Tim: So I'm going to ask you Jeff, as late as we've talked about this here, and I can imagine that there are ministers, people are going to talk to their ministers about this podcast as well...  message ministers. My guess is when you came out of the message you had contact with other ministers, but the question I want to ask you is this, have you had any contact with other message ministers since you [00:48:00] left or do they just regard you as an unbeliever and they've just, haven't bothered to reach out? 

Jeff: I first came out. I hadn't even come out yet. Actually, what I did was I asked a bunch of ministers to meet with me so that they, I wanted to be judged by a party of my own peers. So I said, I want you to tell me where I'm off, where I'm wrong, much like what you did, Rod, by coming down here, you just to sit down and say, okay, am I going nuts? Am I crazy? 
So I did the same thing. Now, most of the ministers that I invited would not show up because they considered me radioactive. It was not politically expedient for them to show up, because they figured if I jumped ship and they had always been identified with me, whether it was at family camp or me preaching for them, that somehow they would be associated with what I did.
And would they possibly be the next domino to go over? So it wasn't politically expedient for them to associate with me. So 99 and nine tenths of them did [00:49:00] not. And that the ones that did only did for one hour at a lunch. Between here and Toledo. 
And then the other ones that I invited up in in Blaine, Washington, one came and then the rest of them. And then another one was from a minister from my church. And then, thank God, Lance came. And of course I did not know at that time that Lance was also on his way out. And I don't think he knew that I was on my way out. And so it was just providential that he and I got together, compared notes. We were, I spent more time up in Lance's motel room, as we discussed all the things that we were seeing.
Then we would go back down and meet with the other ministers. And it was like, it was how much of them were contending for the message. And it really sounded hollow and empty even back then seven years ago. And so now seven years later, I've reached out to many message ministers and many ministers have [00:50:00] reached out to me, but not to convert me, actually, they're coming out of the message.
And so they're meeting with me secretly or their wives are meeting with me. And sometimes they were meeting with me secretly. And I would say, listen, you've got to tell your husband that you're really having a crisis, a faith crisis. And you've got to sit down with him. I said, I can't meet with you anymore until you talk to your husband, because I know he's the pastor, you've got to sit down with your own husband.
And so I was telling Rod before the podcast that I had a brother passed away, his son took the church over. His son, had some misgivings. He had listened to the podcast that Rod and I did way back when, on the cloud. And he calls me up, he's bawling. So I meet him and we talk. And so he says, would you come and spend some time at my church?
We're getting rid of the minister. He was an associate minister. He said, we're getting rid of the minister. He's a message minister. He's got to go. We no longer believe brother Branham is Malachi 4, but we don't know what to do with everything else. Can you come teach us? So I spent a [00:51:00] year there. And this would have been the latter part of 2019 and the very first part of 2020.
And so I spent a year with them and they completely came out of the message. And so that's exciting. I'm very happy for them. Now they've moved into different churches. They've gotten to the place where they can accept another ministry outside of the authority of a prophet. And they're settling in and they're literally being humbled by what they're seeing in these churches and how the love of God is there and present and real, it's not some social soup supper. All the terms that brother Branham used. It's not that at all. And I hear from them occasionally. And just in fact, I just heard from that former associate minister just the other day, and he was telling me it's going to a particular Baptist church, he's really enjoying it.
But as for the other ministry at large, only the ones that have come out, not a soul except for Ken Andes. Ken Andes used to be the translator for the Voice Of God. Ken Andes reached out to me while I was [00:52:00] working at Lowe's one day and he met me in the nursery. We had a great discussion.
Of course I had my view and he had his, but nonetheless, I did appreciate him coming to talk to me. And then I did have  a minister from Germany, who was a good friend of mine, he was also my translator when I was in Holland and when I was in Germany. And he also came, but I also know some things are happening there, which I can't go into that are really positive.
So I'm hoping to meet with him also very soon, but he came and he's been nothing but a special brother, and a real treat, but God's dealing in wonderful ways there too. So yeah, no, as part of the ministry at large, I've had just two weeks ago, I walked into a restaurant. Sit down. I recognize these two people as being message preachers.
I did not know either one of their names because seven years has gone by and they were young evangelists. And I just didn't remember the name. So one of the came up introduced him to me. He said, are you Jeff Jenkins? That's it? Yeah, we got to talking. And so I said the reason they [00:53:00] wanted to know, why did you leave the message?
So I told them. I said, I started where I started with Rod on the cloud was the first thing. And then of course , none of the visions were fulfilled, like brother Branham said they were fulfilled from India to Africa, you name it. And so then when I went into the seven major visions, I said, oh, Rod used the term moving target.
And so finally he looked at me and he just said, doesn't matter what you say. My womb is closed and no other seeds going to get in there. And it was all this message jargon, was just this molten jargon. And I just thought, oh my. 
I went into law. I took him to Romans chapter 10, like it just said a moment ago. I said, now tell me,  that person who just received Jesus, is he saved? And the one guy on the other side, wouldn't tell me what he felt. the other minister says yeah, he's saved. I said, oh good. So he's going to be in heaven and he's going to be my brother and he's born again.
Oh no, no. He's not born again. I said, okay I said, show me in the Bible where there's a difference [00:54:00] between born again and saved. And so we went into that. He could not show me. And then he dove into dispensationalism. I said, and the first words out of his mouth was it started with a prophet and it ends with a prophet.
I said, yeah, that's what William Branham said, but you're saying the apostle Paul was a prophet. He said, he was. I said, show me in the Bible where the apostle Paul was a prophet. 

Tim: Yeah. 

Jeff: And so when you start to take apart their theology and their filter, the message, they have nothing. They don't have anything to stand on.
They don't realize it. And that's when he said, actually my womb's closed. You can't plant any other seed. That's been generally when I ever meet ministers, that's been my response. I've had several that come to Lowe's that are in the area because it's a lot of message churches and we've had some real doozies of some conversations, I'm telling you that.
And I've even had to apologize to one minister. Because I spoke to him for a half hour  at work on the clock. And he came in later and his wife came in with him and, I said, listen, I was on the clock. [00:55:00] I shouldn't have done that. But  those are my deep convictions but I said, I shouldn't have done that on Lowe's time.
So it's been it's been enlightening and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion with them. It's not an issue of pride. It's an issue of... I'm not Wile E. Coyote anymore. I'm not, I don't have thin air. I literally have Terra Firma. 

Tim: Right. And it's an interesting perspective because we, gosh, we, people will send in clips of a message minister. There are several across the nation that speak very, very badly about this podcast and about BelieveTheSign - the forum, and about the website BelieveTheSign and their contention, frankly is that, this is like you say, this is a different seed. This is of Satan. 
Satan's trying to do whatever they can in order to move you away from the message. And I bless their heart, when they start talking about how we are from Satan, and Jeff, I can't tell you how many times I have heard direct. I can't [00:56:00] tell you how many times I've heard ministers say that guy that said this, he is of Satan. And a lot of that is to direct fear in the hearts of their people in their assemblies. If you talk to that guy, you will be talking to Satan. If pay attention to that guy, you will be paying attention to Satan. And we know we have the word. We're elite. We're special. We have something different. To me, one of the biggest issues is message ministers who cannot contend for their faith.
So you automatically are the problem, right? They can't tell you where William Branham's prophecies came to pass. They can't tell you how he qualifies as a prophet of God, but you are the problem. Not William Branham or the scripture. You're the problem, because you're bringing that to somebody's attention.

Jeff: I'm amazed that if we are no threat to them, if we are a non-issue, if we're just a flea on the back of a dog, then why do they [00:57:00] devote so much time speaking about us from their pulpits? They're afraid they're losing members and numbers, or at least that people are now thinking. I think we've definitely shifted.
Those that have come out and have made themselves more public. We have definitely shifted the debate. It's not where it was two or three or four or five years ago. They're now having to say things like yeah, William Branham made mistakes. No, of course he was not infallible.  You'll never hear them say that he was the divine interpreter of the word of God.
And yet that's what William Branham said about himself. Hardly ever does anybody use that anymore. And so then they won't say, apply the token, hardly ever and say kick the TV out because everybody has a computer.  Brother Branham's message was caught in time. And then we could go through Google and extract it from history.
Whereas the Bible is timeless, but the message is trapped in time. And now it's easy to [00:58:00] decipher it and separate the truth from the error.

Rod: Here's something that I've come to understand. Jesus said, follow me. And that group, that small group of people that actually followed him, went on to turn the world upside down. 

Jeff: Yeah. 

Rod: and Jesus never changed or altered that initial invitation, which was follow me, but the church eventually changed the invitation.
So when William Branham pointed out that the council of Nicaea in three 25 80, this is where the problem in the church started. And I actually think he is correct in that, but he's correct for the wrong reason. So when says the council of Nicaea was a problem, he's right. But William Branham said that the first person ever baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit happened at the Nicene council.
But if you actually study church history, you understand that's completely wrong. People were baptized that way hundreds of years earlier.

Jeff: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Rod: William Branham said that the council of Nicaea [00:59:00] was where the doctrine of the Trinity was substituted for the correct oneness interpretation of the Godhead. But that's also incorrect.
There were two versions of the Godhead, which were both presented at the Nicene council, but the issue was Arianism, which is the view that Jesus was not deity versus the doctrine of the Trinity. The oneness doctrine, which was referred to as Sabellianism, was rejected by the church many years before that 
The real problem with the Nicene council was that they shifted the invitation of Jesus. They refocused the attention from follow me to believe in me. Now, just believe in me, it's much easier. It's much less demanding. And in fact it really doesn't demand anything. Just believe. The most popular statement in the entire new Testament is, maybe the most popular statement in the entire Bible is John 3:16.
Whoever believes in me shall not perish, but have eternal life. And that's true. But we also read in James2:!9 [01:00:00] that the devils also believe and tremble. And message followers often refer to themselves as believers. But if you're simply a believer, you may not be a follower. You'll be a believer. You'll be a consumer, but you won't necessarily be a follower.
Jesus might not be your leader. And, Jesus told us in John 13:35  by this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. But that is not how the church is known today.
 Not the evangelical church, not the message church. It's certainly not what message churches are known for. How loving are message churches if you question William Branham? 
The big problem with the Nicene council was the church went from being behavioral. And I've talked about this before. They loved each other... to being creedal.... What is important is what you believe. And that is what is important in the message. Do you believe me to be God's prophet? William Branham would often say [01:01:00] that. But that doesn't mean anything, a much more important question is, are you a true follower of Jesus?
The Book of Acts refers to Jesus' disciples as followers of the way. What was the way? It was the way of love. And the problem with the Nicene council is not its view of the Godhead. Rather, the biggest problem?  The Nicene creed is missing one small, four letter word, love. What you believe is more important than how you act.
And when this message minister tells you, Jeff. You can't put one contrary seed into my womb. My womb is sealed. He's telling you that the most important thing to him is what he believes, what he's received and what he believes. But scripture tells us that there are three important things, faith, hope, and love.
But the greatest of these is love. And Paul tells us in Galatians 5:6 that the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. The only thing. If you don't have love, you have nothing. And message followers, and sadly, [01:02:00] most of the evangelical church in north America, is missing that most important ingredient.
Love. They believe but they don't love

Jeff: Yeah. 

Tim: William Branham said over 400 times in over 1100 sermons, William Branham referred to himself as a prophet of God. William Branham said, Thus Saith The Lord, 1,616 times in the same 1100 plus sermons. At the end of the day, when we see William Branham's own son, Joseph, preaching to his assembly. And this specific example was a couple of years ago in a March preliminary, where he spoke to his assembly and said, remember that William Branham said, if that the angel came to him and said, if you get them to believe you.   The issue is if you believe William Branham, are you following God? Are you following Jesus Christ? And it's a shame,  because Joseph never says, if you follow Jesus... [01:03:00]  He always says, but brother Branham says, if you believe, if you get the people to believe in you then...  There's a distinction that you draw. There is the only believe. There's an issue  with what he said versus what Christ would say. 

Jeff: What's so earth-shaking about that concept where we can divide between believing a doctrine versus believing in a person. Because the only time you ever see in the new Testament term belief is when it's tied to the person, Jesus Christ. And it's never tied to a dogma. It's never tied to a doctrine.
And yet the message, because of William Branham's sleight of hand, brother Branham, he says, now  it's the bleeding word or it's the word made flesh and  that's  code for, I am the very personage. I am the persona. I'm the person that brings you the word.
And can you, as you just said a moment ago, Tim, can you believe me? And [01:04:00] brother Branham would say, believe in God's prophets, so shall you prosper. And then    Amos chapter three, verse seven. And so all of these verses that they utilize goes back to this one thing. It's believing in a doctrine. Except for, the Bible says, believe on me and thou shall be saved.
A man said to the Ethiopian eunuch, if you believe with all your heart. And he says, I believe on Jesus. He says, and then he went down into the water and he baptized him. It was never, he was never asking us to believe in a creator or a concept.

Rod: And the very word faith  in Greek means trust. So do you trust? Trusting is about taking risk and now you're going to behave differently because of your trust. And if there is no behavior modification, if there's no following of Jesus that goes along with your belief, you don't really believe on Jesus.
He might believe in him, [01:05:00] but you don't believe on him.

Jeff: And you believe about him and he had to have a mediator to do that for you. Let me read you a scripture. And I would like you guys to do, if you wouldn't mind,  to talk about the scripture in light of what we know now. You've read this a million times and I'm sure it's freed you, but it's Hebrews 1:1, God, having in times past spoken to the fathers through the prophets and at many times in various ways has in these last days, spoken to us by his son whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world.
His son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance and the upholding of all things by the word of his power. When he had, by himself, purified us from our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels as he has inherited a more excellent name than they have.
[01:06:00] So my takeaway is in times past. He doesn't speak through prophets anymore. The believing on a prophet and what Elijah says or what Moses says,  that is an old Testament model, an old concept. Now it's believing on the person of Jesus Christ who died and rose again from the dead. And that's the only time I'm asked to believe, but the message people do not know what to do with Hebrews chapter one... God in times past.

Rod:  I agree with you,  Jeff.  What this is saying is that God has disclosed himself in his Son. He's revealed himself in his son, and this is the climax and fulfillment of all previous revelation. As Peter says, we have been given everything necessary to live godly. So we don't need anything else.
And this issue that, [01:07:00] oh, everything was lost.   The Bible wasn't lost. We actually have the word, we can read it. This was what was given to the church. We can read it, we have the Holy Spirit. I don't need anything else. I don't need a William Branham. Now there are gifts in the church that help build up the church, but they don't take me into faith.
So we have       as  scripture says apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers. These are for the edification, which just means for the building up of the church, they don't make me a Christian. They don't cause me to believe. They help build me up.

Jeff: , I love that because what you're saying  is the fivefold ministry of apostle, prophet, teachers, evangelists and pastors are given to the body of believers, but they are not authorities. They're actually there to assist as servants in the body, but they never rise up to take the place of the word or speak in the name of Jesus on [01:08:00] a sole authoritative level.  That is history. And what we have now is the same beautiful gifts of teachers and gifts of healing, gifts of prophecy and gifts of government. They're all there. And  it's the Bible says to edify the body of Jesus Christ.

Tim: Yeah, exactly.  I'm looking at Matthew 11, Matthew chapter 11, verse 15.  Just before that  starting at 13 says for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. If you're willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who is to come. Anyone who has ears should listen. Similarly in the gospel of Luke and that's Luke  chapter 16, verse 16, grab that real quick. There we go. 
The law and the prophets were until john, since then the good news of the kingdom of God has been proclaimed in everyone is strongly urged to enter into it. What Paul does in Hebrews chapter one verse one is to [01:09:00] reaffirm or reestablish what Jesus said in the book of Matthew and in the book of Luke.  That there is no requirement for a Gentile prophet moving forward. That you have Jesus Christ follow him    and follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. That's the key. 

Rod:  I can read from second Peter one verse three, he says, his divine power, God's divine power has bestowed on us everything necessary for life and godliness through the rich knowledge of the one who called us by his own glory and excellence.  And through  these things, he has bestowed on us his precious and most magnificent promises.
So that by means of what was promised. You may become partakers of the divine nature after escaping the worldly corruption that is produced by evil desire.

Jeff: Yeah. Beautiful.

Rod: We have everything we need.

Jeff: We do.  I was  looking at that scripture in John, where  brother Branham [01:10:00] violated this principle. That's in John and it's John one and it says, "Dear friends do not believe every spirit. But test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the spirit of God versus the spirit of error. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God." 
Now let me stop there for just a moment. He's talking about the eternality of Jesus Christ here, which I find very important. Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge  Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. So according to the message, you have to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is  come in [01:11:00] flesh and William Branham in order to get to the Father.
So you cannot get to the Father without Jesus and William Branham.  Where here the scripture says, No, just Christ. Acknowledge Christ. And this is paramount. It's important because if you notice every politician can talk about God. They can evoke the name of God because it's very generic. But they will not evoke the name of Jesus.
They will not do and it cannot come from their mouth.  But here the scripture says that    we know we have the Father because we have the Son. And to me  this is not only inclusive referring to the Son, but it's also exclusive that it can't be the Son and anybody else.

Rod: Here's something that I noticed, Jeff. And I don't know if you've thought about this, but this really struck me  when I thought about this. And actually my son, one of my boys, pointed this out to me, [01:12:00] William Branham stated that he spoke squirrels into existence and it was at the command of a voice that spoke to him.
 And in referring to the voice, he described it as "something said." So he said, something said, Speak these squirrels. So was this God speaking to him? An angel? Or something else? So when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, something spoke to him and said, turn stones into  bread, and Jesus was hungry.
And he was tempted to do what Satan asked him to do. And in the case of William Branham, he was hunting for squirrels. So why was this different from Jesus' first temptation,

Jeff: right.

Rod: Right? And one common interpretation among message believers is that the third pull will manifest among believers as the ability to speak things into existence.
 And of course, this is based on William Branham's testimony. But the danger of this expectation is that it forgets Jesus' first temptation. So we go to William Branham, not to Jesus. When the devil tempted Jesus to use his [01:13:00] supernatural powers to create something from stones in order to satisfy his own hunger. 
And so this temptation is exactly what message believers are expecting to yield to in the future. If the tempter came to a message believer with instructions to create bread or squirrels from stones, they would give in because they would say, oh, William Branham said, we're going to do this. This is wonderful.

Jeff: And you're right about the  the parallel. Because the parallel  is that Jesus refused to toy with the gift of God. Whereas William Branham, I find that creating squirrels  is: one, it's toying with the gift of God. Two, it's placing a power, as if William Branham was almost like Abraham, who was the friend of God, who was, it, had God in his back pocket.
Again, I don't see this favoritism that William Branham said he had    in the new Testament whatsoever.  And yet those kinds of things to me, don't [01:14:00] reflect vindication they reflect favoritism. And I just, I don't see that.
 
Tim: But Jeff, isn't that the reason though for William Branham to have told those types of stories, he was convincing people that he did have God's favor. That he had been vindicated by God. Had he not been vindicated by God? Had he not had God's favor, message believers wouldn't believe in him because there's because anybody  can   anybody any  and don't take this personally, but nearly anybody can preach.
Not everybody can be a prophet of God with God's favor. And that's not to say that everybody can preach, but it's that it separates William Branham from the regular preacher, from the person that most people  would go  to service to listen to or follow..