. She is not to preach, because when you stand before a congregation of people, you do it as a leader, but if you take somebody in your home or somewhere to give testimony to them, and explain a point of scripture that is beneficial to their understanding, that is not preaching and being a leader. That is being a witness. Don’t come back and ask me, well Bro. Jackson, don’t you think? I have spoken it. How many know what I meant? Let us now go back to Acts, the 4th chapter. This is a little after the day of Pentecostal, another event has come about. They are beginning to hear some bad things that have taken place, so the believers are gathered in a certain place. In the 23rd verse it says, “And being let go, they went to their own company, (in a place where they could go and assemble themselves) and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.” Here is where they opened their mouths and began to pray as a united body. As they were praying, we will go to the 29th verse, here is their prayer. “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken (That would scare the liver out of a lot of people, if this house would shake, oh, it is an earthquake. Well it could be the power of God.) where they were assembled together; and they were all filled (not baptized) with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” This was another anointing. It is just a refreshing. That is the reason I read it. No place in the book of Acts, can you find baptism referring to the receiving of the Holy Ghost. Let us learn how to use scriptures in a proper relationship, lest we come to where we will wish we had. Now we are going back to the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. I am not just trying to be smart, so please do not take this that way. As I said to start out, the speaking in tongues manifested here on the day of Pentecost, had never been manifested in all the history of Israel up until this time. When this event did take place, and Peter stood up and began to explain what this was, I want to remind you that we need to see if we are really up to date on how we read our Bible. Did you know, when they came forward and began to ask Peter and them, men and brethren, what must we do, Peter had already preached to them what this was. Notice, nowhere did he say that this manifestation of what they have heard in other languages, was mentioned in the prophecy of Joel. It is not, but Peter did refer to the prophecy of Joel. When you read it, he said it like this, this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel, and it shall come to pass in the last days, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, your sons and daughters shall prophesy, old men shall dream dreams, young men shall see visions. Please show me if anywhere in Joel, he ever said they will speak with other tongues. Well Bro. Jackson, you are confusing me. I am not confusing you. Peter had a reason for stating it in this manner, because he was not ignorant of scripture. That is why I am preaching it this morning. Let us get ourselves familiar with the scriptures and pay attention to how they are written and what is meant. When Peter said this is that, he was one of them that has been speaking in this other dialect, and he also knew that this was prophesied in Isaiah, chapter 28. Let us go there. Peter knew how to connect this event, or this experience, with the event in Joel. As I read this, I ask that we all take a look at the denominational world of religion. I have been in the Church of Christ, I have been in the Methodist, and I am thankful to God for truth. He does not just hit you over the head with truth, He will allow many things to come into your life’s pathway to draw your attention to certain things that will get you to begin to wonder, am I really where I am supposed to be with the Lord? Isaiah prophesied, some seven hundred years before it ever came about, so let us read the 8th verse of the 28th chapter in Isaiah. “For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.”

ETERNAL SECURITY

Look at the denominational church world today. When you step inside, about all the congregation will hear is John 3:16, which has been used so many times, it has lost its meaning. Well, I believe in Jesus, sure you do, but there is more to it than just believing in Jesus, a lot more. There are scriptures in here, that will really tell what He has done for you, so you must ask, Has He really come into my life to give me something that will help me throughout my life? The Holy Spirit is not only a Spirit that can cause one to speak in another language, Jesus refers to Him in one place as the Comforter. Well, I don’t need a Comforter, I listen to my preacher. Then you do not even know what that term, Comforter, actually means. When you have received the genuine Holy Spirit in your life, some of these days ahead, the devil will throw you a hay maker. When you begin to look at yourself and the world around you, how many times have I heard people question their experience, or even ask, am I even a child of God? Well brothers and sisters, if we have received the Holy Spirit, lo, I am with you always, not just for today, or to the next time a problem comes up, and then He leaves you: He is with you from then on. When Jesus said, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world, that is exactly what He meant, or to the end of your life, whichever comes first. It is absolutely necessary, that we understand the Holy Ghost is not just a Comforter, but a guide to guide you through trials and tests. The devil throws things at you and you say, oh I just need a lot of prayer, I just need this. One thing we do need, is that Comforter. Sometimes we have to rely only on Him. When everything about us is going wrong, it is then that we begin to rely on that which is within us, God has His way of using other instruments to comfort and strengthen and encourage us, but we also have to learn how to rely on what we have inside us. Because if we begin to reach out first and we cannot acknowledge what we have received inside, then we forget how He can be a comforter. When God said, For all tables are full of vomit, He gets so tired of this Sunday after Sunday, the same kind of sermons, repetition, now they have gone to having dances on Saturday night for young people who don’t have sense enough to keep rings out of their ears and out of their tongues. I have to say it is pathetic. They don’t need a dance, they need the grace of God to touch their lives and change their attitudes, otherwise they are just going on down the devil’s pathway, led by the devil, talking like the devil, looking like the devil, and acting like the devil. I am not mad, but when you see some of this as you walk down Broadway, you see it, you look at it, there it goes. I can remember when human beings did not act like many do now. What has caused it? Don’t tell me some back sliding preacher did it, it was not that: a bunch of low down politicians and educators said it is not wrong to do this, you don’t have a right to condemn this. Well then go on and look like an animal. That is why they live and act like one and even talk like one. All tables are full of vomit, so that there is no place clean. He is talking in that hour about the spiritual things of Israel, their feast days which were to be fulfilled with a holy attitude of giving praise to God, giving thanks to Him for what He has done for them. But no, every festivity has become a place filled with filth, no sincerity whatsoever. Verse 9 “Whom shall He teach knowledge? (There are very few today that you can teach knowledge to.) and whom shall He make to understand doctrine? (I have heard the Charismatics say, we don’t need that: that divides. Well, it is supposed to) them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts. (They are still sucking on a bottle. Some of those sixty five year old fellows still have a pacifier stuck in their mouth, in a figurative sense.) For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; (This is exactly why John came along preaching what he did, then Jesus came along and for three years preached what He did. He laid down the true path, precept upon precept.) line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: (Now here is the prophecy of what happened on the day of Pentecost.) For with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to this people.” What people is he talking about, seven hundred years before it took place? Jews. They observed the Sabbath, they kept the day of atonement, they keep all those holy rituals, but when they were done, they were ready to go back to the same old carnal activity they had done the previous year. That is why God had to speak to them that way. So when this prophecy was brought down, when the Holy Ghost fell on them that day in the Upper Room, this was the first time that had been expressed. That one hundred and twenty standing there in the streets of Jerusalem, staggering, jabbering, and I will say this, I have seen men so drunk they could not talk any other way. They would try to talk, but they could not speak plain, their mind was jumbled. That is what those people saw and heard that day. That was not all they saw in those people. When they saw these, they could not help but hear the wonderful works of God spoken to them in a language wherein they were born. It had never happened before. My point is, it was prophesied that speaking in tongues was to be definitely a prophetic sign that God has fulfilled His promise of Isaiah 28, when He did give the promise of the outpouring by the prophet Joel. That is the first time it had been spoken and the way it was manifested. That is how we have to get the scriptures balanced. I have to say, all through the book of Acts, I have no doubt in my mind, when the Holy Ghost did fall on the groups from the Jew to the Gentile, that speaking in tongues was a sign, but let us stop saying it is initial evidence. You take what you heard to court; and you will be asked, Where is the smoking gun? That is the initial evidence. Do you understand me? If you do not have a smoking gun, then you have no evidence, you just have an assumption. A man is dead, you can see the bullet that killed him, but where is the gun? Until you find that gun, you cannot point the finger at anyone, can you? Let us stop using this thing of evidence, because it is going to get some in a trap here in the end time. I am going to prove it to you by the Bible, by showing how it reads. I will say this, right here in the end time as God is restoring His Church back to its original likeness, all these gifts that are mentioned in Ephesians are going to be manifested, cultivated and cherished, but we are going to have some character, and some leadership to go along with it. There are a lot of them out there today, that can speak in tongues, but they are no more led by God than that bunch of crows out there in the corn field. You know it. If they were truly filled with the Holy Ghost, like they are supposed to be, you could not keep them away from truth. Instead, they are satisfied just to sit somewhere, cold, dead, and ready to argue at the drop of a hat. “For with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to this people. (That is exactly what happened on the day of Pentecost.) To whom He said, This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.” That bunch of Galilean Jews just walked away that day saying, they are just drunk on new wine. It meant nothing to the home bunch of Jews: they could only speak the Galilean dialect, but these visiting Jews out of every nation could speak dual languages. They heard this said to them in their language. They heard the word of God, and they understood it. When Peter got finished, here they came and said, explain this to us? That is not what they said at all. They said, Men and brethren, what must we do? Peter said, repent every one of you. Well, I am a Jew, I keep the Sabbath. Repent every one of you. Well, I keep the Law, I keep the Sabbath. Repent every one of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. That is a promise to come. Notice how these terms were used. Let us try to refresh our minds, concerning the terms the apostles spoke in, and at the time it was used. With this in mind, go with me to St. John chapter 6. Jesus, all through the gospel of John, began to drop off little indicators, things to prepare the disciple for the day when He would leave. This was His way of showing them, it is important that you receive that which I speak of, in the future.

FOOLISH VIRGINS

I want to say at this time, some will say the foolish virgins did not have anything, look back in your Bible. I beg you, look back in your Bible. I am going to start reading what Jesus said in the 44th verse. “No man can come to me, (What did He mean by that? No man can be saved.) except the Father (Which is this Father? It is the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. His first and foremost work in your life is to draw you from sin unto repentance and then on into a true relationship.) which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. (Now He refers back to Isaiah) It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, (by the Holy Spirit, been convicted by the Holy Spirit, the purpose is that in the end he will submit and comes unto Him) cometh unto me. Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.” Now what does that tell me? You don’t just up and come to Christ on your own terms, when you want to, when it is convenient. You can work for six months, well, on a certain date, I am going to go and give my heart to God. It might not work that way. That is your planning. I can say this, many times you will put off and put off, bingo, God will hit you one day and knock you down. You are laying there crying, Lord, have mercy on me. No man can come to me, for what? Salvation. Except he be drawn. Now let us go to the 13th chapter. Here is where we begin to talk about one of the attributes of the Holy Spirit, it is love. Paul taught it in the Corinthian letter in the 13th chapter. Love believeth all things, love endureth all things, love is not puffed up, so on and so forth. You may not think these little scriptures mean a lot, but if you look at the depth of what they are pointing to in your own personal life, if we really allow the Holy Spirit to get hold of us and lead us, you will find that they are very essential. Jesus said this, (John 13:34) “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, (That is as clear to me as the sun shining outside. I am to love my brothers and sisters in the Lord. That is from a divine relationship, I will not see big I and little you: I have to see each one of you as a child of God, doing your utmost to learn and walk with God in your own personal relationship.) that ye also love one another. By this (by what?) shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” That goes deep. Some might say, but he don’t believe like I do. Well just be a little patient. Maybe you have been in this way a long time, but now you want others to understand just as much as you do in six months, and you have been here six years. Think about it. This is a sign. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” It is not the rich over the poor. It matters not, whether you are penniless or you have a billion dollars, it is still absolutely necessary that you be saved, whether you have any worldly possessions or not. It is God’s love, that caused Jesus to take your and my place at Calvary. That love for others has got to be in our heart, and not because of personality. That divine love is part of the character that the Holy Ghost has to mold in us. There is a lot of tongue talking people out there in the world of religion today, but they have no more love for truth than a hound dog, and the only kind of people they have love for are those of their own click. If you go here with them, if you go there with them, it is all a click. If you try to get them to understand the depth of some scriptures, they are not interested. However we must realize that some of them have to have something, or they could not be called virgins. It is necessary, that we understand what Jesus said about the Holy Ghost? He will teach you all things. He did not say maybe so, hope so, He shall teach you all things. Now brothers and sisters, that nails it down and clinches it. That is His objective in my life and your life, to teach us all things. It was not the Church of Christ that saved me. It was not Methodism that saved me. I am saved by the grace of God. He would not let me sit in that old dead, traditional stuff forever. He began to put a hunger in my heart. A lot of questions came up. I had a lot of feelings in my soul, what about this and that? When those things began to stimulate your inner being to reach out there and talk to people about certain things, it is the Holy Spirit’s purpose to take you and teach you all things. When you forget, He will bring to your remembrance. So don’t say, I forgot. It is His purpose to make you remember, even what you heard five years ago. What is wrong with it? That is why, when my wife and I began to go to the Tabernacle years ago, and I heard Bro. William Branham come out with Serpent Seed doctrine, the first Sunday morning he hit a little point on that, my, my, that old Methodist head of mine began to go into a spin. I thought, I have never heard that before. I did not know that serpent walked on two legs and feet just like man. I did know that he communicated with a vocal voice, but I sure did not know he did such a diabolical thing as that. I thought, Lord, one morning in February 1952, you sat me down on the couch and I read the first chapter of Luke’s writing. I saw that you were going to send that spirit of Elijah in the last days to turn the end time Gentile children back to the faith of our apostolic fathers. I can never forget it. I said to myself, Lord, I am going to keep my mouth shut until I know what I believe, and until I know what I am listening to. I just put that in my filing cabinet. That filing cabinet that God wants each of you to have, do not set it in a junk yard: it is going to be important one of these days. If, when certain things sound mysteriously strange to you, and you say, well I don’t see it that way, just file it away: do not discard it. I promise you, if you have a sincere heart and attitude, one of these days God will see you in the right frame of mind; and He will bring to your remembrance what you heard and what you filed away. He will bring that right down into your memory and you will take a look at it and say, well now I see: why did I not see that before? It is now just as real to you as your hands and feet. So the Holy Spirit is more than something that can talk through you in another language. He is given to you to be a comforter, and He is going to lead your life. No, not to make a good Methodist out of you. You do not have to go to glory wearing a label like that, I am this or that. The main thing is, you are a child of God. You are saved by the grace of God. It is by the grace of God that any of us ever amount to anything. I pray that you know what I am talking about. As we come on down toward the end of this, verse 37, “Peter said unto Him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake. Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.” Peter did not have the Holy Spirit when he said that. It is a good thing that none of the other disciples were around nearby to hear Jesus say that, they might have said, I don’t care if he does get the Holy Ghost, he will never be saved, just because he made that derogatory statement. How many understand? It is not how many times we let certain little issues affect us in our judgment at times, God knows who and what we are. Go with me now to the 14th chapter, 21st verse. I want to read this with respect, and with kindness. When Jesus said this, He was speaking something that is going to go deep into our mentality. “He that hath my commandments, (He is not talking about the Law.) and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: (That is the way it was in the days of the early Church. They all continued steadfastly in the apostles teaching. They went from house to house in that same frame of thought and mind, praying, worshiping, fellowshipping, they were in unity. It is only when somebody comes along that is out of unity with them, when he thinks he has a revelation that needs to be inserted. He it is that keeping my commandments is he that loveth me. You cannot keep the things that you know are right, and turn right around and begin to deny the Lord.) and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” If He is going to manifest Himself, it literally means He is going to come into us with the Holy Spirit. Because He is going to be inside of us as a teaching Spirit, as a revelatory Spirit, and as a comforting Spirit, and it is going to affect our character. Yet only God knows the thousands of people around the world today, that have come through the Pentecostal revivals and have spoken in tongues, and they wind up with no more character and stability than many out in the world. Why did they bypass the prophet to the age, why did they not have an ear to hear? It was not a revelation to them. They are content to be just exactly what they are. They said, I have all I need. So it goes to show, something has happened through time that changed the whole structure from what it was in the apostolic days.

HOW GOD LEADS US

I realize the type of message we are on may not sound too appealing to a lot of Pentecostal people. But when this race is all over and the Bride of Christ has been taken, there is going to be a lot of tongue talking people left in this world, wondering, where are we? I have to say, a lot of people think they can play games with God. You don’t play games with God. When He gave to you a gift of Himself, He gave it with the potential that we allow Him to lead us. There are a lot of Pentecostal people, from the beginning of the 19th century, or the 20th century, call it whatever you want to, there is the trinity Pentecost, you could never change them to believe in water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for anything. Yet they claim to have the Holy Ghost with the initial evidence. Then when the time did come that God began to speak to people, I have read testimony after testimony, how that when God began to speak to people concerning taking on water baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus, that in itself was as much of an experience to that person, as speaking in tongues had been at another time. Yet the Pentecostal movement became split, all over the trinity side and the oneness side. They have looked at each other down through the last one hundred years, fussing and stewing, and nothing could change them. You could not get then out of their system of religion for anything in the world. You are going to have to come up with a justifiable answer one of these days, why don’t they meet the requirements found in other scriptures? Go back with me to St. John, chapter 14, 21st verse. Earlier where it said, he that hath my commandments, that is not the Law, and keepeth them, observes them, he it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and manifest myself to him. What was He talking about? He was talking about being filled with the Holy Spirit. Now in the 23rd verse He said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words: (There are a lot of words in the Bible that neither side believe in. You know that.) and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (How? Through being filled with the Holy Spirit.) He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: (His sayings is not a bunch of tradition. They are just as real as real can be.) and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. (Because He was a physical man. Notice what He said, pointing to the hour when the Holy Spirit would come.) But the Comforter, (That is what He is) which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, (Well Bro. Jackson, you see, we have to have the right meaning.) and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” There is not a thing in this book where He intends to leave your mind, spiritually speaking, blank. It is all in there for your growth in the Lord. Don’t ever think I am speaking against speaking in tongues, to anyone that has received that kind of experience. But please remember, that is only the beginning of something. The Holy Spirit in you, is going to do a lot more than that. That is only a sign that He came. It is not the initial evidence, we are going to prove it. Remember, the Church did not lose it all in one day or one year’s time. She lost certain things gradually. Then in process of time when God began to restore the things back to the church, He had every right to restore things the way He wanted to, to accomplish His end time purpose. How it started with Israel was one thing. But how He winds it up with the Gentiles is going to be another thing. Now when we go to St. John 16, I am bringing these scriptures out because they are not put in there by Jesus as saying them just for nought. We are starting in the 13th verse. “Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, (He will not reveal something to you, that is not truth. He will guide you into all truth. That is His positive objective. He will guide you into all truth. The denominations have absolutely put a gate to this, that they open and shut at will.) for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you.” Sure, the gifts are one thing, they are signs, but they are not altogether the sole evidence, because if it does not develop a character and understanding in you, you can wind up like a foolish virgin. Because the wise virgins are going to be clothed in fine linen. If you want to look at the type back in Leviticus when the Law was made, and then the tabernacle was built, in the tabernacle there was a certain holy place wherein the ark of the covenant and the table of shewbread and so forth was set. When that ark was to sit on that, it was not set open and visible to the entire tabernacle. There was a little room called the Holy of holies, and that was enclosed by curtains of linen. That had a type. God will reveal Himself only behind that kind of understanding. So if that was the type in the natural, that is what God is going to wind up abiding behind, inside of these lively stones, when the people themselves carry a revelation, and understanding. It builds character. Just to speak in tongues is not being a light unto the world. It is the life you live, how you treat fellow man, how you carry on dealings with fellow man, without allowing yourself to become like them. Verse 15, “All things that the Father hath are mine: (That is the attributes, that is the manifestation of the Spirit, everything it takes to build character. Because God Himself is not a man, but in Him is all these characteristics, and attributes that were exemplified in the person we call Jesus. That is why God was manifested in the Son, through the manifestation of these attributes. Because it built a character in Jesus.) therefore said I, that He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you.” Now brothers and sisters, let us go to 1st Corinthians. All of these scriptures are very familiar. In the 12th chapter, Paul explains the different gifts, nine of them. But in the 13th chapter, he is speaking to a Gentile church, and many of their former lives have been wrapped up in paganism, heathen worship. It takes a good while for the Holy Spirit in them to begin to develop a character and attitude and expression of the love that the apostle Paul is trying to get them to look at. He says in the 1st verse, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, (love) I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” Now where is the evidence then? Come on, where is the evidence? Though I have the gift of prophecy and so forth, and have no love, I am nothing. The reason I go this route is to try and show, we should desire spiritual gifts, that is a necessity for the body of Christ. But when that is the only thing we seek after, and we do not allow the grace of God to develop character, the motive of why we want to do certain things, and conduct ourselves certain ways is vain. “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor.” You can give to the Red Cross, you can give to every kind of charity organization there is, that looks good to society, but in the eyes of God it does not cause your name to be written down in the book of life. But when we come over here to the 4th verse, he is dealing with human character. He says, “Charity (love) suffereth long, (It learns to look at problems in other people’s lives, or situations that you might be confronted with, it causes you to look at things with a lot of patience and longsuffering. Don’t fly off the handle all of a sudden.) and is kind; charity (love) envieth not; (There are a lot of people who cannot stand to see brother John get something new and them not have something like it, or better. That is covetousness. That can also lead to jealousy. There are people who let that rule their life. If you come up with something they do not have, it is not long until they ask, where did you get that? They go head over heals in debt just to get that, because they cannot stand to see you have something they do not have.) charity vaunteth not itself, (It does not lift itself up) is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, (There are people that absolutely get the idea, if I can’t be the star, if I can’t be number one in the crowd, I will keep going until I find a crowd where I can be number one. That rules a lot of people.) seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, (Sometimes you hear some very bad expressions about you, but that does not mean you go home and cry, oh, they just treat me so terrible. Sometimes God is going to let these things come our way, because it is His way to develop some character in us, patience, longsuffereing. We get to the place where we do not let those things bother us. Well I can’t help it, I was just born that way. Yes, you were born a sinner, but the grace of God came to change that. Even if you were born upside down, you are going to be required to walk upright on your feet and grow up with a level head. Seeketh not her own and is not easily provoked, all this is pertaining to your character. Because, when the Holy Spirit comes into us, that is the gift of God to cultivate within us, from within us outward, the hidden man that you cannot see, but that is another likeness of Jesus Christ. Not easily upset, provoked, made angry.) thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, (lawlessness, disobedience) but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, (that does not mean you believe all the lies you hear, we need to have sense enough to know, that what we are listening to, maybe might not be truth) hopeth all things, (always hoping for the better side of things) endureth all things.” Puts up with, tolerates a lot of things, it might not make you feel very good at the time, but when you can develop an inward attidude that God approves, He will take care of it all in time. Love, the supreme ultimate behavior we allow the Lord to cultivate in us, never fails. That testimony of love projected and shown forth will stand head and shoulders taller than all the other speeches and talks we make, trying to convince other people we are something. It never fails. “But whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; (Now if you listen to the Church of Christ, they will tell you that all of that disappeared back then. Well I have a reason, and I will not get this message finished tonight, when we do end this message, I want you to know, it is going to wind up with gifts in the Church, but it is going to wind up with a church body that is in unity and of character. The Church is absolutely going to be the exemplification of Jesus Christ manifested through the body, in a lost and dying world. They are going to give this world the last testimony of Christianity they will ever get.) whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” That don’t mean that God meant it to vanish out of the body of Christ. But when people begin to try and specialize and project that as the whole thing, it is not the whole thing. If that becomes the motive, without character being behind it, then God will not honor that. He will let a lot of that fall back and slap us in the face. “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. (In the Branham movement, now they are saying this.) But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” So they say since the prophet has come and brought a revelation, they have the perfect thing, so they sit down to be cured out in the sun, just like green corn. I was talking to a man the other day, he lives south of here. When I was in Shreveport, I remember meeting him, but I didn’t know where he went to. He called me and told me his name, and said, Bro. Jackson, I met you when you were in Shreveport. I said yes, I remember that now. He began to go back through the years of what has been going on, what has happened to the movement, he said, Bro. Jackson, where are people today? He said, Bro. William Branham spoke of the restoration of the gifts and things. I just let him talk. He said, all I can see is fussing, squabbling, arguing among all the followers of Bro. William Branham, this quote and that quote. He said, I get so discouraged sometimes, it makes me wonder, what can I believe? When he got to the place where I thought I could interrupt, I said, brother, there has been a moving of the Spirit to restore some of the gifts. From 1994 until about 1997, we had a moving of the Spirit here in our congregation and some of the assemblies that are in fellowship with us also. Some from Canada came down and it spread off into those groups. We sent videos to Africa and the Philippines and it went there. Oh, it did? I said, yes. Then he said, well what do you think about the Middle East, I said brother, there is going to be a war in the Middle East, and Bro. William Branham never said anything about it. When I began to talk to him about certain scriptures and how they line up, he said, let me write that down. I started out with Zechariah 12, Micah 7, Zephaniah 2, Ezekiel 25, Isaiah 19, I said, now you line these up. He said, oh my, I have to call you again and talk with you again. That is just what he said, I had already talked with him about fifty or fifty five minutes. That was Thursday afternoon while we were getting ready to come to church. I said, I am going to have to hang up, it is time for us to leave for our church service. Oh Bro. Jackson, I am going to call you again, I want you to send me some tapes. I just thought after that, a movement that heard what they heard should be up the road in the Bible, but they are sitting in the road, seasoning out, and they have never been made perfect at all. I have to say, brothers and sisters, that is a sad thing.

GAINING STATURE

Now let us look at this thing of character. You cannot have character without some manifestations of the Spirit of God to go with it. Turn with me to Romans. Paul, the same one who wrote 1st Corinthians 13, said in verse 1 of chapter 8, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, (That is through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, or being filled with the Spirit) who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” He is literally saying, the number one priority, He comes into you to mold and develop character within you. Number two, but at the same time He is going to be a teaching Spirit in us. God does not intend for us to get to one place and graduate, I know all I am supposed to know now. It is necessary that we begin to grow in knowledge and in wisdom, and in the grace of God. I have to say there are a lot of people today, if they had to defend this faith, they would not even know where to start. They would not know how to defend it, if they were challenged in a public way. I am not saying to go down the street with a sign portraying what you believe, what you know and what everybody else doesn’t know. But if we are going to be a shining light, it is not how much noise we make, it is the character that we project. I have to believe there comes a time in your life, where God wants to deal with you and lead you in certain things pertaining many times to your individual life. Let me say this, if you are truly a born again, Holy Spirit filled person, and you are desiring that the Holy Spirit lead you in life, regardless of whether you have a business, or what, there will come a time God is going to lead you in that very thing. You need His help in those times. I look back to the years that I farmed, how many times I have come to a place, I would have a decision to make, and it seemed like as I prayed and meditated and thought on the problem, Lord, I need help in this, and before very long something would develop, He would either force me into a corner where I would be compelled to make a decision, or He would give me a dream and I would know what to do. I know through the years, even after I started the church down in New Albany, I really never thought that it would last and come to this. I just thought, well, I will start it, maybe it will last four or five years, and God will let it pass. But as I kept on farming, and after awhile I began to see it was growing, not getting smaller. I began to become concerned, one of these days I am going to have to decide, which it is, what do I do? Do I keep farming, or what? One particular year I began to realize, I have to withdraw from this occupation so that I can spend more time giving my heart to the Lord in prayer. In the spring of the year, I was planning on doing a very small amount. A neighbor called me one day and said, Raymond, could I rent you my place this year, he told me the conditions he would rent it to me. It all sounded good, it was very close by. I thought, this is a good offer. I thought about it, I prayed about it, I wrestled with the decision for several days. I realized I had to make a decision. The Lord gave me a dream. You would think in the dream He gave me, what would that mean to rent somebody else’s farmland. Having been out west and traveled through the mountains, especially Wolf Creek Pass, I had a dream and saw myself in a trip through the mountains. As I topped the mountain pass and went through, starting down the other side, all of a sudden I began to touch the brake because I could see a long curve in front of me. As my car began to approach that curve, my brake pedal went to the floor. I thought, Lord, what is happening? Then the momentum began to pick up. There was a wall of rock along the side. As I thought about that, if I go over that curve, I am going to wind up in the bottom of a canyon, in a wreck. As I got closer to the curve, I had to do something quick. Just before I actually came to that curve, in haste I said, I will wreck against this rock wall before I go over that curve. You know, I just turned the car into that rock wall and it felt like that rock wall became a big glob of rubber, I ran into it and could feel the car come to a stop. It so scared me, I woke up with my heart pounding. I came to church, a sister in the church back then came up to me and said, Bro. Jackson, I had a dream about you last night, I don’t know what it means, but I dreamed you were having to make a serious decision. I knew what it was. So I called the man and said, just go ahead and rent to somebody else. I realized that was a natural thing, but it doesn’t matter whether you are in business or what, as long as you are living for God and you bring every aspect about your life in relationship to serving the Lord, it doesn’t matter whether you run a dairy, a beef herd, or what, all these things, if you are seeking to serve the Lord in life, He is going to take it seriously for you. He looks ahead for you. That is why many times we have to depend on Him. When you talk like that to the denominational world, oh, they think that is fanaticism. But to me, it is reality. It is just as real as stepping outside to see the sun shining. When you know you are a child of God, you have received His Holy Spirit into your life, you are depending on Him to help you, not only to grow spiritually, but to help you in all your other activities in life, He is going to be right there to help you. That is why, when we come over to the 14th verse, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they (plural) are the sons of God.” When you preach these things some times to a denominational realm of people, they don’t know what you are talking about. Well, I have never been led like that. Then you don’t know how to commit all things into the hand of the Lord for Him to lead you. You just have a traditional belief, that satisfies you, and you sit down. You are not earnestly asking God to lead you and direct you. Go with me now, and let us look at this thing called character, in 2nd Peter chapter 1, when Peter is speaking and writing this epistle, he is definitely dealing in this first chapter about what we, being believers, children of God, are to do as we look at our lives. I realize, if you preach this to a lot of denominational people, and you say, if you are once saved and really saved, and filled with the Holy Spirit, you will always be saved. Oh no, they say, I believe you can backslide. Well sinners don’t backslide. How many know what I mean by that? When Peter wrote this epistle, we pick it up in verse 4, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these (these what? Promises) ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption (the dirty lifestyles of the sinful life that the world lives) that is in the world through lust. (Excess) And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; (What is virtue? It means the state of being right. Only the grace of God can help you attain that. But when we look in Revelation 22, the tree of life there, bore twelve manners of fruits. That is when mortality has been swallowed up in immortality. Then the believers will bear twelve manners, one of them is virtue. It is the state of being right, clean, holy in the eyes of God, because He has made you that way. Until we are saved, we don’t know how to be right.) and to virtue knowledge; (Don’t tell me anymore, I can’t remember all this. God wants us to grow in knowledge and in the grace of God.) And to knowledge temperance; (That is to know when enough is enough. That is why I said the other night, if you like a little ham once in awhile, go ahead and eat it, it isn’t going to hurt you. But know when enough is enough, because it is a fact, too much pork in some people’s lives is not good for your health. Maybe your physical being is not capable of actually consuming that type of meat. I read in the Reader’s Digest, and I talked to a Jewish rabbi, here is what he said to me when I told him about what the medical profession said in Reader’s Digest, how that Muslim women and Judiastic women that did not eat pork, have less female problems in the realm of cancer, than any other race of people. That should tell you something, shouldn’t it? Then you can come along and say, then the Law is right. You didn’t hear me. I am going to challenge you when you hear me. How are you going to go to a country that is starving to death and tell them not to eat pork. They will eat anything. How many hear me? Temperance is knowing when enough is enough. That is my business.) and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; (all of this pertaines to character, if you look at it in the right way) And to godliness (That is when somebody can look at you and watch your life, your character, your conduct, how you do things, sooner or later they are going to have to say, that is a godly person.) brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness (love) charity. (That is the utmost.) For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful (I like that. So we are required to allow the grace of God, the Spirit of God, to guide us in life, to help us cultivate these things, that they may grow, that our lives, our whole character, can become molded in the likeness of Christ. In the likeness of Christ doesn’t mean you comb your hair like you think He combed His. No, it is the character that projected from the person He was.) in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I have to say, when the Holy Spirit comes in, He can come in with many manifestations and signs, but that is just the beginning of something He comes to do, that is to mold in you the likeness of Jesus Christ. Verse 9, “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.” Ye shall never backslide, ye shall never quit the fellowship, you will always be right there to be a part of the body of Christ. Well, I think I am going to take a trip. There is nothing wrong in taking a trip, but I have to say, if we get to the place that we would rather be on Pike’s Peak with a set of field glasses, looking out over the view, than we would to be in fellowship with believers, we are not fruitful in anything. We are living for ourselves. When you live for yourself, you are not living for God. Don’t kid yourself. He is not coming for that kind of people, unless first He takes a two by four and knocks you over the head with it. Oh, He wouldn’t do that. Oh yes, He will. I knew a man years ago, that said, I was so stubborn and rebellious against the will of God, one night in a dream, I was literally being beat with a fencepost. I was pleading, don’t, don’t, don’t. He woke up out of that and realized what was wrong. He needed to change his attitude. God has His way of dealing with you. That is why I have to say, He will even bring you within an inch of your life. Old Hwy. 31, I will never forget the place as long as I live, He put a mark on my face, I know, He don’t make you, He just makes you willing. When He makes you willing, then you want to, and you are going to love like His Word says. You are not going to try to hold back, you are going to say, Lord, give me more, I want to follow you. Eternal security is right there, once saved, always saved. But you have to be a person that is sensitive to the leadership of the Holy Spirit to have the promised benefit, and know why He is in you. You don’t put Him off in a corner somewhere and go ahead and live your life the way your flesh wants to live it. Let us go back to Ephesians. How many times have we read this? When the apostle Paul felt led to write this, he was not only looking at the Church that was then, but he was looking at the Church, the body of Christ, for all times. He speaks of how God has set a certain kind of ministry within the body of Christ, for the perfection. We know this, the body of Christ starts out first with sinners. They come in at different stages of life, in their experience. But the end result is that we can all eventually be taught the right things, that we can spiritually grow to attain an understanding, knowing how to give ourselves to the Lord and allow ourselves to actually function as a living organism, which is the body of Christ. When we look at the organizations today, we have to admit they were an element of people, that at one time, had something from God. He used that to restore something that is vital to the overall Christian faith. But it is sad to say, people in their carnal way of thinking are always content, that is enough, we don’t need any more, so they sit down. They just sit down and denominate. Therefore God could not perfect the actual individual, while the body of Christ is scattered through all these systems. That is why it was necessary that we have spiritual knowledge enough to know that in the last days, again as He sends the spirit of Elijah to start the dispensation of Grace, God knew exactly that the end time element of Gentiles would be split up by all these diverse denominational beliefs. He is not taking the Bride out of one particular system. His messinger came with a message and when it sounded, people came out of this, this, this, and that. When we look here in this day and time, again the Spirit of God is going to deal with us to not only bring us together in our doctrines, but it is going to mold our character, our behavior, our conduct, how we walk before the Lord and serve Him in the presence of the rest of the body of Christ, and how He can use us. We have to begin to recognize the leadership of God in our own respective life. When Paul wrote here, he said, for the perfection, the final reaching of a point of completeness, where in the eyes of God, it is now at a stage wherein there is nothing left to do to it, but take it. Because he plainly says over here later, He will present it to Himself a glorious Church. Not a denominational church, but a glorious Church, having neither spot, wrinkle, or blemish. That is human language, meaning there will be no carnal things held on to, just carrying along traditional things, well that is what I believe. We are going to be willing to empty out everything we have carried in life that we thought was necessary. Because we are going to allow the grace of God to teach us what truth is, and what it is for. For the perfection, the completeness of the overall body. It also presents the opportunity for the ministry to function. First off, if there is not a need, if there is not a visible need among us, then there is no need for God to have a ministry to deal with it. Let me use this illustration, if none of us ever got sick, why have a doctor? If none of our teeth ever rotted out, why have a dentist? Think about it. Well when you bring that into the spiritual realm, the ministry is not working on the physical man, but on the inner man. For the edifying, uplifting, encouraging, of the body of Christ, the individual believers. Ephesians 4:13, “Till (that is progressive, it involves time) we all come (or reach) in the unity (harmony) of the faith, (of (the) faith, not a faith) and of the knowledge of the Son of God, (We find out He is not the third person of a trinity, He is the one and only person of the Godhead. When we come to that knowledge, then by that time, it literally means that we are approaching the point where we begin to measure up) unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” We are not going to fall short of everything God potentially will cultivate in us. I believe when we begin to realize where we are in time, how short time is in front of us, we are going to want to be spending most of our time meditating, Lord, help me when I get up in the morning, that I can go about each day, doing the things your way. Let me say this for a comparison. Being led of the Spirit of God, don’t mean we get up in the morning with our eyes closed, now Lord, just lead me for the day. You haven’t had breakfast, well I am waiting on the Lord to tell me when I should have breakfast. There are people who have been just like that. That is how narrow minded they get. Well I want the Lord to tell me. Then dinner comes, but there is nothing on the stove cooking. I am using this as an illustration. People can become so narrow minded. But I want Him to lead me, I don’t want to do anything on my own. Well there are some things you are going to do on your own, because if you have about ten cows and they need to be milked, don’t sit there waiting for God to tell you to go milk the cows. That is a necessity. After awhile there will be ten cows down in the barn, bawling their heads off, come and milk me. That might sound like a carnal illustration, but God did not put you here with a brain to be dormant, just because you turned your life over to Him, and you want Him to tell you when to do this and when to do that. He is not going to tell you when to take a bath, your neighbor might though. Maybe I better stop with that. But there are some things, as you go down the pathway of life and you are willing to walk with Him and let Him mold your life, as you more and more come into the stature to portray Christ, how you look at things, how you reach out and want to help your brothers and sisters, God sometimes will just put you in a corner. Sometimes we need to watch the circumstances that prevail about us, watch them. If you see certain conditions prevailing that never change, you can look at the condition, it can either come out positive or negative. I am using an illustration. So you just sit there, Lord, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do. I am frustrated. But if you prayed and He has not in some way shown you visibly by a dream or something, what to do, and yet you know you have to do something, God gave you a brain, and there is going to come a time when you have to use it in such a case. You look at that in the overall long term effect and try to look at it from the good standpoint, for your spiritual benefit. If it is a condition He has brought about in your life to force you, and you chose the right thing, I promise, once you are past the point of your decision and you have done what you thought best, it will all come to you and you will be glad you made the choice. I hope you understand what I am saying. I have to say in closing, when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, the gifts of the Spirit are just signs, not evidence. That is why Jesus said in Mark, these signs shall follow them that believe. Well these things can all be visible and audible in that respect. If our mind is only on that and not on the character, the exampleship and manner of life we portray, we are falling short and that is exactly where the denominational groups are today. I will say this, many of the Pentecostal people at one time really believed in dedicated, holy living, separate from the world, not being conformed to this world, but they have gone the way of Hollywood. They speak in tongues, but some of the things they advertise in their services, sixty years ago the founding fathers of it would have scorned them. But that is the way they have drifted because they have lost sight of spiritual reality. They don’t let the Holy Spirit teach them anything.

Rev. Raymond M Jackson

O SCRIBE LOOK OUT

THIS IS THE THIRD AND FOURTH MESSAGE BROTHER JACKSON PREACHED ON THIS VERY ENLIGHTENING SUBJECT. HE DEALS WITH GOD’S FOREKNOWLEDGE, ELECTION, PREDESTINATION, SECURITY OF THE TRUE BELIEVER AND MUCH MORE, SO WE WILL GET RIGHT INTO IT.
We are living in a troubled world, millions don’t even know which way they are going. Politicians are saying, we are doing our best to rid this world of terrorism and get this world ready to live another thousand years with peace and prosperity. I have to say, if God was to listen to them, Jesus would never come, I hope you understand what I mean by that. We are back on the subject of scribes, and the more I think about it the more important it seems. I want you to turn with me back to Matthew 13. I don’t mean to be repeating any words that I have said prior to this, I only pray that God will help me give you an understanding about this little word, scribe. I have listened to a lot of preachers through the years, more back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, than I do any more. You hardly ever hear any of them touch on the parables. They treat them as though they are irrelevant to what they are after. But Jesus said some things in these parables and He knew that He was using simple ways to illustrate something. I want to read these two verses again because they fasten right on to the end of what He said in describing the seventh parable. It would be like a net cast into the sea. I saw that, it was truly a move of God, closing out the 1940’s, going into the 1950’s. By the time we came to the 1960’s, it was tapering off. Evangelists were compromising, sitting down, parking their big semi trucks, folding their tents, never to set them up again. The other part of the parable began to take place. The end results of the seventh parable was, He would come forth, He would send His angels and gather out of His kingdom all things that offend. Then the righteous would be gathered. But there is a reason why He said to His disciples, have you understood all these things? And they said, Yea Lord. Now He uses a point here that is very important to me. The 51st verse, “Jesus saith unto them, Have ye understood all these things? They say unto Him, Yea, Lord.” When you look at the religious world today, all the evangelists that have been going here and there in the past number of years, I have never heard one of them refer to these scriptures. They treat them like they are irrelevant. This 52nd verse is important. We must understand what Jesus meant. “Then said He unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.” I looked up this word householder, it literally means to possess property, also to possess treasures, to possess valuables. Brothers and sisters, I ask you to look at the world of religion today. There are many evangelists, both on TV and radio, then in big auditoriums standing before thousands of people. They all have a program. They are trying to present to the masses of people that they are responsible to see that this world is saved. They are taking in large sums of money to build more TV towers and stations. They are doing their best to reach the world for Christ, before He comes. When you hear one, you will hear another one say something else, and you cannot get a common picture, each one is presenting a picture as though he is responsible as to how the world is going to be won. There are a lot of things going on in the ranks of religion, that most do not even see. That is the pathetic part of it. We look again at this word householder, in this parable. I want to take you to the 24th chapter. When Jesus used a certain word to bring out a meaning, He had a reason. In the 45th verse, notice the simple words of Jesus. “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household?.” Here we get the word again. He is not talking about just any kind of preacher. Back in Matthew 13, the 52nd verse, He said He will bring out of His treasure, things new and old. That implies one thing, it is important for Him to bring out, not only new truths, but deal with old revelations that have been lost. Hundreds of preachers over the world today, could not care less what has been lost, they are just working to put forth their own ideas. Many times the things that do sound like new are just an idea. It has no biblical significance whatsoever. Let me say this to you, we have thousands of people today, making their decision, what they are going to believe, who they are going to follow and why. But I am sure that God is concerned about His chosen Bride. When we take a look at the whole collective element of them, people of all ages, they have been selected from every kind of religious background that you can name. I know some of them have been saved right out of a raw sinful state. They do not have much to rely upon as far as religious upbringing, but God is concerned about one thing. He wants His Bride, with their minds, spiritually speaking, to be centered on one particular thought and picture. I am going to go back to when this seventh parable began to taper off. Evangelists and preachers in the divine deliverance movement began to sit down and compromise. I can name many of them. One was Gale Jackson, he married into a family down in the south, they were undertakers. He had an experience in knowing the Lord in a Pentecostal way. When the deliverance move started, he felt led to begin to pray for the sick. For quite awhile he did. But when the tapering off came and men began to sit down, to show that parable absolutely carries a true meaning, the last I read about him, he had ditched his tent and went back into the undertaker business. Another man that was well known, and had outstanding success in the healing ministry also ditched his tent. Whatever he had in the way of material investment, he began to invest in the Ramada Inn. None of those men fit into this scribe category. But out of all those men, there was one particular man, that they all will say had an outstanding ministry in the healing realm, but they do not want anything to do with anything he taught. I have to say, he was the first one among all of them that I ever heard, that dealt with the point, bringing out old truths and then bringing in new truths. That is why I can look at all of the others and know that none of them were scribes. They were just fishermen in the hour of time that God used them. But this particular man, not only was instrumental in starting the overall deliverance move, he just did not necessarily sit down, he began to change his style of what he preached. Then, is when he began to specialize in things that upset some of those preachers, especially when he began to preach serpent seed and no eternal hell. If you really study with an open mind and prayerfully, it is the only thing that made sense out of all the junk and religious rubbish we have had crammed down us through the years of our upbringing, no matter whether it was Catholic, Baptist, or what. When this man began to really deal with certain things, by the time God was through with him, he had touched on every major New Testament doctrine. He fulfilled exactly and precisely Malachi 4:5-6 in its last day fulfillment. To me, he was not only the spirit of Elijah, he was not only the seventh church age messenger, but he was the beginning of this scribe given office. He began to teach the original faith, one God. Yes, many details, he never covered. But he gave the people the essence of the thought that there is not three Gods, there is only one. He brought out the importance of true water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ. He brought out the importance of being filled with the Holy Spirit, because that is the only way you are put into the body and Bride of Christ. He taught also that the true Church, the body of Christ will have all nine gifts in operation as God perfects it and makes it ready for the rapture. No matter how much opposition he ran into and how men belittled him, he stuck to the standard, because he was not preaching to the masses. He knew that God had sent him here to present a message that would be for an element of people that are the children of this last day dispensation. He knew it was his job to turn their hearts back to the apostolic faith, not just divine healing, but to every major New Testament doctrine that had been laid out by the early apostles. He taught true sanctification, what true holiness is. We have a lot of holiness movements, I know some of them, and to see them as a person, they are nice people, but to talk to them about the second coming of Christ, they will start looking into the trees, because they are not interested. They have their own idea of what holiness is, as long as they can put it on and take it off, that is well and good with them. Then he took on the doctrine of predestination, that before the foundation of the world God knew every one. He brought out also the security of the believer. When you begin to lay it down in the Bible scriptures, that means this, there is no such thing that you can be born again a half dozen times. That is nonsense. Yet within that same holiness element of people, they have had through their years of revival, so many people saved last year in a revival, backslide the next month, then lost, and drift for another three years, then saved all over again. That is the way they look at the whole thing. But I have sense enough to know this, a little baby is only born one time. It can be sick many times, almost die, and some have died only to be revived, but the initial birth of that child only goes back to one period. If that is true in the natural, then it is also true in the spiritual. There is no need for any denomination, to think they are the true Bride of Christ. They are not. They are only a movement, through the years of time, that God has used to restore a truth. Because in the first four hundred years, Christendom had lost its original roots, its foundation. By the time it started into the Dark Ages, more and more tradition came in and pushed truth out. By the time we come to 1500, the Catholic system was put together out of dogmas and creeds, ceremonies and rituals. The Reformation was a slow process over roughly five hundred years of time, for God to gradually restore light on particular truths. When we look at this man, to me, there are many plural statements that he made through the years of time. I was privileged to hear these. I will never forget one of the first ones I ever heard, I thought to myself, if he is a prophet, why was that said like that? Later on, I began to see this, if John the Baptist said one day, there is one coming after me whose shoe latchets I am not worthy to unloose, when He has come, He will indeed baptize you with the Holy Ghost, Jesus Himself has never been here baptizing His people with the Holy Ghost. He has been in heaven as a High Priest, making intercession for ever last one of us. The Holy Spirit has come into our lives as we have met our time wherein God dealt with us. So it is absolutely a working of the Holy Spirit that applies those words. When John the Baptist said, whose fan is in His hand, that meant at the end of the threshing, harvest season, we will pass through an era of time, still related to the kingdom of heaven, that God will deal with us. Not only will He still continue to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire, but He also said, whose fan is in His hand. He will not be here holding a fan in His hand. That is still a work of the Holy Spirit, while His intercessory work is going on. When we see these things, then it becomes more important then when we say, well why did God allow him to make certain plural statements? I have heard different characters who say they are preaching his message, say, well they are all true. Only a first class ignoramus would say that. If you know anything about the Bible and you have reference and respect for it, your knowledge should be able to take hold of that statement and put together a picture, was that scripture or was that just an idea? Keep in mind, if there is going to be a fan in Jesus’ hand, he is not going to be here in person holding it. It is how His Holy Spirit will take and deal with certain elements on the earth to create a fanning situation. That is exactly what that man did. People began to see he was a prophet sent to the age. As people began to accept the things he taught, little did they realize that he knew how to sort it out. Take the seals for instance. One particular statement goes like this, the Bride will be raptured, but the church will go through the tribulation. Well if you know anything about the written word, there is only one Church. That is the Church that Paul wrote all his epistles to. That true Church that he wrote the epistles to, in the end, is going to be His Bride. How can you take those two statements and put them together and say they are both true? They are not. Nevertheless, that is the way people try to justify certain things. So we can say this, when He sent that man in the ending of time, He did it strategically to deal with truths that have been lost, to restore them to accessibility that the true end time believer could see and recognize them. He would also feed into that, new revelation, and the old truths are necessary that we be restored back to what was the faith of our apostolic fathers. This causes us to set aside all our denominational traditions and ideas. That is hard for people to do. When you really begin to bring it down and lay it before them, well, you are telling me I have to turn against what my mother believed, or my grandfather believed, or my uncle believed. The point is this, who saved you? What are you basing your salvation on? Was it what grandma handed to you? You did not inherit anything from her. If you are a young woman, you might have received an old set of beads. If you are a young man, you might have received grandpa’s old hammer. But that does not pertain to salvation. When he began to bring out new revelation it caused a problem. I will never forget Jimmy Swaggart, an evangelist on the scene during the later 1960’s into the 1970’s. Somebody wrote an article about predestination and asked a question. He put an article in the paper he printed, a man gave me a copy and I read it. He condemned the predestination teaching and said it was out of the pit of hell. I said, watch that fellow. He had built one of the tallest platforms ever, in the evangelistic field at that time, and it was not long until we heard of his marital situation. Not only was it one time, but he ran into the problem twice. Slowly he disappeared from the scene, he is still on TV, but he is a very small character. You don’t hear much of him anymore. How many understand the point? I am saying all these things, not to put the man down, not to condemn him, but to try to lift up this certain scribe. That man had a vision that whatever our faith consists of, it has got to be based upon the scriptures. I can say he labored and toiled, to do that very thing. He was only one, but he was the beginning of what God would do collectively for His entire universal Bride. When I read, therefore every scribe, that means something. I looked up the word every, in the dictionary. It applies to more than one. If you are referring to one noun, like a person, and the word every is used, it literally means there is more than one condition he has to deal with. You could say this, as you speak to the singular noun person, be sure that you touch every subject, and when I say every, how many can see what I mean? That is not the term here in verse 52. Therefore every scribe, would be like unto a householder. It starts with one, but when God removes him from the scene, there is definitely going to be God called men to fill that office. They are not just religious evangelists out of every system. They are going to be men, some young and some older, but whatever status of life they are in when God deals with them, God is going to put it in their heart’s, to sooner or later find out what that scribe said. It is God that gives this scribe the authority to possess property. That is in the confines of His Church. Therefore every scribe will be instructed, how to bring out of his treasure things new, new revelation, as well as deal with old truths. That literally means it is pointing to the upcoming five fold ministry that will be in the Bride, as Paul said, to complete it, to perfect it. They will not be just anonymous individuals. First, God will apply this message to the field. Many will get hold of it, and will follow it for a period of time, rejoicing for what they see. Only God Himself knows what is inside their heart and soul, and whether there is the genuine qualification and the will to measure up to His specific call. It is that inside attitude they have toward God and His word, that eventually determines how they begin to fit into the end time picture. It does not matter whether the man is an evangelist, a pastor, a teacher, a prophet, or apostle, because they will each one fit right into a respective office, and sooner or later will be dealing with the things the Holy Spirit has taught him, all related to the one and self same thing, the overall word of God. Neither one will be a repetitionist, a copy cat. Each one in his particular calling, will eventually see everything that deals with what his kind of ministry is meant to deal with. If the overall subject is one God, then I will say this, from the apostle to the evangelist, they will all see the same picture, they will not have a dozen different ideas, like, well it could be, well don’t you think so and so? I have heard plenty of that in time past: it is sickening. When you see things, how the word of God describes them, you know the Lord has put up with all the denominational versions of His Word from the Reformation, from the hour of Luther, right on down here to the Pentecostal hour, and just look at the different systems of religion in the world today. Every person within those systems must feel as though, this is the true Church. They just take things for granted. That is not the way God looks at the Church He is coming for. He plainly states that He is coming for a Church that has been washed. With what? She is washed by the water of God’s Word. That means she has a revelation of the Word itself, and not holding on to tradition, ceremony, nor neat programs. I passed the Methodist church in Elizabeth this morning, they have a sign in front, Valentines Day is coming up this week. They are going to have a Valentine’s dance in the fellowship hall that they built out back. Young people, listen to me: there will be no dancing around here unless you are dancing in the Spirit. I believe it is just as enjoyable for a young person to see a Bible truth, and understand it, as it is for an older one. When I get over here in the 24th chapter, first I am going to read these verses to come down to an hour where I want to approach it, because many people have thought this entire 24th chapter of Matthew covered a long period of the church ages. It did not. The first few words here that He began to explain to His disciples, when they asked him three questions, the first one He said was take heed that no man deceive you. That was applicable right then. Verse 5, “For many shall come in my name, saying I am Christ; and shall deceive many.” When we begin to read church history, no sooner has the Holy Ghost fell and the apostles begin to go forth and write their epistles, here came these false anointed christ’s. Great men, saying, I have been to Jerusalem, I have talked to Peter. You know the question when Paul and Barnabas came back to Antioch and found that church in a furor over circumcision, because somebody came up from Jerusalem, from Peter and them, so that is what Jesus was implying. And ye shall hear of wars, and so forth. Sure, that has gone on through time. When we come to the 7th verse, “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” Was He talking about all through the Dark Ages. No, He was not. Why would He say in the 8th verse, “All these are the beginning of sorrows.” I have read enough history, all these nineteen hundred and some odd years was not times of sorrows, they were natural. There were wars, upheavals and everything, but there was not any particular thing that went on specifically. So that is why, when we come to the 20th century, this political world began to go haywire. So all these are the beginning of sorrows, once that period starts, it will never end until it leads to the coming of Jesus Christ. 9th verse, “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.” Six million Jews were hated by every government in Europe. Sure, I have read how Jews were persecuted in Poland and in different places, but it did not produce a holocaust. How many understand me? When this WW2 episode started, trains were pulling out of stations all over western Europe. They had literally arrested Jewish families, confiscated their wealth, put them on trains, hauling them many miles to detention camps. Some were put in semi trailers, telling them they were being taken to another camp, only while on the road of travel a valve was turned and that trailer was filled with poison gas. By the time they reached a deep woods somewhere, they opened the trailer doors, and all those Jews were laying on top of one another, dead, gassed to death. They pulled them out and bulldozers were waiting nearby to cover them up. That is what happened in central Europe. That is what Jesus had in mind. I am reading this because it shows you, we are looking at the last one hundred years of time, and the church world has lost sight of it. They don’t care which way the sun comes up or goes down, as long as their program is not disturbed. “And then shall many be offended.” Christian principals have become a forgotten item in this present day society, especially of America, but actually world wide. I heard them discuss the other night on a News program, what are we going to do to stop this teenage violence and gangs that are running rampant? Can they stop it? They really cannot, because society turned loose something fifty or sixty years ago that has produced what we are seeing now. It is a shame, that young boys and young girls are being raised up today in homes where they are not being taught basic principals of personal conduct. Philosophers and politicians keep proclaiming, we need a better education. We do not. We need to be turned back to some things that were basic not too long ago. The animal kingdom has more sense than the modern human race today. So when I read this, I want you to know, shortly after the fall meetings, I was asked to explain what Jesus starts with in this 15th verse, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, whoso readeth, let him understand,” Jesus was giving His disciples back then, a graphic picture of what was going to befall Jerusalem and the Jews in that first century of time, as it came to the hour of climax. He warned those disciples and told them what to do. When you study the history of Jerusalem and the Jewish people, (I have the history), one million Jews were slaughtered in 69-70 A.D. when it was finally accomplished. One hundred thousand were led away by the Romans and sold into slavery. Jerusalem was in shambles. The temple had been burned. That fulfilled everything that is written right here. Now let me explain this to you, that same situation will not be repeated over here at the end of the Age. You have the seventieth week of Daniel, but the condition we just read about, will not be repeated. Well Bro. Jackson, I thought, no matter what you thought, we have to read this right: immediately after the tribulation of those days, Jerusalem is not laying in ruins. How many heard me? I don’t say that trying to be smart. Why have a miracle war back here somewhere, that gets the Jews and the world ready to build the temple, and rebuild Jerusalem, and then three and a half years later when the beast comes in and breaks the covenant, he tears Jerusalem to pieces and burns the temple. I just said to that young man, there are certain things that are basic, because this time that spirit is basically against the Jewish nation. He is going to try his best to rid this world of the Jewish race of people. That is why he breaks the covenant and sets himself in the temple as God. His police force, or army, will take possession of the city. The city is not torn up again. How many understand now? It was torn up in 70 A.D. That was a great blood bath. However the true disciples escaped every bit of it. Just try to understand, they escaped that slaughter because they believed those warning words of Jesus. Then when you go from that point over here to the 29th verse, Jesus is talking about the time when Jerusalem is to go into that time of tribulation, and it does not say a thing in the 29th verse, about anything happening to the city. It is what is going to happen to the Jewish people that we look to here. “Immediately after the tribulation of those days.” We are in the 29th verse of the 24th chapter of Matthew. It is not a repeat of what was read back there, starting in the 15th verse. How many understand now? It is all called the abomination that maketh desolate, but this time the antichrist is going to set himself up in that city in that temple and show himself to the world that he is God, and he is going to be a Satanist. He is going to try to rid this planet of every religious person on the face of this earth. That is why, when we read the scriptures carefully over in Revelation, God ordains that after the two prophets have been here, from this point on, that woman (spiritual Israel) flees, and she is no longer there. The antichrist is in full charge of all.

FALSE TEACHING

I give reference every once in awhile, to men that have abstract teachings, all derived out of Bro. William Branham’s teachings. It is strange how they will use certain quotes from Bro. William Branham’s writings to feed into their own thoughts. This man puts in here, prophecies of the last days. I could not help but notice as he comes to the chapter where he is explaining who will be partakers of the rapture, when it occurs, so listen to what he says. “In 1963, the Almighty God, speaking through the mouth of William Marrion Branham, said there are only seven hundred living saints who will be taken in the rapture.” Well, I sat there, and know that is not what Bro. William Branham said. He was making reference to where Elijah was found in the cave, and was praying Oh Lord, they have torn down your altars, they have slain your prophets, and I am the only one that is left alive, and now they are after me. What did God say to Elijah? He said, I still have seven thousand men that have not bowed their knees to the image of Baal. Bro. William Branham was using seven thousand, but this man only said seven hundred, because later, he was asked the question, did you literally mean seven hundred? Then he said no, I literally meant seven thousand. But see, the man did not even correct that. So that is why I have to say, ever since Bro. William Branham had been here, there have been men that arose, mighty men, well respected by society, and the nations they came from. Ewald Frank of Germany did a masterpiece of work in Russia behind the iron curtain, and into Czechoslovakia, but then he let a marital problem ruin his image. Nevertheless he wrote a book in which he completes the analysis of the book of Revelation, he says what each chapter means and everything. Richard Gan of Singapore did the same thing. Each man had his own version. Down in Georgia, another man I know, Ben Howard, did the same thing, I have his book. Each man has different points that he emphasizes, but other points, it is just how he looks at it. I have to say, God is not going to have a scribe ministry that is going to hit and miss it, and hit and miss it, and miss it and miss it, probe and gouge. They will just keep still until they know what they are to say and say the right thing. We don’t have to be a copy cat of each other. How many understand that? That is why I needed to go back over this and give you a clearer picture. Jesus leaves what happened there in 70 A.D. and comes on down through time, and as we see the Jews coming home, do not think a great army is going to come in and tear Jerusalem all to pieces again, like they did before. The abomination here, does not have that military application. It is how the antichrist makes a covenant and then breaks the covenant, so he can set himself up in the temple of God. He is not the one that is going to build the temple. The Jews are going to build the temple. Howeveras he watches the two prophets in the first half of the week, do what they do, and demonstrate God, he is going to be put to shame. That is why Jesus just cut it short saying, immediately after the tribulation of the those days, He is not talking about a great war or anything in Jerusalem. How many understand? All of that, happened in 69 and 70 A.D. So it is not a big war again, tearing Jerusalem all to pieces. It is how the antichrist wants to exterminate the Jewish race completely. I want to bring you over here, after He leaves this description of what happens there in 69 and 70, and says in the 22nd verse, “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” That was a terrible tragedy, a catastrophic event. I have a book, an ancient history book, one million Jews perished, starved to death, were killed. They were thrown over the walls to rot and stink in the valley of Kidron. But when the Romans finally seized the city, they took one hundred thousand of the best, the healthiest and youngest, and led them off and sold them into slavery. They only left the weak to cry and wail over Jerusalem itself. There is a particular reason why I really wanted to go over this. When He ends that part, He keeps emphasizing, verse 24, “For there shall arise false Christs’, and false prophets, (I can say this, since the 1940’s and 1950’s, this world has had them by the car loads. They have advertised their ministry, the greatest, the most important, how God has anointed them. They did not have a vision of the Bride of Christ at all. They only had a vision and understanding of how to reach the masses with their own ideas.) and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” In their respective hours they have had hundreds and thousands following them. Notice here, in the next verse, Jesus gets specific, He is now talking to true believers here in the closing days of this seventh Church Age, when this scribe has been on the scene. “Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert.” they did not say that back in the apostolic days. Listen to how I said that, following the apostolic hour, they weren’t saying that, but I am anointed, here they go. That is why Paul was constantly writing letters, rebuking this and rebuking that. They were not saying, here is Christ, or there is Christ. But they were saying, I am anointed. Look at the phrasing. Jesus words this for the end time. Behold he is in the desert. I have absolutely been a witness of those things myself. It did not come out of Oral Roberts ministry, nor A.A. Allen, it is what began to follow William Branham’s ministry. All of that out there, began to look at the following of this man and that is why they want to put an X on the man, just look at his following. I just have to say, you have to see what God has sent and how carnal minds will want to interpret it. Back in 1958 when I was building our house, a young minister that I had helped move he and his family into the area, (I will not mention his name.) came down one day and volunteered to help on my house. Standing there, he asked me the question, Bro. Jackson, do you think people would know who Jesus Christ really is, if He were to come today dressed like modern man? I thought, this is a question that I have to know what he is pointing to. I said, well I think so. He said, well have you ever really thought Bro. Jackson, who William Branham might be? When he said that, then I could see where he was going. There is a spirit about this man’s life that began to give people the feeling, he could be the Messiah, he could be the Christ. Then take that just a few short years on, when he had to come home from Canada because people were handing out medallions, baptizing in his name, he stood there in the Tabernacle and preached that Sunday morning, The Bruised Serpent, he cried and pleaded and told how he realized he had to come home, he could not go on allowing people to call him the Messiah, making medallions and wearing them. I have had people ask me, Bro. Jackson, don’t you believe that tent ministry has to be fulfilled? I said, no. Well, why not? I said, no sooner did he tell that vision about the tent ministry, than here came people from everywhere, moving in close, I want to be a tent manager, I want to drive a truck, I want to drive stakes, I want to help set up the tent. Out of that element of people came all those twisted revelations, who he is and who he is not, he is the Messiah. Then when he did move west, they began to say, he is in the desert. I heard it. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but I heard it. That is why two brothers out there bought an old WW2 airplane, and it sat for years on the runway. One of them was preaching in church one night, how he expected the resurrection to take place. It went a little something like this, I believe at any time, I can either hear the phone ring or a knock at my door, and it will be none other than William Branham, and he will say, brother, we are ready. With Bro. William Branham in the plane, we will land in a certain place and he will call for the dead to come forth. Then we will take them to Jerusalem, because with him, they have to go to Jerusalem to get ready for the rapture. Now brothers and sisters, let me ask you a simple question, has anything like this come out of all these denominational preachers out there? No, you have never heard anything like that on TV stations. But it came out of a following of this man, and it had to be precisely like this to fulfill these scriptures. When Jesus came to the 27th verse, He was reassuring the believer of our day, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be,” in other words, it is not going to be a secret event, it is going to be a visible event that will take place in the heavens, right above the earth, and only the true believer of the Church, the Bride that is ready go, will even see it. Then notice what Jesus said, I like this, “For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” Have you ever heard any denominational evangelists preach that? They don’t even know what it implies. But I can say this, it all started back in 1963, when that little man stood there in that Tabernacle and brought the revelation of those six seals. That man stood there not only as an Elijah spirit, but he stood there as a scribe, ordained of God, because he preached old truths, he has revealed them, but for one solid week he brought out of the written word, new revelations. Those new revelations, no other preacher on the face of this earth ever touched on and gave them that kind of meaning. I have to say, that is new revelation. It was truth also, and we know it. That is the thing that began to set the course of an element of people that are going to be carriers of it toward the climax. When God did take the man, He did not take His Spirit, I mean the Spirit of God was not taken. As that man’s message began to be echoed throughout the earth, in response to that, God began to raise up men who will be destined to be scribes, so that as we get closer to the end time, not twenty years in advance, nor ten years in advance, but by the time we get here just a short period before the end, that five fold ministry will every one be a scribe, ordained and taught by God, and you could not change them for anything in the world. I hope you understand what I mean, because he knows in his heart beyond the shadow of a doubt what he has seen, what he has heard and what God has let him understand, and that is more important to him than to fall heir to the king’s crown. Because actually every one of them has been called of God, and God has made him the possessor of certain areas in God’s overall household. God specifically has taught each man. Look at all the evangelists on the TV stations. Are they feeding eagles? No. When you see some of the crowds, they look more like stray chickens. I don’t say that to belittle any individual people, but they are not interested in the truth: it is just an idea, a religious thought, and they are entertained by that. I thank God that we have been privileged for thirty some years, to eat on a fresh carcase and not on a rabbit that was run over by a horse and buggy. We are driving cars, if you understand my illustration. We see something that is applicable for our day. That lets me know, verse 28 has been applicable beginning from this point, and continues right straight on through to when the time the Church will be raptured. Now I want to look at this household again. If we have been eating on a carcase, eagles will only eat on fresh killed meat. They will not eat on some old dead thing that has been in the road. They might light in the tree, but when they sense it, that is as close as they come to it. It shows that only eagles, people that have the Spirit of God, are being led by the Spirit of God, to know that true revelation is for the benefit of their lives. From here on down, He begins to describe how the rapture, the secret catching away, will take place. Some can be in the field, some be grinding at the mill, so on and so forth. Well all of that is how we have to understand the rapture when it is to take place. Until that time does come, let us look at the 45th verse. It is a question. “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his (here it is again) household.” So my point is, this is not necessarily talking about Bro. William Branham, this is talking about the ones that are alive, that have been influenced and brought out by his ministry, and every one of them have been called and chosen by God to deal strategically with that element of people that is going to make up the true Bride of Christ. “To give them meat in due season.” They cannot help but give fresh, meat because that is all they are going to be taught. When you look at it from the position of a householder, it is not that in the world they own a lot of wealth, but it is in the Holy Spirit, God can trust them. He has imputed to them the right to have possession of certain aspects of what is for His overall body. That does not mean all one geographical area. It is wherever God’s people are gathered, wherever God’s people are truly hungry for true meat (revelation). That scribe will give them meat in due season. That does not mean he is going to give them some left over hash browns that have been in the ice box, and should have been thrown out a long time ago. It goes to show there is not going to be a lot of men that measure up to this scribe ministry. I hope you understand what I am saying. From that point, I want to take you to this point, some people can say, Bro. Jackson, when is this going to be? We could be standing at the front door of it right now. Back a few weeks ago when those dreams came to me, about, the time has come that judgment shall begin at the house of God, I believe it started with the ministry. I believe that every man that is absolutely God called, ordained to be a true scribe, God is going to deal with him specifically. He will either measure up, or somewhere he disqualifies himself by not having the right attitude. We have heard much about Isaiah 52:8, have we not? I am reading it out of the Hebrew text. “The voice of your watchmen! They lift up the voice, together they sing; for they shall see eye to eye, when Yahweh returns to Zion.” If that isn’t what is taking place, what is it? Is it fifty more years to play around? You may not like me, and if you don’t think I am worth anything, then get away from me. I thank God for what He has allowed me to see in His word through these years. It has been thirty seven years since God took His servant. I am thankful for the things He has allowed us to print and send around the world during that time.

BEING LED BY THE
SPIRIT OF GOD

I am so thankful to the Lord to once again have an opportunity to stand here and do my best to uplift the word of God. To some people, they would say, well, we heard this a long time ago. Let me say this, I know people right now, that if they do not get hold of themselves, something is going to happen to turn them so far away from the truth we believe in, that there will be no return, because they just play around with some ideas. I am of the opinion that the time has come, when we can no longer just play around with the Word of God as to what we are going to believe. We have got to come to a conclusion of what is right, then stick with it. I have said this many times, that thirty some years ago, I heard a man that lived in this area, when he was alive, and I knew that he was God’s messenger and servant to this age. I was young then. I made it my business after the Lord dealt with me, to bring me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, to find out what this Bible really did say. As I watched different denominational structures, each particular denomination had their own theological ideas as to what salvation is, and as to the true Church. The more I read the Bible, the more I began to see the truth in it. I began to see a picture that let me know, there cannot be a dozen churches, all having different ideas. There can only be one true Church, because that is what it started with on the day of Pentecost. There was no such thing as Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, all being God’s Church. They were first called Christians at Antioch. That meant, Christ-like, that is what a Christian is, they are doing their utmost by the grace of God, and with the truth they see, to live the life that Jesus lived according to the record we have of His life. All true believers should try to apply it to their personal life. Many times we see young kids, they look back on the pioneer days and see certain frontier characters, Daniel Boone and all those. They try to imitate them. There is something about them that stands out to the young mind, but Jesus Christ outshines all those characters. He suffered and died that we might be purchased unto God, to become a work that He can mold and fashion in His image and likeness. It seems that the devil, through the centuries of time, has done his best to fight, to divide, to split the Word of God. That is why, when the Reformation came about, and God began to lead people out of the Catholic system to give them a glimpse of truth, it seemed to be in the mind of man that he could only understand so much, and that is as far as he wants to go. That is why we have to understand, it was necessary for God to send a messenger in the last days to do a certain thing, to bring a message that would definitely open the eyes and hearts of an end time Christian people that were scattered here and there in the various denominations. It was the means of restoring true believers back to the teaching of the apostolic fathers. That is what we read in the Bible. That man, to me, did a good job of that. He lived his life according to that. I have said many times, when I was a young kid, I used to be afraid to get around preachers, but I saw in this man, something that made the sinner become relaxed and willing to listen. When you were in his presence, you would never know that he was a preacher unless somebody told you, because he did not go around broadcasting it. However if he did see an opportunity, or if you asked a question, that would lead him to bring out something from a scriptural standpoint, and then you would find out who he is and what he is. He had a way that was so simple, to make people feel at ease. Tonight, I want to take us back to that important passage I read this morning, from Isaiah 52:8. For the past two years we have seen all the mid-east uprising between the Palestinians and the Jews. We know that for fifty some years the Jews have slowly been brought back into that land. The world leaders have all come to a conclusion that they are not going to give the Jews all the land, they just want to give them a small portion of it. Our politicians today, are fast becoming a bunch of people that do not want to go by the Bible, they want to go by their own political ideas. That is why this situation in Iraq is so bad, there are thousands of American people against the whole thing. I don’t want to think of it as a joyful picture for our young men to have to go off into, but if we can realize from the Bible what is at stake, what the issue really is, then we have to come to a conclusion, the devil has used that Islamic spirit to raise up a terror system that is in practically every major society on the face of this earth. That is why our president and a few other world leaders, have come to the conclusion that it is their job to rid the earth of that spirit. I say, God will rid that Islamic spirit and He will do it in a miraculous way, in His time, because we have to see it from the scriptures. When we look at ourselves as true Christians, we have been brought out of every denomination there is. Many can say, I remember when I got hold of the message, or somebody told me something, somebody passed me a book, somebody gave me a tape, and that was the beginning of your process, the way God began to lead you, for thirty some years after Bro. William Branham died, up until 1969, I began to wonder, because I knew God had called me to do something. For about five years, I could not see that anything I was doing was any good. Everything I looked at, looked like it was a losing battle. You would be surprised at the men in the movement, those that set under Bro. William Branham’s ministry, what they thought of me. I knew every one of them by name, and they looked upon me as though I was some kind of black sheep, or a black bird. Many times my name became that in public. Many times I said in prayer, Lord, what good am I doing. Many times I said, I will not go anywhere and preach anything anymore. Then the grace of God, through various dreams and things, would deal with my heart as though saying, Go on? I am thankful to God, it was His grace that moved me on to do many times, things against my own will, simply because I could not see far enough ahead, what it would all lead to. There are various ways to be led of the Spirit of God. In the process of time, we started printing the Contender. At that time I did not realize how important it was going to be in the plan of God, but I knew at that time, I had a few messages in my heart I would like to put in printed form. I did not even expect that it would last over five years. We began printing in 1969, and it is still going. There is a man here who has been in the penitentiary, he told me he had been receiving the Contenders while he was in the penitentiary. He said, Bro. Jackson, the Contender has been printing the truth. I have to say, it is God who made it that way and it was God that dealt with my brain because I am just not a person that is going to sell out to every little whimsical thing that comes down the road claiming to be an evangelist or a religious leader. I know the true gospel of Jesus Christ is a formula. It is like the ingredients that go into a choice cake. You just cannot haphazardly put it together, you have to go by the recipe. As far as I am concerned, the Bible is the recipe book. It does not have a half dozen pictures, it only conveys one thought. It behooves us to try to find out what that original thought is.

GETTING IT RIGHT

For two thousand years the devil, through carnal minded men who want to make themselves something, have made a wreck out of what was supposed to be Christianity, That is why the Bible calls them false christs, false prophets, it says, in the end time they would be so outstanding it would deceive the very elect if possible. I am so thankful the elect are people of God that have a spiritual mind, they have a spiritual eye, they feel inside, that they know what they are looking for and listening for. I have always said, it is not wrong to listen to every Tom, Dick or Harry, but you better know whether you should believe them or not, after you have listened. If you do not know how to acquaint it with the Bible, you could be bent just like that. There are a lot of people that just follow the flesh of the man, because they like the way he says things. That does not have a thing to do with true revelation. It is the thought that he is conveying, the objective he has in view that you must be sure of. Most any man can use conniving words to really get hold of some, but if you have a discerning spirit in you, and you are determined that you only want truth, then God is going to be inside you, guiding you. He will cause you to beware of that. After all these years that people have been scattered and divided through the denominational structures, many times our background becomes so affected by our past, we find it hard to begin to separate ourselves from friendship. We feel that we are loyal, we have to be loyal to our old friends. Our loyalty has to be to God first of all. He is the one that sent His only begotten son to die on the cross to pay our sin debt. I could not have done that, but He did. The truth that He brought, only has one meaning. It is sad though, that many men will get hold of it and split it, and give it many meanings. They say, well that don’t mean that: it means this. If you don’t know the difference yourself, then many times your mind can be swayed by either one. The Bible proves, as we studied last Sunday and again this morning, that in these final days there are going to be some scribes. That is quite an unpopular word. First off, it is a word that you do not even hear used today, especially in the educational realm. The truth is, that was a word that was used in ancient times in Israel. There were certain persons that held that position within the Jewish society. They were men that were legally appointed due to their education and qualifications. It was their job to watch over the Word that was printed, how it was printed, how it was recopied. That is why every jot and tittle had to be in proper place. If there was one little flaw, the examiner could reject the whole thing. In Matthew, when Jesus said, he is like unto a householder that brings out of his treasure things new and old, new truths, old revelations. Out of the denominational structures today, every last one of those preachers use the same verses of scripture over and over and over. When you have heard one, you have heard them all. They have no new revelation whatsoever. Most will say, we don’t deal with revelation. Well I say, you had better, because Jesus said that is what He would build His Church on, not theology. A divine revelation is a spiritual understanding of what it means. That is exactly the thing we have to go by. Seven hundred years before the advent of Christ, just think, Isaiah the prophet looked down through the span of time and saw your day and my day. I want every one of us to remember what is going on in the middle east. We have thousands of troops massing at the borders of Iraq, in Turkey, Kuwait, marines on ships, navy pilots of aircraft carriers. From the political man, we have an idea, we want to get rid of this sick man (Saddam Hussein). But I have to say, he is a symbol of a spirit. That spirit is being harbored by these terrorist Muslims. They are scattered everywhere. It is in the hand of God to use that as a triggering device. I have never heard one preacher on TV even touch on the subject. But I am convinced, once this war does start, if we are approaching those end time days that God said He would do what is in the scriptures, we are going to see this war turn into some kind of situation when we will see the miracle power of God. Already some of the heads of the nation of South Africa have said, if we declare war against Iraq, this could lead to another holocaust. I wonder why they say that? I have to believe, there is no doubt in the world leadership today, there is some shaking feelings about what would take place over there. The Jewish people, for fifty some years, have had to live in that land, full of terror. How would you like to go to bed at night, never knowing when somebody was going to throw a bomb through your bedroom window? When you get out the next morning and go to the grocery store, you may be shot at. Our president would not put up with it. Yet when they attacked our nation and destroyed the World Trade Center, and three thousand people perished in one episode, he was ready to go to war with the whole thing, yet he will tell the Jewish people, now cool it down. I have to say, that is not right. They have as much right to go after that devilish spirit as we do. I cannot help but believe that is what God is going to turn it into. He will allow them to think like politicians, but when they get so far along the road, then God can turn around and let something else happen, then He can begin to deal with it the way He has planned to. If we are living in the days that God is getting ready to show His hand in a miraculous way, to help to establish that Jewish nation of people back in their homeland and their city of Jerusalem, then we just as well get ready to accept the fact, there is going to be things unfold over night that world leaders are not expecting. We, as Christian people, are going to be foolish sitting around, if we don’t begin to look at ourselves and find out where we stand in relationship to the scriptures, am I doing my best to apply everything in the scripture to my personal life, to get myself ready? Somewhere up ahead there is going to be a Bride raptured out of this filthy world. I am going back to this date, why is that important to me? Because that is the year that God used that messenger to bring the revelation of six seals. You have never heard any other evangelist or preacher ever touch on them. Billy Graham wrote his book shortly after Bro. William Branham was gone, called the Four Horsemen. The Jehovah Witness have the same idea, that it is all to take place in the tribulation. When Bro. William Branham taught, that they have already been riding through the ages of time, they did not accept it. When I look at that, that lets me know it is not every preacher coming down the road saying he is anointed, and that God did this and God did that, if he cannot begin to recognize certain scriptures that are applicable for our day, then I have to say, God has not spoken to him. I don’t care if he went on a hundred day fast, he would still miss the mark. I have read the testimonies of some preachers, that have been on long fasts and told how God had spoke to them to do such and such. It was not long until they dropped completely out of sight. It lets me know they are trying to get on course, but they are not on course. God has put them in our society somewhere, He is going to park them on a sideline. It reminds me of when the railroads were really in operation. Every once in awhile there would be a train come through Borden, they would unhook a couple cars and shoot them out on a sideline. Those cars could sit there for two or three months, the weeds would grow around them in the summer time. I don’t want God to shoot me out on a sideline somewhere. I want to stay on the mainline. With this in mind, I want to try to finish this message.

UNITY IS THE THEME

I will read again, Isaiah 52, verse 8. Every time I read this, I think, if in a few days our troops cross the line and there is a war that starts in Iraq and God does use it as a time piece to turn something loose, then it lets me know we better be on the right track. We better be ready to follow the Lord. The voice of the watchmen, does not point to every whimsical preacher, because there are thousands of preachers with a program. He has an idea, he wants to win the world to Christ. But winning the world to Christ is not a burden for the true Church of God as she gets herself ready. So these watchmen, they are God-called special servants that have a vision and understanding of what the will of God is. They are going to be taught by God, they are going to see their position in the body of Christ. They are going to know how to look at their calling in relationship to what they can do and feel that they have the spirit and the will to do it. They are absolutely, each one of them, going to speak the same thing. The prophet Isaiah could not be wrong, because it is God who is going to do the teaching. (Jewish translation) “The voice of your watchmen! They lift up the voice, together they sing.” Now brothers and sisters, let us be sensible, all these watchmen are not coming out of America. They are coming out of this whole area of Christendom where the true Bride of Christ is scattered all over this world. It does not matter what their race is, what color, what culture they come from, nor what language they speak. They are going to speak the same thing, because in their hearts they are going to want to. Every one of them is dependent upon something that he has had to learn. I don’t care how young or old, the main point is, he first has to be saved by the saving grace of God. If God has called him, then he has to know that to be a fact. But he has to know also that he is called from something, to be something, in something. He is not going to be able to say, oh Praise God, I am going to belong to a new movement. I want to say this, I never have said since Bro. William Branham’s death, that I have started a new movement. That was not my vision or purpose. What I heard, I felt like God had let me sit under that man’s ministry long enough that I knew what he said and what he meant. If there were dual statements, then I prayerfully sought God’s answer for them. I searched the scriptures. I had to find out where one of them would apply now and where the other one of these statements would just pertain to something like the denominational world’s religious ideas. They could not both be truth for the bride of Christ. That is why I began to understand, God would use those dual statements. He would use the one, from the natural part of the man, for men to take it and weave together and make a fan out of it. When the apostle Paul speaks about men preaching every wind of doctrine, wind of doctrine, how many times people are truly affected by the winds that preachers blow off. I hope you understand what I mean. When Isaiah the prophet spoke these words, he was looking right at our time when God is going to complete and perfect His true Church. Most all denominational preachers think their system is the Church, or that it is part of it. God is not coming down here and taking the best out of any of them. That is why He sent a messenger, years ago, to send forth a message into the earth. The Spirit of God would take that and sound that backward and forward. Anybody sitting in those systems that had a true, sincere heart from God, it would not be long until a certain word would fall on their ears and they would say, I believe that. This would start them on their course to find out the origin and purpose where God might use that. So when we are talking here tonight, these watchmen, they are not every whimsical doctrine kind of preacher. It is men that God has called by His grace. Yes, they may have come through everything, but each one can recognize the grace of God, how He has led them as a person. After it became evident to me, and I felt like I was nothing in myself, but at least God had put something in my heart so that I could stand and preach the truth as long as I know how to stand. If God is in it, He will use it somewhere. Little by little, it would not be long until I would hear of a certain brother, or two or three families getting hold of it and saying, I see that, I believe that. So tonight I can say, through thirty some years, yes, all over the face of this earth from nation to nation, there have been many ministers that have written nice letters saying, Bro. Jackson, thank you for what you have said, what you have stood for, it gave me something to help straighten me out. There have been a lot of preachers of the Branham movement that have went all over the world and preached quotes, quotes, quotes, and all it has done is created confusion. Because no five of them can say the same thing. One will say this, one will say that, and another will say something else. They all say, I preach the prophet’s message. No they are not: they are preaching their own ideas about it, how they heard it or how they read it. We cannot do that and be in the will of God. It is one thing to hear something, but did we hear with a spiritual mind and ear? What does it mean to me? That is the main objective. Now they lift up the voice, together they sing, it didn’t tell you what they would sing, did it? But we can say, this is more or less an illustration, how the real ministry of the true Bride Church, will operate in these closing moments of time, because it is tied to a world event. “They lift up the voice, together they sing; for they (these watchmen) shall see eye to eye.” I will say this, wherever this is heard in different places around the world, the real ministry that will finish up the Bride of Christ will not be just an anonymous bunch of preachers preaching their own version. When we look back at the beginning of Christendom and the beginning of the kingdom of heaven, it tells me twice in the book of Acts, they all continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine, going from house to house, breaking bread and having fellowship. That was the true Church in its beginning, there were twelve apostles. Then as God collectively called the body of the Church to be brought into existence, necessity laid upon them the need in this element of people, for these other types of ministries. That is why you follow it all down through the book of Acts. It was not long until men were referred to as prophets, others as evangelists. We know also that some had to be pastors. Wherever Paul went, eventually he sent elders there. As the body of Christ grew , necessity required the Spirit of God to raise up men to fill the ranks of that early ministry, which was the five fold ministry. It started with apostles, but did not wind up with another breed of apostles. Listen to how I said it. It started with the apostles, and through that, God added these other offices. Then when the Church collectively went off through time, we see how the devil began to bring on all these other false christs and things to make havoc of the Church. Christendom has never had that same kind of ministry through time until we come down here to the end time. No church evangelist, no modern evangelist has ever seen that. He many times will put himself out there as a great leader, but as I look at this, it is all to fall precisely into a time factor of a world event. Yes, not only will they sing together, and I have used this illustration, you can have five professional singers, base, alto, soprano, and all, bit when they hit the right tune, their voices will harmonize. Is that not right? If they do not harmonize, they may together lift up their voice and say the same words, but the voice they are expressing it with is out of tune. If you had to hear that same course or song, over and over, every time we come together, it would not be long until you would get tired of it. Well I wonder if God doesn’t get tired of hearing every Tom, Dick, and Harry come down the road, I have a new revelation. No, you don’t, you just have a new idea. Any true revelation will always correspond with another revelation that has been brought before. You do not throw away one, and bring on another new one. Every true revelation has to harmonize with what has been revealed before. This is all timed to a world event. When does this happen? “When Yahweh (that means God) returns to Zion.” If this war breaks out and God does come upon the scene by His Spirit and gets involved in it like it says in Micah 7, and you begin to see miraculous things on the field of battle, you will know the Arab world and that Islamic spirit has created a condition that causes Israel to say, now you are forcing us to get involved, that is when I will say Praise the Lord. As the old rabbit hunters used to say, sic him Fido, go get him. How many know what I meant by that? Go get him, Israel. Because angels are going to be on the field of battle and devils will not have a thing to do with it. It says in that 7th chapter of Micah, as it was, so he gives you a past reference, with him, meaning Israel, in the days when I brought him out of Egypt. When you read in Joshua, Exodus, Leviticus, what all took place, for forty years God showed His hand of leadership, this is another time God is going to show Himself to shut up the mouths of this bunch of hypocrites we have everywhere today. As for all these immigrants, they have brought them in by the thousands to use as voting blocks, so they have sold us out. That is why I have said many times, be careful, you are liable to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Then where are all your free handouts going to come from? This thing of watchmen seeing together, is timed to this world event. If that thing does unfold next week, or whenever, I would not want to be on the wrong side of the fence when it does start. I want my ears to be open and my mind unstopped. I want my heart to be right in the eyes of God. Lord, teach me, help me to see the right thing. As the prophet used the illustration, together they will lift up their voice and sing, that means in harmony. Singing in harmony is beautiful. When watchmen can say the same thing, because they see eye to eye, that should let us know we are moving right on time. When preachers, in the back of their mind, are just waiting to bring forth and come out with a new idea, I have heard some people say this, well you don’t have to have it all. I have never said that. You know that. I believe God has called different men and they have been anointed and taught by the Spirit of God to major in certain things. But not every God-called man has been called to be everything. Do you understand what I mean? All you have to do is read the whole structure of the scriptures. Paul’s message was basically to the Bride, the body of Christ. He did not touch much on the prophetic side of things. He did not deal with the spirit of antichrist, but he did explain how the rapture is going to take place. That is why a lot of these modern preachers today, cannot even see it, they say it is false teaching to believe that the rapture is going to take place before the tribulation period. The apostle Paul tells us when it is to be. Let me explain something right here, This is when that seventieth week of Daniel will start (pointing to chart) that is the purple line, here is the middle of that week, and over here is the end of that week of years. That is a seven year period. Preachers in the denominational realm for years, have said the rapture is to take place before the week of Daniel starts. There is not a verse of scripture that reads like that. 2nd Thessalonians, the 2nd chapter, when Paul heard that the Thessalonian people were getting confused, he starts that 2nd chapter by saying this, now concerning the coming of the Lord, he is not talking about His visible coming over here at the end of the tribulation period, he is talking about His mystical coming, when He is coming to get His bride people. That is why he said, that day shall not come, until, or unless, there is first a falling away. That falling away, when we begin to look at new translations, it literally means the time will come when modern man will rebel at the thought of God. Look how it has been in the last twenty five or thirty years in America. They do not want Him taught in schools, they want the ten commandments out of the picture. Our nation is fast becoming a multi-religious society, don’t get too strict in anything. When that begins to dominate society as a whole, then it lets us know, that man of sin is close on the horizon. As for the rapture (the catching away of the bride) Paul said this, 2nd thessalonians 2: 3-4 ,“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day (the catching away) shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed; the son of perdition; 4,Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” In other words, that man of sin will be revealed to the Bride before the catching away of the Bride, which is our gathering together unto Him. Paul is not telling you that you are going to go through that week: He is telling you, that you will see that man of sin introduced when he signs the peace covenant that opens the week of Daniel. That does not mean we are all going to stay alive until then. Some of us will go into the ground before then. This was written for the living ones: they are going to see that man introduced to the world. Then the rapture can take place, because God will then be dealing only with the Jewish nation. That is what starts the week. When God starts dealing with that Jewish nation and the Jews start building their temple, and rebuilding Jerusalem. That compels the world’s antichrist, which comes out of Rome, to step into the picture and begin to dominate world affairs. The U.N. will be a wreck by then. With this in mind, the true Church will see this thing coming on the scene. Israel will begin to rise, Israel will begin to do the things the scripture says, but it lets me know the Spirit of God, through those watchmen, the Spirit of God through those true scribes, that true five fold ministry, which are one and the self same group of men that God has raised up, schooled and brought through the knocks and bangs and has invested in them a picture of what He wants His true Church to look like. They will give their hearts over to that. The true Church will relish and enjoy it. But there are going to be others ejected to the sidelines, simply because they have allowed different selfish ideas to get into their mind’s. It is just like I read from this book I have, I have books of every description that men, supposed to be followers of Bro. William Branham’s ministry, how they have compiled certain scriptural pictures together. It is pathetic. None of them agree, yet each one has expressed his own ideas. We know what it says in Revelation 12, that when that hour of time comes, that Jewish woman has been taught through the first half of the week, where she must flee to when the man of sin takes over. At the same time, there will be 144,000 servants of God sealed, but there is that other part of Jewish society, that is referred to as the woman, which will be men, women, boys and girls, that have been taught by the two prophets, that when that antichrist does break the covenant right here in the middle of the week, they (referred to as the woman) will know automatically where to go. I am not going to read it, I am just going to refer to what this man says, he said these Jews that make up this woman will flee and go right back to some of the nations they came out of. Well then, what is going to happen to them when God rises up to shake terribly the earth and He will slay the wicked with the sword that proceeds out of His mouth? Something does not make sense to me, how many heard what I said? I have to say, if that woman flees somewhere into a wilderness, it is not going to be scattered among a multiple of nations, because let me say this, my Bible tells me over here, immediately after the tribulation of those days, which means when this whole week has come to its end and it is time for Jesus to be revealed from heaven, this planet is going to start shaking. God is going to use that terrible development of nature to destroy, to kill. Therefore I say this, If that woman element has been taken to a place somewhere in this earth, to a particular geographical area, God is going to watch over that woman and that means in that particular geographical area, He has already prepared that place where she will be protected and cared for. She has already gone through her purging. While others places are nothing but chaos, she will be safe. She is not going to have to be dodging rocks falling out of the sky, when the Lord is dealing with the wicked of the world. That place was foreordained by God for her care. That is why those two prophets will tell that woman exactly where to go. The real true watchmen, are not coming on the scene, one saying this, one saying that, if they are true watchmen, they are all going to be consistent with what they say. The Bride, the world over, no matter whether they speak Japanese, Chinese, or what language, they will all understand their message in their own language, and they will all get the same picture. Why? Because God has trained, schooled, and brought His watchmen through the knocks and bangs to get them ready for their hour. Many opportunities have been thrown in their pathway, they could have done this and they could have done that, but they remained loyal to the call of God. Therefore in one way, they are scribes, they are responsible for how they are going to feed the Bride wherever they are. I will now go back to Matthew 24. When Jesus started speaking these things every bit of it is how He is going to deal with His Bride. We can say, from this era of time right straight on through this, Matthew 24 and 25, up until about verse 31, all apply right in here where the five fold ministry is dealing with the bride. Tell me what preacher you hear on the TV even preach out of it. You don’t. It is so simple. That is why in the 45th verse of the 24th chapter, “Who then (That is why I titled this, Looking at Time. Who then, in that crucial hour of time) is a faithful and wise servant, (He is actually a watchman. He is a wise servant.) whom his lord hath made ruler (God does not pass this out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry preacher. All they have in their mind is a program. Most of them have the idea that they need to save the world. That is all these guys have in their mind, a huge program. They have not been taught by God. If they had, somewhere God would have said, that is enough, stop that! Who then, that is in this period of time, it is just not any time and anywhere, it just applies from here until we get to the end. It starts out small, but as we get closer and closer to the end, it is going to become more important, more precise, because the entire scope begins to narrow down. Who then is a faithful and wise servant. It is more than one. As I said earlier, every scribe, that lets us know, every scribe is ordained of God as God has given to him the ability, the opportunity, and the knowledge to take his God-given quality and calling, and minister to the Bride of Christ. He will do it, and do it faithfully, willingly, and he will want to.) to give them (Them who? Not the church world. It is the true Church of God, the Bride of Christ.) meat.” That meat goes back to the 20th verse, the carcase. I know that sounds foolish to a lot of people. What was Jesus talking about? It sounds like He is talking about a bunch of cannibals. He said these things just to throw the wise, those that have a mind of their own, off somewhere. But he that hath a spiritual ear, he that has a spiritual hunger, these are looking to where they can find that special meat, which is true revelation of God’s Word, because it is fresh killed manna prepared by God. This 45th verse applies through time, straight to the end when God raptures the Church. Then when you bring the 25th chapter, you lay that right over that time frame, because that is when God begins to separate the two elements of people. It is not that man separates them, it is how God separates. So when you lay that right over this time frame, conditions are brought about by the Holy Spirit, and truth is made available, it separates the wise saints from the others. Who are the wise? They are the God-called children that will make up the true Bride of Christ. But the foolish will just feed on anything. Most of the time they will go anywhere to any kind of meeting. When you come to the part that deals with the talents, you heard me say in another message when I preached along this line, for a long time I wondered, how does that apply to people of this hour of time? It is not going on in the denominational realm. They are not preaching anything like this. But when I look back to where Bro. William Branham made that church order, and when he preached the Church Ages, for two years all I heard, oh I will be glad when God puts a gift in my life. I will be glad when God opens up the ministry for me. They were looking forward to something. Then he made that order. It was just like, all of a sudden, they all began to say, now there will be no more gifts. One educator said, God would no longer speak in dreams or visions, nor gifts. Well that is the way He has guided a lot of us since that time. So you see, it is all a lie, but has this occurred out of that element out there? No it hasn’t. It has occurred out of an element of the followers of Bro. William Branham. They took what they did have and buried it, laid it aside, hid it. Now they want everybody else to do the same thing. Only Jesus spoke it in such a simple way by putting it in the form of a parable. After a long period of time the Lord comes and begins to call everyone into accountability. It is not Him here in person, it is how the Holy Spirit begins to deal with each one. It goes to show He separates those kind of people because they do not fit in where the body of Christ belongs. You have to be a wise preacher to catch this. You can run all over creation out there in the TBN bunch, John Haggee and all the rest of them, but they never touch on these things that really get next to the Bride of Christ. I have to say, I am thankful for what God allowed me to see in years gone by. I will say tonight, we are just about ready to cross over, we are almost standing at the threshold. I was watching the News this evening, it told how many thousands of troops we have in Kuwait right now, long lines of tanks and weapons carriers, personnel carriers, waiting to make their thrust across the border. I thought to myself, Lord, if and when that hour arrives, if this is the beginning of what you have planned for the Middle East to go through, I want to be on the right side of what this word says. I don’t care whether people like it or not. I love the people of God, but when people want to argue and fuss and say, but Bro. Jackson, that is a nice person. That does not have a thing to do with it. Nicety belongs out there in the world. God is looking at people that have something in their hearts and have a spiritual ear and spiritual mind to know how to take truth, believe it, and apply it. I am thankful for the grace of God. There are a lot of other things I could say, but I will just say it is time we begin to shape up our individual lives. I want to look at my life, I don’t want to conduct myself in any kind of social way to be a hindrance to any brother or sister. Even these little children, I don’t want them to look at me and see I am some old person that cannot speak a word of kindness. These little tots, when they grow up in here, I hope they feel they are growing up amidst a people, old or young, that love them. I know there are probably strangers that come in here a lot of times and say, why do they allow those little fellows to run around like that? Well I could go to a lot of places tonight, where you go in and sit down in quietness, but I cannot say I have been in a spiritual environment. First off, the Word of God is not even exalted. That is why I have said, when God blesses your life with a little baby, don’t leave it at home because you don’t want to be aggravated with its crying. God gave it to you, bring it to church, let it grow up in here. I don’t care if it does sit in the aisle and play. One of these days he will raise up when some preacher will be preaching, and say Amen. It has happened before. He learns more than you think. If he feels he is loved, it becomes his spiritual home. He is not going to get it out there in those schools. This is probably the only place they will ever be loved in the right way. We are standing at the threshold of something, if we are, then up the road in front of us there are some thunders coming. I have stood for the fact that it has to be men who all see the same thing. It is not going to be seven men, one saying one thing, and another saying something else. Those thunders are strictly for the Bride of Jesus Christ and no one else, and what they proclaim to the bride will not be something they have read in a book. They will never be talked about on the TV programs. I have never heard anybody on those programs talk about Bro. William Branham and the six seals. They know what is in that book, but they are ashamed of it. It is because they don’t have an ear for it, they don’t have a mind for it. They don’t see where it came from. I do, and I will say, Lord, give us more, right where that came from. I know as that Bride is separated, refined and begins to have the same mind, it is then, that those thunders will come and there will be no back talk. They will all say, praise the Lord. I am thankful for what God has allowed me to see through the years of time. I believe we are standing at the threshold, at a time we are getting ready to see a drastic change in world affairs. We have heard politicians brag. But I believe the hour is coming when God will show His hand, and when He does, I want to hear some of these News Journalists, educators and philosophers, get up, I would like to see some of them crying on TV, when they have to recognize the hand of God. That would make me feel good. May the Lord bless you everyone. Amen.