<TITLE>04. Par 12-16</TITLE>L-12 No rain, and she must have prayed all night long.
Jezebel and her modern crowd had so socialized the religion, and brought the whole nation into idolatry. It was the time of Ahab's reign, the most wicked king that Israel ever had, for he was just a borderline believer.
And that's the most wicked person that there is, is a man or woman that professes Christianity, and just got enough of it to make them sick--to make them say, "I'd like to do that, but my religion won't let me do it. I shouldn't do it." That's the most miserable person I can think of. If that's all we had, we ought to bury that and go get something better.

L-13 And Ahab had knuckled down to his idolater wife and it brought all Israel into idolatry. And you'd say, "Then, Brother Branham, you compared it to today, to our nation." Yes sir. Our nation all, it's greatly covered over with idolatry. We might not worship wooden animals and so forth, as we want to think of idolatry, but that's not all idolatry consists of. We sometimes make our automobiles, and our clothes, and the things that we do we put as idols. Anything between you and God is an idol. Sometime we make our churches idols. We should never do that. God is the only One we should worship.
The whole nation was governed, of course, by the rules and regulations of its king. And the king had said this was all right; it was modern. And all the people wanted to be modern, just like we are today.

L-14 We want to be modern. You could turn on your television, and you find some woman smoking a cigarette, said, "Be modern, use Certain-certain cigarette." The next place is drinking beer, and saying, "Be modern, drink So-and-so."
Why, we don't want to be modern; we want to be Christians. It's not the modernistic trend that we're trying to keep up with, it's going back to the old hewing lines of God's Word as Christians, and living like men and women was supposed to live by the order of Almighty God. Jesus said, "It's written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." We've got to live by the Word.

L-15 But today, we want to be modern like they were. And the government endorsed it. So does the government endorse it today. Why, a few years ago, twenty-five years ago, fifty years, if women walked on the streets then dressed like they're dressed now, they'd put them in jail. But the government endorses it, and we want to be modern. I'll say this with all respects to our government and our lands, it is a work of the devil. It's the devil at work. I just believe in the old fashion, unadulterated Gospel truth of the Bible.
But drinking, used to be it was a--immoral among the people. And now, you find little bitty teen-aged children drunk. Card playing used to be wrong for the Christian. And now, millions of so-called Christians have entertainment in their churches playing cards, giving away little cars and so forth, bunco. It's all nothing but plain lottery. And it's wrong. And it's degrading to any nation, let alone a church of the living God.
But the king said it was all right in their day. So they took down the altars of God and put up the altars of Baal.

L-16 And today, we've took down the old fashioned banners of holiness and righteousness, and put up the modern trend of denomination. We belong to certain-certain great order. We call ourselves Christians, because we belong to a certain order.
That's not Christianity; Christianity is a borned again experience with God, being filled with the Holy Ghost, and cleaned up from a life of sin, and living clean and holy before God and man. That takes the sting of death away. Death becomes then a victory.


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