Branham Stories
The Caged Eagle
I remember one time at the Cincinnati Zoo, in Cincinnati, Ohio, I was looking at an eagle had just been captured. And it was one of the most pitiful sights that I have ever had the privilege of seeing. This great heavenly bird had been captured and netted by someone and thrown into a cage. And that poor fellow was so out of place, that he would jump with all that was within him against the big bars, flopping his wings only to find hisself to fall back on his back. And that poor eagle had beat hisself against those bars until all the feathers was beat from his wings and his head and face, bruised.
And as I watched him again proudly walk back, and with all that he had he poured himself against the bars, to only find hisself knocked backwards again. And as he laid there on that floor and his weary eyes soared the skies, I thought, "What a pitiful sight. Made not to be on the earth here, he's a heavenly bird. His whole makeup was to live in the blue, way above the haunts and cares of this world. But to see a bird like that made up, borned in the earth, to soar the skies, and yet caged in such a way, that he could never again soar the skies."
And as he laid there looking at the place where he had been made and born to soar... But by the cunningness of man, had been caged for life. Oh, what a pitiful sight that was.
But brethren, that's not a sight at all. To walk out here on the streets of Chicago and of other great cities, and find men who were borned and shaped in the image of God to be sons and daughters of God, and to find them caged by sin, and habits, and the cares of this world, it's a far more pitiful shape than the eagle is.
Man was not made to be bound; man is a free man. "He who the Son has made free is free indeed." He doesn't have to be bound like that. Oh, it would take me hours to try to express the feeling in my heart, and the different things that cage men and deny them of their privileges. Man's in the image of God, and he doesn't have to be a bondslave to Satan. He wasn't made to be a slave; he was made to be a son. God made man in His own image. He placed in him a immortal soul and a thirst to thirst after God. And he tries to satisfy that blessed holy thirst with whiskey, alcohol, tobacco, big times, and luxury. It is a disgrace to try to quench that blessed holy thirst with the things of this world. You're... Men and women are only caged and kept away from the real God-given privilege that they have. Bound by sin, not that the will of God would permit that, but because willfully they do it.
It would do us good to study the life of the eagle and see his makeup, and pattern our condition with the condition the eagle is. And I hope that in these few, maybe misplaced words, that the Holy Spirit will help you to put them together and see the meaning that I mean by them.
The eagle, first, he does not make his nest down here on the earth; he makes his nest just as high in the rock as he can get. He's a type of the Church of the living God. Ye are a city, not in the valley, but set on a hill. She makes her nest way high. She does that, because that the common enemy can't find her young.
Oh, what a blessed privilege it is to know that God has hid us by the Blood of Jesus in the rock of Calvary, far beyond the howls of the enemy, way high. Oh, when I think of it, how to know this great privilege that we have.
Then as she gives birth to her little ones, as they're hatched out, how she cares for them. She nurtures them. She's so high on the rock, that the coyote could never climb to her nest; she's beyond that.
I'm so glad that we have a heavenly Father that if we'll just permit Him, He will place us in a place where the devil's howls, and all the whiskey, and nightclubs can never touch us, far beyond the screams of this world, and all of its pomp, and all of its worldly mixture, and all of its frazzle fantastics. If a man's ever tasted of that good gift of God, these things become as dead as midnight.
And as she goes up there and well places her nest back into the rock, she feeds her little ones. And one day she decides that she'll not have her brood to be like chickens. You know, a chicken is a bird just the same as the eagle is. But he's an earthbound creature. Oh, he can flop and fly a little bit, but he can hardly get his feet off the ground. It reminds me of some of this so-called Christianity we got today, just enough religion to make you miserable. That's right. Oh, you can say, "I got my name on the book," but have you ever soared the heavenly?
Now, the chicken knows not what the eagle's talking about. But the mother eagle is certainly decided, because she is a real mother. She decides that her babies will not walk like chickens. So she watches them until they fully feather out. She watches over them. And one day she decides it's time to change the position. I'm so glad that God don't keep us stale; He's got something new all the time, just one blessing after another.
I heard the famous poet, as I sang his song, when we used to sing it down the old Kentucky Baptist Church, "Floods of joy over my soul like the sea billows roll." And standing my first time by the sides of any large body of water, was out here on Lake Shore Drive about twenty five years ago, and watched those great waves come in. They just come in to go out again and come in again. That's the way I think, or what I think the prophet had, or the poet, when he wrote: "Floods of joy over my soul like the sea billows roll." Roll in and roll out, roll in and roll out, constantly blessing.
And the mother eagle was going to change the church, her children. So the prophet here in speaking, he was talking of course, principally about Jacob, how there was no other God before him; he knew no other God. But he said, "As the eagle stirreth up her nest." It is a time that when the eagle thinks that her little ones has matured enough; she's got to stir her nest.
And God does the same thing in His Church. When we have got all settled down on something, then God stirs the nest again. He brought Martin Luther from Catholicism, and they got so starchy that He stirred the nest and sent Wesley in. Then Wesley got so starchy, He stirred the nest and sent Pentecost in. It's nest stirring time again, 'cause we got so settled down"
