Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
The Exodus of Today
September 10, 2008
In the beginning, God spoke the Word and by the Word He brought forth His creation. Jesus said He was the Word made flesh, that He was the truth, the way and the life (John 14:6). Beyond this truth, there is no life, and so our Most High God is a God of truth (see Deuteronomy 32:4, Psalm 31:5, Isaiah 65:16).
God warned His newly-created living being, whom He called man, about eating the fruit of a certain tree in the Garden unlike all the other trees that produced good, edible fruit. The tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He told Adam that if he were to eat of it, he would surely die. The lure came from the serpent, which put this luscious-looking fruit before the woman with a lie, effectively stating that God did not mean what He said; in other words, what God said was not true.
This was the first denial of God’s truth and the lie behind the belief system that the Bible (the Word of God) is not truth. However, it was by the same Spirit, which breathed life into the living being that the Word was written as spoken directly into the hearts of the scribes. These were the men whom God chose to be His comparable partners – those whom He trusted to write and speak as His voice.
The first lie of the devil was the foundation for the first belief system, which rejected the truth. This was the first religious system, which resulted in liberalism, the means of separating man from the truth of God, which would ultimately lead to his death. Satan was too wily to deny the existence of God; he merely replaced truth by acknowledging God at the same time as though He were One Who would approve of his deception.
The lure had compromised the truth with a little leaven introduced into Creation, which would grow until it filled the entire loaf. This is what is known in Biblical terms as reaching the time of the fullness of the gentiles, or in modern terms, the time of the coming One World Order under the Antichrist.
The problem underlying all of this stems from the fact that life and death cannot coexist together. God was right, Satan was wrong and man was lost for an eternity to the wages of sin. Was there a way for God to restore His lost creation? Man was locked into death, now as a beast-like son of his new father the devil, and there was nothing that could be done about it, for his blood was required of him. If he were to be redeemed, it would have to be by some miraculous work of God.
Hence, the way of redemption, leading man back to God, was established by closing off the Garden on the east side to the tree of life. Religion was eastward, with the way of truth being westward, and there was a spiritual wall between the two running north and south, which prevented man from crossing the great divide between the two.
This is why we read in the Bible about the watchmen on the wall. Cities were walled to keep the enemy out. The east gate in the wall surrounding the old city of Jerusalem was closed and sealed, only to be opened again when Jesus returns to ride through it as the truth made flesh. At this point the victory will be His as He triumphs over Satan and his religious liberalism, which has controlled the city to this day from the time when Jesus was here on earth.
Israel’s role on the pathway to redemption begins with separation of Abraham from the religious household of his father and from his kindred. He and his wife are treated as a one-flesh relationship that will bring forth the good fruit of inheritance again from the corrupted fruit of man. Because of their great ages it would require a miraculous move of God to bring forth a child from the loins of Abraham and the womb of Sarah.
Abraham was to become the father of a nation and a blessing to all the nations of the world, after his willingness to separate, upon hearing the voice of God and by choosing to obey Him. This would begin the process of his becoming an overcomer, for Satan would never cease putting lures before him like a dog nipping at the heels of man.
Through Abraham’s seed, God founded a nation of people who would be required to separate from the world of the gentile nations ruled by religion. He called His nation, Israel. However, by means of an Egyptian woman, and not by Sarah, Abraham also became the father of a line of people who would not inherit the first-son blessing. It would cross over to the second son of the comparable partner. No other partner could produce the acceptable child of the marriage bed, but his wife.
As was Sarah the bride of Abraham, so, too, was Rebekah the bride of Isaac, their son of inheritance, who received the crossover blessing, which went from first son to second son. Isaac’s second son, Jacob, received the crossover blessing, which had belonged to the first son, Esau. In turn, Jacob blessed his first son, Joseph, son of his second family, in a crossover blessing that had belonged to the first son of his first family. It was upon Joseph that his father placed the coat of many colors, reminiscent of the rainbow of color mentioned in the covenant made by God with Noah.
Joseph was a type of Jesus Who was the Son of God conceived by the Spirit and born of a virgin who had none of the corrupt seed of man in her. He was both fully Man and fully God.
Again separation was necessary when Jesus called forth His apostolic church from out of the religion of Judaism to instruct them only in truth. Israel as a nation, like Adam and Eve, succumbed to the lies of religion and was, at this time, caught in the full-blown religion of Judaism. Unless these men made the separation from it, it would mean suicide for them, as was the case with Judas.
The doorway of religion provides Satan with legitimate access to men’s minds. This is how he gains control over men and systems. After taking man’s sin of rejecting God’s truth upon Himself, Jesus became the gateway through the dividing wall back to the kingdom of God, which was closed to man in the Garden.
There were only two requirements of man on his way to redemption. He must first confess his sins before God and then turn them over to Jesus. He, in turn, took our place upon the cross, where His blood was shed instead of ours. He defeated Satan and at the same time became our only way to redemption. Nothing more is required of us than our belief in Him for the work He did for our salvation.
But there is more. The kingdom is one in which there are different nations of salvation dwelling around the Jerusalem of heaven where government headship reigns. Jesus promises thrones of inheritance for those who call on Him to enter into their lives so they can be born again of the Spirit, as was He begotten of the Spirit. They will be tested like Him and must also overcome the lures of Satan, which lead men to sin against God.
This is a crossover, spiritual son-ship inheritance into the immediate family of God, only for those overcomers who will witness to the truth in perfect obedience to the Lord. To do this, there must be complete and total separation again from any religious system, as was required of Abraham and the fledgling nation of Israel before them. Both were required to make an exodus from the only lives they had ever known.
For this purpose, Jesus formed His church of apostles who would separate themselves to witness only to truth so they could fish others out of the sea of religion and back into life, through the knowledge of the truth. Like the uncaught fish of the Galilee, it was but a short journey for the lost down the Jordan and into the Dead Sea.
The Sea of Galilee has the Roman name of Tiberias as well, for it would be religious Romanism that eventually would swallow up the church in her captivity to the sea of religious Christianity, just as Judaism had swallowed up Israel. Jesus had declared the gates of Hades would not prevail against His church, but we see it prevailing daily against the Christian institutions called church, which are gradually dying a slow death in the ‘Dead Sea.’
God’s plan for redemption will not fail as Adam failed. Jesus will watch over, protect and deliver His bride as an overcomer. She will make the necessary separation again, like the apostles before her, from all religions of the world and will become His witness to the truth against the religious antichrist spirit of Satan, which hates Biblical truth.
Her sword will not be a natural sword, but rather the sword of truth. The only empire she is interested in is a spiritual kingdom, and her battle-gear is spiritual armor worn to counteract the spiritual blows of Satan. Hence, the battle of the true apostolic church is not a physical one, but rather a spiritual one.
The bride knows that God’s nation does not receive victory through physical warfare; she is part of the army of spiritual warriors in the line of David. She is destined to the throne with her Beloved Jesus, wanting nothing more than to birthe the good fruit for Him in the Spirit of life. She is preparing for her role in a kingdom of worshipers who worship in spirit and in truth.
Separation from religion is the starting point for man to rebuild the dividing wall of the Garden, for no lie is of the truth. This is the spiritual exodus from the religions of the world (spiritual Egypt) to which the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt points. Nehemiah is the pattern for the cupbearer to bring purity into the nation at the same time as the wall is erected. Micah speaks strongly of that day when the bride will build the wall of protection again to surround her (Jerusalem), as did Nehemiah rebuild the wall that would keep out the enemy.
“As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things (Micah 7:15).” God can and will carry out amazing miracles by giving His church power that has not been seen since the days when Moses led the nation Israel out of the land of Egypt.
The church is in a spiritual battle with the giants of religion, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against her. As the so-called institutional Christian churches go down the route of the broad road, leading to the One World Order of religion, the true church will go up in the other direction, by way of the narrow path of truth, which leads to the kingdom. All peoples must come to the foot of the cross where they will decide for themselves the direction in which they will travel. The broad road leads in a downward spiral to death while the narrow way leads upward to eternal life in the kingdom of God.
And she will be the overcoming bride who calls with the Spirit to those who have ears to hear and willingly make the exodus from religion, before the seawaters cover over its captives who ride the beast to the bottom of the sea.