Judging Him Faithful Pt.3
I PETER 4:19
19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.
There will be times in our lives of which God will allow us by His will to through a portion of suffering (“Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God”) – and our response to that is to commit your soul to God as unto a faithful Creator. We need to trust Him during those times of when there appears to be only one set of footprints in the sand of where our human reasoning can’t understand it.
II THESSALONIANS 3:3
3 But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.
This word “stablish” means to strengthen and establish - like with Abraham and Sarah, after it seemed like the promise of God had failed them, then they were strengthened by God and established in the promise)
LAMENTATIONS 3:22-23
22 It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
(The English Standard Version bible writes) The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
We want to try to finish this thought today of what we have been dealing with over the past few weeks of how that people can often question God’s faithfulness in their lives – of when it appears to them that God has let them down in some way, of how He could have stopped this bad thing from happening in my life, or he did a no show when I was at my lowest point, like how we saw with Martha and Mary when Jesus did a no show and let their brother die when they knew that he could have easily saved him.
*And part of the reason for this is that we expect God to act and bring deliverance to our problems in the way that our human reasoning has got it all worked out of how He is going do it according to our human wisdom and desire – and when He fails to do it our way, then as humans we feel that God has let us down, and so then by our misunderstanding of His higher thoughts and ways, we can become disappointment in God of which can lead us into a deep-seated feeling of doubting His character of being faithful.
Like the old saying – “We don’t see things the way they are, we see things the way we are”.
**History has proven that if someone proposes a new thought or some new scientific idea that is eventually proven to be true (like how Galileo propose that the earth revolved around the sun), then there are three stages that they will go through before that truth is accepted.
The first stage is that the majority will laugh and ridicule it as crazy and false, then secondly, it will be violently opposed. Then thirdly, it will be accepted by the majority as truth and self-evident.
*The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 –1860) stated by his observations of human nature that - “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
**By the dictates of human nature, everyone wants to follow some great person, especially when that person appears have natural charisma and can speak well and perform well on stage, because there is something of the nature man and that is attracted to that (to strong leadership), because we are design by God to be led by something.
*And so Man wants to follow something of what he perceives as being great and powerful, but of which often has the tendency for pride to be involved as a part of the underlying motivation – in other words, it’s got to “LOOK GOOD” or we are not all that interested. Popularity and pride are often at the root of these things.
*But God does not play that game, and He does not revealed Himself through the pride of man, but He reveals Himself in the humility of man, and even in man’s failure.
*Jesus dying on a cross didn’t look like a great ending in victory to anyone looking on at that time – but yet it was the greatest victory of all heaven and earth, and it came by humility and what looked like defeat.
**And so this is what we see when we get to a place of where Martha and Mary arrived at after the death of their beloved brother Lazurus. It was at the end of when all human hope has been removed, of where things look to be at their lowest point of failure – of where it could not have gotten worse.
Of where man’s glory and showmanship had long since passed.
Of where the first and second pull of a healing campaign ministry of Jesus had ceased and it looked like the power of God had left them and all hope had long passed – then that is the place of where God is attracted to, and that is the time of which He places as a great thing of where He can now show Himself against the backdrop of the blackness of human weakness and failure.
JOHN 11:21-22
21 Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.
22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.
This is showing us the level of faith that we are to come into in this day before the resurrection can take place in this hour – a faith that can judge Him faithful under the most unreasonable conditions of the human condition of where it would look like that God has failed and forsaken us.
THE.END.TIME.EVANGELISM_ JEFF.IN V-10 N-5 SUNDAY_ 62-0603
224 …It's always in the weakest moments, when it looks like the true message is about defeated; that's when God steps in. He--He let's the message and the messenger get to the end of the road (See?), then He comes in, and He rides the high waves.
This was also Paul’s (The first church age messenger) experience in the bible.
II TIMOTHY 4:16a
16 ¶ At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me:
*We began to talk about this of what we finished up with last week… And so we want to pick up with this again and ask ourselves – how could this have been good for Paul if everyone had forsaken him?
*How could it be good for six million Jews to be slaughtered unjustly in the Holocaust?
*How could it be good for Lazurus to die?
*How could it be good for little Sharon Rose to die as an innocent little baby?
*How can it ever be good when we pray for our loved ones and they die?
*When Brother Branham had the car accident that eventually claimed his life –all over the world everyone was praying desperately for his recovery, but he just died as if God had simply taken no notice of all those prayers – but in the higher thoughts of God. He had something far greater for us. And this is always the case, because His “no’s” are just as great (if not greater) than His “yeses”.
How could it be good for t Brother Branham to have to leave his home town of Jeffersonville and go out and live in the desert?
There is a great song that was penned by George Matherson (1842-1906) called “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”. And it was written on the evening of his sister’s marriage (June 6th, 1882) when George was just 40 years old.
The story goes that his whole family had gone to the wedding and had left him behind and alone. He later writes of that evening of how he had experienced going into an immense mental anguish of sadness and hopelessness.
20 years before at the age of 20, he had been engaged to be married, it was then that the doctors told him that he was going to be totally blind for the rest of his life, and that there was nothing they could do.
When he told the news to his fiancée, she decided that she could not go through life with a blind husband, and so she broke off their engagement, and so from that time his sister had taken care of him, but now she was going also.
Up to that stage of his life, he had been preaching to over 1500 people each week at a church of where he was the pastor, but he was only able to do this because of the care of his sister, and now she was being married and would soon be gone, and so his dilemma was, who would care for him now, a blind man? “No one cares for me – maybe even God doesn’t care for me either, because if He really loved me and cared for me, then surely He would not be letting all this happen to me.”
And not only that, but his sister’s marriage had brought a fresh reminder of his own heartbreak over his fiancé’s refusal to “go through life with a blind man.” *And so it was in the midst of these circumstances and of his intense sadness that the Lord gave him the words of this great hymn that came like a dictation of which he received all four verses within 5 minutes, and of which later he did not have to edit a single word.
O Love, that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in Thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O Light, that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy, that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to Thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross, that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from Thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
**Last week we began to show how that Paul’s ministry looked to others like the power of God had left it. They thought he was all washed up, and that God’s faithfulness had ceased in his life, because Paul had seemed to have become so weak and powerless to what he had been at the beginning.
*The coppersmith had run him out of town.
*He had left his friend sick.
*His companion Demas had forsaken him.
*He only had one coat (and so on), and then he was soon to have his head chopped off.
And then in 1962, Brother Branham parallels all of this with his own life.
He was rejected - all the denominational doors that had once been opened had been closed. He barely had one suit to wear. He had the government after him for a sham tax case that they were trying to falsely pin on him – on and on we could parallel his experience with Paul’s.
THE.END.TIME.EVANGELISM_ JEFF.IN V-10 N-5 SUNDAY_ 62-0603
224 …It's always in the weakest moments, when it looks like the true message is about defeated; that's when God steps in. He--He let's the message and the messenger get to the end of the road (See?), then He comes in, and He rides the high waves.
*But yet during all that time, God had used Paul to write most of the letters of the New Testament of which was the opening of the word by a prophetic gift.
And so when Brother Branham gets towards the end of 1962 (on the 8th and 9th of September 1962), he preaches a series of 3 services at his home tabernacle of which we have spoken of. On the Saturday night he preaches “Present Stage of My Ministry”, then “Countdown” on the Sunday morning, and then “In His Presence” on the Sunday evening.
*So we see a pattern - First there is a rejection of what it looks like everything has failed and that God’s power had left the people of God. But then the chemicals of the word are made available in order for a people to be able to put that word together to produce a faith to meet the challenge for the hour. **And in this hour, we have been given the chemicals of the word that are able to create a power for us to leave this earth by a “Countdown” so that we can go into “His presence”.
**And so the third pull phase of Malachi 4’s ministry was going to contain material that (when we are able to put it together by revelation) it will unlock the reality of a resurrection and enable us to be able to leave the world and go to another world and into the presence of God.
*Job’s lowest point ushered him into the presences of the Lord of which he caught the revelation of the coming redeemer and of his new body.
*The Jew’s of the holocaust went into the presence of the Lord after what seemed like their lowest point.
*Sharon Rose went into the presence of the Lord after the Branham family’s lowest point.
*George Matherson went into the presence of the Lord and wrote the song “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” after he had arrived at his lowest point on the night of his sister’s wedding.
*And so in 1962, we see that Brother Branham gets to the lowest point of his ministry – but then in March 1963, by the inspiration of God, the word is opened up by the loosing of the seven seals and the very presence of God is revealed.
**God’s thoughts and ways are always higher than our ways – and so just when you thought that God was being unfaithful, we find out that His faithfulness was actually far greater than what you could ever of imagine – GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS.
And this is why we want the mind of Christ to be in our mind – we want to fly up higher into the realms of the eternal thoughts of God of where we Judge Him Faithful even when everything looks weak in our lives.
**This is what we must learn, that what we think is the lowest point, then that is the time of when the greatest events of God take place.
**The opening of the word for this day was such a far greater thing of purpose for God then the platform public show performances of the healing campaigns that on the most part had been temporarily entertaining the people.
*And this is why God had to cause the public show part of Brother Branham’s ministry of his popularity to literally fall away in order for the attraction of the word to be able to take its full effect among the elect of God that are attracted to the word and not to just the stage performance – and this is what the vision of the rainbow trout was all about, because God’s ultimate program for this age was not to have perpetual stage performance prayer lines, but His great goal and purpose for this age is for a people to come into a maturity of a revelation of Himself in order to bring forth a resurrection and rapture.
BEING.LED.OF.THE.HOLY.SPIRIT_ MINNEAPOLIS.MN SUNDAY_ 56-0219
E-24 …He said, "I'll meet you in there and this time it won't be a public show." And the vision left me.
WHAT.IS.A.VISION_ CHI.IL V-2 N-9 SUNDAY_ 56-0408A
18-6 …He said, "I'll meet you in there, and this is the third pull, but nobody will know nothing about it."
And I said, "Well, I don't understand why in there. Why there?"
He said, "It will not be a public show this time."
And I said, "I don't understand going into that closet, like that."
And He said, "Is not it written by our Lord, 'when thou prayest, be not like the hypocrites who like to be heard before men, but enter into the secret closet and pray to the Father Who seeth in secret, and He Who seeth in secret shall reward thee openly?'" It's perfectly to the Scripture; every time it is.
**So Brother Branham’s ministry was changing from a public ministry to a private ministry, just as the bride’s ministry has also become a private ministry – all denominations have forsaken us also, the same thing happened to Jesus because after he was crucified, it looked like his ministry had all washed up. And notice after His first and second pull ministry had ended at the crucifixion (of which was the rejection of the word by the denominations of that time), then we find that there is no account of any more campaigns of public healing demonstrations.
**This is why, when we look at what we would call the “disasters” of our lives, and of what to us looks like our worst failures of when we are sure that we are all washed up, than these are the times that God is in control, and by His mercy will not allow us to be utterly cast down, but will use these low places of our lives to usher us into an even greater stage and ministry also, because “It is also Written”.
***In other words, our lives cannot fail but to follow the pattern of the word of the many other verses of the bible that are to be lived out in our lives – just like how the Holy Spirit told brother Branham to read the rest of 2nd Timothy 4, because that last portion of scripture pertained to his life also, and that was the present stage of his ministry of what he was living out – and so the light of the word explained the current event of his life of the stage of where he was along the road of his life.
***And so this is something quite deep here… Because in the bible, it looked to everyone around like the power had left the apostle Paul of which he once possessed in his earlier ministry, and we know that that was because God had something far greater that He wanted the people to move into.
**If God had allowed divine healing to have become our main focus and to function perfectly every single time we wanted it to, and in the way we wanted it to, then the reality is that we would all be stuck here in this pest house for the rest of eternity, because we would be mostly characterless like a little child that always gets its own way.
**But God’s thinking and purpose is much higher than our temporal mindset of our ease and comfort, and our desire for the path of the least resistance.
PRESENT.STAGE.OF.MY.MINISTRY_ JEFF.IN V-11 N-2 SATURDAY_ 62-0908
77 Now, we find out that Paul... Demas preaching with Paul, had seen Paul see a crippled man laying there, and said, "I perceive you have faith to be healed. Stand up on your feet. Jesus Christ makes you well." Had seen him heal the sick, and yet he leaves his friend Trophimus sick.
"Paul's lost his ministry." That's what Demas must have thought. "Why didn't he, if he had a gift of healing, why didn't he go up there and heal that buddy that stood by him so faithful? He said, 'I've left him up there sick. And I ain't got no coat, and I want you to bring me that coat along. And be careful of that coppersmith; he just ruined that meeting in the city. I had to leave the town. He put me in jail.'"
I imagine Demas said, "What kind of a preacher has this turned out to be?" See?
And, brother, they got a lot of them Demas spirits in the world today. They don't know what it's all about. See? No need trying to explain it to them, 'cause they won't get it anyhow. See, see? A servant of Christ follows the footprints.
…And Demas left him. All the rest of them left him. All of them left him. Paul said, "All men left me." Every one of them left him.
I say this. When a man stands true to the Word, not just in one meeting, but in every meeting, when a man stands true to the Word, the time will come when they'll leave him. Exactly. They did it. They did it to our Lord. They'll leave him when he stands for Truth. "All men has forsaken me." And now what do you think that Demas and some of them men thought, when we all know, that know the Scripture, that Luke was a doctor, and Paul, wherever he went took this doctor with him? And preaching Divine healing, and leaving his friend sick... So poor, that he had one coat... And let a man run him out of town, when he could smite a man blind. See, they thought he was washed up. But he wasn't. He was exactly in the bloody footprints. He was following on. I hope you're understanding. He said, "All men has forsaken me."
… 87 Demas, loving this present world, popularity of men. "Hello, Doctor Demas. I know you got your Ph..."
Oh, sure, they love that. Jesus said, "How you like to stand in synagogues and be called 'Rabbi,' and so forth." Said, "You only receive more damnation." See?
Now, we know when they seen this doctor following him, or with him, and Paul took Luke, said he said--said here, "Luke is--Luke is the only one hadn't forsaken." And Luke is--is good to him. But Luke is prosperous to him; he needs Luke for his ministry. And this doctor following a man around wherever he went, and preached Divine healing. And a man that preached Divine healing could heal the crippled, and raise up the dead, and everything else, and see mighty visions, and speak things that would come to pass, and left his own co-worker sick. And could've had a million dollars and built buildings worth tens of thousands of dollars, and big schools and things like that, and didn't even have but one coat to put on his back...
PRESENT.STAGE.OF.MY.MINISTRY_ JEFF.IN V-11 N-2 SATURDAY_ 62-0908
90 Demas said, "I ain't associating with a guy like that. He's just a--he's a low class of person. I'll go up with the denominational brethren. I'll go up where I'll be somebody."
I wanted to end with this last quote – because when miracles happen, if you notice, they always follow humility, and so this is very important for us to understand if we want to see more of the supernatural among us.
VICTORY.DAY_ SIERRA.VISTA.AZ SUNDAY_ 63-0421
320 I'm glad you got a little, humble man like this around you, who you got confidence in. Believe him; God will work miracles for you, among you.
*Sarah Judged Him faithful under the most humanly impossible conditions – then her body was changed back young again.
*Martha Judged Him faithful under the most humanly impossible conditions – then there was a body change that took place with Lazarus
*We must also Judge Him faithful in this hour, regardless of how impossible the conditions may appear to be - then there will also be a body change take place for this hour.