The Impersonation Of Christianity

It is understood that the Neville trio is one of the best trio's in the nation. [Someone says something to Brother Branham.] That's right. And how many heard the broadcast yesterday? I am an old veteran preacher, over twenty years old. And I've heard lots of sermons, but I believe I heard one of the most appropriate sermons for the day that we're living, I heard it yesterday by our pastor, Brother Neville. You who missed that, missed a great treasure that was dearly in my heart.

And when my wife was washing dishes.... (Junie, I was helping her, so.... That won't hurt. Delores makes you wash them, too.) When I was helping her wash the dishes, we both had to stop just to remark to each other how that the Lord was using our brother, and yesterday's message on the radio. And it was a marvelous masterpiece, if I ever heard one. And I was so happy to know that the one who the Lord was using to bring the message, I was associated with in the work of the Lord.

And the quartet ... or, the trio yesterday was just marvelous. And they are all the time, and so is our pastor. And we appreciate this with all of our heart, and pray that God will continue to be with our brother; and grant these great powerful messages, both in song and in the Word, as the time goes on.

And now, for the sake of your prayers, that you have prayed for us while we were in the field, the Lord has blessed abundantly, greatly. And we are very happy to report that, that many things our Saviour did out in the services: saved souls, and the people's faith met the requirement of God's healing power, and they were healed.

And now, as we have moved up just a notch farther, now we are going out again, plunging out in the field this coming week to Lima, Ohio, to the Baptist people. Which we certainly desire your prayers for the Lima meeting this week. And then we go from there, come back and go to Evansville, Indiana, just for one night (That's the third of February.), to the Christian Businessmen. They're setting a new chapter, and I'm to speak in the morning. And then in the evening, if it's not snowing or bad weather so I can get back, well, I'm to stay for services that evening. If not, I be here at the tabernacle for that night, the Lord willing, February the third. Then the tenth through the seventeenth is at Minneapolis, and the sixteenth, morning of the sixteenth, is the Christian Businessmen's breakfast. And so we're expecting a great time at this break... at this breakfast, and also at the meeting.

We come back to go to Shreveport, then to Phoenix, Arizona, to the Madison Square Garden, and there with full cooperation with all the ministers of the Maricopa Valley Association, at the big beautiful Madison Square Garden there at Phoenix, we have the services. And then from there to the San Fernando Valley with Brother Espinoza, with all the Mexican people.

Then up to some lake (I forget)—Lake Clear—for three nights up there. And then over into Oakland then, to the beautiful big civic auditorium, which seats nearly ten thousand people, with the Twin City Ministerial Association sponsoring the meeting, which we thank God and pray that He'll give us a great outpouring of His blessing.

Just a note from my secretary, just a moment. You see, I have to push it away from me. I'm.... All right. Yes, it's someone to see me after the meeting, some ministers that's come in: Martin brothers. All right, brother, we'll see you just immediately after the message in the deacon's room.

Now, I love the Word, because the Word is the truth of God. And I was talking yesterday to my ... our Brother Cox and Sister Cox. And I think that brother.... Yeah, he's present this morning, and I don't know whether Sister Cox is or not. But we were discussing some things of Christian life, as Christians usually do when they come together. And the discussion came upon the speaking of the ... against other fellow citizens of the kingdom, how that we hear broadcast sometimes that just cuts the other fellow to pieces, and calls their names, and tells them they are not Christians, and so forth, which is just children, that's all. They're just children, and we should be grown-ups. That's right. And so, grown-ups don't talk like that.

But we were talking and, Brother Cox and I, and I said, “Well, I have determined in my heart to preach against sin, just sin, and I just lay it out; and wherever it belongs, God can place it in it's right place.”

The little boy, one time down South, who was saying that ... he was kneeling in a row where he had been plowing, and as a clergyman passed by and heard the little fellow repeating the alphabet, A, B, C, D, so forth. And he was on his knees, so the clergyman was very much disturbed. So, he heard the little boy repeat the alphabet and then say, “Amen.”

And as he got up, why, the clergyman spoke to him and said, “Sonny, I am the servant of the Lord, and I heard you praying but you were only saying the alphabet. And I don't understand why that you were just saying the alphabet.”

He said, “Sir, I can't pray.” He said, “I have never prayed, but I had a praying mother and father, which has done gone on to Heaven.” And said, “Mother, she died when I was such a little boy, but I remember hearing her, when she was in trouble, she went to the Lord and she prayed. And she died when I was so young, she couldn't teach me to pray, and I have been given into the hands of an unkind person who beats me, and mistreats me. And I was ... thought maybe after I had learned my ABC's if I could take all the words and say all the letters, maybe He could put it together, and understand what I meant.”

That's the prayer of sincerity. Certainly He could put them together. It's not how we pray in our lips, it's the motive of our hearts is what God hears. He sometimes don't hear our lips; He hears our intention, the motive of our heart.

So, in doing so yesterday, I was very stricken on this time, and being that it's in the tabernacle, I might express some things that I was thinking that it might be a help, or a benefit. And if I would ever say anything that would be unkind, I certainly wouldn't want to mean it that way, if it was contrary to somebody's beliefs, but I would only express it as a love, and would want maybe to try to straighten it up. Like people who doesn't believe in divine healing, and so forth, and you didn't believe in it, why, me saying I do believe in it, it would not be that I was trying to fuss at you, but I was trying to express it to those who do believe in it. If you understand just what I mean.

Now, praying that God will understand. I know He does. He understands, we know that.

Now, I was speaking to a very scholarly man from Canada, and as we know the Canadians are, if you know them, if you've ever had personal acquaintance with them, they are scholarly, very deep, most of them. And they do not have the troubles up there that we have here.

And in that I found that this man, yet not much older than I; he's probably fifty. And he was completely grayed and his mustache was gray, and yet not over fifty years old. And I said to him, “My brother,” when he came to the room where I was staying—the pastor of a church. I said ... looked at him, and just a few years ago in Saskatoon when we had a great meeting together at the big arena, when I first started into the evangelistic meetings, he was black-headed, his mustache was black, and he was ... had two young daughters, and they are married now and got children. And so I said, in my heart, “Oh, what has happened?”

He said, “Brother Branham, about two years ago, I thought maybe the Lord had called me to the United States for work.” He said, “I went to the West Coast and got connected with a certain broadcast that goes national.” And he said, “When I seen the dishonesty of the way they misused the finance that was sent in,” he said, “I just, as a Christian, couldn't stay there any longer. I left, and I got hooked up with another.” And said, “It was out of the frying pan into the fire.” And he said, “Then I just kept and found out so many things,” and said, “to find the weakness of the American pulpit.”

And I said, “Brother, that is true. We have no middle class here to speak of. We either have the real cold and formal and indifferent, or the extreme fanatic. And we don't have the middle ground.” And I said, “It's too bad.”

And he said, “Then I come here.” And he said, “Brother Branham, as soon as I got here and my first message, I found out it was beating the piano, and turning over the chairs, and....” He said, “Then I began to wonder.” And said, “Then through it all, I tried to preach the Gospel, just in the Word. And when I did,” he said, “there was something another that ... after awhile the Lord let me break through to the anointing, and brought ... the Holy Spirit came into our midst with a love, and the peace of God began to flow over the building.” And said, “Then I said, 'Now the Holy Spirit is here, and we will now worship the Lord and consecrate our lives unto God.'” And said, “Some young boy, with not enough wisdom to hardly get in the door, runs up to the pulpit and said, 'Amen, preacher, that's right. Look, oil's been dripping out of my hands all morning. Hallelujah! Let people come up here and I'll get this anointed oil for healing.'”

He said, “Brother Branham, I said, 'Sonny, find you a seat and sit down.'” And said, “You know what happened? The presiding elders said to me, 'You find you a seat and sat down.'”

He said, “How will we ever ... how can you, or preachers who try to hold that position between the two fanatics, balance the load?”

I said, “Just the grace of God.” Oh, what a place.

And the man threw his hands in his face, and wept till ... the wife and I standing there, and the tears dropping off on his trouser legs.

He said, “Brother Branham, I'm heading for Saskatoon to get out of this nest of evil spirits.”

And I said, “That is true. The American, social intellectual groups, has become so against the other group. And the other group has run forth into fantastics, until the true Gospel is hard to find a place of approach and to get a preeminence.”

But, and as I left the house, speaking to Brother Cox, on my road down (He knows nothing of this as he sits here.), down the road I said, “Lord, how true that is, and how hard that it's been to try to get the true Gospel to the people, pulling from both sides and trying to hold in the middle of the road as we've contended for that, since the hour the cornerstone was laid,” see.

Now ... something.... I said, “What about these Americans down here, what will happen to them?”

And seemed like something said, just spoke to me and said, “What are you doing? What is this to thee? Follow thou Me.”

And then the vision returned to my mind the day that I laid the cornerstone. On return home, I was quoting it to my wife. How many remembers the vision of the morning of the cornerstone? It's laying right there in the cornerstone now, twenty-three years ago, I think. And it was.... I was just across the street here, just waking up one morning about seven o'clock, in the June when the cornerstone was laid, I believe, or July.

And on the morning, looking out towards the rising of the eastern sun, I was praising the Lord because the tabernacle would then have its cornerstone laid. Mr. Markham and them had been here, and many of them that's digging the foundation and so forth. And I was to lay the cornerstone; we have the pictures and so forth of it. And each one was to place in this cornerstone a certain little token, and even Catholics come by and dropped their little beads and so forth (whatever they had) into the cornerstone.

But that morning the Holy Spirit said to me, as I was laying there.... In them days I didn't know to call it a vision; I just said it was a trance. And I saw a vision which spoke and said that my work would be between the two faculties of the Pentecostal, the Trinity, and the Oneness, and there was the empty place on each side to be filled. I did not cross them up; I just broke from each tree and planted it down. And up into the heavens went the great trees growing quickly, and the fruits fell down and they were delicious. I was eating them. And at the cross, just ahead of me, lay all covered with fruits. And then when I got to the place, the Holy Spirit come down through the top of the trees and said—shaking and roaring—and it said, “Do the work of an evangelist.” Said, “When you come out of this, read II Timothy 4.” Said, “Do the work of an evangelist; this is not your tabernacle.”

And I said, “Where....” And I seen the tabernacle as it is today. And I said, “Where is my tabernacle?”

And He sat me down under the bright blue sky, and He said, “Do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but shall heap for themselves together teachers, having itching ears, and shall be turned from the truth to fables.”

If that hasn't happened word by word, that is why I have tried to strictly stay with the Word. And that's my subject tonight, on the Word.

Now, this morning by God's grace, I wish to approach another subject. But before approaching that, while you're turning to Ezekiel the sixth chapter, I would like to say this, in approach: everywhere I've tried hard to keep the Word in line. So, pray for me that I will always be faithful to the Word. That's it: to the Word. All right.

Now, in Ezekiel the 36th chapter, we wish to begin to read the 26th verse.

... a new spirit, and a new heart will I give thee.

And then in the 27th:

And I will put my spirit in you, and cause you to walk in my statutes,...

Now, shall we bow our heads just before we approach this.

Our Heavenly Father, today it's with grateful hearts, as we quietly and reverently approach this sacred moment. How do we know but what this very hour may determine the eternal destination of a soul sitting present. And the value of that soul is compared with many thousands of worlds.

So, we pray, Father, that You will let us approach reverently, solemnly, and in the attitude of prayer. And also, there may be sick people sitting present, who this day.... And their attitude that they receive through this Word may determine how much longer they stay on the earth. So, we realize the solemnity of this very moment, and we ask that Your great presence will anoint us all.

Seeing that we're earthly people, Thou hast taken us from the earth, and earth shall we return. And only while we're living in this earthly vessel, do we have the privilege to serve Thee, and to win others to Thee. So, we ask that You'll let our hearts be yielded to Thy Word. And may the Holy Spirit take the Word, and deliver it to us as we have need. For we ask it in Jesus' name, Thy beloved Son. Amen.

If I should name for a few moments this morning.... My wife told me the other day said, “Billy, if you could cut your sermons to thirty minutes, instead of two hours and thirty minutes, I think it would be more effective.”

And I said, “As much as I love you, and as much as I know that that is the truth, but you see I have no other to lead me but the Holy Spirit, and I don't know no more than just keep talking as He keeps pushing it on.”

So, that's the way I have to do it. And even when I stop when He's blessing, and when He's not, then I'm a miserable person and my audience is also, and every other minister that speaks by inspiration.

But if my subject would be this morning, if I should call it that: The Impersonation of Christianity—Impersonation of Christianity.

In the Scriptures here, which is the Word of God, we read here that the prophet, which had spoken of a new day....

Now, Ezekiel was prophesying, or foretelling what would take place in an age to come—not in his age. But a prophet is a seer, as referred to in the Bible as the eagle, who goes way high in the air. And higher you go, the farther you can see.

So, the eagle soars up much higher than any other bird. There's no bird can go with the eagle. And there's no eye like the eagle. The hawk hasn't got a chance in his sight. And the hawk could not stand the altitude of where the eagle can soar; he would die. He doesn't ... he hasn't got the makeup that the eagle has.

Now, the hawk is a bird and so is the other birds. But the eagle was made thus, because he is a high soaring bird. And he can go way so high, until he can see things that the other birds cannot see, because he's higher. And God in making the eagle made him for that purpose, because his nest is higher than the others. His little ones is up in the nest and they feed on the ground. So, in order to see the storm or the trouble coming, the eagle to survive must go higher, so he can protect his little ones.

And God likened the prophet to the eagle that would go in the makeup of a prophet. He is a seer, that, in the Spirit, climbs beyond the emotion of the church. He goes beyond the rhythm of the music. He goes beyond the clapping of the hands. He goes beyond the joy among the saints. He goes beyond all that. God brings him up into a realm alone—alone. Then He opens his eyes, and He lets him look around, and see things that is to come. Then He brings him back down among the members of the body to foretell them of what is in the making.

So, God had took Ezekiel high, far up, and let him see around about twenty-six hundred years. Think of it. Now, and let him have ... a prophet is also a gift of knowledge. A knowledge is like an attorney, who studies the books, and when you go to hire an attorney to plead your case, he's only taking what he knows, and your paying him for what he knows to present your case before the judge.

And now, a gift of knowledge, in the Bible, is prophesy which goes up and finds out these things that are to come and brings them back down, but they must compare with the Bible, with the Book. If they're out of the Book, then they're not received, because the Judge judges by the Book. Do you see it? So it must be on the Word.

Then the Word that God has spoken before the foundation of the world, it isn't that God speaks and says something to the prophet at that time; it is that the prophet catches what God has already said. For the Word was before the foundation of the world. God spoke the Word and it's laying way out, stretched out in time. And the prophet goes up and sees the time coming. So, it's only a gift of knowledge that he brings down and puts it on the paper.

Now, Ezekiel, the prophet, goes up and sees the day that we're living in. Oh, what a trip up Jacob's ladder to foresee what will be. And he brings it down. And in these last years, the last two thousand years, (which, Ezekiel lived some six or eight hundred years before the coming of Christ), they had a stony heart, and that was the Holy Spirit could not enter that heart. He had no way of entering that heart because it was sinful. And there was only the atonement of blood of an animal laying between that stony heart and the Creator.

But when that animal blood, being substitutionary, of course, but only a shadow or a type of the true blood coming, which the life in the cell of the blood was an animal life, which could not coincide with the human spirit because the animal life has no soul in it. But human life has a soul in it. So, therefore they could not mix, like oil to water.

But when Christ came and died, and now the blood of Christ, which was shed at Calvary, inside that blood cell lays none other than the life of God. See it? Notice. Then the worshipper comes before God with this appropriate blood appropriated. It is the blood of a Redeemer that redeems us.

You put yourself in the pawn shop. I see, Adam put you in the pawn shop, but Christ came and is your Redeemer, and you go on to Christ.

God gave you to Christ as a love gift for His sacrifice. And you are brought to Christ by the Holy Spirit, who wooed you through the blood of the Lord Jesus, and presented to Him as a gift. And God loves His gifts. And He will not stand to see them destroyed.

A minister asked another one the other day ... (which, now pardon this; this has just a little bit of my own doctrine in it, but at the tabernacle we do that).

Now, one fellow asked another, the other day, he said, “Do you believe ... don't you believe, if a man was once a child of God, born of the Spirit of God, washed in the blood, and redeemed thoroughly by God, by the renewing of his heart, by the washing of the water by the blood through the Word, and becomes a child of God, don't you think that person could sin and get away from God to where he would be lost?”

And the minister, who talking, being a very good Bible student, said, “I will answer your question when you answer mine. Do you think that a man could be so good that he wouldn't lie, steal, or do anything bad, but he would be so good that God would receive him into heaven without the blood of Christ?”

No, of course not. You could not go to heaven without the blood of the Lord Jesus, no matter how good you are. It's only self-made righteousness. And we don't go to heaven on self-made righteousness, no matter how good you are. It's totally impossible for you to get to heaven on your goodness. It's the mercy of God that bought you at Calvary, and you are God's love gift to Christ. And if God gave a gift to Christ, Christ keeps His gift, “All that comes to Me.... All the Father has given Me will come to Me and none of them are lost. I will raise them up at the last day.”

Now, you might be emotionally worked up, you might have oil through your hands, or speak with tongues, or dance in the Spirit, or join the church, or some of the fantastics of the day, and you could be lost. Certainly. That's right. But if you are God's love gift to Christ, you are safe.

Now, your life will prove what you are. By their fruits, you shall know them. If you're trying to make yourself act sweet and humble, and so forth, then you are still outside the kingdom. It's not ... it's your own works then. And that's where the church, the people—so-called, the church—has so miserably failed, because it is in our own personal work that they feel that they merit the goodness and grace of God by what they do and how they live. But that has not one thing to do with it. It is a gift of God.

Your own conscience to shun you from hell, would try to make you ... or, you would shun from hell, rather, would try to make you live good, and be right. A good citizen will do that, and not necessarily be a Christian.

I've seen many men who even denied the name of the Lord Jesus, were fine people—that means humanly. Look how much better a man Esau was than Jacob, but he didn't have the conception to know that he had sold his birthright because he despised it, and was rejected in the sight of God. Which was far more of a gentleman, and a neighbor, and a man of works than what Jacob was. Jacob, his very name is supplanter. You know what supplanter is: it's a deceiver.

So, that's.... But, Esau was a gentleman in every respect. But Jacob had recompense to that birthright. And regardless of what anyone called him—if I would say it, you excuse the expression—they could call him holy-roller, fanatic, or whatever they wished to, but he had respect to that birthright. That's his whole motive; no matter what it cost him, he wanted the birthright.

Now, if the church only consists—if the body of Christ—is only to be controlled by intellectuals, theology, mental conception, then we are wholly depending upon the intellectual knowledge of man (if I make that clear). If the church only rests upon the intellectual, or how that men could set the church, build big places, and plush the seats, and the thousands of dollar pipe organ, and how he could preach his message in such a way that would get the people into the church, and join the church, and the more members on the book, the more ... the greater it is in heaven.

Now, I want you to get this, and never let it slip. If we only need the intellectual conception of men, we don't need the Holy Spirit. If the church is to be run and governed upon the intellects, the educational program, and upon the intellects of mankind, we do not need the Holy Spirit. And if it's to be run by the Holy Spirit, we do not need the intellectual. It's either one or the other.

Now, mental emotions.... Now, if we only.... The smarter the man would be, the more intellect he is, the more schooling he got, the better grammar he can use, then the better off the church is, better off the people are.

If he can present the program and say, “Now we will build a great church. We will call it a certain name. We will attract the attention of the people all through the city when we play chimes every Sunday morning on our spire. We shall attract the attention of the poor lost sinner in the gutter when he sees that we wear the better clothes. When he sees that our women can fix their hair ... the poor women can see how our women can do their hair, what nice hats they wear. And when we present this to the people, the poor and hungry will then come to our meetings, and will desire to be as these women are. And the men will see what nice suits we wear, and how we dress, and how ... what cars we ride in, and what we do, and how we stand in the social ability of the city with the Kiwanis and other clubs, and the things that we join, they'll see that the ... and then the poor and the illiterate will come and desire to bring their children and educate them, so they can become a member of this great society called the church.”

Now, if that is God's program, they're right. But Jesus never quoted it that way. Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me.”

So, through the world's educational program, (which is all right, it's all right if you don't leave this out).... But man is not drawn to Christ by intellectuals, by theology. The Holy Spirit, alone, is God's drawing power. The poor will never receive it, and the rich can't until they become poor of these things of the world.

Christ, being rich, become poor, that through His poverty we might be rich. “He that exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.” They have got the thing topsy-turvy. They are trying to get men into church by intellectual speeches. What we need is not intellectual speeches, but it's baptism of the Holy Spirit with power and demonstrations, and manifestations of the Spirit, is what we need to bring men to the church. It's the drawing unction of the Holy Spirit.

Schools and seminaries are wonderful—I have nothing against them—but that's not God's program. God chose the ignorant and illiterate. Men who couldn't speak well, men who couldn't even read their own name, as the Bible said, “They were ignorant and unlearned.” But they had been to a far better school. For when they healed a man at the gate called Beautiful, they took knowledge that they had been with Jesus. There's a school.

And in this being the intellectual type of churches that we have today in America, and all over the world, when we get to that type of school, then the Christian, the believer, the church member, reading the Bible, sees that he must try to act humble. He must try to be this way. But in doing so, he only makes a carnal impersonation. Let that soak deep. A carnal comparison! He's trying to act something that he really isn't in his heart. In his heart he's thinking one thing, and trying to act another. Which, in real genuine language, it makes him a hypocrite.

Jesus said, “You hypocrites, how can you speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart speaketh the mouth.” If you don't speak according to what's in your heart—your heart thinks one thing and you speak another—that makes you a hypocrite.

The very word Pharisee means “actor.” They acted out their religion, for they had a stony heart. They come and said, “Good Master, we would see a sign from Thee, to prove that You are what You said.”

Said, “How do you call Me good, when there's none good but God?”

He said, “The weak and the adulteress generation seeks for this. And there will be a sign given them, as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and nights, so the Son of man will be in the heart of the earth three days and nights.”

Now, to try to place this new program, this new deal that God has with the church that was presented at Pentecost. Not an intellectual at all! But a hundred and twenty fishermen, tent makers, and housewives went up in the upper room and waited until God's prophecy was fulfilled, and they received the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

Jesus said, “Stop your preaching, don't go any farther. Don't do anything more about it, but wait at the city of Jerusalem until ... until you're endued with power from on high.”

Not “...until you have received your BA or your DD, or whatever it may be, until you have become a PhD—psychology.” Not “...until you become an intellectual teacher, or wait until you get your diploma.” Not “wait until you have been given a degree,” but “...until you're endued with power from on high.” Not “from the school,” but “from on high! Then you shall be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the utmost parts of the world.” His last commission was: into all the world, “Preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned, and,” (conjunction) “these signs shall follow them that believe. In My name shall they cast out devils, and they shall speak with new tongues, or if they should drink a deadly thing, or take up a serpent, it would not harm them. And if they should lay their hands on the sick, they shall recover.”

In similar, such as that, was to be the sign of the believer instead of the educated and intellectual, because the intellectual cannot produce that.

Now, we find out then he was going to make a new church. He didn't want.... You can't polish up the old church. You only give it a face lift, and it doesn't do any good. It is a new heart. “I will take the old stony heart away.” Not “You'll throw it away,” but “I will take it away.” Do you see the difference? It's a act of grace.

I will.... And you people, Baptist, and you Presbyterian, who preach eternal security and act like the world, shame on you. What are you preaching? Certainly.

“I will take the old stony heart out and put a fleshly heart in.” Now, watch. He said He would do that. You can't put that, talk that, in the old intellectual church.

And that's why America is in the condition it is today, because it's been callused with the old intellectual idea. That's the reason it has to go forth, and it has to have ... every person sign papers, and so forth, for it's little Hollywood revival that's coming. And all of them come out like glamour girls and boys, and put on a little program. And when they leave, they go back and find out that about ninety percent that accepted Christ as Saviour, they're not there anymore. What's the matter? It wasn't a revival. It was an intellectual illusion. That's right.

It only presented something as the American people finally clap their hands and a Holly... a television article. We have turned it into a television.... The pulpit has been brought into a Hollywood fashion box, when the old-fashioned Gospel preacher, that used to drink cistern water and preach all night by a lamplight. It's changed. But we have changed it, and that's why we've got the intellectual group.

And how are you ever, in a place where every home is televised with “Who Loves Lucy,” and all these other ungodly programs over the air, and in the television, and such as that, how are we ever going to present this new Gospel the way that Christ told us to do, into such as that? If the mind still remains carnal, it'll run to fantastics and fanaticism. It'll bypass the Word of God, and run off into oil drippings, and everything else. So, how are you going to stop it? The Bible said it would be that way, so you can't stop it. That's right. God said it would be that way. Now where're we going?

The intellectuals.... The old lady, they'll give her a face lift, she's still the same old woman. The old man, they give him a face life, he's just the same old man. “I'll turn my new page on New Year's, and I'll start life new. I'll throw away my pipe,” and pick it up the next day, see. That's it. It isn't a face lifting, it's a birth the church needs.

Now, you can't preach this in the old church. She won't stand it. Jesus said that in Luke, about the 5th chapter, about the wine in the bottles. He said, “You can't put new wine in old bottles. If you do, they'll perish.”

That used to wonder me. That used to startle my boyish mind. When I used to think, “How could the bottle perish?” Now, what we call the bottle, being old it makes no difference, because it's glass. But in Jesus' time, what He was speaking of, was the bottle that they used then, which was made out of an animal hide. And an animal hide had been tanned. And when the animal hide was old ... when it was new and young—it just had been tanned—it was flexible. But when it got old, it got dry.

Now, many of you people know what a hide is, when it gets dry. It gets old and dry, and it's all shrunk up and real hard. Now, if you put new wine in that, it hasn't got any life in it. It's going to burst.

It's just like trying to preach the baptism of the Holy Ghost in the real genuine power of the resurrection. It's trying to place that before the people. When you do, what happens if you put it in? The new wine has got life. And the new wine is still fermenting. Oh, I hope you see it.

The new life is fermenting. The new wine is still fermenting. And if it's in a new flexible bottle, where the oil of the animal is still in the skin, when the new wine goes to pushing out, the skin will stretch. In otherwise, when the Bible said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”, the new skin will say, “Amen”—stretch out with it.

And when the new wine said, “That's the baptism of the Holy Spirit; I am the life of God that's working in you.”

The new skin will say, “Amen”—stretch out to it.

When the new wine says that the Holy Ghost is sufficient for our healing today, the new wine will stretch itself out—the wine being the Word. And when it says that, then the new bottle will say, “Amen”—stretch out to it.

But what will the old bottle do? “Days of miracles has passed, and gone.”

Then what are we doing? What are we accomplishing? We are.... He said, “The old bottle will perish and the wine will perish with it.” And it's almost like casting your pearls before swine. They turn and tramp under the people. Do you see it?

Now, Christ doesn't anoint ministers to preach the Gospel, just to have it returned back to Him void. But He expects you to receive the Word. And in receiving the Word, be ready. Take that old cowhide you've been living in over there in that old formal condition, and swap it off for a sheep skin that's flexible to the Word of God. And everything the Bible says, you'll say, “Amen.”

But it must come from the Bible, for the new wine only ferments wine. It only verifies the elements that's in there. The yeast only presses forth the bulb of the alcohol, which makes it a bursting procession, as the yeast bursts its little bubble to make it a more perfect, to give it the better taste, to give it the better substantial holding, to make it more stronger, to make it so it can't sour. Amen.

And when the leaven of the human element, that's brought into the new wine, that seeks to burst the bubble to spread forth the strength of the alcohol, it shoves from the church all the worldly elements like that, and preserves the church. Grape juice will sour in twenty-four hours, but wine will never sour, because the germ of life is in the wine fermenting, and pushing, and sterilizing. And the older it gets, the better it gets. So much for that. The new wine! It can only be put in new Pentecostal bottles.

God had a hundred and twenty of them gathered into the upper room after He had oiled by His Word, and it softened up, and had renewed and got all the old orthodoxy out of them of the old system. And God had a hundred and twenty bottles laying in the upper room with their necks up and a funnel on the top. And when the Holy Spirit began to raise, these bottles got so alive, until they began to run outside preaching the Gospel, bouncing from place to place. And one jumped on a stump and said, “This is that.”

Right back with the Word, “This is that which was spoken of by the prophet Joel. And it shall come to pass in the last days,” saith God, “I will pour out My Spirit. My new wine into My new bodies.”

What a revival they were having. That's God's order. Here comes a couple of bottles of it bursting by, and there laid an afflicted man. And when this afflicted man touched the hand of one of these, why his affliction left him; and he got some of it, and began leaping and praising God, and running into the temple shouting and glorifying God.

That's God's order, not a big school with a degree, but a living, acting experience of the Holy Spirit. Not fanaticism, but the real genuine Holy Spirit put in action. May you see it, is my prayer.

Now, notice the order of the Scripture; it's perfect. God said, “First, I will take away the old stony heart.” You can't receive nothing. Then He said, “I will give you a new spirit.”

Now, that ain't the Holy Spirit. There's where the mistake has been made. Why do people ... many people, rather, come to the altar to pray, and they get down there to praying and praying, they get to feeling a little better. They might get up and go on, and jump around a little while, and after awhile you find out they just bounce, bounce, bounce. Dunk. Back again.

They never received the Holy Spirit. No matter how much they bounce, or how much they screamed, or how much they ... oil run out of their hands, or they had bloody faces, or how much they spoke in tongues, or how much they shouted, or what they did; that has nothing at all to do with it. That was only human emotions. They got a new spirit, and they rejoiced with it.

I'm going to say something, and I want it to sink deep, and may God help. There is the emotional side of the so-called Holy Ghost church today. They get a lot of build-up of fanaticism, and run off out there, because they disregard the Word. They go only together, “Oh, we had a great meeting hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.”

Now, when you do that, and don't bear the fruit of the Spirit, then you're in the new spirit. You didn't use to do that, that's right. But God had to give you a new spirit. Why the spirit you had, you couldn't even get along with yourself. So, how are you going to get along with God?

So, God had to give you a new heart (not a patched up one)—a new heart; that's your intellects that you think with, a new way of thinking. Then when He give you a new way of thinking, “Yes, that's right. The Bible looks to be reasonable. I used to didn't believe that. I believe it now.” Now, there's your great revival, see.

They say, “Yes, sure, I don't want to go to hell. I want to accept Christ.” That's all right. That's good. That's just your first birth.

Then He said after that, “Then I will give you a new spirit.”

What's that? A new desire, “I want to do right.”

“Now, I know I'm a Christian, I got to.... I'll smoke one more, then I'll throw it away, see. And I'll just see ... I'll just stay home tonight, you know, I'll just....” All these little “justs, just”; that's exactly.... Eve stopped just for a moment. That's all she had to do.

But now, that's the new spirit. Then notice the art of the Scripture. After you get a new heart and a new spirit, He said, “Then I will put My Spirit.” Oh, what? That's the what the Scripture says here. That's the order. The pneumatic ... numerical order of the Scripture: a new heart, a new spirit, and then My Spirit.

Then God's Holy Spirit.... God's new heart that He put in you, sits right in the center of you. That's your impulse. Where you ... your emotions goes out. And the new Spirit sits right in the center of the new heart. And God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, sits right in the center of your new Spirit. And there, it controls your emotions.

It's just like the mainspring in a famous watch, and it's self-winding. You don't have to wind it every day. God wound it once, for all. And it sits right in the middle of the ... of your life—your new life. And as the mainspring, as it relieves and ticks away the watch, it controls every little organism of that watch, to perfect time.

And when the Holy Spirit—not the new degree, not the new church, not the new thought, not the new emotion, not the new oil, not the new dance, not the new lips, not the new tongue, not the new this, not the new that—but when God places His Spirit in the middle of your new Spirit, then you don't have to act meek, you don't have to act like a Christian. It controls everything that's within you. It puts you decent, makes the church act orderly, makes the gifts work perfect. And if you have to be taken from a place where you think you should be, and put down somewhere else, it controls you. Not, “Hmmph! I'll never come back again.” Mmm, no, sir. That shows that the mainspring's not in there.

When you blow up at every little thing that happens, poisons that disposition. And when the pastor happens to hit something that's in the Word, and you [Brother Branham makes a spitting noise.], “Why I don't believe that.” Look out old cowhide, see. Watch out. The new mainspring hasn't been set in there right yet. But it controls, it makes you believe, it makes you act in such a way till you become salty. And the whole world thirsts to be like you. That's the Holy Spirit sitting in the middle of your spirit. It's the mainspring. It's then that the yoke that you're yoke with....

“Oh, I just hate to go to church tonight. I don't.... And that preacher, if he wasn't so long-winded, I'd like to hear him a few minutes. But I tell you what: The last time I went, when I went down to the card party, Suzy said to me, 'Do you mean to tell me, the very audacity, that you have belittled yourself to take your hair down? You mean to tell me that you're not going to wear those shorts anymore, Lydia?'” Well, you see, the thing of it is, if you just got a new spirit, it'll just kill you. That's right.

But when you got His Spirit, it makes every emotion tick just right to the Word of God. It'll tick right with the Word. You'll say, “Well, now, Suzy, just a moment. The Bible said, 'It's an abomination before Him to do that. And the love of Christ has come into my heart, and I love Him too much to do it. I love Him.”

“John, do you mean to tell me that you've been associated with that bunch of fanatics, and you won't take a cigar because there was a new boy born in my house?”

“But you see,” John, “it says that we must ... the Holy Spirit in my heart tells me that we should abstain from all filth of the world,” see, see.

Not, John, “Hallelujah, John! Glory to God, John! Praise the Lord! See that oil on my hands. Glory to God, John, I can speak in tongues. Hallelujah!”

No, no, that ain't the way the Holy Ghost behaves itself. No, no, see. It ticks her off in decency. As Paul stood before Agrippa and brought the Word, he said, “O Agrippa!”

And Agrippa said, “Paul, thou almost persuadeth me to be a Christian.”

He said, “Agrippa, is it strange to you, being a Jew, that the Bible has already said and talked about Jehovah? Is it a strange thing to you, that God would raise the dead?”

Not, “Agrippa, hallelujah! Glory to God, Agrippa! Hallelujah!” No, that was crazy.

But Agrippa, the Scripture said.... See where the mainspring ticks you to? Right back. You don't have to worry about it. It's all in God's program. It ticks you right back. “Don't take no thought what you'll say,” said Jesus. “It's not you that speaketh; it's your Father that dwelleth in you. He doeth the speaking.”

“Agrippa, you being a Jew, and know all the laws in the Old Testament. Is it a strange thing to you, Agrippa, that God should raise the dead?”

Agrippa said, “Paul, too much learning maketh thee mad.”

He said, “I'm not mad, Agrippa. But I'm only here telling you what God has did in the Word,” see.

“Oh, you become a holy-roller, Paul?”

“No, Agrippa, I'm only saying what God said here in the Scriptures: that He would raise up His Son, Christ Jesus, in the last day. And now, Agrippa, would it be a strange thing to you that Jehovah God, who opened up the Red Sea, who brought the miracles in that day, that He wouldn't perform miracles today?”

He said, “Paul, thou almost persuadest me to be a Christian.”

Paul said, “I wish you was as I am, only these chains that I'm wearing here on my hands and legs.”

There's one of the springs in the middle of the new Spirit, in the new heart is making every emotion, controlling them. See what I mean? There you are.

If then, that when you slip your head from the yoke of the world, say, “I'll go over and join but I tell you...” and stick your head in the yoke with Christ ... you say you yoked up with Him?

Then you begin, “Oh, it chafes my shoulders, it hurts my social prestige. The people I once associated with pass me by and say, 'Ha, there she is. She's a holy-roller. There he goes; John don't come to the pool room anymore.'”

“Oh, it just, oh, it humiliates me, Brother Branham.”

No, you didn't get the right thing. When that mainspring is in the middle, clicking it off right, then in the yoke is lined with feathers.

Oh, my! No matter what the world calls you, it don't make...

“Why I backslid, because I tell you, I just couldn't stand for them to call me this, that, and the other.”

Well, you never got the mainspring put in the middle ... His Spirit in the middle of your spirit, see. You had a false impersonation. You cried you had a fowl conception, see. You would have ... you just accepted the emotional side, and never got to the real side. You just heard the watch tick, and got the noise and went with it, start ticking, too. But if the mainspring is doing the ticking, if it's controlling every emotion, then the yoke becomes easy.

They can say, “You know what? There she goes. She used to be a doll, but look at her now. Her hair's straight back, her makeup's gone. She wears modest looking....” I don't mean to be now like something out of an ark, but I mean ... I mean just that you should dress decently. “Why, she used to be the cutest little thing. We'd see her laying out in the yard with her shorts on, taking a sun bath, but she don't do it no more.” Something's happened.

The mainspring has got in the place where it ought to be. That's right.

“Oh, he use to come down. He was a pool shark. He could play cards, a hand of this, and he could rake the chips from here and so forth. He was a ... but he don't do it no more.” The main.... “Oh, he's a holy-roller.” But the yoke is easy.

You know what you do with it? You just like to bear it. It's just like Samson when he took the brazen gates of Gaza—the big brass gates. He just picked it up on his shoulders and bore it away. That's right.

And when the yoke is lined with a joy, and peace, and sweetness of Christ in your heart, then you just pick up all the burdens the world cast on you, and bear them to a certain hill called Calvary. And there you kneel down and pray for that one that was persecuting you. Not rain fire out of Heaven and tear up the church; but you bring peace to them. “God be merciful to them.”

Now, the Bible said that when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walks in new places and returns back. And when the devil that once brought you down to the alley, and when he comes back and finds his old alley has been changed, my, God sent His big bulldozer down. You know what He done? He dug up the earth. He turned things up-side-down. He just made a different view out of it. And when the devil returns back to his old tin can alley, where he use to have beer cans laying all over everything, cards on the table, and cigarette papers all over the house, and love story magazines, and, “True” he comes back and finds it's swept, garnished. Hallelujah!

God sent His bulldozer down and cleaned it all off. Here's His bulldozer, brother. You compare with this. Sweeps her all out, bulldozes it all up, and He begins to plant garden. And he finds out a great new modern home's built there. Amen.

The Holy Spirit has moved in. And the Holy Spirit took the place of the beer cans. The Bible took the place of the modern day literature. The Spirit of God took the place of modern theology. The prayer meeting returned to the home, when the Holy Spirit come in. All the other things is gone out.

And listen, friends: In the beginning the Bible said.... Look. Now, I want to introduce to you with all of our intellectuals and our man-made creeds. As I close, I want to introduce to you something.

In the beginning, when this world was laying here void, there wasn't nothing but a big ball of water where the great ice glaciers.... The heat from the sun, as the flick of the earth went off like that and moved into space along, the millions below zero, it formed moisture. Heat and cold together creates a moisture. You can see it on the windows, and so forth from the house, in here, and outside.

And when the earth spun out from whatever orbit it come from, which the sun is claimed to be the mother of all. And these missiles that flew out. When it went from it there, it froze to one big solid thing. Then as it began to move in, and God taking a notion, (listening close now), as He began to move it in close to the sun, it began to thaw out. Then God commissioned the Holy Spirit. The first person introduced is God—God. In the beginning was God, in Genesis.

And then the next introduced is the Holy Spirit, or the Logos, which went out of God, yet it was all of God went out into a person. And the Bible said, it began to brood over the earth. Brood means “to make love,” to coo like a dove. It began to brood over the earth. What happened? Mortal being, fellow citizen, human men and women, like I am this morning, human beings that's got a soul, an immortal soul within you. Who are you? Where did you come from? And whence are you going? Think this now a minute.

The other night when you seen in the paper, one of my cousins who was a druggist, or a doctor in Louisville, when he went down to his work, and came home and laid down till he had his dinner—and asked his wife to bring him an orange—stiffened and died in a heart attack—Raymond Branham.

And his brother, Georgie, my own blood cousins both, my father's brother's children, went to see his brother. And on his road returning, five minutes after he had left his brother, they noticed the car wiggling, slowing down. And they seen a man pitch over in his seat, and he died in a heart attack.

And I went to the funeral home the other night, and I looked at brother Doc there, and we walked in. And I looked over the rooms at the tokens, at the flowers, that was hanging on the walls and around. And I looked down, and memories came into my mind as a little boy playing with these boys, when I was just a baby boy.

And I thought as the people, the homes crowded, and for blocks you couldn't even park your car, from friends and relatives coming. And I walked in and there my cousin, Agnes, grabbed me around the neck and began screaming. And as I got from her to console her, then here come Dorothy, the baby, and she began to hug me and scream, and saying, “Billy, what will we do?”

And as I said, “Where's Aunt Lizzie?”

Said, “She's in a heart attack real bad, and may die at any time,” the mother.

So, I thought, “What is happening to this great Branham generation?” I thought the same thing when I seen my daddy as I held him on my arms, and his curly hair dropped over in my arm. And I seen him as he looked at me and smiled, when I was praying for him, and he went out to meet God.

I thought the same thing a few days before that, when Doc, my brother, there picked up his own brother, cut through the throat where a fellow drinking hit a post, and broke the car, and killed him. And he died in my brother's arms. And seeing Dad come down the street with Mrs. Kelly, Mr. Kelly's house over there crying with his old black hat in his hand.

In a few days later, holding him in my arms as he was dying. I stood there and watched the old rocking chair without anyone in it, begin to rock back and forth as Ruth, my sister-in-law, was going to meet God. And I said, “Honey, shall I hang the picture of Jesus over here?”

She said, “Billy, no. He's before me always.”

Then when I stood by the side of my wife, Hope, the mother of my boy Billy, and my little girl Sharon, and seen her take a hold of my hands, while her dark eyes looked to me, and spoke of the place that she had just returned from, and desired to go back. And told me, “Never fail to preach this Gospel, Billy. You don't understand what a joy it is to go like this.”

And a few hours after that, laying my hands on the head of my little dying baby yonder, and placed it in the arms of the mother. When I said, “O God, I know that You raised the sap in the trees in the spring, and bring forth the bud and the fruit, and hide it in the ground while the winter's going on. You got to be God. And I believe with all my heart that this phenomenal, boy that was born in Galilee twenty hundred years ago, that as He walked around, according to the Scriptures, to me, He was the promised Messiah. No matter what they say, I believe it.

And I know that there's something within me that shows me things to come, that a supernatural being appears. And I see things before it comes. And He warns me of such. But, here I am without warning, up against the thing here. There lays the mother dead there, and there's papa laying out yonder. And now, You're going to take my little baby from my arms, God. Are You going to do that, take my darling?“

And the black sheet began to fold before me. I knew He had done it. If the mainspring hadn't been there then.... Satan said to me, “Now what do you think of it? Even your darling little baby, He's going to take it from your arms; how cruel.” That was the new spirit. That was all the intellectuals. There I stood and my bones beating together.

I thought, “Where would I go? I would go out and get a little drunk.”

“You never drank in your life.”

“But I'd do it anyhow.”

“He told you not to.”

“But, I'd do it anyhow. I'd show Him who was boss.”

I said, “Satan, I can't. He's the boss.”

It was all down to the mainspring. I'm so glad there is a mainspring. When I walked up the road, and Mr. Isler.... My family gone! I was going to walk up.... I couldn't go to the grave; I was just walking up the road. [unclear words] just descending and along ... Mr. Isler come up the road. He jumped out of the car and he said, “Billy, I want to ask you something. I've seen you crying out here in that tent. I've heard you preaching. And how you were so enthused on the message that you were bringing, and you were bringing to the people. Now, what does it mean to you now? Do you still love Him? Would you still say you'd serve Him?”

I said, “Mr. Isler, if He sent me to hell, I'd still love Him. For there has been something placed in here, see, that it's not no longer I, but it's Him.”

I was satisfied of this, that laying in the different graves from here over to the Walnut Ridge straight, my family; my papa, my brother, my wife, my baby. And they were turning back to the dust of the earth from whence they come.

But I realized this, that they must have been here when the world was made, because they were taken from the earth. They were here when the earth was made. Our bodies were here before the earth was made, for we are of the earth. All that we are made of is calcium, potash, petroleum, cosmic light, atoms holding us together; and somehow, by some mastermind we were made thus what we are. Not just a heaping together of potash, and calcium, and petroleum, but something got into the inside and began to create, and I was made thus.

In the beginning, the Holy Spirit began to brood over a bleak desert. Excuse my emotions. But when there was nothing, and have never been nothing, but the Holy Spirit was sent from God, not an intellectual, but the Holy Spirit was sent from the presence of God to make love over the earth.

And as it was, He stretched His big wings around the earth, and began to make love, or to brood, coo over the earth. I can see calcium, and potash, coming together and a little Easter lily stood up. The Holy Spirit brooded it out of the earth. And He kept brooding, and as He cooed, and brood I began to see trees come up. Birds began to fly from the earth. Animals began to walk. And then He kept cooing, and a man came up, called Adam.

And Adam looked lonesome so He made a byproduct for him, and took a rib from his side and made him a sweetheart, Eve. And He loved Adam, and He loved Eve.

And He takes them, and I can see little Eve as she laid her little head against the shoulder of Adam. And as she was everything that a woman could ever expect and more. And she laid against the big strong shoulder of her sweetheart, Adam, and they walked through the garden, perhaps, maybe the lion roared. She couldn't be scared 'cause there was no fear.

So he said, “Sweetheart, that is the lion. I will call him. 'Leo, the lion come forward. Cheetah, the tiger, you come here and lay down.'” And they followed them like kittens. The winds began to blow, and little Eve's hair began to blow.

And she said, “Oh, that wind.”

“Peace be still.” And the winds obeyed him. He was a son of God. She was his sweetheart.

And then I can hear him say, “Dear, do you see the sun setting? It's time that we talk to Father.”

So, they went up to the cathedral, the great tree. And as he knelt down, all of a sudden a heavenly glowing light came down, the Logos. The Holy Spirit that had brood them out of the earth, came down, Father, God. And He said, “Children, have you enjoyed yourself today?”

“Yes, Father.”

“I have come down to kiss you goodnight, and to lay you down to rest tonight.” He kissed them on the cheeks, and laid them down. Nothing could harm. He was right in the bushes with them. The lion, He laid the lion down. He laid, Cheetah, the tiger down. He laid them all down to rest, and Father was so pleased.

Then sin by knowledge, intellectual (I hope you're getting it), by intellectual, sin entered the world by trying to find more light. Getting something that wasn't in the Word of God. God says, “The day you eat thereof, that day you'll die.” But Eve wanted something new.

Oh, can you see from my heart, that I am not trying to cross up someone? I am only trying to lay out in view “thus saith the Lord,” the Word. Nothing but that, not fantastics, and big churches, and intellectuals. But to listen to the One who brood us from the earth. Sin entered.

And now, friends, if the Holy Spirit was the only instrument that God used to brood us out of the earth, and we did come from the earth, and we were here before there was an earth (Remember here's encouragement for you people that's to be prayed for.), if the Holy Spirit by brooding made the physical being, who is the architect of our bodies? O God, may people see it.

The Holy Spirit gave you your appendix, your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your heart, and put a new spirit in you, and then come to live in you. Do not by any means accept intellectual things, theology that's contrary to the Bible, but stay only with “thus saith the Lord.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, with His stripes we were healed.” The Holy Spirit brood His own body to live in, Jesus Christ.

When He overshadowed Mary, and created her, brood a blood cell in the womb that brought forth the Son, Christ Jesus. Where God Himself tabernacled on earth for thirty-three and a half years, and was made a propitiation for our sins to redeem us, and to bring reconciliation between lost men and a holy God to kiss them and reconcile them together that in the cool of the evening when the sun is setting over our brow; when my life's journey is run, and my race is finished, I want Him to kiss me to sleep as He did Stephen when he was baffled from head to head. Said, “I see the heavens open, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” There you are.

Now, how can that come about? And if God made us what we are without us having any knowledge of what was going on, if God made me a man, and put me up at my right age before death set in; at about twenty-three years old, I was strong and healthy. And if Satan didn't interfered.... He tried to cripple me, and shoot me down, and many things.

But God seen so in you, when you were young, and when you were pretty, you women that has got old. And you men who were young, and strong, and healthy, and how you enjoyed being a man, and your little companion. If God did that without you having any say so in it.... You never said, “Make me thus.” Who taking thought can add one cubic to his stature? But if He made you thus, without you having anything to say, how much more can He, through His brooding, give you a choice.

And you're on the basis of free moral agency. You can turn this down, or you can accept it. To turn it down is to be lost, and remain potash, and calcium, and petroleum. But to accept it, and to have a new heart, a new spirit, and His Spirit, part of the Logos in you controlling your emotions; and when He coos through His Word, you coo back in answer to Him.

“Jesus Christ the same, yesterday, today, and forever.”

“Amen, Lord.”

“I'm the Lord that healeth all thy diseases.”

“Amen, Lord.”

How much more will He raise you up, though your bodies be blown from east to the west by the winds, how much more can this Holy Spirit, after the total annihilation by this atomic bomb that's going to drop on this earth one of these days, blowing holes, and scattering out through the space. But the calcium, and potash will remain here. And then the Holy Spirit brood again, every bone will go to bone, every limb will go to limb. And there'll be a church of the living God stand up in the last days.

Friends, only by the brooding or the cooing of the Holy Spirit can you ever do it. Will God ever promise to raise you up, as you listen to His voice, that still small voice that speaks in the depths of your soul.

And friends, in closing this one moment longer, and I want you to be thinking deeply, and sincerely. We're going to leave one day. And why, oh, please tell me why would you try to accept any counterfeit, any church theology, any intellectuals, any emotions, anything contrary, when the Pentecostal skies are full of the genuine blessings?

The real Spirit of God that controls you and makes you a real Christian! You don't have to impersonate a thing; you just be a child of the living God. Why? Tell me why would you try to accept anything different when God is willing and waiting, and has brought you this far, and then trying to make love to you through the Holy Spirit, would you accept the declaration of creeds and so forth to try to get you to heaven, or some fantastic of mental emotion which is not even recognized in the Bible? Won't you receive it.

Oh, people of God, to your knees, and to your God, may God have mercy is my prayer, while we pray.

And with our heads bowed just in this solemn moment. When maybe at this very moment there may rest upon you, upon this church, upon many here.... Think deep. Do not let it be shallow thinking. Are you making love to the Holy Spirit? And is that Spirit that's in your life, ticking out your emotions exactly with the Bible? Have you long-suffering, gentleness, goodness?

Material is not tested. Listen as you pray. Material is not tested by its quantity, how big it is (how big a church, I'm meaning here, see). It's not tested by its quantity, but by its quality. Metal is tested by its strength. And the church is not tested on how big a church, or how many members. It's tested by its strength by the Bible. How can it say, “Amen,” to every promise that God has given?

How does your life move with kindness, and meekness, gentleness, and patience? What is it when something rouses you? There's a little wheel there ticking right away, keeps you under control. His love moves right down through your heart. Are you only trying to put that on? Oh, think now. And while you're thinking seriously, and the Holy Spirit is dealing with you, brooding over you saying, “Child of mine, I'm talking to you.”

Now, in Christ's name, with heads bowed before God, not me, will you raise your hand saying, “God put Your Spirit in me. This is my hand.”

God bless you. Many, many hands.

And Father God, in the name of the Lord Jesus, Thy Son, the ever brooding, wooing, cooing Holy Spirit. I ask that You today will take Your place in the heart of every person that raised their hand. They signified to You that they need Thee. Oh, how they need Thee. And if they're recognizing it now, what about the hour when the heart is refusing to beat? How about the hour that they feel the cold vapors of death floating in? How much more are they going to recognize it then? And what are we, whence did we come from, and where are we going?

And Father, we are tired of impersonations of Christian life. Create in us, Lord, today a new heart, a new spirit, and put Your Spirit, according to Your prophet's Word in the middle of our new spirit. And control us by love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, gentleness, patience, and faith, and all the fruits of the Spirit may be found in us, as we humbly yield ourselves, our souls, the innermost parts, the life that brings all this earthly potash, and calcium, and petroleum together and holds it thus. When it leaves, we go back to the dust. And we yield our spirits. We yield them to You.

And create in us the right kind of spirit and let the Holy Spirit, Thy Spirit, control us, and lead us, and guide us as we journey on. Bless these dear people; heal the sickness in the midst of us, Lord, also.

And may we say as we left this building this morning, it was good for us to have been there. The Holy Spirit did a work in us that will change our emotions, that will make us a different person than what we were when we come in. Renew the hope that's in the saints. Strengthen them, Lord, against the day that's coming.

Oh, the corn is fully matured, Jesus shall come for the harvest soon. And I pray this blessing in Jesus' name. Amen.

I think it'd be good just to—set still just a moment while she plays, “I need Thee. Oh how I need Thee.” I wonder what Georgie was thinking the other night when he had just left his dead brother? As he went down the street and felt his heart moving away, getting black in front of him as he's pitching into seats in front of him, leaving his wife and loved ones...

O great Jehovah, move now. Heal each one by Thy Spirit. Place in our hearts just something that's been a lacking so long. Give us that victory, Lord, that overcoming victory that we so graciously need. Will You do it, Father? We wait on Thee. And now we pray in Jesus' Name. Amen.

I wonder now, is there some here to be prayed for? A lady called me from New Albany and someone was here... A lady called me from New... That's all right. All right, Miss... here to be prayed for. If you just follow the... Go ahead with the song you were playing, sister. And then right over on the side here for the prayer line, if you'll be so reverent for a few moments. Line up to the right-hand the side here so we can pray for the healing.

Now, what happened? These who are standing in line now to be prayed for, has come solemnly upon their own faith believing. They have come to say that wine has come into new bottles; that they are willing to say amen to THUS SAITH THE LORD. The Bible has said, which is THUS SAITH THE LORD: if there be any among you sick, call for the elders. Let them anoint them with oil, and pray over them; the prayer of faith shall save the sick.

And again, it is written in the Scripture, “These signs shall follow them that believe. They'll lay hands on the sick; they shall recover.” And we're taught to do this, and constrained by the Holy Spirit, that this is God's order of ministering to those who are needy. It does not mean that the individual that is praying must be a saint or an angel. It means that the person that's coming must have a faith in their own being; that the Holy Spirit in His cooing by His Word, has dropped a little something in there that makes them believe, that He will brood over them until they are well.

As Abraham of old, when God appeared to him in the Name of El Shaddai, the bosom, the breast of a woman-like, and said, “Abraham, you are a hundred years old, but I am the breasted One. Just lean against Me, like the baby, and nurse, and I will confirm My Word.” And Abraham, being a hundred years old, laid against the bosom of God. Him and Sarah being one, of course, begin to study and to brew and to accept the Word of God. And what happened? God turned him back to a young man, him and his wife, and they brought forth a child, Isaac: who through Isaac come Christ and blessed the world. He was made a father of nations because Abraham called those things (Listen.) which were not. The case of divine healing in Abraham was not. When he accepted the promise, it taken twenty-five years for it to happen: twenty-five years. When Abraham was seventy-five, he was given the promise; at one hundred the baby was born. But all through these twenty-five years, him continually making love back to the Holy Spirit that's brood out of the earth, and calling the Holy Spirit's Word right, calling the things which are as though they are not because they were contrary to the Holy Spirit's Word, he was made a young man and brought forth the child.

Now, that's how we come. We are Abraham's seed. And we've called the things that's sent, our afflictions, our diseases, as though they were not, because we are obeying what the Holy Spirit, through the prophet, the seer, has said to be the truth. And all man's to do that has trusted it, and has come out right every time. Now, we are calling these things right, and accepting them as our personal property, and wooing back to the Holy Spirit, “Your Word is true. I refuse any other sense of anything else. I believe that You'll make me well, because Thy Word, Lord, says the prayer of faith shall save his soul and God shall raise him up. That's all, that's the truth.

I'm wondering this morning, I've know Brother Jackson... I heard him say, “Amen,” somewhere back there. And I wonder if there's other ministers here this morning who believe in Divine healing, that would like to come stand with us for these people. They are your brothers and sisters in Christ. Would you like to come here and pray with us while our pastor comes forward, if so be that he will pray this morning for the sick. Any of the rest of you, come, take your position right here with us while we minister to the—the needy in this building this morning. Any of you ministers that wish to come...

And I believe I saw Teddy there, awhile ago... I'm not mistaken. And any other ministers, whoever you are, it matters not, we're only happy to have you up here if you're a believer, to join your faith with us as we pray for the needs.

Now, I want the elders to come: Brother Higgenbottom and those who stand here to bring the line along as we pray for them, and we'll minister right along. Now, ministering brethren, come right over here if you will. We'll pray for these two people setting in chairs first. Then we will minister to others.

And everybody here that's on speaking terms to the Lord Jesus (And you all should be this morning.), now I want you to join with us. What if this... And it may be your brother, your sister, your papa or mama, and you want them to be well? And it's your faith, you're projecting of your faith, going out like a great dynamo in here, that brings down the Shekinah glory of God that anoints the individual to have faith. “Faith cometh by hearing, hearing of the Word.”

Now, the Holy Spirit is here to inject the Word of God into your hearts, that you'll accept it. And then when you believe it, you come. Now, what's my duty and these ministers? To lay hands on you: “The prayer of faith shall save the sick,” said God. Can you just take that and make love back to the Holy Ghost: “Oh, Holy Spirit, Your Word is true; I am not sick no more. I'm just getting better all the time. I thank You, heavenly Father, for Your kindness to me. I'm constantly getting better each hour.” Watch what takes place as you make love, as you brood back to the Holy Spirit that's brood to you through the Word. Now, to pray, then we'll come lay hands.

Our Father God, Thou seeth the need. And most surely, You are more than able to supply every need. You, Who could take Daniel out of the lions' den; and the Hebrew children out of the fiery furnace; that could open up the Red Sea and the people walk on dry land; that could raise Lazarus from the dead, and take Elijah home in a chariot... Oh God, Thou hast never failed. And these new bottles with new wine, these with new hope and new life, come forward this morning to be anointed, to have hands placed upon them in commemoration of the Word. And Father, we stand as men to lay our hands as Thou hast commissioned us: “If they lay their hands on the sick, they shall recover.” That commission is just as solidly the Gospel as it is to preach the Gospel: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” And we pray, Father, that You will grant Your Word to be fulfilled this day as we, upon the confession of these people, who are bringing forth their faith to test it against the power of the devil. Let them go, delivered, each one, in Christ' Name.

With your heads bowed and as we walk forward now to minister to the people.

Our beloved sister, in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus. As ministers of the cross, we now, as divine partakers of His blessing and resurrection. In commemoration of His Word, we ask this evil to leave you, in Jesus' Name, and may you be healed. May your faith never waver, but may you succor from God, the wooing of the Holy Spirit, your strength, that brought you from the dust of the earth and put every organ in your body. He is more than able to repair that which He has made, where Satan has tore down. We present you to God, as a believer in the Name of His Son Jesus.

Now, brother, upon whom we lay our hands, with the same prayer before God our Father, and by the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and the commission that He sent to the earth, we as believing ministers, we present you to God, the Holy Spirit, that Who succored You from the earth, and put into your body every part. And seeing that Satan has come down and has interrupted, broken your body, that upon the remitting of sins of these people coming down at this altar, that would cause it, or upon any unbelief or failure to...?... We ask that God would heal and bless...?... on this solemn obligation. We lay our hands upon you in commemoration of the Word not knowing your heart, but ask that God Almighty; who brood you from the earth, will repair or strengthen the weak, vital places of your body, and will bring you back to your perfect health, in Jesus' Name.

Our beloved sister...?... we lay our hands upon you and ask that...?... and she will not be...?... Holy Ghost...?... someday...?... only for the praise of God.

Now, our sister, as we stand with bowed head and we ask that God Almighty, send forth the Logos from the beginning...?... and those different colors...?... We are all...?... prayed for that one...?... And now we commit the Holy Spirit to let us bring forth of God, to present to Him a church without spot and...?... of those...?... the bride... Oh, Holy Spirit, may...?... and I pray this woman to her health and strength as we commend her to God. Amen.

Almighty and omnipotent God, the infinite One, the omnipresent, omniscient; God Who fills all over space. We lay hands upon our sister, introducing her to Thee with the same prayer that we have prayed over the others, that You will perform in her body that which is lacking and has been robbed by the devil. And...?... for the glory of God.

Father, God, we likewise lay hands upon our sister with the same prayer that in Your...?... in Your care...?... for the healing of her body...?...

Father, God, upon the body of this man who through the wear of years has stooped shoulders, wrinkled in face, and has injured his body. But Thou O God, Who are the brooding Holy Spirit, we commend him to Thee, in Jesus' Name, that may the Holy Spirit turn with a great love, cause him to look up and recognize that the One Who took him from the earth, can also repair that which He created. ...?...