At The Crossing
Exodus 2:1-13 “And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein" and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river" and her maidens walked along by the river’s side" and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrew children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?”
Now, I want to take my time and talk with you a little bit tonight. I think we all recognize the seriousness of what we are doing tonight, that this is the first time we have ever had the Lord’s Supper in this temple. It is the first time in this building. There is a great significance to it, in that today is Columbus day, the day when he passed over and discovered the new world.
Most of us are acquainted with the ways of Israel and we are acquainted with their feasts, and the offerings of Israel. By number, they had about eight feasts and about five offerings. They had the feast of the Passover, the feast of the unleavened bread, the feast of the firstfruits, the feast of weeks, which was their seven Sabbaths, the feast of trumpets, the feast of atonement, and the feast of tabernacles. They had five offerings, which was the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. All of these things were a must to Israel. It was something they had to do. You and I don’t have to do that today. I’m thankful of that because they had so many things to do it would be hard to remember them, let alone do them. They had all these they had to do, and these feasts and burnt offerings all were compacted into one unit as to their meaning: pointing toward Jesus. All of the offerings pointed to Jesus. All of the feasts pointed to Jesus, all of them.
In the first offering, Israel had a burnt offering to God wherein they offered a bullock, lamb, sheep, goat, or turtledoves or pigeons as a burnt offering. They were allowed to do that. They had to have a lamb of the first year without spot or blemish. I read to you how that they had to slay a lamb for the Passover of Egypt. They had to offer this offering to God with a regularity. They also had a meal offering, sometimes referred to as a meat offering in that they used meal for flour and they called it meat. They could offer this offering as a meal offering unto the Lord. It had to be unbaked fine flour or baked cakes or a green ear of corn parched with oil, with salt, and frankincense. This was the offering that they had to offer to God. They also had a peace offering, offering either a male or a female bullock, lamb, or goat. In their sin offering, it was still a male or female bullock, a lamb, or a goat. In their trespass offering, which was their last offering, they had to have a lamb or a kid. It had to be a female or it could be two turtledoves or two young pigeons, or the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour without any frankincense or oil. They couldn’t use honey or anything like that because it would sour. The Lord wouldn’t let them use that but they could use salt. These were the offerings that Israel had to offer.
There was another offering that was called the atonement. One of the feasts in the seventh month on the tenth day was called the atonement offering or feast. Now, they had the feast of the firstfruits on the fourteenth. They had the feast of the unleavened bread on the fifteenth beginning at sundown on the fourteenth because a day was reckoned from evening until morning, as in God’s creation. The fifteenth was the unleavened" and the sixteenth they had the firstfruits. Fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth - Passover, unleavened, and firstfruits. Now, these were very significant. They could not celebrate the feast of the firstfruits until after they entered into Canaan. They kept the feast of the Passover, which was coming out of Egypt. They had to do this as a memorial unto God forever. It signified passing from death unto life. It was kept as the Lord’s Supper from Calvary on down. Before then, it was kept as the Passover until the real Passover Lamb came, who is Jesus. They kept the Passover and then they kept the unleavened bread. I want you to listen to this close because if I get into revelation, you are not going to understand what I am saying because you are not listening to the typical formula that God gives for revelation. To understand a revelation, you have got to know what you are dealing with. So then, on the fourteenth it was the Passover. Now, they put it up a lamb on the tenth. And then on the fourteenth, he was slain. Go back to the days of Noah, the time that God appeared to Noah, and He spoke to him and told him to go into the ark. Go back and check it out. Then check it out on your calendar. God does everything in a great sequence, I call it. They observed the Passover, they observed the unleavened bread" but they did not observe the feast of firstfruits until after they got into Canaan because the feast of firstfruits represented the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It was kept by getting a whole sheaf of barley when the barley harvest came in. They would take a whole sheaf of it. This was the barley harvest that they waved before God as the significance of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in their firstfruits after Canaan.
The beginning of that harvest was the barley harvest. It lasted over until Pentecost. That’s where their feast of weeks came in, their seven Sabbaths. The fifty days from the resurrection unto Pentecost. In other words, the firstfruits signified the resurrection, which is after Calvary, because Calvary signifies the Passover. The wilderness wandering signifies the unleavened bread until they came to Canaan, and they came to the Jordan. When they got to the Jordan, then the unleavened bread, or the walk of unleavened bread, ends. They called it the holy walk, walking with God. And all of this is significant to our own life, for when we are born again by the blood of Jesus, we start the holy walk with God. In Corinthians, Paul said that we are to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of truth and sincerity. The unleavened, for leaven represents sin and they could eat no leavening from the time that they came out of Egypt. It had to be an unleavened walk with God. Once you come out of the flesh and you head for the body of the Lord Jesus, which is the new Canaan land, there is no leavening that can be in your life. Malice, all of these things, you have to get rid of because you are in a holy walk with God. If you don’t keep that holy walk, then God will do you like He did the elders. He brought then out of Egypt, and the Bible said God was still not well pleased with them in the wilderness. So then, the holy walk must be kept with God. It must be kept. You must live a holy life. People can tell you what they want to about the gospel, but I’m telling you, folks, you’ve got to live a holy life. It has to be a holy life. The wilderness wandering is the time that Jesus was in the heart of the earth, preaching to the souls in prison, as Moses, the Word, leading us through the wanderings. We are wandering in our minds, here and there, trying to find out what is going on, being bit by the serpents as we wander through the wilderness. The evil spirits tried to look on the brazen serpent of Jesus, who was made the propitiation for our sin, made like unto a serpent to end all of our sins. We use the term “the king snake” that swallows up evil, which was signified by Moses when he was down in Egypt and he used that rod and turned it into a serpent and swallowed up the serpents of the magicians down there to show Calvary.
The unleavened bread of sincerity must be kept without intermingling, or putting malice in your heart to walk with God, the holy walk of God. Then you cross over the Jordan, which represented the grave" whereas Jesus came out of the grave and then appeared to them in another form over there as He walked along the way to Emmaus. I have said this a number of times, this is where people get in trouble when they don’t understand God because God appears in another form. He walks in a prophet, he walks in one individual, and then when He gets through there, He goes to somebody else (like He appeared to Mary). The Bible teaches that He appeared to Mary in one form, and all of a sudden, on the way to Emmaus, He meets some men walking down the road and the Bible said He appeared in another form. God has always done that down through the years.
Keeping the holy walk, then coming to Jordan and crossing over and the fifty days, which is the feast of weeks from the resurrection over to Pentecost and then the feast of Pentecost. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen - Passover, unleavened bread, firstfruits, then the feast of weeks is signified from the resurrection to Pentecost. They only celebrated the first and the last day of it. Barley harvest was the first day, and the last day of it was when the wheat harvest came in. The first was before God, as firstfruits way before Him. The last one that came in was on the sixth day of the third month" whereas, the firstfruits come in on the sixteenth day of the first month which was Abib, the beginning of their months. Fifty days was in between there. They celebrated the first one then they celebrated the last one.
On this day of Pentecost, when it came in, they would celebrate the day of Pentecost by their wave loaves. They would take the fine flour. It had to be ground up real fine. Now, in the barley harvest it was just a sheaf, which represented just one, Jesus Christ coming up the firstfruits on them that slept, the first of the barley harvest. But when the last day came around of those fifty days it represented the Holy Ghost coming back. A measure of fine flour, a measure of the Spirit in you, a measure in me, ground up. It had to be ground up where it could be proportioned. It was a measure. They made it into two loaves. They had to bake it with leaven because there the Gentiles came in with sin. Now, instead of just the Jews, the Gentiles came in, the Catholics, the Protestants. They had two wave loaves made into something they could use in the home. Something they would feed from, for it signified the bread of life. That was on the sixth day of the third month. This great feast of Pentecost is how we got in. Jesus said, after the supper, that He wouldn’t drink this wine with you anew until He drank it in His Father’s kingdom" whereas, the kingdom of God cometh not by observation but is within a man. Inside of our heart at Pentecost, that is, the Holy Ghost of God came in. They accused the apostles of being drunk on new wine because He was drinking it afresh with them in the kingdom of God. God, as a Spirit, has been drinking it afresh with us ever since. We sing the song “He turned the water into wine”. At the marriage supper of the Lamb, Jesus turned the water into wine. That’s why He tells us to keep the supper as an ordinance. We do this in remembrance of Him, showing forth His blood, His death, His resurrection. The blood signifies His life in us, in that Israel was under the covering of the cloud, which was spirit by day as a cloud of refreshing and rain, as a mist" but by night it was a pillar of fire that lead Israel. The angel of God making Himself a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
I’ve explained that now, instead of being a pillar of fire as it moved with Brother Branham back in the age of the church, it is a pillar of cloud. It is the latter rain. When he was with the pillar of fire, Brother Branham kept saying that this will come as the latter rain. The latter rain was to be the revelation of Jesus Christ, which was to be out of the veil. That is to say, at night, God being a consuming fire, at night He was a pillar of fire because night represents the veil. Night represents the carnal mind. In the intellectual realms of moving or in the veil of the church ages, then He is a pillar of fire. He is judgment. But then, the veil is taken away, and the Bible says that the veil is taken away in Christ, when you get into the mind of the Lord Jesus, Paul said. The reason he knew that is because he had the revelation of Jesus Christ, and he knew that, having the revelation, the veil was taken away in Christ. It was a pillar of cloud by day.
You don’t find in the New Testament where the pillar of fire ever followed them. You find it in the Old Testament, because the Old Testament was represented that way. It was Israel and the pillar of fire, and the denominational world represents Israel and the pillar of fire. Brother Branham represented the Lord in the veil with them. This represents the spiritual Jew and the spiritual Christ out of the veil, a refreshing by day. David and Solomon, the same kingdom. The angel of God is still here, just like He has always been. How else would He tell us these things? How would we know these things? The Bible says, “The angel of the Lord encamped around about them that love Him and fear Him” How many of you believe that? He watches over us. He keeps us. He never leaves us. He is always there to deliver us.
So then, Israel was under the pillar of fire because she was under the covering of the blood, and the life is in the blood. But what happened? The pillar of fire went away at Calvary, because it indicated the night, the carnal mind, and the life being in the blood and the blood having to do with the veil. When Jesus went to Calvary, He spilt the blood. He did away with the Jesus part and He let the Christ part out, which was the cloud by day. That’s why Elijah was told, “A cloud like unto a man’s hand.” The cloud of the five-fold ministry. God gave us a symbol of the pillar of fire in the latter times when He brought Brother Branham forth. Like the coming of the Jews, Moses will be again with the Jews, where the pillar of fire was, and Elijah will be again with the Jews as it was in the day of judgment.
At Calvary, the blood is spilt. The blood signifies that which is over the door post. Brother Branham signifies Jesus, and the pillar of fire would appear over the heads of the people in that the Bible teaches that we are the everlasting doors or the gates of God. We are the gates of heaven. He said, “Lift up your heads ye everlasting gates and let the king of glory come in.” It signifies the blood over the door post, where the Lord said, “When I see the blood I’ll pass over you.” Brother Branham was typical of that door. Then the blood was applied over the door post, in that he was a type of Shepherd who went up and made a doorway between heaven and earth so that the rest of the astronauts might pass through. Shepherd, as a type to get into the new world, which was out yonder in the galaxies.
In other words, there is a difference in the day that we are living in. God is not a pillar of fire. God is a Spirit. How many of you know that? God only uses fire to signify Calvary, to signify the blood, to let us know that the wrath of God is to be upon the people. Look in the covenants God made. What kind of covenant did He make with Adam? He made a water covenant. Adam could eat of the fruit of the trees, isn’t that right? He made a water covenant with him. From Adam, the beginning of the covenant, the trees, the water, the fruit, all the way down through the 2000 years over to Noah, it was water. It was a water covenant, and man lived longer that they did when they got under the blood covenant. In other words, the water covenant signified the redemption of the body, the cleansing of the body. He fell from the spiritual realm or level that God had exposed him to. By listening to the carnal mind, he fell down to the realm where he was supposed to be, to process him, down to the water realm to where he could go back from that to the blood realm and through the spirit realm to get back to God where he was. God did that to process him. In other words, the first thing He did was expose him to the heavenly things, to give him an appetite, a hunger, a thirst for Him, and then He let him drop down to the water realm and for 2000 years. Man lived a long time under the water realm. I’ve noticed that we are gradually coming back to the garden of Eden because men, more and more, are getting away from the blood realm, going into the vegetation realm. The Lord made a covenant with, Adam and that was the covenant He made. He said, “I set My bow in the clouds,” and He made a covenant by water. He saved Moses by water in the little ark in the bulrush. But then the next covenant God made was after the flood, when He made a meat covenant, which was a blood covenant. It started with water with Adam, ended with water with Noah, then it started with blood with Abraham and ends with blood with Jesus, another 2000 years. The first had to do with the body, but this had to do with the soul, for the blood denotes the soul.
So they went through the wilderness wandering of the blood age. That first one was established with the people that were to escape, which signified the Jews. That second one, though the Jews were chosen to be a type of sin, they were not (Jesus being made sin, He was not sinful), but the blood covenant was made to show that wrath of God. That’s why the pillar of fire came to Brother Branham. It was in the Catholic realm, the Roman realm, the church world realm to show God, the consuming fire, the blood of His Son as judgment upon them that rejected God. The blood over Israel and applied over us to show that when He saw the blood, He passed over us. That realm is a blood realm, a blood covenant. It starts with blood and it ends with blood, because it is made with the Gentile people as the wrath of God upon them that are guilty of the blood.
But the next covenant it starts with the Christ, with Peter, as Christ lives in Peter. It is a spiritual covenant, where He said, “I’ll pour out My Spirit upon all flesh.” It’s not made with the body, it is not made with the soul, it is made with the spirit. It’s an angelic covenant. It is made with the church. It starts with Spirit, the Christ, and it ends over here in the last days with the translation of the coming of the Spirit again. It is a spiritual covenant. I just want to lay down, real slow and careful, a few of these things that we are talking about so you can get them in your thought pattern and you can understand when I preach revelation and understand what I’m saying. If I broke down some of it, I think it would run at least eighty-one times, eighty-one different approaches. The things of God are complicated. How many of you know that? I know the simplicity of the gospel is just repent and be baptized in Jesus name for the remission of sin. But great are the mysteries of God. It is said that Genesis, I believe it is, the creative days back there, can be broken down 40,020 times, and yet Moses on the mountain took one shot at it and got it just right, just exactly according to the way scientists finally defined it in the last days. That proves it is God, doesn’t it?
So then, God is trying to make a covenant with us, and that covenant is in the blood of His Son. The blood is for the atonement of our sins. The blood indicates wrath. The blood always indicates wrath. Hold a red garment up before a bull and see what he’ll do to it. It’s typical of Satan. Typical of the rage of the devil trying to destroy the blood. It is typical of the wrath, but God put it away once and for all. But the life is in the blood" that is, the spirit. God is a Spirit. He sent back the Holy Ghost. That’s God. God has always wanted it to be where you could just see Him through the eyes of your understanding and see the head of His body as Jesus Christ, the Son of God" not to see anything else so that we wouldn’t have a fear, wouldn’t have a dread, so we could be knitted to together in a membership in a unity. That’s why He brought a Pentecost, to bring back the Christ in the church. That is why they have the wave offering over there of the loaves, signifying the crossing over of the Jordan, the conquering of death, coming over the carnal mind, and getting into the world of light. That was a great offering. They had to kill seven lambs, along with those two loaves of bread, a burnt offering, meat offering and drink offering to accompany it. They had to kill a bullock and two rams, and then kill a goat, and then kill two more lambs, all just to signify Pentecost and what God was doing. I believe it had to do with the church ages when the seven lambs were slain. The bullock had to do with Israel, and those two rams, no doubt, showed the end of the church ages, showing us the two prophets coming in with Israel. Then the lamb nations come in after the bullocks and the two rams. Then came the goat, perhaps having to do with the sacrifice of the antichrist, doing away with sin. Then comes the Lamb to bring in the Lamb nation. It was a beautiful thing that God did.
One of the greatest offerings was the atonement offering that had to do with the feast of atonement. Notice this, passed Pentecost, the fourth, fifth, sixth month on passed there, they gathered their harvest, and then at the end of it, when the seventh month came in, which signified their rest again, on the very first day they started to sound the trumpets, bringing in another feast, the feast of the trumpets. Then just a few days later, on the tenth of the seventh month, they began to have their feast of atonement. That was an outstanding feast. Then, from about the 15th unto the 22nd of the latter part of that month, they had their feast of tabernacles. They had to keep it with their little palm bushes and the little willows that some believe signified the pilgrimage that they had back there through the wilderness, when they stopped at Elim under the palms and the willows by the brook over in Babylon where they hanged their harps on a willow and couldn’t play because they were in a strange country. Yet now, they had crossed over into Canaan land.
It was about eight days of celebration, of a remembrance, to commemorate what had been done, to show what God had done in delivering them. On the day of the atonement, the priest had to bring a bullock and the people had to bring two goats. He had to kill the bullock take the blood and put it on the hot coals in a censer that it might cause the sweet aroma, typical of the Holy Ghost, to come up to stand between the offerer, who was the priest, and the mercy seat, to keep the judgment of God down. He had to go back out and kill one of the goats, and using the blood, do likewise to sanctify the tabernacle and the altar. Then, he had to take the other goat, lay his hands on it, confess the sins of the people, take an able man and let him take the goat away into the wilderness as a scapegoat. This is on the day of atonement. Then he’d return into the holy place, which was the second part of the tabernacle, wash his body, change his clothes from the linen that he had used for the sacrifice, and put on his holy garments, his glorious garments, and come back out to the people.
At the beginning of this atonement, he had to take these two goats, and before he killed one of them, he had to cast lots on them to see which would be the scapegoat. This was on the day of atonement. To us, it has to do with Jesus. But with Israel, it was altogether different. It has to do with the coming back of the Lord, when He sets His foot upon the mount of Olives, when the great gathering of the Jews will be again. The sounding of the trumpets will gather them, then the return to Mount Olivet, to have the day of atonement and then the celebration of the booths, indicating Canaan land, the millennium rest.
All of these feasts had to be kept. All of these offerings had to be given because God demanded it of Israel. It had to be that way. Of those five burnt offerings, the first offering of the bullocks, lambs, or the turtledoves, was burned up completely. Nobody got it. The priest didn’t get it. The offerer didn’t get it. The offerer only got one offering, and that was the peace offering. He could take that after he took the fat out, and took the caul out, and then took the kidney out, and offered that on the brazen altar. He could then take the rest of it and he could eat it with his family in the tabernacle.
The priest never got much. A handful of the meal offering was thrown on the altar and all of the frankincense poured on it, and then he got the rest of it. He didn’t get any of the burnt offering. Nobody got any of it. Only the skin was taken from the burnt offering and he got the skin. To me, that really means something. The Bible teaches that in Genesis, the first thing that happened, when God killed the Lamb there in His foreknowledge, there had to be something that took place, because He clothed them with skin. That was all that the priest got, just the skin of the burnt offering. Everything else was consumed. All he got was the skin. Then on the sin offering, the priest could have whatever was left if it went in a certain way. For the ruler and the common people, it had to go one way, for the priest and the congregation it had to go another way. If it was for the priest and the congregation, then they could not eat it. It had to be taken outside of the gates and burned. But if it was for the ruler and the common people, then it could be boiled and the priest could eat it in the tabernacle.
These burnt offerings all pointed to what we are doing tonight. Everyone of them. The burnt offering. The meal offering. The peace offering. The sin offering. The trespass offering. All pointed to what we are doing tonight. In the last offering, it was a trespass offering for those that had trespassed against God. We pray, “Lord forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” That is all we have to do, but back there they couldn’t do that. They had to kill a female lamb or a kid. They had to bring either two turtledoves or two pigeons, or a tenth part of an ephah of flour without oil or frankincense, and they had to offer it up to God. They had to go through all of this for God to take away their trespasses. All of this had to be done. The peace offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering, all of them were pretty much the same. The fat, the kidney, and the caul had to be taken out and burned on the altar. Of the three offerings, one could go to man that offered it, which was the peace offering. One could go to the priest, if it was for the ruler and the common people, which was the sin offering. And the last offering, the priest could have it. They didn’t get a whole lot of some of the offerings, and not any of some of the offerings, but they were allowed to get enough to sustain them and take care of them.
All of these different covenants that God made, we enumerated them to try to put a thought pattern into your mind so that when you get into revelation, every bit of it points to Calvary, which means the blood and which means the bread of His broken body, for the ground meal was the grinding of His body that we might be fed the bread of life. Ground at the mill of Calvary for you and I. Everything points to it, and that’s why that I’m taking my time tonight to teach you. the sacredness of what we are doing tonight, what all the Jews had to go through with, and all we have to do is sum it up in one thing and that’s just keep the Lord’s Supper. That’s all we do. Aren’t you glad it is simple? I’d hate to have to go through all of the things that they went through with. Israel still offers up a sacrifice to God for the Passover. But it’s not a lamb or blood. It is a different kind of thing because they are out of their homeland. The blood is left at Calvary. They don’t keep it like they used to, but they still keep the Passover. We keep it too, as a spiritual Jew, we keep it as a supper, a memorial unto God to commemorate the things of God. What God wants us to do is to try to establish in the minds of the people the need of having faith in the Word of God and of the things of God.
I’ve heard people say, “Well, I believe it is all spiritual.” I do too. I believe that God is a Spirit and I believe that everything God does is in the spirit. I believe that. But I also believe that there are some natural ordinances that we’ve got to keep. When you get to the place to where you take everything spiritual, the first thing you want to do in not live holy, not pray, not fast, not do anything, because you want to take it all spiritual. I believe you need a house, but I believe you need some doorsteps up to it. I believe that these natural things are to captivate the minds of the children, to be a doorstep to show them how to get into the spiritual house of God. Don’t you? I believe that there is a great spiritual significance in it.
Down here in our little finite minds, and in the little finite world of ours, we get off in a corner somewhere and we forget how great God is. We forget there is an eternity. We define things the way we want to, as a comprehensive definition of things, and that’s it. But God had a different way of doing it. There is more to this thing than you think. Great is the mystery of godliness. There are other worlds. There are greater places in the galaxies that scientists have discovered. We leave this little ball we call earth down here, and get out there, and then where are we at? Out there, it is void. Out there, before there was ever a world created, where everything is void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. When the Bible says that the Spirit of God moved upon the waters, He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. In our little world of finite thinking, we fail to realize there is an infinite world somewhere. Scientists, because they are able to leave this little ball that is called earth and go up to the moon, they feel like they have accomplished something. But I want you to know something. It would take them over three years to make a trip to the sun at the rate they are going. And then, they couldn’t get near it because the Bible says, “God is the great light unto which no man can approach.” They can’t get near it. It would burn them up. But then when we get away form the sun, and get away from the earth, and get away from the planets, then we see how smart man is.
Man thinks he can comprehend the depths of the ocean pretty well. He can comprehend the time and space from here to the moon and over to the sun, but what happens when you get away from those planets? Where are the walls? Where is the bottom? Where is the top? When you get out in that part that is void, when you get away from this little ball down here that we call earth, that has got a few time elements in it because of our intellectual definition (we do that to maintain a vocabulary expression to one another to be able to keep our bearings), but when you get away from what God made and you get out there, then you are in an infinity. You can’t find the bottom. It’s a bottomless pit. There is no top to it. There are no walls to it. There is no bottom to it. If scientists are smart, why don’t they measure it? Why don’t they tell you where the bottom of it is at? Why don’t they tell you where the top of it is at? Why don’t they tell you where the walls of it is at? If they’re smart, all they can do is take what God’s made and just work with it and define it down. That’s just as far as their intelligence goes. But when you get out there in the void and you get out there in the emptiness and you leave somewhere and go to nowhere, then what about that? Get out there in the eternities. Man is not very smart, is he? He just thinks he’s smart. He is not very smart. If he is smart, why can’t he figure that out? He has been here long enough. There is a world of finite.
I’m thankful to be a part of it in the sense that God made it. I’m glad that we have got some kind of foundation. The Bible says, “We seek a city that’s got foundation.” I’m glad there is a place somewhere that’s got some foundation, because that void out there, that space out there, that’s a bottomless pit. I mean that is eternity. There aren’t any boundaries to it. There isn’t any end to it. It’s about 93 million miles, I believe they say, to the sun? About 247,000 miles to the moon. But when you get beyond that 93 million miles and you travel another 93 billion, then were are you going to be? What’s going to be out there? I tell you, I’m glad I’m a Christian, aren’t you? I’m glad for what science can do. I thank the Lord for what man can do, what God has allowed him to do. But I think sometimes we get too big for our britches. That’s the old folk’s saying. God has to take you down a notch or two. We get to thinking we are pretty smart, but we forget there is something out there that we don’t know anything about. That’s why it pays us to listen and learn. That’s why it pays to get in with God and go on with God. You get a hold of God and you can’t turn Him loose as easily as you’d like to. The better thing to do is serve Him and love Him. Go on with Him. That’s what we need to do. Let Him have the reigns and let Him guide us, and acknowledge God in all of our ways. That’s the better way to do it. Let Him be the big boss. Somebody said, “If I can just hold out.” You don’t have to hold out, you just hold on. He can hold out.
When I think about Calvary and the great things of Calvary, what the Lord has done for us, it thrills my soul. I go back, sometimes, and I read the stories and I hear about the great things of old. I’ve relate things like William Travis and the Alamo, and different things. Great men and great things that happened. In everything I read, I start reading it and looking at it, and the first thing you know I see Jesus jump up. And I think my, “My! There He is again.” Everywhere I look, He is there. David said, “Wherever I go, He is there. If I make my place up in heaven, He is there. If I make my bed in hell, He is there. He is on my right hand, that I should not be moved. He is ever before my face. I see Him always.” Hallelujah!
I was thinking of the beauty of the revelation, of Brother Richard’s dad coming to visit. Being a railroad engineer, it is typical of death. Trains are typical of death. The railroad crossing. It is a typical thing of death. Trains go all through the mountains, winding around them. I’ve been on them, and when they get into the mountains, you can look back and see the tail of it way over there on the other side of the valley. They go down through tunnels like a big worm, a big snake, down through the tunnels, down under water. And when they roll down the track, everything shakes and trembles, because they are of death, typical of Satan. It shakes and trembles. Death moving through the land. Everything shakes and shivers. Then, when you go to cross over the railroad track with a car, you see that the crossing symbolizes what Jesus did for us.
Everything is a type and shadow. Everything points to Jesus. Everything shows the greatness of God, from the heavens, the land and the seas, the three bodies by which God works. In the ships, in the great airliners, in the great trains that move up and down the rails. God in His greatness. What is He doing? He is trying to speak to us, trying to deliver us, trying to show us His love, His compassion in types and shadows, to get us educated in the spiritual side of it. Somebody thinks that the world is just one big vacation. They think all you got to do is make money and ride trains and planes and go swimming and play golf. God didn’t put us down here for that. This is not one big vacation land down here. This is a training ground where we can get a hold of God, learn about Jesus, get over the Jordan and get into the world that’s out yonder in the great beyond where the real land of vacation is. I see the Lord in all of that.
There’s a little sign about Casey Jones over here in Memphis. I remember the story of Casey Jones. I remember how we used to sing that song, how that I saw Jesus in the life of Casey Jones. Running the rails, trying to make a crossing, running late, and had to get there, knowing that they only had one track in that day and they had to get to a side track so that the other train might get around. But when they got off schedule, it meant a crash. It was a deadly thing. Two big iron engines crashing together, maybe with fifty or a hundred cars behind them. A terrible crash. I don’t guess there is anything worse than a train crash. There haven’t been a lot of them, but where one is recorded, it is a sad thing. Casey Jones was trying to make it. I saw Jesus in the story of it. I remember the song, because he was late and he couldn’t get there. He was trying to make it and the other train was trying to make it. I saw a beautiful picture of Christ and I saw a beautiful picture of Satan. I saw them moving down the track one toward another, getting closer and closer. They got a little game they called “chicken.” You start running at each other and one chickens out. In the story, they kept getting closer and closer. Casey Jones looked at his watch, but his watch was running slow, and he looked at the water and the water was low. He hollered to the fire man to shovel in the coal, pulled on the whistle and let the drivers roll. He hit the train head on. I thought that’s Jesus. Hallelujah! He could have got out of it, but He didn’t do it. He met the devil head on. When He had a chance to get away for His life, He didn’t do it. He met it head on. I’m glad He did. He made the crossing and He made it for me. He could have gotten out of it, but He didn’t do it. He knew it meant His life, just like Casey Jones knew it meant his life, but he was still trying to make the crossing.
I’m glad that Jesus didn’t give up. I saw the life of Christ in it. I know that Casey Jones was a black man, as far as we know. But Jesus was made sin too. Gave His life. The blood was spilt in the life of Casey Jones to seal a testimony and a story. You hear a lot about Casey Jones. They commemorated him. They’ve got his home over there. But you don’t hear anything else about the other fellow, do you? You hear a lot about Jesus, but Satan is standing in the background.
I thought about how beautiful the story was, and how that right at this very hour, Brother Richard’s dad has come down here and how the Lord referred me back to Macon, Georgia. having to do with Centerville. Over there, at the little widow’s house that you’ve heard me tell about it, how that I saw the great pillar of fire rise up, after praying and seeking God. I looked out the window and I could hardly believe my own eyes when I saw the pillar of fire rise up and go over the house of the engineer, and I said, “Lord, what in the world does that mean?” That engineer had been so cruel to that little widow and I didn’t understand it. The Lord spoke to me after I got acquainted with the engineer. I took my three little children over there, like little bitty lambs, and I was talking to the engineer and the engineer told me how that a train could knock anything off the track. He said there was hardly anything that would derail a train. But, he said when that little sheep got on the rail, he said there was something about it because the fur would roll up and it wouldn’t separate, and the oil that was in the skin was a sure thing that would derail a train. Just as sure as you hit him, he said, you’d come off the track. And I thought about it a few days later when we had the children sing for that hard-hearted fellow. When they begin to sing, all of a sudden, the tears begin to run down his cheeks and he began to get the praise of God in his heart, and I thought, “What nothing else could do, a little lamb did it.” It derailed him and broke him up and he saw Christ in the life of it. That’s why that we ought to be innocent. We ought to love the Lord and be innocent. Be innocent children of God and come into innocency, even the partaking of the supper tonight, as a lamb led to the slaughter, who opened not His mouth.
That’s what derails the devil. That’s what hits him head on and causes him to be unable to find his bearings, because, we as children of God, swear to our own hurt and go right on when people mistreat us, not being a quitter, but like Casey Jones, knowing he was going to hit but just kept right on keeping on. Jesus knew it would cost Him His life, but He kept on keeping on. They say a good skipper goes down with his ship. I believe that’s what we ought to do. May God give us the same courage, the same perseverance, the same outlook so that we can rise up for Christ and keep on keeping on. Be a lamb and be gentle, swear to our own hurt and let people say what they want to and do what they want to, as the scripture say, “Open not our mouths,” just commit ourselves unto Him.
I believe that we are at the crossing and there has to be some blood spilt to get over. I’m glad that the blood has been spilt. I’m glad that He spilt His blood so we could make it over, aren’t you? I want you to think of the seriousness of these things that I’ve talked to you about. The offerings, and the Passover, the unleavened bread of sincerity, the blood of which Jesus said, “Drink My blood, eat My flesh, if you don’t do this, you have no life in you.” A lot of you tonight might not want to partake of it, and you’d better not partake of it if your heart isn’t pure and right with God. “Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you,” Jesus said. I want you to partake of this offering of the Lamb, and come out of that fleshly mind of Egypt. Start a holy walk with God, with the unleavened bread of sincerity, and walk until you walk over into the Canaan land of the mind of Jesus Christ, into the revelation of God.
How many of you love the Lord? Let me see your hand. Now, I want to do everything that I can tonight according to the way that I feel that the Lord would have it done. To me, as I said before, this is very scared. We already have the wine for it. I don’t believe in using grape juice, like a lot of churches do, because there is no strength in grape juice, and His blood had strength in it. Alcohol is a preserver, and real wine carries a little alcohol in it. I believe His blood can preserve. I believe the supper should be kept with wine. I believe that’s why God let’s them keep the supper with grape juice out there just to show that they don’t have the Holy Spirit or any strength in it to preserve them. It is just a ritualistic with them. But any blood won’t do. It takes His blood so tonight I want you to regard this as the crossing over of the Jordan.
When I saw that pillar of fire go over that engineer’s house I asked, “Lord, what does it mean?” And He said, “That’s death. This is the church passing over the Jordan, going over the Jordan by the blood of Jesus Christ.” What we want to do is get over our carnal mind. To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. To lean to your own understand is the carnal mind of death. To lean to the mind of the Lord and trust in His Word with all your heart is the mind of life and peace. Don’t try to figure it out" try to believe it out. If you try to figure it out, God will turn you over to a reprobate mind and send you strong delusion, letting you believe a lie and be damned. But if you’ll try to believe it, God will open up your understanding and give you revelation and show you what it means.
Somebody said, “Well Brother Pike, do we just go out into something we don’t understand?” Abraham sojourned in a land he didn’t understand and didn’t know anything about. He just went by faith, believing that God was going to make the way and God did. It’s a journey by faith. Did you notice that in all of the offerings that they brought that animal to the door and always killed it at the door? That again had to do with the blood being applied over the door post. There’s no atonement or no remission without the shedding of blood as in the atonement of the Lord Jesus. All things were sprinkled with blood.
Jesus gird himself about with a towel, which indicates the truth, and He took that and used the water to wash Peter’s feet, which indicated the Spirit, by the Word of truth, the Spirit of truth. He had His loins gird about with the truth. He washed the feet of Peter because that’s where the soul is. The serpent strikes at the heel of the foot. The soul is that that goes through the torture by everything resting on it continually. Peter said, “Lord, You will never do that to me.” He said, “If I don’t wash you, you’ll have no part with Me.” That was baptism. Then Peter said, “Lord, not only my feet, but my head and my hands,” that is, baptize me. And so then Peter boldly preached baptism when he got the revelation of it.
Jesus was the Word that washed Peter’s feet. Tonight, when you wash each other’s feet, I want you to remember that your doing it to the least of these. It is bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. You are washing the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. When you eat the communion bread, you are eating the broken body of the Lord Jesus in a spiritual sense. The unleavened bread of His broken body, for His broken body had no sin in it. It was unleavened. You are eating the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. When you drink His blood, His blood represents the Spirit of God, for the life, which is the spirit, is within the encasement of the blood. Without the blood of Jesus, there is no life or spirit because it comes within the blood of Jesus. So, to drink the blood is to get the strength of the blood to preserve you. To drink the wine is to get the strength of the wine.
The Bible said, “Drink a little wine for the stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.” Jesus drank wine at the supper and then He turned the water into wine. So, they could drink wine, but He said drink a little wine. Paul said, “A little wine.” They called Jesus a wine bibber. You know, a wine bibber is one they say is always running off at the mouth about something. When Jesus would go to preach, they said, “You’re just a bibber and it is all caused from wine. Everything you say, you are just bibbing over Your drunkenness.” But He wasn’t a bibber. He wasn’t drunk and what He said wasn’t bibbing. It was preaching the gospel. He knew exactly what He was saying.
John came neither eating or drinking and they said he had a devil. You can’t please folks, can you? Jesus came both eating and drinking, to be made like unto us, and they called Him a wine bibber and a friend of publicans. John neither ate nor drank or would fellowship anybody, and they said he’s got a devil. Either way you go, folks are going to pin you down. So the only thing to do is obey the Lord and let nature take its course, as it is said, as God guides you. Acknowledge the Lord in all of your ways and He will direct your paths.
Tonight, we want to acknowledge the Lord in this. We’ve got the plate and we’ve got the little tiny glasses that you use, but we are just going to use one cup tonight, just one cup. Brother Terry brought me a cup and he is a Lambert. So tonight, we are going to use one cup and that cup being brought by the Lamb in the type tonight. The men are going to drink from it and then we are going to let the ladies drink from the same cup. Take a sip of that and to pass it on from one to another. Brother and sister Lambert made this bread, so it also comes from the Lamb. Isn’t that something? The wine will be from the Lamb and the bread will be from the Lamb. What I want you to do, before we do anything, is to kneel down where you are at. I want you to pray for a few minutes.
I want you to pray tonight and I want you to talk with the Lord and ask God to clear your soul and your mind before you partake of this tonight. Father of heaven, Lord we come to thee tonight in Jesus’ precious wonderful name. God, You said let whosoever will come and partake of the waters of life freely. Lord in the book of Zachariah, You said there would be fountain open in that day for Israel. Dear God, I believe that that fountain was Calvary, and I believe that it’s open, Lord, for Israel, and I believe that tonight, Lord, that Your blessings are upon spiritual Israel. Father, tonight I know that Your blessings are upon us. I know that this is a great significant, God, in that in our history it shows a new world coming in, Lord, by the man Columbus. Dear God, I pray tonight, as this new world comes in, as this new revelation comes in, Father, as this new mind of God comes in and the old veil goes out, I pray, dear God, that this great refreshing of the later rain might rapture the church and bring forth the harvest that is needed, O God, for what we are about to do. I ask in the name of the Holy Christ child tonight, that if there be anything in my heart, Lord, that it be moved away, that I might be pure in heart, dear God, and that if there be anything, Lord, in the minds of these people, in the hearts of these people, Lord, in the souls of these people, that it might be moved away. I ask in Jesus’ name that You unite us together tonight as one body by Thy blood, heavenly Father. Unite us together tonight as one body, dear God, by Thy blood and by Thy broken body tonight that we become one membership through the eating and drinking, Lord, tonight. I ask You to be with us and I ask You to help us. O God, bless the people tonight, Lord, as we linger here before Thee. I pray, keep us in Jesus’ name tonight.
By Rev. George Leon Pike Sr.
Founder and first President of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Kingdom of Abundant Life, Inc.
Holiness Unto The Lord