The Silent Years
ISAIAH 40:28-31
28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength (This word wait (in our common English understanding), would simply mean to tarry in one place until. But there is a deeper thought that is attached to this word in the Hebrew with the meaning of “to look for with hope and expectation” and “to maintain a confident trust”. The Hebrew word for “wait” is the word {kaw-vaw'} qavah, and it implies looking forward to something with absolute certainty that it will happen. “But they that wait (that look forward to something with the absolute certainty that it will happen) upon the LORD shall renew their strength”; they shall mount up with wings as eagles (And so it is this attitude of waiting (with this level of expectation), that especially applies to us in this last “eagle” age, in order for our strength to be constantly renewed); they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
GALATIANS 6:9
9 And let us not be weary in well doing (We must not allow ourselves to get tired of doing well – of maintaining our stand for this great truth and revelation of what God has sent to us in this hour): for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
This word “faint” means to become despondent - to become faint-hearted.
Like a person that gives up because it seems to them like that all their years of faithful efforts have born little to no fruit, and so they begin to grow weak and weary in their spirit and in their mind – but in due season, we shall reap a good harvest. And so we have to guard ourselves from growing weak and tired and despondent.
ISAIAH 30:15
15 For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: (This was the condition that Ruth came into after her secret meeting with Boaz at the midnight hour – her experience with Boaz caused her to come into a confidence and into a rest, and now she could wait with a sure hope and a confidence in that He will finish the work) and ye would not.
Over the years, we have witnessed many that have left the message because for some, things have simply just taken so long in that it seemed to them like that the prophecies lingered for longer than many could wait out - they became tired and many have fainted, and so we have witnessed so many that ran out of steam and out of strength. But the bible is giving the answer to us here - For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: But then we find that this verse ends with that fact that “many would not”.
HABAKKUK 2:3
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
The Silent Years
Built into prophecy is the time of having to wait before that prophecy comes to pass. And often that waiting can be for many years, even hundreds or maybe even thousands of which amounts to many lifetimes and generations.
*And so many people in their short lifetime will never get to see certain prophecies of scripture take place because they just didn’t live long enough. *Because God has an appointed time of when certain visions and prophecies are purposed to come to pass – and it is very important for us to realise, that before a prophecy of the word can be fulfilled, the stage has to be set and all the actors have to be in their right place on the stage.
*And so we often term this time of waiting as if they were “silent years” of when it seems like things are just going on and on normally as we wait for the fulfilment of certain prophecies.
*And so this is one aspect of what we can use this term of the “Silent years”.
*Between Malachi and Mathew (The Old and New Testament) there was 400 years of which it seemed like God was silent. And that was largely because there had been no prophet of God rise up during that time of whom God spoke to the people through. And so this period of time is often referred to as “The 400 Years of Silence” – four whole centuries of when it seemed like that God was being silent.
*Yet through all of that time, a huge amount of history and preparation was taking place for when God would speak again.
During this 400 year period between Malachi and Mathew
*There was the rise of Greece of when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire - bringing Greek culture and language to the entire region.
*Then there was the Maccabean Revolt resulting in temporary Jewish independence and the rededication of the Temple.
*It was also during this time that new religious fractions such as the Pharisees and Sadducees emerged.
*Then there came the rise of Rome, so that by the time the New Testament opens, Israel is under the heavy hand of Roman rule and of king Herod.
*And so the point is, that even though God appeared to be silent, He was very much still at work and involved in every detail of setting up the stage for literally hundreds of prophecies of the Old Testament to be fulfilled.
And so what we would think is just ordinary history taking place of where it seemed that God was silent, it was actually God setting up all the correct props and actors and getting everything ready for the big act of the fulfilment of prophecy – and this is what has always been going on throughout history.
And this is how God also deals with our lives, of the history of our lives of when it looks like we are going through our “silent years”. God is preparing us for the fulfilment of prophecy by being involved in every single event of the history of our lives also.
31-2 THE.REVELATION.OF.JESUS.CHRIST - CHURCH.AGE.BOOK CPT.1
He gave the Greeks who gave a universal language. He gave us the Jews who gave us the true religion and true knowledge of God through the Saviour. He gave us the Romans who gave us a unified empire with law and a system of highways. Thus we have true religion, the language to express it to many peoples, and the government and roads to spread it physically.
**But then there is another way of what we would call silent year periods in the bible, and that is of where there are long periods of information that is left out about the history of the lives of bible characters. And one of the greatest examples of these silent years is in the life of Jesus Himself.
*Because out of His 33 years on earth, the bible only gives us the details of a few days here and there of around the time of his immediate birth and young childhood, and again at the age of 12 at the temple when Joseph and Mary thought they had lost him - and then we have no account of his life until he begins His three years of public ministry right towards the end of his earthly life.
*And so all of the history of his life as a carpenter working in a small town, and of having to struggle to take care of the family after the death of Joseph – and all of the things that must have happened during those years of all the experiences that would have shaped his life - the bible is silent about it.
**And so these years are also known as the “silent years”, and yet we know that it was during these years that the character was built in Him that prepared Him for what would come later. The bible said that He learned obedience by the things that he suffered.
**It’s like how Brother Branham was told that there would be a work for him to do later, and that he was not to drink or smoke or run with woman, because his life was being prepared for a certain work that would fulfil much scriptural prophecy.
**It has been suggested that if too much insight had been given about the details of those silent years of Jesus life, that our faith would have been put to the test in a way that many would not have coped with it, simply because of our wonder as to how such an ordinary and trouble filled life could have truly been the experience that God would have chosen for his earthly life’s journey.
*And this is why He knows what you and I go through in all of our struggles in life – because He also went through all of those things as well.
*The bible tells us that He was a man of sorrows, and that He experienced what it was like to be rejected…
ISAIAH 53:3
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
That word “despised” means to regard with contempt, to look down on as vile and worthless.
This is why we are not to become despondent if we are rejected here in this life, because that is how things work.
*Lazarus the beggar was despise and rejected on earth, but when the time came for him to die, the angels carried him to Abraham’s side, and so in heaven he was given a place of honour while the rich man who ignored him ended up in torment.
**Jesus talked about how that they would garnish the tombs of the prophets that their own fathers had rejected and killed, and how that this has always been the way with religious people – they treat God’s living messengers terribly, but then turn around and treat them like heroes once they are safely dead and buried.
And so there is a great lesson in this for us – because we all get to witness each other go through our individual struggles of life, and so that tend to keep us looking at each other with the human realisation that we are all just the same people of low degree, and because of this, we will often fail to see the hand and leadership of God in the lives of one another – of how He is shaping each one of us differently.
**And this is why they didn’t recognise Christ, because they saw that His life of struggles and problems looked just like everyone else’s, and in fact probably even looked worse – and so they looked down on Him with contempt.
MATTHEW 23:29-31
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
This is why what we are in good company when we are rejected and despised by other people.
**Moses, after growing up as a prince in Egypt for 40 years spent another 40 years tending sheep in a remote desert before God spoke to him through the burning bush, and then sent Him back to Egypt as an exodus prophet to deliver his people.
ACTS 7:30
30 ¶ And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.
Brother Branham told us that Moses spent 40 years in Egypt being educated and learning all the ways of the Egyptians, and then another 40 years in the wilderness to get all of his own self-worth and pride taken out of him - and then God would use him for another 40 years to lead a stiff-necked and mostly ungrateful people to a promised land that he himself never got to enter into.
And so God had to put him through all of those silent years in order to train him for that work, and to also train him so that he wouldn’t get all puffed up with the pride of his position when he finally got to being the great prophet and leader of God’s people.
We remember how that Lucifer couldn’t stay in his own lane that the Lord had made for him to stay in.
QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS_ JEFF.IN COD SUNDAY_ 59-0628E
375-68 …See, Satan was the original archangel of God. He once dwelt in the heaven. He once was the greatest person in the heavens outside of God. He was God's right-hand man to fellowship, and he got puffed up in his heart.
376-70 And isn't that just the way that people get today? Let God just bless a fellow and put a little confidence in him, and he gets to be a know-it-all. He gets to be... He's got to start an organization, or he's got to do something that's different. "Why art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer."
It's... God has a hard time trying to get somebody that He can deal with, that'll stay humble, and meek, and stay in the place until God calls him to do something (you believe that? See?), a man that God can bless and he'll still keep hisself a man, not be an angel or a god. As soon as man gets blessed and has a little something given to him, he wants to become a god; he wants to become a--a angel. He wants to become some great person. "What I do, what... Me and me and mine..." all that. That's the wrong attitude. God's hunting for somebody who He could bless and pour out the blessings, and--and more He blessed, the littler the man will become.
And you'll never get more of God until you become nothing. You've got to belittle yourself. He that will exalt himself, God will bring abase. He that will humble himself, God will exalt. You've got to get little before you can get big. And you'll never be big in your own self; you'll only be as big as God will be big in you. See?
**We are told that history is written by the victors – and of course they write their history in a way that makes them look good and everyone else look bad – and this is just normal fallen human nature.
And so if we were to scale that down to a local church level and of the history of our own personal lives, then when you hear from the account of someone who has a gripe with another person, it will often leave you with a bias picture of that person’s character by hearing the account of their life from the angle of that another person’s viewpoint.
*There is one thing that we can almost be certain of, and that is that when a person that gives an account of what they perceive about another person’s life, that that account will not include the full understanding of the means of how that God has been moulding that person’s life over all the years of their life and through all of their struggles and failings of their lives of what He allowed for them to go through – all we can see in their failings.
Maybe some of us would even think that if they had only taken our advice, then they would not have had to go through some of their struggles and that their lives would have been easier for them.
*We fail to realise that God was actually in every little detail of their life, because He had to bring humility into that person’s life, and that it was actually all the failings and struggles of their lives that made them turn out the way that they became in the end – of what God wanted them to be.
THINGS.THAT.ARE.TO.BE_ RIALTO.CA V-4 N-6 SUNDAY_ 65-1205
31 You were all pre-planned by God. Nothing happens by chance, with God. He knows all about it. It's all pre-planned, planned for many generations back, so that you could be here tonight. Did you know that?
LETTING.OFF.THE.PRESSURE_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-11 SUNDAY_ 62-0513E
145 … Nothing happens by chance; everything is ordained of God. No matter what happens, all things are going to work together for good.
**It is amazing of how that when you go to a funeral service for an acquaintance, and even though you may have known the deceased off and on for many years, it is quite common for you to learn more about them in that short little hour-long funeral service then of what you had known about them from all the time of being an acquaintance with them.
*And then you hear about of how that they were such a great person, and of all the things that they achieved in their life – and you find out that you had no idea of that, and then you become genuinely impressed and go away with an appreciation for that person that you wished you would have had from the very start of knowing them.
*It is also amazing how when a person passes, that people mostly only remember and say all the good things about that person – and that is what we should do.
**Over the course of our lives, it can seem like that we can go for many years of where things are silent as far as what we would consider the moving of the spirit of God in a way that to us that would seem to be outstanding and that we could testify and marvel about it – but yet we know that God has never left us during those times, and that He is actually working in every detail of our lives for the purpose of preparing us for future events – as we have been speaking of in previous services.
LAMENTATIONS 3:21-26
21 ¶ This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
22 It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. (God’s compassions haven’t failed us because of how long things have seemed to go on)
23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
24 The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
HABAKKUK 2:3
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.