When a man is converted, it doesn't mean that... Here is a good, deep teaching. I hope you get it. Sometime ago... I was just telling some boys the other day.
A man sat on my porch, and he said, "Brother Branham, I was once a businessman. And I've spent years trying to get saved." And telling me all of his troubles. Said his wife went down and got the Spirit. And she couldn't... He couldn't get the Spirit.
I said, "What do you mean, brother?" And he told me where he was from, and expressed himself. He said... I said, "You're trying to get saved?"
He said, "Yes. I'm trying to get saved."
And I said, "The Lord wants..."
Said, "I believe I've crossed the line, Brother Branham, where you can't get saved."
I said, "Oh, I don't know."
He said, "Look, I went to Billy Graham's meetings, a great, famous preacher." And he is a wonderful man of God, doing a great work for God. And he said, "I went to his meetings, and he told, 'All that wants to be saved, raise up your hands.'" And said, "I raised my hand up, and went into an inquiry room." Said, "Then they told me, back there, I had to accept Jesus."
And said, "I got down and prayed. And he told me, 'Now, do you believe in Jesus Christ?' I said, 'Yes,' said, 'I accept Him as personal Saviour.' Said, he said, 'Now, you're saved.'" Said, "Nothing happened to me."
Said, "I went then for a couple of years, and I found the Free Methodist people, who said I had to get happy enough to shout." And he said, "They prayed over me, and everything, till I got happy enough to shout." Said, "They said, 'Now you got It. You got sanctification.'" Said, "I went out." And said, "I was searching for all I could." Said, "I still didn't have It."
Said, "I went to Brother Roberts' meetings, Oral Roberts." He said, "They went into the room and told me I had to receive the Holy Ghost, and I had to speak with tongues or I didn't have It." Said, "I went back in there, and they got... prayed over me, and--and told me to talk to the Lord." And--and said, "I--I spoke with tongues."
He said, "Brother Branham, I still ain't got It." He said, "I don't know what to do."
I said, "Now, my brother..."
He said, "I've been down to Shreveport, "The Voice Of Healing," and they told me that you was a prophet, to come up here and you'd be able to reveal to me, when the Spirit come on you, what was my trouble."
I said, "Brother, you don't have to be a prophet to do that. The Word of God settles that." I said, "It don't need prophecy."
I said, "My brother, the only thing, you're just confused." I said, "I want to ask you something. Did you always love the Lord Jesus?"
He said, "Well, I--I belonged to the Presbyterian church," but said, "I just went there."
I said, "Well, I want to ask you. What happened, what taken place, that you changed your mind all at once?"
He said, "Well, my wife, she went down to the Pentecostals," and said, "she got the Spirit." And said, "Then she come back up, and," said, "she was happy." And said...
I said, "What did you think about that? Did you criticize It?"
He said, "No." He said, "I just thought, 'Well, I will see how it lasts.'" And said, "It went on." Said, "She seemed to have It."
And he said, "One day, I was coming in from making a sale out in the yard, and I happened to reach in my pocket, and somebody had give me a little old tract." And said, "I sit down in the office and begin to read this tract." And said, "The awfullest feeling come over me, that I ought to get right with God." He said, "I've been searching ever since."
I said, "I want to ask you something? When this feeling come over you, you've never been able to get out of it?"
He said, "No, sir, I haven't."
I said, "Well, that's when you received Christ." I said, "It doesn't mean raising up your hands. That's all right. Speaking in tongues, that's all right." And I said, "Shouting, that's all right. But that's the attributes of Christ after He come in." I said, "To receive Christ is to receive the Person, Christ Jesus, to receive Him is Life." I said, "Shouting, speaking in tongues, and all demonstrations," I said, "that is attributes that follows This. But first, is to receive Christ."
He said, "Then, Brother Branham, I've been saved all the time?"
I said, "Sure. Look," I said, "Do you love Him?"
He said, "With all my heart."
I said, "One time you didn't love Him."
He said, "That's right."
"And now you love Him?"
He said, "Well, that's the truth."
"Well, you had Him all the time."
And he jumped off the porch, and begin crying, and holding me in his arms, and said, "O God, I've been a Christian all these years."
You see, the thing of it was, he wasn't straightened out in the beginning. Hallelujah.
What? You couldn't make a lamb out of a pig, if you had to. He's a pig to begin with; he tends to his own business, and tell the lamb to take care of his own business. The only way that you could make that pig believe that it's wrong to be in the pig pen, would put a lamb spirit in him. If he ever gets a lamb's soul in him... Or, a lamb ain't got no soul. But if he ever gets a lamb's spirit in him, the very nature of the thing... That's the reason you can't make, convert a pig; you can't convert a lamb, because he ain't got no soul. What he is in his spirit, he's got that same nature forever. See?
But a human being can be changed from a pig to a lamb, because he's got a soul made in the image of God. Amen.
Well, his thoughts changed. Something does it for him. Hallelujah. "As a man thinketh in his heart." See? Christ the Creator come to him in a still form, and created. His Own Spirit took the man's nature away, to love dancing, and the world, and carrying on, and from that time he just laid it aside and was hungering after God. And God was in him all the time. It was God in the beginning. See? There you are. Amen.
"As a man thinketh..." It has to become a thought before it can become a word. And a word expressed, materializes. I believe in my heart that I am a Christian, because I have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ; if I don't cry, if I don't move, if I don't do a thing. In my heart first, I believe that Christ died for me in my stead.
Amen. I accept it as a Christian; I believe it as a Christian; then it's in my heart. Then I express it in a word, "I am a Christian." Hallelujah. Then I start walking as a Christian, talking as a Christian, living as a Christian, being as a Christian. And by my fruits I'm recognized by the world as a Christian. Hallelujah.
( 54 - 1003M ) La Palabra se hizo carne Paf (189-212)
