Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
May 01, 2010
The redeemed of the Lord – are they not the Israel of today? Are they not called to be His witnesses to the truth?
Long before there were an Old Testament and a New Testament, there was the prophet Isaiah. He was a very special prophet, whose writings would be guarded in a clay vessel for over 2200 years. They were only discovered in this past century, intact and perfectly preserved, as they are to this day through many years of being re-written and translated. We discover that there is virtually no difference between the ancient scrolls and what we have in our present-day Bibles, taken from the Hebrew text of the book of Isaiah as we know it today.
If we look carefully at this book, we see Isaiah has created a mini-Bible before its time, in which the first 39 chapters correspond to the Old Testament and God’s dealing with the nation Israel. Judgment is the theme of these verses, and they end on a note where King Hezekiah of Judah, shared the sight of all his treasures with Babylon, only to have God tell him that the treasures and his sons would be carried off to Babylon where they would serve as eunuchs in the palace of the king. This was to say, that Israel would not become a fruitful nation under her kings of this world.
Then a complete change in message and in time follows, beginning with chapter 40, which takes us forward to the end times and the climax of the New Testament. This jump to the end of the age brings us to a time when the Babylonian system is drawing to a close and the captivity of God’s people to the nations of world governments will be over. The empire-building nations will no longer harass them with warfare. Speaking of these government strongholds, the Lord says, Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places smooth (Isaiah 40:4).
At the same time, the voice of the bride calls God’s people to make straight the Way, a straight highway for her God leading into the kingdom. The Lord has called her forth to cry out. She is about to do a gold-medal performance with Him as His partner for the perfect skate, something sought by Him, but never found in either Israel or spiritual Israel.
God speaks of the nations as a drop in the bucket, which count for nothing: All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless (Isaiah 40:17). He does not make an exception for either a failed Israel, or a failed America.
The Lord promises a way through the sea and a path through the mighty waters (see Isaiah 43:16). Then He describes the empire-building nations, the false torch-bearers of Satan, exactly as portrayed in the natural at the 2010 Winter Olympics closing performance at Whistler: They shall lie down together, they shall not rise; they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick (Isaiah 43:17). And so, we have been witnesses to the prophetic message of the Olympics, regarding the torch of Babylon being extinguished like a wick. The torch of the gods of this world was brought to its final resting place at the same time that the perfect skate was completed by the Canadian pair who skated their way as a dance team to a gold-medal victory.
How is this female partner described by Isaiah as he describes a redeemed Israel at last working in perfect relationship and submission to her Lord? She is one who has been brought out of the blinded nations, now able to see with spiritual understanding. She is the one among them who can declare and show the former things through a witness, which can be justified by prophecy.
For what purpose does the secular talk of academia serve, having no such justification? The academics merely quote the arguments of men, using human knowledge and not God, to justify themselves; there is no power of the Spirit of life in them whatsoever. God mocks them asking them to bring out their witnesses that they may be justified, or then let them hear His and declare, “It is truth (Isaiah 43:9).”
Academia has no idea what truth is; it declares truth to be different for each person, in its unsubstantiated arguments. But God declares His witnesses are His servants whom He has chosen who will witness as to Whom He is, because they know Him in the spirit and believe Him and His truth.
The truth is that there was no God formed before Him or before He created all things, and there shall never be any real gods of the Olympics or of any empire-building gentile nation of this world beside Him. It is all myth, with the Olympic gods being nothing more than the gods of what we call Greek Mythology, today. He is the Lord and beside Him there is no Savior for mankind. There is no god of this world, especially the would-be-god, Satan, who is able to reverse the work of God. His works will survive, regardless of the faulty statements of academia and the secular world with their gods.
This is a marvelous group of 26 chapters, which represents the New Testament and concludes the book of Isaiah by declaring the Redeemer of mankind to be one and the same Person as the sent One to save the house of Israel. It is to His witnesses that the Lord, as their Husband, gives His surname of Israel. There is not a messianic note in these chapters, which could suggest that the house of Israel spoken of here is that nation called Israel, presently established in the Land by the United Nations.
The Lord is not called the Messiah, but rather the Redeemer and Savior of His people from all nations and not just from one nation, to bring all of His people into the house of Israel. Abraham’s grandson, Jacob was the first to see the pre-incarnate Jesus as that Redeemer of Israel in a dream of a ladder reaching into the heavens. He was also the first to take the surname of Israel.
These same chapters move us straight ahead to the kingdom to where Jesus, the Redeemer, will lead His church and His bride to take up the throne of heaven with Him. She is the true Jew and her surname shall henceforth be the name of Israel, because she will marry into the house of Israel. She is represented by the pillar set up by Jacob after his dream in that awesome place he called Bethel, whereby he declared it to be the house of God and the gate of heaven.
Jesus inferred to Nathanael that He was that ladder upon which the angels of God ascended and descended from an open heaven (see John 1:51).
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine (Isaiah 43:1).”
“Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth – everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him (Isaiah 43:6-7).”