<TITLE>05. Par 18-23</TITLE>L-18 Now, we're going to speak on this marvelous character, which we... I've spoke on it for, maybe take a subject of three or four weeks and stay right with it, and never leave that subject on Abraham.
And I've took subjects out of the Bible in meetings. One time I took Job in the Bible, and I got over there to where he was on the ash heap. And I stayed right there; I'd been on Job for almost a year. And then I got him to the ash heap, and there's about three weeks I just kept on. And a lady, nice, she wrote and said, "Brother Branham, when you ever going to get Job off the ash heap?" She was nice--nice about it, but you know, I was making a point right there, and when finally the Holy Spirit broke through, people just streamed to the altar.
Oh, God takes little Scriptures, and how He can just drive them home if we'll just wait on Him a little bit. He works in His Word.

L-19 Now, we're going to speak of Abraham. And I love to speak of Abraham, and the reason that I have chosen this for a text tonight, is the closing, where there's lots of anticipation.
Now, Abraham was just an ordinary man. He wasn't any different from any of us, just the same. People today, when they see God put a gift in the church, some people tries to stand that person up as some great big outstanding something. Well, that's wrong. You got your mind on the person then instead of on the Christ. We're all just the same. The Bible said that Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are. He just had the same ups-and-downs that we have.

L-20 Now, my people formally are Catholic; you all know that. And they're great on, "holy man, holy man." But to me it's not holy man, it's holy God. That's right. It's God is the object; we're men, all the same.
Notice, but Abraham was just an ordinary man, came down from Babylon. And he dwelt there in the land of Shinar. And perhaps his diet was, go in of a morning and pick some berries from the bushes, and go back out and kill an animal and have his noonday meal, and some more berries for supper, and so forth. And he had married his half sister; her name was Sarah.
And while Abraham, being just an ordinary man, God chose Abraham by election. Not because he was different from any other man, but it was cause that God's election has to stand sure.
Now, may we take our time and not be in no hurry. We want to comb this just a moment.

L-21 Now, if God called Abraham by election, and give His Covenant to Abraham unconditionally, not, "if you will do this," or "you will do that"; it's "I have done." Not nothing that you had--Abraham had to do, it's what God has done.
Now, God made a covenant with Adam. Adam broke the covenant. Every time man makes a covenant with God, he breaks it. So God made the covenant with Abraham unconditionally. God was determined to save man.

L-22 Now, and now you say, "Well, does God still call, make His covenant unconditionally?" Absolutely. The Bible said that Christ said, No man can come to Me except My Father draws him first." No man don't seek God at any time. It's God seeking man.
That's his nature; he's a fallen being. And Adam well expressed the nature of man in the garden of Eden when he realized he was wrong. Instead of going through the garden screaming, "Oh, Father, where are you?" it was God going through the garden screaming, "Adam, where art thou?" And instead of Adam coming out and confessing his wrong, he was hiding in the bushes. That's the very nature of man to begin with.

L-23 A man is a failure; he's totally lost at his birth. There is no good in man. If there's anything good about a man, it's what--the part of God that's in him. For a man in himself is totally no good. And there's any goodness about him all--at all, it's God that's did it for him.
So we cannot say that we did this to deserve this. We prayed all night to get this. It isn't whether you do this or that; it's God. It's not him that willeth or him that runneth; it's God that showeth mercy: lays in the hands of God.


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