God Expresses Himself pt1
Bro. Chris Osborne
09-10-2017e
Hebrews 11:1-16
Hebrews 12:1-2
54-0624 THE.DEEP.CALLETH.TO.THE.DEEP
E-40 Now, okay? No man seeks God at any time; God seeks man. Never did a man seek God in all the world, God's seeking man. When man first fell in the garden of Eden, it showed the strain of man. Man hid; God was hunting man. Jesus said, "No man can come to Me except My Father draws him." He has to be drawn of the Father first.
PERGAMEAN.CHURCH.AGE - CHURCH.AGE.BOOK CPT.5
179-2 THOU HAST NOT DENIED MY FAITH
In Acts 3:16 when Peter was asked how the mighty miracle had taken place upon the crippled one at the Gate Beautiful, he explained it on this wise, "And His (Jesus) Name through faith in His (Jesus) Name hath made this man (former cripple) strong, yea, the faith which is by (from) Him (Jesus) hath given him (the man) this perfect soundness in the presence of you all." See, there it is. Jesus' Name, and Jesus' Faith brought about the miracle. Peter did not claim it was his own human faith any more than he claimed that it was his own name. He said that Jesus' Name used in the faith which is from Jesus performed that great work. This faith is what the Lord was speaking about in Revelation 2:13. It was HIS faith. It was not faith IN Him. But it was HIS OWN faith that He had given to the believers.
Romans 12:3
"According as God hath dealt to every man (according to verse 1 the men are BRETHREN) the measure of faith."
Ephesians 2:8,
"By grace are ye saved through faith, and that (Faith) not of yourselves, it is the gift of God."
And it also says in James 2:1,
"My brethren (notice he, too, is talking to BRETHREN) have not the faith OF (not in) our Lord Jesus Christ with respect of persons."
179-3 In this Pergamean Age where men were humanizing salvation, having turned from the truth that "Salvation is of the Lord,"--having cast aside the doctrine of election and opened wide the church door and their fellowship to any and all who subscribed to their tenets (never mind the Word), in this age of rapid degradation, there were still the few who had the measure of that faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not only used that faith in acts of power but withstood those who dared to say that they were saved simply on the grounds of joining a church. They knew that no man could truly believe unto eternal life and the righteousness of God apart from the measure of the faith of the Lord Jesus, Himself. As today's church is filled with mental believers who endorse the virgin birth, the shed blood, going to church and taking communion, and are not reborn at all, even so in that third age was the same problem. Human faith wasn't enough then and it is not enough now. It takes the very faith of the Son of God to drop into a man's heart so that he can receive the Lord of glory into the temple not made with hands.
180-1 This was a living faith. "I live by the faith of the Son of God." Paul did not say that he lived by faith IN the Son of God. It was the faith of the Son of God that had given him life and kept him living in Christian victory.
64-0816 PROVING.HIS.WORD
64 Now, there is also an old proverb that says, "Prove it, and I'll believe it." Now, they got one of our state, one of our states in the nation, they have a slogan, "I'm from Missouri, show me." See, in other words, "Prove it to me, I'm from Missouri." But this doesn't work always, because God has, in every age, fulfilled and proved the work that He has set out for that age, and spoke it in His Word. And every time that God's Word has been proven in the age, the majority has turned It down. So, "Prove it, and I'll believe it," is not so. You can only have faith as God gives you faith. Faith is a gift of God. Ever how religious you may be, yet it must take the... you must have faith. And your faith can only rest, if you're a Christian, upon the proven Word of God.
(65-0725M THE.ANOINTED.ONES.AT.THE.END.TIME
53 What is faith? Faith is something that's revealed to you; that is not yet, but you believe it will be. Faith is a revelation of the will of God. So, by revelation!)
64-0319 CALLING.JESUS.ON.THE.SCENE
204 Now what did she touch? I want to ask the audience. What did she touch? There is a woman with her right hand up, and mine, too, before God. See? She touched Something. Just a simple little woman, it actually, to tell you the truth, now you see if this is the truth, it surprised her. She didn't know she had that much faith. Faith is not something you manufacture; it's something you have. See? She was surprised. Even right now the woman feels different than what she did a few minutes ago. She knows something has happened to her.
63-0728CHRIST.IS.THE.MYSTERY.OF.GOD.REVEALED
106 God's great mystery of how, it's a secret. He kept it a secret. Nobody knowed nothing about it. Even the Angels didn't understand it. See, He didn't reveal it. That's the reason, under our seventh mystery, when the seventh seal was opened, there was silence. Jesus, when He was on earth, they wanted to know when He would come. He said, "It's not... Even the Son Himself don't know when it's going to happen." See, God has this all to Himself. It's a secret. And that's the reason there was silence in Heaven for a space of a half hour, and seven thunders utter their voices, and John was even forbidden to write it, see, the Coming of the Lord. That's one thing He hasn't revealed yet, of how He will come, and when He will come. It's a good thing that He doesn't. No.
107 He has showed or revealed it in every type that's in the Bible. Therefore, the entire Bible is the revelation of God's mystery in Christ. Hum! The entire Bible is an expression of one goal that God had, one purpose He wanted to achieve in the entire Bible. And all the acts of the--of the believers in the Bible has been in type, and expressing what God's great goal is, and now in this last day He has revealed it and shows it. And God's help, well, you'll see it right here this morning, what the Lord has had in His mind all along, and has expressed it.
65-0410 THE.EASTER.SEAL
60 Look at the millions on earth that didn't receive It when Jesus was here. But how thankful that we should be this morning, to know that we have the direct evidence and the Bible proofs, that we are included in that great resurrection morning coming, that great Easter. We have the earnest of it, right now in our mortal bodies. The predestinated ones are the first, of course, to be quickened, when the Holy Spirit comes to claim Its own.
61 Now, there's a great statement, and I want my minister brothers to try to understand this. See? In the beginning, God, the great Spirit, He wasn't even "God" then. He was the Eternal One. God is an "object of worship." He had nothing to worship Him. There was no--there was no Angels, no nothing. Just God alone, Him alone, is Eternal. But, in order to be God, there had to be something to worship Him, so He created Angels, and Beings, and Cherubims, and so forth, to worship Him. His great plan begin to unfold.
62 But remember, you, in the--the statue that you are in, this morning, if you wasn't in His thinking then, you're not now. For you, there's some part that's in you, that's Eternal, and Eternal only belongs to God. And in God was His thinking of you setting right where you are now. In His thinking, I stood at the pulpit this morning, because He's infinite and knows all things. Therefore He could tell the end from the beginning, because He is Eternal. And you, being a son of God or a daughter of God, then you were in His thinking at the beginning.
63 And then when the Holy Spirit come, and you're on earth, walking around here as a sinner, way down in your life there is something. You don't know what's taking place, but you're hungry. I heard the Presbyterian brother; I heard the--the Baptist talking about, back there, he was a--a Freewill Baptist, preaching where he can. My fellow brother, that you, there's something in you, something that you never put in there. It's something that you couldn't desire to be in there. It's something that's contrary to your own nature. It's the foreknowledge of God, taking place, God's Word.
63-0825E PERFECT.FAITH
114 And so when a man lives by faith and walks by faith, I mean substance faith, he is isolated from the entire world and becomes a new creature in Christ. There, now you're getting into Bride material. See? See? See? You're getting into rapturing condition, now. That means for each one of us; not just the pastor, deacons, trustees. That means for the laity, every individual walks in a world with God alone. You're baptized into this Kingdom, and there's nobody in there but you and God. See? He gives the orders, and you pack them out. Whatever He says, there's not a shadow of doubt nowhere, you walk right on. If the Lord says this, there's nobody in the world can talk you out of it, you go right on just the same. Now you're coming into Perfect Faith, perfect perfection that cannot fail. That faith never fails. Yes, He was a mystic to them with His Perfect Faith; and so is it now with those who have Perfect Faith, are a mystic to others.
63-0728 CHRIST.IS.THE.MYSTERY.OF.GOD.REVEALED
24 And I said, "Now, the only stereoscope that I have is the Bible, see, for the soul." And I said, "I'm going to give you the test." I said, "Saint John 5:24, said, 'He that heareth My Words.'" I said, "That isn't just sit and listening to It. That's receiving It, see, receiving It; you believe It. Something inside of you tells you It's right. You've accepted It, you believe It, It's yours. 'He that heareth,' It's already yours, 'My Words, and believeth on Him that sent Me.' You believe that?"
He said, "I do."
64-0402 JEHOVAH.JIREH.1
17 They probably, as a farmer, lived in the valley of the Shinar there, and lived an ordinary life. He--he probably went out in the daytime, and got his meat from the bush, and picked berries, and lived that sort of a life. Just an ordinary man, there was nothing special about him. But one day, God called him. That's what made the difference, when God made the call.
18 And that's the way it is to any life. It takes God. It isn't what you do; it's what God does. See? You say, "I sought God. I sought God." You're mistaken. No man seeks God. God seeks the man. See? It's not you seeking God; it's God seeking you.
19 Jesus said, "You haven't chose Me, but I chose you." See? So you're chose before the foundation of the world, or you wasn't chose at all. He just come to redeem that name. And all whose names are not on that Lamb's Book of Life... before the foundation of the world, is the only ones going to be there, anyhow. See? You were chose in Him before the foundation of the world. When the Lamb was chosen, then you were chosen with Him, before the foundation.
20 And you are, as I said last night, an attribute of God's thinking. See, that's the only way you can be Eternal, and only form of Eternal Life. There is only one form of Eternal Life, and that's God. So, that's all, He is the One that's Eternal.
34-3 THE.REVELATION.OF.JESUS.CHRIST - CHURCH.AGE.BOOK CPT.1 LOOSED FROM SIN
Revelation 1:5,
"Unto Him That loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood."
The word "washed" is actually "loosed"--"Loosed us from our sins in His own blood." Isn't that wonderful? But are you spiritual minded? Did you catch it? It was His OWN blood that loosed us completely from our sins. It was not human blood. It was the blood of God. Peter called it the blood of Christ. Paul called it the blood of the Lord, and the blood of Jesus. Not three persons, but ONE person. There is that revelation again, ONE God. That omnipotent Jehovah God came down and made Himself a body by means of the virgin birth and in-dwelt it, that it might be the blood of God that would free us (loose us entirely) from our sins and present us spotless before Himself with exceeding great joy.
34-4 Would you like an Old Testament type? Let us go back to the Garden of Eden. When the first news came to glory that the son, Adam, had been lost, did God send an angel? Did He send a son? Did He send another one like unto us? No, He came HIMSELF to redeem that lost son. Hallelujah! God did not entrust His plan of salvation to another. He trusted only Himself. God was made flesh and dwelt among us and redeemed us unto Himself. We're saved by the "blood of God". The Eternal God in-dwelt a mortal body in order to take away sin. He became the Lamb in order to shed His blood and enter into the veil with it.
63-0728 CHRIST.IS.THE.MYSTERY.OF.GOD.REVEALED
136 But the only way that you can actually be a Christian is for Christ to identify Himself in you. How we got some, a stinger there! I hope everybody on the tape gets that, too. See? See? See?
You say, "I'm Pentecostal." That don't mean a thing.
137 It's Christ identified in you. That's when He has recognized you.
Say, "I spoke with tongues." Devils does, too.
138 "I shouted." The Mohammedans, Buddhas, and everything shouts. The Indians scream at the snake dance. See? Sure. They all do. Cults, clans, and everything else, scream and holler. They holler and shout at a baseball game.
139 But when Christ is identified in you, identifying Hisself, then you are Christ-like. Which, the word Christian means to be "Christ-like." There is your identification. All right. Now, and since He is our identification, then we should be identified with Him, by living for Him.
235 You say, "Well, I'm a Lutheran. I'm a Baptist. I'm Presbyterian." That don't mean one, don't mean [Brother Branham snaps his finger--Ed.] that to God, not a thing, not a snap of your finger.
236 What is it? It's Christ being revealed, and He is the Word. And when the Word is revealed, It expresses Itself. See? That's God's purpose for Jesus Christ, was to express Himself, to take His Own laws and live by His laws, con-... and fulfill His law, by death. And Christ, God, died in flesh, in order to condemn sin in the flesh, that He might bring to Himself a glorious Bride, redeemed back, that will believe only in the Word of God; and not swap It, like Eve did, for intellectual conceptions of man. You see it? That's Christ's idea. That's God's idea. The new Birth reveals this.
237 And if a man says he is born again, and try to place these promises of Christ, in this last days, to some other age, making Him Christ yesterday but not today, then that man or that person has been in a--a delusion by Satan. And if that man says that he believes That, and it doesn't manifest itself through him?
238 Jesus said, in Mark 16, "These signs shall follow them that believe; into all the world, and to every age." Casting out devils, and speaking with tongues, and--and all these great manifestations of gifts that would follow, that, "they shall!" Not, "they may be; they ought to." "They will!" And heavens and earth will pass away, but His Word won't.
239 So it's Christ expressing Himself in the individual, whether he's intellectual or whether he's--he don't know his ABC's. Half the apostles didn't know it, see, but they knowed Christ. They never taken heed to Peter and John, knowing that they had been out of some seminary. They said, "They taken heed and noticed that they had been with Christ," when they healed the lame man, see, at the gate. They knowed they--they had been with Christ.
240 The new Birth is Christ, is the revelation. God has revealed to you this great mystery, and that's a new Birth. Now what are you going to do when you get all that group together, where the revelation is perfectly in harmony, and God expressing it through His Word by the same actions, the same things that He did, making the Word manifest! Oh, if the Church only knew its position! It will, one day. Then, the Rapture will go when it knows what it is. Now notice.