It is Also Written Pt.2
MATTHEW 26:31-33
31 ¶ Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. (Regardless of how loyal the disciples appeared to be, Jesus knew what would happen because of the prophecy)
32 But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.
33 Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended.
Peter’s human determination was 100% real, but when it came to the crunch, the prophecy concerning the current event of his life played out exactly according to Zachariah 13:7 – and this is why we can know for sure that human will, will never override scriptural prophecy.
MATTHEW 26:53-56
53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? (Jesus had the power to change his circumstances from discomfort to comfort, but (as he tells us here) how would the scriptures be fulfilled, and so he restrained himself from doing it. But on the contrary, if we had that sort of power that could call twelve legions of angels, then there would probably be many things of which we would change our circumstances from discomfort to comfort, and so for good reason, God mostly doesn’t allow us the privilege of that power, and the reason is that there are things that are written in the word of God concerning our lives that must be fulfilled, and so God will not allow anything to stop the prophecy concerning His purpose for our lives from coming to pass. And so when you get to the end of your life and look back, you will see then how that your life has lived out exactly what the prophecy of the word had determined for you for this day. Peter had made up his mind to do one thing, but the prophecy was stronger that Peter’s determination)
55 In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me.
56 But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.
Why did they all flee after they had sworn that they would stay with him to the death – because it was already written in Zechariah that they would…
ZECHARIAH 13:7
7 ¶ Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
Just like Peter and the rest of the disciples, our lives are governed by scriptural prophecy first and not by our own will first. If we were to always have our own way, then we would never develop the right character that is required for an eternal existence.
It is Also Written Pt.2
We are continuing on with the theme of our original study on the subject of “Questions and Answers” of which we have been looking at this subject from the angle of trying to see the events of what we often call the disappointments of our lives from a higher realm of the realm of the thinking of God, and not from a humanistic temporal life realm of human reasoning.
Because often people can “fall out” with God over the disappointments in their lives of what they actually misunderstand God by, and it’s because they do not understand that those things are actually all working together for their eternal good.
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It seems like, the Christian life, if the fellow is not absolutely centered on Christ, the Christian life, seems like, holds so many disappointments. But those disappointments are--are God's Divine will happening for us.
**If we could just elevate our thoughts into a higher level of trust in the Lord - a higher elevation of knowing the ways of how God deals with us, and that He has it all in control, then many things of what we question in life of what seems to be so wrong and of which we can often become so confused over, many of these questions would automatically be answered, at least to a level that it would not cause our trust in the Lord to be diminished in some way.
**It is very important for us to realize that our lives are governed by certain scriptures that must need to be fulfilled in our lives – and this is the reality of what overrides everything else of what we may humanly desire to have our lives all filled up with happy and comfortably living from the cradle to the grave.
***And so this is why that we can maybe quote to ourselves certain scriptures that we wish to apply to ourselves along the road of life concerning the state of our health, and safety, and prosperity, but in the volume of the book it is written of you concerning your life in that there are certain scriptures for this hour that must needs be fulfilled in your life according to prophecy just like Jesus knew that certain scriptures had to be fulfilled by Him also.
**And this is why we so often don’t understand our lives and even less our mistakes, because like Peter, we are determined in a certain way to do the right thing, but then when we fail, we become confused and disorientated.
*And then also we get so focused about our level of comfort that we do not think too much about trying to match our lives with the prophecies of the scriptures concerning the program of God for this day.
*On Wednesday night we had ministered about the story of how Abraham went down to Gerar and deceived king Abimelech by saying that Sarah was his sister because he was worried about his own skin, and so he in effect sacrificed his wife’s skin in order to save his own – and we would wonder why God allowed Abraham (this great giant of the faith) to behave in such a way because that certainly didn’t look very heroic.
GENESIS 20:1-3
1 ¶ And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and sojourned in Gerar.
2 And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, She is my sister: and Abimelech king of Gerar sent, and took Sarah.
3 ¶ But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife.
*Look at the mess that Abraham had caused everyone to get into, and so why didn’t God just talk to Abraham and stop him from going to Gerar in the first place, and then why was even the account of this placed in the bible anyway because it doesn’t actually make Abraham look very good? These are just natural human questions because it looks all wrong.
**But if we would only look a bit deeper, then we would see that God had a very cleaver purpose for this, because this event took place directly after the time of when Abraham and Sarah had met the Judge of all the earth, the one who was able to reveal the secrets of Sarah’s heart of which we have seen repeat again in this day.
***And so this “flaw” (if you will) in Abraham’s behavior was allowed by God and recorded in the bible, because this is the scripture that Brother Branham goes to to show how that Abraham and Sarah had been turned back young again, and so there was a mystery of the body change hiding under this event, because there is no other place that shows that they were changed back young again apart from this event, because the king of Gerar thought that Sarah was so young and beautiful.
**And so the prophet of God for this generation picks that up by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and shows us that their bodies were turned back young again directly after the visitation of the angel.
**And so what looked so wrong in Abraham’s life, God had a purpose for it and worked it out for the right, and so this is also the case with our own lives, in that God will take our mistakes and work them out for our good at the end.
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E-16 Now, we've been studying on Abraham, and how that God was with Abraham, and what He did for him. And last Saturday night, we left Abraham, you know, where God had turned him and Sarah back to a young man and young woman. Did you like that? Do you believe it? Went back, and she had the baby. And we've proved that by the Scripture that Sarah was a young woman, because it was a young king down there, Abimelech, that fell in love with her.
So this event that happened in Abraham’s life was recorded in the bible to show us of what would take place in this last age to another group of a people in these last days that would also see that same sign of the revealing of the secrets of the heart – and so that you would know that that prophecy of you turning back young again cannot fail to happen for you also in this hour, because the prophecy is even stronger than your own will.
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20 And as I see all of us, the three of us getting... creeping up towards the aged, the end. It'll be a very sad thing if we didn't have placed within us that great thing, what we know is Truth. We're just fixing to turn back one of these days, back to our young manhood again, to never... our bodies transformed, made into His likeness to stand. "For when this earthly tabernacle of our habitation be dissolved, there's one already waiting."
21 And the thankful part of it, dear friend, that the dear Lord Jesus... You who trust me to tell you the Truth; the dear Lord Jesus, one morning about eight o'clock, let me see that Land. Now, it wasn't--it wasn't a vision; but I don't want to say that. Ever what it was, it was just as real as I'm speaking to you here. Now, I seen the faces of those people, and I couldn't recognize them, they had turned back young again. And they was just real as... I'd hold their hands and things. Just as real...
*The greatest battle that we will ever fight is the battle that takes place in our minds. And it is the battle between the word of God and our human reasoning?
**But because we are of Abraham’s faith seed, then we are to enter into a higher realm of reasoning that goes beyond the realm of human reasoning – and that is the reasoning in that Abraham knew that no matter what happened to him, that God was able to keep His promise to him regardless of how impossible it looked in the natural world of everyday life.
*It's easy for us to look back at Abraham’s life after that we know how the story ends, but at the time it literally looked like it was totally impossible to the point that for many it had appeared that God had failed to keep His promise to Abraham, and yet Abraham still believed that God would keep His promise, even against a backdrop of being total impossibility by all human reasoning.
How could Abraham (99 years old) and Sarah (89 years old) possibly have a baby together, they had even ceased from having family relations.
HEBREWS 11:11-13
11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. (To everyone around them, they were totally convinced that God had failed to keep His promise to Abraham and Sarah.
Sara was so far past the time of child bearing that it was humanly impossible for her to conceive to the point of where even her human reasoning would have been telling her subconscious realm to doubt the promise of God.
***But then there was a higher realm of a level of thinking and reasoning that kicked in, in that she judged the one who had made the promise faithful in that she believed that He would be able to keep His promise even after it had looked like it had failed.
*But to the human realm of reasoning, the reality was that up to that point, it was a fact that God had not made good on what he had promised them – and this is where many fail right here by finding themselves at the lowest point of possibility of where all human reasoning is screaming to them that God has failed them – a time of when things look to be at their most weakest and most impossible, and many give up right there because of the battle of the reasoning that is going on in their human mind against the word of God – and that is why you need to use an atomic bomb on your human reasoning that will annihilate it forever, and then clime up out of that realm of human reasoning and into a higher realm of the reasoning of where the word of God dwells, of where all things are possible to them that believe)
12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
**So this is showing us something here, in that God will keep all of His promises even if they are not always realized in this life, and so this proves to us that there are promises that God can chose to fulfil whether on this side or after you cross over to the other side – because we know that the next life is just a greater advancement and continuation of this life anyway, and so the promise of God doesn’t stop just because we pass over to the other side, because God will still keep His promise to you regardless of any circumstances.
****But then the idea of our original question was, that if we put all the promises of God such as divine healing and things that looks like they should apply to this mortal life, and then place the fulfilment of those type of promises over into the new life of where we will all have immortal bodies that will never get sick anyway, it seems like a cop-out and an excuse to excuse God for not bringing His word to pass in this life – and I know that this idea can run very deep and cause us to have many unanswered questions, and so we want to look at this with a greater level of focus, because we all have questions about these things, and so then we want solid scriptural answers as to why sometimes when we pray for people, especially people with terminal diseases, that sometimes they just continue to get sick and eventually die like any other person would of who would have no faith or trust in God at all – and so it’s like “what’s the point” of putting our faith in God when it sometimes appears like absolutely nothing comes of it (apart from a lot of pain and disappointment), because this is the natural way of how a human would naturally respond and think on a humanistic level, because all we can often think of is in the terms of this short life that we are living here.
***And so because of this question, there have been multitudes of people down through history who were once strong believers in God, and that when they were faced with a life crisis, especially like the situation of a loved one that they prayed for and believe that God would heal them according to His many promises of His word, that when that person just continued to deteriorate and eventually die, and because they couldn’t understand the reason why, they allowed it to damaged their faith and trust in God. And in many cases, people have walked away from their faith based on these kind of situations, but it’s actually a lack of a higher understanding that causes that – it’s a lack of the knowledge that it is impossible for God to fail to keep His promises. Sometimes we apply a promise of God to a situation in our lives of how we want that certain promise to apply and work out – But it is Also Written of the prophecy concerning our lives of which is greater.
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781-178 …And Jesus just set and watched her, never moved a foot till she got done. If you're going to do something for Jesus, Jesus set and watch you do it sometime. He lets you go ahead till you get finished, then the reward comes. Maybe you run the whole race of life working for Him, but don't worry, there's a reward at the end if you just take your way with His side.
781-181 I've You might not see one person healed that you pray for, just keep on praying for them. often said, "If I pray for five hundred tonight, all five hundred dead in the morning, tomorrow night I'll be preaching divine healing and praying for the sick." See? Don't have one thing to do with it. See?
He'll let you come right down to defeats and everything else, till you come right down to the end of the road and finish your work, like He let that woman. She wanted to do Him a service, so He just held His feet out there and let--let her wash them.
And so we know for sure that it is impossible for God to fail to keep His word, and so we want to find answers to our question of when we encounter these kind of things that we have all observed and witnessed along life’s weary way, if not directly, then by our observation of others.
**We want to ook at the angle of that “It is Also Written”. Because many times we can take a certain promise of God and apply it to our lives in a way that may bring us temporal blessing but eternal loss – and so God is forced to veto that by refusing to allow us the substance faith that would effectively force His hand – and we see this play out at times in the prophet’s life of where God tells him to leave something alone because that is His own hand that has allowed that for an eternal purpose.