Christ Revealed in His Own Word #62

Discern is to criticize

Wednesday, December 18, 1996  

Brian Kocourek, Pastor Grace Fellowship

 

 

[Hebrews 4: 12-13] Prayer                 A week or so ago, we began looking at this thought that the Word of God is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart and I would like to again focus our thinking on these thoughts as we read from paragraph 66.

 

[66]  Now, notice. And there is not any error in the Scriptures. Jesus, the Word of God, perceives the thought that's in the heart. The Word of God is stronger, sharper, Hebrews 4:12: "The Word of God is sharper, more powerful than a two-edged sword, even a Discerner of the thoughts and intents of the mind." See? Goes way down into the mind, and pulls out, and discerns. What is "discern"? "Make known, reveal out." And that's what the Word of God does. Today we say, "The Catholic church is the Word of God, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Pentecostal, the tabernacle." That's wrong. The Word is the revelation, God revealed by the Word.

 

[Hebrews 4:12-13]   We find in looking at the Word of God that we are told that His Word is a discerner, And this word discerner comes from a Greek word, Kritikos which sounds like and is the equivalent of our English word critical.  And the word means  relating to judging, fit for judging and skilled in judging.” This word as applied to this scripture tells us that “the Word of God is quick in discriminating and passing judgment on the thoughts and feelings.”

 

Now, just because a person may be critical in there nature does not mean the same thing as what we are looking at here. Because with this word Kriticos, or critical it not only means a judging, but it also means “fit for and skilled at.”  Now, I have met a few people in my time who have been very critical in their nature of just about everyone and everything. But this form of criticism is far from Discernment.

 

What these people show is that they are aware of every detail that differs from their own thinking and how they think every detail should be. In other words, they have their own absolute and they are it. But with this word kritikos we are looking at a discerning that is fit to judge and a discerning that is skilled at judging. And the reason for this is because the absolute is the One which God Himself set forth as our standard. And that is His own Word.

 

Therefore we are not looking at something that is a great mysterious thing, here. But we are simply looking at God’s Own Words, (which are His Thoughts expressed) and this Word is our standard. Then anything that would run contrary to this Absolute, we are commanded to  assess and properly assigned it’s origin. And to make things even simpler, God has told us that anything that is contrary to His thoughts and His Words has it’s source from the devil himself.   

 

[1 John 4:1] Notice that we are commanded to test the spirits. This word try that is used here is a word which means to “prove, discern, examine, and scrutinize to see whether a thing is genuine or not. And then after examination, if it passes the test, then we are to receive it as genuine and we are to approve it and deem it as worthy.”  And so we find that this trying of the spirits is a whole process that we must go through in order to come to this conclusion. We find this process is not just to make a determination as to authenticity and genuineness of the spirit, but we are to come to this decision with a purpose in mind, and that purpose is to separate out whatever is not of God from the things which are from God., Then we are to not only accept what is from God, but going beyond mere acceptance, we are also to deem it worthy which means to judge it as valuable to us for our use.

 

Now what are these spirits that we are to discern and judge? The word is Pneuma and that is the word which is used of the three fold man. We speak of His Body, Soul and Spirit, and when se speak of his spirit we are speaking of His Pneuma. The Spirit is the influence by which we are governed in our soul. Brother Branham taught us that in our Spirit we have five inner senses.

 

1)        Memory =        the ability to retain or revive in the mind past thoughts, images, ideas, etc.

2)        Imagination = the power to form( conceive or picture )  mental images of what is not actually present.

3)        Reasoning =  The ability to draw conclusions or inference from assumed facts.

4)        Conscience = The moral sense. Knowledge from within. Inner thoughts and feelings.

5)        Affection =    The emotional state of being, disposition. The prevailing aspects of our true nature.

 

Christ Revealed in His Own Word #62

Wednesday, December 18, 1996  

 

We have found that these five inner senses make up our spirit and control and influence our being. And it is this influence that we are told to try, ( That we are to put to the test, and examine and scrutinize) with the purpose of  finding out from what source it originates. Basically to see whether it is from God or from the devil and then to deal with it accordingly. If it is of the devil, then we are to flee from that influence. But, if it is from God then we are to receive it and accept it and make use of it as we would something that is of value to us. 

 

Notice that this scripture begins by telling us, (in fact commanding) us NOT to believe everything we are told, but we are first told to examine from where this influence is coming from, then we are to either receive it as from God,  or we are to reject it as from the devil.  In other words, if the person does not have their source in God we are not to believe anything they may tell us.

 

You might say, “Yes, but I thought we are to believe all things, and hope for all things like the scripture tells us in Corinthians.” Because then we will have love.  well, let’s just see what the scripture does tell us, for after all, don’t take my word for it, you must have Bible, God’s Word for what we accept and put into practice.

 

[1 John 4: 4-6] Notice that the world will hear them but not those who are of God. And the world will not hear God’s seed either. But I want you to pay close attention to verse [6]. John is telling us that those who are of God will hear those who are from God. And in discerning who is from god and who is not from God you will know also the difference between truth and error.

[1 John 4: 1 - 2] Now does this mean that everyone who says that Jesus came in the flesh? If it did then it would be speaking of every denominational person who claims to be a Christian. But this is not what this scripture is telling us. If you read carefully what this verse tells us, it says, “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God:” And this is what we want to know, right? What is the Spirit of God and what is not? Then he tells us how to tell the difference.

 

He says, “He that confesseth” .... and that word confesseth is the Greek word, Homologeo and it comes from two Greek Words, the first of which means at the same time, at once and together and the second word is Logos which we know to be the expressed thoughts.  And so this scripture tells us that “he that says the same things at the same time and at once together as what the Father has said about the coming into flesh of Jesus, It is He that has the Spirit of God.

 

Now, look, we have men running around this message who are trying to place the Fullness of the Godhead in the themselves as part of the Bride and they are not saying what God has said and what His Son has said and what God has revealed to us through the Shout which is the Revelation of Jesus Christ which is what we are to confess or say the same thing He said about Him. And this is how you identify who is of God and who is not. By what they are saying. As Brother Branham said, “You give them the Word test.”

 

In the First Church Age the people gave the false apostles the word test and found them to be liars.  And so in getting back to what John told us let’s again turn back to [1 John 4: 1-2] Now let’s read verse [3]. Now, notice what he is telling us here. If a man teaches the coming into flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ in any other way than what we are taught by God Himself, then that man proves himself to be anti Christ. Therefore those spirits who would make themselves to be the Living Word of the Living God, telling the people that the fullness of  the Godhead is in the Bride as though it is in them, are antichrist unless they are backed up and vindicated by God Himself.  And in this case these men have no more vindication than Jannes and Jambres had. And that spirit who would pervert the Godhead to make it two spirits, (one a feminish and the other a masculine) is also an anti Christ spirit as well. As is also those spirits who would tell people they must have a visitation by an angel to receive the Holy spirit baptism. These are antichrist spirits.

 

But as you full well know that these things were spoken of to come in this hour. [1 Tim 4: 1-2]  Notice they speak these things knowing full well they are teaching wrong, but notice also their consciences are seared. You can’t tell them they’re wrong. They’ll do what they want and that’s all there is to it.

 

Christ Revealed in His Own Word #62

Wednesday, December 18, 1996  

 

[1 John 4: 4-6] Notice that the world will hear them but not those who are of God. And the world will not hear God’s seed either. But I want you to pay close attention to verse [6]. John is telling us that those who are of God will hear those who are from God. And in discerning who is from god and who is not from God you will know also the difference between truth and error.

 

Now we know that at this end time Appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are to see Him and in seeing Him as He really is we will take on the same nature as He. This we find in many scriptures including, [Col 3:4, 2 Cor 3:18, 1 John 3: 2-3, 1 Cor 13: 12] etc. Now what attribute is there that will be the predominant attribute of Christ in this hour?  In what manner did He show Himself when the Fullness of the Revelation was made known to us? What manifestation did God use to show us this attribute? What did the Prophet do that manifested this attribute? The first sign was in the hand and then what? The very thoughts would be exposed. Right?

 

So what was the last attribute of Himself that He made known in this hour? In order to know this we must look at what happened in other times in the Bible that were types of this hour. And so we ask the question, what did Jesus tells us Himself would happen at the end-time.

 

[Luke 17:30] Brother Branham referred to this scripture more than others because of it’s significance tot he setting. The setting in the days of Lot was this. God Himself came down to earth with two angels. He met with Abraham while the other two went to Sodom. To make Himself known to Abraham, God did a certain thing which was that He showed forth discernment to Sarah while He had His back to her, and she was in the tent behind Him. He caught her very thoughts and told these to Abraham showing that The Word of God is a Discerner of the Thoughts and intents of the heart. Abraham called Him the Judge and said, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

 

From pp. 202 [Identified Christ of all ages],  64-0617 brother Branham said, "The Presence of Jesus Christ, which ought to illuminate the church, to know that in this last days where creeds and denomina­tions and isms and everything has got the Word all smothered out, and Jesus the Word on the outside of the church, [Rev 3: 20, James 5: 7-9, John 12: 48, 2 Thes 1: 7-10 , Matt 16:27,] and to see Him come right back among the people and identify Himself as He promised, "in the last days when the Son of man is being re­vealed." He was revealed in the baptism; He was revealed in Divine healing; here He is in His last attribute. Remember, that was the last thing that Abraham saw before the fire fell and Judged the Gentile world, and before the promised son came on the scene, Isaac. This is the last thing that the Christian church will see, in the sign of miracle, until the appearing of Jesus Christ. If God has give me favor before you, believe me in the Name of the Lord, there is nothing else left in the Bible to be done but take on the mark of the beast; and you have the Seal of God.   And What did Abraham call him? He said, Shall not the Judge of the earth do right?  So we see that the Judge has once again come down in the Form of The Word to judge amongst the Living and the dead. For if He must bring forth a resurrection, then He must have already chosen who will come forth and He is here to execute this Judgment. This is why in his Message [Perfect Faith] he could say he was "standing before the White Throne, now."

 

Again we notice brother Branham's gift of discernment. And what is discernment but a judging. And Who Judges but a Judge. And this is why brother Branham made such a point  in showing the people the Picture in [Life Magazine] of the Cloud of angels which made up God's White Wig, which he called the "Supreme Judge". Unless the people can see that the Judge is here, they won't understand the last attribute that God is manifesting to them before we are caught up to meet Jesus His Son in the air. This we shall study this more in the chapter on the Glory [Doxa] of Christ.

I hope you enjoy this book. I will publish more chapters as the Lord permits.

 

[ Rev 3: 14-21]

 [James 5: 7-9]

[John 12: 48]

[Matt 3: 12, 7: 15-23, 13: 24-30, 36-43, 47-49, 25: 1-11]

[2: Thes 1: 7-10]