Marriage And Divorce.
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But from the beginning it was not so.
William Branham.Read the full account in...
Marriage And Divorce.Matthew 19:8,
8 And He said unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.This scripture, this question, confronted Jesus at the very beginning of His ministry, and it confronted Moses at the very beginning of his ministry. It's a foremost question in believers' hearts. The sinner doesn't care. But it's to believers because the believer is trying to do all that he knows how to do to live right before God. Therefore, if any question comes up on religion, then the marriage and divorce case comes up. Why? Because it is the cause of the original sin. That's where sin started, and that's the reason it's brought up every time, because it is the very beginning of sin.
Now, I won't have time to explain all these things, but I'll be glad to answer your letter or anything I can, or we've got the books wrote on it and many questions and even cuttings out of newspapers and things here to prove this. We know that it was Eve.... The apple that she was supposed to eat (for it's not even scriptural), now they claim it was an apricot. It was neither one. She committed adultery that brought forth the first child, which was Cain, Satan's own son. For in him laid evil. It did not come through Abel. Satan's son was Cain.
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It's like I said: if I wanted to go east this morning, and the best that I knowed this... I had to find a certain something in the field, and it was directly east, and I went east. Somebody said, “Brother Branham, this is east.” It is east potentially, but it's northeast. I would pass the very object I was looking for; I'd come back knowing it was wrong. And then if somebody said, “Brother Branham, go this way, to your right.” Now, that is potentially east also, but it's southeast. I would lose the object that I was looking for, because I went beyond the boundaries of the perfect and direct way.Now, if that be so, we have two schools of thought on marriage and divorce. And that is, one of them says, that a man can only be married once unless his wife is dead. And that's one of the questions. But you go to following that, you go overboard. And then the next says, “Oh, if the wife or the husband (either one) has committed adultery, either one of them can be put away and married again.” You find yourself overboard with that.
So see, it's neither southeast or northeast; we want directly east. You run out of scripture when you go this way. You run out of scripture when you go that way. We want to know where scripture meets scripture and know what's the truth of it. Each takes a different way and fail to bring up the correct answer, but there still must be an answer.
It's just like today, there is two great schools of doctrine in the church: one of them is Calvinism, the other one is Arminianism. One of them is legalist, and the other one's grace. And we come to find out that the people who believe in grace (the Calvinists), they say, “Bless God, it don't hurt me to smoke, it don't hurt me to drink. I can do these things; I've got eternal security.” Then we find the other side (on the legalists) said, “Oh, I would like to bawl him out, I'd like to show him a piece of my mind; but I'm a Christian, I have to keep still.” See, you find yourself on two different roads, and neither one of them is right. Now, that's hard to say that, but it is the truth. We find ourselves on two different roads: one going one way; one, another. Now, let's see what truth is.
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We have also two thoughts of this marriage and divorce. Now that our Lord has opened the seven seal mystery of His Word to us in this last day.... Now, many of you, this might be Greek to you, but my church understands what... when you've heard of the visions and what taken place. And the question is a Bible question. We are invited here to believe there must be a true answer to the whole hidden secret that's been hid since the foundation of the world. And the Bible prophesies and says that in this day these secrets would be made known. Revelation 10: “And at the sounding of the seventh angel (the Laodicea messenger) the mysteries of God would be made known.” And this is the last age, which is Laodicea.----
Jesus, in our text, invites us to go back to the beginning for the true scriptural answer. Now, when He was confronted with this, there was two things in view. The priest said to Him, “Can a man put away his wife, marry another for any cause?” And Jesus said, “It wasn't so from the beginning.” Then they said, “Moses suffered us a writing of divorcement,” and to put her away for anything they wanted to. He said that Moses did that because... (let that straight a while)... because of the hardness of your hearts, but from, or at, the beginning it wasn't so. The question...If Jesus said, “Go back to the beginning,” there was only one pair of anything on earth. There was one Adam, one Eve. They were joined by God alone. One female horse, one male. One female parrot, one male. At the beginning, as He told us to go back, there was only one pair of anything. Is that true? Then we find out that everything in the beginning was running in perfect order and harmony with God; nothing was out of cater. Everything in heaven is still in order; all the stars, the galaxies, the solar system, everything is perfectly in order. One of them move, would interrupt the whole program.
Now, listen! Do you see? One interruption spoils the entire program! Now, when human beings was running in continuity with God, with one man and one woman, this woman sinned. And it throwed the whole earthly program out of continuity with God! Therefore, one word added to this Book, or one word taken from, it throws a Christian out of continuity with God, throws the church out of continuity with God, throws the family out of continuity with God! Every believer can be thrown out by not accepting every word of God.
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Now, it was then man was made to rule over the woman by God's Word. She was no more co-equal with him. She was co-equal in nature, you know. But when she broke God's Word, God made a man to be a ruler over her. Genesis 3:16, if you want to put it down. She was no more equal with the man. She was a breaker of God's Word. Don't you see “she”—“she,” the church down here, the breaker of God's Word? That throwed her completely out of continuity, and that's what the church has done; it's throwed spiritual death upon the whole thing! Now, you'll understand why I hammer at these things like I do! It's truth! This is Bible facts!Notice, why did she do such a thing as this? How could that lovely, beautiful, perfect woman...? I seen a picture one time (I believe it was in Greece) of an artist that painted a picture of Eve, she was the most horrible looking thing you ever seen. That shows what a carnal mind can look at. But she wasn't. She was beautiful, because she was perfect woman, all woman.
Notice, why did she do such a thing, being in that high order? She was right with man, co-equal with him. But we all know now that she lost her co-equalness with man when she sinned, and God said, “Man will be your ruler from here out.” Now, that's the Scripture. If you want to, we could read it. I'm giving you the Scriptures so (save time for this big hookup across the country) that you might read it yourself. Notice the reason she did that. How did Satan ever get to her?
Did you know Satan was co-equal with God one day? He sure was. All but a creator. He was everything, stood at the right hand of God in the heavens, a great leading cherubim. Notice, the reason that she did this, she was not in the original creation. She is not in God's original creation. She is a byproduct. Therefore, at the beginning (as Jesus referred to it), she was not an original creative being of God! She's a byproduct of a man, when Jesus referred to the beginning.
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Now, on the marriage and divorce, see, it has to be revealed. Until it's revealed, you don't know it. But He promised in this last days, in this age, that every hidden mystery in the Bible would be revealed. How many knows that? (Revelations the tenth chapter.) Jesus promised it, that all of these hidden mysteries on marriage and divorce, all these other hidden mysteries that's been, would be revealed in the end time. Now, you remember the voice said, “Go to Tucson?” You remember a mystic light in the skies, the seven angels standing there? Come back and the opening of the seven seals? Watch what's taken place. That is true.-----
This is an awful strong thing. I didn't know how to bring it out! What will I do when I got men and women sitting in my congregation, some that's been married twice or three times? Good men, good women, all mixed up! What done it? False teaching. Exactly. Not waiting on the Lord. “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder....” Not what man joined together, what God joined together. When you got a direct revelation from God that's your wife, and the same thing, that's yours the rest of your life. See? But what man joins together, anybody can put apart. But what God joins together, no man better dare to touch it. “Whatsoever God joins together,” He said, “let no man put asunder.” Not what some half-drunk magistrate or something else put together, or some backslidden preacher with a bunch of creeds in a book that would let them do anything in the world, and the Word of God laying right there. See? I'm talking about what God joined together.-----
The other day, knowing that when I tell you anything it must come “Thus saith the Lord,” then I had the Scriptures as He revealed it to me but, “Lord God, what can I say to that congregation? I'll have separations. Men will be sitting on the porch and out in the yard and everywhere else: 'Shall I leave her?' Women: 'Shall I leave my husband?' 'What shall I do?'” I said, “Lord, what can I do?”Something said to me, “Go up yonder in the mountain, and I'll talk to you.” And while I was up in the mountain.... Not knowing that down in Tucson they were seeing it, but even the teachers called the children from—(my little girl and them)—from the schoolroom and said, “Look yonder in that mountain. There's a fiery looking amber cloud going up in the air and coming back down, and going up in the air and coming back down!”
Mrs. Evans, are you here? Ronnie, you here? I come on back down to the station, this young boy (by the filling station, Evans' filling station there, and before I knowed what the boy was going to say), he took me off my feet, he said, “Brother Branham, you was up in that mountain over yonder, wasn't you?” I said, “What do you mean, Ronnie? No.” (See? To see what he was going to do.) Lot of times things happen, I don't... you don't say it to people. It becomes.... The thing of it is, you see so much happening, it becomes common to you. See? I just don't tell the people. I said, “Ronnie, what was you...?”
He said, “I can show you right where you were at.” Said, “I called Mama, and we stood here and watched that cloud hanging up yonder, going up and down. I said, 'It's got to be Brother Branham sitting up in there somewhere. That's God talking to him!'” And the whole city of people looked at it. On a bright day with no clouds nowhere at all, with this big amber cloud hanging there, coming down like a funnel and going back and spreading out.
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Now, we are found in this mess because of misinterpreted theology. Is that right? That's why you women married the second time and you men, because misinterpreted theology. Now, I want to show you something that He told me. And if God, our Creator, was questioned the question when He was here on earth (Jesus Christ), and when His delivering prophet came forth (Moses) down in Egypt to bring the children out of Egypt to put them in the promised land; and Jesus said here that Moses seen the people in this condition, and he granted them a writing of divorcement because the situation was what it was, Moses found such as.... “Let him suffer....” God permitted Moses, that prophet sent to the people, to grant this writing of divorcement to them.And in I Corinthians the seventh chapter, the twelfth and fifteenth verse, in the New Testament prophet, Paul, who met the same thing in the church, and spoke this: “This is I, not the Lord.” Is that right? Because of the divorce condition. It wasn't so from the beginning. But Moses was permitted it, and God recognized it righteousness! And Paul also had a right when he found his church in that condition.
Now, you believe this to be true and believe it to come from God. And by the vindication of His cloud and His message that's brought me this far, should not God upon the mountain permit me to do the same thing, to suffer you to go on the way you are and do it no more? Go with your wives and live in peace for the hour is late. The coming of the Lord is at hand! We haven't got time to break these things up! Don't you dare try to do it again! I'm speaking only to my congregation. But if you are married— and God bore me witness to that on the mountain that I could say this (a supernatural revelation because of the opening of the seven seals and this is a question in God's Word): let them go on as they are and sin no more!
It wasn't so from the beginning. That is right. It wasn't so, and it will not be at the end! But under modern conditions, as God's servant—I won't call myself His prophet, but I believe that if I wouldn't be sent for that, I'm laying a ground for him when he does come—so under the modern conditions, I command you to go to your home with your wife now. If you are happy with her, live with her, raise your children in the admonition of God; but God be merciful to you if you ever do that again! You teach your children to never do a thing like that. Bring them up in the admonition of God! And now that you are as you are, let us go now to... late evening hour that we're living in, and press towards the mark of the high calling in Christ where all things will be possible.
Read the full account in...
Marriage And Divorce.
