Matthew 24, part 2 - Sign of the Son of man

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The disciples only asked for the sign of His Coming

MATTHEW 24:3And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

Notice. The disciples sought out the Word (by coming to Jesus) to find answers to their questions.

We must do the same.

This verse is vital.

Three questions were asked.

Question 1 : when shall these things be?

In other words, when is the Temple going to be destroyed?

Question 2 : what shall be the sign of Thy Coming?

"The" sign. A single specific sign.

This takes us right into the first half of the Fourth Seal. The Eagle-age where Truth is either revealed to the Bride of Christ so that they can escape the impending disaster of great Tribulation, or rejected by the majority of Christians who follow their traditions and leaders into the 3.5 years of great Tribulation. This time-slot is just before Death rides in to produce great Tribulation. We are all preparing now either for the Wedding Feast or for the Beast. We will either eat in Heaven or be eaten by the fowls at Armageddon.

The disciples did not ask when He was Coming. They knew that was a total mystery.

Any Christian who thinks he knows when the Lord is Coming or who even asks when the Lord is Coming is not agreeing with the disciples. Thus that question is forbidden and is only asked by an error-ridden person who is totally off-track. Worse still is anyone who thinks that the Lord has already come. That person is really gullible and totally fooled.

So, to be Scriptural, all we can ask for is THE sign of His Coming.

This is what the disciples asked.

A crucially important sign that nobody looked for before it happened.

But another problem with this question is that we must not seek a sign.

MATTHEW 16:4A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

Jesus rose from the dead. No other religious leader ever did that. So that is the sign we remember every Sunday when we gather to worship and serve God.

How then did Jesus reply to this question about the sign of His Coming.?

MATTHEW 24:30   And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:

"The sign" has to happen to show that the first stage of the Lord's return is starting to happen.

The Coming of Jesus occurs in three stages or steps.

1. Shout.  A message to reveal the mysteries of Scripture and prepare the Bride to be able to understand the Bible. The "shout" is not brother Branham getting the revelation of Scripture from God. The shout is when the Bride is able to get the revelation from Scripture for themselves.
2. Voice.   The Archangel or mighty Angel of Revelation Chapter 10 comes down to raise the dead.
3. Trump. Jesus returns in a physical Body to catch up the Bride to Heaven.

I THESSALONIANS 4:16   For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

:17   Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

One month before he died and brother Branham was still looking into the future for the shout (the message that revealed the Bible) to get the Bride together and the voice of the Archangel to raise the dead.
65-1127  I  HAVE  HEARD  BUT  NOW  I  SEE
Dear God, in this solemn moment, it's going to be a time like this when there really will be a clap of thunder someday, and the Son of God shall descend from the heavens with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God, the dead in Christ shall rise.

Brother Branham, right at the end of his life, was still looking for the "shout" to happen in the future.

The "shout" was not brother Branham getting the revelation of the Bible mysteries. That happened between 1947 and 1965. The shout is when the Bride is able to understand the Bible mysteries for themselves.

We must learn from his quotes how to understand Scripture. We must not replace Scripture with his quotes.

First the mysteries come down as the revealed Word

Stage one of the Coming of the Lord was when

the mysteries came down from God as the revealed Word of God.

Jesus first comes down as the revealed Word. Only at the end does He come as a Man.

We are first introduced to Christ by Him being revealed to us as the opened Bible that we are able to understand.

We have to use brother Branham's quotes to understand the Bible mysteries, the Bible patterns, and symbols.

Stage two. After the mysteries have been revealed to the Bride, then the Archangel of Revelation Chapter 10 comes down to raise the dead. Are the living Bride restored to exactly the same beliefs as the first church age Bride?

Stage three. Our bodies change and the trumpet calls the Bride up to meet the Lord, in His physical Body, in the air.

63-0317 THE  BREACH  BETWEEN  THE  SEVEN  CHURCH  AGES  AND  THE  SEVEN SEALS

and the mysteries comes down from God as the Word of God

and reveals the entire revelation of God.

...  And when the Seals are broke and the mystery is revealed, down comes the Angel,

the Messenger, Christ, setting His foot upon the land and upon the sea with a rainbow over His head. 

... And here He returns back in the 10th chapter

after the coming time, that all the mysteries is to be finished,

and the Seals are to be broke, and proclaiming that its time is no more. And he said, "When the seventh angel has begin to sound, then the mysteries should be finished and

time for the Angel to appear.

This is 17 days after the supernatural cloud was photographed on 28 February 1963. And the Angel is still to come in the future. So the cloud was not the Angel of Revelation Chapter 10.

Once the living Bride understands the mysteries of the Bible, then the resurrection of the church ages saints happens as promised by Revelation Chapter 10.

64-0119 SHALOM

When that Angel, of Revelation the 10th chapter, puts one foot on land and one on the sea, and a rainbow over His head, He swore, "time shall be no more." When that time comes,

you'll rise up from among the dead.

While the rest of them lay there, you'll go in.

We first meet Christ as the revealed Word

So Christ first comes down as the revealed mysteries of Scripture to see if we actually love the revealed Word of God.

If we cannot love the revealed mysteries then we do not love the thinking of Jesus

This is how we get introduced to the thinking of Jesus.

Are we impressed by the way He thinks? Do we place His revealed Word above the opinions of any man?

There had to be THE SIGN (a specific sign) that the real revelation of the mysteries was going to start.

63-0318 THE  FIRST  SEAL
Takes the Book of Seals and breaks them and shows the seventh angel,

for this alone, the mysteries of God, is the ministry of the seventh angel.

The incredible supernatural in brother Branham's ministry was just to attract attention.

His main purpose was to reveal the Seven Seals so that the rest of the Bible mysteries could be puzzled out.

The Coming of the Lord would start with Jesus being revealed in His Word as the mysteries unfolded.

65-0718   TRYING  TO  DO  GOD  A  SERVICE  WITHOUT  BEING  THE  WILL  OF  GOD
And then in that great observatory, so that the world will be without, they're still wondering what happened. In Tucson, them big observatories took the picture of it up there; still wondering what happened. What is it? They still put in the paper, "Does anybody know anything about what, how it could have happen?" There is no fog up there, there's no air, there's no moisture;

thirty miles high in the air.

Oh, my!
"There shall be signs in the heaven above. And when these things take place, earthquakes in divers places,

then shall appear the sign in the heaven, of the Son of man."

"That day," in Luke,

"the Son of man will reveal Himself again;

being revealed, Hisself." And the world will look like Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Christ revealed in His Word that can now be understood.

MATTHEW 24:29   ... and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

We call the heavens our atmosphere. The atmosphere is where the clouds are.

So something is going to be photographed high up in the atmosphere that is far too high for any natural cloud to form.

Clouds are very unlikely to form above a height of about 12 miles as 99% of the water vapour that forms clouds exists below the 12-mile limit.

The laws of atmospheric physics will be shaken to produce a supernatural cloud that science cannot explain. There is hardly any water vapour above 12 miles, certainly not enough to produce a water vapour cloud.

Peter prophesied of a high altitude smoke cloud

Acts 2:19  speaks of the vapour of smoke in heaven. A very high smoke cloud is needed.

Two clouds would be seen at a height of about 26 - 30 miles for 28 minutes just after sunset near the city of Flagstaff in northern Arizona. The date was 28 February 1963. The smaller cloud was about 20 miles behind the bigger cloud.

The smaller cloud could be explained by the debris and smoke of a high altitude explosion of a souped-up Thor rocket from Vandenburg Airforce Base in California earlier that afternoon.

ACTS 2:19   And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire,

and vapour of smoke:

Vapour of water forms a rain cloud.

Vapour of smoke thus forms a smoke cloud. So this prophecy requires a high-altitude smoke cloud.

"Blood". This was 1963, the year that President Kennedy was shot and his blood was seen on his wife's dress. This tragedy shocked the world. Kennedy had also begun sending 15000 more military advisors to South Vietnam which laid the foundation for Lyndon Johnson to foolishly escalate the Vietnam war in 1965, the year brother Branham died.

"Fire" symbolizes war. The Vietnam war was a huge trauma and disaster for America. In addition, there were the burning American cities caused by racial riots in the 1960s that started in 1963 in Birlingham, Alabama.

Encyclopedia.com

The 1960s saw the most serious and widespread series of race riots in the history of the United States

A sad temporary judgement on them for rejecting the revelations that brother Branham had brought.

One historian said that America tried to commit suicide between 1965 and 1980.

But there was no scientific explanation for the bigger cloud that was photographed from the Tucson Observatory.

This was formed by the wings of seven angels.

All they did that day was to form "the sign in the heaven" that God was about to start revealing the Seven Seals.

Please note that there is no face visible in the original photograph.

There was also dead silence for those 28 minutes. The seven angels spoke to nobody. Brother Branham knew nothing about them as he was 200 miles south in Tucson.

MATTHEW 24:30   And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven:

The two clouds that were 20 miles apart were visible from Winslow because Winslow was in their path as they moved from West to east.

Eight days later those same seven angels visited brother Branham near Sunset Peak on 8 March 1963, which is about 200 miles south of Flagstaff.

Eight days and 200 miles separated brother Branham from the angels when they formed the cloud and when they visited him in the desert at Sunset Peak.

Message people distorted the Cloud to mean that It was the Coming of the Lord or the coming down of the mighty Angel in Revelation Chapter 10.

They studiously ignored the fact that there were two clouds.

They fudge around the fact that the angels formed no cloud on the day they visited brother Branham. They overlook the fact that brother Branham knew nothing about the cloud until some months later. His first public comments about the cloud were made in June 1963.

They try hard to fudge the 8-day gap between the 7 angels forming the cloud at Flagstaff and the 7 angels visiting brother Branham at Sunset Peak.

They claim, wrongly, that this cloud happened at Sunset Peak which is near Tucson in Arizona. But Sunset Peak is in the great Sonoran desert.

Christ does not come in a desert.

MATTHEW 24:26   Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth:

The sign of the Revelation of the mysterious 7 Seals

The 1963 cloud that was 200 miles north of Sunset Peak, just north of Flagstaff, was basically THE SIGN that God was going to use brother Branham to reveal the Seven Seals in the Book of Revelation.

The 7 angels that formed the cloud on 28 February 1963 at Flagstaff were showing a silent sign for almost half an hour (symbolic of the seventh Seal that symbolizes the Coming of the Lord) that it was time for the mysteries of God to come down to reveal Christ in His Word.

Brother Branham was not to reveal Christ as a Man. He was to present Christ as the revealed Word.

Then the same 7 angels would come down eight days later on 8 March 1963 to see him at Sunset Peak. There they commissioned him to return to Jeffersonville where they would bring down to him the revelations of the Seven Seals.

The 7 angels did this during the period of eight days from 17 March to 24 March when brother Branham revealed the Seven Seals. These sermons were published as a famous book, "The Revelation of the Seven Seals".

Then the rest of the Bible mysteries began to be revealed as his understanding of the Bible opened up.

64-0719  THE  FEAST  OF  THE  TRUMPETS

Immediately after that, the Angels of the Lord appeared and told about the Seven Seals, that I was to return back here to Jeffersonville and preach the Seven Seals. And, there, if I've ever said anything that was inspired, it was in that. There where the Angel of the Lord met us,

and the Bible become a new Bible.

There It opened up and revealed all the things that the reformers and things had left out.

It was the complete revelation of Jesus Christ, altogether new to us, but perfectly exactly with the Scripture.

That was the Word which has always been. I was so inspired and directed.

Message people really got things muddled up when the mistook the revelation of the opening of the Seven Seals for the actual opening of the Seven Seals in their full details which will only happen when the Bride is in Heaven.

The revelation of the Seven Seals was needed to open up the revelation of the Bible mysteries.

John the Baptist revealed Jesus as a Man walking amongst men.

Brother Branham revealed the mysteries of Scripture which showed us, Jesus, as the revealed Word of God, walking through the pages of the Bible.

Jesus is not revealed as a Man in a Body of flesh in our days.

He is revealed by our ability to understand the written Scripture that describes His thoughts and deeds. These are the revealed mysteries of God.

People forget that Jesus is the Word of God. So we will not know the true Jesus until we understand the revealed Bible which tells us His thoughts and what He wants to be done so that we can be ready for His Coming.

The seven angels brought down the revelations of the Seals between March 17 and March 24 which were the key to unlocking the rest of the Bible's mysteries.

The mysteries must first come down from God

63-0317   THE  BREACH  BETWEEN  THE  SEVEN  CHURCH  AGES  AND  THE  SEVEN  SEALS
... when the seventh angel begins to sound his mystery, he winds up all of the loose ends that these fellows probed at, and

the mysteries comes down from God as the Word of God and reveals the entire revelation of God.

The mighty Angel of Revelation Chapter 10 only comes down after all the mysteries have come down and been revealed.

Christ first comes down as the revealed Word which started with the revelation of the Seven Seals.

Christ is revealed to us in Scripture that becomes understandable to us.

Can you believe what the Bible reveals about Christ?

Then, after that, the mighty Angel of Revelation Chapter 10 comes down to perform the resurrection.

63-03 20  THE  THIRD  SEAL
... the seventh angel, when he sounds,

all the mysteries of God should be finished up

by his sounding.

Then AFTER it's revealed, the Angel come down

from heaven, which was Christ

The mighty Angel or Archangel can only return after brother Branham has revealed the mysteries.

He completed the revelation of the mysteries in December 1965. He died later that month.

The seventh messenger must first reveal the 7 Seals to be able to finish all the mysteries.

Revealing Christ in His Word.

After that, the Angel comes down to make an end of time as the Bride steps into their immortal bodies.

But before revealing the 7 Seals God showed a supernatural cloud in the heaven as the sign of the Son of man Who was to be revealed in His Word.

64-0112  SHALOM

But in the seventh hour, the seventh messenger,

that all these mysteries should be finished.

See? The seventh earthly messenger, see, this angel that He speaks of then was on earth. An angel means "messenger."

And then, AFTER that, he saw another Angel coming down,

not the earthly angel that had been given the Message here, but another mighty Angel came from Heaven with a rainbow over Him, and set His foot on the land and sea, and swore by Him that lives forever and ever, "Time shall be no more." See?

But BEFORE He broke forth on those Seven Seals to reveal them, that He showed miraculous, He showed it first in the heavens.
That day they took pictures all across southern United States and Mexico. There it hangs now in the Life Magazine, still a mystery to them.

But He declares it in the heavens before He does it on earth.

He always does that.

He shows His signs in the heavens first.

64-0719  THE  FEAST  OF  THE  TRUMPETS

The Seventh Seal hasn't opened yet, you know. That's His Coming.

64-0816 PROVING  HIS  WORD

The seventh angel was to open the six-seal mystery. It's all to be gathered up in the Son of man, His fullness of time has come to the fullness of His Word, to manifest the fullness of His Body. That's the Word, then, that's the spoken Word made manifest by the Word, reveal the Word.

The Seventh Seal symbolizes the Second Coming of Jesus. As such it is a total mystery. We know nothing about it, so the Seventh Seal cannot have been opened.

Christ has come in the form of a revelation of His Word so that you should be able to read the Bible and understand it.

65-0718   SPIRITUAL  FOOD  IN  DUE  SEASON

Now mark that with what the last prophet said, "Behold I send to you Elijah the prophet, and he will restore the hearts of the children back to the fathers." See?

A Message to bring them back to the Bible, and the Son of man will be revealing Himself in that day.

And at that day of the sounding of the last church age, the seventh angel, the mysteries of God should be made known in that day. The Seven Seals would be broken. The mysteries of all these churches and things, how they happened, and what taken place.

Angel only comes down AFTER mysteries are all revealed

But the Angel of Revelation Chapter 10 has not yet come down.

When He does come down, then He will raise the dead in the resurrection.

Then the seven Thunders will guide the living Bride to receive their new immortal bodies.

Only then will the Bride receive rapturing faith. We cannot get raptured in these bodies.

Only then will the Lord Jesus come to catch us up into the air.

Jesus ascended 40 days after His resurrection. History will repeat itself at the end.

People claim that Jesus came as the 1963 cloud and thus mercy is over and so we must stop taking communion, etc.

The error keeps multiplying and thus modifies Scripture just like a virus keeps mutating.

Jesus, in Matthew Chapter 24, then describes the way people would think and behave towards the end of the 7^th church age, just before the Second Coming which rescues us from the Tribulation.

But very importantly, when describing the conditions for the end-time, He spent a lot of time warning us how we should think and behave in order to escape the 3.5 years of great Tribulation.

Wrong quotes concerning the date of the 1963 cloud

Please remember, brother Branham knew nothing about the cloud when it was photographed.

If you defend a quote that is wrong, you are not standing up for the truth.

He was in Tucson, 200 miles south of Flagstaff where the cloud was briefly seen just after sunset.

Look how he gets his dates muddled up.

63-0601  COME  FOLLOW  ME

And just as I looked, right there was them Angels just as plain as They could be, setting right there in that picture. See? I looked to see when it was,

and it was time, same, about day or two before, or day or two after I was up there.

I looked where it was at. "Northeast of Flagstaff, or Prescott, which is below Flagstaff." Well, that's just where we was at, see, just exactly.

According to his daughter Becky in her article "Return to Sunset" he got to Sunset Peak on 6 March 1963. He first had to preach "An Absolute" at Houston, Texas which is about 1000 miles away from Tucson on 4 March 1963.

The cloud was seen on 28 February. That is neither 2 days before 6 March nor 2 days after 6 March.

63-0324E  THE  SEVENTH  SEAL

(16 days later. A little over 2 weeks after the angels visited him)

Notice, there's witnesses of three setting in here,

that a week ago (a little over a week ago)

I was up way back into the mountains, nearly to Mexico, with two brethren that's setting here,

picking cocklebur--or sand burrs off of my trouser leg,

and a blast went off that almost, looked like, shook the mountains down.

This is preached on 24 March. A little over a week ago would be about 10 days. That would be about 14 March 1963. But the javelina pig hunting season is from 1 March to 10 March. So the angels that appeared to him on 8 March would be 16 days previously, far more than a little over a week previously.

Brother Branham never saw the cloud and took three different guesses about it.

He assumed that the cloud was formed at Sunset Peak and that he was below it.

Not a good guess because 28 February is before the hunting season opens.

If he was there, he was hunting illegally.

Do not repeat a quote before checking the facts

He assumed that the angels formed the cloud as they came down to him.

On another occasion, he assumed that the angels formed the cloud as they went up from him.

On yet another occasion, he assumed that the angels that formed the cloud hung up in the air 26 miles high.

Three different statements. He was obviously guessing about something that he never saw.

63-0628   O  LORD  JUST  ONCE  MORE

Now science took the picture of It, you seen It, went on Associated Press. They didn't know what It was.

There is a Cloud hanging, twenty-six miles high

Here the cloud was hanging in the air. That was true. It never changed its height in the 28 minutes that it was visible just after dark.

63-0630   IS  YOUR  LIFE  WORTHY  OF  THE  GOSPEL

And say, let's say, maybe it's fifteen miles till you can't get no more vapor.

But this is twenty-six miles, and she hung there all day.

See? They don't know what It is. But, thank the Lord, we do.

No. The cloud was not visible all day. At a height of 26 - 30 miles, the air is too thin and the molecules are too spread out for a cloud to be seen against the glare of the blue sky.  It can only be seen when the sky is black, just after sunset, for about 28 minutes.

65-0725  WHAT  IS  THE  ATTRACTION  ON  THE  MOUNTAIN

So high they can't be fog, mist, or nothing up there. "What did it? Where is it at?" They're just as puzzled of that

supernatural Halo hanging yonder in the sky.

True. The cloud hung in the sky for 28 minutes.

63-0623   STANDING  IN  THE  GAP

And, now, I didn't know at the time, that they were taking pictures of that, scientists was, as

the Angels lowered themselves from Heaven,

to bring the Message.

… See the pyramid of the Cloud?

I was standing just below this.

Not true. He was mistaken. The cloud formed 8 days before the angels came down to him. He never stood below the cloud. The angels never formed a cloud when they came down to him.

65-0718   SPIRITUAL  FOOD  IN  DUE  SEASON

… and I and Brother Gene Norman, standing right there present when it went up.

They took the picture, still they don't know what about it.

Not true. This was 8 days after the cloud had formed.

The angels formed no cloud as they went up.

Notice his changing thinking on the cloud. Unsure if the cloud formed when the angels went up or came down.

The cloud was the sign in the heaven of the Son of man

But brother Branham never called the cloud the Coming of the Lord.

He never called the cloud the coming down of the mighty Angel of Revelation Chapter 10.

He did call the cloud the sign of the Son of man in the Heaven.

64-0112  SHALOM

There it hangs now in the Life Magazine, still a mystery to them. But He declares it in the heavens before He does it on earth. He always does that.

He shows His signs in the heavens first.

65-0718  TRYING  TO  DO  GOD  A  SERVICE  WITHOUT  BEING  THE  WILL  OF  GOD

... then shall appear the sign in the heaven, of the Son of man."

That is what the cloud was all about.

The sign in the heaven that

Christ would come down to us as the revealed Word that we could understand.

The revealed Scripture will restore us to the faith of the apostles and thereby prepare us for the resurrection of the dead saints of the 7 church ages. That happens when the mighty Angel comes down to raise them from the dead.

Then, finally, Christ comes down in His Body of flesh to catch us up to Him.

The problems with the supernatural cloud arose because the emphasis was put on brother Branham as a man.

The emphasis should be on his message which was to reveal the mysteries of the Scripture so that the Bride could understand the Bible.

61-0316   THE  CHURCH  CHOOSING  LAW  FOR  GRACE
Stood right over where I was at and said, "As John the Baptist was sent to forerun the first coming of Christ, your message will forerun the second coming of Christ."

Revelation 10:7 does not say in the days of the seventh angel. That was 1947 to 1965.

It says in the days of the VOICE of the seventh angel.

Brother Branham died in 1965.

Since 1966 we have to be guided by his voice as he interprets the mysteries to enable us to understand the written Bible.

1966 -     is "in the days of the VOICE of the seventh angel".

Wrong information spreads easily.

This was the original Cloud photograph. It has no face. There is no mountain below it.

This next picture is fake news. This is what message preachers spread around the world.

"Christ on Sunset Mountain".   The cloud was never near Sunset Mountain. It was 200 miles north over Flagstaff.

The Cloud was over Flagstaff 8 days before the 7 angels came to brother Branham.

The ground has been cut out of this picture and the picture rotated through 90 degrees to make it seem like the face is standing up. The face was never in the original photograph. It came from a photostat or duotone copy of the photograph where some light inadvertently leaked in.

65-0725  WHAT  IS  THE  ATTRACTION  ON  THE  MOUNTAIN

Everything that... That shall never die. It's constantly unrolling Itself. From the very thing happening, to the picture being Jesus standing looking at us; and now exactly on Sunset Mountain, and the sunset Light.

The Cloud does not show Jesus standing.

Superimpose a picture of Christ into the Cloud and He is lying on His side, parallel to the surface of the earth.

Brother Branham, who knew nothing of the Cloud at the time it was photographed, mistakenly thought it was over Sunset Mountain. That was a mistake that any person, being human, could make. But mistakes are to be corrected, not defended as if they are true.

So message preachers took a quote that is wrong and insisted that it is the truth, even though it contradicts the facts of time and geography.

But, once unleashed, error breeds like a virus.

Brother Branham never said, "The seven Thunders have uttered".

Then, message preachers who no longer check their facts, made up this statement that brother Branham never said and built many major doctrines on it.

Despite the fact that God told John not to write what the Thunders said nor what they are.

Do not be part of the fooled or foolish virgins.

MATTHEW 24:4   And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.