DEWITT TABERNACLE TEACHING SERIES
THE
UNPARDONABLE SIN
By C.W. Wood
MAY
2014
PERSONAL
NOTE TO OUR READERS: Dear
Friends, We press the battle for our Lord here.
If we count the Bride Revival as having started in 1963, when the Seven
Seals were opened, then it has been going on for over 50 years.
Some may be waiting for the Bride to have revival, but this writer
believes it is about to end! This
note is to each one of our readers individually, and I say from my heart,
“Thank you for your support. I
am very encouraged by your confidence in the ministry, and I believe the Lord
is rewarding you.” We have
started a project to mail all our readers a copy of Br. F.F. Bosworth’s book
“CHRIST THE HEALER” (at no charge), but we are getting some of them back due to
incorrect addresses. So, if you
haven’t received your book and you would like to have it, please send a card
with your current NAME and ADDRESS. No more will be mailed out
unless we receive your card. Hope
to hear from you. Br.
C.W. Wood
QUOTE:
HEBREWS BOOK, PAGE 216,
“…..Let’s go over to Hebrews, 10th chapter, the 26th
verse: For
if we sin wilfully after…we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.
But
a certain fearful looking…. of the judgment and fiery indignation, which
shall devour the adversary.
He
that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:
Of
how much more sorer punishment…..who has trod underfoot the Son of God, and
has counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy
thing, and…. done despite to the works of grace?”
(End of Quote)
QUOTE:
HEBREWS BOOK, PAGE 217, “That’s not talking about a Christian.
That’s talking about a man that heard the Word and turned away from
it….he that disbelieves wilfully
after he… (Not after he received Christ in his heart; the Bible doesn’t
say that)…If we sin wilfully (disbelieve wilfully) after….we received the knowledge of the truth, (get it? Wasn’t
talking to a Christian at all!)
Some
woman came to me not long ago, and said, “Brother Branham, I’m a
Christian, but I blasphemed the Holy Ghost.”
I
said, “It’s Impossible.” A
Christian could not blaspheme the Holy Ghost.
You can’t do it. A
Christian spirit bears record with Christ’s Spirit.
See? And you’ll call
everything of God, “God’s” (End of quote)
A
Born-Again Christian cannot commit the Unpardonable Sin.
Now
I want to go to the Message and show that the Prophet said the so-called
Unpardonable Sin can be forgiven.
QUOTE:
UNPARDONABEL SIN. PAGE 28, “For if you sin wilfully, after you received
the knowledge of the Truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sin,” till
you come make that thing right. That’s
right. If you know you’re doing
wrong, walk right up just as humbly as you can, search it out.
“Well,”
you say, “I’ll look it up some of these days.”
Some of these days may be too long.
You may not live “some of these days.”
The thing to do is search it out right now.
That’s right. Look at it
and see if it’s right. And if
it’s the Truth, walk in it and God will bless you.”
(End of Quote)
Here
he says the Unpardonable Sin can be forgiven.
This has to be true in order to fit the rest of the scripture.
John 6:37, “If any man
shall come to me, I will in no wise cast him out.”
Ezek. 18:23, “Have
I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? Saith the Lord God, and not
that he should return from his ways and live?
Ezek. 33:11, “Say
unto them, As I live saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of
the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye
from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” Verse
12, “As for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the
day that he turneth from his wickedness;” Verse 14, “Again,
when I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin and
do that which is lawful and right;” Verse 16, “None
of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him: he hath done
that that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.”
How
plainly do all these scriptures say that any wicked and any sin will be
forgiven when repented of! Remember,
scripture cannot contradict scripture! They must all agree!
As
a minister of the Gospel for 50 years, May 2014, I have encountered people who
have been taught that they had committed the Unpardonable Sin.
And, some of these people seemed to have a desire to be in a church and
serve God, but had been wrongly taught that some sin or other that they were
guilty of, had caused them to be eternally lost.
QUOTE:
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN, PAGE 16, “Now the first thing we want to know,
what is the Unpardonable Sin? Some
of them said, it’s suicide, some of them said, it’s a mother that gets rid
of her child (abortion), others said because you once had the Holy Ghost and
backslid on the Holy Ghost. It
isn’t. No sir!
(End of Quote)
QUOTE:
THE UNPARDONABLE SIN, PAGE 19, “Paul said he that sins or, disbelieves
wilfully after he has received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no
more sacrifice for sin. There is
your Unpardonable Sin, to know what the truth is and refuse to walk in it.”
(End of Quote)
And,
the mysterious thing about this wrong teaching was that the teachers did not
agree on what sin it was that caused one to be eternally lost!
Some say that the Unpardonable sin is to see the truth, but resist it
for so long a time that the Lord will eventually refuse to forgive you.
It is not that God will refuse to forgive after so long a time, but
that our hearts become so hard that we won’t repent.
Psalms
95:8, “Harden not your hearts, as in the day of provocation, and as in the
day of temptation.”
Heb.
3:8 “Harden
not your hearts, as in the provocation…”
Heb.
3:15,
“….today if you will hear His voice, harden not your heart.”
Heb.
4:7, “….today
after so long a time, as it is said, if you will hear His voice harden not
your heart.”
Why
then does the Scripture say that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart?
Very simple reason. Pharaoh
never did repent! After all the
miracles he saw, he refused to repent. So,
God hardened his heart!
We
admit that to read the scriptures with our natural (carnal) mind, we will come
to a wrong conclusion. Scripture
warns us not to harden our hearts. It
leads to unrepentant sins. We must
learn to read the Word, and then wait for our Lord to shine His light on it
for us, before we each our final conclusion!
We
often testify that nothing is too hard for our God, and that nothing is
impossible for Him! And this is
true, but with one exception. The
exception is this; our God can do anything except make a wrong decision or do
a wrong thing. His Holy, Perfect
character prohibits Him from any kind of wrong doing!
His Bride is receiving this revelation concerning their Bridegroom.
We now know, by revelation that no wrong thought nor any wrong act can
come from the Holy One of Israel! Keeping
this in mind, I am going to be a public witness for my Lord and King by saying
He has never refused to forgive any person for sin when they have come to Him
with an honest heart and being truly repentant!
It matters not what the sin is, or how long it has been committed, if
the heart of the individual is still soft enough to come and truly repent, he
will be forgiven.
At
this point, I can hear some of your rejections to this teaching.
I expect that. Scriptures
are more than likely coming to the minds of you Bible scholars.
So, I respectfully ask
you not to trash the sermon, but allow me to make the case for our Lord.
If you will read on, I promise to give you Scripture and quote to prove
the statements I have made. “Let
every man be a liar, but God be the truth.”
Is that not what we want? The
truth will set us free!
First,
I will remind us all what our Lord told Peter when he asked how many times he
must forgive a person who had wronged him.
Matt.
18:21-35, Peter asked, “Shall I
forgive him as many as seven times?” The
Lord’s answer is most amazing and enlightening!
Jesus said, “I say not unto
thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven.”
That equals 490 times, and even this number of times was not meant by
our Lord to be the end of our forgiveness!
It only indicates that we are to forgive as often as the offender comes
and truly repents! In Verse 35,
the Lord states clearly that we will be delivered to the tormentors if we do
not forgive everyone his brother their trespasses.
If the Lord requires us to be always forgiving, then how dare we to
accuse Him of ever failing to forgive, when the seeker comes in the right
spirit of meekness!
I
would like to fill our minds with scriptures that say that our Gracious Lord
always forgives one that is truly repentant.
Then we will investigate the scriptures that seem to say that there is
a sin, or sins, that He will not forgive.
In
Rev. 3, the Lord is speaking about our last age, the Laodicean Age.
He has noted our sins and our lukewarmness.
He rightly accuses us of being wretched, miserable, poor, blind and
naked! Nevertheless, in Verse 2,
He promises that He is still standing at the door of our heart, knocking to
see if we will allow Him to come in! His
promise is, “If any man hear my voice
and open the door, I will come in unto him, and will sup with him and he with
me.”
In
11 Peter 3:9, we are told,”……the
Lord is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance!
John
3:16 is one of the scriptures that our children learn first, but have we
grownups received all its meaning? Who
was the Lord speaking to when He said, “Whosoever
believeth shall not perish?” This
word whosoever circles the globe and
gives a promise to all us humans who were born in sin, that if we come, and
when we come and repent, we will not perish!
It does not set a time limit, after which we cannot come!
Neither does it set a limit on how much we have sinned or our degree of
guilt! Jesus simply said,
“Whosoever you are, come and repent, believe in the plan of salvation, and
you shall not perish.”
1
Peter 3:18, “….Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust,
that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh…”
Notice! It does not say
that Christ suffered for only some of us unjust people, but it indicates that
He suffered for all the unjust!
Matt.
12:31-33, “Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be
forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be
forgiven unto men.”
Verse
32 “And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be
forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be
forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”
Verse
33, “Either
make the tree good and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt and his
fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit.”
Here
in Verse 32 is a scripture that seems to be saying that he that speaks
against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, neither
in the world to come. But notice Verse
31. There seems to be a
contradiction here for it says, “…….all
manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”
Do you see the puzzle here? One
verse says all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven, but then goes on
to say, “… but blasphemy against
the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven.” Notice!
It says all manner of blasphemy shall be forgiven, but then says some
manner of this will not be forgiven! We
cannot make the Word lie, but it is written in such a way that unless God
reveals it, we cannot understand it.
To
me, Verse 33 holds the answer, “Either
make the tree good (cause the person to repent and be forgiven) or
else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by its
fruit.” In other words, if a
person won’t repent and receive forgiveness, then he can’t be forgiven in
this life or the world to come. The
world to come for those without the Holy Ghost will be decided at White Throne
Judgment.
So,
what is the overall meaning of our scripture in Matt. 12:31-33?
This is my understanding, People who speak against God and His Word
before they have a revelation of the truth are not held responsible.
But, when the Holy Ghost comes and gives us a revelation and then after
seeing the real truth we reject it, then we have to repent or be lost!
If that’s our case at White Throne Judgment, even our good works
won’t save us. There is no way
to repent after we are at White Throne Judgment!
Some will be given Life there (the Holy Ghost) but if we didn’t
repent before we died, it’s too late at White Throne Judgment.
John
5:16 needs to be explained. John
5:15, “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he
shall ask, and He shall give him life for them that sin not unto death.
There is a sin unto death: I
do not say that he shall pray for it.
17
All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.
18
We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of
God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.”
This
seems to say that some certain sin can’t be repented of.
Not so! It can’t mean
that and fit the rest of the Word! God
was coming against the Catholic teaching about Purgatory.
If you die unrepentant, you can’t be prayed out of a place called
Purgatory.
Now
it is time to show a man in the scripture that blasphemed the Holy Ghost and
was forgiven!
In
Matt. 16:13-17, Peter received a revelation from God about who the man
Jesus was. He said to Jesus, you
are the Christ. Then Jesus said to
him, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, (but My Father gave you
the revelation). The point here is
that Peter had a revelation.
Now,
let’s look at Matt. 26:69-75, Peter in Pilate’s Judgment Hall
denied his revelation three times, the last time with cursing.
When he went out, and the cock crowed, he wept bitterly and repented,
after he had blasphemed by denying the truth the Holy Ghost had given him.
How do we know that he repented and was forgiven?
He went on to the Upper Room and received the Holy Ghost.
Also,
in Heb. 12:15-17 it looks like Esau tried to repent and was rejected,
but no! If he had repented he
would have received the Blessing. The
scripture says he couldn’t repent.
His heart was too hard.