Death Conquered (1)
Let’s read now from the eighth chapter of the book of Revelation.
Revelation 8:1-13: “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And I saw the seven angels which stood before God" and to them were given seven trumpets. And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer" and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood" And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died" and the third part of the ships were destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters" And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood" and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars" so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise. And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!”
You can see by reading the eighth chapter that great is the mystery of godliness, just as Paul said. I can’t explain it any more than you can because I’m just a man. But the mind of God can explain it, and the mind of God understands just exactly what’s being said because it was the mind of God that spoke these things to John the Revelator on the isle of Patmos. He spoke these things to John in types and shadows and in parabolic form because He knew how He had made mankind. He made man with a mind to understand such things as trees, houses, waters, flowers, stars, and those kinds of things. God, being a Spirit, everything He did was spiritual, and every move of God being in the Spirit, no man could see it, nor understand it. I believe that we’re going to have to know all things, and the way to know all things is to have the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Within your natural mind, you can’t contain these things and you can’t understand these things. But within the mind of Christ, everything, from the beginning of the world to the consummation of the world, is recorded within that mind, and God gives that mind to you. Paul said, “Let this mind,” which means you have to allow it to be there or it won’t be there. Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who being made in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but took upon Himself to make Himself of no reputation, but He likened Himself unto a man and became humble, even unto the death of the cross.
The mind of God, which was in Christ Jesus, can also be within us, and it should be in us and it will be in us if we let it. Paul said, “Let this mind.” In our early ministry, we had to teach it in its primitive form. Repent and be baptized in Jesus’ name. Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Don’t dip snuff. Don’t chew tobacco. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Don’t curse. Don’t frolic. Every bit of this is the Word of God in its first stages or in its primitive form. That’s the first part. We started indoctrinating the people with this, to repent of your sins, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
God allowed this to come forth during the apostle’s time.. Then, they killed out the early Apostolic church of Pentecost, and He let the church go into the Dark Ages with the very primitive part of the gospel, which was the very first step. It was so primitive that all they taught was that you just had to believe. That was the first step of it. You must believe. God didn’t require anything. He just let them teach that you must believe. So, the Catholic Church came on down requiring nothing but just believe.
And then, after that, He started to teach us more. He began to teach us that there was more to it than just believing. We had to have His Spirit. And then, after that, we had to put away evil out of our lives. Then, there was more to it than that. We had to comprehend the redemption of the body in part, which means in this latter age, we’ve had the greatest portion that we’ve ever had, which is comprehending the redemption of the body. Many of the great leaders have taught us to comprehend the redemption of our body, such as comprehension from cancer, from blindness, from deafness. Comprehending in part. Comprehending from spirits that plague us, like spirits of oppression, spirits of possession, and all of these other things that the ministry has dealt with. And God has, in part, let us grasp or comprehend the redemption of the body.
But now, the hour is at hand, as Paul said, when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be swallowed up or done away with. The hour is at hand when we’re going to comprehend the fullness of the redemption of our body. Not just comprehend the fact that the Spirit of God can heal us of cancer, not just the fact that He can heal deafness, but the fact that He can totally keep us in perfect health and keep us from all sickness, as well as from all sin, and translate our body into the perfect eternal substance of God.
Now, you may ask, “Brother Pike, is there such a thing for us? Did God ever intend that?” That was the ultimate purpose of God to begin with. Look at Jesus Christ before He ever went to Calvary. He mastered the gospel. He became a master of the gospel, but the Lord Jesus had to learn just like you. He had to grow up into the fullness of the stature. The Bible says that He grew in wisdom and He grew in stature. He waxed strong in the Spirit, and Jesus grew to the fullness of what God called the fullness of the stature of the Christian, and then God took Him off the scene and He was our example. The Lord Jesus did not have to die.
When we think about being changed into the eternal creature that God wants us to be changed into, the first thing we think is, “Well, if we could die, lay down in the dust, and then get up, we’d be ready.” But no, that isn’t true. I love to ask this question: what profit is it to God or to man when we lay down in the dust? What profit is it to man or to God if I go out there, and they put me in the dirt, let my body rot and let the skin worms feed off of my body?
When the Lord Jesus laid down in the dust, He did it for one reason. That was to let you know that death, as we know death, has no more power over the human being. He said, “I have power to lay My life down" I have power to take My life up.” He yielded up the ghost and laid down in the grave for just one purpose: that was to let you know that the grave had no more power over those that believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn’t have to go down there. It wasn’t necessary. To the Lord Jesus, it was no more than going through a ritual or through a form. If the Lord Jesus had just gone on back to heaven, if He would have atoned for our sins any other way outside of death, you could have never been convinced that you had power over death, because to you, death is to bring somebody up out of the grave.
So, to show us the ultimate triumph over death, He laid down in the dust and then got back up so that you, in your finite way of thinking, could know that there was no more power in the grave to hold them that had the Spirit of God. That’s all it was. He just went through a form or a ritual, which He did not have to go through, except for your good.
He did not have to die at Calvary to get back into the presence of God. Jesus did not have to yield up the ghost. He did not have to die to get back to glory, and neither do you have to die to go to heaven. You don’t have to die to get back into His presence, or into the glory world, the presence of God. Paul said, “Behold, I show you a mystery,” (and the Bible says that great is the mystery of godliness), “we shall not all sleep,” (which means die), “but we all shall be changed.”
To prove that the Lord Jesus did not have to die to get back into the glory world, after He had been in this world thirty-one or thirty-two years, He walked up on a mountain with three disciples. When they got up there on the mountain, the Lord Jesus left a sure witness that He had mastered the human body and that He had made the way back into the glory world. There, He transfigured His body. On the mountain, He transfigured His body before His very disciple’s eyes and walked right into heaven.
How do I know He walked into heaven? Because the eleventh chapter of Hebrews says that Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him, for before his translation, he had this testimony: a clear conscience, that he pleased God. So then, Enoch walked with God, learned the secrets of God, and bypassed the grave and was translated.
If Enoch did that, then why didn’t somebody else do it? Well, they did. Moses did and Elijah did, but why didn’t a whole generation do it? Because Enoch had three hundred years to walk with God, and he had enough time to discover the revelation of Jesus Christ. We have had forty years, seventy years, eighty years to a generation. This generation would discover a little and pass it on to the next generation, and that generation on to the next generation, and it takes many generations to be able to discover what Enoch discovered in his lifetime. It was the ordination of God. He let Enoch do it so that we’d have a record of it back there. Enoch was the seventh from Adam, and the seventh means translation, and He let Enoch be translated. If you notice, the son of Enoch, Methuselah, lived nine hundred sixty-nine years, almost a thousand years, which showed the millennium coming in.
We can see then that Jesus did not have to die. He went back into glory, and I say into glory because He appeared in glory with Moses and Elijah. He did not have to die to get back to glory. He left us the way" He left us an example. Paul, also, did not have to die. Paul was caught up into the third heaven. He did not have to die. It was just the divine ordination of the Lord. This was the only reason.
You might say, “But Brother Pike, the Bible says that it’s appointed unto man once to die, and every man has to die.” That’s true. God gave an appointment unto man. The day thou eatest thereof, of thine own understanding (which is the tree of knowledge), thou shalt surely die, for to be carnal minded is death, but to be spiritual minded, eating from the mind of God, which is the tree of life, is life and peace.
God gave an appointment unto mankind, but the Lord did not suffer that appointment to stand. It is appointed unto man once to die. Is that right? But, the Bible says that God looked down from heaven, heard the groaning of the prisoners, and He came down and loosed them that were appointed unto death. Is that Bible? He loosed the appointment with death at Calvary. He tasted death for every man. Then, what did the Lord say through Paul? “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin by the body of Jesus Christ on the cross and alive unto God by the resurrected body of the Lord Jesus.”
So then, He met the appointment at Calvary for us. It was appointed unto you once to die, and Jesus died at Calvary, and that was your death right there. He died at Calvary. He that knew no sin was made your sin that we might be made the righteousness of Jesus Christ within God. He met the appointment. It was appointed unto me once to die, and being appointed unto death, the Lord Jesus Christ paid the price. God, who gave the appointment unto death, robed Himself in a body of humanity called the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came down and went to Calvary, met that appointment at Calvary, and loosed the prisoners that were appointed unto death.
Peter says that when the Lord Jesus died, He went down into the heart of the earth and preached to the souls in prison. He looked down from heaven and heard the groaning of the prisoners, and loosed them that were appointed unto death. He preached to the souls in prison. He broke open the prison, and He let them that were bound with death come out of the prison to show us what He had done for us. When the Lord Jesus went down into the natural heart of the earth, His soul went into hell. His soul went into hell, His body went into the grave, and His Spirit went into paradise. He went down and loosed the souls in prison in this natural earth. He took these people out of hell, out of the chambers of the earth in every way. He paid the penalty and the price for them. They used to call the grave hell. He took them out. He loosed them to show that He had power over death, and now the resurrection had come. When Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus, Mary and Martha exclaimed to Jesus, “If You would have been here, our brother would not have died.” Jesus said, “Your brother shall live again.” Mary said, “Jesus, I know that he shall live again at the resurrection.” Jesus said, “I am the resurrection.” He also said, “I am the truth, I am the life. I am the resurrection.”
We know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Word. The Word was made flesh. He said, “Lest you eat My flesh,” which means eat the Word, “you have no life in you. Lest you drink My blood,” which means partake of His Spirit, “you have no life within you.” We know that this Word is the resurrection. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection. My words are Spirit, and they are life.” In the beginning was the Word. Who was the Word? God. In the beginning was God. God who? God the Word. In the beginning was God the Word. God the Word spoke man unto death by divine appointment. That same God came to Calvary and broke the appointment of death. That same God, living in a human body, that Word God, spoke man unto life and said, “He that believeth on Me.” Believe that I have broke the appointment that was passed on to you in the garden because of the sins of Adam. “He that believes on Me, the Word,” Jesus said, “has passed from death unto life and shall not come into condemnation.” We have passed from death unto life, and we are not of this world because He has chosen us out of the world and we are hid with Christ in God, whom the heavens have received until the time of the restitution of all things, which is the millennium.
When Jesus was talking with Nicodemus and Nicodemus asked Him what he had to do to be saved, Jesus said to him, “No man has ever entered heaven except the Son of Man, who came down from heaven, and who is in heaven.” Did the Lord Jesus go into heaven when He talked with Moses and Elijah? The Bible says that He was in glory. Glory is heaven. Paul was also caught up into the third heaven. Jesus said that no man has ever ascended up into heaven, except the Son of Man who came down from heaven, and, as He said to Nicodemus, “Who is in heaven.” The Bible says He is our example. We ought to follow in His steps. If He was in heaven, doesn’t it sound right for us to be in heaven if we follow in His steps? When He started to leave the disciples, they asked, “Where are You going?” He answered, “Where I’m going, you cannot come now. But, you can follow Me later.” He sent back the Holy Ghost later, that it might translate them into the kingdom of God.
God has done the same thing to you that He did to Enoch. God has translated you into the marvelous kingdom of your God. Somebody might ask, “If He did the same thing to me that He did to Enoch, why haven’t I gone to the same place that Enoch went to?”
Remember what Elijah said to his servant? “Lord, open his eyes.” Paul said that the eyes of your understanding might be enlightened, that you might comprehend the heights and the depths and the widths. Was it a special occasion when that fiery chariot came down and picked up Elijah and took him to glory? No! He had fiery chariots with him all the time. They were ready, waiting for him to finish his ministry. They were with him all the time. The Bible says that when the servant’s eyes were opened, he looked behind Elijah, and there were prancing horses with chariots of fire standing right there, waiting for the ministry of Elijah to be finished, that Elijah might just step on board and go away. Where was Elijah? That might be a little hard to understand if you’re carnally minded. To be carnally minded is death, because the carnal mind is not subject to the laws of God, which is the word of translation, neither indeed can be, because the carnal mind is the thing that brought man unto death.
In the garden, man died. God did not bring death unto man. The Lord Jesus Christ, or God, had nothing to do with death. Absolutely nothing. When your little baby dies, or your wife dies, or your loved ones die, remember that God had nothing to do with death. You say, “But God appointed man unto death.” I know He appointed man unto death, but God broke the appointment! When your baby dies, it didn’t have to die. When you die, you don’t have to die. Nobody has to die anymore. Jesus broke the appointment with death. You may ask, “Brother Pike, if this is true, why haven’t men discovered it?” They did. At Pentecost, they discovered it. That’s why the Lord let every one of those apostles be killed. They did discover it. That’s why He let that church die. He wasn’t through with His plan, and there were still many years to come yet. You would ask, “Why would He wait so many years?” So the brothers and sisters of the church today could be born into the world and go to heaven. If He had let the disciples on in to heaven, all of us would have been lost because we hadn’t been born yet.
So, He had a certain period of time, letting men multiply and replenish the earth, that He might have a great kingdom. This was the plan of God. God doesn’t make man die. It never came by God. God didn’t send death. The Bible very emphatically states, if you’ll read it, that death came by man and not by God. God had nothing to do with it. Unbelief brings death. The Word created man, and the Word of life nourished him, and when he quit nursing from the breast of El Shaddai (El Shaddai means “the breasted one”), he died. He turned away from God and his belief in the Word that said, “Adam, thou shall not.” When Adam disbelieved that, he cut his spirit off from the Spirit of eternal life, which is the Word Spirit of God, and he died. The thing that killed him was his thinking, his own understanding, that which the beast had slipped into his mind. The thing that killed him was the carnal mind.
This is the thing that is still killing people today. To be carnally minded is death. You would as, “Brother Pike, what do you mean to be carnally minded is death?” To think naturally is to die. That brings it down where we can understand it. To think naturally is to die. If you have cancer and the doctor can’t do anything about it, and you think naturally, what’s going to happen to you? You die. If you have cancer and the doctor can’t heal it, but you think supernaturally, what’s going to happen to you? The Bible says to call those things that are not as though they are. What is the difference? This is redemption in part" it’s just God acquainting our minds with the Words of re-creation. The cancer is eating away a part of the body, and the Word that created that part of the body, through the act of faith by a minister, re-creates that part of the body, and that’s all there is to it. That part of the body is redeemed from corruption. If God can do that to one part of the body, why can’t God do that to all the body? You may ask, “Well, why does He let it be in part to begin with?” To give people time to multiply and replenish the earth, but at the same time, to keep them acquainted with the supernatural power that is among them, that someday He would manifest fully to let them know there was a God in their midst.
If this isn’t the reason, why did the angel, when he appeared over there to Gideon, say, “Gideon, O thou mighty man of valor!” He told him what a great conqueror he was, and what he could do. Why did Gideon then turn to him and say, “If God be with us, where are the miracles?” Isn’t that what he said? Where are the miracles? All they had ever known of God being among the people was that there had to be miracles. If there were no miracles, then God was not among them. That was the only thing that Gideon knew.
I don’t mean the make-believe miracles like we’ve got today. I’m talking about real, genuine healing, real genuine miracles, that people can prove by doctor’s reports, things that have taken place with the power of God’s Word with re-creation. That’s what I’m talking about.
I believe, with all of my heart, that we have passed from death unto life because of love. Love is as strong as death. We have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. The only proof of eternal life is to love the brethren, to talk about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to have the fellowship and the warmth of the Spirit of God flowing from breast to breast, and if you don’t do it, it’s positive proof that love’s not there. If you’ve got that love, you’re going to be with the brethren in spite of all that comes.
If the wife has got the love of God, she’s going to want to be right there, too. I don’t mean right in the midst of the brethren. There are some sisters, too. In Christ, there’s neither male nor female. You get one of these sisters that cuts herself off over here somewhere, and she’s interested in worldly things and what she can get for herself, and she doesn’t want anybody troubling her, and all she wants is her four and no more, then that sister needs to be born again. I don’t care who it is. Something’s wrong with her. She’s never passed from death unto life. If she had passed from death unto life, she couldn’t stay away from the sisters. She’ll want that godly fellowship in Christ Jesus, that flows from heart to heart, and this is the only proof of eternal life. This is the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We’ve come to the age when we do not have to die. Someone might say, “Now Brother Pike, you just go on believing that, and I’ll see the day they put you in a casket.” If you ever have the pleasure of looking on my face and seeing me in a casket, you just remember one thing: what I preached is absolutely the truth. Many people have tried to believe that they could be healed of cancer, and they died. But many people believed and didn’t die. There’s going to be many that try to believe, but do not. I may be one of them. But, there’s going to be some that believe, just like Enoch did, and they won’t die. When this message is preached around the earth, you can look for the end to come. It’s going to be preached, and you just remember that. It’s going to be preached because it’s the redemption of the body. It’s real. It works. It’s alive. It’s quickening.
There are people who are being indoctrinated this way, to believe that death has no power over them. I’ve proved to them, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that death is conquered, that it is gone, and there is no more power with death. The Bible says that God has destroyed him that has the power of death. God has destroyed him, He’s done away with him. Death has no power over us. It’s the last enemy to be conquered. I’ve proved by the Scriptures, to any sober, sane, reasonable thinking person, that death is absolutely defeated, and it has no power over anybody.
If the Word of God says that, and you believe it, this Word of God will translate you. If you’ve got cancer, and I preach and prove to you by the Word of God, that the cancer can be healed and taken away, and you believe the Word of God, that Word of God will heal you. The Bible says that He sent His Word and healed them. Enoch was translated by faith that comes by the hearing of the Word. In the past, the knowledge of translation was not revealed. But, now it is being made known, because it is time for it to be made known. It could not be made known, because every revelation with the Word of God proved God could not make it known until this hour. Even Paul, in his day, spoke of how he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which were not lawful for a man to utter. God would not let them be uttered.
How did Paul get caught up to the third heaven? Because he discovered the translation message. How do I know he did? Because it’s Paul’s writings that I read and discovered this thing. He’s the one that brings it out so clearly. But you have to be in the Spirit of God for God for prove it to you and show you what happened to Paul. It is the same thing with John the Revelator.
So then, men don’t have to die. I have proved it by the Scriptures. If you believe the Scriptures, if you believe the Word of God, you can put it line upon line upon line upon line. You can take any Scripture that you can get, from Genesis to Revelation, and try to disprove it, but I promise you that you cannot touch it. How do I know you can’t? Because I’ve been before some of the greatest Bible scholars in the world, and never met one of them that didn’t have to take a bow to it. I’ve been before scholars with years of seminary, but they had to take a bow to it. There wasn’t any way to get around it, because it’s God. A botany professor in North Carolina, with about six or eight years of college, had to take a bow to it. He said, “I have never, in my life, ever heard anything like it. It has to be very God.”
I say this because of unbelief, and I want you to know that this is for sure. The Scriptures positively prove that death is swallowed up in victory. It’s not a make-believe. It’s what the world calls an absolute. It’s real. It’s genuine. I plan to make the rapture. Not only that, but I predict, that within the next few years, if the Lord tarries, the rapture message for the church is going to be preached by the sons of God. Those sons of God are going to be manifested, which means they are going to be known among the people, and they’re going to recognize that they’ve got something the church world has never had before.
Brother Branham saw it, but couldn’t come over to it. Like Moses, Brother Branham had it in his heart. He saw it, just like Paul did, but he couldn’t come over to it because spiritual revelation shows God had to stop him at a certain place. It was ordained for Him to do it. He was the great champion among the denominations, because denominations are the wilderness, and he was the Moses that was in the wilderness, to lead those people out of the garlic and onions, which means the worldly things, and lead them into that great denomination. Brother Branham was with a denomination when he started. He started out with the Baptist Church and wound up in the Jesus Name, in a denomination that was called the Full Gospel Businessmen. Moses died in the wilderness. He had to do it.
Brother Branham kept telling them, “Get out of the wilderness. Get out of the wilderness.” They’re going to leave it, and they’re going to come into the Canaan land of God, which is the revelation of eternal life.
I raise my hand to heaven, that according to the integrity of my heart, and I base all of my years of experience, of traveling from coast to coast, and praying and seeking God, and giving my life to God, I raise my hand to God that this is the truth. This is God’s very truth. He’s about to translate His church, and take them out of this world. We are at the crossing. It’s here. You say, “But Brother Pike, the world doesn’t know about this.” When the Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples, how many people believed Him? Who knew about it? Twelve men, and one of them was a Judas. Twelve men. That’s all. From those twelve men sprang that great message that went all over the world. It’s always been that way. When the angel appeared to Brother Branham, how many people knew about it? He and one little group.
When Jesus Christ came into the world, how many knew about it? He was born in a manger. Why did He do that? He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. He did that to hide it from eyes of the wise and prudent. They expected Him to come on a white horse and in a royal garment. But He said He would come as a thief in the night,. Today, they expect Him to come through the seminaries. They expect Him to come through the philosophers. They expect Him to come through the money men. But He’s not going to do it.
After the tribulation, He’ll come back to the Jews, and they’ll accept Him because that’s the way they believed He would come. In the day they see Him like that, they’ll accept Him. The Bible says that He will come back on a white horse, and have many crowns upon His head, and the saints of God, you and I, will come back with Him. But it will be too late for the church then, because that will be three years after the church has been raptured. We will have been taken up with God, glorified, and come back, following Him on white horses to the Jews, and when they see Him, they’ll accept Him. They’ll accept Him because that’s the way they’re looking for Him. When He came on a donkey, He came humbly, they rejected Him. He did that to blind the Jews until the fullness of the Gentiles came in, to give them a chance for salvation.
But now, He’s blinding the Gentiles. The fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and He’s blinding the Gentiles so they can’t see what He’s doing. “Humble thyself,” Solomon said, “make sure thy friend.” Act like a peasant, and you’ll find out who really loves you. Act like you don’t have anything, like you’re just down here, like a little country boy with holes in your pants and patches on your knees. Humble thyself and you’ll find out who your friends are. Solomon said, “The rich have many friends.” But when your money runs out, you’ll find those friends are gone.
So then, Jesus is humbling Himself to find out who is His friend. Think on these things and stir up your pure mind.
By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.
Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.
Holiness Unto The Lord