ONENESS #31
God desires our ambition (His way)
Brian
Kocourek
Wednesday
night
I really believe that God met with us in a very special way. I believe He let us know the reason why His very own Presence is here, and that is
because He has brought us His
very Life. He
wants so much to give of Himself that He has come
down in this hour in order to impart to
us of His Divine Nature.
We read PP. 136 to 146
and we saw the emphasis here that Brother Branham keeps talking about Life. Now remember, his
topic is ONENESS
and yet he is focusing here on Life.
Not just Life in
general, but His life. The very Life of God
Himself. He's
telling us of this ONENESS
coming only by the very Life of God coming back into the believer,
His Elect.
In these paragraphs we
see Brother Branham telling us to get our focus
off the way He comes, and he says in one place, "He didn't have to
borrow any timber," Then in another, he said, "He didn't have
to borrow an egg or a sperm". In
other words, he's letting us know it is
not so much the form in which God came down, but the fact that the
very Life of God Himself has come to bring this oneness back again. To "RE-ESTABLISH"
oneness with man again.
Today, I would like to,
by the Grace of the Almighty God continue with this
thought. I believe as we proceed we shall further understand what
it is to be His Seed, and what it means to receive
the new birth. To be "BORN
AGAIN"
PP. 143 ONENESS (read) Notice
here
he asks us two questions. #1) What
was He? and #2 What did He come for? I know there is no way we can cover this in one morning.
That
sounds
an awful lot like another statement that we are familiar
with that we quote Brother Branham often:
"This is my
ministry, see, to declare Him, that He is here!"
(FROM THAT TIME
PP. 227)
But let's examine this
first question first. #1) What is He?
Does
anybody
notice something a little strange about this Question?
What is the question? What was He? WHAT, He didn't
say WHO? He said,
what! Now there is a big difference here between
what and who. If I were to ask you Who was He, You could say without reservation, God
manifested in flesh, right? But that is not
the question He asked. He said, what was He?
Now
if
I am asking about a person, I would say who was He? Now you may
think I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but I believe
every Word is perfectly spoken and God had a purpose for
those things being said the way he said them. I do not for one minute believe the Prophet
spoke here in vain.
I think sometimes when
we hear Brother Branham speak, or when we read one of His messages, we
have a tendency to immediately refer to our educational upbringing and we thus
make our own assessment what he is saying or we make our judgments of
what he is saying based upon our own knowledge of the language. But if God is here to
renew our mind, to change our opinions to His opinions, then
we must never approach this Holy Message with just our own understanding
whether it be our understanding of language or theology. We must come
totally dependent upon Him to reveal to us what is being said.
I
learned
years ago not to look at this Message through my own thinking
when I began to see the real true meaning of this Message
in the light of Christ's descent and presence. Because I
realized right then that based upon what you want it to say, you can take
it and twist it to say, you can take it and twist it to say what
you want. Just like all the
denominations do the Word of God to their own
destruction.
For example, let me give
you a couple quotes to illustrate.
In the message PAUL A PRISONER OF
CHRIST Brother Branham said, "And there is where so many
people today bring a reproach upon the Word. They get out with an ambition."
Now
if
you just stop there with that quote you make
Brother Branham say that you shouldn't have ambition. That if you have
ambition you are actually bringing a reproach to the Word. But He goes on to say, "How many
revivals have been left flat because of a thing like that? Because the evangelist
doesn't wait to see what the Lord's got to say".
The
illustrations Brother Branham used in this message were of Paul
and Moses. Two men who had great
ambition to serve God but who both
found themselves going out and hindering His Work by their
ambition because they really were not in the conduit of His Word. They wanted to serve God and were
zealous to serve Him. Now that was a noble
thing. Brother Branham was not putting
down their zeal and ambition but he was
just telling the people to make sure their ambitions are in God's
will. God later used both of these men's
ambition to spread His Glorious Gospel. He never took away their ambition, He only channeled
it.
Let's just see what else
He said about ambition.
WHAT IT TAKES TO OVERCOME ALL UNBELIEF 60-0729 "When God speaks to a man, he has faith,
and he has ambition, and he has a
purpose. When God speaks to a man,
He gives him a purpose. When God speaks to a man, He gives him
ambition. When God speaks to a
man, He gives him faith to do it, to accomplish,
or achieve what his purpose in life is, what God called him
to do."
Now, that sounds
completely contrary to the other thought doesn't it?
AS THE EAGLE STIRRETH HER NEST 60-0804 " I haven't got much hopes for a pastor's church
that hasn't got ambitions to better themselves day by day, and year
by year. A church
that's really a church of the living God will never stop,
say, "Well, I just come in, I guess it's all right
now." That ain't the