Growing in Grace – Pt.3
II PETER 3:18a
18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
ZECHARIAH 4:7
7 Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
The same revelation of grace that the early church preached will be restored to the church in the last days, but with a double portion of grace.
The early church received the new birth by the word for their day, but they went into the grave, but in last day, we have received the new birth by the spoken word seed of this message, and we will also receive a new body and not go into the grave, but be changed from mortal to immortality - a double portion of unmerited favour.
JOHN 1:14-16
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15 ¶ John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16 And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
Or in other words “grace upon grace”, like a double portion of grace in addition to grace already received – grace for rapturing faith, grace to leave this earth.
Growing in Grace – Pt.3
ZECHARIAH 4:7 (Read again)
7 Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it.
**The headstone is what caps the pyramid of the entire seven church ages of the body of believers who under their messenger have believed and manifested the word for their day.
This cap stone is Christ in the form of a people at the end of the seven church ages with a revelation of the fullness of the word in their hearts, and it is these people who will have a double portion of grace, not just to receive the word for their age, but to also be changed in their bodies from mortality to immortality. And that rapture process is taking place right now in a people that have received the grace of God through the seventh angel’s message in this day.
We have already received that first portion of grace like what Mary received at her encounter with the angel’s message at Christ’s first coming.
LUKE 1:30
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. This word “favour” is actually the word “grace”.
**As students of the message we know that the full mystery of Justification that wasn’t fully revealed in Luther’s day has now been fully opened to us through a prophetic ministry of this hour.
*And so we know that under the full revelation of Justification, that God not only has forgiven us, but that He doesn’t even remember our sin anymore to the point that we are just the same as if we had never sinned in the first place. **We are justified in that (in the mind of God) we never even did it in the first place – that is powerful grace.
JEHOVAH.JIREH_ LONG.BEACH.CA THURSDAY_ 61-0209
E-34 …God's Church is back in grace again. Not under the law and legalism, it's under grace and the promise of God, the true Seed of Abraham. He taken the law upon Himself and the law nailed Him to the cross--of what we must do, and must not do, and must do, and must not do.
*In the message Jehovah Jireh 1962, Brother Branham explains to us about the three covenants between God and man.
JEHOVAH.JIREH.1_ GRASS.VALLEY.CA JJ 37-72 THURSDAY_ 62-0705
39 Now, there had been two covenants. One of them was the Adam covenant. God made a covenant with the man, "If you will, I will." And he broke it. Then God made a covenant with Noah; that was the Noah covenant, and it was broke. (The Adam covenant, and the Noah covenant, both of these men were heads of a race – so that covenant applied to their offspring also)
Now, He's making the Abrahamic covenant. And the Abrahamic covenant, according to Genesis the 12th chapter, it was given unconditionally; therefore, it's eternal, because it's unconditional. Not "if you will, I will." He said, "I have. I've already done it." Not "I will do it"; "I have done it." Oh, that--oh, that--that bases faith. See, not... God's determined to save man. He make a covenant, "If you will, I will," he'd break it. Another one, "You will, I will," he broke it. Man can't keep his covenant (This is why as a human, you might try to make a covenant with God to be a good person, but then you will find that somewhere down the road you will break that covenant because no matter how hard you try, man simply can’t keep his side of the contract with God – Adam and Noah have already proven that. And then sometimes when a person fails God, they might even think that they’ve lost their salvation over it. The problem is that in your mind you are subconsciously thinking in the terms of a wrong covenant in your relationship with God, your thinking is in the channel of a works based covenant like of Adam and Noah instead of the unconditional covenant of God’s grace covenant), so God saves man by His grace, under a covenant that's unconditional, unconditional covenant. Oh, my. Never ending, that was all of it; three, perfect. Noah, Abraham, and I mean... Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Now, that's the reason we are Abraham's children, that covenant cannot be end, never end, because it is unconditionally. They... It isn't because you do something; it's because God did something. Not because you chose God; God chose you. Do you believe that?
**So God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham and his seed after him, because the first covenant with Adam was based on the condition of “The day you eat from the wrong tree, you will die”.
***The same thing in principle applied to Noah who was the head of a new race of people after the flood.
**Notice that the same way that the serpent broke the unity between Adam and his wife Eve by a false union, we see the same thing took place with Ham breaking the unity between Noah and his wife by a false union between Ham and his step mother in the same way as what took place between the serpent and Eve.
**And so it was a false union act between Ham and his step mother that caused the serpent’s seed to come over into the new world through Noah’s second wife who was from the lineage of Cain.
**Notice how that Adam’s sin resulted in the exposure of his own nakedness, and then also how that Noah’s sin in getting drunk resulted in the exposure of his nakedness. And how that Adam and Eve’s nakedness had to be covered by God, and how that Noah and his wife’s nakedness had to be covered by his two sons – it’s just the same pattern.
And then we see how that Adam’s sin brought a curse upon his seed also “By one man, sin and death passed into the whole earth”. And then a curse came upon Noah’s seed also because Canaan was Ham’s seed who was from Noah.
GENESIS 9:24-25
24 ¶ And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
*And so if you study these scriptural patterns closely, you will notice that God never intervening to stop the union between the serpent and Eve taking place, and you will also not find God stopping the union between Ham and his stepmother from taking place, but when God made an unconditional covenant with Abraham, and Abimelech went to touch Sarah in Genesis 20, you will find that God stepped in and intervened and stopped that false union from taking place. God told Abimelech that, “If you touch that woman, you are a dead man along with your whole kingdom.”
**So this covenant of grace with Abraham was a very different covenant to that of the first two conditional covenants of Adam and Noah, it was a new covenant based entirely on God’s grace, and it had nothing to do with Abraham’s good living.
**This so this is also how God deals with Abraham’s seed because Abraham was the head of a faith seed race of people. And this is why God will intervene in certain situations in your life supernaturally of which you would have otherwise been really messed up. This is the grace of God revealed in your life as it was in Abraham’s life.
**So understand this clearly, we know that Adam was the head of a race that fell by sex. And Noah was the head of a race of a second world that was also polluted by sex. So we can see that both of these races came by the flesh – by the seed of flesh through the birth and womb of woman.
But when Abraham was called, he was called to be the head of a race that was not going come by a fleshly seed through the womb of woman, but by a faith seed that came out of his faith – Abraham’s faith seed, a seed that would not come by sex but a seed that would come by the revelation of the word of God by Christ?
*So under the first two covenants God was dealing by ways of the flesh and on conditions of law, but under the third Abrahamic covenant, God was now dealing by the ways of faith by the revealing of His word – and not by sex and law anymore, but by the revelation of Himself. So Abraham was the father of many nations of his faith seed of the revelation of Christ in the hearts of people.
****So under this third and final and never ending covenant of grace, God was bringing forth His seed by a faith creation and not by a sex creation.
**That’s why today, Muslims hold on to Abraham, Christians hold on to Abraham, and the Jews hold on to Abraham. But yet the real ones are the royal seed of the faith of Abraham of the one that came and turned His back to the tent and opened up the mysteries to them, that is the true identification of Abraham’s seed in this day – it is His royal faith seed that in this day has seen the same event take place as our father Abraham saw in his day.
***Muslims can’t claim that, Christian Denominations can’t claim that, the Jews can’t claim that, but you and I can claim that.
EPHESIANS 2:8-9
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
**You are saved by God’s grace that comes by the revelation of the seed word for your day.
And so it is by the grace of God alone that God has reveal Himself to you by the word for your day, and so it has nothing to do with your works of your good behaviour no more than it was Abraham’s works.
*And so we want to reflect that grace of God in our lives by our desire to live the right sort of life that is pleasing to the Lord – and that is the true balance of the grace of God in your life, and if you fail at times like we find that Abraham did in Genesis 20 by giving his wife away to be pregnated by another man, then it is God’s grace that intervenes.
THE.INVISIBLE.UNION.OF.THE.BRIDE.OF.CHRIST_ SHP.LA V-2 N-15 THURSDAY_ 65-1125
277 … you're going to the Wedding in the sky. And you are wearing the wedding band of predestinated, unmerited grace, a wedding band of grace unmerited of your own. God did it, Himself. He knew you before the foundation of the world, so He slipped the wedding band on you There, put your name on a Book.
Let’s look at this quote from the message of “The Message of Grace”.
THE.MESSAGE.OF.GRACE_ JEFF.IN V-13 N-3 SUNDAY_ 61-0827
12 …Before the meeting closes today, may there be something happen, Lord, that would bring Your Presence so close to the people, that they would know that that same Jesus that walked in Galilee stands in the midst of His people, they might go away from here today with the same assurance that those who came from Emmaus that time. When they were on their road back, after walking with Him all day long, talking to Him, and Him talking to them, and yet they had little idea that it was Him.
O God, so many times we are like that. You speak to us in the setting of the sun, in the singing of the birds, in the rustling of the leaves, in the blooming of the flowers, in the hymns of the church, and we so little recognize that it's You. In the sick rooms in the hospital, many other places You speak to us and we so little realize that it's You.
***God has mysteries sealed up in everything that He made.
*There is a mystery in the eagle of his great wings and his great eagle eye sight. *There is a mystery sealed up in the Lion and in the Ox and in the Lamb and in the dove and in the great whale of the ocean, and in every animal and insect from the ant to the elephant.
King Solomon told us to go to the ant and consider her ways because there is a mystery sealed up in the ants.
*There is a mystery of God in every flower and in every tree because all the creation of God came from the thoughts of God so that every single one of his created works is showing us another portion of His great mind of His thoughts of who he is, and of the millions and millions of different insects and animals and bird life and fish life and trees and flowers, each one is individually showing is a different portion of a characteristic of the one great God and of His grace.
*Brother Branham tells us that grace and love are twin sisters – when you love someone, then you will show unmerited favour toward them.
THE.MESSAGE.OF.GRACE_ JEFF.IN V-13 N-3 SUNDAY_ 61-0827
136 Think of it. Love and grace is sisters, twin sisters. You can't have grace without having love. They're twin sisters. That's exactly right. Before you can have grace, you have to have love. Before you can actually show somebody a favor, you love them; right or wrong, you have to love them anyhow, or you can't. See? So love and grace is the same thing. They're just twin sisters (That's all.), love and grace. They were... We can't see one without the other. "God so loved the world, gave His only begotten Son." He shed His grace abroad in our hearts through the Holy Ghost. See? There's just nothing you can do without working one with the other. Grace, grace of God this is what saves us.
JOHN 1:17
17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
We would simply not know grace if it hadn’t been for law – the law of God was only given to Moses in order to show what sin was. God never intended for us to somehow stand perfect before him by obeying an endless number of rules and laws – he knew that that would never work.
LAW.OR.GRACE_ JEFF.IN V-26 N-7 WEDNESDAY_ 54-1006
40 Back in the time that God sent down the law, and was added to show us that these things were sin. But now, that law couldn't take away sin. It only magnified sin. See?
Because if there's no law says you can't do this, why, it's not... It isn't... If you commit or break that, that... You can't break it, 'cause there's no law to break.
But when law becomes in effect, then sin is made manifest. Then they would... They'd say, "Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not bear false witness." All those things. They did it before, but it couldn't be reckoned as sin, because there's no law against it. But then when law came in, it made the man realize he can't steal, he can't lie, and he commit adultery. And all of the commandments just magnifies, but yet that law didn't take away sin. It only brought a man to know that it was sin. Then when Christ came, Christ came to take away sin. See?
II PETER 3:15-18 (opening scripture from Pt.1)
15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (This word “wrest” in the bible sense = to twist, turn awry, to pervert, of one who wrests or tortures language in a false sense so that the original meaning has been changed in their minds, in other words your conception of the epistles of Paul have become like a set of law like rules that actually begin to work against you in a destructive way instead of causing you to grow in the knowledge of the grace of God and of the finished work of Christ.
That is why a person can start to become unstable in their Christian walk in their concept of thinking that it is about laws and rules – if you don’t grow in the grace of God, then you can start in grace and end up in law and begin to see yourself through the eyes of the law and not through the eyes of grace and of a finished work of Christ. You can begin to think that it is by your own good deeds of obedience to a set rules – this is a Catholic idea of it being Christ and your good works combined together, and this concept is what causes a person to end up in a self-condemned state of mind that is destructive to their own faith and to others, and this is what the children of Israel effectively did in the wilderness journey when they took on law instead of grace, and that was one of their biggest mistakes, and it can also be one of our biggest mistakes)
17 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness. (This word “stedfastness” = firm condition, of mind. In other words, as you go along in your growth as a believer in the knowledge of the word of God, but you fail to grow in the grace of God also, then you can begin to think that it is about the rules, and then you will become unstable and unsteadfast in your faith in the finished work of grace – and this is the trap that the children of Israel fell into after they had eaten the passover (which was Christ), and after were baptised in the red sea for their justification, but then they fell away from the understanding of an unconditional covenant of grace that God had made with their father Abraham that was the final and everlasting covenant – there was no better covenant to come after grace, and yet they fell into a concept of righteousness by the keeping of the law)
18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
**It is so important for us realise the full revelation of the mystery of the grace of God that has been fully opened to us in this age along with our growth in the revelation of the word – the balance of these two wings will keep us walking in faith and in peace, and in the joy of our salvation.
THE.MESSAGE.OF.GRACE_ JEFF.IN V-13 N-3 SUNDAY_ 61-0827
56 But now, according to the prophecy, there will come the Headstone. And I want you to notice that when the Headstone comes, the prince that's going to cry out the message will cry out, "Grace, grace." For it's by grace are we saved, that not of works, lest any man should boast. And the message of grace has been tramped under the feet of men until it's become a disgrace. Some of them runs out into eternal security; some runs out into, oh, everything. But the true message of grace remains the same, and there's where Satan tries to knock it out from the church. But it's the grace of God that we're all saved by.
*Remember that you can never undo the power of the grace of God of what he has achieved by His redemptive work in your life, but you can at times fail to live a life that lives up to that grace, so then your life and actions will bring confusion to others and you will suffer for that in this life. We will all struggle with (at times) of what Paul struggled with in that when we want to do good evil is present.
**But like Paul we must know that the real true grace of God is that He has revealed this great mystery of his word to us in this hour, and so it’s not that we live our live by trying to follow a set of rules, but that we live our lives out of an appreciation of the grace of God shown to us.
*And when we make a mistake and our flesh fails, then we must confess our sins to God knowing that there is an unconditional covenant of grace that is a million times more sufficient than all our sin.
WHAT.IS.THE.WORKS.OF.GOD_ LA.CA SATURDAY_ 59-0404
E-41 Someone... I made a remark like that, and they said, "Then why did He permit sin?" Sin works for His cause. In God dwelt all the great glory. If there had not been a sinner, He'd never been a Saviour. In Him was the attributes of a Saviour. And sin had to project itself in order for Him to be a Saviour. Which is the most powerful, a sin--a sinner, or sin or grace? Grace, of course. Which is the most powerful, a sickness or a healer? Well of course, the--the healer has power over the sickness. And God, if there'd never been sick person, He'd never be a Healer. So there had to be sickness to make Him what He is, a Healer. There had to be sin to make Him what He is, a Saviour. Sure.