The Queen Of Sheba

Let's bow our heads now just for a moment of prayer before we start the further part of the service. Our heavenly Father, we are grateful indeed for this grand privilege of assembling ourselves together, on this lovely Sabbath evening, to worship Thee and to give Thee thanks and praise for all that You have done for us. We look back down the trail of our life, we can see the many things that your kindness has granted to us, your hand of mercy in time of trouble, and we thank Thee for it. We pray, Lord, that You will receive our thanks tonight. And as we are going into the closing of this little three-night service, we want to thank You for all that You have done for us—for the greatness of Your presence, for the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and for the hunger and thirsting of Thy children.

Lord, it is written, if we ask for bread, we will not get a rock.; if we ask for a fish, we would not get a serpent. Thou has granted this to us, that we are thirsty for the bread of life. O Lord, feed us with Thy goodness and Thy mercy. Forgive us of our sins and our trespasses against Thee.

We pray, Lord, that because of this little gathering, that it'll start such a thirst in the city and around about, that there will be an old-fashioned revival break out through the city and go nationwide. Grant it, Lord.

Hear us as we pray and as we read the Word and speak of the Lord Jesus. We pray that You'll open every heart. We would not forget those that are sick and afflicted and so in need tonight, Lord, of your healing power. Some of them, your beloved physicians here of the earth has done all that they can do for them and they're at the end of the road, so as to speak. But Thou, O Lord, Thou art our stay. Thou art a refuge, a very present help in the time of trouble. We have the God-given right and privilege to call upon Thee. We pray that You'll heal the sick tonight in the hospitals. The convalescents, we pray for them, that You'll heal them also, Father. Get glory unto Thyself. And when we leave the service tonight may we say like those coming from Emmaus, “Did not our hearts burn within us, as He talked to us along the way?” For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated.

There's just one regret tonight, that this is the last service of this little meeting. But if it be the Lord's will and the people's desire, I'd like to come back to Tifton sometime for a meeting when we could have more time to stay. I want to say that what people I have met since I've been here has been some of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. I do not say that to be complimentary; I only say it because it's in my heart and it's true. Lovely, fine people. You know, I know that some of the truest hearts that beats is under an old blue shirt—perhaps with a patch on it, but there's where you meet real men. I'm so glad to meet that type of people.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your kindness and cooperation. There was one thing they did that I did not agree with—that was last night taking an offering for me. And they taken up a hundred and some dollars (seventeen, a hundred and seventeen dollars, or something), brought it to me. I don't know how to give it back to you. I never come for that purpose. I never took an offering in my life. Money's not the subject; it's your soul. It's the good that we can do. I've been in the ministry thirty years (I'm an old man) and I have never yet taken up my first offering. And if I would've took offerings I would've (or taken the people's money), I'd've perhaps had one time given me one-and-a-half-million dollars at one time from the Mission Bell Winery (Mr. Archaleon, the owner, his wife being healed of cancer). I refused to even look at the check . . . or, the money draft.

What would I want with a million-and-a-half dollars? There's only one thing I could do with it: give it away. And if I'd take it—it's taxable—the government takes the biggest part of it before I could give it away.

So you see, we don't want money; we just want you to believe God. Believe the Bible and live right, because all that we have on this earth we're going to lay down and leave it one of these days. It's just those things that's eternal that count. So . . . but being that it was given (the hundred and something . . . seventeen dollars, something, the brethren told me), thank you, my precious friends.

I will take that right straight to the mission fields to feed some hungry children (see them laying on the street with their little bellies swelled up from starvation), do everything I can to make it count. And at that day when the rewards are given out, you'll see where it went. God ever bless you. There's a portion of your living that we share with others.

I want to thank the ministers (I suppose this is their line), wherever they are, for their fine cooperation in this little three days, just almost unnoticed. I've got three or four or five more of them, just little spots, before going overseas for a world-wide trip, Africa and Asia and Europe and around the world. Thank you, my brethren, for your fine cooperation. If we ever get to come back, we'll come first and consult all you brethren and find when you haven't got any meetings going on; and maybe kind of pitch a tent outside the city, or something like that, so we can stay a long time and all of us together working together for one great cause, the Lord Jesus. That's the only way that we can ever. . . . We go into the city, it must be a cooperation with all churches—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Nazarene. You can surely get together for a revival for the saving of souls. I believe we can if we just pray and ask the Lord.

Then I want to thank the court for this place. We were just going to drop by, and went out in the country here, and some precious brother that let us have his church. . . . The people were standing in the cold, and then they changed it right quick and brought it here. And tonight I noticed cars all up and down the street here with people in them, standing out back in the back, down the halls, couldn't get in. And so we're thankful to the court for their fine cooperation. Someone said today (and I just quoting someone else) that the judge came and said, “Well, you need some more room, or you might need my office; here is the key.” I just hung my coat in the judge's office. God bless that man. I pray that his court of justice will . . . and he'll serve so well that in the day that when he has to stand before the judge of the earth, and the trials of his court be brought before Him, that the Master, the great Judge, will say, “It was well done, my good and faithful servant.”

May the Lord bless you all.

Hearing testimony. . . . Last evening I gave a testimony of some brother that met me on the street with a . . . told me that his little girl having her eyes scratched out. And I come and repeated it right behind him here last night, not knowing that he'd said anything about it. Billy was telling me, I believe, of some couple that he'd met that's got an Assembly of God school out here. My son went to Waxahachi Assembly of God School in Texas. Waxahachi, Texas. And they were. . . . This girl said many years ago (the woman, the boy's wife, minister), that when she was just a little girl, just a little tiny tot, that they brought her to Pensacola, I believe it was, where we was having a meeting, and I prayed till I couldn't stand no longer.

Many times I'd get so weary, the visions would leave, and I'd just have to stand and the ministers would lift my hand and lay it on the people as they passed by.

And she said she had so many ulcers till it was thought that she couldn't live. And her mother brought her by, took her hand and laid it over on my hand, went by. The ulcers left, and she's in just perfect health. See, it wasn't my hand that done it. That had nothing to do with it. It was the mother's faith, her faith in God. Jesus said, “It isn't I that doeth the works. It's the Father dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” And you'll only get from God the things that you're expecting from God, in the way you approach God. You approach Him with reverence, with faith, every word is true.

Now, there's handkerchiefs laying here I want to pray over. Now, many of you, you know the scriptures on that. Many times ministers anoint those handkerchiefs with oil and send them to the people. That's perfectly all right. I believe that anything the Lord Jesus will bless, I'm just for it. But scripturally, in the Bible, Paul didn't anoint the handkerchiefs. They taken from his body handkerchiefs and aprons.

I believe Paul was a fundamentalist. You know where I believe he got that in the Scripture? Where Elijah . . . or, Elisha sent the staff with his servant Gehazi, and said, “Lay it on the baby.” Elisha knew that everything he touched was blessed. And so the staff that he'd walked with, he said, “Go lay that on the baby.” But the woman's faith wasn't in the staff; it was in the prophet. So she wouldn't leave him until the prophet laid his own body on the baby; and the baby come to life. It depends on where your faith lays.

But in the handkerchiefs . . .

I remember in South Africa, at the last trip at Capetown. And I was there, and I believe it was ten or fourteen sackfuls of handkerchiefs and letters in this great . . . what we call grass sacks, burlap sacks. And the writer in the paper said, “Brother Branham's superstitious. He was praying over handker-chiefs.” Just not knowing the Scripture, of course. But we're glad to pray over these. And if you do not have one up here, you're on the outside of the building or anything, if you wish me to pray over one, just write me. I'm not trying to get your address. We have nothing to sell, no radio broadcasts, no nothing, nothing at all. It's absolutely free. Just anything that we can do to help you, make life a little better for you, make the way, the rough places, a little more plain, that's what we're here for. Just write us: Jeffersonville, Indiana. We'll send it to you as quick as we possibly can.

Now, if I've missed anything, the little brother that played the music, and the different ones, and the ministers, the Lord bless you richly for your kindness and everything. If I've missed someone, well, I didn't mean to. The Lord be with you all.

And I'm going to ask you one favor. That is. . . . Over in Africa and India where we stand there, where there's twenty times as many witch doctors as in this building tonight, and they're there trying to cast spells on you and everything, you better know what you're talking about. You better be sure that He sent you. But when the winds are blowing hot and heavy, and I'm under a lot of pressure, can I be thinking of Tifton, Georgia, that the people are praying for me? Will you be doing that? Thank you.

Dear heavenly Father, I pray that You'll help us now as we're journeying together. Many here tonight I'll never see again, if I come back in six months. A crowd like this, and old people, even young that might be killed in accidents, there'll be somebody missing. I'll never see them no more until the judgment. I pray, Lord, that there'll not be one person missing, but all will be there under the blood of the Lord Jesus, ready to go into eternal life with Him forever. Help us now as we open the Word.

We realize that the Word is Your Word, and it's of no private interpretation. The Holy Spirit wrote the Bible. So we pray that the Holy Spirit will interpret the meanings of the Scriptures to us tonight in such a way that He might plant seed of the Bible in every heart, that when the service shall be ended, that each person will receive that what they've come for, for we ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.

I'm sorry that the people . . . they're standing, no place to sit down to listen. You'd be comfortable and could get more out of the service, of course. But to you who are now . . . got your Bibles, and you like to kind of follow the scriptures, turn with me to the book of St. Matthew, twelfth chapter, and we'll begin from the twelfth chapter at the thirty-eighth verse for just a portion.

Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.

But he answered and said unto them, An evil and an adulterous generation seeketh . . . signs; and there shall be no sign given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

The men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.

May the Lord add His blessings to the reading of His Word.

We find Jesus, tonight as we move in upon the scene of His sermon and His speech to the people, He was a bit disturbed with the people because of the cities that He had been into and had been preaching and showing them the sign of His Messiahship, at the attitude that they'd taken towards it. Last evening we spoke on what was the sign of the Messiah—what type of a sign would it be, and how the people were to know, and how that He gave that sign to the Jews, and those that received it had eternal life. Those that rejected it was turned away into condemnation, to everlasting separation from the presence of God.

Then we find also that He went to Samaria, and the Samaritans received that sign as He spoke to the woman and told her of her condition. And the Samaritans believed the testimony of the woman. Jesus did not perform any miracles in Samaria, because we find out later that Philip went down after Pentecost and there he healed the sick. Jesus laid the foregrounds for it.

And if you'll notice, it's very strange in the preceding, or the previous scripture of this text tonight, when He was quoting Isaiah the prophet, how that Isaiah said that He would be a light unto the Gentiles. That's very outstanding, for the very sign that he was showing was. . . . Otherwise, Dr. Scofield, in his Bible, in the footnotes, predicts that it will be at the last day when the Gentiles will receive the sign of the Messiah. Christ being Messiah, they didn't get it in their day.

We've only had a day of theology. We come in the reformation of Luther. The Protestants and the Catholics come in after about six hundred years, or three hundred years after the death of the last apostle. They failed to get the Messiahic sign. Of course they were Romans and Anglo-Saxons, and now. . . .

But in here Isaiah spoke that it would be for the Gentiles in the last days.

But Jesus was upbraiding these people because that they had rejected to understand the Scriptures, with all their great churches and their great mighty leaders, scholarships, priests of a certain lineage of priests, holy men that no man could lay one finger to their immorals or their lives. But yet in all that they failed to see the real thing. Now, if goodness and mercy, if holiness and righteous living pleases God, then He had to accept the Pharisees.

But you see, my precious friend, sin is not immoral living. Sin is not drinking whiskey. Sin is not committing adultery. You do that because you're not a believer. That's the attributes of unbelief. You do that because you're not a believer. But if you are a believer, you do not do those things. So there's only one original sin, and that's unbelief. The Scripture says, “He that believeth not is condemned already.”

You can't even get to the first base. You're condemned before you start if you're not a believer in every word of God.

For if the Holy Spirit is in you, you are a believer and the Holy Spirit that wrote the Bible will say “amen” to every promise. Everything that God says, it'll “amen” it back. But if the Holy Spirit isn't in you and you're just intellectually trained. . . . Which I have nothing against it—intellectual training, schooling, college. That's wonderful if you've got the Holy Spirit with that to back up what you're talking about. But as the Scripture said, “In the last days . . . having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof.”

Now, Jesus had met this type of people, and the sign had been given them, and they had classed it as an evil spirit doing it. They said, “This man is Beelzebub,” in the same chapter that I just read. “This man does this; he's a fortune-teller.” Beelzebub was a devil, and anyone knows that fortune-telling is of the devil. But you see, it's a spirit, and the Bible teaches us that in the last days that those spirits will be so close it would deceive the very elected if possible. But watch them by the fruit that they bear. Fortune-tellers are out there on the street making money; and they're guessing, and they're taking telepathy and mental psychology. But the power of God preaches the gospel, and warns of the hell that there is before you and a heaven to go to, and calls sinners to repentance, and heals the sick, and does good things. Then “by their fruits you shall know them.”

But these men could not give an answer to their church. The thing had been done, and there was something wrong, and they had to give an answer. So they just placed it off, and said, “Why, he's the prince of all the devils.”

Jesus said, “I'll forgive you for it, speaking that word against I, the Son of man; but when the Holy Ghost is come [referring back to Isaiah's scripture of the Gentiles in the last days] one word against it will be never forgiven in this world or the one that is to come.” So it behooves us in these last days, that when we are seeing strange sights, to be careful; place it on the Scripture, and if God said so, then believe it. If He did not say it, then be real careful—if it isn't in the Bible and a promise of God.

Now God, in all generations, has always . . . never been without a witness. He's always had a witness somewhere. Though it's gotten down sometimes maybe to one person, but God has always, and always will, have a witness—somebody He can lay His hand on. And Jesus was His witness in that day. And His witness today is the Holy Spirit, God's witness in the earth.

Now, we find that they was rejecting Jesus. And Jesus was speaking how they had rejected the other witnesses; and predicted that they'd still reject it in the days to come, but there would be some that would receive it. “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way and few there'll be that find it,” because, “Broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many will go in thereat.”

And He referred back, we notice, to men who God had sent before Him. And He spoke once, we read a few moments ago, of Jonah. I feel sorry for Jonah because so many people condemn that prophet. He doesn't deserve to be condemned. He was a prophet of the Lord who did just exactly what God led him to do. I was reading one time before. . . . He was sent to Nineveh but taken a ship to Tarshish, and got in trouble out on the sea and was throwed out of the ship, bound hand and foot, and throwed into the sea and swallowed by a whale.

And then when the whale had fed, went down to the bottom of the sea to rest hisself at the bottom. . . . That's the way a fish does when it eats. Feed your little goldfish and watch them; they'll go right down to the bottom and rest.

And this great whale had been prowling through the waters, and he found this prophet falling through the waters, and he'd picked him up in his great huge mouth and had swallowed him. Scientists sometimes don't want to believe that, but God had prepared this fish. This was a different kind of a whale. God prepared this one to swallow a preacher. So it was a different fish.

And notice, though, when he had his hands and feet bound, and he was in the belly of the whale, in the bottom of the sea, and a storm on top. . . . Now, some people look at their symptoms: “My pastor prayed for me last night, but my hand's no better.” That has nothing to do with it. If you are really a believer, you don't even look at that. It's already settled forever! God heals you. What if Abraham would've looked the next month to see if Sarah was going to have the baby? He never noticed that; he just noticed what God said. And any true believer looks to the promise, not what the symptoms are around them. They look what God said.

And Jonah down there in the vomit in the whale's belly, speaking of symptoms, he had a right to have them. If he looked this way was a whale's belly, he looked back this way it was whale's belly. All around him was whale's belly, but what did he say? He didn't believe any of it. He turned himself over in the whale and he said, “Lord God, once more will I look to your holy temple.” Not at his symptoms, not at the condition, not how far his hopes had gone, but he said, “I'll look to your temple.” Because when Solomon dedicated that temple he said, “Lord, if thy people anytime be in trouble, and will look towards this holy place and pray, then hear from heaven;” and he believed that God heard Solomon's prayer.

And Jonah in those conditions—there's no one here in that condition, as bad off as that—but in that condition, he could refuse to look at his symptoms. And so, “I look towards the temple”—a natural temple where a natural man built, where a natural man, a real man that would just . . . a sinful man that later backslid. And could believe God, that He heard the prayer. How much more ought you and I, under these conditions, to look to heaven where Jesus sits at the right hand of God to make intercessions upon our confession? He refused to see the symptoms, had nothing to do with it.

I want to straighten Jonah in your mind's thinking. The people of Nineveh, if you've studied the history, they were fishermen, very wicked, and they worshipped idols. God knows how to do things. Just follow the leading of the Spirit. Jonah had to take that because . . . that ship because he was led to. And now after three days and nights he stayed in the belly of the whale. . . . The people of Nineveh worshipped the idols; and their god of the sea, where they made their living, was the whale. And while they were all out in their fish boats fishing, here come the god up, and licked his tongue out. The prophet walked out on his tongue like a gangplank, with a message of repentance, of miracles. God always performs miracles when He's around. Sure they would believe it; the god spit the prophet out. Sure. And they repented at the preaching of Jonah.

And Jesus said that “. . . a greater than Jonah is here.” He said those people who didn't know which was right and left hand will rise in the judgment and condemn this generation, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. Nothing like that was ever said in the Scriptures that He would do that, but He did it. But here was Jesus, from Genesis was predicted to come, being the Messiah, and He would be a God-prophet; and they failed to recognize Him. Said, “They'll rise in the day of the judgment and condemn this generation.”

One more little quotation on Jonah before we go somewhere, a different case. Did you notice they said, “Sir, we would seek a sign of Thee.” Now listen at Him. And if some critic might get ahold of it, they said. . . . “A wicked and an evil and adulterous generation seeks after signs.” If that prophecy was ever fulfilled, it's today. When did we ever have a more evil and an adulterous generation? When the divorce courts are full of marriage and divorcing—marrying and giving in marriage, Jesus said it would be. A Reno, Nevada. Leading people married four or five different times—just leave one wife and marry another, and leave a husband and marry another. Just like . . . worse than animals.

When was there a more evil and an adulterous generation?

He said, “They will seek after a sign.” And they will get it! Look at the Scriptures. He said, “They'll get a sign. For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and nights, so the Son of man will be in the belly of the earth . . . or, the heart of the earth, three days and nights.” What kind of a sign will that wicked and evil adulterous generation get? The sign of the resurrection: Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. That's the sign that they were promised. God keeps His Word. They get . . . they are getting, and they've gotten it, the sign of the resurrection—the Lord Jesus manifesting Himself amongst people by the same signs and wonders that He did when He was on earth. They will receive a sign.

Then he said, “The queen of the south shall stand in the day of judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the utmost parts [of the known earth at that day] to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” Now, speaking of the time of Solomon, now any theologian and Bible reader knows that was the millennium almost for the Jews. It was when Israel prospered, and great wonders were done, and great signs and so forth taken place. And they built the temple in the reign of Solomon, which was the son of David, a type of the Lord Jesus. And it was all. . . . David had fought down the nations till they all feared Israel. And to make that a golden age for them, God sent a mighty gift amongst the people.

When God sends a gift to the people and they recognize it, it's always a golden age. But when they refuse it, there's nothing left but a chaos for that generation. Now, listen closely. If God has sent the Holy Spirit in this age for a sign and we reject it, there's nothing left but a destruction. But if we refuse it, we're sure to be blowed off the earth. The atomic bombs are hanging ready now, each one afraid to pull the trigger. But some day they'll have too much vodka and press the trigger. And when that bomb passes through that radar sound, when it goes through there, there'll be others go the other way; and you know what will take place. The world can't stand it. And the gospel's being preached and Christ is being made manifested to the people just before the rapture, or the taking away, of the church.

Before that can happen the church will be gone. And if we know that that could happen before morning. . . . And before that happens the church will be gone. Before one drop of rain fell, Noah was in the ark. Before one speck of fire fell from the heavens, Lot was out of Sodom. Before that atomic bomb can whistle the nations, the church will be gone to glory. As it was in the days of Noah and in the days of Lot. . . . See the preparation we spoke of last night? We're here.

And all the people with one accord rallied around that great gift that God gave Solomon. Everybody believed it. What if we'd all believe it today? Don't take the whole nation. What if all the churches would believe the Holy Spirit and rally around the Holy Spirit the way they rallied around Solomon? And which is the greatest, Solomon or the Holy Spirit? A greater than Solomon is here and the people doesn't want to believe it. Kind of tears down worldly prestige. The Holy Spirit makes you do things that you didn't think you would do. But we go to school and we get highly educated, and we feel like that we have to go according to that trend. And the Holy Spirit comes in and works with a humble little bunch of people, and then somebody that's a little higher tries . . . or little longer, got a bigger name, begins to say, “Oh, they're just a bunch of common, aw, backwash.”

Reminds me of my little girls. I got two little girls, and one of them's name is Rebekah, the older, and the other one's name is Sarah, a little short fellow. And they're both Daddy's little girls. And here some time ago I'd been out on a meeting, and Mama and the girls were waiting up to see me; and I was too late, getting in around three o'clock in the morning. So the little girls climbed in their little pajamas and went to bed. Waiting for daddy, their eyes got heavy, and they had to go to bed. I'd come in and I was tired from a big campaigns, and I slept a little while and got up early and sat in a chair.

After a while, back in their bedroom I heard a noise—the pillows and covers a-flying, you know what I mean. And they were just a-carrying on because it was daylight. Wonder if Daddy had got home yet?

And through the floor they come running, and I was sitting in the parlor in a chair. And Rebekah was longer-legged than Sarah so she could outrun her—she's about four years older. And she come running through just as fast as she could and jumped a-straddle of my knee and throwed both arms around my neck and begin to say, “Daddy, we're so glad to see you home!” (Oh, you know how that makes your heart feel.) And then, coming behind her, her little sister, her pajama feet too big. Becky's old pajamas she was wearing, you know (the hand-me-downs) how it is in the family. And she had Becky's pajamas which was too big for her, and she was stumbling and falling. Becky beat her, so she jumped up, straddled my leg; and her legs was long and she could reach down to the floor. She balanced herself well, and throwed both arms around my neck, and said, looked around and said, “Sarah, my sister, I want to tell you something. I've got all of Daddy, and there isn't any left for you.”

Now, that's the way some people try to spend . . . long time way back when the early ages was starting, the churches think that they've got all of it, because they've been on the earth a little longer.

But poor little Sarah, I felt so sorry for her, her little eyes dropped down. Her little . . . her lip dropped down, her little brown eyes began to shed like a tear. She started to turn away because her sister had all of Daddy. And Becky leaning her head over on my shoulder, just a-hugging me, because she had all of Daddy. I looked at Sarah and her little countenance dropped down, she started to cry. I winked at her and motioned my finger and stuck out the other leg.

Here she come as hard as she could and jumped right up on my leg. She was too short-legged. She was the young church, you know, she's topsy-turvy; she just get to shouting, screaming, you know, don't know where. . . . But, see, I knowed she might fall off my leg so I just took both arms and held her like this, because I was afraid she might fall. I hugged her, and she got up into my bosom, and she turned over to her sister and said this, she said, “Now, Rebekah, my sister, I want to tell you something.” She said, “It may be true,” she said, “that you've got all of Daddy, but I want you to know that Daddy's got all of me.”

So that's what it is. It isn't . . . I want Him to have all of me. God, take me all, whether I know my ABC's or not. Whether I know whether I can compete with the rest, I don't try. Just surrender yourself and let God have all of you. That's what we should do. “God, take all of me.”

So, in the days of Solomon, God had his church all together, like He did at Pentecost, only He had the nation. What would happen tonight if all the nation would rally around the Holy Spirit? Why, it would be the best bomb shelter they ever got. I said once before that I had a bomb shelter. It wasn't made out of steel, but it was made out of feathers—under His wings. That's the best bomb shelter I know of: under His protection.

And everybody come by, the strangers passing through Israel going up to Jerusalem, they'd hear about the great gift of God being in operation. So they'd come and look. And there's nobody can ever see God's gifts operate but what it thrills them—if they've got anything about God at all in them. So these people . . . it scattered worldwide. Everybody begin to hear across the world about God operating with His people, a great gift He had sent.

Now, it'd be the same thing today if we'd just all rally around Him. But what we do, we pull a little bunch off here, and say, “I'm Presbyterian,” “I'm Methodist,” “I'm Pentecostal,” “I'm Nazarene.” Oh my, you're trying to rally. . . . Now the denominations are fine, every one of them's good. But the thing of it is, you're trying to make your denomination. . . . Make Christ the center. The denomination is fine, but make Christ your center. When you do, then all men is your brethren of like precious faith, that believe in God. You got room for God. Don't never end your doctrine with a period; end it with a comma. “We believe this, plus as much as the Lord will show us.” Just keep on going.

Now, that's all right then. But when you say, “This is the only thing. It's got to be just the way we believe it,” then you're wrong, see. God comes in and just upsets the little apple cart, and shows that you're not the only pebble on the beach. So then that . . . God does it. He does it always.

That's what He did to the Pharisees. Taken a baby born in a manger, raised up with a bad name behind Him as a illegitimate child and poured His fullness into Him. He done signs and wonders that believers was watching for, and they knowed He was the Messiah.

Now, watch just a minute. Find the word got all through the utmost parts of the earth to the queen. Down in Sheba was where it really was. And you know everybody would come by this queen. . . . They didn't have television and radio and the press then, so it'd be from lip to ear. So finally the word got down to the queen that she was . . . that up in Israel there was a great gift of God and it was in operation. God had showed a great sign to that generation.

Faith cometh by hearing. That's how you know, is when you hear. And everybody talking about it, it made a hunger come in the little queen's heart.

Everybody'd come by and say, “Oh, you should stand up there in the courts! Why, Solomon, the servant of the Lord God of Israel, stands up there and you never seen such discernment. It's beyond anything.” You know, if you've got any inkling of God anywhere, that begins to give you a hunger. And finally she made up her mind that she'd come see for herself. She just wouldn't take everybody's word, she'd come see for herself. That's a good thing to do—come see.

So I'd imagine she bought up all the Hebrew Bibles that she could find; and she read in them what Jehovah God was like, because she was a pagan. Now, in order to go to visit, and see whether this sign of God was right, she had to get permission from her church. So I can imagine her going over to the church, and she said to her pagan priest, “Father, I've heard that there is a God in Israel that's alive, and He's took one of His servants and is manifesting Himself through that servant.”

Oh, I can hear the pagan priest say, “Now, wait a minute, daughter. If there was anything supernatural to be done, it would come through our church. It would be through us. Don't believe those kind of things.”

But you know, when you start to meet God, the devil is going to throw everything in your way that he can throw in your way. That's his duty to do it. And he's going to hinder you in every way, but if you are determined, God will make a way. Let's break in on their conversation, her and the priest.

Supposing that he said this, he said, “Now, don't get mixed up in some fanaticism now. Better be careful what you're doing, because I've heard them Israelites screaming and hollering around an ark up there. So you don't want to get mixed up in that, my child, because you have big prestige, you are a queen.”

She said, “But, father, there's something in my heart burning; I must go.”

“Oh,” he said, “maybe you'd better come and take confession of your wrong,” or something. And “You know you mustn't do that because, you see, we've got the history here of our bible, of our history, of our gods.”

I can hear her answer something like this, “Yes, my grandmother heard that, my mother heard that, I've heard that since a little child. You've got words, you've got writings; but up there they've got a living God! I want to see something that's real, something that's alive. We've got all kinds of writings, but I want to see One that can write, and then come fulfill it.” So do I. I don't want to serve a God that just wrote something, and went off and died. I'm glad we serve a God tonight that could write, and return, fulfill what He said He would do. Though they killed Him, the grave couldn't hold Him—He rose again. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And then, oh, she turned her back on the priest and walked out. If you're determined to find Jesus, to get to God, God will make a way for you.

Now she sits down and thinks it over: “It's a long ways up there. So now, what if I go up there and it is right, and really what I've been told, if God, their God, is God? He don't only have writings, but He has . . . confirming that writing; He makes his promises true, and that is the Spirit of God working? If it is, I owe all I have to it.” That's exactly right. If God is God we owe our life to Him, we owe our all to Him, we owe everything to Him. So she said, “If it is so, I will support it.” So she laden camels with gold, and with spices and perfumes, many riches. She thought this: “If it is of God I will support it; if it isn't of God, I can bring my gift back. [That's good sound sense.] So I will make ready, where if it is, I'll be prepared.”

Now, with all of this gold, she had to travel. . . . Mark on your map from Jerusalem down to Sheba. It taken three months to make the trip. Not in an air-conditioned Cadillac or in a coach or an airplane, but on the back of a camel. No wonder Jesus said, “She'll stand in the day of judgment and condemn this generation.” Some won't come across the street to hear, to see a gift of God. They'll turn their nose up at it and walk away.

But she was determined. No wonder Jesus said, “No man can come unless my Father draws him, and all the Father has given me will come to me.”

Now, another thing, if she had all that riches, wasn't she simply afraid of the children of Ishmael, who were robbers on the desert in those days, those fleet-footed horses? Why, they'd fall in on her little caravan there and murder her, and think it would be . . . why, they'd take everything she had, all that gold and things. But you know, there's something about it when you want to meet God that there's nothing will stand in your way. You're going on anyhow! You're blind to the dangers, you're blind to the criticism, you're blind to anything else. God is your only motive, and you're going to find Him. You let every person in here tonight seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit be that determined: I don't care what anyone says, you're going to see it anyhow. Anyone in here sick, don't care what anyone says, you're going to be healed anyhow. Watch what takes place. That's where it lays, friend.

She was determined. She never thought of dangers; the only thing she thought of was getting to God. And she ladened her camels, and she got her princes, her bodyguards, a few of those guards to walk with her. And they must have traveled by night—three months!—to see a gift of God. I wonder if there's that much sincerity in the world today. And Jesus said she's going to stand with us in the day of the judgment.

Wonder what she'll do to the United States in them days. What will her testimony weigh out against the Americans after we've had thousands of years of testimony of God, with all the schools and churches and things? What will her testimony weigh against the Americans, would condemn it and call it the devil and walk away? And a greater than Solomon is here. The Holy Spirit is here. Wouldn't walk across the street, only to laugh at it. Many thousands, millions of them.

But she made her way across the desert. Not thinking of the troubles, but she made her way.

Finally she arrived at the palace yard. I can see her unladen her camels and put up her tents and so forth. So they was in the courts, and the next day she wanted to attend one of the meetings to see what it would be. She'd finally, after three months of travel, after maybe a year or more of hearing about it, she finally arrived. After she got to the place, she might have had to stand, too. But that morning when they brought Solomon out, the servant of the Lord, and the elders gathered and . . . she said, “Now, I'm not coming to criticize. I'm just going to sit down and look for myself, and just compare it with the Scriptures and with the testimonies I've heard.”

And when the hymns were sang and so forth, and the service started, why, they brought someone up to Solomon. He looked just an ordinary man. That's all he was, but there was something about him that he wasn't himself that morning. God came down. They never seen such discernment, how every case, he was perfect in it. She said, “A man can't be that perfect, just can't be. There has to be something.”

Out to the tent she goes. And I imagine all night long she read those Hebrew scrolls again. The next morning she goes back. Now, she never come just to say, “Well, I'll go in and sit down five minutes. If I don't like what he says, I'll get up and go out.” That's the American attitude. But she come to stay until she was convinced. She wanted to examine it, and stay with it. She come prepared for that. So the next day and perhaps the next day, and for many days. . . . Of course she didn't, but let's say she had a prayer card and she was waiting.

Finally it come her time to come before Solomon. Now, she said. . . . See, she'd watched so many others, so she said, “I believe it's going to be all right.” And when she got before the gift of God that was in Solomon, why, Solomon told her everything, the Bible says. Said that God never withheld one thing but told everything that the woman had desired in her heart. And when she seen it done on her, she turned and she said to the audience (a pagan), she said, “All that I heard was right, and more than I heard.” She said, “Truly, God is with you.” She said, “Blessed is the men who stays with you and sees these things daily. Blessed are the people, and blessed is the God that you serve, who gives these great things.” But, the witness,

she believed it.

She had an awful time getting to it in her age. That's all God had in her age for her, she believed it; and they were standing there watching greater things than Solomon did, and yet they did not believe it, and called it the devil. He said, “She'll rise in the judgment with this generation, and condemn it: because she came from the utmost parts of the earth to see a spirit of discernment, and a greater than that is with you.”

I say tonight, friends, though Jesus Christ being the Son of God standing where He was, He was not yet glorified. He'd not yet been proven. He had a chance at Gethsemane to turn it down but . . . He hadn't been proven. But today He's proven by God. He died and buried and rose again, and after two thousand years He's alive yet tonight—a greater sign than it was when He walked on the earth. A greater than Solomon is here!

Oh, my, I believe the honest in heart wants to see something real. Words are fine, but will that word work? If God made a promise of healing, will it work? If He made these promises, will it work? If He said, “The things that I do shall you do also, and more than this because I go to my Father,” will it work? Now, I know the King James says “greater,” but nothing could be. . . . If you notice the original, it said “more.” He stopped nature, raised the dead. You could do no greater, but you could do more of it. He was in one person then, His Son, God was Jesus. And now He's in the church universal around the world. “More than this shall you do because I go to my Father.”

Real, honest-hearted people, you Georgians. I believe you to be honest and sincere, honest-hearted. That's the reason you're here tonight. Not as I'm condemning a man's church. Every one of them is fine. We're brethren. But the hour has come when we've got to lift up above our denominational feelings, come into brotherhood—a brotherhood with one another and with Christ. And that's what these things are for. God sends something real to draw the honest heart to Him.

I am a hunter, as many of you know. I used to hunt in the north woods. And I hunted with a man called Burt Caul, one of the best shots I ever hunted with. And I'm a guide in many of the states, a licensed guide. My mother is a half-Indian. She come off the reservations—her mother did. My father is Irish. Just enough of the blood to make me long for the outside. I'd like to preach to you sometime on my experiences, how I found God in nature. God lives in nature.

And I used to go up there and hunt with him, because you never had to worry about Burt ever being lost. He knowed where he was at and a good shot. But he was the meanest man I ever seen. He was so cruel hearted. And one year I went up there. . . . He used to shoot little baby fawns just to make me feel bad. I said, “Burt, you don't have to do that. There's no need of you shooting a little baby fawn. We got plenty of time. Hunt a deer, one that's old.”

“Oh,” he said, “preacher, you're chicken-hearted. That's what's the matter with you bunch of preachers,” said, “you're just chicken-hearted.”

I said, “Burt. . . .”

He said, “I thought you was a hunter.”

I said, “I'm a hunter, but I'm not a killer.” I said, “That's wrong.” I was a game warden for seven years just before coming into the ministry. Now, I said, “I'm a conservationist and I don't believe in doing that”; though it was legal to shoot a fawn—but not a dozen.

But he'd do it just to be mean, to make me feel bad.

You know there's people like that in the world, or just make fun of you just to make you feel bad, say something evil about you. It isn't the person; it's the devil in that person, that's all. That person loves his wife just the same as you love yours, and so forth, likes to eat, and sleep, and drink, and be sociable, and things; but they just do it because the devil has control of them. That maniac in Gadarea, that man loved and everything. But he was so possessed of the devil until the devil used his tongue to speak: “We know thee, thou Holy One of God, why do you come to torment us?” That wasn't that man; it was the devil using his voice.

And a man can be so full of God till God can use your voice, too. Did you ever notice a maniac, it takes several men to hold him? His power is so great because he's so possessed with the devil. This man could break chains. If the devil can give a man that much power, how much more can He give you in these wheelchairs power of His Spirit to rise. Wheelchairs or nothing could hold you if God really gets ahold. Not when a preacher gets ahold; but when God gets ahold, something takes place! I'm not beside myself, I know right where I am; but I just feel religious. If God really could take ahold of this church tonight, what would take place? He's here. His Spirit is here. He wants to do it. He longs to do it! if we'll just let Him. “I can, if you will.”

Now notice. One year I went up to hunt with Burt, and we started hunting. He said, “I want to show you something, Billy.”

I said, “All right.”

He reached down in his pocket (and he had eyes looked like a lizard anyhow), and he looked over with them lizard-looking eyes and he blowed this little whistle, and it sounded like a little baby fawn crying for its mama. I said, “Burt, you wouldn't do that!”

He said, “Aw, preacher, get next to yourself.” Said, “Sure, I'm going to do it. I'm going to hang a string of fawns all the way across this room just to show them to you.”

Said, “Oh, Burt, you're so wicked.” And I said, “Why don't you be a Christian? You'd stop that stuff.”

He said, “Aw, go on, Billy.”

We went hunting that day. There was about six or eight inches of snow, just enough to track good. It was a little late in the season and so . . . I'd had to work late and I didn't get up there at the time of my vacation. And we started up over the White Mountains off of Highway 2 coming from New Hampshire—down through New Hampshire, from Berlin coming down through, going over to Lancaster by the highway, crosses . . . only one through the Presidential Range. We was going up towards Mount Washington. And it was a little chilly, and we hunted all morning long. Deers were very scarce. They'd been hunted and they was . . . them little fellows, when a gun fires, they take for cover. You don't see them no more till the next spring. And they were hiding, and we'd hunted all morning and did not even see one track.

And we come to a little opening where there was a snowdrift. The winds had blowed, the snow had drifted up, oh, three or four feet high. And Burt just kind of, as we'd call it, hunkered down. He reached back in his bosom here. It was about eleven o'clock. We always carried a thermos jug of hot chocolate—where if we got hurt, or got real cold or something, we'd drink this hot chocolate, and kind of the candy, the sweetness-like in there, would kind of warm you up—and maybe a sandwich. Well, I thought Burt was getting hungry, so we'll just eat a sandwich here. He'd kind of hunkered down and went back in his bosom, but when he brought it out, it was that little whistle. And we were in a little clearing about three or four times the size of this courtroom. And he looked up at me with that lizard-looking eyes of his, and he laughed to himself.

I said, “Burt, you wouldn't do that.” And he gave it a blow. And to my surprise, just across the place a big mother doe stood up. Now, that's unusual. Oh, she was a pretty animal. Now, the doe is the mother, and she was standing there. I was so close to her I could see her great big pretty ears sticking up. And turned and looked up to me again with them lizard eyes, and he blowed it again. Now, that's unusual that time of day for a deer to raise, but she heard the cry of a baby.

And he blew it, and she walked right out into the open. Now, they never do that. They never do that because, if they'd even raise up, they'd stay under cover; but she walked right out in the open.

And he looked up at me, and I thought, “Oh, Burt, you couldn't do that.” I heard the click of the bolt when that 30.06 . . . throwed in there a shell and locked it down. And he was a dead shot. And he leveled the rifle. I thought, “Oh, mercy.” She never . . . if she heard that click of the rifle. . . . And when she looked, them big ears stood up, and those big brown eyes, and she seen the hunter. Why, usually they'd be gone like a flash; but not her—she was a mother. A baby was in trouble. Though it meant death, her baby was in trouble.

She couldn't help it. She wasn't putting something on. She didn't have a make-believe, there was something in her. She was born a mother, and her baby was calling—death or no death. She looked at the hunter, and I seen them still arms raise down with that rifle.

I thought, “Oh, my, Burt, how can you do it? That loyal heart of a mother beating for her baby, and another minute, when you squeeze that trigger with them cross hairs laid across her, you'll blow her loyal heart plumb through her.” (That close. I was thirty yards from her.) I thought, “There won't even be one piece of heart left in her, that heart that's beating so loyal as a mother. How can you do it, Burt?” I couldn't watch it. I turned my head. I said, “Heavenly Father [in my . . . quietly], don't let him do it. How can he do it when he sees that mother? Something in her she can't help it, she's a mother.”

I kept listening, and the gun never went off. I waited a few seconds, and still the gun never went off. And I turned to look and the gun barrel was going like this. He looked around at me and throwed the gun on the ground. He grabbed me by the pants leg and he said, “Preacher, I've had enough of it. Lead me to that Jesus that you're talking about. I want to know Him.”

What was the matter? He'd went to church all of his life. He'd seen hypocrites and everything else; but he seen something real. He seen something that wasn't a put-on. He seen something that was really godly. That old mother deer's display of loyalty as a mother led that cruel-hearted hunter to God right there on that snowbank. Unloaded his rifle and said, “I'll never shoot a little fawn as long as . . . day I live.” He's a deacon in one of the Baptist churches in New Hampshire now.

What is it? Brother, sister, wouldn't you like to be a Christian, as much Christian as she was a mother? Wouldn't you like to display your loyalty and your faith to Christ? No matter what it cost you, stand out there with something in you? You can't do it until it's born in you. If you haven't had that experience, something in there that makes you . . . something that's real to you—not because you belong to a church; because that Christ lives in you—something that is real, would you like to have that? How many in here right now? While people with their heads up, just raise your hands and say, “Brother, I'd like to be as much Christian in my heart to display the loyalty to Christ as that old mother deer was to be a mother.” Raise your hand. God bless you. Let us pray.

Lord, the queen of the south stood like that mother deer, in the midst of the people, and she professed and said that truly this come from God. Something had happened to her. God had spoke to her heart. And You assured us that she was not dead, but she would stand in the resurrection and would condemn those who refuse to hear You. I pray tonight, Lord, in the name of Your Son, Jesus, that You will let the Holy Spirit take every hand that was raised tonight, and those who ought to have raised their hands, and along with me, Lord, and create in us a loyalty, a realness—such a real experience of the new birth, of being born of the Spirit of God, till we can display before the world and before the people we work and associate with a real display of Christianity. Grant it, Lord.

You know every heart here and the hunger that's therein. Fill it, Lord, according to Your riches and Your grace. I commit them to Thee.

Now, Lord, I pray that You'll walk out on the scene tonight. Come, Lord, riding on the waves, come down in the whirlwind, come in the pillar of fire. Let the people know that these things . . . that You have also sent the Holy Spirit as a witness in this day as You said You would do it.

And may every person here be so full of Your Spirit until there'll not be a feeble person in our midst when the service is over. May those who are not Christians become Christians. Those who have accepted You as Saviour and has not yet been born of the Spirit, filled with the Holy Ghost, we pray that they'll receive it tonight; that those that are sick and afflicted will walk away with the assurance resting in their heart, something that will make them stand in the trials of the devil to try to take it away from them. Yet they can say, “It is written, by His stripes I'm healed.”

Many will not be in the prayer line. Many will be standing on the outside that wants healing. Lord, let them know that You're in reach of everyone. You're able and willing to give them the strength and the faith that will stand no matter what their conditions or physical beings look like. They'll still believe it, and confess it, and You'll bring it to pass, and the neighborhood where they live will see that there's something real, that the Holy Spirit has moved on them.

Sinners, drunkards, those who has lived immoral, broken their vows to their wives and their husbands, sweethearts that's untrue—let them see, Lord, that it takes God to make a man or woman what they should be; stand boldly tonight and confess You, and be filled with the Spirit of God, and go away from here just as gallant a Christian as the old mother deer that I have told about was a mother. Grant it, Father. We'll praise Thee, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

I know you're tired, standing, and I've preached lengthy (almost nine o'clock), but it's just a few more minutes now. Now, just these little. . . . I'm not a preacher. You know that. My gift is something else. You've got ministers here who are trained. I'm untrained, and my old seventh-grade education doesn't go very far. But I love to tell what I know, I love to share it with someone else. But my ministry is to the sick; and through the sick we catch the sinner. It's just like taking a bait and putting it on a hook. You don't show the fish the hook; you show him the bait. He takes the bait and gets the hook. So that's the way with preaching the gospel. It's to show you, show you Christ. And in there He can get ahold of you, and lead you and guide you, and take you out of the contaminated stream where you're dying with sawdust in your gills, and put you into the waters of eternal life where you can swim freely. He's only trying to do something good for you.

Now, there is no man in the world that can heal another man. We know that. The doctor could not do it. There's no medicine that can do it. There never was a medicine that healed anybody, and never will be. And there's not a sound-minded doctor would say that there was. If he does, he needs mental healing. I've been interviewed at Mayo Clinic. They said, “We do not profess to be healers, Reverend Branham. We profess that we assist nature. There's one healer—that's God.” God is the only healer. And what God does for His healing, He's already made preparations for you; the only thing you have to do is receive it.

Looky here. (That kind of didn't go very good, I'm afraid.)

What if I was cranking my car or doing something, I broke my arm and run in to the doctor and said, “Doctor, heal it. You are a healer.”

He'd say, “Brother Branham, you need healing in your head!” And that's right. Now, he can set it, but God has to heal it. He can take a tooth out, but God has to heal where the tooth came out. He can extract appendicitis, but God has to heal.

Someone said, “What about penicillin for a bad cold?” Well, penicillin is like. . . . You got a house full of rats and they're eating holes in the house. You put out some rat poison, it kills the rats—but it don't patch the holes. Penicillin kills the germs, but God has to restore that back again where the germs has been. Certainly. There's no healing but God.

Look, if I cut my hand with a knife and fell down dead here, there isn't a medicine in the world could heal my hand. Any medicine that healed my hand, a cut in my hand, would heal a cut in my coat. Well, you say, “It wasn't made for the coat, Brother Branham. It was made for the human body.” All right. Let me fall down dead, and you take me over to the morgue and embalm my body with a fluid and make me look natural for fifty years, give me a shot of penicillin every day. Let the doctors come dress it, sew it up, and fifty years from today it looks exactly like it was when it was cut. Well, you say, “Sure, the life is gone out of you.” Then which is the healer, the medicine or the life? You tell me what life is and I'll tell you who God is.

See, God is the healer. Now that doesn't discard medicine. Medicine doeth good, and a merry heart doeth good like medicine. Now, but God is the only healer.

So the only way that you can. . . . If your doctor's done all that he can do, God is here to make you well. When you become so filled with His Spirit and power and faith that you can raise yourself to a faith to walk out on something real (God), then you're going to walk, live, and be all right. He wouldn't take one and not the other. He'd take them all.

Now, my ministry is the ministry that the Lord Jesus used here on earth, as the Father used Him, for discernment. We went through it last night. Most all of you, I guess, was here last evening. Now, we give out prayer cards every day fresh because that we believe that somebody, and everybody, gets healed.

Now you just remember, pastors, from last night's meeting there's many people that sat here, that wasn't around that prayer line, was healed. I could tell it. My son said, and my brother here, when we went out the door, said, “You stayed a little too long.”

I said, “I know it, but how could I help it? Them lovely people standing there waiting and . . . I just stayed, that's all.” Today I've just laid around all day because I felt it very bad. So, you see, it's your faith. It's your faith in God, your own individual faith. If I could heal you, I sure would do it. I would be glad to, but I can't. But with a divine gift. . . . The first. . . . “Faith comes by hearing, hearing the Word.” Then when faith comes, and you hear the Word, if that won't work. . . . As far as you or I would be concerned, if people don't believe our word that would settle it; but not God. After He sent His Word, then He set in the church first apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors, and so forth, in His church to perfect the church. Now, these things are gifts that God sets in the church.

Now, I forgot, but Billy told me that he give out prayer cards, but I can't. . . . Card B, 1 to 100? 1 to 100? All right, where did we start from last night? Where? Let's start from somewhere else tonight. Let's start from 25 tonight. B25. Prayer card B25. The lady has it? Come right here. B26.

It's got a B on it and a number 26. The boys comes down, one of the boys mixes them all up together and hands them to anybody that wants them, see. You can have them. It's just a number to be called. You don't have to have your prayer card. Where one's healed here on the platform, there's twenty-five healed out there. Certainly. It's your faith. How many was here last night to see that happen? Raise up your hand, all out through the audience, no matter who you are.

Let's see, where did we start? B what, 25? 26, 27, B27, 28, 29, 30, 31. Did I say 31? B3l, 3l, 32. The reason we do this, we don't want them all race at one time. It's not an arena, it's a church now, see. It keeps everything decently and in order. How many see that that's right? The only way you can do it. What if I said, “How many here wants to be prayed for?” How many does, raise up your hand. Now, who's first? We're not going to get to too many, that's one thing sure, because it just kills me. And there'll be . . . for every one here there'll be somebody out in there receive it, see.

How far did we get to there, brother? What say? B32, B32. Oh, you got it. B33, 34, B34, 35, 36. Did I say 36? B36, 37, 38, 39. 39, would you raise your hand, ever who has it, please. 40, 40, B40, all right. (Is that enough? You got some more room down there? Some more room?) All right, 41, 42. What's the number? 42, who has it? Is that 42 raising up there? B43, prayer card B43, 44, 45, 45. Over here, come. 46, B46, 47, 47. Look and see, somebody look. I see a lady here that's got a prayer card. What say? 47. Let's take it on to 50. You pile them out there somewhere. 47, 48, who has 48? 49, 49 way in the back, way back. All right. They got them all over the building. 49. Let the lady come down. 50, who has B50? Prayer card B50, would you. . . . Is it here? I'm sorry. Back there wherever it is, come. B50.

That way. . . . They got a whole crowd standing in here

and so let's let them line the people and get them picked out in the hall and down the steps. And now I want to ask ever . . . was you standing up there, sir? All right, come on in here. All right. Now let's hold it there just for a little bit. Now, how many in here that does not have a prayer card and you want God to heal you? Raise your hand. Well, it's practically everywhere. All right.

Jesus said. . . . If there's someone here that wasn't here last night when we went through the instructions (while they're lining the people up),

Jesus said in the Scripture, or the Bible said of Jesus, rather, that when He passed through the multitude, why, went . . . going over into a certain country and there was people in there that was all around Him and greeting Him. And there was a woman had a blood issue; and she pressed through the crowd and touched the border of his garment, for she said, “If I must even touch the border of his garment, I'll be made well.” How many remembers that story? And quickly He felt it. Now, we illustrated last night: Here was the garment around the Master, with an underneath garment. He did not physically feel it, for she touched this; but that on the inside felt it.

And He said, “Who touched me?”

And Simon Peter as much as rebuked Him and said, “Why do you say such a thing? All of them is touching you.”

He said, “But I perceive that I have gotten weak; virtue has gone from Me.” And He looked all around over the audience until He found the person. Then, when He found the person, He said . . . told her about her blood issue, that her faith had healed her. Is that right? Her faith had healed her.

Now, the Bible said that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That's true. And to these clergymen here, and to back in there, doesn't the Scripture teach us, the New Testament, that He is a high priest that can be touched by the feeling of our infirmities? Well, if He's the same high priest—the same yesterday, today, and forever—then if He is touched, He'll act the same way that He did yesterday because He can't do no more. He's the same high priest.

And remember this, friends. While we're getting the people ready, I want to leave this with you. If anyone ever asks you on it, do you believe that God is infinite? Then if God is ever called on the scene (a crisis arises, and God is ever called on the scene to act), the way that God acts the first time, He has to forever act the same way. If He doesn't, He acted wrong when He acted the first time. If a sinner called on Him to be saved, He's got to save that sinner, if He saved the first sinner that called on Him. That's right. If He was called on for sickness and He healed the first man by his faith, He's got to heal the next man and every other person that comes to Him; or if He didn't, He did wrong when He healed the first one, because He's infinite.

Now, I can say something, I'll have to take it back because I'm just a man. You can say something with all good intentions, but you have to take it back many times. You're finite, you're just a human. But He's God. He doesn't know . . . He isn't any smarter today than He was at the beginning. He's perfect from beginning to end. He's the same, so His decisions is always the same—perfectly. So the God that we serve (just remember this, keep it in your mind), the God that we serve has always been God and always will be God. He cannot change.

And to manifest Hisself before Israel, to show that He was the Messiah, and the ending up of that Jewish dispensation, He showed signs of discernment, like He did to Philip, when he went and got Nathanael and brought him. He told him, “I knowed where you was at. You're an Israelite. Saw you under the tree before you come to the meeting.”

When he went and got Simon Peter, brought him, He said, “Your name is Simon, your father's name is Jonas.” Oh, my, that got him. And when He told Nathanael, He said, “Behold an Israelite, in whom there's no guile!”

He said, “Rabbi [reverend, preacher, teacher, the word really means teacher], when did you know me? You never seen me in your life. How do you know that I'm a just man and a Hebrew?”

He said, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the tree, I saw you.”

He said, “Rabbi, you're the Son of God; you're the King of Israel.” That was a real true Jew.

That great, starchy Jew said, “He's a devil. He's a fortune-teller.” That's when Jesus said what I spoke about while ago.

Then He had to go down in Samaria. Remember, there's only three classes of people. That's Ham, Shem, and Japheth's people. How many remembers that Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom? We all know that. And on the day of Pentecost, who opened the kingdom of God? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John? Peter. Philip went down and baptized the Samaritans, but yet the Holy Ghost had come upon not them; and he sent up to the men that had the keys. Coming down, laid hands upon them, opened up the dispensation to the Samaritans. He went up to the house of Cornelius to the Gentiles, and opened up at Cornelius's house, and since then it's been to anybody, or whosoever, see. No more was the keys used, because the kingdom's open.

Now, when Jesus come, He made Himself known to the Jews because they were looking for a God-prophet to rise, which would be the Messiah. How many understands that? Deuteronomy 18:5, when God said, “I'll raise up a prophet among your brethren, like unto Moses. And it'll come to pass, that every soul that will not hear this prophet, he'll be cut off from amongst the people.” And they were looking for a prophet, a God-prophet, a man, Immanuel. Spoke in Isaiah and said how “I'll give you an eternal sign; that a virgin shall conceive, and bear a child, and He'll be Immanuel”—God with us, God manifested in the flesh.

See, all it is, is God condescends. God's holy, above sin. Sin had not yet been judged, so to make Hisself on the law of redemption, He had to be a near kinsman on the law of redemption, like Ruth and Naomi, Boaz. God made Himself a body, his Son created in the womb of Mary, a blood cell. Do you believe that? And Jesus was born without sexual desire. He was born a virgin birth. That blood cell was made by Jehovah God.

Then after He was baptized in water, John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and going on Him, a voice saying, “This is my beloved Son, [correctly like this] in whom I am pleased to dwell in.” God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Jesus said, “It's not me that doeth these things, it's my Father. The Son can do nothing in Himself but what He sees the Father doing.” And then God was with us. God above us, God with us in Christ. Immanuel, God with us.

And then when that blood cell was broke at Calvary, and the blood was shed, the Spirit. . . . Under the old dispensation, sin was just covered. Not forgiven; covered, because the blood of goats and bulls would not take away sin. It only covered it. But when the life that was in the animal that died. . . . The life could not come back and be a spirit with the human being, because it was animal life without a soul. But when Jesus died, it was the soul of God; and when that cell was broke, it sanctified a church, that the Holy Spirit could live in us who were sexual born. Then it's God above us; God with us; now it's God in us.

“A little while, and the world won't see me no more;” said Jesus, “[That's cosmos, the world order, it won't see me no more.] yet ye shall see me: [ye, the church, the believers] for I [and anyone with a grammar school education knows I is a personal pronoun], I will be with you, even in you, to the end of the world.” Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.

If the first bunch of people. . . . He's the vine, John 15, and we are the branches. Now, the vine does not bear fruit. The branch bears fruit as it's energized by the vine. And if the first branch out of that vine produced a church that wrote a book of Acts, the second branch will do the same thing. And every branch that comes out of that vine will be energized by the same life that's in the vine. Amen.

I'd like to come down sometime and talk this over with you. Oh, it's no secret what God can do, if He can get people who'll believe Him. Now, there's . . . I hope there's no one leaves here tonight disappointed. There's no reason for it. Some of you are here, maybe, with heart trouble, may not live but just a little while. Others with cancer won't live but a little while—your doctor has done all he knows to do. Here's those . . . two or three people sitting here in wheelchairs might live a normal life, a long time, but you'll never come out of the wheelchair unless God helps you. That's right.

But usually, when you take a person in a wheelchair, they think, “Well, I'm hopeless.” No, you're not. No more harder for God to heal you than it would be to stop a toothache. He's infinite God. You just have to let Him have control and then place a faith in here, and it goes to work.

Right immediately you might not see nothing happen, but you remember St. Mark 11:24? Jesus passed by a tree, there was no figs on it. He said, “No man eateth from thee,” and went on. They didn't see no difference in that tree. But way down beneath the ground, at the roots, it started dying; and within twenty-four hours, when they passed by again, it had begin to wither. That's the same thing takes place with a cancer when God's Spirit curses that thing. You might go back to the doctor, it looks just the same, but way down deep it's a-dying. Way down deep upon you, if you accepted Christ as your healer (maybe you can move that finger just a little teeny bit more), God's on the job. “Believe what you say shall come to pass, and you can have what you say.” If that isn't true, then God isn't true, then the Bible isn't true.

Now, what does He do? Now, He doesn't give men power to heal, neither to save. No man can forgive your sins—it's already forgiven. You just have to accept your pardon. No man can heal you, but God has already did it. You just have to accept it, that's all. And maybe you have mustard-seed faith, just a little bit. But if you've got mustard-seed faith, just hold on to it. Mustard seed won't mix with nothing else. And if you got real faith that won't mix with no unbelief, hold on to it. It'll wind you around the curve, and finally you're out of the cage, you're in the light. Just hold on to it.

Hold to it like Abraham did: twenty-five years with a perfect testimony he never staggered with unbelief. And all the time he got older, and the case got more impossible. But instead of getting weaker and saying “Well, I guess I never got it,” he was strong, giving praise to God. “If it didn't come when I was seventy-five, it'll come when I'm eighty. If it don't come till I'm eighty-five, it'll be greater than it was if it come when I was seventy-five.” Went on to a hundred, and God performed the miracle—turned him back to a young man. Him and Sarah, a young woman, they raised children. And after that, after forty-five years later, he had seven more sons. God is God.

Yes, sir, turned them back to a young man and woman again.

You've probably read my literature on that. It's exactly what He done. Why did the king of Gerar down there fall in love with Sarah (a little grandma, a hundred years old) looking for a sweetheart? She was a beautiful young woman. He turned her back to a young woman to show what He'll do to all Abraham's seed. Some of these days, Mother, the wrinkles will leave your face. Dad, that gray hair will drop away. The God of Abraham will come. Things will be changed then. We'll come back in the splinter. . . .

Tell me one thing, answer me this: Why was it when you eat food (the same food you eat now) when you was fifteen years old, you was renewing your life every time you put food into your body (you renew your life blood cells), you got stronger and stronger till about twenty-five; and now no matter how much you eat you're going down. Explain it to me.

Pouring water out of a jug in a glass, it gets about half full; then the more you pour, the farther down it goes. It's an appointment you've got with God. You're going to meet it, too. That's exactly right. Yes, sir.

But remember (you believe on Him), “He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me has eternal life, and I'll raise him up at the last day.” That's right. It'll raise him up. God moves. . . . And there'll never be an old person resurrected old. They'll be young there forever. That's exactly. Christianity is based upon not replacement, reincarnation, but resurrection. The same one went down come up, but in the splinter of immortality, made like unto His own glorious body, where He's able to subdue all things unto Himself. That would make a Baptist shout. Yes, it would. Oh, it's real, real, real.

And to think that we don't have to guess about it. The God that made the promise is right here tonight to show Himself among us, resurrected from the dead. Two thousand years, and still alive tonight. Then if eternal life rests within you, it's just as alive as it was . . . well, it just always was alive. And it's got you under its control, and “I will raise you up at the last day.” God is real. Isn't He wonderful?

All right. Now we'll begin the prayer line. How many in here is strangers to me, that I do not know you or know anything about you? Raise up your hands. Down the prayer line, every one of them. How many you got out there now? Fifty? Be hard to get them through. We will not stop just the discernment on each one, but that people might understand and know. . . . We'll get just as many through as we possibly can.

You out there pray. Now, just take all your worries and things and cast them over to the side. This is that moment, friends, that you've stood and waited for.

Now I must cease right now, because from here on it can't be me.

What if Jesus was standing here wearing this suit that He had Brother Palmer to give me? What if He had on this suit, and this woman was standing before Him, and she'd say, “Sir, I'm sick. Will you heal me?” You know what His answer would be? “Child, I did that when I died for you back yonder at the cross.” Is that right? Well, now the only thing He could do would make some kind of a sign to let her know—say something to her—that He was there, or know that it was Him. Is that right? Now, I don't know nothing about her, but by a gift I surrender myself to Him and He speaks through my lips.

God doesn't have any lips but yours and mine. He doesn't have any ears or eyes but mine and yours. Did you know that? We are the branches, He's just the vine. The vine doesn't bear fruit. The branches. See, He's here in the form of spirit. He will come physically some day in a corporal body, but now He's spirit in His church. “At that day you'll know that I am in the Father and you in me and I in you,” and so forth, see. That day you'll know it, see. “I and my Father working in you.” See, God in us.

Now, if He is the same as He was then, and giving His last call to the Gentiles. . . . Remember, that settled the Jewish dispensation, after they'd had years of theology and teaching. Now the church has had them years—the Gentiles. Now it's coming to their end. Now here's a case tonight exactly of St. John the fourth chapter. A man and a woman meets, and God wants to show to the Samaritans that He is God and that's His Messiah. Now the Messiah is the Holy Spirit, not me. Now understand that. I'm a man just like you, but the Messiah is the one that's here, the supernatural one. Each one of you has got part of Him in you, see. That's the Messiah.

Now, by a gift . . . it has to come somewhere.

Now if He's the same yesterday, today, and forever, and this woman standing here and has a need. . . . I don't know her need, might not be as that woman's was. I don't know what her need is. But if He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He wants you all to believe in Him, and know that He is the same (like He wanted the Samaritans to know), He'd perform the same thing that He did then. Is that reasonable? And that's not only reasonable, that's what the Scriptures said that He would do.

Now, here I've never seen the woman in my life. If I did, I didn't know her. Now, I guess this is our first time meeting. You don't know me? [Sister answers.] She said I didn't know her but she was back . . . she was out to service Friday night out there. Of course I would never know somebody sitting back in the meeting. I don't know nothing about her, never seen her, have no idea. She might be having domestic trouble at home, she might not even be married.

She may be . . . she might be standing there just as a deceiver, see. She might be standing there as a . . . just a. . . .

She's saying, “Thank you, Jesus”; that don't mean she's a Christian. I've heard hypocrites say that a lot of times, go out and take another man's wife home with him. Sure. And say, “Thank you, Jesus.” Certainly. That don't mean nothing. You've got to be born of the Spirit of God, have something in here that makes you a Christian. That's right.

She might be standing for someone else. Who is she? Where did she come from? I don't know. God knows that; I don't. But now if the Holy Spirit is here, as I say He is. . . . I want you to listen to this, mother, young ladies, all of you in here. Listen. If Jesus Christ has raised from the dead and can prove that He's alive, then every one of his promises can be made just as true to you tonight as it was to them in Galilee.

But is He alive? That's the next thing.

Now, Jesus said this generation would receive the sign of Jonah—the resurrection. Now, is He alive? Is this Jesus that we're talking about. . . . We know He was crucified, died, buried. The Jews said He was stole away, but is He alive? He said He would be. He'd come back again in the form of the Holy Ghost, be with us, do the same works, working through us to the end of the consummation, or the age. Now, if He is, He'll act the same way. He wouldn't do anything different.

Now, the only thing I can do is to submit myself to a gift, and then see what He says. Now, if He will do such. . . . Both the lady and I with our hands up and the Bible laying here, we've never met in our life. And many of you out there no doubt, God will go right out there tonight if you'll believe. He'll say. . . . You do this, you say, “Lord Jesus, I have a need in my heart. I know that preacher don't know me.”

Someone was telling me last night, when they went by, they said, “I know that man didn't know me. He had no way of knowing me.” Certainly I do not, but God does know you. He knowed you before the world ever was founded. He knowed you. He knowed every flea would be on the earth and how many times he would bat his eyes. He's infinite, see. He knowed the end from the beginning. Now, He wouldn't act a different way. He'd have to act the same way.

You say, “Brother Branham, you're stalling for something.” I am, that's exactly right. If He don't come, I'll just have to leave here, that's. . . . I'll just pray for the sick. I'm totally helpless, I've got to wait for Him.

How many seen the picture of it? They've got pictures in Washington, D.C.

Now, in the name of Jesus Christ I take, in the Holy Spirit, every soul that's sitting present for the kingdom of God's sake. Obey what you're told, from henceforth it'll be Him. Let the audience know this (if I never see you again until the resurrection): the Spirit, the Life, the pillar of fire, the same One that led the children of Israel, that you see on that picture, it'll show the same signs. That was Jesus. He was, in Him, the pillar of fire. How many knows that? Before Abraham was, I AM. I AM at the burning bush. If He acted like that in a man. . . . He's here now. That same pillar of fire isn't two foot from where I'm standing right now. That's true.

Now, what He does, I don't know. God bless you. Sometimes it makes me completely unconscious nearly if I try to get this whole prayer line. But if I don't see you no more this side of the river, I'll see you on the other side one of these days. God bless you. God be with you.

Now, heavenly Father, we commit ourselves to Thee. Thank You for coming. We know the meeting is all in your control now. And I pray that You'll take your humble servants: I, your servant, to use my eyes and lips; your servants out there, with their ears and heart to hear and to see. And through us together, working together, all of us, may the power of God take full control of this meeting. May there not be a sinner be able to leave the building without being saved. May no one that hasn't got the Holy Ghost . . . may they be filled tonight with the Spirit (of all churches, denominations). May every sick person, every afflicted person be healed. We commit it to You now. Speak from henceforth, Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Be just as reverent as you can. Now to speak to the woman. Our Lord met the woman at the well and I'm doing the same thing here that He did there (He talked to her just a moment) because I've been preaching. What was He trying to do? The Father had sent Him up there. He had needs go by Samaria, and He did nothing till the Father showed Him. St. John 5:19. Then He went to Samaria. Then He didn't know what to do. This woman come out. He was just waiting. He begin to talk to her. Said, “Woman, bring me a drink.”

She said, “It's not customary for you to ask a Samaritan such. You're a Jew.”

He said, “But if you knew who you were talking to, you'd ask me for a drink.”

The conversation went on till He found where her trouble was. That's the same thing I'm trying to do now by His Spirit—find what's wrong with her. What are you doing standing here? You be the judge whether it's right or not, see. I can only . . . I don't know, but if He tells me, you know whether it's right or not. And then when He found her trouble, her trouble was immoral. Said, “Go get your husband and come here.”

She said, “I have no husband.”

He said, “You've said right. You've had five; the one you're now living with is not your husband.”

She said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. We know, we Samaritans, we know that when the Messiah cometh, He'll tell us these things. But I don't know who you are.”

He said, “I'm he.”

Now, if you're a woman of the United States, do you believe the Messiah would do the same thing today? Are you taught to believe that, to believe that He'd do the same thing? I believe that. Now, you're aware that something is going on. It's the angel of the Lord coming between you and I, settling to you. The woman is suffering with something wrong in her breast. That's true. If that's right raise your hand. Now, you see, you don't see it. Now, do you believe? That's His Spirit.

Now, she's a wonderful person. She's a Christian, a real Christian. Now, she's a lovely person to deal with. Let's talk to the woman just a moment, see what the Holy Spirit will say. Then the next one . . . we'll just pray for a few, so we can get the line through.

Then you start praying out there, every one of you that have needs, just start praying. Say, “God, that man doesn't know me, but let me touch Your garment. Then You use his lips and speak back, then I'll be assured that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, giving his final sign to the Gentile church, the called-out church, the separated group, like Abraham and his group.”

Now, sister, I don't know what I said, see. Whatever it is, it's on the tape over there, see. Whatever it was was right, wasn't it? Now, I have no way of knowing you. I wouldn't know you from anyone. But that's the only way . . . there's something supernatural here now that knows you, see. You're aware of that. You think it is the Lord Jesus? You think it is His Spirit speaking through me? Thank you.

Yes, I see the woman, her trouble. See it back again now. It's in her breast. That's right, and she's got trouble with her side. That's true. Got trouble with your heart, trouble with your throat. That's right, isn't it? I didn't guess that. The Holy Spirit's here to reveal, knows. She knows whether that's right or not. She raises her hand solemnly that's true. Now, you know that there's something here, some spirit that knows that woman, coming from the Bible, a promise of God. Isn't He wonderful? Do you believe Him now? Just let that settle down.

I don't know you. God does. What if God would tell me who you are? He knowed Simon Peter, He knowed Philip. You think He knows you? Would that help you? Mrs. Taylor, go home, you're over your sickness. Jesus Christ makes you well

the lily of the valley, the morning star, the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, He that was, which is, and shall come, the root and offspring of David. Oh, His majesty, His mercy, His goodness, the Holy Spirit of God here at the platform.

For your baby? Many suffers with the same disease. You believe its little heart will get well and it'll be all right? You believe? Father God, the baby's too little to have faith. May it be well in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. Don't doubt; the baby will live. Go home and be thankful to God now.

Come, sister. How do you do? We're strangers to each other. I feel that coming from somewhere, I'm reading their minds. Don't do that. You hinder the meeting. Here, put your hand on mine, sister. Now, if God shows me out here what your trouble is, you raise your hand if it's true. You suffer with a ladies' trouble, female trouble. If that's right, raise up your hand. This lady here, ladies' trouble. Now is that mind reading? You're healed now, sister, you can go on back home.

You don't have to come up with that arthritis; you done got well. Trouble in your back. Just turn and go right on home, saying “Thank you, Lord Jesus, for healing me.” If you can believe. Do you believe? Have faith now, don't doubt. All right.

I don't know you. I'm a stranger to you, but if God will tell me about you. . . . It's our first time meeting, but if God will tell me about you, you'll believe? Nervous, got a hernia. Reverend Orr, go home and be well. God bless you.

Your heart trouble is all right. Go right. . . . The arthritis will leave you if you'll believe. Will you believe it? [Brother Branham continues prayer line.]

You believe with all your heart? Just have faith in God. Believe, don't doubt! Have faith in God. All right.

You, lady, do you believe with all your heart? Want to stand right there? You believe God will talk to me about you standing there? (I turned my head around because there's people out there praying. I was trying to catch where it was at.) I want to talk to you just a minute. If God will tell me what your trouble is, or where your trouble is, or something, you'll believe with all your heart? You got nervousness, heart trouble. That's right. Something wrong with your eye, growth on your right eye. That's right. You want to be healed. Mrs. Todd, go home and be well. Jesus Christ. . . .