23-0217A_A PRISONER FOR CHRIST

Phm 1:1  Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer, 

Phm 1:2  And to our beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house: 

Phm 1:3  Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Phm 1:4  I thank my God, making mention of thee always in my prayers, 

Phm 1:5  Hearing of thy love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints; 

Phm 1:6  That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. 

Phm 1:7  For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother. 

Phm 1:8  Wherefore, though I might be much bold in Christ to enjoin thee that which is convenient, 

Phm 1:9  Yet for love's sake I rather beseech thee, being such an one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. 

Phm 1:10  I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds:

65-0429E - The Choosing Of A Bride  Rev. William Marrion Branham

198 A few weeks ago, I was in a vision. And I was standing up on a—a high place, and I was to see the preview of the Church. And I noticed, coming from my…I was standing more like this way, facing the West. And coming this way was the lovely bunch of women, real nice dress, long hair fixed nice in the back, sleeves, and skirts down neatly. And they were all in a marching tune, like, “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.” And as they passed by, I stood, and there was Something there, some Spirit, was God, and said, “There is the Bride.” And I looked, and my heart was happy. And She went around this way, and passed around behind me.

199 After while, when she come back this way, It said, “Now the modern church will come into preview.” And here come the Asian church up. I never seen such a filthy bunch.

200 Here come the other churches up, of the different nations. They looked horrible.

201 And I—I say this because I’m duty bound to tell the truth, before God. And when He said, “Here comes the church of America now, to be previewed,” if I ever seen a bunch of devils, it was that. Them women were stripped naked, with an old gray-looking thing, like a color of an elephant’s hide. And they was holding it in front of them, with no upper part on it at all. And they were doing this kind of stuff, that, these—these dances that these kids do out here, that twist and stuff, and that kind of music going on. And when I seen Miss U.S.A. come up, I almost fainted.

202 Now, this is THUS SAITH THE LORD. If you believe me to be His servant, you believe me now. I wouldn’t say that for nothing in the world. There’s not enough money in all the world to get me to say that if it wasn’t true.

203 And when she come by, that was the filthiest-looking thing I ever seen. I thought, “God, as hard as preachers and we brethren have labored to get You a Bride, and that’s the best we could do.” She was twisting, holding this in front of her, like one of these hula skirts of a thing, holding it in front of her parts, her lower part, like this, dancing and twisting like these kids do out here on the…on these vulgar shows that they have, twisting. That was Miss Christianity of America.

204 So help me, by the help of God, that’s what it looks like in His face. I—I just…I start…I could have fainted. I thought, “All the trying, and the preaching, and the persuading?” Every one of them with bobbed hair, and they were twisting and carrying on, holding this in front. They come around, where I was standing there with this supernatural Being. I couldn’t see Him. I’d hear Him talking to me; was right around me. But when they turned this way, they hold this. And just twisting and laughing and going on, carrying on like that, holding this in front of them.

205 Now, me standing in His Presence there, and His servant. “And of all I tried, that’s the best I could do?” I thought, “God, what good did it do me? What good did it do? All the crying, and begging, and persuading, and the great signs and wonders and miracles that You showed. And how I stood there, and go home and cry after preaching to them and things, and what good did it do me? And then I have to present something like that for You, for a Bride?”

206 And as I stood there, looking, she passed on by. And you can imagine the back part of her, with nothing on, holding this in front of her as she went shimmying by, like that, to this twist, throwing her limbs out like that. And, her, oh, it was vulgar, how she was carrying on, her body shaking around like that. Now I…

207 You say, “What does it mean, Brother Branham?” I don’t know. I’m just telling you what I seen.

208 And when she passed by like that, I looked at her. Oh, I just got real faint. I just turned around. I thought, “God, I’m condemned. There—there’s no need of me trying any now. Just might as well quit.”

209 Mrs. Carl Williams, if you’re setting here, and that dream that you told me about, a while ago, that you had the other night, that’s been bothering you, there it is. The steering wheel is taken from my hand.

210 Then, I just thought, “I—I just might as well forget it.” I was gone.

211 Then, all at once, I heard It coming again. And coming up on this side come the same Bride that went around this a way. Here come them little ladies again, and each one of them was dressed in their national garb from where they come from, like Switzerland, Germany, and so forth, each one wearing that kind of garb, all long hair, just exactly like the one at the first. And here they was coming, walking. “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.” And when they all passed by the preview stand where we were standing, just all at once, every eye went that way. And then they turned back, and on they went, marching.

212 And just as they started to going right up into the skies, this other one went up to a brink of a hill and went down, like that.

213 These started marching right up into the skies. And when they went to marching, I noticed a couple of little girls in the back, looked like they might be of some foreign girl, like Sweden or Switzerland, or somewhere. They started to look around, and got…I said, “Don’t do that! Don’t get out of that step!” And as I screamed like that, I come to, in the vision, standing there with my hand out like that. I thought, “Well…”

214 That’s the reason I said what I have, tonight. I want to ask you a question. Is it later than we think? Could She already be called and chosen, sealed away? There won’t be one extra one, you know. Could it be possible? Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

    65-0429E - The Choosing Of A Bride Rev. William Marrion Branham

217 When Israel left Egypt, on their road to the promised land, they were approximately two million people. Every one of them was under the same sacrificial lamb, or they wouldn’t have lived. Every one of them listened to Moses, the prophet. Every one of them was baptized to him, in the Red Sea. Every one of them danced, the women with Miriam, up-and-down the side of (when) the seashore, when God destroyed the enemy. Every one of them stood with Moses, and heard him sing in the Spirit. They, every one, eat manna out of the wilderness, that dropped down from Heaven. New manna, every night, which is a type of the Message, every one of them eat from it. But, out of the two million, how many made it? Two. One out of a million.

218 There’s approximately five hundred million Christians in the world tonight, counting Catholic and all. Five hundred million so-called believers in the world. If the Rapture come tonight, that would mean…if one out of a million was the count. I don’t say it is. But if it was, five hundred people, in the next twenty-four hours, would be missing. You’d never even hear of it. There’ll be that many missing, anyhow, can’t even be accounted for.

219 Then it could be, happen to us, friend, like it did when John the Baptist came. Even the disciples said, “Why did the Scriptures say, why do the—the apostles or the prophets say, why does it say that Elias must first come and restore all things?”

220 He said, “I say unto you that Elias has already come, and you didn’t know it.”

221 One of these days we could be left setting here, “What about the Rapture before the tribulation sets in?”

“It’s already come and you didn’t know it.”

222 All the Body, sealed in, just keeping It in step. I ain’t saying it’s that way. I hope it isn’t that way. But, friend, when it lets…

223 If we got a feel in our heart, tonight, that we should straighten up our lives, and the things that we have done, let me advise you, as a minister brother. I’m going to say this for my first time, over the pulpit. I’ve stretched out farther tonight, on This, than I have on anything else, any time, anyhow, before the public, because I’ve had a great freedom in these meetings. If you believe me to be God’s prophet, you listen to what I’ve told you. If there’s one little tinkle of feeling in your heart, you go to God right now. You do it.

224 Stop just a minute, men. Look at your—your creeds that you serve. Look in your churches. Is it just exactly with the Word of God? Have you met every qualification? Say, “I’m a good man.” So was Nicodemus, and so was all the rest. They—they were fine. See? That don’t have nothing to do with It.

225 And, women, I want you to look in the mirror, and look what God requires a woman to do. And see in God’s mirror, not in your church mirror now, in God’s mirror; and see if you could qualify, in your life, the spiritual Bride of Jesus Christ.

226 Ministers, think the same. Do you cut corners here, to save somebody’s feelings over yonder? Would you do this if it wasn’t…and they’ll put you out of the church? If you are feeling that way, my dear brother, let me warn you, in the Name of Jesus Christ, flee from that right now.

227 And, lady, if you can’t measure up to the qualification of a Christian, not as a nominal Christian, but in your heart, and your life is patterned exactly like God’s marriage certificate, here, says it has to be…

228 And, church member, if your church isn’t like that, can measure up to God’s qualification of His Word, get out of it and get into Christ.

229 That is solemn warning. We don’t know what time, and you don’t know what time, that this city one day is going to be laying out here in the bottom of this ocean.

230 “Oh, Capernaum,” said Jesus, “thou who exalted into heaven, will be brought down into hell. For, if the mighty works had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, it’d have been standing to this day.” And Sodom, Gomorrah lays in the bottom of the Dead Sea. And Capernaum is in the bottom of the sea.

231 Thou city, who claims to be the city of the Angels, who has exalted yourself into heaven, and sent all the dirty, filthy things of fashions and things, till even the foreign countries come here to pick up our filth and send it away, to your fine churches and steeples, and so forth, the way you do. Remember, one day you’ll be laying in the bottom of the sea, your great honeycomb under you right now. The wrath of God is belching right beneath you. How much longer He will hold this sandbar hanging out over that? When, that ocean out yonder, a mile deep, will slide in there, plumb back to the Salton Sea. It’ll be worse than the last day of Pompeii. Repent, Los Angeles.

232 Repent, the rest of you, and turn to God. The hour of His wrath is upon the earth. Flee while there’s time to flee, and come into Christ.

    65-0429E - The Choosing Of A Bride  Rev. William Marrion Branham

    63-0717 - A Prisoner Rev. William Marrion Branham

40 Now, the 1st verse, I want to take just a word or two from it.

Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ,…

41 And that’s what I want to use tonight, as a text, the Lord willing, is: A Prisoner.

42 Now, you could hardly imagine Paul regarding himself a prisoner. A born-free man, filled with the Holy Spirit, but yet he calls himself “a prisoner.”

43 And now we find out, when he’s addressing the Corinthians, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.” Another time, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ by the will of God,” when he’s speaking to Timothy, different ones. Now when he’s writing here to Philemon, he said, “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ.” “Paul, an apostle,” I’d like to preach one night on that. “Paul, a—a servant,” preach on that. And then, “Paul, a prisoner.”

44 But, tonight, being it’d take hours to duly consider one of the subjects, I’d like to take, tonight, “Paul, the prisoner,” and take the subject of: A Prisoner.

Now let us bow our heads just a moment.

45 Lord Jesus, any man, that’s physically able, can pull back the pages of this Bible, but only the Holy Spirit can interpret It in the light that it’s been meant to. We ask Him to come now and help us to understand what this was, addressed, this great, mighty prophet, Paul, and yet call himself “a prisoner.” May the Holy Spirit reveal this to us as we wait on Him, in Jesus Christ’s Name. Amen.

46 Now I can imagine, Paul, when he wrote this letter to Philemon, how he was sitting in jail, down there in the dungeon of this city, a—a—a prisoner. And he could well know, by his position what the word meant. He was surrounded by—by—by bars. He could only be let free as someone would let him go free. And he knew what it was to be a prisoner. And then, again, I believe that the—the apostle meant just a little…not exactly addressing it to his present condition, as being a prisoner of his—his physical being sitting here in this—in this jail. But I believe he was referring to his—his being, his—his—his spirit, his will, being a prisoner to Jesus Christ.

47 Now, we’re all born, a free moral agent, to make any decision that we wish to. God justly does that. Because, He must put every man on the same basis, or He put the wrong man on…He put the first man on the wrong basis, that He put on free moral agency. See? We’re just exactly, tonight, like Adam and Eve. There’s no different. Right and wrong sets before either one of us. Life and death, we can make our choice; it’s up to you, to make it. See?

48 That’s the way Adam and Eve did, and, see, and—and they made the wrong choice. And now, by that, put the whole race, of human race, under death, the penalty of death.

49 And then God came down in the form of man and took that death, and paid the penalty of death, that the…His subjects that desired to—to be free could go free.

50 Now, if He took us, without the same way that He did Adam and Eve, just pulled us through something, said, “I’ll save you whether you want saved or not,” then He put Adam and Eve on—on the wrong basis, you see. But each one of us has to choose, this day, between death and life. We can do it.

51 As I just expressed, if your light will prove, your life will prove exactly what side you’re on. I don’t care what side you say you’re on. What you do, every day, proves what you are. You’ve heard the old saying, “Your life is so loud, I can’t hear your testimony.” See? Your—your actions is so loud.

52 I’ve always believed in shouting and jumping. But I’ve always said, “Don’t jump no higher than you live, ’cause the world is going to watch that.” You see? You must just jump as high as you live, so, because somebody is watching you. And now when…

53 People won’t come to church. They—they, many of them, just won’t do it. And some of them, not coming, is sincere people. They seen so much corruption in the church, until they don’t want to have anything to do with it. And many times, we’re speaking on a flat thought of that, you can hardly blame them, see, because of—of the way the people act. They call themselves Christian. They’re the greatest stumbling block that the world has got, is the man and woman who professes to be a Christian, and lives something different from their profession. Exactly right.

54 Now, for the disappointments will be coming at the Judgment. Now, the sinner, the bootlegger, the gambler, the adulterous, he—he won’t be disappointed to hear his sentence read, “To depart into everlasting fire.” He won’t be disappointed. But that fellow who is trying to hide himself behind some kind of a church profession, that’s the boy is going to be disappointed at the Day of Judgment. See? That professes to be a Christian, and lives some other way. It’d be better for him that he never did even make any kind of profession, started off, than to start and live something different. Because, he’s the greatest stumbling block we got, is for that professor that says that he—he—he is a Christian, and lives something different.

55 Always, don’t judge your life by how much power you have to perform miracles. And we don’t judge ourself by how much knowledge you have of the Word. But always judge yourself, look back and taking inventory of what kind of a fruit that the life you presently live now is bearing. See?

56 As I preached some time ago, at a businessmen’s meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, of the reflection of Jesus, reflecting Christian Life. I said I was born up here in Kentucky, where it’s very primitive, especially back when I was a kid. And this certain little boy never had a—a—a—a home like we have here, where we had so many pretty ladies that have to look through mirrors, all through the house, to keep their hair just in place, and so forth. But he had one little mirror, just a little piece tacked on a tree on the outside, where the wash bench was, where his mother and father washed, and they combed their hair, and so forth, from this little piece of an old mirror tacked on a tree.

57 Frankly, that’s the type of home that we have. Anybody want to see a mirror, we kids, we had to get a box and get up on the wash bench, and look in this piece of a—of a mirror that I picked up, myself, in a dump. That wasn’t down in Kentucky. That’s here in Indiana, up on Utica Pike here.

58 Now, this little kid had never exactly seen himself like that. So, he come to the city, to visit his grandma. And at the…It’s on the tour of room, the grandma had a house that had a complete mirror on the door. And so, little boy, running through the—the room, seen another little boy in front of him. And the little boy was running, also. So he thought he should stop a few minutes and see what the little lad was going to do. And when he stopped, the little boy stopped. When he turned his head, the little boy turned his head. He scratched his head, the little boy scratched his. Finally, walked closer, to investigate. And he turned around. His mother watching him, and his grandmother, with amazement. Said, “Why, mother, that’s me.”

59 So I said, that, “We, too, are reflecting something.” See? Our life is reflected.

60 And now, if we lived in the days of Noah, whose side would we take? What side would we took in that great day that Noah lived? What side would we took in the days of Moses? What side in the days of Elijah, the prophet, when all the world was gulfed up in a—a great mass of—of modernism, like the modern Jezebel, and had rid all the servants of the Lord out into a worldly way? And the church and the priests was all bowing to her. Would you have took the side of popularity, or would you have stood with Elijah?

61 Now, in the days of the Lord Jesus, when we would think of this unpopular Person, uneducated by the world, no schools they could ever find that He went to, and no—no seminary experience. And—and then raise up with a name of “illegitimate birth.” And then come out, preaching a Gospel that was contrary to anything that they had been taught. Very…And condemning the ministers and their organizations, and so forth.

62 And the organizations had made a—a—a statement, “If anybody even went to hear this so-called prophet, would be put out of the synagogue,” which was a—a mortal sin. They had to be accounted. Only way they could worship was under the blood of the lamb. They had to come to this sacrifice. And—and then they were outcasts, and what a great thing it was.

63 And this Man ignored such as that. And yet He was perfectly with the Scripture, but not in the way they knew It. What side would you have took? See? Now, don’t…Your life that you live now, reflects now just what you would have done then, because you still are possessed with the same spirit. See? If you take that side now, with them, you’d have done it then. Because, the same spirit that’s in you now was in people then. See?

64 The devil never takes his spirit; he just goes off of one man onto another.

65 God never takes His Spirit, neither; It goes from one to the other. See?

66 So, the very Spirit was upon Elijah come upon Elisha, same One on John the Baptist, and so forth.

67 The Holy Spirit, was upon Christ, come upon the disciples, all down, and still upon the people. You see? God never takes His Spirit.

So there we are left, to make a choice.

68 And I—I can’t see here where Paul was regretting anything, and saying he was sorry he was a prisoner. But he was addressing hisself…

63-0717 - A Prisoner Rev. William Marrion Branham