<TITLE>16. Par 181-189</TITLE>L-181 What time is it? "Is there a possibility?" Samson stood there and said. What time? Just, "Is there a possibility?" Samson happened to think, "That great God! He's omnipresent. He is everlasting God. I see my mistake. I'm going to repent." And he cried out.

L-182 There is a possibility that we could do the same thing. They of that day... This day don't see the vision, like Samson. If we could only see the vision of a possibility! Start right here, right now. A possibility, see.

L-183   They sit tight, and clap their hands, and wonder what it's going to come out to be. You're going to find out someday, you're going to come out the little end of the horn, see, that time. Have great gatherings, and glittering, worldly things, "Oh, we think, well, you know what? We got more members than we ever had. And we can build billions of dollars of buildings, got more money than we ever had, better churches maybe than some of the Protestants or some of the others has got. Oh, man! Scholarship; well, we take our children to school, and building new seminaries for them to go into."

L-184 Let me tell you right now. A man with an education, without the Holy Spirit, takes himself, every degree he gets, farther away from God. That's right. You say, "I got a Bachelor of Art." Then you're just a little bit farther away than you was. Split an egg in an atom, and stumble over a blade of grass that they don't know nothing about. You've heard the old saying, "Fools will walk with hobnailed shoes, where Angels fear to trod." That's right, scholarship, but it don't bring the Spirit. It don't bring the works and Life of Jesus Christ.

L-185   The trouble of it is, the church today is not like Samson. They're not willing to pay the price. Samson prayed right when he prayed, "Lord, let me die with the enemy." He knowed it was going to cost him something. He knowed it was going to cost something. It's going to cost you something, it's going to cost me something; your social prestige, your place and position in the denomination. "Lord, let me die, then. I see Your purpose." He knowed it was going to cost him something. You must be ready to die out, to your enemy, to get in the blessings of God. Samson was willing to pay the price, to get the power of God again upon him. He was willing to do it. Are you?

L-186 Are you willing to sacrifice your television programs? And, you know, it used to be as wrong for us to go to the movies. But now the Devil put one over on you, brought it right in the house with you. That's right. See?

L-187   I used to go down to an old Methodist preacher, used to sing a song:
We let down the bars, we let down the bars.
We compromised with sin;
We let down the bars, the sheep got out,
But how did the goats get in?
You let down the bars, that's all.

L-188 Oh, I hear someone say, "Now wait a minute, Brother Branham, we have revivals!" Yea, what is it? A denominational revival. That's right. Look at your morals and your differences. Is it a revival? Is there a breaking-up time? Is there time that everybody can associate together and have fellowship? If your organization is in it, "it's all right." Getting farther away from the Word all the time, that's right, making new bishops and everything. See?

L-189   Samson knew that his present backslidden condition could not produce the strength of the challenge of the hour.


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