Godhead #03

Shall we pray.

Gracious heavenly Father, we appreciate Your Presence tonight and thank You, Lord, that You’ve made Yourself known, that You sent a prophet who gave us the truth and told us what we needed to know for the end time, a Bride waiting for the revelation of the Rapture. And he gave it, Lord, just shortly before he departed this earth, the way You wanted to take him.

And we’re grateful that all things have worked out for our good, even though we were like the disciples who could not understand why it would be necessary that You went away and You did; and it was necessary or the Holy Spirit could not come and do the work that He was supposed to do.

Now even in the end time we know that there must be a work done by the Holy Spirit working through the Word in our lives. And the prophet had to go off the scene, because his ministry was over, and judgment must now set in.

So we understand these things and appreciate it all, because we have insight; and with the insight, this great knowledge, Lord, we can worship You in spirit and in truth; and we thank You for that.

Now help us in our studies tonight that we may further know the truth and come even more thoroughly to an understanding, even a solid rock understanding, Lord, to where we have a tie post which is absolutely unmovable and we unmovable with it, Lord, and become strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus at this hour, with the Word of the Lord having Its place in our lives, and we becoming more and more the Word, which we actually are, but in the negative at this point.

We want to come more and more to the positive, and with Your help, we will.

In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated.

Now just before we go into the study again concerning “Godhead,” I want to read you something that I talked about in one of the earlier messages, and it had to do with a statement that a person made, and I can tell you exactly who that person is, and I’ll read it to you.

It’s Dr. Elmer M. Nelson, the second head of the FDA, tried to block health food processors from comparing the quality of their products with their synthetic or their engineered products, their counterparts.

He said in testimony in Federal Court that:

“It is wholly unscientific to state that a well fed body is more able to resist disease than the less well fed body.”

Now that’s what this man said.

“My overall opinion is that there hasn’t been enough experimentation to prove dietary deficiencies make one more susceptible to disease.”

Now this guy is an unmitigated, lying, hell-hound, deceiving antichrist. What about scurvy? What about beriberi? People took limes, and they got better.

This is the stuff that’s in the world today—science so-called. You cannot turn around but lies, lies, lies. Why? Money. Money. Money. The intrinsicality of the soul of man is money, money, money.

Now let me tell you something about what’s happening. They’re falling into their own trap. The farmers in America will soon lose a twelve billion dollar contract with Japan over-engineered soy beans. They’re turning them down. And Europe won’t take them.

Now I won’t quote my source or the pharmaceutical company, but I’ve been given to understand a certain pharmaceutical company, using soy beans for their mash or their broth, what they were going to feed whatever they’re feeding on to get their drugs… Something wasn’t working. They made an analysis and found the engineered soy beans only had fifty percent of the nutrients the others had, and therefore, what they were doing failed.

And yet the other day I saw pictures of these rabid guys, oh, these scientists, saying, “No such thing as engineered food being bad. It’s the best.”

They knew they were lying. I’m going to tell you what: I know when I’m lying. I know when I’m telling the truth. Don’t tell me they don’t know! Of course they aren’t lying.

An educated MD telling you that? Then why are they worried about little babies not getting nourishment? Why are they screaming about little kids! “Little kids! Little kids! They’re poverty-stricken. They don’t have the money for food!”

Who gives a rip? Let them eat sawdust. They’ll be fine. Isn’t that a logical conclusion at the end of it all?

Now take that to the pulpit and see what you’ve got. Ersatz. Man! I get so steamed up over that. But I get steamed up over the Word, too. Don’t think I don’t get steamed up and happy and everything else, too.

But I just had to read this and… See, I knew about it, but I didn’t have the quote—didn’t have the man’s name—but I got it. Fortunately, it fell into my hands. Fortunately, the other fell into my hands too, about the pharmaceutical company.

And they’re going to say, “Oh, it’s all right. It’s all right.”

That’s why the herbs and things don’t work… We’re getting irradiated herbs. The Europeans are not taking our engineered grain. If you don’t believe me, go to the elevators around here, and they’ll tell you.

“What is this? Is it engineered?”

“Yep.”

Well, but when you consider what the devil has sold to the people, leading in worship of God, I guess this is just child’s play and nothing to even talk about.

Now I want to go to Godhead, and we’re going to try to do some talking about Godhead and a few things, and I’m going to read a lot of quotes of Brother Branham.

I don’t like doing that, because when you take things out of context, it isn’t quite right. You need to read a lot of context, but when you take enough quotes you can sometimes bring a lot of things together that are quite good; they’re quite beneficial.

Now to begin with, we know that Brother Branham talked different times about, God being called ‘El’, that’s E-L, and then ‘Elah’, and then ‘El Elah’, and then ‘Elohim’.

And of course, like everybody else, he settled on the word ‘Elohim’, and what it all boils down to is the “Strong One Bound by an Oath.”

Now, so let’s just work a little bit here at the white board. It doesn’t really matter what color we use, but we could start with blue up here.

We have here: ‘El’, and then ‘Elah’, and then ‘Elohim’, and as we said, that’s the “Strong One Bound by an Oath.” So we’ve got the “Strong One,” and that’s “Bound by an Oath.”

So what you really see here is actually strength, and it’s extra strong, because it’s omnipotence, and over here is Word, actually, which is omniscience.

So when you find that God is bound by an oath, you find that God actually is His Own Word. He’s His Own bond. See, that’s over in Hebrews, where It says that, when God made a promise to Abraham, He swore by an oath.

And since He couldn’t swear by anybody greater, He swore by Himself. And actually His Presence was there, confirming His Word. So you find that God is a Confirmer or Keeper of His Own Word. And Brother Branham makes the statement where he says, “A man is his word,’ getting this from God.

And of course, this is exceptionally true as you look at the Scripture, because, if we are a part of God, which we’ll talk about every so often, and God is Word on the grounds of omniscience and omnipotence—He’s bound by His oath, He’s bound to His Word, and His Word is bound to Him—you can see then, that we also are our word, and a man is as good as his word.

Well, if a man is as good as his word, it means that he’s an honorable person, and he will discharge the responsibility of his word being brought to pass, whatever it is that he has said.

So we find God up here Who is actually love, that’s one of the three, and then we have omnipotence over here, and we have omniscience over here.

So we have actually all those… That’s the great Fountain of the Holy Spirit and out of the great Fountain of the Holy Spirit, we have here, coming up from down in this great reservoir, God Almighty revealing Himself as to the God of love—the “Strong One Bound by an Oath.”

And you will notice, as you study Scripture, that God never, ever, as far as I can see or read in Scripture, made a covenant prehistorically with anybody except Jesus, His Only-begotten Son. ‘Only-begotten’ means ‘begotten in a unique way’, no one before him and no one after him. He’s that unique one, and he’s the first and only one.

And you don’t find God having a bond with angels. When there was a war in heaven, it is quite evident that the die was cast when Satan became iniquitous, which means he perverted the Word, at least what is about two-thirds, or perhaps it was, one third of the host of heavens, fell with him, and they went into a perverted state.

And you see there was no contract there. It was simply: “You’re here and tomorrow you won’t be here, if you’re off my Word. You’re in now, conditionally.” There was no contract. But when it becomes contractual, you have to know what lies within the individual to bring out this contract.

Now we’ll show you the contract and it has to do with man. The contract that God made with His Son positively had to do with mankind.

And anything else is peripheral, because It says in Romans: “If God spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all, how shall He not with him also freely give us all things?”

You can see right there that the contract with the Son concerning the children of God, who were begotten in a different manner from Jesus, is in play, and this is why you have the Jehovah-complex come up out of the El, Elah, becoming the Elohim-complex, and it’s never changed.

It now is that love, the Spirit which is love, omnipotence and omniscience and is completely centered upon the children of God. And nothing takes precedence over it. This is central or core.

Now you have to understand that: that anything else there is a matter of circumstances and convenience and the circumstances and convenience are not about God; it’s about the people—their care, because God can take care of Himself. That’s like the 144,000 virgins—they’re attendants upon the Bride, and they’re, therefore, in the New Jerusalem because of the Bride.

And then all around them the foolish virgin, and the rest bring their glory in, and then outside of that there’s all the attendant angels and archangels and cherubim and heavenly hosts.

But you’ll notice that when the end time comes and the Kingdom is handed back to the Father, He now is in a Pillar of Fire above the throne and before they call, He answers.

And everything of course that is devoted specifically for the family of God comes down through Jesus in the New Jerusalem, and then out and around about and yonder.

So what we have here, is the Jehovah-complex which Brother Branham admitted was God’s nature and love toward mankind and is what is demonstrated here.

Now you’ll notice, I mentioned there were, as Brother Branham brought out, seven redemptive titles in this. Not seven, because seven is not the number of God. Seven is completion. Three is the number of God.

So you’ve either got to have a three or a six or a nine or a twelve or a fifteen or an eighteen or a twenty-one or a twenty-four. Well, forget it.

There’s nine. Three three’s and that’s exactly what is true. And now that’s what I’ve done here, because I’ve numbered these here, and it’s going to be difficult to follow.

I’m going to do this over again here, because I didn’t give myself enough room down here.

So I’m going to bring this down here, coming up out of this great Fountain of the Spirit of love and omnipotence and omniscience, and It comes flowing up and out of El, Elah, Elohim, Who is alone and inviolate, Who dwells by Himself, Who needs nobody, Who doesn’t have to have anybody, Who is ‘There’s no God beside Him’. He’s there. Period.

And He’s there all alone with this great loving Spirit that’s omnipotent and omniscient, and He’s bound by an oath. He’s already bound by His Own Word, He’s got to live up to what lies within Him, and you can see now that He is actually powerful Word, lovingly giving of Himself. That’s what He is, so we shouldn’t have any trouble understanding that.

Now way back in Jewish history the Israelites decided that they would make what actually is a logo, you might say, or it’s a figure whereby they could immediately recognize the Jehovah-complex of God’s great love and earnest intentions and guaranteed Word concerning them. That was the nine stemmed lamp or ‘memra’.

The first title I’m going to put up here is ‘redemption’. Now that’s one that’s missed out by everybody—and ‘sanctification’. God is not in seven’s. Seven is completion. What everything God does is in seven’s. Huh? That’s exactly right. But God Himself is in threes.

Now the reason I take ‘redemption’ as the middle and top one is because that’s what Brother Branham talked about: man left God in sin, and now God must buy back or redeem.

And ‘redeem’ means to ‘buy back’, and put in its rightful place, completely restored to where it was and should be, with all the benefits they should have had and didn’t have, and now will have, and even beyond that. That’s redemption.

So number one, to me, has got to be redemption at the top.

So this is called the ‘memra’, what we’re going to talk about. Now notice how pretty that is: one, two, three, four, five. That’s five letters, right?

Now the new spelling of it is ‘menorah’, the ‘menorah’, that’s seven. Well, that’s very nice, too. God, working in sevens. But the actual number of the arms of the lamp is nine.

So down here we have a set of arms: that’s two there; and that’s four there, and we’ve got…let’s see…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and we’ve got a ninth one.

Now that is symbolical, but it’s not at all sensate. It’s not alive. It is just dormant and standing there as a symbol, as a memorial, and as you look at it, you think about God and you say, “All right. I am related to Him. In these nine ways He is blessing me, this great God of love.”

So at the top is redemption, because that is number one. Now going up there, that really is the…one, two, three, four…that’s really number five. That’s a high point right there.

Over here, I put on number one: He’s present. And so He has got to do something to work with man. So what does He do? In redemption He’s got to come down and be present. He has got to be a Kinsman Redeemer, and He does that through Jesus, as Brother Branham explained.

So then, number two up here, I put that as ‘the Lord is our Righteousness’, and He is our Righteousness there. And then for number three, I’ve got: ‘our Sanctifier’ up here.

And then on number four. What have we got for number four? Redeemer at the top. I’m going to get these all here eventually, so don’t worry about it. That would be number five up there. Okay. This here then would be ‘Peace’: He is our ‘Peace’. I think we’ve got that, right?

And then from down here we would have… These are what I figure. I’m just talking what I would figure. He is our ‘Shepherd’, He is our ‘Provider’, and then He is our ‘Healer’, and then He is ‘our Banner over us is Love’, because that would be the feast of the trumpets, which is the last feast.

So now we have here all of this beautiful Fountain of God coming up here, and of course, this is a candlestick. like this here. Now that’s what they had back there in the ancient times.

Now when it came to the New Testament and God worked out all of this redemption, because God was in Christ, you know, reconciling the world. God was in Christ redeeming the world, and all of these here have to come through the one that God sent.

And we went all through this at different times as we followed what Brother Branham said, and we got right down here, where we see that the next step is going to be coming over here from this here, which is simply the memra into the logos.

Now the ‘logos’ is the word that went way back to the time before John, I guess, back to the time of the Old Testament put into Greek. They had a million Jews in Alexandria, and they had scholars by the scores, and they put out the Septuagint.

They got the Hebrew into the Greek. And where they used the ‘memra’ there, they used the ‘logos’ over here. And this word ‘logos’ is a word that John was able to use.

Now see, if you watch carefully Brother Branham did something which I also did, and he could do it, and I couldn’t, because he could actually reword a lot of things, but he oversimplified.

And in the oversimplification—in a sense of the word, it’s oversimplification—it’s really not when you understand what he’s saying.

But when you take and say, “All right now, ‘logos’ is the actual exterior or the expression of what is in the interior,” and the exterior has to be a part of the interior, and now when you use this simple saying, which is true: a word is a thought expressed…

Now I don’t have any trouble with that except for the English language‘s common usage.

Now if I use a word or words, I am actually using a means of communication, and a word will take on the meaning of a person, place or thing, a verb, an adjective, an adverb. It’ll describe location, describe conditions, describe previous to present to future, will actually use words that analyze, come to conclusions and actually go so far as to delineate feelings, motivation, and various other elements so that I can stand up here and draw you a word picture whereby you could instantly with your mind, see every single thing that is not present, and know every single thing about that and be absolutely satisfied that you have it.

Now you couldn’t possibly think in terms of the word that we call ‘word’ in the English language and associate that to God. You can’t do it.

So when it’s simply said: a word is the thought expressed—although it’s very true—where do you really come to the understanding you should come to when you’re talking about God?

Well, of course, you’re not talking about God when you use the word ‘word’ in the English language. That’s a means of communication. I know that God is the Great Communicator. I have no problem with that. We’re just talking in terms of just straight talk tonight, not just talking spiritually.

But we get to the place where “In the beginning was the Logos.” See? Now, “The Logos was with God and the Logos was God.” And that is translated “Word,” you are far beyond anything that we use in our common, everyday language for ‘word’.

Now the reason I’m saying this is because we’ve got to be very careful about Rhema and Logos and know how they actually interact. And you’ll find that many people, like this one fellow from up in Chicago. His name was Olsen.

He was making a big deal about Rhema and Logos and trying to let everybody know that in his own way, Brother Branham was all messed up, and he wasn’t the Elijah which was for to come.

In fact, he told that down in Dayton in a very crude and vulgar manner, and that’s why they never had him back anymore. That whole bunch finally found out what we knew all these years: the guy was absolutely Satanic in his approach to this Word. He had nothing in mind except to destroy Brother Branham and the ministry.

He would go to Europe and say, “I can’t stand the thought of saying, ‘people in the Message.’” Well, what is he in? I want to know something. See?

This guy was a weasel in the chicken house. Boy, they went from down in Dayton and all around, toward Lima and the whole area, until finally he just boldly told the people, “Look, if you believe Brother Branham is Elijah, you are so-and-so.” It was a very vulgar and crude statement he made. But anyway, they finally found out what he was.

So this business then of Rhema and Logos, what I’m looking at here is: you simply cannot just take and say “word.” It won’t work, because God is not just word. See?

Look here, we have it all up here on the board: omnipotence, omniscience, all coming up in the form of His attitude and His heart’s desire and the outworking of His heart’s desire for His children. Well, come on. This is Logos, but this is just sitting there. It’s simply a picture. Over here is reality.

So now here we are, and remember, they had reality, too. See? No doubt about it, they had reality, but we’re moving now from what they call the ‘memra’, that nine-pronged candlestick, and we’re going now to an understanding, which is the same understanding but now coming to the Gentiles and using a Gentile language, which was the Greek language, even though the Bible is also written in the Aramaic.

And you’re going to find in the Aramaic there are even some words that are better used in the Aramaic than in the King James Version. In the Aramaic where It comes to Timothy, where It talks about the elders, can only be the husband of one wife. Right in there it calls it ‘polygamy’.

That’s what Brother Branham said it was: polygamy, where the King James Version doesn’t give you a clue, and you go haywire and crazy trying to figure this thing out. It’s polygamy!

And yet how many people would have known except I asked Brother Branham point blank, and he said, “Lee, in my thinking, that’s polygamy.”

You wouldn’t even know that. It’s not in a tape. It’s nowhere, but the Lamsa version positively identifies it as polygamy. So, see, so much for language. You’ve got to have revelation along with even what you are getting, which is legitimate according to the language. So all right.

We have Logos over here. Now I’m going to take a little time reading to you, and I hope I can get through at least this portion tonight, reading from Doctor Vine, who of course was a student of all the other students ahead of him.

And he mentions here in 1 John 1, which we will find that Brother Branham uses one way and then another way. In one time he will say, “If you make Jesus the Logos, positively you have three gods.”

And yet in fifty, maybe to a hundred places, he makes Jesus the Logos, and it is a hundred percent right in what he is doing. People just don’t understand. And then many times he uses words, and he runs them right together; and they are nouns in apposition, which means they are the same thing. See?

But just like you say, “There’s a great thunderhead. There’s a great storm.” Well, ‘thunderhead’ and great ‘storm’, they’re nouns in apposition, but one clarifies the other. See? You could say a ‘terrifically strong wind’, or you could say a ‘hurricane’: they’re in apposition.

Now he takes a thought:

“In the beginning was…” and that’s what you’re looking at, with evident allusion to the first word in Genesis.

“Now this allusion here, it actually is an allusion back to Genesis 1: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void…’” and so on.

“But John elevates the phrase, now listen, from its reference to a point of time, the beginning of creation, to the time of absolute preexistence, before any creation, which is not mentioned until verse 3.”

“So when you’re looking at John 1:1, you’re looking at a far deeper understanding of the beginning, and this has always been put forth by students than in Genesis 1:1.

And in verse 3 It says, “And there was nothing made that wasn’t made by him.” There’s nothing made except by God. This beginning had no beginning.”

See? Now he’s telling you right there that the beginning he’s talking about actually had no beginning. The One before there was a beginning.

So he’s letting you know there’s something here in John 1:1 that far supercedes what is in Genesis 1:1 when it comes to time and the place in time.

So, since he’s back here in John 1:3: “All things were made by him: and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

So he’s saying here:

“In the beginning was the Word.” And the beginning here far supercedes anything that has to do with creation.

This is actually something that is found in the Greek here, and we could go here also to Ephesians 1:1, and he uses this as the very same thought from the very same words, and he says:

“Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Jesus…”

And of course, you’ve got to read on there where It tells you how that you were in Him, chosen before the foundation of the world. So if you were there, in Him before the foundation of the world, this predates any reference to creation.

So there’s somebody here in a beginning, before there’s a beginning, you’d say, but it’s still a beginning; but it’s much previous and much further ahead.

And he goes on into Ephesians 1:4: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world…”

And then he goes into Proverbs 8:23, bringing these different ones out, to let you know how this happened.

He said:

“I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.” That’s wisdom.

“So you’re looking at John 1:1 here in a depth that is not in Genesis 1:1. This heightening of the conception, however, appears not so much in”—that’s the word ‘in’, beginning, which simply leaves room for it, “as in the use of the word ‘was’ denoting absolute existence.” See? “Instead of came into being, or began to be, as it’s used in the third verse and in the fourteenth, ‘The word became flesh.’ This tells you that there was somebody way back there before creation. And that’s what John 1:1 is actually saying. And this is from the authorities that go into the Greek and they know the tenses and they’re able to parse every sentence and tell you exactly what it all means.” See?

Now again, it says here:

“…Instead of coming into being or began to be, which is used in verses 3 and 14 of the coming into being of creation and the Word becoming flesh. Note also the contrast of the word ‘in the beginning’ and the expression ‘from the beginning’, which is common in John’s writing. So you have one which was previous to the beginning, and you have something from the beginning. So you’ve got a beginning line, if you want to use that here, we’ve got a beginning line here before John begins talking, and there’s something way up here, and there’s a beginning here; now this is previous and this is after.”

So the Bible is very, very accurate in what we’re seeing here.

Now:

“…Which is common to John’s writing, and which leaves no room for the idea of eternal preexistence. So in Gen 1:1 the sacred historian starts from the beginning and comes downward, thus keeping us in the course of time.”

Here he starts from the same period but goes upward, so that’s what he’s looking at here. See?

“Thus taking us into the eternity preceding time.” Now he’s quoting from Moulton and Milligan, who are very outstanding authorities on the Greek.

“And then you see in Colossians 1:15:” And that’s one we’ve used many, many times over here concerning creation.

Colossians 1:15, here it is:

“‘Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature…’” So the image of the invisible God, we’re talking about Jesus, “and by him God created all things. So you’re looking at a period even before him.”

See? Now I can understand that. There’s no big problem there.

“This beginning is still further heightened by the subsequent statement of the relation of the Logos to the Eternal God. The Logos must refer to the creation, the primal beginning of things, but if in this beginning the Logos already was, then He belonged to the order of eternity.”

So what he’s saying here: if you have a Logos right here in this area of creation, that wouldn’t hold up in the Greek. It has to be the area before creation. He has to be before. Then you find all this that happens down after creation starts, and Brother Branham took us through much of that. All right.

“The Logos was not merely existent, however, in the beginning, but was also the efficient principle, the beginning of the beginning.”

So he says here: the Logos was not merely existent, however, in the beginning, but was also the efficient principle. In other words He’s the One that was there all by Himself and started doing this thing, whatever it was that was being done.

So you can look at it this way and say, “All right. This Logos is merely something to do, bringing us into a relationship and knowledge, or visibility of what was already there, and we had no knowledge of, relationship to, or visibility.”

So there’s something there. And that’s exactly what we found right up there in that particular area. See?

“The beginning… The Logos was not merely existent, however, in the beginning, but was also the efficient principle, the beginning of the beginnings.”

In other words, if He hadn’t have been there, nothing would have begun. And yet when He was there to begin with, in the sense of standing all alone—we call that ‘to begin with,’ in the sense there’s going to be something come down—we could say, “Before anything ever came down, somebody was there, somebody had to be there.”

“The beginning in itself and its operation, dark, chaotic, was in its idea and its principle, comprised in one single, illuminous Word which was ‘the Logos’.”

So therefore, what he’s telling us here that John looked at was: no matter what you are looking at, no matter what is in the world and no matter what predated the world and anything in it, there was Logos, there was this One, and He’s called “The Logos.” That means He’s called “The Word.”

But you see, this is where I was talking about, I would have trouble in simply saying that a word is an idea expressed, because God is not an idea. It goes deeper and deeper, but this is the word that John found better than ‘memra’, or just a symbol.

So he says:

“All right now, we’re going to begin to unveil this God, and we’re going to start right back in the beginning, before there was a beginning.”

We start with the Beginner and as to when He began to unfold Himself in His plan. In other words, before there was an atom, a speck of stardust, as Brother Branham said, a breeze—anything—God was all alone. The Bible often speaks of it as God in the darkness.

This fellow here puts it as ‘chaotic’, what have you, nothing really there. But the thing that comes out now, according to him, which is luminous, which is bright, which is wonderful, is this thought here, or the idea, that as a word expresses a thought, so now evidently God is going to come into whatever He was: inscrutable, unknown, known to nobody, because nobody’s there. He’s now going to start to come forth.

So as God comes forth, it will have to be God illuminating Himself somehow, and He cannot illuminate Himself, even though He has the calling or quality and ability, unless there’s somebody to illuminate Himself to.

This is where you have the understanding now of Logos, or God, coming into what you might call the ‘Being’ relationship, which will be started with His Son, we’ll see that, and then coming on down, as Brother Branham explained it.

“And when it is said the Logos was in this beginning, His eternal existence is already expressed and His eternal position in the Godhead already indicated thereby.”

Now I want you to know this guy is Trinitarian. That doesn’t bug me one bit, because I know what he’s saying is the truth. But he doesn’t have the truth. He’s a Trinitarian. See? He’s trying to throw this Logos back onto Jesus. He can’t do it.

Even from his very words, he cannot do it, because sons have beginnings! And if Son had a beginning, who is before the beginning? Huh? And who brought about the first beginning? See? He chops his head off. He doesn’t even know it. See? We know the truth.

Now he’s quoting from Langy.

“Eight times in the narrative of creation in Genesis, It is said, ‘God said, God said.’”

“Now the word ‘logos’: this expression is the keynote and theme of the entire Gospel and it comes from several root words, and I’ve talked about them before, which means ‘to lay’. The primitive meaning is ‘to lay’,” that is, to lay something out, to lay there. “Then it means to ‘pick out’, ‘gather’, and ‘pick up’. Hence, to gather or put words together and so to speak.” See? That’s okay, it’s fine.

“And when you speak words and use words, you do it to communicate. And the communication is knowledge. And so God, in communicating Himself, has this special way of revealing Himself, even as the Bible said, ‘The Only-begotten had declared Him,’ which means to ‘lead Him forth by words, and actually explain Him’.”

“Hence, logos is first of all a collecting or collection, both of things in the mind and of the words by which they are expressed.” It all comes together and spells “God.” All things are of God.

Okay. Then all you’ve got to say is: whatever is in here in God is collected in there, and then It’s expressed. And that’s what we’re talking about. And it’s the same thing here.

What was in Him, in Him as He was going to relate to His Own children, was already there. And it comes up in the Jehovah-complex, the top one, the fifth, is redemption, that’s the high one, and this leads up to it. And this leads down from it. [Brother Vayle points to his rendering of the candlestick on the white board.]

So you’re going up to here: complete redemption, and you’re coming down here, and you’re coming, and then it comes back to God. Right? And sure it’s got to come back to God, because God becomes All and in all.

And the feast of the tabernacles is the last one, and that’s where they come together in houses made out of branches. It’s a very temporary thing. Why? Because they’re on their way to the Promised Land. And it’s the eighth one, meaning we’re starting all over.

Now:

“Hence, logos is first of all a collecting or collection, both of things in the mind and of the Word, by which they’re expressed.”

So you see, if you’re going to express it, you’re going to have to be perfect in your expression. Your words have to be perfect. That’s why you can’t add a word or take a Word.

Now that’s where I said ‘oversimplified’. I tried to get people to see that logos wasn’t just what they thought it was. Like, for instance, if a man made a knife, he’s going to make a knife, and it’s serrated edges and all, you know what a knife is like.

I’m not good at drawing knives, but a knife is… We’ll make a little knife something like this with a little handle on it, little teeth here, like that. It looks more like a ladle, but it’s a knife. Now the point is: if it came out like this here, that’s a spoon. That’s no logos of the thought of a knife.

I oversimplified it to get people to know that. Look: it’s got to come out what is there. And if God is a logos, then God has got to come out. He’s got to come into view.

Now if you don’t think that’s true, then why did John say, concerning the Logos, “Then we beheld His glory as of the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

And he’s telling you flat: God literally manifested His glory through Jesus Christ, and Jesus got the glory by healing the sick, and raising the dead, and being a great figure, and God was doing it all along. Combination: a duality. One within the other. See?

So I oversimplified it on purpose, and I was really sorry I did, and like I say, Brother Branham went so far as to just talk about ‘being the Word’, ‘being the Word’, ‘being the Word’. And you come to the place where it’s almost like saying, “Rhema, Rhema, Rhema.” And it’s Logos with Rhema—See?—because the Logos would have to contain the Rhema.

That’s where this guy, Olsen, went haywire. He tried to separate them. I looked in my Bible; I found case after case after case where it’s Rhema-Logos. It’s just like Jehovah-Elohim.

You can’t say, “Well, one is. You could say, all right, maybe with Benny Hinn. He got so messed up, he said, “There’s three sets of three gods.” I think he got it from this.

Well, I can say, “Okay, here’s El: one god, two god, three god.”

Oh, good! We’ve got three in a row. You know, stupidity is not allowed in the presence of God. Do you know why? Because He will give you the answers and make you to know all things. See?

“So it therefore signifies both the outward form by which the inward thought is expressed, and the inward thought itself. The Latin ‘oratio’ and ‘ratio’ compare with the Italian ‘raggino’: ‘to think and to speak’.”

Which it doesn’t matter, these guys are always comparing Latin to Greek, and it pains my neck. All the students have always gone stupid. They’re so big headed and so smart, they can’t say anything sensible.

They’ve got to talk around and make you think they know more than God. Well, I read what the idiot said, anyway. Too bad. I’m a vulgar person, so just forgive me. I think he’s a great guy, but what a mess. But he’s pedantically right.

“As signifying the outward form it is never used in the merely grammatical sense as simply the name of a thing.” See? That’s what I’m talking about. “…Or an act, but means a word as the thing referred to.”

In other words you’re not simply talking about something, there’s a reality. Now you could talk about Gulliver’s Travels. That’s a myth. But if you talked about Marco Polo, that’s not a myth. See? There’s got to be something there that’s real.

“The material, not the formal part, a word as embodying a concept or idea.” See? It’s not that. See? “See, for instance, Matthew 22:46.”

So we’ll just see what he says in Matthew 22:46 to help us get… we already know this, but we’ll see what he’s saying, because he’s going to the Greek for us.

“And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.”

Now the idea was: if David then called him ‘Lord’, then whose son is he? And what I looked up here in Matthew 22:46, he was “signifying the outward form that is never used in the merely grammatical sense as simply the name of a thing or act, but means a word as the thing referred to, the material, not the formal part—a word as embodying a conception or idea.”

And It said right here then: “No man was able to ask him a word.” It said, “If David called him Lord, how is he his son?”

So this is not just merely a technical question. It’s a question which has to have an answer, which I say is deep within it, and at this point would require a revelation.

So you’re simply not asking a question for the sake of a question. You’re simply not bringing information for the sake of saying something. There’s got to be something. And my understanding of what he is saying is something very definite—something very pertinent.

Now he says also:

“Further used of discourse, either the act of speaking,” that’s his word ‘logos’, “the skill or practice, of speaking,” this is in the Bible now, “also used of doctrine or of narrative, a matter under discussion.”

So the Bible uses this word ‘logos’ in different ways. And when It does, in referring to God Himself, you have to go far beyond what is just a definition, and you have to go into the philosophy.

And the philosophy was: here is God from the memra, put before you knowing in three three’s, with the full redemptive quality, which takes you all the way from being alienated from God, a sinner, not a reprobate, not a child of disobedience, but a sinning, disobedient child, all the way, God coming down, taking all the way up here and all the way back. See?

Now that’s what we are looking at when we are looking at ‘logos’.

Now:

“Therefore, having understood this, is it possible that you can attribute to Logos in John 1:1 anything but God Himself?”

Now don’t get all messed up in your thinking as to how God did this through the Son, because remember: there was no creation until God birthed His Own Son, and thereby God birthed Himself as God. See?

As Brother Branham said, “In him…” Here, let’s bring this down here.

Now in here: “In here,” and this is ‘Him’, “was to be Father. In Him was to be Son. In Him was to be Holy Spirit.” In there.

Now you will notice that this complete plan, from here all the way back again, God is All and in all, and everything in Him now comes into full manifestation in the human race, and whatever He wants, and these are the redeemed, “As in Adam all died, even so in Christ all are made alive,” and in Him was to be Father, He certainly was, in Him was to be Son.

How did He do it? Very simply. He came and indwelt the Son. In Him was to be Holy Spirit. How? He came and divided Himself upon the people.

And yet remember: God is a Person. God is a Person. He’s not omnipresent, He’s only omnipresent by virtue of His omniscience and omnipotence.

And if you know everything, and you can act on everything, you don’t have to be omnipresent. You’ve automatically got it. Otherwise, that’s pantheism.

That’s that old junk down in Florida, you know. I wave my arms—I wave through God. I breathe in—I breathe God. I breathe… Well, I’m never going to breathe out again. I want all the God I can get. You talk about foolishness. Come on! This is the junk they’re preaching. It’s the same thing they’re preaching right today.

They’re quoting Brother Branham, and Brother Branham is not saying what they’re saying. One guy, he takes these three tumblers, and he said, “Okay. This is God. This is the Son. This is the church. And this is full of water. He pours it into Christ. Throw away that. All right. He pours it into the church. Throw away that.

That’s not what It said! That is not what Brother Branham said. I’ll get quotes on that and show you. No, no, no, no, no. You step outside this Bible, you’re wrong. See? I’m showing you: Logos up here in John 1:1 is speaking of the Elohim Himself.

Now he said,

“When you are in narrative, both the relation and the thing related of matter under discussion and affair, as in the case of the law and so on, you can call ‘logos’, because as signifying the inward thoughts, it denotes the faculty of thinking and reasoning, regard or consideration, reckoning, account, cause, or reason.”

Now that’s right—found in that word. And John uses the word in a peculiar sense here in verse 14, in this sense in these two passages only. And let’s read that to you, because it’s the one concerning the Word made flesh. And here’s your Trinitarians all messed up again. Okay.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of truth.”

He’s talking about the glory of the Logos coming through the Son.

We’ll get into more of this as time goes on and show you where we’ve all missed the boat—wrong teaching. The American tradition is: get all the money you can, have all you can, be a hog, kill, do what you want to do. There is no thought of God in the ways of the people here.

Our education is so putrid, and it’s not because they took religion out of the schools. They could put prayer back in the schools. They can put religion back in the schools. They’ll end up a bunch of Trinitarian heretics and all go to hell anyway.

What they’re doing now is just a manifestation which had to come, that’s all, whether you had it in school or not. Why? Because the heart of everybody is full of nothing but money, money, money. The essentiality of the soul of man is nothing but money—the love of money. You can say what you want.

You can say, “Well, the Book of James was written to the Jews.” That’s fine.

Who controls all the money today? The Jews. And don’t think for one minute the Gentiles aren’t just as anxious to have it as Jews are. And that’s where the fight is going to be. And that’s where the Blood is going to be shed.

That’s why Hitler killed them, and that’s why they’ll be killed again. They’re going to want what the Jews have got. So if you want to be worldly guys, just get ready to kill all the Jews or anybody else. Listen, this is what’s going on now.

So he’s telling you here: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And he’s telling you: that beginning is the beginning before beginnings when there wasn’t anything at that time, until that beginning began.

And they’re going to throw this right onto the Son, and it won’t work! It won’t work from even the Trinitarian concept can’t work.

This Logos is what Brother Branham said, “If you make Jesus God,” in John 1:1, under the conditions of which he was speaking and giving us doctrine, “you end up with three gods.”

But you can quote him in 150 more places where Jesus is the logos, but not ‘that’ Logos. See? There’s where people… Look: you heard what I read, and this word ‘logos’ cannot possibly refer to God under every condition. It just doesn’t.

But this is the one word that you can use to begin to see the beauty of it where omniscience, omnipotence work together in love, and now is revealed or declared to us, which means that no matter when God comes on the scene, He still has to be explained. See?

That’s the thing where they miss Brother Branham. They miss every prophet. Even when God comes on the scene, they say, “That’s God.” Then shut up and listen to what the prophet says!

What do you think he came on the scene for? Even the Catholics know: shut up and sit down. There’s a message here! That’s why Brother Branham kept on saying, “They know better. They know better.”

One day I began saying, “God, how do they know better?”

Then I got Dave to get me some books. I wanted to know about this little Fatima gal. So Dave got me the books, and there it was, right there.

And the priest that was narrating the whole thing, he said, “What is this?” He said, “It wasn’t a great manifestation out there. The thing was, God was saying, ‘Listen! I’ve got something to tell you!’”

Then tell me Brother Branham made a mistake when he said, “They know better.”

Oh, hallelujah! I could get real religious right now.

Now:

“The Word here points directly to Genesis 1 where the act of creation is effected by God speaking.” And you can find that in Psalm 33:60. “‘The idea of God Who in His Own nature hidden, revealing Himself in creation is the root of the Logos idea, in contrast with all materialistic or pantheistic conceptions of creation.’”

In other words this man is saying here, just exactly what Paul said, “You can know God by creation, but you can’t really know Him as to know Him; but you can know positively He’s there.”

And if you turn down that, that’s the first step to complete obliteration and annihilation. God in nature.

Now, we go to the Logos concept, because we do know you can see God in nature: there’s a creator. But if you can’t hear from Him, if He doesn’t express Himself, His wisdom, only shows forth His power, doesn’t explain it.

How could you possibly believe in a love of God and the kind of God we believe in? He’s got to come forth as Logos. In other words everything that lies in here, that is in this great one God, loving Spirit, omniscient, omnipotent—He’s got to do something whereby He Himself in it manifests, declares, helps us to know Him—“Whom to know right is life eternal.” If you don’t know Him right, you don’t have Life Eternal. If you’ve got Life Eternal, you will know Him right.

So that’s where Logos comes in. It goes beyond nature, because I can look at nature and say, “Oh, look at that! That’s God in nature.” And a hurricane come, and 2700 people drown, three billion dollars in damage? An earthquake come, and thirty thousand people killed, billions of dollars in damage?

So that’s God in nature? Ha! Give me a break! You’ll never know God outside of His Word. You can’t do it.

So therefore, the idea must come forth expressed, which is, God must express Himself. And He’s got to be in it. And the beautiful thing is, they don’t want to believe God in the prophet—that God declared He would reveal Himself again in human flesh. Oh, they can’t take it.

I love it! I get real religious. I’m not going to hang on the chandeliers either. I’m just going to scream up here a bit. See? We’re different. We’re different. From what I see in this world, we’d better be different.

“The Word as embodying the Divine Will is personified in Hebrew poetry.” That’s true. You can see it. “The word: a ‘healer’, a ‘messenger’, the ‘agent of divine decrees’, the ‘personification of wisdom’, and right down the line.” You can see it.

So here we find where Brother Branham said, “This Bible is God in print,” and that’s all It is: God in print. It means It’s not God in action, It’s God in print.

But It can tell you Who He is, what He does, how He does it, how you affect Him, and that’s true, how He affects you, which is truer still, motives, and everything.

It’s all out here in this Book, and this reveals God by revealing Jesus Christ, who is the image, who, in turn, the Son is a logos. If he is not a logos, you tell me what he is.

“Well, he could be a chicken.”

Well, did God have an idea to have a chicken? No. An idea to have a horse? No. He had a Son. Then the idea to have a Son already was in God, capable to have a Son, and He birthed His Son. That’s a logos. Well, isn’t it? Most certainly. That’s what we’re talking about.

And that’s why this word ‘logos’ becomes such a very, very good word. Now there are many things I could read here which are very good, but I’m not going to take time to do it, because it is not all that necessary and that pertinent.

So what I wanted to get the idea here, when you go to John 1:1, it’s absolutely lying there in the Greek: a beginning before all beginnings. As Brother Branham said, “He comes before He comes.”

You say, “Oh, that was Brother Branham stuttering.”

Well, maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. I never took it for that. He said, “He comes before He comes.”

And I say, “That’s exactly right.” He comes before He comes, and He’s talking about God. God comes before Jesus comes. And that’s exactly true. And Jesus also comes before he comes, because we meet him in the air. And he’s got to get down here on earth to be a coming.

So how was the prophet’s language? Maybe a hundred percent beautifully perfect. I take it to be that way. So all right.

We’re looking at logos, and we’re looking at what Brother Branham categorically said about Jn 1:1 concerning Jehovah-Elohim. In the beginning someone was there before anything started. That’s what it’s all about.

Who was there before anything started? Just God. So that’s exactly what we are talking about.

Now we can go from there, and this is one thing I said I don’t like to do, but we’ll do it. I’m going to do some reading of some of Brother Branham’s quotes, and it’s dangerous in the sense that you isolate some things, but if you read enough of them, you know, you can begin to see the formulation and the direction, that things are going.

So all right. We find ‘Logos’ is rightly used by John, because we find God revealing or expressing Himself in and through His Only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and in so doing, all nine aspects of the memra come out into the open. And we saw that.

We saw the fact of what Jesus did, and remember that He was in the likeness of Moses.

So reading a bit here, to get on the other track where we find Brother Branham talking about the Logos, talking about Jesus, talking about the halo of light, talking about different things.

He talks about the theophany, and he actually is not correct on the word ‘theophany’, but as the Bible always corrects the Word, the Word corrects the Word, you’ll find that he is corrected. And he’s corrected it very nicely himself, God having corrected him.

And remember, Brother Branham did need correction. When Brother Branham said he always had his doctrine right, that is true, but he had errors within the doctrine.

For instance, Brother Branham knew the baptism with the Holy Ghost was a born again experience, but he said the evidence was love.

And it’s not love; he had to be corrected. It’s believing the Word for the hour, because that’s what God said the Holy Ghost would do when He came.

“Well, if He does something else,” you say, “I’m to change my mind and not teach these people. I’m going to just fill them full of love.”

Well, that’s wonderful. So then maybe, in an act of love you could go right against the will of Almighty God.

Now let’s talk about an act of love along that line, just for the sake of it. The Bible distinctly said, “If a child is obstreperous and will not obey his parents, and he’s absolutely a bad, little kid—little devil—you bring him before the elders—they’ll lay hands on him, and they’ll kill him. “Let not thine eyes spare; don’t let your heart tremble. Do it.”

Did they do it? No. When a man rapes a woman, he’s supposed to be killed. And he should be killed, even today. They used to do it. Why did they quit doing it? Why did David not do it? “Oh, this is my son. Boys will be boys.”

Well, he had a daughter! Why didn’t he protect her integrity? What Absalom got away with… After Absalom got killed, he boo-hooed and bellyached until they said, “Listen, you’re crying more for that boy than for the kingdom. You are going to lose your head, if you don’t smarten up, David.”

In other words they said, “You’ve got a false sympathy and a false thing going here. As king, you better smarten up.”

So you see, what if God just said, “Okay. I’ll give them all love.”

Where does love of God come in? What’s true love toward each other? What about Brother Branham saying, “How you ought to love each other, you that love this Word.”

We’re mostly like a bunch of tomcats with their tails tied together, thrown over a clothesline. Yeah. Preachers, especially. People ain’t far behind. People, like preacher, same spirit gets on them. See? The evidence is knowing the Word, and from there on there’ll come the actions. All right.

Who Is God?  50-0815

[16]  So he first was God, Jehovah. [Well, that’s true. Actually, he was what Brother Branham said in another place: He was El, Elah, Elohim.] Let’s just picture now as a little drama so you can get it.

Now this is said back in 1950 in Cleveland, Ohio. What’s up in Cleveland? What’s in Windsor? What’s in Toledo? Death, death… everywhere. Why do you think certain places in America are going to get the bomb, or bombs?

[16]  Let’s just picture now as a little drama so you can get it. Let’s see coming out of space where there’s nothing. Let’s make it a little white Light, like a mystic Light, like a Halo. And that was the Logos that went out of God in the beginning. That was the Son of God that came out of the bosom of the Father. That was what was in the beginning, was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Now see, you can get fooled right here, thinking that Brother Branham is not saying what he said previously. He’s talking about God, and that’s what happened in the beginning. God was there and nothing else was there, and the beginning was the birth of the Son. And that’s the beginning of all beginnings.

[16] That was the beginning of the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. In the beginning was God. Now notice, he’s right back to what I’m trying to tell you: In the beginning was God.

In the beginning was God. What came out of God? A Logos. And then It became flesh. What became flesh? God became flesh. How did He become flesh? Through the Son. Now watch:

[16]  …In the beginning was God. And then out of God came the Logos, a part of God that went out of God.

Now see, what he said, “A part of God that went out of God,” a Logos. He’s talking about that Light.

“So therefore, you see the idea perfectly expressed: I am to become a father; I want this Son; he’s very necessary to me, so he must be gotten in this very particular way.”

And when he comes forth, he’s formed. And there’s nothing to form out of except God Himself, just like when a baby comes, when the sperm and the egg is there, there’s nothing but the mother. That’s all.

And of course she has to eat, and she has to be sustained, and so on. But God doesn’t have to even be sustained..

So He gives birth to this Son, that’s the Logos. Because He wanted a Son, a Son is what He got, and the Light was around Him, there the exterior and the interior was perfect; from the omniscient, omnipotent loving God, we have the Son.

Now I’ll skip a lot of these, and read here, now:

Hebrews, Chapter One  57-0821

[28]  When these great Lights went out or great rays of Spirit, love, peace, and so on. That was all there. There was no suffering; there was no hate, no malice. It couldn’t come from this Fountain. That was Jehovah, That was Jehovah God. And now as the theologians call it, a theophany went from That, which was called in the Scriptural the Logos, the Logos that went out of God, is hard to explain, but It was a part of God.

Now very vaguely, you could make that a theophany on the very grounds that Jesus was nothing but a part of God. As the question came to Brother Branham, listen: “What is the difference between God and Jesus?”

He said, “No difference, except sons have beginnings.”

So here we have now, we have God Almighty up here, and here is the Great One before all the beginnings. Now come forth the Son. Here‘s the Son, and he is in a Light—up here a light. And he’s actually a part of Almighty God, and he is the Son.

Now that has to be a logos. That’s all there is to it. And at the same time, he’s nothing but a part of God, that’s all he is. That person right there is a chunk of God, a part of God. That’s a theophany, But theophany and logos are not really the same thing.

Brother Branham equates the theophany to that which is a Spirit form, and it is. But when you use the word ‘theophany’, you’ve got two words: ‘theo’, ‘theos’, which is God, and ‘phanero’, which is to show forth.

In a sense that is Jesus, and he does show forth God, absolutely. “He that has seen me has seen the Father.” No problem. But you can’t carry that all the way. You have got to be very careful. But notice… It’s all right.

[129]  Now here’s what happened. Excuse me; this just gets right where I love it. See? The Logos, and this Great Fountain, this Great Fountain of Spirit, which had no beginning or no end, the Great Spirit began to form in the creation; and the Logos that went out from It was the Son of God. It was the only visible form that this Spirit had, and it was a theophany, which means a body, the body like a man.

Now the reason he says that is the following verse. So he’s right in Scripture.

Moses saw It when It passed by the rock, and as he looked at It, said, “It looked like the hind part of a man,” the back of a man, is what Scripture says. It’s the same type of body that we receive when we die.

Now the point is: that is not a theophany. And Brother Branham corrected it by saying, “Spirit or Word-form body.” The Word always corrects the Word.

Now if you want to use the word ‘theophany’ here, that is perfectly legitimate, on this grounds: if we were a part of God, and we were, and we had gone directly to that Word-body, which we could have gone to, that would be actually a theophany in the sense that we were nothing but a part of God. And it would be like the prophets: ‘gods’, g-o-d-s, to whom the Words come.

As Brother Branham said, “You’re Messiahettes. You’re Mrs. Jesuses.”

In other words we are looking at the lowering and the coming down of the line of the Life of God. Now these terms here are legitimate. The reason I, myself, prefer other terms is because I can be more definitive in what I say and hold my line.

And I always like to teach by holding my line, and I don’t say I always do. I do not like convolutions. They’re dangerous. That’s why a preacher or speaker should never leave his notes or his idea to bypass it and think he can come back, because he can get lost.

I’ve been preaching about sixty years, and I don’t think I’ve done that six times. That’s a pretty big record, and that means one thing: God sure helped this pinhead of mine. I like straight, direct attacks when it comes to these things. But it’s all right.

Now watch:

[130]  It’s the same type of body that we receive when we die. Now notice he said ‘type of body’; didn’t say it was, but ‘type’. “If this earthly tabernacle be dissolved, we have one already waiting.” That was it.

And that was the Theophany which was the Son of God. That Son, That Logos, became flesh because we were put in flesh. And the Theophany, the Logos, became flesh here amongst us, and It was nothing else but the dwelling place; for That entire Fountain dwelt in Him.

Now that might sound obtuse in certain ways but there again, I’m back to what I said: you can say this—I don’t like saying it, not saying the prophet’s wrong, but the fact is: if we had gone directly to our body, which Jesus did, it would have been a Spirit-body. It would not have been a theophany body, it would have been a Son-body, but being the Son is a part of God, it would have that which was required to be from that Life of God.

That’s why Brother Branham said, “It’s eternal in the heavens; it’s waiting for you; and when you’re born again, you’ve heard from your theophany,” because that’s where you should have gone.

But now born-again, you have that which is commensurate, whereby you can be tested and live up to the expectations which were in you being in that Word-body.

That’s why you heard from it, and that’s why it’s eternal, because it’s a part naturally. Wouldn’t that Light that emanated from Jesus have to be eternal, coming from the eternal part? I would look at it that way. All right.

Sirs, We Would See Jesus  57-0104

[11]  Now, John 1: “In the beginning was the Word.” Now a word is a thought expressed.

Now you see, that’s what I say that’s fine, but you can’t leave it that flat, because you’re referring to God. So everything that lies within the natural concept of Logos, you have to bring back to God and you have to lift It up where it works, see, in the sense of begins to communicate to you what you need to know.

Because remember: the Only-begotten Son absolutely declared Him, which means ‘brings Him forth by Word’.

Now let’s look at this Son here—this Only-begotten Son. He comes down here and is in human flesh. What happens? After He comes down at the River Jordan, we find God, Logos, comes into this logos here.

Now Jehovah of the Old Testament is Jesus of the New. Now, not this flesh person, that’s the Son, but this Jehovah of the Old is Jesus of the New. So we have to be very careful when we talk about Jesus. Yeah. Because this in the flesh came in his Father’s Name, but he wasn’t the Father, period; he was the Son.

And the Father Who created that cell and egg, in which God wrapped Himself to bring forth what God’s Own flesh would have brought forth had He Himself done it, instead of through Jesus—those traits would be in there.

As Brother Branham said, “He took your great, great, great-grandmother, great, great, great-grandfather, down, down, down…to get you.”

So God did it to get this. Then He came in here temporarily to the Garden of Gethsemane. And remember: after Gethsemane, when God left him, and Peter cut off the high priest’s ear, and the people were fussing, and Jesus said, “Whom do you come and seek?”

And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.”

He said, “I am,” and they fell backward, and people try to make that ‘Godhead’. Not so! Not so, because he was before Abraham, and he was there. See? You’ve got to be careful. Jehovah of the Old is Jesus of the New.

So I want you to keep that in mind. I just suddenly remembered I hadn’t brought that to your attention, and I certainly had wanted to, because here’s pitfalls, if you don’t realize that. Jehovah of the Old is the Jesus of the New.

So therefore, all of this [pointing to the picture of the circle on the white board], the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Jehovah-complex, lay in him: the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But show me where he was omniscient or omnipotent.

Show me that he had his own will, and it was right in doing it. He said, “Spare this from me, O Lord, but if the cup can’t pass away, Thy will be done.” “I come to do Thy will, O God.” See? He’s not God. He’s the Son of God.

So, now:

Sirs, We Would See Jesus  57-0104

[54]  Now, a word is a thought expressed. It’s a thought first. You think it, then you speak it. And He was the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Is that right? In the very beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word…God.

Now that word ‘with’, of course, we understand has to do with the thought. ‘It’ denotes ‘motion toward, or direction, not merely in the sense of being near or beside, but as a living union, implying the act and motion of intercourse.’

In other words God is a Rhema-Logos. There’s no way that God can act apart from His Word. No way whatever. That’s why He is the Word, and He’s not just the Word on the grounds of the manifestation, He’s the Word on the ground that the manifestation is based upon this, that you could call a ‘Rhema’.

In other words it’s written in stone. And then what’s written in stone is manifested in a vessel. And everything in the Jehovah-complex, you see right here, comes out in Jesus.

So what did God pour into him? The fullness of the Godhead bodily. And then Jesus poured what he was into the church, which is complete redemption and all of these things coming through it.

Look at what he was, and then see what was poured into the church. He was the complete Son of God, the Only-begotten. Did he pour that into the church? He sure did; he gave himself for it. His Spirit was of God’s.

What did he do? He gave that to the church. As Brother Branham said, “He poured his soul out.” He does say, “He poured his soul in death”…many things.

Now here:

[54]  “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word… Because It was His thought before He expressed It, It was God. When He expressed It, It became God because the Word is a part of God, just like you are a part of your word. And when He expressed It, It became God. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld him, the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace.

Of course, It doesn’t quite say that, but that’s the idea in there. You can read It yourself, and It says, “And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In other words It tells you there flat: there’s only one that could have had that, only one, and that was the Son. No one else could have had that glory. No one else could have shared it.

No one else could say, “The Father dwells in me. I and my Father are one.” No one else could say, “All my thoughts are of God. I don’t do a thing, unless I see Him do it. I never say anything, unless I hear it.”

There’s nobody else could say that. Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody. No. The only perfect one. And even he learned obedience by suffering. Many things in here you have to watch.

[55] Now, if He was the Word then, expressed and manifested Word, then He’d have to be the same thing tonight, because when God speaks, He can never take it back. See, that’s the way you must have confidence in your Bible. Your Bible is this: God wrote on paper in word form, because it is God.

In other words He gave us a complete photograph, you might say. He put Himself in black and white. Even the Old Testament, the Bible, said that the Word, God, came to the prophets. The prophets, the Word of God came to them.

Now that’s why Brother Branham said, and this is something nobody really wants to believe it but guys like you and me, and that is, he said, “The prophet is the living Word of God made manifest.” Right, Joe?

And Brother Branham said… That one Mr. Rosenke couldn’t take; could he? And Johnny Rowe. Sorry to mention their names, but they thought it was blasphemy, utter blasphemy, until Joe said, “Look, I just quoted it…” Joe gave me that one.

What was that out of? I forget what it’s out of. It might be “The Future Home of the Earthly Bride.” “The prophet is the living Word of God made manifest.”

They said, “Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”

So Joe said, “Just a minute, here it is in my book.”

They said, “Oh?”

People are still doing it.

“Uh?”

I say, “Now there’s two of them.”

“Uh? Lee Vayle’s preaching two gods.”

“Uh?”

I’m quoting Brother Branham. Hey! You know something? Live with it! Like women live with their long hair, live with the Word. Okay.

FUTURE HOME…  64-0802

[129]  Now “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us.” The three stages: it was an attribute first, was in God, that He thought of Himself as being human, and that transmitted Him down to be Jesus. Now if you’ll ever be there, you were with Him then. And there’s only one form of Eternal Life and that’s God, and you had to be a part of God in the beginning. It’s not what you just chose down here; He chose you. “All the Father has given me will come.” Now that’s a good thought right in here, when we look at this. Let me go into it again:

[129]  …Three stages: it was an attribute first, was in God, that He thought of Himself as being human, and that transmitted Him down to Jesus

Now let’s look at that: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God.” Now if you put this into human figure: “In the beginning was the Word, Almighty God, the Great Fountainhead Word.” Now, It was “with God.” Bring that to yourself: part of God, you were with Him, in Him, and coming down. See?

But it’s still God. He’s not talking here about Jesus in John 1:1, in the case of Godhead. We saw that right from the Greek. See, every time you’re going to find Brother Branham right on the Word. I don’t care how you look, you’re going to find him on the Word.

Now I know preachers aren’t going to agree with me, but I agree with myself. And I know what I’m talking about. If they do, that’s fine. No problem.

Let them talk what they know. I talk what I know, and I know there’s one God, and Jesus is not God, period. He’s the Son of God, and I know exactly how he came.

I know what kind of body he’s got, and that’s exactly why I teach this way, because one day they’re going to be people just sitting here, healed in their seats.

You know why? We’ve got two out of the three right now, if there are three. One is “If you only knew I was, you’d all be healed.” We know that.

We know Brother Branham, living Word of God made manifest. We know Jehovah-Elohim right there. We understand perfectly. And we understand Jehovah of the Old is Jesus of the New.

And we know that Jesus is here right now in the form of the Pillar of Fire. He brought that Word. He’s here right now to raise the dead.

The next thing he said, “If you understood the virgin birth, your blind eyes would be open.”

Is there a third thing? I don’t know; but I’m telling you, brother/sister, we’ve got to believe this Word. You’ll be healed sitting in your seats.

I haven’t stopped praying for the sick. I’ll lay hands on the sick. But Brother Branham said, “That’s not our time.” He did it, and I’m willing to do it… any way for people to get help, but I’m looking, by the grace of God, for this Word to be fulfilled. And it’s going to be fulfilled somewhere.

Like Brother Branham said, “If we’re not Bride, there’s a Bride out there somewhere, and by the grace of God, I won’t stand in her way.” That’s a beautiful thing to say. How many of us can say it? That’s a different story. All right.

Let’s go a little further here:

Questions And Answers #2  64-0823e

[105]  And now, what was that other question? I get so wound up in these, I forget what things they were. What was I, the Son of man, or the Pillar of Fire?

No, no, he said. The Pillar of Fire is the Anointing, the Pillar of Fire… Now, this may go a little deep unless some of you are theologians, and some of these ministers sitting here, my good friends around, they probably know.

Now, that Pillar of Fire is the Logos that went out of God, the Logos which is actually the attribute of the fullness of God, when God became into the form to where it could be seen.

It really should be, “He could be seen.”

It was the anointing of the Great Spirit that went forth, condescending, coming down, God the Father, the Logos, there’s Jn 1:1. Right? That was up over Israel…

In other words he’s telling you: God was in that Logos, and that’s exactly what it should be, or it couldn’t be otherwise. That’s the only word that fits now in the modern language. The memra won’t do it. That’s just a static thing.

We’re looking at Life and Reality; we’re looking at actually what God is, right today, the same One in the Pillar of Fire came down. That’s Logos right there [Brother Vayle points to the picture of the Pillar of Fire.]

[107]  There had to be a blood offering right in Eden. Then that Logos became flesh and and dwelt among us.

Now he said, “Dwelt in a human body.” He didn’t say, “He was born…” He said, “He dwelt in the body,” which was the sacrifice; so that one’s okay. So the Bible is the complete revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now that’s good. See? Everything He poured into Jesus. And at the same time, remember: ‘pouring into Jesus’, like Brother Branham said, “Not like He vomited up, or tore off an arm and a leg, but a mask.”

So what happened? [Pointing to board:] This one here, all the attributes He wanted to express: the fullness of the Godhead bodily, coming right down here to this one here. Jehovah of the Old, Jesus of the New: fullness of the Godhead bodily.

So therefore, when it’s all summed up, and you get all of this revealed and coming here, you now have the whole Bible is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And at the same time it’s the revelation of this One here, because Jehovah of the Old is Jesus of the New.

And remember, Jesus of the New is Christ, the Anointed One, and it’s also the same word for ‘Messiah’. It’s also the same word for ‘Holy Spirit.’ See? That’s where you get caught up in these things, and it’s difficult.

I don’t pretend I’ve got all the answers, but I’ve got to stay with that Word and see what Brother Branham said, and bring it down every single time.

And you cannot make Jesus ‘God’, except where Brother Branham said, “He’s God, but he’s not God.” All right.

Number one: When is he God but not God?

Well, he never was God. He’s the Son of God, and God dwelt in him. And as a prophet, he was “God to the people.” And because God was in him, he was God, but not now. See?

“But I can worship him.”

That’s true, because he’s lord. Sarah worshipped Abraham, called him ‘lord.’ We do the same thing. There’s lots of lords, you know. That’s an indication of power and authority, due to accepted stewardship, and proven stewardship.

Christ Is Revealed In His Own Word  65-0822m

[52]  So the Bible is the complete revelation of Jesus Christ, Jehovah-Elohim, brought through the Son in this day. “God, in sundry times, spoke in the prophets, and in the last day speaks through His Son, Jesus Christ.”

So there it is. Everything that was, he is the complete Word revealed.

[52]  Jesus was Malachi, Jesus was Jeremiah, Isaiah, Elijah, all of them. And all they were, were in him. And all that you are, and all that I am is in Him: Words, witnesses of the Word. So It’s not a book of systems, a code of moral ethics, neither is It a history book, a book of theology. It is not.

And yet, in a word, It is. it’s all there, but It’s the revelation of Jesus Christ in every bit of it.

And so you’ll find, therefore, what God put forth to the people and gave them the opportunity, that’s in the Bible. What they did with that, and how they did it, that’s in the Bible.

And how God responded to that, that’s in the Bible. And where God effected His cures, or wanted His cures, that’s in the Bible. What God did as an antidote, that is in the Bible. What God brought in judgment, it’s in the Word.

So you see, everything that Brother Branham said is actually not true, but true. It’s all there, but it’s all a revelation. It’s all a revelation.

[52]  It’s a revelation of Jesus Christ: God Himself, revealed from Word to flesh.

Now what does he call that? The revelation of Jesus Christ. He’s right back to Jehovah of the Old is Jesus of the New.

[52]  …Revealed from Word to flesh. That’s what It is. The Bible is the Word. God is the flesh,” [but he didn’t mean that.] God is the Word, rather, and Jesus being the flesh. It’s a revelation how God, the Word, [right back to John 1:1,] was manifested in human flesh and revealed to us. And that’s why He becomes the Son of God. He is a part of God. You understand.

So therefore, Jesus was a part of God and proven by the fact that God indwelled him, and the same thing is today. If you are Seed, you will receive the Holy Ghost, and if you have received the Holy Ghost, you will believe this Message.

You see, you can’t do otherwise. You can’t back off the Word that Brother Branham taught. I realize that, in the eyes of many people, I am doing a dance, and a little convoluting. But I don’t care what they believe, because I know where I stand and know what’s being said.

[52] The body is a part of God so much that it’s a Son. [Isn’t that beautiful? Well, that’s true. We told you how he got born.]

[53]  As the Catholic puts it, eternal Son (and the rest of the churches), the Word don’t even make sense. See? There cannot be eternal and then be a son because the Son is something that’s begotten from. The word ‘eternal’ cannot be. He can be a Son, but he can’t be eternal Son. No, sir. Cannot be eternal Son.

[54]  But now, He’s the Son of God, so much that all the Word that was in Jeremiah, Moses… All those Words He said, “They speak of me.” That’s right. That’s the Bible. All that true, Divine revelation of Word was wound up into one body, and God put flesh around it.

Well, that’s true. Put in a different way.

That’s the reason He was called ‘Son’, reason He refers, ‘Father’. Why? It’s just as simple. If you just let God pour it down your mind. See? God revealed in a body of flesh, (Notice)—revealed from flesh—or Word unto flesh. That’s Jn 1:14: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

You see, Brother Branham never, ever deviates from the fact that Jn 1:1 absolutely, literally, is God Almighty, and He came down and indwelt human flesh: the Jehovah of the Old was Jesus of the New. And we’re talking now of the God within the man, because Jesus is not God.

“It was a duality,” as Brother Branham said. It was the Son of God, begotten in such a way, no other one, and he had the fullness of the Godhead: God Himself, absolutely as a Person, indwelt him. That made Emmanuel: God with us. All right. That’s as far as we’ll go.

So I hope you begin to see that there is a thread here, and that thread is inviolate. You can’t violate it. It goes all the way through: Father and Son and children, and we’ve explained it. All right.

Tomorrow, if we have the ability, the wherewithal, to get back, we shall be back. It’s getting to the point where I’m getting, not just a few days behind, I’m getting months behind, and time is running out on me so fast, I figure you people are coming every two weeks instead of four weeks, and I’m wondering when you’re going to make it once a week. That’s the way time’s going these days. So it’s very tiring. All right.

Let’s bow our heads for a second.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for the time of fellowship we’ve had, and now as we go, Lord, to look at Your Word a little tiny bit and have Foot-washing and Communion, Lord, we praise You that we’re able to do this, knowing, O God, that You have made the way for us, and therefore, Lord, we are anxious to be participants therein, knowing that it is required of us. And such an easy requirement and such a blessing.

Help us now. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.