The Trail of the SerpentPart 4

‘The Rod and the Serpent’ Pastor Mita Edwardson

16th December, 2012 Wanganui, New Zealand

1 I’ll tell you something. I’m reading through Brother Don’s ‘Third Testament’ series and it’s huge... it’s just massive... and I’m on part one. Jon Parson gave me the books long ago, but I just like to take my time and feel my way into things and I have just recently started on them. I thought I had better start getting into it… keep with the Word… keep feeding and just keep moving with it.

2 So with the leading of the Spirit, I got into ‘The Third Testament’, Part One, and I’m thinking this is enormous... this revelation, this message that we have, and it’s a privilege that we have it and I’m glad that we are a great part of what God is doing in this Third Testament. The Ministry of Brother Parnell’s is so huge, it just keeps growing actually. I don’t know what you think about that but that’s what I think. And one thing that I do want to say, in saying all that, is that I do read all the Paltalk notes that come through… I browse them and catch the thought. But when you actually read the books and take your time with it and take a little marker. Get the marker out Brother Jon… it can be disturbing because you’re not going to get past page one after a week… and you mark it and you think, ‘Did he really say that? Did the Bible really say that?’

3 I’m saying that as a positive… it actually said that. ‘This is that’, and I’m just encouraging you to just take your time with these books that we have. I’m not saying you have to do it, but if you would like some fine reading and some good nourishment and something that is going to progress you forward in your Soul and your Spirit in the Word... to understand the mind of God and what he is doing in the earth... then get those books. Get the markers and mark every Word… it’s beautiful. And so back to what I said about our mid-week meetings… we’ve got so much food it’s come to the point where I thought ‘Well meeting after meeting. We used to have Wednesday nights; we use to have Sunday mornings and Sunday nights and then more and more and more of it and prayer meetings’.

4 Well, we’ve turned a corner. We’ve come into a New Day and there is a great supply. Brother Branham talks about Abraham... (I’m still waiting for Luke and Dave to come)... Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, showing us different stages of the Bride Body in coming up into it’s maturity. And Joseph is the full maturity of the Bride Body. It’s Christ in Gods people, who have advanced through the Ages, and Joseph represents the ‘spirit-filled church’. His name, Joseph, means ‘to add to’ and we know that is a type and a symbol of us in this hour. He was actually the ruler and conqueror of Egypt. He didn’t conqueror Egypt with weapons, but with the wisdom of the Spirit. Joseph represents the End-time Church. Brother Branham said that, in the ‘Revelation of Jesus Christ’ series. Of course we are not the End-time Church but we have been birthed from her. We are the offspring of the End-time Church. She, the mother... she carried us in her womb like a shuck carrying a seed... and now we have come forth.

5 I am thinking about Joseph. Joseph was a ‘dreamer’, he was a ‘revealer of secrets’ and that’s where we are right now, talking about an addition. We have an ‘additional’ Book to the Bible. I’ll say it that way plain and simple. The additional... we have the Old and the New Testaments and we’ve read them for years, but when we come to the Third Testament. It’s just astounding. I’m just blown away. And I’m thinking ‘What do we need all these services for, when we’ve got so much food’? It’s nice for us to gather like this and I wish you would bring all your families and get everybody in and worship the Lord and sing and rejoice and praise God for this glorious Word.

6 God has given us a portion here as well… it’s our portion… it’s a local portion. It came the way God had moulded me and the gift in my life, as small as it is, but the Lord has moulded us and shaped us. And you have a Pastor here, and God has given me a little something to share with you, so I was thinking, ‘In combination with the Sunday service and the books and the mp3s and Paltalk and everything we are just loaded to the teeth’, don’t you think? Somebody say ‘Amen’. So the question was, from the start, ‘Why don’t we have these meetings’? I think I’ve answered that. We’ve got plenty of food to eat, but now if you want fellowship with me come on over let’s have fellowship and let’s talk about this. Let’s get our Bibles out and let’s just fellowship. Let’s get a cup of coffee, Macona, Coca-Cola... (that’s for Jhim)... and let’s fellowship. Let’s keep the fires burning.

7 You know there’s plenty. We have more than enough. So what I am saying is, ‘We have come into a New Day, we don’t do things the way we used to’. We’re not loaded up with meetings, meetings and more meetings, because Joseph is here... the revealer of secrets... who has given us an addition to what we had before. Do you understand me? So the question, ‘Why don’t we have all these meetings’? The answer is, ‘We’ve got plenty of food. The storehouse is full’. The garner is full, it’s overflowing with grain and I’m encouraging you to go beyond just listening, because in listening, you know, you can only take in so much. Listen as much… but read and mark now and you’ll go somewhere else with that. You’ll go to another place. So as much as you can, listen, scan, brief, take your time. Get a message out, even one of our local messages... that doesn’t take long... you won’t get stuck on that, but get some of these series out and take a little look at it, line by line, carefully Word by Word.

8 Here’s what I do... I take thought by thought. As soon as a thought shifts then I study on that… it might take me a week, but I gather that whole thought. Then Brother Don will turn again and bring something further in the same book on another angle, and I just take my time in there, and it’s just amazing. You know, I feel like a fat cat... the rich kid on the block. Don’t you feel like that? It’s beautiful and it gives me a lot of energy.

9 Thank you Brother for saying those kind words before. He hasn’t seen me freak out or flip out or get angry, but anyway thanks for that Brother, it’s nice of you. Thank you. Your love and respects is much appreciated, and that’s for all of you. Every one of you. Thank you, and Merry Christmas to you all. Brother Don said don’t be a snob. Someone was asking a question about Christmas. Well, you know, we go with the flow, but like our Prophet told us, ‘Don’t tell your kids lies’, but there is no need to be a snob. Don’t be a snob and all stuck up and religious, and don’t want to say ‘Merry Christmas’, or don’t want to give me presents… don’t be snobs. Well you know I’m only joking.

10 Well here we are. I’m going to ask Brother David Arnst to come forward… (Brothers David Arnst and Luke Henare bless the congregation with an instrumental on their ukuleles). 11 We’ve been going through the series, ‘The Trail of the Serpent’. To the best of my ability, I feel inspired and directed by the Spirit of God to do it, and so this morning we’re continuing in the series ‘The Trail of the Serpent’ and the title of this message this morning is ‘The Rod and the Serpent.’ We started off with the ‘The Bruised Serpent’, Revelation 5, out of ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ’ series where Brother Branham was talking about the people worshipping him. Then we spoke about how that relationship between men of God and the children of God can be misrepresented and out of proportion, and saw how that happened, even with John, who was a true believer.

12 He was a symbol of all of us. John was a Prophet, an eagle, on the Island of Patmos, with a great commission, and even John fell at the feet of the angel to worship him. So you know, I didn’t want to make anyone feel bad or think ‘What are you on about’? This is the Word and all I was trying to say in that was, locate and identify where you are standing in the revelation. It was at that time, in Revelation 22, where the angel was bringing the understanding or clarifying the vision of the Holy City, the Heavenly Jerusalem... making a clear picture of it, and it just blew John away. He thought ‘This guy has got to be the Messiah’. John lived with Jesus. He said ‘No, I’m not him’ because the Christ was in him, in his servant, in the Prophet. That was God himself standing in flesh and the angel didn’t accept worship.

13 But John was so close... because they looked so much the same as if that was God himself... and he said ‘Don’t worship me. I am your fellow servant’. In ‘Bruised Serpent’ (the serpent is a symbol of the flesh, and it’s not the flesh we need to worship), the angel of the Lord actually was Jesus Christ himself... in my personal opinion... but he was wearing a body that wasn’t to receive worship. He was in the form of a servant. If you say ‘Christ in a servant’, ‘Christ in a Sister’, ‘Christ in the babies’... it’s all Jesus Christ. ‘By one Spirit we are all baptised into One Body’, so the angel that was revealing the City to John was Christ, but the body that he came in wasn’t the body ordained to be worshipped… it’s as simple as that.

14 So we started in ‘The Bruised Serpent’. I can say a lot more about that, but one thing that we did notice is that Brother Branham didn’t even realise that he was standing in the Book of Revelation... it was fulfilled by the very thing that was going on in the Tabernacle. Here was the Angel himself opening the Book of Revelation to John, and here was John’s people turning back to worship at his feet. Brother Branham was so emotional about. I said to you that I thought that if Brother Branham could have just shifted his Spirit to realise that, ‘Hold on, this is the Word of God fulfilled in this Tabernacle here and now’, he could have come out and said ‘These people are worshipping me. I want to show you where that is in Revelation 19. I want to show you where that is in Revelation 22. This day this prophecy is fulfilled. Don’t worship me. Worship God. I’m your Prophet and a servant. Worship God’. But Brother Branham came in another shift of the Spirit, like he often did. Instead, he came out preaching ‘This day this Scripture is Fulfilled’.

15 But anyway, when we started in ‘Bruised Serpent’, then Brother Don sent out a message on ‘Viewing the City’. One of his newsletters was on ‘Viewing the City’, and right away, while I was studying this, I thought ‘Here’s the same Ministry, the second time around’, and he and I have been talking about this. He said the very reason why he hasn’t gone back out in the field is because people misrepresent his Ministry in relation to local ministries. He said ‘This is the specific reason why I haven’t been out in the field’. And then I thought ‘That’s exactly what Brother Branham said’. ‘I am not going back on the field because of this’. So in my mind I’m thinking ‘Well, let’s think in the prophetic channel. Let’s get in the Spirit of Prophecy. Let’s understand what’s going on here. This is actually happening in the Second Ride just like it did in the First Ride... the same situation, the same circumstances, and the same reactions. It is nothing short of the glorious Word been fulfilled. It’s the Word of God. The people that were worshipping him... Brother Branham said those that worshipped him were true believers’. He said ‘You could tell they were true believers because they took correction’. John was a true believer. We are true believers. So the Holy Spirit was just letting us in on that to show us that we are in that part of the Book.

16 Let’s go on. ‘The Bruised Serpent’... that’s where we started, two weeks ago... then I titled the next message ‘The Prophecy’, because Brother Branham left us with the prophecy ‘I will ride this trail again’… the trail of the serpent. Think about that… ‘I will ride this trail’. What trail is he talking about? Some old beat-up track down in the bush? He’s talking about the trail of that which he brought, when he preached ‘Serpent Seed’, at the opening of the Seals. Because of the opening of ‘The Seals’ we understand ‘Serpent Seed’ and so forth, and then he went through all the mysteries... so ‘Ride this trail’. You know that people weren’t receiving what he was saying. He said he had to ‘Come back again when it was more in season’. He said that ‘This has to drop back for that to catch up with this’. In other words he had to drop back into a little evangelism. He had to preach some little petty services… and I say that respectfully. By petty I mean ‘Not exactly the core message that he was trying to bring’. So he had to sort of talk about people and their kids and all around about. He was still bringing his message, but it was difficult for him to do it.

17 When you see him in ‘Souls in Prison Now’, he’s talking in that way – he’s saying ‘Like I have to water this down’. He says ‘I don’t want to choke anyone’. He’s bringing a powerful thought to the people to show them that Christ had come and the blood had left the mercy seat. The judgements of God were in the earth, and the Third Pull was on. We are not in the Second Coming... we are in the Third Coming. He was trying to bring this thought, and in that message ‘Souls in Prison Now’, he said ‘I don’t want to choke anyone’. He sort of felt to break it down, or water it down. He’s saying things in a roundabout way, but now, in the Second Ride… catch the

thought of ‘I will ride this trail again’. Why? Because now it is much more in season. He says ‘You’ll get it when it’s more in season’. Hallelujah.

18 The ‘Trail of the Serpent’ – ‘The Prophecy’. And then we went through the scriptures which proclaimed and declared that there would come a people that would reveal that serpent and consume him. There are so many scriptures pointing to this, that it’s unbelievable. There’s the evidence sitting right from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible about who the serpent is, and who it is that has come to slay that serpent. And we are standing here knowing exactly what the serpent is and know exactly what to do with him. And it was prophesied from Genesis all the way through the Bible. So I called that message ‘The Prophecy’.

19 The next message I preached, last week, was ‘The Commission’. I wanted to make that personal. This is not some hum-drum education system where we get our heads loaded up with a bunch of knowledge. We need, in this teaching, to personalise it. To grasp it in our soul, in an emotional way even. I want to say it so that we become so attached to it and become one with it. It’s not just things that we are talking about. You know there’s people that sing songs and they are just singing words, and some people sing with a lot of emotion and feeling... because it’s their experience. You can sing a song because it’s a time to sing a song. You can sing a song and the words are beautiful or you can sing a song because it’s your life and you feel that’s your conviction and when you can sing it with conviction, it’s a whole different song. So is it with the Word of God. We don’t want this ‘Trail of the Serpent’, this ‘Third Coming’, ‘Third Testament’... (you could use all the terms you like and it just becomes clichés)... and we don’t want that to happen. So I’m here feeling my way in trying to bring it in a certain way so we can relate to it in a personal manner… to become passionate. Not just giving a whole bunch of sermons and a whole lot of information. Do you understand me? I’m sure you do. This is not education.

20 So, ‘My Commission’. I came out and said, ‘This is my commission’, to reveal the ‘Trail of the Serpent’. It seems very presumptuous but now, turn it around… I felt the Spirit of God tell me to do this… to get the people to confess that they can say ‘This is my commission’. You have a commission. You are called of God and sent by the Spirit of God. One time the Bible says, God says ‘Who will go for us’? And a young man puts his hand up. ‘Here am I Lord send me’. And then we saw a young Isaiah showing off. He said ‘Lord you called me from the womb. I was called for this purpose; I am going to deal the blows on these nations because I’m the man’. It was young Isaiah. You can see that in Isaiah, about Chapter 41 or 42. What I’m trying to show you is that Isaiah located his position, understood his purpose, knew what he was born for and he came out and declared it – ‘This is My Commission’, instead of just dilly-dallying along.

21 There is something we are all born for. This Isaiah was inspired… I can feel the passion of that young Prophet when he came out and started to declare his commission. So we understand the commission is to ‘Slay the dragon that is in the sea, smite leviathan with that sore dreadful and sore sword’. That’s our commission. You ask ‘Why, are you saying this’? Because we are not just imagining that we’ve got this commission, and just imagining that there’s a devil that’s the flesh, and everything else. I want to show you this is real. This is so real. This is not some fantasy story that’s made up to entertain people. This is our message, this is our day, this is our commission, this is our purpose, this is what we were born for, to come out and reveal the devil, reveal that trail of the serpent, to trace him from Genesis all the way through, to identify and to smite that thing and destroy it. That’s it.

22 So this week the message is ‘The Rod and the Serpent’. First week it was ‘The Prophecy’, then ‘The Commission’, and this week, ‘The Rod and the Serpent’. Let’s go into the scripture in John 16:21... it’s up there on the wall…

21 A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

You know, people have these little hang ups. ‘Oh, we used to be in your Church. You never used to let us do this, or that’. You know... this is kids and their parents. Some of them become casualties and actually left because we have so much liberty now. I think that’s the very time to hang in and enjoy church. It’s not the time to forsake the assembly when it’s come to its victory… when the woman has given birth to the Manchild. The Son of David is on the scene,

the Law is over, the anguish is gone and the labour pains are finished. It’s now time to enjoy the Child. And it says right here that when she is delivered of the child, she remembers the anguish no more. And some of these people... I’m telling you the truth... are angry with me because I am preaching in a certain way that I never preached back there.

23 We preached the people into a whole bunch of chains, but it was written of us, because the woman hadn’t brought forth the child. We were in her pain alright. We were labouring. What for? To bring forth the Son of David. But now that the Son of David is here and the Child is born and growing in our midst, let’s forget the anguish. Forget the past, forget the Law, forget the labour, and forget yesterday… just enjoy the baby. So I’m thinking that this Son of David Ministry, obviously, has been birthed ‘out of’ a church. The church was the womb. The church we belonged to… the first two Testaments. The Old Testament and the New Testament were only a carrier. They carried the seed… that’s my mother’s womb. Where is my mother’s womb? It is the Old and the New Testaments. This is the womb of my mother, written – the written side of it. Of course that’s not it, but that’s the ‘written side’. Where is my birth recorded? Right here in the womb of the Church… Paul, Irenaeus, Martin, Luther, Columba... all the way up. Look how painful that was. They died by the sword, they died at the stake… they were burnt. They came out preaching all kinds of strange things that allowed all kinds of crazy stuff to go on in the Church. One lot was full of grace and the other lot were full of the law… nobody had the balance of love until a Prophet came and started to demonstrate, with the killer bull and the wild man from Oregon, and everything else. They didn’t have that perfect love. What I am saying is we came from that. She gave birth to this. That was our anguish, now this is our joy. Can you say Amen?

24 Let’s keep moving here… another scripture in Isaiah 11… another prophecy. 1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out

of his roots. Notice the highlights there on the PowerPoint slide… a rod, a stem, a Branch and roots. This is a tree here... symbols that are all related to the same thing. Remember what Jesus said ‘I am the vine; ye are the Branches’ I want to show you who this Branch is… who ‘The Branch’ is. Well you say oh that’s Jesus. You see, because we read these scriptures under the veil of the old understanding we’ve had since we went to Sunday school... we read these scriptures and we always praised Jesus. But we are now in a Third Testament. We are in another Light, and these scriptures have taken on a whole new meaning. The stem, the rod, the Branch, the root are not ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ in this Third Testament. So who is it?

There shall come forth a rod. Hallelujah. There’s that prophecy again.

Out of the stem of Jesse… You know that Jesse was the Father of David.

25 It’s talking about the offspring of David… the offspring of David. David had a son, the great King Solomon, the Son of David. So this scripture is relating specifically to the Son of David.

2 And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. Did you know that She has become He? Brother Branham said ‘He is She’, and we are saying ‘She is Him’. You can hardly say ‘He’ or ‘She’… it’s not even ‘He’ or ‘She’ because they are one. It’s a whole new being. It needs another term, ‘The Great It’… ‘I am’… ‘I am’. You can say it because this Branch is I am. This is Christ, the Word born in the Third Testament under the Son of David anointing… a stem, a Branch, a rod. So we are talking about this rod now and we are going to tie that into the serpent.

2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon you. Now don’t put that back 2000 years ago... that’s the temptation, to do that. In my traditional mind when I read that I’m thinking about the Jesus that came with long hair and died at Calvary. I don’t know about you.

26 How many people have a little thing going on there? When you read it, you’re thinking about the historical Jesus? We have to drop that because this is a ‘new testament’... a ‘Third Testament’. Brother Branham spoke about a second crucifixion, and Brother Jerry spoke about a

third crucifixion. This morning I am talking about another stem and another rod, and it’s not ‘Jesus of Nazareth’. So get used to this.

2 And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. That’s good enough for me. You can call it any spirit you want to call it, but Isaiah called it ‘the spirit of the Lord’…

... the spirit of wisdom, understanding, the spirit of counsel...You might want to put that on one man, but don’t you do it. Jesus said… Jesus said ‘That where I am there you may be also. Greater works than these shall you do because I go to the Father’. Brother Branham said ‘You see what I'm doing, brethren? I'm putting you all the same place I am, 'cause you're just as much into it as I am. You are messengers of this same message’. So that’s what we want to do when we read this scripture is put yourself in the scripture because you have the authority to do it.

27 ‘If you say unto this tree be removed it shall obey you’. This tree is the Tree of Life we’re reading about. This rod, this stem, these roots are the Tree of Life and I am standing here shifting this tree because Jesus told me that if I command this tree to move, it shall obey me. So I am shifting this tree away from Calvary and bringing it right down into the Third Testament. We haven’t chained it and made it an immovable tradition... we have shifted this tree. This is the great Mount Zion. Mount Zion is God’s people. Jesus says ‘If you say unto this mountain be ye removed, it will obey you’. I am standing here, under the anointing and authority of that Word, moving this pyramid-shaped mountain... Mount Zion, which is the City of God. We are him, ‘He is She’, ‘She is He’, I Am ‘that I Am’. We’re looking for some terms aren’t we? I Am Isaiah 11:4!

4 But with righteousness shall he judge the poor and shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth.

We’re talking about this rod here. I am showing you what the rod is. And the rod is the Tree of Life, the stem of Jesse, the son of David… let’s put it that way. She is He. I Am that son of David, I Am that stem out of Jesse. Amen.

28 I Am the root and offspring of David so what is my purpose? What have I got? What have I got going for me seeing that I Am that?

...with righteousness shall I judge the poor... You’ve got to say it for yourself because that’s who you are

... and (I shall), he shall, (you shall)… he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth...

We have power to change the earth. We have a gathering… we have a cluster of dust here this morning... clods of dirt. And you can change that dirt with the spirit of your mouth. Try it on your children. Try it on your neighbours. Try it on your Pastor. Pastor try it on the Church, Brothers try it on the Sisters... wives use it on your husbands… the power of the Spoken Word.

29 This Son of David, the stem, the root and offspring is here with the rod of the mouth and it has power over the earth.

... And ye shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth... You can change it’s elements... shift it and remodel it… excavate it.

... And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. Do you know what ‘the wicked is’? It’s anything that stands in your way. You have the power with the Spoken Word to slay the wicked.

30 Now let’s get back to our subject: ‘The Trail of the Serpent’. ‘Where did you get this idea from, Pastor? Why are you thinking you can beat the devil up’? Because he said I could do it. He said I’ve got something in my mouth… I got something in my mouth. Where did you get that from? I got it from the Word. He said ‘Out of my mouth, from my lips, my breath shall slay this wicked’. Amen. And the scripture goes on… we go to Revelation Chapter 1: verse 15.

15 And his feet... We’re talking about Christ now. Don’t think about this as being Jesus. Do you remember we spoke about ‘He is worthy’… who is worthy and I was showing you when we went through that

study that the Worthy One is not Jesus of Nazareth with long curly hair. ‘Thou alone art worthy to take the Book and loose the Seals thereof’, but the Bible tells us in the Book of Revelation that the Lamb had seven eyes. Jesus only had two.

31 This Lamb with seven eyes is the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ... the seven spirits of God. The seven lamps are burning, and He has seven stars in his hand. It’s not Jesus of Nazareth – its Christ walking through the Ages, embedded in his people. ‘Christ in you; the hope of glory’… so think that way, when we read the scripture. Don’t think of the woolly-haired Jesus.

15 And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burn in a furnace… John is describing this individual. I’m talking about the ‘rod’ here, same person, a different symbol. Christ is the ‘rod out of Jesse’, and his voice as a sound of ‘many waters’. You see it’s not just one... this Christ, this voice... it’s many. It’s not just me, it’s not just Don, it’s not just John, it’s no single person, yet it’s Christ in a many-membered Body. Read it for yourself… his voice as the sound of ‘many waters’. Can you identify yourself in there? This Jesus is not the woolly haired one, this is a Body.

16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth…

32 This rod, the stem of Jesse, the Son of David... His voice is many. His hand has seven stars,

... and out his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. You know, we can sit back and reverence the Lord all day long, and say ‘Oh that’s mighty about Jesus’. We can look at one-another and treat each other differently, but actually, the scripture is who we are. I want to point to you that the ‘many waters’ have something in their mouth. In the scripture we took before that, in Isaiah, there was a rod in your mouth, there’s breath coming out and what is the purpose of it? To slay the wicked.

16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

So the purpose of the rod, the stem, the son of David is for one thing: to slay the wicked. Now it’s important to us who the wicked is, because we are talking about the rod and the wicked... the rod and the serpent... and we are trying to bring those two together. ‘The Rod and the Serpent’. So let’s just keep that in our minds.

33 The next scripture, in II Thessalonians, Chapter 2. We know this scripture so well. We are talking about the mouth of this Great One... the rod. The rod is a person. You are that stem. Out of your mouth comes breath. The breath and the sword coming out of your mouth are called a rod, they’re called a sword, and they’re called breath. One scripture says ‘fire came out of their mouths’. What is fire about? It’s about obliterating and destroying and cleansing the way... and we have within us the Son of David, the power of the rod, the sword and the fire. What for? To cleanse... what? There’s only one thing that needs to be cleansed from this planet and that’s the devil. There is only one unclean thing and that’s Satan himself. So you see the relationship of us coming into this Third Testament, and the power that has been invested in us, and the commission that’s been given to us and how it’s been prophesied from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. We’re trailing this serpent and the relationship we have toward him. II Thessalonians, Chapter 2...

8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth.

‘Oh’, you say ‘you’ve got a big mouth’… my mouth isn’t big enough. I can’t get it open enough to get breath out, to get a rod out, to get a sword out and to get fire out of this same mouth. A sword is to cleanse… cleanse… cleanse the community.

34 We are talking Old Testament. Cleanse the land. Kill every Hittite, every Hivite, and every Jebusite with the sword, and cleanse the land of these wicked heathens. Number one is ‘the sword’. ‘The rod’ is to beat them and rule them. We are not talking about people out in the community... we are talking about opposing forces... starting with our personal lives, in our homes, in our Church and in our community. He has given us the power to put satan under our feet in every way.

8 ... You shall consume him with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

We are talking about the Third Coming. What is the purpose of the Son of David coming in this hour? He’s to embed himself... his commission... in human beings so that he himself can speak through many waters. Amen.

35 You know that Brother Branham said ‘There is a people again’, (talking about the end-time... and he called them ‘the final voice’), ‘who under their messenger shall be the final voice’. I’m talking about the people being the final voice. You can’t just sit back and say ‘Well, I’m a part of the congregation... I’m a member of the Church’. You are Isaiah’s prophecy. You are II Thessalonians, Chapter 2. You are the ‘rod’, the ‘stem out of Jesse’. You are the ‘root and offspring of David’. You are the ‘Son of David’. This is the Third Testament. This is our commission. That’s my purpose! It’s multiple... but it’s one. It’s many... this Christ, this Son of David. Can you relate to it? Can you put yourself right there? I’m not your boss and you’re not my boss. We are family. We are blood. We have one spirit, one mind, one voice and one purpose. Blood Sisters and blood Brothers.

36 Revelation 12 now… we’re thinking about that ‘rod’, that’s what we are doing. We are following this ‘Branch’. Call him ‘a stem’, call him ‘a root’, call him ‘an offspring’. It’s a Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is Christ. Now, in Revelation 12… maybe we can turn in our Bibles to Revelation 12. We just want to take a moment there in Revelation 12. I’m just turning in my Bible, and you can turn to it too if you like. We’ll just have a little scan in there. We know this scripture so well. In Revelation 12, there’s a woman there and she’s in pain. It was so painful under the Law. It was so painful in partial Light stumbling and staggering, bumping our heads in the dark. Have you ever experienced bumping your head in the dark? I try and stagger my way through the house without turning the light on. One night I staggered alright, and collapsed and fell over and crawled back to bed. It’s painful in the dark. This woman, in Revelation 12, is the Church. She’s many things. Brother Branham called her America and he laid that out so clearly that Revelation 12 is the nation of America. We won’t get into that, but there is a compound meaning.

37 Revelation 12 is Pharaoh, the dragon, killing all the babies to try and catch Moses before the Deliverer is born. Revelation 12 is the Virgin Mary bringing forth Jesus and Herod, the red dragon, tried to kill all the babies so he could kill the King of the Jews. Revelation Chapter 12 is when I was born in 1962.That old devil was right there to try and kill me as soon as I was born. He gave me all sorts of inheritances from the complexes of twisted genes that came on down through the French, came on down through the Norwegians, that came down through the Maoris and the Polynesians. The dragon was right there to shut me down before I could even walk this planet. Sparks begin to fly, and the war was on. There was war in heaven.

38 That old dragon tried to kill me right there. I didn’t even make it to the hospital. He kept me at the house. He got jammed up in the delivery, my mother told me... and it was a hard delivery. That old dragon, you know, he was trying to stop this child from preaching today, to declare his day and its message, to identify his position. So Revelation 12 is multiple. Revelation 12... the woman is the Heavenly Jerusalem. Paul said ‘She is the Mother of us all’, and we descended from the great Mother. We came from her womb to be planted in this earth. The dragon is the human realm. But anyway, we know the story there quite well, so we are not going to go too much into that.

1 ¶ And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed in the sun, and the moon was under her feet.

This woman has escaped the church. It’s the young Hebrew Church in the Book of Acts. The woman is the Church. The moon is the Law that you just come from, the Old Testament was under her feet… the lesser light. Now she is standing in the Greater Light of the New Testament in all its glory… the young Church.

39 Paul and Peter were a part of it; Paul was a part of it... all the believers. John, James, Bartholomew, Thomas… that woman gave birth to a child. That child was the Son of God. They had just come from Son of Man. Now the child that was born of this great celestial Mother into the earth was now Son of God... a new dispensation. A new day dawned and a new message

had come forth. The old lesser light was gone. She’s standing in the brilliance of the New Light. And as soon as the Church of the first born came into manifestation, who happened to be there? The church of Rome! That red dragon was there to shut her down as soon as that child was born into the earth.

40 Now let’s go and have a look at this scripture. I know there is something in there we need to have a look at. Verse 5… we’ve got that up on the board there. Let’s read verse 3...

3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven. Now, notice where the dragon is... the serpent. It’s not in hell. Think about that.

I saw another great wonder in heaven. John didn’t say ‘Oh, I saw in the abyss… locked up in the abyss’, but ‘I saw the great wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon’. Where did the dragon come from? You brought him with you. The rod – which is the stem from the Mother Jerusalem – that rod from Jerusalem… that stem and offspring of David, that was born into this world, brought the dragon with it. Inside of your Theophany you were carrying a thought of a temporal flesh-man and you were the one who brought that flesh-man into existence.

41 Melchizedek grabbed himself a bunch of dust and stepped into it. You did exactly the same thing… so the dragon and the rod... the child and the serpent.

There appeared another wonder in heaven… That’s my point, look where the dragon comes from.

And behold a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns. You know that the ten horns are the ten dictators... see, taste, smell, touch, feel, memory, imagination, conscience, reason and affection.

... and seven crowns upon his heads… They trailed him from Paul, Irenaeus, Martin, Columba, Luther, Wesley and Branham... all the way through that New Testament. You watch that trail of the serpent… there’s twins in every Age Brother Branham said… twins in every Age. Seven heads, seven crowns in every Age… white horse, red horse, black horse, pale horse, the trail of the serpent.

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven.

42 You know that tail is a reproductive organ and it is the human instrument of flesh. It’s the only system that can bring those stars into the planet to manifest their day and its message. You came by way of the dragon. Your mother and your father... excuse me, don’t hit me for this... your mother is an old dragon. You know what the Bible says out of the dragon came three unclean spirits… body, spirit and soul that’s you. A new trinity came out of an old trinity. A new dragon came out of an old dragon. So the tail, let’s get that tail of the dragon. We are talking about the serpent and the rod here. You know, actually, when it comes down to the conclusion of the service, there is actually no difference between the dragon, the sword and the rod, because one is the offspring of the other. One has a purpose in the hand of the other. One is the creation of the other. The dragon is created by the rod... the stem. The son of David creates the serpent.

43 But let’s just have a look at that there. His tail brought a third part of the stars of heaven and cast into the earth. Your father is the dragon. Your mother is the dragon. The dragon has a tail and the dragon’s tail is the instrument by which you descended… transcended... from heaven. You couldn’t get out of heaven without a tail on a dragon. Two dragons had a relationship and through the tail of that dragon come a third part of the stars from heaven. You know our beings are in thirds aren’t they, and one third of you came through the tail of the dragon. Do you believe that? You can’t help it. You’ve got a father you’ve got a mother… fathers have a tail. That’s how you came – from the start. You say I’m a star in heaven. I was right up there before the world began. Well how did you get here? It took a red dragon with a tail, to get the stars from heaven... to get them into the earth. We’re talking about reproduction – natural, physical seed. We are talking about the first birth. That’s what John was seeing there.

Another wonder in heaven... a great red dragon... with seven heads

44 All the way through the Ages, same thing, ten horns. We know what that is. Verse 4, 4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth:

and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

5 And she brought forth a man child. Hallelujah. Out from the Old Testament came Paul, Ireaneus, Martin, Columba, Luther, Wesley and Brother Branham… out from that system of the womb of the Church... here we come, Brothers and Sisters. We are standing in the planet right now as the progeny of our Mother, the New Testament. The Third Testament is but the offspring of the Second Testament. The Second Testament (the Mother), married to the First Testament (the Father), produces the baby. Are you with me? The trail of the serpent runs from Adam to Christ, from Christ to Brother Branham, the whole thing is the Mother. Weren’t we mothered all the way through there since Adam and Eve? Our lineage… our seed is carried all the way through and here we are standing right here. Why? We came out of the womb of the church into this hour to fulfil our purpose.

45 Think about that child there… she brought forth a Manchild who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. He’s a ruler this fellow. Who is he? You say, ‘Oh it’s someone’. No... It’s me! This is my commission. Can you say it with me? ‘This is my commission’! You say it about yourself: ‘This is my commission’. Say ‘Who is she? Who is he? Who is this rod of iron? What is this iron’? The iron is the blood system. Your blood system is made up of iron… it’s a rod of iron... it’s a Spoken-Word Body, born by the Word of God. I Am that rod of iron that should rule this earth, these nations. You’re not expecting somebody to come out of a cloud with a stick are you? Or are you? This is a serious business, people. This is a serious scripture. This is a serious commitment… a responsibility, as Brother Don was saying recently. A great responsibility but people get all upset about responsibility. ‘How am I going to fulfil my responsibility’? Don’t you even worry about that. The one who gave you the responsibility… the one who gave you the commission… the one who gave you this understanding, to know your purpose and what you are here for – He is going to give you everything you have need of to fulfil your commission. You can turn around and say ‘I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision’.

46 He was to rule all nations with the rod of iron... She brought forth a manchild... mature... a male... a King... a ruler... through a body of blood. And her child was caught up unto God and to his Throne. In ‘The Seals’ book, Brother Branham said ‘We know what that Throne is’. He said ‘That’s this Throne of David’. That child that came out of the New Testament into the Third Testament... Hallelujah... that’s us coming out of the old system into the new system.

Her child was caught up unto the Throne… Enthroned... crowned... King of kings Lord of lords. Where is this great King that we could worship him? What did those wise men say? ‘We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship Him’. Where is this King that we should worship Him? ‘Ah, well, some baby Jesus’. When next you see that little cradle, think about this message. We were cradled in the church, in the womb of an old dragon, and here we were born into the Third Testament... caught up unto the Throne and crowned ‘King’. You say ‘Well, how can I be a King? I’m a woman!’ Well how could I be ‘the Bride’ all those years and I’m a man. I went around telling everybody I was a female... ‘I am the Bride of Christ’… I had no problem. Like Brother Don said, he had no problem saying ‘I am the Bride’, so you ladies get used to it. You are the King. You say, ‘No. I am the Queen’. Well you’re the King and the Queen. I Am that I Am. I Am not any I Am, I Am that I Am. I Am not ‘The voice of the one crying in the wilderness’, I Am that I Am. Hallelujah.

47 So let’s go on from there. Think about this... we are talking about this rod. We’re staying a long time on him. And in those days, and at that time, here’s a prophecy coming, which will cause the ‘branch of righteousness’ to ‘grow up unto David’. It’s a specific branch. It’s not the Buffalo Lodge – that branch. It’s not some branch of the Methodist Church that is to grow up unto David. It’s the BRANCH. A branch is an offspring. We are talking about The Son of David. The Branch... the Son of David... is the manchild of Revelation 12. That manchild should come in a ‘rod of iron’, manifest in ‘a body of flesh and blood’. And I am telling you Brothers and Sisters, that is my flesh and blood, and you need to say the same thing. ‘He is here… I Am that I Am. I’m on a mission, with a purpose, and a great responsibility to rid this place of the wicked, by the breath of my mouth’.

48 ‘So what are you preaching for’? That’s my point. That’s the ‘breath’. Do you know that ‘H’ is a part of God’s name? They don’t want to put the ‘H’ back in Wanganui... some people do and some don’t. The other day someone said leave the ‘H’ in there… some Labour Department guys signing a piece of paper. Should we put it in or put it out? One of them said ‘Leave the ‘H’ in Whanganui’. ‘H’ is a part of God’s own name. Leave it in there. An ‘H’ can only be pronounced when you breathe out.. You try and pronounce ‘H’ while you are breathing in… say ‘H’. You can’t do it. The Bible says Jesus ‘breathed on them the breath of Life’. And the Bible say’s about Ezekiel ‘Can these slain live’? See there was a great wind came... an out-breathing... an injection for the Age It was God placing himself in a body of iron. He breathed himself out into Adam by an out-breathing... a placement for that Age... by injecting himself into Adam. He is standing here as Son of David in this Third Testament to smite the wicked. And He… personal… (the Branch is a person)… shall execute judgement and righteousness in the land.

49 Let’s go from there. Zechariah’s got a little bit of something on the branch, in Zechariah 3,8 ... behold I will bring forth my servant the Branch.

Do you want to know my name? It’s Branch. I feel like the young Isaiah. He sounded as if he was being smart. ‘I was born for this purpose, from my mother’s womb he knew me. I’m here on a mission’. Come on people... you ought to be excited about this. Don’t go all glum and miserable. What is He bringing His servant forth to do? This is just so great. It’s brilliant. It’s amazing. It’s the Word of God made flesh in me and in you. I Am the Branch, I Am that Servant, I Am God’s Servant. Hallelujah

8 ... I will bring forth my Servant the BRANCH... 9 ... Upon one stone shall be seven eyes, behold…

Now he’s talking about a Stone. He’s talking about a Branch… and he’s the same person. The rock hewed out of the mountain without the hands of a man.

50 Now we came by the dragon’s tail... then we destroyed that old dragon. We gave birth to a Spoken-Word Body of iron. We are standing here ‘virgin born’. Can you say ‘Amen’ to that? The New Birth is virgin born… talk about Christmas.

9 ... Upon one stone shall be seven eyes, That rock with seven eyes… it’s the chief corner stone, it’s the capstone. Amen.

9 ... I will engrave the engraving thereof saith the Lord of host... I am going to embed my thought… engrave. I’m going to carve Isaiah, I want to carve Zechariah in him, I want to carve Revelation 12 right there. I want to carve Genesis chapter 3 and verse 2 right there. I want to carve the Word right in them. The carving is on the stone, the engraving... your identity.

51 The engraving is about identity. God say’s I’m going to bring this Branch, my Servant. ‘On one stone shall be seven eyes, behold I will engrave the engraving’… I will do it. I’ll identify with him. I’ll name him. I’ll stand beside him. I’ll put my personality in him. I’ll breathe the ‘H’ into him. Ezekiel said ‘and then there was a great wind and breath came into those slain’. This Third Coming Message is the breath of God. He has risen himself up a stem to Jesse for a specific purpose. And I will, here’s the purpose, I will remove the iniquity of that land in one message. You ask ‘Why are you on about this serpent’? ‘Why are you on about killing the devil’? ‘Why are you on about standing on his head and bruising him’? Because God has brought me here for that purpose. He has engraved and etched it in my life. I can’t breathe anything else but that. Why? Because that’s my commission... and it’s your prophecy. This is our purpose. To do what? To remove the iniquity of the land in one day. Where does iniquity come from? What is iniquity? It’s everything unclean and unrighteous. To know what is right to do, but to do wrong. ‘Don’t touch this’, but you touch it. ‘Don’t touch’, ‘don’t taste’, everyone is all freaked out and so religious. ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’.

52 Just like some parents. They say ‘Don’t touch that’ to the children, and the children are all nervous. You know, we all do it… we’ve all done it… some children need it more than others do. ‘Don’t do it… don’t do it’. You know what I did one day? I said ‘Oh go for it. Give it heaps’. I tell my grandchildren, ‘Go on. Give it heaps’ and they are standing there… What? Where’s the ‘don’t do’ and ‘don’t touch’ and ‘don’t go there? When you say ‘don’t do it’, they want to do it. ‘Don’t

touch that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Did you eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge? I will do away with that’. I will remove the Law that creates anxiety because labour relates to the Old Testament, see. People don’t understand me.

53 They ask ‘Why does Brother Mita preach differently than he used to? Why not preach the old Law? Why doesn’t he tell everybody off? Why doesn’t he tell such and such and so and so about teenagers... examples and all the things’? Because this is a different day, and because the child was in the womb, in the belly, making the mother sick. She was always full of anxiety and everything else. In need of iron… longing and craving for it. Now, why are we different now? Why is the preaching different? Because the baby has been born. The mother has given up the anguish of ‘Don’t do this… do this, don’t do this, do that’. That’s how you create iniquity... by creating Laws. When you create boundaries you create criminals.

54 For example: I’m only a criminal in felling a tree without chaps on, because a man told me not to do so... because a man wrote a Law out. The Labour Department wrote, ‘You cannot cut down trees unless you are wearing chaps, and if you do not obey this rule, you are breaking the Law’. I only become a criminal when someone gives me a Law. You can only have iniquity and anxiety and anguish in a Church if you’ve got a bunch of creeds. Take down the Law; take away the creeds; and there is no more sin. That’s why we’re at the place we are now. That is why the Ministry is preaching the way it is because it is written... Zechariah chapter 3 and verse 9.

9 I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. A day is a message… it’s my message. It’s this message of the Third Coming that abolishes all the iniquity. How do you abolish the iniquity? Take down the Laws. How do you get rid of the anguish? Give birth to a Manchild. Amen.

55 Okay so here’s another kind of a branch. We are talking about the rod now…‘The Rod and the Serpent’. We know who the rod is... we’ve gone through that clearly. Brother Branham, in the Second Seal, he says... ‘THE SECOND SEAL’, Jeffersonville, Indiana. 19th March, 1963.

195-1 {132} If that tree... (talking about the original Book of Acts)... if that tree ever puts forth another branch... (Can you see the branches?)... they’ll write another Book of Acts.

People ask, ‘Where is Brother Don coming from when he is talking about the Third Testament’? I saw the quotes he used. Brother Branham said it in three different places, about a New Book... a New Testament. It’s so beautiful to see that so clearly and how we missed it all these years. It’s sitting right there with the messenger himself talking about it. He was standing there writing… he was opening the New Testament himself. William Branham was on the earth writing a New Book.

56 So he comes along and he says ‘another branch’. ‘If the tree ever puts forth another branch they will write another Book of Acts’. I was reading in the message, Brother Branham was talking about Finney, Sankey and Knox... all the Reformers... and he says ‘But this is another light today… this is another light today’. He said ‘If there is another Age there will be another gospel for that Age. There will be another day. There will be another character manifest in the earth’. I am talking about the character of this Branch right now… the rod out of Jesse. How does he destroy the wicked? How does he slay with the rod of his mouth? By pulling down the old concepts and by changing the old terms and bringing in new terms… by out-breathing into the people... by breathing the spirit of this Word into the people, so that we rise up as new characters that aren’t fussing, fighting, arguing... all fumed up and full of anxiety. How do we change all that and take it away from people? By opening the Word. By breathing the Word. By slaying that wicked with the sword of the mouth.

57 I wouldn’t want to fight with it if I was you. You can fight it if you want… you are fighting something deadly, and you are going to lose. If I fight this, I’ll lose. My advice to anybody is ‘Don’t fight this. Fall on the rock and be humbled rather than have the rock fall on you where you’ll be crushed to powder’. Hallelujah. See that Branch that I’m talking about. It’s another Branch. It’s another Book. I will bring forth the Branch, my Servant the Branch. And when the new Branch comes, what comes with it? Another Book. Another life. In other words, a book is a life. It’s not the life of the Old Testament. It’s not the life of those through the Ages, but it is the

life of a people... born for a different purpose... coming from a different place. It’s a whole new character. A new specie.

Figure 1

58 See the symbol here (Figure 1)… changing the subject slightly. In Revelation 12, as soon as the child was born the serpent was there to devour it. It kind of looks negative, but actually it’s not negative. You know the child, the Manchild, the spirit of God, the stem of Jesse came by way of the serpent. Jesse was the serpent that gave birth to David. David was the serpent that gave birth to Solomon. Is it true? Here’s the serpent trying to devour the child. There’s a relationship there and it’s not necessarily negative. Look at the Alpha Romeo symbol, the logo. They took their logo from the city of Milan and the logo sits above several different prominent places... I saw that on the internet. I’ve never been there, but I visited it on the web. It’s one of the crests for some of the richest people in the regions of Italy – there are several different families and that’s their logo. And Alpha Romeo means ‘Rome the first’. The red dragon is Rome… Alpha is number one… Rome is number one but we are not going to go right into that. I like that logo. It’s got a cross there. We know what Brother Branham said about that, the cross of the two natures... but look on the other side of the logo. The serpent is devouring the man-child – that’s the same thing – the cross of the two natures.

59 I just thought I would drop that in there. This character here, Ophiuchus… I can’t pronounce the name they call him but this is Serpentarius, the man there, Serpentarius (the serpent holder), and this constellation is Serpens.

Figure 2

God wrote about this whole thing in the stars. That man standing there is none other than the Branch himself and that serpent, called Serpens in the star chart (Figure 2), is the only way by which man could come to this planet. This is putting a bit of a different twist on it, but this is a New Day, with a New Book. We’re writing another Book… this is not the same Book as the old

book. This is another Book and we are interpreting that Book by the history of our lives. This Serpentarius… Ophiuchus … he’s a snake-handler. He’s got that serpent, and in the stars, if you have a look at E.W. Bullinger’s ‘The Witness of the Stars’, or look at any star chart, just above the head of that serpent is a crown. I showed you that Alpha Romeo logo, (Figure 1). That is the picture of the serpent with the crown. He’s going for the crown… he wants to be crowned.

60 You remember what the serpent said in the beginning ‘I am a god’… ‘I am a god. I will rise above the stars’, then God turns around and says ‘Oh no, you are going to be a man in the hand of him that slays you’. Let’s go back again. ‘You will not be a God’. He’s reaching for that crown, and God says ‘You shall be a man’. You can’t rule the nations without the rod of flesh and blood. The Theophany Celestial Word-man has to be born into this earth by way of the serpent. That serpent’s tail is the instrument that brings the stars to the planet. So I thought I would just show you that there.

61 Let’s just go again. Just go back there. I’ve got a little note here. It says… two-fold… there’s a purpose. This picture here in the stars of Serpens (Figure 2) is two-fold. You remember what Moses held up in the wilderness? He held up the serpent, and the serpent is the symbol of sin and death, isn’t it? And the crucifixion is the symbol of darkness… Golgotha... the place of the skull. But if you turn it around it actually is a place of healing. As we said a couple of weeks ago, the serpent’s bite is the remedy for the serpent’s bite. The same symbol of that represented death is the same symbol that represents healing. How is that? Adam stood there in a body of death. Is it true? He did. Even Jesus the second Adam stood there in a body of death. Well the Bible said he was thirty-three years old. Brother Branham told us that He would have grown old and died if he hadn’t have gone to Calvary. This serpent is a body symbol of death... but death in this situation doesn’t have to be feared. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil’. Why? ‘Thy rod and thy staff’ are with me’. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the serpent I will not fear because the rod is in my mouth and I shall rule him with a rod of iron. Okay.

62 Now here’s Serpens as a literal photograph from NASA1 (Figure 3). We are closing in a moment. Stay with me on this. There’s a picture of the serpent. You can’t see it… it’s wriggling from the left of the picture then it goes toward that cluster in the middle. Can you see a little dark shadow? It didn’t come out so well in that picture with the bright lights on but that’s alright we don’t have to turn the lights off for it.

Figure 3

There’s a serpent weaving through there and there is the cluster of stars right in the centre and a few bright ones here and there. That Serpens was taken by NASA’s Spitzer Telescope. So it’s one of those NASA pictures right there. So have a look on the NASA website1. Look up Serpens and you’ll see this photograph. In August 2007, there was a discovery made because of the advancements in technology.

63 That’s just like us, when we were in Africa in 2007. There was advancement in the understanding of the Word. There was a further unfolding on revelation of the serpent. Right there was the serpent being revealed in Africa, and at the same time, right there at NASA, they were taking a photograph of Serpens, and they came out and said some words. We’re going to read the words… the commentary on it. Somebody is speaking… one of the scientists... who took the photograph. He said ‘At visible wave-lengths the stars can’t be seen at all’. This is an announcement in August 2007. ‘They are completely obscured by the dust in the cloud’... star dust… dust in the clouds’, says Robert Gutermuth, of the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. ‘This is the first time that anyone has ever seen these stars’. Astronomers dubbed the new found cluster ‘Serpens South’. In August 2007, here they are with this new telescope… new technology, being able to measure from the earth to the stars. Don’t ask me how. And they were able to see this cluster of stars right there in the middle of Serpens coming forth in the south side of the Serpens… these brilliant lights.

64 And he goes on talking about Serpens South, as we read more about it. A telescope named Spitzer uncovered the young star cluster. Do you know who... or what Spitzer is? It’s a pointed shape. They named a bullet… there’s a bullet called a ‘spitzer’. It’s a German bullet... it’s pyramid-shaped. It comes to a head like a bullet…‘Spitzer’. So it happened to be this ‘pyramid-shaped’ system uncovered the young star cluster, but it couldn’t determine whether they formed a new family unit or not... or if they are members of an established Stellar Clan… or both? What do you think? This is a new family unit right here in this Third Testament, and we come from an established Stellar Clan. We were dust in the cloud.

65 In the case of the Serpens South, Doctor Tyler Bourke used SMA (The Submillimeter Array (SMA) is an 8-element radio interferometer located atop Mauna Kea in Hawai, (Figure 4), to

Figure 4

solve this mystery of Stellar Ancestry. So SMA represents some little formula that they’d used... named after a person. I won’t go into it because I wouldn’t know how to tell you the story anyway. Look at this now. In the case of Serpens South, Doctor Tyler used SMA to solve this mystery... this is the part I underlined… ‘the mystery of Stellar Ancestry’. You know we are talking about a woman and the stars... a woman in the sun... a woman with the moon under her feet. That’s stellar. We are talking about Celestial Bodies, Heavenly Jerusalem, the Mother of us all, coming through the serpent… that’s ‘The Trail of the Serpent’.

66 We’re taking about the serpent Brother. We’re bringing him down from Heaven... ‘and that old dragon was cast into the earth and that tail of the dragon brought the stars with it’. And Doctor Bourke’s saying ‘Mmm... this just turned up here in 2007, this mystery of Stellar Ancestry’. These aren’t my words. These are their words1. He measured the motion of the gas surrounding the newly-formed cluster... (You know this Third Testament is a new group. It’s a new generation; a new people, with a new message. A newly-formed cluster)… and determined that the newly-discovered stars belong to the Serpens star-forming cloud. Out from the cloud came the stars which host the famous and massive Serpens star cluster. So this new cluster came out from this old clan.

67 Brother Branham said there was ‘three sets of Angels’ that came out West when he was in Arizona. Ancient Ones... the Old Testament Saints. Ancient Ones... the New Testament Saints. He said ‘They came from Eternity in a split’, and ‘They caught me up into the constellations of themselves, mysteries made known only to them’… our Stellar Ancestors. We came from that

cloud. Look at the connection. We’re connected to the serpent... the Serpens, the star-forming cloud. The tail of the serpent brought those stars into the planet. Now we’re going to wind this off and get away from all that.

68 Take another terminology, slightly… just a few little examples on closing here. Exodus 42 And the Lord said unto Moses, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod and he

said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent. The rod was in the hand of a heavenly creature and that rod in the hand of Moses became a snake. Look at Serpentarius in the stars... Moses and the rod. But remember what we are talking about... ‘If the vine brings forth another Branch’. Moses has got a branch in his hand… a rod. You can call it a stick. It’s a branch... a staff, and here we are discovering another Branch, a New Cluster... Southern Stars. ‘And he cast it on the ground’. He cast his rod, he cast it into the earth and when he cast that rod that branch was cast into the ground… what happened? It became a snake. On your belly you shall go, dust shall be thy meat. Oh, you can see the birth right there. You can see Serpentarius standing right there. ‘I will raise up a Prophet like… God will raise a Prophet like unto me’ Moses said. Jesus became that Moses. Brother Branham said ‘Moses was standing in his flesh’.

69 So look at William Branham… Serpentarius... the serpent holder. Brother Branham was ‘a Prophet like unto Moses’, wasn’t he? Look at the message he held. He says ‘when I get home I’m going to come back and we are going to take the ‘Trail of the Serpent’. ‘Remember’, he says, ‘we will ride this trail again. It’s a promise’.

4 And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand... Look what Moses did... he fled from the thing he created! Look what we did. We came from Stellar dust... from a clan of stars... we transcended from Serpens (the serpent) and the staff (the rod) was cast into the ground and I was born by the tail of my dragon father. And I fled from that thing and ran to drugs and alcohol and everything else... all kinds of weird stuff. Why, because I was running from the snake that I had created.

70 Moses created that serpent. He was the one with the serpent in his own hands. He cast it into his own ground, and when it wriggled he was afraid of it.

4 The Lord said unto Moses, put forth thine hand, take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand and caught it...

See what he caught? He caught the serpent. The Branch, the rod and the serpent. That’s what Moses caught. You know Brother Branham identified himself as Moses... then Brother Don comes along and he said ‘People think that I am calling myself Moses’. He said ‘You are Moses’ He says ‘You… we… I am Moses’. We won’t go into that. That’s not this message today. But soon you are going to be able to see clearly that the ‘Moses Ministry’, a ‘Prophet like unto Moses’, is this baby that’s been born in the Third Coming. You say ‘Well, hold on. I can see William Branham’s part easily’. Yes you can, but that’s the point in shifting the trees... to un-shadow your part.

71 Brother Branham was a Tree of Life. He had a Branch. He was Moses. But this is my Day. This is not William Branham’s day. Who is this Moses standing before you? Every character in the Book is who you are. We won’t go into that, but do you see yourself right there? Moses caught it. He put forth his hand and caught the serpent that he had created. The very thing that he created was the thing he feared, and the thing that he feared, he paralysed and gripped it with his own hand. He paralysed the thing he feared. Isn’t that where we are standing right now?

... and it became a rod in his hand. The very thing that had a forked tongue. The very thing that wriggled like... it was slippery and slimy... that human spirit. The same thing that he created... the same thing that he feared... now he’s got a grasp of it. Amen Brother. Let’s go.

72 Look at Brother Branham in the message ‘Look’, preached in Phoenix, Arizona, in April of 1963. Look what I’m doing here. We are looking at the serpent and the rod… in other words the pole with a brass snake on it. That’s all we are doing here this morning, we are looking on that.

E-112 ... The only thing you can do is look. Take the Word. As the serpent on a pole represented the living Word that would be made flesh,

And Brother Branham said the serpent on a pole represented the living Word that would be made flesh. The living Word is the pole. You can turn it around if you like, the flesh is the snake. I will bring forth the Branch, the offspring… if she… if you bring forth another Branch I will write another Book. This is not the same book. The serpent on a pole represented the devil, sickness, criminals, and pain. No. He says the serpent on a pole represents the Living Word. We can preach the old thunder and lightning and have everybody at the altar weeping, afraid of the snake and running from serpents, but this in Moses Ministry in this Third Testament, the Branch is standing here telling you take a hold of… catch this serpent. It is the Living Word made flesh. Hallelujah. Oh I’m so happy.

73 Let’s go Brother. We’ve got a couple more slides right there. Here’s the message ‘Condemnation by Representation’ preached in 1960. Brother Branham is talking about Eve. She had this affair with the serpent which was not a reptile. The Bible said he was the most subtil of the all the beasts of the field.

14-4 ... But when she had this affair with the serpent, which was not a serpent, a reptile... The Bible said he was the most subtle of all the beasts of the field. Science trying to find now, the bones of some creature between a monkey and a man, and applying it to coloured race and so forth like that, they're as ignorant as they can come. The serpent was a man.

He says ‘the serpent was a man’. Did he say it? He said ‘the serpent was a man’.

74 There were only two trees in the Garden of Eden. Adam... the flesh body of Adam was that man standing right there. She didn’t have a baby by a snake (not a reptile), and he says it real plain here, ‘The serpent was a man’. It was the flesh man of Adam, the serpent, and the rod, the stem of Life, the Branch, was Adam’s Theophany... the Celestial, Word-man... The Genesis 1:26 Adam, the Spirit man, the Rod. Here he was inside that serpent... the serpent was coiled around that rod called Adam. The Genesis 1:26, Spirit man, was that that Branch. Adam was that Branch, Adam was the stem, Adam was the root and the serpent wrapped around that tree of knowledge and made love to Eve and she had a baby and Brother Branham said ‘Adam was the father of Cain’.2

75 In ‘The Spoken Word is the Original Seed’, March 1962, the Prophet says 89-4 ... That slick-tongued devil, he ain't got hoofs and a forked tail, no, like they try to

make you believe. He's a slicker behind the pulpit. That's right. Or some little "Ricky" with his hair combed down like a duck, setting on his back out there to harm some mother's daughter...

Look what he says. ‘The devil is not like some fork-tail like they try to make you believe’. Look at Genesis 49... 17 Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so

that his rider shall fall backward.The devil is a man… ‘Dan shall be a serpent’. You say ‘That’s an allegory’. Whatever you want to say, nevertheless, Dan shall be a serpent and the serpent shall be a man.

76 I think this might be the last one, Romans 8:3. Watch this serpent and the pole, the rod and the serpent, in closing now.

3 For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son…

We are talking about the Son of David…God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh...

I am standing here in the likeness of a serpent. Dan shall be a serpent. The serpent on the pole represents the Word made flesh. And when the Law was weak through the flesh... God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. I just look like a slicker behind the pulpit. I was going to wear my black shirt to church this morning, and I thought, ‘Man they might think I belong to that slicker Tamaki’s church’. He sent his own Son... the Third Testament... the Son of David...

Revelation 12... the Manchild... the Branch... the stem of Jesse... wrapped in serpent’s likeness... in the same body as sin – and condemned sin. The Bible says he became sin.

77 He wasn’t sinful. He put on corruption... Jesus the Son... and in that body he condemned sin. He took on the form of the serpent to defeat the serpent. When Moses put down his rod all the magicians of Egypt threw in their rods. The difference was that Moses rod swallowed up and devoured all their rods. This revelation of the serpent supersedes anything anyone tries to produce out there. Serpentarius is standing here putting out his rod, and it supersedes all that that we came from. We’ve been Born Again.

78 Just a couple more there… there’s two more. ‘God’s only Provided Place of Worship’, in 1965… he says

4 ... It's just begin blooming now, just begin... The shuck's pulling away so the wheat can lay out there... ... I was getting pretty old, and I thought, "Will I... Will there be another revival, I'll see another time?" And just remember, from the west will come a white horse rider. We'll ride this trail again. That's right. Soon as we get ready. It's a promise.

Look at the trail we took this morning. Look at the trail we have been taking these past three weeks. Look at Serpens and Serpentarius and the New Cluster in the South of the Serpent. Do you know how many stars they found? Fifty of them. You know how old I am? Fifty years old. You know what this revelation is doing for us? It’s bringing a Jubilee. What is a Jubilee? It’s freedom from bondage and slavery. Hallelujah.

We’ll ride this trail again, that’s right as soon as we get ready. It’s a promise.

79 You remember Jesus said ‘I will send the promise of my Father upon you’. Brother Branham promised… he is sending the promise of his Father upon us. What is the promise?

... We will ride this trail again... Look what he says there.

... It’s just begin blooming... What blooms? What has flowers? Branches bloom, trees bloom... and branches bloom. There was a New Branch standing right there. Brother Branham was trying to bring The Third Coming, and nobody could understand it. He could hardly understand it himself and he says ‘It’s just begin blooming’. The rod and the serpent… the rod, in his time, was just beginning to bloom.

80 Now let’s just finish off, in Numbers 17,8 And it came to pass, that on the morrow...

You know there was a big dispute about who was going to be the Leader of the Church. The people were a bit sick of Moses. They said ‘That man... he brought us out of there to starve’. Starve? My goodness what’s wrong with those people? Moses had done so many miracles and opened up so many things to them and here they were complaining. ‘We’re hungry’. You know that he had got quails and manna for them. They said, ‘Yes, and we’re sick of it’. Okay. Moses said, ‘Well God, I’m angry with these people’. God said, ‘Oh be quiet Moses, settle down boy. They’re an ungrateful bunch, so I’ll wipe the whole lot of them out for you, and I will give you a new family’. Moses said ‘Oh no, no, no don’t do that… don’t you do that, don’t kill the whole lot’. But you know, God actually did kill everyone and then brought forth a new cluster.

81 If you don’t watch it you will become ‘the old fogeys’, and the new ones will come and take your place, and you’ll rot in your traditions. Don’t do it; go with the move. Move on when the Word moves on. Stay fresh and calm and cool. And Moses… there was an argument going on right here in the scripture. ‘Ah Moses you brought us out here to die’. Moses got upset. God said ‘I’ll kill them’. ‘No, no... don’t do it’. So God said, ‘Okay... I want to show them who’s really leading this group, so all the leaders of the tribes bring your rods together’. You know what Brother Branham said? Test somebody; see if they have really got it. If you really know how to run the Church you come up here. If any of you ladies have got something to say you come up here.

82 God said, ‘Come here, all of you. Bring your sticks. Bring your rods here’. And they all brought them into the Shekinah Glory. Thank God we’ve got a Living Branch. You are that

Branch. They brought all the others. There are others. There are plenty of them in the mess-age, as Brother Glen called it. There are plenty of them, false anointed ones – but there can only be One. Do you claim to be that One? You can say ‘I am that Voice, I am Serpentarius, I am the Cluster, and the new-found bunch born in the south side of the serpent in 2007’. While we were in Ghana, Africa, during their 50th year of Jubilee, breaking and crystallising the serpent, there were Astronomers watching it happen in the stars. Fifty bright new stars born out of the cloud right there on the south side of the serpent. Look... here he says... in Numbers 17, 8 ¶ And it came to pass, on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness...

(They all brought their rods into the Shekinah glory)... And behold the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded and brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms and... (Look) and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.

83 This is another Book pertaining to Another Group.It’s a New Cluster that came from a Stellar Clan who have Stellar connections. And there are scientists in the planet who are able to measure these things, and identify them, and reveal them... and they don’t belong to universities either. They are Prophets, Seers, and Visionaries… budded. Look at the quote before that, Brother Branham said ‘It’s just beginning to bloom’. What can we say now? It’s almond time. Hallelujah. He said you go down to Egypt and you throw your stick down there Aaron… you show them, I want you to judge this place. He smote the water. He smote the earth. He smote everything... he smote the elements. What are we here for in this Third Coming? We’ll get that another time. God Bless you. Stand with me. Hallelujah.

References:1 Paragraph 62 and 66 http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2007/pr200720.html

2 Paragraph 74942-96 QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS_JEFF.IN COD_64-0823M107 ONENESS_ JEFF.IN V-10 N-2 _ 62-0211E-13 GOD'S.COVENANT.WITH.ABRAHAM.AND.HIS.SEED_SIOUX.FALLS.SD_56-0223303-580 QA.HEBREWS.PART.3_JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_57-1006

12-1216 – The Trail of the Serpent – The Rod and the SerpentDecember 16, 2012 – Pastor Mita Edwardson