The Masterpiece 88
Learning how to read our Bible
October 8th,
2006
Let us remain standing for the reading of the Scriptures.
Deuteronomy
28:1-2. And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt
hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments
which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high
above all nations of the earth: 2. And all these blessings shall come on thee,
and overtake thee, if thou shalt
hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.
Genesis 3:1 Now
the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had
made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every
tree of the garden? 2 And
the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall
not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And
the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not
surely die:
Revelations
22:17 And
the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let
him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. 18 For I testify unto every man that heareth
the words of the prophecy of this book, If
any man shall add unto these things, God
shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
19 And if any man shall
take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of
the holy city, and from the things which are
written in this book.
20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Dear Heavenly Father, we have read from your Word this
morning, from the first Book in your Bible, Genesis to the last Book in your
Bible, Revelations, and we see plainly that you have commanded us to not only
believe every Word you have spoken, but you also commanded us to teach our
children to obey all Thy Words written in this Book. And we see that there is
reward for our actions and there is punishment for wrong actions, and it all
depends on how we treat the Voice of the Lord, Your voice o Father. And we have seen this blessing and curse run
consistently throughout your Bible Father, and we ask that you give us the
energy and strength to love and obey your Word. Now, be with us as we open Your
Word and read from it and speak of it this morning, and help us to understand
more fully your expectations of us, your children for we ask it in the name of
Your eldest Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that name which you gave Him by
inheritance. Amen.
You may be seated.
Now, this morning we shall continue in our study of
Br. Branham’s sermon called the Masterpiece, and this morning we will pick up
at paragraph 164. Before we read, I want for us to be careful to hear brother
Branham speak of how we must have all the Word of God, the whole word of God as
we have already seen from our Scriptural references this morning.
THE MASTERPIECE 64-0705 165 So the stalk, the tassel,
and husk never become Seed. No, but are all the time becoming more like the
Seed. Now, at the harvest time the Seed is back to its original Life, back to
the Bible. Malachi 4 said it would be brought that way. Oh, oh, my. Must have
all... To be this way it must have all
of the Word. Is that right?
167
Now, what did He say in Revelations 10, that would take place? Why was the trip
to
Now, what I would like to say concerning these words
which we read from Br. Branham sermon the Masterpiece this morning is that
there is one common thread I have seen in speaking to over 1,000 ministers in
all six continents so far, and that is that the Message ministers I have met in
almost every country I have visited, have forgotten how to read their Bibles. In
fact I do not think they ever learned to read it correctly in the first place.
And that is the problem in all the churches. They do not know how to read the
Word of God.
In fact I hear those words from almost everywhere.
After the meetings are over generally I usually get quite a few brothers coming
up to me and telling me that during our meetings they have learned how to read
their Bibles. It seems that for some reason, men have forgotten that William
Branham said his absolute was the Word of God, and so they will pile quote upon
quote to try and justify their misconception of the Message and they don’t even
read the quotes right.
I have often said if you are a Baptist you will read your Bible with a
Baptist filter over your mind, and if you are Pentecostal you will read the
Bible with a Pentecostal filter over your mind, and if you are a Oneness you
will read your Bible with a Oneness filter over your mind. And in all three
cases I just mentioned, they are afraid of their Bibles for there are certain
Scriptures they will just brush right over and not stop to ask themselves why
that Scripture seems to contradict what they have been taught and what they are
holding on to. And frankly we should never be afraid to read any verse of
Scripture for it is all the Word of God.
Now, brother Branham said the Word of God was His absolute. He did not
teach us the Message from his own quotes, but rather taught us how to read the
Scriptures the way they are written.
From Church order COD 63-1226 P:4 he
said, It's
got to come to one final absolute, and my absolute is the Word, the Bible. And
as a pastor here of the church, my absolute is the Word, …
So you see, we need to look to God’s Word as our
absolute as well, and to do so we must take everything we believe back to the
Word of God, because to add one word or take one away has dire circumstances
that we do not wish to partake in. When we read the Message or the Bible, or
listen to a tape, we need to listen to every thought as it is presented. And if
we can not teach what Br. Branham taught from the Bible then we ought to leave
it alone until we can.
We should search the Word of God for each thought he
said to see how it lays within the Word of God from Genesis to Revelations to
ensure that this is what God has intended for us to believe and understand. Not
that he would teach us wrong, but we might not understand what he is teaching
if we can not line it up with the Scriptures. That is why so many have drifted
off into Oneness theology instead of staying with what he taught.
I mean if we believe what he said, then when he said
he is not a oneness and that Trinitarians and oneness are both wrong and that
what he believed is right down the middle of the road, then that ought to stop
us in our tracks and ask ourselves then what does this Man vindicated by God as
His Prophet believe anyhow?
And when he said that Jesus is a dual being because
God indwelt Him, then that ought to make us back up and take another look at
what this man taught on the Godhead. And when he said that Jesus could not be
his own Father, and when he said that Jesus and God were not one like your
finger is one, and when he said that God did not enter Him until the river
Jordan and left Him in Gethsemane, if we were even listening to what he said,
why did not that stop us right there in our tracks and cause us to investigate
what does this man believe concerning the Godhead. But
the fact is that we have not been trained to read the Word of God to capture
the thoughts of God.
And what is to blame is our educational system. We are
taught that speed is good and the faster we read the better. But if the Bible
is truly God’s Word, and it is a way for God to communicate to us, then why
would we want to put it on fast forward, and skim right through it?
Uncertain
sound 62-0714 P:86 Let the God that be God speak like God. Let
the God that answers by fire be God. Let the God tonight... If your systems is
better than the Word, then let them speak and heal the sick, and discern the
thoughts, and do what God said He would do. Amen. If your denominational
systems is better than the Word of God, then let them speak. Let's see them
raise up a church in their Roman dogmas, and so forth, and produce something
like Jesus Christ. Let's see them with the dogmas make the Word live again. They bypass the Word by their dogmas, their
creeds today, because they're afraid to meet the issue. And they bypass it and base the people upon
intellectual education in the stead of the power of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, and the manifestation of His Being. Amen. Nothing uncertain about
that. Try it. Certainly it's the truth. Yes, sir.
Uncertain sound 62-0714 P:71 Intellectual,
they don't want somebody to really stand up and pull the Scripture out and show
it. They want somebody that's trained to bypass It. They don't want to know
that. Oh, they just can't stand that. Fish and loaves is fine. But Jesus done
the same thing. What a wonderful prophet. The little prophet of
Now, it is amazing to see how easy it is to understand
the Bible if we just read it for what it says. I‘ve had pastors who have been
in the message for 20 to 30 years tell me they wished they would have had the
meetings twenty years ago because if they had, they would not have preached
false doctrine for the past 20 years. And they’ve told me after our meetings, that they’ve
learned how to read their Bibles again.
So you see most people read their Bibles like they
would read a Book. And they will brag
about how many times they have read the Bible from cover to cover. And I say
when you read it that way most likely you didn’t get a thing out of it. Because
the word of God is the thoughts of God written down on paper, and we should
take those thoughts one at a time and examine them and meditate upon them if we
are to better understand our Loving heavenly Father.
One person recently wrote me to ask me where in the
Bible that it states we are the “new
Jews”. I wrote back to this person and said the Bible does not say we are new
Jews. It says we are Christians. And the person wrote back to me and said they
were surprised that I did not know where this was in the Bible because they had
read their Bible three and a half times through, and they knew they had read it
somewhere in there.
So I wrote back and said, “well when you find it let me know where you found it.” But they
never will find it because it’s not in there. Why would God condemn the Jews
and their law and then create a New Form of the same religion which was based
upon law and not upon Grace, and the once for all sacrifice of Christ Jesus the
son of God.
But, You can’t talk to those kind of people, because
they don’t have ears to hear. They’ve read their Bible three and a half times,
and so there. They know. And yet they might have read it with their eyes, but
nothing penetrated their thick skulls. So you just let them believe whatever
nonsense they want to believe and forget about it. Unless God opens their eyes
they never will see what He wants us to see and they will continue to look for silly
ideas anywhere they can find them.
But brother Branham is
talking about how important it is for us to have all of the Word, because this
is the harvest time and he says you can’t plant just half of a seed and expect
to harvest anything. You must plant the entire seed, and we know that the seed
is the Word of God according to Mark 4:14 and Luke 8:11 Now the parable is this: The seed is the word
of God.
So you see, we must
come to the place where we look to the Word of God as the thoughts of God expressed
on paper and when we do then instead of reading it like we would read a book we
will begin to look for one thought at a time and when we read that thought we
will meditate upon it and regurgitate it over and over in our soul.
Isaiah 55:8 Seek ye the LORD while he may
be found, call ye upon him while he is near: 7 Let
the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him
return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he
will abundantly pardon. 8 For
my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For
as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and
returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and
bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So
shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me
void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 12 For ye shall go out with
joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth
before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Now, one thing that has helped me more than anything
else is that God placed it upon my heart years ago to take brother Branham’s
sermons one thought at a time, from the opening prayer to the closing prayer,
and to take each thought he spoke back to the Scriptures, and then to find
those same thoughts from Genesis through Revelations.
And another thing that
has helped me tremendously is that Br. Branham said, in His sermon, Shalom 64-0119 P:92 “All the New Testament speaks of this hour.”
And in the process I have also learned to read my
Bible as brother Branham read his. Notice
how he would not just read a verse of Scripture, but many times just a few
words from a verse would have such meaning that he would tarry with that Thought
and bring out such wonderful thoughts from the mind of God that it would just
fill your soul with delight.
Now, think of it. Brother
Branham read the verse Luke 23: 33 And when they were come to the place, which is
called
And from that verse he spoke over several sermons on
just four little words “There they Crucified
Him,” and he preached several messages.
World's
Falling Apart 63-0412M P:4 So then, tonight I'm to speak on the
subject tonight, the Lord willing, "There They Crucified Him.
From the Second Seal pp 59 he said, "There
They Crucified Him." There, the holiest, religious place in the world
was
And from the Sixth seal the 63-0323 P:83 he said, Look,
"There they crucified Him," the Bible said.
That's a four of the greatest words... Look. There,
And from the
Indictment he said, Indictment the 63-0707M P:26 Now, I want to take four words out of there,
out of that reading to base what I want to say: There they crucified Him: four
words. And my subject is called, I'm bringing an indictment to the
denominational churches of this day and also many of the independents for
crucifying Jesus Christ afresh in this day: indicting them.
Indictment
the 63-0707M P:37 Now, them four words: "There they crucified Him."
Now, you still show the Bible. You see, it's
just four words, but the Bible
condenses Its Truths. Now, me, I have to go way around and explain what I'm
talking about, but the Bible don't have to explain nothing. It just is all
Truth. So the Bible don't have to explain anything. It doesn't have to explain
it, because It is all the Truth. Here is
four words of Its great chain of Truth. I'll try to explain it. And to try
to explain It clearly would make a library. There's no way for me to explain
those four words. But now, let us, by the help of Him Who caused it to be
written, try to explain these four words, to bring it in such a way that people
would understand it. What we got before us now? We got the first crucifixion
laying before us at the most holy place, the most religious people, the most
shameful death, to the most precious Person. Oh, it's such a contradictory. My,
oh my, it's disgraceful.
Indictment
the 63-0707M P:50 There "They, they," the ones who
ought to have knowed better... If anybody should've known better, it should
been them ministers. If anybody should know better, it should be the clergy of
this day. If anybody ought to know, the bishops, and archbishops, and
ministers, and doctors of divinity ought to know different. But why can't they?
Oh, what a contradiction. What have we got before us here but a contradiction?
They claim that they worship God, and they are killing the Prince of Life. "They, There they crucified Him," and here
"they" again do the same thing, for He is the Word. That's what...
He's only a reflection of the Word. And that's what He is today, a reflection
of the Word, trying to find somebody to reflect Himself through.
Indictment
the 63-0707M P:90 Remember, they were very religious people
that did that. They wasn't outsiders. They were the religious people of that
day. And that's what's doing it today is the religious people: same
crucifixion, same thing today. Quickly. "There they crucified Him then." Then? Sure. Then
they were rejecting God's Word made manifest, accepting their creeds instead of
the Word. Is that what they're doing today? That's exactly, doing the same
today. He was the Word, and they rejected the Word. That's one point I want you
not to miss, I want you not to miss. He
was the Word, and when they rejected Him, they rejected the Word. And when
they did reject Him, they finally crucified Him. And that's what they've done
today: reject the Word of God, and accepted their creeds, and has crucified
publicly before their congregations, the working of the Holy Spirit. And
they're guilty, and I indict them in the Name of Jesus Christ.
Now, if we read the
Bible as it says, then let’s read a few verses of scripture and tell me how you
could remain a Oneness and believe Jesus was His own Father when the Scripture
speaks just exactly what William Branham said.
Ephesians
2: 15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of
commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new
man, so making peace;
Now, how can you read that and still be Oneness in your thinking without
your Oneness being a willful ignorance.
2 John 1:3
Grace be with you, mercy, and peace, from God the Father, and from
the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
Now, how can you read that and still be Oneness in your thinking without
your Oneness being a willful ignorance.
2 John 1:
9 Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ,
hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the
Father and the Son.
John
5:30 I
can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just;
because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent
me. 31 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. 32 There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that
the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. 33 Ye
sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. 34 But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say,
that ye might be saved. 35 He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for
a season to rejoice in his light. 36 But
I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to
finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent
me. 37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne
witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. 38 And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath
sent, him ye believe not. 39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal
life: and they are they which testify of me.
Now, how can you read that and still be Oneness in your thinking without
your Oneness being a willful ignorance.
1 Timothy
2: 5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus; Now, how can you read that and still be Oneness in
your thinking without your Oneness being a willful ignorance.
Galatians
3: 20 Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Now, how can you read that
and still be Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful
ignorance.
John 20:17 Jesus
saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to
my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father,
and your Father; and to my God, and your God. Now, how can you read that and still be
Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful ignorance.
Mark 15:34 And
at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
Now, how can you read that and still be Oneness in your thinking without your
Oneness being a willful ignorance.
Matthew 27:46 And
about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Now, how can you read that
and still be Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful
ignorance.
1 John 5:10
He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he
that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he believeth not the
record that God gave of his Son. Now, how can you read that
and still be Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful
ignorance.
1 John 2:22
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is
antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Now, how can you read that
and still be Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful
ignorance.
John 8:28
Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man,
then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father
hath taught me, I speak these things. Now, how can you read that
and still be Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful
ignorance.
John 5:30
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my
judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father
which hath sent me. Now, how can you read that and still be Oneness in
your thinking without your Oneness being a willful ignorance.
John 5:19
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto
you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for
what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. Now, how can you read that
and still be Oneness in your thinking without your Oneness being a willful ignorance.