Religion Parades; Truth Testifies to Jesus in the Spirit of Prophecy
Written by Elinor Montgomery – emontgomery@cogeco.ca
March 01, 2005
Religion parades in a display of men wearing rich robes and headgear, while others carry such symbols as crosses and palanquins bearing kings and high priests. But it is nothing more than a disguise, which covers up the religious evil, such as that of the Pharisees who were steeped in their own hypocrisy. Seemingly, this has the appearance of righteousness, but, in truth, has corruption at its roots. Four times, Jesus warns to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. By this He meant that the slightest drop of religion in one’s life would eventually fill the whole loaf and destroy it. Hence, in the final chapters of Revelation, we are called to come out of her, Babylon the Great, the harlot of lies, who comes against the truth.
How does one establish what religion is? Is it always paraded as blatantly as it is paraded by the Roman Catholic Church, or by Judaism, with its legalism of traditions and its rejection of Jesus? Do all religions not ultimately reject Jesus, who testifies only to the truth? The truth does not require a belief system of doctrines and practices; it only requires the Word to become known. For the truth of the Word never changes like the doctrines of religion; it is the same today, as it was yesterday. How many times have the doctrines changed, say, for example, those of Roman Catholicism, with a change of hierarchy or even with a change of heart within the hierarchy? One day, the eating of meat on Friday is a sin; the next day, it is not a sin. Was it truth that brought about the change, or were they the doctrinal policies of religion that initiated the change? Were they men’s minds that changed, or was it God’s change of heart, giving way to a new doctrine, which would replace the error of the old? Where is the infallible Pope in all of this; is he, in fact, not found to be fallible? The answer, of course, is that truth does not rest on the shifting sands of religious doctrines, but rather it stands on a firm stone foundation.
Jesus is the cornerstone of His apostolic church, which is made up of little stones, taught by Him and grounded only in the truth. They were never sent out in a religious parade that leads to building programs and denominational walls. It cannot be said of Jesus’ church that they loved a religious parade. To the contrary, like Jesus, who was disgusted with the leaven of the Pharisees, Paul warned severely to stay away from it all, and that he would tolerate none of it among his Greeks, whom he was evangelizing.
The principles for everything that will take place in the lives of a people and its nation are found in the Old Testament’s account of the history of Israel. The coming out of her captivity to Egypt is the pattern for the church of Jesus Christ coming out of her captivity to religious Romanism. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 tells us that when the Lord God divided the inheritance of all people to the nations, He separated the sons of Adam and set boundaries around the different peoples. How did He do this? It was done according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance, and Jacob’s spiritual blessings upon his sons, delineate the boundaries of the nations of the kingdom, having access to the New Jerusalem, through the gates named for each tribe or nation. When God separated them, which is to say, the people of Israel, there was no foreign god among them – no idolatry, no religion.
Let us go back further to Exodus 12 when God instituted the Passover and the killing of the lamb at twilight, which points prophetically to the final hours before darkness, and to the bride’s captivity to religious Romanism. The flesh of the lamb roasted in fire was to be eaten with unleavened bread. There must be a perfect feeding of truth in the midst of the fire judgment that will burn away all religion or untruth, and it will take the form of unleavened bread, or a teaching that has no religion in it that could possibly grow from within to fill the whole teaching. It can only be said that, as Jesus warned us, leaven will finally fill the whole loaf and lead to total apostasy. In biblical terms, prophetically, this roasted lamb being eaten with the blood being placed on the doorpost, points to a final feeding of the pure Word, which will lead many to place the shed blood of Jesus on the doorposts of their hearts, so that the judgment will pass them by.
The fire roasting points to the time of judgment, or the great tribulation, which culminates in the battle of Armageddon, and not to a flood judgment that can only cover over sin, but to a fire judgment that takes it away. They were the firstborns whose lives were at stake. Those born once, who have not accepted the salvation of Jesus, will die along with the rest of the religious idol-worshiping nations, portrayed by the idol-worshiping Egyptians. The Lord is saying gentiles will be removed from all nations, including Israel, if they are not depending on His blood salvation, and are rooted only in the truth, being born again of the spirit. This is a seven-day, or seven-year period of tribulation, in which the house of Israel, which is to say, the saved of the nations, will be cleansed of all religion in their midst. God speaks severely regarding this matter. Anyone who eats leaven will be cut off from the nation of salvation, which is Israel.
These are the armies of which God is speaking, when He alludes to saving the armies of Israel here in Exodus; He is pointing to the future army of David, the king, which points to the army of 144,000 witnesses, the bride, under the leadership of Jesus. When He sees the doors of our hearts are shut tightly to religion and the destroyer, with the mark of the blood of the Lamb being our protection, Satan will have no opportunity to enter any door to our lives, which has been shut to him in this way. He cannot enter such a house to destroy the first-born man child of the woman, who has birthed a new creation by the Spirit of God. See Revelation 12 to see that Satan, though he comes after her with a flood, has no power over her, for she is redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. It is the Passover sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb of God, who passes over His church, His bride, while Satan, the spirit of death, is loosed to allow it to pass over its first-born sons of religious idolatry and of perdition. One household is led to pass through the raging sea waters to the kingdom, while the other is taken down to its destruction by the evil spirits of the sea. Tsunamis could not give us a better picture of the raging of the seas that is coming at this time. When the sons of Israel are delivered, so, too, is the whole household of those who have worshiped the Lord, and looked only to Him for salvation.
In this age, the process of the Passover to the kingdom of spiritual Israel began with a purified church of Puritans, coming to America as the early settlers who set up a government of liberty under God. For the first time, outside of the nation Israel, the world saw a government of freedom from religious/state controls of liberalism and rebellion to God. Justice was set squarely on the truth of His Word, the Bible. Remove one or both, and God will remove His hand of protection from this nation. He will allow it to become just another religious/state-controlled nation like those of the East, which are under rigid controls, leading to loss of individual freedoms and persecution. America was founded and established as the New World, in order to show the coming new order of God that will soon be established on earth with the return of Jesus at the time of the all-out battle between Him and Satan. He will establish liberty and peace, with His truth being as distant from religion as the West from the East. God shows first in the natural, what He will do in the spiritual realm.
Galatians 5 tells America to get her act together, if she wants to keep her liberty by way of the truth of Jesus, which set her free. To reject Him means entanglement again with the yoke of bondage that we see already moving into the land, coming with the leaven of religion, which will eventually fill the whole land. To remove God and His Word from America, and to replace it with eastern cultic religions, or any cultic religion, is the prescription for disaster for its people. Open your eyes, America, and open your Bibles. Blow off the dust that has brought on the silencing of God’s messenger’s voice, so that it can start to be heard in this land, standing for truth. For they were the armies of Israel, which God saved, when they came out of Egypt, not the idolaters. He rejected those, disobedient to His commandments, who dared to place their faith in idolatrous religions instead of in Him.
This is the hour when liberty for the true Israel of God is but a sea-crossing away. Whether we realize it or not, we are dancing on the Titanic, which is the iron empire that is about to go down, having incredulously proclaimed that it does not need God to stay afloat. “Indeed, do we not need God? That is one challenge of which I would want to have no part.” We are in the final hours for this nation to make the necessary changes and return to God. As surely as it rejects Him, it will go into the fire judgment coming on all the gentile nations of the world in the very near future. As Elijah said, in words such as these, “Get off the fence and stand either for God or for Satan, for truth or for religion, for you can’t have it both ways by trying to serve two masters.” As a nation, will Canada join forces with the parade of the religious nations of the world, or will it separate itself with her western ally to the south, by testifying to the truth and proclaiming their liberty in God? Her very future depends on this decision.
