What Does It Take To Make A Christian Life?

Thank you, Brother Joseph. Good to be here this morning. And fellowship is something that's hard to explain, isn't it?“ I told my wife I'm getting old. Joseph called me the other day and we were talking. I said, ”Say, Joseph, I'm just outside the vicinity Sunday morning; I'll be over and see you.“

“Oh,” he said, “nothing would please us any better.” I thought I was at Gary, and I was a hundred and twenty-five miles of South Bend. I drove through a blinding snow storm this morning, after a meeting last night over there in dedication of a church. And a good friend, Mr. Tom from Canada, and we drove this morning zigzagging over the roads over here in a blinding snow storm to keep our promise to Brother Joseph—very fine friend.

These Swedes, I don't know. The other day I would've never knowed unless my bosom friends here, Gene and Leo, had told me. I was supposed to be in Minneapolis, February the tenth through the seventeenth. Never heard a word of it. And I was going down.... The meeting was in making, to be with Sister Coe, that's Brother Jack's widow. He just went on to be with the Lord, and she's in desperate need, and I said, “Now, Sister Coe, I'll let you know in a few days. I will be praying over it.” And here come a message in from these boys that I was on the radio station being broadcast all across the country, to be there the tenth through the seventeenth. Have never yet heard from it, see? So I'm going to have to go because I.... just had to tell Sister Coe I can't go.

These Swedes.... Gordon Peterson. So, I guess I'll have to do it because I.... Some people, not him at this time, he just, that was just.... He has no guard even over that. So it's just.... They advertise you to be certain places, and I don't know nothing about it. And then I've got other meetings set now. I have to keep my word to the people. That's how it happened. So, if anybody ever says, “Brother Branham don't keep his word,” you just remember that's the kind of slip-ups that it is.

And I don't have any big outlets, radio, television, and things like that. If I did, I couldn't go to little churches. Do you think Oral Roberts could come to a small congregation? Certainly not.

I was in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the other day and I heard a man making a statement, said, “Here we are a little people, fifteen hundred, here at the little temple.” And said, “We asked a certain minister if he would come, 'too small, can't do it.'” Said, “We asked another one, 'Too small, can't do it.'” Asked three or four of them, of the big ministers that's in the field today, 'Can't do it, you're too small.'“ And he said, ”Brother Branham come.“ Like he was giving me a great praise for that. And I got to the platform, I said, ”Now, just a moment. I heard the pastor back there make that statement. Now, these men would come if they could, but you see, they've got theirselves under such obligations, financially they can't do it.“

How many thousands of dollars a day do you think Oral Roberts has to have? How is he going to go in a church where you stay there four or five days and get a three hundred dollar love offering, when he has to have six, seven thousand a day? He can't do it. Not because he don't want to, but he can't do it.

But you know, just myself, well, I just haven't got that. I don't need nothing. What I need, the Lord supplies it, what little I have to have. So I'm not under any obligation, so I can just go anyhow. If He wants me to go to a little place here that's got ten in the congregation, okay. If He wants me to stay a week, ten days, I can stay. If He wants me to go to Africa and preach for three or four hundred thousand, well, He has the money, so He just sends me. I ain't under any obligations. And if He wants me to go, He always takes care of that. So, that's the way I like to live, just free.

I'm going to a tabernacle beginning tomorrow night.... Tomorrow night I'm going to a tabernacle that packed out will hold sixty, for a two nights' meeting. That's right. Sturgis, Michigan. When she's packed out, it'll hold sixty people. Well, I'm just as happy going there as I was in Bombay, India, to five hundred thousand. It just depends on what the Lord would want you to do, see. Now, I like that. Pray for me.

Now, we got a snowstorm on now and I've got all this road to drive back, get over there this afternoon. But somehow my wife got up this morning, she was kind of low in faith. She said, “I believe if you'd just call Joseph and tell him that you made a mistake.”

I said, “But that's not what I promised.”

Said, “Billy, do you think that Chicago.... Why, it's three above zero. Do you think people would come out?”

“Well, I've got to come out because I promised it, you see. I promised Joseph and I want to do it.”

Now, before opening His Word just for a little evangelistic message this morning, the Lord willing, and we will dismiss. You can go home and have your dinner. We will be on the road back over there. Will you be praying for us? Do that. I'm so thankful to see this nice audience.

Now, just a word to the Author of the book.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee today for the Lord Jesus, who came here on earth from heaven and was made flesh and dwelt among us, the Word of God made manifest. And then in doing so He reconciled God and man together which had been at ends for some time because of sin and transgression. But now today we're sons and daughters of God by His appearing. It does not yet appear what we shall be finally, but we know we will look something like Him, for we shall have a body like His own glorious body. We shall see Him as He is. We will live in a world without snow, and without troubles, and without heartaches, and without sorrow. And now as we're looking to that time, pulling Thy precious promises from the Bible, we pray that the Holy Spirit will come now and take the Word of God and deliver it to every heart as we have need. For we ask it in Christ's name. Amen.

Over in Ezekiel.... And I've got some itinerary wrote out here I should say something about before ... right before reading the Scripture. I'm sorry I didn't think of it. Just happened to feel my marker.

Now, after leaving Sturgis, Michigan, the following week I am with the Baptist people in Lima, Ohio, at the Municipal Auditorium. I go then to Minneapolis from February the tenth through the seventeenth ... Mr. Peterson. The following Sunday I'm with Brother Moore one night at Shreveport, and the tenth to the tenth of Febr... or, the twenty-sixth of February until the tenth of March I'm at Madison Square Gardens in Phoenix, Arizona. And on the seventeenth of March I begin with Brother Espinoza in the valley of the San Fernando Valley. And on the nineteenth I begin with the Philadelphian church at the Civic Auditorium. That's the big auditorium at Oakland, California. We come back, and from that till June I'm in about six different major cities of Canada.

In June I'm planning, the Lord willing, this is after.... The first is the Philadelphian and the International Brotherhood Meeting again at Indianapolis. Brother Joseph knows about that. And from a hop off there, I hope I can meet David DuPlessis in Africa to go into Africa and stay until this coming autumn. If that doesn't materialize, I will be with the Christian Businessmen in July with Brother Carlson, was just asking me that. I told him I didn't know as yet, because I'm kind of betwixt two opinions here. I don't know which way to turn from there, asking the Lord for the big convention here in Chicago this coming July. So pray for us.

In the 6th... 26th chapter of Ezekiel and beginning with the 26th verse we read this:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

And I will ... [This here's the part I want you to get.]

And ye shall dwell in the land, ... and I will give you your first fruits.

Now, I want the Lord Jesus, if He will, to give us His blessings upon the reading of His blessed Word.

Now, we're going to talk about, this morning, what is the reason.... And Brother David, I want you to especially pray for me on this, and the rest of you, that I'm going to talk about: What Does It Take To Make A Christian Life? What constitutes the Christian life?

Now, there's many things that we do not know. It's not let.... We're not.... Many things that we don't know. There's many things that God lets us know. And now the things that we do know, we want to fellowship around each other and around the Word of God to find out these things. Now, I pray that God will send His blessings upon us as we minister in His Word, as you all remember and pray.

Now, to begin with, there's always been something about the church that isn't just exactly right. Course we realize that's the devil. Brother Carlson and I were talking about it up in the room just a few moments ago, in the pastor's study. It seems like that there has been a lacking somewhere among the people. I have my ideas, and we have beat at this bridge and beat these walls as hard as we could, but yet in all of it we've been unsuccessfully to beat down the walls of the opposition. Yet I'm so glad that we got some bomb holes in it anyhow, that someday this great wall of indifference among the people will fall down and God's great united army will march in one great forefront, with one great banner: the Lord Jesus Christ. That's my sincere hope.

Now, if the church of the living God, which is the pillar of the truth.... God intended this church to be a powerful church, a glorious church, a church that the whole world could look upon as a bride of Christ well expected and espoused, and to live in such an atmosphere and conduct itself in such a way that God would be proud of this church to present it to Christ at the coming of the Lord. It should live in that characteristic in the church, and it should be living that way. But we find out that many times, with good intentions that people are trying to make themselves act like Christians. They're trying to say, “Well, now I am thus, and I must live this way.”

Now, if the church could only not look at it in that way, but.... Christianity and the church.... God never intended Christianity to be governed by denominations, neither by creeds, or He.... If God only allowed or intended for the church to be governed and carried on by creeds and denominations and intellectuals, then we do not need the Holy Spirit in the church. Our church then should ... it's success would be largely placed upon the intellectuals of the best of us. That would be what our church would have.... The better intellectuals we would have in our church, the more progressive our church would be.

But in the Word I find that God did not intend for the church to be governed by intellectuals or by any theology of man, but the Holy Spirit was given to the church to govern and control the body of Christ. And I think in doing that, with that in mind and in God's program, we will never be successfully, no matter how good our intentions are, until we get back into the center of God's program where the Holy Spirit....

Now, realizing that this is no new thing to preach on. It is something that's been preached on many times, but the way we approach it and the way that we take it.... We take it still thinking that it is a Holy Spirit-controlled church and yet we put our intellectuals mixed with it and then we can get a conglomeration of both Holy Spirit and intellectual. And when the Holy Spirit desires to do a thing and degrades something or lifts something up, it causes petty jealousy amongst the people, which proves that they haven't got the Holy Spirit. Every man would want to be in his place.

Now, in this the people have a reason, because they have seen so much denominationals and so many different dictators, as it was, spiritual dictators in the church to say thus and thus. But the Holy Spirit has placed each one into the body of Christ and we're helpless to maneuver without every member of our body. We have to have my hands, my arms, my mouth, my eyes, my.... Everything that's in me has to operate to make my body function perfectly. And then if God wanted His body, the church, to be governed by His Spirit, there has got to be some way or some program that we've got to enter into, farther than what we have already had.

Now the Bible, said here, Ezekiel speaking (and Ezekiel was a prophet), and he said, “A new heart will I give you....” I like it. Always God speaking of something new that He's going to do. He didn't say now.... That doesn't mean that He will just patch up the old condition, but “A new heart will I give you: and I will take away the stony heart which you have, and a new spirit will I give you.”

He never said He would have a facelift to the old church. He would have a new thing, a brand new. And in doing this you can't mix an old intellectual church with a new Pentecostal experience church.

Jesus taught the same thing in Luke when He said, “You cannot put new wine into old bottles.” That was sometimes hard for me to understand before I became a missionary, to see what bottles and so forth. I thought, “Well, the bottle, what we call a bottle, it just wouldn't get old.” But in the Palestinian country, and during this time especially, the bottle was an animal skin that had been tanned and sewed up and tied up in places, and the skin contained the liquids and so forth, they put in it: water, wine, and oils, and what they carried in the skin.

Now, when the skin became old, well, it was dry. And then when Jesus was speaking, “Put new wine into old bottles, they would both perish.” You'd lose your wine and lose your bottle.

Now, you might be able to put water into an old bottle, but you can't put wine into an old bottle, because water is the ashes of hydrogen and oxygen which remains, and, if anything, dwindles away. It shrinks. Its substance has no life, but it is the ashes made from hydrogen and ... or, hydrogen and oxygen is ashes.

But wine has a life in it. And wine, new wine especially, is fermenting yet, and it might spread out a little; and if it goes to pushing in the old bottle, in the old dry hide will burst and fly open. Now, that's.... And then the hide is ruined and also the bottle is ... the bottle is ruined and the wine is spilled.

Now, that's about the picture we have before us today. You can't come to an old formal bunch of intellectuals and your ideas and try to adopt God's program into your intellectual program. It just won't work. That old dry cow hide will blow up. It just can't take it.

Now, a new bottle is a new tanned hide, and the new tanned hide has still the animal oil in the hide. Then when the new wine goes into a new bottle, then when the new wine begins to swell, the new bottle gives, pushes out because it's got oil in it. And if there ever was a time that the church needs a oiling, it's today; a Holy Spirit oiling. New wine.

Now, when the Bible says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” His healing power's just as great today as it ever was. The old intellectuals will blow up. “No such a thing; Dr. Jones said the days of miracles is passed. That settles it.”

But when the new wine is put into a new bottle and then when the ... begins to ferment, the life begins to work in from the old outside theology that we used to study, and see the Word of God in its divine promises and said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The new wine will say, “Hallelujah!” And the old bottle will say, “Glory to God,” spread out and give it room. That's what we get.

It's not put the new wine in the old bottle. It'd say, “Now, our school teaches different, our denomination....” That old dry cowhide. “Our teachers, our pastor says these things are finished.”

But if it's a new hide and it's got new life, it's flexible and it gives to the Word and the Word supports the Spirit ... or, the Spirit supports the Word, and when they come into the new bottle and they say, “Someone got healed of a cancer last evening,” the old hide says, “Let me see what the doctor says, let me see him a year from now. I just can't believe it.” But the new hide says, “Hallelujah to the Lamb!” spreads out. Then both wine and bottle is kept. You can't put new wine in old bottles.

It reminds me of an experience of years ago. I don't know whether I ever told you or not. I was in Northern British Columbia on a hunting trip, and I was out into the woods one night. I thought I was a pretty fair woodsman, raised in the woods all my life. And I got turned around and I'd been chasing an old bear, and I wanted to get some pictures of him and so forth. I didn't have a license to shoot the bear because I was goat hunting, but I wanted to get close to this grizzly. He was a beautiful animal, and I wished to have his picture.

And on a little young horse of about three years old that had an ambition that he wanted to pile a preacher off of him. And then he'd tried all day long to throw me, as I'd spurred him through the blow-downs and so forth, trying to catch up with this bear.

And I had got into a place to where I had got turned around. And on my road back, knowing general directions; was raised to know the moss on the north side of the tree, or if there's no moss, close your eyes and take a hold of the tree and move around the tree with the bark in your hand until you find a thick place, and that's the north side. So there's many things you have to know in the woods if you survive.

And that's the same thing it is if you survive spiritually. You have to know Him who is the Creator and who leads you and teaches you.

And then I noticed as I come up and got my bearings, and I started back the general direction. Because you could go hundreds of miles without seeing a living thing. Getting my general directions to know that some.... After a while I'd catch into the top of a mountain there that I'd find my way back that night.

I was amazed, as it'd been raining that afternoon, and storming, partly causing me to be turned around. But the clouds were clearing, and there were great white clouds in the sky that the moon shining down beautifully. And I stopped in an old blow-down ... a burn-over, rather. I don't know whether you people here in the city would know what a burn-over was. It's where a sweeping fire with a wind behind it sweeps through the forest and it kills everything. Many times the tree remains standing but it's burnt the bark. After awhile the little termites will get into the bark, but the fire will case the tree and the bark falls off, the termites eats it. But the old tree stands there as a bleak snag, no lifeline in it, no sap ring and so forth. And it dies because the sap ring, of course, comes through the bark.

Now, as I stood there, and I was amazed as I tied my horse. The little fellow was very tired, and I just felt somehow definitely led to stop for a few minutes. And I tied up my horse and I got over there and I was looking up at the moon and I said, “Father God, I am so happy to know that You are my Father. Into this beautiful country to which I am now permitted to come on this hunting trip to look at Your animals and the things that You have made for my joy, and how I thank Thee for these.” And only as you could see British Columbia, a woodsman or a hunter could appreciate. And there looking at those beautiful things.

Then I began to notice a peculiarity. It was a noise that.... It seemed to be so weary. And the winds were blowing as it had blowed away the storm. And as the clouds passed over, little what we call “buttermilk skies,” them little blotches in it, of white clouds. But the moon shining down, the wind blowing, a real weary noise set in, like a mournful noise, moaning, groaning, ooh. And as the moon shined upon the bleak trees, it looked like tombstones, and that mournful noise, woooh. What a horrible thing. And I said, “Now, I wonder what all this means?”

And we're taught that the footsteps of the righteous is ordered of the Lord. And everything works together for good to them that love God. God just brings things around to happen that way. It's His great love to His people. Sometimes He has to take you through some dark places, but only to show you a light. And our Father works those things.

And I believe that the church today, only in its condition.... It's only a place that God's bringing the church that when it all breaks, what a time of rejoicing. When the redeemed stand someday to crown Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords. When He's sitting on Mount Zion and all around the earth is circled with the redeemed singing of redemption. The angels will stand off on a sideline with bowed heads. They won't understand. They've never been redeemed. They never fell to be redeemed. Only we mortals know what it means to be lost; an angel doesn't know what it means to be lost. And we are the only ones that can get joy out of the song of redemption; and I think that's the way it'll be in the church.

And as I stood there looking, and all that mournful sound, I thought, “Oh, this is a hideous place.” This is, we would call it on the street, spooky. It's a horrible place. “O God, why did You ever let me tie up my little horse here, to let him rest here? We should have been over into the forest farther and tied up.” But somehow it was God teaching me something. And I said, “What does all this mean?”

Then I began to think, them tombstones, as it were. That mournful wind as it howled through them, sets up a sensation of a little weary feeling, kind of leery, especially way into the mountains. I thought, “Why would I, the servant of the Lord, be presented with a picture of this? What type of drama are You setting before me, Father?”

And as I looked onward, wondering, it seems to me that a Scripture came to me over in Joel, “What the palmerworm left the caterpillar eaten; what the caterpillar left the other bugs eaten.” And I thought, “That's true, that's right.” Now looky here, these great big trees once were mammoth big fellows who stood there. As the winds blowed they swayed back and forth in its power. What a majestic sight it must have been, in those towering big spruce up on top of that mountain as the wind swayed. But now what can they do? They cannot sway to the wind anymore. Something has happened. They are dead and the winds can blow and they're only so starchy, so stiff, that the winds passing through their beings can only make a mournful sound, can only set up, instead of a beautiful rhythm of the playing of the tassels on them, back and forth as they frolicked one time in the winds of heaven. Now, they can only be bare and mourn. And I thought, “Yes, Lord, that's it.”

I looked back then upon the Lutheran, the Methodist, and even the Pentecostal, and the Nazarene, the Pilgrim Holiness, and all the great churches that we have. And I think of their early ... in their origins, how they had a lifeline on them, the Holy Spirit was in them. And how when God sent the mighty rushing winds like He did on the day of Pentecost, how they frolicked in the blessings of God with their great heavy foliage on them; the winds caught into them like sails and sailed them back and forth, revival after revival.

But there came something that happened. The fires of persecution and the new order of the church. When they got off into seminaries and got boys and men who were brilliant and intellectual and taught out the old baptism of the Holy Spirit, they cut the lifeline.

When the Methodist revivals used to strike in the nations when they'd lay in schoolhouses on the floor and receive the Holy Spirit and become “knocked out”, as we call it today. Or in them days they thought they'd fainted. And in our own Baptist church, how I've seen in our Baptist church, take pitchers of water from the pulpit and pour it on the people's faces and fan them and cry when they were laying under the power of the Holy Spirit.

But the new teachers, the old country church was done away with and they brought it into the more elaborate, the more fantastic, the educated side of it. Upon the side of the altar being featherly decorated or the pipe organ and the seats all plush, and the old church was done away with. The old altar was taken. The old-fashioned mourners bench was taken out and put down into the basement. And instead of souls on the altar, it was lilies on the altar. And instead of the old-fashioned organ that they used to pump with a stick, or the old tuning fork....

And when they sang “I will fear no evils when I come to die”, instead of that, it was a well trained choir with a melodious voice that sang such hymns until they would hold on till they were blue in the face and call it class. That's the most miserable thing I ever sat under, is to hear a over-trained voice that'll hold a note until they're blue in the face to try to put on a show; and that's all it is. You're not singing to the glory of God. And the sweetest thing under heaven is an old-fashioned Spirit-filled church with the Holy Ghost, everybody singing in the Spirit.

But they cut the lifeline when they cut the singing. When they taken the days of miracles away from the church and adopted their theologies and their intellectuals instead of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, they cut the lifeline. No doubt they're great denominations. So was them great trees. They can prove by history that they had great things. The one who looked at the forest can prove that they were once great thriving trees. But, oh, today they're nothing but bleached. The lifeline is gone.

And when God still sends His wind down for His trees to frolic and to take new life by the pushing of the trees, what can they do? Just set up a mournful sound, “Now, I will tell to this congregation, if anyone shall attend that healing campaign, immediately they'll be excommunicated from this fellowship.” Some little preacher with more intellectual than he's got sense to govern, stand up there with a tuxedo coat on and bow with a “Ah-men” like a calf with the cramps, and then try to place that to take the place of the Holy Ghost. It'll never do it.

God's eternal plan of salvation for His people is the Holy Spirit in the church, borned-again men and women operated by the Holy Spirit. Not them trying to operate the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit operating them. Do you see?

And as I looked at those trees I wondered, “What about them?” And then I thought, “Yes, there comes the wind from heaven just like it always did.” And Christ is the same. On the day of Pentecost there was a mighty rushing wind who came from heaven, and the people received it because they were flexible. They were willing to take God's way.

But we find out that now when God sends down a great healing campaign, or great miracles and signs, and the signs that were in the Bible return back to the church, what does the great intellectual group say? “The days of miracles are past. There is no such a thing as divine healing. There is no baptism of the Holy Spirit. I will give my congregation to know this, that just the poor, just the outcast, just the illiterate type of people attend those meetings. Go around to them and find out.” And true the man is. The man is true when he says that. It's usually the poor, not the intellectual type. It's the uneducated type, it's the common people who heard Him gladly, says the Bible.

Now, we will notice again, if you will. Then I thought, “What's the use of sending any rushing mighty wind if there's nothing to receive it?” But God is sovereign to His promise and He has to send it. He keeps His Word. “A little while and the world will see me no more, yet you'll see me, for I will be with you till the end of the world. And the things that I do shall you also.” God's got to send His promise.

I thought, “Well Lord, what will happen?” Then I happened to notice. Listen. Then I noticed that after these trees, in their falling, their great cones that they had, there was some little seeds dropped out of these trees and out of these cones, and they were absolutely the life of that tree. And it dropped off onto the ground, and though the fire passed over, and though all these things happened, yet I noticed underneath, there was an undergrowth coming up. Trees again. Trees that were flexible. Young trees that had life in them. The undergrowth. What we'd call today, maybe, the underdog. The fellow that's been kicked out of the big church because he hollered “Amen” when the preacher was preaching. And maybe something like that. But anyhow, it's some of the life, or the teachings from the old beginning, from the Methodist, Lutheran, and the Pentecostals, and so forth, as they used to be.

And so I noticed when the winds fell, the old tree moaned, but the little tree had a revival. It just jumped and went round and round and round and round and flashed around, shouting and praising the Lord. And I thought, “Well, there's one thing we might say: It may not have the education that the old one's got, it may be green, but it's flexible. So that's what God was doing.” And I noticed in an experience with God, how God likes to shake His trees, loose them up. And every time a tree moves and shakes, it pulls the roots and makes them loose so they can grow down and get a better hold.

Now, what the Lutheran left has the Methodist eaten; what the Methodist left, the Baptist eaten; what the Baptist left, the Presbyterian's eaten; what the Presbyterian's left, the Nazarene's eaten; what the Nazarene's left, the Pentecostal's eaten. “But I will restore”, saith the Lord. “I will restore.” Then God in His great move of the Spirit is coming to restore.

Notice, God taken one hundred and twenty brand new green bottles, all flexible, and He laid them in the upper room. Green bottles. And when there came from heaven as a sound as a mighty rushing wind, they were all filled with new Pentecostal wine. Oh, what a working and a moving and an explosion there must have been. How those bottles were leaping and jumping. They had life in them.

Now, the old bottle would've said, “This is fanaticism”. But the new bottle got life and spread out and hollered, “Amen” to everything the Spirit said. There were some things that went on that didn't seem ethical to the old teaching, but they were new bottles, they could stand it. And God takes His bottles....

Now, I want you to listen for a few moments before closing. I want you to notice one thing and watch closely now. Watch the order of the Scripture, “I will take away the stony heart, and give you a new heart.” Now, the heart is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. “And I will give you a new spirit.” I want you to watch the order. Now, many people get mixed up there. They think they got the Holy Ghost, but they just get a new spirit. Watch. “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit. And then I will put my spirit....” Now, the new Spirit.... God had to give you a new spirit, but that's the new spirit God give you so you'd get along with the Holy Ghost. With that old spirit you had, you couldn't get along with your neighbor, you couldn't get along with yourself; so you know you couldn't get along with God, so God gives you a new spirit.

And many times under enthusiasm, and if you'll watch the life that it bears.... I hope I'm not hurting, but I hope I'm uncovering, see. A lot of times you think that you have the Holy Spirit. “Oh,” you said, “I sung, I spoke in tongues.” Certainly. Being that close to it you might do all of that, but that isn't the Holy Spirit yet, see. The Holy Spirit bears record of Jesus Christ.

Now, He taken, and what did He do? Give you a new heart, give you a new spirit and then He puts His Spirit—His Spirit—in you. It's just like.... You don't have to go around and pretend that you're a Christian then. That new spirit brings new life. The Holy Spirit in your new spirit, in your new heart.... Your new heart, your new spirit and the Holy Spirit goes right in the center of your new spirit and your new spirit goes right in the center of your new heart.

So it's like a mainspring in a famous watch, and it's self-winding. All right, it sits right in the middle of that new spirit and the mainspring of a famous watch sits in the middle of the watch and makes every organ of that watch, every little instrument, tick just perfectly to time. It's all done by a mainspring. And the little works out on the side move with this mainspring. It is the wheel in the middle of the wheel, as Ezekiel said.

Now, when you receive the Holy Spirit, it goes right in the middle of that new disposition of yours. “Oh,” you say, “I quit drinking, I quit smoking. You know, I—I just feel like a different person.” Oops! Wait a minute, see, you just got a new spirit. But the Holy Spirit comes into the middle of that spirit and then He makes you, every main motion, every intellectual, everything agreeing right into this middle of the wheel. What God says, that's true. The days of miracles.... If Jesus is the same yesterday and forever, the Holy Spirit will bear record with that and every intellectual move of yours will say the same thing.

And when you have these little temper fits and you fly and you tell lies and you proselyte and you jump the fences and you're so selfish with your organization that you're so narrow minded you couldn't hear another minister, just remember, the Holy Spirit isn't ticking in the inside of you. Whew! I didn't know I was going to say that, but that's right, see.

The Holy Spirit will make every movement like Christ. It'll make you Christ-like. The fruits of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, goodness, meekness, gentleness, patience, faith. Those things are what the Holy Spirit controls: our emotions.

Our emotions is not so much as jumping up and down. You can do that. A shindig will bring that to you. But the Holy Spirit brings you into operation ... or, in control of God, that you walk in peace and in love and in joy with long suffering, goodness, meekness, gentleness, patience. You see, it isn't something that you do. It's something the Holy Spirit does in you. You see, it's no longer an intellectual thought of your own; it's a subconscious moving of the Holy Spirit. Oh, I wish I could shout the praises of God around the world to that.

Church of the living God, there's where our Pentecostal move failed. We have some manmade musical, clap hands, jump up and down emotion. When we go back out on the street and the Holy Spirit doesn't govern our lives to cooperate with that, we have not got the Holy Spirit. That's not skim milk. But, brother, that's what the church needs. Only life can come by the Holy Spirit.

Did you ever notice how God in His Bible, how wonderful He made things? Just one moment now. Jesus said, “Except a man be born again, he will in no wise enter into the kingdom.” You've got to be born again. You've got to be.

What is it? That doesn't mean an experience that you shouted or spoke with tongues. Those things are fine, but that isn't what I'm talking about this morning. If your life doesn't cooperate, or doesn't testify of your emotions that you receive when you spoke with tongues, then you're deceived, because the Holy Spirit takes your innermost being and controls you as you are, makes you, forms you into a Christian man or a woman. It ticks off with your life. There's something in you pushing you, just making you do it anyhow. It makes you love those who spit on you. It makes them love those who say that you're insane.

When you get this Spirit in you, then the burdens of life becomes light. You don't notice them anymore. The yoke is lined with feathers. They become so easy. And then the people that pile things on you. You know what? You're like Samson at the gates of Gaza, who picks up the big brass gate and packed it up on the hill.

And when you get to a place that the Holy Spirit has you, not you the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit has you.... You say, “I got the Holy Ghost”. I don't think that should be said. You must say, “The Holy Ghost got me.” And then when the Holy Ghost gets you, the burdens, the yoke is easy. Then you pick up the big gates of Gaza and pack them straight to Calvary. And there on Mount Calvary you lay them at the feet of Jesus and pray for your enemies. Not with a grudge, “Lord, if You'd bust him open”. No, but with something from your heart that, “Dear God, that man is a man like I am.” You see what's lacking in the church, friends? Now, what we need is a.... We need to start all over.

Now, a few remarks before closing, please. You're lovely. I want to speak to you from my heart now. Let's take a little mental trip this morning, and then we will close. Let's go back to before the foundation of the world.

I look at those lilies in the bouquet sitting on the little table. Bless the man. I believe he's a florist, comes to this church. He's always so generous in doing things. He perhaps sent those. And how they are serving their purpose. But did you ever know that who made that lily? Where did it come from?

Let's take before there, in the beginning of the world. Now, the lily come from the earth; so did you. If that be so, then we were here—our bodies were on the earth—before there was any life here. We are made of sixteen different elements of the earth. That's potash, calcium, petroleum, cosmic light, and so forth, and held together by atoms. Sixteen elements of the earth. Then, if that is so, which is scientifically so, then we really ... our bodies were laying spread out on this earth before there was any type of life on the earth.

Potash, calcium, petroleum, and cosmic light was here at the creation. As the volcanic, as chronologists tell us, that bursted and formed the materials of the earth and so forth, was, just a burning brimstone was Satan's procession as he walked up and down the fiery brimstone of the earth. And then when God cooled it off and set it over there in His great mind, He had something in His mind that He was going to do.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now, a word is a thought expressed. God had in His mind what to do, but when He expressed it, it had to come into existence. It become a reality because it was God's Word expressed.

And there isn't.... May you take me to record this morning, friends. There isn't enough power in all hell can ever defeat the purpose of God. God will do it anyhow.

And as I've often said.... I hit a little spot last night in the church that I didn't know I was saying it, but how that Satan is not a healer. And the Lutheran college where all those were converted recently, when the man debated with me on the subject, said Satan could heal. And when you hear anyone say Satan can heal, he's wrong.

Only God can create. Satan cannot create. He can only pervert what has been created. There's only one omnipresent. Satan cannot be omnipresent. God alone is omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite.

And no medicine can create cells to heal. There's doctors that can cut out old cells; there's ones that can straighten arms or set arms or pull extractions of a tooth; but there's no one, no powers in all the earth and all hell that can create cells outside of Almighty God. “I am the Lord that heals all your diseases.” How petty, how childish, juvenile, that even great intellectuals can be when they get away from the Word of God.

Now, I want you to notice. In the beginning when God our Father looked over this bleak earth, and it wasn't nothing but one great big ball of water, and God sent the Holy Spirit to the earth—the Logos that went out of God, and it began to brood over the earth. Now, the word brood means “to make love,” or just like the dove to coo. And the great Holy Spirit over the earth.... As a mental picture, we're going to make it like wings, with His great wings around the earth, brooding, making love, cooing. “Come, come, the Father has ordained you, come. I'm coming to perform what the Father's Word has said.” Is it soaking in? “I have come to manifest what the Father has spoken.”

Brood. And after awhile there begin to come some petroleum moving across the earth and a little bit of this and that, and a little Easter lily comes up in the earth. What brought it? The Holy Spirit brooding. Then come along the dahlia, the azalea, and the other bush. Then along come the vegetation. The Holy Spirit brooding. Then along came, after the vegetation, came the trees, then the plant life; then after awhile, birds began to fly from the dust of the earth: the Holy Spirit brooding them together and sent them into the air. Then along came the animal life; the Holy Spirit brooding.

Then what happened? Along came human life. All of our bodies was all laying right here on the earth at that day, if we come from the earth, and we do, and our bodies are made by the earth. We are the dead substance of dead cattle and dead sheep and fish, dead beans, dead potatoes, and dead wheat. The stuff that we eat multiply cells and make us what we are. We are from the earth, that's what we are.

We live because something died. If you don't live today, if you don't eat dead substance, you can't live. Our natural life is only by dead substance. We eat fish, the fish died. If we eat beef, the cow died. If we eat bread, the wheat died. Something has to die so we physically can live again because we are substance of the earth, and that's the way we take in the substance to keep us alive. And if something had to die so we could live physically again, why not this immortal soul in you? Something had to die so that could live eternally. The flower has perpetual life, for it's here for a purpose of beauty. We have immortal life.

Now, I want you to notice, as we are moving on. The Holy Spirit, after brooding into man, man come up. What a beautiful thing he was. And then God made the woman. Now, she was not in the original creation; she's a byproduct of a man. I don't want to get started on that, but she is a byproduct of man. Then when she came into existence.... And she was the prettiest woman in all the world, little Eve. I can see her long hair hanging down. And let's say for sake right now, it was blonde. And she had her eyes as blue as the sky and her sparkle was like the stars. What a sweetheart Adam had. Not vulgarity, not even in the picture. She walked with Adam and here he come to where the waters was and she'd say, “Oh, Adam, that wind.”

“Peace.” And the wind ceased.

And then she went on to.... And the great lion let out a roar. Eve could not be afraid, for there's nothing in her to make her afraid. She said, “Dear, what is that?”

He called the lion over, said, “Come here.” And he patted him on the head, and he meowed like a kitten and walked behind him as a little dog would follow you from your house. And here comes Sheta the tiger. So he talked to the Sheta, and then he began to speak with her and she followed along.

But you know, it begin to get evening time, the sun was setting. And he said, “Sweetheart, we must go up to the Cathedral. We've got to worship.” It wasn't a denomination; it was in a great big forest. And they went up and knelt down as the sun was going down. And the Father came down. The lightnings flashed, the thunders roared, and a beautiful majestic light sailed over the bushes, and it come down.

I can hear the loving voice of the Father say, “Children, have you enjoyed yourself today? Papa has come down to kiss you good night and lay you down for the night.” And a kiss upon the cheek of Adam, and a kiss upon the cheek of Eve. And as he lays his big arm out and she lays her head, little dainty head, upon his arm as a pillow, they went to sleep and perfect, nothing can bother them. Father is watching over them. There's nothing in the earth to harm them. Leo the lion lays here, Sheta the tiger lays there. He laid them all down ... Father. If that isn't wonderful.

Then sin came in. It spoiled the picture. Yes. But we were here. God's purpose has to be carried out.

Now, women must bring forth this germ of life, her and man together, by connection. We won't go into that, cause you'd certainly disagree with me. But it wasn't apples they taken in the garden of Eden. So then, when they did (let it be what it may), woman sinned; man never sinned ... I mean, man sinned, woman never sinned. The woman was actually deceived. Adam was not deceived. He knowed what he was doing. Eve actually thought she was right. She was getting some new light that Satan was giving her. He's still giving her new light. Stay with the Bible. That's it.

But he told her. And she said, “Now, wait, God has said....” But he said, “Surely....” And then, whatever it was, the act was committed. And then she enticed her husband, him knowing it was wrong. And Adam walked out of the garden of Eden because the love of his wife; which was a type of Christ, knowing no sin, came down and was made sin for His church, walked right out knowing what he was doing. “I have power to lay it down or take it up.” He walked out knowing what he was doing and was partakers of our transgression that He might redeem us back. What a beautiful picture.

Notice. Then, friend, if it took the Holy Spirit to woo us ... or, brood over the earth and to call us back and to call us together, and we were made thus without any consideration of our own; we were made what we are now without having anything to do into it. God, by His foreknowledge knew we would be here, and He made us what we are without us having anything to do into it, how much more will He raise us up? Though the potash and calcium and petroleum and moistures, and so forth, of our body be scattered to the four winds, the same Holy Ghost that brooded us into existence in the first place, can raise us up again in the last days.

And then, how do we come when we become a young man or a young woman? He said, “How do you like to be this way?”

“It is wonderful, Father.” You are on the free moral agent. You can take your choice. You can receive eternal life or you can reject eternal life. You're the potash and calcium of the world. Your bodies are made of that. Now, do you love to remain.... He never made you an angel and you never will be an angel. He made you men and women and that's what you'll remain. But if you love life, then seek life.

And if the Holy Spirit.... Here it is, quickly.... If the Holy Spirit brooding over mankind, that's already nothing but dust of the earth, the Holy Spirit is the only one who can brood eternal life into you. Your intellectuals, no matter how brilliant you may be, they are totally rejected by God. Your denominations means not that much to God. Your great teachers of theology doesn't mean that to God. It takes the brooding of the Holy Spirit to bring you into the fellowship of God to give you eternal life to raise you up again at the last day. “Except a man be born of the Spirit and water, he will in no wise enter in.”

Do you see it, friends? How smart you are, that has nothing to do with it. That could be you.... “I belong to church”; that could be your new spirit. “I've spoken in tongues”; that could be your new spirit. Don't think because you spoke with tongues.... I've seen devils speak with tongues, witch doctors, and every.... And yet the Holy Spirit speaks with tongues.

But, what is unrighteousness? It's righteousness perverted. Certainly, the devil has a false thing. What is an old fortuneteller out on the street, a devil possessed person? It's a prophet perverted. He can only take something of God and pervert it. But we've been taught against those things. And the devil just cabbages on them. But when we're taught in the line of the Bible, then the Holy Spirit takes it and places it into the church. Do you see?

If you won't accept righteousness, then unrighteousness will take over. If you won't receive Christ, the world will take you. You can't go out that door the same person you was coming in here. You can't be. The Holy Spirit brooding, wooing, calling, “Oh, if you'll come, I'll take away that stony heart. If you'll come, I'll place a new spirit in you; and if you'll come, I'll come into this new spirit.”

Then when the devil comes back, what does he find? He finds his old tin can alley. God sent His big bulldozer down and cut the thing all to pieces and bulldozed it up and scraped it all off, and a Hallelujah Avenue is built there. It ain't the same place. There's a big modern home built there with.... The Holy Spirit has brooded, the beautiful flowers of salvation standing up. You don't have to try to impersonate anything. It's a new heart. It's a new dwelling place. It's a new spirit. Everything is new.

How can the devil walk back there and expect the old card table and cigars and the old fussing, fighting, stewing, everything that you had in you. When he walks back, he finds God took His bulldozer and run the whole thing out and turn the whole ground upside-down, made a big terrace and put a beautiful home and moved in Hisself.

Hallelujah! Amen. Oh, I feel religious. The Holy Spirit turns over the old tin can alley and dumps you upside-down, sweeps the devils stuff out of there and creates a new heart and a new life. Not only that, but he moves in to see that everything goes all right. Glory to God! He has the care-takers, the angels that prunes the trees. Oh, my! Oh, I wish I was twice my size. Think of it, what He does, brother, sister.

Today there is so much based upon intellectual. There is so much based in Pentecostal, upon fantastics, upon emotions. Don't take a substitute when Pentecostal skies are loaded with the real thing. Don't take some little emotion, some little work up, some little oil falling from your hands, or a bloody face; don't take these little emotions when the whole skies of God is full of real genuine Pentecostal blessings. He will give you a new heart, a new spirit, and put His Spirit in you.

Let us pray. And with our heads bowed and your eyes closed. You know which way you're pointed now? From where you moved out of, the earth. Do you know which way you're going? Right back the way you got your head bowed, right back to the dust. But did you know that dust that you're made out of was laying here on the earth when God created the earth? He created you with the earth. You're part of the earth, but the thing is in you is a spirit, it's a life. If it's old and stony, it's of the world by nature.

Now, do you want a new heart? You want a new spirit? And do you want His Spirit to come into yours and to operate you? You not try to tell Him what to do and you have your own thoughts of things; you just take what He wants. And you want Him to go to brooding to you? “Yes, Brother Branham.” Well, that's Him brooding at your heart right now. “It's Me, child. It's Me.” I'm standing here; I don't want you to perish. Oh, Jesus our Lord died that you wouldn't perish. But if you continue in the way you are, you're going to perish. You can't raise up. There's nothing in you to raise you. The Holy Spirit—you reject Him, He can't brood in the last days. You crossed the line. Oh, come back quickly, right quick, before you get too far away.

How many in here will raise your hand, with your heads bowed in prayer, the church praying, say, “Brother Branham, please, in Christ's name, pray for me right now that I will receive God's Spirit in my spirit to make me live a victorious life. I'm up and down. I just have the awfullest time trying to be a Christian, and I want you to pray for me right now.” Will you raise your hand? God bless you, sonny. God bless you. God bless you, lady, you sir, you brother. Someone else? God bless you, sir. God bless you. God bless you, sir; you, you lady. God knows everyone of you. Raise your hand. Don't you think the infinite God who knew every flea, every fly that would be on the earth before the earth was ever created, knows you? Can two sparrows be sold for a farthing (a fourth of a penny), and not one of them can fall without your Father...? How much more are you than the sparrow.

If you just say to God, “Here's my hand, God; I truly want You to come into my heart. I've belonged to church for years. I believe something happened to me, but I've never been able to live that type of life that the preacher is speaking of. I am living a life of ups and downs, and I'm up and done and in and out and I can't get nowhere. God, maybe I just received a new spirit. Your Word said so. Your prophet said that You said You'd give them a new spirit, then put Your Spirit in the new spirit; and maybe I just got the new spirit. My life is.... Oh, I got an awful temper. I got all of this, and I—I don't to be....” Sure, your new spirit will make you that way.

But, brother, “Except a man be born again.” “Oh, but Brother Branham, I spoke with tongues, I shouted, I—I've spoke in tongues, I prophesied, I....” That don't make any difference what you've done. “Many will come to me that day and say, Lord, Lord, have not I done this and done that?”

But right down in the depths of your heart, has all the world died and Christ just took over? Now, something just moves you every day in love. No matter how things come, you're still in love. The skies are blue always to you. No matter what happens, God is on the throne, He's answering prayer, working everything for you. Neighbors talk about you, somebody ridicules you, the church tell you you have to do this or do that, and you don't want to do it. Do you just pick up the cross with a sweet little smile and go on towards Calvary? Or do you stand off and sullen, say, “I'll not go back anymore; I'm through with that old bunch of people anyhow.” If that's the spirit that's in you, that isn't the Holy Spirit.

Will you raise your hand and say, “God, right in the spirit that I have, my new spirit, give me Your Holy Spirit. Make me live a victorious life.” God bless you, sir. God bless you, lady, you lady, you, you, you back there in the back, little lady there up in the balcony. All right. God bless you, you, you. All right.

Now, let's bow our heads quietly.

Kind Heavenly Father, the snows are raging outside, the streets are slick. I don't know why that standing on the telephone, that I said to Brother Joseph, “I will be over.” Maybe that was all in Your great work. I know it is, for all things work together for good. And now as the little message, though chopped up, has been given to the people, yet maybe twenty or thirty people has raised their hands to Thee. They could not, by no means, Father God, ever do this without You knowing it. And I pray Thee, that in Jesus' name, that You will grant whatever they have need of, may it be given to them.

And, Father God, I pray with all the sincerity of my heart, that every sin, every iniquity, every sickness and everything will be taken away from the people. In Jesus' name, may it be so. And may they be blessed abundantly and gratefully. And may every heart go out of here singing with the mainspring of their soul, the Holy Spirit, entering the impulsions of their heart as it beats. Oh, may their souls jump and spring and stretch to the Word of God as new bottles with new wine. With a new hope, with a new faith, with a new spirit and God's Spirit in the middle of it, the life pushing them on. Grant it, Father.

Bless Brother Joseph; he's in a marvelous hour of decision. I pray that You'll be with him. Brother duPlessis, the brother from Africa, and all the visiting brothers with us, God be with us. Help them here tonight in their service. Help us over yonder where we shall go, Father, to preach tonight. And I pray that You'll be with us and help us along the slick highways as we go back. Let Thy Holy Spirit guide us and direct us in these things. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

I love Him, oh, I love Him. I want to see Him. My deepest desire of my heart is to see that lovely person, the Lord Jesus. Is that your desire this morning, church of God? Is that your desire? May He share His blessings upon you. All power in heavens and earth is given into my hands, and what God had, He poured.... Everything God was He poured into Christ. What Christ was He poured into His church. The great fountains are open everywhere, ready. Just get rid of these little isms and so forth, and open up your heart and say, “Lord Jesus, move into my heart.”

Pray for me, friends. I love you. You're a wonderful people and I love you. Wished I could stay tonight with you, but I must go hence. And I'll be across the nations, if the Lord willing, 'fore I see you again. So I pray that God will bless you abundantly, and I love you. And I want you to be in prayer for me. God bless you till I see you again. Brother Joseph.