Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
From Planned Extinction to the Passover
(Exodus – Chapters One To Twelve)
Chapter One
August 27, 2005
Coming out of Egypt is one of the greatest examples of typology to be found in the entire Bible. If Jesus is the Word made flesh, and if the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, then the Word is given in the spirit of prophecy. It is the prophetic spirit of the Word, which the believer must seek to understand, and the question arises as to what the exodus of Israel from Egypt is pointing, prophetically. Then the next question arises as to who Israel is. In every way, the exodus from Egypt points to the exodus of the true Jew, the bride of Christ, which is the exodus of the church from the controls of the world of religion, economics, and politics, before the judgment falls on the beast of the sea. It points to coming out from under the mark of the beast, the mark of 666, and into the liberty of truth in Jesus.
The Passover is nothing more than the pattern for the crossover, which occurs at the cross, through the shed blood of Jesus as the mark of salvation from the slavish captivity of sin to death. The believer, who believes in Jesus for salvation, escapes the condemnation of death to embrace life in an eternity of kingdom dwelling in the family of God, the true Israel, which is His portion of the people. The believer is in the world, but no longer dependant upon the world as his dependency switches from leaning on the things of this world to leaning on God. Jacob understood this dependency well, after his struggle all through the night with One Who was both Man and God, leaving him lame and walking with a limp. His struggle represents that of all believers who will struggle with men and God to prevail as overcomers of the darkness of this world before passing through the cross as part of Israel.
Let us begin at the very beginning of Exodus and follow through to the Passover to see how the pattern of the Exodus matches the pattern of the exodus of the church from religion at the end of the church age. Both Joseph and Moses were types of Jesus. The twelve tribes could be compared to the twelve apostles in so far as the twelve gateways require a foundation on which they must rest, and building stones upon which they are set.
Exodus begins by listing the twelve brothers and their little families as the household of Israel, which entered into Egypt. Remember, Jesus said of the believers that they were His family, or household, who would be His mother, His brothers and His sisters. At this point, with salvation going to the believer, the household of Israel became the household of believers. The tribes are as types of the apostles, representing the government of heaven. We know for certain that Paul was of the line of Benjamin, as is the bride, the sister and spouse of Jesus, of the spiritual line of Benjamin, which points to the brotherhood of Joseph to Benjamin, as a type of Jesus and His church.
The lineage of Israel, the nation, ceased with Jesus, when it transferred from a natural lineage to a spiritual one, with the blessing of Israel going out to all the families of the earth. Still the pattern or type of Israel would continue throughout all of history. At the time of the Exodus, we are pointing to a time when Joseph had died and all his brothers had gone to their rest with him. The tribes had grown dramatically into a number exceeding two million people. Yet, God reminds us of the small beginnings of the early years when Israel was but a tiny band of people, which had entered into Egypt. Just as the tribes numbered twelve so, too, did the early apostolic church, with Paul being the Lord’s choice to replace Judas. The nation Israel grew during her captivity of slavery, while building bricks for their Egyptian masters, which were used to build their buildings. In a similar way, the church went into captivity as slaves to Romanism, known as the religion of Christianity, working to provide the cut stones for the building programs of the pagan Roman priesthood.
A new king arose who ruled over Egypt, and he did not know Joseph. Here, we have a type of pagan ruler over Christianity, a new type of priesthood of the institutional church, which did not know Jesus. He had died, and His apostles, under the ruler-ship of the Roman Empire, started out as a very small, blessed, free group of people indeed, having been liberated from the world of religion by Jesus. He had begun the process of becoming the Shepherd for the entire world of believers through these men called to witness to the truth of the Word. Though in the world, the little band of true Jews, which once numbered twelve, began to grow, and nothing could stop its rapidity any more than Pharaoh could stop the Hebrew women from birthing sons and daughters of Israel within the borders of Egypt.
But eventually a Caesar, called Constantine, came along and saw the rapid growth of this group of men called the ‘Way’ by the Israelites and called ‘Christians’, in mockery, by the Greeks and Romans. He feared for the power of his empire and the rapid growth of this sect, so he created his own worldly religious system, which would turn the growing spiritual nation into slaves to religion, by serving Roman paganism, as opposed to serving the purposes of God. Constantine set up his own high priest of paganism, as the ruler over the religious institution he called church at the same time as the Roman Empire was beginning to fall apart. It became the new Roman political force as the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a city deemed holy, with its own city government, priesthood, and ambassadors of Vatican City.
The Caesars disappeared, but not before the church was safely placed in the hands of this pagan ruler of religion, who would become known as ‘the pope’. The true apostolic church was transformed into a religious, institutional, political system, which stole the name of church. Those of the faith were held in captivity to the politics of this system and to its religious practices and building programs. As they became slaves, whose wages were used to provide the money for the cut stones of the massive building programs of Rome, spiritual Israel moved into her own form of captivity to the empires of man. The voice for truth was captive but never completely silenced during the church age of religion. There has always been a remnant of God’s true church to be found in the midst of the captive institutional church. It is this voice, which the Lord is raising up today, as His true church comes into unity in truth, but never in religion.
A heavy burden was placed on God’s people, which nearly silenced the witnessing voice for God, a role to which the church had been called by Jesus. Now the great cathedral-building plans of Romanism held the early apostolic church in captivity to the cutting of stones (hence, the Masonic Order) as the mother church wielded her control over the true Jew, of the true church. The early cathedral-building programs of Roman Catholicism, under its pagan priesthood, were responsible for the walls being erected to imprison the believers. Today, the institutional-church-building programs of all denominations have become responsible for the imprisoning walls that silence the apostolic voice.
The entire history of mankind has been pointing to a final spiritual battle of all battles between Christ and the Antichrist that is yet to come. Pharaoh, wearing the headgear of the gold of the worship of this world on his head, was the perfect picture of the antichrist spirit and ruler of a world empire, symbolized by the serpent worn on his forehead. He feared for his armies in the upcoming battles for ruler-ship over the world. So the people were required to remain in their slavery to their building block programs, but it was also required that the Hebrew newborn sons be killed in order to prevent the increase of the Hebrew population within Egypt’s territory. Pharaoh was afraid that they would choose not to serve him in his upcoming battles, as will the Antichrist fear the power of the bride to grow and prevent his ruler-ship from taking place over the entire world in a One World Religion. And, once more, the edict will go out, calling for the death of the new ‘born-again’ man child.
Now, here we have the battle lines drawn for the last battle between the witnessing church and the religious world system of Satan. The firstborn of a believer is none other than the new creation of rebirth in the water and the Spirit. The old man dies and the new man comes forth. This child is the firstborn that we see Satan is waiting to devour as we look forward in the Scriptures to Revelation. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her child as soon as it was born (Revelation 12:4). This is the adopted son of God, the overcomer who will rule and reign with Jesus as His sister and spouse, who is snatched up to the throne of God.
Jesus was the first and only begotten Son born of the Spirit, Whom the satanically-led King Herod tried to kill by killing all the newborn babies of Bethlehem. Though he killed many, he could not destroy this Child born of the Spirit of God, in the same way as Satan had managed to destroy Adam. It could be said that God removed Jesus from the arm’s-reach of Satan. There have always been the two routes taken by Satan for his program of death; first, there is the lure, and if it should fail to succeed with the overcomer, then the killing begins. Therefore, today we must be overcomers of the wily lures of the serpent, and then rest in our position in Jesus for protection from the killings of the dragon.
The new king in Egypt, who did not know Joseph, placed taskmasters over the Israelites, in order to afflict them, yet the growth of their numbers could not be stopped, even though they were made to serve rigorously. It was a bitter bondage as the bondage of mortar and bricks and every manner of service in the field increased. How clearly this portrays the pope, the pagan priest of Rome setting up his Nicolaitan system of archbishops, bishops and priests, the taskmasters of Christianity, who kept the church in submission to man rather than to Jesus. The Word was denied to the laity, who suffered under the heavy burden to produce the wherewithal financially to keep this greedy system going.
Christians were under the constant and terrible threat of excommunication and death, if they showed any signs of producing Spirit-filled sons for God. Their duty was to have a church full of submitted, female-like creatures under the control of the priestly hierarchy of men. Salvation was clearly defined in relationship to the degree to which one was in religious submission, carrying out all the necessary, required religious practices.
Yet, because there was always a remnant of Israel, functioning within the system, we have the semblance of the midwives who, in disobedience, overcame the system to see that sons were born into Israel. God recognized this group of midwives, so to speak, by the meaning of their name, Shiphrah; they were the ‘beauties’ in the Lord’s eyes, as the sort of people He wants His bride to be. They knew exactly who they were as children of Israel, fed and kept alive by the grain of Joseph, which points us, today, to a special feeding of the Word of Jesus. They were destined to enter a land where no man would rule over them, except God.
By overcoming, even by disobeying the commands of the Egyptian rulers, they would survive; for they were within the covenant promise of God. Man’s obedience is to God, when the edicts of men require his disobedience to the Word of God. It is the freedom given to man to choose his own destiny, which opened the door for Adam to respond to the lure of the flesh rather than obey God’s Word. Remember, it rested with the midwives, or women, to keep Israel alive in Egypt. It will rest with the bride, who will buck the rules of the system, to keep spiritual Israel alive in the face of a One World Order. God will deal well with these women, and because of them, will cause the people to multiply and grow very mightily.
What is the essence of these women, whom God so loves? They fear God, not man, and so are fitting for their Davidic role as warriors, pitting them against the Antichrist, the greatest Philistine giant of them all. David walked straight toward Goliath, fearing nothing, for he knew exactly Who his God, the God of Israel, was. He also knew whence his power came and that the victory was God’s, before the battle had ever begun. They are the midwives and pillars of overcomers who will receive their inheritance, by entering into the kingdom through the gateways of the tribes of Jacob, resting on the foundation of the twelve apostles. Of such is the governmental number of heaven, which can never be the number of 666.
Here, found in the bride, is a group, who fears God only and not man. And so, the edict will go out to kill her, just as it went out from Pharaoh and Herod to kill the Hebrew babies, but with the same degree of success today that it had yesterday. This edict did not stop Moses any more than it could stop Jesus, nor will it stop the bride from completing her job here on earth, set before her by God. This is a calling put in place before the very foundations of the earth were formed, with the perfect knowledge and understanding of God, the depths of which no man can comprehend.