A Stone of Stumbling and a Rock of Offense
Written by Elinor Montgomery – emontgomery@cogeco.ca
January 12, 2013
Out of the valley of the Dead Sea come the living words of the prophet, Isaiah, with the voice of God being heard over the politics of this day.
Therefore thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; whoever believes will not act hastily. Also I will make justice the measuring line, and righteousness the plummet; the hail will sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters will overflow the hiding place. Your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overflowing scourge passes through, then you will be trampled down by it…. Now therefore, do not be mockers, lest your bonds be made strong; for I have heard from the Lord God of hosts, a destruction determined even upon the whole earth. Give ear and hear my voice, listen and hear my speech. Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?….For He instructs him in right judgment, his God teaches him (Isaiah 28:16-26).
And so, Isaiah had a vision of the pre-incarnate Jesus, as the Cornerstone of His church, with a sure foundation of justice as the measuring line and righteousness the plummet. The mockers stand in grave danger, for destruction is determined upon the whole earth. It would appear the world does not want to hear the witness of the truth-sayers, those called to expose the religious lies of Satan. For Satan is not mindful of the things of God but rather the things of men (see Matthew 16:23).
Through one man’s offense of sin, death reigned, but through the abundance of God’s grace, and the righteousness of one Man, Jesus Christ, righteousness shall reign. So, in fact, there are two very different federal headships of this world – that of Satan, where the sin of Adam affects those born in him, and that of Jesus, whose righteous act upon the cross benefits only those in Him. Hence, the antichrist spirit hates those born in the Spirit of Christ and of life. The chief Cornerstone becomes a rock of offense to the world at large.
“The Lord of hosts, Him you shall hallow; let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread. He will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the house of Israel, as a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken (Isaiah 8:13-15).”
The battle in the world today over Israel is, and always has been that, which was revealed of old by the prophet Isaiah, a battle between two federal heads, that of Satan and that of Christ; that of sin and that of righteousness; that of death and that of life. Each offends the other – but it would appear Satan is winning the battle with his favorite word “offense” employed by his favorite government, the United Nations.
Whereas, the Law of God reveals sin to be an offense, for the evil nations of this world the name of Jesus has officially been declared an offense to the religious crew behind the U.N. This concept of Jesus as an offense has been spread through the disease of America, called Political Correctness, the brainchild of liberalism. It has reached the point where it is politically correct to call the Tea Party-ers, and other such groups, who make Christ their federal headship, “sluts”, hateful, and worthy of death. Boorish, foul language and behavior have been taken to the extreme by our Hollywood bunch and the late-night-show-hosts of the liberal persuasion, not to mention the rest of the media at large.
As the federal push of Satan rapidly moves toward the coming One World Order, the Cornerstone ever grows as a Stone of stumbling and Rock of offense to the entire world, including those two nations of America whose Founding Fathers made Jesus, the Cornerstone and Foundation of our Constitutions. We have chosen fools as leaders who are doing their best to remove Him and His Law of God so we can comply with the religious/state drive to make Satan, and his federal empire, ruler over the entire world.
Would you believe Rick Warren, Robert Schuller and the smiley one, Joel Osteen, to name but a few, all Christian pastors, supposedly of the faith, play right into the hands of Satan’s coming One World Religion? Billy Graham and the Pope add fuel to Satan’s fire in their call for respect for the wicked, pagan religions of the world, and in so doing, throw their hat into the ring with the lords of this world. How can they ever be partners in the marriage bed of our Lord God and Creator, who created man to partner with Him in truth and not with Satan and his lies of religion?
Where sin abounds through Adam and Eve, grace abounds more in Christ, and that great Cornerstone and Rock of offense shall surely win the day, as another prophet, Daniel, is heard speaking over time as another prophetic voice for God. He reveals the truth of the great statue of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the king of the Babylonian Empire who was shown a picture of the empires to come under the Babylonian system of religious/states, all bent on world ruler-ship, right up to the end of the age. It will be then that Satan will rid the world of the last church-age witnesses who witness to the truth so that nothing but sin and lies will abound in a world gone mad and in darkness, without the light.
“You, O king, were watching; and behold, a great image! This great image, whose splendor was excellent, stood before you; and its form was awesome. This image’s head was of fine gold (Babylonian Empire), its chest and arms of silver (Medo-Persian Empire), its belly and thighs of bronze (Greek Empire), its legs of iron (Early Roman Empire), its feet partly of iron and partly of clay (Revived Roman Empire and the coming One World Order).
You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:31-35).”
That Stone is the Cornerstone and Rock of offense, called Jesus, whose ruler-ship will encompass the entire earth as the federal headship of the coming kingdom of God on earth, as it is in heaven. Surely, the world will come to the same understanding as that reached by Nebuchadnezzar when he declared to Daniel, “Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret (Daniel 2:47).”
And you who have been offended by this Rock will be crushed by the Stone of stumbling and Rock of offense along with all the others who have chosen the federal state of the Babylonian system and One World Order of Satan, taking upon yourselves the mark of the beast, whose number is 666.
But you, who have purified your souls by obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the Word of God which lives and abides forever, because “all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, but the word of the Lord endures forever (see 1 Peter 1:22-25).”