<TITLE>09. Par 24-26</TITLE>L-24 Mercy be unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
Beloved,... (I just like that word.)... Beloved,... I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints.
Now, let's stop here a few moments. "Earnestly contending for the faith." Now, what is it to contend? "Contend" is "to--to debate or stand there and hold fast on your conviction." For what? Earnestly contend for "the" faith, not "a" faith, "the" faith.
Now, if someone says, "Well, Brother Branham, that's--that's not my faith. I don't believe in that." There's only one faith: "One faith, one Lord, one baptism," and that's the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. See? Only one faith...
Now, we have lots of religions, lots of ceremonies, but there's only one faith that you should earnestly contend for, "The faith that was once delivered unto the saints."
Now, they wasn't called saints until they become sanctified. The word, "sanctified," I believe, means "saintly," or "saint" means "sanctified." Until they was sanctified through the Blood of the offering of Jesus Christ, once for all, they were the saints then.

L-25 Now, if we can find out what kind of... Now remember, this is just thirty-three years after the inauguration of the church at Pentecost. Thirty-three years later, there has been such a falling away until Jude, here, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is sending the letter to the churches to earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Now, if we can only find out what kind of a faith the first saints had, then we can find out what kind of faith to contend for. Is that right? But we must remember what kind of faith was it.
Now, let's just think about... Oh, well, the first thing a person ought to do is think of the first subject, the first thing that we must do is to repent. The disciples taught repentance, water baptism, Divine healing, resurrection of the dead, manifestation of the power of the Holy Ghost, signs and wonders, spoke with tongues, interpretated tongues, cast out devils, healed the sick, opened the blinded eyes, saw visions. Is that right? Well, this is nineteen hundred years and we're still contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. And God is confirming it.

L-26 I think today of how many religions there are in the world. Just being locally here in America, you don't realize, friends, the things that you run into across the seas. For instance, I was just rehearsing, or, to a fellow, to a man, where in Ja--a--Japan where we're to go pretty soon, after visiting Australia and New Zealand, then going up in to--to the east to Japan, Korea. And in Japan, they got a Buddha statue eighty feet tall. And it's made out of bones and hair of the people who was his followers: eighty feet tall. And in every place in the inside of this Buddha temple, they got a little bitty Buddha in there with some kind of a stones in the eyes that is valued up to over two hundred thousand dollars apiece. Then they got... That's a greater or--or more popular religion than Christianity. And Mohammedanism is far beyond that.
But then they got another religion there, where they got a lot of--of gods, many gods. As I was saying awhile ago, talk about trinitarian, you ought to hear of "hundred-tarians." They have--they got four hundred kitchen gods; and if the woman does something she don't want the god, her little god to confess it, then she goes and puts some paste in his mouth so he can't talk about it. Superstition, oh, that's just... We here have the very same thing. Just a minute we'll get to it.


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