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]