The Power of Remembrance
ECCLESIASTES 1:9-11
9 ¶ The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
(History repeats itself. Everything that we go through as a human beings in this life is common to what millions of people have already gone through before us)
10 Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
There are many things of the past and in the future that will not be remembered by future generations if time were to go on.
*We could not even begin to understand some of the history that has been lost with the memory of all the thousands of millions of people that have gone on from this life – this is the way of human life. In other words, things are so easily forgotten.
ISAIAH 46:8-10
8 Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.
9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, (We are instructed here of what we should continually bring to the remembrance of our minds so that we will not forget)
10 Declaring the end from the beginning (the entire purpose of God is to be declared – that is what has taken place in this generation in the days of the voice of the seventh angel), and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
*Ecclesiastes 1 tells us that the things of the past and even many things of the future will not be remembered, and then this portion of scripture in Isaiah 46 is telling us to bring certain things of old to mind and to keep them in our remembrance.
DEUTERONOMY 4:9
9 Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons;
DEUTERONOMY 6:12
12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
JOHN 14:26
26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
The Power of Remembrance
So much of what we do in our ordinary everyday lives comes from our ability to be able to remember the things of our past – of what we have learned from our personal past.
*There is a great power that we are given access to every day that comes to us by the way of remembrance.
If we were to somehow lose our memory of even just the basic things of life, like how to drive our cars, or how to do our professional work, or even the very basic things of life, it would be a very bad thing for us, and we would soon realize the importance and the power that we have been given access to by our ability to remember.
**So when we reflect on this, we realize that there is a great power that comes to us by being able to remember certain things and to bring things back to our remembrance.
*We all probably know the history of our own lives better than anyone else, and so the things that we remember from our past will often influence us in the decisions that we make for our future.
There is a saying that goes something like – “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat its mistakes”. If you have ever had a bad experience because of a certain decision that you made in life, then as long as you can remember that experience, then it is unlikely that you would repeat that same decision again.
We know that the original sin was not eating apples, but it was to disbelieve the word of God. Mankind forgot that the word of God is the eternal absolute – it is absolute truth for eternity, it’s the yard stick that can never be wrong.
**And whenever we find mankind forgetting that, then the same mistake is made all over again of what Adam and Eve made in Eden - they forfeit the word of God in exchange for the reasoning of man, and history repeats itself again, and once again the story ends in death and sorrow.
*When a person begins to think in his heart that the word of God is not true, and that it will somehow fail to come to pass, then they are repeating in their own personal lives the history of what Adam and Eve did in Eden – and then they wonder why things go wrong in their lives.
**But if they could just bring to remembrance the history of what happen to Adam and Eve at the fall in Eden, then it is possible that there would be a power in that remembrance to change the direction of their pathway and the course of their life by not failing where Adam and Eve failed, and causing that same history to repeat itself again in their own personal lives.
*The relationship that existed with God in Eden before the fall of man, God has made a way to restored that same relationship back again in these last days by the ministry of the seventh angel’s message.
REVELATION 21:3-4
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
*Sin (or unbelief in the word of God) is what breaks a man’s fellowship with God, because you simply cannot have meaningful fellowship with someone of whom you subconsciously perceive is a liar.
*To disbelieve or to even doubt the word of God is in effect to label God as a liar – and if a person would ever think of God in that way in their conscious mind, then their subconscious mind will simply not allow them to have any form of genuine faith in the word of God.
*This is what the “believe the sign” website is focused on doing – it tries to sow seeds into the minds of the followers of the message to make out that William Branham was a liar, and they do it by all their fancy reasoning and arguments just the same way of how Eve was deceived at the beginning.
**If they can influence the people into believing that William Branham told lies, then that will affect the confidence that the person had in the message of God for this day, and then that will break their fellowship with God as it did with Adam and Eve in Eden, because there is nothing new under the sun, and history will repeat itself again, and they will become cut off as Adam and Eve were from the benefits of that fellowship with God which was Eternal life, and dominion over the earth.
This is the same history of what Lucifer did at the beginning with a third of the angels, and he just repeated that history again with the serpent in Eden with Eve, and now he is doing the same thing on a mass scale at this end time hour, but there is a power that has come to us by the way of remembrance, so that we will not to make the same mistake that Adam and Eve made.
We must never let ourselves be fooled into doubting the word of God as Eve was.
AND.KNOWETH.IT.NOT_ JEFF.IN V-2 N-10 SUNDAY_ 65-0815
261 Said, "I looked down there, and there was a whole lot of scientists." And the next morning... That was Saturday. On the next morning, I preached on scientists, you know, being of the devil. And said, "Scientists there were pouring things in tubes, and mixing it." Said, "You stopped the horse, raised up your hands again and screamed, 'I'll ride this trail once more!'" And said, "The whole earth shook. Them people shook," said, "looked up and looked at one another, like that, and looked up to you. They just shrugged their shoulders, went on with their scientific research." And said, "You started going on towards the west.
262 "And when it did," said, "I seen this man that called himself a prophet, you know," said, "he come up on a horse that was mixed with white and black together." And said, "He got up behind this great big horse." Said, "It was," said, "way up above the clouds, and the road wasn't over about that wide." And said, "That horse just danced, to the wind blowing the feathers and everything on--on your garb," and said, "then the horse mane and tail blowing. Great master, big white horse, walking right in line." And said--and said, "This guy ran up behind you, come from towards Canada," and the man lives in Canada. And he said, "Come back, and," said, "he took his little horse, trying to knock your big horse off; turning him around; make his hips hit against the..." Said, "It never moved the big horse; he just kept walking."
*As things went along in Eden, and the serpent kept his communication up with Eve, he was constantly sending her texts, and she kept on listening to his voice, and by degrees she became persuaded and eventually convinced by the serpent that God was actually not being completely truthful with her about certain things of what his word had declared to her, and so she began to have doubts about the integrity of God and the reliability of His word, and this is what broke off her fellowship with God, and that is what will break anyone’s fellowship with God.
Eve forgot the golden rule of ABC – to Always Believe Christ.
GENESIS 3:2-5
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: (In other words Eve – “God is actually lying to you about that little part. He is only threating you with death in order to try to frighten you away from something good that he wants to keep you away from. He wants to keep you in ignorance about certain things that will make you a god like He is. Think logically Eve, God would never allow his lovely children to die – ye shall not surely die”)
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Evil was the mystery that Eve wanted to learn about)
**The understanding of hidden mysteries is one of the most powerful things that a human being craves for.
*Look at the world today of science that is constantly in pursuit of trying to understand the mysteries of life and the secrets of the universe.
*Billions upon billions of dollars are spent every year in the attempt to try to solve some of these mysteries of the cosmos and of quantum theory simply for the purpose of opening up the eyes of our understanding in a greater way.
*God made us to be like that, He made us with an intellectual thirst to understand things, and He made us that way in order for us to have fellowship with Himself who is the sum of all knowledge and wisdom – but man has turned himself away from God as the fountain of all knowledge and wisdom, he has turned from God to science and technology to try to get his questions answered - from the tree of life to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
COUNTDOWN_ JEFF.IN V-11 N-3 SUNDAY_ 62-0909M
72 Did you notice, one--one of those scientific achievements accompanied the other one--complimented the other one. It was only a higher form. See? The automobile was a higher form of transportation than the horse, and the airplane was a higher form of transportation than the automobile, but they accompanied one another: horse power. Amen. If that's horse power, what about God power? What about the Holy Ghost and power? The Holy Ghost power that can justify you, the same Holy Ghost power can sanctify you. The same Holy Ghost power that sanctifies you, can fill you with His Presence. And little science, that didn't know their ABC's, found it. Why? They were spiritual scientists. Amen. They seen the thing; they believed it. Man did it by education, the natural scientist. The spiritual scientist done it by revelation: one by education, the other by revelation.
*Adam and Eve were supposed to satisfy their desire for more understanding by receiving their knowledge from the source of the tree of life.
The tree of life was Christ, He was the fountain of all knowledge and truth – but Eve chose to receive information from another tree of a source of knowledge that was a mixed tree of the knowledge of good as well as evil, truth as well as lies, and that tree was a person also (Lucifer), and the evil part of that tree was the lies that she would receive from that source into her mind of things that would not be true – you must never let your reasoning get involved with the word of God, because the word of God surpasses all reasoning of man.
*Truth will set a person free, while lies will bind a person in chains.
*This is why if you have memories of past mistakes and sins that by faith have been placed under the blood of Jesus Christ, then according to the word of God, those sins of your past are not even remember by God anymore, so this is why we should not allow the memory of those things to be in the forefront of our thoughts – these are the things that are to be forgotten forever – there is to be no remembrance of these things.
PSALM 103:10-18
10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
13 Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.
14 For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
15 As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
16 For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;
18 To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them.
PHILIPPIANS 3:13-14
13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
There is a power that is released upon us when we are able to disregard our failures and sins of the past and embrace the grace of God – remember his grace.
It’s not that we can just easily forget things, but we must not allow our thoughts to retain those negative memories in the forefront of our minds because these are the things that are already in the sea of God’s forgetfulness right now.
*Negative memories of past failings can hold a person in a kind of mental prison house that will stunt their advancement of character of what God wants to advance them into.
**There is an antidote to this problem of our remembrance of negative things of our pass – and that is to replace those thoughts by purposely encouraging our minds to remember the things of the past of what the grace of God and the work that He has achieved in our lives.
PSALM 77:11-12
11 ¶ I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.
12 I will meditate also of all thy work, and talk of thy doings.
Every year in Australia and New Zealand we celebrate ANZAC day of where we remember the men that served and died in the first world war.
ANZAC stands for “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps”. The soldiers in those forces became known as ANZACs. Once a year we commemorate the anniversary of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli in Turkey on 25th April 1915.
And the purpose of keeping this ceremony is that “Lest we Forget”.
This phrase 'Lest we forget' came from a line in an 1897 Rudyard Kipling poem”
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
**God place certain things in the bible in order to keep us reminded – to keep certain things in our remembrance.
*In the bible, the Sabbath was a weekly reminder of how God rested on the seventh day.
*The Passover was a yearly was as event that kept them in remembrance of how God delivered the Israelites from Egypt.
*In Joshua 4, they stacked 12 stones in remembrance of how God miraculously parted the Jordan river and let them cross on dry land.
*Throughout the Psalms, David and the other writers meditated on the works and wonders of God. They called the reader to remember God’s past faithfulness and to dwell on His goodness.
*At the last supper, Jesus invited His followers to take the bread and the cup in remembrance of Him.
I CORINTHIANS 11:24-25
24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
REMEMBERING.THE.LORD_ PHOENIX.AZ TUESDAY_ 63-0122
26 And now for a text, I'd like to take from there: Remembering The Lord.
27 Now, of course, any, we all know, in--in our church, we read this at the communion service each night. And it is a--a--a great text to read, or a great Scripture at that time, and it applies there. But I just wanted those words, "In remembrance of me."
*There is a power that comes into your life by keeping the Lord in your remembrance, by believing the great promises that He has made to us especially for this time and season, and then there is also a great danger in forgetting the Lord.
PSALM 78:38-42
38 But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath.
39 For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.
40 ¶ How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! (This is how most of our lives have been. If we would only know the times that we have grieved the Lord of which He chose to just forgive us for)
41 Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. (Why did they limit God from achieving even great things in their lives? By their forgetfulness of what He had done for them in the past)
42 They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy.
There’s an old song that goes:
Roll back the curtain of memory now and then
Show me where you brought me from and
Where I could have been
Just remember I'm a human and human's forget
So remind me, remind me dear Lord
REMEMBERING.THE.LORD_ PHOENIX.AZ TUESDAY_ 63-0122
46 Now let's just talk a few moments on something that somebody would have to remember. I'd imagine, way over in Glory tonight, there's a man by the name of Noah, and he certainly has a lot to remember the Lord for. For in the time that when God was going to destroy all the wickedness off of the face the earth, God remembered Noah. And Noah remembers how he escaped the wrath of God, by God's mercy. How that the--the great waters started flowing down the streets, and the winds howled, and the rocks moved from the mountains! And what a terrible storm! Houses blew away, and the fountains broke up, and God had Noah inside the ark. Now, if that ain't a wonderful place to remember Him by, yeah, yes, to be inside the ark, safely secured in the Presence of God, to live with Him!
***We must keep visualized in the forefront of our remembrance the great things that God has done in our generation of the fulfilment of the word in sending the fulfilment of Malichi 4 in our day and of His faithfulness, knowing that we are also a part of this fulfilment of those who would receive this message.