Christ is the Mystery no 165

Oneness through Organization or through Christ's Headship

Brian Kocourek, Pastor

 

Malachi 4:1  For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. 2  But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. 3  And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts. 4  Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. 5  Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6  And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

 

This evening we will again take our study from brother Branham's sermon, Christ is the Mystery of God Revealed, and we will cover about fifteen paragraphs from no 270 through 284, so let's begin reading and we will comment as we go along.

 

270 Notice, Lucifer comes in cunning like he did then, and by temptations, and false promises of power out apart from the Word of God.

 

In other words, the temptations and the flattering promises thought they be false promises, have nothing to do with the True Word, although they are presented to the religious people like they did at Nicaea Rome. But remember the Nicaea council was where they merged Christianity with politics, which made it a hybrid religion. 

 

He did the same at Nicaea, Rome. He's doing the same today at the World Council of Ecumenical Churches." Let's all unite together," the pope says. "I want all my ecumenical brethren out there to unite with me. We're one." That's right. In organizations you are one. But that has nothing to do with the Bride of Christ, not a thing, Brother. You'll never wash Her in anything like that.


Now the word ecumenical comes from the Latin word: oecumenicus, from Late Greek oikoumenikos, which simply means the: inhabited world.

 

In other words, it has nothing to do with Christ nor with Election nor does it have to do with any predestinated people, but it has altogether to do with people in general. In other words, it means "A mixed multitude" if we can say it any plainer.

 

And notice brother Branham quotes the Pope as saying, "I want all my ecumenical brethren out there to unite with me. We're one." So if they are all different from each other, all are a different denomination, then how can they all be one?

 

So the real question to ask is where did this idea of Oneness begin?  It certainly never was taught by God. So where did this ecumenical oneness begin? And to find our answer we will have to go back to the story of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis.

 

Genesis 11:1  And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.  2  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3  And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.  4  And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

 

Now, it is interesting to see God's rejection of man's oneness here. So if men think that just being one and getting along is God's plan for us, then why would God not want the oneness that was proposed back there in the Book of genesis.

 

To gain a little better understanding of the scene spoken of in Genesis 11 I would like to read from some historical texts.

 

The first one we shall read from the Book of Josephus   Book 1 - From The Creation To The Death Of Isaac P:19 Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion.

 

The next historical accounts we will read from Hysslop's  "The Two Babylons"   Ch 1 - "The Two Systems" P:32, This was a period when the patriarchal faith was still fresh in the minds of men, when Shem was still alive, to rouse the minds of the faithful to rally around the banner for the truth and cause of God,

 

We know that Shem the youngest of Noah's sons, lived for 502 years after the flood,  and he lived to keep the presence of light of God's ways before men.

 

In the book, The Two Babylons   Ch 7 - Section 1 - The Great Red Dragon P:112 we read, "Power and numbers were on the side of the fire-worshippers. But on the side of Shem and the faithful was the mighty power of God's Spirit. Therefore many were convinced of their sin, arrested in their evil career; and victory, as we have already seen, declared for the saints. The power of Nimrod came to an end, and with that, for a time, the worship of the sun, and the fiery serpent associated with it."

 

Just as we see today so many having come out of the Babylonian false religious system of confusion and came out under the vindicated prophet that God sent, yet of those who came out, we find two group of people, those who went back into apostasy and those who have remained faithful to the teachings of the prophet. In the same manner, after the departure of Noah many years after the flood, there lived Shem Noah's youngest son, who was the leader of God's faithful. The men who stayed true to the teachings of God were led by Shem, while the rest of mankind though far outnumbering the faithful, were led by Nimrod. Shem, the leader of the faithful had preserved the "integrity" of God's Word, when so many had made shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. Shem was said to have had a great gift of preaching and persuasive power that enabled him for a time to withstand the tide of evil that came rapidly rushing in upon the world.

 

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6  And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8  So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.  10  These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:

 

In Hysslop's "The Two Babylons" we read "where after the flood for many generations SHEM and his descendants lived and kept the story of the flood and the presence of God so alive to the people, that those people who were not in the seed of God found it hard to bare and looked for an emancipator to free the people from this heavy burden.


All tradition from the earliest times bears testimony to the apostacy of Nimrod, and to his success in leading men away from the patriarchal faith, and delivering their minds from that awe of God and fear of the judgments of heaven that must have rested on them while yet the memory of the flood was recent.


And according to all the principles of depraved human nature, this too, no doubt, was one grand element in his fame; for men will readily rally around any one who can give the least appearance of plausibility to any doctrine which will teach that they can be assured of happiness and heaven at last, though their hearts and natures are unchanged, and though they live without God in the world. How great was the boon conferred by Nimrod on the human race, in the estimation of ungodly men, by emancipating them from the impressions of true religion, and putting the authority of heaven to a distance from them, we find most vividly described in a Polynesian tradition, that carries its own evidence with it.


John Williams, the well known missionary, tells us that, according to one of the ancient traditions of the islanders of the South Seas, "the heavens were originally so close to the earth that men could not walk, but were compelled to crawl" under them. "This was found a very serious evil; but at length an individual conceived the sublime idea of elevating the heavens to a more convenient height.


For this, as a mighty benefactor of mankind, "this individual was deified; and up to the moment that Christianity was embraced, the deluded inhabitants worshipped him as the 'Elevator of the heavens.'" Now, what could more graphically describe the position of mankind soon after the flood, and the proceedings of Nimrod as"The Emancipator,"
15   While the awful catastrophe by which God had showed His avenging justice on the sinners of the old world was yet fresh in the minds of men, and so long as Noah, and the upright among his descendants, sought with all earnestness to impress upon all under their control the lessons which that solemn event was so well fitted to teach, "heaven," that is, God, must have seemed very near to earth.

 
To maintain the union between heaven and earth, and to keep it as close as possible, must have been the grand aim of all who loved God and the best interests of the human race.


But this implied the restraining and discountenancing of all vice and all those "pleasures of sin," after which the natural mind, un-renewed and unsanctified, continually pants. This must have been secretly felt by every unholy mind as a state of insufferable bondage. "The carnal mind is enmity against God," is "not subject to His law," neither indeed is "able to be" so.


No wonder that those who were alienated from God and godliness, felt heaven and its influence and authority to be intolerably near, and that in such circumstances they "could not walk," but only "crawl," that is, that they had no freedom to "walk after the sight of their own eyes and the imaginations of their own hearts."


From this bondage Nimrod emancipated them. By the apostacy he introduced, by the free life he developed among those who rallied around him, and by separating them from the holy influences that had previously less or more controlled them, he helped them to put God and the strict spirituality of His law at a distance, and thus he became the "Elevator of the heavens," making men feel and act as if heaven were afar off from earth, and as if either the God of heaven "could not see through the dark cloud," or did not regard with displeasure the breakers of His laws. [Leading people into the presence of the gods]


so we see the motives and objectives of the Oneness produced through men organizing themselves is not acceptable to God, then we must ask the question, then what form of Oneness is acceptable to God.

 

In paragraph 271 Christ is the Mystery of God Revealed, we hear brother Branham say, "Now, it is promised in the last days that the original faith in the same is to be restored to the children of God at the time of the Bride Tree (Malachi 4). God said, "Before the world burns up with fire, behold I send to you Elijah the prophet, and he will restore the faith of the children." Now, that wasn't the first Elijah that come. No, no. Now, we don't teach here Elijah's mantel, and Elijah's blankets, and all those things like that. We just teach the Word of God. See? That's what He said. See, we got all kind of Elijah this and Elijah that, which is nonsense. We know that, I'm not talking about that. And you that's spiritual minded understand. See, the hour's getting late and can't put it all on this tape, of course.


Now, we know that Jesus promised us that we could have a Oneness with God and a Oneness with each other, but it had to come from the same word God had given Him being received by us. He said the Doxa you have given me I have given them that they might be one as you and I are one.

Now, let's look then at this prayer of Jesus.

 

Jesus prayed that we would be one with God in St. John 17 and brother Branham told us that the oneness with God is to be one with His Word even as Jesus was one with God's Word. And that can come only if you have his spirit for the Bible teaches us in 1 Corinthians 2 that "no man can understand the things of God except the Spirit of God be in him."  Then if you have His Spirit you can understand His Word.

 

In John 17:11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

 

And how is it that we might be One even as which means in the same manner as Jesus and His Father were One? Now in John 17:14 we read further where Jesus says, "I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."

 

Notice that Jesus is telling us that we become One with God through the same Word that He became One With God.

 

John 17:20 Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;  21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. 22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:


Therefore it is very apparent that we are one with God and the only way we can be one with each other is by receiving the same Word which brings us into the same Glory or the same mind as the Father. And the glory which thou gavest me (remember glory is doxa and it is the opinion, assessment and judgment, so "the opinion thou gavest me" ) I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:


And from Harvest Time 641212 87  34 Brother Branham said, "Jesus said, "That they might be one, Father, as You and I are one." Not for some man to be over something, it never will work; one denomination wants to take over the other, and one man over the other. But that you might be one with God, like Christ and God was one; that's what the prayer is. That... He was the Word, and Jesus prayed that we might be the Word, reflecting Him. That's His prayer to be answered. See how Satan scruples it up in the carnal mind? But that wasn't Jesus' prayer, at all, that we might all congregate together and all have a certain creed and so forth. Every time they do it, they go further and further from God. He wants us to be one with God, and God is the Word. Each individual in his heart must be that one with God.

 

Now, in getting back to brother Branham's sermon, Christ is the Mystery of God Revealed, he said in pp. 272 Now, the promise in the last days... Now, if Jesus said in Matthew, I believe, the 11th chapter, or the 6th chapter and the 11... No, it's the 11th chapter and about the 6th verse. When John sent his disciples over there to see if He really was the One, Jesus said, "Who did you go out to see? A wind--a reed that's shaken by the winds? Did you go out to see such-and-such?" He said, "Or did you go to see a prophet?" He said, "More than a prophet..." John was more than a prophet; he was the messenger of the covenant. And He said, "If you can receive it, this is he which is spoke of by the prophets, 'I will send My messenger before My face.'" Now, that's in Malachi 3, not Malachi 4. 'Cause the Elijah that was to come in Malachi 4, the earth was to be burnt with a fervent heat and the righteous was to walk out in the millennium upon the ashes of the wicked. So it is not that one. See?

 

273 Now, we see the promise being fulfilled. Christ, the true Headship coming in His Bride, doing the same works that He did at the beginning, and making ready, and fulfilling His Word as He did at first in John 14:12: "He that believeth on Me the works that I do shall he do also." Then the Head and the Body are becoming one in 1) works and in 2) sign and in 3) Life, vindicated by God Himself through His promised Word for the last days. He promised this in the last days. Now, if you're spiritual, you'll catch it.


274 Then we can see that the marriage supper is at hand. Now, if I never see you again, remember, the marriage supper is at hand. And then the Kingdom according to the promise is ready to be issued in, the great millennium, the taking up of the Church, and the destroying of the wicked, and the world under the Sixth Seal to be purified by volcanic to take all the corruption and sin of the world, and to mold her out again, and to bring forth a bright new millennium for the age that is to come.

 

I'm going to stop here for just a minute and comment that we hear brother Branham talk about the destruction that is coming. We saw it already as we read our text tonight from Malachi 4 the great day of burning. We see it also in Isaiah chapter 2 and Isaiah chapter 24. I'm not going to take the time tonight to go into those things, but I have sent you all via email the 20 page study that shows the Scriptures and quotations from God's prophet and many pictures and articles that confirm these Scriptures are coming to pass as we watch.  So let's continue with our study in Christ is the Mystery of God revealed and pick up where we left off at p 276.

 

"When we see all these great threefold revelations: 1) God in Christ, 2) Christ in the Church, 3) the Kingdom coming, Adam and Eve redeemed back to the garden of Eden in the representation of Christ and His Bride, and then the Kingdom is going to be restored according to His promise. Praise be to God. Now, by the revelation of the threefold mystery (the secret) and by the personal a-vindicated Word by His original Headship...


275 Not say, "Well, glory to God, we shout; hallelujah, we sing." Now, that ain't it. (that ain't what? That ain't the headship. Shouting is not the headship, neither is he says fleshly manifestations of any sort.)

 

I'm a missionary. I've been seven times practically over the world. See? I've seen heathens, devils, and everything else dance and shout. I've seen all kinds of fleshly manifestations. That's carnal. But I'm talking about the Headship of Christ.

 

Now, there is a big difference between fleshly manifestations which are things man can do, and supernatural manifestations which only God can do. He calls the one carnal, but then he says, I'm not talking about those manifestations, I'm talking about headship.

 

276 Notice, being personally identified by the original Headship, we have the answer to the devil's question. Amen. Glory. We have the answer to the devil's question. He, Christ, is risen and has paid the price and raising up the Body. The devil can't stand it. That's the reason these ecumenical kingdoms are setting up. That's the reason they're all coming into what they're doing now. The devil, that's the reason he's howling the way he is. His wickedness has been... His scheme has been uncovered by the risen resurrected Christ in the Headship over His Body. Glory.


He's talking about vindication here. And then he said, ...

 

277 You think I'm beside myself? I'm not. We've got the devil's answer. "It's not me that liveth, but Christ the Word living in me." It's not my idea; it's His power. Not my idea; it's His Word. He promised and here it is. He said it would be here, and here it is. We've got his answer. Christ is risen and has paid the price for our redemption. What God in Christ manifested, He gave that flesh and that Blood, that in the Blood might come the Life, and the flesh be redeemed; that God in this redeemed flesh could manifest His Word for the day as He did in that day. Whew. Glory. You see it? Oh, my, when can I stop? Um.


278 Notice it. And we stand justified in the Presence of God as a drop of ink dropping into a tub full of bleach. You'll never find the stain of the ink no more. It went somewhere. It'll never come back again. And when man is truly redeemed (that predestinated seed that sees it and accepts it), his sins are demolished. It's gone. It's separated. It's dropped into the ink of the Blood of Jesus Christ and it's never to be remembered. God forgets it, and he stands as a son and a daughter of God in the Presence of God. Amen and amen.


279 "Now, we are the sons of God, not we will be; we are." Now, we're redeemed. We have Satan's answer. God's a-vindicated Himself. God's proved Himself to His promise in this day. Hallelujah. The Headship is here (Amen.), Christ, the risen Lord. It's here in the same power of His resurrection that He ever was, manifesting Himself. There's the devil's answer.


280 That's the reason when this man setting here dropped dead the other day setting here, we could say, "Come back, life." 'Cause the Holy Spirit said so. That's why He could do to that little baby yonder in Mexico had been dead for about fifteen hours. When the vision come, He said, "Call her back to life." Said, "Let the little baby live." And the baby that the doctors wrote a statement died at 9 o'clock that morning and 11 o'clock that night come back to life and is living today.

 

281 What is it? Not them people; the Headship and the Body has become One unit. It's God manifested in His people. That's the reason the husband and wife is no longer twain; they're one. God and His Church is One: Christ in you, God's great revelation (Glory to God.), even bearing His Name. His Name is Jesus, the Anointed. The reason He's called Jesus, He is the Anointed. And it's the Anointed Body of Christ proving, manifested God like that Body did. And that Body redeemed every these bodies.


282 And through there God works His threefold manifestation. Going to the Kingdom, risen, paid the price, we're redeemed. God's proved it, vindicated it. See? And we stand justified in Christ before Him, because He cannot pass judgment, for He's already judged that Body in which I am a part of. What? How am I a part of it? Here it is; it's in me. "If ye abide in Me and My Word's in you, then what you say... Ask the Father anything in My Name it'll be done," because it's there. Justified... Glory to God.


283 Oh, if I could get the world to see that... Why? There you are. There's the Body of Christ living, standing redeemed. Oh my, justified in His sight. Why are we justified? We are His victory. The Church is His victory. We come forth in this last days with this glorious Gospel showing His victory. He died for this purpose, and we are proof of His victory. Amen. When we see Him coming down and living among the Church, that's His victory. Shows that he couldn't keep Him in the grave, neither can they keep us...? And we're already potentially risen because we've raised from dead unbelief in His Word, from denomination and creeds to the eternal Word of the eternal God which is Himself working through us, manifesting Himself that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.


284 And then the Word moves on down into the Body from the Head. What is it? This same word. Nothing can be added or taken from It. So that same Word moves from the Head as the day comes close, down into the Body, down into the Body vindicating that they are One. They're Husband and Wife. They're flesh of His flesh, Word of His Word, Life of His Life, Spirit of His Spirit. See? Amen. How do you know it? Bears the same record, same fruit, same Word (See?), manifests Christ: same Life, same God, same Spirit, same Word, same Book (Amen!), same signs, "Things that I do shall you also." Oh hallelujah. My...

 

So what is this sermon Christ is the Mystery of God Revealed all about? It's about John 14:12, that's what, it's all about. That's what the second fold mystery is, Christ in you the Hope of Glory, the Hope of having the same values, the same opinions, and the same Judgments, because it's the same Spirit, the same Life, the same Word living in you that lived in Christ Jesus.

 

Let's bow our heads in prayer.