Purpose and Providence a Study on the Prophet Jonah Part 4 "Why Have You Done This?"
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Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them.
Introduction.
Introduction.
Looking for answers.
Jonah didn’t have an answer for the most difficult question he would ever be asked. Why have you done this?
Hebrew prophets were not often seen in the cargo holds of the ships of Tarshish. It was the lowest moment of his life.
There is no excuse for what Jonah did.
There is no excuse for what Jonah did.
God’s providential work in one person’s life to turn an awful decision into a testimony is no excuse for the next person to try and do the same.
Paul lists 5 things in 1 Corinthians 10 that we shouldn’t do, that the Children of Israel did.
Lust
Idolatry
Fornication
Tempting Christ
Murmuring
Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
(Admonition = Warning/Correction)
Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
Perfect Will and Permissive Will
Perfect Will and Permissive Will
Very early in Bro. Branham’s ministry he recognized the difference.
Now look. There is a perfect will of God, and there’s a permissive will of God. And God permitted His prophet to go on, yet he…It wasn’t His perfect will. It was His permissive will.
And I feel this afternoon is the same thing —working these—for this miracle line. It is God’s, maybe, permissive will, but it’s not His perfect will. 47-1123 - The Children Of Israel
Now, this is just His permissive will, this way. It’s just when I come here, and pray, and cry, and beg to Him before coming, until that is laying so close it forces me into it. And you see the vision, and it’ll cut off.
But when it comes upon God’s perfect will, it just moves down and sometimes I’m out for about two hours. Then He sends in different parts of the country and different places; that’s just every time perfect. 51-0928 - At Thy Word
So I said, “Now, God has a permissive will. But I never like to work God’s permissive will. I want His perfect will.” See, always. I don’t want to work secondarily. I want to know what He wants me to do, and I’ll go do it. 52-0726 - Faith (Africa Trip Report)
At the very end of Bro. Branham’s ministry you find him picking up the same theme.
God doesn’t change His mind about His Word.
But, and if the people won’t walk in His perfect will, He does have a permissive will He’ll let you walk in. Notice, He permits it, all right, but He will make it work out for His glory, in His perfect will. 65-0418E - Does God Ever Change His Mind About His Word?
It’s best to have God’s will. That’s what He taught us. “Thy will be done. Thy Kingdom come. Thine will be done.” We must submit ourselves to His will and His Word. Don’t question It. Believe It. Don’t try to find a way around It. Just take It the way It is.
So many wants to go around, get some other way. And when you do, you find yourself going on, you find God blessing you, but you’re working in His permissive will and not in His perfect, Divine will.
He permits it, as I said, but He will not let it be His perfect will; but He’ll make it work to honor and bless His perfect will. 65-0418E - Does God Ever Change His Mind About His Word?
Moses and the Rock
God said, “Come here, Moses. Come here. Come up here on top…You’ve been a faithful servant.” (Like the woman with the high heels, “You climbed,” see.) “Look over yonder. See the promised land?” “O Lord!”
“But you’re not going over. You took My permissive will, down here at the Rock. You have glorified yourself, see, and not Me. You sanctified yourself. You didn’t sanctify Me. You didn’t keep My original Word, what I told you to do.” Yet, the waters did come.
You can lay hands on the sick and they recover. You can prophesy, or speak with tongues. But, the thing is, keep His original Word! God don’t change His mind, friend. You’ve got to keep His commission, His will. “Oh, well, that was for the disciples.”
He doesn’t change. If He’s still got a disciple, that’s the same commission. “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel. These signs shall follow them that believe.” It’s never change. He can’t change.
Now, you can say, “Well, I tell you, it ain’t for this day.” Oh, you Balaamite! You see? See, God don’t change. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. 65-0418E - Does God Ever Change His Mind About His Word?
Yet, He grants you permission for to make, permit your will, a permissive will, knowing that…What’s in your heart, He knows it.
You say, “Well, Brother Branham, I do so-and-so. It don’t bother me. God blesses me every day. I sing in the Spirit. I dance in the Spirit. I…” He’ll permit it.
“I wear shorts, and I do this. It don’t bother me. I know my faith is in Christ, not in what I wear.”
But, the Bible said there is something to it. What’ll you do? You’ll make a stumbling block, like Balaam did, before every one of the other women. What’ll you do to your young girls? You’ll have a bunch of Rickettas, that’s exactly right, a bunch of little painted-up Jezebels.
But God will prosper you. “Why, He blesses me.” I don’t doubt that. He blessed Balaam, too. Certainly He will. You’re walking in His permissive will, not His perfect will. God doesn’t change His mind, ’cause He blesses you.
He blessed Israel right out there for forty years. What did they do? Married wives, raised families, kissed the children, paid their tithes, lived right out there.
And the God blessed them in the wilderness, fed them with the manna, on and on. And every one of them perished, ’cause they never kept His original will, His Word. They took His permissive way.
Go ahead, but, you remember, when they left Kadesh, they never journeyed any farther. They just went around and around, in the wilderness.
Where, they could have been out, in two days after that, they could been in the promised land. They journeyed forty years, and every one of them died but Joshua and Caleb, the ones that stayed on the original Word. 65-0418E - Does God Ever Change His Mind About His Word?
Now, you see, from as I said last night, any move from that original plan of God throws the whole thing out of cater. We can’t move from that original Word.
We talked on it last evening, or evening before last, rather, on Balaam. He got God’s answer, straight and clear, “Don’t go!” But He has a permissive will.
And you can work in that if you wish to, and God will make it honor Him, but still it’s not God’s perfect will. And that’s what we should strive for, His perfect will, not His permissive will.
The Kingdom of God, which He…is in the earth today, can never be set up, justly, on a permissive will. It’s got to come back to His perfect will. 65-0429B - The Seed Shall Not Be Heir With The Shuck
Abraham- Hagar (Polygamy)
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
So, we really believe that God never changes His mind about what He said. He always keeps It true.
But He has a permissive will. Now, there, where the trouble lays. We try to work on God’s permissive will, and He will permit it.
But also if we take His permissive will, though it’s not right, He will make His permissive will to work out, together, to glorify His perfect will.
There is nothing will go wrong, with God. He knows just where the clock is ticking at, tonight. There is nothing wrong. Every lick is hitting just exactly the way it should be, everything.
We think it’s wrong, but He knows it’s right. It’s supposed to be like this. 65-0427 - Does God Change His Mind?
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
The Bible reveals that God knows every detail of the past present and future, and he actively works in the present to bring about His future plan.
Bro. Branham preaches for years that Jonah was backslid.
And let’s stop just for a minute to straighten my expression that I made about Jonah. I do not believe he was backslid. I believe that he was…He did what God told him not to do, but God knew all the time that he was going to do it, for God’s infinite, and He knows all things.
And we are told, or I have read, that the people of Nineveh were worshippers of idols, and their sins had got great. And one of their gods, especially the god of the sea, was a whale. And it was the god of the sea, because it was the largest specie in the sea.
And the people, their occupation was fishing. And as all of them at their task that morning, drawing in the nets of fishes…And all of a sudden, up comes the god of the sea, opens up his mouth, and the prophet walks out. Sure, they repented. It was all in order. 59-0405E - The Queen Of Sheba
Bro. Branham is looking at the big picture now.
A prophet was a sign. Bro. Branham couldn’t smoke or drink, even though he tried. Some of you could. You are not less of a Christian, but God was using Him for a special purpose.
And the prophet, when he got down to the sea coast…Instead of going to Nineveh, he took a ship that was sailing out to Tarshish. Now, we’ve always thought that was a shortcut, or dodging the duty.
But I’m going to try to take up for that preacher tonight, and I’m going to say that I believe he was a prophet, and was exactly in the will of God.
I believe he followed the leading of the Spirit. I believe he was led to go that way. He didn’t understand it, after God had commissioned him one place, and here he found himself going another way. 62-0612 - Behold, A Greater Than Solomon Is Here
Jonah was a prophet. Many people condemn Jonah and say, “Well, he was a ol’ backslider.” He wasn’t backslid. A man of God, “The footsteps of the righteous is ordered of the Lord.” Do you believe that?
And I don’t care what the man of God does, if he’s ordained of God, he might do things that he thinks is crazy to himself, but if you’ll only watch, it works right out exactly right, if he just goes the way he’s led. 62-0721 - Behold, A Greater Than Solomon Is Here
God is perfect, the men He uses are not, but still He backs them up.
The Seven Spirits of God
The Seven Spirits of God
“He that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars,” Revelation 3:1. As this same Lord identified Himself with man in the incarnation, He is again identifying Himself with man by His Spirit within man. “These are mine,” saith the Lord.
The seven Spirit-filled messengers are the Lord’s. They may be repudiated. They may be questioned. Indeed, to human minds they may not even seem to qualify — nevertheless, they are the messengers for their age.
God used an Abraham (he lied), He used a Moses (he rebelled), a Jonah (he disobeyed), a Samson (he sinned), a David (he murdered). He also used a Joshua, and a Joseph. And those with severe blemishes far outnumber those whose histories seem to be perfect.
ALL WERE, AND ARE HIS. None dare deny that. He used them by and through the Holy Spirit that He put within them. To their own Master they stood or fell. And in them all was accomplished the sovereign will of God.
Let external history attempt to refute this, it still stands. The Eternal God still walks amongst the golden lamp stands and sends His messengers by His Spirit with the Word to the people of every age. CAB 07 - Sardisean
He wasn’t justifying sin. A Christian minister has a higher calling than an Israelite king. The angel explained to Bro. Branham that he had a higher calling as a minister than an Old Testament Prophet.
Don’t put your confidence in a man. When that man leaves the Word of God, you leave the man. 63-1130B - Influence
Committal
Committal
The sailors asked Jonah, “Why did you do this?” He didn’t know. You don’t have to be able to explain your past, to trust God with your future.
Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous.
And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.
They attempted to row and couldn’t do it. “It’s hard to kick against the pricks”.
So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.
Jonah said, commit me to the sea. Lord, I’m yours. I can’t change the past, but I can commit myself wholly to your mercy.
Now, there’s a perfect way and a permissive way. And I feel that if God, here on the platform, can show me things that has been, and in my rooms and so forth, He’s able to tell me just where He wants me and what He wants me to do.
But I feel as long as I’ve got it all hooked up, or I feel like then He won’t put His hands on it, as long as I’m doing it.
And that’s the way it is, anything. As long as you’re going to do it…If someone talks about you, and you talk back about them, God can’t fight your battle; you’re fighting it yourself.
Just let loose and let Him do it. And just commit it to Him. The greatest weapon that I know of, of a Christian today, is a committal to God. When you can’t do nothing about it, just commit it to Him, and God will take care of it. 51-0722A - Life Story
When Jonah commited himself to the sea, He was in the perfect will of God.
Commit thy way unto the Lord; Trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.
Conclusion.
Conclusion.
Jonah commited himself to the sea, Christ commited himself to the cross.
Into thine hand I commit my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.
Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:
Let that be our example, so we can be in the perfect will of God.
I give myself away.
I surrender