Paradox

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 Good morning, friends. It's a privilege to be here again this morning. And they told me they'd had a special meeting, and had made some minutes. And they wanted me to come hear those minutes, of what ... if I had anything to say for or against it. About ... said there was something about interviews, they'd had some trouble. I think that's grand, like that. I accept that. That gets me a chance then that I can...

2 There is so many. I guess there is around six hundred on waiting lists, right now, see, of special interviews. And I'm morally obligated to my word, to stay with each one until we hear from God, for that person, see. And then if you do that, you might have one fellow right on the waiting list there for ... or maybe with that one person, waiting for two or three weeks for that one person, see, till we actually hear from God; coming together, praying together, going back, separating, coming back together, praying together, till we have "Thus saith the Lord" for that person. Well, in that time, see, there is other things.

3 Now this way---the way I understand it right---that each one will write their requests, whatever they are, and just hand it in to me. And let me have it, and then let me pray over this request. Then I can call these people to where... Was that the way it was? [Brother Neville says, "Amen."] Now, that's fine. See, and then maybe while I'm waiting with this one person, I could get a hundred, two hundred people, right in this one, this group right here, where I'm waiting on one. Because that way, it'll give me a chance then to get to see more people. I really like that. Ever who fell on that idea, well, I believe it was pretty good. That's fine.
And so, now, this has been kind of a great week for me, these last couple weeks. I have been out before our Lord, as you understand.

4 But, I think, before we start the service, I think... One, I know. I got a grandson here somewhere in the building, and perhaps... If he's a Branham, he's disorderly, running around here somewhere, maybe, so he's the one to have to take these instructions. So he's around here somewhere. I think there is a dedication service, and for other mothers who have their little ones. Well, if Brother Teddy, I believe it is, will come to the piano, and we're going to sing our familiar old dedication service of babies, "Bring Them In."

5 Now, many people, in many churches, they sprinkle the babies. And we try to follow just the trend of the Bible, just as close as I know how to follow it. Now, there is no place in the Bible where they ever sprinkled an adult, let alone a baby. And nowhere there was ever ... sprinkling was ever ordained of God, a baby or adult.
But there is in the Bible where they brought little children unto Jesus, and He lifted up His hands and laid them upon the little ones, and blessed them, and said, "Suffer little children to come unto me." Now that's our way of doing it here. And now, as His servants, we just take them before God in prayer; and if there is anyone here that's got your little baby that has not been dedicated.

6 We don't believe in baptizing, in any form, those little babies, because they have no sin. They are born in sin, shaped in iniquity, come to the world speaking lies, but they have nothing to repentance of. And baptism is unto repentance and remission of sin. So their baby has nothing to repent for; and when Jesus died on the cross, He cleansed all sin. And now when we get old enough to know that we got to repent for what we've did, then we are ... and recognize that Christ died for us. That little baby can't recognize that, that Christ died for him; but when we are old enough to recognize that Christ died for us, and then we are baptized then unto His death and raised to His resurrection. Lord willing, next Sunday I'll get on that, if God willing.

7 Now, therefore, we bring them and dedicate them. Any mothers, any church, any creed, any color, anything else, we dedicate all little children to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, Brother Teddy, if you'll let us sing this, "Bring Them In," if you will. All right, let's all together now:
Bring them in, bring them in,
Bring them in from the fields of sin;
Bring them in, bring them in,
Bring the little ones ones to Jesus.
In the vision I had, just after the going of my mother, that's what I was leading, a song, was "Bring Them In," when the little children ... was bringing. Will you come, Brother Neville?

8 I know this boy. Billy says, "Don't you drop him. Don't you drop him." Here, this is William Branham, there is three of us standing here together, William Branhams, three generations, three names. He's looking me over this morning. There's something about them that's kind of innocent-looking, you know. He's William Paul, Junior, and so we are grateful, I am this morning, to give to the Lord Jesus, from the arms of his father (my son), the grandson, for a life of service, blessings upon the father and mother.
Let us bow our heads.

9 Our gracious, heavenly Father, I know I'm getting way up the road when I hold my grandson in my hands.
But I'm thinking of Jacob, when he brought his grandchildren between his knees, when he was an old man, Ephraim and Manasseh; blessed those children, and imparted to them the spiritual blessings that lasted even to this day. How he crossed his hands from one to the other taking the blessing from the Jew to the Gentile, in the cross. Let the God of heaven come near now.
This grandson that You have given to me, Lord, through my son and my daughter-in-law---I'm thinking of she being barren, to raise no children, and coming down that day from Yakima, Washington, when she was crying, and said, "I wish I could have a baby."
Your Spirit came into the car, and there I said, "You shall have it." And today I hold this fine little boy in my hand---your spoken word, your promise.

10 Now, Lord, in simplicity of our actions, we place this baby by faith in the hands of the Lord Jesus; that Him, being here in the form of the Holy Spirit, will take the baby into His arms and His care, and will guide it through life. Give it health and strength, a long life, if You tarry. And may the baby be used to your glory. May the power of the living God rest upon the child. If he lives to be a man, and Jesus tarries, may he preach the gospel. The power of God that gave him to his mother and father, may it never depart from him.
Bless his daddy and his mother. May they be raised ... may he raise this baby in the Christian atmosphere. That all possible human training that they can do, this baby shall have it.
Now, little Billy Paul Branham, Junior, I give thee to Almighty God in dedication, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

11 There is something about little babies, that I think is so sweet!
I remember Loyce, she cried and clutched her hands. She is real nervous. Loyce has come up out of great tribulation, just a little Kentucky girl that had rather a hard life. And one night Jesus appeared to her, standing in the cold. And she come running up to the house around midnight, her and Billy, after they got married. And down by the side of the duofold there, I put my arm around her and led her to the Lord Jesus.
She wanted babies so bad. They had been married several years. And coming down from Yakima one day, she was kind of weeping. It had been a... The Holy Spirit came in and told her of a female trouble that she had had, the reason she could not have any babies. Then the Holy Spirit came again, and cursed that female trouble and give her the blessing. I dedicated him just now.
There is a...

12 I have some little things wrote out here, that I want to say first, before we read the text. First, is future meetings, I have written. That is next Sunday, the Lord being willing. I know it's getting icy and bad on the roads.
And we got people here that come from Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, and Ohio, and Illinois. And this little group of people are made up from everywhere.
Some of the people tell me, say, "I passed by your church down there, Billy. Mornings there there's licenses from all over the country here."
I say, "Yeah."
One here and one there, that's the way I think the bride will be. "Two in the field; and I'll take one, leave one," so forth.
And I don't want the people to drive them icy roads.
And I know, too, right after Christmas now, I'll be leaving in the field, the Lord willing. I got about fifteen different services set up now.

13 And I want to announce, on next Sunday, the Lord willing, I want to teach on a very outstanding message to me. I've been studying, this week and the week before, on Bible history. And I want to speak on the subject of "Christianity Versus Paganism (Idolatry)," next Sunday.
And then the next Sunday is Christmas Eve day, next Sunday ... and Sunday, a week, I mean, pardon me. Sunday, a week, is Christmas Eve day. Now if I give out for a message, and those, some of my dear friends, come from Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia, and around like that, the little children will sure be disappointed on the night of Christmas. And if the Lord puts upon my heart to bring the Christmas message to the church, I will then, if God being willing, I promise everyone that's out of town, see, I'll send you the tape myself, see, so you won't have to leave your kiddies out for Christmas Eve night. And then I'll send you the tape, at my compliments of the meeting. And just remember that.

14 Another thing, you know, you can't expect everybody to believe everything you say. It just doesn't work that way.
I forgot this morning, rushing away quickly, on account of getting down here. I happened to look up... Brother Wood brought my wife and them down. I looked up, and it was almost time to start the service down here, for me to come in. And they told me, Billy called me last night, and said they wanted me here this morning, to hear these minutes read from the last meeting.

15 I was going to bring a history, just to try to straighten something that I've said. No matter how clear you try to make it, still there is someone doesn't get it. It's about altars in church, see. Someone said, "Brother Branham don't believe in an altar in a church." I do believe in an altar at church, see. But altars was not the place where people come to pray. There never was an altar call made anytime in the Bible. There is no such a thing.
And I want to bring you, I will next Sunday, in the history of the early church, that... The reason there was no altars in the church, because falling prostrate at an altar is a pagan form of worship, and is not a Christian idea at all. Now, I will speak on that, also, next Sunday. But there was no altars in the early church to make altar calls. There was nothing but just a hollow room. That's all. No crucifix, no nothing, there was nothing in the room but just a flat floor. The people were ... the Pentecostal church in the early days, as I will bring you from many different historians, next Sunday, the Lord willing. And I want to bring it to you from Ironside's Early Pilgrim Church, and from Hislop's Two Babylons, from Pre-Nicene Fathers, The Nicene Council, oh, so many of them, Hazeltine's writings of the early church, and different ones, you see, to show you that nowhere...

16 Even in Ireland, where I have visited in the church that the Catholics call a Catholic saint, St. Patrick; but was absolutely not one speck of history nowhere that says that. St. Patrick was nothing but a protester of the Roman church. There is nowhere, no one can produce any history that will show that he was a Catholic. All of his schools was in Northern Ireland. Then when this Catholic emperor come in in England, he put to death ten thousand of St. Patrick's people. And the church is still standing there today, his schools, all in Northern England.
And where you hear them say, "St. Patrick run all the snakes out of Ireland," you know what it was, the historical facts of it? He believed in Pentecost, that had power to pick up serpents, take up serpents. And that's the reason it got started.
And Peter being crucified, head down, in Rome, there's not in the martyrology. And I've searched every one, everywhere, and read of historians, everything I know of, and there is not one Scripture that said either Paul or Peter was ever killed in Rome. It's dogmas. It's just been started by the first Roman church, and it's not truth. There is a whole lot. I'll get in that next Sunday.

17 Then another thing I have so much, hear about. Someone told me, a great outstanding preacher, he said, "Brother Branham, why don't you leave them women alone?" He said, "You know, people regard you as a prophet. Why don't you teach them high spiritual things?" That man may be sitting present. If it is, I want you to get this, brother. "Why don't you teach them high spiritual things, where you climb, and let them climb there; instead of telling them about not cutting their hair, and the kind of dresses to wear?"
If you are here, or hear the tape, brother... If I can't get them out of kindergarten, how am I going to teach them algebra? They haven't got the decency and morality about them to even let their hair grow out and wear ... dress like ladies. How're you going to teach them spiritual things? Don't know the first ... don't know ABC's. And try to teach them something high, give them a college education when they don't know ABC? Let them learn ABC's first, and then we'll go on to that.

18 Now, last week you had a great man here at the pulpit, to take my place. That was Brother William Booth-Clibborn, which is known amongst all the preachers to be the prince of the preachers. Great man, great, great preacher. Frankly, he is one of the best there is in the lands, anywhere. The man can preach the gospel in seven different languages, so you can imagine what he is. And he is a full gospel preacher.
He was the one that stayed with me in that debate with them seven Church of Christ preachers that time. And if there ever was people I felt sorry for, it was them men after he got through with them. I never heard such in my life. They even got up and started to walk away. He met them at the door, said, "I thought you wanted to talk about divine healing?"

19 And he is so flat, though, just so awful flat. He just called them everything he could---"ignoramuses" and everything, you know. So, he is real flat, and that's the only thing about him. If he'd just season that knowledge with some love, it would be different, you see. And he may be here. Yeah, but I mean that, you know, like that---if he'd just be real sweet about it. But, oh, my, he's an Englishman, and he just really can get so stirred up.
But he met them at the door, and pointed his finger in their face, said, "You ever jump on him again," (that was me) said, "I'll expose you before the public, and I really will make a bunch of donkeys out of you," he said. I've never heard of them since, see. I don't blame them. I'd stay away also. Yes, because you'll never get a word in edgewise around Brother Booth.

20 A wonderful preacher, fine man, good Christian, clean, moral man, as far as I know anything about him, and knowed him for years. I got to hear his tape, what he preached on about how holy and high God was, and how we were born in sin; and what could a man ever do that would bring ... could tell God what to do, see. And that really was wonderful.
Now, the reason I was gone at this time, I had had a week of fasting and prayer, which had led me to have a decision.

21 And I got a little switch here, supposed to be somewhere, that will censor what I didn't want. Oh, here we are. This is it---what I want on tape, and what you don't want on tape. So, brethren, if your tape is a little messed up, well, don't... You can cut that part out. Now, but in there, that way, so many taking, when Brother Mercier and them had ... the only ones who could take tapes, why, I'd have them to censor them out there before I would let them go out. But in this, anybody can take them now, you see, anybody that wants to take them can take them. And so I have to censor them myself, from this switch right here, what I don't want to say, or let go out over the tapes.
Because, there is some things I can tell you all here, that I certainly wouldn't want to get out with the people. Because, let them alone. If the blind leads the blind, they all fall in the ditch, anyhow, you see. So, just don't offend them. Like Jesus said, "Don't offend them Pharisees." Said, "If they want some tribute money, go down and cast the hook in the sea, and get the first fish, and take the coin out of his mouth, and go pay them." Said, "Don't offend them, just let them alone."

22 But in all of my life, since I have been a little boy, the Lord has always given me visions, which we are acquainted with here at the church and, I am sure, in the land where these tapes will travel also, of visions. And with this open Bible before me, and before God who I stand, I have never knowed of one of them failing. They've always been perfect.
And I had a vision a few weeks ago, about three weeks now this coming Tuesday, that drove me to my knees, and out into the wilderness to fast and pray. And I put on (being it's cold) heavy insulated underclothes that I use on hunting trips so I wouldn't freeze up around there in my cave and in the woods. And I went up, not...

23 Someone said, "Well, Brother Branham, did you go up to seek? You ought to have went up to seek a vision from the Lord."
I said, "No, you don't go... You don't do it that way. You can't pull nothing out of God."
See that's the reason people keep saying, on interviews, saying, "Ask the Lord. Just stay with it! Just stay with it!"
I had a word of the Lord to take to Brother Neville, about prophesying over everyone that comes by this altar here. God told him ... really called him down about it, see. Don't do that. You'll shove him out in the flesh and then you'll have a false prophet, see. See, let him do just as the Spirit leads him to do, see.
Don't try to pull nothing out of God, because you can't do it. He'll only speak... Like Balaam, the hireling prophet, said, "I can only speak what God puts in my mouth. Otherwise, I can't say it."
And that's the same thing, I like this system they got now, so that I can find out just what the Lord would have do. That's very good.

24 But Jesus went to the wilderness to fast after the Holy Ghost had come upon Him. John bare record, seeing the Spirit of God come upon him, and He was filled with the power of God, God in Him. And then He went into the wilderness to fast, afterwards. Not before, for the Holy Ghost to come on Him; but He went in and fasted after the Holy Ghost came on Him, see.

25 And now, in the vision, I might say this. I mentioned it once. I was going to cut it off the tape, but I believe I'll just leave it on.
It was about three o'clock in the morning, I suppose. I had gotten up, and I looked where in front of me, and I was coming down to the Jordan. Looked like I was standing on the map of Palestine, and I was coming down to the Jordan. And seemed like I could hear the song, "I'm going down to the Jordan," someone was singing it. And as I drew near the river I looked back and seen which a-way I had come, and I was two-thirds of the way there, to the Jordan. And I looked across Jordan, and I said, "Oh, praise God, just on the other side is where all the promises lay! Every promise lays in the promised land."

26 And then I came to myself. I thought, "Could I have possibly have ... could it have been that I was a-dreaming, because it's nighttime?" See, a vision is something that you see with your eyes open. Just like a dream, you're looking right at it. And you're conscious that you're standing, like here on the platform. And you're standing here, but yet look like you're in a dream. You can't explain it, there's no way to do it. See, it's God's works. And God's ways are unexplainable. They have to be accepted by faith.

27 And then as I sat there a little bit, beside this chair, then, all of a sudden, here it come back again. Then I knew then that it was vision. And then when I come into the vision again, it seemed that I was lifted up and sitting on a highway, a narrow highway, with some brother. I never knew who the brother was. I looked around. I said, "Now I am sure and know this is a vision, the Lord God is here." And seemed like everybody was afraid. I said, "What's everybody so afraid of?"
And a voice came and said, "There is such danger in these days. There's a great hideous thing that's death when it strikes you."

28 And I heard the weeds a-mashing down, and I looked, and here come a huge monster snake crawling through the weeds. I thought, "Now, knowing this is vision, then I shall see what this animal or this beast is." And he crawled up on the highway. And as soon as I got sight of him, I knew it was a mamba. Now, a mamba is an African snake, which is the most deadly bite of all things there is. There's nothing as poison as a mamba. And the snake, of course, represents sin, death, see. And there is the... We have in this country the rattlesnake, and the copperhead, and the cottonmouth moccasin, many of those snakes, that, if you're in a bad health and one would bit you, it would perhaps kill you, if you didn't get aid of some sort right away.

29 And then we go into Africa and India, and we find the cobra. There's a black cobra. He's a bad snake, he's a death-bite, too. And there's the yellow cobra, which is far beyond him. And the yellow cobra, the patient dies with such a horrible death. It dies from suffocation. It paralyzes the breathing system. And they can't breathe, they can just open their mouth and gasp, trying to, and die like that. And that was the type of snake was just one lick from getting Billy Paul when we got the snake, in Africa.
And then comes the mamba, he's death. Just when he... He's so fast you can't see him. He goes over the top of the weeds and propels hisself with the back of his tail. Just "sssst" and he's gone! Hits you in the face, usually. Stands up high and strikes hard. And when he hits you, you've just got a few breaths till you're finished. It don't only paralyze, get in the blood stream, it gets nerves, everything. You just die just in a few seconds. Them native boys, track boys, you can say "mamba," and they'll butt their heads together, scream, because it's death just in a few seconds, see, when one hits you.

30 And here he was on the highway. I thought, "Well, this is it." So I looked at him. And he looked angry at me, and he licked his tongue, and here he come. But when he got right close to me... He would run up fast, and then he would get slower and slower, and just quiver and stop, and then something would hold him off. He couldn't bite me. And he would turn around on the other side, and try to approach from this side. And he would get back and get a start, and he'd swish right towards me, get slower and slower and slower, and then to a stop, and then shake like that and move back. He couldn't strike me.

31 Then he turned and looked at my friend, and away he went after my friend. And I seen my friend just jumping way in the air, and over him and over him and over him, trying, and the thing was striking at him. I thought, "Oh, if it ever hits him, it'll be instant death. No wonder everybody is so scared, because when this thing hits you it's an instant death." And it was just striking at him like that, and I threw my hands up, I said, "O God, have mercy on my brother!" I said, "If that serpent ever strikes him, it'll kill him."
And just then the serpent turned to me when I said that, and looked at me again. And a voice came from above me, and said, "You have been given power to bind him---the worst, or any."
And I said, "Well, God, what must I do?"
He said, "There is one thing you must do, you must be more sincere. See, you must be more sincere."
I said, "Well, God, forgive me for my insincerity, and let me have sincerity." And when I raised up my hands to Him again, there was a great something came over me, just lifted me up, seemed like that my whole body was charged with something.

32 And I looked at the serpent. And then he started towards me, and he couldn't do it, yet. And I said, "Satan, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I bind you." And the serpent, a blue smoke flew out of him, and he curled up and made that sign like an S, capital S made backwards, an and sign, &. And means bind this one or anything below him, because he was the worst. Blue smoke fell out of him, and his tail choked his own self to death around his head, when he made this backward S, that and sign, & (like a conjunction, you see), choked it to death. And the brother was free.
And I went over and mashed on it. I said, "Now I've got to find out about this, because it's vision." And I hit on the thing, and it turned like that, looked like a handle, a glass handle on a pitcher, and just made it solid crystal. And I said, "Think of that, how quick! That blue smoke was life. And everything had left it, all the elements, and it's turned to glass."
And just then a voice came again, and said, "You can unbind him, also."
So I said, "Then, Satan, that I might know, I unbind you." And when it did, he started coming to life again, wiggling. And I said, "I bind you back, in the name of Jesus Christ." And when it did, the smoke flew out of him again, and he choked hisself right back again and turned to crystal.

33 And then when he did that, that voice said, "Now you must be more sincere than what you are, to do this." Then it left me, and I was standing in the room.
A few moments, I heard a clock go off, and my wife was getting up. The children, you know how it is, I guess, at your house: one, "What am I going to wear today, Mama? Where are my books? And what did I do?" You know. Just like any home, you can't hear yourself think, hardly, for all of them trying to get ready at once.

34 And so I slipped off into the den room, and I got down on my knees, and I said, "Lord Jesus, I don't know these things. And what must I do? And the children will be calling me to take them to school in a few moments. What must I do?" And I looked around, and my Bible was laying there, and I said, "Lord, if You will forgive me..." I do not believe in just opening up the Scripture, and taking something out of the Bible and saying that, but, there is times that when God can comfort you by such a thing. And I said, "Lord, in this case of emergency right now, before your Spirit leaves me, and I don't know what to do. The kids will be an hour yet, before they'll be gone. Would You just show me? If that was something You're trying to get to me, heavenly Father, then let me know."

35 And I took this Bible and just pulled it open like that, and my thumb was laying at I Corinthians, the fifth chapter, the eighth verse, when something reads something like this. "When you come..." I was planning on taking a fast, to the Lord. I'd told Him I'd go out and fast. Said, "When you come to this feast..." Which, a fast in the body is a feast with the Lord. We know that. "So when you come to this feast, don't come with the old leaven or the leaven of malice, and so forth; but come with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth," just exactly what He had told me in the vision. God is my solemn judge. "Come with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, that is the Word." Then I seen what He meant.

36 Years ago, when I seen the Bible come down (I got it wrote right here), come down, and a hand came from heaven and pointed down to Joshua, and read the first nine verses, and stopped there. That's Joshua, come to the wilderness, but never did ... he was ready... When he got near Jordan, God called him out, said, "This day I'll begin to magnify you before the people. And then he took the children of Israel across Jordan, to the land where ... give them, divided to them, the promised land.

37 I went to the woods, and prayed and prayed, and fasted. And, now, I went back to that tree where I had met ... where those squirrels was, that you've heard in other messages, see, where those squirrels was. And standing there, along about three or four o'clock in the morning, after I had staggered through the brush with what light I could see, to get to the tree, coming early because I was led there. And then I met Him. God, help me to ever live true!

38 I'm going to read my text now. I have taken for a text this morning, wrote down here somewhere (oh, here it is), Joshua, in the book of Joshua, the tenth chapter. To you who are going to read behind me, the tenth chapter and the twelfth verse.
And I just have one hour. And then I think, I'm not sure, but I believe Billy said he give out prayer cards this morning, said, "There wasn't very many, but some people wanted to be prayed for." And anybody got prayer cards, raise up your hand now. That's right. Okay, that's fine. All right.
Now, the twelfth verse of the tenth chapter of Joshua.

39 And now remember, now, in the future, next Sunday I want to speak on "Christianity Versus Idolatry." And then I'll tell you from then, about whether the Lord leads on for the Christmas message or not. It seems like that I have a message on my heart for the people at Christmas. And then I'll tell you from then.

40 Now, beginning the reading at the twelfth verse of the tenth chapter of Joshua.
Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and ... Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. [Listen now.]
And there was no day like that before ... or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel.
And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp at Gilgal.

41 May God add His blessings to His Word. Now I wish, if it be the will of the Lord, that you tarry with me for a few minutes. I want to take a subject, strange, odd, upon reading such a scripture. I want your attention and prayer during this time. I want to take the subject of one word: "Paradox."
And, first, I'd like to explain maybe what a paradox is. In the Webster's dictionary, it says that a paradox means "something that's incredible, but true." That is a paradox. Something that's almost completely out of reason, couldn't be so but yet it is, that's a paradox. And I want to rest a few minutes on these words, a paradox.
Now we have many things that we could refer to as paradox. One thing that I would like to refer to, is this world itself is a paradox. Its standing is a paradox.

42 Last night I was talking to my daughter, Rebekah, that's in high school. And I was studying here in the Scripture, and was telling her about reading this verse here. And she said, "Daddy, Joshua actually stopped the world, didn't he?"
I said, "I don't know what he stopped. He stopped the sun."
She said, "He could not stop the sun, because the sun doesn't travel."
I said, "The reflection of it travels across the earth, though, and he stopped that."
She said, "Well, then God stopped the world."
I said, "Then, to the agnostic, what happens if the world happens to stop and loses gravitation? It would shoot through space like a star, and missiles of it would be falling for hundred billions of years in space."
But the Bible said that the sun stopped, and held its place for a whole day. I believe it. I believe it. It's unreasonable and incredible, but it's the truth.

43 Pray tell me then, which is the top side of the world, the North Pole or the South Pole? How do you know, if you're in space? You say, "The South Pole is down under us." They think the North Pole is down under them, see.
It's standing in a space, in a little circle of air, as it's turning some thousand-something miles per hour. Because, there's twenty-four or twenty-five thousand miles around it, and it turns around in twenty-four hours, so it make it going better than a thousand miles an hour, traveling around. And it never misses, striking exactly. Where it's on the equator where it goes around, it never misses a minute; perfectly timed, standing in the air. If that isn't a paradox, I don't know what one is. How that all the heavenly systems, how they are so timed so perfectly till that in years that's to come, twenty and thirty years from now, science can see the coming of the eclipse of the sun and the moon, passing; and can tell you to the moment when they will pass and when the eclipse will start.

44 No matter how fine a watch that we have, one of the precision... I've got one here that was give to me in Switzerland, as a present, when I was there. The value is about three hundred dollars, in American money. That was give to me. There isn't a week but what it has to be retimed. All clocks, nothing that man can make is so perfect. In a few years it'll be worn out and gone. As it gets older, it'll get worse all the time. The jewels will wear down. The accuracy of it will leave it. There is nothing that can be ground or fixed out by man, or honed out by man, that can stay perfect.
But this world stays perfect! What controls it? Well, you say, "I don't know what controls it, what holds it in its place." It truly is a paradox. You cannot describe how God does it, but He does it. So that's the main thing, that He does it. And we know that it's so.
It's incredible how that... You could spin a ball in the air---it will not make one complete revolution in the same place.

45 I was thinking, here some time ago, when I was in the desert. And one of these little old jumping cactuses that the acids in your blood will draw right to you, one of those fellows jumped onto me. And you can't pick it off. You have to take something and rake it off. And it's got little burrs on it. And no matter how well you sharpen a needle, a needle will be blunt on the end. A perfect sharpness of a needle---will be as perfect as you could get it---it'll be blunt, to one of those jumping cactuses. And yet it is a leaf, itself, rolled down tight. How could it be that nature could roll a leaf tighter and sharper on the point than a fine machine could grind one? And yet, plumb down to the end of that point is little fishhook burrs like that, little burrs to keep it, to hold itself in as it goes. Oh, a paradox, right, to science. It's incredible, but it's true.

46 I would like for someone to explain this. I could not tell you exactly the miles, or how many miles science says that the moon is from the earth. But how could that moon, I would say standing millions and millions of miles away from the earth, and yet controls that tide of the sea. What does it? How can it be done? It's a paradox, but yet we look and see that it's done. It happens. The moon controls the tides. When the moon rocks out like this, from the earth, the tide goes with it. And God has put the moon over the tides, and set the boundaries. And they cannot pass that boundary where God drawed a line, and said, "See, you can come this close, but you cannot take the rest of it, for I've put my guard over you."

47 That moon, millions of miles from the earth, calls to that sea, and it sets its boundaries and controls it. Incredible! What is on that moon? When, just a few miles off the earth, all gravitation, all air, everything else, leaves, goes out into space where there is not even air, for millions and millions and multiplied millions of miles. Yet, it controls it! Says, "You can go so far, but you can't go no farther, for I am the guard of God. I'm the watchdog that sits here, and you cannot pass these boundaries." Explain that. That's a paradox, how that God does that, but yet He does it. It cannot be explained.

48 We got wintertime, snow on the ground, cold, ground is freezing. A little seed, and in that little seed is a germ of life, and that little seed will freeze and burst open, and the pulp will run out of it. And that germ of life will be laying in the dust, in a frozen sheet of ice that would kill any life. How is it preserved, and then comes again in the springtime? Couldn't explain that, could we? It's a paradox.

49 We take Hebrews, the eleventh chapter and the twenty third verse. We understand there that the Bible says, Paul speaking, that the world was framed and put together by the word of God. A paradox, that a word could speak and out of that word would form material things, so that things that do appear was made out of things that does not appear. Things that we see was the spoken word of God. The earth is the word of God. The trees are a word of God. Why would we be afraid to trust One that's given such a word, with such power and authority? Why would we be afraid to take that word to ourselves and apply it to our own self? It shows where we have fallen, in unbelief. The Word, God's Word, a paradox! Truly a paradox, God's Word.

50 Also, I would like to show a paradox right quick, and that's when God called Abraham and told him, when he was a hundred years old and Sarah was ninety---forty years a-past the time of menopause for her. And Abraham, whose life was as good as dead, and Sarah, who was barren to begin with, and her womb as good as dead, and yet God said that He would bring through them a child. That's a paradox. Ask the doctor if a woman a hundred years old could raise a baby, have a baby. It's impossible, it's incredible, but she did it---because God said she would do it.

51 It's an incredible thing, to think that a man could sit with His back turned to a tent, a stranger with dust on His clothes, and tell a woman who was in the back of the tent what she was thinking about. A paradox, incredible, but yet it's true.
It was incredible, when Abraham taken Isaac to the top of the mountain, his only begotten son, and took him up to the top of the mountain to offer him up as a sacrifice. And when he got to the top of the mountain and laid Isaac on the wood, and was ready to take his life, and when he was coming down with his hand, something caught his hand! And there was a ram hooked by its horns, in the wilderness, on top of the mountain. A paradox! Where did the ram come from? How could it be a hundred miles from civilization, without being killed; with lions and jackals, and wild dogs and beasts, and things? Where did it come from? How did it get there, and up on top of the mountain where there is no water? Why wasn't it there when he picked up the rocks? He called the name Jehovah- jireh, "the Lord has provided Himself a sacrifice." Incredible, but yet is so true, for He is Jehovah jireh. Incredible things to our knowledge and science, but yet it is true! A great paradox!
It was a paradox, and will be, when Jesus (Mark 11:22 or 23), when He said, "If you say to this mountain, 'Be moved,' and don't doubt in your heart, but believe that what you have said will come to pass, you can have what you've said." It's incredible, but it's true. It's a paradox.

52 May I stop here to say, yonder in that woods, sitting by the side of that tree that morning, no squirrels in the woods, but when a voice spoke and said, "Say where they'll be"!
And there, so help me, if I die before I finish this message, pointing my finger to a bare-limbed walnut tree, said, "He'll sit right there," and there he was! Incredible, but true!
He said, "Where will the next one be?"
I said, "Over in that bunch of clumps of stuff," and I never took my finger down till there he was!
"Where will the next one be?"
"Out on that snag out over that field." And there he was! It's incredible.

53 I asked my wife, the other morning, I said, "Honey, have I lost my senses? Am I becoming a madman? What's the matter with me? Why do I say the things I do? What do I do the things I do for? What makes me?" I love people, and yet just rip them apart. And I fast and pray to get rid of it; and the more I fast and pray, the worse it comes. Incredible, but it's true! It's true.

54 I seen a woman raise her hand just then, back in the building, praising the Lord. It was Hattie Wright, sitting down there. When she had two boys, if they'll excuse me in saying this, renegades, boys of the world... That little woman sitting there that day, a widow, and I said, "Hattie, the Lord God ... you said the right thing. He provided those squirrels. He's Jehovah-jireh."
She said, "That's nothing but the truth of God!" Oh, she said the right thing! It seems incredible that a human being could speak a word...

55 As Brother Booth told you, as dirty and filthy as we are, who is He that sits back yonder beyond the moon and stars, and all space and time and eternity? As even Booth said it, and I read the same thing the other day, reading Irenaeus, that even the angels are dirty in His sight. Who are we?
But a woman said the right thing, that calls the heart of Jehovah! Said, "Ask her what she wants, and then give it to her." Amen. Incredible, but true! Right here now in our sight is visible evidence. She asked for her boys' souls to be Christians. God gave her her desire. Incredible! That was more of a miracle than healing a sick person. That's changing a man's life, his soul, body, and all he is. It changed his make up. Incredible, but true! It was a paradox. We see it everywhere.

56 Paradox in Noah's time. When Noah, a man, just an ordinary man, he became a prophet, or was a prophet of the Lord, perhaps farming. God told him, "Prepare for a rain to come from heaven," when there was no rain. There had never been no rain. There is no way to get rain up there. It had never rained on the earth. There was no seas, there was no waters, but yet God told him to make an ark for the saving of his house. And God brought the rain down! It was a paradox. Unscientific, but what? It was a paradox, anyhow. Yes.

57 It was a paradox when the Hebrew children that had decided they would stay with God's Word, regardless of what happened, that the king built the furnace seven times hotter than it ever had been het, and throwed those men in there. When the intense heat of the furnace killed the men who walked up the gangplank with them to the mouth of the furnace, they died. But yet those men walked in that furnace for perhaps three hours. There would be no more even dust of them, for the human life that was in them would have perished. If it made one human life perish by coming close to it, what would it do another human life? But they throwed them in there, and let's say three hours. It might have been five.

58 He might have went and had lunch, and come back, said, "Open up the furnace door. There won't even be dust of them fellows left!" But when he opened the door, there they were, unharmed, walking around in the fire. Incredible, but true! Why? He said, "How many did you put in?"
They said, "We have put three in."
He said, "I see four. [That's what made the paradox.] And that one looks like the son of the gods." He wasn't a son of the gods; He was the Son of God! They were heathens. Oh, God in His great Word!

59 There come a time when God's army had got cowardly and was afraid of a man, and stood on the side of a hill. When they let one man that was three times any of their size, stand out on the side of the hill, and say, "Now you trust in a real God, you say. One of you fellows come out and fight me, and we won't have any bloodshed." The enemy of God had backed the church of God against the hillside, and they were taking it! They were afraid. They were cowards.
And in the camp come a little bitty fellow, little sheepskin wrapped around him, a shepherd's coat, the smallest man in the whole army, and not even a soldier. But it was a paradox when God took that one man, that one little unconcerned fellow. The Bible said he was ruddy. That one little man put the whole army, the enemy, to flight! That was a paradox. Looks like God would have give that great marching army enough courage to go fight. They were servants of God, why not go fight the battle of God? That's God's enemy, take it! Looks like He would have give them courage. But God took one little individual.

60 And remember, another paradox, he never took a sword. Saul tried to put his armor on him, tried to put a sword in his hand. The poor little fellow couldn't hold it up. And he took a slingshot, a little rubber ... or, a little leather, with two pieces of string wrapped on it. And he defeated the whole army of the enemy, and put them to rout. It was a paradox, how that one little boy could put an army to running.
It's a paradox. Sure. God does it. He's just full of it. Sure, He is. That's what He does. That's His way of doing it. Yes, sir.

61 It was a paradox.
When Egypt had a great army that they had, the whole world was conquered. They had every nation under their hands. And when God decided to destroy that army, destroy that nation, looked like He would have raised up some Amorite army, or some great army somewhere, and would have sent them down there with better equipment; or put a consolidation of all the denominations together, to go down and to fight together, so he'd get full cooperation. But, God used a paradox. He took an old man, eighty years old, and never put a sword in his hand, but an old crooked stick, that sunk Egypt in the bottom of the Dead Sea. Incredible, what God can do; but that's the way He does it. He uses paradoxes to do it. See, He brings it to a paradox, a crooked stick of a shepherd instead of a marching army, to defeat a nation that ruled the world.
Oh, the only thing God is waiting on now, I believe... Russia don't mean nothing to God. He wants to get one man. He don't have to have big organizations. He don't have to have big denominations. He wants to get one man that He can wrap His Spirit into him! That will tell the rest of it---there will be another paradox. Until He can get someone completely surrendered, that will do that. That's the way God does His work. He uses paradoxes.

62 It was a paradox when a great soldier of God, by the name of Jehoshaphat, stood in the gates with a backslidden man by the name of Ahab, and said, "Before we go to this battle, is not it a good thing that we consult the Lord?" Now, if that man's heart is hungry to know the will of God, there's got to be a will of God somewhere.
Not always in the multitude of counsel it's safety. Ahab says, "I've got all my ministers. They're all prophets. I'll call them up here. And you know, if I bring out four hundred prophets, we'll find the word of the Lord."
Not always you do, not always. If it's not with the Word, then stay away from it. I don't care how many is there. Stay with that Word. God can't take that Word back.
Now, he brought them all out there, and they all prophesied with one accord that the Lord was with them. "Go up!"
But yet there was something wasn't right. And that man of God knowed that wasn't right. He said, "Haven't you got one more? Just another one, somewhere?"
"Oh," said, "we got one, but I hate him."
Said, "Don't let the king say so."

63 God chose one illiterate boy, a little renegade to the nation, a despised and rejected one, to bring His message to the hungry-hearted. Instead of all the denominations together speaking with one accord in union, God brought one person. A paradox, but the man had the truth. And it proved to be the truth, because he was with the Word. It was a paradox, exactly.
Now you say, "You mean you disagree with all this and that, and that?" If it's not with the Word, I disagree with it. That's right. God's Word will never fail.
Talking with a priest, not long ago, he said, "Mr. Branham, you are trying to argue a point from a Bible." Said, "We believe the church, nothing but that. We believe the church, what the church says. God is in His church."
I said, "God is in His Word, and He is the Word." That's right, the Word!

64 That's the reason Micaiah took the Word. And God used a paradox to put every denomination to shame, and brought to pass the word of the servant of God. One man, despised, rejected, hated! What? Hated by his own people. Now, he wasn't a communist, or he wasn't something else. Let's say he was Pentecostal, and the Pentecostal groups hated him. They didn't like him. They had nothing to do with him. But he had the Word of God. God made a paradox out of it.
Why wouldn't he, if all these other fellows are prophets and ministers, and so forth, why can't in all this whole big group decide something better than one person? Seems unreasonable that God would just make one man's word right, than the rest of them.

65 Because, that man's word was God's Word. That's the reason God brought the thing to pass, because the man was with God's Word. The others were prophesying a lie. Yes, it was a paradox when God took one little fellow's word, and made it true, because it was His Word. God has to stand by His Word. not the council's word, but, God's Word---that's who He stands by.
He took Micaiah instead of a well-trained school of ministers, renowned men. Nothing against them---they were great men. They were men who believed in not another god; they believed in the same God Micaiah believed in. But they acted like they believed in it, but wouldn't take His Word, because they wanted to be popular. They wanted to find favor with the king, and their blindness overlooked the true Word of God. How could God bless what He had cursed?

66 You ladies and men, both, don't think that I do this to be nasty. I do it to be honest. That's the reason. How can I say that women should have ... all right ... let them cut their hair off, and things like that, wear their clothes... ? That ain't got nothing to do with it? God's Word says it does! She is shameful and disgraceful as long as she does it, and God will never deal with her. I don't care how much she speaks in tongues, or jumps or shouts, she's not got anywhere with God yet. That's the Word of the Lord.
Men, you who can't rule your own house, and then try to be preachers and deacons? How are you fit to be a preacher in the pulpit, to lead the church of the living God, and divide for them their inheritance? when you think more of your meal ticket and the offering that comes in than you do the Word of God, and ashamed to say it before the women, afraid you won't be popular. God have mercy on your sinful soul!
Speak the Word of God in truth!

67 John said, "The ax is laid at the root of the tree," and the ax is the Word of God. "Every tree that don't bring forth the right fruit, hew it down and cast it into the fire." God, bring us another paradox!
Why did God take John the Baptist, as I was just speaking of, instead of His well-trained priests of that day? He took a man that never went to school a day in his life. So we understand---that John went into the wilderness, the age of nine years old, and was alone with God.

68 A few days ago, in reading of the Nicene Council... That was a long time after the death of the last apostle, St. John. When those men come up there to that Nicaea Council, some of those old brothers embarrassed the rest of them. They come there dressed in sheep skins; upon those robed emperors, like Constantine and the bishops of Rome. Old sheep skins wrapped around them, and lived in the wilderness on herbs; but they were prophets of the Lord. The little church, the Greek side, went on; the Roman side went back. But it goes to show, when you compromise you can't be a servant of Christ.

69 John---in that day, the church was very orthodox, they had the priests, the well-trained men. But God chose the man that had no education at all, and took him out of the wilderness, with a piece of sheepskin wrapped around him, and his whiskers all burred out, his hair hanging over his neck. No pulpit to preach from, no church to invite him. But he probably stood in mud, half to his knees, and preached, "The kingdom of God is at hand!" God chose that man.

70 Jesus said, "Who did you go out to see, a man that can speak at all the schools, a man that's finely robed, and so forth?" He said, "They're in kings' palaces." Said, "What did you go to see, a prophet?" He said, "More than a prophet. This is who the prophet spoke of would come, 'I send my messenger before my face.' " He was the angel of the covenant. He was the great forerunner.

71 But it was a paradox, how it got. Why didn't He come down to that big school up there at Jerusalem? Why didn't He come to Caiaphas, the high priest? Why did He not come to some of those great, trained men who had been trained from childhood? And their fathers had been trained before them, and their fathers before them, for generation after generation after generation, trained and schooled, fine, high-cultured, educated. And then pick an old man out in the wilderness, that never had a day's schooling in his life, and set him out there on the Jordan, and said, "This is him." A paradox, exactly. Incredible, but yet it was true. God did it.

72 The virgin birth of our Lord, incredible, for a woman to bring a child without knowing a man. God did it. God did it. See, it's a paradox. Took a little old woman down there, a little old girl, engaged to some man about forty-five years old, she herself was about sixteen or eighteen, and engaged to this man who was a widower, of four children. And then took this woman and overshadowed her by the Holy Spirit, and conceived in her womb the body that tabernacled Almighty God. A paradox!

73 How that heaven can't hold Him! Earth is His footstool, heavens is His throne, and yet could bring the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and embody it into a man. Oh! When you can measure for hundreds of billions of miles into aeons of time, and never measure God; and yet a little baby laying in a manger contained the fullness of His Godhead bodily. Jehovah! A paradox! That great God, who sits back yonder, to control a hundred million suns shining on planets, who never began and never ended, and would embody Himself in a manured stable!
And then we get out and dance and drink, and carry on, in a celebration. It's not a celebration; it's a worship. We celebrate Christmas, how that God did that in order He could die, to take the place of a sinner.

74 It was a paradox when a little curly-headed boy, little stoop-shouldered fellow, he probably wasn't five-foot tall, and he had seven locks hanging down around his head---a little sissy... And he was on his road down one day to see his girl friend, and a lion roared against him.
Did anybody ever hear a real lion roar? You probably have, in these cages and things around here. But I want to tell you, they're just meowing then. You ought to hear a wild one really roar. The rocks will fall off the hill a half a mile away; pebbles will roll down the hill, it just vibrates the ground so. Where that roar comes from, I don't know.

75 Oh, I seen one one day, he was hanging his head down. A big old yellow-mane lion roared at a black one, because (a black mane), because he had picked up a piece of meat. He left it laying there, and he just as much as to say, "Now you leave that alone, I'm going down to get a drink of water." And he went down to lap the water. When he come back, this black mane had been licking on it. The old pappy just stopped, put his head down, and he let out a belch, and I say that the rocks rolled off the hill. Oh, my! He'd shake the city, if he roared like that here. A roar of the lion, oh, he is ferocious!
And that roar run out against this little curly-headed shrimp (we'd call him), and something happened. That little shrimp walks over and gets him by the mouth, puts one hand down this way and one in that way, not nervously, and just pulls him apart and lays him down there. That's a paradox. What caused it? If you'll notice the reading just before it, "And [the conjunction] the Spirit of the Lord came upon him." That's what made the difference. And he slew the lion.

76 Then one day some Philistines came after him. He was unarmed. There was a thousand of them. They had long spears and big shields, and that's like a door in front of you, like that, the shields. Just think of a great big brass shield now, all the way in front of you, with helmets of brass on, big coats of brass, and all over their shins and everything with brass; great big long spears, long as them out to that pole there, maybe fifteen, twenty feet long. Big brass heads on them like that, sharp as a razor. And they found this little curly-headed shrimp coming down from Palestine, to visit some girl friend of his down there. So they said, "There is that little fellow. Let's go take him!" One man could have took him by the end of that spear, and just lifted him up and shook him a little bit, and he'd've fell right down to his hand, down to the hilt on the spear. Why, he's just a little bitty old guy.

77 Some people, the artists, trying to draw Samson with shoulders he couldn't have walked in this tabernacle. Well, that wouldn't be no mystery, a man that size. Samson was just a little bitty old thing, but the Spirit of the Lord is what was big, see. He takes the... It's dishonoring the Scripture to say he was a man that size.
God always takes the foolish and ignorant things like that, to do His work with, you see. He takes something that's nothing.

78 So this little fellow was standing out there, and all at once here come these Philistines and surrounded him to kill him. And he took the jawbone of a mule that was laying there, a wild one, a little donkey's. Picked up the jawbone of that mule. And the Spirit of the Lord came on him. And there was a paradox, how that he beat down with the jawbone of a mule through that half-inch-thick helmet over the top of the head. With the jawbone of a mule! Why, the first, that old dry jawbone laying there, the first lick he would have hit it, it would have bursted into a thousand pieces, over the top of one of those helmets or those big shields. When a thousand rushed in upon him, and he beat every one of them to death. Paradox! That was when the Spirit of God come upon him.
Oh, if we could only be jaw bones in the hand of God, there would be another paradox. Yes, it was.

79 It was a paradox when Jesus our Lord took five biscuits and two little fish, and broke them, and fed five thousand. And taken up basketsful of remainings, little parcels that some of them didn't eat. They'd lay four or five fish down at this table, and four or five loaves of bread, and then go over here and lay four or five loaves of bread. And some of them couldn't even eat it all, just left them laying there. So they picked them up, basketsful of them. Oh! See? How did He do it? It's incredible that a man could take five biscuits and two little fishes and feed five thousand---and take up seven basketsful, left over. It's incredible, but He did it. Why? It was God. It was a paradox. It's incredible, but He did it.

80 It was incredible, and never before or after, on a stormy sea, and the waves so high till it was sinking the ship, when a man come walking down across those waves. I can just see every time the great big whitecap comes around Him, it just bursts and falls down towards the bottom, and He walks right on, just like He was on a piece of concrete. Walking upon the sea, in time of a storm! Let science figure that one out. What held Him up there? What kept Him on that sea, when it's a half a mile deep right in there? When those great waves, many times bigger than this tabernacle, splashing, why, it filled the little boat and waterlogged it. It was wet inside and out, and it was sinking. The mast poles had broke down, and the oars was gone, and all hopes of being saved was gone. And here come somebody walking on the water! A paradox, sure. Incredible, cannot be explained, but He did it. Oh, yes, He did it, come walking on the water.
It's incredible that this same one (O God, I hope this drives home!),

81 incredible, a real paradox, that this same one, Jesus of Nazareth, would choose a bunch of ignorant fishermen for His church, instead of the well-trained priests and denominations of that day. How that a God that had all wisdom, that could walk on the waters, that could turn water into wine, that could take five biscuits and feed five thousand people, and take up seven basketfuls left over! How that that same one---the God that sits in eternity yonder, that's so bright till the suns hide their face from Him, the very pool of wisdom and purity, and of understanding and knowledge, supreme of the supremes---that He would come to a place where a great organization of churches had all gathered together and trained all their men, and He'd go down and pick up a bunch of dirty, stinking fishermen that couldn't even write their own name, and choose that type of men to set the church in order for His bride. Strange thing, isn't it? Looks like at least He'd have took somebody was trained.
He's the trainer, He's the one who does it. Strange that He had did it. Instead of taking church men, He took fishermen to do it. Very odd, but that's the way He does it. It's true.

82 It's a real paradox.
When God took a bunch of ignoramuses, as we'd call them today, holy-rollers, poor of this world's goods, and poured out the Holy Ghost on them in an upper room; instead of pouring it out upon the Sanhedrin Council where all the theologians sat, where all the great men was, where the head of all the churches, where the ones that had studied in the Scriptures... And had made a great school, well trained, and waiting for the coming Messiah, and knowing that they would be the one who would walk out and meet Him, and say, "Messiah, You came down as if on an airplane's wings, You sat down here on the temple steps, we seen You come down out of heaven, from the golden corridors of heaven. Now, we're all trained and ready to go to work. We got our schooling, we got our Bachelor of Art, we got our Ph.D., LL.D., and all this. We're all trained. Here we stand, ten-thousand strong. We're ready for You. Come on! We're waiting, calling, 'Come!' "

83 But instead of that, He goes down and gets a bunch of people that didn't hardly know right hand from left. That's right. And put them in the upper room, and poured out His Spirit, O God, upon a bunch of people like that. Instead of taking the Sanhedrin Council, He took fishermen. Isn't it strange that He didn't use their education? It pleased God.
It seems to please God to make His own church a paradox. The same thing He is doing right now, making a paradox out of His church, bypassing all the great highfalutin', all this stuff there that's so-called church. And He'll ... anybody that He can get into His hand, that'll open their eyes and see what's truth, and test it with the Word of God in the time that we're living, and place them into the body. A paradox! God chooses such. He makes His church a paradox---odd people, strange people.

84 All these up there in the upper room, come out there speaking in another language, staggering like drunk people, staggering and carrying on. Women, His own mother and all of them in the upper room, come out there jabbering something that nobody could understand what they were doing at first. They had ... cloven tongues sat upon them. Cloven means "parted." No one understood what they were doing. They were jabbering around there, acting like they were drunk.
And there stood a bunch of people who was trained, scholars of the gospel, theologians; but God chose---God---to take and leave them sit in their ignorance, with their highly smart in education; and come over here and picked up this bunch of guys that didn't know their ABC's, and poured out His Spirit upon them, made a paradox out of them. Yes, God does that, He does that for His own purpose. He makes His church a paradox. I believe in them. I believe it!

85 So help me God, I believe the Word! "Let every man's word be a lie, and this be truth." What this Word says do, let's do it the way this Word says do it. No matter how funny it seems, and how odd you get to be, or anything like that, stay with the Word. You're called old-fashioned, you're called this, that, or the other. What do you care anyhow? Stay with this Word! This is it, the truth. Don't take what someone else says; take what the Word says.

86 Here some time ago, a minister friend ... I just heard this told. I believe it. One hot afternoon down in Georgia, he was visiting with a druggist. The old druggist was a fine old Christian brother, full of the Spirit of God. And he said, "Come in and sit down, and let's have a Coke." They was sitting there, drinking their Coke. He said, "I want to say something to you, and you perhaps will not believe this."
"Well, let's hear it first," said the minister.
He said, "I have always tried to do my best for God." He was a deacon in a church. He said, "I've always tried to live to my calling, and do that which was right." He said, "I've never cheated anybody. I've always testified for my Lord everywhere I could." And said, "My drugs here," said, "I've tried to carry the very highest class that could be bought. I've never overcharged anybody. I've tried to do everything was right that I knowed how to do to serve the Lord." He said, "I'm going to tell you what happened."

87 Said, "My son, who is studying to be a druggist, too, to follow me, he was in the front of the building there one day." And said, "It was during the time of the depression." Said, "A little lady walked into the door," and said, "you could see what her trouble was. She was to be a mother. And her husband, and both of them, poorly dressed." Said, "They give the prescription over to my son," and said, "to have it filled, for the woman was in need of this certain thing that the doctor had prescribed for her." And said, "He said, 'This will be so much, such-and-such,' when the to-be father asked 'How much will it be?' 'So-and-so.' He said, 'Sir, I will not be able to get the prescription fulfilled ... or, filled,' he said, 'because that I haven't any money.' "

88 Well, he said, "My son said, 'Go right down the street there, just a half a block, or a block, and turn left, and you will see where the place is where they have charity. And you go there to the county, and they will perhaps give you the money to have ... or an order, that they'll pay for this prescription, because the lady has to have the medicine right away.' " And said, "He went out of the place, started..."
And said he listened to his son, and something said, "Oh, no, don't do that." Said, "That woman needs that." Said he happened to think, "That long line of people down there! It's hard for a well man to stand in the line, let alone a mother in that condition."
Said, "I said to my son, 'Go, call them, tell them to come back.' " He said, "And I rushed to the door, and said, 'Come back. Come back.' They come back and I said to my son, 'Fill that. There is no charge.' "

89 And said, "My son give me the prescription, and I went over and had it filled. And filled it up the best that I could, and brought it out to give to the lady, and tell her that there would be no charges on this. That was all right, because she was in need of it real bad, and I'd get by without it, the money for it."
So said, "I just started to lay the medicine in her hand. And when I did, I looked at the hand, and it was scarred." Said, "I looked up, and I was putting it in Jesus' hand." Said, "I learned then that the Scriptures, what it meant, 'Insomuch as you've done unto the least of these, my little ones...' "
Said, "Do you believe that?" this fellow said to me.
"Why, sure, I believe that." It was a paradox. Incredible, but it's true.

90 How about the great St. Martin of Tours. When he, being a soldier, was one night coming down a cold, dark street, and there was a... In this cold, dark street laid an old bum, laying on the street, freezing. His blood was freezing in his veins. And Martin, yet not a Christian... And anyone who has read Bible history knows of St. Martin. The historian the other day that was trying to get his card... That's the one I picked for the third church age, St. Martin, because he had signs following. And St. Martin looked down, before... He was a soldier, and there laid this old man, laying in the street, freezing. And he looked. And he had one coat; without the coat, he would freeze. He took his knife and cut the coat in half, and wrapped the bum up in it. Put the other half around himself and went walking on.

91 That night, when he got into his room, and had sat down, he heard someone come into the room. He looked. Here come Jesus, wrapped in that piece of coat. That was his call to the ministry.
He become a saint. He spoke in tongues. His school was trained. He trained his people right with the Word of God. He didn't care about what the first church of Rome or any of them said. He stayed right with the Word of God. He taught them---speaking in tongues, and laying hands on the sick, they raised the dead, they cast out devils. One man, his friend, had been killed, and he went and laid his body over him (asked if he could see him a few minutes). He and his buddy come walking out together. Why? It was a paradox. Sure, God did it.

92 I believe in paradoxes. Yes, sir, I believe. I believe in them with all my heart.
It was a paradox when all the smart men there was in the world and God put the key to the kingdom in the hands of the one that was considered the ignorant and unlearned. That's right. One of the smartest men in the world in that day was Caiaphas, the high priest. Another was the emperors and the kings and the great men of the earth, like presidents and so forth---all these great men.
And what is the most important thing in the world? Is God's church! God made the earth. He made it for a purpose---to take a church out of it, a bride. And that's the most important job in the world.

93 And the smartest men He had was emperors and kings, and potentates and monarchs, high priests and church men. He could have took any of those. But it was a paradox when He called a man who couldn't even sign his own name, and said, "I'll give you the keys to the kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth, I'll bind it in heaven. What you loose on earth, I'll loose it in heaven.
(Say, I just thought of that about that vision, "What you loose or bind.")
"What you bind on earth, I'll bind in heaven. What you loose on earth, I'll loose in heaven." Yes. He give that not to a learned high priest, Caiaphas, but to an ignorant fisherman. Truly a paradox!

94 We see Paul, a little old hook-nosed Jew, on his road down, arrogant, going down to bind them people making that noise, and shouting and things; throwing them in jail, making havoc of the church; stoned Stephen, witnessed to it, and held their coats. He was a terror. How would God ever choose a man like that?
And look, the bishops (all the apostles), they said, "We'll make a choice, somebody to take Judas' place." And who do they choose? They chose Matthias. Matthias, I believe it's called. Matthias, yeah, Matthias. They chose him by casting lots, and not one thing did he ever do. He seemed to be a righteous man; and God chose the most high-tempered, meanest guy there was in the land to take his place. Paradox! That's what God does. Paradox!

95 It was a paradox when this ungodly, high-headed, high-tempered, mean, despisable Jew was on his road down one day to a city, to bind the Christians and put them in jail, and when all at once he was stricken down. And when he looked up, there stood that pillar of fire, and a voice coming, saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" It was a paradox when he could see it, and the rest of them couldn't see it, see.
Somebody said, "Oh, I never see that. There is no such a thing there. You don't... That's wrong." About this today, they say, "I don't believe such." No, sure not. Certainly not. But there is those there that does see it. Sure, if you're blind you can't see it.

96 A fellow said to me some time ago, been several years ago, said, "Now, if I'm in your way..." He said, "Now, Paul struck a man blind." Said, "If I be of the devil," said, "you strike me blind."
I said, "That don't necessarily have to be done. You're already blind, see. You're already blind. You're the worst kind of blindness, see." I said, "Anna, in the temple, could see farther than you can see, and she was blind, physically." He was blind spiritually. Sure. It was a paradox.

97 It was a paradox when God made so-called "heresy"... All this noise, and shouting, and praising God, and speaking in tongues, and people who is despised and rejected, and called idiots and heretics; it's a paradox when God, the great Father of all, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who chose a bunch of "heretics" to bring salvation to His church, instead of the well-trained, ecclesiastical, theological system. It's a paradox.

98 Not long ago I was in a city in Washington, or, I believe it was Oregon. And there was a reporter come, two little reporters, had cigarettes in their hands. They come in. They was going to write me up, and, sure, really good, you know. And they were going on, saying this thing and another thing. And he said, "And are you a holy roller?"
I said, "No." I said, "I haven't ever rolled. But," I said, "I guess if He would tell me to roll, I would."
And so went ahead talking like that, you know. And she said, "Tch, tch, tch, oh...", going on.
I said, "Just let me tell you something, little lady, you write up anything you want to. You're a Catholic."
She said, "That's right." Said, "How did you know I was a Catholic?"
I said, "Well, just the same way I know those other things on the platform, see." I said, "You're a Catholic. And you go on and write it up, but I'm warning you right now: in thirty days from now, you write it up, and you'll be laying on the side of a road, with your throat cut by glass off of your own car, screaming for mercy, and you'll think of me many times."
She said, "Aren't you Irish?"
"Yes."
"Was your people Catholic?"
I said, "Perhaps before me."
Said, "What would your mother think of such, about you doing the way... ?"

99 I said, "I baptized her in the name of Jesus Christ, and she received the Holy Ghost. Yes."
And I said, "Now, if you want to go in that way, then I'll take your name and you take my name. Then if it isn't so, then after thirty days, you write it up in the paper that I'm a false prophet. Now you go ahead and write it."
She said, "Well, I would hate to think, when I got to heaven that a bunch of ignoramuses like is up there at that meeting, would be ruling heaven."
I said, "You won't have much trouble." I said, "Unless you change your mind and your way, you won't be there anyhow, see," I said, "because, they'll be there. God has chosen that."

100 It's a paradox, that God has taken the foolish, see, them things. God chose to bring salvation to the world through such a bunch, a paradox, altogether different from their high-trained and polished scholars and theologians and things. God just by-passes that. Takes some little ignoramus and raise it up, and puts His message in him, like He did John, some of the rest of them, Peter and them. Sent them on out and preached the gospel, and bringing in His church, and save them, and bring them back to the earth, and that's all there is to it, see. And just let all this great polished stuff go. Oh, my, it sure is something!

101 When God chose the ignorant and unlearned, instead of the educated and learned, for His bride! Could you imagine a man choosing his bride, would take... ? A man with the highest supreme powers...
(I got a little something here I wanted to say, but I won't have time to say it, about a little parable I seen one time. But I won't be able to say it. I had it jotted down here, but I haven't got time for it.)
But God chose His bride out of a bunch of people like that. Now, anybody say that that isn't so, then you don't believe your Bible. That's exactly right. Read your Bible, that's exactly what.

102 It was a real paradox when God chose the foolishness of inspired preaching instead of high-polished theology. A man that don't know, hardly, use "hit, hain't, tote, fetch, carry," all such words as that, and say all kinds of things out of his grammar, and ungrammarized, and everything else like that. And God chose that instead of taking the great scholarly polished, who can really pronounce the words and say it just right. But it pleased God to take the foolishness of inspired preaching---some little old plowboy don't know his ABC's, and take that man and win souls by him; when deceivers, all polished up, just the blind leading the blind. A real paradox!
Oh, the Word is so full of it. Many contexts here, or texts, I have to bypass.

103 It's true that the big church shines and glitters, with polished theology; while the kingdom glows with humbleness, the poor and humble. The gospel don't shine; it glows. Fool's gold shines; real gold glows. There's a difference between a glow and a shine. We know that. While the big church glitters and shines with high-polished scholars, fine pews, crucifixes all over the wall, and the highest and finest of structures and buildings, and great towering things, all like that; the little kingdom, down in some little alley like here, somewhere, is glowing with the glory of God, filled with the humble in heart, see, God working in them, healing the sick, and raising the dead, and casting out devils, and so forth like that---just letting them pass on by.

104 There was a great ministerial (don't you forget this), there was a great ministerial meeting here some time ago in a certain city, where some people from right here was at the meeting. And they had a certain man who was going to... Oh, he was a theologian, "he had the message for the day for the people." And he had studied for two or three weeks on it. That was all right. And when he walked up to the platform, not a wrinkle in his clothes, my, with the finest of things on, you know. Walked up there and stuck out his chest and laid all of his material out for his message. And he really preached an hour's message that could not be touched, intellectually. Oh, how he stuck out his chest, and took the name of LL. Dr. So-and-so, from a certain big school that was so highly polished and scholarly, that he brought such a masterpiece to the people, of psychology and things, said it was wonderful.
But the Christians sitting there, just like at the Nicene Council, it just grieved the Spirit. Oh, it was a masterpiece, sure. Yes, sir. It had all the polish on it could be. But the real Spirit filled people, just, "Hmm." It just didn't go over. There was no Spirit there to back it up.

105 So when he come down, he had his head ducked down. He seen it didn't go over right. He was from another school and he was with Pentecostal people. So when he come down off the platform, his feathers was dropped down. Started walking down through there, with all of his stuff under his arm, like this, walking down through the congregation.
There was a wise old saint sitting over on the right-hand side, reached over to another man, and said, "If he would have went up the way that he come down, he would have come down the way he went up." That's it. If he'd've went up humble, he'd've probably come down filled with the glory. If he would have went up the way he come down, he would have come down the way he went up. That's right. A paradox!

106 Listen, in closing now, just for a moment before the prayer line. I wanted to say another word or two, about paradox.
The old prophets' visions is still a paradox. It's untouched. Who can say that a man four thousand years ago could've spoke of the horseless carriages, jostling through the broad ways against one another. The Old Testament prophets, how they could foresee things and foretell it, lifted up by the power of God, that saw it way in the years to come, and foretold it to the accuracy of perfection. Explain it! It's a paradox. Oh!

107 Another one, I want to give you a little one, insignificant---but my conversion was a paradox. I say this with love and respect. My parents has gone on. My mother's people were all sinners---trappers, hunters, and mountain people. My father's people were all drunkards, bootleggers, gamblers, gun-shooters, killing one another, most all of them died with their shoes on. There wasn't a speck of religion, any way, to us. And how did God ... what was that that come into that little old log cabin up there that morning, that you see pictured on that wall there? What? It's altogether different.
If you put a grain of wheat in the ground, it'll bear a grain of wheat. You put corn in the ground, it'll bear corn. You put a cocklebur in the ground, it'll bear a cocklebur.
But this is a paradox! Each one of you can say the same thing about yourself. We all can think it a paradox of what happened.

108 Here is another paradox. How can me, after preaching nearly thirty years, could still dread that thought of going yonder? How could it be? After ... been preaching since I was a little boy, and now here a man fifty-two years old, and then think of dreading... I knowed I was saved, but was dreading of the thought... But the love of God, one morning, came down in my room, lifted me up, and took me into a place where the redeemed was. Indeed a paradox!

109 I want to ask you something. I might cut this off here now. I want to ask you something. What is that on that picture there? Where did it come from? What's it here for? Science can't deny it. What is it in the meeting that stands there and combs the people through, and tells them back yonder what you did? "You're here for this purpose. You're here for that." It's incredible to the scientific mind.

110 Now, we know telepathy. Telepathy is say something ... like you're saying something and I can say the same thing, see; or, I'm reading your mind, it's happening right then. But when you see that it tells things that'll happen way out yonder, that leaves telepathy alone.
It's incredible that God, in this last days, as He promised He'd do, would do such a thing. But it's true, it's a paradox! The same God that's always had paradoxes showed to me, He's the same God today, because He keeps His Word. Science cannot deny it---there it is on the mechanical camera. It's a paradox, God!

111 What is it? In Exodus, the thirteenth chapter, we read that God gave the children of Israel, which was a type of the church today... As they journeyed naturally, we are journeying in the Spirit. Next Sunday we're taking that, now. Remember, it's all on that, see. Now, how that where they went on the ground, materially, like this, and God was with them, the church is seated with Christ, in heavenly places, in the spiritual realms a-going, with all dominions under our feet. Hallelujah! Yes, sir. And they had a pillar of fire, a light that they followed. Wherever this light went, they followed that light. Thousands of years has passed, hundreds and hundreds of years has went by, and it's still alive. A paradox! The same yesterday... Fulfilling the Scripture, it's here for a witness; not because of us, but because that God promised it, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It was the One that Moses esteemed the riches of Christ ... or, the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. And what was the Christ that went before Him? A light, a pillar of fire.
He said, "I come from God and I return to God." He did. "A little while and the world won't see me no more, yet ye shall see me; for I'll be with you, even in you, to the end of the world." Right down at the end of the world, He'd be there, too. Here we are!

112 After His death, burial, and resurrection, St. Paul met Him on the road down to Damascus, He was back to that pillar of fire.
Almost two thousand years has passed since then, and here He is! Not amongst the denominations, not a bunch of high-polished scholars of the day, but a bunch of poor and humble. A paradox! A paradox! To those who love Him, believe Him, thousands around the world who believed Him, it's to fulfill His promise of both New aCustomize Linksnd Old Testament. That's what it is, but it's a paradox.

113 It was a paradox when God promised to give the kingdom to a little flock, instead of a great organized church. "Fear not little flock, it's your Father's good will to give you the kingdom." It's a paradox. It's a paradox.
It'll be a real paradox one of these day when Jesus comes, and the dead in Christ shall rise, this mortal takes on immortality, and the rapture of the church comes.
In this Christmas time, when people are shopping, and dancing, and drinking, and celebrating something that they know nothing about, like they was celebrating Washington or Lincoln's birthday, and not worshipping the...
They've still got God in a manger, when God is not in a manger. He's raised from the dead, and alive forevermore, living among us, proving Himself, as the same God that the Nicene fathers carried, and down through the ages has come since the day of Pentecost. The same God that met Paul on the road to Damascus. He was a missionary to the Gentiles, and a messenger from God to the Gentiles. The Gentiles' message started by a visitation of the pillar of fire, and it ends the same way.

114 The Gentile kingdom started off---the kingdom of the world, that's the world---started off with a rebuke from a heavenly language in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar; ends up the same thing, as the Holy Ghost poured out upon the Gentile church in the last days to rebuke the Gentile nations again with a handwriting on the wall. The handwriting on the wall, that God has prepared His church, He's prepared His people, He has prepared His place, and they are waiting for Him to come in that rapture!
"When the trumpet of God shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise, we which are alive and remain shall not hinder them that's asleep. For the trumpet of God shall sound, the dead in Christ shall rise; and we shall be caught up together with them, to meet the Lord in the air." A paradox, one of these mornings, when the graves open and the dead walks out; when the ones who are living will be changed, in a moment, of a twinkling of an eye, and go up in the air to meet Him.

115 The whole thing is a paradox, God moving amongst His people. Do you believe that? Let us bow our heads for a word of prayer.
God, now for over an hour, about an hour and ten minutes, we have stood here speaking of past and present events, of how the Holy Spirit dividing them, Lord, as the Word of God has so graciously did; showing that the very God of heaven, who lived in the old days, in the same form and the same way lives today. The same wonders, and the same power that was upon the prophets of old, that was upon the church at Pentecost, was upon Hannah, and upon Agabus, the prophets of the New Testament in that day, who even corrected St. Paul. And St. Paul got in trouble by not listening to Agabus, because Agabus... Though he was an apostle, Paul was, but Agabus had the Word of the Lord, and he warned him not to go up there. But Paul was determined to go, and then he got in trouble. And, Father, always we get in trouble if we disobey the Word of God.
And we see that the very God that was with those brethren there, is the same God today. We see Him in every manifestation. And it is a paradox, Lord. The world looks, and shakes their head, and says, "There is nothing to it." The believer accepts it and embraces it, and knows that it's the living God.

116 O Father, we pray this morning, that if there would be someone among us who has not yet been a believer, that this will be the hour that they will believe. O God, grant just now in the heart of every person that's here, that doesn't know Christ as their Saviour, that this will be the hour that there will be a paradox before them; that a vile wretched sinner (by nature a sinner, born in the world in sin, shaped in iniquity, come to the world speaking lies, through filth) could be changed and made in the righteousness of the Son of God. Grant, Lord, that that great paradox will take place in the hearts of all here this morning who doesn't know Thee as their Saviour and their coming King, and are ready to meet Thee at the last trump if it should sound today.
Then we would pray also, Lord, that You would remember those here that are sick and afflicted. O God, today we pray that You will heal every person that's sick or afflicted. Let them know that God still performs paradoxes to anyone who will ... make come to pass His Word.

117 We know His Word is a paradox. When it promises something so unreal to the world, something that they cannot prescribe to, it's something beyond their knowledge and understanding. But when a simple heart will take that Word and sink it into the depths of its being, then that Word produces the life facts of that promise.
Oh, how we thank Thee for this, that there is simple people that believe this message. We're not looking for a kingdom to where that atomic ages will rule, but we're looking for a kingdom that Christ will rule in the power and majesty of peace and glory upon the earth. Not where we will press our feet to automobile gas pedals, or fly through the air with jet planes; but where we'll sit around the throne of the living God, oh, and look upon Him, and see the one who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquity, the chastisement of our peace upon Him, and with whose stripes we were healed. Our hearts' desire, Lord, since the great paradox has come to us, that we will reach Him and sit with Him at that day. Grant it, Lord. We ask this in Jesus' name.

118 And while we have our heads bowed, I wonder, in the audience this morning, if anybody would like to be remembered in prayer, and say, "Lord God, I raise my hand to You"? "And Brother Branham, you're going to look and see my hand, and pray for me, that a great paradox will take place in my heart, that when ... I'll meet Christ in the baptism of the Spirit and the power of His resurrection." God bless you, each and every one. That's fine. "That I'll meet God." God be with you. "I'll meet Him, and a great paradox will take place in my life, and I'll be filled with His power and His glory, and the goodness and mercy of Him that liveth forever and ever. And someday I'll be included in that paradox that's coming, something that when..."
The dust of those prophets lays yonder in the earth. When the dust of the martyrs who were ate up by lions and with the dung of the lions was spread across the dust, and all over the earth, but yet Christ will raise that body again! It goes to show that He is the resurrection.

119 When He took a little mud from His hands and put them on the eyes of a man who never had eyes, showed that man was made from the dust of the earth, and he returned with eyeballs and could see the Creator that made him.
If God don't intend to raise the dead, then why did He become flesh like us, and go back towards the dust, and raise Himself up again? Why did He raise Himself up if there is no resurrection of the dead? Oh, let us not be children, but let us be men and women in the Spirit, believe God with all of our heart.
Would there be another now, before we start praying? God bless you, and you, my brother, and you. Yes.

120 Our heavenly Father, now we bring to You these that's raised their hands. Somehow another, the Holy Spirit has made its way down into their hearts, there telling them, "You are not here just to eat and drink, and to sleep, and to get up and work; and then go back, eat and drink, and sleep again. You are here to be sons and daughters of God. You are here to take your position and place in Christ, and I am here this morning to call you," would say the Holy Spirit to their life.
Father, with prayer, the only weapon that I know of, I present them to You. And I defy the enemy that would keep them from You. I place by faith the blood of Jesus Christ between the enemy and them, that would keep them from this glorious experience of this great paradox, of receiving the Holy Spirit and having eternal life. For we realize that's the only thing that there is. The only solution that's given to us for eternal life is to have God's life in us, then it's eternal life in us. Grant it, Lord, that it'll happen to every one who raised their hands, and perhaps those who did not have the courage to raise their hands, grant it to them also. Now, Father, they are Yours. I present them to You, in the name of Jesus Christ.
Now as the prayer line is to be formed, Father, I don't know who will be coming up here. But give us another paradox this morning, Lord. May some great mysterious power of God move down and do something as You've promised. And this will be my first time, Lord, since meeting with You the other day. I pray now that You will grant the requests of the people, through Jesus' name. Amen.

121 Now I wish that everyone would just be seated, if you can, for just a moment.
Now, anyone that has a prayer card ... Billy come down this morning, as he promised he would, and gave out prayer cards to some people here. He said there wasn't very many. Would you raise up your hands, the ones that's got prayer cards? All right. I wonder if you'd just take your place and stand right along here, those who have prayer cards. Billy, where you at? All right. Just stand right along here.

122 Everyone in prayer now. We're coming before our Lord God. Now let's sing that song with the music, if you will, as Sister Arnold plays there. All together now, as quietly:
Only believe, only believe,
All things are possible, only believe;
Only believe, only believe,
All things are possible, only believe.
[Brother Branham begins humming "Only Believe."]
All things are possible, only believe;
Only believe, only believe,
All things are possible, only believe.

123 [Brother Branham begins humming "Only Believe."]
... Peter calling to remembrance said unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which Thou cursedst is withered away.
... Jesus answering said unto him, Have faith in God.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

124 Jesus said once, when they couldn't understand that He was ... who He was, He said, "If you can't believe me, believe the works that I do. And if I don't do the works of my Father, then don't believe me. But if I do the works of my Father, then you believe the works."
I have got just through this morning bringing the message of "A Paradox." A paradox is something that's unreasonable, but ... it's really incredible, says Webster, but is true. Something that's incredible, you can't understand it, it's just a mystery.

125 Jesus did the works of His Father because the Father was in Him. That is why the works was done, because that the Father was in the Son. Do you believe that? that, in Him, He was the incarnate God. Do you believe that? That God the Father---which is the Father of Jesus Christ---the great Spirit, dwelt in the fullness of His power in Jesus Christ, which was the tabernacle of God, made flesh and dwelt on earth, representing the Word. Jesus was the Word. The Bible said so, St. John, the first chapter. And the Word was invisible. Now listen close. The Word was invisible until it was made flesh, and then the Word become visible.
And through His sacrificial death at Calvary, and his resurrec-tion, positionally placed His church in that realm, that the same invisible God could come into the individual and make the Word visible. Oh, my! I wish my church could get that. If you could see, friends, the invisible God made visible. Now listen. Let's study it again.

126 I've often wanted to come into a church---I've longed to see it, I guess---where I could walk in the back door, front door, wherever it was, look across an audience and see a perfect church, all in order. Sin couldn't stay there. No, the Spirit would call it out, you see. It just couldn't stay. Like Ananias and Sapphira, it just couldn't do it. There'd be no sin in that group. No, sir. See, the Spirit quickly speak it like that. [Brother Branham snaps his fingers.] No matter what it was, how little, it would be done. See women and men sitting there under the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God moving perfectly, moving. Someone had done something wrong in the congregation, couldn't ... they'd be... They'd come quickly and confess it before the Spirit got ahold of it, to confess it and come tell it, because they know right then it's going to be called. That's right. That's the church of the living God. How my old, poor old heart, now it's getting old, how I've longed to stand and see a church like that. I may yet, I hope to. Perfect works of God, without sin, that could understand.

127 Now here stands a group of people to be prayed for. Now we realize, if this Scripture is true... And the God of heaven, who could create a squirrel, could create a ram, could stop the sun for a whole day, twenty-four hours, that could keep fire from burning people in a furnace for three hours, He could stop the mouth of lions, that could raise the dead, could walk on water, could take biscuits and feed five thousand---that's God. That's the Word made flesh in human beings. Now does everybody understand that? Now this same God promised that in the last days these things would recur again, but He can't do it until there is somebody He can work with and work on. You see what I mean? Now let's believe that emphatically, with all of our heart, that it's going to be that way.

128 Now here stands a group of people, most of them I know. I think ... I don't think, this first woman here in front, this girl, I don't think I know her. I know Brother Way; and the sister, the next there, Brother Roberson's ... or, Border's wife. And I don't know the next man. I ought to know the next woman; I don't know her, I don't think I do. Yes, I do. And the next, the man standing there, if I'm not mistaken, that's Brother Daulton's son. And, along the row there, I practically know everybody in there.
I would have no idea who the people are, where they come from. But now, what they need now is prayer. Some of them, of course, is beyond ... they cannot grasp just exactly what it is.

129 Now will each one of you look this way a minute, each one of you in the prayer line? If I could help you, I would do so, see. Now, I am here to help you. But the only way I'll ever be able to do it, to restore back what Satan has done to you, is you to believe. If you'll just believe me with all your heart, it'll be done.
Now it used to be, in my ministry, it would cause visions. Visions would spring up, and I could tell the people what they were for. How many has seen that done? Oh, all of you, see. That's right. I can still do it. Oh, it can still be done. Sure. Yeah. That's right.
But we're coming to something greater than that now. We're rising above that. See, we're coming to that spoken word. And Satan will have to do it; it'll tie him in a knot. If I can only get you to believe it! Don't you doubt.

130 Here, if you want to know whether I'm telling you the truth, if the Holy Spirit is here, I know what is wrong with that girl. I don't know her, but I know what's wrong with her, see. That's exactly right. And he's just battling at me as hard as he can, but he'll have to give it up. You just believe it. Don't you doubt it, sister. Don't doubt it. It's all right, sister. You're going to get ... it's going to be all right.
Here is a colored man looking at me, standing there in the line. I don't know you, but God knows you. If I was to tell you what's your trouble, will you believe me to be His prophet? You will? You're not here for yourself. That child in the hospital will get well if you'll believe it. Do you believe that with all your heart? Then go on back to your seat. I pronounce the power of God upon the child, the devil will turn it loose.
Little Daulton, looking at me, you're here for that baby. That baby has got something wrong with his navel, hasn't it? Go back to your seat, and believe it, and it'll just get all right.

131 I'm looking at another woman sitting there. It's Mrs. Stricker. Mrs. Stricker, I haven't talked to you for months. I have no idea what you're here for. Do you believe God can tell me what's your trouble? Would it make all of you believe? You're here for that kid that's got something wrong with its leg. Then, you're praying for a friend in Africa. That's exactly right. That's "Thus saith the Lord." Now if that's right, Mrs. Stricker, raise up your hand. See?
He's here, see. But that ministry will always be, but here comes another. You believe now! Don't you doubt. Don't a one of you doubt. When I lay hands on you, and ask this to be done, it's going to be done. The only thing, it's just like taking God's Word. The only thing, if you don't believe it, it won't. If you do believe it, it's got to happen. For something happened the other night up there, and I know the very God that could create could do it. All right.

132 I want everybody to bow your heads. Everybody in prayer. [Brother Branham prays for the people in the prayer line.]
Thou devil that has bound Sharon, this lovely little girl...
But, God, You gave me the vision the other night of that devil being bound, and said, "In sincerity, you can bind him." And with sincerity in my heart for this child, I've come, Lord, to ask mercy and favor of You for her.
Satan, I bind thee. In the name of Jesus Christ, leave this child, that her mind and reason will come back to her, normally. So the word has been spoken, so shall it be done in the name of Jesus Christ.

133 Lord God, for my Brother Way, may the power of Jesus Christ bind the power of the devil that binds my brother, and set him free, in the name of Jesus Christ.
God, this poor little woman will be like this first one here in a few weeks if something isn't done for her. She is the wife of my brother, Brother Roy. Lord Jesus, give me strength now. You who gave the vision, You've never failed, it's never failed.
Thou spirit of the devil that has bound my sister, I bind you. In the name of Jesus Christ, you leave her. It has been spoken, so let it be done.
In the name of the Lord Jesus, deliver our sister from her trouble. In the name of Christ who promised, and gave the promise, "If you say to this mountain..." let it be done, Lord.

134 Upon this woman, feeling the anointing of the Holy Spirit in the room, I place my hands, in the name of Jesus Christ, for her healing. May it be done, for it has been spoken. Amen.
Upon this little girl, Jo Ann, as I place in my mind an example of a little Christian girl, I deliver her this morning from this evil thing. In the name of Jesus Christ, may her request be granted.
Lord God, upon this companion of my beloved brother, Sister Thomas. May I [unclear word] that evil one that would bind her; may he be bound. In the name of Jesus Christ, may she be free.
Upon my sister. laying my hands. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, may the power of the enemy be bound in my sister, that she'll be free from this day.

135 Upon my brother lay I my hands, in accordance with God's Word. May the devil that would harm and hinder, go from him. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
For my sister's request, I pray that You will grant it, Lord. As I place my hands upon her, in the name of Jesus Christ, let it be done. Amen.
For my sister, Father, as I place my hands upon her, in the name of Jesus Christ, let her request be granted. Amen.
By simple faith, Lord, though it is a paradox, laying my hands upon brother. In the name of the Lord Jesus, let his request be granted.
Upon my Sister Way, who has been merciful to those who needed mercy, and has risked [unclear words]. May the mercies that she has asked for this morning be granted to her, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

136 Lord, this little brokenhearted mother, knowing her request, O eternal God, let it be granted to her today, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Father God, to my sister, I lay my hands upon her, as commissioned by the Holy Spirit and by a vision the other night. May her request be granted, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Heavenly Father, as this sister moves up here to take her place, for hands to be laid upon her, grant her request, O God. In the name of Jesus Christ, may it be done.
Heavenly Father, as I take ahold of this, my sister's hand, may the power of Jesus Christ grant her request. Amen.
Lord Jesus, as I take hold of this sister's hand, and the handkerchief which she holds, may her request be granted, in the name of Jesus Christ. Grant it, Lord. Amen.
Father God, in the name of the Lord Jesus, may our sister's request be granted to her. What she asks, may she receive, in the name of Jesus Christ.

137 Only believe, only believe,
All things are possible, only believe;
Just only believe, only believe,
All things are possible, only believe.
Now just before dismissing, may I just have one more moment or two of your time. A paradox, God has performed that. In our very presence, a paradox has been done. For just when I started to go to that prayer line, something just lifted me up, just exactly the way He said it would do. A paradox, see?
And when the Spirit was on me so, I could look down the line and see those things that those people were wanting, see. So at least three or four of them, or something, that it might be a confirmation, witness, that God never takes a gift that's a true gift. He just adds to it, just keeps building higher and higher.

138 Now I believe with all my heart that you're healed. I believe it with all that's in me. I believe it.
Now, Jesus invited you to come to salvation. If you would come, you'd get it, because He promised it. He promised it. Now let's not doubt it, but let's believe it with all of our heart. Now, don't fight at it, just know that it's got to be done. It has to be done. Jesus said, "Speak this Word. Don't you doubt," see. And He was the very One...
And those visions, so far as I know, with all my heart, not one time have they failed, not one time. And He said, the other night, in that vision I told you, before God who I stand, that is true, see. He seen that serpent bound. He said, "You'll have to be more sincere."

139 That's what I'm striving for, is more sincere. And each one coming along this morning, I tried to think, "If that was my mother (those women), if that was my sister sitting back there, if that was my wife sitting back there, or one of my children sitting back there, what if it was them?" Trying to place myself in their position, to be sincere. And if you noticed, the very...
This happens to come to my memory: Over the other day, when I was in California, and standing at that Businessmen's break-fast... (I think I've got it here. I'm pretty sure. I was looking at it just awhile ago, a prophecy that was given. Here it is right here.) This was given, after standing and preaching a hard sermon. And people are here this morning---Brother Roy Borders, for one, that was there, I believe, ever where Roy is at. Was---yes, sitting here---was there when this taken place, and many others that were there. When, a boy that was a Baptist... It was Jane Russell's cousin, the movie star. Anything can come in that breakfast that wants to come. And when I got through speaking, the boy walked over and put his arms around me, and said...

140 When I come off of one platform, down to another one, to speak to the congregation, which, several hundred was present. And I was speaking on a broadcast that went across the nation at nine o'clock the following night. It was being taped then. And when I stepped down on this next level, to speak another time to these people here... And one of the great denominations had one of their great men, was standing there and was resenting the message, see, by saying...
I was talking about I was over in Phoenix, a few days before that, and seen several different fruits growing on one tree. I seen on an orange tree---was grapefruit, lemons, and I believe tangerines, and tangelos, and all them different things growing, because it's a citrus tree. But I said, "Every year it blooms and puts forth new fruit. But there is only those original branches. When the real tree itself brings forth another branch, it puts out the same kind of fruit that it is in stalk. But these other trees are bearing their fruit, although they're living off the life of this tree." I said, "That's like organizations being placed into the vine. Jesus said, 'I'm the vine.' And every time that vine puts forth a branch, it'll be just like the vine. See, it'll have the same fruit."

141 Well, this great minister of the biggest Pentecostal organization we have was standing there, and resented it, see---said that I didn't mean it that way.
But I got back and said, "I do mean it that way," see. I said, "Exactly! I take nothing back."
The other day when I spoke about those altars, not knowing, never seeing that in history... I never have said nothing yet in the platform under inspiration that I ever had to take back. Now you can call that "Seed Of The Serpent," or whatever you wish to, whatever them messages was, or, "The Great Harlot," that's so much kicked against. Just come. Why don't you come to me with the Scriptures with it, see whether it's right.

142 This man come up there, put his arms around me, and was going to say... He said, "Brother Branham, not to be sacrilegious, but that could have made the twenty-third chapter of Revelation. (You know, another book added.) Of course," he said, "that wouldn't be right. Of course, we're not supposed to add anything to it." And just as he started to say that, he started speaking in tongues. And the boy didn't know what speaking in tongues meant.
And as soon as he did, right out in front of me was a French woman from Louisiana. She said, "That needed no interpretation. That was pure French."
And a man over here got up and said, "That's right."
And way back in the back was the interpreter for the U.N., give his name, never been there before. He said, "Correctly. That's right."
And here is what they got together. And each one of them had the same thing when they come together, each one of the ones giving the interpretation, exactly.

143 And this Frenchman, the second one over here, he wrote it out, because he had been taking minutes of the meeting. Here is what he wrote. "I, Victor Le Deux, am a Frenchman, full-blooded, born-again Christian, filled with the Holy Spirit. I live at 809 North King's Road, Los Angeles 46. Attend Bethel Temple, Arnie Vick is our pastor [a Pentecostal minister, biggest Pentecostal church in Los Angeles]. A translation of a prophecy over Brother Branham, give by Danny Henry, in French, February the 11th, 1961, at the Full Gospel Businessmen's breakfast; a true translation of the prophecy." All three of them said this is it. "Because thou has chosen the narrow path..."

144 See, just ... against ... I'd have to walk by yourself, see. I can understand that. Moses had to make his choice too, see. He didn't have to do it, but he did it, see. "The harder way; thou... Because thou has chosen the narrow path, the harder way; thou has made ... thou has walked of your own choosing."
In other words, I didn't have to do it. I can side in, go with them if I want to. But I stayed with the ... want to stay with the Word. "Thou has picked the correct and precise decision, and it is my way."
If you'll notice, it's punctuated and underlined. If you notice, it's wrote in French, spoke in French, verb before the adverb, see. "Because of this momentous decision, a huge portion of heaven awaits thee."
Now, that's what I wondered. When I die, will it be... ? Then I happened to think, "Heaven is not portioned off to different portions to us up there; heaven is the kingdom of heaven that's within us, one waits for," see. Now watch. "What a glorious decision thou has made! This in itself is that which will give and make come to pass the tremendous victory in the love divine."
See, we would say it, "In the tremendous victory in the divine love," but in French it would be "love divine." Just like German or any other, see, they put the verb before the adverb.

145 Now you see what coming down to the Jordan meant? We're down here now. Let's cross over now. Let's quit playing. Let's cross the other side now, because it all belongs to us. It's all ours. Them visions has never failed. They can't fail, because they come from God. I believe it with all that is within me. We're not the hireling that will run back into the wilderness. We'll cross Jordan, the separation. God, break to us the seals that's on the back of the book. Let us enter into this great place now, for Joshua divided to the people their inheritance that God had left for them.

146 And if you notice, those Hebrew mothers when they was in labor and gave birth to those patriarchs (I'll get on that, one of these days, the Lord willing), and gave birth to those patriarchs, when she spoke their name, in labor, she also positionally placed them in their place in the kingdom. Oh, my!
Inspiration is a paradox. See, you just can't catch it. But it's inspired, and God moves it right into its place, just at the hour when you think not.

147 Now, if it's not real snowy, and we can, the Lord willing, next Sunday I want to speak on the subject of "Christianity Versus Pagan Worship." And if you can, bring your paper, whatever you wish, for the message. The messages will be again tonight. Some of the brethren here, I suppose, will bring it. I was going to stay, but I know many of the people would stay, and it's predicted snow again this afternoon, to cover the roads over, from Georgia and different places. So, the Lord willing, be next Sunday. I was going to speak the same message tonight, but I'll put it till next Sunday and then, God be with you.

148 I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, born of a virgin, conceived, God in a womb, a tabernacle in which He would dwell in. I believe that in Christ He is the incarnate God. He is God made flesh. When the Father God came into Jesus Christ, He was the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In Him dwells all the fullness. God the Father spoke the words. Jesus said, "It's not me that speaketh, but my Father that dwelleth in me. He doeth the speaking." Therefore upon that basis, Him being made flesh so He could die, God paying the penalty for the human race, to redeem and bring up, and bring together the things that His own creation had lost in the fall, He redeemed it back with His own life.

149 Then, in redeeming these people, that His gospel could go further, "The works that I do, shall you do, also. More than this shall you do, for I go unto the Father. A little while and the world won't see me no more, yet you'll see me, for I'll be with you, even in you, to the end of the world." Now we're down to the end time. Christ has returned in the form of the Holy Spirit, in the fullness of His power, into the church, to manifest Himself. It's simple. It's simple people.

150 If there would be someone here that might be fortunate enough to have a fine education, and maybe go to a big church, do not let the simplicity of this poor class of people stumble you, see. It's not that. "The common people heard him gladly." See, it's the common people.
Now, there is classes of people. There is some that just don't care, just lives any kind of a life, out on the streets, and so forth. That's not the ones that heard Him. And them classical kind, they wasn't the ones that heard Him. It was the in-between class, the common people, the ones that's poor, yet want to live clean and decent, and want to live for God, that's the ones that hear Him.
So, may you and I be that people that will hear Him in this day, for I truly believe that one of the greatest things that's ever broke forth in the world is breaking forth now. Amen. God bless you.
Now I'll turn the service to Brother Neville.

Paradox

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 Thank you, my brothers and sisters. This I deem indeed a grand privilege to be here this morning, to speak to these, the servants of Christ, and my colleagues in the gospel---fellow workers. I'm not much to make a speech. I have no ability to do that. And I would just like to get the men together, and sometimes that way ... especially those who have (what we would call in the world) kind of stuck out their necks to sponsor you, see---one of the meetings.
And I would like to give the reason for the hope that I'm contending for, and let you brethren see that it's not full of superstitions. It's the gospel.

2 Many years ago when I made my first trip to Phoenix, Arizona, where I was just enjoying my breakfast this morning with my good friend, Carl Williams, over here in the corner... I guess you're all acquainted with Brother Carl Williams. Would you just stand up, Brother and Sister Williams? He's the president of the chapter of the Full Gospel Businessmen at Phoenix, Arizona. Brother and Sister Williams. And so, he's been proven to be a very precious friend to me.

3 Last week in the meeting, and the week before last in Phoenix, I was telling about when I made my first trip to Phoenix. I remembered, as a little boy I watched and read everything that I could, because it was my idea some day... My father was a rider, and I wanted to be a cowboy. I'd read some Western magazines, and seen too many movies as a little boy. And so, I seen my father ride and I thought surely I could ride, too.
And my ambition was to come west and be a rider. And I'd heard of the Superstition Mountain, 'course the Lost Dutchman (which I believe is the Lost Dutchman mine, which I think is a legend.).

4 And so many people now in our country there ... it's becoming rodeo time and everybody wearing blue jeans, a big hat. They're trying to live in a past age. They're living something that ... it's done lived by. And I wonder why they do that? There's something in them to make them do that.
But you see, I think that's what's the matter with our Christian economy today. We're trying to live in a age gone by, what somebody else said in some other age. And that won't work for this age.
But it's strange that they want some old-fashioned idea---some barn dance, or some cowboy something or other like that. And that real thing in them, that makes them want to go back there, is the gospel. They want a new, decorated gospel---something to meet this day here, some fine fantastics, and fine culture, and education. But they don't want the old-fashioned gospel, where that real thing in them that makes them want to go back. That's where it should go, back to that; but instead of that, they go back to something else.
Then when something is displayed from God, it's very astounding, unusual to them, and not according to their ethics. And they don't want to accept it.

5 No one would have any more respects for John Wesley, Sankey, Moody, or Finney, Knox, Calvin, any of those men, than any of us ministers who appreciate men of God, would have for those men. But you see, we're coming on up. We're not in that age. Each one of them served in a different age, in a different measure. We're serving God today in a different measure from what they were. If there is a tomorrow, there'll be an age, there'll be a gospel for that age. That'll still advance until the whole thing is complete in God, and God becomes one with us.

6 Now, I remember the morning I took a flashlight. I couldn't wait to see Superstitious Mountain. I had to go up there. But my little flashlight was nothing. I couldn't see nothing. The great spooky shadows, and the men that's been killed on that mountain in search for gold... And it held many superstitions, truly. And as I tried with my little flashlight to look around, I couldn't see nothing. Everything was scary. You know what I did? I just sat still, until the sun come up. When that sun (which is the king of all light), when it raised up, my little flashlight didn't play anything. But all the spooks left.
I seen Superstitious Mountain wasn't spooky. I was ready to walk into it, to discover it for myself, because that great light (the sun), which is the spoken word of God... God said, "Let there be light," and that's the word of God made manifest. And when it showed, all the spooks left.

7 And I think that way today. Where I've been so misunderstood amongst brethren, may the great light, the king light... There's no other light. There's none of our manufacturing lights will shine out there today. No matter how many ball parks we throw, you can't see nothing. You have to look right into its face to see any kind of a light at all. This sun puts it all out, because it's the manifested Word of God.
And I think when the manifested Word of God rises over all of our superstitions, they fade away, see. We are wanting to know what is truth, what is the hour that we're living.

8 And brethren, we sit here this morning as many different denominations---representing different denominations. I don't think that counts.
I used to herd cattle up in Colorado. I remember the time when we would have the roundup---in the spring drive the cattle up into the Arapajo Forest. I sat there many a day, with my leg hung over the horn of the saddle and watch the ranger, as he counted those cattle as they went through the drift fence off of private property up into the forest.

9 Each ranch, to put a cow in there, has to (have) be able to produce a bale of hay. (I believe ... not a bale of hay; a ton of hay. Oh, I think it's two ton to a cow.) Depends on how much the Chamber of Commerce will let you go in there with your brand, because... In this brand, this ranch produces so much hay. Then you put a cow on grazing up there in the forest. That is, if the forest's not overrun by cattle. And then it's just enough to take care of them, 'cause everybody would be coming in.
And I noticed, it was the Hereford Association that grazes that forest---in that part of it---the Arapajo Forest. I watched the ranger. Now we ... ours is the old (Turkey Trot) Turkey. The Tripod was just above us. Mr. Grimes worked about fifteen men. He had several hundred heads of cattle. And we had a few cattle there, the outfit I was working on---four or five hundred head. But Grimes went into maybe fifteen, eighteen hundred head. It was the Bar Diamond Bar.

10 And I watched the ranger. He has to stand there and count those cows as they go through.
You know, he never paid no attention to what brand they had on them. There's one thing he checked, was the blood tag in the ear, because they had to be a registered Hereford before they could graze. That's on account of keeping your pedigree, see. Your cow must be bred. Your calf must be from a pedigreed bull. And therefore, after so many cows, you have to have a bull. And they all mixed together. All has to be registered, pedigreed cattle---thoroughbred. You keep your ... the bloodstream running right, then, of the Hereford Association.

11 I thought many times, that's the way it'll be at the judgment. He'll not notice what brands we're wearing. But He'll look for that blood tag, Jesus Christ. He'll work... If we tried to make all of us this morning Assemblies of God, we couldn't do that. We try to make them Pentecostal Holiness; we'd never do that. We try to make them United churches; we'll never do that. But there's one place that we can meet, all of us that's believers: under the blood of Jesus Christ. And that's the only place that God ever met man, or ever will meet man, is under the blood of Jesus Christ. That's where we have things in common.

12 Recently, I was reading of where a young couple was separating, and it was a pitiful thing. They had lived together for several years, and a disagreement come up among them. And the little mother, lady, and her husband was going to separate. And they were ... the attorney was a friend to them.
He said, "Now, before we have to get somebody up there and sell these things and take what you got, if you're going to have the divorce, then just divide the spoils among yourselves." They said they would do that.

13 They went into the parlor. They fussed, they fought and everything else, over what was in the parlor. They went into the living room, and they did the same thing there, and the dining room, and kitchen. Finally they remembered---up in the attic---that they had some stuff stored away up there.
So they both went up into the garret, I guess you call it here. In the East we call it up in the attic. So they went up there, and pulled out an old trunk, and they had some clothes and things that... So they were reaching, and fussing over this, and that. And after awhile when they lifted up something, they both reached for it. And their hands caught each other's hands, as they grabbed. It was a little pair of white shoes. It was to... A baby had been granted to their union, but had passed on. They were holding each other's hands. One couldn't say "It's mine," and the other couldn't say "It's mine." It was something they had together.
Just a few moments they looked at each other. One couldn't claim it, and the other one couldn't claim it. So they was in one another's arms, and the divorce was annulled.
I want to see that. We Baptists, and we Methodists, and we Assemblies, and Church of God, and whatever we might be... We might have things all different, and everything like that---that's our own traditions that's got us into that. But there's one thing we have in common, brother: Christ. He's the Word. That's what we're here to do. Not talk about our differences, but talk about what we have in common, Jesus Christ. Now let us pray.

14 Heavenly Father, Thou art our Father. We thank Thee, because that today we have the hopes of eternal life through the blessed resurrection of Jesus Christ. We see the evening lights a-shining. The tree that the palmerworm left, the caterpillar eaten; the caterpillar left, the locust eaten. And we realize that these insects are the same insect; just in another stage of its life.
And we realize that church differences is still the same old Roman insect that started at Nicaea. What one leaves, the other eats. And it looks like, today, that we're in such a chaos---and now going into the great council, the ecumenic council of churches. Looks like there would be nothing left. Hopes is gone.
But we remember the infallible Word of God. As the sun rose up to show the superstitions up, so have You promised "I will restore, saith the Lord." All the years that the caterpillars destroyed, and the palmerworms, and so forth, how they would be restored again. And that tree would live again.
We pray, Father, that You'll send down grace and the resurrection power of Christ, that You might restore; resurrect us to a living faith in the living Word of this day. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

15 I'm a little hoarse, brethren. And not being a speech maker, but just a time to get together, that you'll see what I mean, I'm here. If you catch me doing anything outside of this Word, and what's promised for the day, you owe it to me to come to me. You owe it to me to come tell me. But as I say, there's one thing we can agree upon, is Christ. We have it in common. He died for all of us. We're under that blood.
Now I'm not here to do nothing but to try to help each one of you men, that this community will be a better place after the revival, because we have come together for this purpose. We've come together for this: to get acquainted with each other, to know each other better, to have fellowship with each other. That's why I'm here this morning. That was our purpose of having this meeting here, so that we get to know one another.

16 Now, we do realize that through all ages it's always been that way. Little something phenomenal be done, or something different, you have a bunch of carnal impersonations following it. Then you have all kinds of superstitions. And it's just to be that way. That's the way it's supposed to be. And things are said about that that isn't true. We know it's always been.
Jesus was supposed to be a illegitimate child. He wasn't. He was exactly the way the Bible said. Those men who called him that... He was a manifestation of the Word of God made clear. And you notice, they said his disciples come and stole his body away, paid off the Roman soldiers. They still believe that.
But we believe, and know by his living presence now, that He raised from the dead and is here with us now. We are sure, and know that. Every word that He spoke of, and promised through the ages, has been fulfilled if you'll watch it. There's nothing could do it, only God. We are his servants.

17 And now, I thought this morning that I would just read a little text out of the Scripture, and speak to you brethren and sisters here, that we might just have a little come-together. That wind ain't doing me too good up there. I hear... That's all right. Just let it alone, right now, Brother Roy, 'cause I'm just going to stay a few minutes.

18 A few years ago (about fifteen years ago) I used to hunt with a man that was a barber. And he was also a chiropodist. That's cutting calluses from feet. You know, during those times it was hard going. There was no money. And this barber friend of mine, I ... combing my hair and had... He was cutting my hair, rather, and he had dandruff on the shoulder.
He said, "Billy," said, "you have to ... I'll have to give you a little shampoo." Said, "You got so much dandruff on your coat."
And I said, "All right, Jimmy."
And talking about coon hunting, and he reached back (I was his pastor. He taught Sunday school. He was a fine man.) to get what he thought was this Lucky Tiger Shampoo to throw on my head. And it was carbolic acid. And I wore a stocking cap in my pulpit for weeks. Today that still bothers me, see. Just that little... See, my scalp is still soft, you see. And it... No, that's all right now, because it was that last night. And I just get choked up.
My wife bought me a piece of hair to wear. I couldn't wear a hat in the pulpit. It's disrespectable to Christ. If you wear a little cap, they say you want to be a bishop. And it's just a problem. She bought it for me, but I have never had the nerve to wear it. I wish I did, but I haven't. But I'm afraid it reflects something, and you know... And I'll just have to let it go, I guess.

19 And now, I just want to read some of the Scripture where ... God's Word never fails. Mine will. But I want you to remember this, that in each age that...
God ... in the beginning is the Word. He always was the Word. And the Word is a thought that's expressed, see. Now, in his thinking, what He had---the whole plan, knowing the end from the beginning---he's just expressed it in words. And those words are manifested. Just like the sun---that's God's Word manifested. He said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
And there's a time of separation. There was a time when God separated the light from the darkness. He always does that. There's a time that He separated the land from the earth, or the water. He separated Paul and Barnabas. He separated Moses out of Egypt. See, He is always a separation. And there's times come, people---men who carry these ministries don't like to do that ---but it must be done, see. There was a time that the disciples had to separate themselves from their own people.

20 Paul turned to the Gentiles, away from the Jews, God's heritage. The time come when he had to do it. They talked against him, but he made that famous word, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."
May I say that same thing, brethren, see---the vision of today, see, the vision of the promise of today, the Holy Spirit in the land today. God promised that in this day He'd pour the Holy spirit out upon us. Now, I've crossed the country back and forth. There's been phenomenal signs, as you notice. Not one time has them signs ever failed. They're perfectly the truth, 'cause it's God. Tens of thousands times thousands times thousands, and not one of them can fail.

21 They call it a devil. They call it everything. Some says one thing and another.
But Jesus said, "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his disciples." So Jesus said, "Search the scriptures. In them you think you have eternal life. They are they that testify of Me." Now, not... They wouldn't testify of me---I'm a human. But the message that's went forth, it testifies of that.
Now, God doesn't send phenomena just to show that He's God. God sends a phenomenon to do this: to declare something. A ministry goes forth in phenomena, and after it, all the carnality and stuff that follows it.

22 As I read of Martin Luther the other day, said, "It wasn't a mysterious thing that he could ... that he could take and protest the Catholic church and get by with it. The phenomenon of Martin Luther was, he could hold his head above all the fanaticism that followed the reformation."
That's what we must do. There's everything goes on. And that puts spooks before you brothers. But remember, the true light, when it rises, it puts all them spooks away, see. It puts the spooks to shame. It shows them up. And so we know that where the phenomenon is done, a mixed crowd always goes.

23 Moses done the phenomena, and there it went into the wilderness. Korah tried to say, "Well, now you try to say you're the only one that can do this. There's more holy men besides you."
You know what taken place, don't you? God said, "Just separate yourself from them," see.
We always have that. When the supernatural's done, the impersonators follows it. It's got to be that way.
And that impersonation is what brings in if... Like Congressman Upshaw---his widow flew in last night to be in the meeting here. He was healed in the services, as you all understand. He always had this expression, "You can't be nothing that you hain't." That's exactly right. You can't be nothing that you're not.

24 If we could just... Like a great symphony: if we would just follow the beats as the composer's beating it out, we would see.
Now, we come to this thought, that the hour that we're living---the time that we're in now---that we have come to the spot to where we're watching for God. When you brethren first started, your reformers, the Pentecostal move many years ago---when the restoration of the gifts, the speaking in tongues, and things come into the church, God restoring the gifts back into the church---you remember you all had a reformation too. Your fathers did.
It was hard to pull away from Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, and so forth, in that reformation. The Nazarenes were in their bloom in them times. So was the Pilgrim Holiness. They rejected your message. What happened to them? You see where they're at today? Now remember, we can do the same thing.

25 When a church ever organizes, a message ever organizes, it goes to the shelf and never rises again. Now, your historians here---I know one of you, see---and that's right. It never rises again when it organizes.
Catholicism was the first organization, called in the Bible a whore. She was a mother of harlots, the same thing---organizations. You see where it's all winding up again up here in the ecumenical council? Now, I'm put out because of that, amongst the organizations. Them brethren doesn't realize what they're doing. It's not me. I'm not put out. They're putting the Word out.
The Bible said in this Laodicean age that Christ was on the outside of the church, knocking, trying to get back in. There never was a age like that. On the outside! 'Course there's going to be no more church ages. This is the end of the... Laodicea was the last age. And Pentecost is that Laodicean age, and we know that. There'll never be no more above Pentecost. That's it.

26 Like a man... No creature ever come up from its evolution (coming up into higher species) than a man, because a man is in the image of the God who created him. There'll never be nothing higher. This is... The Word wouldn't let it go any further 'cause He is the Word. And neither can the Word climb above any Laodicea church age. And we see them, every one, there.
Jesus on the outside of the church, trying to get back in, see. That's what they done to Him when he was here first. He is the Word, and the Word... He was the Word. They say, "We got the Word." The Pharisees said, "We got the Word." But the real true Word, they was rejecting. That's the reason that Jesus said, "Search the scriptures, they that testify of Me."

27 Today we can look back and say, "How were they so blind?" Wonder if some time we won't look back and say, "How were we so blind?" See, see. It has to be that way, brethren. It's too bad. But it has to be that... Don't say, "Too bad." I don't mean it that way. God knows what He's doing, see. They don't ... they... It's the Word they are rejecting, the Word made manifest, the promise that's made manifest, the promise for this day. And the reason it's done is because people are living in the glare of another light.
The greatest robbery that was ever performed was in England not long ago---was done by a false light. A seven million dollar robbery---the world's never heard of such a robbery. Scotland Yard couldn't catch up with it. That was the greatest robbery the world ever had---was performed by a false light.
May I say this, brethren, with love in my heart for men. God knows that. The greatest robbery the church ever had was a false light too, living in the glare of some other age---what Luther, Martin Luther, Wesley, or what some of our fore-Pentecostal fathers said, see. That ain't today. Here's the promise for the day. Here's the Word and the...
You say, "Well, you got it interpreted wrong."
God's his own interpreter, when He manifests it.

28 What if they told the Pentecostal fathers back there fifty years ago that they had the Word interpreted wrong? "There's no such thing as speaking in tongues." They didn't stand still for that. God interpreted his own Word.
Peter said on the day of Pentecost, "Repent, and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; for the promise is unto you and to your children, to them that's far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." How could they get away from that? It interprets itself, see. Don't need no interpretation.

29 And today, this age that we're living now, there's a bride tree coming forth, see. Truly the tree's come up. And they... Soon as they organized, they couldn't step any farther. What happens? They organize and go out on this limb. Then the limb is pruned, according to St. John, 15th chapter. He prunes them off. They're never used no more.
But in the heart of that tree comes forth the fruit, right in the top of it, when the tree is fully matured. It can't go no farther, right on the top. The last church age is here. She's coming to full mature. It's a bride tree.
Jesus was the tree of life from the garden of Eden. Do you believe that? He was the tree of life.

30 There's a tree in the garden. And one of them was, if you touched it... Now, we have our differences on that, so I won't go into it. But let's say it was a tree of disobedience. And as soon as they touched that tree, all people was to die. And they had to put them away from this other tree. 'Cause if they eat this tree of life, they would all live knowing right from wrong. That's right.
You know that as ministers. We have our ideas on that, and we probably differ what the tree was. But we can all know that Christ is that tree of life. For one day at the jubilee there, when they was drinking and rejoicing, Jesus said about the water, He said that He was the rock that was in the wilderness.
They said, "Our fathers eat manna in the wilderness."
And He said, "And they're every one dead. But I am the bread of life." Amen. That tree of life that come down from God out of heaven: "He that eats this bread shall never die." That is the bread of life.

31 Now, to make a mockery out of it, the Romans hung Him on a tree. Cursed is he that hangs on a tree. To make a mockery out of the Son of God, He was despised, rejected. He came from the highest of heaven, and became the lowest on earth. When He was here, He went to the lowest city. The smallest man in the city had to look down to see Him---Zacchaeus. He was given the lowest name. He was treated the worst, and hung on the... Died the cruelest death that could be died. That's what people thought of Him. That's what the world thought of Him.
But God lifted Him so high, till He has to look down to see heaven. Give Him a name above every name, that everything in heaven and earth is named after Him. That's what God thought of Him. If we're sons of God, the attributes of his thoughts before the foundation of the world, we'll think the same of Him. And remember, brothers, He is the Word.
The message always follows the phenomena. Jesus, as a young rabbi, as He started preaching, healing the sick, everybody wanted Him in their church. You know that. But that was just the phenomena. What He had is producing. He caught the eyes of the people. But one day He sat down and begin to speak to them. There come the ministry to follow the phenomena. Then nobody wanted Him then. It's too bad, but it just repeats itself. You all understand from there on.

32 Let's read in the vested old Bible here just a little ... for a little talk this morning, the Lord willing. Let's read out of the book of Joshua, the tenth chapter, and beginning with the twelfth verse.
And now... What time do we get out of here? What time we have to be out of here, say ... well, I'll say within fifteen, twenty minutes. Will that be enough? That'll be all right. Just a moment.
Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand ... still stand upon Gibeon; and Moon, thou in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hastened not to go down about a whole day.

33 Now, I'm going to take just a little text from there, because I told you I can't make a speech. But I think you understand what I mean by now. I'm here to put my shoulders with you, to help you to press Jesus Christ: not press organization, not press persons of the earth, but to press Jesus Christ who is the manifested Word of God---God manifested. Not just what someone interprets; God doing his own interpretation, God proving what it is. He proves what He is.
If the Pharisees had just have seen that. If they could just have read the scripture where it said these things, they would have seen that God was manifesting his Word by Jesus Christ. He was the Word. And He's still the Word.

34 Now, this subject I want to take for about fifteen minutes, and I'll try to make my talk... And I make tapes (as you all hear) three and four hours. But that's on a subject, see. And in your churches I try to make my talking at night about thirty minutes, so I can have the prayer line. It won't wear the people out. They can come back. I'm sure you like that better. I used to stay for hours, and get in at eleven-thirty and twelve. And now, I try to make my service about forty-five minutes to an hour.
I want to take the subject here, of "Paradox"---just the word "A Paradox." And I didn't know I was going to have the breakfast. Usually we do. But I thought, maybe come up about, maybe Saturday, or something like that. And Brother Borders told me last night, late, that it was to be this morning. So I just jotted down a few scriptures here that I thought I'd refer to, for a few minutes.

35 Now, "paradox," Webster says, is something that's incredible but is true. That's something that no one can explain. It's out of the realms of the knowledge of mankind, but yet is true. Paradox. And now, we find out that if you would read in Hebrews the eleventh chapter, and the third verse, that this world itself is a paradox.

36 A few weeks ago in our meetings in New York City, I'd come out one night from the Morris Auditorium, and we were walking down the street, my son and I. And we looked upon the people, and there were just thousands. And men with hair like women, you know, what they call "ratted," and earrings and leotards on, and white and colored children (you know what I mean), men and women together, and they... Poor old woman fell on the street. Nobody picked her up, just went on. And I helped her get her oranges, and picked up like that---old thing about seventy years old. And she looked at me real strange, and went down the street. I spoke to a cab driver about it.
He said, "Mister, when anybody comes to New York and acts like they're in their right mind," he said, "we know he's a stranger," see. He said, "Them are good people." Said, "But they just get into that swing." Said, "You take a man that comes here, it isn't long till he's in that same condition. He comes in here, try to do everything." Said, "You could lay down, and die on that street in a heart attack; somebody'd think you was drunk. They never touch you. Let you lay there and die, see. They don't mean to be that way. It's just getting in the swing."

37 That's the way we do, brethren, in our church life. We get into a swing of one certain creed, or one certain thing, and there we stay, see. We swing with the rest of them. We swing with our organization. We swing with our community. It's just a natural. Paint your steps red, and watch what your neighbor does. They'll do it, too.
One of you sisters get a certain kind of a dress, or hat, and watch what your neighbors does, see. It's an impersonation. It's a matching time. We don't care whether our trousers match our coats; we want our experience to match the Word, see, and God.

38 But walking down the street, Billy said to me, he said, "Dad, how does God ever know who they all are?
I said, "All right, son. Look right straight up towards the sky. Now," I said, "see those two little stars up there, almost together?"
"Yeah."
I said, "If one of them... Science tells us, if one of them would start to the earth at a million miles an hour, it'd take it millions of years to get here. That's how far it is away. And yet those two stars are closer to each other than we are to the star, or we're probably closer to the star than they are to us."
He said, "How does God ever do it?"
I said, "He's infinite," see.

39 We just heard a lecture from Einstein, this galaxy and the constellation. And he said, "If a person could leave the earth [one of his great speeches, last ones], if a person could leave the earth at the speed of light [that's 186 thousand miles per second? 186 thousand miles per second] and would travel 150 million light years, he would arrive there. And then it'd take him 150 million light years to come back. That would be so many billions of years, you could run a row of nines around the earth and not break it down." In talking about years, you know how long he'd've been gone from the earth? Fifty years, in our time.

40 We're in such a hurry. What if a little ant started from Tucson, to come up here to Bakersfield. How far do you think he would get in forty years? Probably a half-a-mile. See, it means so much to him. To us it meant twelve hours driving; to a jet plane, just a few seconds; to God, nothing. Jesus died yesterday afternoon. He was crucified. Paul died yesterday. One thousand years is as a day with God, as it was. Not even that, if you want to count the time. So those apostles, and things, died yesterday.
We're hurrying. We ain't got but a little bit of time to stay here. Then you think, when you look at eternity...

41 Einstein, the great philosopher, said, or the great scientist, said that there's only one sensible way to explain the origin of this earth. That was found in Hebrews the eleventh chapter, and the third verse: "By faith we understand God framed the world out of things that..." He spoke it into existence.
How does it stand in the skies? Never gets out of its orbit. How that everything in heaven, and that constellation... If one of those stars would move... I know you go out at night and say, "I seen a star shooting." No, you seen a weather light. A star don't move. If that star would move, we'd move with it. Everything in heaven is so much in harmony, it holds one another together.
What if mankind could be that way to hold the church together, that we could all be in harmony with the Word, see. Only one way: let God to be his own interpreter, and we will be, see. God's his interpreter of that.

42 Now we find out that in ... this is simply a paradox. There's no doubt but what that's one of the great paradoxes. Now, there's been so many paradoxes as we come. Things ... it's incredible, but yet it's true.
In the days of Noah, you remember, it had never rained upon the earth. There had been no such a thing as rain. The world stood up straight, just equal with the sun. It was disbelief and disobedience that throwed it out of its cater, makes it lean back, and cause the hot and cold air to bring up the vapor from the seas, and make rain. It had never rained upon the earth. And here comes a man out saying that it's going to rain. Strange thing, but it was the word of the Lord.
I can hear science.

43 You say "Well, now, how do you know they had science?" They built the pyramids in those days. We couldn't build them today. No. We haven't the material, we haven't the stuff to build them with, and we have no machinery to lift those boulders up there. It's still a mystery to the world. They built it.
Jesus said, "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of man." As it was in that day, so will it be in the coming of the Son of man.

44 And brethren, for a little thing that I might squeeze in here, just a moment... Peter quoted it in I Peter. He said, "Wherein ... eight souls were saved by water." Eight souls. What's an ecumenical council of tens of millions, see? That doesn't save. It's the Word. God saves. Eight souls were saved by water in the days of Noah. Look what was saved in the days of Lot. Look what ended in the journey through the wilderness---two, Joshua and Caleb, see.
As it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the coming of the Son of man: a great scientific age. And no doubt they could shoot the skies and say (with a radar), and say, "There's no water up there. Where's it coming from?"
God said it will be there. That was good enough. And Noah believed it, and he saved his household.

45 You remember, God tries his people who believes his Word.
Where God is there's always paradox, 'cause He does things that's incredible to the human thinking. You know that. We all know that---incredible to the human thinking. And He tries those humans that are predicting this paradox. He gives them trials. Never does He omit or change his way. God never changes his system. Do you know that, brethren? Sure you do. He never changes his system. He always keeps it going in continuity, the way He started.
He never dealt with the world, only under preaching with one man, Noah. He never had four to go down and deliver them, or an organization, in the days of Moses. He never had two on the earth at the same time. Each one of us differ from one another---our features, our make-up. God just gets ahold. All He needs is one person that He can get in control. That's his example. He did it by Moses. He did it always.
When Elijah and Elisha was on earth, they both couldn't stay the same time. One was taken, the other one got his mantle upon him.

46 When John came upon the earth, he was the manifested word of God for that hour. We know that. He was God's manifested word. Because why? Isaiah said there'd be a voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Malachi, the last prophet, said, "Behold, I send my messenger before my face to prepare the way before the people." Now, that was not Malachi 4; that was Malachi 3. John was Elijah of Malachi 3, not Malachi 4. Because when Malachi 4, when that prophecy comes forth, the earth is to be burnt with a fervent heat, and the righteous walk out in the millennium upon the ashes. And it never happened in the days of John.

47 In Matthew 11 we find out that when John sent disciples down to there where... John paid Jesus the least respect that he could, after he had already seen the sign over Him, and said, "That's Him." He had told him in the wilderness to go baptize with water. Said, "On whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining, He baptizes with the Holy Ghost." He said he was sure of that. He saw the sign.
Then after his eagle eye got filmed over, down in the prison, he said "Go ask Him if He really is the one, or another." That was disregarding the Word.
But Jesus knew that. He paid John a great respect. He said, "Who did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft raiment? They don't handle a sword. They kiss the babies, and bury the dead. They're in king's palaces." Said, "What did you go out to see? A reed shaken with any wind? When one organization offered a little more than the other, or some community ... he'll move to that community, 'cause..." Not John.
Said, "What did you go to see? A prophet?" Said, "I say unto you, and greater than a prophet."
He was. He was the messenger of the covenant. He was the breach, he was the keystone between law and grace. "What did you go out to see? A prophet? And I say unto you, more than a prophet." He said, "He was a bright and shining light for a while." Why? He was the Word made light. He was the Word manifested.
Then, when He come on the scene he said, "I must decrease, and He must increase." Two of them couldn't stay at the same time. John had to go; Jesus remained, see. It's always that way.

48 God did that in the days of Noah. We find out then, that that was the phenomenon. It was something what was a paradox: that God floated that ark, when the whole world a-rocking, with the waves probably bigger than the mountains today, when it swung from its... When them stars moved back, or whatever taken place, and that world moved out of its orbit, swung itself out there in those great waves, it was certainly a paradox---that that little old wooden ship could rock for forty days and nights on that, in that water. It was a paradox.
It was a paradox that God could bring water out of the skies, when there was no water up there to bring. But He can fix the situation to make it suit his Word. He's still... Like Genesis 22, He's Jehovah-jireh, "The Lord can provide for Himself a sacrifice," see. He remains... That's one of his compound redemptive names.

49 It was a paradox when the Hebrew children was throwed into the fiery furnace: how that three men could walk into a furnace so hot that the intense heat even killed the men that were pushing them in. And yet, they stayed in. That only delivered them. That's the only thing it did. It delivered them from the bonds that they were bound with. It was a paradox.
Sometimes in our own lives, that paradox repeats. Sometimes you're brought to a showdown, where you have to make a decision. You have to stand on that decision like they did. And it all works together for the good. What did it do? It never hurt them. It loosened them.
Sometimes we're caught in that position. First thing, we've got... Just like the man drowning in the river. You've got to get the man out of the river, before you can get the river out of the man. And that sometimes... What a man has to do is come out and make his stand. (Get the thing out) Get him out of the thing, so he can get the thing out of him. That's what the Hebrew children had to do. They had to get out of the fire. And God caused the paradox to happen.

50 David: we see David, just a kid, just a boy, with a slingshot---not a spear, sword. He was put over some sheep, to watch after them. His father's word was to care for those sheep. He was a shepherd.
Brethren, that's as we stand this morning. We are shepherds. We don't need a college education. We don't need a bunch of theology. We need the Father's Word.
It may seem simple. And when a bear or a stealer comes in, and gets one of the Father's sheep and packs it off in some kind of a ism... It's a very small thing that we seem to have, that's laughed at. But it's, oh, so powerful when God's behind it. Go after it. Bring it back.

51 How David could take that slingshot, and knock down a lion! I've hunted lion. My! Sat upon a hill here, one day, and I guess half-a-mile away... You've heard them growl, around in these circuses. You ought to hear a wild one roar once. Rocks rolled down off the hill, where that fellow roared. And to see that ferocious animal like that, and this little boy... Little stooped-shouldered, ruddy fellow goes and kills that lion with a slingshot. That's a paradox.
It was a paradox when a man with fourteen-inch fingers by the name of Goliath, a warrior from his youth, covered over with an armor---how that God took this same little slingshot, and it brought down that giant because that he was protesting the armies of God. It was a paradox.
And when we take our stand today when men say these things can't happen, don't be fussing with them. That's wrong. Don't fuss with them. But pick up the sword. Pick up what's... Look what's supposed to be this day. When God gave his promise for today, pick this up and go. All the Goliaths will fall under it. It's a paradox. What God's doing today is a paradox. How He can... Only God can do that. All right. The sling.

52 It was a Moses who was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He could teach the Egyptians science, and so forth. And it certainly was a paradox how that God equipped that man. Now look, all of his education, everything he had... It took forty years to educate him; then it took God forty years to get it out of him, see. See. Get the man out of the water, before you get the water out of the man, see.
Took Him forty years to take out of him what he had learned. He found out that what he had wouldn't deliver Israel. And that's what he was born for. He didn't have no choice of that. God called him for that. And we find out that it had taken forty years to get it out of him.
And sometimes, when men really follow the commandments of God, he does things that seems to be ... kind of, I guess, mental to other men. Jesus was considered a madman. But He was doing exactly what the Father told Him to do. He was the Word manifested. He was called a madman.

53 Look at Moses---with his wife, Zipporah, sitting on a mule, and Gershom on her hip---eighty years old, white beard hanging to his waistline, his bald head shining to the skies, with a crooked stick in his hand, going down to Egypt to take over. Could you imagine that? They'd say, "Where you going, Moses?"
"Going down to Egypt, to take over."
"How do you know?"
"The Lord told me to." To take over an army? Not an army, but a nation.
The thing of it is, he did it. That was a paradox. How with a crooked stick he brought the judgments of God upon Egypt, and delivered Israel with a crooked stick---not an army or a sword---it was a paradox. If anybody look at the things that's incredible, but yet is true, it's a paradox when you do that.

54 Now we find out, also Joshua here, that we was speaking of over here in Joshua 10:12. Joshua... The sun, we say (they tell us today), stands still. The world turns around. They say, "If the world stops, it would drop. Gravitation holds it in its spot." Now, brethren, what took place? He said for the sun to stand still.

55 My teacher in school, and teaching the Bible said, "He ... God winked at his ignorance." But anyhow, it stopped. That was the main thing. It stopped. And it said here that it stood still for most a whole day, and the moon hung over Ajalon---that the sun stood still. Whatever he stopped...
I don't know what he stopped. But because of a man saying "Stand still," and it's written here that the sun stood still. Science proves that---that a mark in the sky still says that that's the truth. Can vindicate it by a mark in the sky today, that it did take place. See, that's just been about 2500 years ago, or something like that---2800 years ago, maybe, that it did that. It hasn't had... That mark hasn't had time to trail into the stars and things yet. That was just two days ago, by God's time, see. But yet, the mark shows that and it stood still. That's a paradox.
No one can figure it out. If the (sun),

56 if the world's a-turning, then you say he stopped the world. Well, if he stopped the world, then the science says that gravitation a-turning holds it up there, then the world would have dropped itself. But it went right on moving, at the hand of God. A paradox. Why? Oh, you say, "That was a long time ago." That is today, the same God.
Jesus said in Matthew---not Matthew---it's St. Mark 11:22, "If you say to this mountain be moved and don't doubt in your heart, but believe that what you've said will come to pass, you can have what you've said." That's defy nature. But you have to have a motive and objective to that---that's connected with it. Find out in the Word if it's supposed to be done, and then God's calling you to do it. And it'll do it. When you know that it's spoken in the Word to do it, and then God's called you to do it, then it'll happen if your motive and objective is right to God.
That's why visions take place, why things going the way they... You have to know---know God promised it this hour. As it was in the days of Lot... He promised in the last days, then He calls to do that. It's no problem. God said so. That settles it. Sure, it's a paradox. You can't explain it. No man can explain how certain things will be predicted, and never one time fail to happen. It's a paradox. But God said do it. It's today. That's the day we're living in. The sun stood still.

57 Samson: it was a paradox how he could kill a lion barehanded, a little curly-headed shrimp separated from God. He was a Nazarite, separated by the Word of God. He was a Nazarite. And so he separated himself for the Word. And he didn't have shoulders the size of that door there. Any man with shoulders like that could kill a lion. That wouldn't be no mystery if he was that size. The science or the theologists of today, and artists, try to draw his picture. He was just a little bitty guy, see. And he was totally unable to do it. But when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, then he could do it.
We might stand alone. We might stand just one or two. Whatever it is, when the Spirit of the Lord is coming to confirm a Word that He's promised, and told you to do it, it'll happen. It'll be a paradox again. Certainly.

58 It was a paradox when this man could take the jawbone of a mule that he picked up on a field. Now remember, those Philistines' helmets was about a inch thick with brass. Think of it. And he had the jawbone of a mule. Now, it's laying out there on the desert. Did you ever pick up one? You can kick it with your foot, and it'll bust into a million pieces. Hit it against a rock, it just goes to powder almost. And he took this jawbone of this mule, and beat down a thousand Philistines---beat their helmets in!
How did the jawbone hold together? Why didn't his arm give out? How could he do it, and them trained men with spears? It's a paradox. God made the promise. And where God is, paradoxes always happen. Where God is, yes, sir.

59 Wasn't it a strange thing in the days that when King Ahab was king of Judaea, and, of Israel rather, and Jehoshaphat, the righteous man, king of Judaea, of Judah---and they made an alliance. There's how a believer can get connected with a make-believer.
Sometimes men gets in that kind of a fix today, mix themselves up with people who don't believe the Word. And yet they're bound into them with such ties till they can't get out. They're afraid to accept it. I admire you brothers' courage.
Now, you don't have to have that interpreted see, see. When they deny, or won't have nothing to do with it, get it away... And yet, you'll step right out and sponsor. I admire a man like that. You're not afraid of the Caesars and the commandments.

60 Believers being hooked up with make-believers...
And Jehoshaphat did that when he went down to Ahab. That lukewarm, borderline believer thought more of the social things of the world, and his wife's fine hairdos and things, than he did of God---give in to her. And we find out that Israel was a very type of this nation then, how they went over and took the occupants out, and occupied; and had great men like David and Solomon. But finally there rose up a fellow like Ahab.
But in the days of Ahab is when the prophet came on the scene. God always manifests his Word. And we find out then that this nation's done the same. We come in and drove out the Indians and occupied; and we had a Washington and a Lincoln. But where are we getting to now?
But God can still raise up prophets. He's able of these stones to rise children to Abraham when his Word requires it. Malachi said we would have it, and we'll have it. It'll be here, don't you worry. His Word will be fulfilled.
Notice. Micaiah was down in the country.

61 And Ahab, to kind of make a shine to the country, he had four hundred Hebrew prophets down there, great organization of them. They was all well-dressed, fine-dressed, educated, scholarly men---Hebrew prophets. Now, not heathens; Hebrew prophets. Jehoshaphat made this alliance. I think that all things works together. The symphony is just beating out the beat, see.
So he made an alliance to go up, take the king of Edom and go on up into the land and take the Syrians, because it seemed very good. And Jehoshaphat fell on the idea. Being a godly man, said, "We should consult the Lord, shouldn't we?"
Said, "That's right. Excuse me. I should have thought of that. Yeah. I got a seminary down here. Got the best there is in the country, most scholarly. They can say 'Amen' the prettiest you ever heard."

62 He goes down and gets them, bring them up, and let them prophesy. Here come the prophets all up, well, fine-dressed men, fine cultured, educated to the dot. They knowed all their Greek, Hebrew, and all, see. They come up, and they all prophesied. And they had a right to prophesy.
They said, "Go on up. What's the matter? That land up there belongs to Israel. [And that's true.] Joshua gave it to us. God gave it and Joshua divided it. And our children are going hungry, and the Philistines' bellies are filled with the wheat that's raised on that country."
They was absolutely on the Word, when it come to that. But they had sinned and lost that land. They'd lost it. It absolutely wasn't theirs then, see. But accordingly, if you want to go back to the foundation, it did belong to them. And them prophets were right. They said, "Go on up. The Lord's with you."

63 But you know, when a man's really... Like I said last night, about Joseph being a just man: there was something didn't ring a bell with Jehoshaphat. He was a righteous man. He said, "Haven't you got one more?"
"One more? And we got the whole seminary here? The best we got in the country, Hebrew prophets? And they're telling exactly... Look how close they are on the Word. There's ... the Word said that this land belongs to us. We got a right to go get it."
But Jesus told the devil the same thing. Said, "It's also written..." That's what they failed to see. That's what made them disbelieve Jesus. It's also written "A virgin shall conceive," see. They failed to see that.

64 So when they said, "Go on up. The Lord is with you. He'll give you the victory because it belongs to us. It's in the name of the Lord. Here it is."
But it didn't ring the bell. Jehoshaphat said, "Haven't you got one more that you might consult?"
Said, "Yes, there's another one, but I hate him. The association won't receive him. We won't have nothing to do with him. He's Micaiah, the son of Imlah."
Said, "Don't let the king say so," said Jehoshaphat. "Go get him."

65 So then they sent a forerunner, said, "Micaiah, you want to come back into the fellowship again?" See? "Just say the same thing the rest of them are saying. This is your opportunity now. You agree with the organization, all the rest of them, they'll bring you back, see, and you'll be in fellowship. And you can have your campaigns all around over the country then."
He said, "As the Lord God lives, I'll only say what He puts in my mouth." We need some Micaiahs. He said, "I'll see what God says about it first, if He wants me to go back in, yet again." So he said, "Give me tonight. Let me see what the Lord will say."
And that night the Lord showed him a vision. He compared his vision with the Word. That was right. Said, "Go on up, but I seen Israel like sheep scattered, having no shepherd."

66 So then, the one---the high priest, or the ecumenical council leader---come up and smacked him in the mouth, and said, "Where did the Spirit of God go when it left me?"
He said, "You'll see, that day when you're sitting inside."
Said, "Where did it go?"And he said, "I saw God sitting upon a throne. I saw the host of heaven gathered around Him."
And there... God's prophet---the Word always comes to the prophet. No matter how unpopular it seems to be, it's always there. And the reason they know it is, it makes it so that what the man speaks comes to pass. God said; then that proves it. Then a prophet means not only to speak the Word, but also to foretell---and a divine interpreter of the Word, divine Word written. The Word came to the prophet.
And this is the complete revelation of Jesus Christ. This is the revelation, the Bible. It's revealing Jesus Christ, see.

67 And now, when the prophet came on the scene then, and could foretell things that happened exactly like that, God said, "Remember, I'm with him then." Then, when he revealed the Word (what the other prophet had said before him), it come to pass then they knowed that was true. That still remains God's way of doing it. He never changes his way, see. Remember, the great groups tried to change that, but they didn't do it.
Here's one we're talking of now, and they had a right. But Elijah had told Ahab... See, Israel had accepted the wrong man, who had made them organizations; and had turned down the true Word, see.
He said, "I seen God, and the council was held. And He said, 'Who can we get to go down to deceive Ahab?'"
Said, "A lying spirit come up, probably from hell. He said, 'I'll go down and get into those prophets, and cause them to prophesy a lie.'" Hebrew prophets that was looking right at the Word, see.
But what Elijah said was blinded to them. They thought he was a crank too, see. But when Micaiah went under the Spirit he saw exactly what the real prophet had said. That was a chance. That was it to do it. And them Hebrews was right on that.

68 So was the Hebrews right in what they was saying about Jesus Christ, see. But it was according to their shadow that they were walking in. It was a glare of another day, not the light of that day. Could the history repeat itself again? The Bible says it does, see.
Now we find out that there was... It was strange that God chose this one---little, uneducated, unaffiliated with them---to show and bring those people the Word---instead of that school, a fine cultured, educated man, smart. He chose Micaiah. That's a paradox. It sure was. And it happened just the way Micaiah said it would happen, because he had the Word of the Lord. It's always been that way. Yes, sir.

69 John the Baptist was another one. You know we don't have very much record of where prophets come from, so forth, spiritual men, see. Man-picked men, like they picked Matthias to take Judas' place, we don't hear very much about him. God chose Paul, see. That was God's choosing; and the church's choosing, see.
And the same thing: men who are filled with the Spirit are usually men who try to run from the thing, get away from it. They don't want to do it. But God just takes it, and says, "I'll show you. I'll make you do it." Paul tried to run. Others tried to run. Many tried to do it. Moses tried to get away from it.

70 We don't have much record of John. His father was a priest. It was a tradition in them days for the son to follow the father, his trade. But when John was borned a funny, odd, phenomenal birth; when he was conceived in his mother's womb... We know the story of Zacharias, how the angel said his wife would conceive. And when we find out that's what taken place---six months the baby hadn't moved.
And Mary was visited by Gabriel, and went up in Judaea to salute her, because Gabriel told her that she was pregnant. And when she got up there, she told her, she said...
She'd hid herself. And when she met Mary, she put her arms around Mary and begin to hug her as women do---really Christian women, believers---begin to hug her. And she said (she seen she was big---to be mother), and she said, "You know, the angel of the Lord told me I was to be mother too."
And Mary, Martha, pardon me ..

71 . Elisabeth said she was kind of worried, she said, because it's six months now and the baby hadn't moved. That's irregular, see. Baby is practically, what we call today, dead, see. He was good as dead in his mother's womb ---six months. It troubled her. And you know, John was six months older than Jesus which was his second cousin. Mary and Elisabeth were first cousins.
Then when we find that (Elis...) Mary looked back, her young face, and she said, "I'm going to have a child, too."
"Oh, you and Joseph are married?"
"No. We're not married."
"And you're going to have a child?"
"Yes. The Holy Ghost shall overshadow me. [Paradox, see.] The Holy Ghost shall overshadow me. That holy thing will be called the Son of God." Said, "Gabriel met me. And when he did, he said I'd have a son, and I'd call his name 'Jesus.'"
And as soon as she said "Jesus," little John begin to leap in his mother's womb. He received the Holy Ghost. The Bible said he was born from his mother's womb full of the Holy Ghost. The first time that name was ever called out of a human lip, a dead baby come to life in the womb of a mother. What ought it to do to a borned-again church? That name Jesus.
Said, (Why cometh) " Whence cometh the mother of my Lord? For as soon as thy salutation come to my ear [she heard his name], my baby leaped in the womb for joy."
It's quite a phenomenon. It's a paradox.

72 John, dead six months in his mother's womb, come to life through the name of Jesus Christ, the first time it was ever spoke by human lip---show that dead men would come to life by the name of Jesus Christ. Still a paradox. "Not another name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved." A paradox. Yes.
John was a phenomenon. Looked like he would have went and carried out his father's ... went to his school where his father was trained at, being a Levite. Levite was the only ones could be in the priesthood. So John was a Levite. So, ordinarily it was traditional for him to go to the school of his father. But God had a work for him. He was to announce the Messiah. His work was too phenomenal for him to follow the traditions. I hope you're reading right. His work was too phenomenal.
He couldn't go to their traditions and take up with their traditions. Everybody'd be saying, "Now, don't you think that Brother Jones, here, is just the man to be the Messiah? We know that you're to announce Him. Don't you think he's just the right kind of a man?" It'd been another Matthias.

73 But what did he do? He stayed in the wilderness. He had no education. John... Like many of us today, he could not speak and use the words of grammar that we would express our inspiration by---or men, not myself. Probably most of us in here couldn't do that. What did he do? He had to go to nature to parallel it, to bring out his point, see. When he had the expression, he had to go to nature. Look, he said, "Oh, you generation of vipers!"---what he'd seen---snakes in the wilderness. He'd seen that's what they were, "generation of vipers."
Now, an educated man would have had some other word, see, that he could have used instead of that. But he expressed it by a snake. Said, "Don't think within yourselves because we belong to this, that you're going to mean anything to God. For God's able of these stones...," see, not to take some theological word. He knowed nothing about any seminary. He had his seminary in the wilderness before God.
It's strange that God would take a man like that (it's a paradox), instead of all them fine educated priests that was in the schools. It was quite a paradox. God always works in paradoxes, to my opinion.

74 The virgin birth was a paradox. A virgin conceived, bring forth a child, God made flesh. God changed his strand from spirit to become a man. (Man changed) He changed his tent, his dwelling place, and tabernacle.
When Jesus was standing there, upon the shores of Galilee, John looked up and he saw the Spirit of God like a dove, descending, and a voice saying "This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm pleased to dwell in." "In whom I'm pleased to dwell," the same thing---verb before the adverb is all, see, see.
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am pleased to dwell in," God and man becoming one, uniting together for redemption. How God, that covered all space and time, could come down and bottle Himself into a man so He could taste death for all the human race---the creator dying to save his creation! Heavens and earth kissed each other. Man and God became one (how can a man deny...), that He might dwell in man and fellowship. It's nothing but God condescending, trying to get to his man.

75 In the beginning He was a father. He was above all. He was alone. He dwelled alone. Elohim. Even when He come down upon the mountain, even if an animal touched the mountain it must die. But then He was made flesh, and we touched Him, handled Him. He did that in order to shed his blood, virgin blood, because we're born by sexual desire. He was born virgin birth.
He wasn't the blood of a Jew. Neither was He a Gentile. He was God, creative blood, see. Jew blood don't save us. Gentile blood don't save us. God's blood, the Bible says, saves us. He was God's blood.

76 Some people said that He was ... that Mary conceived, and that was ... the egg belonged to Mary; the blood cell come from the male sex, which was God. That's wrong, too. If it is, looky here: then to bring that egg down, there had to be some kind of a sensation. Then what do you have God doing to Mary?
He created both egg and blood. He was God. She was an incubator. She was only a borrowed womb, like a borrowed grave to be buried in. He made all, see; had not a place to lay his head. He become our example, what we should be. He never took sides with nobody; but did that which pleased the Father always.

77 And the Father now dwells in us by his death.
He sanctified a church that absolutely... This church, the unclean, filthy... God condescend from a pillar of fire down to be made man, and then the Holy Spirit right in us. Don't you see what it is? The same God, coming down all the time. Now, God above us, God with us, God in us, see---like the thoughts of God, the Word of God, and the manifestation of the Word---just the same thing from the beginning. God thinking: a father He was, a son He was, a saviour He was, a healer He was.
The words was spoke, and it was manifested. "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son. His name shall be called Immanuel, Counsellor, Prince of Peace, mighty God, everlasting Father," and it was. And from that come forth that He might bring forth many sons unto God.
The whole thing is God revealed. God above us, God with us, God in us. A paradox indeed, that God would dwell in man Himself. Sure. He had to become that to die, to satisfy his own laws of righteousness. He predicted, and said, "The day you eat thereof, that day you die," and He had to fulfill. There's nobody else could do it but Himself. If ...

78 today in this day I like to bring this, the deity of Jesus Christ---because that men try to make Him a prophet.
Now, if there happens to be a Christian Science sitting here, I'm not hurting your feelings---I hope I'm not. But we stress so much upon evidences. We Pentecostals put our evidence upon speaking in tongues, and how bad we've been fooled in that. And how many of them says the fruit of the Spirit is the evidence. How badly you're fooled by that. No, sir.
If you talk about speaking in tongues being the evidence of the Holy Ghost---which I do believe, the Holy Ghost speaks in tongues ---don't get me wrong...
Yeah, but you say, "A man speaks with tongues has got the Holy Ghost." We believed that for a while; but we found out it was wrong.

79 Luther said those that said they believe; we found out that was wrong. Wesley said those that got sanctified and shouted; we found out that was wrong. Pentecost said those that spoke with tongues; we found out that was wrong. The Christian Science said, the fruit of the Spirit is the evidence. We find out that that's wrong.
I've seen witches and wizards drink blood out of a human skull, and speak in tongues; and lay a pencil on the table, and write in unknown tongues and interpret it. Now, don't tell me about that. My mother's a half Indian, see, and I know. I've seen it, and dealt with it.
Yet, God does speak with tongues. But that's no infallible evidence that you got the Holy Ghost. Certainly not. No, indeed. A Christian's not...
Let me,

80 God forgive me for doing this, I'm going to put Jesus on the trial for you just a moment, if you'll forgive me. Have I got that much time? Let's see. Just a moment. Just be ... yes, I'm ten minutes past time. But I'll hurry and omit some of this, see. Let's just try this just a minute, brethren.
My heavenly Father, forgive me for this. I don't like to speak it, but it's so that people would know.
I'm going to take... I'm going against Jesus this morning. And I'm going to say you're a bunch of Jewish people, and Jesus just rose up here in Bakersfield. Let me call you men together, and talk to you about fruits of the Spirit. They believed that, too.
What is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness. Is that right? Fruit of the Spirit---many people rely upon that. Sometimes that's the devil. He can impersonate that to the letter. He can impersonate speaking in tongues to the letter, interpretation of it to the letter. Any of those gifts he can impersonate it.

81 Notice. I'm going to... There's the priest. I'm going to talk to you all. Now I'm taking sides against Jesus, just a moment. Now, I've asked God to forgive me, just so that I could show you what I mean---to bring out a point, see.
I'll say, "Gentlemen, I'm here in behalf of your church this morning. I'm speaking to you all. Now, there's a young fellow in the city here, by the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He's got a strange doctrine. We know our priest. Now, we have to judge this by the fruit of the Spirit. This, your priest: his great-great-great-great-grandfather was a priest. He omitted all of his young life, for the things that you all enjoyed, when you were young men. He omitted that to be a priest to God. What did he do by this? He studied, he done everything he could be to be a right kind of a man.

82 "Who was it stood by you when papa and mama was arguing? They was going to separate. Who stood by papa and mama, and put arms around one, and one around the other, and brought them back together? Your faithful old priest, out there."
Your faithful old priest studied Jehovah's laws until he knows them in and out, in and out, in and out. He went through every seminary. He's got a doctor's degree, a bachelor of art. He's got a D.D., LL., Ph.D. He knows exactly what he's talking about. He studied for that, while you men were running around. He studied because he's your leader."
It all makes sense, brothers, if you're talking in a psychological way of it. It all makes sense.

83 "What school did this Jesus of Nazareth come from? He never had a day in school as we know of. Where did He come from? No one knows. Here He comes around.
"Look at your kind old priest. When your daddy run out of money that time, didn't have no money, who did he go to? The man that had the fruit of the Spirit, your kind old priest that loaned him the money to tide him over till his crops come in.
"Who stood by you when your mother was in labor [excuse me, sisters], as they thought she was going to die? Who held his hands upon her and prayed, while you was being born in this world? Your kind old priest. Who lifted you up to Jehovah and circumcised you, and held you, and made you ... and offered you to Jehovah? That kind old priest.

84 "And look what this Jesus of Nazareth done the other day. What did He ever do for the fruit of the Spirit?
"Now, many of you are business men. You have ... you have businesses here. You're merchants, and so forth. Jehovah requires a lamb for your sins. You don't raise lambs. So what did these kind old priests do? So that your soul would not be lost, they had some sellers to go up there in the courts, make little cages and put lambs in there, that you could take your income---that you would have (done) made out of lambs, but you made it on something else to keep our economy going---and they made a place, so you, when you got sin-burdened and you want to get released from your sins, this kind old priest had a place you could go buy a lamb. God didn't want your money. He said a lamb. And you went and bought it.
"What did this Jesus of Nazareth done? Come and kicked them things out, and emptied them up, and told them they was a den of thieves. Not much fruit of the Spirit there, is there?
"Your kind old priest never gets out of humor. This fellow plaited ropes together, and kicked the tables over, and run them out there, and looked angered upon them. That's not fruit of the Spirit. Your kind old priest---who's going to say the last words over you? Your kind old priest. Who's going to (permit) commit your soul to God? The kind old priest, see. Fruit of the Spirit, and that fellow had none of them."

85 Now, you say, "Brother Branham..." I could stay a sermon on this, but I won't.
What is the fruit of the Spirit? The manifestation of the promised Word. If they'd just stopped to look. He did not have these things that they had, fruit of the Spirit or anything; but the Word that was promised that day was manifesting Himself. That was exactly the light of the hour. That was it, see. No matter how much education, how kind, how much you speak with tongues, how much kind, gentle, and everything you are: unless you accept that Word of the hour, when it's manifested before you, you're in the same predicament. That might sound crude. I don't mean it that way. But it's truth. Let's just believe, see. All right. Now, God forgive me. You see what I mean?

86 Who had the fruit of the Spirit? Jesus. He said, "Search the scriptures. You think they... In them you think you have eternal life. They testify of Me. They tell you who I am." He never did come out and say who He was. He didn't tell them.
And when He got his congregation, that great... He said, "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood [as I said last night], you have no life."
Well, my! That congregation said, "That guy's crazy! What would doctors, and scientists... Well, that man's trying to make cannibals." He never explained it. It was time for them to turn Him down.

87 Then He had a bunch of preachers hanging around Him, borderline believers. He said, "Well, what are you going to say when you see Me ascend up from where I come from?"
"Come from? Why, we seen the cradle You were born in, the city You were born in. We fished with You out here on the hills. You... We walked with You, talked with You, and You come from... Oh, my. Now we know You're crazy."
But real genuine faith don't move. Them disciples couldn't explain it, but they knowed there it was. See, it has to be something that God planted---had to be his thoughts before the foundation of the world. When He planned the whole redeem... Ephesians 1:1-5, He planned the whole thing before the foundation of the world, his thoughts. And this is the attributes of his thoughts.

88 Look at Judas, standing there as a clergyman up here, just walking in the light. Had power to heal the sick. Matthew 10 proves it. He sent them out, and they come back rejoicing. And devils was subject unto them, Judas with them. That's right. He said, "Don't rejoice that the devils are subject; but your names are written on the Lamb's book of life." Judas was with them. But when it come to taking the full Word of God, he turned it down.
So does people today, see. Jesus said, "Man shall live by every Word..."---not just one or two words; every Word.
You say, "Well, Brother Branham, I can go for part of it, and I can't go..."
Then you got the interpreter Eve had. She took every bit of it, interpreted right---but one little phrase. It's got to be every bit of it. If the Bible says it that way, it's of no private interpretation. It's the way the Bible said it. And if God caused all this heartaches and sorrow, and death of babies, and crying, and wars and things, because his Word was doubted by one phrase, will He take you back in anything less than that? Think it over.
He doesn't change. His first decision has to always remain that decision. That's the reason He deals with one individual; not with a group. One. He can't change it.
Well, I got a whole lot to say here, but I...

89 Jesus' death was a phenomenon. It was a paradox. The resurrection was a paradox. We believe that. Everybody knows the resurrection was a paradox. God raised Him up from the dead. The new birth is a paradox. That's right. Can change a man's being.
We could preach a sermon right here, in a little bit, see, how a paradox... To take a man that's a disbeliever, unbeliever, has nothing to do with it; and all at once changed from a renegade to a saint, a prostitute to a sister---it's a paradox. No one can give him a medicine or a shot, or a dose of medicine or anything else; it takes the hand of Almighty God, and that alone, to change a man. It's a paradox when a man is borned again. That's right---a paradox.

90 It was a paradox, when God chose a hundred and twenty ignorant fishermen to take the news, the gospel at Pentecost, around the world, instead of the great Sanhedrin council that was trained for it; those who had trained and waited, and waited, for the thing to happen. And God revealed Himself to a bunch of fishermen that couldn't even sign their own name to a piece of paper. A paradox, that God chose such as that instead of taking the ecumenical council of that day to do it. It'll do the same thing today. He is able of these stones to rise children unto Abraham.

91 The prophet's visions has always been a paradox: how that those men by inspiration could foretell things that never fail. That's a paradox. How that something beyond the human mind, that you cannot comprehend... There is two, conscious and subconscious that... God gets into the subconscious (which is the real) and foresees; takes him out and sees things that was way back in another age; brings him down to present tense and tells the future. And it never fails any time. A paradox, indeed. Incredible, but it's true. It happens just exactly.
What we seen Him do last night was a paradox, incredible to the human being. We can't explain it.

92 A certain Baptist church my little family went to the other day (and they'd been down to the meeting at Tucson), the pastor got up... Not knowing that the boy that goes with my daughter is a member there, he said, "You know, I just learned Brother Branham's father and mother traveled in a circus." And said, "They were magicians. And that's a little trick that he does," see. I guess it was a trick that healed the sick.
I doubt whether my father and mother ever seen a circus. They never seen an automobile till I had one. They never knowed nothing about it. But you see, the devil's always got to say... They told Jesus, "They do this by Beelzebub." They had to answer something to their congregation. Why don't they search the Scripture and see this is predicted today? It's Jesus Christ, the same yesterday... As He was yesterday, He is today, and will be forever.
But that's it, see. That's just the way they try to do it. The Pentecostal uneducated, the prophet's visions... Jesus alive today after two thousand years is a paradox, too. It certainly is.
I must close 'cause it's getting late. Do you believe in paradox? Certainly.

93 May I say this. One time an old druggist friend, kind old man, he said, "Brother Branham, I'm going to tell you something." Said, "I know you're a minister." He said, "I'm going to tell you." Said, "It might sound ridiculous, but," said, "I haven't told it to people 'cause they wouldn't believe it." But said, "I'm going to tell it to you."
I said, "Go ahead."
He said, "Right in this same drug store," he said, "during the time of the depression, I was sitting here. My boy, which is now married and runs a drug store in another city," he said, "he was waiting on customers." And said, "People had..." Said, "You had to go to... You remember when you had to go get But I can't do it,' he said, 'because that we have a rule here that it's a cash-and-carry basis.' He said, 'We have to have it.'"

94 And said, "The young man walked up to my son, and said, 'I'm got an order here for... The doctor sent me down to get an order, rather, from the county agent here, to--to get some medicine. My wife needs it real bad.' And said, 'She just can't stand it no longer,' said, 'she is so sick. Doctor told me, "Get it right now and give it to her."' Said, 'I wonder if I could get the medicine, and give her the medicine, and she could sit down here?' And said, 'It's going to take me two or three hours, stand in that line, 'fore I can get my order for it.' Said, 'Wonder if you could give me the medicine now?'
"The young man said, 'Sir, I'd like to do that.' Said, 'I can't do it,' he said, 'because that we have a--a rule here, that, we, it's a cash-and-carry basis.' He said, 'We have to have it.'"
And said he was sitting back there reading the paper, elderly man. He said, "Wait a minute, son." Looked at that poor little woman, was holding like that. And so he said, "Go fill that order," and said, "Hand it here to me."
Said he took the prescription the doctor had give, and went over there and filled it. Said, "I filled it up, and thought, 'If she never pays it, all right. Don't make any difference.'"

95 Said, "I walked around to where she was at. I raised it over to give it to her hand." And said, "When I laid it in her hands, I looked up." Said,"Brother Branham, I don't know whether you believe this or not." Said, "I put it in the hands of the Lord Jesus." Said, "I seen Him standing there looking at me, and the blood running down his face, and scars upon his head."
Said, "I shut my eyes like that, kind of staggered, and I heard her husband say, 'Are you all right, doctor?'"
And he said, "Yes." Said, "I looked back, and the woman was holding the prescription." Said, "You believe that?"
I said, "Sure, I believe it. 'Insomuch as you've done it unto the least of these, my little ones, you have done it unto Me.'" A paradox, indeed.

96 Many of you brothers here has read the writings of saint ... of the saints of the early days, how that the Lord dealt with them. Paradox, how things happen. We believe in paradox. One of the... St. Martin was one I was trying to think of. See, he was a soldier. And in France it was ordered that he should follow his father's work. But he always kind of believed. His mother was a believer.
One cold day... He was a very humble man. They always furnished a man to polish his boots and keep him looking neat, like a soldier should. He polished his servant's boots. He didn't go to their traditions, and strains. He thought men were made equal.

97 So one cold day, he was standing by the gate of the city at Tours when he was going in. And said there laid an old beggar in the street (you've read it, no doubt many a time). There laid a beggar in the street, freezing to death---a real cold winter.
He was begging people ... come, "Will somebody give me a cloak? I'll freeze tonight. I can't lay out on this ground like this. Will somebody give me a coat?" Nobody. He said, "Please, somebody have mercy. An old man, I'm dying. I've served my time. I've done my best. Don't let me die. I'm freezing to death. Somebody wrap me up, will you?"
So he just stood back, St. Martin, looking. He wasn't a believer. He wasn't a Christian then. He hadn't accepted it. He just stood and watched. Nobody did it. When the crowds went on by, some of them plenty well to do it. He only had one coat, and that was his military coat. He pulled out his sword and cut it half in two, wrapped the old beggar up in it, and went on.
People laughed at him, going down the street, one piece of coat hanging on him. What a funny looking soldier they said it was---made fun of him.
That night, he was woke up in his sleep. He looked, standing beside of his bed. And there stood Jesus wrapped in that old piece of coat that he had wrapped the beggar in. Then he knowed. "Insomuch as you've done it unto the least of these, my little ones..." It was a paradox, his call.
He was a ... he was a messenger of that age, who stood for the scripture against all the wickedness of Catholicism in that day. God chose him. And He let him see Christ by a paradox.

98 Brethren, we may see paradox after paradox. The great paradox is coming ahead of us.
When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound,
And time shall be no more,
And the morning breaks eternal, bright and fair;
When the resurrection comes and we're caught up together to meet Him in the air. That'll be the final paradox---when we go to be with Him. Until then, let's be faithful servants to the Word of God, which is Christ. Can we pray.

99 Heavenly Father, we thank Thee this morning, for the blood that makes us brothers. We thank Thee for the Son of God who gave his life, that we might be one with Him in this great kingdom upon the earth, the kingdom of heaven that's to be established.
We're looking for that glad millennium day, when our blessed Lord shall come and catch his waiting bride away, the little bride tree. He is that tree that was in the garden of Eden, the bread of life. So is his little wife a tree, the bride tree of the last days. Where everything is tied to bring... But the great powers of God prunes the branches off, that the fruit might ripen. Grant it, Lord, that we can be included in that.
Give us eternal life. We have this one thing together while we're here in this city. We believe the Word of God. We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe that He's not dead, but He lives and his Words of promise for the hour is now being manifested. This is the last hours. This is the last sign. The coming of the promised Son is at hand.

100 We see the world geographically. We see the signs: earthquakes in divers places, nations against nations. We see all the things that's predicted. We see fearful sights in the skies, men's hearts failing, flying saucers and so forth, that they can't explain---investigating judgments coming to the earth.
We see the atomic bombs hanging out yonder everywhere, and the great missiles can carry total destruction in an hour. We see the gasses hanging above us there, that would rain the fires down right out of the heaven and destroy the earth. But we see Jesus, also, who made the promise. And as we said, "this same Jesus that was taken up from You will come again in like manner, as you seen Him go into heaven." We're watching for that glad day to come.

101 Our hearts... Many of us here, Lord.
For, since little boys we put forth every effort that we knowed how, to serve you. Lord, don't let our eyes be blinded to this hour. Open my eyes, Lord, that I'll see every promise. May I be able to punctuate it with an "Amen," that it's so, everything that God has promised. Grant it, Lord.
Give us a great meeting. Bless these, my brothers and sisters here. Some of these little women standing here, grey-headed, who served and taken care of their husbands, while they worked out there in the fields, and... God, you'll reward them.
Those men who's fought to win the prize, and sailed through bloody seas, as we sit here this morning around this table, looking at one another. And our hair is turning grey, and we've battled a long time. And we may never meet at another breakfast. We don't know.

102 The coming of the Lord may be today, it may be tomorrow, may be next year. We don't know when it will be.
But there's one thing sure. We're promised that we'll meet at a supper in the skies. And the King shall come out and wipe all tears from our eyes and say, "Don't worry. It's all over now. Enter into the joys of the Lord that's been prepared for you since the foundation of the world," when we were ordained to be sons of God through Jesus Christ. O Father God, grant this.
May our hearts beat as one. And as I said a while ago to the little couple that was about to separate... God, as we separate from one another here, we found this one thing that we have in common. The Methodists, the Baptists, the United, the Assemblies, the Church of God---we all have one thing in common: Jesus Christ. We can't meet as organizations, and fuss out them creeds, and things of the church. But as brothers, we can meet under the blood of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. And there we have things in common.
And upon this common ground, Lord, I come to meet my brothers---men of like precious faith. May we together, in this coming week, work with all that's within us to see the glory of God brought back to the church again. We commit everything to you with ourselves. In Jesus' name, bless our efforts. Amen.

103 Bless you, my brethren. Brother Roy, do you have a word to say?
Just ... how infallible the Word is! Jesus was the Word. We agree on that. When his parents had forgotten Him and left Him down at the feast, and they had gone three days and they couldn't find Him, and they come back. They found Him in the temple discussing with the priests, and they was amazed at this kid. We have no record of Him going to school. But remember, He was just a boy twelve years old---about this high.
And what's the mother's statement? Now, no disregard to you Catholic people, if there's any in here, calling her the mother of God. How could she be the mother of God, see? She was an incubator that God used, not to... Look at her. If she's the mother of God, she actually had more wisdom than Him. Notice. When she's a mother, she gave Him life. She gave God life, see?

104 Look here. She said, "Your father and I have sought you day and night with tears." She discredited her first testimony. She called Joseph his father.
Now look at this twelve-year-old boy, not knowing what He said---He was just a boy. But He was the Word, see. He said "Know ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" See the Word correcting that error? See, she was giving testimony after He was raised up. It was all over now, see.
"Your father and I have sought you," going exactly what she said... She had conceived this child by the Holy Ghost; and then calling Joseph the father. And this little boy, twelve-year-old child---no wisdom at all---but just a twelve-year-old boy...
The Father didn't dwell in Him at that time, because He come on the day when He baptized Him. He saw the Spirit of God coming down, see. And when He... But look. This little twelve-year-old boy, being the Word... He was borned the anointed One, see, to be the anointed.
And here He was, "Know ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"
She said, "Your father and I have been looking for you." If Joseph was his father, He'd have been with him on his business---making doors and houses.
But He was in the temple straightening out those organizations. "Know ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" See how the Word of God corrected that error, in that child? Amen. God bless you.

Paradox

You can find this sermon at ChurchAges.net

1 The Lord bless you. It's certainly deemed to me a grand privilege to be here this morning. That was ... it's a unexpected blessing because I didn't think I'd have this privilege to get to speak here, especially to just you---what we'd think ... we'd call a selected group---the ministers, and my brethren here, who are cooperating in this meeting and making it possible. I've wanted this opportunity. This way I get a chance sometimes to explain things, that I don't do at the platform 'cause you're in a mixed audience there.

2 And I met an attorney here this morning, one of the brethren, the Christian Businessmen. And last night I was speaking on Zacchaeus once there, you know, when he ... Jesus was in the... He hardly believed (as the little drama was) that He wasn't a prophet. But when Jesus stopped under the tree and looked up, He called him by name, and he come down. I never did tell just what happened to Zacchaeus. You know what happened to that fellow? He become a member of the Full Gospel Businessmen's... Charter member, that's right. Of course, Jesus wouldn't have nothing else but a full gospel, you know. He being a business man, that was what ... so you could remember that.
And so, I was speaking the other day on---up at the last meeting ---on having a court trial, and Jesus brought, or God brought in, about His Word for a breach of promise. Many of you has heard it. And so I was thinking about maybe giving that Sunday afternoon, this court trial. And then this attorney here---he might be able to correct me on some of the procedure that I go about.

3 So I, but sitting here this morning, it's certainly a privilege. I was looking around to different friends and a little boy here, a little friend, here, just called me over there. And he's crippled.
He said, "Brother Branham, if you'll just tell me that I can walk out of here, that's all I want you to do," see.
And I just thought how lovely, see. But see, these things are a little different than what we, you think they are, see. See, now that's where I think many of the brethren gets off the track. See, God will let them do something with a little faith. Then they figure that everything they bounce into they just say it, and that's all. But you see, how can I say, "Thus saith the Lord," until He tells me first? I've got to have it first. If He didn't, I'd say, "Thus saith William Branham," and that wouldn't do any good. But, see, He's got to tell me first.

4 A man drove up in an ambulance with a baby, and I was real busy. And he said, "Well, I... If you'll just tell me, and come here, and say my baby will be all right, that's all I want to know."
Well that, how lovely. But how can I say that, until I know it, see? If I, some go... People just go on impression---"The Lord told me to do this." Well, that's yourself many times, see. You've got to actually see it, and know it. How could I ... Brother Fox here say something, unless (if he's honest)... He said, "Brother Branham said so-and-so," and if I didn't say that, he's falsely accusing me of saying something I didn't say. But if I really said it, then I've got to stand behind it. So when the Lord says anything, that does it.

5 I met a little Baptist here, a while ago. Maybe he isn't Baptist. I think he's a Pentecostal Baptist, like me. And he's another good old Southerner. I watched him eating this Georgia ice cream this morning here, this grits. And so, he was one of those persistent type, you know. And he smoked cigarettes, and a very good Baptist. And he had a lot of things that he was going on. And he kept on...
Now out here in the meeting, it's those ... you people---the people---they're doing that themselves, see. And it's Christ coming to His body.

6 Now let me get that, right now, just stop with you just a moment. See, Christ coming to His body---that don't mean it's just me. I'm not the body. I'm just a member of that body, see. You're part of that body too. "By one Spirit (I Corinthians 6:15, I Corinthians 12), by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." We are members of that body, every one of us; whether you are Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Oneness, twoness, fiveness, or whatever you got, see. By that one Spirit we are all in one body.
If God accepts the oneness in with his peculiar idea, the Church of God in with his peculiar idea, the Methodist in with his peculiar idea, the Assemblies in with his peculiar idea, that's up to Him. I got nine brothers, and every one of them different from another; but we all got the same parents. See, we're every one Branhams. Now my brothers, I'm the hunter---I like to hunt and fish. The rest of them don't care for it. They like to play golf, and things like that. But not me. See, that's my peculiarity. But yet their father is my father, see. But we all agree when it comes to daddy---that's all our daddy.

7 And that's the way we do, too.
Now look. The church has become, see, just growing up. Just like I was going to speak tonight, upon the "Unveiling of the One True God." But I think it'll take a little too long, and I notice that people, after about nine o'clock they get restless, and I thought I'd just wait till sometime at the tabernacle. I got something else on my mind maybe for tonight, to bring a message of salvation. That's what we're trying, that's our ... what we're trying to do here.
Now you minister brothers, we ... this divine healing, as old Doctor Bosworth---he just went home to glory down here, recently ---he used to say, "Divine healing is a bait that you put on a hook. You never show the fish the hook. You show him the bait; and he gets the bait and gets the hook." So that's the way it is when you... Divine healing just draws the attention, see. And then salvation is what we're after. We're after the strength of the body of Christ, you see.
And every one of your different organizations... I'm not too much on the organizations, just saying, "I belong to this..." I was ordained a Baptist.
And then when I heard about Pentecostals, I thought, "My, what's this?" And I thought, "That's what I'm going to join up with." And I come over here---they're as broke up as the Baptists is, and just all different types of things, and there's...
And I thought, "Well now, I'm not going to join any of them. I'm going to stand right between them, and put my arms around all of them, and say "We're brothers." And see, the system that keeps us from being that, that's what I'm against, the system that ... see. And that's the reason I'm with one group, and that's the Full Gospel Businessmen, see. We want to stretch our tent so far that it'll take everything, all of them, see, everybody. We're all brothers. See, we're every one brothers in Christ.
Now, one of my great sponsors is Assemblies, and United, and the Four Square, and the Church of God. And all those brethren---they panned out to be real men.

8 Now what is it? Christ coming to His body. Christ is the Word. We all know the anointing is Christ, that comes on the Word that makes the Word live. Is that right? That is the anointing. Christ is the anointing, the Spirit that comes upon the Word, that quickens the Word to make it live. Now the Word is in your heart. You believe in divine healing, whatevermore, see.
And Christ, the anointing, coming to His body (see the connection there), just like husband and wife to become one. Now the church has got to get to the ministry until the church and Christ become one. He can anoint you for every blessing that's in the Bible. All of it is yours. Everything that's promised of this age is yours. But if we leave anything out, see, then... If anointing strikes that, it'll, it will anoint it. It's just...
Here ...

9 like I use this for an illustration. There's a doctrine called pyramid doctrine. But don't never get that in your idea, that I---that I believe in pyramid doctrines. I believe in the Bible, see, and although I believe the pyramid part played something in it.
I believe God wrote three Bibles. He wrote one in the skies, which is the zodiac. Anybody knows that---Job spoke of it. What? Look at the zodiac. It starts off with the virgin, it ends up with Leo the lion. That's how He come. First was the virgin. His next coming will be Leo the lion, see, coming as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And all of them---that crossed fishes, and what we're in now, the cancer age, and everything---it all speaks. But forget it, see. That ain't your Bible.
Then the pyramids, exactly how they were drawed---the headstone was rejected. Still, that's not your Bible.
Then God wrote it on words.

10 Jesus comes three times. One time He come to redeem His wife. Next time He comes to catch her away. And the next time He comes with her---three comings, see. Everything alike: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, see; all, everything, in a three. The mathematics of the Bible is perfect. If you keep those mathematics right, you can keep your story right, see. But if you get off the mathematics, you'll have in your picture a cow picking grass on top of a tree. So it won't look right, see. Stay in the mathematics, see, of the Bible, and you place it out right.

11 Now, I was telling about this here young, fine-looking fellow sitting here. He kept coming. Every time they'd put his name on for a private interview. Well, when he would do that, then he'd wait a long time, till finally his time come up. Here he come.
Now, in private interview it isn't like this, see, it isn't sitting in a meeting like we do here. You wait until the Lord speaks and shows you what to do. Well, it never... He never did ... his time would run out. Well, he wouldn't be discouraged, he just put his name down for another one. So he finally worked down to be a few hundred, till they got to him again.
Then one day, sitting at the place... He would try---he would take all the psychological ideas that he could, to lay them cigarettes down, and he couldn't do it. But one day it come, thus saith the Lord. That was it. That was the last of it. And so, here he sits this morning. So we're thankful for that.

12 Now, let me just give a little explanation a minute, if it's all right to take just this much time. I think I'm watching the clock there. At ten o'clock we're supposed to be out, I understood, I heard through the grapevine just a few minutes ago. And I'm just like a freight train, I'm long-winded. And I remember the first time when I started to preach. And I was a little Baptist preacher. I carried that Bible under my arm, and I thought I was just a real preacher. Somebody'd say, "Are you a preacher?"
I'd say, "Sure. Yes, sir, really am."

13 And it reminds me when I was a boy out on the farm. My father was a rider. And he'd break horses and follow the rodeo to break the horses, and so forth. He was really a good rider. Well, I thought being his son, surely I was a rider, too. So I...
Daddy would be away out at the back of the farm with his horses, you know, and I'd take out the old plow horse, you know---old, and stoved-up, and stiff and tired. And we had an old water trough hewed out of a log. How many ever seen one of that? Well, what part of Kentucky are you from, anyhow? So, and we used to go down there, and get stung with the honey bees. You know, they come to get their water. So I looked to see Daddy making his rounds in the corn field, way back at the back. I'd go in and get his saddle, and a handful of cockleburs, you know, and slip it up under the saddle, and pull up the cinch, and climb up in it. And that poor old horse...
My little brothers sitting all around, they all hollered, "Ride him, Billy. Ride him!" You know. And the poor horse so tired, he couldn't even get his feet off the ground, and so... I thought, "Man, am I a rider!" I had read too many western stories. That was... So I thought, maybe, you know ... well...
You know, I got...

14 One day I decided that they needed me out in the West to break their horses, you know (about eighteen years old). They had to have me, and my services was needed. So I slipped out, went out West, and I tried to buy me a pair of chaps. I was a little bitty fellow, you know, and I thought that was pretty. It had A-R-I-Z-O-N-A and a steer's head on it. And I thought, "Oh, my, that's beautiful!" When I put them on I looked like one of these little game chickens, you know, with them feathers on. I couldn't walk with the things. So I just got me a pair of Levis.
And I thought, "Well, I'll ride the silver saddle. I'll go out and get me some..." And I sat out there. "And wait till they bring them bucking horses out. There's some of them guys get throwed. I'll show them how to ride them. My daddy is a rider."

15 So I climbed up on the fence, and they had ... was breaking some horses. And I looked over there in the pen, and I seen them outlaws in there that... My, that ... you couldn't even throw fodder in to them; they was so wild they wouldn't eat it.
So I thought, "Say. I don't know. That don't look like that old plow horse I rode." I looked at him for awhile. After awhile, they had one there they called the Kansas Outlaw. So they brought him out---a great big heavy horse, about seventeen hands and it ... he was really a horse.
So they put a ... had a fine man there with all of his great uniform on, and everything, the girls all waving at him. He was quite a star. I looked at him as he come out of his automobile. And they said, "This man can ride this horse." So they put him in the chute, and he got up on there, and got him saddled up, and he got set in his saddle, and they opened the gate.
My, oh, my! About two twists and a sunfish, and he looked like he could throw the saddle over the moon. I never seen such a... Well, the pickups got the horse and the ambulance got the rider.
Here come the caller around, you know. He said, "I'll give any man here five hundred dollars, that can stay on him sixty seconds." He come right down the line. I don't know how it ever was, he picked me right out, sitting there with this ... sitting there by all these old disappearing cowboys, you know. My legs wasn't bowed enough, and I thought I was a real rider. I was sitting there with them. I was fellowshipping with them, you know, with a hat sitting on the back of my head (about seventeen years old, I guess), looking around like that.
And he come said, "Are you a rider?"
And I said, "No, sir."

16 When I was a little Baptist preacher, I used to think God called me to be the defender of the Word, see. I was to defend the faith. One day I was over in St. Louis, Missouri, and I went into a tent meeting, and I run into a Robert Daugherty. He's a Pentecostal preacher. And I stood upon the platform with him. Man, that man preached till he'd get blue in the face, and buckle his knees together, and catch his breath (you could hear him for two city blocks), and come back up preaching. And then somebody'd say, "Are you a preacher?"
And I'd say, "No. sir." I get amongst the Pentecostal people, I don't say much about being a preacher. I was with that like it was with the horse, see. I'd just say, "No, the Lord called me to pray for His sick children."
So we're happy to be here this morning in this...

17 While we're on the thought of riding, I love outdoors. That's where I found God. And I used to herd quite a bit in Colorado---go up there. Now I usually ride the roundups, and so forth, we have up on Troublesome River. Now many a time I stood there by the side of the gate, when we was having the roundup---spring roundup---send the cattle up. The Hereford Association grazes the valley. Raise two ton of hay, and you have the right, on your ranch, to put a cow on the forest. And some of them has hundreds of head 'cause they got where they can irrigate. Down there---they have that wild meadow.
And then they ... every spring, when they run them cattle up on the forest up there, they... The ranger stands there and counts those cattle, and watches the brands. They're each one branded. The little group that I worked for didn't have too many---about 150, 200 head---a little tripod brand. And Grimes, the Bar---the Diamond Bar---had about 1500 head.

18 But there's one thing I always noticed. When standing there, after we got the cattle up there, and the ranger stood in the drift fence (that's to keep the cattle from getting on private property again), I used to sit there and put my leg around the horn of the saddle and watch that ranger. And he'd watch them cattle coming through, standing there. Every cow went through you had to inspect. You notice, he didn't pay much attention to the brand that was on them. But there's one thing he really watched---that was for the blood tag, see, because you can't put nothing in there on account of the breed---keeping the line of breed right, see. Nothing but a genuine Hereford could enter that park, nothing but a Hereford. Had to have a blood tag, to show that it was examined. And it had the blood tag to show it was a Hereford. I think that's the way the great roundup will be. He won't ask us whether we were Assemblies, or whether we were Foursquare. He's going to look for that blood tag. No matter about our brand, He'll watch for the blood tag. "...I see the blood."
I'm so glad to be associated with such people as that this morning. The Lord bless you real richly, now. I sit and talk to you, my time will get away.

19 I want to read a Word of the Lord, because no service is complete without the reading of the Word. And now, let's turn over in the Scriptures here with just a few thoughts I had lined out. Used to be I could think of the things that I was going to say without even writing a note. But since I've passed twenty-five, the second time, I can't think of it like I used to. So I have to kind of make a note, write down my text what I'm going to say, and think of it. And then I think, too, a little more... I was a kid then. I just splattered, like shooting a shotgun, see. But now you got to zero it.
People come to hear me because I was just a boy preacher. This is thirty-three years behind the pulpit for me. But now I meet great men, like I'm sitting before this morning. You've got to hit the target. It's got to be the Word.

20 Remember the old Baptist preacher that ordained me. I remember my first time up to preach. I just cried and beat on the desk, and everything like that. And some of the elderly women come by and patted me on the back and said, "Oh, honey," and crying, "you're going to be a great servant to Christ."
Old Dr. Davis, sitting there looking me right in the eye, I said, "How did I do, Dr. Davis?"
Said, "The worst I ever heard in my life." He upbraided me. So he was an attorney. So he said to me afterwards, "Come over to the study, Billy," He said, "Billy, all your emotion, and all that you went through," said, "you was just trying to act like a preacher." He said, "I got the same thing when I become an attorney." He said, "I ... my first case was a divorce case." And said, "Really didn't have no grounds at all." But said, "I said, 'Oh, this poor woman!' I cried, and I run with my eyes. And said, 'I ... this poor little woman, her husband did so-and-so, and things.'"

21 And said, "I got the same thing I give you, and I thought it'd be a good thing.
Said, "The first thing you know, the ... so the other attorney struck the desk and said, 'Judge, your Honor, sir, how much more of this nonsense will your court stand?' Said, 'He hasn't said one thing to defend the person---not one part of the law. He's just crying and jumping up and down.' "
He said, "You know what? That deflated me, and put me back where I came..." Said, "Now Billy, you done all the emotions---crying and jumping up and down---but you never brought one thing of the Scripture that really gives the basic things, boy." That's right.

22 Now, we're shooting a rifle. It's got to be zeroed. It's got to hit the spot. Lord help us now, as we read from Joshua, the 10th chapter. And I'm going to begin at the 12th verse, and read Joshua 10 and 12, down to the 14th or 15th verse.
Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand ... still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
And there was no day like that before ... or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.

23 Now, if you will pardon me for a minute, I want to take a text here this morning on the subject of one word. Now, you say, "Brother Branham, that's not ... that's not too much for all these here 150 people or so. That's not enough." Oh, yes it is. It's enough. It's the Word of God, see, no matter it ... it's not the quality, it's the quantity.
Like here, not long ago, in Louisville, Kentucky, I was thinking of a little boy that climbed up in the attic---was searching around one day. And he found in an old garret, a little trunk, he found a postage stamp. And he thought, "You know, this might be worth something." So he took off and found a collector. And, of course, he had ice cream in his mind.
He said, "What will you give me for this stamp?"
He said, "I'll give you a dollar for it."
Oh, my, that's about ten cones there, you know, so he had thought he had made a bargain. That man sold it a little later for five hundred dollars. And I forget, now it goes into the thousands, what that stamp's worth.
See, as far as the paper, it wasn't worth nothing. But it's what's wrote on it what makes the difference.

24 This is just ordinary India paper. But it's what is on it. It's God, in letter form. Yes.
Sometimes it's a ... no matter how little it is... That's where we people make our mistake. We're always wanting to do something big. Maybe it wasn't ordained to do something big. Maybe it's the little things that we're leaving undone is what's hurting us.
Like in Canada, I was standing there with my good friend Dr. Ern Baxter, who used to be my platform man---very fine, eloquent man. And when King George (who I had the privilege of praying for, you know, when he was healed with the multiple sclerosis), when he and his wife passed down the street that day in Vancouver, there... As they went down the street, there she was in her beautiful blue dress, and the king himself sitting up there, trying to sit straight, hurting and sick, his ulcers bothering him. But yet, he knowed he was a king, and so he bowed to the people.
And when he went by, Ern and I listened to it. Ern just turned his head and started crying: He couldn't hold it. He said, "Brother Branham, my king is passing by."

25 And I thought, "If it'll make a Canadian feel like that, what will it do when we see our King go by."
They turned out all the children at church, or the schools did, to see the king. They give them little British flags to wave. When they returned back to the school after their regular procedure, they found out that one little fellow didn't come back. And the teacher got alarmed, so she went out to look for the little fellow. And she was standing (a little girl), standing behind a post, crying her little heart out. The teacher picked her up and said, "What's the matter, sweetheart?" Said, "Didn't you see the king?"
She said, "Yes, I saw the king."
And said, "Did you wave your little flag?"
Said, "Yes, I waved the little flag."
Said, "What you crying about?"
She said, "You know," she said, "I'm too little." She said, "I saw the king, and I waved my flag, but the king didn't see me," see, and her little heart was broken.
That's different from our King. You can't be too little... You can't do anything. He knows every little move that you make. He knows all about you.

26 Now, my subject this morning I'm going to speak on, for a few minutes, the Lord willing, is "A Paradox." What is a paradox? According to Webster, here, it means something that's incredible, but true. I think we've witnessed that, the last few days, minor stage. But a paradox---an incredible, but yet it's true. That makes a paradox.
In Hebrews, the 11th chapter, and the 3rd verse, we see that the world was made and framed together by the word of God.

27 A few weeks ago I was in New York City at the Morris Auditorium. And I heard this tape of Einstein talking of that galaxy, of how many... If we left here, and went (I think) 150 million light years---traveling at the speed of light---take us 150 million light years to get over there; and then 150 million light years to get back. And you know how fast light travels, see. And just think, 150 million light years...
Well, if you'd run a row of nines around, around and around the world, you'd never break it down in years. It's nine, nine, nine, close together around the world, you couldn't break it down in years. For, just think---light travels at what? At eight hundred ... a hundred and eighty-six ... 186,000 miles per second---in a light year.
In 300 million light years, try to figure it up. You know how long, then, we'd been gone from the earth? Fifty years. That's right. See, they broke in, to find out if eternity... They say that John Glenn, the astronaut that went around the ... it never taken one second off of his life, even the speed that he was traveling, about 1700 miles...
So then, see, we broke into eternity. We're an earth-bound people that knows just inches, and so forth. When you break into that unknown, you can't fathom that. Our minds are not comprehending. We couldn't fathom what it means to get into that. But we know that it's true.

28 And Einstein said, "There's only one sensible thing to say about the world. By faith, we understand that God framed the world together," see.
And the world standing there in space, it had to come from somewhere. The science says it's a piece of the sun. Then where did the sun come? See, you keep breaking it down, till finally you come to a place that you have to find out it had to have a beginning, see. God created the heavens and the earth, we're taught in the Bible.
And how does it stand there in space? It never moves. You can't take an instrument... I have wore for my ... my meetings overseas, and Switzerland, one of their best watches that was give me while I was there. It's a ... really, I think in American money it costs a hundred-fifty, two hundred dollars, maybe more. And yet that watch will gain, and lose, just in a few days.
I took it to a jeweler. He said, "Well, we have nothing that keeps perfect."

29 But the world does, perfectly, at a time. They can tell the eclipse of the sun and moon, many, many years apart, just to the minute. How it turns---and yet nothing holding it up.
Which is up, and which is down? We don't know. Is the North Pole up? Or the South Pole up? We're in space. That's a paradox, isn't it? It cannot be explained. Anything that cannot be explained like that, is simply a paradox. So we find out that it was a paradox for the world to be in space. All right.
And time and seasons---how does it cross its seasons just the same time? How that summer and winter... How it leans ... it's leaning backward. If it was up straight...

30 Now, we proved that one time it was up straight, 'cause God said it was. Up in the British ice fields, they can blast 500 foot through that ice, and there's palms, ferns. It showed it was once a tropic. And now, see, it leans back, from the antediluvian destruction, that leaned it back. And I believe the very thing that they throwed it out of its cycle then, is ready to throw it back in its cycle now.

31 Man destroys himself by his knowledge, see. He never, God destroys nothing. Man ... and you... We can't, no matter what, we can a-liquidate; we cannot annihilate. There's nothing, and even as far as the closest we have to annihilation... But you can't annihilate. When fires are burning, that's gases breaking apart. It goes right back to its original condition again. You can't annihilate nothing.
Some people get so guilty till they want to take their body and have it burned, and blow it to the seven winds of the seas. But that doesn't make any difference. Your ... it isn't annihilated; you can't annihilate. God created it. You can't tear down. You can pervert, or carry on or do other things; but you can't annihilate. God's the only one who can annihilate. He's the creator. He's the only one that has the right to do it.

32 How it stands in space? So much we could say to that, it'd take hours upon it.
But we find out here that, Joshua stopping the sun---now that's a paradox. I remember the time... My old father, he had no education, and I ... he could just hardly sign his name. But he used to say to me, he said, "You know, I never could believe that the ... but what the sun turns from the world."
And I said, "Well, I don't know, Dad."
And one day in high school, I know I was talking to the high school teacher there of the Bible. And I asked him this question about Joshua. He said the turning of the earth made the gravitation, and the gravitation held the world up.
And I said, "Then, why, then---you teach the Bible---did Joshua command the sun to stand still?"
He said, "God winked at his ignorance," see, "and stopped the world."
I said, "You just got through telling me [Now, he didn't believe in the miracles of God, see, and he said...], you just got through telling me that if the world ever stopped, it would stop its gravitation. And then it would shoot like a comet through the air. Now," I said, "the Bible said that the world stood still here, for twenty four hours."

33 It's a paradox, but God did it anyhow. What? By a man---not a god, not some great angel coming down from heaven---a man with faith in the mission that he was given, to take that land, the Word of God was behind it. "I give you this land. And everywhere the soles of your foot shall set upon, that I give you. It's yours." Footsteps meant possession.
And the sun is what... The achievement he was trying to do, see, his enemy was routed. And he knew if the sun ever set, them kings would get together, and they'd come back upon him with double forces. So the sun was going down, and Joshua, a man commanded to do this, said, "Sun, stand still."

34 Whatever God did, I don't know. But the sun stood still, the moon over Ajalon, because a man, a human being---a human being! ---was in the line of duty. In the line of duty he commanded the sun to stand still. And if we're Christians we have to believe this to be the infallible Word of God. Everywhere... He stopped the world, stopped the sun, whatever He did, it stood still for twenty-four hours. I believe it.
Jesus said in St. Mark 11:22, "If you say to this mountain be moved; and don't doubt in your heart, but believe that what you said will come to pass; you can have what you said."

35 But that takes motive and objective. Of course, you've got to have a reason for it. You can't have faith, unless you've got some reason.
As I tried to say last night, some people's faith is in their textbook. Some people's faith's in something else. But depends on where your faith is. I want to believe God's Word. What He says is true. Then I've got to see whether it's His will or not. Then if it's His will, I've got to check out my objective to it, and then my motive in doing it.
If I do it because I'd say, "Well, I'm going over the mountain here. There's a mountain before me. There's a million people on that side perishing. I've got a hundred million over here I'm preaching to." Well, if I can't get over, around, or under the mountain or nothing; and yet something in my heart keeps telling me, "Go over the mountain, go to them, go to them," and I can't get over it---now Jesus said, "... they shall move this mountain," see.

36 Now, the thing of it is, is first ... what if I say... Now first, I never created that in there. Something created that. It's for a good cause. Because why would I go to one million, when a hundred million here are perishing on this side? But it's something in my heart, saying "Go over on that side."
Now, the first thing I have to say, "Well, if I go over there ... this side can only pay me so much a month, and over there..." See, my motive's not right. My objective is not right. No.
Well, what if I say, "No, I don't care about the money. But when I get over there, some day---the ages to come, they'll---put up a great big monument, say 'Brother Branham, the great missionary.'" Then still my motive's not right.
But, when I don't care if they ever know who went over there, ease sits in my heart. Then I'll speak to that mountain, it'll happen, see. It's got to.
But see your motive, and your objective depends on who you are, and what business, what your ... what... That's where the church misses it so far. They get worked up in an emotion. And first thing you know, an enthusiasm... They don't stop to check it back here again. Check there, for sure. Then it's thus saith the Lord---see whether it's right.

37 Joshua had a commission to go over and to take that land, and God caused a great paradox. Even science can prove today the scar is still in the sky where that absolutely happened. I heard in Chicago, not long ago, a scientist talking, that was showing on a little chart where it happened.

38 Now we find out again, Moses was in the line of duty too. And there was the Red Sea. Did you see that rashal article that some of them people are trying to make now, that Moses went through a bunch of reeds---a sea of reeds. Wasn't that horrible? It's just trying... The devil, inspiring those people to take away the truth of the Word. How could the waters... Then did the reeds drown up Pharaoh then when he come? Crazy.
Then we find out that Moses had a commission to bring those people out of Egypt to that mountain. And there it was in the line of duty. And Moses begin to cry unto God, when he saw the pillar of fire hanging up here, and there come Pharaoh's chariots. And he cried, and the pillar of fire came down---was light to them, and darkness to them. And God said, "Why are you crying to me? I commissioned you to do it. Speak, and go forward." Oh, my!

39 The trouble of it is, today the churches speak, look like they say, "What did Moody say? What did Sankey say?" Speak, and say what God said. Let's go forward, not look back. Go this a-way.
It's hard, on these turning corners. Church don't want to believe that, you see. They're always referring back from where their educational standpoint. 'Course, that's a school in itself, see. They learn that through book-learning. We know that through experience of trusting God, see, and knowing that He does do this. It was a paradox, that God opened up that Dead Sea, and did that great thing.

40 Noah, in his time... Remember, Noah preached in an intellectual, to an intellectual world like we're preaching to now---a day when they were farther advanced in science than we are now. We could never build a pyramid. There's no way for us to do it. We haven't got the machinery to do it with. Some of them... If you was ever there, why, them boulders weighed tons---hundreds of tons, way up in the air. We have no machinery to lift it up there. Nothing at all to do it with, no power that would lift it up there. They did it.

41 I remember in school, we had a debate on that. And I took the side to say that they had some secret. They didn't know... And my opponent, he took the side to say that, why, they got enough men around it, and they made a level of dirt like this, and then they rolled it up.
I said (I worked in a section gang), I said, "Why, we can't... You take a box car with wheels, and them greased, and put them on a railroad track; and you can't put enough men along there to push that box car, and it empty. That's right. You just get one layer of men, and then the next man is pushing against that man, see. You couldn't move it if you had to."

42 They had the secret. They knowed how to do it. They had a greater instrument. That pyramid sits so perfectly in the center of the earth, pointing, that there's not a shadow around it, no matter where the sun is. It's never got a shadow around it, see. It's a perfect thing that they did. And their instruments was far beyond what we have now.
And Noah preached in that great intellectual age.
And Jesus said, "As it was in the days of Noah,"---another great intellectual age, see.
Now, remember Noah had a message from God: It was going to rain. Well, there had never... See, the world sat up straight in them days. They had never had rain. But Noah said, "It's going to rain." The water was on the earth, not in the skies. They could take an instrument and prove there was no water there. But Noah said, "It's going to happen anyhow," see. And it rained. That was a paradox, see. Something that could not be explained. But God shook the earth somehow, just in condition so it would rain. So we see it was a paradox for Noah to do that.

43 Also it was a paradox when Israel stood on one side of the hill, and Goliath on the other side of the hill. They had a great challenger over there. He was a great scientist. He knew all the ins and outs. And when the enemy thinks he's got you to the wall, that's when he likes to bark the loudest.
I remember when I first started out in this ministry, that Pastor Davis said to me, he said, "Billy, what in the world did you eat that night for supper?" He couldn't understand it.
I got a group of ministers together with me. They said, "What's the matter with you? You think that that..."
I said, "I don't care."
"In the day of this scientific age that we're living in, and you mean to tell me that God..."
I said, "I don't care what you say. That man, that angel of the Lord, has never told me anything wrong." I said, "If He sends me out there, there'll be somebody that'll listen to it. If the Baptist church don't want to, then here's my fellowship card." That's all. I knew God said so, and that settled it.
Said, "You can't do it."

44 That's that giant standing yonder saying, "If you'll come over here, and send one of your men and fight me, then we won't have no bloodshed."
Oh, my. How easy. How they like to bark, when they got it like that. Said, "You let one of your greatest men..." 'Course, Saul was head and shoulders above his army. And he knowed better than to go out and meet that fellow on his grounds.
He said, "Now, we won't kill anybody. We'll just let two of us ... one of us die---just one man die instead of the whole armies here die." He had a psychological point, and you notice he said... Israel was scared to death. They wouldn't want to meet the challenge.

45 But one day a little old ruddy fellow come up, piece of sheep skin wrapped around his shoulders, bent down, his hair in his face. Come up there to bring his brothers some raisin cakes, that his father sent him up there. His name was David. Little bitty, old scrawny fellow, standing around there...
But you know, there'd been, a few days before that, a prophet had anointed him. They wanted to put it upon his bigger brother's head, because he looked better. You know that makes impression to the people he's going to stand before---he looks like a king.
Oh, that's what the world's still got their eyes full of---Hollywood. Ought to be full of Christ. That's the reason it's so hard to get the program over to the people, the message. They want to be Hollywood. Hollywood shines. Well, it's a shine...
I live...

46 I'm a prospector. You know, fool's gold shines brighter than real gold. Anything glitters ... everything glitters is not gold. After all, gold doesn't glitter; it glows. And Hollywood shines with glitter, while the gospel glows with humility.
Hollywood shines with its great fine churches, its psychological, educated ministers, who can speak and use their nouns and pronouns, and everything just right; while in humility the gospel of Jesus Christ glows to the glory of God, where they know no more about it than a rabbit would know about snow shoes. They just ... (Excuse that expression. This is no place for that.)
But I ... that's what I try to mean, you know. They don't understand it. They think it's got to be all polished up with scholarship. And our Pentecostal people's getting like that. Their ministers has got to go away, and have so many degrees of psychology, know just how to say "Amen" just right. That's right. Oh, it's a disgrace, friends. It's a disgrace among us.

47 Now it isn't that I'm against the church; I'm against that system that's taking godly men and doing that. We need not to shine. We'll never get the enemy over on our ground, or, we can never go over on the enemy's ground and try to have fine glitter, well-dressed, and clergy collars, and everything, and our choir all robed, and everything like them. Don't go on their ground. We can never compare with them.
Let them, if they're hungry, come over to us. We're full gospel. Amen. Let's stay that way. The gospel came not in word only, but through power and manifestation of the Word. That's what the writer said. Power and manifestation---in other words, the Word vindicated is the gospel, see, Mark 16.

48 Notice now, we find that in the days of Noah that while he preached, they could hardly believe such a thing as that---they ... Noah believing for such a thing. But finally the paradox came, and it happened. It actually rained.
Then in the days of David, we find out that when Saul was up there with all of his great army, this little ruddy-looking fellow come up there, and come to bring some cakes to his brother from his father. And this giant came out and made his boast one time too many. There was a real man of God heard that boast.
And he turned around, he said, "You mean to tell me that you, the armies of the living God, will let that uncircumcised Philistine out there stand and tell you the days of miracles is past, or, well, uh [Audience laughs. Brother Branham says, "Same principle."] ... let that uncircumcised scientist tell you---defy the armies of the living God?" Said, "I'm ashamed of you, and you supposed to be trained men." Said, "I'll go fight him." Oh, I admire his courage. He knowed what he believed.

49 So Saul took him up there and said, "Son, I admire your courage. But remember, you're nothing but a youth, see, and he is a warrior from his youth, see. And you know nothing about a sword and things. Now how you going to meet that fellow, meet his challenge?"
He said, "Saul, I was herding your servant's sheep, and a bear come in and got one of them. And he run with it. I went and took it away from him. And a lion come in and got one, and I run out after him. And I took a sling shot and knocked him down, and when he rose up I slew him." Said, "The Lord God that gave me the victory over the lion and the bear, how much more will he give me the victory over this uncircumcised Philistine?"

50 You know, I think about that when I'm praying for you, see. See, a lion called "cancer" come in and got one of his sheep. I ain't got no medicine, I have no shots, I don't know what radium is. I don't know nothing about theologies, and these man-made things; but I know how to send this little sling shot. I come here after you, now. I want to bring you back. It's my Father's sheep. Sometimes I have to scold you, and fuss at you. But it's because I love you. Always, always bear this in mind, that love is corrective.
If your boy's sitting out here in the street, and you say, "Junior, dear, you shouldn't sit... Oh, bless your little heart. If you want..." That's not a real mother, or dad. You'll go get him and turn him over his arm, and give him a little posterior protoplasm stimulation. It'll fix him up just right, see, if you bring him in.
But you ain't going to stay there, and say, "Now, Junior, dear... ," when you know the little fellow can get hurt! You love him. That's the reason I'm fussing. It's not trying to hurt some organization. It's, "Wake him up!" That's the truth.

51 So we find out that David said, Saul said, "Well, I tell you, if you're going to fight him, I'll..." And he put his armor on him. Huh! I imagine little David, probably about five foot tall, and stooped shoulders, and this shoulder pads out about like this, and this steel... Saul finally said, "Take the thing off of him."
Said, "I never proved this. I don't know nothing about your ethics, and your, oh, your pulpit manners, and things you're supposed to have," see. He found out that his ecclesiastical vest didn't fit a man of God.
Said, "Take the thing off of him. He knows nothing about it."
Said, "Let me go with what I know is the truth, where God has blessed me." That's right! Let me go with the Word; not with some educational program, or something somebody's cooked up somewhere. I know God's Word will never fail; other man's word will fail. And God's His own interpreter. Said, "Let's go like that. Let's believe it."

52 Doctor, no doubt, will give you the best examination he can, and helps you every way he can. But that's the best he knows. We know something different. When all hopes is gone, then He's the one that comes to help us.
We see this then, David---not with a bow and arrow, not with a... 'Cause you couldn't hit the giant nowhere. He just had one place across his eyes.
Just think, his big spear he had would probably weigh four hundred pounds. His fingers was fourteen inches long. And just think of the helmet, was over top of his head. And all this breast plate... And brave David had a little bitty rock, that's all he had. He had four more in his sling. Do you know what them five rocks meant? F-a-i-t-h in J-e-s-u-s. That did it, see. He had faith, you see---faith, grace. He was the grace of God.
And then he went to meet the giant. He only had one place, and God directed that rock. And when he slew that giant to show that it could be done, then the rest of the armies grabbed their swords and away they went. They fought them to the bottom.

53 Now, a few years ago they said there's no such a thing as divine healing. But when we stepped out to prove that there was, then the fire caught in the Pentecostal church, and we've had a fifteen-year revival. Brother, them critics that wanted to give a thousand dollars for any proof, they've shut up now, because it's proven. Doctor's statements, and everything---cancer, blind, deaf, dumb; even to them that's dead been raised up, because you've just received faith by seeing one thing done. God is. The whole thing's based upon that. Believe every word that He said. For healing ... I believe in the rapture, I believe in everything that He said. It's going to take place. It's called a paradox, something that was unscientifically, but it happened anyhow. It was a paradox.

54 Now my next thought was Samson, with his jaw bone of a mule. Very, very strange to see this guy Samson... A lot of people try to think that he was a... I seen the psychological effect, or picture of Samson with shoulders as big as a barn door. Well, that would be no strange thing to see that man pick up a lion and tear him apart. But Samson was a little bitty, curly-headed shrimp (as we'd call him), little bitty old guy, mommy's little boy, long curls hanging down his back.
And when you see ... now remember, when the lion run out to roar upon him, notice what happened, see. What happened? The Spirit of the Lord came on him. That's what made the difference. That's the reason they could bind him, one time, when the Spirit of the Lord didn't come to him. His Nazarite sign wasn't there. But as long as he could feel that Nazarite sign, let anything come what wanted to.

55 And that's the way it is with you Pentecostals. When you get to that ethicals part, when you get to that spot to where you want to listen to the creed, and so forth like that, I don't know about you then. But if you'll just come back to this Nazarite sign, the Holy Ghost working in you, everything's all right then. Don't be afraid of nothing. As long as the Holy Ghost is there to identify that Word, let them say what they want to. Yes, sir. God still performs paradox.
And we find out that Samson... Think of that. With an old brittle jaw bone of a mule, that had been laying out on that prairie there, for many years... And anyone knows you could hit it against a rock, it'd fly to pieces. And, "Samson, the Philistines is upon thee," and he looked around. He had nothing in his hands. And here was a thousand Philistines standing there.
So he just reached down and picked up this old jaw bone.

56 And you think of those helmets, was sometimes an inch-and-a-half thick over the top of their heads. And he took that mule's jaw bone and beat down a thousand Philistines, Did it! Them sticking up in the rocks, hiding, said, "You want some of it? Come on down."
It was a paradox. But the Spirit of the Lord was upon him. That's what made the difference. It was a paradox to see a man---with well-armed men, trained men to fight, with long spears, and knives and so forth, helmets and armors---and this one man standing alone out in the field with the jaw bone of a mule, and beat down a thousand of them. But it's the truth. The Bible said it was.
A man that could take the gates of Gaza, that weighed down there probably eight tons apiece, big brass gates... And they fenced him in one night. Said, "We'll get him." Said, "We'll comb every hair in here till we find him, and we'll get him." But this little shrimp come out about midnight, and looked out there and the gates was in his way. So he just picked them up and put them upon his shoulders, and walked up to the top of the hill, and sat down on them. It was a paradox.

57 You can't fence God in. You can't tie Him in nowhere. He's God. Sure. Great victories that he won, Samson... God used him, and made paradox. He'll use anybody as long as you'll take His Word, if you're ordained for the cause. If you're not, well, then just stay with the ones ... listen to the message, then.
Now we'll hurry. I see I got about ten minutes left.
The virgin birth was a paradox [Someone says "You've got till 10:30."] Ten-thirty. I'll try not to take all that. You've been such a nice audience everywhere. Now, I know I'm supposed to stand here, and make a speech to these Businessmen and so forth, but I can't make speeches. I don't know anything about it.

58 Only, I remember here, not long ago, Billy just before his conversion (he was with me), he said, "Daddy..." We was in a place to eat, and there was a song going on you know, like that. And he said, "Ain't that a pretty song?"
And I said, "What song?"
And he said, "Daddy, you know there's only one thing about you that's wrong?"
And I said, "What's that, Billy?"
He said, "The only thing you think about is Christ---that's all."
I said, "That's a compliment, son." Yes, sir. He thought he'd get next to me, you see; but that did. That's what ... I just know Him. That's all I want, and to know Him is life. And to know these other things, I don't know about it. It might identify me as a smart man. And I don't want to be a smart man; I just want to know Him. I know Him, as Paul said, in the power of His resurrection, that when He calls I'll come out from among the dead. That's all I want. I want my name on the right place.

59 Now, it was a paradox when God caused a woman to conceive. It was a paradox that how God, the Eternal that fills all time and eternity, could come down and become one little baby crying in a manger. That was a paradox. It was a paradox when He died at the cross. That was a paradox, to think that God would come human so He could die as a human, to redeem His own creation. He had to do that. There was nobody else. If that was anybody else besides God, see, if that was anybody else besides God, we're lost.

60 For instance, what if I had the jurisdiction over you as God had over everything? And I'd say, "Well, I tell you what. Anybody looks at that light's going to die. Like, take the tree." And the first thing you know, this brother sitting here this would look at that. I feel sorry for him; I don't want him to die. So I'll have Terry here to... That wouldn't be right. No. What if I'd have my own son to do it? That wouldn't be right. There's only one way I can be just, and that's take his place. And God could not take a human's place, being a spirit.
So, God created a blood cell which was His own son, Jesus Christ. And God came in and lived in there, and lived ... identified Himself in Christ. That was God Emmanuel. Jesus said, "I and my Father are one. My Father dwells in Me," see: God in Christ reconciling the world. Jesus was the body, the tabernacle; God was the Spirit that lived in Him.

61 Now, for instance, we have the Spirit by portion. He had it without measure. He was the fullness of the Godhead bodily---God. But we have it by measure. Now, for instance like the little gift that we have among us now. Now, that's like taking a spoonful of water out of the ocean. Jesus was the whole ocean; but this is just a spoonful. But remember, the same chemicals that's in the whole ocean is in this spoonful, only there's more of it out there, see.

62 He was God. We are not God. We are not God, but together...
If you notice, it was so beautifully illustrated, when that great pillar of fire that followed the children of Israel through the wilderness appeared to St. Paul. When it come down on the day of Pentecost it broke up and tongues of fire sat upon each of them. It was God in this pillar of fire, the Logos, separating Himself among His people, showing that Christ and the bride, see (God and His church), are becoming one. Why, it's just the most beautiful thing you ever seen. Then together, brethren... Not in different organizations we'll ever stand. I'm a Kentuckian. Together we stand, and divided we'll fall.
Why did the Indians lose this country to the white people? It's because they wasn't ... they was divided among themselves. How are we going to lose this great race? It's because we're divided. How we going to do it? We got to stay together. We're all believers in God. The Holy Ghost takes us all in. It'll be a paradox if God ever gets us together. But He will; just trust Him. The virgin birth... He knows how to send the persecution. It'll run us together. Now, the virgin birth was...

63 Now, Pentecost was a paradox, how that God chose a bunch of illiterate fishermen, that didn't even know their ABC's. There's told that Peter couldn't even sign his own name. The Bible said that he and John (Acts 4) was ignorant and unlearned. But yet they'd taken notice that they had been with Jesus. That's the main thing.
And how God chose! Now the church had trained up a bunch of men for that---thousands of fine, intellectual priests who knowed that Word, they said, from all the meanings of it, and everything---studied it day and night, just had it in their heart; and failed to see it. And God chose a bunch of men that didn't even know their ... how to sign their name.
That was a paradox, from taking a man who was trained for the Word, and by the Word; and take a man knowed nothing about the Word, and confirming the Word through him. That was a paradox, certainly was.

64 It was a paradox, how that them people up in that upper room, there, afraid of the Jews, and had walked with Jesus; but when the Holy Ghost came, they wasn't afraid no more. Out into the street they went, screaming, and falling, and acting like a bunch of drunk people. That was a paradox. The Holy Ghost came upon them---women and all. They wasn't ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It certainly was a paradox.
The old prophet's visions was a paradox. We can't explain a vision. How are you going to explain a vision? It's something that happens to the person, that he foresees things for years to come. And it happens exactly on the dot. That cannot be explained. There's no scientific way of doing it.

65 Here some time ago in a fuss with a doctor, when I was at a Kiwanis meeting, he said, "Mr. Branham, I don't ... I like to hear you talk," he said, "but I tell you," said, "I can't believe anything but what is scientifically proved."
I said, "You claim to be a Christian?
He said, "Yes. Some of it's puzzling to me."
Then I said, "Then, you can't be. You must believe all of it, see."
He said, "I can't believe the virgin birth."
And I said, "Well, I can believe the virgin birth better than I can believe the natural birth." Certainly can.

66 How ... if you'd ever see the natural birth, how that sperm from male and female, and where... Who determines what it's going to be? Here is the sperm from the male with the hemoglobin, the blood, in it. And here's the woman, which is the egg, up here. Now the first two that meets, the germ crawls into the egg, and the rest of them die. And there's tens of thousands times thousands of those germs.
And you say, "Well, the first in front."
No, no. They stop. And maybe it'll be a germ come up from the middle of the germs, and the egg come from the very back end, and they'll come across one another and meet. It's determined whether it's going to be a boy or girl, whether it's going to be red-headed or black-headed, what disposition it's going to be. Something unknown to science determines it.
If that ain't a paradox, what is? Point to point is the closest way around, we understand. But not that time. God determines it. Why, the natural birth---if we had time to break it down, even to the chemistry of the blood and so forth, and prove that out---my, it's a great mystery, how... We take it commonly.

67 And that's the trouble with these Pentecostals. We're taking God too commonly. The whole thing, we just let it pass by. Don't do that! That's not right; don't do that. Look at it, and praise God for it. Every little thing that takes place, give God praise. That's what He ... shows you appreciate. What if somebody keeps going things for you, you don't even thank him, or nothing, see? Then after awhile they get tired of doing that, see. So now, God will too. Now remember, He's able of the stones to rise children to Abraham.
Now, them visions of the old prophets were certainly paradox. We cannot explain them: they're without explaining. But every one of them happened just according to the way that they said.

68 Listen, right now in our midst, Jesus Christ is here. That's a paradox, how that He's alive after two thousand years. Who could explain that? How that He, that Spirit unseen, can come among us, and take an individual and identify Himself exactly, impersonate Himself in an individual---as you as a believer, and to a gift. That's a paradox. Nobody can understand that.
Nobody can know how perfectly He can just say to each person what it is, and what's this, and where's this, and what's that---never be mistaken. Because He's God, He can't mistake. That's a paradox. How is it that now, as I come in last night in hearing my brother, my field manager here, Mr. Borders, speaking---I just got the last part of it---about George J. Lacy taking a picture of that angel of the Lord. Search it. If that isn't the same pillar of fire that followed the children of Israel...
See, how do you know? It's got the same nature.

69 When Jesus was on earth He said, "I come from God, and I go to God." And we know that He was the I AM. And the I AM was that Logos, that pillar of fire.
And then, when He went back to God and ascended up on high, Saul of Tarsus was on his road down to Damascus, one day, and that same light fell in his ... before him, and blinded him. Now look, it's possible that one can see it, and the other one can't. Tens of thousands have seen it. When I used to tell about it, they'd say, "Aw, that's psychology. He just imagined that---them people just so under emotion."
But when George J. Lacy took that picture, he said to me that day over at Houston, there in the building, before all that "Times," "Life," and "Collier's," and all them other magazines, he said, "Mr. Branham, I'm one of your critics, too." He said, "But I want to tell you, I said it was psychology." But said, "The mechanical eye of this camera won't take psychology. [blank spot] The testator's dead, see." He said, "But some day after you're gone it'll be on ten cent stores." Said, "I'm in position to know there's never been a supernatural being that's been scientifically proven." But, said, "This is scientifically proven. The light struck the lens."
Then you see, the testimony that I've given since a little bitty boy, that I've seen that light before me always---and you know, you've read the books and seen the documented statements, see---it's the truth. Now I'm not here to deceive you.

70 I got a wife, I got a little boy ... called me the other night, on the phone, crying "Daddy, come home." How he'll cry, and go on, when he sees me leaving, because so many accidents in planes, and things like that. My little girls, and them ... why, they're Daddy's girls, see.
I get paid from my church. I never took an offering in my life. I don't ask people, and people gives me money. I put it in foreign missions, see. Some of my trustees are sitting present right now, knows that's true. I don't spend one cent of it. I take the gospel myself. And I get enough built in there, I take off overseas and preach to people.
It's you ... you're sponsoring them. They don't have one penny of money. And then when I go over there, then I go in and preach the gospel over there. The way's already paid by you Americans. You're building your home. You don't know nothing about it. But that day you'll understand, see. It's you doing that. I get a hundred dollars a week from my church, and that's right.

71 I don't have no reason to be out here, no other way. But it's something in me. I can't curse it or bless it. It's pulsation---it drives me to it. You think it's easy, standing here speaking against organizations? And see these brothers sitting here, brothers who stuck their neck right out to have me to come here?
Even my Christian Businessmen brethren, when I had to tell Demos about "thus saith the Lord," what was going to take place in that organization---which it did a few weeks ago by Brother Ford and them. Told them two years ago to watch what would happen, see. You're getting into it. You're going to make it an organization. When it does, then I'm through with it, that minute. It's been a oasis, because the people that minister come in, because that's their support, see. And then I get to bring the message, and plant the seed, everything I can.

72 It's not because I want to be different. If I'm that way, then I'm a hypocrite. Then God'll never work them things through a hypocrite. God identified in a hypocrite? Far be it from God. It has to be truth. But if we could just shake ourself a minute, and realize. And don't think it's some man---some man's got nothing. Some... God has to choose somebody.
Now, you historians here, did God ever use an organization? Never. Now, I want to ask you something else. When a man raised up with a message, and that organization organized the organization behind that message, it died right there, and God put it on the shelf. And it never did come to life. Now just ask. Ask yourself that question.
Now, see, now that's not talk against...

73 Now, these Catholic's: all my people are Catholic. I'm an Irishman, and all my people are Irish-Catholic, and they're fine people. And I'm not against the Catholic people; it's the system. I'm not against the Methodist, I'm not against the Pentecostals. It's that system that bars us out. We're that... See, we're working for one achievement here, and we're trying to produce God, the Bible. And they've already got their documents drawed, their form of religion, what they believe, and outside of that you can't cross it.

74 And you think it's an easy thing for me to stand here, and say that to brothers who love me? You think it's easy for me to bawl you sisters out, with short hair? You think it's easy for me to bawl you men out for letting your women wear shorts and things like that, when them women puts money in to support me, a missionary overseas? If there was no money went in the church, my children couldn't live. And somebody who's nice to you, kind to you... You think it's an easy thing for me to stand there, when I love people?

75 When I was a little boy, my father being a bootlegger, I was hated. Anybody who'd go downtown, I'd start talking to somebody. Nobody'd have nothing to do with me. The minute they'd see somebody else come along they could talk to, they'd walk away and leave me. And I always loved people.
When I was a little boy I studied, and reading my history book. And I was reading one day, and seen there where Abraham Lincoln got off of a train, down here in New Orleans. And they was auctioning off a big colored slave, down there, to breed him over to some bigger women to make better slaves. And Abraham Lincoln took his hat off, and twisted his fist (he was a Kentuckian, too). He said, "That's wrong. That's wrong."
And I still say it's wrong. God made man. Man made slaves. God makes us our color, just like He does the flowers. He has a white flower, a blue flower, a red flower. Let them alone. Don't hybreed it. Leave them alone; let them the way they are. They're all God's flowers. It's His bouquet. God made man, and man made slaves. We don't need to be slaves.

76 Like I said, this Martin Luther King's leading his people to a crucifixion. It's communistic. Sure it is. If them people were slaves, then I'd be down here fighting for them. That's right. But they're not slaves. It's a argument where they go to school or not. Won't go talking about that. I just thought I'd express it, see. All right. Notice, it's just the devil. Certainly.
We're all human beings; we all come from God. God by one blood made all nations. A colored man can give me a blood transfusion. His blood's just the same as mine is. Mine, just is ... I can give him one. Who am I to argue? He's my brother.

77 But I don't believe in marrying, and intermarrying them like that. I don't believe in a white... What business would a beautiful, young, intelligent colored girl want to marry a white man for, and have mulatto children? What would a fine, intelligent, colored girl want to do a thing like that for? I can't understand it.
And what would a white woman want to marry a colored man, with mulatto children? Why don't you stay the way God made you? Be content with such as you have, see.
Now, notice the virgin birth, and the prophets... All right.

78 Now, today, He's still alive. He's still here. He's proving Hisself by His Word. This Word is God. You believe it? Then this Word is 'lotted here for this day. There's got to be somebody come by, that that Word can become quickened, and make that Word live. That's when He was borned a virgin birth. It was unusual, out of the ordinary. These things are out of the ordinary. And He couldn't help it,

79 no more than Joseph could help being who he was.
Look at those four patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Abraham, calling; Isaac, election; (or vice versa) Abraham, election; and Isaac, calling; Jacob, grace; Joseph, perfection. Nothing against him. That's God working His way out.
Watch. Luther, Wesley, Pentecost, and the capstone, when the church and the Word becomes the same. Same thing exactly, perfectly. Everything in the mathematics in the Bible perfectly sets it. I wish I had a month here with you nice people. We could sit down and talk that over. We could run in, and out. If it looks spooky to you, you walk away and say, "I wonder." Many of them---not you, but many of them---say, "I wonder." You see, you just have to hit the end of it, and walk away---just enough that you can see, see? And that's the way that God calls His people. He always does it that way.
Notice, now.

80 Now, He's still alive today, a paradox. The pillar of fire identified among us scientifically---and it's still here, since plumb back in the wilderness with Moses. He's still the I AM. Not I was, or I will be; I AM---present tense---scientifically, and by the...
Notice this pillar that put the eyes of Paul out (Saul), and them men standing there didn't even see nothing about it. They didn't see it. But it was so bright to Paul it put his eyes out. He always was bothered with his eyes from then on, see. He put it... Now look, that'd be in the Hebrew.
And he said, "Lord, who are you?"
Now, would that Hebrew have called some kind of a spirit "Lord," that staunch man who was taught under Gamaliel, renowned teacher? And he knew that if it was Lord, it was the Lord that led His people out of Egypt. There was that pillar of fire standing there, said, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?"
Said, "Lord, who are you?"
He said, "I am Jesus."

81 Now here He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, see. He returned, and promised that He'd return in the last days. There He is, the Holy Spirit, see, returning in the last days to bring the people... Now look. Right at the end of the Jew and the Samaritan, this manifestation of the Word of God, knowing the thoughts that's in the heart, He showed that to them before they were taken away. And the veil over their face (that I was going to preach about tonight) had blinded them. They didn't see it.
Now, if He ... if He done that before, on them two races of people (which I say there's three: Ham, Shem, and Japheth), if He did that, and He lets this church here go in on intellectual conceptions, then He did wrong. But He's the same yesterday ... to Ham, Shem, Japheth, the same yesterday, today, and forever. And He promised to do it. So He's no respecter of persons.

82 And watch how Abraham come up through His signs and things, and the last sign that he saw done by God, was God, Himself. He saw Him in lights, and everything else. But God, Himself, was manifested in a human being, and eat and drink.
Some man said to me one time, (a minister, Brother Fox), he said, "Brother Branham, do you mean to tell me you think that one that eat was... That man stood there eating that calf, and eating cornbread, and the milk, do you think that that was God?"
I said, "Certainly. Abraham said it was. He was the one talked to Him. He ought to know it. He said He was Elohim." I said, "You ... see, He come down to make an investigation---as He is now in investigation judgment---to see who is believers. We've been hollering so much about it. Just investigating, see who really is believers, see. And He made Hisself manifest.
He sent the little wheat type down in there, like in the modern messages we hear in Babylon.

83 But watch what He done there to that church-elect. He give it a chance, too, see. See what I mean? And he's bought by...
My God? What did He do? You know we're made out of sixteen different elements of the earth: potash, and petroleum, and cosmic light, and what more. He just reached over and got a handful of atoms, and cosmic light, petroleum [Brother Branham makes blowing sound], and said, "Step into it, Gabriel." And made one to step into Himself. That's our God.
And when He give His message to Abraham, He vanished and turned right back to God again. All them atoms and things just broke up---like a fire breaks up the ashes and chemicals in the wood, or coal, or whatever you're burning---turned back to the unseen. I'm so glad my Father's like that.
See, I know after this body's become nothing that you can't see no more, just the chemicals where it was, some day He'll call and I'll answer Him. Yes, sir.

84 My wife said here not long ago... I was combing these two or three hairs I got left. And she said, "Billy, you know what? You're getting completely bald-headed."
I said, "I haven't lost a one of them."
She said, "Pray, tell me where they're at."
I said, "All right, sweetheart, I will when you do this: tell me where they was before I got them. Wherever they was before I got them, they're there waiting for me to come to them." Hallelujah!
That's my God! That's our God. Sure. If we're Abraham's children, we believe it. Yes, sir. He's our God. (I got to hurry.)

85 The pillar of fire is identified scientifically, and by the reaction, by its character, and everything else. Just the same as it was when it was dwelling in the body of God's only begotten Son, so does it dwell in the body of His adopted sons for the last day.

86 Now, I know, brethren, we've had a lot of this impersonation. But the Bible said it would happen, you know that. As Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, see, it's just got to happen. But don't let that that blind you. When You see a bogus dollar, remember it was made off of a real one, see. If it isn't, it's the original. But there is original Holy Ghost, original Christ, certainly. He is the Holy Ghost.
Notice now, and the pillar of fire---still alive today among us---after all these thousands of years, and still it's here. It's a paradox.

87 The seed in the ground is a paradox (and I'm going to close---about twelve minutes). The seed in the ground is a paradox. How that that little seed will go in the ground and die, and then when that little seed dies in the ground, then it... You might take a handful of the dirt and take it to the laboratory and examine it, you couldn't find that germ of life if you had to. There's nothing scientifically there, show it's there. But just let the sun rock around in its right position. Watch what happens. It comes from somewhere. It rises. That's a paradox. They can't explain it. See everything in it dies but the life, and the life is unseen. And wherever the little life is, it's supernatural. And the natural body's completely gone. But the supernatural still lives.

88 Now, if that little seed could be buried (now listen to me, friend), that little seed could be buried in the ground. And if that seed hasn't become germitized with the mate, I don't care how pretty the seed is, it'll never live, see. I don't care how pretty our churches get, how nice we try to dress, how fine and intellectual we become, unless we become in contact with the mate---and the mate is the Word---see, you can't rise. There's no way for you to do it, see.

89 You know, we take corn. We're living in a day of hybrid. Everything's hybrid, till they've even hybred the church. That's right. They've hybred the church from the Word to intellectual creed, denomination. Jesus never did say, "Go make denominations. He never did say, "Go build schools." Said, "Preach the gospel. Demonstrate the power of the Word of promise for the day," see. But we've hybred. Now we've got a prettier church.
You Pentecostal women---your mothers used to stand on the corner with no stockings on, little old wore out shoes (and them tennis), beating a tambourine. And the denominations laughed at her, and made fun of her. Dad stood there with ... needing a hair cut, and picking up corn on the road somewhere, to feed you kids. It's too bad you got away from it.

90 Now you got a bunch of Rickys in there that wants to come like the rest of them, like Israel did---wanted a king of their own. You wanted to make your own, see. And now what you got? A bunch of educated Rickys. That's right.
They got this intellectual ... they want to be like the rest of them, Dr. so-and-so, and Dr. so-and-so, see. And where's it got you to? You're more prettier. That's right. You're better churches.
But where's that spirit was in there? Where's them all-night prayer meetings for them sinning in the city? Remember, the Holy Spirit said in the last days, "Go seal those only who cry and sigh for the abomination that's did in the city."
Now I want you ministers to lay your hands upon that member of your church, you Pentecostal ministers. And then when you find it, then you come, and I'll apologize to you. You find that member of yours that can't rest day and night, for crying for the abomination of sin that's done in the city. Ninety percent of them stay home, and see "We Love Suzy," instead.
Oh, you speak with tongues, sure, jump up and down and shout. That's all right. Nothing against that. Nothing against your organization, either. But I'm trying to talk about life. Where's it at?

91 Now you show me that member. Look how worldly, how indifferent.
Always the outside expresses what's on the inside. By their fruits they're known. Where's it at? Now, I just ask ... just ask you a question. Before you condemn it, see, just ask that question. Fine.
See, now, I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to help you, see. I'm trying to help you. That seed must die. "When (a Jew) these Greeks come to Jesus and said, "We would see Jesus," Jesus ... what did He say? The first thing He said, "Except a corn of wheat falls into the ground, dies, it abides alone." He showed them how to see. And die to yourself, die to your ethics, your creeds, and all this. Just be born in the Word, into Christ. That's a paradox, to see it come forth. Yes.

92 I remember here not long ago, I was down in a little place called Acton, Kentucky, way back in the mountains, never been there before. A fellow named Mr. Woods and I... He was a Jehovah Witness. And he was at one of the meetings, and the Holy Spirit spoke. He had a boy with a crippled leg drawed up under him, like that. I was standing on the platform just preaching, and I looked, and I said, "I see a man sitting way in the back of the building." It was three times as long as this is here, a big tent. And I said... And we was up around ... oh, it's up on the Great Lakes.
And this man, I said, "He's got a boy. The man comes from Kentucky, way down in Kentucky. He's a contractor. His name is Banks Woods. He's got a boy that's got polio. His leg's drawed up under him." I said, "Thus saith the Lord, he's healed." So the woman stood there.
Now, there's just many people standing, right here this morning, my people, that knows David Woods. How many knows David Woods, knows? ... That's right. Right then he raised up, and his leg perfectly normal. That settled the Jehovah Witness problem. And besides that, by them same visions has led his whole people...

93 His brother come in to make fun of him, and just tear him apart. Said, "What are you doing, following some kind of a fanatic like that, some of these modern-day cults?" (A reader in the Jehovah Witness.)
He said, "Why, the man's out there cutting grass." And I had on a big old straw hat, and out in the field mowing. And I come in, sat down. He said, Brother Banks said, "This is my brother, Lyle."
And I said, "How do you do, Mr. Woods?"
Said, "How do you do?"
Oh, real arrogant. I sat there a little bit, and the Lord gave a vision. I said, "Mr. Woods," I said, "I suppose you don't believe this?"
He said, "I certainly don't." And he said, "There's no such a thing as things like that." Said, "It's just a bunch of make-up that you got my brother all mixed up in."
I said, "You know, the Bible said, 'One word against the Holy Ghost will never be forgiven'?" I said, "What... And Jesus was doing the same thing." See, he'd never seen it yet.
So he said, "I don't believe in no such."
I said, "All right. If you would believe in such, you'd go back to your wife that you've left."
He looked around at me. He looked over... Now, he didn't know that I was catching his thoughts.

94 How strange---people come around, see that on the platform, and think that you don't know just exactly... Why, He reveals things right around, see. But you can't say it. Jesus knowed Judas was with Him all the time. But just let it alone, 'cause there's a purpose of it, see. And just...
So he sat there, and he said... Looked around at Banks as if Banks told him (that's his brother). I said, "You've got two children---two little blond-headed boys." He looked back to Banks, see. And I said, "What are you thinking? That Banks told me that."
I said, "How about this? Night before last, you were running with a woman that's got auburn hair, and you was in a room. And in this room, there was somebody knocked on the door. And you sent her to the door because you was afraid. It's a good thing. You'd've got your head blowed off. Another one of her lovers was standing there with a pistol in his hand."
He said, "God be merciful to me."
God knows how. Now he's a sweet, staunch Christian. His father came the same way, his sisters, and all of them.

95 We were down in Kentucky, squirrel hunting between one of my meetings. I had two weeks. Got real dry. How many ever hunted squirrel? Oh, my brother, there's nothing like it. So, give me a .22 rifle in the middle of August, and I'm at home. How the Lord speaks out there, and know things, so forth.
Notice, then when it got real dry up on the ridges where we were at, he said, "I know an old man that's an infidel." Said, "He's got five hundred acres of just hills like this, and down in the valleys [hollers, we call them there] that you can walk, 'cause it's wet." Said, "We might get to some squirrels." Said, "But he's a rough old fellow."
I said, "Well, let's go down and see him."

96 So about a couple months before that---how we knowed the place was there---I had a meeting on the Methodist Camp Ground at Acton, Kentucky. And that night, while the Holy Spirit was making discernment, there was a woman sitting way back in the back of the grounds. And it called her name, and said, "You got a sister that's dying with cancer of the stomach. She's just been to Louisville, and they opened her up. The cancer was wrapped so around her that they couldn't operate. And it's Mrs. So-and-so." She raised up and started crying.
I said, "When you left home tonight, on a marble top dresser you taken a little handkerchief, and you put it in your purse. It's got a little blue figure in the corner," see.

97 You say, "How ... that sounds very..." Well, how about Jesus telling where that fish had the coin in his mouth? How about the prophet telling the man that the mules had returned back? See, you just... The devil has an impersonation, yes. But you never hear of one of them preaching the gospel and getting souls saved. See, by ... see. You ought to know better.
So then, we find out, told her that, to "take that handkerchief and lay it upon your sister. For thus saith the Lord, she'll live."

98 Well, I don't know whether you ever knowed Brother Ben (I forget what his last name---Bryant, that's right), Ben Bryant. Oh, my, you'll never... You'll always know him, if you ever see him once. If he'd been here, he'd been screaming, throwing his hands and feet in the air like that, screaming. So one time... Then he went with this woman, put it on her (handkerchief), and put the handkerchief upon her up there.
And about two years later, when we went squirrel hunting, he said, "Let's go down into that..." Yeah, that was that same country, about twenty miles from where we were. So we went down there, and drawed way back over the hills, and down the hollers, and up though a broom-sage patch, and over this way, till we come to a big old house. And there sat two old men, sitting under an apple tree, and their old slouch hats pulled down. He said, "That's him, and, boy, he's a rough one." Said, "He's a terrible ... an infidel."

99 So we stopped, and I said, "You better go talk to him then. He know I'm a preacher, he wouldn't let us hunt at all." So he said ... walked up there and stopped.
He was standing there with a big chew of tobacco in his mouth, and it running all down through his beard, standing there. So he got around, and said, "Hello, come in."
So he got up there, and he said, "My name is Woods." He said, "I'm Banks Woods." Said I ... we been ... me and my friend's been hunting over here," said, "for a few days up here around Acton." He said ... and said, "I," or, "It's so dry," said, "We can't get into the woods. The squirrels are so scarce." Said, "I know your place is posted, but I thought maybe I'd come ask you, you'd let me hunt."
Said, "What Woods are you?"
He said, "I'm Jim Woods' boy." That's the Jehovah reader, the Witness reader, see.

100 He said, "Old Jim Woods is one of the most honest men you ever [they lived in Indiana then]," said, "...most honest men that there ever was in this country." Said, "I can certainly trust you not to kill one of my cows, or start a fire." He said, "Just help yourself." Said, "Go ahead and hunt anything. I got five hundred acres here. Make yourself at home."
"All right. Thank you." He said, "I guess it's all right for my pastor to come, too."
He said, "Your what?"
Said, "My pastor." (Am I taking too long?) He said, "My pastor."
And he said, "Woods, you don't mean to tell me you got so low down till you have to carry a preacher with you wherever you go." And he said...
I thought it was about time for me to get out then. So I got out of the car and walked around, and said, "How do you do?"

101 Looked at me, and washed his tobacco around, you know, and spit down like that. He said, "And you're a preacher, huh?"
I said ... looked, squirrel blood all over me, and whiskers (hadn't had a bath for two weeks, you know.), and laying in the woods sleeping, you know. And so, I said, "Might not look like one, but," I said, "I am."
And he said, "Well," he said, "at least I can respect you looking like a human being." He said, "You look more like a preacher than some."
So I said, "Well, thank you, sir."
He said, "I'm kind of against you fellows."
And I said, "I understood from Mr. Woods you was."
He said, "You know, I'm an infidel---I'm supposed to be."
And I said, "Yes, but I don't think that's anything to brag about, do you?"
And he said, "Well," he said, "I don't know." He said, "I think you fellows are barking up the wrong bush." (And you know what that means? A lying dog, see. The 'coon ain't up there, see.) So he said, "I think you are barking up the wrong bush. There's nothing up there, and you all are just lying about it."
I said, "'Course, that's to opinion."
And he said, "Yes, I guess that's the way you think it." He said, "Looky here, Mister." Said, "See that old chimney up there? That's where the old house. I was borned up there. My pappy built this house down here," he said, "about seventy-five years ago." Said, "I was raised right here, walked over these hills. I've looked everywhere, up in the skies, all around. I ain't seen no God, no angels, or nothing else."
I said, "Well, that's to opinion."
And he said, "I never seen one here but what I thought was lying." He said, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, Mister."
I, well, am I going to go hunting, or am I going to really trim him down? So I thought I'd just give him... Mama always said give a cow enough rope, it'd hang itself, see. So I said, "Yes, sir. That's right."
He said, "I met ... I heard of one preacher one time, that if I ever meet the guy, I'm going to talk to him." Said, "He might've had something."
And we talked a little while, you know, and I said, "Who was that?"
Said, "There was a fellow..." said, "what was his name? He was up here at Acton. I believe they called him ... I forget what his name was. Branham!"
I looked over to Woods, and Brother Woods, said, "Huh-huh."

102 And he said, "You know, the ... old lady Casmo lives up here on top of the hill." And said, "We taken her to the doctor in Louisville, and said she had cancer, and they just sewed her back up." Said, "The doctor gave them medicine to give her keep her quiet till she died. And she was then just about time for her to be gone." Said, "She couldn't even raise in the bed." Said, "We had to pull her bed sheet out from under her, she couldn't put her on the bed pan, see, right from under her." Said, "Wife and I'd go up and clean up her bed every morning."
And said, "There was a preacher from way out yonder, somewhere in Indiana." Said, "He come down here, and he had a meeting up there." And said, "That man stood there that night, and told her sister So-and-so of a handkerchief she had in her pocket." Said, "Put it on."
And said, "They brought a bunch of them holy rollers over there," and said, "I thought they had the Salvation Army up on top of the hill that night. (That was old Ben crying out like that, you know.)
So he said, "I said, 'Well, you know, she died. Said 'That's her family.'"

103 You know how it is back in the country. They just have one another; and they love and live for one another. It's too bad we don't do that around the big cities.
So they said, "We ... and if was going to die..." Said, "I thought, 'Well, that's her.'" Said, 'Well, it's late, we can't get her body out till morning.' Said, 'I'll get my wagon. I'll go up there and get her, and haul her out so we can take her to the ... over to Campbellsville, Kentucky, about forty miles from there, to the undertaker.' Said the undertaker had to come to the main road, which is about eight miles---ten miles out. Said 'He can pick her body up from there.' Said, 'No need of goin' over there tonight, They'll just be crying.' Said, 'We'll just wait till daylight.'"
Said, "You know, the next morning when I went up there, that woman had cooked some fried apple pies, and her and her husband sat at the table eating them. And she was living on barley water.
I thought "Uh, oh." I said, "Oh, now---now wait a minute." I said, "You don't believe that."
He said, "And you don't believe it?" He was the one that said it.
I thought, "Old boy, you're going to preach to me now."
He said, "You don't believe it?"
I said, "Man, do you mean to tell me that such a thing as that could happen in all these scientific age, where they have the best doctors?"
He said, "If you don't believe it, I'll take you up there and prove it to you." Now the infidel is preaching to me about God.
I said, "Well, you a ... you mean that?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Well, what was it?
He said, "I want to... If I ever meet that man, I'm going to ask him what in the world it was that told him about that, and how he knowed that woman would be well," see. Said, "I'm going to ask him about that."

104 I said, "Uh, huh." I said, "Well, that'd be a good thing." And I said, "Say, do you mind if I have one of them apples?" And it was laying on the ground (fall of the year, you know, second week in August), and the leaves was dropping off the tree. And the apples was there---nice apples. And I picked it up and rubbed it on these old dirty pants, and went to eating it, you know like that.
He said, "Yeah, help yourself. The yellow jackets are eating them." How many knows what a yellow jacket is? So he said, "The yellow jackets eating them up. You can help yourself."
So I said, "All right." So I went to eating, and I said, "Boy, it's a fine apple."
He said, "Oh, yes. I planted that tree there myself, fifty years ago."
"That's strange." I said, "Hey, you know we're going to have an early fall." I said, "You looky there." I said, "Wonder why them leaves are dropping off that tree before we even have a cool night. August's the hottest."
"Oh," he said, "the life left it."
"Oh, is that what does that?"
He said, "Yeah, they're turning yellow and dropping off."
I said, "Where'd the life go?"
He said, "It went down into the root."
I said, "Well, how ... what'd it do that for?" See.

105 He said, "Well, it's because, if it don't go down in the root," he said, "the winter'll kill the tree. The germ of life is in the ... in the sap that's in the tree, and it goes down in the roots."
What a beautiful testimony there, see, of death, burial, and resurrection again, see. Now, I said, "Then it ... what happens then? Does it stay down there?"
He said, "No, no."
I said, "Comes back the next spring, and brings you another bunch of apples. And you sit there and eat them."
"Yeah."
"And then you say you never seen God."
He said, "Well, that's just nature."
I said, "Is that right?"
"Yes, sir."
I said, "I want to ask you something. If it's just nature, tell me what intelligence warns that tree? That sap in the tree, it has no intelligence of its own. But what intelligence runs that sap down to the roots, say, 'Get down here and hide in the depths of the earth, now, till all the trouble's past. Then I'll bring you back up again.'? Tell me the life that was in the leaf... Just the body dies; the leaf dropped off. The life itself went down, coming back with the new, see." I said, "The life hid, went down in the ground."

106 Job, as I said last night, "Oh, hide me in the earth, till thy wrath be past." He seen the tribulation coming, of course, see. Notice, he said, "Hide me."
He said, "Well, that's just nature."
And I said, "Mister," I said, "if I put a bucket of water out here on the post, and then every August that water run down to the bottom of the post, and then in the spring of the year it come back up in the bucket again?"
He said, "Oh, oh, no. It don't have any life."
I said, "There you are. Now you got it. See, it's life. Now I said, "See, that's God."
He said, "You know, I never thought of that."
I said, "Tell me what does that?"
He said, "I don't know. I don't know what does it."
I said, "If nature," I said, "well, who controls nature? Is nature an intelligence? No."
He said, "Well, I never had thought of it just like that."

107 I said, "I tell you, I'm going out here squirrel hunting, if it's all right."
Said, "Help yourself."
"Now," I said, "when I come back, when I come back---you study real hard now---and when I come back you tell me what intelligence that tells that life in that tree to go down in the root, and come back next spring; and I'll tell you what, the same thing, that told me that woman was going to live up there that had the cancer.
Said, "Told you?"
I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "Are you that preacher?"
I said, "Yes, sir. I'm Brother Branham."
And there under that tree that afternoon, by a simple little thing like that, I led him to Christ, tears running down his cheeks.
A year later I went down. I pulled my truck up in the yard. They'd moved away. He was gone. He'd died. And when I come back the lady was standing there to give me a bawling out for hunting on posted ground. He'd told me to hunt any time I wanted to. She wasn't ... didn't hear him say that.
So I come up, and I said, "I'm sorry." I said, "I come here early this morning, and parked the car here where you could see it."
Said, "That an Indiana license on there?"
And I said, "Yes, ma'am." I said, "Your husband..."
Said, "My husband's been dead almost a year." And she sat peeling apples on the back porch, off that same tree. And I said, "Well, he told me before he died..."
Said, "I don't believe it."
I said, "I was sitting right out there one day." And I said, "And I come up, and I was talking to him. They said he was an infidel."
She dropped that apple and looked at me, and said, "Are you Brother Branham?"
Said, "Yes, ma'am."
She said, "Forgive me." She said, "Forgive me." She said, "He died shouting, both hands up in the air praising God, knowing, as that leaf come back, he'd come back again." See, a paradox, unexplainable.

108 Sat and eat some ice cream (just in closing), sat and eat some ice cream not long ago. An old druggist told me, said, "You know, Brother Branham, I got... Do you believe in paradox?"
And I said, "Yes."
He said, "I heard your message one time on a tape, 'A Paradox.'" He said, "Many years ago during the depression," said, "people on county, on relief, had to come get an order," and said, "to get their medicine." And said, "They had to stand in long lines." And said, "One day a strange thing..."
He said, "I was sitting back here reading a paper, and my young boy," he said, "he was up there."

109 And said, "A little woman been standing in line out there. Since she was to be mother, you know, any time, she had to get some medicine. The doctor prescribed it. Had to get the prescription filled."
So said, "The (boy) or, the mother couldn't stand up no longer. He brought her up there. Said, 'Sir, I'm going to stand in line. I got to take my wife home,' see. Said, 'Can I take her home? The doctor said to have this medicine this afternoon, and she can't stand any longer.' Said, 'Can I, can I get this prescription filled? See, I got the order here, I got this ... just get a note to say that I can do it.' And said, I'll bring it right back to you.'
"And the young boy ('course, in times of depression, you know), he said, 'I'm sorry.' He said, 'I can't do that.' Said, 'We got orders not to do that.' Said, 'I can't do that.'"
And said he just happened to turn around and listen to what it was, and looked up there. And that poor little woman---her mouth white, and holding against the side of the wall, like that, and her husband standing there just as nice as he could be---he said, "Wait a minute, son."

110 Said, "I went and got the prescription, filled it, brought it back." Said, "Brother Branham, when I went to hand it out," he said, "I looked, and I put it in the hand of the Lord Jesus." He said, "I rubbed my eyes, and I looked again." And said, "He was the one reached out, and got that prescription." Said, "Do you think I'm beside myself, Brother Branham?"
I said "Oh, no. 'Insomuch as you have done it unto the least of these my little ones, you have done it unto Me.'" A paradox---sure it was. It fulfilled the Word.

111 There's many paradox we could talk about. But, dear friends, as we close let's think of this. There's one great one coming, the rapture. Let's all be ready for that one there. Let's condition our souls now, before God, that when that time comes that we'll go.
When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound,
And time shall be no more,
The morning breaks eternal bright and fair.
And when our chosen ones are gathered
To their home beyond the sky,
When the roll is called up yonder,
Let's all be there.

112 I sat at the table this morning looking at you. You know, we may never eat another breakfast together. Do you know that? This may be the last time we'll ever eat breakfast together. But there's one thing sure: by the grace of God, we're going to eat a supper together one of these days.
I'll look across the table there and see you. And I'll say, "Remember when we was down at Tampa?"
"That's when I made my full surrender."
And my! 'Course tears will run down our cheeks. Then the King'll come out in His beauty, wipe all tears from our eyes and say, "Don't cry anymore, children. It's all over. Enter into the joys of the Lord that's prepared for you since the foundation of the world." Let us bow our heads.

113 Heavenly Father, our time element means so much, Lord. We're just earth-bound. And just a few minutes here and there, just runs out on us. And when we talk with You, we believe that we are risen with You now, sitting in heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. And You're with us, this morning. We're conscious of that. We know that You're here.
And we're speaking on the subject of paradox. That's the supernatural. It's a paradox that you ever saved a wretch like me. How that all my people---sinners---raised in the backwoods, a cocklebur---how'd you ever make a grain of wheat out of it, Lord? Paradox.
Most of my people dying with their boots on, fighting, guns. O God! But Your grace saved me. I'm ever grateful, God, forever grateful.
I pray for others, Lord. If I could... If they could just know this wonderful person, Christ. When I see them, Lord, as they sit back with an intellectual conception of it, and really don't know what the person Christ is---Lord, make it real to them. Help these fine bunch of men, Lord, my brothers. These ministers and Businessmen, who in this great hour of darkness, they've identified themselves, Lord, their convictions. Even sometimes against the better thinking of their organizations, they want it anyhow. Bless them, Father. Bless each one.

114 Now, while we have our heads bowed, I wonder this morning if there's any here that's not sure that the little leaf---that you're making shade for somebody else---if the life should leave it to go back to the ground, would it rise again? Is the seed germitized with the mate that would make it come back again? If you're not absolutely sure of that, friend, let us pray about it now.
You know what the life is? It's the Holy Spirit. If you haven't received that Holy Spirit in you, which is the life that was in the first plant that raised up, see---Christ, first fruit of those who slept... Now, if that life that was in Him (that same Spirit) is not in you, no matter how nice you try to be, you can't come forth. There's nothing there to raise you up. You can take corn, hybreed it with something else, it won't bear no more. It's finished.
If you just belong to church, and you're really not filled with the Spirit of God...

115 I know it's hard to make a stand now, 'cause they call you everything. That don't matter. They called Him the same thing. And all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. They persecuted the prophets which was before you. They do it today. They persecuted those who believed the prophets that was before Him. So will they do to you.
If you're not sure of it, with your head bowed and your eyes closed, I'm going to ask you one more thing to do. Please understand me. Bow your heart, will you? Just bow your heart for a minute. And you say, "Brother Branham, [nobody looking but God and I], I, truly, I'm a little in doubt whether I'd come up again. Will you remember me in prayer?"
Now, we can't make no altar call. I'm only ... if you just raise your hand. Just raise your hand and say, "Remember me, Brother Branham." God bless you, and you, and you, and you, and you, you, yes. Thank you.

116 Heavenly Father, little simple words, but yet the great Holy Spirit's near. He even knows the secret of the heart. And they've raised their hands that they're not sure. But yet, they believe You. They want to. And they ... this, that, they haven't got that... They just don't know how that road will be---down the limb, out of the branch into the limb, out of the limb down into the trunk, back up again. You're the guide, Lord.
Like on a hunting trip, if you don't call ahead and make arrangements for the guide, you can get lost. And we're calling ahead now, to the guide of life who said, "I am the resurrection and the life." You know the way, Lord, and I'm writing you this little letter in the form of prayer. And they're writing the same thing. Receive them, Lord.

117 They want to make reservations for the rapture, that great paradox. They've been in the meeting this week, and they've seen Your presence, and they know You're here. They're not that starchy, to think that... Men who bring messages are not angels; they're men. And we know that You work through men. And I pray now, that their reservations will be made this morning.
You said, "He that will confess Me before men, him will I confess before my Father and the holy angels." When that day comes then, You'll guide them over the river. Out of the branch, down into the vine, into the root of the tree, if You tarry; then bring them back up again in that great paradox at the end of the road. They're yours, Lord. It's between You and them. I pray, Lord, if they've never been baptized in Christian baptism, that they'll do that. And then they'll be filled with the Holy Ghost, the life that will guide them. For it's in the name of Jesus Christ we ask it. Amen.

118 Thank you for Your kindness. Way overtime, and I feel that I'm responsible. If there's any difference to be paid than what there was for the hall this morning, I'll pay it myself. That will make it right.
I love Him, I love Him,
Because He first loved me;
And purchased my salvation
On Calvary's tree.
Notice the form of the rapture, how it will be. We meet one another before we meet Him, 'cause He knows that when we got there, I'd be wondering if you were there, you wondering if I were there. But the Bible said, "We which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord shall not prevent [or hinder] those which are asleep. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, and be caught up together with them." Oh, what a worship it'll be that time! Now, caught up together with them. Now, if we become part of that before that time comes, catching up into the rapture...

119 Let's just shake hands, just for a moment. Then we'll be dismissed officially, just in a moment. While we sing "I Love Him," let's just shake hands with one another and say, "God bless you, brother; God bless you, sister."
I love Him, I love Him,
Because He first loved me;
And purchased my salvation
On Calvary's tree.
God bless you, brother. Now let's just raise up our hands and close our eyes. Now, real sweetly,
I love Him, I love Him,
Because He.........