Broken Cisterns

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 Let us pray. Lord, now we believe. We believe on the Son of God, and through this we accept eternal life through Him. Now, we have gathered again this afternoon---or this evening for another service, trusting You for the message and for what You will tell us tonight. We believe Thee, Lord, and we wait upon Thee. You said, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like an eagle." And we pray, God, that You'll give us that mounting-up power tonight as we wait on Thee.
We thank Thee for these people and for what they mean to You and what they mean to me. I thank You for it, Father. They are your jewels. And I pray, God, that tonight that You will manifest Yourself in the way to them that they have need of. If there is sick here, may they be healed. If there's a doubt in someone's mind, clear it up, Lord, and just give us of thy presence and thy blessings, because we need them, Lord, You are our all-sufficiency, and without You we cannot do nothing.
We pray that You'll receive our thanksgiving for all that You have done. In the name of Jesus Christ we look forward to your blessings. Amen. May be seated.

2 Well, it's just a bit cooler this Sunday night in there than it was last Sunday night. So we're very grateful to our brothers who worked so faithfully in getting this in. I know two or three of them: Brother Mike Egan, as I see back there, and Brother Mike and Brother Sothmann, Brother, I believe, Roy Roberson, and Brother Wood, and all of them, they were down here just sweating it out, trying to get it in so we could have this message now---or today. So we're grateful.

3 Now, next Sunday morning, the Lord willing, I want to have a healing service, prayers for the sick. And we'll designate it to a healing service, if the Lord willing.
I noticed this morning there's a bunch of handkerchiefs here. I prayed for them, and I... While you were praying and singing, I prayed for the handkerchiefs, and then there's more here tonight. So we believe that God heals the sick, so many great testimonies of healing among us and across the world. And we're grateful for this.
And I thought, next Sunday, being I have to be away for a little bit, and we've been holding so much just to the teaching and of the message, that I thought would be a good thing if we had a healing service, prayed for the sick. And we trust that God will give us a great time.

4 Now, many of you have to drive many miles tonight. So I was talking to groups over at the Blue Boar Cafeteria today where I was having dinner, many fine people. I got to shake their hands and talk with them, people I never met before that comes here to the church. And I'm grateful for such friends, and I want to thank each and every one of you. Some of them had picked blackberries and brought us. And one brought us a bucket of syrup---or molasses, I believe it was, and just things... You don't know what that means. And of a morning, I come up and go out of the house, sometime there was...

5 Other morning there was some brother there that was real bad off, had no clothes and things, wanted me to go get him some clothes. I started out, and I almost stumbled over a bucket of blackberries setting there. I said, "Did you bring these blackberries?"
And he said, "No, never had nothing to do with it. I been here 'fore daylight, and they was setting here then." And it was my good Brother Ruddell had brought them to me. And so those things I certainly appreciate.
Billy Paul just made mention to me a few moments ago that among this congregation tonight, they took up an offering that---for me. I thank you for that. I didn't want you to do that. I just appreciate your efforts and so forth, but that wasn't necessary, and... But the Lord bless you. You know, the Bible said, "Insomuch as you have done unto the least of these, you have did it unto me."

6 Now, I been kind of speaking to you on the message very straight, and I ... some people might be under the impression that I think that Jesus is going to come in the morning or tonight. I do! Now, I don't say that He will. And again, He may not come for next week. And it might be next year. It might be ten years. I don't know when He's coming, but there's one thing I want to always you bear in mind: you be ready every minute or hour, see. Then if He doesn't come today, He might be here tomorrow. So just keep that in your mind, that He's coming.
And I don't know what time is going to be my last hour on this earth, neither does any of us. And there's none of us know when He's coming. He doesn't even know Himself by his own words. He said the Father only knows when He will come; not even the Son knows when He will come. It's when God sends Him to us again. But we're looking for his coming. And if He doesn't come in my generation, He might come in the next. If He doesn't come in that one, He'll come in the next. But for myself, I can't see hardly any time left. I just... To me, it could happen at any minute. Now, that don't mean ... that doesn't mean, now, that you'll see the heavens change and every... That's not the coming I'm speaking of. I'm talking of the rapture.

7 See, He makes three comings. He come in three Son's names. He come in a trinity, Father, Son, Holy Ghost. See? All of it the same Christ, the same God all the time.
Now, we know He come to bring three works of grace: justification, sanctification, baptism of the Holy Ghost. Everything in God is completed in three's. And so He come first to redeem his bride; He come second as a rapture to take away his bride; He comes third with his bride, king and queen. After ... That's when many people are expecting the coming. But when He comes this time, hardly none but those who are ready will know when He comes. There'll just be an absence of people. They won't know what happened to them. They'll just be caught away in a moment. And that... They'll just come up missing, changed in a moment in a twinkling of an eye. So just be ready for that. It'd be horrible some morning to miss a loved one, no one can find them. Wouldn't it be too bad to know it's done past and you missed it? So just keep before God.

8 Now, next week, the Lord willing, Monday, from ... week from this Monday, if God willing, I'm taking the family back out to Arizona where they go to school, then I'm coming back.
Now, I don't go out there... I haven't any services to be out there in. I'm hardly ever in Arizona; I'm gone somewhere else. I take the wife out there next Monday. I'm coming back here again. I'll leave from here to British Columbia. I come back to Colorado. I'll be in Arizona again sometime near Christmas just for a few minutes, long enough for maybe two or three days, get the family together, be back here through Christmas holidays, the Lord willing, have a service through New Year's week here.

9 So then, I'm here practically... I'm here ten times more than out there, because we don't have any church or any services out there, nothing we have out there, so---in the way of church service. That's one bad thing about it; I have no place to send the children that will hear these message like your children gets to hear it here. And so that's one defect we have. But they're all healthier. It's a dry, hot, dry climate, but all the children seem to be healthier. I'm not there long enough to know whether it's healthy or not healthy. I'm on the move, and I guess I was just born a rambler.
My wife calls me... (I know she's here, so I'll get this after church, you all know.) What is that called? "Shifting Winds" or "Restless Winds" or whatever, you know, "Shifting Sands," or... I'm always on the move, in other words. And I've been married now twenty-two years, and I've ... sometimes I think I'm a stranger around the house, because I have to be going. But I'm looking for the time that when we'll be settled down in the homeland someday. But now the battle's on, so let's be in prayer.

10 Don't forget, next Sunday morning, the Lord willing, bring in your sick and the afflicted. Come early, get your place, then probably there's a group to be prayed for. We'll have to give out prayer cards. If there isn't enough, we won't give out prayer cards, just enough to form a little line like two or three dozen or something. But we'll probably give out prayer cards. So we'll probably do it about a hour before the regular service, which I think takes up ... I'd be eight o'clock. Eight o'clock or eight thirty they'll give out the prayer cards, open the church, give the prayer cards next Sunday morning. And then, be sure to be here for your---bring your loved ones. Put them in there. It'll be nice and cool in the church (if they're sick), and we'll do everything we can to pray for them.
Thank you again for the love offering.

11 And now, we're going to read some of God's Word tonight, and be ready for this event of his presence again to bring us his Word. Now, we know we can read a text, but God has to reveal the context, see. We can take a text, but God has to reveal the context.
And while you're turning now in the book of Jeremiah, the 2nd chapter, I want to say that I'm glad to have with us Brother Lee Vayle, a precious brother in the Lord, and I think here---a brother here (I can't think of his name), Brother Willard Crase. And I seen the brothers from Arkansas, Brother John and them from around Poplar Bluff, and Brother Blair. And oh, Brother Jackson, and Brother Ruddell, and so many that I just can't... Wish I could call everybody's name, but I just can't do it, and you understand. Brother Ben Bryant, I see him setting here. He's usually my "amen corner" while I'm... Everybody knows Ben by his voice.

12 Sitting in California one time, I was preaching a message for the Baptist people up in the valley. They had a big tent there and a lot of kind of aristocratical Baptists. I could never hear a "amen" from anywhere, you know. Afraid, some of the women break the paint on their face. And then first thing you know, I seen a pair of feet about like that go up in the air, and two big hands, and a black hair shaking there, hollering, "Amen!" screaming like that. I looked down there; I said, "Ben, where'd you come from?" He was really getting the "Amen!"
I see his wife looking him over a little bit. Well, he's losing a little of that black hair, but that's all right. Don't get worried about that. I did mine a long time ago.
So now, don't forget to pray.

13 Now, while we get to the sincere side of the service, remember, if we read this word then God will bless his Word. It will not return to Him void, but it will accomplish that which it's purposed for. And I know in reading the Word, I'll always be right. When I read the Word, God will honor his Word.
Now, let us stand in respect to his Word, Jeremiah the 2nd chapter, the 12th and 13th verses of Jeremiah 2:
Be astonished, O ... heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD.
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that cannot---can hold no water.
Let us bow our heads now.

14 Dear God, thy Word has been read, and we pray that You will honor that Word and give to us tonight the parable---or the parallel of it, as we look to days gone by, Israel as examples, as the Bible teaches us, that we can see what You did to them when they obeyed the Word, see what You did to them when they disobeyed the Word, and learn what we must do. So we pray that You will speak to us tonight in a very special way, that we might know how to conduct ourselves in this day that we learned this morning that we're living in. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. May be seated.

15 I want to speak tonight on the subject for just a short time on "Broken Cisterns."
Israel had done two great evils. God said they had turned from Him, the fountain of life, and had hewed themselves cisterns to drink out of.
Now, that's something... The reason I thought of this text, was because that it would run parallel to what I was saying this morning of the hour that we're living and the cause that we are struggling for.

16 And we look at Israel as example that what God was, He always has to remain the same. And there's only one thing that God ever did honor; that was his way that He provided for the people. And when they got out of that way, then God was dishonored, and God made the people suffer for getting away from what he had told them to do. No matter what it was. He even give them a law: "Touch not, handle not, taste not," just---not because of the evil of doing it, but the evil of disobeying what He said do. And there's---always cannot be a law without a punishment for law, because if there's no punishment, then law is not much to it---unless it has a penalty, the law.

17 Now, we find what they did in that day seems to parallel what we are doing today, what the church people are doing.
Now, we see a strange thing here. It might be strange to some people when He said, "You have ... they have hewn to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns." Now, maybe some of you don't know what a cistern is. How many knows what a cistern is? Well, most all of you. If you was ever raised on a farm, you know what a cistern is. I remember I've drank enough bugs from one to know what a cistern was. Preached out in the country where you---in a brush arbor where you'd have a big pitcher full of cistern water setting there, out of the rain, you know, and it kind of got a little old, and then the bugs at nighttime would get into it... And so, I know what cistern water is.

18 A cistern is a place, a thing that's dug in the ground to take the place of a well. Where people doesn't have a well, then they get a cistern. In other words, a cistern is a man-made tank or a man-made well in the ground that men dig out to catch the water to use it. Some of them use it for wash water, and some use it for drinking water, and different way maybe. All the water sometime that we used to get was on a cistern. Used to have an old thing you have to wind around, around, around, around to get the water up, had little buckets on it to pump the water out of the cistern.
Well, we notice one thing about a cistern that's different from a well. Now, a cistern will get empty. The cistern cannot fill itself. It is not reliable. You can't rely upon a cistern. It has to rely and depend upon the rains that fall in the summer or in the winter, whatever it is, to... Usually in the wintertime when the snow and rain comes, then it runs the water off into the cistern. And if it doesn't get that water, then you don't have any water. It's all ... dries up. And it can't refill itself. The old cistern cannot refill itself; it gets its filling from the rains that falls.

19 And I want you to notice another thing about a cistern. Usually, you find... The way it was at our place, the cistern... Usually the barn's about twice the size of the house, and they usually run the water off the barn to the cistern. I remember that old cistern well out there when he had---when the drain pipes rushing it into---off the barn. It fills from the barn, so then the water is carried from the roof of the barn where all the animals stepping around through the stable yard and all the filth of the barnyard settles on top the barn in dry times, and then the water comes and washes it all down off the roof into a trough that's man-made, then into a man-made spout, then into a man-made cistern. And if you haven't got a mess, I don't know what you got, when you got a cistern! Yes, sir! It's all man-made and just as dirty as it can be.

20 You know, we used to call---we had a filter rag on one. Did you ever know what that was? Had to put a filter rag on it to catch all the bugs and things that come off the top of the barn, and all around the place, and poured out from one place to another into the cistern. And we used to put a filter rag on it to catch all the scum and stuff that we could. Course that wouldn't catch the real dirt, it just caught the big missiles that come down and fell into it. The bug might fall in it, but the juice of the bug went on with the water. So you really had a mess when you had an old dirty cistern.

21 In a few days, you let that water stand there, and it becomes stagnated. You let the water stand in a cistern, it becomes stagnated, and it gets full of frogs, and lizards, and snakes, and we used to call it "wiggletails," little bitty ... I don't know whether... They're not a parasite, they're... I don't know what you call them, but some little thing gets in the water that we call it wiggletails. You know what it is. How many know what I'm talking about? Oh, why sure, all you country folks know. Gets it all full of stagnation, and then these lovers of stagnation comes with it. It just actually comes, because it's stagnated. And because it's stagnated, it draws the animal there that likes stagnated things.

22 That's a whole lot like our churches today. I think that we have left... One of the great sins that the church has done today, just like Israel then, it left Him, the fountain of living water, and has hewed themselves out man-made cisterns. And it become a habitation of everything that loves that kind of water. Lizards, frogs, and all kinds of unclean germs live in it, because it's a man-made tank; and in this tank these things stay. A perfect example of our denominationals today.
"Now," you say, "Brother Branham, why do you strike at those people so hard?" It ought to be struck at. It's got to be struck at. Flee it, because it will finally form the mark of the beast. Remember, that is the truth! It will be the mark of the beast; denomination will lead right to it. It's on it's road right there now to force by power...
Look, in the old Roman empire that's exactly what led them to that mark of an apostasy. You found out that no man could buy or sell without the mark of the beast. He had to have it.

23 There's only two classes of people will be on the earth; those with the seal of God, and those with the mark of the beast, only two classes. So you'll have to have one or the other. And it'll be an apostasy, a mark of a religion, apostate religion.
And it's going to have a image unto the beast. As we study, we find out that Rome was, is, and always will be the beast. Exactly. There's no way to get anything else---Rome.
And what did Rome do? Was converted from pagan Rome unto papal Rome and organized a system, a universal system, that forced everybody to that one religion or be put to death.

24 And it's a strange thing that this United States appears on the scene, and it's a ... like a lamb. And a lamb has two small horns, civil and ecclesiastical rites. And after awhile when that was a lamb, we found out that it spoke then like a dragon and exercised all the power the dragon had before it. And the Bible tells us that they said, "Let us make a image unto the beast." A image is something like something else. And we can see it right now that in it's apostate condition the church is forming the World Council of Churches, which is the image to the power of Rome, and will force upon the people the same thing that pagan Rome or papal Rome did. So there's no other way, no other thing, but that is the truth.
And that's why I'm striking it in my age, in my time, is because it's got to be struck at. The call come to "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins!"

25 Now, I'm liking that to these dirty, filthy cisterns. He is the fountain of life; He is the living waters. And men leave that and dig for themselves cisterns which can only catch the filth. That's the only thing it can catch. And that's what denominationalism does; it catches everything that comes along, that wants to join. They're willing to take it in if it's got some money or can dress in a certain way. No matter who they are, where they come from, they take them anyhow.

26 Now, we find again that this mark of the beast that was formed here... America is number thirteen. It was born with thirteen colonies. It had a flag that had thirteen stars---thirteen stripes; and it even appears in Revelation the 13th chapter. And America has always been a woman, represented on our coins. Even the Indian head on a penny is a woman's profile. We know that, know the history of it. Everything, the Liberty Bell and everything else, the Liberty ... Statue of Liberty is... Everything a woman. A woman, number thirteen, see.
Now, it's beautiful to see those things.

27 And now, I have predicted by revelation from God or a vision in 1933, that seven things would happen before the end time. And that---one of them, that Mussolini, who was then becoming dictator, he would become dictator; and also he would make an invasion, and go down to Ethiopia, and would take Ethiopia. And the Spirit had said, "He shall fall at his step."
I wonder if there's any of the old-timers still left in the tabernacle remember me saying that in the Redman's Hall down here when we preached many, many years ago. Is there one in the building tonight that was left from down there at the old Redman's Hall when I preached that, when they had the NRA out, way back in the time of Roosevelt's first term? I guess there's not a one in here. Is there one? Yeah, yeah, one. There's one, yes, Mrs. Wilson, I remember her. My wife, setting in the back. Two left out of the old generation of those in that day. That when they said this NRA was the mark of the beast, I said, "Nothing to it! Not at all. The mark of the beast don't come here, it comes out of Rome, and it can't be the mark of the beast."

28 And I remember that these things was said. Said Adolph Hitler would come to a mysterious end; and he would declare war on the United States; and they'd build a great concrete thing, that they'd even live in it, and right there the Americans would take a horrible beating at this. And it was the Siegfried line---eleven years before it was ever started to be built! And then said but he would come to an end, and the States would win the war.
And then said that there's three "ism's": Nazism, Facism, and Communism. And I said, "They'll all wind up in Communism. Russia will take it all in Communism."
And I said, "then science is going to be so great, man's going to get so smart till he'll invent so many things, until he's going to make an automobile that looks like an egg that'll have like a glass top on it, and it'd be controlled by some other power than a steering wheel." And they've got the car.

29 And I said, "Then the morals of our women is going to fall in such a degraded things till they're going to be a disgrace to all nations. They're going to wear men's clothes. They're going to keep taking off their clothes till actually they come down like they got their underneath clothes on. That's all. And finally they'll come to wearing just a fig leaf." And if you notice, in last month's Life magazine, they had the woman with the fig leaves on; and that's the new evening frock or gown, what they wear of a evening, transparent, can see through it, only the fig leaves just hide a certain spot of her body. With strapless---or strap... unstrapped bathing suits, the top of it, exposed body... And how that those things has happened.
Then I said, "I seen a woman standing in the United States like a great queen or something. And she was beautiful to look at, but wicked in her heart. And she made the nation step---go with her step.

30 But I said, "Finally He told me to look back east again, and when I did, I seen, looked like, as it was, the world had exploded. As far as I could see was nothing but sticks, and smoldering rocks had been blowed up out of the earth. And these were to happen before the end of the world." And five of the seven has already happened in thirty-three years!
There we are, back to the end time! And I spoke against that denominational system right then. And I still believe tonight that it's a cesspool, that it's a place where the filth run into it. I can't believe that God would ever take such a thing in His church, because it's got to be born of the Spirit of God and then cleansed before it can be called His. The mystical body of Christ, we're baptized into it by the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

31 Yes, this cistern system is certainly a perfect example of denomination. A wise man ought to look and never to go into it, for God has proved through the ages that He's against it and never did work with it. Any group... Any time a man raised up with a message, like Luther, Wesley, or so forth, and Smith, and Calvin, and them, when they started the organization, God laid the thing on the shelf and never did visit it again in a revival.
Look through history. There has never been a time that God ever took a denomination and made a revival out of it. Nowhere. Then through history and by the Bible proves that it's a filthy thing in the sight of God. So I don't want nothing to do with it. And that's why I'm against it and trying to get the people out of it.

32 We are invited---like in Israel, so is it now---to look to Israel for examples. They, as long as they stayed with that fountain, they were all right. But when they got to hewing themselves cisterns, man-made systems, then God left them flat. He'll do us the same. They have forsook Him, the fountain of living water. That was the complaints that God had against them, to make something they could say, "You see what we have done?"

33 Now, when---in the time of the travel of Moses, when God by grace had given them a prophet, had given them a pillar of fire to go before them, had vindicated it by signs and wonders, grace had provided all these things, Israel still wanted law. They refused grace to take law. That's exactly what the people does today; they refuse the Word to take a denominational system, because in that they can do what they want to and get by with it. But you can't do it in Christ! You've got to come clean and clear in order to be in Christ.

34 Leaving the artesian well for a man-made system or cistern, could you imagine someone doing that? Could you imagine the mental conditions of a person that could drink at a fresh artesian well, and would leave that for a man-made cistern with frogs, and lizards, and wiggletails, and everything else in it? It don't seem even sensible even to be right, but that's just exactly what the people has done. They've left the Word, the true fountain of God's source and power to drink out of cisterns and make themselves cisterns. Same as they did then, they have done it now.
They say... He said, "They've left me here." He said here in Jeremiah 2 and 14---or 13 rather. He said, "They have left me, the fountain of living water."

35 Now, we see what a cistern is. We see what it catches. We see how it's made. It's a man-made thing that comes off of a dirty roof. The water that falls down hits on a dirty roof, and it only washes the roof off, puts it down through a man-made trough, through a man-made spout, into a man-made tank. And all the filth gathers in there, and the germs, and the lizards, and frogs, and things of the land like that. And notice, they are the unclean animal, wiggletails, stagnated. A wiggletail can't live in clear water. If it does, it'd kill him. He's got to be in the stagnation.

36 And that's the way it is with a lot of these parasites today. You can't live in the fresh water of the Holy Spirit. That's the reason they're so firmly against the Word, and say it contradicts itself; there's nothing to it. It's because they have to have some kind of a stagnated pool to wiggle in. Right. That's the same way it is with frogs, and with lizards, and with tadpoles, and such as that. They've got to get around the swamp or the stagnated pool to live, for it's their nature to live there. And you can't change the animal till you change its nature. And you cannot make a man see the Word of God till his nature's been changed. And when his nature is changed from what he is to a son of God and the Holy Spirit comes into him... The Holy Spirit wrote the Word of God.

37 Today I was talking with my good friend Dr. Lee Vayle, who's present now. And he's quite a theologian. And so we usually have some pretty good discussions on the Scripture. Very smart. And he asked me one time what I thought about the initial evidence of the Holy Ghost, was it speaking in tongues? (It's been many years ago.) I said, "No, can't see that."
He said, "Neither do I," said, "though I've been taught that." He said, "What would you think would be a evidence?"
I said, "The most perfect evidence I can think of is love." And so we got to talking on that. And then I thought, "That sounded pretty good." So I just held that: If a man's got love. But one day the Lord in a vision straightened me out, and He said that the evidence of the Spirit was those who could receive the Word, neither love nor speaking in tongues, but it's receiving the Word.

38 And then Dr. Vayle was saying to me that that is Scriptural. He said, "Because in John 14 Jesus said, 'When He, the Holy Ghost, is come upon you, He will reveal these things to you that I've taught you, and will show you things to come.' " So there is the genuine evidence of the Holy Ghost. He's never told me anything wrong yet. That it is; the evidence of the Holy Ghost is he who can believe the Word, who can receive it. Cause Jesus never said, "When the Holy Ghost is come, you'll speak with tongues." He never said, "... the Holy Ghost come you'd do any of those things," but He said, "He will take these things of mine and show them to you, and will show you things that is to come." So there is the genuine evidence of the Holy Ghost according to Jesus Himself.

39 So all these sensations and things that people have and still live on, you can see why they do it. See, it becomes a denomination or a stagnated pool, and there'll never be a denomination made upon the perfect Word of God. It can't do it, because you can't (nominate or) denominate God. No, sir!
The reason it is, you get a bunch of men who can believe the Word, let them start an organization. The first thing you know, in a year's time there's a bunch of Rickys in there that you couldn't do nothing with. They got a hold, and you can't do nothing about it. It's not God's system. It isn't. So we know that that thing's died and becomes a cistern and becomes a place where each one will compromise on this, that, or the other to get members in there, or let people come in.

40 We find out this system started one time back in the Israelite's day when they was digging these cisterns. And there was a man and a bunch of Pharisees who had dug some cisterns. And they had a man named Herod, and he was a proclamator, governor of the state. And he come down to hear a man that didn't fool with their denominations. He was a prophet. And no prophet ever had anything to do with a denomination, but hated it.
This prophet begin to say, "Don't you begin to say within yourselves, 'We have Abraham to our father,' because I tell you that God's able of these stones of rise children to Abraham." And they brought out a dignitary to hear him, and this dignitary had took his brother's wife away from him and married her. And what did that man walk out to his face and say? They thought he would compromise and say, "Now, sir, you have you a nice seat over here. And you ought to... I'm so glad you're here to hear me today." John walked right up in his face and said, "It's not lawful for you to have her." The very first thing he said, he bawled him out for his sin.

41 See, denominations make stagnate pools where men can live with women, and then women can carry on and cut their hair and wear shorts and anything else and call themselves Christians; but a genuine fountain (Hallelujah!) of the power of God, it can't stay there, because it pushes it out. "I am the fountain of living waters. They left me to dig themselves some cisterns."
Now, a fountain of living water... We find out what is a fountain of living water. We find out what the cistern is. Now, what is a fountain of living water. It's an artesian well. "An artesian well, what's that, Brother Branham?" It's a well that it's ... always comes from beneath and pushes its water out. It's flowing all the time. It is self-supporting, always fresh and clean, an artesian well, a fountain of living water. It's not dead and stagnated; it's living. It's constantly changing, bringing up something new all the time, moving on, coming from its resources. It draws its resources from its bed, which is still a fountain of living waters spraying up, self-cleansing. It's clean---pure, clean water. It's self-supporting; you don't have to wait for the rains to fill its tank up. It's always a-bubbling up, gives its water free. You don't have to pump it, wind it, twist it, or join it. It's just a fountain of living waters.

42 You know, you take these old cisterns, you have to crank it and crank it and crank it, and pump, and everything to get a little of that stagnated water out, but a fountain of living water gives it out free without pumping, joining, anything else.
Oh, I'm glad for that fountain! Yes, sir! It needs no strainer on it to take the parasites out, for it's coming so deep down there in the rock until there's no parasites there. It don't have to have an educational rag hanging on it (that's right!), some worldly-made system of man-made, denominational wisdom to tell you before a psychiatrist whether you're able to preach or not. It don't have one of those filthy rags hanging on it. It'd push it right off as soon as you put it on there. You can't do it. That well is bubbling up all the time. If you'd put one of them rags on it, it'd throw it plumb out of the one side or the other. It don't have no time for a denominational rag on it.

43 You don't need no filter, no strainer, no pumping, no jerking, no nothing else. It's just there, bubbling up. It don't have to depend on local rains to fill it up. Rains are revivals. Where that fountain ... that's at that fountain of life, where the carcass is the eagles will gather. You don't have to pump up a revival; you don't have to pump up nothing. Only thing you have to do is just come to the fountain. It's always full of good, fresh water, and there's no end to it. It just keeps on bubbling.
You don't have to go to the cistern and say, "Well, if it rains and washes off the barn, we'll have something to drink." My, my! Not this. That artesian well's spurting forth good cold water all the time. You can depend on it. You don't have to say, "Well, I'll go to this old cistern. We used to drink out of it, but it hasn't rained in a long time. I tell you, it may be dry."

44 That's the way some of these man-made systems are. You can go in, if you got a big something going on, a big kaboo, and selling something, or some kind of a something going on, a big parties and things going on, bunco games, and parties in the basement, everything, you might find a full house; but where you go to where that fountain is bubbling up always, the people are there getting them a good cold drink of water; you can depend on it. Say, "They haven't had a revival for ten years." If you live by that fountain, she's always got a revival going on.

45 Like the little Welshman said or... One time when they had the Welsh revival going on, there was some dignitaries from the States, some of these great doctors of divinity went over to Wales to find out where and what all this was about. So they had on their turned around collars, and their plug hats, and they was walking down the street. And here come a little cop along, whirling his little old billyclub in his hand, a-whistling, "Down at the cross where my Saviour died; down there for cleansing from sin I cried. There to my heart was the blood applied. Glory to his name," walking down the street. So they said, "This seems to be a religious man, we'll go ask him." And they said, "Mister!"
Said, "Yes, sir!"
He said, "We are here from the United States. We're a delegation. We come over here to investigate the Welsh revival, so-called. We are doctors of divinity, and we're here to look it over." He said, "We want to know where the revival is and where it's held."
He said, "Sir, you have arrived. I am the Welsh revival!" Amen! "The Welsh revival's in me! Here's where it's at!"

46 That's the way it is when you live by that fountain of living waters. It's a-living all the time, bubbling over, and over, and over, and over; there's no end to it. Not go see if some water, if we had a rain here not long ago; that's not it. It's that fountain of living water.
As I say, it gives its water free. You don't have to put rags on it to find out---some educational rags 'fore you can send him out to preach and see if he spells his words right, speaks them right, if he uses the nouns and pronouns, and so forth, and adjectives. Many of them don't even know what they are. But he's living at the fountain just the same, see---the same.

47 It don't have to depend on the local rains to fill it up or the local revivals, for it don't have to do that, for its power and its purity is within itself. That's where the Word is, its own power. When a man can receive it in his heart, it's got its purity; it's got its power. It's right in the Word itself. Springs forth to life.
Israel would get away from it. They'd get in trouble. Every time they got away from it, they got in trouble, the same as we do now. When the revival, gets away from that, then it's no good; it digs itself some wells and---or some stagnated cisterns, and there it goes.

48 But He always helped them. The murmuring at the Red Sea. Then when they murmured... Yet in all that He'd promised, made them a promise. He should've turned them back right there, the way we'd look at it, but He'd promised to take them over there. What did He do? Them children of Israel, He furnished them the pillar of fire and everything for a vindication, their prophet. And they led them out there to the sea---and always there's trouble against it---and here come the Pharaoh and his army. And you know what God did? He just opened up that Red stagnated cistern. The Dead Sea's the deadest thing in the world, it's really dead; it's stagnated, nothing can live in it. And He opened it up and set them free on the other side. He took them to where they wouldn't have to be bound by such a thing as that.

49 In the wilderness they found that the tanks could not be depended on; they were dry. Found out they'd go from one water hole to another. When they was in the wilderness, they was starving to death for a drink of water, and they'd go to this tank over here, a pond; it was dried up. They went to another place; it was dried up. They just couldn't think they was ever going to get a drink. And then, on the most unlikely place in all the desert they found the water. It was in a rock. It was in a rock. The most unlikely place that a man would find any water would be in a dry rock in the middle of the desert. But you see, God does things like that. In the most unlikely place, in the most unusual way. That's what we've always had.

50 They think you have to have a big denomination to gather and let them all come together, and have a great big milling around and so forth, and get thousands to cooperate, and all like this to have a revival. Sometimes God takes a little old guy don't even know he's ABC's and right amongst a bunch of illiterate people that hardly knows the right-hand from the left, He can raise up a revival that'll shake the world. He did it in the time of John. He done it in the time of the prophets. None of them as we know of was ever educated. But God could get ahold of them and do something with them.

51 In this rock came forth the waters. He was the rock. And He commanded this rock and ... must be smote. And He gave abundance of pure, fresh, clean water to everybody that would drink. He saved all who would drink from it, a perfect parallel with John 3:16: "...God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, ... whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but would have everlasting life."
God smote that rock on Calvary. Our judgment was upon Him, that from Him might come the Spirit of life that would give you and me eternal life. That's a perfect parable of it there in this wilderness.

52 They never had to pull, dig, pump, or anything, just partake of his provided way freely. They didn't have to dig it out of a pond; they didn't have to pull it up with a bucket; they didn't have to have no windle to get it with; they just had to partake of it. And that's all there is now. You don't have to join nothing; you don't have to get down at the altar and work up something, pumping it; you don't have to say a word over and over and over till you get a confusion of language; the only thing you have to do is just partake of Him freely, God's provided way. No pumping, no pushing, no nothing, just take of it freely. Nothing you have to do, just partake of it; that is just believe it that's all I can say to it. You never had to do anything for it, never had to dig for it. They never had to get down and cry all night for it; they just partook of it. It was smitten and ready. That's right.

53 I'm looking at a man now setting in the back of the room here. I remember telling him that on an old barn stall one day by a manger. And he said, "But I'm no good."
I said, "I know you're not." And I said, "I'm not either. But I said, "You're looking at what you are. Quit looking at what you are, and look what He is."
He said, "If I could just get rid of these cigarettes, Brother Branham, I'd be a Christian."
I said, "Don't get rid of them. You're trying to get good and then come to Him. He never come to save good men; He come to save bad men that knowed they were bad."
He said, "Well..."
I said, "Listen, you don't want to go to hell, do you?"
He said, "No!"
I said, "Well, you don't have to. He died that you might not have to go."
He said, "What do I have to do?"
I said, "Nothing. It's just that simple."
He said, "But if I could ever..."
I said, "There you go back to that cigarette again. Quit thinking about that cigarette. Just remember, think about Him, what He did, what He is, not what you are. You're no good, and you never was and never will be, but what He is! He's the one." And I said, "Now, the only one thing you have to do, if He took your place down there, you just willingly accept what He did. Only thing you have to do is just accept it."
"Why," he said, "that's simple. I'll do that."

54 I said, "Here's the creek." I brought him up here and baptized him in the name of Jesus Christ. Some of his people are setting here, and I know how ... they felt funny at me for doing that. But I knowed what I was doing. I seen in the man something that was genuine. I could see it there, and I took him and baptized him in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when we did that, it wasn't long after that till I went down to his son's house. We seen a vision of a tree being broke at a certain place, and the man fell, almost broke his back, took him in the hospital, and that night the Lord revealed to me that was the end of cigarettes. So the next day he wanted some cigarettes. I said, "I'll buy him a carton and take it to him. You just watch and see." His cigarette days are done. He's never smoked one since, never wanted one since.
God! See, the first thing you got to do is to come to that fountain. You've got to come to that water, realizing it's nothing that you can do; it's what He done for you. You don't have to dig; you don't have to pump out; you don't have to quit this; you don't have to quit that; the only thing you have to do is get there and drink. That's all. If you're thirsty, drink!

55 Now, He was the rock. God smote Him for us, and He gave forth abundance of pure, clean water. He does yet today to everyone that will believe. This is his grace, of course, to his people, us.
There's something like there like the people of today, ready to receive what they can get, but don't want to give any service in return. Israel was ready to drink from the rock now, but they didn't want to give God his service that was due Him.
And He's always giving us a service. You know, we can't even breathe without Him. We can't breathe without God's service. That's how dependant we are on Him. And yet, it almost breaks us in two if we try to do---have to do something for Him, He asks us to do something, go see somebody, go pray for somebody, go help somebody. It almost breaks us up to do it. But we don't want to do anything to Him for service.

56 His complaint was, "They have forsaken me, the Word, and have accepted a broken cistern instead. Accept... They have forsaken me, the fountain of life, the fountain of water of life, and they desire and would rather drink from a stagnated cistern."
Could you imagine that? Could you imagine a person now, that here's an artesian well who's putting out that fine, limestone water right out of the heart of the rocks, down there in the sand beds and so forth, just as cold and good as it could be, and would rather drink out of a cistern over there that had washed off the top of the barn, the sheds, and all of the out-buildings around the place, and put it right into that cistern there where the seepage of the water drains right back into from the barn, the stables, and stalls, and everything draining right back into the cistern, and then we want to---would drink out of that before going to that artesian well? There would be something mentally wrong with the person. That's right.

57 And when a man or a woman will take a denomination on their stand, that'll permit bobbed hair, wearing shorts, makeup, all this other kind of stuff, and some little kind of a program, and all this carrying on, and can go to the bowling alleys, and all that nonsense out there, and can put up with that, and like that better than they do the old-fashioned Word of God that cuts down and hews out and makes ladies out of women and takes them ... makes them dress right and act right, takes cigarettes and tobaccos and swearing and cursing and lying and stealing away from you, and all the world away from you, and give you something that is a perfect satisfaction? Why would a man or a woman go to such a thing as that for comfort? How can you get comfort out of that?

58 How could you get a fresh drink out of a stagnated cistern? Why would a person...
If a person goes to a stagnated cistern to get a drink when there's an artesian well open, you'd say, "There's something wrong with that man's mind." And if a woman or a man goes to such a place to find comfort, there's something spiritually wrong with that person. They don't want the Word. It shows that their nature is still a frog, or a tadpole, or something. That's right. Something in that nature likes that stagnated pool, because them kind of things won't live in a fresh water pool. They can't do it; it's fresh water. They can't do it.

59 Now, the complain was, they left it. And today they've done the same thing. Now, look at the woman at the well. Well, she'd come up to Jacob's cistern, and she had been getting water there all the time, at Jacob's cistern. But Jacob's cistern---denomination, we would call it, 'cause he dug three of them, and this one he'd dug... Now, she had a great story. She said, "Now, our father dug this well, Jacob; he drank out of it, and his cattle drank out of it, and everything; isn't that good enough?"
He said, "But the water that you draw from there, you thirst again, have to come back here to get it. "But," said, "the water that I give you is a fountain, a geyser, spurting up from the inside, and you don't come here to get it, it's right with you."

60 Notice, but when she discovered that a scriptural fountain had spoken to her by a scriptural sign that she had been looking for, she left that Jacob's denominational system and never went back to it again, because she had found the real rock, see. She run into the city. She was through with sin. She was no more a foul woman. She said, "Come, see who I have found, a man who told me the things that I done. Isn't this the very Christ?" She... That cistern might've been all right. It had served its purpose. Now she was at the true fountain. The cistern had been all right until the true fountain was open. But when the true fountain come along, the cistern lost its strength. She found there's a better place to drink.

61 And there is a better place! There's a better place, and that's in Christ.
In St. John 7:37 and 38, Jesus said at the last of the feast of the tabernacles: "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." They were all rejoicing. They had a little spurt of water coming out from under the altar, and there they was all drinking from this in celebration of the feast, and said, "Our fathers drank from a spiritual rock in the wilderness..." See, they'd hewed themselves a cistern, some stagnated water they pumped down from somewhere, and spurting up under the temple there. And they would all get around this water, and drink, and say, "Years ago our fathers drank in the wilderness."
Jesus said, "I am that rock that was in the wilderness."Said, "We eat manna from heaven and God rained it down."
Said, "I am that manna." That fountain was standing among them, the bread of life was standing among them and still they did not want it. They'd rather have their cistern, because man had made this and God had sent that. That's exactly the difference. Dug themselves cisterns.
He said, "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." He is that fountain. And as the Scripture has said: "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Oh, He is that artesian well! "Our of his belly or innermost being shall flow rivers of living water."

62 He is that rock that was in---that was Hagar's rock in the time of trouble. When her baby was about to die, when she'd been put out of the camp and was out there with little Ishmael, her water in her cistern that she was packing with her had give out, and she laid little Ishmael down and walked over a bow shot and cried, and oh---because she didn't want to see the baby die. And all at once the angel of the Lord spoke, and she found Beerlahairoi the well there that was flowing, and still flowing to this day. He was Hagar's Beerlahairoi rock out there in the wilderness.

63 It was standing here in the fountain filled with blood that day, standing there in the temple [blank spot] time of storm.
In Zechariah the 13th chapter, He was that fountain opened in the house of David for cleansing and ... or, sin---cleansing of sin. He was that fountain. In the Psalms 36:9, He was David's fountain of life. He's still that fountain in the house of David, and He's the poet's... In his heart there---poet said,
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
When sinners plunge beneath the flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
He is that fountain of life, fountain of water. He is the Word of God.

64 People of these last days has forsook Him, the true Word, water of life, and has hewed themself out denominational cisterns. And again, hewed, dug...
And now, we find out they have had broken cisterns. And then this cistern is filled with unbelieving germs, unbelieving, boasting, educational programs and so forth, which is contrary to God's promises. They're doubters of the Word.

65 Now, these cisterns that they've got, the Bible said, were broken. Broken cistern is a leaking cistern, and it's seeping out. What's it doing? It's seeping out into a religious cesspool called the World Council of Churches. And that's where the broken cistern is leading them to. All because they have forsook Him and have---the fountain of living water, and made these cisterns.
Digging out big seminary systems of learning, education, and so forth, that's the kind of cisterns they're digging today, that a man has to have a PhD, or a LLD, or Bachelor of Art or something before he can even go preach. Cisterns that has been filled with man-made theology. They take them into these great big schools of learning, and in there they inject into them their own man-made theology, and they send them out with that. What a day that we're living in!
Man-made cisterns! No trouble the... No wonder the thing has become a stink. Oh, my! It's because that the people are drinking from that.

66 And when the people want joy today, what do they do? The people, instead of accepting the joy of the Lord, they turn to sin for joy. People who go to church and claim to be servants of Christ, when they get real nervous, they'll light up a cigarette. And when they want to have some fun, they stick on their immoral clothes and go out and cut the grass when a man's going by to get him to whistle at them. They do everything to be popular. They want to look like the movie stars. That's their joy, when Jesus said, "I am their sufficiency." The reason that they go to that, because they don't want to drink from that fountain. They've turned it down. They don't want to drink from it. They join themselves to some kind of a man-made system, some kind of a cistern that's full of all kind of stagnated things that they can go like that.

67 Yesterday we had the kids up on the river---or I believe it was Saturday morning. We went down; Billy had been fishing in the boat. And we took the kiddies up (my little grandson and them, my daughter, and my little son) and we went up the river to take a boat ride. You couldn't even take a boat ride on the river for the filthy, dirty, scummy people out there on the river, half naked, and carrying on. A boat drove up beside of us, a bunch of little twelve, fourteen year old boys, each one with a beer can in their hand and a cigarette. They call that "having fun." Oh, my! How long can this world last with such a system as that!

68 Then to free themselves from the thoughts that when they die they'll go to hell, the thing they do, they go and join one of these man-made cisterns. So that same type of people belongs in that cistern. It's nothing but a bunch of unclean, filthy wiggletails of the world. And they associate themselves to that, because, as my old mother used to say, "Birds of a feather flock together." They won't come to the fountain and be cleaned up from that life of sin. They want to live out there and still hold a testimony that they're Christians. Why? They've turned from Him, the true fountain of joy, life, perfect life, and satisfaction. That's the reason they did it, because that they want to join up. They have some kind of people there that believe in that stuff.

69 Here not long ago, Brother Fred and I, and Brother Tom, a bunch of us went to a noted Baptist church in the city of Tucson to see if we couldn't find a little something that would give us maybe a little fresh feeling. And the minister said something another about the people in Egypt, when they left they was eating garlic and so forth, they wanted to go back again and eat that. Said, "That's something like people of today." And we---everybody said "Amen!" I never seen such a bunch! The whole church lost the sight of the preacher and looked back to see who it was that said "Amen." Liked to scared them to death. They didn't know what it was. When the... David said, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord! Praise Him upon harps; praise Him with a psaltery; let everything that has breath praise the Lord, and praise ye the Lord!" God rejoices in his people. Let them---if they learn, say "Amen!" when anything is said right.

70 Why not turn from this system and cisterns of the world to the faithful system of God, which is the artesian well, Jesus Christ. Why don't you turn to Him? Where God is our abundant supply of joy, our abundant supply in praises, our abundant supply in satisfaction. The calmness of my nerves comes from God. When I'm tore up, I find my satisfaction in Christ, not in a cigarette, not in the things of the world, not in joining some creed, but in finding Him, the promised Word that He said, "If I go away, I'll come again to receive you." I find my joy in that. He is my joy.

71 They say today by joining these things and by making this World Council of Churches that they're going to make a better place to live in. To my honest opinion, they're going to make a better place to sin in. That's just... The whole thing's sin anyhow. Not to live in, but to die in. Make us a place to sit in ... sin in, instead of live in.
Any other thing outside of Jesus Christ and his Word of life is a broken cistern. Anything that tries to substitute it, anything that you try to do to bring you peace, anything that you try to do to bring you comfort, any kind of a joy that you receive from anything else as a substitute for this, it's a broken cistern full of filth. He gives perfect satisfaction.

72 I remember here couple summers ago I stepped out the back door. There was a young snicklefritz out there that said to me, said, "You know the reason you're always talking about women like that, wearing those shorts and things," he said, "because you're an old man." Said, "That's the reason it is."
I said, "Look here. How old are you?"
Said, "Twenty-seven."
I said, "When I was many years younger than you, I preached the same thing!" I found the fountain of satisfaction; He is my portion. Amen! As long as He supplies that, that's the beauty. That's my art, is looking at Him, watching his handwork and see what He's doing. There's no other fount I know.
Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
Where sinners plunge beneath the flood,
Lose all their guilty stain.

73 I'm telling you, no other fount that I know but that fountain. It cleansed me when I was dirty. It keeps me cleansed, because I want to live right at it, drink this fresh water that fills my soul with joy. I can be so---ever so down and feel that I can't hardly go no---another round, can't go nowhere else, then I can kneel down and put my finger on a promise and say, "Lord God, Thou art my strength, Thou art my satisfaction, Thou art my all in all." I can begin to feel something bubbling up way inside of me there, I come out of it!

74 As I've passed fifty years old, I'd wake up of a morning... You know how it is, you can't hardly get that one foot out of the bed. My, you can't hardly do it, and somebody at the door knocking or Billy telling me there's an emergency somewhere I've got to go, and I think, "How can I do?" Try to put one foot out; I think, "Thou art the fountain filled with my strength!" Amen! "My strength and my help cometh from the Lord. Thou art my artesian well; Thou art my youth." "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with the wings like an eagle. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." "Lord God, this is my duty to go. I'm called to the post of duty," and the first thing you know, something begins to gurgle up inside of me.

75 The other day over in a little place I was having a meeting over here in Topeka, Kansas, there was a boy, a young preacher, one of my first sponsors ... Brother Roy, setting here, remembers the place. In this great place there, there was this minister had got under a roof or a place to sidewall, mashed him down beneath that. The little fellow was going to die. His liver was bursted; his spleen was knocked out of place; tons fell on him.
I sat at the breakfast talking to the wife. I said, "Wife, you know Jesus was here; you know what He'd do?" I said, "When he sponsored me---I believe that Word---he was sponsoring Christ." I said, "That's a trick of the devil." I said, "If Jesus was here, He'd go lay his holy hands upon him. That boy would get well. I don't care if his liver is bursted. He'd get well, because Jesus would walk in there knowing exactly who He was. He knowed his calling, the Scriptures was right, vindicating in Him that He knowed who He was, and not no shadow of doubt. He'd lay his hands upon him and say, 'Son, be well,' walk out of there. And I said, "There isn't enough devils in hell to kill that boy then." I said, "He'd get well. But I said, "You see, Honey, He was Jesus, the holy hands of God." I said, "I'm a sinner; I was born sexual birth. My father and mother were both sinners. And I'm just a no good nothing." And I said, "But you know what? If the Lord would give me a vision and send me down there, then that'd be different." I said, "I'd go down, lay my hands on him, he'd come out of that bed, if He give me a vision."

76 Then I got to thinking, "After all, if it was the vision, what was it? It was the same dirty hands on him, same man praying for him, same dirty hands." Then I begin to think, "I am his representative. Then God doesn't see me. That blood of that righteous One lays up there upon the altar; it makes intercessions for me. He is my sufficiency, He's my prayer, He's my life." I said, "The only thing that'd make me put my hands on him with faith, because I have faith in the vision, and without the vision the same faith would do the same thing! "So I can reckon myself nothing, but reckon Him my all in all. He is my life; He is my commissioner. No denomination sent me; He's sent me. Hallelujah! I go in his name. Now, I'll lay hands upon him." Walked down there, laid hands on that boy, and that night he was in the meeting solid well. Amen!

77 Oh, yes, He's that fountain. "No other fount I know. Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
I'm a stinker; I'm a renegade; every one of us are. But before God we are perfect. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." How can you be? Because a perfect one represents us there. That fountain is there every day, fresh, not some stagnated something, but fresh every day, that washes away all my sins. He is that fountain.

78 Now, in closing I might say this: Anything different from this is broken cisterns and will finally leak out what you put it in. If you're putting all your hopes, all your time, and everything in one of those stagnated cisterns... Jesus said they were broken cisterns. God said they're broken, and they'll leak out ever what you put in them. You can't go any farther with them, 'cause they'll leak out. For He is the only way to the truth, to the life, and to eternal joy and eternal peace. He is the only one and the only way to that.
Oh, my! The inexhaustable fountain of life is Jesus Christ. Why? And who is He? The Word, the same; the Word, the life, the fountain, the same yesterday, today, and forever. The true believer, it's his supreme joy, his supreme life, and his supreme satisfaction is in Christ. No pumping, no pulling, no joining, no bailing, just believing and resting. That's what He is to the believing.

79 Like father Abraham, he never pulled; he never fretted; he never wearied; he had the Word. He lay upon El Shaddai's breast. When Abraham was a hundred years old, God appeared to him and said, "I am the Almighty (The Hebrew word is El Shaddai, means "the breasted one."), and you're old, and your strength is gone, but just lay upon my bosom and nurse your strength from this fountain." Amen! What did he nurse himself to? A new body. he had the baby by Sarah, and fifty years later had seven children by another woman!
Oh, El Shaddai! The Old Testament shows what He did, the New Testament tells what He'll do. Amen! In the Old Testament...

80 Now, the air is off, so I'll hurry and quit here now, just in a minute. I'd like to say this before I close. I had a good example of this one time. I was patrolling. And many people here, down around Georgetown, down there, Milltown, there used to be way back in the hills a fountain. It was a artesian well. It was---throwed out about a four or five foot stream of water, just gushed out all the time, and a great big fountain around there and right around it was a lot of this penny royal, you know, and stuff growing there, that mintlike. And oh, I used to just thirst to get there (oh, my!), to get to that fountain! And I'd lay down by this thing and just drink and drink and set down and drink, wait. And year after year I'd still come to this same fountain, it never did cease, winter or summer. They couldn't freeze it. You can't freeze an artesian well. Oh, no! Oh, no! I don't care how cold it gets, it ain't going to freeze that. You'll freeze the cistern, just a little frost will do that, see. But anything that's moving, got Life in it; it's a-moving around. And you can't freeze the artesian well out. No matter how depressed the spirit is around the place, this well's always a-living. Live at that well.

81 And I noticed there, I went by, and I'd drink at it, and oh, my, just the fresh water; you never had to worry, "Wonder if I get there, wonder if it quit running?" It's been running...
An old farmer told me, said, "My grandfather drank out of it." And said, "It never has diminished or nothing; it's still the same well, gushing right out into the Blue River there."
I thought, "Oh, my! What a fine place to water." I walked about a mile out of the way to get to that place, because it was such a real place to drink at. Oh, how good that water was! Oh, my! I get out there in that desert, Arizona, now and still think about it. "That wonderful well down there, if I could just lay down to that. "As David said one time, "Oh, if I could once more drink from that well." If he could just get there.

82 And I set down one day, and I had a little funny thing that happened to me; and I said, "What makes you so happy all the time? I wished I could be happy like that. Why, I never seen you sad since I been coming here. There's not one sad thing about you." I said, "You're always full of joy; you're jumping and bubbling and carrying on. Winter or summer, cold or hot, whatever it is, you're always full of joy. What makes you---what is it---because I drink out of you?"
"Nope."
I said, "Well, maybe the rabbits drink out of you, and you like it so well!"
"Nope."
I said, "Well, what makes you bubbling over like that? What makes you so happy? What makes you always full of joy?" Said, "Is it because that the birds drink from you?"
"No."
"Cause I drink from you?"
"No."
I said, "Well, what makes you so full of joy?"
And if that well could speak back to me, he'd say this: "Brother Branham, not because you drink---I appreciate that---and because I can furnish for the birds. I furnish for anybody that wants to drink. Only thing you have to do is come here and drink. But what makes me happy, it ain't me bubbling, it's something inside pushing me. It's something bubbling me."
And that's the way it is with a Spirit-filled life. As Jesus said, He was in... He give you wells of water, springing up into everlasting life, an artesian, over-flowing gusher that's constantly flowing. Whether the rest of the church is up or down, you're still at that well. Why would you take an old denominational system and cistern full of parasites and everything else and drink around on that stagnated stuff, when you're invited to a fountain, an artesian well?

83 I think how it just pushed, and juggled, and gurgled, and laughed, and joyed, and jumped, and frolicked. Cold, rainy, hot, dry, when all the rest of the country was drying up, it was bubbling just like it always did. Cause it was deep, rooted; way down in the rocks it come forth.
Oh, let me live by that gusher. Take all your man-made systems you want to, all your old stagnated wells, but let me come to---or stagnated cisterns, but let me come to this fountain. Let me come there where He is just full... He is my joy; He is my light; He's my ... He is my strength; He's my water; He's my life; He's my healer; He's my saviour; He's my king. Everything that I have need of is found in Him. Why would I want to go to anything else?

84 Brother, Sister, won't you come to this fountain tonight. Won't you, if you're not---ever been there, won't you receive it tonight while we bow our heads.
Broken cisterns, leaking, seeping, the world seeping into it, filth from the barn and of other days. Why not this well that that stuff cannot stay in, this great fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins. Why don't you receive that tonight? May God help us tonight, in this dry, thirsty land. As the prophet said, "He is the rock in a weary land." He's that fountain. Won't you come to Him tonight in your hearts while we pray.

85 Dear heavenly Father, there's no other fountain (as the music is playing "No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus"). I was born there; I been raised there; I want to live there, and die there, and rise again there in his presence. Always, Lord, let me be in his presence, for there's no other I know, no creed, no love---no love but Christ, no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no anything else, no joy outside of Him. Take Him from me (Oh, God!), I don't care how much of the world I own, it would still be dead. I'd wander around with my hands up over my head. Take Him from me, I'll be gone, Lord. But let Him be in me, then December's as pleasant as May; then there's no hot places and no dry places; even death itself has no victory. Let us have Him, Father. Give Him in abundance to every believer here tonight, as they've waited in this room.
Many of them's got to drive along the road tonight as they go to their homes, and may this be their thinking, "I'm living at that fountain; I'm living there, freshly drinking hour by hour."
And if they haven't received that as yet, may they receive Him now, so they can take the fountain right with them. "I'll go with you; I'll be with you to the end of the world." Grant these things, Father.

86 And now, while we have our heads bowed, is there someone in here tonight, or how many would say, "Lord, take me to that fountain just now. I've never come here just to hear; I come here to find out something. I've come here to find You, Lord. I have a need of You tonight. Come to my heart right now. Will you do it, Lord?" God bless you. The Lord bless each one.

87 Father, You seen the hands, even up and around the wall and in the other rooms, outside. You seen them, Father. I pray that You'll supply everything they have need of. Maybe they've been drinking at some old cistern, Lord, just some halfway stopover where some man hewed out a cistern. It's become contaminated with all kinds of strange doctrines, denying the Word. I pray, God, that tonight they'll come to Him who is that fountain, that fountain of life. Grant it, Father. I commit them to Thee now in Jesus' name.
And You told me, "If you ask anything in my name, it'll be done." Now, I wouldn't ask this, Lord, if I didn't think it would be done. I'd be just saying it in a ritual routine. But I pray for them with sincerity; I pray for them, believing that You'll grant what You promised.
And now, I take them away from that cistern tonight. I take them away from the place they've been drinking, where they're not satisfied to this fountain. I do it in Jesus Christ's name.

88 They're yours, Lord. Let them drink from You, the living water, the fountain of living water. In Jesus' name I ask it. Amen. Grant it, Lord.
Oh, precious is that flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh,...............
Jesus, heal these, Lord! Grant it, Lord, through Jesus' name I pray, God, that You will. Thou knowest all things.
No other fount I know,
Oh, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Think of it! No other fount I know. I don't know nothing else but Him. I don't desire to know nothing else but Him. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Oh, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

89 While we sing that gain, let's shake hands with one another. Do you love one another? Is there anybody in here got anything against somebody else. If there is, go make it right, will you. Let's not leave here like that, see. If you got a ought against anybody, you go make it right, right now. Right now's your opportunity to go and say, "Brother, Sister, I said something about you ... I thought something... I didn't mean to do that. Forgive me." That's the way to do it. Let's have the fountain right among us all the time, see.
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh, precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
Oh, no other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh, isn't He wonderful? No other fountain. We won't contaminate ourselves with other things. We have separated, left the world behind. We don't want no more of Egypt's garlics and broken cisterns. We're in the journey with the Lord Jesus, that smitten rock (Amen!), eating manna from above and drinking---eating angel's food and drinking from the rock. Amen.
No other fount I know,
Nothing the the blood of Jesus.
Let us bow our heads,

90 praying that God will so richly bless each of you that his grace and mercy will be with you through the coming week, and if anything should happen that one of you may slip beyond the veil now, just remember, that it's only a few hours of sleep and rest until we meet. Remember that they which are alive and remain shall not hinder those which are sleeping, for the trump of God, that last trumpet (the sixth one has just sounded), and that last trumpet like the last seal, will be the coming of the Lord; it shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Just resting till that time.
And if you should get hurt, remember:
Take the name of Jesus with you,
As a shield from every snare;
And when temptations around you gather,
Just breathe that holy name in prayer.
Devils will flee. Just remember, we hope to meet you here next Sunday morning. Bring in the sick and afflicted. I'll be praying for you. You pray for me now. Will you do it? Say, "Amen!" I'll pray for you that God will bless.
......... name in prayer.
Precious name, (Precious name,)
O how sweet!
Hope of earth and joy of heaven;
Precious name, O how sweet!
Hope of earth and joy of heaven.
At the name of Jesus bowing,
Falling prostrate at his feet,
King of kings in heaven we'll crown Him,
When our journey is complete.
Precious name (Precious name, isn't it
sweet and precious?)
Hope of earth and joy of heaven;
Precious name, (Precious name,)
O how sweet! (O how sweet!)
Hope of earth and joy of heaven.

91 It's always so hard to leave you. Although I know that you're burning up, but there's just something about... Let's one more verse of something, will you do it? Will you do it? Blest Be the Tie that Binds, Sister. How many knows the old song? We used to sing it years ago.
And I was thinking tonight, two hands out of the hundreds that's left when we used to sing that song around the tabernacle and join one another's hands. Blest Be the Tie that Binds. I've buried a lot of them right up here in the cemetery. They're waiting. I'll see them again. I see them once in a while in a vision when I look beyond the veil; they're there. Let's bow our heads now as we sing.
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
When we (Now, reach over and get ahold
of somebody's hand.) asunder part,
(Now, bow your head.)
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
With our heads bowed, I turn the service to the pastor now, to dismiss in prayer.

Broken Cisterns

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 Let us remain standing just a moment, and bow our heads. Lord Jesus, we are trying in our humble way to express to you by singing this that we believe. And we pray, Lord, now, that You will continue breaking the bread of life to us, giving to us that which we have need of out of thy Word, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

2 I am quite sure if we should ... if I'd say the all-sufficient word now of "Amen," that all blessings of God would still rest on this audience.
I sat this morning and listened close to the service, and enjoyed the testimonies, the different ways each one has of expressing themselves, and to hear the newcomers ... Baptist brother here that come to apologize for thinking that little wrong. I certainly appreciate the human ... somebody that can be human enough, or gentleman enough to, if he thinks he's made a mistake... He didn't exactly apologize to me. It wasn't me he was apologizing to, but it was God. So I appreciate that, see. God bless our brother and his evangelist brother.
My, that Baptist... You know I used to belong to the Baptist church myself. I was a member of the Missionary Baptist Church. When I come among the people... I know how you feel. I felt the same way, just full of something that... I didn't know...

3 I remember my first experience of seeing a Pentecostal. It was in Dowagiac, Michigan. I beg your pardon. I had been in Dowagiac on a fishing trip, and was coming down from Dowagiac down into Indiana. And so I seen the name of Jesus all over the cars and things, and I listened to the services that day. And the next day they asked me to come to the platform to say a few words, and I did. And they asked me what church I belonged to, and I told them I was a Baptist. And that night they had an old colored man was going to preach. And he must have been in his late eighties, and he come out to the platform---the old fellow, they almost had to lead him out. He was ... long ministerial coats on, the velvet collar, just a little rim of white fur, hair around the side. And I thought, "All these men here, and theologians, great men, how they'd let this service be given to a fellow like that. Why, the old man should be in his chair somewhere, sitting down."

4 They had been preaching that day about what Jesus had did here on earth and... But he took his text, I believe from Job 7:20. I wouldn't be sure that's the scripture. However this is the quotation, or some part of it: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world, when the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy?" And he spoke on what went on in heaven, while they had been speaking on what went on on earth. And somewhere about five minutes after he was speaking, the Spirit of the Lord hit him, and he jumped way up on the floor and clicked his heels together. My! There was as much room as almost half on this platform, and he went walking off. Said, "You just haven't got enough room up here for me to preach."
Well, I was about twenty years old then. I thought, "If that'll do that for that old man, what would it do for me?"

5 We have to keep everything just as orderly for our new brethren that... We certainly welcome them into our fellowship, see. I believe they mention of a priest sitting here, I think. Of course, being Irish, my people are Catholic. And so there was a couple more---Baptist, and different ones.
You might have been a little confused awhile ago. I noticed none of the brethren spoke about it, but I thought I would try to straighten out when Brother Shakarian, after (the fine speaker here) ... was ... got so filled with joy of knowing the coming of the Lord's so close at hand, he spoke in an unknown tongue to us. And we have interpreters. The gift, the interpretation, which Scripture says if there be no interpreter then let them hold their peace; but if they speak in tongues, and then interpret it, it becomes prophecy. So the little confusion of two of them at one time... Now that wasn't a bit confusing, see, because one of them was giving the interpretation; the other was prophesying, see. So that's...

6 I thought I would let our brethren understand, if they did not understand, because one of them is correctly giving... Do you note the time limits of each one? And the other one was just so filled himself that the Spirit of God was prophesying through one interpreting; the other was giving the interpretation. So that it might be clear that you... We're not... Sometimes to the natural mind... Just like our precious brother that give the apology this morning, it is a bit confusing to the person who doesn't understand. But to those who are in that ... veterans of the battle that we're in, why, we understand that what these things are. So I just thought I'd just say something about it, if it was all right.

7 Now I know this is no place to say this, but being everybody's been telling little things, I... You know that fellow said, the old colored man said, "You don't have enough room for me to preach." You ain't got enough time for me to preach. I'm rather long-winded.
Man said one day, said... A minister came up. He'd been a pastor at the church for twenty years, and he always preached just exactly thirty minutes each Sunday morning at his church. And he said this Sunday morning he preached three hours. And so the deacon board called him in. Said, "Pastor, we really appreciate you." Said, "We always know that you stand for the Bible, and it's right." And said then, "And you always correct us, so we can be ... feel pure and clean before God, and we really appreciate you. And we believe you're God's servant, and we certainly did appreciate that message this morning." But said, "There's just one thing that we want to ask you about. Said, "We timed you." The deacon board said, "Every Sunday morning you're just exactly thirty minutes, and today you were three hours." Said, "Now remember we appreciate every bit of it. It was all right," making the old fellow feel good, you know.

8 He said, "Well, brethren, I'll tell you what it is. Every morning when I go on call to the pulpit," said, "I put one of those little Lifesavers in my mouth." He said, "I just suck on it." And said, "When the Lifesaver's done," said, "takes just thirty minutes." And said, "then I quit preaching." He said, "You know this morning I thought I was a little overtime. I spit it out. I had a button in my mouth." I ain't going to put anything in. Hope I don't get a button. But we are... I hope that didn't sound sacrilegious here, but just... You know, even God has a sense of humor, you know.
So, we are very thankful to be here, and have this time of fellowship, and with this grand privilege to break the bread of life once again in my own simple little way. I know as theologians, as that man spoke here last night from England, my I hate to get up behind a person like that with my seventh-grade education, but I hope that God will interpret to you the meaning in my heart. If my words are not right, my intentions, I trust, are.

9 Now let us read in the Scripture. Many of you like to follow, and I'm going to read this morning for just a few moments from the book of Jeremiah, the prophet, the 2nd chapter. And I'm going to begin now with the 1st verse.
Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, and the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.
Israel was holiness unto the LORD, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the LORD.
Hear ye the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel:
Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and ... walked after vanity, and are become vain?
Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, and led us through the wilderness, through the land of deserts and of pits, through the land of drought, and of the shadows of death, through a land that no man passed through, and ... no man dwelleth?
And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when you entered, ye defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.
And the priests said not, Where is the LORD? and the hand of the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.
Therefore I will ... plead with you, saith the LORD, and with your children's children will I plead.
For ... over this land of Chittim and see; and in the Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing.
Hath a nation changed their gods, which are ... no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.
Be astonished, O you heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye ... desolate, saith the LORD.
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

10 May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Word. And I would like to take a text of that: "Broken Cisterns."
In reading this scripture this morning, which all Scripture's given by inspiration, and we come to the house of the Lord for correction, and for understanding. And sometimes that we see any little thing in the way... Like this military man awhile ago was speaking to us, and saying that some certain things, that perhaps ... maybe in some other country has a certain missile, or something on that idea, and we've got to find something to counteract that in military strategy.
Well, the same thing goes into a church, the parish where a man is preaching, or if he's an evangelist in the field. When he sees uprisings, and something that's just starting, going in its infancy, or whatever it is, if that man, if he's a servant of God ... to blot that thing so far from the people's mind that they'll keep away from it. And we don't want that to happen, or to get into places like that.

11 Now, during the time of Jeremiah here, his prophecy, it had been about sixty years since the death of Isaiah. And it had been about sixty years without a major prophet. There was Habakkuk, and some of the small minor prophets, but Isaiah was the last major prophet. And the people had ... during this time had had no one to call them out. They had drifted, yet they were God's people. Had drifted into this state now that we find them in as Jeremiah came to prophesy to them. And Jeremiah also was... He prophesied before the exile, and also he went into exile with them. And then, of course, Daniel come on after Jeremiah; and Daniel said that he had understandings for the Scripture of the seventy years that they was to be there.
Of course, that was another prophet among them that wanted to make this yoke, as he put it upon his neck; that it would be a small thing---that within two years that God was going to bring them all back. But Jeremiah knowed different from that. And we know what happened to the prophet who prophesied wrongly. He died that same year---so God wouldn't let him stand.

12 And now, we also noticed the conditions of the people in that day.
Now I do not wish you to misunderstand me. I'm not aiming ... what I aim to say here, some scriptures and little notes... Used to be I didn't have to write my scripture and things down, but after I passed twenty-five, the second time, well, I don't remember like I used to. So I write down the scripture, and kind of know from that where I'm going. Then so much time praying for the sick and so forth, and out and gone, I don't have time to really study like I should do.

13 Now...
But this great prophet of this day was Jeremiah, and he was something on the order of Amos, and many of the other prophets that rose up. He was stirred when he seen the conditions of the nation. Now they were... Places sometimes when you're speaking about a nation, it ... might think that it's reflecting to a certain group. It's not that; it's the over-all picture of the nation.
And we find, today, a very comparative condition today, as it was in the days of Jeremiah, that the nation itself altogether has gone into, more or less, idolatry. Kind of, I'd say, got away from God, and by doing that... It's been the weakness of the pulpit, because if the pulpit would've stayed straight and with the Word of God, God would be in every church like He is moving among us here. But they have led away from that, and that's the thing that I want to talk about this morning.
And now we find that that's absolutely true in every age.

14 I believe it was Amos (as I referred to him awhile ago), that he said he was not a prophet, he was the son of a prophet, but said that when the lion roars who can but fear? And if anyone ever heard a real lion roar in the wilderness... These you hear in the cages around here are just meowing; but when one roars in the wilderness everything takes heed.
I've laid in the jungle to hunt them. And he's the king of the beasts, and when that lion roars even the beetles stop hollering. Everything does. The jackals and the hyenas a-screaming, and the other animals, the squawking of the baboons, the monkeys, and the beetles---you can hardly hear yourself think. But in the distance let a lion roar, and every beetle'll stop hollering. See, everything's afraid of him. Yet there's many things can kill him, but he's recognized as a king amongst the beasts. And he says, "When a lion roars, who can but fear?"
He said, "When God has spoken, who can but prophesy?" And that's ... I think the condition meets that challenge again today. God has spoken, see, and we see the handwriting on the wall. So it's very easy to prophesy and see that we're at the end time.

15 And we're seeing God from every section of denomination. All the way from Catholicism to all the Protestant churches, Buddhas and what more from India, and whatever more---He's calling His people together, assembling them together. And I'm very happy for that, to see this day coming.
Now, we... It's a great day. One of the greatest privileges that... If I had ... if I would have known... Before there was a world, when we were souls, a part of God that we are... For we were with Him before the foundations of the world, because there's only one form of eternal life and that's God, and we're a part of Him. We was ... not so much that we would know, and could think, and had a being; but we were in His thoughts of what we were before the foundation of the world, because we are a part of Him. Like my son is part of me, and I'm part of my father, and so forth, we are sons and daughters of God by His foreknowledge.
And back there if I could have known, as I know now, and could've looked over the whole span of time, and He'd said to me, "What time do you want to live?", I'd've said, "This time right now."---just the eve of the ending up of world history, and the oncoming of the kingdom of God to be established in the earth. I think it's the most glorious time of all ages, is right now.

16 We find out here that Israel is accused by the prophet---when God had ordained him, and sent him out---they were accused of two major sins. And we want to talk on those two things that they had done, and from that we want to prosper by it. Now they had turned from God, the fountain of living water, and had hewed themselves out cisterns. They had turned from the thing that God had given them, and had hewed themselves something that they had did themselves.

17 And these cisterns, you notice, he had ... they had broken and they were leaking. Now a broken cistern cannot hold water. It'll leak out. I was raised on a farm and I know what an old cistern is, and the difficulty we have with them. And this leaking cistern is a very fine picture, I think, of this day that when our... Everything that we have tried to do to get men together, get people together, get churches together, it has become always in the realm of intellectual trying. We've tried to make all the Methodists become Baptists, and vice versa, and the different denominations---and that was not God's program to begin with.

18 God only has one meeting place. He said over there in the book of Exodus that, "I have chosen the place to put my name, and that's the only place that I'll meet people." And He'd chosen a place to put His name, and where He put His name that's where He met Israel.
He's got a place that He meets His church today, and He chose that name. That name is Jesus Christ. And there's where He meets the true believer: when He's in Jesus Christ. That's where God chose to put His name.
You say, "God's name?"
He said, "I came in my Father's name." So that's where God put His name, was in Christ. And in Christ is where we can all meet under the shed blood, and there have real true fellowship.

19 God made His program at the beginning, in the garden of Eden, where ... the place He would meet man. And that wasn't upon intellectual understanding. If it had, Eve was exactly in line with His program. But we know that her accepting Satan's intellectual conceptions ("Surely God will not.")... But God said He would. And so then, He chose a place of redemption, and it was by blood, and not by intellectual conception. So we're only beating the air, but it's just human nature that people will try to do that. If we had time we could break it down in many pieces, but I don't want that button, so we'll just try to make it as simple as possible.
Leaking cisterns---and we find that it's absolutely happened again. It's a very picture of our age that we're living in, of all of our tryings. And no disregard to every effort of any servant of God that even names the name of Jesus Christ. He ought to be honored for just even naming His name in reverence and respect. And the great evangelistical systems that cross the earth, and so forth, in these last days, I think still we'll never be able to get people in one heart until we get them underneath the blood of Jesus Christ. That's the only place that we'll ever be safely.

20 Someone called me not long ago from up in the East, and said, "Brother Branham, I hear you moved out to Arizona and you formed a place there where that there is safety." And as you know how the message come, and the Lord told me what would happen in Alaska and how down through California it would be---and it's just been that way. And they said, "Now, if that's shaking and everything, where is a safety zone?"
I said, "There is one safety zone that I know of. That's in Christ, for those that are in Christ Jesus. It's the only one I know."

21 Now, Jeremiah was called also the weeping prophet, and because I believe what made this prophet weak, weep rather, was because him being a prophet (and the Word of the Lord comes to such) and seeing the people walk after their traditions, and thought they were all right; and no way at all to turn them, for they were going straight to exile, because we know you reap what you sow, regardless of who you are, what you are.
And we as a nation have reaped, or sowed rather, and we've got to reap. And speaking tomorrow, the Lord willing (that's afternoon), on "Birth Pains," and I touch that in there, that we cannot get by with nothing. We got to reap what we sow. And if God would let us get by with our perversion of Christianity today, and perverting the people into these things that's so-called Christianity, as Brother Moore once said, He'd be morally obligated to raise up Sodom and Gomorrah and apologize for burning them up. That's right, because God's still just, and we're unjust. It's becoming to His holiness and His Word that He makes people reap for what they sow, and we'll have to do that.

22 Now notice, they had left Him, the fountain of living waters, and had hewed themselves cisterns. Now there may be somebody here who wouldn't understand what a cistern is. A cistern is a man-made tank that tries to take the place of a well. It's something that somebody dug, and... How many knows what a cistern is? Fine. All right, a lot of country people here this morning. So, I remember the old cistern at the place, how it looked. I was always afraid to drink from the thing. It was a man-made tank, and it never can be relied on. You cannot rely on a cistern.

23 Now anything that man does is usually not very good. But just like the Lord sets time into cycles, and the earth turning every year, every time it crosses, every day, every hour, and the sun setting, and it never fails. But the very best watches we can get will fail many minutes in a month's time, no doubt. But you see everything God does is perfect, and what man does is imperfect. So why accept what man does, when you can have perfect?

24 I've always said that about us Pentecostal people, see. We know, and we're not out of the order, of course, of God, we don't believe; but we also know that among us we have people who try to impersonate the other fellow. That's just human. They'll try to do that. They did it in the Bible---one, "I'm of Paul," "I'm of Silas," and so forth. But they try to impersonate what someone else did, or is doing. But why would you accept a false impersonation when the skies are full of the genuine thing?
When the promises are to you, and your children, why would we accept something that was different? Why would we take up a creed or a dogma, when the Bible is the unadulterated Word of God? Why would we try to add to it, or take from, when the Lord Jesus said in Revelations 22:18, "Whosoever shall take one word out of it, or add one word to it, his part will be taken from the book of life."?

25 When God first set the human race on earth He told them they live by His Word. Now the Word of God is like a chain. You're passing across hell with it, and it's ... chains only its best at its weakest link---and God wants us to keep every word of it.
Now that's at the first of the Bible. Just to break one word plunged the human race into a darkness of death. Jesus came in the middle of the Bible, and He said that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word." Not just part of the words, or ninety nine out of a hundred, but every word, just like Eve and Adam was. And in the last of the Bible, Revelation 22:18, He said that whosoever shall take a word out of this, or add one word to it...
So why do we need to inject here somebody's ideas of things, when this is God's own idea about it? We want to take what He said. It is also written, "Let every man's word be a lie, and mine be the truth."

26 That's what was the matter with this prophet in the days of Jeremiah. He was a prophet, he had the Word of the Lord, and this fellow was trying to inject something to it.
Now it cannot be relied upon, and I'm likening these tanks now to these systems that we have tried to take ... and to take the place of the original Word of God. For nothing can take its place ---it is God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us..." And Hebrews 13:8 said, "He's the same yesterday, today, and forever."
How can we run away from that? It's got to be the truth! He remains the same. He's the same in every principle. That's the reason you enjoy---you Baptists, and Methodists, and Catholics, and Presbyterians, and so forth---enjoy that presence. Somewhere in you, you've accepted God. Maybe it's sometimes in a intellectual way, maybe you have felt the power of God, and you are a servant of God; but when you can really come into God and recognize your place in Him as a son or daughter of God, that's what brings that great thrill to you that God intended you to have.

27 Now we notice in St. Mark, the 16th chapter, Jesus did not say, "Go ye into all the world and teach." He said, "Go preach the gospel." Preach the gospel is demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit. Go ye into all the world and demonstrate the power of the Holy Ghost!
Talking to a brother, one of the sponsors on the ... my meeting in India, Bombay there, down in South Africa, and different places where the missionaries are taught it as a word, or as a intellectual conception. But one day in the meeting when ... the Holy Spirit came down Himself and saved thirty thousand blanket natives at one altar call, right on the same ground where they were standing. Women standing there who had been as naked as they almost were when they come into the world, and the very minute that they raised their hands to receive Christ... And the Holy Spirit fell upon the place and healed twenty five thousand people at one time, off of wheel chairs, cots, and stretchers. The mayor of the city had me next day look at these van loads going down the street.

28 Them women standing there naked, not knowing they were naked, but as soon as the Holy Spirit struck them they folded their arms to walk away from the presence of their men.
And I'm wondering how that we in America call ourselves a Christian nation, and in the presence of God, and each year we, our women, take off more, and you ought to be putting on more. And the more Christ you put, on the more conscious you'll be of your own condition. Sometimes I see the way people act on the street I wonder if they're just exactly mentally right. Seems like they don't realize that when they do that what they're doing. They're making themselves a bait for the devil, and to send souls to hell. That's right! But the world's in a corruption like it was in the days of Jeremiah.

29 Now back to the cistern. Now this cistern cannot be relied upon because it cannot fill itself, and it has to depend upon the local rains to fill it, the local rains and the local revivals---to have a little revival here and a little revival over there, or so forth, to get it filled up. So it cannot be relied on---it can't fill itself. See, it's insufficiency to itself. It cannot do it, and it's got to depend on the rains to fill it.
Then let's notice where it gets its rain, where it gets its water, the cistern. It comes off the top of the barn, shed, where all the dirt that the dust blows up there washes right into the rain and right down into the cistern, a man-made tank. It becomes almost like a cesspool. And it washes off the top of the barn, where all the animals, and the smell of the barn yards, and so forth can settle down, and the air blows in the dust and stuff on the barn. Then the local rain comes along and washes the rain right off.
And then the water is carried by a man-made trough, through a man-made spout, through a man-made tank, and then when it gets there it's filthy---so filthy that you have to put a strainer rag on it, or you couldn't drink it. Now, see, it's washing from the roof by a man-made trough, man-made spout, into a man-made tank, and then it was a man-made strainer on the top of it to see that some of the bugs and things is kept back.

30 Now we notice in these, a few days after the water sits there in this man-made denominat ... or tank... Excuse me. All right, after it's ... after it's been washed off with all kinds of these theologies and things washed into it. Now we come to find out when it sits there a few days it becomes stagnant. And anyone knows in the history of the church when God sends something forth, a message, and it becomes fresh from God, then after the life of that founder, whatever it might be---you call him reformer, or whatever you want to say about it---after his death then they get a system worked up, and they make an organization.
And as soon as they make an organization out of that, it dies right there. It never rises again. It did it through every time back, plumb on back

31 (and giving regards to this Catholic priest sitting here), when God organized a church... Not organized it. God never did organize a church. He's not in that kind of a business. He's in birth, not organization. So when God started the church off at the day of Pentecost, and then finally down at Nicaea-Rome they organized it, and there's where it lost its power.
Then we come on down to the Lutheran Reformation, and it was a great thing. The Word of God was given: "The just shall live by faith." And when they did, instead of picking up altogether, and all of them together and marching on, they made a Lutheran church, separated themselves from this group, and then it died.

32 Then God raised up John Wesley with sanctification, the message of the second work of grace, and it was a wonderful thing. But after Wesley and Asbury they organized it. It died.
Then up come the Pentecostals with the restoration of the gifts. They were doing fine. What happened? Organized it, it died. Just exactly.
Now in the midst of all of this, God's still calling a remnant out of every one of those generations, and it's our time of coming out of gathering together.
That's what I think this Full Gospel Businessmen has played a great part in breaking down these walls, in saying that there is no difference in us. Let us come together and worship God under one principle, not in an organization.
If it was an organization I'd get off this platform right now. I'd have nothing to do with it.

33 What it is, it's got to be a fellowship; and not a fellowship of some creed, but a fellowship in Christ by the power of His resurrection. That's the thing that brings life, that brings birth.
And before birth can come, we realize there has to be death before birth. And a birth is a mess. I don't care what kind of a birth it is. If it is in a pig pen, or wherever it is, it is a mess. And so is the new birth. It makes you do things that you ordinarily think you wouldn't do. But when you're ready to die to yourself, then you're borned again a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Then things open up, and life becomes a new sight to you, because you've accepted the person of Jesus Christ, and not some theory, or some creed, or even to the written Word---it's got to be quickened by the Holy Spirit. No matter how much theology you've got, it's laying there dead. I can have a handful of wheat. Until it gets into the process so where it can be quickened, the wheat will never live. And you can have a doctor's degree, Ph., LL., whatever you wish to, but until the Holy Spirit comes upon that and quickens it to you as a personal experience with God, then the wheat does no good.
Your learning is in vain,

34 as this Englishman said the other night here. I was so astonished. He had ... all the learning he had, as Paul, he had to forget all he knowed in order to find Christ, do things that he thought he wouldn't do. So that's the way God does. He humiliates us in our educational systems.
Not as I'm trying to support ignorance, but I'm trying to tell you the difference. Education can never bring life. It takes the Spirit of God to bring life, and that life must not come out of just an intellectual revival. It's got to come out of the Bible, Word revival. And that Word is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And when it falls today and quickens, you get the same results you did in Acts 2. Exactly! It always has, and always will be, because it's the Spirit of God that conditions the atmosphere.

35 It takes atmosphere to do things.
That's the reason you men are always taught, bring your children here. Well, certainly, that's right! I was glad to see my daughter Rebekah come in and sit down just a few minutes ago. If somebody seen me wink to a woman, it was my daughter. So she come in, and sat down. I want her to receive the baptism of the Spirit. That's why she's here in the meeting. That's the purpose of it---it takes atmosphere. Old Dr. Bosworth used to say, "You just take a hen egg, and put it under a pup, it'll hatch a chicken." Why? Because it's an egg, and got the right atmosphere. I don't care if you're Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian---in the right atmosphere it'll hatch out a new born son of God. It's the atmosphere that does it, no matter what denominational tag you have.

36 Used to herd cattle. I noticed the ranger when we'd take them up into the forest, out of the feeding lands down at the ranches and put them on the forest, he would stand there and watch as they went through the gate at the drift fence. He never paid so much attention to the brands, because there's all kinds of brands went through there. But there's one thing he did notice---the blood tag. It had to be a thoroughbred Hereford or it could not go on that forest, because it's the Hereford associations that grazes that forest. It must have a blood tag to keep the breeding right.
And I think that that's the way it'll be at the day of the judgment. He's not going to ask me if I was Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, or Presbyterian, but He's going to look for the blood tag. "When I see the blood I'll pass over you." That's the thing.

37 So we find that these cisterns after they sit around awhile they become stagnant, and they are no good. And it becomes, then, also becomes the home of frogs, and lizards, and snakes, and bugs, and germs, and whatmore, because it's a stagnated condition that's pushed into it. Could you imagine washing off of the barn roof, or off of the house close to the barn, or anywhere the dirt would be, what kind of bugs, and germs, and everything, it washes into this cistern?

38 Now it's a perfect example of any kind of a man-made system. He's a failure to begin with. That's the reason he needs a savior. He could not save himself. He cannot do nothing, for he's lost to begin with. He's born in the world sinful. He comes to the world speaking lies. He's a liar to start with, so how in the world can he do anything for himself?
How can a holy man...? There's no holy man, there's no holy church. It's the Holy Ghost; not a holy church, a holy people. It's a Holy Ghost among a people. That's what it is. See, not a holy mountain where Peter and them stood. The mountain wasn't holy, but it's the holy God on the mountain that made it holy. Not a holy person. It's the Holy Ghost used in that person what makes it holy; not the person, but the person of the Holy Ghost.
It isn't a man, because he's just a man, born in sin, shaped in iniquity, come to the world speaking lies.

39 Any man-made system'll keep him right in that. He'll blind the things from the intellectual, the intellectual eyes, that they think: "I belong to the church," "My name is on the book," "I have did this," "My father was this," and so forth. That sounds all right, which it is. Nothing to say against it.
But still, friends, Jesus said, "Except a man be borned again he cannot even see ["See"---that doesn't mean that he sees with his eyes, but understand] the kingdom of heaven." Until you're born into... How would this Baptist evangelist, how would that man who stood there and criticized and made fun of it, see? There's nothing in him that could even receive it, but God had to do it, see. God gave him the Holy Spirit. He manifested that this is not hypocrisy; this is the Word. He only hears it from the school idea, and they try to take all the blessings of God and place it on a day gone by.

40 A young Baptist preacher here not long ago, sitting present right here this morning, and he came to me, and he said, "Brother Branham, there's one thing that you're doing is wrong."
And I said, "Help me."
And he said, "You are ... I think you're sincere and a good person, but..."
I said, "Thank you, sir."
He said, "But there's one thing you're doing wrong."
I said, "I hope the Lord just finds one thing wrong."
And he said, "Well, this is what you're doing that's wrong." Said, "You're trying to introduce to the world an apostolic ministry." And said, "The apostolic ministry ceased with the apostles."
I said, "As a Baptist to a Baptist, I'd like to ask you a question." So I said, "Do you believe the Word of God's inspired, every bit of it?"
He said, "Why, certainly!"
I said, "Then He said, 'Don't add one word or take one from it.'" I said, "Then I'll show you where the apostolic blessings come on the people by a promise of God. Now you show me the promise of God, and when it went off the people. If you can't produce that in the Word, then forget about it," see. I said, "Because it's still going on."

41 He never said nothing for a few minutes, and so I said, "Well then, brother, I'd like to ask you this: Peter introduced the apostolic message on the day of Pentecost, and we all know that's true, for he had the keys to the kingdom that Jesus had given to him. Now watch what he said. He said, 'Repent every one of you, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to them that's far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.' Then if there's a place where He took it out, what happened to Peter's words on the day of Pentecost, see?" No, it's never ceased.
Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
For all the ransomed church of God
be saved to sin no more.
Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering
tongue
Lies silent in the grave.
God help me to believe that, and hold to it, all of us, and stand by it because it is a gospel truth. Yes, sir.

42 A wise man should never look at these things---and know that they won't work. They never have worked. An organized religion, and an organized experience will never work in the presence of God. It's got to come unadulterated from God. It has never been used by God! No time in the past did God ever use such a system. Now you ... oh, you get members and things like that, but I mean the genuine seed of God, the blessing like fell on the day of Pentecost. It never comes by organization. It comes by birth, being born again.

43 We're invited to take Israel for an example, which they have been. Notice, they have forsaken Him. They were provided fountains, and had hewed themselves out cisterns. Could you imagine a thing, when a man is at a artesian well drinking, and then wants to make him a cistern, see, to drink out of it?
Now that's what the prophet said. That's what the Word of God says. That's what God said to the prophet: "You have forsaken me, and have left me, the fountain of living waters, and have hewed yourself out cisterns, which are broken and they're leaking out."

44 See, something ... they wanted something they could control, or to show what they had done.
That's the folly of organized religion. It's always trying ... they got to have something in it themselves. They got to have all these systems, and societies, and things, and "I belong to this," and "I..." Instead just being humble children of God, they want something that they could show themself. Instead of letting God do it His way, they want to do it their way. And that's the way the systems has got the church today. Not... Each system---one wants it this way, one wants it that way. If you're a Methodist, you must see it this way, Baptist this way, Presbyterian, Catholic, whatever more. They got their systems. Nothing against that, but that ain't what I'm talking about.
Man wants his way of doing it, and God's got His way of doing it. And it says you are holding to your way, a broken cistern, and won't accept my way, the way of life. That's the same thing as it is today. It just hasn't varied a bit. Think how foolish of a man leaving an artesian well of pure, clean water, bubbling up, and then he'd want to go to a broken cistern that and he made himself. And dig him out a cistern with that trash that's up on top the barn washing into it, and drink from that! There certainly is something mentally wrong with that person.

45 And when a man'll cling to an ecclesiastical conception of the Scripture instead of accepting the Holy Ghost, which vindicates the Scripture and makes it real to you, there's something spiritual wrong with that person. That's exactly right. Sure, the Holy Ghost...
Each one has an interpretation of the Bible, what you think is right. God don't need your help. God don't need your interpretation. God's His own interpreter. God tells the interpretation the way He says He would do it. The Lord said in the beginning, "Let there be light," and there was light. That don't need any interpretation. That's what God did. He said, "a virgin shall conceive." She did. That don't need any interpretation. He said He would pour out His spirit upon all flesh. He did. It doesn't need any interpretation. God interprets His own word by vindicating it, and manifesting it, and proving it.

46 That's how a prophet was proven to be of God. He said, "If there be one among you who is spiritual, a prophet, I, the Lord, will make myself known unto him in visions, speak to him through dreams. And what he says comes to pass, then fear him; but if it doesn't, don't do it." That's the same thing when God speaks His word, and the man says the word is this, and it happens that way---then it's God doing it.
But if he says, "It's this way," and "The days are gone," why, he takes all the... He reaches for a hungry ... bird in his hand, the children, and take it away from them, and them starving.
Why would you want to drink out of a cistern when this artesian well was there? What is a fountain of life now? What is the fountain of life, fountain of living waters? An artesian well, we would liken it to.

47 Now, I want you to notice the difference between a cistern and a fountain of living water---artesian well, and an old broken cistern. And they're full of bugs, lizards, frogs, germs, whatmore, see; and here's an artesian well.
Now watch this. It's self-supporting. You don't have to get any big systems to bring a lot of money into it, you don't have to join a lot of members; it supports its members---of the Spirit of life in them, functioning. Notice the water that comes from it. Fresh, pure, and clean. Not a cistern---something stagnated that's been indocumated with forty, sixty, different minds saying this is right, and that's right, and this conception; and vote, and call on it, as they do, and make a denomination out of it. It's pure and clean, unadulterated Word of God coming from the hand of God. It's a real artesian well.
Notice the secret of its power is within itself. Man cannot find it. Some kind of a pressure beneath it that's making it push up.

48 I remember that when I used ... was a state game warden of Indiana, I used to go by, in Harrison County, a certain well or spring. It was always bubbling up, and this always looked like it was the most happiest thing. Whether the snow was on the ground, ice was froze, how cold it was, it still bubbled---where the old man-made ponds and tanks was frozen. Everything was out there was froze over solid. And that goes to show that any denomination, through a little lack of Spirit or a little change of atmosphere, will freeze over. But God's artesian well is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
It keeps all the things bubbled out of it, shoved out of it. And there's nothing in there to begin with, and anything gets into it, it'll push it out of the way.

49 And that thing was bubbling up like that, and I said ... sat down there one day. I said, "I believe I'll talk to that spring just for a moment." I took off my hat, and I said, "What are you so happy about? What are you bubbling so about. Maybe it's because the deers drink from you once in awhile?"
If he could've spoke, he'd've said, "No."
I said, "Maybe it's because that I drink from you?"
"No, that isn't it!"
I said, "Well, what's making you so pure, so clean? So what is it bubbling that makes you bubble, so full of joy all the time, and nothing can freeze you over? You're spurting up in the air, and there's nothing ... clean water."
If it could've spoke to me, you know what that well would've said? It said, "Brother Branham, it isn't me a-bubbling, it's something behind me bubbling me." And that's the way it is with ... that's a poor word, but you know what I mean.

50 That's the way it is with a born again experience. [Unclear words.] It's a well of water within you bubbling up into everlasting life. See there's something about it, that you have nothing to do with. The man-made tanks may freeze, and them begging for revival and everything; but a man that's under that fountain, living in that fountain, it's day and night.
No, you don't have to wait on local rains and local revivals. You're full of it. "I'll give unto him a fountain of life," in him, bubbling up, something in it that's fresh every day, pure and clean. It's unadulterated Word of God in your heart and mouth, vindicating itself, speaking for itself. I don't care whether it's raining, whether it's snowing, what kind of weather it is, you're still happy, because the Holy Spirit is in there bubbling up.
It's a hidden power, notice, for its secret's within it.

51 It gives of itself freely to whomsoever will drink, and use of its substance. Now you don't pick up and say, "Well, now, I'm ... just have to go to the Methodist Church, because I'm a Methodist, for a revival. I'll have to go over here." But if... "I have to go to a Pentecostal, because I'm a Pentecostal revivalist."
I'm telling you, when you got that well of water springing up, that fountain, when you're drinking by there, there's no difference. You'd give to anything that comes by. You're willing to give a hope of life to a Catholic, to a Protestant, to a Jew, to a atheist, or whatever it is. You really, really got something in you that's doing it.

52 You notice another thing about it---you don't have to pump it. You don't have to pull it, you pump it up. I've seen so much of that that it makes me sick. Pumping up something, playing a bunch of music, and jumping up and down, or great bunch of literature out on the town, and great big signs, "the man of the hour!"
There's only one man of the hour---that's Jesus Christ, who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. There's only one messenger from God, and that's Jesus Christ.
Yes, sir. You don't have to pump this up, or pull it down, or you don't have to join it---you just take it freely. Amen! "I am the fountain of living water. You left me to go and make yourself some tanks." Now you don't have to pump it, pump it, pull it, join it, dig it---nothing else. You just have to take of it freely.

53 You don't need any man-made theology for a strainer rag either. I tell you [unclear words]. Some man-made theology, some educational system, self righteous religion in your ... in the ... just some cistern of religious system---you don't need it. It don't have to be there. You put a rag over that, it'll float plumb up in the air. You don't have nothing to do with it. It's self supporting. It's the power of God springing up into life. Why would a man leave a thing like that to join into a system, is more than what I can say. You don't need any strainer rags. You don't need it.
It does not need to be---it doesn't need to depend on local rains for its filling; it's full all the time! Amen.

54 A man I used to ... "I'm just down in the dumps today." Oh, my! Oh, I'm glad to be living in the presence of God, whether things are going right, or not right. He's my life! Amen. He's our life, He's the life, the abundant life. Yes, sir! Look what it does for us.
Its power and purity is within itself. It needs no priming from the cistern, or any other system. Somebody say, "Well, what's your fellowship card? Let's see if you're a good Baptist. I'll see if you got a card."---or a good Pentecostal, if you're a Oneness, Twoness, Threeness, or whatevermore. See, it doesn't need any priming; it's always a-going. Yes.
You know, I used to have this old cistern. I had to pour water down there, and prime, and prime, and prime this old sucker pump to get it out of there. You know---pour some more water in it, and just pour (a bunch of bugs and things in it), to pump out bugs and things. That's just about the way some of these systematic revivals is.
But thank God, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins; where sinners plunged beneath the flood... You don't give ... make church members; you make Christians out of them when they come to that fountain. Why would you leave the fountain of living waters, to drink at such a cesspool as that?

55 No pumping up---its power's within itself. It needs no priming, yes, sir, for itself ... its own life is in itself. That's the way the seed of God is in a man's heart... The life of God is just in the individual. Not in the church; in you. It's in you. You're the one that has the germ of life in you.
Just one taste of it is convincing to all kinds of clergymen. Ask the Catholic priest, ask the Baptist, whatever it is. Just one taste of this great, fresh, artesian water, I'm telling you, it's convincing that it's the truth! Your hungry soul ... anyhow, it's convincing to the thirster anyhow. Now if you're not thirsting... This little Baptist, he wasn't thirsting to begin with; but when he got thirsty the water tasted awful good. That's right. But you've got to thirst, the blessed thirst that ... Jesus called that: "Blessed are you when you do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for you shall be filled." Jesus said that, friends. Yes, sir! It's a blessed fountain to the thirsty.

56 Why should any want to swap it for a swamp? How would you like to swap an artesian well for a swamp water full of bugs and contaminations, of all kinds of man-made theories, which God said that adding one to His Word, or taking one of His words away, his part would be taken off of the book of life? and when God promised that He'd vindicate this Word in every generation? "For the promise is to you, and your children, and to them far off, that's as many as the Lord our God shall call."
Why would you pump on some systematic pump that's been contaminated for years, from some old manna? Maybe the manna was all right, nothing against it, in the days of Martin Luther, in the days of this, and in the days of that, the other reformers---nothing about it. But that's manna that fell a long time ago. If we notice in the Bible they had to pick it up every day. They had to get new. After it got a little old, it rotted. It cannot rot without breaking down. It has to have bacteria in it, or something to make it rot. We know that's so, and so is the systems. After it lays there from one great revival to another it gets contaminated. It gets full of bugs and like a cistern full of wiggle-tails (that we used to call it), little old bugs that wiggle in there.

57 That's what's the matter with so many people's experience today. They're just full of wiggle-tails wiggling from one to one, on to the other, telling tales that ain't got no truth in it at all. That's right---wiggling out of one into another. "I was a Methodist, I joined the Baptist, I was a Catholic, I went to be this, I went to be that." It's just wiggle-tails. Oh, forget the whole thing, and come to the fountain, amen, that artesian well, the ever-living presence of Christ.
I believe Him to be the inexhaustible fountain of life. More you get ... come in the pressure, gets in ... the colder it gets, and the better it gets, and the sweeter it tastes. I been serving Him now for thirty three years, and each day grows still sweeter than it was the day before. I never ... He said you'd never thirst if you drink of this water. Notice, how great it is.
Oh, Israel did, as many do today---they left the fountain of living waters to go dig themselves cisterns.

58 Now, speaking of grace just for a moment---what the grace of God... We got laws and by-laws, and if you don't measure up to this standard... I got a religious measuring stick; if you don't measure just up to that, you got to ... you can't come in, and so forth. But God saves us by grace, not by measuring stick, see. But God, speaking of grace, now, just how this happened to take place, a-drinking from Him, from this measuring-stick. Murmuring Israel, watch, He said, "And I will visit you again." Notice in the Scripture, notice He's going to try them---to visit them again.
Murmuring Israel, at the Red Sea, was invited to follow Him through the stagnated Egyptians' water, to be a free people. They was invited to come over to be a free people with Him, come out through the Dead Sea (the Red Sea, rather), come out through that to go into a wilderness to bring a separation between them and the impersonators, trying to impersonate it without circumcision.

59 Oh, that's what caused the trouble. Every one of them perished right in the sea. Pharaoh and his army, they seen human beings walking by supernatural power; so they come back around and tried to impersonate that without being ... and when they did, they perished. It's carnal comparisons. A man that tries to do that, tries to impersonate something, then he is making a carnal comparison of a real Christian.

60 My Indian brother there knows that. Come up around Bombay, and you see the people there, the Hindus and so forth, laying on spikes, and upon ... walking on glass, and walking in fire, to show what they can do, and things like... That's carnal impersonations of some man back in the jungle there doing that to sacrifice for his god.
We find that amongst all religious life---carnal impersonations, somebody trying to be like the other. There's only one example you're to be like: that's like Jesus Christ, who was the Word. And then when the Word of God comes to you it'll be the same way.

61 But God led them right on to the promised land anyhow. They found, also, every tank---when they started through the wilderness in their journey, now after they had separated---they found out that every tank was dry to them. And you'll find the same thing, brother, when you start this journey to the promised land. You'll find doors closed, like that little preacher said---an Anglican or whatever he was, and the first thing you know his church turned him out. Just as soon as he had so many received the Holy Ghost, that was the end of it.

62 And Israel found the same thing, as examples, in their journey to the promised land. The tanks were all dry. Yeah, their journey, in obedience to His promised Word, their journey in ... the tanks they found dry. Now they found the tanks could not be depended on for the journey. And if you're going to journey in obedience to the Word of God, and try to join this, and join that, you're going to find out there ain't a tank in the world that will support it. Not at all. You are an individual. God leads you just the way He wants to lead you.
Then we have found the same thing today, and all tanks are dried up,

63 but the promises are always true to... God, who will keep His promise to His people, He promised He'd supply all they had need of, so He did that. In the midst of the empty dry tanks (just think of it), and complaining Israel in the desert, in the journey, He called His servant-leader, the prophet Moses, out to one side, and opened up a fountain of living water by a smitten rock, so His believing children would not perish.
In this day that speaks of grace to me. We are undeserving. The way that we've done, the way that we've lived, we're undeserving. But God in this day, like right here this morning, look---the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, and all, He has opened up a fountain. Hebrews 13 proves that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever; so it makes true John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
And it was lifted up for a compound reason: because the people were murmuring and sinning, and they were snake bitten, and they were dying; and for their forgiveness of their sins, and the healing of their sickness. And that's the same fountain that's open to us today---for our salvation, and for our healing, physical healing, for He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

64 And when the rock that was smitten by ... the promised Word of God had commanded, it was giving forth gushers of pure clean water. Not stagnated, not contaminated, but God's own presence, pure water, and saved all that drank. Now we know that's true because we read it in the Old Testament as a type.
Now you did not have to pull it, pump it, join it, go into the seminary to learn how to use it. They'll tell you how to use it there, see. "Oh, well, if you have received the Holy Spirit, we believe that; but so, we ... you do it this way..." But, you see, there's no control of it.
You don't use the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit uses you, see. See, you're not, you're not to use the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's got you. A gift is not something you take, like a knife and sharpen a pencil with it. It's yielding yourself to God, and getting yourself out of the way so the Holy Spirit can use you.

65 Notice, they never had to pump it, or pull it or they never had to ask, "Now how do we use this water?"---because they knowed how to use it. They were thirsty. They knowed what to do with it. And so does a man or woman, regardless of what creed, or denomination he belongs to, if he's thirsting for God he don't have to run back to seminary like this Anglican brother did, or British brother last night had to go back and consult "how" to the Anglican Church---how he must use this great gift he's got, speaking in tongues, and how he must do this. They'd kick him out to begin with. See, he was thirsty, so God just filled him. That's all there is to it. It's thirsting, and then He just fills.
You don't have to have any control, somebody tell you what to do with it. God leads each individual in the way He wants you to do. You are an individual yourself. You are a part of God. Nobody can take your place. And there's no way I have to go to somebody and say, "Now, I have to do this with it, or I have to do that with it." No, sir! God uses it the way that He wants to.
When you're thirsty you know enough to drink.

66 If you're thirsty this morning, drink from it. That's all you have to do. God had provided a way for their thirst. The thirsty children could partake freely of Himself. And God's provided a way for every man and woman this morning who's hungering and thirsts.
Perhaps there's people sitting here who's never been saved, there's people sitting here who's on the verge of being saved, there's people here sitting here is church members. You want to do right, but you're drinking from a tank. It'll never tell you these truths.
The only thing to come is take the promise of God, and come to that fountain. Then He'll quench the thirst. He that drinks from this fountain shall never thirst again.

67 Notice now, how He liberated His ones who received this water by grace, and not by a system, or cistern of education. It vindicates His Word, is a life-giving resource. How many in here knows that you received life when you've taken that Word, and His water, just ... you know that you received life?
Let's take just another example or two, then we'll close just in a moment. I must have that button somewhere, but notice... I just keep talking, but I don't mean to do it.
Look. Let's take for example just a couple people.

68 Let's take the woman at Jacob's cistern, a dug well. There she was sitting there. That's all the woman knowed was this cistern, where she come to get water. And over against the well, she found (in the little panoramic there), a man sitting there, a Jew, and she was a Samaritan. This is the city of Sychar. And we find out that this man, this Jew, spoke a unusual word to this woman: said, "Bring me a drink."
She said, "Now we have segregation. It's not right for you to ask me a question like that, you being a Jew and me a Samaritan."
He said, "But if you knew who you were talking to, you'd ask me for a drink, and I'd give you waters that you don't have to come to this cistern to drink; it'd be a well of water bubbling up in you." Notice, when she found that this proved to be the truth...

69 Now, first, any man could have said that, but she said, "You say worship in to Jerusalem, and we worship in this mountain."
And He said, "Salvation is of the Jews. We know what we believe, but," said, "let me tell you one thing [in words like this]: neither in this mountain, or at Jerusalem... The time's coming when the men shall worship God in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such..."
He said, "Go get your husband and come here." Watch, here it proved it. Here it showed what fountain she was at. Said, "Go get your husband and come here."
She said, "I don't have any husband."
He said, "You said the truth." See, looked like a plain contradiction to what He had asked her, and said, "Go get your husband."
Said, "I have no husband."
Said, "You've said the truth." Said, "Because you've had five, and the one you're living with now is not yours."

70 Watch that woman---how different from the priest of that day. The priest of that day seen the same thing happen, and said, "That's a devil, telepathy, or Beelzebub." See, they failed to see the Word promising that; but that little woman was better versed in the Scripture than any of the priests.
She said, "Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet. We haven't had one for four hundred years [that's from Malachi]." But said, "We have looked for one, and we know there's one coming, the Messiah, and when He comes this'll be what He'll do."
Jesus said, "I am he." Amen!
Did you notice, she left her bucket at Jacob's cistern, run down into the city, full of an artesian well. She'd seen it perfectly vindicated that He was that fountain. Let me introduce her to you. She left that. When it was proved to be the Word of life, she left it. And had discovered that the same rock that was smitten in the wilderness was proven to be present then.

71 Then let me say that same God that was in the days gone by, that we speak so much of, He's present here now. Not with some theological understanding, but by a personal knowledge of His vindication that He'd pour out, in this last days, the Holy Spirit upon His church. He is not a "I was"; He is still the "I AM," present tense, always.
Then the cistern lost its taste. And so does every man who ever falls into the power of God by the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The denominational systems lose their taste. You don't want no more of that stagnated ... frogs, and lizards, and bugs, and so forth. You're drinking from a fountain that's fresh and pure, the Word of God, fresh every hour in your soul; the same as now, when as the Word has been proven to be the truth. Taste and see if it's not right.
So the cistern has served us well, served its time well, but you see the fountain of life was there. Not Jacob's well no more for spiritual drinking. What they thought they'd drink from that well, why, it would be all right; but now the fountain of life itself was sitting there.

72 Now we don't need systems and organizations like that. We're at the end time. And God promised them at the end time the things that He would do, and we see it fulfilled to the word. We hear the men of military might stand up, and shivering, and saying, "Something's fixing to happen." We feel the Holy Spirit warning us that something's fixing to happen. We see everything's set in order. Then leave that system and come to the fountain!
Yes, sir, served its purpose, but now she was face to face with the fountain itself.

73 In John 7:37-38 Jesus said, in the last days of the feast of the tabernacle... What did He say? "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink." Right in a bunch of theologians. "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink, for the Scriptures has said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water." There's the living fountain. That's the fountain that the people's forsaken today. For the creed they have forsaken the fountain of living waters.
Let me introduce you to Him. He to me (and I'm closing,) He to me is that fountain that saved Hagar's life and the child, when they were dying in the wilderness. I believe He is that rock. In Isaiah 32, He's that rock in a weary land. He's a shelter in a time of storm. Zechariah 13, He is the fountain that's open in the house of David for sin. I believe Him to be that, don't you? And Psalms 36:9, He is David's fountain of life. He is the still waters of David in the green pastures. He is the water by the brookside for David.

74 In Genesis 17, He's Abraham's nursing breast, El Shaddai. That when his life was gone from him, still he... God said... A man of a hundred years old, "How would this thing be? I'm old, my wife is old, how can these things be?"
He said, "I am El Shaddai." Now, "El" is "the," and "Shad" is "breasted." Shaddai is plural. Would be, "I am the breasted God." Like a baby that's fretting, and it's sick, and its strength is gone from it; lean upon the mother's bosom and nurse its strength back. Sure. Not only when it's nursing, it isn't fretting no more; at the mother's breast it's satisfied. Why? It is getting its strength.
And any man that would take God's promise in his heart---that the promise is unto you, and your children, them that's far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call---and lay right against that, and nurse your strength back. Fretting child, believe it. It's for the believers.

75 To the believer poet, I could think of many songs that the poets found that... There was one of them said one time:
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
When sinners plunge beneath the flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
That dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
There may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.
Ever since by faith I saw that stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.

76 To me, He's the waters of the word of separation that separates you from everything that's contrary to His Word. That's the fountain I believe Him to be. Yes, sir! That ... it's the water that's separated me from man-made cisterns, to the fountain of living water. Oh, friend, I could just ... you could just go on and on with the things that He is to us. He's Alpha, Omega, He's the beginning, He's the end, He's He that was, which is, and shall come, He's the root and offspring of David, He's the morning star, He's my all in all.

77 And brother, sister, if you haven't had ... just been drinking from this little man-made tank all your life, why not this morning forsake that tank, and come to this fountain?
Let's bow our heads just a moment. With your head bowed [Someone sings a prophecy. Blank spot on tape.] ... to my opinion the altar call ... how many now? I was all nervous I was keeping you too long. Oh, it made me chop my message to pieces, but I believe the Holy Spirit wants you to get what I mean, see. Look there's nothing more important in this day than getting right with God. See, our dinners, whatever it is, whatever---the Lord is here. (Now, I've only heard that about once in my life since this time.)
Now, all of you here, not how many, all of you here that wants to drink from that, just stand up. Just a minute, just for prayer. God bless you. The Lord bless you.

78 Now how many in here that's standing present now, would say that, by a uplifted hand, like this, "God, move on me. Just fill me. Let me drink from this fountain. And I haven't done just what's right, but I want you to forgive me for it. I want you to wash away my sins, and let me from this day just..."
Just now,
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
Now that you that's a Christian believer, you've accepted Christ as your personal Savior, but you have not as yet... Now if you haven't, that's the fountain. The only one I know about is that fountain from Immanuel's veins. Now, and if many of you here...

79 Just like I was speaking the other night about this little eagle walking in the barnyard with the chickens. And he never knowed nothing else but the chickens, but he knowed there's something about him was different from the chickens. And then his mother come hunting him and she screamed from above. It was an eagle's call, see.
He had to be an eagle to begin with, or he'd've never recognized that call, see. He ... there has to be something there to germitize, or it can never produce life. And if the seed, the Word of God, is in you, the Holy Spirit's here now to germitize that and bring it to a reality to you.

80 How many in here has not received the baptism of the Holy Ghost? Would you raise up your hands? All around, everywhere, just real honest, if you haven't received the Holy Ghost, and you'd like to, raise up your hand wherever you are. Just keep your hand up just a moment.
Now I want you standing around, and looking at them, I want somebody to lay your hands over on them. I believe right now the Holy Spirit will fill every one of you that wants it. Now don't think about the food out there in the cafeteria. Let's think about this food here. This is the one. This is life, see. This is life. Now turn right around, each one of you and lay hands on each other. "And they laid their hands upon them..." Now I want you to pray for that person you got your... Now don't think about going out, don't think about nothing else, just think right now the Holy Spirit's here to fill each individual.
Open up your heart, dump all the cistern water out, and say, "O fountain of life, come into me, fill me, O Lord God, with Thy goodness and mercy."

81 Lord Jesus, that inexhaustible fountain, I pray God that You will fill each one of them. May the Holy Ghost fall here. I pray God, that we forget all about anything else, that the Holy Spirit fall into the midst of us just now, and will give to us that waters of life freely. From everywhere, grant it, O God, for all. The continuity of prayer and song blending together, Lord, knowing that your presence, your divine presence...
We want to come to the fountain. We want the real genuine baptism with the Holy Ghost, Lord. These people are praying for it. I pray that it'll strike a moment now, that they will be filled with this goodness of God. Grant it, O God. Hear the prayer of your children. May you come upon their beings, may the power of God and the Holy Ghost sweep over them. Grant it, God.
Oh, how we thank you for the refreshing, for the presence of the mighty God of Heaven standing in our midst. Right at this noon hour, Lord, feed us. Lord, we want food from your table. Feed us, Lord, just now. Feed us with the Holy Spirit in our lives. Our hungry, parching souls are thirsty, as you said in the interpretation of the song: It would pour forth water upon parched ground. Let it happen, Lord. Let thy words be made manifested in the hearts of thy children---water upon dry, parched ground. Eternal God, hear the prayer of your servant, and give unto us that blessing. Amen.
Oh, how I love Jesus,

82 Just keep praising now, find out---the Holy Spirit's here. If you don't receive it, it's your fault.
... how I love Jesus,
(Lovest thou me more than these?)
....... love Jesus,
Because He first loved me.
Oh, how I love Jesus,
(Praise be to God!)
Oh, how I love....,
(What if He comes just...?)
Oh, how I love Jesus,
Because He first loved me.
I'll never forsake Him,
I'll never forsake Him,
I'll never forsake Him,
Because He first loved me.
Wonderful, wonderful, Jesus is to me,
The Counselor, Prince of Peace,
Mighty God is He,
Saving me, keeping me, from all sin
and shame.
Wonderful is my Redeemer, praise His ...
Let's sing it to Him.
Oh, wonderful, wonderful, Jesus is to me.
Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God
is He;
Saving me, keeping me, from all sin
and shame,
Wonderful is my Redeemer, praise His name.

83 All that feel that, say amen! Oh, hallelujah. I see some people coming through now with the Holy Spirit.
I once was lost, now I'm found, free
from condemnation,
Jesus gives liberty, and a full salvation.
Saving me, keeping me, from all sin
and shame,
Wonderful is my Redeemer, praise....
Let's raise up our hands, and really sing.
Wonderful, wonderful, Jesus is to me,
Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God
is He;
Saving me, keeping me, from all sin
and shame,
Wonderful is my Redeemer, praise His name.
Do you love Him? Oh, wonderful. Praise Him, the fountain filled with blood where sinners lose all fear of man, all condemnation, just free in Him. Hallelujah! Oh, my. That's really wonderful.
Now while we sing that again, let's let all the Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Presbyterians, what there is, while we sing this "wonderful, Jesus is to me," let's just turn around and shake hands with each other, just have a good old mix-up. You know, that's what I like. Come on, let's sing it now as we do it.
Oh, wonderful, wonderful, Jesus is to me,
(That's right)
Oh, Counselor, Prince of Peace.....
... . keeping me, from all sin
and shame,
Wonderful is my Redeemer, praise His name.
............. comforts me,
It makes the lame to walk, and the
blind to see,
It opens prison doors, sets the
captives free.
Well, there's a river of life flowing
down through me.

84 [Gap in the audio]
The Bible said pray for those that are in authority.

85 Our heavenly Father, we are standing in a desperate need for the leader of our nation, our President. He may never know this, Lord, but you know it. I pray for Brother Johnson, as he professes to be a believer in you. And, Father, a heart attack, we understand, has struck him. I pray, God, spare his life. We're in a national crisis right now anyhow. Let thy spirit come upon him, Lord, and right now in the hospital, or wherever he may be, let your spirit come down to that Walter Reed hospital, and touch his body, sparing his life, Lord. The man's under pressure, more pressure than what we understand, so we pray, God, as believers and as a part of this nation, we pray for our leader, that you will grant him an extension of life in this great hour. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.