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The Book of Joel, Chapter One

Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective

by Elinor Montgomery

March 18, 2017

Upon receiving the prophetic word from God, “I am going to pour out My Spirit on all flesh”, following the conference I attended in Wisconsin, I felt it was necessary to write on the Book of Joel. I believe it signifies the times in which we presently find ourselves, as we quickly approach the Day of the Lord. The book of Joel clearly describes the pathetic condition of the church in America, today, as a nation under God, having become the victim of a failed, church witness to the truth of the gospels.

To begin, only God establishes who the prophet is who will speak for Him. In this book, he is Joel, whose name means ‘Yahweh is God’. These words could be transposed into other words, which say a similar thing: ‘I Am Who I Am’. There is no other. I am the Creator of all things, and the promised One to come, called ‘the Word made flesh’. Joel was the son of Pethuel, whose name means ‘persuaded of God’. It would appear that Joel had a heritage in the line of faithful believers, for they are persuaded by the truth of God – they do not reject it for the religious lies of Satan.

By his name and nature, Joel is pointing directly to the bride in prophecy, skipping over all the generations of kings and rulers who ruled over the nation Israel. Joel purposely does not mention them, for his message is for Judah and the line of David, which is the believing, spiritual line descending from the Lord by spiritual rebirth. It is to the true church, the true sons and daughters of inheritance of the Lord, to whom Joel is addressing this book. He makes the message and the nature of Israel clear from the beginning; the spiritual house of Israel is going to inherit a kingdom, which can never be inherited solely by a bloodline inheritance of a nation called Israel. It is a spiritual inheritance, which was established by the crossover blessing, which took place at the cross.

Mary was the first and only woman to birth a Son of Man and a Son of God by the Spirit of God, and not by the seed of man, for she was pure in her virginity and her Child was free of the judgment upon the seed of Adam. Her Son established the line of the New Covenant, the line of the spiritual house of Israel and house of God, which Jacob recognized at the time of his dream of the ladder set up on earth, with its top, reaching heaven, upon which the angels of God ascended and descended (see Genesis 28:12). This was before there ever was a nation, and before Jacob was renamed Israel.

The nation, Israel, actually follows the house of Israel in Scripture. If this fact were better understood, there would be less confusion over who Israel really is. Jesus later claimed to be that ladder, in the book of John (see John 1:47-51). And finally the crossover pattern of inheritance going from first son to second son, from Adam to Jesus, became a reality. This Seed of the woman would step on the seed of the serpent and bruise its head. But at the same time, the Seed of the woman will suffer painful bruising to the heel of His foot (see Genesis 3:15), from which He will shake the dust.

Mary was the first bride to birth a new line in the Spirit of God. The bride of the church is in this pure line of Mary, birthing in the spirit a second-birth, a born-again child. Jesus had to return to the Father before He could send His Spirit to accomplish the purpose of the cross, for which He made the enormous sacrifice of salvation for all who would believe on Him. He wanted a bride from His church who could bear fruit acceptable to the Father, by her union in the Spirit of life with His Son. Paul called such a person the true Jew (see Romans 2:29).

The inheritance of God would pass over the sons of the devil through their lineage from Adam, the one created by God, but not persuaded by Him, to the sons and daughters of God who are persuaded, believers in Jesus, embracing Him and receiving His Spirit of life, at the crossover point of the cross. At the same time, Israel, the nation, lost the inheritance as a nation, which never was persuaded of God, nor believed Him enough to be a light of truth to the world. She chose to become like all the other nations of the gentile world, who worshiped their idols and gods carved of wood and tooled of stone. One could only say their gods are as dead as are cut wood and tool-cut stone.

The believers now become the sons and daughters of God, to make up His family of the nearest and dearest in the house of Israel, and the house of God. It matters not who controls Jerusalem today; for the Jerusalem of tomorrow and of the kingdom will be dressed as the bride who comes down from heaven as an entirely New Jerusalem for a New Heaven and a New Earth.

The most likely dates for the time in which Joel prophesied was during the reign of Joash (835-796 B.C.). Joash’s reign, in the natural, symbolized to some degree the reign of Jesus. As a minor, Joash was protected by the high priest (Jesus, High Priest of Church). Once the usurper of the throne, Athaliah, (Satan usurped Jesus) was removed, Joash came to the throne as a minor ruled under the regency of Jehoiada (High Priest, Jesus) until the time he would take ownership of his throne.

The church grew into maturity with Jesus ruling over it throughout her difficulties of maturing during a dark, church age between the last two empires of the Babylonian system of empires. The Early Roman Empire, which was dying, was on one side of the church age with the rising Revived Roman Empire on the other side, and some 1800 years of a captive church between them (see Daniel 12:5-13).

History tells us that Christianity, as a religion, was established by Constantine, after the mocking name of ‘Christian’, given to the people of the Way, was introduced in the Roman-controlled city of Antioch. He blended the name of the church of Jesus, a good thing, with the religion of Rome, an evil thing, straight from the lies of the serpent in the Garden in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This new notion of church became the religious glue holding the two parts of the Roman Empire together within pagan, religious Romanism all those years. Jesus, on the other hand simply named His apostles the church, which in no way had any Roman high priest, such as the pagan priest of Rome who became the high priest of Christianity, later to become known as the Pope.

Joel was writing prophetically about the apostolic church, when he referred to Israel’s battle for survival, as a remnant of Judah, which, at the right time, will rule and reign forever with her Beloved, her Husband and her King. He writes in the style of Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, in that they point to repentance, the coming Day of the Lord and His judgment. Elisha would be his contemporary, so it is a time when Jezebel and Baal worship have just been cleansed from Israel’s slate by Elijah calling on the power of God to remove from the nation such evil idol worship.

Elijah dealt with the male god of Baal, but the female goddess of Asherah and all her controlling spirits were not removed. One might say that the harlotry of the woman remained within the nation as a problem, which today would be called radical feminism, the power of which frightened even Elijah. God would bring His bride from out of that Jezebel control by setting her free before the harlot, mother of all harlots, Babylon the Great, would be taken down. Joel speaks only of Phoenicia, Philistia, Egypt and Edom, which again dates him from a time prior to Israel’s captivity to Assyria. Yet Israel, the northern nation, is not addressed by him.

The enemy of old has never changed. It has always been about religious idolatry, with only the names of the enemy changing. The Goliath of the Philistines will become the Antichrist of the One World Order of government, and David’s army has become the army of the bride with the banner of the Lord over her. Egypt speaks of her captivity, and Edom speaks of a people who have rejected God’s inheritance to enjoy the things this world has to offer in the here and now. We are looking at a serious schism, or division, in the peoples of the world between those on the Lord’s side and those who choose the religious lies of Satan. It is all about the decisions we make around God, and what we will do with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘the Word made flesh’.

Joel speaks directly to the nation addressing her elders to ask the question as to whether or not anything like this had happened in their day. “Are the problems the church faces today, something Israel faced before in history or is it a new thing, a national problem, which the fathers had not faced before? He warns the people of the importance of telling the children, throughout the generations to come, that the problems they will face in the future will be to the same degree as those faced by the nation in the past. In fact, it has always been the same means by which Satan attacks, so never let this be removed from the understanding of the children.

For in that day, the Day of the Lord, lack of understanding will become such a problem to the nation, that the younger generation will have no understanding at all of the problems facing the church, and how the enemy works by deception. “Here is the problem,” says the prophet, “and I am going to take you forward, in time, to the future, to show you exactly what will happen to God’s chosen people.”

“The enemy is Satan, the master of the lie by which he creates the counterfeit of liberty with his progressive liberalism from God. His vehicle, which he uses, is religion. You, O Israel, are sons of the truth whose Word comes straight from God, delivered by His messengers. I speak as one of them, and the message will be written down for you to keep before the future generations of Israel.”

In skipping forward in time, the remnant becomes Judah, for the northern state of Israel was ripped away from the inheritance because of gross idolatry in Solomon’s time. Jesus is the Son of inheritance in the line of David, the line of Judah, and He gave the keys of the kingdom to His church. She is a woman like Abishag who will keep the line alive in the latter days.

“There is the early apostolic church (the male branch), which went out from Jerusalem, while in the latter days, it will be the revived apostolic church (the female branch), which will return, the two, together, making up the full circle of the house of Israel around the Light. This will become the ruler-ship in heaven, in the circle of eternity. But between these two branches of the church lies an age, which must take place, which I am about to describe,” said Joel, in words one can only imagine, though left unspoken.

The enemy of religion can be described in terms of the locust, an evil, little beast that will first chew at the church and then swarm at it to devour it. Then, like a worm, it will crawl into every opening left to continue the destruction until finally the church will become consumed by the counterfeit lies. They are as the snakes of Pharaoh daring to try to consume the snake of Moses’ rod – a rod that has the power of victory within it. Of course, this counterfeit religion will never succeed in devouring the church any more than the snakes could devour Moses’ snake; in fact, the reversal took place.

For the promise of the Lord has always been for a remnant to be saved for the throne-line promise to David, which will come out of Judah to reign eternally, fulfilling the Covenant promises to Abraham. How could Satan and his religion have ever managed to get such a foothold in the church in such a devastating way? “Just let me tell you what happened,” says Joel. “While the church became drunk with wine and danced at the foot of the mountain in revelry, or spiritualism, the enemy moved in; for there were no watchmen on the walls to give the warning signal.

Now weep and wail, you people of religion, who dare to call yourselves by My name; for I will spew you out of My mouth and do a new thing with My church. She will come forth with new wine, never tasted by you before. You have allowed this lion, or beast (the first Babylonian beast of the empires) with the fierce teeth to bite and destroy you, to lay waste the life of the vine and strip bare the bark from the tree.

One day, there will come along a man called Jesus, who is the tree of life and His church is as the bark that clings to Him for life. You have made naked the branch (the church), just as the lies of religion in the Garden of Eden left Adam and Eve naked and ashamed of themselves. Their beauty was turned to ugliness and they wanted no one to see, especially God. Their shame led them to hide from Him, and to stay out of His presence, as they took the wrong turn in the road, by not repenting of their sin.

In your day, you will need to repent for the loss of the young, virginal, apostolic church, whose husband was close to her heart. Lament! For the sacrificial offering of the Lord is no longer preached in His house because of you drunkards. The priests who should be serving the Lord, are in mourning; for the field of the grain of truth is wasted. The land is simply producing nothing. The grain of teaching is ruined by falsehoods, the wine of the Spirit is dried up, and there is no anointing on a religious system of institutions daring to call themselves by the name of ‘Church’.”

Those workers of the land, called to till and turn the soil, will not be able to escape the judgment, for the church, which was called to be sowers of the seed for the Lord, have produced no harvest whatsoever. The name of Jesus has been dropped from the roster of the church bulletin, while, at the same time, we surely worship under the god of tolerance, on a multi-faith foundation known as multiculturalism. The fig tree of Israel has withered, though not dead, to become like a tree dying from lack of the moisture of the dew.

It is a tree without fruit, a tree of withered leaves, greatly in need of healing. The Spirit has departed from her midst, with all branches withering, which should have had potential to bear fruit. To My priesthood I say, “Get down on your knees and repent. There can be no one at the center of the Church but Me, your Lord and Savior, Jesus, who is the sacrifice and the truth. Repent for allowing religion instead of truth into this land. Repent for the damage done, when you allowed the Bible of truth and prophecy to be taken from the children so that the teeth of the beast got into them and has destroyed a whole generation.”

It is time to call the house of Israel, the true apostolic church, to come together in assembly; for the Day of the Lord is right at hand. There is a mighty destruction coming from the right hand of the Lord, the source of all power. You only need to look through the doors of the institutions to see there is no real truth there. The food of the Word has been cut off as the works of man’s hands are announced on signs and bulletins advertising dinners, yoga, bazaars and bingo.

Storehouses barely exist and barns are broken down, for they have not been stocked in a long time, as opposed to the way Joseph stored the grain. The beastly sons of their father, Satan, receive no truth from his religious armies; there is nothing but relativism everywhere, with no green pastures of the Lord to be found. The flocks of even the sheep, the born again believers, have little to feed on, without any shepherding.

Lord, we cry out; for the fire of Your judgment is ready to fall, as we allow Your name, Your Law and Your Word to be taken from the land. There are no trees and no branches, which will not be under fire. Lord, there is no living water, only flood waters from the sea of evil spirits, which further destroy and flatten the grain. The brooks of running, living water are blocked and have dried up. Lord, there is nothing to be seen but religion where there should be green pastures in which to feed on truth.

Our condition appears hopeless. Still, to you, O Lord, we cry out in pain and repentance that we might return to the church of our youth and to our Bridegroom.”

This commentary was taken from a writing on the book of Joel, written on July 18, 2005.

Elinor Montgomery: emontgomery@cogeco.ca 

Voice of the Kingfisher: www.newsnblues.ca