Transcript
It’s time to begin our service.
I send you all my greetings! It is wonderful to be back with you here today. I send special greetings to our friends across the United States. God is continuing to bless us and our work. I send my greetings to the brothers and sisters in Colorado, in Arizona, in Washington, out in California, and up in Chicago. Of course, all our friends here in Indiana, in the Jeffersonville area, and further north.
To our sister who is so kind to send me these beautiful cards—God bless you, sister. We don’t say names because we don’t want to cause anyone problems. But God bless you all.
All our friends across the South, down in Fairhope, God bless you all. To all our friends at Faith Assembly who listen regularly, God bless you. I appreciate all the different ones who have reached out over the past week.
I also want to send greetings to our friends in Ghana. One of the brothers over there has been working hard to build a new church, and their progress really looks wonderful. I send you greetings, brothers, and also to the other brothers in Africa who have been so good to reach out over the past week. I am always glad to hear from each of you and know how you are doing.
Pray for the saints in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. We appreciate each of our brothers and sisters there, and in Kentucky. We have some brothers in Kentucky who have been able to exit with their entire churches, so pray for them.
It’s not an easy thing to do, to come through what we have, and the persecution can be very strong. So we just want to lift each other up in prayer. I want to let you know that we are here praying for you, and I hope you are encouraged just to know you are not alone on this journey.
If this is your first time joining us and you wonder who we are and what we are up to, my name is Charles Paisley. I and most of our listeners here are formerly members of the cult following of William Branham, known as The Message. The Message is a global doomsday cult with millions of members.
The Message started here in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and spread all over the world. I am a former associate pastor of the second oldest Message church in the world, right here in the Jeffersonville area. This is a little mission we operate to offer encouragement to those leaving The Message and to take a look at the plain reading of scripture as we seek to wash out of our minds what, for most of us, has been a lifetime of indoctrination.
Last week we started working our way through a list of questions about specific things we were taught in The Message, and I expect we are going to spend the next few weeks doing that. That is what we will be doing today.
Today, as we start our lesson, we are going to deal with a subject that is really well known in the churches I come from. The subject is, The Fan is in His Hand. If you are not from the Message churches I come from, you probably have no idea what in the world I am even talking about. But this was a major teaching in the churches which fellowshipped with Faith Assembly and accepted Raymond Jackson’s version of The Message.
If you will turn with me to Matthew chapter 3, I will read the text for our lesson. I will be using the King James Version today, and I will start in verse 1 of the third chapter of Matthew:
Matthew 3 (King James Version)
1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
4 And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey.
5 Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan,
6 And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:
9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.
Let us pray.
Lord God, as we approach the scripture today, we come with a question in our mind and a desire in our heart to understand. We thank you for delivering us from a system of false religion, and we ask that you guide us and help us see clearly.
We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Introduction
Well, brothers and sisters,
We have a topic I think people will find interesting, if you have come from the background that I do. Today, we are primarily going to just be looking at the 12th verse that we read, but I have read this whole passage so we can get the broader context it fits into.
We can see verse 12 is a prophecy from John the Baptist. It is about Jesus Christ and something Jesus will do, and we are going to analyze that today.
But before we do, let me explain how Bible prophecy gets abused by false preachers and false churches. Oftentimes, in false systems of religion, like the one practiced by Faith Assembly and other Message churches, you will find that they invent doctrines or invent ideas. They come up with new things that no one anywhere believed ever before them. It’s a more or less new thing they came up with, and they tend to do it through interpreting symbols in prophecies like this one from John the Baptist.
In the places we come from, most of the core doctrines or core teachings which we held in very high esteem did not actually come from the plain reading of the Bible. They almost always came from the interpretation of symbolism in the scripture, and it is very important to recognize that. On this side, in our minds, we need to separate what we understand through the plain reading of the Bible from what we learned through the interpretation of symbols.
The things that came from the interpretation of symbols might just be a bunch of junk because they had no special authority to interpret any of those symbols. We cannot carry forward with any of that without carefully examining it to see if what they told us about those things was right or wrong.
Preachers will develop these sorts of doctrines they got from the interpretation of symbols into really fundamental teachings. Then, they build a whole system of religion on the back of those interpretations of symbols.
That is the sort of verse we have here in verse 12. Verse 12 is a symbolic verse, and those symbols do have a meaning—the fan, the garner, the wheat, the purging floor, the fire—all those symbols do have a purpose and a meaning.
But how do we decide what those symbols mean? I want to ask you that very honestly and humbly: How do we determine what these symbolic images actually mean? Certainly, John is not talking about a literal fan, literal wheat, or a literal purging floor. This verse is a metaphor. It uses these symbols to convey a picture of something to us.
How do we decide what those symbols are pointing to?
It is in this space where the false preachers in the places we come from live and thrive. They thrive on interpreting these symbolic things. They love to tell you they got some special insight from God and that He told them what the symbols mean. Then, because an angel supposedly met someone in a back room, they build a whole system of religion around what the preacher says the symbols mean.
In The Message, we determined what these symbols meant based on what our preachers told us, especially William Branham. We believed that he had a special prophetic gift to restore perfect understanding of the Bible to the church and that angels were coming to talk to him, and things like that. Therefore, if he said the black horse rider is the power of the pope in the Dark Ages, we believed it.
Regardless of whether the Bible actually said that or not, we believed it—not because the Bible said so, but because of the authority we thought William Branham had. The same was true with many of the preachers who came after him.
In this passage, for example, Raymond Jackson had a very specific explanation of what these symbols meant. Based on his authority as an apostle, we accepted what these symbols meant.
Again, I want to ask you very simply and humbly: Is that a valid way to do it?
At the end of the day, it turns out William Branham was not who he claimed to be. He was a deceiver who had no special authority at all. He is the one who ordained Raymond Jackson as an apostle, which is an invalid ordination, giving Raymond Jackson an invalid foundation. Raymond Jackson likewise had no special authority to interpret these symbols—none whatsoever.
So where does that leave us? If we subtract the special authority we thought these sorts of men had, how do we then approach these passages of scripture that use this sort of symbolic language?
What are we to do?
Some people will say, “Well, you need the Holy Spirit to give you a special revelation,” or “You need a divinely inspired preacher to reveal it to you,” or “You need a dream or a vision, or something like that, in order to understand the meaning of these symbols.”
But I ask you again: Is that actually a valid thing to say?
If I have a dream or a vision, and it tells me this fire in this parable is the eruption of Mount Saint Helens—is that what it is? Or I tell you the fan in His hand was Hurricane Katrina that struck New Orleans? Or maybe I tell you that the wheat in this parable is your soul and the chaff is your fleshly body, and that you need to separate the wheat from the chaff.
If I tell you that sort of thing and tell you about the great experience I had to give me that so-called revelation—is any of that valid? Should you or I accept such a thing as that, on that merit alone?
Even if you get a tingling sensation when I tell it to you, even if there is tongues and interpretation with it, even if I can work a big miracle in front of you after I say it—is that any reason you should believe me?
The answer is a very solid no. Absolutely not. In fact, we are forbidden by the Bible from doing that. You would be disobeying God to believe me, based on any of those things alone.
The scripture says, prove all things. There has to be proof.
Proof is not miracles. It’s not speaking in tongues. It’s not me having a dream or a vision. That is not where the proof comes from. If you think that is where you go for proof, you are already down the wrong road.
Those things are not proof about what these symbols in the Bible mean.
Someone coming and telling us they had some special experience—that is no proof at all. So let me ask you again, really humbly and honestly: How do we figure out what these symbols mean?
How do we do it in a way that is not going to lead us down a road into another crazy cult?
I think the very honest answer to that question is that we determine what these symbols mean by reading the context surrounding the verse. We determine what the symbols mean entirely from what we can read in the scripture.
And if the context tells us what the symbols mean, then we can say what the symbols mean.
But if the context does not tell us – then we are out on a limb, all on our own, in the land of speculation. No one has any right to expect you to accept their speculations, whether or not they say they had some dream or vision or anything else.
Their speculation might be right. Their speculations might be wrong. But it is irrelevant either way because it’s just speculation. And only a fool builds a religion on speculation. The wise man builds on the rock, not on an unknown substance.
And if someone approaches symbols that are ambiguous or unclear, that you can’t really tell from the passage what it means, and they want to force something down your throat—those are people we are going to have to get away from. They are dangerous. They are saying something that has no basis in the Bible. They are turning their opinions into doctrines, and then they are at risk of doing crazy things in the name of those speculatory ideas.
Very sadly, at times, they can build entire systems of religion on their speculations. And that is what The Message is.
It’s a house of cards. It is built on the supposed authority of William Branham to interpret symbols. And when that falls, a lot of the religion crumbles apart with it.
Now, having said all that, this 12th verse we are looking at today is one of the false beliefs of Faith Assembly that hold the false system together. This is a very important verse to making it all work.
This 12th verse is how Raymond Jackson and the other false preachers in the churches that I come from are able to validate William Branham as a prophet. And as I say that, I want you to know I was once one of them myself. I was right there saying the same false things. So, I don’t have much room to talk, but I am speaking plainly so you will understand.
This verse right here is the key.
And as we walk through this lesson, you will understand why they did.
Message Interpretation
Now, in the churches I come from, we all knew William Branham taught false doctrine and that he made up fake stories. Raymond Jackson and our leaders were always pretty direct about that. They told us he preached false doctrine. They told us he made up fake stories. They told it to us straight.
That is why there are quite a few things that William Branham preached that we did not believe in at Faith Assembly. There are stories we never talked about much because we always knew he was an exaggerator.
Now, I will say they really downplayed the extent of it. They didn’t tell us the whole story. They didn’t tell us about all the different failed “thus saith the Lord” prophecies he gave.
And there were many, and they are on recording too. He “thus saith the Lord” what would happen on his trip to India, and it all failed. He “thus saith the Lord” Donny Morton would be healed, but he died. He “thus saith the Lord” Jean Dyer would be healed, but she died. He “thus saith the Lord” that the entire marriage and divorce sermon was from God—and it certainly wasn’t.
He preached the false teaching that the devil was coequal with God. He preached the false teaching that Jesus was the Archangel Michael. He preached many false things which just are not in the Bible at all, or are totally contradictory to it. And we recognized some of those things at Faith Assembly.
This 12th verse is how our leaders reconciled it all.
I want to explain how they interpreted this verse, and it’s pretty straightforward.
They said this fan produced a wind, and it was a wind of doctrine. By blowing this wind of doctrine, the wheat and the chaff would be separated. The wheat was elect Christians, and the chaff was everyone else. The fire in prophecy was the tribulation and judgment of God at the end of the world.
The elect Christians would be saved into the garner—which was the rapture—and the rest would burn up in the tribulations and wrath of God.
That is a short basic explanation of what we believed verse 12 meant.
And let me repeat it again, and be a bit more specific about how we applied that idea.
We believed verse 12 would be fulfilled by preachers, and especially William Branham, who would preach false doctrines that would cause people to separate from each other. The ones who separated on the right side would get to go in the rapture, and the rest would burn up in the tribulation.
That was the basic premise here for verse 12.
The way Raymond Jackson and many of our preachers used this was to justify all the bad things William Branham said and did.
If William Branham taught something wrong, that was the will of God to separate the wheat from the chaff. If William Branham made a mistake or had a personal failing, that was the will of God to separate the wheat from the chaff.
That is exactly how this verse was used.
So, by that reasoning, every bad thing William Branham ever did was actually inspired of God to separate the wheat and the chaff.
Now, there is a lot more I could say. I could talk about some of their logic, and how they arrived at those conclusions. But I am going to skip over that because, as I have already said, those men had no special authority to interpret those symbols whatsoever.
Dreams, visions, impressions, ideas—whatever it was—they had no authority to interpret those symbols. They were already a long way down a wrong road when Raymond Jackson came up with this “fan is in His hand” stuff. So I am not going to explore that any further.
Is there any basis for that belief here at all?
But, realizing that these men had no special authority to interpret those symbols whatsoever, let’s ask ourselves the simple question – is there anything here in this third chapter of Matthew to suggest to us that any of what I have just explained is correct?
Let me just read it to you and just see as we read it: Is there anything here in the plain reading which would let us think this had anything to do with a man named William Branham? Anything to do with dividing people over doctrine? Anything to do with giving some people the rapture and burning other people up in the tribulation?
Let’s see. Let me start reading at verse 6, and let’s just take a few minutes to examine these verses.
Verse 6
6 [People were being baptized by John] in Jordan, confessing their sins.
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
So here, we see who John is talking to. It’s not you and me. It is the Pharisees and the Sadducees. This message is addressed to them.
And there he mentions the wrath to come. We know that everyone who is justified by Jesus will be delivered from the wrath to come. But those who are not will experience the wrath of God.
So John here is pointing towards salvation through Christ because that is how we flee the wrath to come—by turning to Jesus as our savior.
Let’s read on and see if there are more clues.
Verse 8 says
8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:
Repentance—this again gives us an impression this is related to sin. There needs to be an admission of sin, an acknowledgment that they need a savior. Fruits of repentance.
Verse 9
9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.
So he is confronting them, telling them their present religion is not good enough. Being a descendant of Abraham is not good enough. They still need to repent and come to Christ.
And this verse also foreshadows the Gentiles being saved. He is telling them that God can raise up other people to be children of Abraham, which Paul explains, that you and I are children of Abraham by faith—even though we are not Jews.
So verse 9 is John warning the Jewish people not to put their hopes of salvation in their heritage or their group membership.
Verse 10
10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Ok, so catch that second word there in verse 10. The second word there is “now”—N-O-W.
And “now” is not today. “Now” is 2000 years ago. Verse 10 lets us put the words of John here into a time frame. What he is saying has an immediate application, right then and there—2000 years ago.
Right then, the axe was being laid to the root of the trees. Whatever that is, it was happening right then. They are going to be cut down, and they are going to be cast into the fire.
Whatever this fire is, it is what is going to happen to these people who do not bring forth the fruit of repentance.
Let’s keep reading.
Verse 11 says
11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
So, do you notice that verse 11 talks about fire again? Verse 10 talked about fire. Verse 11 talks about fire. Verse 12 is going to talk about fire a third time.
And here in verse 11, this fire actually seems like it is a good thing, doesn’t it? This fire is the Holy Ghost in verse 11. It was what they are going to be baptized with.
And when we notice that, it brings in some ambiguity. Is the fire in verse 11 the same fire in verses 10 and 12? Is the fire in verse 10 the Holy Ghost fire? And is the fire in verse 12 the Holy Ghost fire?
And I am going to tell you, it’s not actually clear. There is no clear way to be sure.
And if we read verses 10, 11, and 12 as all talking about the Holy Ghost fire of baptism, then it is going to lead us to read these verses in a way that John is talking about the Holy Ghost cleaning up our lives when we are saved.
And that may be what this is talking about. This whole thing might be about the Holy Ghost purifying our lives. And the chaff is not people but it is parts of people—the parts that are gotten rid of because they are bad parts.
And the same back in verse 10—the trees might not be people either. They could be bad things which grow in our lives, and they are cut down and cleared away by the fire baptism of the Holy Ghost.
That could entirely be what this passage is talking about.
But it is ambiguous. It’s not clear. Because the language in the verses leading up to verse 10 leaves us with the impression that John is talking about people.
Until you get to verse 11, you get the impression that he is talking about bad, unrepentant people being thrown into the fire. And then verse 11 takes us back and gives us the impression that instead of whole people being burned, it is just the bad parts of people.
And so, which one of those two things is right?
Or maybe let me ask you this: Could it be that both of those two things are right?
And, I will be honest, that is what I lean towards. I think both of those two things are right. I see no reason both of those things cannot be true from the same passage.
Because we know from the plain reading of scripture—both of those things are true. People who do not repent will suffer the wrath of God, and people who do repent will be purified by fire and come out like gold.
So both of those things are true. And if this passage is just pointing to one or the other of those things, it doesn’t really matter so much because they are both true.
I hope you understand my point.
So that is what we have so far.
And then we arrive at verse 12, the one which is our focus. Verse 12 says:
12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
So here we have this fire again. And so we ask ourselves: What is this fire? Is this the Holy Ghost fire? Because if it is the Holy Ghost fire, then this cannot have anything to do with what Raymond Jackson said.
And just right there, let me pause. What this fire is here is ambiguous. To turn one of those two options into a doctrine you force on people, you are already in the place of turning speculation into doctrine.
We can say, 100% sure, if we just go back one verse, this fire is not a bad thing but a good thing. If this fire is still a good thing in verse 12, then this is in no way talking about the wrath of God, or the tribulation, or any such thing as that.
Raymond Jackson and no Message preacher today have any special authority to tell us this fire in verse 12 is not the same fire as in verse 11. They don’t have that right. They are sinning against us already to try and force something like that down your throat.
And so, just right here on this basis, we can toss out the “fan is in his hand.”
Now let me read verse 13 as the last verse to consider:
13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.
So, here comes Jesus. Remember back what John said leading up to verse 13?
In verse 9, he said the root was being laid to the axe of the tree, right then—now. Then he talks about people being baptized with fire. Then he talks about someone coming to purge his floor and separate the chaff and the wheat.
And then, in the very next verse, Jesus suddenly appears out of the crowd. Jesus comes as the answer to what John has been talking about.
The implication here is that Jesus is coming right at that very moment to begin fulfilling this prophecy John just gave. Jesus, right at that moment, was stepping out to start doing what John was talking about.
Once again, the implication is not that this is something that is going to happen thousands of years later. The implication is that it is beginning to happen right then and there. That is the same day Jesus starts his ministry, so it fits perfectly.
And so we will stop reading there.
Then we will ask ourselves some simple questions about what we have read. The first question I will ask is this:
Is there any indication this fan has anything to do with a last-day prophet or a man named William Branham? Is there anything at all?
The answer is a very solid no. There is nothing in this plain reading that would lead us to that conclusion. To arrive at that conclusion, we would have to be three or four or five layers deep into speculations and assumptions.
The truth is, there is absolutely nothing here to suggest this has anything to do with a last-day prophet named William Branham. Anyone who says that is someone who cannot be trusted with a Bible, and you should never listen to anything they say, ever again.
Now let me ask you a second question:
What is this fan in verse 12? What does the fan symbolize? Does this fan symbolize someone saying good doctrine and bad doctrine, and using that to divide people?
Is there a single shred of anything here to give us that impression?
The answer to that is again no. Not at all. This fan might be the work of the Holy Spirit—which came as a mighty rushing wind. Maybe.
But the truth is, there is nothing in this passage to suggest this fan is anything in particular. It lets us know there will be a separation of good from bad, but it really does not give us any indication about just what it is that brings about the separation. It just doesn’t.
I know, where we come from, they would go into the writings of Paul where he talks about the winds of doctrine, and they say the winds of doctrine are made by this fan. But that is total speculation.
There is absolutely nothing in the writings of Paul to make us think he had this prophecy of John the Baptist in mind when he wrote about “winds of doctrine.” It’s just speculation, which at the end of the day is enough by itself for us to toss out the “fan is in his hand” teachings.
So, I hope you are seeing what I am getting at here. There’s not really any support at all for what Raymond Jackson and our preachers told us this verse meant. Nothing at all. It is pure speculation on exceedingly thin evidence.
Anyone would be a fool to build their worldview on such a thin thing. It could be sinking sand for all we know. And the truth is, that is exactly what it is.
We can be sure that it is sinking sand by comparing the doctrine to the plain reading of the Bible. We may not be able to always say with certainty what a symbol is, but we can say what it is not. We can be totally sure what it is not.
And I want to show that to you next.
It does not match the plain reading of scripture.
There is something very corrupt the preachers where we come from did with this verse.
They used this verse to short-circuit the biblical tests for detecting false prophets and false teachers.
The Bible gives us very clear instructions. If a preacher teaches a false doctrine, he teaches another gospel, he preaches things contrary to the Bible, then he is a false teacher. We are to ignore him and what he says. The Bible is very straightforward.
There is no opening where God will let them say some good things and some bad things, and then use that to separate wheat and chaff. That is totally wrong.
And this “fan is in his hand” business from Faith Assembly is just a tool to allow them to short-circuit the biblical test for false teachers. If William Branham taught false doctrine—and he did, we admitted he did when we were still in the message—if he taught false teachings, then he is a false teacher, and we should ignore everything he said.
It’s that simple. There is no “fan is in his hand” get-out-of-jail-free card. And it is of the devil to use this Matthew 3 verse 12 to try and convince us we can still trust a false teacher. That is of the devil.
And there is another test the false preachers in the message use this “fan is in his hand” verse to short-circuit. The Bible gives us a test for detecting false prophets.
If they say, “Donny Morton is healed, thus saith the Lord,” and then he dies—he is a false prophet. If he says, “Jean Dyer is healed, thus saith the Lord,” and she dies—he is a false prophet. If he says, “Thus saith the Lord, there will be 300,000 at my meeting in India,” and there are not—he is a false prophet.
And you can’t use “the fan is in his hand” to excuse his false prophecies. He is still a false prophet. And if someone is a false prophet, we should ignore all their prophecies. That is what the Bible tells us.
It is of the devil to use Matthew 3 verse 12 to try and convince us we can still trust a false prophet. It is of the devil.
And today, I believe we have every right to call on Faith Assembly and the false Message preachers to repent of their evil, to repent of this false teaching, to repent of their twisting of scripture. We have every right to call on them to bring forth fruit of repentance and actually obey the warning of John the Baptist here.
Don’t think because you have a false prophet named William Branham in your heritage you are going to be okay. You need Jesus. You need a real Savior. You need to turn from your evil and come to Christ. And that is what we call on you to do today. Set the people free.
Amen.
I am going to end this lesson here. Come back next week. We are going to examine George Washington’s vision as we continue this Message Questions series.
God bless you all. Let me close here in prayer.
Lord God,
We reach out to you today by faith, and we thank you for our Savior Jesus Christ, who has baptized us with fire, who has caused us to bring forth fruit of repentance, who cleans our hearts and our lives, who makes us pure as gold.
Help us see the truth clearly and set us free from the powers of deceit and wickedness. We ask it in Jesus’ name.
Amen.