20-0216M: FAMILY [PART 2]: LOYALTY AND ONENESS.
Preacher: Pastor L.T. Mutasa
Scriptures: Ephesians 5:21-33, 6:1-3; Genesis 5:1-2, 9:20-27
SERMON NOTES
It’s good to be in the house of God. The world has a lot that it can offer us but those things come with a lot of impurities. We are therefore thankful to God for His refuge and a place where we come to gather for real things.
I believe you agree with me that the God that took us through COMMUNION is the same One that will see us through this series of FAMILY. We sometimes look for solutions when the Lord has already granted them. The Voice of God is Something that we need to be constantly hearing.
I am not going to be continuing with our series of FAMILY today with the intensity that I wanted because we will be nominating our office bearers. This series must produce in us and our children the kind of people that God wants us to be.
Ephesians 5:21-33 ~ It’s easy for people to acknowledge the devil in a man than it is for them to acknowledge God in a man. Submission is inseparable from wisdom. Submission does not mean you are a fool. It’s actually wisdom that makes you to submit.
The body is submissive to the head and when you see the body working against the head, you are looking at a fool. Loyalty comes with a sense of submission. Here is a secret I want to speak to every woman: if you are a woman, you don’t need to wait for your death, or a prophet, for you to know whether you will be in the Rapture or not. But if your husband is submissive to the Word and the Message of the Hour, and you are submissive to him, then you are Rapture material, but if he is not happy with you, yet he is a true son of God, then you are not going to be part of the Rapture.
And now, here is a secret for the brothers (independent of the first one for the sisters, God is not here to defend your pride, He is here for the salvation of your soul): the same way you treat your wife is the same way God will treat you. You are lord to your wife and if you beat her, you are saying God must beat you too as He is your Lord.
You are rich or poor according to your location. A one-eyed man can be king in the land of the blind, but when he comes to the land of people with both eyes, he is nothing.
If you take what I am saying and apply it wrongly, you will do so to your destruction. I am talking to married people here. You can’t go and marry an unbeliever, or a sister without the character of a real woman and say, “I will be patient with her”. No, you must just say you lust after her.
Genesis 5:1-2 ~ Marriage is not a connection of joining things together but it’s restoration, it’s redemption, bringing back that which was out of its original place/position. Adam and Eve had to be separated for them to be married in oneness of unity.
When you understand these things, you will know the order of the family, home, and of the Church. You must reform as a man and as a woman, we do not even need to fast and seek God for certain things that we bring upon ourselves.
Loyalty brings oneness and then that oneness is also a product of the realisation that we are one. My body submits to my own head not another person’s head and it is the loyalty of the body to the head that maintains oneness.
THE ORDER WITHOUT WHICH THERE IS NO RAPTURE.
If the respect of the wife skips the husband whereby, she respects the Pastor yet despises her husband, there is no Rapture. If any stage is skipped, there is no Rapture. Another tip for husbands: The way you respect your Pastor is the way you are saying your wife should respect you.
If you backbite and despise your Pastor before your children, the very same children will do the same to you.
Some women appear to be strong not because of humility but because of fear. When the husband is not there, the woman who submits because of fear will let it off on the children.
As a church, we are family and these things apply to everyone: man and women, boys and girls.
Ephesians 6:1 ~ God is not saying if your father drinks beer then you must buy him, or if your parents go to consult from a witch doctor, you must go with them. Neither is God saying because they do such you must not take care of them.
If you have nothing good to say about anyone, believer, unbeliever, or make believer, keep quiet. Be loyal. Even though your mother may be the most well-known witch in the village, you must love her, take care of her, visit her, and pray for her.
Samuel was loyal even to Eli, a blind Priest. Many people spoke against Eli and his disobedient sons but Samuel kept quiet. True loyalty can pass through any season. There are people who are loyal when things are fine but when things go wrong, that is when you really get to know them. Samuel kept respecting Eli until the end. He let God do the judging.
God will respect you if you stay in your position like Samuel. Loyalty must not be conditional. Your behaviour as a girl tells a wise boy how you will treat him in marriage.
Genesis 9:20-27 ~ The judgment of Ham was because he saw the nakedness of his father and went to tell his brothers who reacted with loyalty, like Samuel to Eli, as they took a blanket and went backwards to cover their father. Ham might even have had a quarrel with the father the day before. The goodness or badness of another person does not approve or disapprove you before God.
The falling or backsliding of another person is not a platform to rejoice. Tell the backbiter, “I’m not a dustbin into which you can dump your garbage”. You do not rejoice because of the nakedness of a brother.
At the family level, the wife is the body and the husband is the head. At the Church level, the Pastor under the Prophet is the head and the entire global Church out of all ages is the Body and God the Head.
Ephesians 6:3 ~ If you want long life then you must respect your parents. It’s not cancer that kills, it’s disobedience. Disobedience will kill you; we may not speak at your funeral but we will be knowing.
The same applies to spiritual lifespan, disobedience will shorten it. Imagine Daniel competing with Jeremiah. They were contemporaries, naturally speaking but they were not contemporaries. Daniel had to study the books of Jeremiah. We are contemporaries, but we are not contemporaries. It’s not by choice that I’m standing here as a Pastor and you sitting there, otherwise I was supposed to be sitting down and you being the Pastor.
You want a long spiritual lifespan, obey the Word. Every person who is under this ministry will not fall into calamity by accident, you will see it coming. I have no record of being disloyal and if I had, it would make me powerless to stand and preach. People must see that you are faithful and you stand true.
The deacons/elders must discuss who should come and pray to open every service. It must not just be anyone. If you read the COD you will know.
61-0108 – REVELATION, CHAPTER FOUR #3
118 Now, everybody can’t be a preacher, but you got a voice. And if you can’t preach the people a sermon…If you’re a preacher, you’re called to the pulpit to preach. If you’re not, you’re still a preacher, but live the people a sermon. Let your sermon be lived, and it’s the Voice of God that’ll bring reproach to them who reject It. They say, “No one can put a finger on his or her life. They’re sweet, living…They…If there ever was a man of God, it’s that man or that woman.” See, live your sermons. Don’t try to preach them if you’re not called to be a preacher; you get all mixed up, anyhow, and messed up, and you’ll get people tangled up, and you won’t know…Well, you’ll—you’ll ruin them and yourself, too. Just live your sermon!
119 The preacher’s called to preach his, and to live it too. If you can’t live It, then you stop preaching It. But you’re supposed to live your sermons.
[REV. WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM]
Here in this assembly, every young man is allowed to preach but the wife you marry will either qualify or disqualify you as a preacher for preaching here is not a show but a calling and a life.
The fact that the brother is a preacher is not an automatic qualification for the woman, there is a certain kind of life that a woman should live to be worthy. There is no engineering, your choice as a brother will qualify or disqualify you. You as a man must know your calling, stand responsible and pray before you choose your wife.
Marriage is not an emotional thing. It is something that can bring a man down if he marries a jezebel in a long dress. You don’t gamble with such matters. If you do things right, there are certain things that we will not condone.
63-1226 – CHURCH ORDER
71 There you are, that’s up to you to vote your own teachers in. And you ought to do that, put them in there, get somebody. And meet with the church, and say, “Who’s…Who here feels led of the Lord?” And then get a qualified teacher. And then let it be done. It’s got to be strictly business, brethren. If the teacher can’t qualify to it, then change teachers.
[REV. WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM]
This is a responsibility and if you are not performing, you must surrender and let somebody who will deliver to take up the office.
60-0308 – DISCERNMENT OF SPIRIT
That’s right. Every man ought to have a church home. You ought to have a place, not just to float about from pillar to post, but have somewhere that you go to church and you call it your church, somewhere you pay your tithes, and somewhere that you help support the Cause. Take your choice, but then don’t never disfellowship the other man because he don’t belong with your group. See? Discern his spirit and see if he’s got the same purpose in heart, then you got fellowship one with another. You’re working for one great Cause. That’s the cause of Christ. I think that that is absolutely true.
[REV. WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM]
You are a member of an assembly by your presence, your tithing, and your vote otherwise you are just a visitor who can come to hear the Word only, but you must have a home church.
57-0908M HEBREWS, CHAPTER FIVE AND SIX #1
26 But I believe in the supreme authority of the local assembly. Yes. Let each church be its own, choose its pastors, its deacons, its, whatever it is. And then, that way, the man in there has no bishop over him. The Holy Spirit wants to speak something to that church, they don’t have to ask anybody about whether they could do this or do that. It’s the individual in contact with the Holy Spirit. Show me by the Bible what’s greater, in the Bible, than a local elder to a local church? That’s right, yes, sir, the sovereignty of the local church, each church in itself. Now, brotherhood, that’s wonderful. All churches ought to be in a brotherhood like that, together. But the sovereignty of local church!
[REV. WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM]
There is no bishopric in the Message. You can talk to other ministers/pastors by way of fellowship only not to make them referral points. I am not pastoring you as grandchildren of another bishop at some headquarters somewhere.
When I visit other churches I preach the doctrine part of the Message but there are other things that I don’t preach which pertain to conduct and order (Conduct, Order, and Doctrine – COD). I preach only the doctrine which is the same because it is the Bible but I will be out of my place to preach conduct and order in another assembly.
For example, in the white community, their conduct and order is different from ours and, whether we like it or not, culture influences conduct and order and culture is alright as long as it’s in line with the Bible.
There are certain things that are peculiar to an assembly. If our service starts at 10am, it doesn’t mean every church in Limpopo must start their services at 10am. If our song service lasts 40 minutes, not every assembly must have the same duration. But doctrine, the Word, the Bible is the same.
57-0922E – HEBREWS, CHAPTER SEVEN #2
282 But the full and complete authority of the church is the pastor. Read that in the Bible, see if that’s not Bible order. That’s exactly right. There is no one above the elder. I have nothing to do with what Brother Neville does here. That’s up to you and Brother Neville. If Brother Neville wanted to preach Jehovah Witness doctrine, that’s up to him and you. See? If he wanted to preach anything he wanted to, that’s between you and him. That’s all. If the congregation votes for him in there, to preach that, that’s all right. That’s up to him.
[REV. WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM]
We are going to ordain the officers whom we are nominating today during our Month-End Meetings and one of the services will be a question and answer service. People must submit their questions before the meetings starting from today on the COD or on the things that we have preached: the Seals, Trumpets, dimensions and everything.
58-0928M – THE BAPTISM OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
186 And this church is sovereign. There ain’t no board of trustees or deacons going to tell you what to do. This church, in a whole vote, tells you what to do. That’s exactly right, if there’s a decision.
[REV. WILLIAM MARRION BRANHAM]
There are two kinds of offices that I am going to announce for our nominees today. These are major offices that run for a full year and minor offices which do not necessarily have to run throughout the year but can exp
