The Woman Clothed with the Sun
When Brother Branham was asked, "Is Revelation 12 speaking of the Bride?" He replied, "Revelation 12 does not pertain to the Bride . . . it's Israel, the church"
(C.O.D. 1145:Q137).Please open your Bibles to Revelation 12. This chapter outlines the earthly journey of the believers in Jesus as Messiah. The woman clothed with the Sun is the church in the sense of those who have separated from the world and identified with Jesus Christ. The woman symbolizes the elect. Since the revelation in this chapter will be received by the 144,000 elect Israelites during the tribulation, three and a half years after the first resurrection and the translation of the living Bride, we should view this chapter through the eyes of those Hebrew believers.
Revelation 12 spans Matthew 1:1 to Revelation 11:19. From the birth of Messiah, His confirmation of the Abrahamic Covenant for three and a half years, His rejection and crucifixion as foretold in Daniel 9:27, His ascension, and fulfillment of the Promise -- from the Day of Pentecost and the redemption of the Gentiles during Israel's apostacy and spiritual blindness -- to Israel's revival and the consummation. In this time the sixfold purpose of Gabriel's visit to Daniel (9:24) will be fulfilled under the Seven Seals, Seven Trumpets, Seven Vials and Three Woes, bringing-in the Millennium.
"And there appeared a great sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the Sun, and the Moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and screamed in the anguish of delivery."
This woman represents Israel, the mother church who brought forth Messiah and has crossed from Orthodox Law to the Christian Gospel. The Moon is a reflection of the perfect light of the Sun in its absence and becomes superfluous once the Sun has risen. The Sun types the Word or Light of God; Jesus is the Light of the World made flesh. The Moon types the Law, reflecting good things to come. In an eclipse, the world comes between the Sun light of grace and the Moon, bringing darkness upon the earth as in the total eclipse (December 30, 1963) before Pope Paul VI visited Jerusalem (January 4-6, 1964).
The woman is under the headship of the glory of twelve stars which are the twelve apostles who crown the New Testament. Ephesians 2:20, "The church is build on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone". No other foundation can be laid (I Corinthians 3:11; Matthew 19:28). Like the Sun, true stars are on fire (or full of the Spirit) and generate their own Light (Matthew 5:14). Although the Law is still glowing, it has fulfilled its purpose and is no longer needed. She has risen above it, clothed in the Light of the PRESENT Truth (I John 1:7).
Joseph, a type of Jesus Christ, was Spiritual and loved by his father but hated of his brethren. Both Joseph and Jesus married a Gentile Bride. When Joseph's father blessed his two sons, God crossed Israel's hands so that the greatest blessing passed to the younger. This heavenly sign shows the blessing is crossing from Israel the elder to the younger Gentile Church (Genesis 48:11-22).
Jesus came first to Israel, commissioning His disciples, "Go not in the way of the Gentiles or into any city of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel" (Matthew 10:5-6). The S-O-N Light was anointing the woman because He came to His own and an election received Him. Because "Israel knew Him NOT", she is travailing under Roman and "Jewish" persecution, to bear the Gospel church, and pass the blessing FROM Israel TO the Gentiles.
Acts 15:14-17, "Simon Peter has just explained (in verses 7-9) how God visited the Gentiles in the House of Cornelius at the start of the Church (Acts 10), to call a people for His Name, a Gentile Bride. To this agree the Words of the prophets; as it is written, 'After this I will return, and will rebuild the House of David, which has fallen down; and I will rebuild its very ruins and I will set it up again (or restore them to the Promise I made with the Fathers): So that the rest of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom My Name has been invoked', says the Lord, Who does all these things'." First God would call out a Gentile Bride for His Son (Genesis 9:27; Isaiah 11:10; 54:1-5; Amos 9:11), then He will return to Israel during Daniel's Seventieth Week and reconfirm the Abrahamic Covenant their forefathers had rejected (Daniel 9:27).
Revelation 12:3-5, "And there appeared another sign in heaven; a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail gathered a third of the stars, and cast them to the Earth: and the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man Child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her Child was caught up unto God, and to His throne".
The red dragon is Satan, here working through Rome, the fourth Gentile empire of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2). We know this is Imperial Rome (before the Roman Catholic church organized) as the crowns are on the seven Emperors who deified themselves, whereas Revelation 13:1 is Papal Rome and it is the ten kings of the Holy Roman Empire who are crowned (Revelation 17:9-12).
The tail of the fiery red dragon signifies the "tale" by which he deceived Israel, causing Shem, the third part of man to reject his very Messiah. The deceived "stars" were blotted from the Book of Life (Isaiah 9:15; Psalm 69:26-28).
When Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus, who from his accession called himself "son of the divine Julius", ruled Rome, and the Edomite king, Herod the Great, ruled Rome's colony of Judea. The insignia on the pennants of the Roman armies was a red dragon. When Satan heard Jesus was born, he tried to kill all boys two years and younger as he had tried to destroy Moses when Pharaoh ordered Israelite boys killed at birth. Moses also typed Jesus.
God warned Joseph in a dream and he fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt where he remained until after Herod's death. Herod knew the Hebrew prophecies and feared his Hasmonaean House might forfeit its kingdom to the House of David.
Rome has been the enemy of God's church under both Old and New Covenants. The prophet said it would be (Daniel 2). America is the image of Rome in the political as Protestant denominations are the image of the Roman Catholic church in the spiritual. As Rome has persecuted the church from the beginning, killing scores of millions who refused to receive its mark of the beast, it will martyr the foolish virgin and 144,000 elect Hebrews when Israel receives the Gospel in the end.
Revelation 13:11-15, "And I saw another beast coming up out of the Earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke like a dragon, exerting all the power of the first beast on his behalf, and causes the Earth and all who dwell there to deify and worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
He does great wonders, making fire fall from the sky to the Earth in men's sight (the first Atomic bombs). By these signs he is permitted to perform in behalf of the first beast he is able to deceive everyone on earth, commanding them to make an image to the beast, which was fatally wounded by a sword, yet is alive. And he was empowered to give life to the image (a world confederation of Protestant churches), so that it could execute all who refuse to worship the image of the beast".
Imperial Rome was mortally wounded, her Empire in decline, when Emperor Constantine united the nominal Christian church with the State at the First Nicea Council of AD325, transforming Rome from a natural to a spiritual empire.
In AD337, Constantine founded a new Capital in the city of Byzantium in Asia Minor, away from the troubles of Italy, modestly renamed "Constantinople", (now Istanbul, Turkey). This change created rivalry within the administration, eventually splitting the empire and later the Roman church, between East and West as symbolized by the legs of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2).
Emperor Theodosius who was the last ruler of a united empire, outlawed the old gods, and made conversion to Roman Catholicism compulsory. At his death in AD395, the Empire was divided between his two sons -- the East and West legs. The Gothic and Germanic tribes effectively conquered the Western Roman Empire in 410, leaving a ceremonial emperor on the imperial throne, and half the Empire was occupied by the warring barbarian tribes of Gaul, the Germanic Visigoths, and the Hun. As the non-Germanic Hun were the Dragon's seed, these powers embodied forces from which Western Europe has never been free.
Pope Leo's intervention to persuade Attila the Hun not to invade Rome was crucial in augmenting the power of the Roman church and laying the foundation of the temporal power of the popes. It was thus that the primacy of Rome's bishop was asserted over all other bishops. As the Council of Chalcedon stated in 451, "Peter has spoken by Leo; let him be anathema who believes otherwise".
From this, the doctrine that papal power was granted by Christ to Peter, and that power was passed on by Peter to his successors, began to take firm root. But the Western Empire had merely become a ceremonial show for various Germanic generals. That ended in AD476, when the final emperor was deposed, leaving Germanic kings governing every portion. Effectively the Western Empire had fallen, but forces were already at work to mold a new Roman Empire out of the ruins.
In 554, the Emperor Justinian succeeded in that restoration. He saw himself as God's agent, destroying barbarian heretics, winning back the lost provinces of the West, and healing the divisions inflicted on Rome by the barbarian invaders in 476. He acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope in the West. At Justinian's death in 565, the resources of the restored Empire had been depleted and subsequent invasions once again divided East and West for a further two centuries. But the principal focus shifted to the West, as Papal Rome turned its eyes to the powerful Frankish, German and Austrian kings at the heart of Europe.
The transformation of Rome from Imperial to Papal power healed her mortal wound, and today Rome rules a universal Empire with greater power than ever she had under the Caesars.
Rome and America in the natural, and the Roman Catholic church and her Protestant image in the spiritual, are type and antitype. Through her (once) Protestant image, Rome will ban and persecute the end-time Bride, as she sought to eliminate the early Church under martyrdom. Her image will do Rome's bidding, and they will kill the foolish virgin and other classes of the "saved", but the Bride will be translated.
The true Church is feminine in designation. In Revelation 18 to 22, Jesus calls her His Wife and His Bride, whereas in Revelation 17, He calls the Roman Catholic church a whore, the mother of harlots (her Protestant daughter churches) and abominations of the earth (her creed and rituals). Rome's military enforcer and image in the political realm is America, which is also feminine in designation. As Jesus called Rome "the prostitute of the churches" because she broke her vow to Christ and hybrid His Word with Satan's wisdom to form a creed, Brother Branham called America "the prostitute of the nations" because she broke her Constitution and hybrid her people. America is the headquarters of Protestantism, the image of the "First Lady" seated on seven hills.
The degradation of women began in Eden when Eve disbelieved God's Word. Satan has been working on women ever since, causing those he can deceive to ruin men, and causing the spiritual woman or second Eve, the Roman Catholic church, to destroy billions of souls. From Eden the degradation of women went to Babylon, then Rome. Now it's in America where the women have invaded the pulpits, cut their hair, put on garments pertaining to men and divorced their husbands. Hollywood leads the world in filth. And there it will be judged (Revelation 18:21-24).
Thirteen is the number of a woman and the number of America. America began with thirteen colonies, thirteen stripes and thirteen stars in the flag, and she appears in the thirteenth chapter of Revelation. The Pilgrim Fathers wanted no Pope. They were godly men who settled America for religious freedom to serve God in a freed country. This suggested US Seal showing the children of Israel led by the Pillar of Fire crossing the Red Sea, bears a Roman Catholic lie for its motto. Whereas God regards rebellion as the sin of witchcraft, to the Jesuits, "the ends justify the means".
Revelation 13:11 does not call America a lamb, the creature was a young animal, an American buffalo that "had two horns like a lamb". Those two horns signify the strength and courage of the beast, which in its youth, rested in the principles of faith and its Constitution and the separation of church and state for freedom of worship. Now church and state are reuniting, and America is "speaking like the dragon".
Revelation 17:3 shows Rome riding on or controlling the last world Empire. And Revelation 13:12-18 foretells that the church will reunite with the state. Then America will serve Catholicism, and exercise all the power of ancient Rome.
The Books of Daniel and Revelation foretell the struggle between Michael and Lucifer for mastery over men's souls. Each is building a kingdom. Christ is building His by grace through faith received through discernment and free moral agency. Lucifer is building his kingdom by force and totalitarian rule. The times of the Gentiles which commenced in 606BC and continue to the consummation, reveal the rivalry between Satan's children, the genealogically nondescript non-Semitic anti-Semitic self-styled "Jews" of Cain's lineage (Genesis 4:11-15; 3:15) and his dupes of Adam's line, to destroy Abraham's natural seed (Israel) and the offspring of his Spiritual seed, the Church or Army of the Lord Jesus Christ (Revelation 19:14).
Satan rules the seed of Israel under the political and psychological power of Esau -- Canaanite and Edomite physical Serpent's seed "Jews" who intermarried under the edict of John Hyrcanus in 109BC and the Hittite (Ashkenazim) majority converted under the Khazar king Bulan, in AD740. Satan controls their religious beliefs by means of his sub-sewer substitute "holy book", the Babylonian Talmud, which they hold above Moses and the Prophets. The elect Israelites are a humble minority of 144,000 of the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, separated from the evils of Jewry, and living in the Land of Israel under the Law and the Prophets.
Satan rules the nominally Gentile world power through unbelief and our familiarity with the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil: superstitions and psychology of the false teachings of Rome and her denominational daughter churches in the place of sound doctrine, which is Bible faith.
The self-styled "Jews" control the Money Power which is the root of all evil controlling every nation under heaven. They established the capitalist system and its antithesis, Communism, which is funded by tax-farmed citizens in the free world whose nations forego income from tax-exempt foundations and multinational corporations, while their economies are manipulated by "autonimous" central banks in hand with the usurious Babylonian fractional reserve banking system that fraudulently creates money out of thin air and loans it at interest. Both systems enslave their citizens: one via taxation and interest, the other by the police state.
They plan to achieve world hegemony and install their "King-Despot of the blood of Zion" by a world revolution between communists, atheists, Nihilists and other Masonic groups, against Christians, Israelites, Muslims and all religions. Then, when the world has fought itself into utter exhaustion, they propose to introduce the "pure Luciferian doctrine" and totalitarian one world government. But a preliminary NWO is planned.
This initial form of the NWO is to be accomplished by bringing the political Zionists -- Israel and the nominally Christian West, into planned conflict with Islam in World War III. Preparations have been under way for centuries and plans were updated by Albert Pike in 1859. Religious hatred between Islam and Christendom is being fomented in the Middle East with Israeli provocation of the Arabs and the devastation of Iraq; in Somalia, Chechnya and the Balkans, the Philippine Islands, Indonesia and elsewhere.
The intended outcome of World War III is a NWO under nominal Roman Catholic control. But according to Protocol 17, "The King of the Jews will be the real Pope of the Universe, the patriarch of an international church". Pope John Paul II, like many of his predecessors, is a Jew. None of them have claimed the Law and the Old Covenant or believed the Talmud. "Jew" is a RACE and the natural attributes of that people and has nothing to do with religious belief.
The "City of London" is exceedingly busy nowadays. The Money Power also controls the Roman Catholic church. And Lucifer controls the Money Power. So Rome will rule the world as the Bible foretold, but not quite according to the script of the Money Power, whose plan is to destroy Rome and all religions in a world revolution.
Since 1990, there has been only one true superpower in the world, the United States. Because of internal decay and American pressure, the Soviet Union "collapsed". But remember, the Money Power controls American politics and foreign policy through "think tanks" like "the City of London's" Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Russia's "collapse" was NOT the collapse of Communism which is the creation and tool of the Money Power.
As far back as 1950, Dimitri Manuilsky, Russian delegate to the United Nations (UN) who succeeded Lenin as leader of the World Revolutionary Movement, or Free Masons, spoke of "launching the most spectacular peace movement on record". Its objective was to "put the burgoisie to sleep", so that the final take-over of the entire world by the Communists would succeed through the element of surprise.
This "peace offensive" was launched by Khrushchev in 1956, but passed largely unnoticed because of the dramatic diversion provided by de-Stalinisation. The vital importance of Khrushchev's speech at the Twentieth Party Congress was that it inaugurated the strategy of "peaceful co-existence" as the means of achieving world-wide Communist dictatorship -- an objective which clearly could not be gained by conventional military confrontation.
Michail Gorbechev brought it to fruition, and the International Jews are funding it at Taxpayer expense through their tax-exempt foundations, and agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), UN, and World Bank.
Global Finance is broke. The American Empire that arose from World War II is in disarray and financially malnourished. But the importance of her military power to the Money Power should not be underestimated. Besides, their Roman church holds the world's gold. America is and was ever a colony of the City of London. Like Australia and the rest of the Commonwealth, America is part of the Empire of the International Jews, with Wall Street a subsidiary of London. The US is taking the path of least resistance in solving her economic problems. Rather than apply internal industry and discipline to rebuild the domestic economy, she is transferring wealth from her colonies and allies. For instance, pressing Japan to support the dollar by bond purchases and the importation of products she does not need or want; impoverishing Canada, Mexico and South American nations through NAFTA; and military action to prevent development of Iraq's Mosul oil fields (which would have doubled her capacity to supply hydrocarbon fuels), thus maintaining oil profits.
Do you recall Revelation 13:3-5? "And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given to him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty-two months".
Rome was mortally wounded as an Imperial political power, but like the mythical phoenix, she resurrected as a Papal religious Empire, claiming dominion over heaven, earth and purgatory. She will gain temporal power over the whole world through peace, and her US image and NATO allies of the Holy Roman Empire will enforce that peace throughout forty two months of absolute sovereignty.
The real ruler of Rome is Lucifer through the Rothschilds' Money Power. Benjamin Disraeli called Rothschilds "the hidden hand" that controls ALL governments.
In the brief World War III, Islam will be supported by Communist nations, Russia and China. With malice-a-foresight, an alliance is being proposed between Japan, Taiwan and the US -- with Australia supposed to persuade Indonesia to join in the fray (John Simpson, The Weekly Telegraph, UK, Vol. 26 Issue 451). The strategy, as always, is "divide and conquer".
Beneath the surface of all factions, left and right, Christian, Jewish, or Moslem, capitalist or communist, "the City of London" rules through global financial and political manipulation. Whether it is European cohesion, US Presidential elections, US foreign policy, Colombian, Albanian, Chechenyan, Taliban narcoterrorism, oil-pricing-policy bombing of Iraq, Kashmiri "separatism", the military overthrow of Pakistan's elected government, a motion of no confidence removing the elected government of India or Australia, sabotaging trade relations and the political moving-together of Taiwan and China, the collapse of the Asian Tigers, the break-up of Indonesia, the emergence of a new political leadership in Australia, or the imposition of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) to wreck Australia's economy, "the City" rules.
Israel, a type of America, was freed from physical slavery into a wilderness where she was tried by the Lord before entering her Promised Land. There she drove out the occupants and possessed it. America's settlers were freed from spiritual slavery into a wilderness before they came to a place of rest prepared of God in the New World, took the land from the Indians and possessed it.
God made Israel the mightiest nation in the world, because so long as it was in His will it was invincible. Then He took a handful of people who wanted freedom to serve Him and He made America the mightiest nation in the world. America once proclaimed "In God we Trust" -- "friendship with all, and alliances with none". But upon entering the UN, America placed her trust in a confederation of unbelievers and has lost every war since (Isaiah 8:9-22). Now she has come to a place of no more repentance.
The founders of the town of Philadelphia called themselves "the woman in the wilderness" of Revelation 12:6, because they had fled the religious oppression of the established church in England and Europe. Judge Rutherford, Mother Shipton and others have tried to figure out the Scriptures with pencil and paper. But God knows precisely what His Word means. He interprets His Word by bringing It to pass, or sending and vindicating a prophet. He promised that "in the days of the Voice of the angel to the Laodicean Church Age, the mystery of God as spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began should be finished" (Acts 3:21; Revelation 10:7).
The "wilderness" is a place of desolation and loneliness where all the saints have lived. Martin Luther and his followers were cast into the wilderness by the Roman church; John Wesley was put out by the Anglicans; and for years the Methodists, Baptists, Nazarene and Pilgrim Holiness groups were in the wilderness, where God sent angels to feed them Supernaturally as He fed Elijah by ravens (I Kings 17). More recently the Pentecostals fled into the wilderness. But Satan and civilization eventually encroach upon the wilderness with education, reasoning against the Word, and things that satisfy the senses. Each time God revealed more of His Word in a fresh Move of the Spirit, He separated His "little flock" for a closer walk with Him.
Brother Branham called his own church "the backside of the desert", and this present separation has been in process since Laodicea ended. God could not immediately take us into the eternal Land of the Millennium any more than He could allow Abraham to settle the Promised Land because the occupants must first be destroyed, and the iniquity of the Amorites is not quite full (Malachi 4:1-3).
Brother Branham said, "When her man Child was caught up to sit on God's throne, . . . the woman fled into the wilderness where she was taken care of for a thousand two hundred and three score days, to exactly the date of Plymouth Rock, exactly, where the church came over here for freedom of religion, and she established here" (Mark of the Beast, #26:3, 22:157) just as Israel wandered in the wilderness and established in Canaan Land. That would be 1620. Deducting 1260 regular 365.25-day years from 1620, we come to AD360 which is the date of the Council at Constantinople where the Nicene Creed was issued as the Catholic faith. That's historical comment, not doctrinal statement. "God had made the promise to the church (to the woman), to come into this country" -- America (Jezebel Religion, 7:53).
Israel had to be tried, proven and sanctified. Those who came out with Moses perished in the Wilderness. Any elect among them would receive their reward through the grave, at Jesus' resurrection. Likewise, Pentecostals and others born-again by part-Word before the opening of the Seven Seals will perish in the wilderness journey and enter the Millennium through death's door.
God commanded Moses to utterly slay the Amorites and other Serpent seed people found in their Land. Christians too are to be totally separated unto the Word. Wise men wanted to exclude Catholic and Jew from America by the Constitution. Today they've intermarried with the physical Serpent's seed, invited tens of millions to settle, and united in brotherhood with spiritual Dragon's seed of Roman Catholicism. The iniquity of the Amorites is just about full again. America will be utterly destroyed by nuclear warfare as God revealed to Brother Branham by vision in 1933. "The last and seventh vision was wherein I heard a most terrible explosion. As I turned to look I saw nothing but debris, craters, and smoke all over the land of America" (An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages, 322:3).
Israel rose to greatness under God-fearing kings like David and Solomon and declined under Ahab who was led by his pagan wife, Jezebel, and Israel finally intermarried with natural Serpent's seed. Likewise, America rose to greatness under godly men like George Washington and Lincoln, and declined under President Kennedy who was led by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church, making an image unto the beast.
Forty-two is the number of "man's opposition to God".
When Ephraim failed to join Israel in their fight against Ammon, Jepthah slew forty-two thousand Ephraimites (Judges 12:6). Two she bears killed forty-two children who were disrespectful to God's prophet, Elijah (II Kings 2:24).
Jesus Christ is the forty-second generation from Abraham (Matthew 1:17). The Roman church will have dominion over Jerusalem for forty-two months (Daniel 7:23-25; 12:7; Revelation 11:2; 13:5). Forty-two churches in one place agreed to sponsor a series of Brother Branham's meetings, and when Brother Branham got there, he had none (Unveiling of God, 38:257).
Israel had forty-two camps before they reached their rest (Numbers 33:50-56). And America has had forty-two administrations -- President Bill Clinton is the forty-second President of America. A lady's man, like President Kennedy, he even tried to find an old lover in Norway during an official visit. Will the Clinton administration mark the end of the woman's journey?
Seven major continuous visions came to Brother one Sunday morning in June, 1933. The Lord Jesus spoke to him and said that the coming of the Lord was drawing nigh, but that before He came, seven major events would transpire. "In the sixth vision there arose up in America a most beautiful, but cruel woman. She held the people in her complete power. I believed that this was the rise of the Roman Catholic Church . ." (An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages, 322:2).
Will President Clinton be the LAST President before the woman, Rome, takes over? Will President Clinton lead America into World War III as Roosevelt led America into Britain's tea party? Will he use war and Roosevelt's precedent of breaking the Constitution for a third term as an excuse to run for his third term?
Brother Branham said when the Constitution's broken a little more, they'll put you in chains for preaching the Gospel (C.O.D., 145:201-203). He tied that comment to the end of the Gentile dispensation and the manifestation of the Sons of God.
Like Clinton, Roosevelt was a fascist dictator who set-out to bankrupt and destroy America and bring in the Jew, er. . . New World Order. Mr. Clinton is a pharaoh who doesn't know Joseph, and like Pharaoh, he has a great military power. As it was in the days of Moses, God has a little group under THUS SAITH THE LORD of a vindicated prophet. Is history repeating as God turns back to Israel?
The hour is late so here is something you can ask the Holy Spirit to assess, and perhaps correct or help expand my understanding.
In 1961, the Lord showed Brother Branham a vision wherein he shot a caribou with forty-two inch horns and afterwards, a silver tip grizzly bear. The caribou is the North American rein deer. "Rein" has the same meaning as reign, rule, govern or control. A "deer" is to a cud-chewing animal with deciduous horns. A "horn" in Bible symbolism is a power like a king or a dictator. The US "horn" is "deciduous" in the sense that the President has a limited term and is then replaced. Mr. Clinton is the forty-second "horn".
Although I have not preached this to a large congregation before, I have long believed this animal Brother Branham saw in the vision and later shot signified the total number of US Presidential administrations to the end of the Gentile dispensation. (But with the benefit of hindsight we now see that the forty-second presidency ended democracy in America since Mr. Clinton's successor, George W. Bush, was not elected but decreed President by a court of law. He has since over-ridden the Constitution, particularly following America's "Reichstag fire" which was engineered by the Money Power in order to hasten World War III and their totalitarian one world government).
American Presidents have often personified "man's opposition to God". Many have been traitors to America, lackeys of the Rothschilds, and in this century, Communists! Like American presidents who are elected, the horns of the caribou are regularly replaced. Whereas caribou horns normally have panels (like elected representative governments), the horns in the vision had spikes measuring exactly forty-two inches. (A "horn" signifies a king or a dictator). The horns on the beast that rose up from the sea had ten spikes, and they will rule a short time with Rome, deserting him at the end of forty-two months precisely (Revelation 13:1; 17:12-13; Daniel 2:41-44).
The little gun Brother Branham used to shoot those beasts represents the still small Voice of God's Word which accomplishes that for which it was sent. The fact that he killed each animal with one shot indicates the infalibility of prophecy. Had he missed, it would have represented sin. God will destroy His enemies with the spoken Word. Our defense and our resurrection will be the manifestation of that Word in us.
Brother Branham afterwards shot the silver tip grizzly with one shot in the heart. But the bear continued charging after he was shot, dying fifty yards from where the Prophet was standing. Perhaps I am stretching my imagination . . . or yours, but fifty is the number of Jubilee, and the Pentecostal Jubilee is the catching away of the Bride. The Russian bear will continue his charge after the caribou is dead, and after the 144,000 elect Israelites have received their Jubilee. The head and the horns of the caribou weighed a hundred and fifty pounds.
Brother Branham said there are four species in the grizzly family (as there are four different world empires in the times of the Gentiles). He described the silver tip bear as highly strung, ill-tempered, and the biggest fighter of these four bears. Certainly, "one of his heads was wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed." He's a real fighter, that iron runs right to the toes.
Brother Branham found and shot this bear in "sheep country". It was black with silver on the tips of its fur. Black represents sin, whilst silver signifies redemption. This is confusion, like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Another word for confusion is "Babylon". "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth" which stalks its prey among the "sheep".
From its fierce appearance and disposition I identify this bear with the beast described by Daniel 7:7-8, 19-25, and Revelation 13:2. I believe it represents the Roman Catholic church which will rule the world with America and the Black Nobility of the ten kingdoms of a revived Holy Roman Empire as revealed to Daniel and John in a series of visions. I understand both the Vatican and communism are controlled by the "Jews".
In some places Brother Branham said the bear would be nine feet tall. Nine is the number of finality and judgment. Once the bear had been slain, he said it was seven feet tall. Seven is the number for completion. Russia will annihilate the US, and then the Vatican by nuclear bombs. But the Devil-incarnate Roman Beast ruling from Jerusalem, will continue his aggression after the destruction of the Vatican (Revelation 17:16; 18:6-20; 19:2-3). Then Armageddon will break out wherein ALL life will be destroyed.
From the third to the nineteenth chapter of Revelation, God is dealing with Israel. Then from the nineteenth to the end of the Book we see the Bride and Groom returning to earth for the Millennium with the Old Testament saints and the 144,000 elect Israelites.
Please open your Bibles and follow closely. The first three chapters of the Book of Revelation reveals all that happens to the Church. When Christ opened the Seven Seals and revealed them through His prophet in March, 1963, the Church was potentially sealed. "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby you are sealed UNTIL THE DAY THAT THE BOOK OF REDEMPTION IS REVEALED AND THE REDEEMER COMES TO CLAIM HIS POSSESSION" (Ephesians 4:30; Revelation 5).
Redemption was virtually finished because the end-time Bride, like the 144,000 Israelites, were fully redeemed IN Christ ON Calvary. The Church Age saints however were NOT able to be fully redeemed on the Cross because in their dispensations the Bible was sealed with Seven Seals; they had only PART-Word and required Christ's Mediation for their ignorance in order that they could be born-again. Thus the Church is finished at the end of the third Chapter.
Revelation 7:1-17 is in parenthesis, meaning it is a soliloquy or narrative that shows the calling out of the 144,000 by God's two witnesses in the great tribulation under the Sixth Seal, and between the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12-17) and Seventh Seal (Revelation 8:1) as they appear in the Book.
The Seven Trumpet mysteries (Revelation 8:7-9:21 and 11:14-19) are preached to Israel under the Sixth Trumpet, bringing him from bondage in spiritual Egypt back to the Word from which he apostatised, by an understanding of the history of the past 2,000 years, and his PRESENT truth. This revelation is typed in Leviticus by the Feast of Trumpets, calling Israel to Jerusalem for the Feast of Atonement which will be a mourning for their rejection of Messiah throughout 2,000 years as described in Zechariah 12-13 (Leviticus 16; 23:26-32). Under the Sixth Trumpet (Revelation 9:13-21), Rome looses a religious persecution; Christ takes His Bride Home to the Wedding Supper, and two prophets minister to Israel, smiting the Earth with plagues by the spoken Word as oft as they please.
Revelation 10:1-11:13 is also in parenthesis, meaning it is a soliloquy or narrative that describes the Message of Brother Branham, the angel to the Seventh Church Age indicting the denominationals for rejecting Christ, and calling the Bride out of worldly traditions into the fullness of the genuine Atonement -- Christ manifest among us. Once the Bride is ready she is translated, and 144,000 elect Israelites are called by their two prophets from the shadows of bulls and goats, by the Seven Trumpet mysteries to the sacrificed and risen living Word. These things are revealed to the Bride under the Sixth Trumpet as it is positioned in the Bible (Revelation 9:13-21).
When the churches rejected Christ, the Holy Spirit, in 1963, they took the mark of the beast, uniting among themselves (and will unite with the State) to form an image to the beast.
Revelation 12:1 to 18:24 is also a parenthesis. The Bride is gone at this time. The manifestation of the Seventh or Great Trumpet of Isaiah 18:1-3; 27:12-13 marks the end of the Gentile dispensation. Under the revelation of the Seventh Trumpet (Revelation 11:14-19) to Israel (which is the revelation of the previous Six Trumpets and Christ's parousia to them), "the temple of God in heaven is opened and the Ark of His Testament is seen in His Temple, and there is a mighty earthquake". These symbols signify the ministry of Israel's two prophets finally revealing Jesus Christ. The Ark of the Covenant was the symbol of God's Presence with Israel -- His parousia to Israel. The earthquake is California, marking the end of the Gentile dispensation.
Revelation 12:7-12, "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven".
We see this passage is directed to the Hebrews because the Archangel or Chief Messenger we know as our Lord Jesus Christ is here called by the Hebrew name, Michael ("Who is like God"). The Dragon is Satan, and "his angels" are they whose names are not on the Book of Life from the foundation of the world (Revelation 17:8). Hence they are lost and have no place in heaven.
"And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, who deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the Earth, and his angels were cast out with him".
The casting out of Satan coincides with the manifestation of the Seventh or Great Trump at the end of the Gentile dispensation that is marked by an earthquake sinking Los Angeles.
"And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, 'Now is come the salvation, and the strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night.' And they (the Church Age saints) overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and (the Fifth Seal Israelites overcame) by the Word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you that dwell in them. Woe to you O Earth and sea! for the Devil is come down to you in fierce anger, because he knows that he has but a short time".
When Satan is cast down he incarnates the pope of Rome who changes from the false prophet to the beast. The Bride will become a hunted and persecuted little group, and after a brief and powerful display of the Spirit in the manifestation of the Sons of God, go Home to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in the sky.
Revelation 12:13-14, "And when the dragon saw that he was cast down to the Earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the man child".
Notice, he is no longer persecuting the elect Church. She has been translated. This is the Israelite Church who brought forth Jesus, the Messiah.
"And to the woman were given two wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent".
The Great Eagle is Jehovah God Whose wings are two Hebrew prophets with the anointings that rested upon Moses and Elijah to show the 144,000 whence they have fallen from the Old Testament, and by explaining its shadows and types in history and prophecy, disclose their predestinated place in the New Covenant.
Their wilderness like our own, is a place and state of heart which worldly and religious folk disdain. In Revelation 11:2 this place is typed by the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place which SYMBOLIZE a holy and solitary walk in the Presence of God which is the revelation of His Word, or where ever two or more are united in the faith, NOT an actual temple or physical desert. For the 144,000, this will be in Israel, where God will feed the Israelite believers for three and a half prophetic years under the ministry of two prophets.
These three and a half years are all that remains of the Spiritual promise of Daniel's Seventieth Week to reconfirm the Covenant. The covenant of Daniel 9:27 was confirmed for half a week (or three and a half prophetic years) under the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus never went to the Gentiles, and told His disciples, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles nor enter any city of the Samaritans; but go to the lost sheep of the House of Israel". The Abrahamic Covenant was confirmed to the Israelite first.
Jesus was thoroughly vindicated to Israel, but God allowed rabbis and priests to blind their spiritual vision so that He could create a dispensation wherein we Gentiles could receive the grace they would reject. The Seventieth Week is the tribulation period. After the resurrection and translation of the Church, the Covenant will be reconfirmed for three and a half years by the prophets of Zechariah 4 and Revelation 11.
Revelation 12:15-17, "And the serpent cast out of his mouth water (multitudes of people) as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood (his armed forces). And the Earth helped the woman, and the Earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth."
Another earthquake in Earth's birth pains to push up Mount Zion from within her bowels in preparation for the descent of New Jerusalem which is the Bride of Christ (Zechariah 14:4-5; Revelation 11:13; 21:2).
Isaiah 29:5-8, "The multitude of your strangers (Rome's Serpent's seed army) shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones shall be as chaff that blows away: in an instant suddenly. You shall be visited of the LORD of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire. And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel (Jerusalem, the Lion of God), and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream. It shall be as when a hungry man dreams of eating but awakens hungry: or as when a thirsty man dreams, but when he wakens, he is faint, and his thirst is not quenched: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that fight against mount Zion".
"And the dragon was furious with the woman (the blessing has crossed back from the youngest to the eldest), and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ (the 144,000 elect Israelites and the foolish virgin)". bb000415.htm
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