The First of a Three-part Commentary on the Cross
Written by Elinor Montgomery – em*********@****co.ca
August 26-28, 2003
Jesus stood before Pilate who asked Him the question, “Are You a king?” And Jesus answered him saying, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice” (John 18:37). Pilate then said to Him, “What is truth?”
As a Roman, Pilate never had known anything except pagan religion – hence, the term Romanism. Try as he would, he could not wash his hands free of it, for it was religion that was keeping him from setting the truth free. Consequently, Pilate, representing the governing power of Rome, shared with religion in sending Jesus to the cross. We have here the picture of the compromised governments of the world, which are in the bondage of religious/state ties. This is the very bondage from which America was delivered in liberty under God’s Law, free of any such religious/state controls. This new nation trusted only in the Bible, and not in the institutional church system for truth.
Jesus was about to take the sins of the world upon His shoulders, by going to the cross to bear our sins so that we might live. This is the gift of God’s mercy and grace for mankind. Should man refuse His Son, Jesus, on the cross, having first refused His gift of life in the Garden, then death becomes final and eternal. Jesus did not come to bear witness to religion and belief systems, as did Satan. You will make a choice at the cross to depend either on the truth for salvation, or upon the lies which are the foundation for Satan’s religious belief systems.
Worldly kings and worldly temples are a recipe for disaster, for they open the door to rebellion and religion, through the pride of self. It is the Saul-Solomon syndrome, which took down Israel, the nation, and will take down Israel, the spiritual nation of captivity, being the two companies of Jacob. All the events that led up to the crucifixion are a prophetic guideline for the events that will take place in the institutional churches today. The same judgment, which Jesus took for us on the cross some 2,000 years ago, will come down upon those who have refused to accept His gift of salvation, as God’s wrath builds against His own people.
The pattern is clear to the bride, who has ears to hear and eyes to see the signs given to the world at this time. She knows it is now the time to cling to Jesus and the cross in order to escape the coming judgment. Death, for her, is not the worst thing that can happen, for she, like her Beloved, will witness to the truth, lie dead for three days, and then be raised up as she is raptured to meet Him in the cloud. Because He endured the agony, she shall experience the ecstasy and a joy unspeakable in His presence.
Before Jesus’ arrest, He prayed for His apostles, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:14). “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word” (John 17:17-20). This is the key message for the church today. We are not sanctified by Christianity, with its many denominations and doctrines. We cannot be saved by religion, church membership, baptism, social programs or church attendance. Only a belief in and a witness to the truth of the Word will save us and sanctify us in God’s eyes, as His church, and His people of kingdom inheritance.
Institutional churches generally call the acceptance of the infallibility of the Word, fundamentalism. It is a term used today with an intention to mock the fundamentalist. But the truth is that only they have a spiritual understanding beyond that of the secular humanist’s understanding in a secular world, which does not want to hear about unalterable truths. But Jesus warned us in His prayers that unless we accept the fundamental truth of the Word, we are running the risk of damnation. The greatest thing we can do for our children is to teach them the truth of the Word.
Jesus prayed that we might know the righteous Father in love, as He knew Him, so that the love in Him might be in us. It is the Spirit in us that leads us to the love of the Father. Jesus was praying our way right into the throne room by wrapping us within His mantle. This is the prayer for all eternity that preceded the cross, the prayer for the world of believers throughout the ages. All people will come to the foot of the cross, but only a belief in the truth of the Word and in Jesus’ saving grace will make us true Jews and partakers of the blessing of Israel, which is the Father’s blessing upon the believers.
Now there was, among the twelve, one called Judas. Satan entered into him and it was in his heart to betray his Master. How was the door opened to Satan in his life? He was a thief and, in his greed, he used to steal from the moneybox of the apostles, of which he was in charge. In cahoots with the governing religious body of the chief priests and Pharisees, Judas agreed to turn over Jesus to the religious leaders for trial, in return for thirty pieces of silver. His compromised position regarding sin in his life, points to the access point for Satan to enter the churches today. Judas was trying to keep a foot in both worlds. He wanted to serve the Master of truth, while also serving the master of religion. Jesus warned that one cannot serve two masters. Consequently, the kiss Judas placed on his Master, became the religious kiss of death for him.
Agreement to remain silent, regarding the political affairs of a nation with respect to her laws and judiciary, has placed cherished tax dollar exemptions into the moneyboxes of the institutional churches. She cares more for this than she cares for her commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel of truth to every creature. Today, the churches know very little about the sufferings of believers in poor religious countries and in the Muslim countries of the world. They are hardly aware that every believer does not have a nice building and a comfortable pew with a club-type lifestyle. Satan has found his access point for entering the church system, one which has its head buried in the sand in order to ignore what is going on around it in the world.
Jesus called the disciples to note that the hour had come for the Son of Man to be betrayed and turned over to the hands of religious sinners. Today, secular humanism demands the removal of Jesus’ name in this land to which He gave liberty, as the hour for His betrayal again draws near. Jesus asked His apostles to watch and pray, saying, “Be on guard for Me.” Yet, they continued to sleep and rest, oblivious to the urgency and danger of the hour. Likewise, the church and nation are sleeping and unaware that the signs are all around them, while they continue to ignore the danger of the hour. Just as Jesus was getting ready to depart from them, the light is again getting ready to depart from a slumbering church. At this time, all manner of evil shall suddenly enter into it, seeking to destroy the Word and scatter the flock.
Jesus was forced to face two trials; first, the religious one and then the civil trial. The religious Pharisees wanted to accuse Him of blasphemy. It is interesting to note that Jesus was first taken before the high priest, Annas, and then before his son-in-law Caiaphas, who was high priest at the same time. It has the appearance of a family Levitical high priesthood, but there was no relationship whatsoever between these priests and the true Levitical priesthood. John the Baptist was the last of the Levitical high priest line, who, at Jesus’ baptism, gave way for the crossover and the transferal of the Levitical priesthood to the one true High Priest of God, named Jesus.
The high priest, Caiaphas, was a counterfeit, appointed by Rome and working in cahoots with Roman rule. Nothing could point more clearly to the counterfeit high priesthood system, today. The pope and his hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church are a completely apostate priesthood, still in cahoots with Rome. In these final days the pope could well become the false prophet of the Antichrist, steeped in religion, seeking to unite the religions of the world together under his office. His authority comes from a man-elected body of ordinary men, and not from God. This trial of a dual nature points to our present day situation, in which Jesus and truth are being rejected by both the liberal empire building governments of Satan and by the religious leaders.
Caiaphas had unwittingly prophesied that it would be better for one man to die, in order to save a nation (see John 11:50), and now he would play his part in fulfilling that prophecy. His high priest role then, so resembles that of the pope and of the priesthood today, trained in seminary colleges under the doctrinal teaching of other priests, only to become men clamoring for positions in the church hierarchy and in the public eye. Most of our churches are full of just such a priesthood, steeped in religious practices and liturgy, while endorsing sin and abominations within the ranks.
They are religious bodies today, which will put the bride on trial in the same way that they tried her Beloved before her. The cry shall arise, “Who does she think she is?” But in her close relationship with her Beloved, she knows exactly who she is. Judaism was threatened by Jesus and His twelve apostles. Christianity will be threatened by the bride, witnessing to the truth instead of to religion, for she knows it is all about to go down under the same judgment that took down the Temple, the Pharisees and their religious practices. The Law and the truth will be imbedded in the heart of the bride; she will not compromise with religious Christianity.
When they came after Jesus, Peter, the symbolic church leader among the apostles, was used by Jesus, as was His custom, to show us important truths about the end days’ church. Peter depended on his own strength, by reacting as one who thinks as man thinks and not as God thinks. He was ready to go to war with the sword in order to get rid of the religious soldiers who were coming against Jesus. But Jesus stopped it immediately, enacting damage control to show that He, and not the sword, would be the apostles’ protection, setting them free to carry out their commission (their numbers would eventually increase again to twelve, to include Paul as one of them). Nothing could have harmed His true church at this point, not because of the power of the sword, but because they were in God’s will. Likewise, nothing will come against the bride to stop her from carrying out her commission.
Peter, a leader by nature, was always proud of his own leadership. It wasn’t enough for him to receive the vision of Jesus walking on water; he wanted to walk on water too. He pointed out to Jesus that, though all of the others would forsake Him, he never would. Like a horse in training, he had to be broken before he could be ridden. Jesus used him to give an important message to the bride who, in many ways, will have to go through a ‘breaking in’ period. She will have to make the separation from the religion of Christianity, to which she may have clung all of her life, and return to her apostolic roots, and the leadership of only Jesus and His Word. There can be no submission to man, as Paul showed us in his adjusting position of influence over the apostles, who would have preferred him to be submitted still to their religious practices and to them, if it had been possible.
Before the cock crowed, Peter denied Jesus three times. In his denial of Jesus, we are given a picture of God’s sons of man, denying Him three times in history before the dawn of a new age. This new age would dawn with the appearance of the Morning Star, or the return of Jesus. Adam and Eve were the first to deny the authority of God over their lives by responding in pride and weakness to the lures of the devil. The nation Israel chose the religious idols of the world as she rejected and denied the supremacy of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Finally, spiritual Israel, by rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the inerrant truth of His Word, will embrace all religions to become part of a One World Religious Order. As prophesied by Peter, God’s blessed and chosen people will deny Him for the third time. But the bride will be raised up as a tender branch to embrace and cling only to her Beloved in gratitude for her blessing of life, never to walk away from Him again.
There was no question as to whether or not Peter repented while weeping over his own act of cowardice. The bride’s purity will be accompanied by her repentance for her role in the institutional church that remained silent while the pressures of liberalism overcame it. She will respond by becoming a voice for her Beloved, because of her passionate love for Him. This is the love Jesus was searching for, when He asked Peter three times, “Do you love Me?” If she does love Him as a bride loves her bridegroom, she will bear the fruit of their union. She will teach only truth, and will totally separate herself from religion in order to open up the gospel to all creatures. There will be none of the impurity of religion in her message, for it is the leaven that fills the whole loaf.
She will finally become the light of Israel in the liberty of truth, witnessing so that all nations might receive the message. In the same manner that Joseph fed the twelve tribes, Jesus fed the twelve with His teaching, day and night. Presently, He is teaching His bride directly, Himself, so that she, in turn, can feed the sheep and tend to their well-being. There will be an awesome unveiling of the prophecy of the Word and with it, a very special feeding from the bride in these final days before the dawn of a new day when the rooster crows. The bride, like John the Baptist before her, will make straight the way for the second coming of Jesus.
The sweat of Jesus in the garden and the crown of thorns placed on His head take us back to another Garden setting with God placing a curse upon man. Jesus was taking this curse of man upon His shoulders, which would take Him to His death. Having rejected the provision of God, man chose to depend on his own power and strength. So God determined that by his sweat and toil, or his own works, he would only produce thistles and thorns. He became a victim to the evil governments of the world, having had his liberty taken away from him. He had become captive to the ruling king of the world, which was a far cry from being under the ruler-ship of the Lord God. His sweat and toil would end in futility and death, as King Solomon so aptly put it. Jesus was sweating this blood of man’s disobedience, which was the sweat of death, to which He was taken wearing the appropriate crown of thorns.
This King of the Jews was no ordinary king. He was the only perfect Man, Who could break the chains of death, which bind you and me, the same chains that bound Pilate and the religious body of Pharisees. Yet, with no understanding at all, Pilate declared Jesus to be the King of the Jews. In so doing, he was acting prophetically, for one day, all the rulers and kings of the world would bow before truth, recognizing Jesus, the King of the Jews to also be the King of the world.
Hanging on the cross, the tree of life was superimposed over the dead wood of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, winning the victory over Satan and the evil of this world. On either side of the cross, hung the picture of man and his destiny in relationship to the work Jesus was doing for him as He hung there. On one side was the dead man, and on the other side, was the man who would inherit eternal life. One was symbolic of the unbeliever, doomed to die in his unrepented sin and lack of faith in Jesus, while the other was the believer, victorious over his sin through repentance and faith in the power of Jesus for salvation. All of mankind comes to the foot of the cross and will either make the crossover or stumble, for he will be forced to choose the side to which he will go.
When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides His sheep from the goats. And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:31-3).