<TITLE>10. Par 33-36</TITLE>L-33 How we going to get around that? There's so much make-believe going on sensations and different things like that. But when in your heart you believe it, when something has happened to you, it's God did it, and God's the only One that can do it. So God by grace and election put that in your heart to believe it. It wasn't there to begin with, and you had no way of putting it there. God placed it there and you answered the call.
Now, notice, in Genesis the 15th chapter, when He taught Abraham the separation, when Abraham was ready to separate himself by--from unbelief--believing Lot, the lukewarm church member... When Lot went down into Sodom, and--and become the mayor of the city, and built him a nice church down there, something, whatever he did, then God met Abraham, and they offered a blood sacrifice for separation and confirmed the covenant to Abraham. Amen.

L-34 For without the shedding of Blood there's no separation from sin. See, it's through the shed Blood. Now, notice what he... what taken place.
He took the animals and cut them apart. Abraham watched until the sun went down. And there was a--a deep sleep fell upon Abraham. And when he noticed a deep sleep come, that meant death. It's due to all of us. We're all coming there to that great eternal sleep.
Now, we noticed immediately after that, he looked before him, and a great horror of blackness and a smoking furnace. What is it? Hell. Down through the valley of the shadow of death... Every man goes into hell; that's where he belongs at. And then just beyond that went a little white Light, that went in between each one of those cuts of flesh. Abraham having the covenant confirmed to him by the Lord God, that how He was going to take Abraham and make him a father of nations. How He was going to save Abraham and his seed, He was making a confirmation of the covenant by the shed blood of the clean offered animals.

L-35 Now, how do we make a covenant? Say for instance, Brother Carlson here, stand up just a minute, Brother Carlson. If I was going to say, "Brother Carlson," say, "Brother Branham, will you come to Miami to--at the meeting?"
I'd say, "Well, let's think it over, Brother Carlson." I'd say, "Well, I believe so. All right. I'll come, Brother Carlson. Let's shake." See? That's a covenant. We'll be there. That's right. That's got it. See? We'll make the covenant like that. That's the way we make a covenant.
How did? You know in Japan how they make a covenant? They go out... We go out to eat, usually. The Japanese get a little cruse of salt and throw a little salt on one another, that's how they make the covenant with each other, 'cause salt is a contact and savour. You see? So they throw salt on one another making a covenant.
But in the days of Abraham, you know how they made a covenant back in the eastern oriental countries then? They killed a beast and they stood between these dead pieces of beast; they wrote on the parchment or the lamb's skin, whatever it was, and made this Jewish writing, the covenant, whatever it was. And then, they... Over this dead beast's body they took an oath, that if they broke this covenant, let them be cut to pieces like this dead beast was.

L-36 Then they took the skin and tore it apart, and one kept one piece; one kept the other piece. And then when this covenant was brought back, or when the covenant was brought to its fullness, then these two pieces had to be dovetailed together and made that skin, and them letters meet letter by letter. That's the way the covenant was confirmed to Abraham. That's... He was showing him there what He was going to do in the times to come through the Royal Seed that He had promised him, yet him without any children. He had promised the son, that he was going to have it. He was seventy-five years old, and Sarah was sixty-five when the promise was made, and it was twenty-five years later before the--the promise was ever fulfilled. But God kept His promise with him, because Abraham kept faith in God.


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