The Invasion of the Locusts
JOEL 1:1-4
1 ¶ The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
2 Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? (In other words – “have you ever seen anything like this happen before as far back as you can remember”. And this is the day that we are also living in, the things that we are witnessing in the world today are unprecedented compared to any previous age – it is such a time of trouble that never has been or ever shall be again)
3 Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. (That is how we are to pass on the truth of the word of this hour, and you don’t just tell it by talking, the biggest way to tell is by the actions of your dedication to the word of the hour, because if this message is not all that important to you, then it probably won’t be all that important to your children either)
4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.
New King James Version
4 What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.
Brother Branham tells us that these four were all the same insects at different stages of growth and eating down different parts of the bride tree.
The Invasion of the Locusts
We are continuing with our study on the Easter seal.
On the 22nd of April 1962 (Easter Sunday), Brother Branham preached a sermon call “The Restoration of the Bride Tree” and connected that with the resurrection of the bride of this hour where we would be resurrected out of the denominations to the word to this hour in parallel to the first resurrection of Christ, and then also the bride of seven church ages would be physically resurrected from the graves. And so his scripture reading for this message was from the book of Joel.
That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.
*In this message “The Restoration of the Bride Tree” Brother Branham explains how that:
The Palmerworm ate the fruit of the tree -
The Locust ate the leaves – the fellowship.
The Cankerworm ate the bark
And the Caterpillar ate the life.
THE.RESTORATION.OF.THE.BRIDE.TREE_ JEFF.IN V-3 N-15 SUNDAY_ 62-0422
33-4 So this little palmerworm come around to take off the fruits. (I have two pages of fruits; I'm just, want to read some of them.) First thing, the first fruit he took off was brotherly love. That's right. That's one of the things that kills the church right there, when brotherly love... Yes, sir.
Then, the next fruit he took off the Tree... You remember, love is the first fruit on the tree: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, meekness, faith, patience (that's right.) in the Holy Ghost. Now, nine spiritual gifts with nine fruits of the Tree and so forth... All right.
So he is applying this invasion of these locusts to the individual person of how these four stages of this insect is sent for the purpose of the destruction of the spiritual condition of a person’s Christian life.
The Palmerworm, it eats away at your brotherly love so that all you can do is complain about all the problems among the people of God, and you begin to resent the believers and get an attitude and a complex.
Then the joy of the promise and truth of this hour is eaten away from you, so that if you won a million dollars then that would give you more joy then the promise of this message that promises eternal life.
Then your faith is eaten down, and your patience is eaten down, you get tired of going to church all the time for all these years, you just can’t wait any longer for God to bring His word to pass and you lose interest because you stagnate in your advancement in the revelation of the word because man is made to continually advance – all of these fruits in your life are being slowly eroded away from you.
**What is causing this? It is the invasion of the locusts at the time of the resurrection.
Then the locusts ate the leaves, that is the fellowship, people can’t fellowship around the word hardly anymore.
Then the bark is your covering, your doctrine of what you believe begins to be eaten away, your not so sure if you completely agree with some if the teaching of this message anymore, maybe there could be an eternal hell after all, maybe Eve did eat an apple or an apricot, maybe there is more than one person in the trinity? Maybe Malachi 4 was someone else apart from William Branham?
**These are basic things that we believe, but there are things that are more difficult to grasp of the doctrines of this message that you may just in your heart kind of half accept only because you know that you are supposed to be a believer of the message, but really deep down you think that you have a better idea of the subject then what God knows about it. What is causing that? It is this invasion of the locusts.
Then the last thing that is destroyed is the very life itself, the caterpillar, he worms his way right down deep inside of a person to eat away the very revelation of the life of the word away from you.
But the good news is that this message was sent in this hour to restore all these things back to us by the message of truth that we have been given access to at this time.
JOEL 2:23-26
23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion (Zion is the bride), and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.
24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.
There are two main themes in the book of Joel.
1 – The invasion of the locusts – which is the pouring out of demon power upon the people in the form of deception.
2 - The pouring out of the two rains – the former rain and the later rain. Which is the teaching of the truth of the message of this hour, that is the rain that we as message believers are under now that is causing us to be able to eat in plenty of the revelation of the truth of this hour, and then the later rain will be a fresh outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon this planted word of what we are planting in our hearts now, and that will be sent to give us the final burst of rapturing faith for the going home.
379-2 A.RESUME.OF.THE.AGES - CHURCH.AGE.BOOK CPT.10
It is "Thus saith the Lord" for that is what Joel 2:23-26 says,
"Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for He hath given you the former rain moderately, and He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain in the first month.
And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, My great army which I sent among you.
And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the Name of the Lord your God, That hath dealt wondrously with you: and My people shall never be ashamed."
Now it says God is going to "restore". The Lutheran Age did not restore the church; it started a reformation. The Wesleyan Age did not restore. The Pentecostal Age did not restore. But God has to restore for He cannot deny His Word. This is not the resurrection of the Church; it is the "Restoration". God will take the Church right back to Pentecost of the beginning. Now notice in verse 25 it tells why we need restoration. The locust, cankerworm, caterpillar and palmerworm have eaten all but the root and a small bit of the stem. Now we are told that all these insects are all one and the same in different stages. That is right. They are the antichrist spirit manifested in organization, denomination and false doctrine through the ages. And that poor little root and stalk is going to be restored. God isn't going to plant a new Church, but is going to bring His original planting back to original seed. He is doing it as stated in verse 23, by the teaching, or "former" rain. Next will come the harvest rain or rapturing faith.
So again – the two main themes of the book of Joel is:
1 – The invasion of the locusts, and 2 - The pouring out of the two rains upon the elect of God – the former rain and the later rain. And we know that the main fulfilment of these scriptures in the book of Joel is in this end time hour that we are living in now.
**The former of the two rains at this harvest time is the true teaching of the word that has come to us in this hour by the descending of an angel and the opening of the seven seals – that is found in Revelation 10, and that angel is still continuing to sound through the ministry of the voice of his end time prophet on magnetic tape as well as the many voices of the 5 fold ministry that are faithful to the doctrine of the message of the hour, that is literally the rain that we are being watered by in this hour.
But if we notice that in Parallel to this event of the opening of the truth of the word to the bride, there is also an invasion of the locusts taking place upon the earth that was also caused by an angel (Star) falling from heaven at the time of the sounding of the fifth trumpeting angel in Revelation 9 which we know was the First World War - 1914.
So the prophecies in the book of Joel are in their main fulfilment in this day that we are living in now.
**So we want to look at this a little deeper because this will help us to understand the unprecedented times that we are living in and to make clear to us the answers that we need to know, and to also give us a confidence in the message of the hour and one that we are uniting with in this hour because there are only these two angels that are influencing the people of the world at this time – the tree of life (Christ) and the tree of the knowledge of good and Evil (Lucifer), and that is why you will often find evil coated with good.
The internet is coated with what looks good, but then there is all the evil hidden beneath the good. Sin is always coated in what looks good to the eyes – that is how Satan bates the trap for you just like you bate a hook to catch a fish.
REVELATION 9:1-3
1 ¶ And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth (This fallen angel was Lucifer . In Revelation 10, a mightily angel descends from heaven to the earth (which was Christ), but in Revelation 9 it is not Christ but Lucifer that falls from heaven to the earth, and his descent is for the purpose of becoming incarnate in his subjects as the God of this evil age, while in Revelation 10 Christ descends to the earth in word form to become incarnate in his subjects in oneness again like the relationship he had with man in Eden): and to him (Lucifer) was given the key of the bottomless pit. (A key unlocks things that were previously locked. Remember that that 5th trumpeting angel sounded the first woe which was the First World War (1914), so from 1914 on we see a tremendous advancement of technology up until this time because of that opening up of the key of the knowledge of science and technology which has infiltrated every part of our modern world today)
2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. (Notice - it affected the air ways, the air was darkened, not lightened, but darkened, this was the prince of the power of the air, it was Lucifer controlling the airwaves – the media and the information super highways, and the communication and knowledge explosion of these last 3 generations from the first world war until now – it keeps advancing among his subjects just like the word is to also keep advancing among the subjects of the bride of Christ in this hour)
3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
JEHOVAH.JIREH_ CHARLOTTE.NC SUNDAY_ 56-0429
E-58 ... In the last days the Bible said that the devil would go about like a roaring lion, lying wonders, deceiving. Is that right? And when all hell opened up, remember all heaven open up, too. See?
So when hell was opened up and released upon the inhabiters of the earth in Revelation 9, heaven was also opened up in Revelation 10, so we see that it is Christ and Lucifer side by side again contending for throne of the hearts of the people. That is why Lucifer has become the God of this evil age, because he is now dwelling in the hearts of men and is worshiped by the same.
To be continued...