What a wonderful opportunity! We get to enjoy with our friends around the world: the adopted sons and daughters of God!
Brother Branham starts the first in a series of four sermons on "Adoption," while going deeper and deeper into the Book of Ephesians every sermon. He takes his text from Ephesians 1:
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Oh, I like that. God made him an apostle. No elders laid hands on him, no bishops sent him anywhere, but God called him and made him an apostle.
And then if God has sent us to be His ambassadors, all the power that's in heaven, all that God is, all of His Angels and all of His power stands behind our words if we are correctly an ordained, sent messengers to the people. God has to honor the Word, for He has so solemnly written, that "Whatever you bind on earth, that will I bind in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth, that will I loose in heaven. And I give unto thee the keys to the Kingdom." Oh, such great promises He's given the church.
But if I have the privilege, and it was that God let me be caught up to see something, I would refer to the first heavens. And then I believe, one in the Bible by the name, I believe it was Paul, that was caught up into the third heaven. And if it was this glorious in the first heavens, what does that third heavens hold? No wonder he couldn't speak of it for fourteen years.
Well now, many of these little pretty-faced mothers setting here, some of them sixty or seventy years old, would say, "Well, what have I done, Brother Branham?" You've raised your children. You've done what you were supposed to do.
Now, Canaan does not represent the age of the Millennium. It only represents the age of the overcomer, the dispensation of overcoming, because in Canaan they killed and burned and took cities. And there'll be no death in the Millennium.
Let's not stop at believing on the Lord Jesus, being baptized. Let's not stop because He cleaned us up from a life of sin. But now we pressed on into a position, to a promise of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. For Peter said on the day of Pentecost, "For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to them that's far off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."
But when they are born, and positionally born into the Kingdom of God, then the Holy Ghost has set in the church, some apostles, some prophets, some teachers, some pastors, some evangelists. Then He's give into there, speaking with tongues, interpretation of tongues, knowledge, wisdom, gifts of healing, all kinds of miracles.
And now after you are in, that don't mean that you're out free from war. You still have to fight for every inch of ground you stand on. So see, Canaan did not represent the great heaven, because it's war and troubles and killings and fightings, and so forth. But it did represent this: that it must be a perfect walk.
Do you know that even your own behavior can knock somebody else out of getting healed? Your misbehavior of unconfessed sins of you believers, can cause this church to bitterly fail. And at the day of the judgment you'll be responsible for every bit of it.
Did we choose Him, or He chose us? He chose us.
Election looks back to foreknowledge, and predestination looks to destiny. Don't forget that, that election looks back here, here it is, "I was a cocklebur."
God has adopted us unto the sons; we are sons by birth, adopted and positionally placed by the Holy Spirit. Look. They were every one Hebrews, when they crossed the river, but Joshua divided the land and give each one his land according to the utterance of his mother at the birth, where the Holy Spirit told her.
But I'm telling you, as an individual, you let the Holy Spirit lead you. You read the Bible. And what the Bible says do, you do it.