Preparation #17 (Godhood )
Brian
Kocourek
This morning we shall again examine the words which
brother Branham spoke
from his sermon Preparation in PP. 017.
Here he said, In the garden of
Eden there were two trees: one was Life,
one was knowledge. Man left the Tree
of Life to eat off the tree of knowledge.
Now, what or who were those two trees. We need to know this in order to really
understand what took place in the garden. What or who were those two trees.
In the Christian world of pseudo-theology, they want you to
believe that those two trees were an apple tree, and some other fruit tree. But
let's get down to viewing exactly what or shall we say who those trees really
were, and what was this act that took place that has ever
since caused death for man.
Now, to better understand all of what took place in
the very beginning, let's go back to the book of beginnings, Genesis, and begin
reading at the beginning.
GENESIS 1:1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters. 3 ¶ And God said, Let
there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that
[it was] good: and God divided the light
from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the
darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first
day.
Now, here we have the first seen which deals
specifically with the earth, and the creation, and we see the first time that
God speaks, He brings forth light. Then notice what happens,…
Separation takes place. and God
divided the light from the darkness. That word divided is a Hebrew word, Badal
which means to separate, or sever, in order to make a distinction between the
two.
So here we see a distinguishing characteristic of
God's Word coming forth from the very first time that He speaks, and that is
this, "God's Word calls for separation."
Now, let's see what happens next as we go back and
view this opening scene in Genesis again.
GENESIS 1:6 ¶ And God
said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide
the waters from the waters. (I want you to notice that first God
speaks, and then He does) 7 And God made the firmament,
and divided the waters which [were]
under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it
was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And
the evening and the morning were the second day. 9 ¶ And God said, Let
the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the
dry [land] appear: and it was so.
10 And God called the dry
[land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good.
Notice here that the second time God speaks, it brings forth the waters and then separates them.
God speaks, then separation, and then each time this happens, it is recorded, ": and
God saw that [it was] good." God perceived or saw to it that it
was good.
Notice that God divided the waters above from the
waters below, which allowed the land to appear.
Science has proven today that there are several major rivers of water
that encircle the earth up in the ionosphere. These rivers have been estimated
at being thousands of miles long and hundreds of miles wide, and several miles
deep. Science tells us that there is
enough water up there to pour forth hundreds of millions of tons of water per
minute. During the great flood of 1937 which brother Branham had prophesied
would happen, science tells us 168 billion tons of water fell during the month
of January. And I believe that is what God allowed to happen at the flood of
Noah. Now, we don’t have time to get into that, but man is once again tampering
with the ionosphere like he did back them, only this time all that hydrogen and
oxygen will turn to fire.
Now, so far we have seen a principle take place here
which we will also see concerning God's Word throughout the rest of the Bible.
"When God speaks, separation follows." And God calls this
good.
II
CORINTHIANS
Now, we know that before anything existed, there was
God alone with His Word. JOHN 1:1 ¶ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All
things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was
made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light
of men.
Now, what I want you to see here is that if we go way,
way back to the very beginning, we find that God dwelt alone. Now, the
Scripture tells us here that at the beginning God existed alone with His Word.
But let's go back even before there was His Word, and we find that the
Scripture refers to him as Elohim. (The self existent one).
GENESIS 1:1 ¶ In the beginning God, Elohim, the self
existent One.
So we find that before the beginning, which the word
beginning means the first, and when we read this account in Genesis
, we find that it is speaking of the creation account. GENESIS 1:1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
Therefore, we want to look at this thought here to lay
out the order of all things. #1) If
we are dealing with the beginning here of all things, and we are told at the
beginning, there was one Thing and it was God, then we must also conclude that
this God was self existing, and thus the Hebrew word Elohim which means the
self existent One.
#2) The first
record we have of God speaking is at the time of the beginning of the creation.
JOHN 1:1 ¶ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God And
then in the Genesis account we see the Word of God being spoken and then
creation taking place as He spoke it.
Therefore, we see that the Word and Creation were at
the beginning, but before this beginning, there was just the God who was
self-existent and dwelt alone.
Now, before you can have a word, you must first have a
thought. Therefore we can conclude that God dwelt alone before the beginning,
as a great fountain of thought. Let's read about his in John's account of the
beginning. JOHN 1:1 ¶ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All
things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was
made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light
of men.
So before anything was made there was the word which
was with God, and in this word was Life. And this Life was also called the
Light of men.
Now, let's go back to this great fountain of Life and
look at it. PSALMS 36:9 For with thee [is] the fountain of life: in thy light shall
we see light.
Notice the two attributes that David and John both
characterize this great fountain is Life and Light. And we see the first
expression of this fountain come forth when God begins to speak. What takes
place first? Light is spoken, and then what does that Light bring forth? Life..
GENESIS 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth
grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his
kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12
And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his
kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind:
and God saw that [it was] good.
I want you to notice that the first time God expressed
His Word the first manifestation of that Word was Light, then the next time God
spoke there came forth water. These are the two main ingredients to bring forth
Life. You don't need soil, although God provided the soil when he separated the
waters above from the waters below. But
we have proven today with hydro farming that all you need is light and water
for life to grow. And so we see in verse 11, that God spoke all life forms into
existence at this time. This great fountain of God contained Life and when God
began to open forth this great fountain it issued forth all life seeds that
will ever be. Notice, the seeds of life were brought forth in Genesis 1:11 and
placed upon the earth at this time.
Then as we read on in the Genesis account God made
lesser lights, the sun, moon and stars. But what was this light that was separated from darkness
at the beginning?
GENESIS 1:14 ¶ And
God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day
from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and
years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament
of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and
the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also. 17
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the
earth 18 And to rule over the day and over the
night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was]
good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the
fourth day.
Now, most people assume that the first light that is
spoken of is the SUN, but it is not. It speaks of the SON. For here we see an
account of the SUN and MOON in Genesis 14 though 19. These lights were placed
here to regulate the seed life that God placed in the earth.
But what of this first Light we see in Genesis. From the Message "Questions and answer
on Genesis," Brother Branham said,
QA ON
GENESIS 53-0729 010 The first creation was God Himself; then out of God came the Logos, which was
the Son of God; then out of the Logos, which was the Word ("In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."), out of the Logos came forth
the man. 011 Oh, I got a beautiful picture in my mind
now, if you could take a little trip with me. I believe I've talked on it
before, but to get this to the place where you'll be sure to see it. Now, let's
take a little trip and go back for a little while. Now, don't think about how
hot it is; let's get our minds right on what we're going to talk about and
think now. Let's go back a hundred million years before there ever was a star,
moon, or anything in the world. Now, there was a time when there wasn't nothing here; it was just all forever and eternity. And all
of ever and eternity was God; He was there in the beginning. Now, let's go out
here on the edge of this banister and look over and see these things happen.
15-26 012 Now, "No man
has seen the Father at anytime." No
man can see God in the bodily form, because God is not in body form; God is a
Spirit. See? All right. "No man has seen the
Father, but the only begotten of the Father hath declared Him," I John...
See? Now, but notice now, there's
nothing; there's just space. There's no light; there's no dark; there's no
nothing; it's just seems nothing. But in there is a great supernatural Being,
Jehovah God, Who covered all space of all places at all times. He was from
everlasting from everlasting; He is the beginning of creation. That's God.
Can't see nothing, can't hear nothing, not a move of an atom in the air, not
nothing, not no air, no nothing, but yet God was there. That was God. (Now,
let's watch for a few minutes, and after a while...)
No man has seen That, now; that's the Father. That's
God, the Father.
15-28 013 Now, notice. Then
after while I begin to see a little sacred Light begin to form, like a little
halo or something; you could only see it by spiritual eyes to look now, while
we're looking, the whole church now. We're standing on a great big banister,
watching what God's doing. And we'll get right down to this question here and
you'll see how He brings it in. Now, no one has seen God. And now, the next
thing we begin to see, by eyes of supernatural looking, we see a little white Light forming out there.
What is that? That was called, by Bible readers, "Logos," or "the anointed," or "the
anointing," or the--as I was going to say, the part of God begin to develop into something so human beings could
have some type of an idea what It was: it was a little, a little Light moving.
That was the Word of God. Now, God gave Himself birth to this Son which
was before there was even an atom in the, or air to make an atom. That
was... See, Jesus said, "Glorify Me, Father, with the glory that We had before the foundation of the world." See, way
back in yonder...
15-32 014 Now, in
16-35 015 Now,
watch this now. Beautiful.... Now, He made the sun.
Then the first thing you know, a big clinker fell off of it, weighed about,
just about like this earth, went "Spew..." Then this Logos here now,
the Son of God, is watching it. He lets it fall for a hundred million years and
He stops it. Then another one flies off, and He let's it flew off--fall for
millions of years, then He stops it. Now, we're standing, watching it come into
existence. Now, He's got something in His mind. And what's He doing? He's writing
His first Bible. The first Bible that man ever looked to was the stars, the
zodiac. And it's a perfect... just... It dovetailed with this Bible here. It
starts off, the first of the zodiac is the virgin. Is
that right? The last of the zodiac is what? Leo, the lion.
That's the first coming of Jesus; He came through a virgin; the second, He
comes as the Lion of the tribe of
17-38
016 Now,
that was this earth come into existence, just a big old piece of cinder flew
off out yonder. Down beneath it now is nothing but a turning, burning volcano,
completely; the eruptions come everywhere, volcanic. And science claims
that--that this world is, the crust on top of it, where we live, is just about
like the peeling on an apple. And all the... Now, there's twenty-five thousand
miles around, it's probably eight thousand miles that'd be approximately eight
thousand miles thick. And just think, of in there, it's a burning
volcanic. And two thirds of the earth,
better than two thirds of it, is in water; and one third of it is in land,
about one third. And just look at this crust that we're living on; it's full of
dangerous explosives, gas, gasoline, oil, everything. Is that right? And the
two thirds of it, better than two thirds of it, water. What is the formula of
water? Two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen: explosives. There's enough
electricity in every room to separate the heat from the cold, and it'll make
enough electricity to burst a room. You can put enough atoms in a golf ball to
blow
17-41
017 And
now, notice, but now when this was first found, when Jesus... Now, watch the
little halo yonder. Now, I can see It move out to this
earth and get over the top of it and begin to move it over here close to the
sun. It's nothing but a big ball of ice. And when it begins to get melting,
then great big glaciers begin to cut through up in the northlands and come
down. And when it did, it cut out
18-43 018
He got all those things together, and made...?... made all the other
things, all the animal life, the birds, the bees, the monkeys, and whatever it
was, put them all here on earth. And then He asked this question now. "Let us (Who? Father and Son) make man in Our own image." Now, if a man was made something like that little sacred Light yonder, or something like
that, It could not be seen (which is a spiritual Being). He manifested or
unfolded Himself a little more to make a trinity of Himself by Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. And here was God, unfolded Himself now, down into "let us
make man (which was His son, an offspring from Him) man in Our
own image (He was a supernatural being.), and let him have dominion over the
cattles of the field, and so forth." Now, the man led the man--led
the--the cattle and everything, just like the Holy Spirit leads a real true
believer today. The Voice of God out there... The voice of man, rather, would
speak and say... call the cattle this way, call the sheep over to this pasture,
call the fishes to this water. See, he had dominion; everything obeyed him.
18-46
019 Now, but then there was no
man to till the soil (Genesis 2), no man to till the soil. "And then God
formed man (Genesis 2:7) out of the dust of the earth." Now, we follow it;
He formed man out of the dust of the earth, and put this supernatural
Spirit...Now, he was laying there. I can have many pictures of it. I can see
Adam standing... Let's take this way, see him standing like a tree. God had
made him. He was dead as he could be, his toes, like the roots sticking in the
ground. And God said, "Let there be," or breathed the breath of life
into him, and he jumped, came to himself. See, He was a... Breathed the breath
of life into him, he became a living soul. Now, and he begin to move on, move
on.
129
HEBREWS.CHAPTER.1 -- JEFF.IN -- HEB 1-32 -- 57-0821 Now, here's what happened. Oh! (excuse me), This just
gets me right where I love it. See? The Logos, and this Great
Fountain; this Great Fountain of Spirit
which had no beginning or no end. This Great Spirit began to form in the
creation, and the Logos that went out
from It was the Son of God. It was the only
visible form that the Spirit had. And It was a theophany, which means a body, and the
body was like a man.
Hebrews 1: 3 Who being the brightness of [his] glory, and the express image of his person,
and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; 4
¶ Being
made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more
excellent name than they. 5 For unto which of
the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?
And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? The expressed image... The
outraying or etching of God.
Now , we have looked at this first light that God
brought forth and as we see, it was the Logos which was part of God coming
forth into an expression which God called His Son, and then through this
expression, or expressed Word, or Manifested Word God brought forth all of
creation.
REVELATION
ROMANS
EPHESIANS
3:9 And to make all [men] see what
[is] the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath
been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
COLOSSIANS
1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of every creature: 16 For by him were all things created,
that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they
be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were
created by him, and for him: 17 And he is before all things, and by him all
things consist.
Now, we began today by examining these words of
brother Branham's from his message, Preparation, and I would like to look more
closely at these words, that we might rightly divide them according to the
Scripture and our understanding we now have of that scripture.
In Paragraph 17 he
said, In the garden of Eden there were two trees: one was Life, one was knowledge. Man left the Tree of Life to eat off the tree of knowledge.
Now, as I stated earlier in this study, we must know
what or who those trees were in order for us to fully understand this passage
of scripture.
Two trees. One was the tree of Life and the other, was a tree
full of wisdom and knowledge.
Now, the first question we must ask is what these two
trees represent, or who are these trees, and how did they get here in this
garden.
We have already established in Genesis 1:11 that God
placed all seed life that will ever be and scattered it upon the earth in the
beginning by His Word.
GENESIS
Now, before we can address these two trees, we have to
understand that so far when we see this creation of man in God's image, we are
seeing the creation of man in a spirit form as were quoted brother Branham
earlier. Now, let's see how these two trees interplay with man in the garden.
GENESIS 2:4 ¶ These [are] the generations (this
word here is a Hebrew word, to-led-aw, which means genealogies or lineage) of
the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD
God made the earth and the heavens,
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth,( Notice we
are hearing here that the seeds existed before they were in the earth, and how
was this? They were first a seed in God in His thoughts, and then they became
spoken word seeds, and then they received a material covering)
and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not
caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the
ground. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth,
and watered the whole face of the ground.
7 And the LORD God formed man
[of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;
and man became a living soul. 8 ¶ And the LORD God planted a garden
eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. ( Now, notice here that God now took these seeds which up to
this point were not in the earth, but only upon the earth, and He now plants
them IN the earth). 9
And out of the ground made
the LORD God to grow every tree that is
pleasant to the sight, and good for food;( But notice here as we
continue that he speaks of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge and
distinguishes them as being different. These two trees are not said to be
planted, but they are placed in the garden along with man whom God whom God put
there. the tree of life also
in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Now, we know that Genesis One is the creation in
spirit form and in genesis two we see God clothing His Word, and bringing it
into manifestation. These are not two different renditions of the same
creation, but in genesis One we see the Word of God
bringing forth man in the Image of God, and Jesus told us that God is Spirit
and they that worship Him must do so in spirit and truth. So we see then that
man was created in Spirit form in Genesis One and in Genesis two we see God
forming a body for that Spirit man to dwell.
Now, those trees God planted he said are good for the
sight and good for eating, but notice what he said to Adam concerning the Tree
of Knowledge? GENESIS 2:15 And
the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden
of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16
¶ And the LORD God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of
it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Now, if this tree would cause death then it was not
one of those which God had planted, for the trees He planted were good to look
upon and good for food. And
a tree that would cause death is not good for food.
Then what was this tree if it was not a planted tree,
and how did it get there.