This is the evening service at the Branham Tabernacle. Brother Branham titles his message, “Broken Cisterns.” If you’ve never seen a cistern, they are usually used for watering livestock or watering gardens. The water falls on the roof of the house or barn, then through the gutters, and eventually into large tank, where it sits stagnant. Everything from dead rats to aquatic bugs can be found in a typical cistern.
The prophet makes a perfect parable of how the world drinks from these cisterns, and scoffs at the Bride of Christ drinking from a cold, clear spring. As far as we are concerned, they can keep the dead bugs and wiggletails. We’ll keep eating angels’ Food and drinking from this fountain of pure artesian Water. It feels good to be a believer!
Some people might be under the impression that--that I think that Jesus is going to come in the morning or tonight. I do. Now, I don't say that He will.
A--a cistern is a--a place, a thing that's dug in the ground, to take the place of a well. Where people doesn't have a well, then they get a--a cistern. In other words, a cistern is a man-made tank or a man-made well in the ground, that man dig out, to catch the water, to--to use it.
Now, a cistern will get empty. The--the--the cistern cannot fill itself. It is--is... It's not reliable. You can't rely upon a cistern.
One of the great sins that the church has done today, just like Israel then, it left Him, the Fountain of living Water, and has hewed themselves out man-made cisterns. And it become a habitation of everything that loves that kind of water. Lizards, frogs, and all kinds of unclean germs, live in it, because it's a man-made tank. And in this tank these things stay, a perfect example of our denominationals today.
And that's the way it is with a lot of these parasites today. You can't live in the fresh water of the Holy Spirit. That's the reason they're so firmly against the Word, and say, "It contradicts Itself. There is nothing to It." Is because they have to have some kind of a stagnated pool to wiggle in.
So there is the genuine evidence of the Holy Ghost! He has never told me anything wrong yet. That, "It is the evidence of the Holy Ghost, is he who can believe the Word."
And He's always giving us a service. You know, we can't even breathe without Him. We can't breathe without God's service. That's how dependent we are on Him. And, yet, it almost breaks us in two if we try to do, have to do something for Him. He asks us to do something, go see somebody, go pray for somebody, go help somebody, it's almost breaks us up, to do it. But we don't want to do anything to Him for service.
If a person goes to a stagnated cistern to get a drink, when there's an artesian well open, you would say, "There is something wrong with that man's mind."
Any other thing, outside of Jesus Christ and His Word of Life, is a broken cistern.
I can be so ever so down, and feel that I can't hardly go no... another round, can't go nowhere else; then I can kneel down and put my finger on a promise, and say, "Lord God, Thou art my strength. Thou art my satisfaction. Thou art my all-in-all." I can begin to feel Something bubbling up from inside of me there. I come out of it.
I'm a stinker, I'm a renegade, every one of us are, but before God we are perfect. Je-... "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect." How can you be? Because a perfect One represents us there. That Fountain is there every day, fresh. Not some stagnated something, but fresh every day, that washes away all my sins. He is that Fountain.
The inexhaustible Fountain of Life is Jesus Christ.
And that's the way it is with a Spirit-filled life. As Jesus said, He was in... See, He give you wells of water springing up unto everlasting Life, an artesian, overflowing gusher that's constantly flowing. Whether the rest of the church is up or down, you're still at that Well.
Always, Lord, let me be in His Presence, for there's no other I know. No creed, no love; no love but Christ, no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no anything else, no joy outside of Him.
Do you love one another? Is there anybody in here got anything against somebody else? If there is, go make it right. Will you? Let's not leave here like that. See? If you got an ought against anybody, you go make it right, right now. Right now is your opportunity to go over, say, "Brother, sister, I said something about you, I thought something. I didn't mean to do that. Forgive me." See, that's the way to do it. Let's have the Fountain right among us, all the time.
Oh, isn't He wonderful? No other fountain! We won't contaminate ourselves with other things. We have separated, left the world behind. We don't want no more of Egypt's garlics and broken cisterns. We are in the journey with the Lord Jesus, that smitten Rock, amen, eating Manna from Above, and drinking; eating angels' Food, and drinking from the Rock. Amen!
Brother Branham refers to the seven visions he had in 1933. Here is an excerpt from the Church Age Book, where he wrote what these visions were.
The Lord Jesus spoke to me and said that the coming of the Lord was drawing nigh, but that before He came, seven major events would transpire. I wrote them all down and that morning I gave forth the revelation of the Lord. The first vision was that Mussolini would invade Ethiopia and that nation would "fall at his steps". That vision surely did cause some repercussions, and some were very angry when I said it and would not believe it. But it happened that way. He just walked in there with his modern arms and took over. The natives didn't have a chance. But the vision also said that Mussolini would come to a horrible end with his own people turning on him. That came to pass just exactly as it was said.
The next vision foretold that an Austrian by the name of Adolph Hitler would rise up as dictator over Germany, and that he would draw the world into war. It showed the Siegfried line and how our troops would have a terrible time to overcome it. Then it showed that Hitler would come to a mysterious end.
The third vision was in the realm of world politics for it showed me that there would be three great ISMS, Facism, Nazism, Communism, but that the first two would be swallowed up into the third. The voice admonished, "WATCH RUSSIA, WATCH RUSSIA. Keep your eye on the King of the North.
The fourth vision showed the great advances in science that would come after the second world war. It was headed up in the vision of a plastic bubble-topped car that was running down beautiful highways under remote control so that people appeared seated in this car without a steering wheel and they were playing some sort of a game to amuse themselves.
The fifth vision had to do with the moral problem of our age, centering mostly around women. God showed me that women began to be out of their place with the granting of the vote. Then they cut off their hair, which signified that they were no longer under the authority of a man but insisted on either equal rights, or in most cases, more than equal rights. She adopted men's clothing and went into a state of undress, until the last picture I saw was a woman naked except for a little fig leaf type apron. With this vision I saw the terrible perversion and moral plight of the whole world.
Then 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, though I knew it could possibly be a vision of some woman rising in great power in America due to a popular vote by women.
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.