Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
The Prodigal
February 06, 2011
God is the Creator. He created all things good and in rightness for man – the human being to whom He imparted His Spirit of life and understanding. What an incredible gift, to be granted such things, so that we can become children of the all-powerful, living God! He wants us to become part of His family, and so Jesus said that God is both His Father and ours. He is the God of truth; it follows then, that to be in His family, we must become children of truth.
The beast has no understanding, so it can be used to destroy man by Satan, the author of evil. Satan is a destroyer, for he wants to be like God in order to be worshiped like Him. This was the incredible pride that God found in His worship angel, Lucifer, who turned his worship inward and, for this reason, was cast from heaven to become the devil. The beast does not know the value of truth, and is unable to place any more value on the lie than he places on the truth. Satan is as the king of the beast and will use it to destroy mankind. For this reason, God told Adam to take dominion over the beast.
We are told in the beginning of the book of Genesis that Satan entered the serpent and was lurking in the tree, the fruit of which was forbidden by God for man. The commandment to Adam was to be fruitful and multiply like a good tree producing the good fruit of children for the Father. The next commandment was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for to do so would surely cause him to die. How was it possible to twist that important piece of truth and cause man to believe the lie of Satan in place of the truth of God?
The devil appealed to the pride of man, telling him that he could be like God and that God really doesn’t mean what He says by speaking truth. Satan made God out as a rogue like himself, as a liar who had told man the lie that he would die. The serpent said that in the day he should eat the forbidden fruit that his eyes would be opened and he would have the knowledge of good and evil like God. Satan always deceives with an appeal to the flesh, but just as the Father had indicated, the deceptive message of the serpent proved to be deadly. He created a belief system apart from truth, called religion, which led to liberalism or separation from the Father and Creator.
The history of the world is His story about the return of the prodigal son of man to the Father. Fortunately, the Father is a loving Father who provided an open door to His wayward son so that he could return from his journey into the world, back to the Father’s household. The son chose to believe the lie and to take his chances in the world outside of the Garden, as opposed to receiving his inheritance with the Father in His household and living in the surety of His word. Satan had convinced him that he really would not die, that God would not really let that happen.
God is ready and waiting to receive the son of man back, but it was necessary to let the son go to discover for himself the advantages of obeying the truth of the Father and the cost of being deceived by Satan. The devil wants man to believe his days on earth are numbered and to live them to the hilt, for there is nothing more to come. Like Satan, man will become temporal in disobedience as opposed to being eternal in obedience to the truth of the Father.
In the parable of the Prodigal Son, as told by Jesus (see Luke 15: 11-32), we know the father of the prodigal boy bowed to his son’s desire to depart with his inheritance and leave a homeland where the father provided everything of which the son had need, including his food. There was no guarantee of any such provision in the far country to which he traveled. Once the devil had deceived Adam, there was never again a guarantee of anything except disaster, unlike the promises and guarantees God offers. The prodigal son of the parable experienced hunger like he had never known under his father’s care.
He foolishly journeyed away from the father in his search for a wonderful time of prodigal living among the ‘swingers’ of his day. Instead, when he had spent his inheritance, foolishly, he experienced the hunger pangs caused by a terrible famine, so that he came to aspire even for the food of swine. He remembered how his father’s servants had more than enough bread with some to spare, while he perished from hunger.
Somehow, life without the inheritance became more than he could endure, after he had squandered it for the pleasures of the here and now. He knew if he were to return home he would have to humble himself before the father and confess his sin and lack of worthiness before him. Oh, but how loving and generous of spirit was the father! He was ready to clothe him in the best robes of the household and have a celebration to welcome him back to sonship in his house.
Of such is His story. Man became God’s prodigal son in the Garden and the rest is history. Having poorly exercised the free will, which the Father had given to him, he would then be forced to face the hardships brought on by his own choices. He had been given the freedom to love and desire the good things of his Father, or to love the world more, and branch out on his own in search of the riches and treasures of this world, offered by Satan.
Americans, who are ruled by God, have rejected His truth to join with the gentile nations who live by religion. The truth of the parable is in evidence everywhere and could not be seen more clearly in our world, with famine being at our door as food prices are now soaring around the world. We have chosen to trade with the enemy instead of separating unto the Father and allowing Him to provide for us with work. Now our prodigal funds are becoming depleted as the dollar falls in value and we burrow our way deeper and deeper into debt, until soon there will be no money left and no food to be found.
Have we not been fools to walk away from the protection and house of God? Liberalism leads always to defeat and loss of one’s very own eternal life. Religion and liberalism will take us back to the dust from which God delivered us and the Spirit of life will depart from us just as it departed from Adam and Eve. There can be no fruitfulness in a seed corrupted by the spirit of death.
God sent us the good Son, and His only begotten Son, so we could be redeemed by Him, our Redeemer. Naomi wanted the inheritance for her daughter-in-law, Ruth, which her sons of Israel could not provide in a foreign land. She needed Boaz, her near kin, to redeem Ruth so she could provide an inheritance for Naomi, just as Mary needed her Son, Jesus, to redeem both her and all her future daughters-in-law who would choose her Son to be their Betrothed and their Husband.
Mary was the first to bear a child in the Spirit of life, to become the mother of a new line belonging to spiritual Israel, where salvation is for the spiritual Jew, not one of Hebrewness or of any particular bloodline. At last the crossover blessing upon the sons of Joseph by Jacob would come to pass and the spiritual nation of second sons would inherit that which was lost to the first sons of the nation Israel, who chose also to be as prodigals, refusing the welcome-home-mat of the Father, which would have allowed them to come back into the Father’s household.
And so, history shows that the Father turns His attention to the prodigal, whom He honors, when he returns in humility and confession seeking a place of forgiveness with Him. He clothes the son in robes befitting a king, all because of that first and only begotten Son, the wonderful spiritual bread of life for which we hunger, called Jesus, our Husband, Lover and precious Redeemer of His precious bride. He is preparing a place for her as I write and will return very soon to take her home to the Father.
The choice is yours – to be the prodigal, redeemed, or the son lost forever because of the deception of Satan, which began in the Garden.