And so the deacon board called him in, and said, “Pastor, we really appreciate you.” Said, “We always know that you stand for the Bible and its rights.”

And said, “And you always correct us so we can be pure and clean before God.

And we really appreciate you, and we believe you’re God’s servant. And we certainly did appreciate that message this morning.”

“But”, they said, “There’s just one thing that we want to ask you about.” Said, “We timed you, as a deacon board.” Said, “Every Sunday morning you’re just exactly thirty minutes, and today you were three hours!”

They said, “Now, remember, we appreciate every bit of it. It was all right.” Just making the old pastor feel good, you know.

He said, “Well, brethren, I’ll tell you what it is.” He said, “Every morning when I’m called to the pulpit,” he said, “I put one of those little Life Savers in my mouth,” he said, “and I just suck on it.”

And he said, “When the Life Saver is done, (it takes just thirty minutes) then I stop preaching.”

He said, “You know, this morning, I thought I was a little overtime, and I spit the life saver out … Oh it was a button in my mouth instead!”

I ain’t going to put anything in in my mouth, so I hope I don’t get some buttons in my mouth instead…

I hope that didn’t sound sacrilegious here. You know, even God has a sense of humor, you know.

So we are very thankful to be here and have this time of fellowship, and with this grand privilege to break the Bread of Life once again in my own simple little way.

I know, as theologians, as that man spoke here last night from England; my, I hate to get up behind a person like that with my seventh-grade education. But I hope that God will interpret to you the meaning in my heart. If my words are not right, my intentions, I trust, are.

Now, let us read in the Scripture. Many of you would like to follow.

And I’m going to read this morning, for just a few moments from the Book of Jeremiah the prophet, the 2nd chapter, and I am going to begin now with the 1st verse.

Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, and the love of thine espoused, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, and in the land that was not sown.

Israel was holiness unto the LORD, and the firstfruit of his increase: all that devour him shall… and offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the LORD.

Hear ye the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel:

Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they have gone far from me, and walked after vanity, and are become vain?

Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, and led us through the wilderness, through the land of desert and of pits, through the land of drought, and of the shadows of death, through the land that no man passed through, and… no man dwelleth?

And I brought you into a plentiful country to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when you entered, ye defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.

And the priests said not, Where is the LORD? And the hand of the law knew me not: and the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.

Therefore I will… plead with you, saith the LORD, and with your children’s children will I plead.

For… over this land of Chittim, and see; and in the Kedar, and consider diligently that, and see if there be such a thing.

Has a nation changed their gods, which are… no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.

Be astonished, O you heavens, at this, and be horrible afraid,… very desolate, saith the LORD.

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

May the Lord add His blessings to the reading of His Words. And I would like to take a text of that as, “Broken Cisterns.”

We were reading this Scripture this morning; of course, all Scriptures are given by inspiration. And we come to the house of the Lord for correction and for understanding.

And sometimes that we see any little thing in the way … (like this military man awhile ago was speaking to us and saying that some certain things, that perhaps maybe in some other country has a certain missile, or something on that idea, and we’ve got to find something to counteract that in a military strategy.)

Well, the same thing goes into a church and to a parish where a man is preaching, or if he’s an evangelist in the field. When he sees uprisings, and something that’s just starting, going, its infancy or whatever it is; it’s up to that man, if he is a servant of God, to block that thing so far from the people’s minds that they’ll keep away from it.

And we don’t want that to happen, for us to get into places like that.

Now, during the time of Jeremiah here, his prophecy, it had been about sixty years since the death of Isaiah. And they’d been about sixty years without a major prophet.

There was Habakkuk and some of the small minor prophets, but Isaiah was the final major prophet. And the people had, during this time to call them out, they had drifted, (yet, they were God’s people), had drifted into this state that we find them in, as Jeremiah came to prophesy to them.

And Jeremiah also prophesied before the exile, and also he went into exile with them.

And then, of course, Daniel come on after Jeremiah. And Daniel said that he had understandings by the Scripture of the seventy years that they was to be there.

Of course, there was another prophet among them, that wanted to break his yoke, as he put it upon his neck, that it would be a small thing, that, “Within two years, well, God was going to bring them all back,”

But Jeremiah knowed different from that. And we know what happened to the prophet who prophesied wrongly; he died that same year. So God wouldn’t let him stand against His Word.

And now, we also notice the conditions of the people in that day. (Now, I do not wish you to misunderstand me; I’m not aiming in what I aim to say here, some Scriptures and little notes.)

Used to be I didn’t have to write my Scriptures and things down. But after I passed twenty-five the second time, well, I don’t remember like I used to, so I write down a Scripture and kind of know from that where I’m going.

And then so much time praying for the sick, and so forth, and out and gone, I don’t have time to really study like I should do.

Now, but this great prophet of this day was Jeremiah, and he was something on the order of Amos and many of the other prophets that rose up. He was stirred when he seen the conditions of the nation.

Now, there are places, some time when you’re speaking about a nation, they might think that it’s reflecting to a certain group. It’s not that. It’s the overall picture of the nation.

And we find today, a very comparative condition today as it was in the days of Jeremiah, that the nation itself altogether has gone into, more or less, idolatry; kind of, I’d say, got away from God.

And by doing that, it’s been because of the weakness of the pulpit. Because if the pulpit would’ve stayed straight, and with the Word of God, God would be in every church like He is moving among us here. But they have led away from that.

And that’s the thing that I want to talk about this morning. And now, we find that that’s absolutely true in every age.

I believe it was Amos, as I referred to him awhile ago, that he said he was not a prophet, neither the son of a prophet. But said, that when the lion roars, who can but fear?

And if anyone ever heard a real lion roar in the wilderness, these you hear in the cages around here are just meowing. But when one roars in the wilderness, everything takes heed.

I’ve laid in the jungle to hunt them. And he’s the king of the beasts, and, when that lion roars, even the beetles stop hollering; everything does. The jackals and the hyenas a-screaming, and the other animals, the squawking of the baboons and the monkeys, the beetles, you can hardly hear yourself think; but in the distance let a lion roar, and every beetle will stop hollering.

See, everything’s afraid of him. Yet, there’s many things can kill him, but he’s recognized as the king amongst the beasts.

He said, “When the lion roars, who can but fear?” He said, “Then God has spoken, who can but prophesy?”

And that’s, I think, the condition meets that challenge again today. God has spoken. See? And we see the handwriting on the wall, so it’s very easy to prophesy and see that we’re at the end time.

69 And we’re seeing God, from every section of denominations, all the way from Catholicism, through all the Protestant churches, Buddhas and whatmore, from India, and whatevermore. He’s calling His people together, assembling them together.

And I’m very happy for that to see this day coming. Now, it’s a great day, one of the greatest privileges.

That if I had to, if I would’ve knowed before there was a world, when we were souls a part of God, that we are, for we were with Him before the foundations of the world. Because there’s only one form of Eternal Life, and that’s God. And we’re a part of Him. We was not so much that we would know and could think, and had a being; but we were in His thoughts of what we were, before the foundation of the world.

Because we are a part of Him, like my son is part of me, and I am part of my father, and so forth. We are sons and daughters of God, by His foreknowledge.

And back there, if I could’ve known as I know now, and could looked over the whole span of time, and He’d have said to me, “What time do you want to live?” I’d said this time right now, just the eve of the ending up of world history, and the oncoming of the Kingdom of God to be established in the earth. I think it’s the most glorious time of all ages is right now.

The message

We find out here that Israel is accused by the prophet, when God had ordained him and sent him out. They were accused of two major sins.

And we want to talk on those two things that they had done. And from that, we want to prosper by it.

Now, they had turned from God, the Fountain of living water, and had hewed themselves out cisterns. They had turned from the thing that God had given them, and had hewed themselves something that they had did themselves. And these cisterns, you notice, they were broken and were leaking.

Now, a broken cistern cannot hold water. It’ll leak out.

I was raised on a farm, and I know what an old cistern is, and the difficult we have with it.

And this leaking cistern is a very fine picture, I think, of this day, that when everything that we have tried to do, to get men together, get people together, get churches together, it has become always in the realm of intellectual tryings.

We have tried to make all the Methodists become Baptists, and vice versa, and the different denominations. And that was not God’s program to begin with.

God only has one meeting place. He said over there in the Book of Exodus, that, “I have chosen the place to put My Name, and that’s the only place that I’ll meet people.”

And He had chose a place to put His Name. And where He put His Name, that’s where He met Israel. He’s got a place that He meets His church today, and He chose that Name, and that Name is Jesus Christ. And there’s where He meets the true believer, when he’s in Jesus Christ. That’s where God chose to put His Name.

You say, “God’s Name?”

He said, “I came in My Father’s Name.” So that’s where God put His Name was in Christ. And in Christ is where we can all meet under the shed Blood, and there we have real, true fellowship.

God made His program at the beginning in the garden of Eden, where the place He would meet man, and that wasn’t upon the ground of intellectual understanding; if it had, Eve was exactly in line with His program.

But we know that her accepting Satan’s intellectual conception, “Surely, God will not,” but God said He would…

And so then He chose the place of redemption, and it was by Blood, and not by intellectual conception.

So we’re only beating the air, but it’s just human nature that people will try to do that. If we had time, we could break it down in many pieces, but I don’t want that button.

So, we’ll just try to make it as simple as possible, “Leaking cisterns.” And we find that it’s absolutely happened again; it’s the very picture of our age that we’re living in, of all of our trying.

And no disregards to every effort that any servant of God, that names the Name of Jesus Christ. He ought to be honored for just even naming His Name in reverence and respect.

And the great evangelistical systems that’s crossed the earth, and so forth, in these last days, I think, still we’ll never be able to get people in one heart until we get them underneath the Blood of Jesus Christ. That’s the only place that we’ll ever be safely.

Someone called me not long ago, from up in the east, and said, “Brother Branham, I hear you’ve moved out to Arizona, and you formed a place there where that there’s safety.” And as you know how the Message came, and the Lord told me what would happen in Alaska, and how down through California it would be, and it’s just been that way.

They said, “Now, if that’s shaking, and everything, where is the safety zone?”

I said, “There is one safety zone that I know of. That’s in Christ. For those that are in Christ, will the Lord bring with Him.” It’s the only place I know.

Now, Jeremiah was called also, “the weeping prophet.” And I believe what made this prophet weep, rather, was because him being a prophet (and the Word of the Lord comes to such) and seeing the people walk after their traditions, and thought they were all right, and no way at all to turn them.

For they was going straight to exile, because we know you reap what you sow, regardless of who you are, what you are.

And we as a nation have sowed, rather, and we’ve got to reap.

I’m speaking tomorrow, the Lord willing, at afternoon, on “Birth Pains”; and I touch that in there, that we cannot get by with it. We’ve got to reap what we sow.

And if God would let us get by with our perversion of Christianity today, and perverting in the people into these things that’s so-called Christianity, as Brother Moore once said, “He’d be morally obligated to raise up Sodom and Gomorrah and apologize for burning them up.”

That’s right, because God’s still just. And where unjustice has got; it’s behooving to His holiness and His Word that He makes people reap for what they sow, and we’ll have to do that.

Now, notice they had left Him, the Fountain of living waters, and had hewed themselves cisterns.

Now, there may be somebody here who wouldn’t understand what a cistern is. A cistern is a manmade tank that tries to take the place of a well. It’s something that somebody dug.

A cistern looks something like this

And how many knows what a cistern is? Fine. All right, a lot of country people here this morning.

I remember the old cistern at the place we lived, how it looked, and I was always afraid to drink from the thing. It was a manmade tank. And it never can be relied on. You cannot rely on a cistern.

Now, anything that man does is usually not very good. Just like the Lord set time into its cycle, and the earth turning; every year, every time it crosses, every day, every hour, and the sun setting, and it never fails. But the very best watches we can get, will fail many minutes in a month’s time, no doubt. But, you see, everything God does is perfect, and what man does is imperfect. So why accept what man does, when you can have perfect?

I’ve always said that about us Pentecostal people. See, we know, and we’re not out of the order of course, of God, we don’t believe; but we also know that among us we have people who try to impersonate the other fellow. That’s just human. They’ll try to do that. They did it in the Bible: one, “I’m of Paul,” and “I’m of Silas,” and so forth. But they tried to impersonate what someone else did or is doing.