Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
Opening the Sealed Book (see Daniel 12:4)
January 05, 2011
“And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees (Matthew 3:10; Luke 3:9).” These words were said by the voice of one crying in the wilderness, a certain man called John the Baptist calling to the men of Israel to prepare the way of the Lord, by making His paths straight.
He was calling for confession of their sins so they could bear fruits worthy of repentance. There is no good fruit without the recognition of oneself as a sinful being in need of redemption. The problem is that man has always believed he can be good and still co-partner with evil. This is the message of the serpent in the Garden, which took men off the straight way and onto the crooked, broad road leading to death.
So, what defines the straight way? The straight way leads to the tree of life and to the kingdom; truth is its foundation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil leads to the crooked road of destruction; the lies of Satan are its foundation. It is what the world knows today as religion, with its roots of liberalism setting men apart in liberalism from God in their rejection of the truth. It is the road to death, about which the truth of God warned in His second commandment given in the Garden.
His first commandment was for the man and the woman to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, taking dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. However, He did not tell man to take dominion over man. That was God’s prerogative.
With this first command, God established the marriage bed between a man and a woman as the bedrock of fruitfulness; there can be no fruitfulness outside of it, only rebellion to God’s plan. In marriage, the man and the woman become as one flesh, personified in the child as the fruit of their union, born to be a son of God.
The second command was given to keep man from losing his eternal life to death, which would prevent him from being fruitful for God. If man were to disobey Him, he would no longer be in the image of God, and his fruit would become sons of the devil into whose image man had been transformed. He was doomed to die with his seed in the sin of rebellion to the Word of truth, having knowingly forfeited his eternal life. He was commanded to not eat of one particular tree in the midst of the Garden, for he was told that if he were to do so, he would surely die. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, about which God did not speak lies or idle words; His Word is truth.
Now, Eve put her own spin on God’s Word, turning the word ‘surely’ into ‘lest’, with the suggestion this was not a matter of absolutes. Either God was right or man was right, and we all know the answer to that. Man surely did get trapped in the snare of death by believing the devil in his first religious message that came against the truth of God. Today, we have a multitude of religious systems coming against the Word of God, such as Secular Humanism, Atheism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and yes, even Christianity.
The root of all religious systems goes back to the serpent’s message from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The last-mentioned religious system of Christianity is Satan’s greatest achievement of deception. He has applied the name of Christ to his religious system, and he has called it the church, which is to suggest it belongs to Jesus and it cannot fail, to coin the words of Jesus. However, it is failing daily in carrying out the great commission of Jesus to spread the gospel of truth, just like every other religion fails that rests on the rebellion of man to God’s Word.
What was the result of such sin? Adam and Eve were ashamed of their sexuality, for the greatest blessing of man had been corrupted with evil. They could no longer bring forth the good fruit of sons for God, once they had made the choice to eat the fruit of corruption with its roots deeply set in Satan’s lies of religion and liberalism.
John the Baptist came before Jesus to tell Israel, in particular, to get her act together before the King of kings and Lord of lords was about to make an appearance on this earth. He was coming to save mankind from his captivity to the death penalty, by purifying him of religion with the truth again, and then taking man’s place in the judgment man deserved. From the moment Jesus appeared on this earth, the ax was set to the root of the tree where religion all began. Today, the ax is set to the root of the trees, which produced the antichrist, religious, spiritual works of the devil, leaving untouched those who know the truth of who God’s Son is and then repent and call upon Him for salvation.
In Matthew, John goes right to the heart of the matter by addressing the religious men of Israel – the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He called them a brood of vipers (many but not all). They hung their religious cloaks upon their blood tie to Abraham, but John warned them that, in God’s eyes, they had no special relationship to Abraham through blood line, which could save them from the wrath to come.
The household of Abraham was a faith-based house that was, in point of fact, a spiritual nation, of which Jesus was the Father and Husband at the same time. Of course, the religious hated both John and Him because they challenged religion with truth. John’s message was to make straight the way, which never could include the lies of satanic religion. It would be chopped out at its roots before anyone could enter the kingdom of God.
The straight way leads to the closed gate on the east side of Jerusalem and ultimately back to the tree of life, where there is a rebirth in the Spirit of life, which was breathed into man at creation; it was then lost in the sin of rebellion to God. Jesus first took our sin to the cross with Him and then offered the Spirit of life freely to any and all who would willingly choose life over death. What an incredible gift – but look at us! The institutional, Christian church, which has become a Laodicean institution, is on the verge of collapse and about to be vomited out of Jesus’ mouth.
In order to understand this we must move to the book of Luke to read the same account, but a different version from that of the apostle, Matthew. Here, the great physician writes to Theophilus, the most honored one and loved by God, who is none other than the bride of Christ, her Beloved, who will share His throne with her.
Now, we have a message about a woman who carries a Spirit-filled child in the womb, born of a woman of the High Priest line, who will bring forth a true priesthood for Jesus, crying as the voice in the wilderness of the world before His second coming. This is not the same John crying out to the Pharisees and Sadducees. This is prophetic of the voice of the bride – the 144,000 who will witness to the multitudes of a religious world in the last days, every bit as much a brood of vipers as were the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Nothing has changed.
The good voices, which are crying out, such as those of Chuck Baldwin, Coach Daubenmire, and Michael Youssef, to name but a few, need to understand this message. There is a difference between this passage recorded in Matthew for a time when the church was sent out from Jerusalem as the early apostolic church and how it was written in the book of Luke, where the latter day apostolic church is returning to Jerusalem. Jesus is riding just the colt of the donkey, as opposed to His first ride on a donkey with a colt, as described in the book of Matthew. The colt represents the latter day church as the new life belonging to the donkey, representing the early apostolic church. It will come from out of the tomb of the religious church system, where Jesus allowed it to grow, just as He allowed Egypt to grow His nation.
And so the voice of the bride, belonging to the Kingfisher of men, will make the final call to make straight the way in the wilderness of this world. ‘“Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill brought low; and the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God (Luke 3:5-6 and Isaiah 40:4-5).”’ At the same time it can be said, “And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire (Luke 3:9).”
“Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues (Revelation 18:4).”
“For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10).”
The ax will cut away those who continue in the sin of Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but it will never go near those who choose the way back into the kingdom where they can eat to their hearts content again of the tree of life, which will cause them to become fruitful.
And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever (Revelation 22:1-5).
And 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 foundation of the apostolic church must be restored to its true foundation, which was taken captive to paganism and given over to the religious institutions of Christianity, back at the beginning of the church age. This is the last call of Scripture, to come out of the religious system of the world and make straight the way of the Lord in truth, which will lead into the kingdom.