You once in times past, dead-- You were dead. Even many here tonight, one time can look back and know that you were dead. But now why aren't you dead tonight as you were then? You deserve to be that way, because you was a sinner, but God Who is rich in mercy. That's the--that's the thing: God Who was rich. All these things that we were, but God. That made the change right there: God Who is rich in mercy.

Oh, I'm so glad for that, that He being rich in mercy. If He was just rich in money, if He was just rich in materials, which He is, but yet the greatest thing is being rich in mercy. Oh, what a great word that is, how that we were once dead.

And we was speaking the other night on how the seed must die. And everything around that germ of life must not only die, but rot. If it doesn't rot, it cannot live. And rot is "completely done away with; it's finished." And until we get to the place that our own ideas and our own thinking is completely gone and it's rotted away from us, then the germ of life can begin to live.

Now, now, we might, I might inject just a little bit of doctrine here that I don't-- If you don't believe it, all right. That's just okay. I do believe it.

I believe that a man, when he's born in this world, that when you're a little baby, born into the world, you could not have been here without being the foreknowledge of God, because He is infinite and He knows all things. And when that little baby is born into the world, there's something in that baby. If he's ever going to have Life, there's a little something in there, in that child then, that he comes to sooner or later. That little seed is in him. Now, if you'll take-- The Scriptures plainly declare that.

-- Brother Branham
January 19, 1965