Priorities #2

Bro. Lee Vayle

Gruenthal Church

Saskatchewan, Canada

July 12, 1978

1.	It’s a great privilege to be here again this morning, and I won’t
keep you as long as I kept you yesterday. I have a very bad problem in
my life: if I have two pages of notes, I preach two to three hours. If
I’ve got sixteen pages, or twenty-four pages, I’ll do the same
thing. It reminds me of the manna… And I’m just going to flatter
myself now. You know, the fellows that went out picking and got a little
bit; they ate just as long as the fellows that went out and picked a
whole lot. 

	So, two pages of notes or twenty-four pages, what does it matter? But I
won’t keep you so long. I might have to make a little confession why I
talk so long usually: I was preaching many years ago and those were the
days I might have preached, you know, as long as an hour and a half,
which was pretty phenomenal, because it was usually forty-five minutes.
And this brother said, “Now Bro. Vayle is not really long-winded; he
just has a lot to say about the subject.”

	Now I thought that was very sweet of him; and whereas one little fellow
got a whole lot more direct than he did. And one day he said, “Bro.
Vayle, don’t you get kind of tired standing up there so long?”

	And I laughed, and I said, “Now, Tim, what you really mean, isn’t
it, you’re getting pretty tired of listening to me so long?”

	He got a great big grin on his face. He said, “Yeah, that’s really
right.”

	He’s a very sweet kid. So, one day he said, “Now, Bro. Vayle, if
you ever preach for forty-five minutes,” he said, “I’m going to
buy you a ham. And, if you ever get to preaching a half an hour, I’m
going to give you the whole hog.”

	So, I wasn’t paying any attention, but a couple of years later, I
guess it was, which was just last year, I preached for less than
forty-five minutes, because I wanted to get out early—you know, kind
of cut the message down. And we had all got to “The Spot” for a cup
of coffee, and in walks Tim with a great, big ham. It sure pays, you
know, if you preach certain ways! And one of these days I’m going to
get the whole hog!

2.	I’m not in any real rush for it, because we don’t eat that much
pork, but I’m not averse to it. But, you know, Bro. Branham’s
favorite little joke was about the preacher that used to pop the life
saver in his pocket, and he’d preach the twenty-five minutes. And one
day the guy got a hold of a button, and after an hour and a half, he
finally realized what had happened, and he quit preaching. 

	But that’s not as bad as: a friend of mine told me about this
Pentecostal preacher. He got up one morning; he used to preach about
three-quarter hour. And the guy started talking, and he couldn’t sit
down, until finally he fell down exhausted. And they said, “What
happened?”	

	“Well,” he said, “it was this: my teeth broke last night, and I
had to borrow my wife’s!”

3.	Now you may think that’s funny, but I’m going to tell you a true
story now, and if you laugh, you’re going to be in trouble. When I was
born, the doctor looked in my mouth, and he said to my mother, “The
tying of the tongue is too far down, and if we don’t cut the little
boy’s tongue there, he’s going to get tongue-tied.”

	Now I’m going to just ask you: do you know how fast I can talk?
That’s because I think that fast, and I think faster than I can talk.
Now, what would have happened to me if I’d have been tongue-tied?
“Uh-uh-uh-uh.” And with my fast thinking, I’d have blown my brains
up by the time I was five years of age.

	Well, the doctor thought he did me a favor; he cut that string there.
But I think he made a mistake—that he must have cut the back of the
tongue, too. So, now my tongue’s tied in the middle; I can get it
going in both ends. So, if I talk fast and long, that’s just too bad;
because, what are you going to do when you’re born a certain way, or
they do something to you? So, you’ve just got to be very prayerful and
very careful now, because what I told you now is a true story, and
I’ve got that infirmity. And so, you’ve got to bear now with those
that have infirmities. I don’t want to keep you so long, but if I
should take some time, it’s going to be all right.

	Now, shall we bow our heads in prayer?

	Heavenly Father, we pray now You’ll solemnize our hearts seriously
towards the thoughts of Your Kingdom, O God, which we know is the most
important thing in this world, because one day the kingdoms of this
earth shall become the kingdoms of our God. And You said that we’d
become priests and kings in it and reign for a thousand years, and then
come back in the generations of the eternal—in New Jerusalem. And,
Lord, we know that You told us, concerning this, that there are certain
duties that are to be performed, even though it’s all done by grace in
the introduction of us into this Kingdom. But our positioning and those
things, Lord, which are for the future, which You set forth in Your
Word—they depend upon us, who, in turn, depend upon You.

	And so, Father, this morning give us, we pray, the clear-cut
conceptions, understanding—not just of ‘what’ but ‘how’—this
is what we really want, Lord, because we know that today in this world
system, the economists and men that aren’t even half bright, can tell
what’s wrong, but hardly anybody can tell how to make it right. But,
Lord, this would be the crime of eternity if ministers, by the Holy
Ghost, were not given the ability by the revealed Word, which in this
hour has been vindicated, to help the people so they would know not just
the ‘what’, but the ‘why’ and the ‘how’.

	So, Father, this morning we put ourselves on the spot; but we’re not
on the spot if the Holy Spirit makes us able ministers, and able
hearers, and able doers. God, this morning we’re just resting in You
now by faith, based on what we talked about yesterday. Bless each one
here in divine Presence, O God. May Your sweet Spirit just be with each
one here until, as a brother so aptly put it, quoting the prophet, that
“Satan’s already bound because of the circumstances,” and the
circumstances are: we’ve let down our guards, we’ve let down the
barriers. We’re now in each other’s bosom, and a part of each other.


	O God, if there is a life moving through us, and, if that one life is
centralized, being one life, then everybody’s moving in harmony and
unison—one body, one great symphony, Lord. 

	Father God, we know these things, and now, Lord, as we learn more
things, we’ll be happy if we do them. We commend ourselves, therefore,
to You, in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

4.	Now, in the first message on this subject of “Priorities” we saw
that God’s choosing, God’s ordained priority for us, was to seek His
Kingdom and His righteousness. Now we notice that this is not our
choice, but it is God’s choice for us. Carnal man would not so do.
See? It’s God’s ordained choice; it’s what God said to us. We
didn’t have any more to do with this than we had to do with being
born. It’s something that God said. And we see that the Kingdom of God
is a future Kingdom, for Jesus answered and said, “My Kingdom is not
of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then would my servants
fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews, but now is my Kingdom
not from hence.”

	Also, and as they heard these things, he added and spake another
parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that
the Kingdom should immediately appear. “But I say unto you, I will not
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink
it anew with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”

	Finally, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven.” There is a future Kingdom of God upon this earth wherein
righteousness and peace reigns, where there is a head of a Bride who is
in the Millennium where she serves him, and the hundred and forty-four
thousand serve her, and that Kingdom is right here upon this earth and
it is future, and there is a preparation to be made toward it that
carries over to the New Jerusalem which sets a permanent status of
destiny.

5.	I said “a status within our destiny”, because our destiny was
already under foreknowledge and predestination through the process of
election, whereby God did it, and we did not, but there’s incumbent
upon us something we must do that sets our status, because in the
Resurrection we differ as the sun from the moon and the stars, which all
differ in glory, and so do we.

	Now the fish are going to be resurrected, the birds are going to be
resurrected, the animals are going to be resurrected, and we are going
to be resurrected. And there is going to be a society who will be set
forth, in my understanding, according to how they have treated the Word
of God that said, “But seek you first the Kingdom of God.” In other
words we are to put the future ahead of the present so that the unseen
takes precedence over the seen, and the future takes precedence over the
present, so that the bird in the bush is worth more than the bird in the
hand; because I let the bird in my hand go, and I get the bird in the
bush.

	Now man doesn’t operate that way, nor want to operate that way, but
that’s what we’re talking about: there is a future Kingdom.

6.	Now it should not be necessary for further comment, but I still want
to take a little time on this stock and that is: though the Kingdom we
look for is future, God’s sovereignty is in effect now, for the
Scripture says: “He rules in the armies in the heavens and the earth,
and He puts over men the basest of men.” I guess that’s to make
people want the Kingdom a whole lot more than they’d want it, if they
had a bunch of good dictators. See?

	God is running and ruling everything now. This gives us a tremendous
hope, a tremendous stimulus, that if God is reigning and ruling right
now in the things of the earth, then we are superior to, and in
authority over, anything which could hinder us from the preparation of
the future, which we are laying up for ourselves. See? Now we saw that,
but we’ll see a whole lot more of it. 

7.	So, we see our great priority is to get ready for the Kingdom of God
coming upon this earth. We go first, then, to Rom 8:14-23, and we all
know them, but we’re going to read them anyway. 

(14)	For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God. (I showed you yesterday: we were born into the Kingdom by the Holy
Ghost, and the Holy Ghost was given in order that we serve the future
Kingdom now, to be justified citizens, manifested by conduct. We’ll
show you that under adoption in a minute.) …they are the sons of God.

(15)	For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.

	Because God is ruling over everything. See? He’s taken power.
Remember: “He makes the wrath of man to praise Him” [Ps 76:10], and
the remainder wrath, He does restrain. He took the Hitlers and the
Stalins, the same as He took the pharaohs, to get Israel back there in
the promised land. And men are fussing, and men are screaming, (And well
they might cry out against injustice.) but God was in it. He said,
“I’ll fish you.” (That’s give them a little bait) They
wouldn’t take the bait. He said, “I’ll hunt you.” And He hunted
them down, and they’re back there now. He said, “I’ll bear you
upon eagle wings” And He took planes to bring them in there.
Hallelujah! I want you to know this morning: God is reigning and God is
ruling! And He takes the wrath of man to praise Him. All right. 

8.	Now:

(15)	We’ve not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; (“Fear
not, I’m with you.” See?) but you have received the Spirit of (the
placing of sons) whereby we cry, Father, Father. (Oh, it makes you so
happy.) 

(16)	The Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God: 

(17)	And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
Christ, (but, hold it), if so be that we suffer with him, that we may
also be glorified. 

	Glorification depends in a great measure… I’m not speaking now
about the immortalization of your body. I’m talking about the glory
when you walk before the great congregation, and they say, “Look at
that great child of God. Look at that great servant of God. Look at that
great child of faith—that man of virtue down there in the earth; in
the face of every adversity, stood with Jesus Christ, and that Jesus
Christ… Now, look at him.”

	And they screamed, “Hallelujah! Glory to God!” And the heavens
begin to reign. Yes, sir. That’s preparing for the Kingdom.

9.	Now:      

(18)	For I reckon…

	This is the day of reckoning—computerization. I’ve got the cutest
little computer, little thing, that my son gave me. It’s called the
Casio—little tiny thing. It sits in the palm of my hand, and I get to
playing with that thing like a kid enamoured with a toy. Man! That thing
is fast and can do things. 

	Reckoning! We’re in the day of the most dynamic,
mathematically-proven reckoning that the world has ever seen, when God
Himself came down as Melchisedec and showed exactly Who and What He was,
Who exactly, and what we are, and what lies ahead—revealing glories
which had not been revealed.

	Now:

(18)	I reckon… (I made my computation:) that the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be
revealed in us (who suffer).

	Ah ha! It’s not, “Must I go to heaven with flowery beds of ease?”
No, sirree. Other men traverse the stormy seas, and I stay home and fan
my brow? Many a time I’ve told you folk in a jest. But I’m sorry,
sometimes it’s a very rotten jest: my idea of roughing it is a good
Holiday Inn, or some comparable motel by a nice little lake with
screened-in windows, so the mosquitoes don’t bite me, a nice
air-conditioned restaurant to sit in, and I look out the window and say,
“I’m having the time.”

	That ain’t Christianity. If it is, you ain’t getting nowhere. 

10.	Now:

(19)	For the earnest (Listen:) expectation…

	I like that. The words, “There now remaineth three great things:
faith, hope and love.” Everybody thinks that word ‘hope’ means
‘Well, I ‘hope’ it don’t rain; but, you know my luck, it’ll
rain.” 

	“I hope the mosquitoes ain’t bad, but I know Waskasu and
Tippecanoe, and all the rest of it, and it’ll be mosquito country.
Yeah, yeah.”

	I want to tell you something! Ain’t no such word in the Bible! The
word ‘hope’ means ‘earnest expectation’; God being earnest, and
I’m being earnest. I’m suffering; I can earnestly enter the
sufferings of Jesus Christ, knowing there lies before me a crown.
There’s something that’s earnest, as the Holy Ghost is the earnest
of our down-payment soul. There’s an earnestness with the Word of God
that Bro. Brown brought up, “God Himself, Whose Word could not fail,
then swore by Himself Who could not fail, if thou become earnest.”

	Also, I don’t mind suffering. I don’t mind paying a price. I
don’t mind laying down the present for the future. I don’t mind
dying. Why? He said, “Because I’ve got the assurance. I’m
earnest,” he said, “the same as God is earnest.”

(19)	For the earnest expectation of creation waiting for the
manifestation of the sons of God. 

	Creation is waiting for God to take these lovely creatures who have
been down here reflecting His Glory, standing in His Presence and
suffering to show the Kingdom of God, walking in the footsteps of their
great Leader. Creation is waiting. I can say, “No wonder it’s waited
so long. It might have a while to wait longer, too.” I hope not. 

11.	Now:

(20)	Creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason
of him who hath subjected the same in hope.

	You say, “Oh, why must it be this way?”

	Sometimes I feel more sorry for nature than people. And I could cry
over the carrier pigeons. I could weep with those conservationists who
see the animals disappearing; and I look up at the window many times,
and I see the birds, and I just sit there, and I smile. And yeah,
that’s one time I smile! You know, sour old Vayle… I can smile. And
I just smile at the birds, and I begin to wonder if I haven’t gotten a
little bit cracked, because I’m smiling more at nature than with the
people, because the people are important, but that nature out there is
waiting on you and me to get our change, and nature’s going to change.
See? 

	Now that’s what the Bible teaches us. Now nature didn’t get itself
in a mess. We got nature in a mess. Have you ever seen a country as
great as North America? There is no country greater, and no country
decimated and destroyed and polluted in less time than any nation in
history—hardly three hundred years, and we have a rottener mess over
here, perhaps, than any place in the world. We polluted it. God’s
going to destroy those that destroy the world—the Bible said so. 

12.	Now nature is suffering, (as birth is suffering) going through birth
pains, even right now, as Bro. Branham brought out.

(21)	The creature brought into bondage and is waiting for the liberty of
the glory of the children of God. 

(22)	For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain
together right in this very moment. 

(23)	And not only they, but ourselves also.

	Paul saying it, he said, “We want the spirit of the first fruit, and
we turn around and say, “Well, hallelujah! I’ve got the very thing
that’s going to put me in the Resurrection, that puts me in
perfection.” 

	And Paul says, “You bet you have; but you’re going to suffer here,
while you’ve got it, till you get there.”

	And the people who can’t suffer and put away the present for the
future, cannot release the bird in the hand for the bird in the bush,
are not worthy of the kingdom of Almighty God, and prove they’re
bastards and not sons. 

13.	I thought I was a bastard one time. I quit preaching. Yeah, I
couldn’t take the glory of God putting the food on the table. Oh, what
kind of jackasses are we? Balaam’s old donkey had a whole lot more, it
seems, than I ever had. Didn’t know I could stand there and pray
before God, and God bring the food on the table. God put the patches on
my patches, but I didn’t want patches. But they wandered in goatskins
and in caves and were sawed asunder, and I counted myself unworthy for a
while.

	I tell you, I wasn’t illegitimate to the Word, as bad as I thought I
was. William Branham came by one day; that did it. I knew I’d go back.
But I knew: when I went back, that this time there’d be no turning
back. There wasn’t, and there ain’t going to be. I know it’s going
to be ahead, but it’s too late to turn back—the decision is made,
the die is cast. Not because I’m too old. I feel just about as good as
at any time in my life. With the antibiotics, I feel a whole lot better
than I felt for a long time in a lot of years. I’m not going back.
See?

14.	Now:

(23)	(We) have the firstfruits.

	In other words we’re going to be just like Jesus Christ, but we’re
going to suffer. Why? Because you’re looking forward to a Kingdom,
which you’ve got to be born into. And the law has not been rescinded:
In pain you come forth during birth. As the woman had her pain, so you
and I now have our pains. We’re born into immortality to come forth in
the Resurrection. That’s the path that every Christian’s foot must
tread upon: the path between the promise of the Millennium to the
Millennium, the Resurrection, there will be suffering.

(23)	(Whole creation groaning, we ourselves having the firstfruits,
groan, and we’re) waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of
our body.

	But, listen: it’s earnest expectation. If I were some slave, as the
Bible makes a comparison, and the master said to me, “Now, listen,”
whip, whip, “you get working.” Whip, whip, “You get working.”

	And I say, “What for? What am I getting out of it?”

	“Nothing. I’m getting everything out of it.”

	Cracked the whip; made me work harder.

15.	Oh, man, I used to get mad, as a kid; and I used to hoe corn. Now,
being a Canadian by birth… [Words on tape missing] But, oh, boy, the
times it did mature, we had a ball—and it’s kind of nasty what I’m
going to tell you. But we’d get a crop of corn, and we’d run it
through butter, and put the salt on it. Oh, it was fantastic. Then,
we’d have a corn cob fight. Ha! Ha! Wham! Bam!

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, on the walls of your house?”

	You should have seen our wallpaper! [Laughs.] We had holes in the house
you could almost throw a cat through. In the winter time the snow would
come upon the bed. It was lucky you had a feather tick.

	So, once in a while ma would get the walls covered. And every once in a
while we’d have a corn crop, and we’d have a good old corn cob
fight. 

	But in the meantime, I’d hoe that corn, and nothing would come. And
I’d hoe the corn the next year, and nothing would come. And I’d get
so mad, because it was useless. But I’m going to tell you something,
brother/sister: This is not useless; It’s not useless. No, sir. God
has a purpose. 

16.	Now: thus you can see why Jesus so spoke in Mt 6:19-21. So, we go
back to Matthew 6:

(19)	Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt.

	I don’t care how much you lay up, it’s going to go on you. I
don’t care how or why you try to keep it, it’s going to get shot.
Thieves will break through and steal. Crooked lawyers will take it. Your
kids will blow it. Your wife will run off with some young man. You’ll
make a fool out of her, and there goes your dough. 

	Spend your time laying up for yourselves. Now God doesn’t say, “I
want you to do a lot of things down here to particularly glorify me;”
so, there’s a lot of nice things up there I could trade around. He
said, “Take care of yourself; look out for yourself.” He said,
“I’ve looked out for your rebirth; now you look out for yourself:
“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” [Phil 2:12]
Everyone has the command.

(20)	Lay up treasures in heaven, and the moth can’t corrupt and the
rust doesn’t corrupt, and the theives can’t get it. (And nobody can
take it. And then, It says here: I’m going to give you a secret:)

(21)	For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

	We have got the wrong emphasis. We’re trying to get a heart condition
here, and that’s something there. Let me tell you: you and I are
wrong. It’s get the treasure there, then the heart begins to respond.
See? I showed you that time after time, that law that Dr. Crane sets
forth: go through the motions, and the corresponding emotions will come.

	You say, “My heart is vacuous. It’s like a vacuum. I don’t feel
that pulsating about the treasures in heaven.”

	Why? Because you haven’t laid anything up! That’s why a lot of us
are scared right now to meet heaven. We’re commanded not to come
empty-handed. This one fellow said, “The gates of the city are so
wide, you’ve got forty miles of elbow room.”

	That’s to haul your glories in—your cartloads of goodies, that you
may have praise in your own. There comes a time when we praise God, and
Him alone, but there comes another time when we’re praised. See? The
heart’s going to follow.

17.	Now, listen:

(22)	The light of the body is the eye.

	Now, where’s my eye looking? My eye is bypassing the seen for the
unseen. My eye is bypassing the bird in the hand for the bird in the
bush. See? My eye is bypassing the temporal for the eternal. Now It
says, when you do that, your whole body is full of light. Yet, there are
people trying to get this Message down pat by studying, and thereby
we’re dividing each other. If we would start laying treasure in
heaven, we’d get the full revelation of Almighty God. 

	Why, is God going to give a full revelation to a bunch of bums? I’m
not going to take that back. Don’t ask me to. If you’ve got it
coming, you’ve got it coming, and so have I. This is theWord! Not what
you and I talk about the Word. 

	You say, “Well, the prophet came; we got our eye single.” 

	That’s true. One eye of an eagle gets us a single revelation, but if
you want the truth of it, get your eyes on that Kingdom and nothing
else. Then, watch the Word begin to trickle through. 

	I want to tell you, when a certain brother came here the first time, he
had it right. I might not get along with him. That’s his business and
mine. I don’t agree with a lot of things a lot of people say. They
don’t have to agree with me. That doesn’t mean anything. But I’m
going to tell you flat: he had the original, proper statement correct.
It wasn’t how much light you thought you had, but it was what light
you walked in. 

	I tell you flat: it’s not whether The Church Age book was written by
Lee Vayle on his own thinking, or William Branham’s, or anybody
else’s. It’s whether you’ve got an eye single to laying up those
treasures, where the heart begins to follow, and the body starts to get
full of light. That’s the Word of God! Not the half-baked, cock-eyed
ideas that people have in this Message based upon things they can’t
prove, or believe they can prove, because they think they’ve got it!

	I don’t like to talk like this, but I’ll challenge anybody here:
come up here and give me “THUS SAITH THE LORD”, and I’ll kiss your
feet, I’ll bow at your feet, I’ll call you ‘Jesus Christ’. Now
I’m laying it down flat: dirty old Vayle is right back to preaching
mean.

	Well, I can’t change my nature, hallelujah. I was born that way. Or,
not so ‘hallelujah’; I was born that way. 

18.	Then, listen:

(23)	But if thine eye be evil…

	The evil eye considers this, considers that. The evil eye—the eye
that’s not single, the life that refuses to lay up treasure—as Bro.
Branham said, “The wife that refuses to bear the child for the
husband.” The same thing is right here: the so-called bride that
refuses to bear the reproach and the laying up of treasure in the
Kingdom is not worthy. Evil-eyed people are not necessarily those that
go around drinking, maligning the name of God, perjuring themselves and
others, or living despicably. The evil eye is in the person who refuses
the priority that God laid down: “Seek ye first the kingdom; begin
laying up those treasures.”

	I didn’t write the Bible! Do you think I’d preach this way if I had
something to do with this Bible? Ho! I’d simply say, “Let’s rough
it by going to a nice lake and a Holiday Inn that’s air-conditioned
with screens on the windows and a restaurant right around the corner,
and we won’t even bother to walk. There’ll be a taxi at the door.”

	Oh, evil-eye Vayle. Huh? Man wanting the easy way. I said I didn’t
write the Book, but I’m going to preach it. I told you when I started
this series, there are three kinds of preachers: those that preach it
and live it. There are more old timers that did that than new timers.
Then, there are the hypocrites who pretend they live it and act as
though you don’t. Then, there’s a third group—of which I’m a
part, with embarrassment and a red face. I stand here and proclaim it.
If it kills all of us, it’s still God’s Word! And we’ve got a
little while to do something about it.

19.	Now he said:

(24)	No man can serve two masters (and so on. Now, 25-33, he said:)

(25)	Therefore I say unto you…

	Now here is the ‘therefore’ based upon this premise: get
single-eyed, forget the things around you, concentrate on what is ahead
of you. Not like Bro. Branham said, “People always looking back and
always looking forward, ignoring what’s here.” I’m not talking
about that. See? Don’t ignore what is here that will bring the future
glory: the laying up of treasure.

(25)	Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what you
are going to eat, or what you are going to drink…

	Not that you shouldn’t take care of yourself. Not that you
shouldn’t do the things necessary. Because a man that doesn’t take
care of his family is worse than an infidel. A man that says, “Well,
God’s going to fill my platter” and doesn’t do a thing, is
ridiculous, because God Himself said to Adam, “You’re going to wrest
your living out of that soil in a mighty tough way. Start working, kid;
get digging.”

	Huh? Not talking about that. He’s telling you this: that the Kingdom
takes precedence over your appetite, over your dress, over everything.
If there’s a decision to be made, put it in the future in the kingdom
of Almighty God. If your conscience strikes you working on Sunday, quit
your job and get another job. 

	 I know people don’t understand what a preacher goes through. What do
you think I went through, quitting my job, going down the road with
nothing to go to and nothing to go with?

	“Well, you see, Bro. Vayle, you’re a preacher.”

	Hogwash! I’m a human being, like you are. Leave your wife and kids to
the mercy of the elements! No, sir. Leave them with God. Go through
tempest and high water and temptation. Preachers are not the only ones.
There’s no place in Scripture that the preacher alone does what Paul
just says. We’re examples to the flock by doing it. Now, come along,
join the crowd. You’ve got to put the Kingdom ahead of everything
else. See?

20.	Now, listen: 

 (25)	Therefore take no thought what you’re going to eat… (And so
on.) The life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment. (Then,
he said:)

(26)	Behold the fowls of the air: they neither sow nor reap, they
don’t gather into barns; but your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t
you a whole lot  better than they are? 

(27)	Which of you can add stature? (And so on.)

(28)	…Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they don’t
toil, don’t spin. 

(29)	Yet Solomon never had a gown like those.

(30)	 So therefore God clothed the grass of the field, which today is,
and gone tomorrow. (Twenty-four hour life has always gotten us. That’s
worse than a little mayfly. Now:) How much more shall he clothe you, O
you of little faith?

(31)	 Therefore take no thought, saying, What are we going to eat? or,
What are we going to drink? How are we going to be clothed?

(32)	All these things Gentiles seek after…

	The world seeks after, but you don’t. You’re seeking after one
thing, the major priority. I don’t care whether the world seeks after
security, gain, or possessions; I’m laying up treasure. Yes, sir.
“He that seeks to save his life shall lose it, but he that loses his
life for my sake shall find it.” [Lk 9:24] And, “There’s no man
that’s left father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, lands, but
will get a hundred fold in this life and life everlasting.” [Mk
10:29-30] 

21.	I remember I told you about zoe. Zoe is not eternal life; zoe is
life. You and I are going right into that future Kingdom just the way we
are, except for a change in our bodies. Yes, sir. We’re going to eat,
we’re going to drink, we’re going to build, we’re going to plant,
we’re going to sow, we’re going to visit…that great day after
Millennium, the White Throne Judgment, and the City come on down, then
in God’s holy mountain, the beautiful animals and everything there,
the Holy City upon Mt. Zion, the Lamb upon the throne, the Pillar of
Fire over the throne, ‘before we call, He answers’. Oh, how blessed.

	And it’s the same way. Yes, sir. A lot of guys have an idea that
we’re all going to look like Raymond Naverra, Marilyn Monroe. Hogwash!
I’m going to go in with my crazy looking old nose—buzzard beak—and
the whole thing. I’m going to be just as pretty as a doll before God.
According to Bro. Branham: “the apostle Paul…hunchback, hook-nose,
bandy-legged, little old Jew.” 

	Bro. Marconda sat there, and he said, “Wow,” he said, “that’s
the same vision I had.” 

	And David wasn’t what Michelangelo made him either. He was nothing
but a kind of runt, according to Bro. Branham. Oh, we’ve got our
priorities all messed up. Look pretty, act pretty, be worldly.

	Forget the world. Forget the bird in your hand. Look to the bird in the
bush. See? Look down that road.

22.	Now, it said here: “Don’t you take any thoughts.” Now: 

(33)	Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things are going to be added to you. 

	In other words the guarantee lies there: “If you honor me, I will
honor you. If you do what I tell you to do, I will do what I said I will
do for you.” I’m preaching faith right now, though I’ve been
pretty rough. Yes, sir. We could be just like the kid whose father said,
“Look, I’m going to give you a bicycle, when you clean up that
barn.”

	And the kid messes around; and so, one day Daddy comes in, and he says,
“I want that barn cleaned up.”

	And the kid fools around; so, the dad takes a long, willow stick, or a
hickory stick, and beats the living daylights out of him. The kid cleans
the barn, and the dad gives him the bicycle. That’s my preaching.
That’s the way God can do, too. You’ll get your bicycle. God’s
going to train his kids.

23.	Now, He said, “If you’ll listen to me and do what I say, you put
me first, I will guarantee you unequivocally that I will back you.”

	The Word of God came to Bro. Branham, and He said, “Because you made
the right decision, the momentous decision, a great portion of heaven
awaits you.”

	What was that decision? Picking the hard way. Oh, he could have had the
easy way. Do you think that Bro. Branham wasn’t like you and me? Let
me let my hair down, or his hair down for him. We sat in Portland,
Oregon, one day before our meeting would take place in an auditorium in
Portland. We turned the television on to see Oral Roberts. We saw the
vast crowd; we saw Oral Roberts ministering and preaching, and I saw
Bro. Branham break down with tears of human frustration and say, “Bro.
Lee, I could have the same thing, but God wants something different.”

	Oh, come on. Oh, you think you knew the prophet? Not like I did! And
I’m not boasting. There’s people knew him better than I did.
Somebody knew him better than anybody, and that was God. But, don’t
think he didn’t have his frustrations. I remember the day… I think
it’s right on the tape, actually, where Bro. Branham and Sis. Branham
were in meetings, refusing to take large offerings and things, came home
one day, and here are great big cracks in the floor. And he said,
“Honey, that floor is a mess. Now,” he said, “if I promoted my
ministry, and I took money like the rest of these people,” he said,
“we could have a nice rug on that floor.”

	I don’t know if that’s on a tape for sure or not. Is it? Anybody
remember that? Well, as long as it’s on the tape, it’s okay. I’m
telling you flat anyway, because he and I talked. 

	I had a friend who dealt in furniture, and I told my friend… 

	“Well,” he said, “let’s fix it.”

	We went there and took the measurements, and poor Bro. Branham got
nervous. He said, “What’s it going to cost?”

	“Oh,” he said, “nothing!”

	Who needs gimmicks? He said, “You leave it here. I’ll give it to
you here again, and up there.”

24.	Brother/sister, people are too scared to believe the Word of God.
Let me tell you again: the bird in the hand ain’t worth nothing, if
God has got a bird in the bush. Yes, sir. Don’t try to be some kind of
an eagle with buzzard feathers, or buzzard with eagle feathers. Go
ahead, and just be the real eagle.

	Now the whole of our Christian lives has one purpose: to be trained up
and placed as manifested sons in the Resurrection of the Kingdom, to go
on where Adam failed. Right. To go on where Adam failed. God said,
“Don’t eat of that tree. Now,” He said, “all these other things
are available. That’s just fine, but there’s a certain thing that
you’ve got to shun.” 

	And we have literally in our day the same command: get away from that
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; get away from your thinking; get
away from the world; get right back to that Word. 

25.	Now, listen: I said, “We’re going to go where Adam failed to go.
And I’m going to go back to Genesis 1:28 and show you something. I’m
going to show you the perfection of the Word of a prophet. And this is
what I love, because I love my prophet. Yep, I can smile, toothless or
otherwise, when it comes to the prophet.

(28)	And God blessed them, and said, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the whole
thing: earth and sea and air.

	And Bro. Branham said that the woman caused an interruption.

	And everybody said, “Uh…an interruption? The man speaks a very
peculiar language. Interruption?”

	Absolutely. It was interrupted until the Millennium. Now some of you
guys criticize the prophet. He was so perfectly correct; he was too
perfect. Some of you would like to change his words, wouldn’t you? Uh?
Or would you? I hope none of you do, because you’re in trouble. When
he said, “Nature was interrupted,” “The plan was interrupted,”
it was the Word of God, the perfect Word, because that’s all it is, is
an interruption. Adam flunked the test. He wouldn’t take the training.
See? Yes, sir. A lot of people want manifestation, like Latter Rain
does—great, big things and great, big goodies, and, “Come and watch
me,” and, “We’re going to have this,” and the rest of you guys
going to be so and so.

	Hogwash! You want to be a manifested son? Then, get rid of the bird in
the hand and go for the bird in the bush. Start knocking the present on
the head and go for the future. Start putting down your own ideas and go
for His.

26.	Now this may sound strange in the light of the rebirth through
grace, but it’s not. Remember, the ‘state and standing’ doctrine
is true. We have a perfect standing before God. But, what’s our state?
Our state is usually one of sleep and slovenliness—carelessness, not
redeeming the time because the days are evil. In other words, because
there are evil days, we have a chance to redeem time. It’s only in the
face of adversity we can make things count. You can never tell a man
what he really is like in the face of his action; you have to watch his
reaction, because that’s when his hair’s down. See?

	So, God sends these things. How do we stand? Yeah. So, you see there is
a conduct, a course of life, set forth in the Word that is required of
us ere we reach that Kingdom. And now, needless to say, there are
various aspects to consider, you know, about the conduct—going to the
Kingdom. So, we consider them. 

27.	Now, at the expense of being repetitious just to get my point
across… And Paul the apostle endorsed repetition; and so, I’m on
good ground. So, if you have good ears—so goody-goody. Listen, the
first we consider is Mt 6:24-26 and 30:

(24)	No man can serve two masters… 

	You can’t have your foot in one kingdom and your foot in the other
kingdom at the same time. You can’t provide for the future at the same
time you’re providing for the present. Now I’m talking in terms of
the Kingdom, not necessarily where you and I must do something about our
welfare. As we get old, it’s only right to, you know, to walk in the
world in the proper way, but never put it above the Kingdom of God. See?


	That’s what happened even to preachers. They got trapped in their
pensions, and the preachers got together and guys like old Rockefeller
gave the Baptists in American one million dollars many years ago for
their pension fund. What is that one million dollars worth today? Likely
several hundred million dollars.

28.	Now, how will the Baptists quit being Baptists? Dear old Daddy
Baptist, sixty years old, said, “Well, now, in five years I’m going
to retire. I’ve been a faithful old servant to Jesus Christ.
Hallelujah!”

	And along comes William Branham. His ears began to flap, his eyes begin
to bug, and he said, “Nobody told me about this.” He sniffled his
nostrils, he said, “Smells like God; but just a minute; if I leave the
Baptists, I’d lose my pension.”

	That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t mind you having a pension.
I don’t mind you having life insurance. I don’t mind you having
anything at all that’s good for you that’s helpful. That shows
you’re industrious and wise and careful. What I’m talking about
isn’t a trap to you. Are you willing to let it go for the Kingdom? 

	I’m not talking about stupid, old Lee Vayle, that his wife worked,
and he sold the refrigerator to buy a Sunday school bus. Oh, God! Puke
on that one. It took everything I had to be a jackass. Sunday school and
buses? How sick could I get? Don’t answer the question. My
temperature’s still there, to think I gave my refrigerator up. Shee!
Huh? I’m not talking about stupidity. I’m talking about dead-center
reckoning, I reckon. Not with the human, carnal mind, but by the Word of
God, I reckon. 

29.	I like what—who was it? Oh, I’ve got a lousy memory. Bob, who
was that fellow that was in England, who was a famous accountant and
became a missionary? I guess, you know… Maybe your memory is gone,
too. But, anyway, they said to him, “Well, now, look, you’ve got a
great talent, and you’re over here in China, you’re a missionary,
you could use some money. We want you as an accountant for our firm.”

	“Why,” he said, “if the accountants of the Bible left to be
missionaries, how can a missionary now leave to be an accountant?”

	Do you remember who he was? You know the story anyway, I’m sure.
That’s what we’re talking about. See? Human minds—no good. Where
was I? Yeah.

30.	Matthew 6:24:

(24)	No man can serve two masters.

	Now, listen; now, listen. Let’s get this. Oh, this is a tough baby,
but I’m going to tell you what Jesus said. Now, do you believe Jesus
would tell you the truth? He sure does, but it sure hurts. How would you
like to be like that guy written up in The Reader’s Digest? that
Saskatchewan guy, Badell, or something, his name is. Here the poor
guy… He’s got this hay bailer, and he thought maybe he could get the
thing just working right while the gears were rolling. And that’s the
most stupid thing he ever did. He should have stopped the thing and gone
home and got help. But he thought, “I’ll just put my hand up in the
air. And he was doing real good, and suddenly, he found the other was
caught in; and pretty soon two were caught in. Now he’s hanging there,
and nothing can be done. So, the doctor comes and cuts off both arms.
See? Pretty tough. People are that way, See? Now he shouldn’t have
done it. 

31.	Now, look at what I’m talking about here:

(24)	No man can serve two masters: he will hate the one, and love the
other.

	But that man was in serious trouble, and lost his arms. So it is that
anybody who refuses to follow what Christ said concerning the future
Kingdom will actually end up hating Jesus. Sure, it’s right. You know
why? Because the burden will pressure you so great, you’ll consider
Him a fearful taskmaster, an exacter of dues of which He has no reason
to exact. You’ll lose the whole picture. Everything goes out of focus,
and the devil gets into your heart, and mine. And then, you’ll pay the
price of the man that lost his arms. See? He did wrong. It was folly for
him to attempt to do something in that area.

	Now we are just as foolish. It says here:

(24)	You can’t serve two masters: (It says categorically:) he will
hate the one, and love the other, or he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. 

	If you want to become a despiser of the kingdoms of this world, of the
rum trickiness of the system, and be a lover of Jesus, you have got to
follow this dictum: start laying up treasures; start doing something. A
glass of cold water will not lose its reward. That’s how simple it is.
Sending a little kind letter, doing an act of cheerfulness, going to the
hospital, giving somebody a smile, giving him a cup of coffee—start
doing something. See? Start doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. 

32.	Brother/Sister, I am not telling you a lie. I am telling you what
has been forgotten for years amongst us, and we wonder what’s wrong;
but we palliate ourselves: “Well, you must believe as I believe the
Message, that Bro. Branham is going to do so and so,” Or, “He’s
not going to do so and so,” or “This will happen,” or “That will
happen.”

	And you’ve got it all figured that ‘you’re right’.

	You are wrong! If I preach Sunday morning here, I’m going to preach a
sermon you’ll misunderstand so bad, I’ll scatter you. But, if you
understand, you’ll begin a walk with Jesus that you never walked
before, and you’ll love your brothers as you never loved them before.
I’ve followed this Message a long time, perhaps more than most of you.
I’m going to tell you: don’t you put too much faith in the fact that
you say, “I believe it.”

	I’ve got news for you: all the devils in hell believe, too, and
they’re running scared. And a lot of us are running ‘high-minded and
proud’. I’m living in fear and trembling day by day. I don’t know
about you. I’m so sad and sick inside, I want to go home and quit. I
didn’t even want to come here, and I want to go back home right now,
when it’s over, and just sit there and look out the window. But I’ve
got something better to do, and that’s start doing more in the name of
Jesus Christ, start giving a few more cups of water, start being a
little more of a blessing. Yes, sir. Because It said, “If you don’t
do it, you’ll love one, which is the world, and you’ll hate the
other.” Oh, yeah, do you know why you’ll hate the other? Because
he’s talking about ‘identification of conduct demanded by two
sources.’ And, if you don’t identify with the one conduct that is
right, you will hate it, and therefore hate the source. If you identify
with the conduct that is right, you will love it and love the source. 

	I’m sorry, folks, I’m not here in the explaining business too well;
I am here in the preaching business. I did not write the Book, but this
is what the Book says. There’s too much talk of the family praying
together, sticks together. The family that works together is the family
that sticks together, because anybody can pray. And there’s too much
praying, “Thy will be done be done on earth,” and then say, “Let
Joe do it.” 

33.	Mathew 6:26. Now, listen:

(26)	Behold the fowls of the air: (Peruse it. Adam was to do that. Folks
study nature, learn all about it, see God in it. Then live it, believe
it.) Look at the fowl of the air: they don’t sow; (The fact is: they
can’t.) they don’t reap, (But they sure can eat.) they don’t
gather in barns, (They sure make out.) your heavenly Father feeds them.
(Well, lucky for the birds. And Jesus said, “Isn’t it too bad that
you aren’t a bird?” I thought we were—eagles.) Are you not much
better than they?

(30)	Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is,
and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O
you of little faith?

	I told you yesterday, herein lay the validity of faith—your faith
becomes valid. It is not counterfeit. It will not fall by the roadside.
It is the unadulterated, sown commandment of God in your life that you
are watering, and it will come forth.

34.	Now, in these three verses, we find the mention of God. The word in
the Greek is ‘theos’, which is God, and it does not have the meaning
of a one who is worshipped, by the way. It does not mean ‘Jehovah’.
It does not mean ‘Adonai’, and so on, but it is ‘theos’, which
means ‘magistrate’, ‘judge’. So therefore, it sets forth God as
judicious. Huh? Would a judicious person say, “A bird in the hand is
not to be worthy of a bird in the bush”? They’d say, “Hoo Boy!
Some con artist here.”

	Like Elisha… “Woman, make me a cake first.” 

	Oh, some con artist. I know you con artist preachers. Oh, boy, you want
to eat the cake, and me starve.

	What would you be like if you had just enough for two little sticks and
were going to cook it? It didn’t say ‘two trees’; it said two
little sticks.

	“Well,” he said, “you make me a little bit first.” He said,
“I’m going to tell you something: you do that, and you’re going to
get fed like nobody else around here is being fed.”

	“Oh,” she said, “hallelujah! Glory to God! I’ll bake you a
cake! Anything else you want?”

	Oh, I like her. She’s God’s kind of a people. God’s kind of a
people just believe that Word. See?

	God is Magistrate, Judge, judicious, wise, the Decision-Maker, the
Righteous-Advisor, the Interpreter of the Law, the One Who sets the
course of action.

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, I thought that word ‘God’ would just mean
‘to be worshipped’.”

	And I say, “Hallelujah, Lord. You’re a real, fine God, and I know
there’s a verse in there about the sparrows, and I know there’s a
verse in there about the hair of the head, and I know there’s a verse
in there. And it’s all so sweet; I’ll make up a song about it.”

	The Judge is talking, the sentence has been handed down, the full
effect of the forces behind the wall now go into effect, and It says,
“Do it, or else.”

35.	I want to tell you something: we’re a little bit all screwed up in
our thinking. Now you Canadians are in the same boat as Americans are.
Do you know that you don’t actually have to pay income tax? That’s
right. We don’t in the States either, because Congress has set the law
that they can levy taxes and collect them. But, when they set up the
IRS, they made a mistake, and already the Supreme Court has passed on
two cases where men refused to pay taxes. And yet, Lee Vayle pays taxes,
and Bill pays taxes, and Bob pays taxes. Where are the rest of the
Yankees? And all you dumb Canadians pay taxes, like us dumb Yankees.
Right? And the dumb Englishmen. You know what? Scared not to, because
the l a w has spoken.

	What about that law? He’s not just saying, “Now I tell you dear
people: you have a choice. And wouldn’t it be nice that, if this
became effective, there is a vast, or at least some possibility, that,
if you should consider seriously, that the bird in the bush is better
than the bird in the hand, you just might find that the bird in the bush
is better than the bird in the hand.”

	That’s a lot of hogwash. The bird in the bush is better than the bird
in the hand, period. 

36.	Listen: Magistrate, Judge, Wise, judicious, Decision-Maker,
Righteous-Advisor, Interpreter of the Law, Settler of the Courses.

	You say, “Um…um…um… That means I’m not part of the
government. I’m just part of the one who carries it out?”

	Exactly. Exactly. You were not called in. You don’t say, “Hey,
judge, let me interpret the law for you.”

	He said, “I am the interpreter. Sit down.”

	And the lawyer says, “Well, now, your honor, dear honorable sir, I
know the law.”

	He said, “But I know it better. Sit down.”

	“But, your honor, certain judges said so and so.”

	He said, “And well might they have, but I am the judge. Shut up, and
sit down, or I will call you into contempt and boot you out and fine
you. And one more time you smart off, I’ll put you in the hoosegow
jail.”

	“Oh…yes, your honor. Yes, your honor.”

	“Well, Lord, I…I…I just don’t think I’ll do what You say,
though.”

	Then, where is the validity of faith, my brother/sister? He said, “If
I’ve fed those sparrows, and I’ve clothed the lily, your faith is
now valid.” 

37.	I want to raise your faith, brother/sister. Here we go…okay? [Oh,
boy, three o’clock it is. I told you I’ve got half the notes I had
yesterday, so it’s going to be twice as long. All right.]

	We’re going to do a little experiment. Years ago, when I discerned…
And, remember: everybody learns what the vernacular would call
‘tricks’. It really means ‘ways of contacting’. Now one of the
ways to discern is to make your mind up how you want to hear from God;
and, if you will exercise your faith persuasively, almost defiantly,
willfully, unflinchingly, you can swing yourself into the spirit. 

	I was in Calgary one time, and a poor girl with headaches that drove
her crazy could get no relief. She’d been prayed for by many people.
And, as I laid hands on her, the pastor said, “Forget it, Lee.
Everybody’s prayed for her. I don’t know if she’s hypochondriac or
what, but she’s always got her headaches.”

	Well, fortunately, I had a little compassion…a little, but I also had
a stubborn desire to find out and see if she could be helped. So, I laid
hands upon her, and I demanded that I know by the Spirit exactly what
was the trouble with her head. I determined, and, as I recall, I set my
mind to see it. And that’s one of the hardest things to do, is to get
a mental vision. It can be done, but I’m kind of scattered for it.

	Now here’s what I did. I’m going to do the same with you: I simply
ask this question, “Do you know what hour of the morning I was born?
Everyone of your minds suddenly went blank as you opened your minds to
hear the hour I was born. Is that right? It’s that simple. 

	I laid my hands on her and drew my mind blank, because I knew nothing,
with the expectancy of knowing from God, and her skull opened before me
in a vision: I saw the two parts and the pinks and the purples and the
veins and the crevices and the cracks and the creeks, and so on. And in
the middle of the brain, the size of a pea, was a little blood
hemorrhage, or something you’d call it, causing her a terrible
pressure to drive her crazy. I was so happy to know the trouble, I
cursed it. She never had a headache from that time on.

38.	Now, what I’m doing is this experiment as good news; the law that
I will give you so that you will have a faith that you have not had
before. And I say to you, “Do you want to know how valid your faith
is, and how right and proper your faith is, and that it will absolutely
work?” There is no doubt. Do you want to know? [Congregation replies,
“Amen!”] Open your minds, and let your hearts go, while I say,
“Wherefore, God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and
tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more shall He clothe you, O you
of little faith?”

	And you say, “Then, I’m clothed! I’ve got no fear. It’s
over.”

	Then, you lock it down here. Brother/Sister, there has got to be a
decision made sometime, which master you’re going to follow to cast
fear out of your lives, to make sure you can put your life on the altar
and go down that road toward the lion’s den, if necessary? It can be
done! And it’s got to be done. Or you’d be trying to serve two
masters, or be going around, saying, “Well, you see, you need to
believe the prophet’s message as I do, because I’ve got the
revelation.” 

	Yuk. Nope. There’s something more than just talk.

39.	Now, listen, verse 24, a distinctly judicious statement that forever
settles all arguments: “No man can serve two masters,” can’t ride
two horses at one time, can’t be here and there at the same time. Now
this is a judicious statement, handed down by God: you cannot serve two
masters. So, stop trying it. Therefore, every effort must be expended to
find some way to serve the purpose you’re put on earth here for, which
is to lay up treasures. Follow me? That means: young people, your
education must be blended toward God. You cannot set your heart to make
money. You cannot set your heart to be a doctor to get a great salary.
You set your heart as a doctor to be merciful. As Bro. Branham said to
the old doctor lying there in that bed, dying, and he was wondering
about God, and Bro. Branham said, “You showed mercy, ‘Blessed are
the merciful, for they’ll be shown mercy.’”

40.	What do young people want to be? You might be so anxious to be
somebody’s wife. What for? Why do young men want to be somebody’s
husband? What for? Bet you never gave this a thought: that you might
glorify Almighty God. 

	I’ve seen people put in their little letters, you know, to me, and
say, “United to glorify God,” and I want to vomit. And yet, I
shouldn’t, but I’m just too, too doubtful to believe their little
tricky statement, because I’ve never seen it followed too well.

	I’m going to tell you flat: what’s marriage all about?
Representative of Christ in a Bride. And, is that how you felt about
your marriage? Are children to be born simply by sexual desire? Sure,
they will be. That’s part of it. But, is that it? Now we’re getting
right down to truth, brother/sister. See? We’re bugged so much. You
don’t need to be bugged. 

	The point is: you can’t serve two masters! The judicious statement:
it cannot be done! Why are people nervous and frustrated? Because the
devil’s got one lick coming? Oh, that’s not bad at all, the one lick
he’s got coming. The big thing in here is disobedience to Scripture
that makes us the most nervous. I don’t care about the devil; hogwash
on him. All he can do is destroy my body. But there’s One who can
destroy both my body and soul. That’s the One to have fear of.

41.	Now, you can’t serve two masters, and it settles all arguments. I
have nothing to do with this. I must obey it. The Kingdom comes
first—in other words, taking precedence: that whatever is done is done
according to the Word of Almighty God, and within the framework of the
Word of Almighty God. All right. 

	Notice: it has to be the basis because of the coming Kingdom, because
in the coming Kingdom, Christ is supreme, and the Bride serves Him. What
kind of a Bride is going to be serving the Supreme King who doesn’t
know the first thing about obedience down here? Well, let’s face it.
The basis of the coming Kingdom: one Master, and not just a comment, but
the irrevocable pronouncement: if you don’t do it, there’s a hate
campaign going to go on in your heart. 

42.	Now, listen, brother/sister. I’m serious this morning, and I
don’t know how to put it across. God knows I did not write this, but
I’ve got enough brains to read It and to know what It says. It says,
“You cannot serve materiality. Under no condition can you be bound by
it.” Yet I’ve heard preachers in this Message say, (At least I’m
told it was said by a certain preacher.) “I must be doing something
right, because look at all the money coming in.” Another guy boasting
of, “A quarter million dollars a year goes through my hands.”

	Thank God no quarter million dollars goes through my hands. I
couldn’t even handle forty thousand. Now, put that where you want to
put it. See? You’re not spiritual because you’ve got a plug nickel,
and you’re not spiritual even if you haven’t got a plug nickel. See?
You can’t serve God and man. You can’t do it! You just can’t do
it.

43.	William Branham, the paradox of the ages. 

	“Oh,” said Churchill, “give us the tools. We’ll do the job!”

	And the Canadians, who couldn’t afford to keep Canadians, dug down
and gave Britain a billion dollars. Yeuh. Charity begins at home.

	I was born over here. Don’t kid me. You know why I left? One of the
reasons--not just because God wanted me to go--but you couldn’t be a
Canadian. You could be a Chinaman or a Ukrain or a Frenchman, but you
couldn’t be Canadian. 

	“Well, what are you doing here?” If I can’t be a citizen of some
kingdom, phooey on it. 

	But I’m a citizen of His Kingdom. Oh, that’s good. And He wants me
to be a citizen of His Kingdom. And He doesn’t say, “Now Son, you
was a part of this ‘heah’ place, ‘heah’, but you ain’t no part
of my citizenship.”

	I’m a tough former Canadian. I’m not going to hurt your feelings,
but I’m telling you why. Yeah. Can’t serve God and mammon. Are you a
part of His Kingdom? Am I? Serve Him.

 	Now they couldn’t understand Bro. Branham. No. Churchill could say,
“Give us the tools; give us the money.” 

	So then, Osborne, and all the rest said, “Give us the money, give us
the tools. We’ll do the job.”

	When did money do the job? I said before, and I’ll say it again: if
money could do the job, I’ll rob a bank and kill the guy that’s
going to stop me; because, what’s one life expended, if I could win
thousands? Somebody’s sick, and I’m not. Money doesn’t mean a
thing, whether you’ve got it or don’t got it. See? Materiality. Now
it’s been settled.

44.	Matthew 6:26-30. I read  them. “Therefore, I say, Take no
thought…” and so on. Again, listen; the judicious statement, which
is absolutely reasonable, simple, and factual, again forever settles the
question. That’s why I said a while ago: do you want active, permanent
faith? Then, look around you. This world’s been here for four billion
years. How long have you been here? Why the homes, the trees that your
homes were built out of, how many years have they been here? If you’ve
got one of the giant redwoods, it could be what? Two thousand
years—something like that. A sequoia? What if you built your house out
of a rock? Four billion years! How many birds were extinct by
themselves? None. Look around you. Reason, senses exercised spiritually
unto Holy Ghost reasoning, gives your faith validity. If God could do
all of this, and does all of this, then I’ve got no problems. 

	Now, look at it. We’re preaching just plain, simple bread and butter
this morning. But I’m going to tell you a little secret: I’m trying
to help me, even maybe more than trying to help you, because I don’t
think there’s anything anybody can major in greater than faith by
love. See? The validity, the judicious statement. This is it: “Can’t
serve two masters.” And then, the calm oil of the Holy Ghost inspired
Word, pouring over your soul, saying, “Don’t let it bug you; don’t
let it bother you. It’s not as big as it looks. It’s not as hard as
it sounds.”

45.	I want to tell you something: Have you ever seen anybody as pretty
as that lily out there? Oh, boy, these gals that coif themselves.
Notice, the Bible talked of Solomon in all his glory; but now it’s
Willie Mae and all her beauty. As Bro. Branham said, “Any teenage
teeny-bopper is a whole lot prettier than Pearl Bryant,” or whoever it
was he said was pretty in her day. And so, Madam Beautiful walks
by…chickety-chew-a-hoo.

	I like my wife to look pretty in pretty clothes, but I’ve got news
for her, and news for you: I ain’t ever expecting her and her clothes
to look half as nice as a rose or a little old lily I pick up, and say,
“Oh, man,” and say, “Now, Alisen, I do admit you’re a pretty
girl all right…” (I wouldn’t have married an ugly one, and I think
she looks better as time goes on, too—of course my eyesight could be
failing…heh, heh.) but I’m going to tell you something: she’ll
never touch a lily. Oh, no!

	You say, “What about you?”

	Heh! Let’s not talk about me. Some of you women in here are
beautiful. There’s no doubt about it. But you ain’t a patch on a
lily. I’m sorry. Oh, no, no, no, no. I don’t care what you do.

	And you men can lift your barbells and your biceps, and the muscles can
ripple; and oh, you can look like Mr. Universe! You ain’t nothing when
I pick a little crocus, a little flower of the spring, and oh, my eyes
bug, and I sit there, and I look at it. 

46.	And that’s what Jesus is trying to tell us this morning: Forget
yourself! Just look out there at what God does for the insignificant,
then what will He do for His Own Elect Children?

	Not just great, big, fantastic mountain-moving things. Forget it! I
don’t care two cents for the mountain-moving stuff, for the prophet
said, “When that sweet Spirit comes again, your gifts, as it were, go
on the shelf, and the Spirit of God moving, as it were, the devil bound,
watch what begins to happen.”

	Adorn your homes with flowers, brother/sister, for a while, and every
day go by and take a look and say, “Isn’t it wonderful how He takes
care of these. Boy, am I lucky! Wow! Because I’ve got so much better
care, He said.”

	He said, “The flower gets chucked in the oven, (It’s gone.) but He
says, “I want to tell you: O ye of little faith, get that faith up.”

47.	The validity. See? So, we find a spiritual law. That great spiritual
law is this: when you come into the Kingdom of God by rebirth, whether
you knew it then or know it now, you come under a totalitarian, infinite
Sovereign of complete authority, Whose wisdom gives Him the right of
supreme control over all of our ways. Right?

	Now the average preacher will preach God is a God Who can do what He
wants, He can talk to you if He wants, and He can make you talk. But
I’m not an average preacher. I’m below average; so therefore, I have
enough brains to tell you that His infinite wisdom--yes, infinite
wisdom--which means no better way to do it, no other way (Oh, the only
way, when you speak in superlatives); and He has spoken.

48.	Now, if I can just get that into my heart, which I can, because
mechanical faith becomes spiritual faith… I can; you can, too. Right?
You can! 

	Let’s say it, “I can do it.” 

	“I can do it.” 

	Sure we can! 

	You say, “What if I don’t do it?”

	I didn’t say that, and you didn’t say that, because I know if you
don’t want to do it, you don’t have to and you wouldn’t. But you
can do it. Like, I can throw this book out here, or I don’t have to.
Well, if I wanted to throw it out there, I could do it.

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, you’re vulgar.”

	Who said I wasn’t? Do you follow me? I can do it. Really, I can do
it, and I’ve done it. But the thing is: to make it a life. Yes, sir. 

49.	Here is a spiritual law: when you come into the Kingdom of God by
rebirth, whether you knew it then or know it now, (And we do know it
now.) you come under a totalitarian, infinite Sovereign of complete,
unmitigated, unwavering, irrevocable authority, whose wisdom (See,
magistrate.) gives Him the right of supreme and exclusive control over
all of our ways. Right? I’m sorry about that, if you think different.

	As the head, or mind, governs the body through its wisdom, so God, Holy
Spirit, is meant to govern us. A definition of the word ‘mind’ will
give us more insight. The mind is ‘the mental, or intelligent, power
in man’. It’s ‘a power’. It’s not just a little receptacle, a
reservoir, although that does have a part; it is a power, the power that
concedes, judges, reasons, wills, imagines, remembers, or performs any
other intellectual operation--the understanding. That’s what it is.

50.	So, let us go to Scripture—for another two and a half hours.
It’s going to be good, because one of these days my throat’s going
to wear out, and you’re going to be all right. Yes, sir. Everything
works together for good—not my good, your good. Hallelujah! Be of good
cheer! Bro. Vayle will unwind one day. Yes, now. Philippians 2:5:

(5)	Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

(6)	Who, being in the form of God, thought it not a prize to be grasped
and retained. (That’s equality with God.) 

(7)	But made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a
servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 

(8)	And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

(9)	Wherefore, God highly exalted him, and gave him a name above every
name.

	Now you and I: let this mind be in you and me, though we have the power
of our minds and our own lives, and our own discretions, we were born
with intelligence, we were born with mental faculties, we were born with
physical powers, and we can use them any way we want to use them. But,
be like Jesus. Bring yourself down under a headship. Humble yourself.
Get yourself out of the way. Stop trying to reason. Reason will drive
you crazy. See? All right.

50.	Also, Hebrews 4:12:

(12)	For the word of God is quick, and powerful, (Oh, my!) and sharper
than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart. 

(13)	Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight:
but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we
have to do. (Now, that’s the power of that Word. See? And what a help
that is to you.)

51.	Now, 2 Corinthians 10. You all know what I’m going to say, 1-5:

(1)	Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of
Christ, who in the presence am base among you, (Notice, just what I’m
been saying here:) but being absent am bold toward you: (Just the mind
of Christ now.) 

(2)	I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I am present with that
confidence, wherewith I think to be bold against some, which think of us
as though we walked according to the flesh (when we don’t).

(3)	For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (In
other words the warfare is over; we’re committed to God. Peace and
satisfaction comes in with this decision. Now:)

(4)	For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, (not mine), but
mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; (Now, watch.
Listen:)

(5)	Casting down reasonings…

	The word in the Greek is not ‘imaginations’, it is
‘reasonings’. If I let the bird in my hand go, for the bird in the
bush, I don’t know that I’ll get the bird in the bush. Ha, ha, ha.
You won’t. 

	“If I don’t look out for myself, then God won’t.” 

	Ah, ha, you’re wrong; but He will. 

	They said, “He saved others, but Himself, He cannot save.”

	That’s a lie, because He saved the entire Seed which was Himself.
Sure!

52.	(5)	Cast down your reasonings, and every high thing that exalts
itself against the knowledge of God…

	And, what’s the highest part of your body? Right here on the
top—the little pointy top—where the brain is, so-called. Bring it
down; stop trying to think. God has been so good, He said, “You can
even have such a rest that you don’t have to think”…or He thought
it out for you. You talk about a soft job, if we just got smart.

(5)	…Everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and
bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

	The warfare of the mind is greater than Armageddon. The greatest battle
ever fought is to come to the conclusion: my mind ain’t worth nothing,
but His is worth everything; so, God, You go ahead, (And mean it.) and
having done all to stand, stand. Ol’ Luther couldn’t, but he sure
stood by the grace of God. “Forget it,” he said. And God swept the
world on the statement of that one man.

	What else can I believe? I’m stuck. Oh, a prisoner of Christ. See?
All right.

53.	The least we can do is apply this much to God, that is, our
Headship. That’s the only thing we can do: take His authority. We need
to start right there. And we can see this in Scripture vividly, that is,
His sovereignty, His dictates, His commandments, His laws—no
questioning.

	Let’s read some on this, because we’ve got to nail the thing down
so that the mind becomes boggled and says, “I quit. God, take over.”
As long as you and I can mess around and question this and question
that, forget it. That’s why Bro. Branham said, “Just believe it.”
Exact statement about his wife was… I’m sure it was the sermon on
“The Anointed Ones at the End Time,” when Bro. Branham said,
“Everybody that understands this, raise your hands.” And because he
had so thoroughly taught me on the subject for the book’s safety,
before the sermon was preached, I was able to raise my hand. I thought
that I really knew; although years later, I found out how little I knew.

	She said, “Bill, I couldn’t raise my hand because,” she said,
“I didn’t know if I understood.” And tears rolled down his cheeks,
and he said, “Mede, only believe; only believe.”

	You don’t have to understand a lot; just believe. You don’t have to
figure it. It’s already been figured.

54.	Isaiah 40:13-14:

(13)	Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor
taught him?

(14)	With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him
in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the
way of understanding? 

	In other words He’s saying, “What are you guys yapping about down
there? What do you think you know anyway? I’m the One that’s telling
you, and nobody ever told me, and nobody ever will. Now, put up and shut
up.”

	Isaiah 40:21-23:

(21)	Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you
from the beginning? (I wish it had been told at the beginning.) have ye
not understood from the foundations of the earth? (Wish we had.)

(22)	It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth, and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.

	Just jumping around, jumping around, jumping around, jumping around,
jumping around. Oh, boy! Hot diggity dog! What a ball! No sense of
direction—you just jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. Ever seen
grasshoppers jump? Jump in water, jump in fire, jump, jump, jump. That
sure doesn’t sound like sheep.

(22)	…Stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as
a tent to dwell in:

(23)	That bringeth the princes to nothing; and makes the judges of the
earth as vanity.

	Smartest guys in the world that passed the laws, that interpreted the
laws, that were supposed to be the authorities, and he said, “They
ain’t nothing at all.”

	He said, “You want to come to somebody that’s got it—come to
me.” And then, He said, “I’m going to let you in on a little
secret: My foolishness is smarter than their smartness.”

	Oh, boy! What a kick in the teeth. Isaiah 40:28:

(28)	Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, the everlasting God, the
LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is
weary? Neither is there any searching of his understanding. 

	In other words, don’t try to figure it out. How in the world can a
bird in the bush be worth more than the bird in the hand? Don’t try to
figure it. You can’t do it. Just believe it. You know the happiest
people in all the world are those that are slightly stupid. The smart
guy drives himself nuts. The uneducated kiddies that don’t have to
know, but just use it, they’re the ones that have got it. And that’s
the way a Christian should be, too, just like a little child and say,
“Well, Daddy said so.” Yes, sir.

55.	Isaiah 45:9. See, we’re telling you why that this law is as it is,
so there’s no comeback. What I’m trying to do this morning is to
settle our hearts and minds on a law, by an unchangeable God, that says,
“This is it. Do it!” See? We’re using a little course here this
morning, like they do in the army training. They train you until
you’re an automaton, where you don’t have a mind of your own. You
act and react according to a training, like Pavlov’s dog. When the
bell rings, your mouth waters.

	So, you and I, when there’s a choice, we say, “God has it. God has
it. God has it.” 

	We become conditioned. We’re taking too long to get there. I am,
anyway. Boy, I hope somebody catches this this morning. If just somebody
catches it, I’ll be one of the happiest men in the world, even if I
miss it all myself. I’m not lying to you. I’ve got a zeal for
God’s integrity.

56.	Listen to it! Isaiah 45:9:

(9)	Woe unto them that strives with his maker… (Yeah. Lord, what are
you doing this for? What’s it going this way for?) Let the
potsherd…(That’s the broken pieces of a pot.) strive with the
potsherds of the earth. 

	Ever hear of anything so stupid? A bunch of cracked pots. Oh, pardon
the expression. I guess I shouldn’t use that, because there are too
many cracked pots around here, anyway. I don’t mean you; I just mean
the world. But that’s what it assuredly is; it’s a chunk of crock, a
crack, a piece of a pot, a bunch of pot. 

	Now here’s a bunch of pottery cracked, and it’s thrown on the
ground. Can you visualize them fighting each other? Fussing with each
other? No, they just lie there. 

	Where was I reading from, Isaiah 45:9?

(9)	…Let the potsherd strive with the potsherd of the earth. 

	Now, in other words you could put it this way: You and I can strive;
you and I can fight—let’s say what’s right and what’s wrong.
Let’s say, “Did he do right?” “Did he do wrong?” “Is this
the way it should be?” “Was that the way it should go?” But,
don’t try it with God. See?

(9)	…Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?
or thy work, He hath no hands? 

	In other words we’re laying down the laws here, brother/sister, that
I would to God somebody had trained me as a child, to take in my fertile
mind when I had one, when I hungered and thirsted for someone to teach
me the right way, and I did want it desperately. 

	You say, “Listen, kid, I’m going to tell you something: I’m going
to let you know the real secret. I may have read to you the Book of
Proverbs, and laid it out in the Word of Almighty God, and said, “This
is the way it is, kid. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His
Righteousness, and know one thing: you don’t talk back to God, you
don’t question God, you don’t try to interpret God, you don’t try
to understand. You just take what He said and do it.”

57.	Now faith does not say in its heart, “Who shall bring him down?”
And faith does not ask, “Who shall bring him up?” Faith does not ask
questions! Now, let’s get this straight: men do not ask questions;
it’s women that ask questions. It is a trait amongst women that drives
me crazy. Now I don’t know about you men, but I’m going to tell you:
it is psychologically, absolutely the truth: women ask questions. Men
don’t. Men just listen. If a man said to another man, “I saw Mr.
Jones today.” He’d say, “Fine.”

	You say to a woman, “I saw Mr. Jones.”

	“Oh, did you? Was his wife with him? Where was he?” 

	They can’t help themselves, but they should. Now I’m not running
women down. I’m making a point here. Bride is woman, and the stern
finger of God says, “Shut up and listen!” This is why the man is the
head and the woman is in silence. But the church says, “Lord, why is
it this way? And, Lord, why is it that way?”

	And God says, “Shut up. A woman is the one that caused the fall. She
can’t talk.”

	I’m talking about the church. See what we’re saying here?
Priorities. A priority is a priority; it’s first. It doesn’t mean it
could be first, if I wanted it first. It is first, because it is first.
Let me tell you flat that two follows one; one does not follow two.

58.	Isaiah 45:19:

(19)	I have not spoken in secret, in the dark place of the earth: I said
not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak
righteousness, I declare things that are right. 

	He said, “I did not make up some little thing and hide it. I came
directly and told the seed of Jacob, ‘This is what I want, and it’s
right. Do it.’” This helps you with the Message—why Bro. Branham
said certain things.

(22)	Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: I am God,
and there is none else beside me.

(23)	I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in
righteousness…

	Notice: every single time: ‘righteousness’. He said, “You can
depend on me. It is not only correct; it is a vital essence of myself
that is at stake”

	Listen: God is at stake! God is on the spot with His Word. I’m not
the spot. I am not on the spot. I’m just like the crazy idiot…puts
myself on the spot. So are you. God’s on the spot. I didn’t say it.
I don’t have to back up nothing. Notice what I’m saying this
morning: Do you follow me? The kind of a God He is, our relationship in
there, He brings His Word, He validates It, He stands behind It, He all
but comes down and said, “Look, can’t you understand and get It?”

	And Melchisedec did come down, opened the books, showed us the whole
thing, and we’re still messing around: “Oh, you gotta believe
this…” “Oh, you gotta believe that, or, you’re out.”

	Is that laying up treasure? Knocking your brother out? You’ve got to
be sick. Huh? Thank you for your no ‘amens’; at least you’re under
conviction. Don’t worry; I’ve been there a long time. Why do you
think I preach this way for? Why do you think I’m burdened day and
night? The hardest job is to believe a thing with all your heart and not
make it hard on anybody, when you can believe this with all your heart
and take everybody with you. Unless you get the two together,
something’s wrong somewhere. God’s Word is enough. All right. 

59.	Oh, good, we’re just great—two more hours to go. Matthew 6:24.
You just pray I’ll lose my voice, and everything’s going to be fine.
I’ve got a terrible way of recovering during the night: “He giveth
His beloved sleep.” Matthew 6:24, again:

(24)	No man can serve two masters: he’ll hate the one, and love the
other;  hold to one, despise the other. You can’t serve God and
mammon.

	Now, let me belabor verses 22 and 23 with it:

(22)	The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.

(23)	But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!

	In other words we can completely fool ourselves that we have the truth,
when we don’t have it; and we can quote, quote, quote, and quote,
quote, quote, and come up like the New York kid—quote himself for
three and a half hours and, then, say what the prophet did not say,
because the prophet did not say the seven thunders were the seven
virtues. 

	Find it! I’ll give you one million dollars, if I gotta rob a bank and
kill a man to do it. I challenge you! Because, buddy, Lee Vayle’s got
the quotes at home, and they’re piled this high. Not one place did he
say it. And, don’t draw your conclusions, and then, when the chips are
down, start screaming and calling people ‘prejudiced filth’!

60.	Oh, I’m in high spirits this morning; but I’m not mad, and I’m
not malicious. I should just play you the tape and let you know what
happens to people when they say that they know and put people out of the
Bride and call them ‘second cousins’ and ‘foolish virgins’, and
they claim they got it (And, when the pressure’s on, watch the
feathers begin to fly!) and call people ‘prejudiced filth’? Huh? How
great can be a darkness, if you don’t get your sights right, to begin
to put treasures up there, and think you’re smart to run around, and
split assemblies, and say, “Oh, hallelujah, look at the people
following me.”

	Well, if you try to follow me, drop dead. You ain’t going nowhere.
You ain’t getting on my back. “Every man shall bear his own
burden.” [Gal 6:5] You do your own thing; I’ll do mine. I’m not
going to try to influence you. Phooey on you and that nonsense: “Come
into my camp.”

	I ain’t got no camp! Follow Him outside where the persecution is. Get
your eye single; start laying up treasure—not running around, trying
to mess up churches, and say, “Believe it this way…” or “…that
way.” Get somebody else’s. Get your own! 

	“Preach it, Bro. Vayle.”

	You did. Thank you. What a blessing to be one-minded. What one-minded?
We know the Message! We’ve got it! Lay up treasure.

	You say, “I’m going to win souls.”

	That’s not laying up treasure, winning souls. Laying up treasure is
your daily life and walk. Winning souls is fine. Win all you can. The
prophet said, even told me, and I’m not an evangelist. So, I tell
everybody else to win souls, because the prophet said so.

61.	One-minded—God-minded. What problems and confusion to attempt to
serve God’s mind by our own mind, and how unnecessary in the light of
1 Cor 2:11-14, where the Scripture tells us the natural man just can’t
do anything about it. So, forget it.

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, what do we have, then?”

	We have the Holy Ghost.

	“Well, what is the Holy Ghost?”

	The Word of God, my brother/my sister. So, we took care of that.

	Now I trust we’re getting a definition of our understanding of the
great priority. I would put it this way: the constant recognition of God
in all things, and the constant awareness of His Presence in our behalf.
That’s what He said: “Don’t think about the future, don’t worry
about the bird in the hand. Try looking at the bird in the bush. Start
looking at the unseen. Start getting away from the world and things of
the world. Start getting up here where I am; get the same mind I’ve
got.”

	“Oh,” you say, “Lord, then that really means that I’m
constantly recognizing You, I’m always aware of Your Presence, and
It’s in my behalf, because You said, ‘If those sparrows out there
are fed, and the lilies are so beautiful’—which I admit they
are--I’m very pretty myself now, Lord.” [Bro. Vayle chuckles.]
“Yes, sir, I can really see it; but I will admit, Lord, that the lily
is pretty.” 

	Pardon my sarcasm, but I’ve got to do it. Huh? See what I mean?
Sovereign God, validity of faith, dynamic pronouncement: “I’ll do
it!” 

	“Then, God, I can put You first.”

	That’s right. William Branham did it. That’s why he kept screaming
the token at us: “Hold that token unwaveringly over those faithful
promises of God.” See? All right.

	I never keep a promise; (They’re only meant to be broken anyway.) so,
I’ve got to put that to four o’clock. 

62.	Hebrews 13. I’m going to quickly read a verse of Scripture.
That’s one of my biggest failings I have: overkill all the
time—Scripture, Scripture, Scripture, Scripture; maybe I could use two
or three and do the job. But, in Heb 13:5-6:

(5)	Let your conversation be without covetousness; (Oh, my! Let the way
you live be without just ‘want, want, want’—that stuff.) be
content with such things as you have: for he said, I will never leave
thee, nor forsake thee. (In other words, learn this: that God will never
leave you stranded, never, even though it looks tough.)

(6)	 So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, I will not fear
what man shall do to me.

	See? We ought to get some inoculations on that thing, get our faith up.
In verse 8:

(8)	He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever.

	So, what He was to Paul, He’s to me; what He was to William Branham,
He is to me. I will not have William Branham’s office, but I will have
William Branham’s God. I will not have his ministry, but I will have
his Minister, which is God. See? Okay.

63.	1 Thessalonians. (I should have written them all down and just gone
through them snappily.) 1 Thessalonians 15:16-18:

(16)	Rejoice evermore. 

(17)	Pray without ceasing. 

(18)	In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ
Jesus concerning you.

	That’s what the Scripture says. This is the Will of God. Many things
people go through, they don’t believe it’s the Will of God; but, if
it wasn’t the Will of God, how can God be sovereign? The devil can’t
come in and take over.

64.	I remember a friend of mine went down to the Virgin Islands—poor
kid went down there, backed by a few people. Of course, being a
Trinitarian, his mainstay was  “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” which
is no laughing matter, because that’s what he understood, and he did
his best to serve God. He couldn’t find a house; he found an old cave
to live in. The heat was oppressive; the humidity was horrible; the kids
began to break out in sores. 

	Everybody he had talked to… It was a fertile mission field. Nobody
was getting saved. It was a bunch of malarkey. They wanted to keep their
paychecks rolling down there. It was the most barren place; and he was
so discouraged, until he read this, and he began thanking God.

	Now, look at it. I don’t think it’s necessary to thank God for
boils and sores, but what the idea is, is to thank God that God’s God,
and He’s there, and you’re going to be victorious.

	But, anyway, he went the full limit; he went whole hog. He thanked God
for the musty condition; he thanked God for the stinking condition; he
thanked God for the sores; he thanked God for the sickness; he thanked
God for the darkness; he thanked God for spiritual barrenness. He
thanked God for everything. And one day the light broke. Souls began to
get saved. He stood on the street corner and a drunken prostitute would
come by—devil-possessed—and she’d dance and jig and point her
finger, carry on, and smirked and scowled, and everything else, and
nobody could do a thing.

	And one day he rolls up in the Holy Ghost and condemned her, and she
went like this [Bro. Vayle makes motion of her leaving quickly.] and
took off—went down the street. She never came back. 

	Devils were cast out, people healed. They were saved. “In everything
give thanks: this is the will of God.”

	You say, “Well, now, Lord, I don’t think it is Your Will.”

	Hogwash! He said it was. See? Preeminence.

65.	Let me tell you, brother/sister: I am not cheating you. The trouble
is: we’re looking for shortcuts, for gifts and miracle ministries, to
put it on, to put it off, to do it here, to do it there; and now, so Lee
Vayle can have his roughing experience of a Holiday
Inn—air-conditioned, with screen windows—as he looks at the lake and
eats good food—yum, yum, yum. For this is the will that he wants for
himself.

	But I have been down the road, my brother/sister, with nothing. I have
been down there with the kids running away from home. I have been down
there with no hope, except God; and it works. Oh, I would love the
air-conditioned hotel. I would love the Millennium right now, but I
ain’t going to get it right now. I’m going to tell you something: I
ain’t going to get a very big part either, unless I begin acting as
though I really am a citizen of that Kingdom; and neither are you. See?

66.	Philippians 4:13:

(13)	I can do all things through Christ who gives me inward strength.

	Ephesians 3:16:

(16)	That he would grant you, according to the riches in glory, that you
be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.

	When Bro. Branham had that picture taken in Grass Valley, I think it
is, or some place in California, (You know, the one with the big lilies
on it, and the flames of fire?) people couldn’t figure out what kind
of desk shape that was behind Bro. Branham, that emaciated form that
kind of looked like it might be the head of Christ. And Bro. Branham
told me what it was. I don’t know if it’s on a tape or not, but I
think it is. He explained it to me. He said, “See, Lee, one day I was
complaining before God, and asking God for consolation, and God said,
‘Why should I give you consolation, when I already gave it to you, and
you didn’t even look at it?’” 

	He said, “Lord, what are you talking about?”

	He said, “Those pictures that Bro. Argenbright took. Get them from
under your bed in your suitcase.”

	He pulled up the suitcase, and the Lord said, “I’ll explain it to
you.” He said, “See those licks of fire? That’s the nine gifts of
the Holy Ghost manifest in your life. And see that dark, old man? That
goes with the youthful man.” I forget how it was… “the shield of
faith,” and so on, and various things.

	And then, he said, “Well, what’s that behind me there?”

	He said, “That is the outer man perishing, but the inner man being
renewed, day by day.”

	Sure, strengthened with might in the inner man. Samson in his death,
taking more in victory than he ever took in a lifetime. We’re running
out the Seventh Church Age, but there’s time to lay up treasures in
heaven, and the hours that are down the road, if we only want to do it.
Yes, sir.

67.	2 Corinthians 3:5. Oh, it’s too bad the Bible’s so full of these
goodies; and yet again, it’s a good thing it is. Sure saves me working
my brain, because all I have to do is read It.

(5)	Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of
ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; (Oh, brother/sister, can we
get an understanding from Matthew? “I am God; I have spoken. Don’t
you doubt it! And I’m all for you, and I’m sowing it to you.” Paul
learned his lesson: he said, “Our sufficiency is of God.” Oh,
brother, what a sufficiency. Oh, man!)

(6)	Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of
the letter, but of the spirit: (The Word Itself doesn’t do you the
good; it’s the revelation that that Word’s real: God Himself.)

68.	2 Corinthians 12:9-10—Paul speaking here:

(9)	And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my
strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I
rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon
me. 

	How we hate ourselves, because we’re fallible. We’d like to rise up
and say, “Look at me. Oh, I’m a strong man. I can resist temptation.
I can…, I can… How I praise God, hallelujah.”

	Oh, the Pentecostals do that to perfection. I’m sorry. I’m not a
Pentecostal; I’m just putting it on! We’d love to be able to do it.
Paul says, “I’d love to be able to say I can do it, but I know
better than to try it.”

	Yes, sir. The ol’ black lady, you know, she’d be pretty much of a
drinker, I guess, when she worked in these homes, a lot of money and a
lot of booze; it wasn’t hard. So, she kept drinking liquor. So, one
day she got saved. And so, the devil came by with a big bottle of
whiskey, and man, one sniff was just about enough to put her in orbit.
And she just said, “Look, Mr. Devil, I can’t handle you, but
there’s One that can. Come here, Jesus, take care of this guy.” 

	It’s true. It’s true. You know, simplicity, brother/sister, is
greater than people think. I was thinking about this fellow one day: the
preacher got up and the guy said, “How am I going to get saved?”

	“Well,” he said, “just say, ‘Lord Jesus, come in.’ Throw open
the door to your heart. Say, ‘Lord Jesus, come in.’”

	So, the guy didn’t understand. He went home and threw open the back
door, and he said, “Lord Jesus, come in!”

	He came in. 

	Simplicity. God meant it. I want to tell you something: you don’t
think you believe that, but you do. That’s why you’re here. If you
really didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t be here this morning. You
really believe it, but you won’t give yourself credit for it. It’s
not right, brother/sister. That’s not right. You are sons of God. You
do have faith. God gave everybody a measure of faith. Everybody’s got
his own proportion. That makes ministries. Bro. Branham said so. Listen,
I can’t read them all.

69.	Romans 14:7-8:

(7)	For none of us live to himself, and no man dies to himself;

(8)	Whether therefore we live or die, whether we live, we live unto the
Lord; whether we die, we die to the Lord: whether we live therefore, or
die, we are the Lord's. 

	In other words he’s showing us here, as Paul did in the other
chapter: I want you to know there is never a time when you are not
God’s Own special child. That’s right. Let it get right down in our
hearts now. The constant recognition of the Presence of God is a
tremendous achievement. See? Don’t fail to understand this and receive
it.

70.	I’m going to go to Luke 2, and I’m going to read 41-45. This is
about the trip from Jerusalem. [End of side one of the second audio
tape. Words are missing.]

41.	Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the
passover.

42.	And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after
the custom of the feast.

43. 	And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child
Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of
it.

44.	But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s
journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance.

45.	And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem,
seeking him.

	A.J. Gordon was given a dream one night, and in that dream he saw Jesus
going down the aisle and unrecognized by the people. So, he got the
great text which I read here, and he said, “Which is more sinful and
terrible, to say that He is with us when He is not, or to say He is not
with us when He is?”

	They thought “He was with them, when He was not.” The world, my
brother/sister, does not believe that. The world churches believe He is
with them and He is not; but He is with us. Do we believe it? Do we
believe it all the way? Now it is the way of victorious, tremendous
achievement.

71.	This is the verse that God gave Joshua. This is the verse that God
gave Bro. Branham, and you all know what it is. It’s Joshua 1:

(1)	Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to
pass, that the LORD said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister,
saying,

(2)	Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, (Don’t sit here and
weep and mourn, and say it’s over. Get up. William Branham’s dead.
Sit down. Forget it all. Get up. See?) go over this Jordan, thou, and
all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the
children of Israel.

(3)	Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I
given unto you, as I said unto Moses. (And so on.)

(4)	To the coast…to the going down of the sun.

(5)	No man shall stand before you all the days of thy life: as I was
with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake
thee. (The God that came down with the Word is the same God that’s
going to put us in the Rapture.)

(6)	Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou
divide for an inheritance the land, (It’s inheritance time now.) 

(7)	Only be thou strong and very courageous, that you mayest observe to
do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn
not from it, right hand, left hand, that you may prosper whithersoever
you shall go.

(8)	This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; you meditate
day and night in it, that you may observe to do all according to that is
written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then
you’re going to have good success.

(9)	Have not I commanded thee? (Notice: the same thing I said in Matthew
6.) Be strong and of a good courage; don’t be afraid, neither be 
dismayed… (Because I’m going to tell you a secret: I’m with you,
whether you know it or not.)

	There you are: Heb 13:5-6 again. Yes, sir. Now, I’m going to skip
this, but we could take what we’re talking about in the life of
Abraham to trace it, because we’re his children. The verses are in Gen
15:1, Gen 18:1-5, Gen 22:7-14, 20:1-7 compared with 2 Tim 2:13. And you
could take Gen 15:1 and compare it to Mt 7:24-25, but we’re just going
to skip it.

72.	And I’m going to swing back now to Philippians 2, because time
goes, and I’ve got to get you out of here. Philippians. Well, it’s
nice there’s so much in the Word of God; because then, you see, if you
miss one, you’re sure to get the other. All right. Phillipians 2:13:

(13)	For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his
good pleasure.

	Now, notice it! The baptism with the Holy Ghost is the instrument
whereby Matthew 6 is put into effective force. A man said, “Bro.
Vayle, I can’t do it.”

	You’re entirely wrong. You certainly can, because it’s God in you.
See? All right.

73.	2 Corinthians 13:

(3)	Seek ye a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not
weak, but is mighty in you. 

(4)	For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he lives by the
power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him by
the power of God toward you.

	In other words, brother/sister, he’s telling us: I don’t care what
life is encumbered with, which is not only your own living within
yourself, but living amongst others, the complete Will of God concerning
this subject is guaranteed to perfection by Christ in us. As I said the
other day, and I asked for a raise of hands, how many can honestly feel
broken down inside, and with the love, and your barriers let down, your
hair let down, to take to each other’s hearts. Oh, we’re a
suspicious people; we’re a funny people to really open up our heart,
like a hotel, and say, “Come in.”

	Oh, listen; some of you raised your hands. I had to raise mine first.
It’s hard to do. I’m a suspicious person. I’m going to tell you
something: no need for it. I’ve got God. He makes me able to do it. I
can open my heart and take anybody in—just be like a hotel. Yep. It
doesn’t mean I’m going to be made a fool of and a sucker. It just
means ‘I’ve got love. I can do it’; you can do it. Well, Paul
said, “Look, I’m weak, but,” he said, “I’ve got Somebody
strong. In the person of Christ, forgave I it.” In the person of
Christ, love everything else, because we are full of the Holy Ghost,
children of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. See?

74.	Psalm 22 is a perfect picture of His Presence—not what they’re
trying to tell us from some who believe this Message a certain way, and
they make up all kinds of things, like the light over the Empire State
Building, and barley falling on it, and a golden triangle, and in Fort
Wayne, where the River Joseph and the River St. Mary are going to bring
forth Jesus. Well, I’ve got news for the whole bunch of them: Lee
Vayle, for sixteen years, has been led beside the ‘still water’. I
live on the banks of the Stillwater River in Ohio, so I’ve got my soul
restored twice and, then, three times on the way round. Hogwash! Such
asininity.

	You live here, and it’s going to be a great thing; who lived there,
and some big thing. Live in the Word! my brother/my sister! Forget your
cotton-pickin’ geography. I’ve never heard of such junk being
preached as in this Message. Oh, I know everything means something, but
it doesn’t mean nonsense—or maybe it does. Carnal typing and carnal
bunk. [Bro. Vayle responds, “Yeah. Amen,” to someone in the
congregation.]

75.	A fellow preached a tape against me the other day, and he said,
“This teacher, that they made an absolute, doesn’t even know that
the Headship has arrived. He’s looking for the Headship in the
Millennium.”

	I should send him my sermon on “The Parousia”, where I prove, as no
man living has ever proved, because of the prophet, that He is here. Get
off the Word, and you’ll soon start telling lies and getting
geographical ideas and everything else. I’ve got news for you: smarten
up. Start serving God through serving your brother. Start giving the cup
of cold water—not handing out your trash, blasting somebody, proving
you’ve got some idea that makes you super super. Chee! Don’t talk to
me about that. I’ve been through it.

	“You’re my brother; you’re my sisters. You’re part of the
Bride.”

	 Oh, yeah. Well, I can believe that. No problem. But, don’t come
around and tell me I’ve got to believe what you believe about a
certain thing, because I don’t gotta, and I don’t. And you don’t
gotta believe what I believe, and you shouldn’t. Yeah.

	“Oh,” you say, “you’re a nut.”

	I didn’t say I wasn’t.

76.	Revelation 1 is a blessed chapter to remember. Over here in Rev
1:12, it’s all part of the subject. Don’t worry, it all comes
together—at least it does to me. I don’t know about you.

(12)	And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. (That is a
‘conversational voice’, which means ‘I can talk to God, and He can
talk to me’. Yes, sir. “Turned to see the voice,” to see it was a
Scriptural voice. Verse 16:) 

(16)	He had in his right hand seven stars: out of his mouth went a sharp
twoedged sword: his countenance was as the sun shines in strength.

	Verse 20:

(20)	The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, the
seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are seven messengers: the
seven candlesticks are the seven churches. 

	Now, there He is, guaranteeing His Presence through the Seven Church
Ages, and now at the end time we are in His Presence, and He is with us
in a greater and more wonderful way than ever. We’ve never been
without Him—age one, two, three, four, five, six—but, in age seven,
oh, how He comes down. 

77.	In 1 Thessalonians 4, as Bro. Branham taught us, and it’s
absolutely perfect with the original Greek, and the great scholars who
couldn’t figure it. Now he said:

(16)	For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.

	He’s going to come right down here on earth with a message. Yes, sir.
Thanks for the “Amen.” You’re perfectly right; I’m going to
quote the prophet, buddy. Don’t worry. 

	“I want you to know this is sure, and you that listen to this tape,
you might have thought that I was trying to say this about myself, being
I was preaching this message. I’ve got no more to do with it than
nothing, no more than just a voice.”

	And the Bible does not say the voice is the voice of Jesus, but He
comes down through the voice, the Word. Christ, the Word, descends.

	I preached a sermon at Bro. Guenther’s not long ago. If you didn’t
catch it, go back over it, on “Christ Himself Revealing Himself”.
It’s a little tough to get at times, but it’s there. 

	“My voice, even against my better judgment I wanted to be a trapper,
but it’s the will of my Father I declare to do, and am determined to
do. I was not the one that appeared down on the river. I was only
standing there when He appeared. I’m not the one that performs these
things and foretells these things that happen as perfect as they are.
I’m only the one that’s near when He does it. I was only a voice
that He used. It wasn’t what I knew. It’s what I surrendered myself
to that He spoke through. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t the seventh
messenger. It was the manifestation of the Son of man. It was not the
angel, his message, it was the mystery that God unfolded: it’s not a
man, it’s God. The messenger was not the Son of man, he was a
messenger ‘from’ the Son of man. The Son of man is Christ. He’s
the One you’re feeding on. You’re not feeding on a man. A man’s
word will fail. But you’re feeding on the unfailing Body Word of
Christ.”

78.	Listen to what he says here:

	“See, they had a testimony that they had seen the Lord, and others
didn’t believe it. He upbraided them because of the hardness of their
heart. They didn’t believe these people who had seen that He was not
dead, He’s alive. (Now, listen.) Same thing today, when you see His
works. Now we have already seen and are witnessing the appearing of the
Lord. Now, remember: ‘the appearing’ and ‘coming’ are two
different words; ‘to appear’, and then ‘to come’. Now is the
Appearing. He’s already appeared in these last days, right here with
us in the last few years. It’s a sign of His Coming. He’s appearing
in the Church in the form of the Holy Spirit, showing that it’s Him,
because people cannot do these things that you see the Holy Spirit
doing. So, that’s the appearing of the Lord. Now, remember; it is
spoke in both places, ‘appearing’ and ‘coming’.”

	Huh? So, Jesus Himself, by the Spirit, through the prophet, brought the
Word, revealing Himself, placing Himself at the head of the Church in
order to raise the dead. That’s right. Presence…right here. What
bothers me is this: who’s recognizing it? The biggest discussion right
now is: “Bro. Branham, is he going to come back with a great ministry,
a third pull, a super ministry—return ministry?”—all that.

	I’m not against it. I’m all for it. I don’t understand what
he’s going to do when he gets here. That’s his business and
God’s—not mine. I don’t understand the tent. I’m not trying to
figure the Third Pull. I know there’s a third pull. There’s many
facets of it. I don’t understand it all. It doesn’t mean because I
don’t understand, you don’t understand. You could well understand.
You could have it all. I don’t know. But I just know this one thing:
while He is here, why are they looking so hard for Bro. Branham and not
looking at Him?

79.	I’m looking for Bro. Branham. Don’t misunderstand me; because,
if he doesn’t get here, forget it. I’m looking for it. You bet I am.
And I’m not looking to just walk around and say, “Howdy, Bub,”
“Howdy, Bub,”  “Howdy, Bub.” Oh, no. Now you read when Jesus
came back, he did things. He ate fish, even. Bro. Branham said so. I
never could figure that—if he really ate fish and bread or not. Bro.
Branham said he did, so that settled it. 

	He declared and revealed things. Oh, yeah. I’m in the middle of the
road in this subject. Let’s get this straight. He’s coming back. I
don’t understand it all, but what destroys my soul at this hour is
that He Who placed Himself at the head of this Church to raise the dead
is not given the reverence that He should be given, when He said, “Why
do you not tremble in my Presence?”

	Now, I don’t care what you people believe. I was invited here to
speak, I don’t want to confuse anybody. You can refute me all you
want. Do what you want about it. But I’m not going to even listen to
you, because I know that He is here, and I know that I don’t give Him
that honor and that depth of recognition and reverence that I should
such that my soul should be literally creeping on the floor in a
hallowed, sanctified awe. But, until you and I produce that, talk all
you want. I’m not interested.

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, you’re hard.”

	I didn’t say I wasn’t; didn’t say I wasn’t. 

80.	I’ll not fight with anybody. I’m even going to go to Junior
Jackson and apologize to Junior, because I misunderstood Bro. Branham.
Bro. Branham said, “Junior believes this Message just the same as we
do.”

	And I thought, “Hold it. Junior doesn’t.” But he does, because he
believes in his own way just as sincerely as I do. And the people who
believe in Deity believe just as sincerely as I do. And there’s nobody
believing this Message any more sincerely than I do, and there’s
nobody believing it any less sincerely than I do. We all believe it
sincerely, but we’re all screwed up. Because as we eat the cherry pie,
we don’t spit out the pits. We fight about them, and then, we throw
either the pie out, or each other out.

	Now, let’s be honest. You’ve done it, especially preachers. I’m
talking to preachers and you, especially, laymen. You’ve done it.
You’ve done it right to me—argue till you’re blue in the face with
me over the very things I talked with Bro. Branham personally. Now I’m
not going to try to make a personal statement about him. Take the tapes;
just live with them. But I want to tell you something, brother/sister:
acting like a bunch of kids in the presence of Him Who is at the head of
the Church now, ready to raise the dead, in this solemn moment, my
brother/sister, there’s something wrong. Spend your time before it’s
too late in doing something good, if it’s buying just a cup of coffee
and saying, “Brother, come sit with me. Let’s talk about Jesus.”
“Sister, can I hold your baby while you get a chance to hear a little
bit more of the Word?” “Brother, can I come and do a little bit of
work so that you can get away?” “Friend, is there some way I can be
of assistance to you?”

	No, it’s much more fun arguing, “Quote, quote, unquote.” Forget
it. I’m not interested. 

	You say, “You don’t believe in quotes?”

	I sure do. What do you think I use them for? But I’m not going to use
them for clubs and swords. I want to use them as food by the Word of
God. You forgive me talking this way, brother/sister, but I’ve got a
right to. And, if you want to follow up here, talk to Bro. Guenther. You
can call and say, “Vayle’s crazy. I’m going to get those quotes
and go in there fighting.”

	We ain’t going to fight me, because I’m just going to walk off and
leave. Don Quixote, go ahead with your windmills! I’m no longer Don
Quixote; believe me. I don’t want to go tilting out there to unseen
giants. I want to tilt against Lee Vayle and bring him under Matthew 6.
I know Matthew 18 is very important: “Go to your brother.” You bet
your life, but I’m going to tell you: Matthew 18 ain’t going to
begin to come to place, until Matthew 6 begins to come into place. See?

81.	Listen: I’m going to read you out of the Book of John—John 11,
then I’m going to keep on reading. I’m going to read some more. All
right. John 11:25-26:

(25)	Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 

(26)	And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.(Do you
believe this? Now John 11:39-40:)

(39)	Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was
dead, said, Lord, by this time he stinks: for he hath been dead four
days. 

(40)	Jesus saith, Said I not unto thee, if thou wouldest believe, thou
shouldest see the glory of God?

	And I’m going to tell you something, brother/sister: Jesus could not
say this until Lazarus was dead four days, and he could not say it until
it was time for him to reveal himself as the Resurrection. 

	The Resurrection hour is approaching. It’s not yet here. At this
moment you have got Word faith to believe the Message; but, when those
dead come out of the ground, you are going to have resurrection faith.
That’s going to spiral you higher and higher, until all the dead are
out, and whatever their ministry to you and me is, and that ministry is
fulfilled. Then, there comes rapturing faith; and in rapturing faith you
walk right to the Tree of Life, knowing that you’re not going to die,
but suddenly a sweep goes over you, and you’ve gone into a state of
immortality, ready to rise and meet your theophany. 

	Brother/sister, let me tell you: that’s going on right now. And
nobody knows it but us, and we don’t even know it; but it’s true.

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, you mean you really don’t know it?”

	I’m talking of the spiritual faith. We have the mechanical, which
will bring the other. 

82.	Yes, usually a fair amount of time is spent on what I’ve been
talking about, His abiding Presence, but far less time is spent on
believing that “all things are working together for good.” We try to
believe it; but, if we get the precept we’ve laid down yesterday and
this morning, we will be able to understand Rom 8:28 that “all things
are working together for good to them that love the Lord.”

	In other words the full effect of the Word, which is God, is on our
behalf. Who can fail? And secondly, since the Kingdom is future in the
Resurrection, it doesn’t matter if you die—life or death, for
nothing is going to spoil it for you. As I said to this brother that
once phoned me, and he talked in his nasal, New York, particular New
York-East type of voice, and he couldn’t understand how God would
smear the prophet across the road, and I answered, and I said, “God
fed his prophets to the lions, and their bodies were dung on the ground!
Don’t tell me He can’t smear a prophet if He wants to!”

	He’s not dead; he’s living. God’s not the God of the dead.

	You say, “Bro. Vayle, what’s he doing?”

	I’ll tell you what he’s doing. There’s such an uproar in heaven
where he is, you can’t believe it, because they said, “The last
messenger has arrived. When are we going to get down now and take over
the Kingdom? When are we going to get our bodies and get back there, the
interruption over?” They’re screaming, and they’re shouting, and
they’re hugging each other. They can’t wait to come down here.
Hallelujah!

83.	Don’t tell me. I know the answers. I got them from God. The
prophet has got to be gathered to his people. Every messenger went
there, and they’re just waiting now for that last one to come in and
be child trained, and when he’s in… And His Presence is here to see
it being done. He’s at the head of the Church to raise the dead. And
we can hardly wait now in expectation, but we’re squabbling and
fighting. Quit it this morning! Stop it before God; I plead with you.
Let a brother who is not tender, who is not sweet…

	Knowing God, I wish I were. I hate myself the way I am. I went to the
prophet, I pleaded, “Do something. Do something. I can’t stand
it.” 

	Don’t talk to me. I know what I’m talking about.

	And he looked at me, and he kind of…funny little voice, he said,
“Well, you wouldn’t be Lee Vayle.”

	I said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Bill. There’s an end to everything.
There’s… Too much is too much! I’m too rough; I’m too hard.”

	He looked back, and he said, “Someone’s got to tell them.”

	I don’t take that for my meanness, but I want to tell you: in my
heart there is a softness somehow, and though I’m rough and mean up
here… Let’s get this: I don’t understand myself even, but He’s
come down at the head of the Church to raise the dead; and we’re still
talking like a bunch of stupid little idiots. And here stands that great
One in our midst, where it’s not only God in us and God over us,
it’s now God with us—the whole thing fulfilled. And we stand around,
stand around, talk, talk, argue, argue, quote, quote, until I can’t
take it any longer. And I want to see Him. I don’t care if He sends me
to hell. That’s His privilege.

	You say, “Vayle, you’re crazy.”

	Yep, I’m crazy. Don’t try to understand. I don’t understand
myself. I’ll be glad to give my life for Him. I don’t understand
what I’m even saying now, but I’ll go to the Lake of Fire, if
that’s what is necessary. I’m not going to push you out or nothing,
because I couldn’t push you in. Seek the Kingdom. Do what you want to
about it.

84.	Now, since we understand this thing, let’s know for a certainty
that, if we accept the great priority, we are set for the rest of the
pilgrimage. The pilgrimage is: “Come unto me, all you that are weary
and heavy-laden,” and brother/sister, at the end of the seventh age,
there’d better be a pretty weary Church, because she’s had a long
pilgrimage. There’s been a long time of waiting, those genes coming
down had the original hunger, the original desire. Now they’ve got to
you and me. It’s as though we can’t wait. 

	I’ve often said, and I guess, facetiously, “If God doesn’t pull
the plug, I’ll pull the plug for God.” I’m tired of the whole
thing. It’s been a long way, and as you get toward the end, there’s
a greater expectancy, there’s a greater nervousness, the whole
thing…people wandering, wandering. Sure. But the pilgrimage is almost
over, and He Who said, “Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are
heavy-laden. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light.”

85.	If we could understand what I’m trying to say this morning—and
I, myself, which we are capable—we’re capable by spiritual abilities
in the Holy Ghost to accept it, and take our rest. Bro. Branham said,
“Under the Seventh Seal was relaxation”. Now I’ve got it written
down somewhere in a book. I don’t know just where now, but what Bro.
Sothmann did not get in the tape, I knew that Bro. Neil did. I phoned
Bro. Neil in Indiana, and I said, “Get your tape and write to me what
was left out,” and nothing was left out of any importance, except the
place where he said, “It’s relaxing time.”

	It’s time to take the yoke to make your burden easy. Why? Because, if
you take a yoke, it means you’re yoked to somebody, and he carries the
greater part of the load. Yoked to Jesus, one with Him… He’s come on
right down here to help us. O God, open our eyes somehow today to see
You. I don’t want to see any Pillar of Fire. No, I don’t want to see
that. I’m not interested. I am just interested with my inner
consciousness and eyes, seeing him as “altogether lovely”, to see
him “who was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our
iniquities, the chastisement of our peace upon him, by his stripes,
being healed”, to see the travail of his soul and know I’m a part of
that travail, to see his seed, to know I’m a part of that seed. Yes,
sir; yes, sir. Adam’s race is no longer condemned, because God has
brought us through. Yes, sir. It’ll bring us to such a measure of
Christlikeness, as to be a part of His Glory in the Kingdom of Almighty
God.

86.	And Philippians 2:5-11:

(5)	Let this (I’ve read it.) mind be in you, which was in Christ.

	The coming down until the recognition is only of Him. See? 

	Now I’ve got one more page of notes here, drawing conclusions. Forget
it. I’m not going to preach any longer. If we haven’t caught it now,
we’re never going to catch it. There is a priority. There’s a God
Who said it. He didn’t say, “Go out and win all the world,”
because you can’t do it. You’ll never do it. He never said, “Go
conquer all ages.” You can’t do it. …all space, all time. He said,
“Get yourself under control.” He said, “You’re an inquisitive
people—I made you that way. You’re going to seek; you’re going to
hunt; you’re going to find.”

	He said, “You’re going to all lay up. And I’ve got news for you:
there’s two ways of doing it: one’s wrong; one’s right. If you
seek the Kingdom first, by way of my Word, understand this is not a
privilege whereby you may decide to do, or not to do.”

	It is a distinct command by a sovereign God, Who never made a mistake,
Who guarantees and has proven by nature that you are safe and secure,
that you will be a part of that Kingdom. He even told you how it was
going to take place. He said, “If you start doing it, you will come to
the place where there’s one master, one eye, which is single, and the
whole body is full of light.”

87.	Now, as individuals, this works; and as a group, it works, until
Bro. Branham said, “Oh, when that sweet Spirit would come amongst
us.” It’ll never come by fussing, with quoting. But Bro. Branham
said It’ll come by doing what Bro. Branham said: “Quit fussing, quit
picking, quit clanning, and don’t put anybody out.”

	Isn’t it the most stupid thing in the world to pretend we want to win
souls to Jesus and win people to the message of the Word of God and,
then, we put each other out? You talk about a fellow building a fence
just to knock it down, building a barn, just to burn it down, having a
baby, just to kill it. Wake up, O Church of God! But awake to
righteousness.

	You still love me? It doesn’t matter if you do. I don’t want to be
loved, anyway. You know something? I’ll just tell you a personal thing
about my life. I’m a married man. I never could stand my wife in bed
to put her arms around me and hug me—just a little while, and then,
just get away. I’m letting you know something about me. I’ve got a
funny kind of a nature. I’m not defending myself; just telling you.
I’m letting you know.

	You may never get close to me, and I may never get close to you, but I
want you to know one thing: I am not a hypocrite, and I’m not standing
here telling you lies. I’ll meet you someday. [Bro. Vayle begins to
weep.] I don’t seek anything for myself. Sure, I want to live. Sure,
there are certain things. I’m human, but brother/sister, above all
things, I want God somehow to get glory. If I get cast into the Lake of
Fire after it, that doesn’t matter. It won’t matter, because He’s
God, and He’s right, and He knows what’s right, and He’s doing
what’s right. I’m going to tell you something: every child of God is
in His image, and he can follow the footsteps of his Father. 

	Do you believe that? I believe it with all my heart, brother/sister.
“Oh, to be like Thee, Blessed Redeemer”; and not just like Him as we
look forward to that future, but to be like Him now. 

	Shall we rise at this time?

	Dear Lord Jesus, as much as we might not want to admit it, deep within
us there’s that hunger and desire to love and be loved. We’re made a
certain way, Lord. It’s been trampled down by the devil, by ourselves,
and it’s made us all a little different. We know that, but there is a
God in heaven, in Whose Hands the hearts of kings are, as the rivers of
water turns them any way He wants, and You can do that this morning,
Lord, if we only want it. Every heart can be broken down, every life can
be put into service, every child of God can reach out and touch, and be
touched, spiritually, and do those beautiful things, Lord, that we ought
to be doing. 

	God, keep us now. I don’t care how and what it’s going to take,
that, if we don’t yield ourselves to simple Word, You said You’d
correct us. Now, go ahead and do it. We’re leaving ourselves open
these last moments, Lord, because time is all but gone. 

	We want to, Lord, give the glass of water, we want to give the
blessing, we want to give the needed touch, the bit of comfort, laying
up treasure in heaven, so the heart can follow, and the whole body be
full of light, knowing, Lord, that this is a command.

	I don’t even have the right, Lord, to pray and ask You to do anything
about it, because it’s already been done. I just pray, O God, if I
don’t do something about it, then beat the living daylights out of me,
Lord. You whipped me before, Lord, and I quit preaching. Now I’d never
go back. God, You’re just so good, You can do it again, until the last
moments of time are no longer wasted on myself—no, sirree—but are
utilized to a better degree and extent as we labor with the children of
God. 

	Lord, may that Spirit the prophet spoke of be amongst us now, sweet,
gentle Spirit of Ezekiel, “a new spirit will I give within you,” for
the Holy Spirit to really come, not that He hasn’t come, but to come
within the Coming, the revelation settling down, something, now, like
the birds of the air hovering over the nest, over the little ones, soon
to descend upon them, that same feeling, same way upon us, O God.

	Heavenly Father, deep calling to deep, just perhaps it’s not deep
enough yet, but You created all things. Could we pray, Lord, this
morning, create a little deeper deep within us. I don’t know if I’m
praying right or wrong, Lord, but I need a deeper deep. I pray for all
of us for a deeper deep, because there’s such a Depth out there to
respond. O God, as the prophet said, “He could reduce Himself to a
cell,” then, Lord, You can reduce Yourself to many cells today. So,
help us all. 

	Bless each one, Lord. And now, Father, may the knowledge of Your Word
somehow come to life that’s been preached today, Lord. I don’t know
that I’ve done the best. I know I haven’t. I know that. But It’s
Your Word, Lord. It can’t fail. It can’t die. It’s got to do
something. It can’t bring forth tares. It’s got to bring forth a
thirty, or a sixty, or a hundred. It’s got to, because It’s Your
Word, and there is good ground here. I don’t care how much sidewalk,
how many rocks, and how many tares. I don’t care. That Word’s got to
do something. 

	So, Lord, here we are. Let the Word come forth, every son and daughter,
laying up treasure, every heart single, obedient, loving, every eye with
the fullness of light, that full Word of God, and a Bride so inured with
the Word, the dead come out of the graves, and we all go to be with
Jesus. Lord, that’s true. That’s Your Word. As the prophet said,
“Thus it has been spoken, thus it shall be.” I know it, Lord. I know
it. And, if we can give You credit there, then we can do the rest. So, I
thank You, blessing Your wonderful Name, because You are wonderful. In
the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. 

	Shall we just sing that chorus, “Hiding in Thee, Hiding in Thee”.

	“Hiding in Thee, hiding in Thee, Thou blessed Rock of Ages, I am
hiding in Thee.

	Hiding in Thee, hiding in Thee, Thou blessed Rock of Ages, I am hiding
in Thee.”

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