A Virgin out of Nazareth
LUKE 1:26-38
26 ¶ And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. (Notice how this angel came from an eternal realm to a geographical location on earth at a specific time in history and to a specific woman – there was no guesswork involved)
28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? (For 4000 years, every single woman had conceived by a certain way, but now Mary was being asked to believe in something that had never happened to a woman before)
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
37 For with God nothing shall be impossible.
(The Old Testament began with a woman conceiving, and the New Testament also begins with a woman conceiving – the difference was in the way they conceived)
38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.
A Virgin out of Nazareth
*We know that we have also had a visitation from an angel that God has sent to us in this age (the angel of Revelation 10:7), and that angel has also departed from us (in 1965) after speaking to us a message that we have also (like Mary) confessed to believe in for this hour.
*And so we can see that the history of this visitation of the angel to this virgin woman Mary from Nazareth has repeated itself again in this age in the place and the geographical location that you and I live in in this day, and there has also been a conception following the visitation of this angel that has taken place in a people of this day.
And so, as we see how that God had caused Mary and Joseph to be living in a certain geographical city called Nazareth – then this also applies to us in type for this hour of where God has placed us also.
JOHN 1:45-46
45 Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
Nazareth is situated around eighty miles from Jerusalem and is not actually mentioned in the Old Testament. It is reported that at the time of Jesus upbringing that Nazareth held the Roman garrison for the northern areas of Galilee, therefore the Jews would have had little to do with this place and largely despised it. This also connects to the rumour that a Roman solder by the name of Tiberius Pantera was actually the father of Jesus, but that is wrong because it is not what the scriptures tell us.
Brother Branham often tells us that this city of Nazareth was one of the meanest cities on the earth.
*As an adult, when Jesus went back to his childhood town of Nazareth, they tried to throw him off a cliff to his death.
So we can be fairly certain that Jesus did not have the privilege of being raised in the nicest town in Israel.
*Geography plays a very important part in all of our lives of the town or the city that we were raised in and also the culture and the family that we were born into - all these things combined have a great influence on the way our human spirit is moulded and shaped – and so God is the orchestrator of all these things.
* The amazing thing with God is that He is able to take all the things that look wrong to us in life and work them all out for our good in the end.
*So by the wisdom and foreknowledge of God, He has placed each one of us on earth in a very precise season of history and into a very specific geographical location that has been custom made for us, and nothing of this is by chance, because as believers we know that our lives were pre-ordained by God in order for Him to shape us in a certain way for the ultimate purpose of being able to reveal Himself to us down through the pathways of our lives.
PSALM 16:11
11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
*It can often take the harshness of life and times of crisis to truly reveal God to us.
**And those crisis times can even come into our lives as the result of being outside of the will of God, even by our direct disobedience to God.
*We know how that brother Branham listened to His mother in law instead of obeying the Lord – and that certainly caused him to come into great crisis time of his life.
Then we think of Jonah running from the presence of the Lord after he was told to go to Nineveh – his disobedience cause crisis to come into a life crisis – but God was in full knowledge and control of those things, and He would bring it all out for the good at the end.
JONAH 1:1-4
1 ¶ Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,
2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.
3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.
4 ¶ But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.
So we cannot deny that sometimes storms that come into our lives can be the result of our disobedience to the word of God.
And to Jonah, it was very clear to him that this was the case - he was able to connect the storm to his disobedience because God had told Jonah in a very clear way to travel to a certain geographical location, but we know that Jonah had directly gone in another direction of geography to what God had told him – and as a result of that, this great storm had risen up and Jonah had found himself swallowed by a whale at the bottom of the sea.
***But in all this disastrous situation we know that God was going to work all the events out for the good, because as we go along in the story, we find that this experience is what caused Jonah to come into a greater faith in God, a faith that he had never known before – and so God placed this story of Jonah in the bible to show us how he works with us in our lives, even when we are running from him in disobedience like Jonah was. So God will use our mistakes in life to bring us into a greater revelation of Himself.
JONAH 2:7-9
7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.
8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.
9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.
So Jonah’s disobedience to God and the drama that unfolded in his life as a result of that disobedience, God used all of these circumstances to reveal to Jonah that He is a great and merciful saviour, and that He is able to save to the uttermost regardless of his prophet’s disobedience or the mistakes that a person will make along the journey of their lives.
*In other words, no matter what the calamity of your situation in life, God is going to work it out for you in order to show you His saving power, because he wants to reveal Himself as a saviour to you.
YE.MUST.BE.BORN.AGAIN_ GREENVILLE.SC THURSDAY_ 58-0619B
E-30 Now, we'll have to use a imagination here as to make a drama. Then the great Holy Spirit went forth, and spread forth His wings over the earth, and begin to brood for a purpose. And that was to bring forth something to project what God was. As I said the other night, "Which was first, a sinner or a Saviour?" What's all this about anyhow? Which was first a--a Healer or sickness?
Why, certainly a Healer, cer... Well, why did--why did we ever become sinners then? It had to be that way. If God is a Saviour, He had to have something to save. So there's nothing wrong; it's just all working His way. Now, I don't--couldn't say this to sinners; I'm saying it to ministers (See?) and children of God. It's all working all right, no matter what we do, or do not do; it's going to come out all right. 'Cause what God foreknew He ordained.
Now notice, then as It's a moving around, as--as--as it is. It's coming out all right, there's no need of us worrying, because it's going to be okay.
***Look what he is saying - it’s going to all work out, so there no need of us worrying – it’s all going to be okay no matter what we do or what we don’t do.
**We have been studying a little (over past few months) how that history repeats itself over and over again in people’s lives, like how that Jonah’s history repeated itself in Jesus life, and Elijah’s history repeated itself in brother Branham’s life, and that Ruth’s history is repeating itself in your life now, and Rebekah’s history has also repeated itself again in this day in your life.
**But we also know that history repeats itself when it comes to geography just like how the history of Israel has repeated itself again in the history of modern America.
JEZEBEL.RELIGION_ MIDDLETOWN.OH V-6 N-14 SUNDAY_ 61-0319
31 It's a striking thing to see the parallel between Israel of the Old Testament and America now. Both of them were great nations. Both of them had been founded, and their people had come there because of religious persecutions.
Israel had been persecuted by Pharaoh and had been in bondage for hundreds of years, where they were deprived of worshipping the true and living God, and had been deprived of that privilege; and they become slaves. But God had made them a promise in His Bible, or in His Word, and by His prophets, that He'd give them a land. And they'd come into this land and drove back the occupants of that land, and had possessed their inheritance, for God had a purpose of doing that.
33 And so is this great nation of ours. We come here, and on Plymouth Rock this nation was founded on freedom of religion because our forefathers had fled Roman persecution of the modern Jezebel system, and had come up, and stood many great persecutions and martyrdom under that false system of Jezebel.
39 What did they do for Israel? He made Israel the most mightiest nation in the world, and she stayed that way until she got out of the will of God. What did He do with America? He made her the mightiest nation in the world until she's getting out of the will of God: parallel, one to the other exactly.
41 And America, upon the basis of our forefathers who came here for religious freedom... We had godly men in them days as leaders: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, men of renowned character, men of God. America was America in those days.
When we look at the parallel of Israel and America, we see that how that Israel was in the East, and America is in the west. In the same way that the natural sun shines across the sky from east to west, this is how Christian history has also travelled.
And even the cities of ancient Israel and the cities of modern America are also like a parallel.
WHY.LITTLE.BETHLEHEM_ PHOENIX.AZ V-9 N-9 SATURDAY_ 63-1214
9 We're glad to be here in Jericho with you brethren this morning, and we invite you, Monday night, up to Jerusalem, at Tucson, to at the banquet down there. See, Phoenix is in the valley, like Jericho. Tucson, where I live, is on the mountain, that's--that's Jerusalem.
**Brother Branham called Tucson Jerusalem and Phoenix Jericho, because we know that the ministry of what Jesus was to Israel repeated itself again throughout the cities of America.
So if America had a Jerusalem and a Jericho, and there was elect in those cities of old that Jesus preached in, then there must also be the elect of this hour in certain cities of America also, and so the message of this hour had to be preached in modern cities of this day in order for the word to find the elect in this day of where God knew that his elected people were, because it was God who had placed them in those cities for that purpose.
**And so if a virgin came out of Nazareth in Israel in the East, then there must also be a virgin that will come out of Nazareth in the West.
THE.GOD.OF.THIS.EVIL.AGE_ JEFF.IN V-4 N-9 SUNDAY_ 65-0801M
182 Look, there wasn't a meaner, wickeder, lower, prostituting city in the world, than Nazareth, and out of there God chose a virgin. "Could any good thing come out of Nazareth?"
And out of this evil age, where the god of this age has blinded the eyes of the people, with their dogmas and denominations; out of that very age, God is choosing a people for His Name.
To be continue... The Lord willing...