<TITLE>07. Par 47-55</TITLE>L-47 And can you see, then, the filthiness of the modern church, calling herself a "church"?

L-48   As someone said the other day; Brother Ruddell, a precious brother of mine, standing against the wall over there now. That, he seen it like a sucker on a vine. And we was discussing it in the room the other day. And Brother Ruddell was disturbed about the conditions of time and the--and the feeling of the spirit in the churches today, how it's begin to drop down. Ministers coming from everywhere, and interviews out here, asking, "What has happened, Brother Branham? What has happened?" Oh, my!

L-49 Brother Ruddell asked me the question, "Are they living off of the spirit of Satan, or what?"

L-50 I said, "No, the sucker lives off of the strength of the vine." It lives because, the citrus fruit, a--a lemon will grow in an orange tree; but it will not bear oranges, though it lives by its life.
And the church, so-called, only is a grafted sucker, living under the name of religion, under the name of the church. Catholic and Protestant, just suckers, pulling the... from the strength of the Vine; and yet bearing the fruit of what they are, because they wasn't converted. They wasn't in the original, predestinated plan of God, that's the reason they have to deny the Word and bear other kind of fruit. The real genuine tree, in its root, was predestinated to bring forth oranges on an orange tree.
Jesus said, "I am the Vine; you're the branches."

L-51 But if that tree ever puts forth another branch, it will bear its original fruit. And there has got to be a restoration of all these things, right at the end of the Vine. There is to be, come forth, a restoration, an evening Light to light It up and to make It right. But it will come out of the Vine, not a denomination that's grafted into It; but original production of the Word. It's to come forth for the evening time. "And there will be Light in the evening time." It takes the Light to ripen It.

L-52   See how perfectly the Scripture is! "A day that won't be called day or night." Fruit cannot ripen unless the sun ripens it. No matter how much you preach, whatever you do, it cannot be ripened, it cannot be manifested, it cannot be vindicated; only by Him Who said, "I am the Light of the world," the Word. So there has to come forth a--a--a Power, the Holy Spirit Himself, to ripen, or to vindicate, or to prove, or to make manifested that what He's predicted would happen in this day. The evening Light produces that. What a time!

L-53 The Bride passed in the same position that She was when She was at the beginning. But I was watching Her getting out of step, and trying to pull Her back. Now, much could be said on these things, of the day that we're living.

L-54   Now, Hosea said, in 6:1, "Return to the Lord." Remember, he said that they would be scattered, and they were. He said, "They'll return to the Lord, after they had been scattered, and He would, will bind them up." Notice, "Return... Be scattered; the second... They were torn, and was blinded." That's just exactly what happened. "He will heal us, and bind us up."
Like Ezekiel 37, "The dry bones, the valley full of dry bones." Ezekiel saw it, their return again.
Then notice, Hosea said, "After two days! After two days He would return to them. He will receive us and give us, revive us." Now, revive doesn't mean "resurrection." Revive, there, is the same word used anywhere else, I just looked it up, means, "a revival." "He will revive us after two days." That would be, "In the third day He will revive us again, after He scattered us, and blinded us, and tore us."

L-55 You know, the Jews were blinded for the very purpose that we could have sight. They were torn apart, and scattered, as a nation, and rejected their Messiah; that we might receive the Messiah, that there might be a people called out of the Gentiles for His Name's sake.


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