Understanding our Hereditary Pt.2

EXODUS 34:5-7

     5     ¶ And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. (This is when the Lord met with Moses on mount Sinai when He descended in a cloud - We have also seen the Lord descend upon a mountain in a cloud in this generation when a prophet of God received the word of the Lord concerning marriage and divorce - they even let the school children out of the classrooms to watch this amber cloud going up and down on top of the mountain – so this event was well witnessed)

     6   And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

   7   Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (It almost looks like a contradiction – Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and then visiting the same iniquity on the children and grandchildren)

Paul talked about the sin that dwelt in his members – At the beginning sin never dwelt in Adam’s body in Eden because there was no sin that had been passed down from a previous sinful generation because Adam had come straight from the spoken word of God.

ROMANS 7:21-23

     21   I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

     22   For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: (As believers we all want to “live the way He wants me to live” – we sing the song, but there is none of us that haven’t failed in the way we live at times, but yet our inward man doesn’t want to fail)

     23   But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

Understanding our Hereditary Pt.2

ROMANS 7:21-23 …read scripture again

     21   I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

     22   For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

     23   But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

This was Paul’s struggle, and this is every believers struggle as long as we have the members of our body influencing our thoughts towards things that are not Godly. We know that our chemistry makeup has a lot to do with our thoughts – brother Branham suffered with being melancholic all his life – sad, depressed, (chemistry can do that to a person), and the baptism of the Holy Ghost didn’t take that out of him. But our new bodies will not have these types of problems, our new bodies will only influence us with thoughts that are pleasing to God, but these fallen bodies that we live in now will always be in conflict in some way with the faith that is on the inside of us – that is why we are told to bring every thought under subjection to the word of God and not let it run loose, and so this is the battle that we are all fighting)

EXODUS 34:7 - opening scripture

     7   Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

EXODUS 34:7 - New Living Translation

I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.”

So the scripture is telling us clearly that the sins of a forefather can come down upon the children and cause trouble in the lives of those children for up to four generations. But we remember also that the blessings of our forefathers are also visited down – so God is not just one sided with this law.

**But yet we know that all this human hereditary has nothing to do with the finished work of Christ of when he took our sin both past present and future upon himself and paid the full price for that sin with the shedding of his own blood. We now stand cleansed and completely sinless in His presence.

***So there is two separate things going on here that we must not get these two things of law and grace mixed up together in any way because if we do we will think that we have to combine a little bit of our own works for our salvation, and then we will doubt the finished work of Christ as being complete on it’s own, and then we will start to think like the Catholics in that we have to do something in order to help finish the work of Christ of the part that he didn’t finish – and you can be a message believer and still hold on to a little bit of this idea, just like you can be a message believer and still hold on to Methodist ideas, or Pentecostal ideas that you have to speak in tongues or shout as an evidence.

**There are seven major judgements in the scriptures, and we know that the first three pertain to the individual believer, and we have been though this subject before but we just want to mention it again because this is very important for us to understand.

**The scripture deals with three relationship judgements that we as individuals are judged by before God.

- Firstly you are judged by God as a sinner, secondly you are judged by God as son, and thirdly you are judged by God as a servant – these are three separated relationship judgements between you and God, and if you don’t understand this then you will think that you are being judged by God as a sinner when you are actually being judged by God as a transgressor in His relationship toward you as a son and not as a sinner.

**David’s sin was forgiven by God, but he continued to pay with troubles in his life as a transgressor because the way of a transgressor is hard – what a man sows he must reap, but with our suffering for transgression, this only pertains to this lifetime, that suffering cannot be carried over into our eternal life.

***We must never forget that Christ took all of our sin of past, present, and future upon himself and paid for all of it with his own blood – so your judgement as a sinner is completely over and passed – it is finished, and your sin can never be remembered by God anymore.

**But in this life you will suffer for your transgression as a son of God for the purpose of correction and the advancement of your character – That is what we are dealing with every day, we are not dealing with the sin question, we are dealing with God dealing with us as His children in Child training.

***So we see that there is our legal state of the finished work of Christ of whom we have been made completely sinless by his mercy and forgiveness, and in this age the full revelation of this has come to us by this opening of the seven seal because in this age it has been revealed that Justification is the same as if we had never sinned in the first place, so that is our legal and literal state before God right now at this present time and forever more throughout eternity - but then there is our earthly state of our temporal life’s journey of having to deal with the influences of our hereditary of these things that have been passed down to us and that we find in our “members” (as Paul the apostle writes it). But as we go along, we will find that God uses these things in our lives as tools in his hand to shape us and to mould our character and to bring us into a knowledge of his grace and to also reveal His great character of what he has done for us.

II CORINTHIANS 12:7-10 Paul talks about a thorn in the flesh...

     7   And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.

     8   For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.

     9   And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

     10   Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

PSALM 51:1-5

     1     ¶ To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

     2   Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

     3   For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. (Notice – his sin wasn’t ever before God, but before me (David). After David had repented, then in God’s sight David had never even done it, but yet David will remember that sin for his whole life, this is where we have to understand about our own sin, we remember it, but God doesn’t, but those memories can torment us for our whole lives if we let them – but we can be free from that guilt of sin if we would just only believe)

     4   Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

     5   Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

***David is identifying the problem here that it is to do with our first birth of how we were conceived, because Eve our first mother conceived by her unbelief of the word, and so every human being born since that time has been birth wrong by unbelief of the word, so that is why we need to be born again by the incorruptible seed of the revelation of faith in the word of God.

**We know that the new birth that came to us by the quickening of the word for the age to our souls has nothing to do with the flesh that we live in – in other words, our new birth in the soul realm didn’t change our bodies into a perfect body. Even though our soul changed from doubt to faith by the spirit of the word, our flesh was not born again at that same time because our physical bodies won’t be changed until they unite with their theophany bodies. *So our soul’s regeneration is from above by the quickening of faith by the word for the age, but our flesh still remains born in sin and shapen in iniquity – so now we have an incompatible situation of a human being that is made up of soul, spirit, and body that is at warfare against itself, and then that is why you are always wondering what is wrong with yourself – this is what is wrong with you, and like Paul says “oh wrenched man that I am”.

*So these are the struggles that are common to all believers who walk with God – and we know that these sins in our member are many times hereditary things that we have inherited from our parents and that came from their parents because the sins of the parents are visited on the children.

**David’s sin became Solomon’s sin because you don’t need a thousand wives to make you happy as Solomon thought that he did, but we notice that Joseph didn’t fall for that sin of what David fell for with Bathsheba, but if David had been in Joseph situation with Potiphar’s wife, then the story may have read different if it had been David in that same situation.

**So people will have weakness for different temptations because of these hereditary influences that are passed down from our forefathers.

We read this quote from last week.

GOD.BEING.MISUNDERSTOOD_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 61-0723E

604-Q-137   137. Brother Branham, I am saved and have been baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, but how do I get away from a stubborn spirit that I can't seem to break away from?

Well, my Christian brother or sister, whoever it may be, now, most times when you find people that's got stubborn spirits, it's usually a complex that causes this, either they have inherited it from a mother, father, uncle, aunt, or grandmother, grandfather, somebody like that. And if you'll chase back down through your life, you'll find... Now, I've taken it by experience under discernment, because I have met cases on the platform, thousands of those that had that spirit. And the first thing you know, I'd chase that spirit right back by discernment and find that there was a granddaddy, there was a grandmother, there was somebody else back down there, and you inherit that by nature.

605-47   Stubborn--stubbornness is not of God. And now, the only way to get away from that is you have to have faith to overcome that, that's if you are a Christian. You are a son or daughter of God, whichever you may be, and you will never be able just to stand and rebuke it and rebuke it and rebuke it. It's just like tantalizing a rattlesnake; he's laying there ready to bite you. If you will just ignore him and walk away from him, he can't hurt you. See?

So when you feel that you got a stubborn spirit, lay the thing on the altar, and believe God that the thing is dead and you will never have it no more, and go on and don't even pay any attention to it no more, and the thing will leave you. Resist the devil and he will flee from you; that's "get away quickly." So that would be my advice how to overcome it. We overcome the devil by faith. That's what we overcome all evil, is by faith. (Faith in the word)

That is why the scripture tells us to deal carefully with someone if they are overtaken in a fault because the next time it may be you with the weakness that you have. Their weak area may just be a different one to yours because of different hereditary traits that each one has been passed down with in our members.

GALATIANS 6:1

     1     ¶ Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

**People in this message with the genuine Holy Ghost of the revealed word of God for this age in their souls as the new birth can still be tempted in the flesh and even fail in that temptation.

And this has been something that many of us have struggled to understand in the message for many years because we think that the evidence of the Holy Ghost is that we will never give in to a temptation, and we can maybe even give a scripture or two and even a quote or two of the prophet to actually try to make this idea seem right, but the problem with this thinking is that idea is not the whole story and won’t dovetail with all scriptures.

***It’s like Calvinism and Arminianism, it’s not that one is completely right and the other is completely wrong or visa-versa, but the fact is that there is truth on both sides, but whatever that truth is, then it must stay within the scriptures of where the bible explains these things.

ABRAHAM_ BROOKLYN.NY SATURDAY_ 56-1208

E-21   Now, you say, "That has an awful Calvinistic swing to it, Brother Branham."

That's right. It does, and Calvinism is all right as long as it stays true to the Bible; but when it gets off on the wrong limb, then it's no good. Arminianism, holiness is correct as long as it stays in Bible holiness, not your holiness but His Holiness. See? Then it's not my holiness. It's... I'm not depending on my holiness. I have none, but I'm wholly trusting in His holiness. See? It's He's the One Who did it. Not my works, but His finished works that I rest assured that I was received into the Beloved and when the Beloved was received by God, God received me in Christ; that settles it. See? No negatives, no ifs and ands. It's a finished work.

***If what Christ did at Calvary is a finished work, then what’s the difference if you fail in temptation or you don’t fail in temptation, because your failure or non-failure has nothing to do with the victory that Christ has already achieved for you? Yes you will pay for your mistakes just like King David did when he failed with Bathsheba because the way of a transgressor is hard and a man will reap what he sows, but your transgression in this life’s journey has no effect on your legal and eternal standing with God because of the finished work of what Christ did for you at Calvary – so you have to be able to see both sides to see the whole truth of it, but if you just take one side without the other then you will get out on a thin limb of a tree branch where you will fall off the tree.

HOW.THE.ANGEL.CAME.TO.ME.AND.HIS.COMMISSION_ CHICAGO.IL FOOTPRINT.BOOK MONDAY_ 55-0117

12   Now, there's a limb on the Tree, that's Calvinism, but there's more limbs on the Tree, too. A tree has more than one limb. He just wanted to run it on out there into Eternal Security, and after a while you go on off into Universalism and you drop off out there somewhere, there's no end to it. But when you get through with Calvinism, come back up and start on Arminianism. See, there's another limb on the Tree, and another limb on the Tree, just keep on. The whole thing together makes the Tree. So I believe in--in the... in Calvinism as long as it stays in the Scripture.

***So when we are talking about hereditary problems that have come down into us from our forefathers, we have to remember that God will use these things in our lives as tools in his hand to shape us and mould our character and bring us into a greater knowledge of Himself.

*I read a sign on this persons tee-shirt that said “The real pandemic is how stupid everyone is” – and that is not too far from the truth because when you reject the truth of God’s provided way that God has sent for your generation, then the only alternative is that you are given over to a spirit of deception because there is no other option available for you.

***We know from last week’s study that when it came to child training that the first parent ever (who was God Himself) ran into some big problems with his own children Adam and Eve.

Their home in Eden had been such a happy place for many years, but after life had gone along for a while we find out that God’s children began to come into a certain stage of their relationship with God of where their maturity of understanding began to change and to advance, and like a lot of young people, when they are just little children they simply just believe everything that father and mother tells them, but as they grow older and begin to mature in their thinking, then they begin to question things, and this is how that Eve when she began to come to a stage of a greater mental maturity then she began to question the word of her father and began to have her own ideas based on her own reasonings.

***And we know that all children go through this stage to some level because they are changing from child to adult and they have to come into an understanding of truth from their own maturity and not from just being told from their mum and dad – we all know this to be true.

And that is why when children get to a certain stage, then as adults our relationship with them has to begin to change like the prodigal son’s relationship with his father of how he dealt with his two boys differently – sometimes they have to be committed to God and released to do their own thing in order to really learn themselves and this can be one of the hardest things to do.

QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS.1_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 64-0823M

946-117   I've just went through the experience with my Rebekah. See? Just commit it to God. When she got to be a little "teeannie," and she was going with some girl when we first went out there, going--run over to some girl's house taking music lessons... And this girl... I come by one day, and here this girl was setting there at the piano playing rock-and-roll. Well, that was just enough for me. So I told her stay away from over there. See? And then she said, "Well, it's the only place I got to go to take music." (You know how "teeannies" get.)

And I said... Every kid has to go through that. Practically everyone goes through that age. You did; I did. And we got to think their thoughts.

946-119   So then, a few days after that her mother got after her for something, and she sassed her. Now, that's not Rebekah at all. Took off and slammed the door, almost, and knocked the things off the wall, went to school.

Now, I ought to have, seemingly, just taken my belt off, and followed her out there in the yard, and brought her back with warps around her. See? But I thought, "Wait a minute; I got to think eighteen year old thoughts." See? "Now," I said, "Mother, I know that..." She started crying, Meda. I said, "I know you done all you can do; I done all I can do. Now, if it's out of our hands, we have to take the next step."…

…I said, "Well look, honey, now, you've got to listen to me. It's hard for you to do this; I'm your husband. But people drive across the nations and around for just a few words of advice. Now, if you... I talked to her the other day, and she just walked away from me."

947-123   Now, Becky never did do that to me. See? And when her mother said something about it, she slammed the door and say, "You expect me to set here and be a wallflower all my life?" And blammy, she slammed the door and went out. That was the devil.

…And then when she--and then that--she started that. And I took Meda about a hour. I said, "Meda, take your hands off."

"Me? That's my kid."

I said, "Isn't it mine too?" All right. I said, "If she was dying this morning, you'd have to commit her to God for her eternal destination. Why can't we commit her to God now for her earthly journey?"

And she said, "Well, that's my kid."

I said, "It's mine too."

I said, "Now, can you take your..."

"Me not say nothing to her?"

I said, "I never said that. We'll quit scolding her, just advise her. She needs a buddy, and you're the one to be her buddy, you and I. We're her parents."

So Meda here was trying to hold on to a relationship with Rebeca as of what she had always had with her as a little child, but Rebeca was now coming to a stage of where she had to come to her own conviction of truth just like we see that Eve came to this same place where she had to decide for herself what was right and wrong.

**So when we look at what God did, he let Eve go and do what she really wanted to do even though it broke his heart to see it happen, and this is the advice that Brother Branham is now giving to his wife concerning this situation.