Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
The War Horse
January 01, 2013
A good way to end the old and begin the new year is to rent the video, “The War Horse”. For some, it has become yesterday’s story, no longer among the new releases on the shelves but, in fact, it is the timeless story of mankind and the future for tomorrow.
It is one giant parable about Jesus, salvation, and the believer’s victory over the devil. The war horse is none other than a type of Jesus, that magnificent creature who stands in all his beauty at the end of the movie outlined against the sun and brilliant sky. He is the picture of the war hero who comes home wearing His many medals and badges of honor, set apart as a thorough-bred and a one-of-a-kind, with a white diamond marking His forehead. His lower legs are covered in white, indicating a walk that comes from a pure heart. He is one, beautiful pure-bred to behold with a name called Joey – short form for Joseph, another type of Jesus, who was made ruler over a kingdom, second only to Pharaoh.
The story-line is about a battle over this horse, between a father of a young boy and a wealthy landowner bent on destroying the man and his son. Both men want ownership of the horse, but the father will not give him up. And so, upon bringing the horse home, the boy is immediately captivated by the magnificent animal, for which the father paid an unfathomable price. The boy begged his father to allow him to work with the horse and to train him to be a work horse.
And so, the two, the son and the horse, became as one, to the point that it appeared to be the horse, which was training the boy to become a man. The time came for the father to pay-up the price agreed for the horse to the owner of the house in which the father, his wife and his son dwelled. An agreement was reached whereby the father first gained time to cultivate a stony field and produce a crop, upon the harvest of which, the debt would be paid in full. The son and the field of stones represent the full church of salvation, against which the gates of hell will not prevail.
The father could not do it alone without the horse and his young son who, together, would cultivate the stony, unlikely ground. They would even cut through the stone, with the horse occasionally pulling the boy, in order to prepare the soil for sowing the seed. The father watched over the process, along with the people of his community who seemed to be fascinated by the work the boy was doing, but were willing only to watch from the sidelines without raising a finger to help him. It exhausted the boy but the day came when the son completed his work. The institutional Laodicean church, today, is like the group standing on the sidelines.
The father planted the field and the crop survived for a while; but then the rains came and the crop was spoiled. The father was forced to sell the boy’s horse for 30 guineas to an officer of the British army of liberty fighters against the army of the German empire-builders of the First World War. The horse was separated from the young boy for a lengthy period of time until we discover the two to be fighting in the same battle and in the same army, in which the officer who bought the horse had fought and was killed. The boy, now a young man, was nearly blinded and unable to recognize the horse with which he once worked to plough the stony field. The apostolic church of Jesus is revived spiritually from her religious blindness with new understanding, to come together with the Lord in the final days of the spiritual battle between the Antichrist, and the Christ.
It would be a difficult war for both of them, but both would become heroes whose paths would cross once more. Through a well-remembered call, the two would be brought together again to become as one with the support of many other soldiers in the battle, who would come to see and understand this special relationship. Man had reached the place where he was willing to pay any price to possess this magnificent horse. The true church will have a keener awareness of the power vested in her calling.
Of such is the story of God and His church at war with Satan for the souls of man. The Father sent His Son as the Cornerstone of a field of stones, which only He, and not man, could cut and reshape into a growing field where the seed is sown on fertile ground prepared to receive it. Of course, Satan is always Johnny-on-the-spot of every move God makes, just waiting to destroy the crop of believers.
To some extent he did exactly that by taking ownership over the church through religion, finally producing a Laodicean church, which refuses, presently, to get into the battle as servants of God. Instead, as good people standing on the other side of the fence surrounding the field, they chose to watch the proceedings only. They stood by to watch a beautiful picture of the horse carrying the boy through the process of breaking up the soil, when the young fellow became too weak to carry on. Yet they never lifted a finger to share in the work.
The job was completed just after war broke out, and the landowner, representing the devil, decided to close in on the payment, after the crops had failed, a year later. The circumstances forced the father to sell the boy’s horse, which then became an enlisted recruit of the army. The sin of man led to Jesus paying the price for his failures at the high-point of the last satanic empire of the Babylonian system of empires, instituted by Satan.
The price Jesus paid would eventually bring forth a great harvest from the cultivated field of church stones. As for a certain young woman named Emily, her name would be remembered and never forgotten, for the role she played in feeding the horse and keeping truth alive. Her situation was not unlike that of Rahab’s support for the spies of God’s people Israel, who would not go unforgotten in her special place in the ancestral line of Jesus, for similar reasons.
The tribulation, which is a time of judgment for the sins of man, which had led to the religious-empire-building nations under Satan, will come to a cataclysmic final showdown between the antichrist (landowner) spirit and the life-giving Spirit of Jesus, the Christ, the coming Ruler of the world kingdom of God on earth. The two battling forces will face each other until a temporary peace agreement is reached in the midst of the tribulation, but then the spiritual gas that destroys the breath of life will eventually destroy all truth-sayers, snuffing out the light of the Bridegroom and His bride, but only temporarily. For the war horse and the son have come home to be together with the Father as His family, ready to dwell with Him in His house of Israel, never to be destroyed or taken away, ever again. Together they will enjoy the harvest of the field when the horsemen of the apocalypse will be seen and heard from no more.
And so, the beautiful but agonizing story of the boy and his war horse concludes in one of the most magnificent scenes in film history – the picture of the Father, His Son and His bride united as one with that beautiful creature, the war horse, all outlined against a sun-lit sky of the heavens in a scene, which portrays a brilliant future for the house of God.
If only everyone could hear the last call of the Spirit of the War Horse and the bride, as they call one and all at the gate of a new era, to “Come!” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. And whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17). The boy’s whistle call at the end of the battle takes us straight to this passage of the Bible prophetically.
And He said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. And when they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. These likewise are the ones sown on stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they stumble. Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred (Mark 4:13-20).”
And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come (Mark 4:26-29).”