The scripture speaks much on the love of God. He loved us so much that he sent the greatest gift of heaven, a pearl of great price, to redeem us from our sins. There is no power, no rule, no teaching, that can come between a Christian believer and the Love of God.
If there is one thing that the great universal church of God needs in this hour it is Love. It is not the great spiritual gifts that God has bestowed upon us that we need as much as we think we do, it not great theology, or even revelation to know all the mysteries, for we are ineffective if we put emphasis on those things if they are not governed by Love.
Love should govern the home. A home that is not disciplined by Love is not much of a home. If the husband and wife do not solemnly Love one another, they cannot trust one another. Remember, Love is the strongest force in the world, and instead of resting our faith upon some emotion, which is alright, or on some gift, which is alright, we should rest our faith upon the Word of God. We must come back to this principle love over all, then those other things. If we did this there would be no division among the churches.
Denominationalism is a "separation of brotherhood." Brothers drawing lines in the sand "believe it our way or your out!?" If I can't disagree with a brother and still hug him and call him my brother then there is something wrong with me.
FROM THAT TIME__ BLOOMINGTON, IL Wm. Branham_ 61-0415B
And listen, I would rather be scripturally wrong, and have the right kind of a spirit, than be scripturally right and have the wrong kind of spirit. It's what is in that display itself... Your life proves what you are.
GODHEAD.EXPLAINED_ CHICAGO.IL V-2 N-24 TUESDAY_ 61-0425B
I would rather be wrong in my doctrine and right in my heart, than to be right in my doctrine and wrong in my heart." See? I said, "After all, it's your heart's condition."
"And I made that a practice to know this, that if a man, no matter what he does and how much he differs, and what he says about me, if in my heart, not from just a duty, but from my heart I can't love that man as well as I love anyone else, then I know there's something wrong in here. See?"
Until we come to a place that we love, not make-believe, but we love one another, when we love every brother, no matter what church he belongs to, we love him, not just pretend we do, because we know it's a religious idea; that we're supposed to do it, but really love him with genuine Christian affection, that we love one another, with long-suffering, bearing with one another, until we can come to that place our heart is not right with God. If I tell you, "I love you," I must mean that. If I don't, I'm a hypocrite.
"With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." (Ephesians 4:2-3)
The Bible speaks of three kinds of Love, three Greek words, eros, philo, and agape. Eros love is a physical love like between a man and his wife in union with one another, it is passionate love. Philo love, is the same word where we get the word Philadelphia, "the city of brotherly Love", that is brotherly love. The third word is agape, which is divine love, God's kind of Love, which is unconditional love, the kind of Love that God gave us in the Lord Jesus.
It was Agape Love that brought Jesus Christ to Cavalry. Human love, affectionate love is from the mind?the love of God is from the Heart. Philo love will always doubt and question, but agape love will always rest and be at peace. Human love is always reasoning, --Godly love never does. When you really love with God's love it produces faith.
Love is a powerful force, and when love is projected, and when it comes to the end of its strength, then sovereign grace will take it from there and will grant the object that love has asked for. That is the reason we have a savior today, God so loved the world, and His Love being projected toward the World that it produced a Savior. God so much wanted to see you well that His Love went out and it produced an atonement for your sickness as well as your sins. It was the love of God that constrained him to do it.
Nothing is greater than Love, it brings trust, it brings faith, it brings pardon. Love has no fear, love casts out fear. I have found a great deal of fear among Christians, this is not right, and it should not be so. Fear is a lack of confidence, but if you have love and confidence you will cast away fear. God wants you to have love and confidence in Him?this will cast away your fears and bring you to serve Him with greater love.
Love is not based on legalistic laws that we have to keep, love is based on faith in one another, faith in God, trust in God, confidence in God. And I will tell you this my friends, when the love of God has come into your heart, you won?t go around hurting and being hurt. When you believe God, really believe Him, and get married to Him, you die out to the things of the world, then God projects His love, and His love makes you what you are.
WHEN DIVINE LOVE IS PROJECTED Lima, Ohio, 57-0126E and WHEN LOVE PROJECTS Minneapolis, Mn 56-0218B
Mr. Wood and Mrs. Wood--Mrs. Woods was a Church of God, and Mr. Wood was a Jehovah Witness. And they had a crippled boy that had his leg drawed up. And they come to the Louisville meeting, and they seen the Lord doing the work. Mr. Wood, a very well-known contractor all over northern Kentucky, he said, "I might've been a Jehovah Witness, but that's of God." So he goes to Houston, Texas, to the next meeting, and there's where the Angel of the Lord come down and had his picture taken. Mr. Wood and Mrs. Woods was present to see it.
I went overseas to Sweden. On my road back, I started my meeting up in Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio. That night they come to the meeting, setting way back, and was setting, praying. And while I was on the platform, the Holy Spirit turned me around to their faith, and said something, maybe not these words, but on this matter. "The lady, and the man, and the little boy setting back there, he's a contractor from Kentucky; and they have a little boy that's crippled by paralysis, that's got his legs drawed up. But THUS SAITH THE LORD, he's healed." They didn't know what to say. In a few moments they said, "David, raised up." And David was as normal as any other boy. Love projected.
He quit contracting, sold out, bought a little place next door to me, and is my neighbor.
Then standing on the porch about ten o'clock one morning, down the lane, came an old opossum walking. Many of you has heard the story. Here he come, walking in there, and her leg was all chewed by dogs or something, and blowflies all over it, and maggots, where that it had been bloated for so many days.
We were looking at the opossum, and I said, "It must have rabies. Oh," I said, "no, and look." Oh, excuse this, but maggots was all over its leg, fly-blows. The dogs had chewed it, or either it had been run over by a car and mashed to pieces.
"Oh," I said, "look how it's swollen up, that great big leg that big and its other one." I said, "It's--it's dying." And while I was holding the rake over the opossum, to my surprise... A opossum and a kangaroo is the only animals that pack their babies in a pocket. And her pocket let out, and she had nine little, tiny, naked babies.
The day before there had been a very fine, beautiful, young colored lady of our city that had had a illegitimate born baby, and had wrapped it up in a blanket, and smothered it to death, and taken it out in a taxicab on the river, and dropped it in the river.
And we were talking of that. So I said, "That lovely young lady wasn't nothing like the mother that this opossum is." Not because she was a colored girl, no, white girls, brown girls, yellow, they all do the same without Christ. But I said, "The morals of this opossum is better than the morals of that woman, for that woman didn't want her baby, and she took its life." The police had her in jail. But I said, "This old mother opossum hasn't got over thirty minutes to live." And she was a biting on the rake for all she could do.
Usually when you touch them they, what you call "play opossum." But she was making her way somewhere. And I said, "She is biting this rake, and she's so frantic; but she's a real mother. She'll give this last thirty minutes of her life, fighting for her babies." I said, "That's mother love." She loved her babies.
The opossum rolling; and it went right up to my door; and there she fell, and exhausted. I said, "She's dead." And I went up there, and I punched her with the rake. But I seen she wasn't dead. And I looked at that leg, laying all spraddled out, and those little babies nursing on that poor dying mother.
And then I looked at that poor leg, instead of her laying there playing opossum, she took out to the house and exhausted and fell over. I said, "You see, she only has just a few minutes to live. But there's such a mother love to her, that she'll give the moments that she's got left to that motherly love constraining her to give those moments to those babies. There's more love to the animal for her baby than there was to that ill woman."
And then Mr. and Mrs. Wood come up. And Mrs. Wood, which is a dear, sweet, Christian woman, but in her terms of knowing, being a veterinarian; she said, "Brother Branham, kill the opossum and get it out of its misery." And said, "The little ones has a round mouth. They cannot take a bottle, and they're too young anyhow. They're just a few hours old.
So you'll have to take the little ones and kill them."
Oh, I thought, "I can't do that." I said, "I just can't."
Oh, she said, "Brother Branham, you're not going to let that poor thing lay there like that, and them little opossums nurse that milk from that dead mother. They'll die a horrible death."
Now, the woman was right. But something in me wouldn't let it happen. She said, "Why, you're a hunter. Go get your gun and shoot her."
I said, "I'm a hunter, but I'm not a killer." I said, "I can't do it."
So my boy come in around midnight from the river, fishing, and there laid the old opossum, still laying there. All night I thought of that opossum. I just couldn't get it off my mind. And the next morning early, I got up, went outside. And when I went outside, there laid the old opossum. Mr. Wood said to me that night, "You know, Brother Branham, if that opossum ever was going to move, it would move when the sun went down." Said, "You've trapped and hunted enough to know it." I said, "That's right."
And I've got a little girl, a little eleven year old girl. She come out on the porch, little Rebekah. And she looked over at it, and she started to cry. She said, "Daddy, she's a real mother, isn't she?"
I went over there, I kicked her on her foot, dew all over her, she still laying there, but I seen part of her mouth move; she's alive. I thought, "Oh, what can I do?"
Said, "Daddy, what are you going to do with that mother opossum?"
I said, "Honey, daddy don't know." She said, "You going to kill her, daddy?"
I made Becky go back in the house. I went in the den room and set down. Set in there, rubbing my forehead, I thought, "Well, I don't know what to do with this animal."
And as I was setting there, something said to me, "You were preaching yesterday about her. You used her as your text."
I said, "That's right."
"You said she was a real mother."
I said, "That's right."
Said, "I sent her to your door, and she's laid at your door like a lady for twenty-four hours, waiting for her turn to be prayed for, and you've never said a word."
I said, "Well, I didn't..." I said, "Who am I talking to? Am I talking to myself?" I jumped up. I thought, "Oh, is that You, God?"
And I walked out on the porch, and little Rebekah standing there looking at the mother opossum yet. She comes by it from the house. I went out to the opossum. I said, "God, I know that You know every flower. You know every cell. And being that this great horrible thing has happened to womanhood, of this beautiful young girl that killed her baby...
And You wanted to show that You can even lead the animals. And she come up and has laid at my gate, waiting for her turn to be prayed for." I said, "I am sorry, God, that I did that." I said, "I didn't know it, God. I would have done it." But I said, "If it be Your Divine providence, that You have sought this, and want me to pray for the opossum, this I do in Christ's Name. Help her, Father. It's her love for her babies has been so great."
And as God Almighty, Who we stand before, my solemn Judge, the opossum turned over and looked at me, raised up, picked up her babies, stuck them in her pocket, put that tail up in the air, marched right down that road, got out in the gate, and turned around as if to say, "Thank you, sir," and went straight to the woods with her babies. And across the road she went into the woods. And as far as I know is happy with her babies tonight.
If God could think that of a opossum, how much more can He think of you, when your love is produced and projected into the heart of the living God? If God... By instinct alone, that opossum didn't have any soul. It was a dumb animal. And if that could be done that way by the instinct, and the Holy Spirit could lead an old mother opossum there, knowing that He would have me to pray for that opossum, and her life would be spared, how much more are you than a opossum?
What was it? When love is projected, Divine grace takes its place and helps it. When love failed in that colored girl's heart, and the love of that opossum to her babies, Divine grace was given to an animal, and sent to the place of prayer for a delivery. If Divine grace will act that way upon an animal, what will it be to human beings who'll consecrate themselves to the Divine love of the Lord Jesus Christ and has recognized Him?
"O God, let Divine grace take its place now, and step in and do that which man could not do. Grant it, heavenly Father, for the glory of God. May the Holy Ghost testify in this meeting, that sinners might come to the altar that people might renew their vows that all prejudice and difference might be taken from the heart, and men and women would live together. And they, with that Divine love for God, projected into the hearts of each other, and draw a circle of fellowship through Divine love will take its place in here and do signs and wonders in the next few hours in this meeting, as it goes on through the day, that the world has never seen nothing like it before. Almighty God, grant this in Christ's Name I pray, Amen."