Communion

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1 ... in my throat from several, fifteen services out in Arizona. Had a wonderful time. The Lord Jesus just blessed us exceedingly, abundantly. They tried to work just a little bit of the Lord's strategy, I trust that would be the right way to put it, going in and rim-firing the place, first. I went in several days ahead of time, had ten or twelve services at all the major big churches throughout Phoenix, Sunnyslope and Tempe and Mesa and down through there, and it kind of rim-fired it all around and then led it all to the five nights of the convention. And it was the biggest convention we've had in North America. It was a great one. The biggest breakfast, and also the banquet that night.

2 I just couldn't say how many it was that received the Holy Ghost. It was tremendous how many received the Holy Ghost, and how many was healed and got saved, it was just wonderful. So we're grateful to God as we see the time moving up. Many great men came in. One of the...
This will do Brother Neville lots of good. I seen a Presbyterian minister, out of the greatest Presbyterian college in this nation, dancing in the Spirit. Oh, my, it was really something, he received the Holy Ghost. And then he told me, he said, "I got one of your tapes." Said, "It wasn't very good." Said, "It was just kind of jumpy, but," said, "I took it right into my college and played it." And said, "Being the great man of psychology there, he kept them all quiet. Well, they got to hear it once, anyhow," he said. And he said he had...
And said he got to dancing in the Spirit at his church, after he received the Holy Ghost, and they said, "Reverend, when are you going to learn a new step?"
He said, "When my congregation learns this one." I thought that was pretty cute, you know, Presbyterian hierarchy, said, "When my congregation learns this one." So that's a good thing. Just like a little baby, just new and yet he's been... Well, you know what he'd have to be, to be the professor of psychology in the greatest Presbyterian college in Boston, well, it's in the United States.

3 I seen one of Mayo's head heart surgeons preach the gospel in the Spirit and speak in tongues. Oh, my! I seen another specialist, which was a Seventh-day Adventist, out of... He was a specialist on the heart and throat also, and he, an old man, received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. He received it. One night I laid hands on him over in the courts, and he received the Holy Ghost. So we're ... just so many things that our Lord did that we're thankful for, and especially seeing at this time.
Then I said to them, "Do you realize what hour this is when the sleeping virgin begins to ask for oil?" It was time that the bridegroom came, and the people, the ready ones went in. Oh, I'm so glad to know that we're living here in these last days. I believe that we're living in one of the most tremendous times that the world's ever known, just on the eve of the coming of the Lord. Isn't that wonderful? Think, that most any time now, all Scripture's just about fulfilled! And so we're expecting Him at any moment. And we should live under those kind of expectations, that, just any time it could happen. Be prayed up, ready!

4 On some of the interviews today, one, I met a missionary from Formosa, gallant woman, seventy-three years old, and would pass for about forty-five. And she's still a Miss, and must have been a beautiful young girl. And she said she was raised up in a Christian home where "yes" meant yes, and "no" meant no. And she come up under that strict teaching. And she said, "Brother Branham, at the age of about, oh," said, "about eight years old, I thought that I gave my life to the Lord Jesus." She said, "About twelve years old, I was enticed by a certain denominational minister, that I must get the second blessing," and said "and was awfully deceived in it." But she said, "About seventeen years old, I really received the Holy Ghost." And she's back here now try to wake up some of these sleeping Baptist churches. She said if there was anything that she seen was "dead," she's a Baptist herself, she said, "are these dead Baptist churches back here." She called them "morgues."
I said, "Well, I guess when you're on the battlefront..." I think now she's... Just think, me, fifty-two, she was out as a missionary before I was born. And then I think I was getting too old to get on the field. And I think, "My, forgive me, Lord."

5 And she, fine, just as bright and brilliant as she could be. And then telling me experiences along the road, and how that the gospel was needed in Formosa and China, and Japan, and so forth. So they sent her back from the field, said, "You can't go in the fields after you're past seventy, you know." So they sent her back. But she's not going to be still, she's going to all these Baptist conventions. And she said, "Billy Graham," said, "the way he was carrying the Baptist message, was in indebtedment to the Baptist church." Said, "He don't take them far enough to get the Holy Ghost," she said. Oh, sister, you stay right with that. That's all right. She said, those Chinese back there, said she wouldn't let them just go along and say, "We believe Jesus Christ." Said, "That was all right," but said she made them stay there till something happened and then they become real Christians.
I said, "That's the way it goes, sister. Just tell them, let them stay till something happens."

6 What if the apostles would have said, now, after nine days, "We believe that we got it, see, let's just accept it by faith and go ahead with our work." See, it never would have worked out. They waited there until they knew that something happened. That's what's the trouble of us is today, we don't stay long enough. Well, that's the reason afterwards we can just live any kind of a life, do anything, don't bother us, because we don't stay there long enough. Today we're in, tomorrow we're out, and this way and that way. If we stay long enough till you get in and close the door behind you, you're going to stay there then. You're sealed until the day of your redemption. I'm so glad of that.

7 And we had a great time, as I said, at Phoenix and through the valley and many of the Christians there, many of them holding on with dear life.
I went up on South Mountain, wife back there and I, one day when friends... My brother Doc kept the two girls, and Brother and Sister Wood kept the boy, and me and my wife had a second honeymoon. And she said, "Bill, you know, this one was more of a honeymoon than the first one." She said, "The first time we went on a honeymoon, the only thing I done was sit in a camp and wait for you to come in from hunting," she said.
I kind of used a little strategy you know. I thought, "Well, now, I haven't got much money. Just saved up in a baking powder can, enough to go on a hunting trip, and yet I was going to get married that fall. So I thought, "Just make it all together," you know. And while I was going on a hunting trip, it'd be the honeymoon, you know, and so we consolidated. But this time we paid up for it and really went out and had a great time.

8 And many of them come from the Tabernacle here. I believe Brother Sothmann, his family's back there, and Brother Tom Simpson and them, and Brother Maguire, and we all had great times in the Lord.

9 And so we went up on South Mountain, which is just South of Phoenix, and got up away from that pressure. Mmm! A pressure in a modern city! No wonder when the people begin to multiply upon the earth, sin and violence set in. And I looked up there, and sitting way high so we could see the valley of Phoenix, I said to the wife, "Wonder how many times, since we've been sitting here in this fifteen minutes, that the name of the Lord is taken in vain in that city?"
About, well, in the metropolitan area, taking in Tempe and Sunnyslope, and through there, I suppose there's right at a million people in that valley. I said, "Three hundred years ago there wasn't nothing but cactus and coyotes in here. And it probably, in the sight of the Lord, it'd be better if it was back like that." That's right. Although the great city that they built there, and beautiful homes and so forth, is pretty. But it would be fine, it would be better off if the men and women were walking up and down the streets with their hands up in the air, glorifying God and thanking Him. But, instead of that, it's cursing, carrying on, drinking. Just let civilization come in, and wickedness is there.

10 I said, "How many adulteries was committed last evening, last night in this city! How many drunk! How many homes... How many disorderly things has been done in the last hour, in this great city!"
And wife said to me, she said then something like this, as I thought, "What would be the use of coming here then? Why did you leave home to come out here?"
Then I said, "Here's what it is. After all of that, which certainly is in the majority, but there is a little minority down there. How many faithful prayers went up in the last evening down there, just coming on to the service?"

11 And He was so good to us that the churches would be packed out before sundown, that you couldn't get in the yards around the place. And them organizations and so forth, and the Lord poured out His Spirit and blessed them. And I never held any punches, just keep punching right away at the gospel. And sometimes, of course, it's pretty rough, but it's the only way I know it. It's rough in here. So it's going to be rougher at that judgment bar where we have to stand up to it. So, altogether, it was a glorious thing. And we want to thank the church here for praying and holding on to us, and keeping us near the cross.
And now coming back home then, in here, and I would have gotten down this morning maybe to pray for some of the sick. I got many of the interviews that's waiting, cases that some of them I got on to the last couple days since I been here, has been waiting a month since I've been gone. So they're trying to get in to them just as fast as they can, get them from different places where they're located.

12 And the Lord willing, in about two more weeks, I'm going to Tucson, that's down lower part. And now the businessmen this time, so you can pray for this... I never like to do anything until first I believe it's the will of the Lord. Now, the next convention comes up in Modesto and then from there to Washington, the state, Washington, and to Zurich, then Palestine, and then into South Africa. And that all takes place between now and June. And I was invited to be the speaker at all these conventions. And it might give me an opportunity to get into South Africa again. Their call, every month we get invitations. But if one...

13 There's a big split in the churches, the Pentecostal churches. And if you go to one side, the other won't have anything to do with it. And they won't cooperate together, so I've just stood back now for about five years with a call in my heart to go. And now, maybe if the businessmen will take me in, just enough to get established, that's from both sides, you see, and so that makes them all come to tall. They all have to come to cooperate in that because the financial needs of their ... means of their churches is there, so they have to come to save their face, you see. So maybe it might be the will of the Lord, however, I don't know. It sounds good, but I don't know.

14 And then, in this year, Brother Borders give me the itinerary or the invitations. And, honestly, it was a book two times that thick that's come in since last Christmas, of invitations around. It's too much for a human mind to try to solve it out, so I didn't take any of them. I'm just going to take one meeting, and wait and see where the Lord tells me to go from there, then I'll go next, and then next, and wherever He tells me to go. So, you pray for me.
I remember last year, down with Brother ... or Sister Cox's down there, when Brother Arganbright called me to go on this trip up to Anchorage. What if I would have went on that just by presuming that it was all right?
Now, I was thinking that, presuming, I preached on the subject of that. I said when I went out there, told the tape boys, "Don't take no tapes. Don't go out for no tapes, I'm going to preach on the same subjects I did here." I think I preached one that I did here, the rest of them was all new ones. And Brother Maguire got them, all of them.

15 Presuming. So if I'd have went, presuming up there, it would have sure been different than what it turned out, the vision wouldn't have been fulfilled. But the vision was fulfilled, and you all are aware of that, how the Lord did bless.
Now, there's another thing that's been on my heart a long time. Church, pray for it. All you people here knows that since I've been a little boy I've never been satisfied in this country. All my heart has always longed for the West. And I remember when I was mowing the grass for my mother-in-law up there in the little place that was the ... belonged into the church here, that the place ... I was sitting on the steps, and the Holy Spirit spoke to me, He said, "I cannot further bless you until you fully obey me, like Abraham," see. And, Abraham, God told him to separate himself and go to himself. And, when he did, he took along with him his father and his nephew. And until Abraham completely obeyed God, then there was a complete fulfillment of what God promised him. And the tie, one of the main ties that bound me here, was my mother. You know that. And now Mother has gone to be with the Lord Jesus. And I don't know which way to turn, what to do, so you pray for me.

16 Now, Brother Neville, I walked out on the platform, I thought, "Well, I'd go out there." Someone met me and said, "My, they got a great lot of service tonight." Said, "They're going to have preaching service, song service, prayer service, and then take up the collections, and then said they got a foot wash, communion, and baptismal service."
I thought, "Poor brother! My! My, all of that, I know what that is, probably after preaching hard this morning." Now, I thought, "I'll slip up there, maybe he'll want me to give communion."
And he said, "Would you speak for us tonight if you feel led?" So I know what that means. So then I went back and got a Scripture here and got a few notes, and maybe the Lord will help me to deliver just a short message of about four hours, and then we'll have our feet washing, and then communion. And, oh, I, maybe I'll get done before then. No, I was just teasing you. About twenty, thirty minutes, and then we'll have the baptismal... What follows this, communion? Communion follows this, then baptismal service.

17 Now, we're happy that you're going to be baptized. Now, if God is willing and that pleases Him, and it's all right with the pastor and the people, next Sunday morning I'll be down to pray for the sick, and to speak, if the Lord willing, this coming Sunday, 'cause perhaps the following Sunday I'll be gone again then. And now when I'm in, I like to come in and speak here, 'cause we're kind of associated together as brethren, Brother Neville and I here, and we love one another, and we want to stay close and help one another.

18 This sounds sacrilegious, but I hope it don't sound that way to you, Mr. Cory said one time, I was in a lamp campaign, selling bulbs for the company. And he bought enormous lot of bulbs which would keep him for four or five years, I turned around and bought a Ford from him. He said, "Billy, I believe we're just scratching each other's back." So that's well, just kind of helping out in the time of need. So that's right. We know how to come to one another's rescue and help each other.

19 Now, let's go to the sincere part of it now, and if I'm not mistaken, I believe I see Brother Beeler back there in the back, another minister brother. And today when I passed by, Brother Junie Jackson was standing out here in the yard with Brother Creech. Do they have a service here sometimes? Baptismal service, I see. All right, we can furnish the water if they'll get the candidate. We got the water, all right.

20 So now, being that we're going to have the communion, I thought it would be good if I talked on communion just for a few minutes.
Now, before we approach the Word, let's lay aside everything now, and all of our childish and kiddish ways, and approach into the presence of God by prayer. Let us pray. Now with our heads bowed, and I trust our hearts also, if there is a request in here that would ... you'd like to be made known to God, and would like for me to remember you before God, would you just let it be known by raising your hand to God. God grant each and everyone's request.

21 Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who raised Him up from the dead and set Him at the right hand of the Majesty, ever living to make intercessions upon the things that we believe that He did for us, and confess it to be so, we pray, Lord God, that tonight, You'll forgive our sins. Oh, we want to keep under the blood at all times, for we don't know just what might happen. All things are about wound up, we feel, Lord, that the coming of the Lord is at hand. And we're fixing to take a journey. And as we think of a journey, we might think of suitcases, and extra clothing and extra shoes. But how different from this journey! It's not packing up; it's unpacking, laying aside. As Your great servant, Paul, said in the book of the Hebrews, the 12th chapter, "We lay aside every weight and the unbelief that does so easily beset us, that we might run with patience the race that's set before us."

22 And we cannot prophesy now of good things to this modern world. The only thing that we can prophesy through the spirit is disaster, troubles, earthquakes, great tidal waves, sun and moon failing, the church in the Laodicean age, Christ outside the door, knocking to get in. O God! Just as Micaiah of old, how could he bless Ahab when prophecy was against him? When that great mighty prophet, Elijah, walked up to him, and because he had took the life of that innocent man, Naboth, so he said, "The dogs will lick your blood." Then how could Micaiah prophesy good things?

23 How can the Spirit-filled children of today prophesy good to a sinful, indifferent people that has turned the Lord outside? O God, we only see the bitterness of judgment ahead. And screaming to those who are not right, "Flee to the Lord, for He is the rock in a weary land! He's the shelter in the time of storm. And the name of the Lord is a mighty tower, and the righteous run into it and are safe." How can we think of those great cities built of refuge? And when the pursuer ... after the man and he got into the tower, he was safe, nothing could touch him. O God, let us run and make haste to the Lord, for He is our refuge and our strength, and a very present help in the time of trouble. So, by seeing by the eye of the eagle, as it was, trouble making up, the clouds a rolling, the thunder and lightning of judgment bearing down upon the earth, we know that the storm is at hand.

24 Tonight, Lord, we pray for these here that raised their hands. I don't know what they wanted, Father, Thou does. I pray that You'll supply everything to their precious souls, that the meaning behind that hand was raised for. Grant it, Lord. Heal the sick. Comfort the weary. Give joy to the oppressed. Give peace to the weary, food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, joy to the sad, power to the church. Lord, bring Jesus in our midst tonight, as we're fixing to take the communion representing his broken body. We pray, Lord, that He will visit us in an outstanding way.
Bless this little congregation, it's beloved pastor, our Brother Neville and his family, and the deacons, the trustees, and every person that's present. Bless others, Lord, all around the world, that's waiting with joy for the coming of the Lord, lamps trimmed, and the chimneys all polished, and the light of the gospel shining in dark places.
Now, help me, Lord, with these few words. Bless it as we read it, and give us the context, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

25 Now we might turn in the Book, to the 6th chapter of St. John, and it would be good if each one of us read this whole chapter when we went home. I would like to read, beginning at the 47th verse, down to the 59th, inclusive, just for a way of building a text on the subject of "Communion." Jesus speaking now, at the feast. It was a great time, these feasts were. They drank the water from the rock, to represent the rock that was in the wilderness. And they eat, for the manna that had fallen many hundreds of years ago, in commemoration. It was just a Passover feast, as we have tonight.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me has everlasting life.
I am that bread of life.
Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto ye. Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
This is that bread which cometh down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: but he that eateth ... this bread shall live for ever.
These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

26 May the Lord bless His Word. I want to, just for a few minutes, speak on: "Communion." What does the word communion mean? Commune means to talk. To have communion really means to have fellowship, talk with each other. If you talk on the phone to someone, you carry a conversation there, you are communing one with another. And if we should come aside and stand back in the back of the building, any individual and the pastor, or any two people, they are communing one with the other.

27 Now, you do not commune by radio, because you cannot talk back, or television. But when ... you can by telephone, because you are communing one to another, it just isn't one side. It is ... I cannot commune with you now, because you do not talk back. So, therefore, it would not be coming to hear a minister deliver his message. That would not be, coming together, to communion. Communion would not be that. If you come just to commune with the minister, you'd call him to one side, or any individual, and commune with him or she.
But to what we come into, communion, is for each of us as individuals to commune with Christ. That is communing. Then, communing is not altogether one doing the talking, us doing all the talking, but waiting and seeing what He says back to us.

28 Now there's where, many times, that we make our great mistakes, is, we do all the talking and don't wait and give Him a chance to answer back. We go sometimes, say, "Lord, I would that You would do so-and-so and so-and-so. Amen.", and get up and leave. Now, that really isn't communing. That's going and asking a favor. But when you stay long enough until He answers back, that's when you're getting communion, communing with the Lord. Now, and a great way to commune, is to be agreed, you must agree upon certain things. Now, and it's strange that sometimes when we get those things...
Eating is associated with it. Now, you take business people, when they want to make a business deal, they'll invite somebody out to dinner. And after they are sat down and eat, and then talk with one another. A good salesman, usually he cannot talk to a person on an empty stomach. It's best to wait till he is feeling good, and then after he has his breakfast. Don't get up there and get him out of bed and tell him about something you got to sell him, but wait till he has his breakfast and is all right in condition.

29 The other day, preaching on the woman that washed Jesus' feet, up in Canada, I was speaking this, saying that when a guest came to visit another person, this person had certain processes they had to go through before they were actually felt fit to come to visit or commune. A visit is a communing. Now, they would come to the ... invited, first you had to be invited. Then you would come to the door and the flunky would wash the feet, because travel, you had the smell of the animals and so forth along the road. They all ... the people traveled the same road with the animal, and then there was a smell in the dust, and the Palestinian garment picked it up and it settled on the sweat of the legs, and the face where it was uncovered, and on the hands. And they would catch them at the door, the flunky would, and would wash their feet. And then another man stood there with a towel and an alabaster, and they would sprinkle this alabaster on the hands, and they would rub it like this, and rub it over their face, then take a towel and wipe themselves off. That taken all the dirt and the smell. And it would have something in it that give a refreshening, like menthol, and it made them feel better.

30 Then when they went in, not with their old dirty shoes on, those fine rugs, they'd have a little, like a little house slipper, and they would walk in. And then the guest would go in and then the host would kiss them welcome. And, see, you wouldn't want the host to kiss you if you smelled bad. You wouldn't want to walk on the rugs when you were dirty. And then the host would kiss you welcome, and then you were just one of the house.

31 And, now, God has such things. Before we are really ready for the communing of God, we must first be washed by the waters of the Word. Separation, the waters of separation that separates us from our sins. Now, the first, you cannot talk to God and you cannot commune with God, and there's... First, you have to repent for what you have done, because you cannot believe right until you are repenting, "Lord, forgive my unbelief," see. "Forgive my unbelief." You have to repent, first. And, when you repent, then you are ... your back sins are forgiven, then you're a candidate then for the baptism. Now, then, He promised the Holy Ghost after the baptism.

32 Now, the thing is, that, on this communing, we find out that there was a foot washing and things associated with that, also, to wash our feet, as a symbol of the cleanliness of the Holy Spirit.
Now, then there must be a mutual feeling. If you are at edge with your host, then you cannot commune. No, you can't do it, because you're disagreeing with him. But if you are in agreement, then you can commune. So that's the way it is when we come to the Lord's table, we've got to be in agreement with His Word, see. We must be born again, the Spirit of God in us saying "Amen" to every word that He has written, then we can commune with Him.

33 This we have of God, if our hearts condemn us not, then we have favor with God. We know we get our requests and our petition, is because that our hearts condemn us not. Now, if God tells us we must be born again, and we have not received the new birth, then we'll feel a little funny about going, asking Him anything, see, because we know we haven't met His requirements. Only thing then is a sinner's prayer. But we talk with Him when we are in fellowship with Him, that brings communion.

34 Now, this means of communion, I'd like to explain for a little while. Now, we take, what we call "communion," is the bread and the wine. Now, that has been so misrepresented till it's not even good to speak of it. Oh, how that has been misrepresented down through the years! That is really not communion, that is just keeping a commandment, see. Now, the reason we call it communion, is because it come from the Catholic association of being the "Holy Eucharist, which is literally the body of the Lord Jesus." But it isn't the Lord Jesus' body! It's only in commemoration of His body.

35 And I don't care how many priests or preachers, or whoever blesses that, it's still bread and wine. There is no priest as they tell us, that, "God is obliged to listen to the priest when he turns the communion [what they call communion], the Eucharist, into the literal body of the Lord Jesus. Then the believer takes that, and that is communion." That is wrong!
"Commune" is to talk to, commune with, something that you can speak to and it'll speak back to you. That's communing. A wafer cannot speak back. So, really, the real communion is the Holy Spirit speaking back. When you ask Him, then He speaks back, that is correct communion. This is a memorial, to take of His crucifixion and His resurrection, and not a communion. We call it that, but it isn't. It come from the Catholic church, of taking this wafer as we went through the other day in the order, and talking about it on "Paganism Versus Christianity."
"How that this little round wafer is the literal body of Christ." Now, the Catholic church believes that.

36 Did you ever notice, in passing a church, they cross themselves, tip their hats, and so forth. It isn't the church, it's that wafer in there, "that body that the priest has turned from a wafer to the literal body of Christ," where the rats and mice could pack it away. Why, you don't, can't think of civil thinking and think that a piece of bread would be a body of the Lord Jesus! It cannot be.
"Communion" is to talk, and it talks back, something that you talk to. The very word "commune" means to talk to, or be associated with something that's talking back to you. And God talks back to you--communion. And it's still bread and wine, that we call communion.

37 Now, Jesus said here, as I read, "My body is meat and drink, my blood ... body and blood is meat and drink."
Now, we want to think of Jesus and associate Him, what He was. What is His body? What is the body of Christ? It's the body of believers that's associated with Him in the Holy Spirit. Not an idol, not a piece of bread, but a Spirit that's in the heart of the believer, and they are associated together, that when man and God can talk to each other, sons and daughters of God. Mortal man, through the shedding of the blood brought remission of sin, and this man and this woman, boy or girl, that has fellowship with Christ, is communing with Him, the body.

38 As a husband and wife would sit down and talk it over, or a boy and his girl friend, Christ and His church is communing together. That's the reason we can hear from Him, and see the future before it gets here, and can tell the future that it's perfect, because that we commune with the God who holds eternity in His hand. Communing one with another, the body of Christ, the mystical, spiritual body of Christ. Not associated with any kind of an idol, or a bread or a wine, but in a spiritual form.

39 Now, Jesus said the same thing. You take St. John, the 4th chapter, talking to the woman at the well, she was speaking on a thing such as, "Our fathers drank at this fountain, and dug this well, Jacob, and gave of his children and his cattle of this water, and You say, 'Worship in a certain city,' and others say 'In this mountain.' "
Jesus as much as said, "Just a minute! We are Jews, and we understand what is ... what worship means. But listen to this, woman. The hour is coming, and now is, that the true worshippers will worship God in spirit and in truth. 'Thy Word is the truth.' And the Father seeks such that will worship Him in spirit and in the Word, the truth. 'Thy Word is truth.' " Now, He told that to the woman.

40 See, Christ ... God is a Spirit. "Christ" means the anointed one, a man anointed with God, which made Him the Christ. Now, Christ said, "I am food and drink." Not a wafer, not a wafer that we take here. That isn't Christ. The wine that we drink at the altar, is not Christ. It represents Him, in a figurative way. But Christ is the Holy Spirit, the anointing that's upon the church, that is the meat and the drink.

41 The greatest cry that there is in all the world, I hope none of you ever heard it, but, if you ever did, there is no cry to equal the cry of hunger. When you see a mother with her baby, and she can't walk she's so weak, and the little baby dying, with its belly swelled out from hunger, hearing them sobs coming from that mother's heart, see that baby with its cheeks drawed in till they're skin and bones, and its little gums a-shining, and he can't make a noise, hardly, his little eyes bugged out. There's no cry like the hunger and the thirsty.

42 Out into the desert, how many men has lost their lives from thirst! Many stories, that I could keep you all night, of true stories of the desert. How that when you get ... become thirsty, how the devil gives you a mirage. You've seen them here, you don't have to go west to see them. Go down the road, and it looks like there's water down the road. Every one of you has seen that, that's drove and been on the highway. That's a false mirage. Here sometime ago, about three or four years ago, I read where some ducks, flying across the country, seen a mirage and fell on the road, thinking they were hitting the water. And they just disintegrated, hit the hard road, thinking they were landing in water, a mirage.

43 How many times has the devil done that same thing to people, give them a false mirage, where, there is nothing there, but it's just a make-belief. So many people today get a make-belief religion, trying to make up something or pretend there's something when it's not so! Like the little missionary woman said that she waited until she was positive. We better do that. You can't come back and try it again. You got one chance, and you got the blueprint, so we better go right down to the mark.

44 The cry of hunger, listen, it's a great cry because it's a distressful cry. The person is dying. And, oh, if we could get to that place, if this nation could get to a place to where it so hungered for God! It's in a worse starvation than the nations like India that's starving physically, this nation is starving spiritually. But after you hunger so long, it gets to the place you don't know you're hungry.
Just like freezing. After you get so far, freezing, you get so cold, then after a while you become warm. And when you do, you're dying! That's what's the matter tonight. The churches has got so cold until they're freezing, and think that they're warm, by membership, and are dying spiritually. Dying! Don't know it. Finally, he lays down to sleep, and that's all of it. He never wakes no more, because his blood's froze in his veins.

45 Now, thirsting. Jesus said, "My blood is drink indeed." If you're hungering for life, hungering for life, Jesus has the only waters that can quench that thirst. "Come unto me, all ye that are labor and heavy laden." Over in Revelation, it said, "Let him that's thirsty come to the fountains of water of life and drink freely." If you're thirsty for life!

46 We see that the astronomers are predicting, sometime in this early part or the first part of the month, beginning on the second or the fifth, or somewhere along this month, the Indian astronomers predict the world to blow to pieces. And the American newspapers make fun of it. I do not believe the world's going to blow to pieces, but I do say it's wrong to make fun of it. Because, something's fixing to happen one of these days, something similar to that, when the five planets, Mars, Jupiter and Venus, and so forth, comes into their ... They never have did it. Oh, they claim maybe twenty-five thousand years ago, but who was back there to know it?

47 I predict that this has a spiritual application. I believe it's the coming in of the issue of God, that the great revelation of the Word will be opened during this time. Remember, they claim it was three stars came into the orbit when Jesus was born. And this is five, and five is grace, the number of grace. Three is the number of perfection. Five is the number of grace, J-e-s-u-s, g-r-a-c-e, f-a-i-t-h, so forth. Number of grace! God ever sends His power to the church, it'll be His grace, it won't be the obedience of the people. As Isaiah said, in the 40th chapter, how to cry to Jerusalem, that her warfare was over, yet she was guilty of idolatry, but it was God's grace that was sending it. God sends anything to us, it'll be His grace and not our merits. So, it may mean something. I predict that there'll be a change. I don't know what it'll be, but I believe it's fixing to happen. We're on the ... right on the eve of it now.
And if any man hungers, let him come to Christ. If any man is thirsty, let him come to Christ. He quenches the thirst. He is the satisfier of all of our thirst and hunger.

48 I had a story that was told me some time ago. I might have told it in this church. If I have, you forgive me for repeating it just to hit the spot. There was an Indian guide, or, kind of an overseer of the Indians. He was traveling in the Navajo country, and was ... got lost. His name was Coy. And he was going down a trail, a game trail, and he thought, "Now, if I hit this trail, I'll surely find water." And his horse was so thirsty till its tongue was hanging out, dry, the nostrils had turned red and caked with sand. He had held his handkerchief over his face in the sandstorms until it was caked over, and he was perishing, for water. And he was leading his horse when he struck the trail. And he said, when he got on the horse he saw this game trail, said, "Surely it'll take me to water." So he jumps a-straddle of his horse and started down the trail.

49 And the horse knew also it was on the trail to water. How God gives instinct to the dumb beasts! And down the trail it went. Finally, a few turned off to one side, just a very few off the beaten path. The horse wanted to turn that way, but Coy thought different. He tried to keep it in the main blazed trail, and he started down and the horse would not go. He spurred it, and it nickered and started the other way. And it started rearing up. She was too weak to buck him off.

50 So he started pulling the spurs to it again, until he cut the horse, so excited to get to water, his life would be spared, until the horse stood, quivering, bleeding. And he looked down, looked down there, she was quivering like that and almost falling under him. He looked down at her, and seen the blood on her side. He was a Christian. And he said to his horse, he said, "I've often heard that wild ... or, beasts had an instinct. It don't look like that that little bitty bunch turned off that way would be going to water. It looks like this great path here would lead to where they go constantly to water." But said "If you've carried me faithful this far, I'll follow your instinct."

51 Oh, how I think of that about Christ! The way to destruction is posted and blazed all the way, but there is a narrow road that leads to life. Few there will be that find it. Only, not instinct, but the Holy Spirit will turn you aside to that water of life. I think, it's brought me safe this far, I'll take it the rest of the way.

52 To finish the story, he hadn't gone a half a mile, until, all at once, the faithful horse plunged right into a big hole of water. The horse knew what it was talking about, what it was meaning in its way of expressing to the rider. He got in there. He said he throwed water up into the horse's nose. He bathed himself, he screamed and he hollered, and he was shouting to the top of his voice, and pouring water down his throat, and screaming, "We're saved! We're saved! We're saved!" And the horse, drinking, and quivering. And he looked at her bloody sides, then all whelped up from the spur marks.

53 And said just then, he said ... heard somebody say, "Come out of the water." And he looked, and there was a little disfigured cowboy standing there. And he got out of the water. And he said he smelled fire, and he looked over, and there was a bunch of men camping there. They had been up on a prospecting outfit. They had struck some gold, and on the road back they had their horses and pack horses along, and they'd come to this water hole and was resting, and they had all got drunk.
And said they had some venison cooking, and he did eat with them. And said, one of them said, "Take a drink." He told them who he was, he was Jack Coy, the Indian guide. So he said, "Well, now, take a drink."
He said, "No," he said, "I don't drink."
And that's kind of an insult to them people. So he said, "You'll take a drink from us!"
He said, "No, I don't drink."
So he throwed the jug up, and said, "Take a drink!" Drunk, all of them, you know, about a half a dozen.
And so he said, "Thank you, boys."
Said, "If our venison is good enough to eat, our whiskey is good enough to drink."
And you know how they are, drunk. And he said, "No," he said.
And they threw a shell in the rifle, and said, "Now you'll drink or else!"

54 He said, "No. No, I won't drink." And he started to aim the rifle. Said, "Just a moment." Said, "I'm not afraid to die." He said, "I'm not afraid to die." He said, "But I want to tell you my story before I do, the reason I don't drink. Said, "I'm a Kentuckian." He said, "And in a little old log cabin one morning, where a mother lay dying, she called me to her bedside, and said, 'Jack, your father died with a deck of cards in his hand, across a table, drunk.' And said, 'Don't never drink, Jack, whatever you do.' " And said, "On my mother's brow I laid my hands. And I promised God, as a little ten-year-old boy, I would never take my first drink." He said, "I've never took it." And said, "Now if you want to shoot, you just shoot."
And as the drunk raised his rifle and throwed the jug up again, said, "Take it or I'll shoot!" And just then a gun fired and the jug bursted.

55 Standing at the side of a canyon was a little old cowboy, disfigured, the tears running down his cheeks. He said, "Jack, I too come from Kentucky. I made a promise to a mother one day, but I've broke my promise." He said, "I was waiting till these guys got drunk enough, and was going to kill the whole bunch of them, anyhow and take what gold they had." He said, "But I've been a drunk and I've done wrong. But," said, "I'm sure when my gun echoed up through the canyons of heaven, mother heard me sign a pledge I'll never do it again." There, by the grace of God, he led all those people to Christ, all those out there.
See, there's something about water, something about refreshing. My point was, to get to the water when you're thirsty. There's something it does to you, is to get to the water when you're thirsting.
Now, He said, "My peace I leave unto you. My peace I give you." Not as the world gives you peace, but the way He gives you peace. His peace quenches our thirst. If we are longing for peace, then let us refresh in His peace, to know that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our peace giver that quenches our thirst.

56 The verse that says, "He is meat indeed and drink indeed." I have a little mark here, the 57th verse, "Meat indeed and drink indeed." Listen what He said here.
And as the living Father hath sent me, and I live by my Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
In other words, "The Father sent me, and I live by Him. And every man that comes to Christ must live by Christ." Oh, my, there you are, that's the communion. That's the real communion that you find when you live by Christ.

57 Now, our bodies need food and drink each day, to survive, our physical body. If we don't take food each day and drink, then our body weakens. There's something in us that we must have food. One day's food will not last for the next day. You've got to have food each day, to strengthen your mortal being. You can live over, but you're weaker. And the second day, you're still weaker. And the third day, you're getting tremendous weak.
Well, that's what many times that we do in the spiritual realm. You see, each day we've got to commune with Christ. We've got to talk to Him each day. We've got to settle it with Him each day. Paul said, "I die each day," see. "Each day, I die; yet I live, not me but Christ lives in me." So, if your physical body needs food each day and drink each day, to survive, your spiritual body needs spiritual food and communion with the Lord each day, to survive. Yes. Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." So, each day we've got to study the Bible. Some people doesn't study it at all. Some picks it up every two or three times a year. But, a real, real believer that's really spiritually built up, he reads his Bible every day, and talks to the Lord. That's right. He has to. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

58 Now, another thing we take food for, is to build up our body to resist diseases. If you don't take food, and let your body get weak, then it's subject to diseases. Diseases will break right into the blood stream, and you're gone. If your blood isn't rich and pure, well, then it'll, disease will go right into your blood stream. So you've got to eat good nourishing food to keep your blood stream right. If you don't, you're allergic to diseases. That's what's the matter with a lot of Christians.

59 Like hothouse plants. You know, you take a plant out of a hothouse, you have to baby it. It don't know the weather. It doesn't know the sunshine and things, it's been covered over and babied. And that's what's the matter with too many so-called Christians, they're hothouse plants. That's right, subject to every bug comes along! You know, it's only the delicate plants has to be sprayed, or, the hybrid plants.

60 You know, you take an old Hereford cow and turn him out there on the pasture, and turn a longhorn out there, that longhorn can make his own way because he's original breed. But you take a Brangus or a Hereford that's a cross breed and a hybrid, it's a better cow to look at, sure, fatter and healthier, but you turn them out there and they can't make their way. They'll die! They've got to be babied, see.
That's what's the matter today, we got better-dressed Christians, bigger churches, and a lot of education, lot of theology, but they have to be babied all the time, you have to look through their glass or you're not seeing at all. What we need is some thoroughbred Christians, born under the blood of the Lord Jesus, that live not off of church theology, but off of the Word of God, the communion with Christ. The Word coming into the believer, his spiritual body is built up. Not a hothouse baby!

61 There was a certain minister said today, I heard him, he said that on a broadcast, he said, that when he come into the country, he had a great sinus trouble, and they were talking of an operation. And they said that they was going to do this and that, and cut on him and operate, and take part of the sinus glands out, which would sink his face in, and so forth like that. And he said he had taken pills by the barrel. Look like there was so many pills he had to take. But when he come to a good Christian doctor, the doctor said, "Let's forget the pills and let's forget the operation, and let's build up the body so it can resist the sinus." That's it!

62 What's the matter that people don't live as long as they used to? We have to take a shot for this and a shot for that, and spraying ourselves over with all kinds of medicines. What does it do? It gets us soft, fat, flabby, no good. When the men of long ago ... Why, we're allergic to everything. Now they're getting allergies and everything else.
I've stood in Africa, couldn't take a shot for Malaria. But a Malaria mosquito would light on my hand, I had Malaria. They don't buzz, and you don't know hardly. They light, they just light on, that's it, you've had it. If you live, you'll have it for fifteen years. And then sometimes you die with it. And there was those natives in their little huts, with mosquitoes all over their legs, them naked. Mosquitoes sticking on them, malaria mosquitoes, and it didn't bother them. Why? They had built up an immunity. They had a God-given inoculation.

63 That's what's the matter today with the people. That's what's the matter with the church. We got so much baby shots and man-made theology, until we're sprayed over. What we need is God's inoculation by the Word of the Lord God. Man shall live daily by that kind of a food, to build his soul into inoculation from spiritual diseases that's flowing and jumping around the country. Got lots of notes on this, but I'm going to have to stop.

64 Now, build up, get ready for the inoculation. Now, we live by this, our bodies must have this. And, if we don't then we are subject to all kinds of diseases. And the Word of God, as we believe it and accept it by communion, "Lord, Thy Word is truth."
"My church says, 'You don't have to be born again.' They say, 'Shaking hands is born again.' They say, 'Sprinkling.' They say, 'All these other things, that's it, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.' " But the Bible said to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, see. Now, you go ahead with those artificial shots if you want to, you'll make yourself an artificial Christian, see. You don't want that.

65 You can't have life, only through Christ. And now what does His Word do? It builds up our spiritual body, strong, as we commune with Him, to resist the devil.
You say, "Brother Branham, what's that you say, 'communing in His Word'?"
Yes, He is the Word. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." And we are to eat His body. Then His body is His Word, because He is the Word. And He said, in St. John 15, "If ye abide in me, and my communion, my Word, abides in you, then you can ask what you will and it'll be done for you." There you are. That's true. See, ask what you will!

66 What do you do? You're building up your body to inoculation from the ... Somebody comes in and said, "Oh, our church don't believe in shouting." See, you're built up. What? You've got communion in you, the Word. And you're inoculated from it. If a bunch of nonsense comes in, what is it? It has no Word in it, then you're sure it's wrong. I don't care how real it looks, if it's not the Word leave it alone. Right, leave it alone. I don't care what it does, it must compare with the Word!

67 In prayer, as I was quoting Micaiah standing there, looked, it looked really right, why, there was Israel, and that piece of land belonged to them. Those aliens had come in and took it away from them and had built their own houses, and they was occupying part of the land that God give them. So it looked like those four hundred Hebrew prophets was right. But, you know, there was something about Jehoshaphat was spiritual, he said, "Haven't you got another one?"
Said, "I got another one, but," said, "I hate him. The only thing he does is prophesy evil."
Said, "Go get him and let's hear him."
And he went up, he said, "Go on, go on up there, but I seen Israel scattered like sheep having no shepherd." And then he told his vision.

68 Now, whose is right? It looked like the four hundred was right. Four hundred well trained men, saying, "Go up, the Lord is with you." And even Zedekiah had a ... two big iron horns built. He said, "By this you'll push the aliens out of the land." He was sure he was right. He knowed he was right. But, you see, he was wrong.
And here's Micaiah, one against four hundred, and he said, "If you go up, Israel will be scattered with no shepherd."
And the others said, "Go up, the Lord is with you!" Now, materially, they was right, the place did belong to Israel. But the Word of the Lord had condemned Ahab, so how could God bless what He had condemned?

69 There it is today, see. The Word of communion was in Micaiah. Now, if you're communing with God in taking the real communion, and the spirit in you disagrees with this Word, you're not communing with God, you're communing with devils. And they're so impersonating! The Bible said, "In the last days they'd almost deceive the very elected if possible. But heavens and earth will pass away, but my Word shall not." And as Paul said, Galatians 1:8, "If an angel from heaven preaches any other gospel than this that you've already heard, let him be accursed." Even an angel! In the early church, when those men, like St. Martin, Irenaeus, those godly men, when the devil would appear like an angel of light. But, you watch, he'll be a little bit off the Word.
He appeared to Eve as an angel of light, told her, "Sure, the Lord said this, the Lord said this," but he disagreed with God right at the end. And that's the way false communion does today. When people think they're praying to God, and won't obey the Word, it's a false communion.

70 "If ye abide in me, and my Word in you, then ask what you will," see, "and it'll be done." Now, it just can't go one time, then off the next. "Ye abide in me, my words abide in you," that's, stay there. "Abide" means to rest there, stay right there. Yes, it's inoculation from sinful diseases.

71 Now, let me close in saying this one word now, before we go to the communion table. The blood and the body of the Lord, mixed with faith, that's the blood and the body, that's the Spirit and the Word, mixed with faith, equals eternal life. "He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." There you are. What is it? The communion of the Lord. The Word and the Spirit, this life is in the blood, the Word and the Spirit equals eternal life, by faith in the Lord.

72 Here's my prayer, as I see the end approaching and see, at any minute, something could happen, and know that we're not far off from the coming of the Lord. Lord, then in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, let me take the Word, the sword, and wave it with what faith I have, and cut my way through every demon power, till I see Jesus, by the communing of His Word.
Commune with His Word. "If ye abide in me, and my Word in you, then ask me what you will and it'll be done for you." How beautiful! There's real communion with the Word and the Spirit, with faith to wave it together, "Ask what you will, and it'll be done for you." Let us pray.

73 Gracious and noble holy Father, God, the great I AM, the El Shaddai, to Abraham. O God, how this great communion of the Lord equals eternal life, and how it inoculates from pride, how it inoculates from unbelief, how it inoculates from the sin of the world! It's communion, with love divine to our heavenly Father. And by the righteousness of Jesus Christ we have the access to this table. And we pray, Lord, that You will give each of us that access tonight, in the Spirit. Forgive us. And we want our spiritual bodies to grow. We do not care about joining some church or denomination. We want to build the spiritual body, to the inoculation of sin, to a place where there is no more desire to do wrong, where the Holy Spirit can take His own Word in our lips and speak it just as fresh as it was spoken on that day, because it's the same Spirit that was in the Lord Jesus. I pray, Father, that You'll give that to us.

74 The hours are closing in. Just when, we don't know, that the last one will be saved. But I pray tonight, Lord, if there is those here who doesn't know You as their Saviour, may they find You tonight as they come to this water of baptism, as a memorial, to confess to this body of believers that they believe the story that Jesus of Nazareth was born of the virgin Mary, and was killed, crucified by Pontius Pilate, and was raised up the third day by God, and sits on the right hand of His Majesty, tonight, ever living to make intercessions.

75 Grant it, Lord, that that same person, obeying the commandments of the Bible, "Repent, every one of you, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins. For there's not another name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved." O God, may the people see the sincerity of it, and the firm Word, "There is not another name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved, but in the name of Jesus Christ." Therefore, the apostle said, "Repent, every one of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sin, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto every age, as many as the Lord our God shall call." Grant Lord, that there will be much calling tonight.

76 And it is said also, by our Lord, "No man can come to me except my Father draws him, and all that the Father has given me will come to me. My sheep hear my voice." A stranger... And if a stranger speaks a voice that's not scriptural, quickly the sheep will recognize it. O God! And if it's Your voice, the Bible, what it says, every sheep will hear it, because it is sheep food. They have communed. They know what kind of food the Father feeds. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God." Grant, Lord, that many will see and will understand, and will come to Thee tonight.
Those without the Holy Spirit, may they not put it off another hour. It may be too late in another hour. They may not be here.

77 And, Father, as we gather around the table now to take this representation of thy broken body, we pray that if there be sin in our midst, Lord, forgive us. You said, "When you come together, tarry one for the other." God, if there's a sin in this congregation, anywhere, I pray that the blood of Jesus Christ will separate that man from his sin, or that woman, boy or girl. And, Father, I pray for myself, that You will separate me from every doubt, every sin, every unbelief, anything. We know that unbelief is sin. It's the only sin there is. "He that believeth not is condemned already." And only sin there is, is not to believe the Word of God. And, Father, if there's any unbelief in me, forgive me, O God, which there is much, and I pray that You forgive me. Forgive my congregation that Thou has given me tonight, and feed them upon the Word. Grant it.
And as we take these little commemorations of the broken body of Him who is raised from the dead and alive forevermore among us, may we receive communion from Him, Lord, the communing of the Holy Spirit. Grant it, Father. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

78 Now, to you that must go and cannot stay for the about fifteen-minute communion service... There's not many of us and we'll take the communion. It is not a closed communion. It is absolutely for every Christian believer. God don't have the line drawed between Baptist and Methodist, and so forth. We are all, by one Spirit, baptized into one body, and we're fellow citizens of the kingdom of God. And if there be someone among us who's strange, I'm not here too much, and don't know who is members and who is not. Remember, no matter what church you belong to, that has nothing to do with it. There's only one church, anyhow, and you don't join it, you're born in it. That's right. And you're born into this church of God. And we pray that you'll receive Christ tonight, commune with Him as we remember His broken body, and these little elements that we take, of the Passover, and may God sprinkle our hearts and conscience with the blood.

79 Now they'll bring forth the communion, and we'll read now from I Corinthians, the 12th chapter. And we're going to take the communion immediately after this, and we trust that God will bless you abundantly. Then as soon as we read this, or just before we read it, if you have to go, well, you can go out easily. And then be with us again Wednesday night, and Sunday morning and Sunday night. If you can stay to take the communion with us, we'll be so happy for you to do it. Then immediately after that, will be the Lord ... will be the baptismal service, which will be in about fifteen minutes, or twenty at the most, I suppose. I Corinthians, the 11th chapter, the 23rd verse.
... I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night ... which he was betrayed took bread:
And when he had gave thanks, he brake it, ... said, Take, and eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
After the same manner also he took the cup, and when he had supped, saying, This is the cup of the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as you drink it, in remembrance of me.
For as oft as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you do shew forth the Lord's death till he come.
Wherefore whosoever shall not eat this ... whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
For this cause many are sick and weakly among you, ... many sleep.
For if we should judge ourselves, we should not be judged.
But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.
Wherefore, my brethren, when you come together to eat, tarry one for the other.

80 Now, just a moment of silent prayer for every one of us, pray for me while I pray for you. Grant these requests, Almighty God. Forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. This we ask in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

81 These little parcels that is kosher bread made without lard, seasoning, and so forth, which represents the body of the Lord. It is not round, it's broke in all pieces. It's because that it means His broken body that was broke for us. And may God grant His blessings to everyone that eats it. Now, it is not the body, it only represents the body. I have no power, no one else does, to make it anything but bread. God alone. And that's what He told us, to eat this bread and drink this cup of wine. Now let us bow our heads.

82 Most holy God, whose servants we are, in the name of Jesus Christ, sanctify this bread for its intended use, to make us, as we receive it, remember that our Lord was crucified; and His body, precious and holy as it was, was mingled with stripes and thorns and nails, for us, that through His riven body came forth the Spirit that gives us eternal life. May we, Lord, as we eat this, have journeying grace, as Israel did forty years in the wilderness, and not a feeble one among them. Father God, grant this, as we pray You sanctify this bread, kosher bread, for its intended use. In Jesus' name. Amen.

83 The cup of the New Testament, the blood. I think of that song, "Ever since by faith I saw that stream Thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die." When I see this blood, grapes, the blood of grapes, I know it represents the blood that came forth from the Lord Jesus' body. May ever who receives this have eternal life, may sickness depart out of their bodies, may weariness and feebleness, oppression, may the devil (in every form) leave them, that they might have great strength and health and eternal life, to let their light shine before this wicked and adulterous generation we live in, to glorify God.

84 Heavenly Father, we present to You the fruit of the vine. In the name of Jesus Christ, sanctify it, to represent the blood of Thy Son, Jesus, in it we have, "Wounded for our transgressions, with his stripes we were healed." Grant, Lord, that life will come to us, eternal life in great abundance, that we might be able to serve You better, have strength and health to carry us from place to place where we expect to serve You, wherever You will call us. Grant these blessings in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Communion

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 Thank you, Brother Orman. We are happy tonight to be here to hear this wonderful message from--from the lips of our brother, that we believe to be anointed of the Holy Spirit to bring us these great tidings of, as is said, of exhortation: how we should live in this present day in holiness before God and before one another. We--we--we want just holiness among us that no filthy communications be heard among us at all as we profess this great calling of God. We must walk worthy of this thing that God has brought us to. And we're way down towards the end of the journey now, where we're expecting the exceeding abundantly above all that we could do or think.
And remember, we want to constantly be in prayer. And above all things, watch your life: if your life don't tally up with God's holiness, then go back and start praying again; there's something wrong. See? We must live in that kind of a state that the fruits of the Spirit will make Itself known through us. That's what we want to live.
You know, sometime we hear great preachers who can preach mighty, but we'd rather see a sermon lived than we would heard one preached (See?) ' cause that's the evidence that God is on the inside.

2 Now, we are having--coming to the communion table. And now, a yet, there's some that doesn't take communion, and maybe you just take it in their own churches, but we'd be happy tonight if you could, would want to, fellowship with us around these things. We never draw any lines of who, just long as you're walking worthy of--of the Gospel that you're--you're listening to and confessing to be part of.
You know you're part of this Gospel. You are--you are written epistles of what we're talking about. And as long as we do something that's reproachful, then we are an indebtiment to what we are listening to. See? We must live what we believe, and live it in such a way that it will never reproach, but reflect Jesus Christ in all things that we do and say. That's way it is. We just love Him for this.

3 And now, tonight, we're going to read the order of the Lord's table that's found over in II Corinthians, about the 11th chapter. And we read this and just let each individual... How, we do this, if there's newcomers among us, we call the people around the altar in--in succession as they come in, take the communion. And every Christian is worthy.
Now, if you live a life that proves what you are... You want to search your heart. Well, let me be sure to mention this, that the Scripture reads here if we take it unworthily. Now, we know that we are not worthy in ourselves; none of us are. But that we are not trusting in our own worthiness, we're trusting in Him Who has... We're--we're trusting in His worthiness, that we have died to our own thinking, and just think His thoughts, and live to everything that we believe He commands us to, and look back and see what we're living, and look our life over, and if we're doing things that's not worthy of the Gospel, then we shouldn't take the communion.

4 But if we're doing things that we thinks that it--that our lives could be read of all men, that if anybody could not point a finger and say, "I seen this man in a barroom the other day," "I--I heard this man stand and telling filthy jokes." "This woman doing wrong." Then, if you know that that's the Holy Spirit pointing to you, then--then don't take the communion. But if you--if you feel that--that you're living, that you'd look back and see that all your sins are confessed and under the Blood, then you--you're supposed to take it. You--you're--you're part of it.

5 Now, let us read the Scripture just as Saint Paul exhorts us here in the book of Saint John the... I beg your pardon, in book of I Corinthians, the a--the 11th chapter, beginning with the 23rd verse.
For I have received of the Lord... which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night... which he was betrayed took bread:
Wished I had time to--to speak that a little bit.
The same night that He was betrayed (You see?), He took bread.
And when he had give thanks, he brake it, ... said, Take and eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
After the same manner also he took the cup, and when he'd supped, saying, This cup is of the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
For as oft as you--as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you do shew forth the Lord's death till he come.
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.
For this cause many are weak and sickly among you,... many sleep.
For if we should judge ourselves, we should not be judged.
But when we are judged, we're chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.

6 May I bring that a point: when we are judged by the Word, which is Christ, we're chastened. If we're doing wrong, we're not living up to this Word, we're chastened of the Lord. And when the Lord chastens us, that means corrects us, that we should not be condemned with the world.
We are not of the world. We are different from the world, live a different life, a separated life. We're never to live the life of the world and be a Christian. We're to live a--a outstanding life, a different life. Not I don't mean in such social ranks, but I mean we're to live a life of genuine holiness that the fruits of the Spirit might be seen in us: of meekness, and gentleness, and patience, long-suffering, faith: the fruit of the Spirit.
But where--when we are--hear these things, then we know we're chastened of the Lord that we don't do them, then we're condemned. And if we have no condemnation within us that we're living above that thing, by the grace of God, then we're not condemned of the world, but we're living above the things of world. See?
Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for the other.
And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye be not come together unto condemnation. And the rest I will set in order when I come.

7 We've always--make great exhortations on this, that when we come together, even though that we can see nothing, there might be something in somebody else that we noticed that wasn't right. When you come together to eat this communion, wait on one another, pray for one another. Pray that... We always make of this: I'll pray for you that if you--if there's some sin in you that, some unrighteous deed or something you've done as a believer, I--I pray that God will take it out of you, that He'll forgive you for it. And you pray for me that if there's some--something that I've done, that I don't know just about... If I done it, and--and knowed it's wrong, I'd--I'll confess it right now. I'm fixing to, because he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eat and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

8 The discernment of knowing that you are the Lord's body, you can't discern it in--in wickedness and sin; we've got to be above that. That we discern that the Lord is righteous, and we discern that He's our Propitiation; that all of our sins we've confessed, and we believe in Him of waiting upon His atonement to cleanse us from all of our iniquity; then we're discerning the Lord's body to what it--discernment of what it's for.
And then discerning again, that in among us, as the Lord's Bride body, let's discern if there's anything wrong with us in here that would hinder the Gospel from growing, or the Lord from presenting us before God as a chaste virgin; let's discern that out right now and find if it's wrong. Let's confess it if it's wrong. Let--let's say, "Lord, I--I'm sorry about that."

9 So therefore, it might be something that we've done, you've done, something I've done. It might not be consciously, right now, let's ask God to forgive us for it. We used to sing a song here: "Forgive, the--the sins I have confessed to Thee," Forgive the secret sins you see? That they don't even know nothing about, an unknown sin. We--we--we pray, God, forgive them.
Now, it said, "When you come together, tarry one for the other one," and that really would be like this; tarry one with the other. "Tarry" means "to wait," wait on each other. And let's do that now. I'll pray for you. If you know anything that you've done wrong, say, "God, forgive me. I didn't mean that. And if You'll help me from this night on, I won't do it again. I--I mean it, Lord, I won't do it again if You'll just forgive me. And upon my confession 'I believe You have forgive me,' I go to take the body of Christ, feeling in my heart that You forgive me for all my sin." I pray then for your secret sin; you pray for mine, that maybe something we don't know about, that we won't come together condemned with the world.

10 We don't want the world in here. This little spot of people that God has give us to worship with here, we want to keep ourselves clean from selfishness; keep our thing, our sin--our lives clean from all the things of the world, that we be not spotted with that. We want to be ready for the rapture. So let us pray now, silently, for one another, just a moment. You pray for me as I pray for you. [There is silence for half a minute, followed by Brother Branham praying]
Lord Jesus, let it be, Lord, that all of our sins be now in the Blood of the Lord Jesus, in the forgetfulness of God's recollections, that we come together now as beloved believers and children in Christ. For we ask it in His Name. Amen.

11 Now, at this time while the--the elders, I think they come to the front. Is that still the procedure, here? Brother Tony Zabel, and he will direct it. And if there's any has to go now and don't want to stay for the communion, we're happy to have you in tonight. Remember on Wednesday meet--Wednesday night's prayer meeting. And you slip out quietly while the rest of them's come to the altar. And Brother Zabel, here, will direct the--the people to the altar while we make ready the communion. [There is another moment of silence]

12 This represents the body of the Lord Jesus, the Bread. And as the song was just sang, "My Faith Looks up to Thee." There's only three orders that the Lord had give us, and that was baptism, taking of the bread and wine, and feet washing; is the orders.
And this represents the broken body of Christ. My prayer is that every person that partakes of this tonight, that will receive the blessing of the Holy Spirit to come upon them. And that they are sick, may the God of heaven, Who instituted this in the first form down in Egypt by taking the--the--the--the bitter herbs and wine... I trust that God will heal you, and in your entire journey there'll be no sickness among you. May the God of heaven look to us now as we offer this to Him.

13 Lord God, Creator of heavens and earth, Author of Everlasting Life, and Giver of every good gift, we thank Thee for this order, that we could do this in remembrance of You as we fellowship, as it was, in Your Presence, around the communing of God's grace. As we think within our own hearts, that one day we were unworthy, and now the Blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed us from that sin, that we stand together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
This kosher bread, Father, that's been baked and brought here for this purpose, we ask You to sanctify it, Lord, that in the representation of the broken body... [Gap in the audio] as the sacredness and the pain and suffering that He did at Calvary when this body was broken. That He was wounded for our transgression, He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we were healed. That's why we take this broken bread tonight. God bless the believers and sanctify this--this kosher bread to be the representation of the body of Jesus Christ. Amen.

14 The Bible said, "In like manner He took the cup. And when He had supped, He took--said, "Take and drink; this is the cup of the New Testament. As oft as you do this, you show forth the Lord's death till He come." As I hold in my hand tonight this wine, made from the--from the life of grapes that's been brought together here to represent the Blood of Jesus Christ. There's never a time yet, that I've ever picked up the communion tray, but I didn't look in there and see my sin's gone. I see if it hadn't been for that what--what--well, where would we be?
I think of in there where a sick man lay dying, yonder in the hospital: me. It's through His stripes I was healed. May the God of heaven bless this wine for its intended use.
Lord Jesus, we present to You this grape juice, wine taken from the blood of the grapes to represent the Blood of Jesus Christ. May, as we receive it, Father, may sickness depart from us. May sin, desire, be taken from us. May we live such holy, consecrated life after this, that men will see the reflection of Jesus Christ in us, and that our--our walk in life would be worthy of the Gospel that we believe. Grant it, Father. And sanctify the--this wine now for it's intended use. In Jesus Christ's Name. Amen.

Communion

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 ... stirring message that Brother Pearry gave us just then from the Word of God. How true it is that we limit God and time God; and He's eternal. We can't do that. So, tonight we're facing something else now ... is communion.
Three years I waited for a church to come in Tucson, but it's here. We're here. So, we thank the Lord; He just let us wait till we can appreciate it now.

2 Now, there's one thing that I'd want to say just before we start the communion, is this: that I believe that we have seen enough in our day that we live in, that we ought to really give every ... all of our being to God. We should really serve God. I believe that He has blessed us with the direct answer to Scripture. As Brother Pearry gave it a few moments ago, that we are at that time. We're not blind; we see that we're here, we've arrived.
And we also can look around and see that the way that the human mind is leaving the people that we can't stay too much longer; we'd be in a complete insane institution---the whole world would be, see. So, we're at the end time.

3 Now---as Brother Pearry ended up there---seeing these things are true, see that they are true... They're not myths. They're not just something that we imagine. They're something that's been directly given to us by the Word of God and manifested publicly before us, that we know we are here. We don't know how long now, because again we come back to a watch, you see---what time it is. But we know we're at the time. Whether God's time, I'd imagine...
Someone give a little analysis one time that said that if God put up with him according ... if He was to allot time... One thousand years is just one day. So, if a man lives seventy years old, it'd just be few minutes of God's time, see. Well, it's said to be forty years, that wouldn't even mean time, hardly, He could bat his eye, see. See, just ... that's how quick it is, the whole thing, if it be allotted time---which He doesn't have any time. So, He just is eternal.

4 I believe it was Sarah back there ... or, no, it was Joseph the other night said to me, Brother Pearry, he said, "Daddy, when did God come on the scene? Where did He come from?" See? "He had to have a beginning, didn't He? Didn't He have to start?"
I said, "No. Anything that has a beginning has an end, but it's that which had not a beginning has no end." Of course, he's ten years old; that was kind of a real mouthful for him, see. How could he receive that, knowing that something never did begin? Not only to him, it is to me, see. It's a great big dose for me, how did it ever begin.

5 Now, we're fixing to observe something here that's really sacred.
I was called on a few days ago to some very fine Christian gentlemen that's never had this, and he understood that we taken communion literally. They take it what they call "spiritual communion." And which, as far as communion, I'd say all right, because communicate is "to talk to," see. And the brother give me this scripture, said, "Brother Branham, don't you think now...?"
Now, reason I'm saying this... It's all right, Brother Pearry? See, that ... reason I'm saying this, so that you would understand what you're doing. You don't ... if you walk into anything blindly, you don't know what you're doing. You can't have even confidence if you don't know what you're doing. But you must understand what you are doing and why you're doing it.
He said, "Now, if we take the Word of God, isn't that God that we're taking?"
I said, "Exactly right, sir, it's true. But we read here that they actually ... Paul taught taking the literal Lord's supper. 'This do in remembrance of me,' said Jesus, 'As oft as you take it in remembrance of me, you show forth the Lord's death till He comes,'" see. Now, we are to take it.

6 We understand that St. Paul, who ordained it in the church, being the prophet of the New Testament... Peter, James, John, all of them, they wrote (Matthew, Mark, Luke) what Jesus did, as scribes. But Paul set the thing in order; he was the prophet of the New Testament. Just as Moses went into the wilderness to receive the inspiration to write the five books of ... the first five books of the Bible, well, Paul also went into the desert and received inspiration from God to set the New Testament church in order and type it with the Old.
Under there they had the sacrificial lamb that Israel kept that for a memorial. It was actually used one time, coming out of Egypt. But then they kept that as a memorial all down through the age. Well, if the law being a shadow of things to come, you see...
Now, I do believe that communion (what we call communion, now) is the Lord's supper.

7 Now, we only have three physical divine orders left to us: one of them is communion; feet-washing; water baptism. That's the only three things. That's the perfection of the three, see. That's the only three orders we have. We realize that that was the issue given by St. Paul in the New Testament.
Now, if we would say the communion should just be taking the Word... I don't believe anyone has a right to take the Lord's supper until he has taken the Word of the Lord into his heart, see, because... I'll read something for you in a few moments and you'll see. Now, notice. Then, why then would we...?
On the same basis we could absolutely justify the Salvation Army. They do not believe in any form of water baptism, said, "We don't need it." Now, if we don't need water baptism, why are we baptized? Said, "The water can't save you; the blood saves you."
I'll agree with that. That's right, the blood saves you, not the water. But we must take the water as an outward emotion that an inwardly work of grace has been done, see. So must we on communion.

8 When we have taken the Lord, our sacrifice, into us, as a matter of spiritual birth into us, and His body---we live by Him by the Word---we also should symbolize it because it's a commandment. "Repent, every one of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins."
Paul said, "I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed took bread, and brake it and gave it to the disciples, and said, 'Take and eat, this do in remembrance of me.' For as often as you take this bread, you show forth His death till He comes." Now we find out that in that, they had people who come and...

9 This precious brother, a very dear brother, he came and he said, "I never did take it, Brother Branham. I don't understand what it is." Said, "I've been taught the other side."
I said, "But remember, we will admit that St. Paul set it in order in the early Christian church. They went from chur... from house to house, broke the bread with singleness of heart, and so forth. Now," I said, "he did put it in the church. Galatians 1:8, he said, 'If an angel from heaven comes and says anything else, let it be accursed,' you see---the same one that had them to be rebaptized again from the baptism of John, to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ."
You see, there are three things that we must do as symbols: the Lord's supper, feet-washing, water baptism, see.

10 He said, "Well, the..." Now, the Salvation Army takes it from the point, "The dying thief, when he died, he wasn't baptized yet. Jesus said he would be in heaven." That's exactly the truth. That's exact. But, you see, he only recognized Jesus right there in the hour he was dying, see. That's the only opportunity he had. He was a thief, he was away, he was out. And as soon as he seen that life, he recognized it: "Lord, remember me!" And Jesus... That was truth.
But to you and I who know that we should be baptized and refuse to do it, then that'll be between you and God. Same thing in communion.
Now, when we take this communion, it isn't just the thing saying, "I'm coming up here and going to eat some bread, and I believe I'm a Christian." But, if you noticed, the Bible said, "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily shall be guilty of the blood and the body of the Lord." You've got to live a life before the people, that ... and before God and the people, that shows that you are sincere.

11 (Now, just a moment longer.) Now, in the Old Testament when the sacrifice was made a statute or an ordinance... And so is water baptism an ordinance, so is feet-washing an ordinance, so is the Lord's supper an ordinance. "Blessed is he that does all of His ordinances, keeps all of His statutes, all of His commandments, that he might have a right to enter into the tree of life."
Now, notice in this now, that in that first ... when it was first an ordinance of God to bring a sacrifice to the church, and ... to the temple and the altar, and offer your gift for your sins, the sacrifice of a lamb... Well, I can just imagine seeing some Jewish brother coming down the road, knowing that he was guilty, and he goes to the altar ... or brings his fat ox or a bullock, or whatever he had, or a ram, lamb, something. He had brought it down the road just as sincere as he could come. He walked up there, keeping God's ordinance just as sincerely as he could.
Then he laid his hands upon it, confessing his sins, and the priest placing this (his sins) upon the lamb, and the lamb's throat was cut, and then died for him. As he laid there (the little lamb), kicking and bleeding, his hands being full of blood, and it flying all over him, the little lamb bleating, dying, he would realize that he had sinned and something had to die in his place. Therefore, he was offering this lamb's death for his death, see. The lamb died in his place. Then the man done it with sincerity, with deepness of his heart.

12 Finally, over and over it went again, over and over it kept going, until finally it become a tradition. The commandment of God became a tradition to the people. And then here he come down, "Well, let's see, this is so-and-so today, maybe I better go down. Yeah, I better offer a bullock." He went down, "Well, Lord, here's my bullock." See, there's no sincerity in it, there's no understanding to it.
Now, we don't want to take communion like that. That's the same thing as we come to the Lord's table.
Isaiah 35 ... no, I beg your pardon, Isaiah 60... Let me take that back. I believe it's Isaiah 28 is where we find this. I'm pretty sure that's the right chapter. He said, "Precept must be upon precept; and line upon line upon line; here a little, there a little. Hold fast to that what's good. With stammering lips and other tongues will I speak to this people. And this is the rest."
He said, "All the tables of the Lord has become full of vomit. Who can I teach doctrine? Who can I make to understand?" See? (I think that was the right scripture, Isaiah 28.) " Who can I make understand doctrine?" See, the tables.

13 Now, we find out today that this great thing that we're fixing to do tonight in commemoration of His death; and His body that we believe that we eat daily---or just got through eating, as our brother preached to us, taking the Word of God... We believe it with all of our heart. We see it manifested; we see it given to us; we see it vindicated; we feel it in our lives. And we must come to this with a deep conscience of what we're doing, not just because it's an order.
You go in a church, and many times they got out an old soda cracker or some kind of a something, break it up, and light bread or something, and break it up; and people who smoke, drink, everything else, because they're a member of the church they come and take the Lord's supper. Well, that's filthiness before God!

14 Even the sacrifice... Said, "Your holy days and your sacrifice become a stench in my nose." Yet He ordained them to make that sacrifice. But the way they treated it, it become a stench (stink in His nose, His nostrils), the very sacrifice that He ordained.
That's the way we take the Word of God. Too many Christians today (so-called) does that. We stand up here and teach this Word, and say, "Jesus Christ isn't the same yesterday, today, and forever," and teach the things that He promised us that He would honor, and say, "Oh, well, that was for something else." Our solemn worship has become a stink in His nose. He will not receive it, by no means. That's the reason, by our traditional habits...

15 You don't take the Lord's supper by a tradition. You take it because it's the love of God in your heart, in keeping the commandments of God, see. That's what you take it for.
So, if you don't take it in sincerity---just, it's a tradition, "Well, our church observes communion once every Sunday, or once every month, or twice a year;" and you go up, say, "Well, it's my time," and then take the communion---why, it's a stink to God. See, that's just a tradition.
Even like anything else, you've got to be sincere. God wants the depths of your heart. You remember, the very God that brought you here on earth is the one you're serving.
You're doing this because He said so, because it's His order. Then we want to come up with deepness of sincerity, knowing that by God's grace that we have been saved. And we love Him and we feel His presence, and we see it change our lives. Our whole being is changed. We're different people. We don't live like we used to. We don't think like we used to.

16 Like in the book here, in the spot there... We was talking about the two books being one, the book of life. The first book of life coming up was when you were born. That was your natural birth, see. But then one time, way back down in there, there was a little grain of life (as I've explained to some of the young sisters at the house this afternoon). See, there's a little grain of life laying there that you'd wonder: "Where did it come from? What ... these strange things...?"
I was saying this, taking for myself, like you was going to say, "William Branham. Well, forty years ago the William Branham isn't the same one tonight"; and somebody back there would say, "He was a rank rascal," see, because I was born of Charles and Ella Branham. In there, nature, I was a sinner. I came to the world a liar, and all the habits of the world laid right in me. But down in there too was another nature present, predestinated. It was in there by God. In this same body, two natures in there.
Well, I only catered to one. As it growed, I gooed as a baby, "Dad-da." First thing you know, I become a liar, become everything else that's a sinner, because I raised up that way. But down in there was a little speck of life all the time.

17 I used to remember, as a little boy (I hope I'm not holding you too long. But knowing...) sitting out on the creek bank, and I'd sit there and look around at nighttime. Pop and Mom, they're gone on now to their rest. And them days, they were sinners; there was no Christianity in our homes at all. And, oh, my, drinking, and parties, and carrying on... It made me sick. I'd take my lantern and my dog and go to the woods to stay all night. In the wintertime I'd hunt till the party was over, maybe daylight in the morning. Come home, wouldn't be over, I've laid on top of a shed and sleep, waiting for daylight to break.
Then I'd think of how that times (then being out there in the summertime), get my sticks and put them down for a little windbreak, where if it rained; lay there and have the poles sticking in the water, fishing, my old coon dog laying there. I'd say, "Looky here. You know, last winter I camped right here one night. I built a fire right here when I was waiting for my old dog here to tree, and I had a fire here. It was froze five inches deep in the ground. But, little flower, where did you come from? Where did you come from? Who come out here and planted you? And what hothouse did they bring you out of? Or what about it? Where'd you come from?" See, that little flower... I'd say "Why, it was froze, and everything, and I built a fire on top here. Besides the freezing element, there was a heat element laying here on a big old log where I burned here. And yet here you are, you're alive. Where did you come from?"

18 What was it? There was another William Branham, see. A little spot of eternal life down there from the genes of God, the word of God that was placed in there. Each one of you can think of similar things, see. It was working.
Then I looked up to the trees and I'd think, "Leaf, I seen you fall off last year, and what are you back there again? Where did you come from? What brought you here?" See, it was that eternal life working in the body.
Now, then one day as I walked on, that voice talking, "Don't never smoke, drink," so forth... And the young fellows and I got older. See, there was something moving.
But yet, all at once I looked up, and I said, "I'm not the son of Charles and Ella Branham. There's something calling." Like my little eagle: "I'm not a chicken. There's something up yonder, somewhere. O great Jehovah, whoever you are, open up! I want to come home. There's something in me calling."
Then I was born again. That little life was laying there; the life of water was poured upon it, then it begin to grow. Now that old life was forgiven, put in the sea of God's forgetfulness, to never be remembered against me no more, see. Now we stand justified---as though we never had sinned---in the presence of God.

19 Then, when we come to the Lord's table, we must come in reverence, love, and respect, of "Look where we would have been if it hadn't been for Him," see. Look where we would've...
Therefore, Paul, I think, in saying this, "Wherefore, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for the other," that is, other words, just wait a few minutes, pray, check yourself out. And if you know a brother is in there, just about to do something that's wrong, or something, you pray for him, too. See, "Tarry one ... the other," wait just a minute, pray. If there's any feelings between you or something, don't do it. Don't do it---go make that right first, see. Go straighten that up first, because we want to come here just as pure as we can be, and our thoughts of one another and to God, and to each other, and then we come in fellowship around the table of the Lord, see.

20 And we do this because that we are giving thanks to Him among one another, eating the bread between each other, drinking the wine between each other, as His blood and His flesh.
"Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you," see. You see, that's what the Bible said. Except you do it, there's no life. You see? You are then, more or less, showing you are ashamed to identify yourself as a Christian because of the life that you live. And then this is really the showdown. Then if you don't do it, you have no life. If you do do it unworthily, you are guilty of the body of the Lord.

21 Same thing in water baptism. If we say, "We believe on Jesus Christ, He saved us from sin, and we are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ," why, we bring disgrace to Him---we do the things that's wrong---and we'll have to pay for that. And another thing, when we do that, we are trying to profess one thing and do another. That's the trouble of us today.
What I think ... I'm saying us---me and the church that the Lord God has let me speak to in these last hours---that we believe we're in the closing time. We believe that God has give us a message. It's been ordained of God, it's been proven of God, it's been showed of God. Now, we must come to Him with reverence and with love, and with purity of heart and mind and soul.

22 You know, the hour will soon arise when right among us will be ... the Holy Spirit will speak out like it did in Ananias and Sapphira. See, that hour is arriving, see. And we are... Now, you just remember that, see, that God is going to dwell among His people. That's what He wants to do now.
We can receive the message as saying... If I was a young man and hunting for a wife, and I could find a wife, I said, "She's just perfect. She's a Christian. She's a lady. She's all this, I got confidence." No matter how much confidence, how much I think she's nice, I've got to receive her, she's got to receive me, see, upon these vows.
Well, it's the same thing we find in the message. We see it's right. We see God vindicates it's right. It's perfectly right. Year after year, year after year, it continues right, continues right. Everything it says happens just exactly the way He said. Now, we know it's right; but, see, don't do it from an intellectual standpoint. If you do, you got a secondhanded religion. We don't want a secondhanded religion---something that somebody else has experienced and we are living off of their testimony.

23 As ... I believe it was Jesus said to Pilate (something---a word I was thinking---he said there, just a few moments ago), " Who told you that, or was it revealed to you? How did you know these things?" In other words (I don't know just what the word is now; it's been a long time since I read it), but, "How did you notice what ... who revealed this to you? [It was about Him being the Son of God.] Who revealed it to you? Did some man tell you that? Or," as Jesus said, "is it my Father in heaven which has revealed it to you?" See? "How did you learn it? A secondhand? Or is it a perfect revelation from God?"
Is this communion just something I go up for, an order, say, "Well, the rest of them take this, I will, too"? It's a revelation that I am part of Him and I'm part of you, and I love you and I love Him, and we're taking this together as a symbol of our love to God, and our love and fellowship to one another.

24 Now, I want to read some from the Scripture. And then I guess... Whichever way Brother Pearry desires today... I wish you'd read it with me, if you got your Bible. I Corinthians, the eleventh chapter, and begin with the twenty-third verse.
And then also, at our Tabernacle, we've always observed this and feet-washing, always, because they go hand in hand together. I believe the brother announced that Wednesday night (because of the crowds and you don't have enough room to get the people in for feet-washing), they're going to observe this Wednesday night.

25 Now, twenty-third verse of the eleventh chapter of I Corinthians, listen at Paul now. Now, remember and keep this in mind, Galatians 1:8: "If we or an angel from heaven preaches any other gospel unto you [than this gospel that he had preached], let him be accursed," see.
For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, ... said, Take and eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
Now, let me stop right here, you see. But taking the body of the Lord Jesus Christ in this communion does not mean that that communion is the literal body of Christ. That's Catholic. I do not believe that that's right. I believe it's only an ordinance that God made with us, see; it isn't the actual body. Now, it's really a little piece of kosher bread. It's just an ordinance.

26 Neither do I believe that the baptism of Jesus Christ (in the name of Jesus Christ) in water does forgive your sins. I do not believe that you ... I believe you could be baptized all day long... Now, I know that there's perhaps people sitting here who come from the Apostolic church ... I mean, or the United Pentecostal church, which they teach that. But, you see, I do not believe that the water forgives sins. Or, if it was, then Jesus died in vain, see. I believe that it's only an ordinance of God, see, to show that you have been forgiven. But to be baptized for regeneration, no, I don't believe that. I don't believe that water forgives sins.
Neither do I believe that this bread and wine has anything to do with you, only keeping an ordinance that God has ordained for us to do, see. That's right. I believe water baptism is the same thing. I believe it's compelling to us to do it, that He had done it all for our example. And He done this for our example, and He washed feet for our example.

27 Now, "After the same manner also," twenty-fifth verse:
After the same manner also he took the cup, and when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
For as oft [remember, now] For as oft as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew forth the Lord's death till he come. [How long? Until He comes, see],
Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord.
Let me stop just a minute. The reason he said this... You notice in another verse here, another chapter, that he said, "I understand when you come together, you're eating ... even getting drunk at the Lord's table." They misunderstood it, you see. They just gluttoned in, see. Just like people are doing today, just live any kind of life and take it, see. He said, "You got homes to eat in, see. But, this is an ordinance that we should keep, see." Now:
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup.
For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

28 What are you? You're a Christian. You live before everybody as a Christian. And if you take that and don't live as a Christian, you're not discerning the Lord's body. You're putting a stumbling block in somebody else's way, see, as they see you trying to do that and then not living what you're supposed to live, see. You're not discerning the Lord's body. Now, watch what the curse of it is:
For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. [The right translation of that word, Brother Pearry, is "dead." See, many are dead.]
For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. [If we judge ourselves, we won't be judged.]
But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. [See, not any attach to the world.]
Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for the other.
And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest I will set in order when I come.

29 Now, in other words, don't just come to take it as a... As I said awhile ago, about what the Jews, their sacrifice, they... It was wonderful, it was given by God. But it got to a place where they didn't do it in sincerity and reverence and in order. Then it become just a ... it become a stench in His nose.
Now, the same thing is by our coming to take the Lord's supper, that we must come knowing what we are doing. Just like when you go into the water to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, you know what you're doing: you're putting on to the church what God has put in you---Christ.
When we take this, it shows to the church that "I believe every word of God. I believe that He is the bread of life that come from God out of heaven. I believe every word that He says is the truth, and I live by it to the best of my knowledge, God being my judge. Therefore, before my brothers, before my sisters, I do not swear, I do not curse, I do not do these things, because I love the Lord; and the Lord knows it and bears me record. Therefore, before you, I take the parcel of His body to know that I am not condemned with the world." See, there you are; then it's a blessing.

30 And, remember, I could give many testimonies on this, where I've took that and explained it in a sickroom, and seen them healed.
Remember, when Israel taken the type of this, they had journeyed forty years in the wilderness and their clothes never even wore out; and they come out without one feeble one among them with two million people---as a type of this. Well, what will the antitype do? If the body of a sacrificial animal did that for them, what would the body of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, do for us?
Let's just be reverent when you come. Let us be just as reverent as we know how to come.