A Dwelling-Place in a Spiritual Swampland or in a Heavenly Mansion
Written by Elinor Montgomery – em*********@****co.ca
October 6, 2007
Most of us spend a lifetime working for silver and gold with the imprint of Caesar upon it. After we have accumulated all we can, we retire to die soon thereafter. At that point we are separated from our lifetime rewards, which no longer are able to serve any purpose for us; they will be good for nothing where we are going. So, the question arises as to where we are going.
There are, and always have been, two very different camps in this world with two very different destinations. One is God’s camp called spiritual Israel, and the other is Satan’s camp of the religious, idol-worshiping, gentile nations of the world. One camp is called to be a nation of light and life, while the other is a camp of nations in captivity to darkness and death.
The silver and gold with the stamp of Caesar upon them are the currency of Satan, but the silver and gold of perfect worship and love are the currency of God. The latter is not lost with the death of the body, but rather lives on with those of us in perfect relationship with God, our Creator. They go with the believer to his/her destination.
So, the dwelling place of Satan is hell, which can best be visualized as a dank swampland, inhabited by reptiles and snakes, the home of wickedness and selfishness, where the wants of the flesh cannot be satisfied and there is no love, one for another. It would be the most rotten of dwelling places, and a far cry from the safe, secure beautiful homes we, in America, have enjoyed, in which we have been blessed with every work-saving convenience possible.
Yet, the other camp is the fulfillment of all of our dreams – a heavenly mansion, where the streets are paved with the same gold one has amassed while here on earth – the gold of worship and love. This mansion can only be purchased by forsaking the pursuit of the gold of the world. The perfect gold of worship covered every vessel of the tabernacle of Israel, which God ordained to be built in the wilderness during the nation’s trek to the Promised Land. Such gold was only melted down and refined after the Israelites had departed from Egypt with the Egyptians’ gold and precious jewellery, through the parted waters of the Red Sea to arrive on dry land again.
Why did God lead His people out through these seawaters? The sea represents the place of shed blood and death, as the darkness of the deep and the dwelling place of Satan. If our eyes were to have the X-ray vision of the Spirit, we could look down into the seawater and see nothing but a maze of evil represented by the symbols of reptiles and snakes with blood all around them. The sea floor produces nothing but a covering of slime and moss.
One only has to look at the geographical picture within the Promised Land, in order to see the picture of judgment and salvation from this spiritual swampland. In the north is the Sea of Galilee. On Mount Hermon, to the north of this sea, is the source for the Jordan River, which runs into the Sea of Galilee and then snakes its way from there as it winds down to the Dead Sea. Of such is the message of the condemnation of man in sin, unless he is fished from these waters spiritually.
Jesus was the Fisherman of the Galilee, Who fished for men. He established His church with fishermen from the Galilee, who were called to be the light of Israel and the torch of liberty to the world. They were spiritual stones, in the same way as Jesus was the Chief Cornerstone, of the church foundation. Their commission was to fish men out of the religious systems of the ruler over the seawaters before they should get sucked into the waters of the Jordan and carried away to the Dead Sea where there is no life at all. This is a geographic, spiritual picture, right within the heart of the nation of Israel. Baptism represents the changing of the waters in man’s life, though it cannot save him from the fast flow. Only spiritual baptism can do that. Hence to inherit the heavenly mansion, one must be born again of the water and the Spirit (see John 3:5).
Being fished out of the sea is like making an exodus from the dwelling place of sin, which will become a lake of fire in the fire judgment. One has to look no further than to Lot’s wife, who, having been taken out of the judgment of fire, chose to look back in longing, only to become a pillar of salt on the edge of the Dead Sea, after rejecting the warning to not look back, given by the Angels of the Lord. The Dead Sea is a very dead sea indeed, with no life in it. Disobedience to the Word of God will take us there every time.
When the seawater closed over Pharaoh’s army, with Egypt representing the world of religious idolatry, we can see the same principle being put in place by God with the exodus of His people from Satan’s territory of religious idolatry. Pharaoh had the mark of Satan upon him, with the symbol of the snake as a seal upon his forehead, professing to be a god. God’s people had to be removed and separated from all such religion before being released from their captivity in order to be led by God to the Promised Land.
Jesus warned about the leaven of the Pharisees, which was nothing but religious legalism. Now, the Spirit and the bride will warn about the religion of Christianity and its same religious ties to Romanism as those of Judaism, which was under the control of Rome. Jesus is coming back to part the seawater once again to allow His church to make the crossover from religion to the kingdom.
The bride’s voice will be heard calling spiritual Israel out of a world full of sin and wickedness, like Moses before her, to embark on the way opened for the last covenant move of God, when there will be absolutely none of the leaven of religion left among His people. For it will continue to grow as long as there is but one drop of it. Hence, we read in Exodus, chapter twelve, in preparation for the Israelites’ departure from Egypt; ‘Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel (Exodus 12:15).’
In the book of Genesis, chapter one, we are given the reason for God’s miracle of parting the waters of the Red Sea. God said “Let there be Light!”, for the Light of the world is also the Truth. It is Truth, which would dispel the darkness on the face of the deep. God could not begin creation and life until Satan’s seawaters, darkness and religion were all separated and held back from a creation God saw as good.
The role of America is to respond in obedience to the truth, never allowing the religious cults to enter this country and get the upper hand. It is the duty of the true church to witness to truth and to preserve its role in America so that the children might be taught about the only way there is to life. For what reason would a true believer ever bow to political correctness, which is not correct at all?
Note carefully that the Lord commanded the Israelites to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for it will be on that day that He will have brought the armies of Israel out of the land of Egypt (see Exodus 12:17). God commands them, using the message of ‘no leaven’ nine times in five verses of chapter twelve of Exodus.
There was to be a seven-days-long observance of no leaven before departure through the sea, with a day being as a thousand years in the sight of God. It was prophetic of a seven-thousand-years-long judgment of God falling upon mankind for rejecting His Word of truth, beginning from the day in which man was created, when he chose to embrace the lies of Satan and the belief system, which became the first outcropping of religion. Once established, it opened the door for religious leaven to grow until presently it will fill the entire world with Satan’s wickedness, which is self-perpetuated by religion. The day we see the One World Religion is the day this prophecy will be fulfilled. It is known as the time of the fullness of the gentiles. Ecumenicalism is its enabler.
Make straight the way, for the Way is coming through as the seawaters of religion are parted and held back by the hand of the Lord. You will have to make the choice – you can either remain tied to the religions of this world, or you can be one of the faithful and obedient of the Way, but you cannot be both. The people of spiritual Israel are kingdom-bound on the Way of truth and life. The religious harlot is getting ready to ride the beast to the pit of hell, where she shall remain for an eternity (see the warning to this effect in Revelation 18:4).
Our lives on earth are all about determining our eternal dwelling place of the future, whether a spiritual swampland, or a mansion in heaven. Are we going to deprive our children of the opportunity to make this choice from an informed position, whereby they have been taught the difference between truth and religion and the repercussions of choosing one over the other?
The truth of God is the same today as it was yesterday; it never changes. What one believes has absolutely no bearing on the truth. It is time to stop teaching our children belief systems and begin to teach them the truth so that they can recognize the belief systems for what they are, nothing but the imaginings and the religious doctrines of men.