Bible Believers' Newsletter 1028
"We focus on the present Truth – what Jesus is doing now. . ."
ISSN 1442-8660
ISSN 1442-8660
Christian greetings in the precious Name of our Lord Jesus Christ; we always appreciate your company and extend an especially warm welcome to our new subscribers.
Today we will study the creation conceived and finished in God's eternal thoughts before the foundation of the world, "when all the sons of God shouted for joy, and the morning stars sang together" (Job 38:7; Romans 8:28-39). Prior to this the eternal Spirit was alone with His thoughts, and He was lonely. He was not God because god is an object of worship, and there was nothing to worship Him. We will discuss "the beginning" when He expressed the Logos, which began to manifest the elements that would constitute the physical universe and whatsoever it would contain. This would have occupied hundreds of millions of years, followed by a further six thousand years in which He prepared earth for the first Adam, His OLD creation, as for two thousand years the last Adam has been preparing a place for His NEW creation John 14:1-4.
This Newsletter serves those of like precious faith. Whoever will receive the truth is welcome to feed their soul from the waters of the River of Life. Everything here presented should be confirmed personally in your own Bible.
Today we will study the creation conceived and finished in God's eternal thoughts before the foundation of the world, "when all the sons of God shouted for joy, and the morning stars sang together" (Job 38:7; Romans 8:28-39). Prior to this the eternal Spirit was alone with His thoughts, and He was lonely. He was not God because god is an object of worship, and there was nothing to worship Him. We will discuss "the beginning" when He expressed the Logos, which began to manifest the elements that would constitute the physical universe and whatsoever it would contain. This would have occupied hundreds of millions of years, followed by a further six thousand years in which He prepared earth for the first Adam, His OLD creation, as for two thousand years the last Adam has been preparing a place for His NEW creation John 14:1-4. This Newsletter serves those of like precious faith. Whoever will receive the truth is welcome to feed their soul from the waters of the River of Life. Everything here presented should be confirmed personally in your own Bible.
Your brother-in-Christ
Anthony Grigor-Scott
Anthony Grigor-Scott
Guatemala Volcano: Dozens Die as Fuego Volcano Erupts
June 10, 2018 — 109 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the most violent eruption . . . "in 500 years." A colossal avalanche of super-heated mud, rock and ash as hot as 1,300°F caught multitudes of local residents completely off guard. And the volcanic gases . . . capable of causing rapid asphyxiation . . . one official is telling the media that they are finding some bodies "totally buried, like you saw in Pompeii . . ." "El Rodeo was buried and we haven't been able to reach the La Libertad village because of the lava . . ." Full story: express.co.uk
Comment: On May 3, 2018, by Israel and Guatemala's ego Guatemala became the very first embassy to move to Jerusalem, to commemorate Israel's 70th birthday celebration. Maybe Guatemala should attempt to placate Fuego volcano by becoming the first embassy to depart Jerusalem.
Also on this same date the US Kilauea volcano began its present and continuing destructive and damaging activity in Hawaii, struck by "over 12,000 earthquakes" during the last 30 days . . . lava from the volcano has destroyed hundreds more homes and has completely filled in Kapoho Bay.
Comment: On May 3, 2018, by Israel and Guatemala's ego Guatemala became the very first embassy to move to Jerusalem, to commemorate Israel's 70th birthday celebration. Maybe Guatemala should attempt to placate Fuego volcano by becoming the first embassy to depart Jerusalem.
Also on this same date the US Kilauea volcano began its present and continuing destructive and damaging activity in Hawaii, struck by "over 12,000 earthquakes" during the last 30 days . . . lava from the volcano has destroyed hundreds more homes and has completely filled in Kapoho Bay.
Inverted Crosses offend some in Christian Community
June 7, 2018 — As part of the city's annual winter festival, several large red crosses, known as the Cross of Saint Peter, have been erected in prominent positions around the waterfront. Inverted crosses are also used as a symbol of the anti-Christ and many in the Christian community have expressed offence at the 20-metre-high art installations . . . there were other Christian links in this year's festival, such as artist Mike Parr burying himself under Macquarie Street . . . and being resurrected three days later . . . "I wonder why Islam is not ridiculed in the same way?" Full story: abc.net.au, abc.net.au
Comment: "In the last days perilous times will come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (II Timothy 3:1-5).
Comment: "In the last days perilous times will come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (II Timothy 3:1-5).
In Unanimous Vote, House says NO Legal Right to attack Iran
June 7, 2018 — The House of Representatives voted unanimously for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 (H.R. 5515) that says no statute authorizes the use of military force against Iran . . . "It is the sense of Congress that the use of the Armed Forces against Iran is not authorized by this Act or any other Act."
A bipartisan majority of the House adopted the National Defense Authorization Act on May 24, with a vote of 351-66. The bill now moves to the Senate. If the Senate version ultimately includes the Ellison amendment as well, Congress would send a clear message to Donald Trump that he has no statutory authority to militarily attack Iran. This becomes particularly significant in light of Trump's May 8 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal . . . followed by a long list of demands by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which could set the stage for a US attack on Iran . . . Full story: globalresearch.ca
A bipartisan majority of the House adopted the National Defense Authorization Act on May 24, with a vote of 351-66. The bill now moves to the Senate. If the Senate version ultimately includes the Ellison amendment as well, Congress would send a clear message to Donald Trump that he has no statutory authority to militarily attack Iran. This becomes particularly significant in light of Trump's May 8 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal . . . followed by a long list of demands by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which could set the stage for a US attack on Iran . . . Full story: globalresearch.ca
They disagree on Everything but Israel
June 7, 2018 — Many self-identified conservatives appear to believe that rules put in place by many college and university administrations unfairly discriminate against them, establishing restrictions on speakers whose opinions might be viewed as offensive to liberals and minority constituencies. This has lately led to the blocking of attempts by notable conservative lecturers to speak on campus and in other public fora lest they cause a breakdown in public order. It is interesting to note that the campaign against conservatives is never packaged quite as an actual free speech issue. It is generally expressed as a desire to sustain community values and to avoid violent confrontations.
Many of the groups engaging in agitprop seeking to redefine the First Amendment at the college level are inevitably Jewish, many of them politically liberal, seeking to eliminate hurtful commentary or actions that involve criticism of Israel. A common complaint is that demonstrations or speakers on campus make Jews feel uncomfortable and therefore should be banned. Full story: globalresearch.ca
Comment: The "squeeze".
Many of the groups engaging in agitprop seeking to redefine the First Amendment at the college level are inevitably Jewish, many of them politically liberal, seeking to eliminate hurtful commentary or actions that involve criticism of Israel. A common complaint is that demonstrations or speakers on campus make Jews feel uncomfortable and therefore should be banned. Full story: globalresearch.ca
Comment: The "squeeze".
America is in a Debt Trap Death Spiral
June 2, 2018 — The US economy and its financial structures have never recovered from the great financial meltdown of 2008 . . . the Republican Congress last year abandoned the process of mandatory budget cuts . . . voted in a feeble attempt to rein in the dramatic rise in US government debt . . . in what soon will be recognized as a classic debt trap. What is now looming over not just the US economy but also the global financial system is a crisis that could spell the end of the post-1944 dollar system . . .
Moody's Credit Rating has just issued a warning that . . . as US interest rates rise, and they are, as much as 22% of US corporations that are being kept alive borrowing at historically low interest, not only in shale oil but in construction and utilities, so-called 'zombie' corporations, will face an avalanche of mass defaults . . . since 2009, the level of global non-financial junk-rated companies has soared by 58% . . . 75% of federal spending is economically non-productive including military, debt service, social security. Unlike during the 1930s Great Depression when levels of Federal debt were almost nil, today the debt is 105% of GDP and rising . . . Into this precarious situation Washington is doing its very best to antagonize the very countries that it needs to finance these deficits and buy the US debt—China, Russia and even Japan. As financial investors demand more interest to invest in US debt, the higher rates will trigger the default avalanche Moody's warns. This is the real backdrop to the dangerous US foreign policy actions of the recent period . . . Full story: globalresearch.ca
Moody's Credit Rating has just issued a warning that . . . as US interest rates rise, and they are, as much as 22% of US corporations that are being kept alive borrowing at historically low interest, not only in shale oil but in construction and utilities, so-called 'zombie' corporations, will face an avalanche of mass defaults . . . since 2009, the level of global non-financial junk-rated companies has soared by 58% . . . 75% of federal spending is economically non-productive including military, debt service, social security. Unlike during the 1930s Great Depression when levels of Federal debt were almost nil, today the debt is 105% of GDP and rising . . . Into this precarious situation Washington is doing its very best to antagonize the very countries that it needs to finance these deficits and buy the US debt—China, Russia and even Japan. As financial investors demand more interest to invest in US debt, the higher rates will trigger the default avalanche Moody's warns. This is the real backdrop to the dangerous US foreign policy actions of the recent period . . . Full story: globalresearch.ca
Financial Repression—Slowly but Surely, the Screws are Tightened Further
May 29, 2018 — The term financial repression has been on everybody's lips at least since the great financial crisis of 2007–2008. Concepts such as low and even negative interest rates and bail-ins are now part of a widely accepted toolbox of macroeconomic torture devices . . . cash is to be abolished, because it stands in the way of making a comprehensive negative interest rate policy enforceable. Hitherto, holding cash involved an opportunity cost because cash has no yield, which meant it was inferior to deposit money in this respect. However, it will definitely become more attractive than a deposit in a bank account on which negative interest rates are imposed. We truly live in an upside-down world . . .
Full story: metallwoche.de P. 146-154.
Full story: metallwoche.de P. 146-154.
India joins International Group dumping US Dollars in Oil Trades to bypass US Sanctions
June 2, 2018 — In 2015 . . . Russia decided to make moves to drop the USD on oil transactions. Gazprom Neft, the third-largest oil producer in Russia, moved away from the dollar and towards the Chinese yuan and other Asian currencies. On March 26 this year, China finally launched a yuan-dominated oil futures contract . . . 15.4 million barrels of crude for delivery in September changing hands over two and a half hours in its first day of trading. With Washington's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, the EU27 backed by Britain decided . . . to side-step US sanctions for trading with Iran . . . India will reportedly pay for Iranian oil in rupees...
China is the world's biggest buyer of oil. America is the second and India is the third. Whilst the USA buys about $110 billion of oil each year—China and India combined—buys nearly $200 billion. The EU including Britain buys another $200 billion. On oil trades—America is outgunned by the combined weight of its competitors . . . Full story: truepublica.org.uk
China is the world's biggest buyer of oil. America is the second and India is the third. Whilst the USA buys about $110 billion of oil each year—China and India combined—buys nearly $200 billion. The EU including Britain buys another $200 billion. On oil trades—America is outgunned by the combined weight of its competitors . . . Full story: truepublica.org.uk
The Empire strikes back: leaving Indian Farmers in the Dirt
June 3, 2018 — By 2050, if current policies continue, India could have numerous mega-cities with up to 30-40 million inhabitants and just two to three hundred million people (perhaps 15-20% of the population) left in an emptied-out countryside. Given current trends in the job market, it could mean tens of millions of city-based rural migrants without much work: victims of the ill thought out policies we currently see being pushed through.
In India, what we are currently witnessing is a headlong rush to facilitate (foreign) capital and the running down of the existing system of agriculture. While India's farmers suffer as the sector is deliberately being made financially non-viable for them, we see state-of-the-art airports, IT parks and highways being built to allow the corporate world to spread its tentacles everywhere to the point that every aspect of culture, infrastructure and economic activity is commodified for corporate profit.
GDP growth—the holy grail of 'development' which stems from an outmoded thinking and has done so much damage to the environment—has been fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers. The gap between their income and the rest of the population, including public sector workers, has widened enormously to the point where rural India consumes less calories than it did 40 years ago . . . The plan is to shift hundreds of millions from the countryside and into the cities to serve as a cheap army of labour for off shored foreign companies, mirroring what China has become: a US colonial outpost for manufacturing that has boosted corporate profits at the expense of US jobs . . . Even here, however, India might have missed the boat as jobless 'growth' seems to be on the horizon and the effects of automation and artificial intelligence are eradicating the need for human labour across many sectors . . . Full story: asia-pacificresearch.com
Comment: India's top court upholds decision that seeds cannot be patented.
In India, what we are currently witnessing is a headlong rush to facilitate (foreign) capital and the running down of the existing system of agriculture. While India's farmers suffer as the sector is deliberately being made financially non-viable for them, we see state-of-the-art airports, IT parks and highways being built to allow the corporate world to spread its tentacles everywhere to the point that every aspect of culture, infrastructure and economic activity is commodified for corporate profit.
GDP growth—the holy grail of 'development' which stems from an outmoded thinking and has done so much damage to the environment—has been fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers. The gap between their income and the rest of the population, including public sector workers, has widened enormously to the point where rural India consumes less calories than it did 40 years ago . . . The plan is to shift hundreds of millions from the countryside and into the cities to serve as a cheap army of labour for off shored foreign companies, mirroring what China has become: a US colonial outpost for manufacturing that has boosted corporate profits at the expense of US jobs . . . Even here, however, India might have missed the boat as jobless 'growth' seems to be on the horizon and the effects of automation and artificial intelligence are eradicating the need for human labour across many sectors . . . Full story: asia-pacificresearch.com
Comment: India's top court upholds decision that seeds cannot be patented.
Security Troops on US Nuclear Missile Base took LSD
May 24, 2018 — Meet service members entrusted with guarding nuclear missiles that are among the most powerful in America's arsenal. Air Force records obtained by The Associated Press show they bought, distributed and used the hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months on a highly secure military base in Wyoming. A slipup on social media by one airman enabled investigators to crack the dr-g ring at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in March 2016, details of which are reported here for the first time. Fourteen airmen were disciplined. Six of them were convicted in courts martial of LSD use or distribution or both. The service members accused of involvement in the LSD ring were from the 90th Missile Wing, which operates one-third of the 400 Minuteman 3 missiles that stand "on alert" 24/7 in underground silos scattered across the northern Great Plains. Full story: military.com, globalresearch.ca
US Supreme Court paves Way for Government Restrictions on Religious Activities not Considered 'Mandatory' such as Bible Reading
June 1, 2018 — The lower courts had ruled that the prison's denial of a legible Bible was not a "substantial burden" on the prisoner's right to exercise his religion because he could not show that reading the Bible daily was a mandatory practice of Christianity. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warn that the Supreme Court's decision to allow the lower court ruling to stand in Hoever v. Bellies could render many common religious practices, such as reading a Bible, unprotected by the constitutional guarantee to free exercise of religion . . .
"This case is about so much more than just one prisoner's right to read a Bible. It's about recognizing that in a prison state or police state, which is what we now have, there is no difference between the treatment meted out to a law-abiding citizen and a convicted felon: both are equally suspect and treated as criminals, without any of the special rights and privileges reserved for the governing elite . . . At a time when America's prison population is growing, laws criminalizing the most mundane activities are on the rise, states have a financial incentive to keep private prisons at capacity, and the courts are inclined to side with law enforcement in matters of security, we would do well to keep in mind that whatever treatment is meted out to "the least of these" in our society is no different from how the rest of us will eventually be treated. In the government's eyes, we are all prisoners of the American police state."
. . . corrections officer in charge refused to provide Hoever with his personal religious materials and instead gave him a Spanish-language Bible, despite being informed Hoever did not know enough Spanish to read the Spanish-language Bible. During the 26 days that Hoever spent in solitary confinement, he was unable to exercise his right to practice his Christian faith by reading the Bible . . . Full story: rutherford.org
Comment: The "squeeze" is throttling Christians in 'the home of the brave and the land of the free,' and throughout the apostate (once) Christian world.
"This case is about so much more than just one prisoner's right to read a Bible. It's about recognizing that in a prison state or police state, which is what we now have, there is no difference between the treatment meted out to a law-abiding citizen and a convicted felon: both are equally suspect and treated as criminals, without any of the special rights and privileges reserved for the governing elite . . . At a time when America's prison population is growing, laws criminalizing the most mundane activities are on the rise, states have a financial incentive to keep private prisons at capacity, and the courts are inclined to side with law enforcement in matters of security, we would do well to keep in mind that whatever treatment is meted out to "the least of these" in our society is no different from how the rest of us will eventually be treated. In the government's eyes, we are all prisoners of the American police state."
. . . corrections officer in charge refused to provide Hoever with his personal religious materials and instead gave him a Spanish-language Bible, despite being informed Hoever did not know enough Spanish to read the Spanish-language Bible. During the 26 days that Hoever spent in solitary confinement, he was unable to exercise his right to practice his Christian faith by reading the Bible . . . Full story: rutherford.org
Comment: The "squeeze" is throttling Christians in 'the home of the brave and the land of the free,' and throughout the apostate (once) Christian world.
This is the Message
I John 1:5, "This then is the Message which we have heard from Jesus Christ, and proclaim to you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all".
Genesis 1:3, "And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light".
God is Light: He expressed the sum of His Attributes in the 'Logos' (Gk.) meaning 'thought in speech,' (En.) "the Word." As the (Heb.) 'Shekinah' the Logos appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and led Israel as a Pillar of Cloud and Fire. Ezekiel called it "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord." The 'Shekinah' smote Paul blind on the Damascus Road, and appeared many times in the ministry of William Branham. 'The Word' manifest bodily as Jesus Christ, the fullness of the nature and character of God, born of a virgin to redeem the elect of Adam's race. He "delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son: in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by Him all things were created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things are sustained. And He is the Head of the body, the Church: Who is the beginning [of the NEW creation], the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence" (Colossians 1:13-18). The Bible is the story of God unfolding Himself or changing His form from the eternal Spirit alone with His thoughts, to the flesh of His glorified Family.
Light is the offspring of the divine command of Genesis 1:3. This primeval light is not a substance but a condition or state of matter that arose over the dark-robed, seething mass of our condensing planet (and probably other bodies in our solar system). Luminosity is the result of incandescence caused by a process of heating which renders a body luminous. Any solid body can be rendered incandescent by being heated up to between 700° and 800°F. Any liquid that can absorb as great a quantity of heat likewise emits light.
This chaos of light was scattered and confused before the light-bearers established their fixed positions, and there was no open sky before the second day. On the first day the divine Word (Heb.) 'asah' made "light" from existing material, elementary light distinct from the "lights," of the sun, moon and stars made on the fourth day. Light does not spring from the sun and stars; the sun itself is a dark body and the light proceeds from a plasma which surrounds it. Light was called forth by the creative mandate "Let there be" to separate the dark chaos, and the Lord moved our glaciated earth toward the Sun, then divided the gaseous waters from the liquid waters to create a clear sky. The six days of creation are not days of mundane duration but six long days of about 1,000 years, each bound by one evening and one morning so that each period was one day in itself (II Peter 3:8).
In reading the account of Genesis 1 and 2 we find four Hebrew words that define primary, secondary and tertiary creation:
1). 'Bara,' means to create 'ex nihlo,' out of nothing (Genesis 1:1, 21, 27; 2:3, 4). God created the heaven and the earth in His great eternal thinking where they existed until "the beginning".
2). 'Asah,' means to make, produce or fashion from existing material (Genesis 1:7, 11-12, 16, 25-26, 31).
3). 'Yatsar,' means to mould or squeeze existing material into shape in time and space (Genesis 2:7-8; Exodus 32:4).
And 'banah,' means to extend, rebuild or cause to continue (Genesis 2:22; 4:17; 8:20).
Genesis 1 and 2 record seven dispensations or periods of time climaxing in the creation of the first Adam and men "of the earth, earthy" under the Old Testament. The four Gospels introduced the climax of the Old Testament with the birth of the last Adam, Jesus Messiah. Revelation 1 – 3 prophesied God creating Himself a part of creation in Jesus Christ, the Author or Beginner, and the beginning of the NEW Creation of God-men "that are heavenly" whose soul is re-born by revelation of the spoken Word for their day as Jesus' flesh was born of the virgin Mary by the spoken Word for His day (Luke 1:26-56; Revelation 3:14). As God put the first Adam to sleep and (Heb.) 'banah' rebuilt woman from a rib, a by-product or extension of man, years after He had finished the old creation, He put the last Adam to sleep on Calvary and under the New Testament He is building His Wife, the Church, by revelation from the Holy Spirit taken from His side (II Corinthians 5:13-21).
As God prepared the old creation for man through seven 'days,' Jesus has built the NEW creation for God through seven dispensations (I Corinthians 15:20-28); we are fulfilling the sabbath of the antitype of the fiftieth day of Israel's Pentecostal Feast—"the dispensation of the fullness of times wherein God is gathering together in one all things in Christ—the sleeping New Testament saints now in heaven and we who are alive and remain, even in Him" (Matthew 25:6; Ephesians 1:10; 4:13; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Revelation 18:4). In the antitype of Israel's feast of Tabernacles we see how man has laboured against sin through six days each of approximately 1,000 years to be followed by the sabbatical millennium; then the judgment and annihilation of sin and sinners will precede eternity in the renewed heavens and renewed earth.
Genesis 1:1-5, "In the beginning God created (Heb.) 'bara' ex nihilo the heaven and the earth." After millions of years earth evolved into the entire mass of which our planet is composed, including the superincumbent atmosphere, which was not uplifted from the chaotic deep until the second day. It is declared to be "without form, and void" and is manifestly not the dry land which was not separated from the waters until the third day. The heavens are the rest of the universe beyond the "firmament" or gaseous expanse which overarches the earth, and the heavens are without light until the fourth day.
God created, 'Bara,' the heaven and the earth in His eternal thinking. From eternity they existed only in His mind until "the beginning," untold millions of years ago, when the Logos was expressed, which materialised an immense sun, and time began. God does not make mistakes therefore He is unchangeable in both essence and behaviour. God is infinite in His abilities so therefore He as God must be omniscient. If He is omniscient, then He is not now learning, nor is He taking counsel even with Himself, nor is He at any time adding to His knowledge. If He can add to His knowledge, then He is not omniscient. God IS omniscient. He has never had a new thought about anything because all His thoughts He has always had and always will have: He knows the end from the beginning because He is God. THUS THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE ETERNAL. THEY ARE REAL. They are not simply like a man with a blueprint he has drawn up and which one day will be translated into substance and form, but they are already real and eternal, and part of God (Romans 8:28-30).
God always had His thoughts for Adam and indeed every man and woman there ever will be although they were yet unexpressed (Genesis 1:27). Psalm 139:15-16 will give YOU an idea of this: "My substance was not hid from You, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance yet unfinished during all the days in which they were being formed and even when there was as yet no first day You were writing the Lamb's Book of Life (the genealogy of the last Adam); all my members were written, when as yet there was none of them".
Brother Branham explained, "As I've often told you I was combing these three or four hairs I got left. My wife said to me, said, "Billy, you're getting completely bald-headed.
I said, "I haven't lost a one of them."
She said, "Pray, tell me where they are."
I said, "You tell me where they was before I got them. Ever where they was, they're there waiting for me to come to them." Amen. Hallelujah. What is it? You rot . . . Every hair in your head's numbered. I'll raise him up in the last days. Hallelujah. My body was laid out on this earth before there was even a life on the earth. The calcium and petroleum and stuff. God's a Contractor. He laid out all the bodies like He was going to build a subdivision. He knowed we'd be here. He knowed I'd be here before the world. He knowed I'd be standing here before there was a world here. He knowed you'd be setting in the seat you are. He's infinite. Certainly, He knows you. What are you scared about?"
"He put your name on the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world. The Bible said He did (Matthew 25:34; Ephesians 1:4; Hebrews 4:3; Revelation 13:8). What you worried about? You got the Holy Ghost, sealed into the Kingdom of God. How long? Until the day of your redemption. Amen. The church is scared. Don't be scared. Fear not. Only believe. That's what God wants. Sure." (#60-1125, Conference).
Brother Branham's anecdote and Psalm 139:15-16 hearken back to Genesis 1:2 when "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the deep, [a formless waste]. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." We were there, "curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," the womb of nature, out of which the Lord God formed men "made to have dominion over the works of His hands" (Psalm 8:4-6).
Darkness is nothing of itself yet it indicates the obstruction of something that already is, and was chronologically the first night of the six periods, just as the light that follows is the first morning of the first God-divided day or thousand year dispensation as distinct from solar days. This ante-solar day, marked by no sunrising or sunsetting, or any astrological measurement, and without any computed duration, had an evening and a morning of its own. Each of the days of creation was defined by one evening and one morning, without a shining sun. Light is the first separation; it is divided from the darkness, which shows it had existed with it in combination in the formless waste. It comes phenomenally, and historically, after the darkness, and even after the division of the water, probably in a gaseous form.
"Let's close our eyes as it was, and take a trip a hundred million years before there was ever a star in the sky . . . God was there then . . . We're standing on a banister watching the creation come into existence, and see whether He was in His Son . . . No man has seen God at any time . . . And here's the Logos. Looks like It's a supernatural Being. It's a Halo. That's the Son of God . . . it was the Logos that went out of God. And there He was playing out there in space just like a child before the door. I can see Him draw the whole picture in His mind of the Kingdom and what it might be.
And then the first thing you know I hear Him say, "Let there be light." And when He did, an atom broke yonder, and the sun come into existence. I watch that sun burn for millions of years. The first thing you know went a clinker. He stood and watched it. And it flew, fell for a few million years; He stopped it. Then another one flew, and He stopped it. What? He was putting the solar system. He was writing His first Bible. The first Bible was written in the skies. Man looked up knowing that God was above. [His second Bible is the Great Pyramid. The third one's wrote on paper because this is that great educational age that we're living in. And none of them contradicts one another]. Look at the Zodiac. It starts off with a virgin, ends up with Leo the lion: the first Coming and second Coming of Christ. Everything in the heavens declares Him. Everything in the earth declares Him. Everything around declares Him. His people declares Him. His Power declares Himself. His Son declared Him.
. . . After all the clinkers went off and the stars and meteors were made, I can see this Logos go over and hang over this earth, brood over it [Genesis 1:2], bring it back here around this sun and begin to break up the ice around it. And great big icebergs begin to come down; Texas and Oklahoma was formed. She run into the Gulf of Mexico down there. He was making the ditches and the plains and whatever He made. Vegetation and things would come up after while.
Then after it all got melted and the ice run out and made water. Now, we're in Genesis 1. You can take up from right there. Genesis 1:2, it was "without form and void." And the Spirit of God moved upon the water. Is that right? In the beginning. Now, He separated the water, brought up the vegetation and everything.
And when He made everything that looked nice and good to Him, now He said, "Let us (plural) make man (plural) in our own image." What was He? There is a supernatural Being. There's the One that could not be seen. God the Father never was seen, never will be seen. He's all nature. And there He is. And now, here's the Son, which is the Logos that went out of Him, made in His image, a supernatural Being that went out in the beginning.
"Let us make man in our own image." After He made a man in His own image, He made a supernatural being. Yes, indeed. Genesis 1:28, read and see if that isn't right. And then when He made man in His own image, he had rule over the beasts. He led the beasts around then like the Holy Spirit's supposed to lead the Church today" (#53-0610, William Branham, Show us the Father and it will Satisfy Us).
The six days were dispensations or periods of about 1,000 years during which the Lord God spoke His creation, beginning from the evening of the (Heb.) 'tohu and bohu' or chaos, by the command, "Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was an evening and there was a morning, the first day" (or dispensation of about 1,000 years). God's "work" during these six days was "speaking" His creation of Genesis 1:1-2 into material existence; now it may have taken thousands of years to manifest, as when He said through Isaiah, "A virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His Name Immanuel [which means God with us]" (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). Nothing happened for almost 800 years, but in its designated and decreed season and time a virgin did conceive and bear the Messiah.
Have faith in God: "The word that goes forth from My mouth will not return to Me void, but it will accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). Having sent His Word to (Heb.) 'asah,' make or bear from existing material the things He had spoken, God rested on the seventh day when the fruit of His lips (Heb.) 'yatsar' fashioned or constructed a more complex creation.
"Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God" (Luke 8:11). By faith His "Let there be . . ." produced the seed which bore what He had spoken in its designated season and time. Jesus assures US, "He who believes on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and more than these shall he do; because I go to My Father. And whatsoever you ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My Name, I will do it" (John 14:12-14).
Have faith in God and "speak the Word" in Jesus' precious Name for righteous needs that align with His will. "You have not, because you ask not. You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:2-3). We are at the end of the Christian dispensation, God's Prophet has restored the apostolic faith and finished the mystery of God (Malachi 4:5, 6b; Matthew 17:11; Revelation 10:7). After fifty-five years the Voice of the seventh angel is still calling the wise and foolish virgin OUT from the Roman Catholic false church and her apostate (once) Protestant daughters INTO the unity of the faith for the manifestation of the Sons of God and the great translation (Matthew 25:6; I Thessalonians 4:16; Romans 8:19; Revelation 18:4; I Corinthians 15:52). The Seed of His end time Message has been spoken; may it find fertile ground in YOUR heart and may the Light of God germinate Its Life in you and bring YOU into "speaking conditions" to exercise the 'third pull' and change in the atoms in the time of the Seventh Trump.
Turning to Genesis 1:3-5, it is not any duration but the phenomenon, the appearing itself, that is first called day. The evening then was "the darkness on the face of the deep." The morning was the light that followed "the moving of the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters." This is not a solar day because "the light" as in "the firmament of the heaven" was not visible at that time (Genesis 1:14-19).
Genesis 1:6-8, "And God said: Let there be a firmament [or expanse, called firm because it is lasting and durable] in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God (Heb.) 'asah' made the firmament [from existing material], and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was one evening, and there was one morning, a second day" [of about 1,000 years]. We now have the sky, the atmosphere, with its auroral light.
This mass of turbid and noisy water covering earth was reduced and confined to expose the land by light or heat causing the gases and vapours resting upon the waters to ascend and form visible clouds when condensed by cold.
Genesis 1:9-13, "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas: and God saw that it was good." Earth and sea are the two constituents of the globe, by their separation its orderly and harmonious formation was completed. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day".
Once again we have a day that does not begin with sunrise and end with sunset. And the grass and herbs and trees God spoke on the third day did not manifest until the seventh day "for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to cultivate the soil; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground" (Genesis 2:5-6).
Genesis 1:14-19, "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs [for the calculation of time, signifying the quality of the weather or season by the manner of their rising and setting (Matthew 16:2), eclipses, conjunctions, etc., and for the discovery of supernatural and miraculous effects (Joshua 10:13; Isaiah 38:8; Luke 21:25-26; Acts 2:19-20)], and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Genesis 8:22). [And to show the fit times and seasons for sowing, planting, reaping, the breeding time of animals, and the migrations of birds, for navigation, for the observation of set and solemn feasts, or the ordering of ecclesiastical or civil affairs. By their diurnal and swift motion to make the natural days of twenty-four hours, and by their nearer approaches to us, or further distances from us, to make the days or nights either longer, or shorter. By their annual and slower motion to make years].
"And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He (Heb.) 'asah' made the stars also[—by which the planets are chiefly meant—two of which, Venus and Mercury, appeared somewhere between the first and the fourth day; and it was not till this day that our solar system, consisting of a central sun and the planets, with their attendant satellites, was complete. And having (Heb.) 'asah' made the heavenly bodies in verse 16] God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day".
The atmosphere being completely purified, the sun, moon and stars were for the first time unveiled in all their glory in a cloudless sky in their permanent co-ordinates for the bestowal of that which is an essential condition for all life, vegetable and animal. Now there is a commencement of astronomical time with its subordinate periods of sun-divided days, not to be confounded with the great God-divided days of which the fourth was one.
The fourth, fifth and sixth days set preconditions in order for the sentient animal and human beings that will be (Heb.) 'yatsar' moulded on the seventh day when God rests. Rest is not inertia. Rest in physics is the equilibrium of power, and so the maximum of power. Motion is the yielding of power, necessary for its manifestation of patent effect, yet still a spending of that static energy which was in quiescence. Absolute rest in the kosmos (the bringing into, or maintaining in, that state) would be the highest exercise of the divine might; but as it would preclude all sensation, and all sentiency, both of which are inseparable from change to motion of some kind, it would be an absence of all outward manifestation.
Whence did Moses obtain this account so different from the puerile and absurd fictions of the heathen? Not from any human source, for no man was in existence to witness it; none but the Creator Himself could give this information. Hebrews 11:1-3, "Now faith is the substance [or confident assurance] of things hoped for, the evidence [conviction] of things you do not see, taste, feel, smell, or hear. By faith, not sight, the elders obtained a good report, and through like faith we perceive that the successive ages (Hebrews 1:2) of preparing and fixing the sun, moon and stars in heaven (Genesis 1 – 2) were perfectly consolidated by God's spoken Word (Gk.) 'rhema,' even "as the dispensations of Christ's Body are fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint contributes" (Ephesians 4:17) "so that things which are seen were made of the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world." There was no pre-existence of matter: even men without revelation can apprehend the unseen by the things that are made (Romans 1:20).
Genesis 2:4, "These are the generations [or posterity] of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens in six days of one contiguous act." This word therefore cannot denote the original beginning of the heaven and the earth but only the historical development of heaven and earth after they are finished in readiness for human habitation on the seventh day.
Read intelligently, the progress of time is carefully marked. In Genesis 2:6 the earth is watered by a mist: earth was standing upright surrounded by a watery canopy providing a more dense atmosphere and higher surface pressure. Under rain-free conditions before the Flood the atmosphere would have been very stable: winds would have been light, global temperatures more uniform, and with no rain to refract sunlight, rainbows would not have formed. All is slow and gradual, it was some time after God (Heb.) 'yatsar,' formed or squeezed Adam "from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives" that He "planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food" (Genesis 2:7-9, 15). God did not summon the Garden of Eden into existence by a sudden command. God works with such long ages of preparation that human eagerness is often tempted to cry, "How long?"
When the trees matured and came into fruit, "The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to protect or guard it." He lived there so long that his solitude became wearisome and God affirmed that it is not good for him to be alone, so He (Heb.) 'yatsar' formed the animals, male and female, and "Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but no suitable help was found for Adam. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs . . . and made a woman." In Newsletter 1027 we explained that no female in the original creation can be immoral because they have sexual relations only for procreation and have no desire to lust. Woman may be touched at practically any time, and not being His spoken Word she can deceive and be deceived. Whereas female animals and human males are plain, male animals and women are beautiful, and with her power of lust woman can be immoral (Proverbs 30:18-20). God placed her on free moral agency with the sacred trust of preserving her virginity for her husband and their babies (Job 14:1-6; Psalm 51:5). When we were theophanies in God's eternal thinking He commanded us: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:27-28). "In the beginning" he intended relations between a man and his wife to be for the purpose of procreation as with the lower animals. When Eve was seduced by the Devil-incarnate Serpent she crossed from Life to Death, and when Adam took her back to Himself he forfeited our dominion to Satan.
Hence man has yet to live one day of a thousand years. Darkness which may be felt is descending upon Jerusalem, which Jesus regards as "Sodom and Egypt" Revelation 11:8). Following its devastation by earthquake and an overwhelming invasion, a mass exodus of non-Semitic, anti-Semitic self-styled Jews will allow the blood descendants of Jacob to return to the land of the Covenant for redemption. Gentile days are numbered, with tribulation and horrors encumbered, eternity soon will unfold.
"This then is the Message. God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." He sent the mighty Covenant prophet William Branham (1909-1965), the Elijah of Malachi 4:5, 6b and Matthew 17:11), the angel of Revelation 1:1; 3:14 and 10:7 with "Light in the evening time" (Zechariah 14:7; Matthew 24:29). His Message has restored the apostolic faith, finished the mystery of God, introduced Christ's second or (Gk.) 'parousia' Coming, and for the past fifty-five years has been calling His people into the Light or understanding of His unchanging Word for that great millennium day. nl1028.htm
Genesis 1:3, "And God said, Let there be Light: and there was Light".
God is Light: He expressed the sum of His Attributes in the 'Logos' (Gk.) meaning 'thought in speech,' (En.) "the Word." As the (Heb.) 'Shekinah' the Logos appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and led Israel as a Pillar of Cloud and Fire. Ezekiel called it "the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord." The 'Shekinah' smote Paul blind on the Damascus Road, and appeared many times in the ministry of William Branham. 'The Word' manifest bodily as Jesus Christ, the fullness of the nature and character of God, born of a virgin to redeem the elect of Adam's race. He "delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son: in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by Him all things were created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things are sustained. And He is the Head of the body, the Church: Who is the beginning [of the NEW creation], the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence" (Colossians 1:13-18). The Bible is the story of God unfolding Himself or changing His form from the eternal Spirit alone with His thoughts, to the flesh of His glorified Family. Light is the offspring of the divine command of Genesis 1:3. This primeval light is not a substance but a condition or state of matter that arose over the dark-robed, seething mass of our condensing planet (and probably other bodies in our solar system). Luminosity is the result of incandescence caused by a process of heating which renders a body luminous. Any solid body can be rendered incandescent by being heated up to between 700° and 800°F. Any liquid that can absorb as great a quantity of heat likewise emits light.
This chaos of light was scattered and confused before the light-bearers established their fixed positions, and there was no open sky before the second day. On the first day the divine Word (Heb.) 'asah' made "light" from existing material, elementary light distinct from the "lights," of the sun, moon and stars made on the fourth day. Light does not spring from the sun and stars; the sun itself is a dark body and the light proceeds from a plasma which surrounds it. Light was called forth by the creative mandate "Let there be" to separate the dark chaos, and the Lord moved our glaciated earth toward the Sun, then divided the gaseous waters from the liquid waters to create a clear sky. The six days of creation are not days of mundane duration but six long days of about 1,000 years, each bound by one evening and one morning so that each period was one day in itself (II Peter 3:8).
In reading the account of Genesis 1 and 2 we find four Hebrew words that define primary, secondary and tertiary creation:
1). 'Bara,' means to create 'ex nihlo,' out of nothing (Genesis 1:1, 21, 27; 2:3, 4). God created the heaven and the earth in His great eternal thinking where they existed until "the beginning".
2). 'Asah,' means to make, produce or fashion from existing material (Genesis 1:7, 11-12, 16, 25-26, 31).
3). 'Yatsar,' means to mould or squeeze existing material into shape in time and space (Genesis 2:7-8; Exodus 32:4).
And 'banah,' means to extend, rebuild or cause to continue (Genesis 2:22; 4:17; 8:20).
Genesis 1 and 2 record seven dispensations or periods of time climaxing in the creation of the first Adam and men "of the earth, earthy" under the Old Testament. The four Gospels introduced the climax of the Old Testament with the birth of the last Adam, Jesus Messiah. Revelation 1 – 3 prophesied God creating Himself a part of creation in Jesus Christ, the Author or Beginner, and the beginning of the NEW Creation of God-men "that are heavenly" whose soul is re-born by revelation of the spoken Word for their day as Jesus' flesh was born of the virgin Mary by the spoken Word for His day (Luke 1:26-56; Revelation 3:14). As God put the first Adam to sleep and (Heb.) 'banah' rebuilt woman from a rib, a by-product or extension of man, years after He had finished the old creation, He put the last Adam to sleep on Calvary and under the New Testament He is building His Wife, the Church, by revelation from the Holy Spirit taken from His side (II Corinthians 5:13-21).
As God prepared the old creation for man through seven 'days,' Jesus has built the NEW creation for God through seven dispensations (I Corinthians 15:20-28); we are fulfilling the sabbath of the antitype of the fiftieth day of Israel's Pentecostal Feast—"the dispensation of the fullness of times wherein God is gathering together in one all things in Christ—the sleeping New Testament saints now in heaven and we who are alive and remain, even in Him" (Matthew 25:6; Ephesians 1:10; 4:13; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Revelation 18:4). In the antitype of Israel's feast of Tabernacles we see how man has laboured against sin through six days each of approximately 1,000 years to be followed by the sabbatical millennium; then the judgment and annihilation of sin and sinners will precede eternity in the renewed heavens and renewed earth.
Genesis 1:1-5, "In the beginning God created (Heb.) 'bara' ex nihilo the heaven and the earth." After millions of years earth evolved into the entire mass of which our planet is composed, including the superincumbent atmosphere, which was not uplifted from the chaotic deep until the second day. It is declared to be "without form, and void" and is manifestly not the dry land which was not separated from the waters until the third day. The heavens are the rest of the universe beyond the "firmament" or gaseous expanse which overarches the earth, and the heavens are without light until the fourth day.
God created, 'Bara,' the heaven and the earth in His eternal thinking. From eternity they existed only in His mind until "the beginning," untold millions of years ago, when the Logos was expressed, which materialised an immense sun, and time began. God does not make mistakes therefore He is unchangeable in both essence and behaviour. God is infinite in His abilities so therefore He as God must be omniscient. If He is omniscient, then He is not now learning, nor is He taking counsel even with Himself, nor is He at any time adding to His knowledge. If He can add to His knowledge, then He is not omniscient. God IS omniscient. He has never had a new thought about anything because all His thoughts He has always had and always will have: He knows the end from the beginning because He is God. THUS THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE ETERNAL. THEY ARE REAL. They are not simply like a man with a blueprint he has drawn up and which one day will be translated into substance and form, but they are already real and eternal, and part of God (Romans 8:28-30).
God always had His thoughts for Adam and indeed every man and woman there ever will be although they were yet unexpressed (Genesis 1:27). Psalm 139:15-16 will give YOU an idea of this: "My substance was not hid from You, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance yet unfinished during all the days in which they were being formed and even when there was as yet no first day You were writing the Lamb's Book of Life (the genealogy of the last Adam); all my members were written, when as yet there was none of them".
Brother Branham explained, "As I've often told you I was combing these three or four hairs I got left. My wife said to me, said, "Billy, you're getting completely bald-headed.
I said, "I haven't lost a one of them."
She said, "Pray, tell me where they are."
I said, "You tell me where they was before I got them. Ever where they was, they're there waiting for me to come to them." Amen. Hallelujah. What is it? You rot . . . Every hair in your head's numbered. I'll raise him up in the last days. Hallelujah. My body was laid out on this earth before there was even a life on the earth. The calcium and petroleum and stuff. God's a Contractor. He laid out all the bodies like He was going to build a subdivision. He knowed we'd be here. He knowed I'd be here before the world. He knowed I'd be standing here before there was a world here. He knowed you'd be setting in the seat you are. He's infinite. Certainly, He knows you. What are you scared about?"
"He put your name on the Lamb's Book of Life before the foundation of the world. The Bible said He did (Matthew 25:34; Ephesians 1:4; Hebrews 4:3; Revelation 13:8). What you worried about? You got the Holy Ghost, sealed into the Kingdom of God. How long? Until the day of your redemption. Amen. The church is scared. Don't be scared. Fear not. Only believe. That's what God wants. Sure." (#60-1125, Conference).
Brother Branham's anecdote and Psalm 139:15-16 hearken back to Genesis 1:2 when "the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the deep, [a formless waste]. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." We were there, "curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," the womb of nature, out of which the Lord God formed men "made to have dominion over the works of His hands" (Psalm 8:4-6).
Darkness is nothing of itself yet it indicates the obstruction of something that already is, and was chronologically the first night of the six periods, just as the light that follows is the first morning of the first God-divided day or thousand year dispensation as distinct from solar days. This ante-solar day, marked by no sunrising or sunsetting, or any astrological measurement, and without any computed duration, had an evening and a morning of its own. Each of the days of creation was defined by one evening and one morning, without a shining sun. Light is the first separation; it is divided from the darkness, which shows it had existed with it in combination in the formless waste. It comes phenomenally, and historically, after the darkness, and even after the division of the water, probably in a gaseous form.
"Let's close our eyes as it was, and take a trip a hundred million years before there was ever a star in the sky . . . God was there then . . . We're standing on a banister watching the creation come into existence, and see whether He was in His Son . . . No man has seen God at any time . . . And here's the Logos. Looks like It's a supernatural Being. It's a Halo. That's the Son of God . . . it was the Logos that went out of God. And there He was playing out there in space just like a child before the door. I can see Him draw the whole picture in His mind of the Kingdom and what it might be.
And then the first thing you know I hear Him say, "Let there be light." And when He did, an atom broke yonder, and the sun come into existence. I watch that sun burn for millions of years. The first thing you know went a clinker. He stood and watched it. And it flew, fell for a few million years; He stopped it. Then another one flew, and He stopped it. What? He was putting the solar system. He was writing His first Bible. The first Bible was written in the skies. Man looked up knowing that God was above. [His second Bible is the Great Pyramid. The third one's wrote on paper because this is that great educational age that we're living in. And none of them contradicts one another]. Look at the Zodiac. It starts off with a virgin, ends up with Leo the lion: the first Coming and second Coming of Christ. Everything in the heavens declares Him. Everything in the earth declares Him. Everything around declares Him. His people declares Him. His Power declares Himself. His Son declared Him. . . . After all the clinkers went off and the stars and meteors were made, I can see this Logos go over and hang over this earth, brood over it [Genesis 1:2], bring it back here around this sun and begin to break up the ice around it. And great big icebergs begin to come down; Texas and Oklahoma was formed. She run into the Gulf of Mexico down there. He was making the ditches and the plains and whatever He made. Vegetation and things would come up after while. Then after it all got melted and the ice run out and made water. Now, we're in Genesis 1. You can take up from right there. Genesis 1:2, it was "without form and void." And the Spirit of God moved upon the water. Is that right? In the beginning. Now, He separated the water, brought up the vegetation and everything.
And when He made everything that looked nice and good to Him, now He said, "Let us (plural) make man (plural) in our own image." What was He? There is a supernatural Being. There's the One that could not be seen. God the Father never was seen, never will be seen. He's all nature. And there He is. And now, here's the Son, which is the Logos that went out of Him, made in His image, a supernatural Being that went out in the beginning.
"Let us make man in our own image." After He made a man in His own image, He made a supernatural being. Yes, indeed. Genesis 1:28, read and see if that isn't right. And then when He made man in His own image, he had rule over the beasts. He led the beasts around then like the Holy Spirit's supposed to lead the Church today" (#53-0610, William Branham, Show us the Father and it will Satisfy Us).
The six days were dispensations or periods of about 1,000 years during which the Lord God spoke His creation, beginning from the evening of the (Heb.) 'tohu and bohu' or chaos, by the command, "Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was an evening and there was a morning, the first day" (or dispensation of about 1,000 years). God's "work" during these six days was "speaking" His creation of Genesis 1:1-2 into material existence; now it may have taken thousands of years to manifest, as when He said through Isaiah, "A virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His Name Immanuel [which means God with us]" (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). Nothing happened for almost 800 years, but in its designated and decreed season and time a virgin did conceive and bear the Messiah.
Have faith in God: "The word that goes forth from My mouth will not return to Me void, but it will accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55:11). Having sent His Word to (Heb.) 'asah,' make or bear from existing material the things He had spoken, God rested on the seventh day when the fruit of His lips (Heb.) 'yatsar' fashioned or constructed a more complex creation.
"Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God" (Luke 8:11). By faith His "Let there be . . ." produced the seed which bore what He had spoken in its designated season and time. Jesus assures US, "He who believes on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and more than these shall he do; because I go to My Father. And whatsoever you ask in My Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My Name, I will do it" (John 14:12-14).
Have faith in God and "speak the Word" in Jesus' precious Name for righteous needs that align with His will. "You have not, because you ask not. You ask and receive not, because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your lusts" (James 4:2-3). We are at the end of the Christian dispensation, God's Prophet has restored the apostolic faith and finished the mystery of God (Malachi 4:5, 6b; Matthew 17:11; Revelation 10:7). After fifty-five years the Voice of the seventh angel is still calling the wise and foolish virgin OUT from the Roman Catholic false church and her apostate (once) Protestant daughters INTO the unity of the faith for the manifestation of the Sons of God and the great translation (Matthew 25:6; I Thessalonians 4:16; Romans 8:19; Revelation 18:4; I Corinthians 15:52). The Seed of His end time Message has been spoken; may it find fertile ground in YOUR heart and may the Light of God germinate Its Life in you and bring YOU into "speaking conditions" to exercise the 'third pull' and change in the atoms in the time of the Seventh Trump.
Turning to Genesis 1:3-5, it is not any duration but the phenomenon, the appearing itself, that is first called day. The evening then was "the darkness on the face of the deep." The morning was the light that followed "the moving of the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters." This is not a solar day because "the light" as in "the firmament of the heaven" was not visible at that time (Genesis 1:14-19).
Genesis 1:6-8, "And God said: Let there be a firmament [or expanse, called firm because it is lasting and durable] in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God (Heb.) 'asah' made the firmament [from existing material], and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was one evening, and there was one morning, a second day" [of about 1,000 years]. We now have the sky, the atmosphere, with its auroral light.
This mass of turbid and noisy water covering earth was reduced and confined to expose the land by light or heat causing the gases and vapours resting upon the waters to ascend and form visible clouds when condensed by cold.
Genesis 1:9-13, "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas: and God saw that it was good." Earth and sea are the two constituents of the globe, by their separation its orderly and harmonious formation was completed. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day".
Once again we have a day that does not begin with sunrise and end with sunset. And the grass and herbs and trees God spoke on the third day did not manifest until the seventh day "for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to cultivate the soil; but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground" (Genesis 2:5-6).
Genesis 1:14-19, "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs [for the calculation of time, signifying the quality of the weather or season by the manner of their rising and setting (Matthew 16:2), eclipses, conjunctions, etc., and for the discovery of supernatural and miraculous effects (Joshua 10:13; Isaiah 38:8; Luke 21:25-26; Acts 2:19-20)], and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Genesis 8:22). [And to show the fit times and seasons for sowing, planting, reaping, the breeding time of animals, and the migrations of birds, for navigation, for the observation of set and solemn feasts, or the ordering of ecclesiastical or civil affairs. By their diurnal and swift motion to make the natural days of twenty-four hours, and by their nearer approaches to us, or further distances from us, to make the days or nights either longer, or shorter. By their annual and slower motion to make years].
"And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He (Heb.) 'asah' made the stars also[—by which the planets are chiefly meant—two of which, Venus and Mercury, appeared somewhere between the first and the fourth day; and it was not till this day that our solar system, consisting of a central sun and the planets, with their attendant satellites, was complete. And having (Heb.) 'asah' made the heavenly bodies in verse 16] God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day".
The atmosphere being completely purified, the sun, moon and stars were for the first time unveiled in all their glory in a cloudless sky in their permanent co-ordinates for the bestowal of that which is an essential condition for all life, vegetable and animal. Now there is a commencement of astronomical time with its subordinate periods of sun-divided days, not to be confounded with the great God-divided days of which the fourth was one.
The fourth, fifth and sixth days set preconditions in order for the sentient animal and human beings that will be (Heb.) 'yatsar' moulded on the seventh day when God rests. Rest is not inertia. Rest in physics is the equilibrium of power, and so the maximum of power. Motion is the yielding of power, necessary for its manifestation of patent effect, yet still a spending of that static energy which was in quiescence. Absolute rest in the kosmos (the bringing into, or maintaining in, that state) would be the highest exercise of the divine might; but as it would preclude all sensation, and all sentiency, both of which are inseparable from change to motion of some kind, it would be an absence of all outward manifestation.
Whence did Moses obtain this account so different from the puerile and absurd fictions of the heathen? Not from any human source, for no man was in existence to witness it; none but the Creator Himself could give this information. Hebrews 11:1-3, "Now faith is the substance [or confident assurance] of things hoped for, the evidence [conviction] of things you do not see, taste, feel, smell, or hear. By faith, not sight, the elders obtained a good report, and through like faith we perceive that the successive ages (Hebrews 1:2) of preparing and fixing the sun, moon and stars in heaven (Genesis 1 – 2) were perfectly consolidated by God's spoken Word (Gk.) 'rhema,' even "as the dispensations of Christ's Body are fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint contributes" (Ephesians 4:17) "so that things which are seen were made of the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world." There was no pre-existence of matter: even men without revelation can apprehend the unseen by the things that are made (Romans 1:20).
Genesis 2:4, "These are the generations [or posterity] of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens in six days of one contiguous act." This word therefore cannot denote the original beginning of the heaven and the earth but only the historical development of heaven and earth after they are finished in readiness for human habitation on the seventh day.
Read intelligently, the progress of time is carefully marked. In Genesis 2:6 the earth is watered by a mist: earth was standing upright surrounded by a watery canopy providing a more dense atmosphere and higher surface pressure. Under rain-free conditions before the Flood the atmosphere would have been very stable: winds would have been light, global temperatures more uniform, and with no rain to refract sunlight, rainbows would not have formed. All is slow and gradual, it was some time after God (Heb.) 'yatsar,' formed or squeezed Adam "from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives" that He "planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food" (Genesis 2:7-9, 15). God did not summon the Garden of Eden into existence by a sudden command. God works with such long ages of preparation that human eagerness is often tempted to cry, "How long?"
When the trees matured and came into fruit, "The Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden to dress it and to protect or guard it." He lived there so long that his solitude became wearisome and God affirmed that it is not good for him to be alone, so He (Heb.) 'yatsar' formed the animals, male and female, and "Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but no suitable help was found for Adam. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs . . . and made a woman." In Newsletter 1027 we explained that no female in the original creation can be immoral because they have sexual relations only for procreation and have no desire to lust. Woman may be touched at practically any time, and not being His spoken Word she can deceive and be deceived. Whereas female animals and human males are plain, male animals and women are beautiful, and with her power of lust woman can be immoral (Proverbs 30:18-20). God placed her on free moral agency with the sacred trust of preserving her virginity for her husband and their babies (Job 14:1-6; Psalm 51:5). When we were theophanies in God's eternal thinking He commanded us: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:27-28). "In the beginning" he intended relations between a man and his wife to be for the purpose of procreation as with the lower animals. When Eve was seduced by the Devil-incarnate Serpent she crossed from Life to Death, and when Adam took her back to Himself he forfeited our dominion to Satan.
Hence man has yet to live one day of a thousand years. Darkness which may be felt is descending upon Jerusalem, which Jesus regards as "Sodom and Egypt" Revelation 11:8). Following its devastation by earthquake and an overwhelming invasion, a mass exodus of non-Semitic, anti-Semitic self-styled Jews will allow the blood descendants of Jacob to return to the land of the Covenant for redemption. Gentile days are numbered, with tribulation and horrors encumbered, eternity soon will unfold.
"This then is the Message. God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." He sent the mighty Covenant prophet William Branham (1909-1965), the Elijah of Malachi 4:5, 6b and Matthew 17:11), the angel of Revelation 1:1; 3:14 and 10:7 with "Light in the evening time" (Zechariah 14:7; Matthew 24:29). His Message has restored the apostolic faith, finished the mystery of God, introduced Christ's second or (Gk.) 'parousia' Coming, and for the past fifty-five years has been calling His people into the Light or understanding of His unchanging Word for that great millennium day. nl1028.htm
Pass it on . . . please send this article to someone you knowBrother Grigor-Scott is a non-denominational minister who has ministered full-time since 1981, primarily to other ministers and their congregations overseas. He pastors Bible Believers' tiny congregation, and is available to teach in your church.
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