Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
The Raging Spiritual Battle
June 06, 2011
The battle for the souls of men is raging right now, while we approach the final hours of history as we have known it. The world has experienced only the empire rule of Satan, that is to say, if we were not fortunate enough to have shared in the rule of God over the nations of Israel and America. Satan has ruled the rest of the world in religion while God ruled His two nations in truth.
The key words separating Satan’s rule from that of God are the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘evil’, with the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil being separated from the good tree of life and truth. The fruit of the tree of life is good because the tree is good; the fruit of the forbidden is the fruit of the sin of rebellion against God, which is evil because the tree is evil.
But Satan, in his wiliness, knew how to put the lure before the flesh to persuade man that he could know evil as well as the good works of God, without suffering death. He was wily enough to persuade him with lies that tickled his ears, so that man believed what he wanted to hear. Satan told him in words such as these that such compromise would actually turn him into a kind of god himself, just like the Most High God, but without having to obey God and His word.
Satan deceived man with this message that he could have his cake and eat it too, with the lie being that God really does not mean what He says, one which sounds harmless enough when speaking of a loving God. He would surely not allow good men to die, for God is a God of love, and how could He allow bad things to happen to good people when He loves them? It sounds pretty logical when one does not know that God is the holy God of truth, and there are no other gods beside Him.
And so the deception about man’s inherent goodness was birthed, and the dangers of evil faded and disappeared as the knowledge of evil grew like leaven. The knowledge of truth faded to the point of disappearing in the secular world of academia where man’s mind is ruled by Satan and an antichrist spirit that comes against a Christ of salvation.
The secular world is at war in a spiritual battle with God’s people, those who are actually His people, the church of Jesus Christ, and those who are perceived to be His people, the institutional churches of Christianity, along with the adherents to Judaism who think the nation Israel, as we know it, is the Israel of God. Satan has control of both these religions, which are forbidden in the first of the Ten Commandments that tells us we shall have no other gods before Him. The first lie that Satan told to Eve was the beginning of the first belief system called religion, which called for the liberalism of self-determination apart from God, making man, himself, a god before God.
Religion was the tool of the serpent in the Garden, into which Satan entered. He offered a belief system to Adam and Eve based on lies, which never denied the existence of God. He was too wily to do that, with an eye to the future and how he could use the religious system to deceive and destroy the church, which Jesus would bring forth to produce good fruit and not the fruit of destruction. It all pointed to the showdown between good and evil when the tree of life was nailed over the dead tree, to have victory over sin and evil.
Never was Jesus’ apostolic church called Christian by Him, nor by His apostles, except on one occasion when Peter warned about this nickname for the Way, which arose in the city of Antioch under Roman rule. Peter more or less said that, regardless of whether or not they called the believers Christian, they were to remain faithful to their calling, a message, which Christianity needs to hear today.
Jesus could not have made it more clear; He declared Himself to be the way, the truth and the life. These three words are interchangeable in their description of Him, but the term, religion (and Christianity is a religion), is not a term that can be used with any one of the three. The church, therefore, as an extension of Jesus, is only interchangeable with these three terms, but not with the term religion. The greatest myth of this age, the church age, is that Christianity is one and the same as the apostolic church of Jesus Christ. The greatest myth of His day, was that God had created Israel to be a religious, Judaic nation.
The foundation of the church ruled by Jesus, which was known to its adherents as the Way, was the truth of Scripture, while, at the same time, religion was the foundation of Judaism, of which the Pharisees were the religious, spiritual leaders. Jesus declared that their father was the devil, and rightly so. One can readily see the compromise of the religious priesthood who considered God to be their God and the Scriptures to be their Scriptures, while believing Jesus to be a blasphemer with His radical views about them and their religion.
The true church, today, will appear to be as radical as Jesus was, and the religious priesthood of Christianity shall respond in as condemning a way as did the Pharisees. The bride, in her fundamental, apostolic fervor based on truth, will rattle the priesthood and confound governments as much as the apostles shook up the Pharisees and caused Caesar to fear their claims in his desire to rid the empire of this radical sect.
Revelation, chapter 12, tells the woman, the pure church of Jesus Christ, that the serpent of old will rise up again out of the spiritual seawaters to challenge her like he challenged Eve. But this lady is not deceived by the lies of religion, for she is firm in her stand on the Word. The serpent becomes furious when he cannot deceive her so he goes after those with the name of Christian and will have a heyday with the others who keep the commandments of God and have the Scriptures for their foundation, but unfortunately have also deep ties to the pagan religion of Romanism.
We are looking at an institutional Christian church today that is combining the Scriptures with religion, just as Judaism did before her. Satan will have no access to a church that stands on truth alone like the apostles before her. However, the Christian institutional church is nothing more than a religious system, whose father is the devil, because of her compromised position. Thus, the door is opened for him to enter in and force the gates of hell upon her.
Unless purified by the Word and washed clean of all religion, just as Jesus washed His apostles clean, the gates of hell will prevail against her, as we see happening today. In the spiritual battle that is raging over God’s people, the sword of truth will be the only sword of the bride, which will cut through the lies of the enemy like a knife. Few are those believers who do not want to be known by the name of Christian because they believe only in the truth of Jesus. The others called Christians will be deceived by the spiritual sway of the serpent within the secularism of the academics and an apostate priesthood.
The pattern for the destruction of the institutional Christian church was set on the day that Constantine made the pagan priest of Rome the first pope of this newly found institution. It was an institution that had come straight out of the last of the Babylonian system of empires, giving to its so-called high priest the status of inerrancy, which belongs only to the only High Priest of His church, called Jesus.
He had said that the gates of hell would not prevail against His church, so, like Israel in Egypt, He would have to fulfill the Passover, to bring her out of the religious system of this world and set the captives free. Through the infilling of the Holy Spirit the church was once again in a position to defeat death. It was required of her that she repent of her sin, and then trust in Jesus for her salvation.
The call of the church came from the Kingfisher of men, to fish for men from all nations, using only the bait of truth. The blessing of Abraham was for all the nations of the world, not just for one nation. Satan’s secular world of religion, including the religion of Atheism, hates the true church with its sword of truth, for it has none of this power in its sword rooted in lies. A sword, such as that which causes pain and suffering, has no power, whatsoever, over the resurrected life.
So, Satan hates the pure church and must eliminate it, making it appear as though it never had existed. He must make Jesus appear to be a liar like himself, so that the Bible can be taken from our children, insisting it is just another religious book like all other books of religion, being nothing more than a collection of fictitious stories. The lies will grow to the point that right is believed to be wrong and wrong will appear to be right.
Notice the ease with which a world leader can actually deny the holocaust of WW II under Hitler, and the deceived will believe it. Note how easy it was for congressman Anthony Weiner to publically lie before a world-wide television audience, until he got caught in his liberalism and could continue no longer with the lie. Still, it was hard to see any sign of a shame-faced, repentant man. He was more concerned about keeping his possibilities open in the political world, which has tolerated such immorality and sexual indecency from its members before his indiscretion. He was certainly not the first or the worst of the political crew of liberal liars.
The sadness is that we have become an immoral people in America, as the spiritual battle rages between the good and evil forces of this world. Those steeped in religion are also the proponents of liberalism at the root of the empire systems of this world, which have always come against those ruled by God’s Law. Satan, as the prince of this world held captive to sin, is on the spiritual war-path to eradicate not only Israel, but America as well.
And, so the battle rages from the Garden to this present day. The wily serpent is still rising out of the sea, but the wall of truth is his nemesis. There is no force that can come against the Word of God and, ultimately, have victory when faith and obedience are attached to its warriors of battle. At this point, Satan is dealing with the way, the truth and the life, and, to his chagrin, death has no place in their midst.