<TITLE>08. Par 16-18</TITLE>L-16 Now, this bishop said to me; he said, "Reverent Branham, of theology," said, "we had the Bible, a thousand-seven-hundred years before you was a nation." That's right. Saint Thomas went down and... I stood in a church and preached were Saint Thomas, the original church, that he established in India, when he went down from Jerusalem to India and established a church.
And he said, "We've had the Bible ever since then. And we've had Christianity since then," but said, "it's at low-ebb in India." And he said, "We have heard of Dr. Reedhead, the man that came to you which was the--the President of the great Sudan Missions," the greatest in the world, who came to me. And he said, "Brother Branham," said, "I've got enough degrees till I could plaster a wall with them, Doctor of Theology, Bachelor's degree, and all kinds of degree." Said, "I've studied since I was about eight years old." But he said, "Brother Branham, where is Christ in all of it?" He said, "Has the teachers been wrong?"

L-17 I said, "The teachers hasn't been wrong, sir." Said, "But what it is," said, "you'll never know Christ by theology. You'll never know Christ by education. You've got to know Christ by personal experience to be borned again of His Spirit that comes down and changes your life and makes you a new creature in Christ Jesus; that's what does the difference." That's what makes the difference of you. Now, that's the reason we have so many different denominations and theories. They're all all right.
But the real thing, Jesus Christ the Son of God, said in Saint John, the Gospel of Saint John the 4th chapter, or the 3rd chapter, pardon me, to Nicodemus, "Except a man be borned again of water and Spirit, he will in no wise enter into the Kingdom." No matter what church you go to, that's Jesus Christ's own words.
Now, to be born means "to be delivered from." Now, unless you are delivered by the Holy Spirit, in your life to a new life in Christ, then our creeds and things are no good. But they're good; they're all right, they're moral teachings and so forth, which help us, but the real personal Christ Jesus... And that's what has made the meetings what it has been today and swept around the world, is because by the grace of God, to introduce to the large or small crowds, a resurrected Lord Jesus, right now present tense in His same power that He ever was in. We don't have to guess at it.

L-18 He said, "Brother Branham, we have the Word. We have the Bible," the bishop said, in India. But said, "What we're interested in, is not your theology." Said, "What we're interested in, 'Has God visited you Yankees with a Spirit or a gift that can make this Bible live again?'" Said, "We know the Bible," and said...
I said, "Well, you just admitted we didn't know It, but I don't know It too well, but I know the Author real well." And I said, "That's the main thing."
He said, "That's what we want to know. Have you faith enough in God to make these Divine promises that He's made," said, "have you faith enough to make them reality?"
I said, "By the grace of God, God will." And that afternoon I was entertained by seventeen different religions that denied Christianity. Some of them worshipped gnats, and some of them horses, and some cattle, and some Buddha, and Mohammedans, and so forth. And they all had their theologies, very good. Everything was works, something that you have to do: Do this, or do that, all of them works, no grace to it at all.


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