Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
The Way vs. Roman Roads
February 01, 2009
God closed off the Garden on the east side after driving man out of it while, at the same time, He established the Way back to the tree of life. Caesar built Roman roads, all of which led to Rome. They served as the economic, political and religious roads, which kept Caesar at the center of worship in the world empire of the day called the Roman Empire.
The most famous of the Roman roads was one called the Appian Way, also known as the Queen of Roads. It was opened in 312 B.C. and later was extended to the seaport of Brindisi on the Mediterranean trade routes. This road was lined with the tombs of the dead – both Romans and believers, with a network of catacombs beneath and alongside of the road.
If one had been traveling with the apostles, Paul and Peter, when they walked toward Rome on this road made of large cut stones, one would have seen many crosses with the dead hanging from them along the roadside. Crucifying the believers of the Way, whom they called Christians, was a favorite past-time of the Caesars.
Jesus, to the contrary, was the Way back to the kingdom established in the Garden of creation at the time of its closure. He is the narrow path of uncut stone upon which none of the tools of men has been used. He, in fact, comes from the God of truth, and is ‘Truth incarnate’ as the cornerstone of His church.
Between Rome of the Babylonian system and the Way of Jesus stands a wall of solid stone, which no man can scale; it is the wall of truth surrounding the spiritual city of spiritual Jerusalem. Beyond this wall lies Paradise, lost on the horizon, in another Garden like that of Creation.
Roman ruler-ship would have men believe that all roads lead to Rome and, unfortunately, nearly all roads of this world do lead there, except the one Way established by Jesus, and it is the exception in that it leads to Jerusalem and from there to the kingdom.
Rome is at the heart of religion; Jesus is at the heart of truth. Satan is the ruler of this world, ruling over religion and the Babylonian system of world trade (the money changers), politics (the road to empirical government rulers), and religion (the belief system of the Garden apart from the truth). Jesus rules over the entire universe in truth, the foundation of His coming kingdom on earth.
How those who hate the truth hate the message of Creation! Oh that the animal state of man was from the beginning, they cry, instead of God making us in His image and of a righteous nature! Evolution is a much more palatable answer for them to the matter of our existence. Man loves his religion and will forsake the truth for its liberalism, even though it brings with it a death sentence. Has modern man learned anything over the years of history, His story, or is he still as morally and spiritually weak as Adam and Eve were?
Christianity was established by Caesar and went out to the world on the roadways of Rome. It was Satan’s way of taking the church captive to religion and deceiving the believers as much as he deceived Eve. So, why did God allow it? It was the fulfillment of the pattern of Israel, which laid down the principle and precept for the church to go into the slavery of religious captivity just as she had been taken into her captivity to slavery in Egypt. It was used by God for His chastising tool for a young, growing church, just as Egypt served to chasten and grow Israel.
But the day will come, in fact, has come for the principle to be put into action. Ultimately, the church must separate from the religious system and stand only on God’s truth. Jesus will be as Moses leading her out of the world system, but His bride will be as Nehemiah, His cupbearer, who will carry the message from the King to build the wall of truth between the true church of spiritual Israel and the religious world system of institutional Christianity.
What is it that keeps good men and followers of Jesus still in the dark with the scales of blindness on their eyes? Can they not see or do they refuse to see that Christianity, as a religion, is the tool of Satan? What is it that keeps them from seeing that the gates of Hades are prevailing daily against religious Christianity? Satan has been smart enough to unite it with Judaism, the very essence of the antichrist spirit, as the two religions link arms more in their common denial of the divinity of Jesus than anything else. The Christian priesthood will happily not mention the name of Jesus in order to pray in unity with those who worship a false god instead of the one true God.
What is the problem that keeps our so-called great Christian leaders from seeing that even they are caught in the web of religion? The problem is that Jesus is coming for a pure bride who witnesses only to the truth. She will be very few in numbers, indeed, in a world of billions, numbering only 144,000 soldiers in the line of David facing the biggest giant of all, in the spiritual battle of all spiritual battles. It will be the final battle of the worldly empires of religion versus the kingdom of truth.
Without donning her spiritual armor and without building a wall of defense in truth with the Lord as her Commander, there would be no contest between Shiloh and the giants. You would have nothing better than the army of Israel under King Saul standing in fear, as opposed to David standing firmly on his foundation of truth, symbolized by the smooth stones he picked up for his sling shot. He did not allow Saul to place the armor of man upon him. The bride is to be as David, very unlike either the armies of Judaism or Christianity, which hold the spiritual nation captive. She is going to reject the armor of both, which depends on man for their covering, in order to put on her full spiritual armor of God.
What was it that King Saul promised to the man who could slay the giant, the Goliath, of the Philistines? He promised a place for this man in the palace as a part of the royal family. David, a young man, looked at the uncircumcised Philistine giant (an impure man), and asked who he thought he was that he would dare to challenge the armies of the living God. David knew that no man’s heart should fail when he is numbered among the soldiers of God, fighting within His protection.
David had killed a lion and a bear to deliver the lambs he shepherded from danger. The power of the Philistines could be compared to these animals, which were the symbols of the danger to man of the power exerted by each one of the different empires of the Babylonian system. The God Who had delivered David from the clutches of these animals would also deliver him from the power of the giant who dared to defy His God. He delivered him from Goliath – the symbol of the final Antichrist who is the last and the biggest of the giants to come against Christ in these times, as he levels his guns on the bride of the pure church, in the line of David.
With his stones (symbolic of the apostolic church) and trusting only in the God of truth, David approached the giant. He shouted at him that he came in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, Whom the giant (or world system) had defied. He declared the victory in the name of God, and that the world would come to know that the battle of salvation is the Lord’s, not with the sword and spear of the religious world, but by the Word of truth.
The Bible tells the ending to this battle, which is known by those who have spiritual understanding. This young man, David, was a descendant of the redeemer, Boaz, in the same spiritual lineage as that of Jesus, which had made Him both Son of man and Son of God. It was with David, the giant-slayer, and not with the weak-kneed and rebellious Saul that the Lord established His throne on earth.
Blind men, who call yourselves Christians, you must bow before the same Light to Whom Saul, the Pharisee had to bow before the scales of religion could be taken from his eyes. Only then could he become a soldier for truth instead of remaining a condemned religious man! Unless you, like Saul, come out of religious Christianity and into the purity of truth, you cannot face that giant in victory and ascend into the royal family of God. The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” (Revelation 22:17). It is time to build the wall of the city, a lasting wall of truth for a lasting city, which will never be broken down again.
You cannot remain on the Roman roads that served Christianity, for the church’s captivity is over and done. The institutions of Christianity are like the tombs tunneled for miles under the Appian Way where Christians and Roman nobility alike are buried. It is time to cross through the cross and ascend on the ladder of heaven to the lost Paradise, stolen by Satan when man accepted his religious lies of liberalism from the truth.
Build the wall, for the giant is rising up out of the sea of religious spirits to challenge the Davidic army led by the Lord Himself! He is the Lord God of Israel Who is coming for His bride and she shall worship Him only in spirit and in truth as they depart from the Roman roads to travel the rest of the distance along the Way to the kingdom.