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 Two (part one)
August 28 – 30, 2005
How does chapter two begin? It begins by describing the wife of the man of the house of Levi. It is about the fruitful daughter of the priestly line. In so far as the Levitical priesthood gave way to Jesus as the High Priest, it also gave way to the bride, or the church, which would serve with Him and be fruitful.
Jesus moved His church into action at Pentecost, at a time when people from all nations, as devout Jews, were dwelling in Jerusalem. It was the time of the infilling of the Spirit for the early apostles and disciples who were also gathered together there, in one place. They were to commence their fruitful journey of fishing for other men. They became the priestly line of Jesus called to evangelize the world. In the same manner as Jesus was born of the Spirit to become the only begotten Son of God, they, too, as children born again of the Spirit, would become the adopted sons of God. They were the true Israel, prophesied here in the second chapter of Exodus, described as a woman birthing a beautiful child. She is the fruitful daughter of the spiritual priestly line of spiritual Israel, who will serve to lead an exodus out of the religious system, just as Moses served to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
The Word says that this Levite daughter birthed a beautiful child. The child was hidden away for a period of three months, pointing to the time of three millennia from Moses to Luther, when the breaking-away process of exiting from religion began. It carried on from him to Puritanism arriving on the shores of America. It was the beginning of the purification process of the church, exiting and separating from the religious world system, serving to make America a light to all the world of liberty in God’s Law, as a nation standing on truth as opposed to religion. This was a land, the government of which met the requirement for liberty with the Ten Commandments as the foundation of the Law, along with a justice system being under the authority of the truth of the Bible. All segments of society fell under the ruler-ship of God, with the Bible setting the parameters of the nation’s borders, her homes, her classrooms, the church, her courtrooms and her government.
When the Levite woman, the wife of the Levite man, could no longer hide her son, she put him in an ark, made of bulrushes, also known as papyrus. The papyrus reed was used for healing, for making fish lines, and for the paper upon which the Scriptures were written. As Moses was hidden in a basket made of papyrus, so too was the baby of the bride hidden in the papyrus of Scripture until it was time to awaken the bride’s love. The prophecy of this baby has been woven by the prophets throughout the pages of Scripture to come forth at just the right moment in history. They were the waters of the Nile from which Moses was taken by the daughter of Pharaoh. They will be the seawaters of the world, which will give up the woman in labor to bring forth the good fruit of the spirit, called the bride, whose child will be snatched up to the throne of God. She will be the voice of Israel, carrying the burning torch of light and liberty that God sought from the nation Israel, which refused to carry it after being liberated from Egypt.
It is particularly important to note at this point that she was a sister, a woman standing afar off, pointing to the bride, who took responsibility for the well-timed appearance of Moses. She was the key figure behind the scenes who saw to it that he reached the daughter of Pharaoh and was actually placed right in her hands so that he might be raised and trained in the palace. Pharaoh is as Satan, while his daughter is as the controlling spirit of Jezebel, with the palace being the institutional church. In prophecy, the palace becomes the palace of the Vatican, from which lesser palaces, known as denominational church buildings, spread throughout the world because of palace-building programs. This little basket, or ark of Moses, was among the bulrushes or reeds used for Scripture in the midst of the vile waters of Egypt, which she worshiped and to which she attributed godly powers over the grain and the harvest.
One must stop for a moment and consider the important arks of Scripture. Noah built an ark over a lengthy period of years while, at the same time, warning the people of the coming destruction or judgment, which would come upon the whole world. Would anyone who lived in a land, which had never known rain, listen to him? They had never experienced judgment as their wickedness grew within the land that had been free of flooding. But God had spoken, and His Word was as good as a covenant; in fact, His commandment to Noah was as a covenant with Him, for His Word is always sure and as a completed event before it occurs. The only way His Word can be reversed is by the evildoer’s repentance of sin, accompanied by a perfect blood sacrifice.
Noah took himself, his wife, his sons and their wives into the ark, along with the animals, which God brought to him. This is a picture of the complete work of salvation. It is for the sons, re-born in the Spirit of God, who were as sister and spouse for Jesus, along with the lesser inheritance of those who were saved for believing upon the saving grace of Jesus for their salvation. The latter were still in their beastly, animal state as sinful sons of the beast, having not been born again of the Spirit of life. Over this covenant, and at its very heart, rests the rainbow as the symbol of the broken body of the Light of the world as a reminder to God. There is nothing man can do to be restored to God. It can only be done when Jesus, the Light, is broken for you and me for our redemption. The boat-load would have to wait upon the birth and resurrection of the broken body of Jesus for their final redemption at the time of the fire judgment of the wicked and the resurrection of the saved.
Moses’ basket is the second picture of an ark, carrying the little child who will lead a nation of people called Israel out of Egypt. The baby was carried in papyrus, the same reed upon which he would later write the first Scriptures under the guiding hand of the Spirit of God. He was a chosen child from birth, coming out of Israel for the purpose of leading the Hebrew children out from their captivity to man’s rule over them. The rule of man over man began with the fall of man when he accepted the lie, which resulted in the belief system that ultimately would become the foundation for all religions. Such religions may embrace elements of truth like Satan does, when he quotes the Word of God while, at the same time, taking it out of its context to prepare the way for the lie. They are characterized by head knowledge, but not by spiritual understanding, for God’s Word is the whole truth, which rejects all religious beliefs and practices.
Faith comes from knowing Him, not from the knowledge of Him. Through the testimony, given in the spirit of prophecy, there is far more than just hope offered; there is the blessed assurance that the kingdom of God will come on earth. The Bible self-validates its truthfulness with prophecy, which is fulfilled without error.
Moses was the leader of a covenant move, which brought a fledgling nation out of captivity to the world and into the Promised Land, as promised to the descendants of Abraham. These two arks, containing the covenant promises, found a kind of natural and spiritual fulfillment in the ark of the covenant, a simple, box-like vessel having four corners, which pointed in prophecy to the four corners of the earth. God led the Hebrew people to construct this ark according to His specifications, using men empowered by Him to do so. For the people of Israel, the ark was the sign of God’s presence with them. It represented His unapproachable holiness, which could never be compromised by the presence of sinful men. For the rest of the gentile world, it symbolized victory for Israel over her enemies under the rule of her God and His Law. The ark was a sight to behold by all the surrounding nations, which could see the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night resting over it while being carried by the priests, in advance of the people, through the wilderness.
It also carried with it the message of the victory of the bride in the light, riding side by side with the fire judgment coming down on sin in this world of darkness. The power of God was displayed through the ark of the covenant, which required the faithfulness and obedience of Israel to keep covenant with Him. Yet it could be captured and taken away from a disobedient Israel, only to bring plagues upon any other nation, which tried to lay claim to it. It could mean death to the people of Israel, when they abused the handling of the ark by acting outside of God’s rules. The sin of Israel, in breaking covenant with God, brought an infestation of snakes with a deadly bite into the camp. Moses was commanded to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole. And so it was that if a serpent had bitten anyone, when that person looked upon the bronze serpent, he would live. This, of course, was the symbol of the sin of man, first introduced into the world by the serpent in the Garden and later taken by Jesus on the cross, so that when you and I looked upon Him for salvation, we might live.
The ark of the covenant held the two tablets of the Law, the pot of manna, and the budding rod of Aaron. The advent of Jesus into the world replaced the ark, or vessel where God dwelt, as the body of a man containing all of the elements Moses had placed in the ark. The national symbol of a holy vessel became a spiritual truth, dwelling with mankind. He came to fulfill the Law of the two tablets as the bread of heaven, the Word made flesh, becoming the embodiment of truth. He was also the High Priest and Rod budding out of Israel to replace the last known Levite of the high priest lineage of Aaron, called John the Baptist. John was of the same Levitical high priest lineage, inherited from both of his parents, as was Moses.
In Jesus, the old covenant was replaced by the new covenant, and though left behind, none of its prophetic messages was to be either ignored or forgotten. The covenant movement was always advancing forward toward the crossover at the cross, emerging on the other side to change from a natural to a spiritual covenant, new and yet bound to the old. With a new beginning that was for all men on a new foundation, the old gateways of the tribes of Israel were to be retained forever. They were never to be forgotten, as all of civilization would move closer to the coming of the kingdom of God on earth, and ultimately to a new heaven and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem, which would honor the names of the sons of Jacob. He had been a man who wanted his father’s inheritance and was the symbol of mankind’s struggle with God and man throughout history until he receives the blessing of his heavenly Father.
The God of Abraham was also the God of Isaac, who was born into the blessing. In being the God of Jacob instead of Esau, Jacob symbolized all men who by law are unable to receive the blessing, but by a heart response to Jesus can share in the struggle to become adopted children into the house of Israel. They can enter into this house by coming through the gateways of the blessings of Jacob upon his sons and the tribes of Israel, names, which were not to be forgotten in the crossover.
Jesus replaced the physical ark with the Scriptural breadbasket that would house His apostolic church, handing over to it the keys that would open the gateways to heaven. Jesus was the embodiment of the ladder to heaven of Jacob’s dream. He was the Vessel that walked on the water, moving over it as the Ark of salvation, in the same way that the ark of Noah and the basket of Moses had moved safely over the waters of the world. Not only Jesus, but also Peter, the symbol of the church, would step out of the apostolic boat and walk on the same seawater of the world. Were it not for the hand of Jesus, both Peter and the church would falter when, for just one moment, they might even consider taking their focus off of Jesus to look downward and into the treacherous waters of evil spirits. So the apostolic boat had its own significance as a boat of fishermen, serving as a kind of apostolic ark for the new covenant.