Christ Revealed in His Own Word #14

Seducing Minsitries

Wednesday Evening, May 8, 1996

Brian Kocourek Pastor, Grace Fellowship

Sunday morning we examined the closing words of Brother Branham's opening prayer which we find in pp. 4 & 5. So let's read..

4 Grant these things to us, Lord, and when we close the service and we go to our different homes across the nation, may we say like those from Emmaus, "Did not our hearts burn within us as He spoke to us along the road?"

5 Now, Father, I know that whatever I would say would be certainly insufficient. With the fine Christians throughout the nation now that's tuned in, it wouldn't be adequate. It would not be something that I could say that could do any good, because we're all in the same category. We're human, mortals, but let the great Holy Spirit speak; may He take ahold the Word and just reveal Himself. We're waiting on Him now, in Jesus' Name. Amen. (May be seated.)

Sunday we examined this opening prayer in light of the fact that God promised to send us help in this latter time. And as he promised back in Moses day, He said our help would come through the lips of a Prophet Whom He would send and Whom He would personally back up which is called vindication. Now the problem has been in each age that God would send to His People a Prophet, but the people would rather hear someone else. Someone who would tell them pleasant things and things that would not be offensive to them. But this has never been God's way of doing it. He sends a man forth that is so trustworthy of His Word that these men will never under any circumstances betray God or His Word. And so because these men take a very strong strand for the Word of God they become misunderstood by the people who usually want them to be nicer than they show themselves to be. What we usually find in scripture and even in our own Christian experience is that the guys who come forth with such nice talk and gentle manner are usually the ones who practice seduction on the people. And that is what happened in the first Church Age as we hear Paul rebuking them in ...

[ 2 Cor 11: 1 - 4] These men came in and brought with them false teaching which also introduced the people to a false Gospel, which then brought the people to believe in a false Jesus and thus gave them a new birth but a false new birth which was not the Spirit of God but another spirit which was a false spirit. And who were these men?

In [ verses 13 - 15] Paul tells us they are Satan's ministers, posing as ministers of Righteousness. Now to you this may be puzzling but to God it is not. He has warned His people from the very beginning to be careful what they hear and to whom they listen to.

[ Deut 13: 1 - 5] Now notice that God allows these men to rise up in order to test you. But I also want you to notice that God has never left His people without a voice. And we know that God's voice is a vindicated one. The voice of God is His Prophet's.

[ Jer 5: 21 - 31]

[ 2 Tim 4: 1 - 4 ] Now this scripture was given to brother Branham by the Angel of the Lord as His Calling. And we see that the people have itching ears and so they will heap to themselves a multitude of teachers who will tell them what their itching ears want to hear.

[ Deut 18: 15 - 22] You will notice here that God will give us a True Prophet to speak His own words, and in this Prophet God will vindicate the man by not allowing His words to fail which he speaks, because it is not the man speaking but God Himself is speaking through His lips.

But what we see in the end time is a picture of men rising up who proclaim to be ministers of righteousness but are actually only impostors. [ 2 Tim 3: 1 - 14] So we see the importance of knowing the one who is teaching you. Not just know the man but knowing what it is he is trying to teach you and knowing his motives for doing so. This is very important, because we know that these false teachers will be causing many to lose there place in the way of righteousness and these men will cause a great falling away from the truth. And notice that these men are not only deceiving, but they themselves are deceived as well. So they are sincere about what they teach. Doesn't the scripture tell us that Judas himself was sincere when he kissed Jesus with the kiss of betrayal. The actual Greek says, he kissed Jesus affectionately again and again. [( kataphileo) To kiss much, again and again, tenderly.] so there is what sincerity will get you. Brother Branham said those people who sacrifice their children to the crocodiles are sincere or they wouldn't do what they do, but they are sincerely wrong. Sincerity has nothing to do with it, "it is not him that runneth or him that willeth, but it is God who showeth Mercy" " Not by might nor by power, but by My Word Saith God." It must all come back to this Word or it is of no good to us. Brother Branham speaking of the Gifts said, why do people want to go after the false when the skies are so full of the Real. And what was first written in the skies? The Word of God.

[ 1 Tim 4: 1] It tells us that some shall fall away from the Truth. Now this falling away is from the Truth. Not just from truth in general, but the Truth which is the Message of God for the people of that hour. And there will be a falling away from what the end-time Message is declared to be. The Truth of It. Paul also warned us of this in the book of [ Acts 20 : 26 - 31] & [ Acts 13: 40 - 41] Here we find that Paul tells the people that God will bring forth a declaration to the people and this declaration they will reject. Now this is fitting because brother Branham said of His own Ministry the following words, " " This is my ministry, see, to declare Him, that He is here!" [FROM THAT TIME PP. 227]

Now if His Words are Spirit and they are Life it is because we also read in [ John 1: 1] That God is His Word. (Read) And so if we see then that God is the Word and His Word is a Seed according to [Mark 4: 13 -20] Those who do not go on to produce the same life as in the Word seed are those who the devil takes the Word from their heart. Now as we have studied, when the word heart is used in the scripture it means their understanding. So when the word is not understood then it can't bring forth any evidence of the Life is the Seed into the person. [ Matt 13: 18 - 19]. So you must understand the Word of God. We find Jesus very specifically telling this to the Apostles in verses [10 - 16].

Now, then, if the Word is meant to be understood for it to do you any good, and if not just any one will have an understanding of it, then we see that only the Elect can not be deceived, because only the elect will have what it takes to receive the Word and all others will not receive it.

And this brings us back to what Jesus said about being Truly born again of the Spirit of God. If we are born of the Spirit of God and God's Spirit is His Word, then our new birth can only come by God's Word becoming alive in us, quickened by His very Presence. [ 1 Peter 1 : 23 ] And so here in 1 Peter we see two forms of a new birth. One form is Corruptible, and the other which is not corruptible is by the Word of God entering in and setting your Soul aflame. Hat is why we find in [ 2 Peter 1: 2 - 4] That every thing we have need of in this life comes through the Word of God. Even the Divine nature which is God's own Nature in us. Therefore you can not escape the fact that every thing must come back to this Word. We van not go by feelings, we must go by the Word of God. Brother Branham many times said, " the Bible never asked you if you feel it, it asked you if you believed it." And that is the crux of the situation.

The Bible tells us that at the end time people will be seduced away from the Truth by men of reprobate minds concerning the Truth. Men who can not in any way shape or form come to an understanding of the Truth because they are not ordained to understand it. And because they do not understand it they therefore will preach error concerning the Truth and therefore the Message of the Hour. If brother Branham said, " This is my ministry, see, to declare Him, that He is here!" then we can be sure of one thing,

and that is those who are not ordained to understand this, will not preach Christ, and they will not preach that He is here. And if they do it will not be the same one that He preached. As they did in the Alpha so shall they do in the Omega. They will bring in another Jesus, another Gospel message and therefore those that hear them will receive another Spirit.

[ 2 Peter 2: 1 - 3] read... Notice that these will bring in a false message. It does not say that they are on the outside preaching there false doctrine, for what good would that do. They are on the inside of it but they bring into it, that which does not belong in it, thus corrupting what is inside. And notice also their purpose is to fleece the people. To make merchandise of them.

[ Gal 1: 6-9 ] not a totally different word, but a perverted word.

Now this brings us to this Message of Brother Branham's that we are studying Christ Revealed in His Own Word. Now what comes to your mind when you hear the word Christ? Do you think of the Son? Or do you think of the Father? Who then is being revealed in Whose Word? Is the Word, Jesus the Son's Word? Or is it the Father's Word? I want you to think about these things because they are very important.

Did not Brother Branham tell us that both the Oneness and Trinitarians were wrong concerning their understanding of the Godhead? Did he not tell us that God is not One like your finger is One? So then if the Godhead is not One like your finger is one, and He is not three as the Trinitarians believe, and he also told us that God is not two-ness or fourness, then what is it? Fiveness??? No! Absolutely not, that would be absurd! So then what is the Truth of the Godhead.

[ 1 Tim 3: 16 ] There is no doubt that there has been a mystery held back from the people about the Godhead. But Christ is the Mystery of God Revealed.

[ Col 2: 9 - 10 ] & [ Acts 17: 28 - 30 ]

The Truth of the Matter is that there is One God and He had a Son. And this Son did not come to the earth to declare Himself. He came to declare the Father. He did not come to reveal Himself, He came to Reveal the Father. He did not come to manifest Himself, He came to manifest the Father.

[ John 14: 6 - 10 ] when you see me, you see the Father.

[ 1 John 1: 1 - 3] The life was manifested and we have seen it's manifestation.

So I would like to ask the question, when you see the son who were you actually seeing? The Son or the Father in the Son? Who was revealed tot he people when Jesus Spoke to them? The Son or the Father? You need to know this if you are to understand what has happened in this hour. [ Romans 1: 1 - 4]

The Entire Bible points to this relationship of God to His people and how this relationship will be brought together by the instrumentality of His Own Son. [ 1 Tim 3: 16 ] & [ 1 Cor 15: 20 - 28 ] &[ Romans 6: 4 ]

[ John 5: 30 - 32] then [ 33 - 40 ] Now here is the catch. If Jesus could do nothing but what the Father showed Him first to do, then everything He did and everything He spoke was simply another doing it, and He had no thoughts of His own to express. He was the first of a great lineage of God who had no thought coming. I hope you get what I'm trying to say here. We are to come forth in His image, then if we are to have the mind of Christ, we will do as Jesus did and that is nothing, except what God has spoken for us to do through His Word.

He was simply a yielded vessel in which His Father spoke through and acted out His redemptive plan through. Yet He was an individual with his own thoughts and his own feelings, yet under such Love for the Father that He freely gave up His own thoughts for God, His Fathers will.

[ Luke 22: 39 - 42 ]

This yielding up of His own Spirit to the Spirit of God, and remember, the Spirit of God is His Word, For "My Words are Spirit and they are Life", Jesus said. Then Jesus was not merely a man and yet He was a man. For their is one mediator between God and man and that is the man Jesus Christ. He was both God and man. The flesh was not God , the flesh was man. When He wept at the grave of Lazarus, that was a man, but when He cried out, Lazarus come forth! That was more than a man. That was God.

Notice many of Paul's salutation's [ Gal 1: 1] & [1 Thes 1: 1] [ 2 Tim 1: 1 ] [ James 1: 1] [ 2 Peter 1: 1 ]

[ 1 John 1: 1 - 2 ] That which was invisible became visible, became manifested. The Life was manifested - How? [ John 5: 26 ] & [ John 1: 14 ] The Word, The Logos was made flesh, notice verse [18] it is the son which hath declared the Father. This word declare means to openly show and set forth into view. And this brings us now to The One Who is here today.

[ Rev 3: 20 ]Brother Branham told us that it is the word of God that is outside knocking trying to gain entrance. And we see the same scene unfold in [James 5: 7 - 9 ] And who is it knocking? The Judge! And then Who is the Judge? The Word! [ John 5: 22 - 32], so then it is not really the Son who is Judging, but it is the Word of the Father through the voice of His Son. [ John 12: 48 ]

You see, a true Judge, a real Judge will not try a case based upon his own opinions of how he feels the law should be stated. A real True Judge will only bring forth into execution what has already been stated as law. A judge does not make up the law, he is only to render the interpretation of that law into effect. He does not show partiality in dealing with the case before, he simply looks at the facts and weighs those facts with the Word set before Him. [ John 7: 24] Therefore a real True judge does not look at the person, only the Word. He deals only with the word. Impersonal. Judgment is based upon the Word and the Word only. What does the Word say about it? Sewing and reaping! Was the Word broken or was it not. And what does the Word say about the situation? Condemned or justified? The Judge looks only at the thoughts and intents of the law. [ Hebrews 4: 12 ] And this has already been fulfilled in our very day before our very eyes.

Let's just bow our hearts reverently in a word of prayer.