Dewitt
Tabernacle Teaching Series
“LORD
I BELIEVE,
HELP
THOU
MY
UNBELIEF”
PERSONAL
NOTE TO OUR READERS: In order to try to keep up with the writing ministry and
keep the sermons going out, I have to put my Thank You notes in the sermons I
send to you. We love and appreciate each one of you. May He return to you one
hundred fold for what you send for the work.
In
Christian Love,
Br.
C. W. Wood
Mark
9:20-24,
“And they brought him unto him and when he saw him, straightway the spirit
tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.
21 And he asked his father, How long
is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child.
22 And oftimes it hath cast him into
the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing,
have compassion on us, and help us.
23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst
believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.
24 And straightway the father of the
child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine
unbelief.”
In Verse 24, there is
hidden a truth that is life changing, to say the least. This writer is convinced
that it is one of the major keys to the Last Day Bride Revival. Here is a
revelation concerning what the Lord said to the man, “All things are
possible to him that believeth.” Jesus was not teaching that all things
are possible to us because we believe intellectually, or with our willpower. He
was saying that because we have that intellectual belief, He can anoint it and
turn it into Supernatural Faith. The Prophet taught that God will anoint what we
have been believing,
Hebrews 11:6, “But without faith it is impossible to please
him; for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
We believe He is a perfect, eternal God, who rewards us with His Gift of
Faith. He quickens our believing and turns it into the Gift of Faith (The Prayer
of Faith).
In Mark 9, we see the same incidence that is recorded in Matt.
17:14-
QUOTE: CHURCH AGE BOOK, PAGES 179-180, “In Acts 3:16 when
Peter was asked how the might miracle had taken place upon the crippled one at
the Gate Beautiful, he explained it on this wise, “And His (Jesus) Name
through faith in His (Jesus) Name hath made this man (former cripple) strong,
yea the faith which is by (from) Him (Jesus) hath given him (the man) this
perfect soundness in the presence of you all.” See, there it is. Jesus’ Name
and
Jesus’ Faith brought about the miracle. Peter did not claim it was his own
human faith any more than he claimed that it was his own name. He said that
Jesus’ Name used in the faith which is from Jesus performed that great work.
This faith is what the Lord was speaking about in Rev. 2:13. It was HIS
faith. It was not faith IN Him. But it was HIS OWN faith that He had given to
the believers.” (End of quote)
QUOTE: CHURCH AGE BOOK, PAGE 180, “Human faith wasn’t enough
then and it is not enough now. It takes the very faith of the Son of God to drop
into a man’s heart so that he can receive the Lord of glory into the temple
not made with hands.
This was a living faith. “I live by the faith of the Son of God.”
Paul did not say that he lived by faith IN the Son of God. It was the faith of
the Son of God that had given him life and kept him living in Christian victory.
No, they had not denied that salvation was supernatural from start to
finish. They kept alive the truth of His name and His Faith and they were
blessed by the Lord and accounted worthy of Him.” (End of quote)
There was a demon possessed child there at the foot of the mountain and a
broken hearted father, who was desperate to see his child healed. It happened
that at that time the Lord Jesus came walking into the crowd that had gathered
around the disciples and the father and son. And, the Lord asked the Scribes,
“What question ye with
them?”
(Mark 9-16) And one of the multitude answered and said, “Master I have brought
unto Thee my son which hath a dumb spirit. Verse 18, “I spake to Thy
Disciples that they should cast him out, and they could not. (Yet they certainly
believed in casting out devils.) Then Jesus spoke and saith, “O Faithless
generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you?” Bring
him unto me.” (Mark
With the Lord there was no struggle, no battle that was long and drawn
out, there was no groaning, at least not from the Lord! He spoke and the devil
came out. A happy son and his crying father hugged each other and looked with
tear-stained eyes, with love, into the face of Jesus of Nazareth.
Then Jesus spoke again in answer to their question regarding their
defeat. (Mark
21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Did those Disciples believe in
Divine Healing? Surely, but they needed something more. Now I want to refer back
to our Scriptures in Mark 9:23-24, “And Jesus said unto him, if thou
canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway
the father of the child cried out, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.”
Please notice, this man was a
“Believer.” He cried out and testified to that fact, and our Lord did not
deny it. At the same time, this father very apparently had a powerful
revelation! Notice again his request, “Help thou mine unbelief.” Is
that not a strange statement when considered by our natural mind? The man said
he was a Believer, yet understood that he
needed
help with some doubts and fears he was having! Somehow,
somewhere, he had learned that there is a difference between our intellectual
believing and the Gift of Supernatural Faith that can only come when God
delivers it.
Jude (Verse3), “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write
unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and
exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once
delivered unto the saints.” Here Jude exhorts (Jude pleads with us) to
seek the Lord’s Faith that can only come as He sends it!
Jesus said, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall
say unto this mountain remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove, and
nothing shall be impossible unto you.”
He said that the least amount of
faith that He can give is mightier than all the power of the Devil. It does not
take a truck-load of the Real God-like Faith, but it does have to be His
Faith that He alone can send as a Gift!
As the man in our story who had the demon possessed son, we must be a
Believer in our God. But, then we must understand that our believing with our
willpower, though absolutely required, is not the same as God’s Gift of Faith.
In our churches, and all around us, there is a multitude of sick people. Some of
these folks are real Believers, such as the man in our story. Yet, we must
confess that the need for healing and deliverance is not being met as the
Scripture says it can be and should be! I am sure that part of the reason is
that we have not recognized the great difference between believing and the
supernatural “Gift of Faith” that can only come as God delivers it into our
heart.
If we can receive the revelation of this difference, then we are on the
road to power with our God. It is true that this power will not be a public
show
this
time. I understand now that some of us have made the God- kind of Faith a
condition of the mind! I mean by this that we have supposed that we can believe
hard enough and long enough to see a miracle. This is the wrong idea about how
God’s miracle working Faith comes, and what it really it!
If we can open the door of our heart to Him and confess our failures, we
make possible this wonderful, powerful revelation concerning the God-kind of
Faith that can only come as He delivers it. The Faith God has to send, even the
size of a mustard seed, will do more than a ton of our willpower, though we must
use our willpower to believe! Our intellectual belief is the platform on which
God can send down His Supernatural Gift of Faith. To believe in healing or any
other promise of God is one thing, but to have His Supernatural Faith to receive
it is quite a different thing! I am satisfied that many of us have failed to see
the difference between belief and faith (the Faith of God). We try and try to
believe hard enough, exerting all our willpower, waiting to see the answer, not
realizing that we are trying to do it by our own power and might, which is in
reality, trying to leave the Lord out of the picture. We didn’t intend to
leave Him out, but if we could exercise miracle working faith without Him, then
He could still be in the Tomb!
We have tried to make real God-like Faith a condition of the mind, when
it is a revelation to the heart. When we see this, there will be an end to our
struggling to believe harder. We will know that we are already Believers, and
that God does not require any more than that from us. He never asks us to do the
impossible and we can not manufacture God’s Faith in our own heart! He
reserves the impossible things for Himself to do! When the revelation settles
down into our spirit that miracle working faith (the Gift of Faith) only comes
as He delivers it, we will no longer struggle harder to believe
believe,
but we will testify to being a believer, then ask our Lord to “Help our
unbelief” by anointing it and turning it into the supernatural Gift of
Faith. We will no longer utter commands out of our own willpower, hoping they
will be obeyed by the enemy.
Our Lord wanted to make receiving His Faith to be so easy, but we have
made it impossible by trying to produce it ourselves. Can we be honest enough to
confess that having come to the end of the road in our struggles to pump up real
Faith and that we have failed? Can we confess that there has been something
wrong in our thinking, and our attitude of spirit, or else we would have seen
more victories than many of us have seen? If there have been disappointments and
failures, it has been on our part, and not on Him who is, “The same
yesterday, today and forever.”
Brother Branham taught on the
difference between our mental believing and the real Faith of God. He called our
mental believing the mechanics and God’s Supernatural Faith the Dynamics.
There is a beautiful parable in the following sermon.
QUOTE:
IT IS THE RISING OF THE SUN, 1965, JEFF. PAGE 16-17-24, “But now, for instance, what if-if we were going to go back to Tucson
this afternoon (now) and each one of us had a—was going to go in a—a big
Cadillac, brand new; and all of the seats were made out of—of doeskin (softest
of the leather, soft and easy to sit in); and the floorboards were plush; the
steering wheel were nickel-plated and had diamond studs all over it; and the
engine was mechanically tested to be exactly the right engine; and the wheels
were—all had bearings and greased up; and the tires were all puncture-proof
and blow-out free, all been tested scientifically. They had been pushed off the
assemble line, both of them, and both of them filled up with gasoline. That’s
the running power, the gasoline, because in it is the octane.
But
now, when you’re going to start them, although both of them look just alike,
but there’s one of them don’t have any spark—any firing power.
“Well,”
you say, “the power is in the gasoline, Brother Branham.” But I don’t’
care how much power is in the gasoline, unless there’s a spark there to
manifest that power, less there’s a power there to confirm that that’s
gasoline; it just might as well be water.
Until…No
matter how much theologians claim, how well you got your church set, how much
education you got, how much like the Bible, until that wave Sheaf, until the
Holy Spirit comes upon that person to quicken that Word (the gasoline represents
the Word; It’s the Truth); but with out the Spirit it won’t move!”
Page
17, “We’ve put too much stress
on the mechanics and nothing on the dynamics. It needs the dynamic Power of God,
the Resurrection power of Jesus Christ upon the Church to manifest and to bring
to pass that this is gasoline! It might be in a gasoline can; it could
still be water. See? But the only proof of it is put the Life on it, and it’ll
prove whether it’s gasoline or not.”
Page
18, “That’s the Easter
Message: the Dynamics and the mechanics together. The mechanics without the
Dynamics, no good, neither is the Dynamics without the mechanics. You can scream
and shout and jump up and down all you want to, and deny this Word; it won’t
do any good. You’re just cranking around the—the pistons of—got spark
there to fire, but no gasoline to fire it by. They only work as they come
together. Amen! So one will set still and the other one’ll go up; that’s the
only thing there is to it. Yet they both might look like, both claim to be
churches, both claim to be Bride, but one has mechanics and Dynamics. It brings
it to pass. But what He said is the Truth.
It
just won’t move, no matter how good the mechanics is, until the Dynamics come.
When the Dynamics
come,
that fire is made to connect with that octane in the gasoline. And when that
explodes it, it causes a combustion, and that combustion moves every motion,
every move, for He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That’s the
resurrection; that’s the real Power of God—mechanics with the Dynamics
(Faith of God).
Notice. It’s the Spirit that quickens; it’s the—it’s the spark
that fires. It’s not the gas that fires; it’s the spark that fires the gas.
See? “You can do nothing without Me, but with Me you can do all things. (End
of quote)
In this parable the Prophet is
teaching that it is not our ability to believe that brings the miracles,
but rather the faith that only comes as God sends it and adds it to our mental
belief. We have confused our ability to believe with the Faith which
is of God!
We can believe so many good things, and we must! We believe in God’s
power to heal and send other blessings. We can believe in His sovereign control,
in His powerful Love and faithfulness, but we must not stake the working of a
miracle on these things, we must ask God to send His spark to ignite the Word in
the gas tanks of our minds. It requires the touch of the Hand of God, Himself.
It is not our ability to count it done, but it’s that perfect knowing that can
only come as God sends it to the heart and mind.
We need the impartation of God’s Faith that goes beyond reason. His
Faith, delivered to us removes all doubts. We will no longer be praying
and hoping that He hears our prayers. He alone is “The Author and the Finisher
of the Faith that moves mountains.”
Heb. 12:2, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our
faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Jesus
was the Author and the finisher of Paul’s Faith. Gal. 2:20, “I
am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of
God.”
He was the Author of Peter and
John’s faith! Acts 3:16, “And his name through faith in his name
hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him
hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.”
The Lord told Brother Branham to
pick up his pen and write.
QUOTE
CHURCH AGE BOOK, PAGES 170-171,
“Now then, this Word He has left behind on the printed page is part of Him
when you accept it by faith into a Spirit-filled life. He said that His Word was
life. John 6:63b. But that is exactly what He is: John 14:6, “I am the Way,
the Truth, and the Life.”
If the church, way back there in that third
age had only held on to the revelation of the living Word in their midst, the
power of God would not have faded as it did in those Dark Ages. And right today,
when the church returns to the Word in faith, we can say without doubt that the
glory of God and the wonderful acts of God will be in her midst again.
One
night as I was seeking the Lord, the Holy Spirit told me to pick up my pen and
write. As I grasped the pen to write, His Spirit gave me a message for the
church. I want to bring it to you…It has to do with the Word and the Bride. “Here
is what I am trying to say to you. The law of reproduction is that each specie
brings forth after its own kind, even according to Gen. 1:11, “And God said,
Let the Earth bring forth grass, and the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree
yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it
was so.” Whatever life was in the seed came forth into a plant and thence into
fruit. The very same law applies to the church today. Whatever seed started the
church will come forth and be like the original seed because it is the same
seed. In these last days the true
Notice
the harmony of the Father and the Son. Jesus never did anything until it was
first showed Him by the Father. John 5:19. This harmony is now to exist between
the Groom and His Bride. He shows her His Word of life. She receives it. She
never doubts it. Therefore, nothing can harm her, not even death. For if the
seed be planted, the water will raise it up again. Here is the secret of this.
The Word is in the Bride (as it was in Mary). The Bride has the mind of Christ
for she knows what He wants done with the Word. She performs the command of the
Word in His name for she has “thus saith the Lord.” Then the Word is
quickened by the Spirit and it comes to pass. Like a seed that is planted and
watered, it comes to full harvest, serving its purpose.
Those
in the Bride do only His will. No one can make them do otherwise. They have
“Thus saith the Lord” or they keep still. They know that it has to be God in
them doing the works, fulfilling His own Word. He did not complete all His work
while in His earthly ministry, so now He works in and through the Bride. She
knows that, for it was not yet time for Him to do certain things that He must
now do. But He will now fulfill through the Bride that work which He left for
this specific time.” (End of quote)
The
mechanics, with the Dynamics added, will produce the Bride Revival that is
already underway. Amen!
QUOTE:
CHURCH AGE BOOK, PAGE 172, “The
member of the virgin Bride will love Him, and they will have His potentials, for
He is their head, and all power belongs to Him, they are subject to Him as the
members of our bodies are subject to our heads.
Notice
the harmony of the Father and the Son. Jesus never did anything until it was
first showed Him by the Father. John 5:19. This harmony is now to exist between
the Groom and His Bride. He shows her His Word of life. She receives it. She
never doubts it. Therefore, nothing can harm her, not even death. For if the
seed be planted, the water will raise it up again. Here is the secret of this.
The Word is in the Bride (as it was in Mary). The Bride has the mind of Christ
for she knows what He wants done with the Word. She performs the command of the
Word in His name for she has “thus saith the Lord.” Then the Word is
quickened by the Spirit and it comes to pass. Like a seed that is planted and
watered, it comes to full harvest, serving its purpose.
Those
in the Bride do only His will. No one can make them do otherwise. They have
“Thus saith the Lord” or they keep still. They know that it has to be God in
them doing the works, fulfilling His own Word. He did not complete al
His
work while in His earthly ministry, so now He works in and through the Bride.
She knows that, for it was not yet time for Him to do certain things that He
must now do. But He will now fulfill through the Bride that work which He left
for this specific time.” (End of quote)
The
mechanics, with the Dynamics added, will produce the Bride Revival that is
already underway. Amen!