Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
Job
August 17, 2011
Job represents the most blessed of mankind throughout history. The book of Job has been given a special place in the Bible within a group of books, which begins with Ezra, followed by Nehemiah, then Esther, to conclude with Job.
These four books paint a picture in themselves, isolated between the pages of the history of man’s fall and the rise of Israel on one side, and the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon and the prophets, on the other side. They act as a kind of buffer zone between very different demonstrations of God’s working with man through His unending love for His creation.
This book, the very expression of redemption, comes before the voice of the prophets, who prophesy doom and gloom for Israel because of her religious harlotry in the face of the jaws of Satan’s religious empires. He is just waiting to gobble her up and steal God’s people, by taking them back into the religious empires from which the Lord had delivered them.
The book of Job paints an all-encompassing picture of Job’s own little corner of the world as being the same place in which the enemy resides, just as the serpent was found in a tree planted within the Garden of creation. The enemy is never far away, in fact, it can be one’s closest family member or friends, such as Job’s wife and his three friends. As the story transpired and things went from bad to worse for Job, Elihu proved to be only one whom Job could trust for advice.
Job was in a life-and-death struggle with illness, one which made him repugnant to the world around him and to the friends and relatives closest to him. The truth of the matter was that God had allowed this illness, in order to take Job on an amazing journey of discovery and recovery. One could say that understanding, concerning his relationship to a God who was also his Creator, brought healing and redemption for him.
In point of fact, Job’s illness was a spiritual one caused by Satan, and allowed by God, who had a better plan for Job in the future. He was being prepared for the kingdom, which, to some degree, had been taken from him. God wanted to restore to him a better life than that which the world of religion, ruled by Satan, had to offer him. God wanted to offer him eternity in relationship with Him, as his Creator and Ruler of the universe. He intended to restore to him, a hundred times over, the things he lost in this world, because of the attack of Satan.
Whom do the people represent in this particular testimony of Scripture, bearing in mind that the testimony of all Scripture is given in the spirit of prophecy (see Revelation 19:10). All things written in Scripture are prophetic, though some religious teachers will erroneously tell you otherwise. Many of them indicate that only 25% to 35% of the Bible is prophecy. This is possibly because they don’t understand the prophecy found in such books as Job, along with the prophetic message of the rivers found in the book of Genesis, the waters of which permeate the entire Bible, and apply to the political state of the world throughout history.
These same religious leaders will rarely, if ever, understand the importance of John the Baptist’s water baptism, instead, turning it into a religious practice. And again, these same religious leaders, caught in the apostasy of religion, will not be able to differentiate between the religious lie and the truth. For, generally, they have compromised the truth by accepting some degree of the religious lie. Religion is foundational to Christianity and the religious institutions, incorrectly called churches, but not to the true apostolic church, founded by Jesus and never by Rome, the last of the empires of the Babylonian religious system.
The book of Job portrays the religious problem so perfectly. The book of Ezra shows the restoration of God’s Word and His Law within a cleansed priesthood of Israel. The book of Nehemiah leads us to the rebuilding of the wall of truth by spiritual Israel, which will make her exodus back out of her captivity from within the religious empires of man, to be reinstated, in the city of Jerusalem. Esther tells us that the king must take for himself a bride to whom he gives the scepter of ruler-ship, sharing it with him by his allowing her to be the voice having the authority to speak for him.
Out of this entire process, comes Job, representing the saved of all mankind, who will receive the inheritance of Abraham, within the house of Israel. He was a man of suffering like his Lord, who was restored because of the understanding he would receive, which was far beyond any understanding of the religious men of the ages. He saw the Holy God as his Creator and came to his senses with respect to his and all men’s relationship with God.
He chose the best thing for man and forsook his self-centeredness to bow before the glory and greatness of his incredible and Mighty God. Great was his reward, when he came to realize that life begins at death, at which time it would seem that all is lost only to discover that all things are restored in infinitely greater measure.
Who were the three, seemingly friends of Job? It would appear, according to God’s standards, that they had nothing to offer this man but very poor advice. They could only be equated to blind shepherds who lead the sheep astray – the religious hirelings, as they are referred to, in the Bible.
The first friend of Job called Eliphaz, meaning ‘God is victorious’, represents the original man and priest God created, called Adam. He was the first man called into co-ruler-ship with God, making him the first of the king-priest line, established by God, requiring obedience to Him, subject only to His kingship, and that of no other, or Adam would surely die in the sin of rebellion. Adam and Eve made up the first faith-based/state government between man and God, which ruled over the earth.
What Satan had to offer was the basis for the religious/state government under his ruler-ship. The first lies of the first religious system appealed to Adam and Eve and they ignored the truth of God to allow religion and the lies of Satan to rule over them. With the fall of these two priests of God, now transformed into religious priests of Satan, came the rebellion of man in liberalism and the separation of mankind from God, caused by sin.
Adam and Eve no longer walked with God in the Spirit of life and truth. They were the first to walk on the broad road to destruction, taking all of mankind down with them in their new-found religion. They discovered rather quickly, the hard way, just what it meant to lose the waters of the Pishon and the good gold of Havilah.
The second friend of Job called Bildad, meaning ‘Bel has loved’, represents the Levitical priesthood of Israel transformed by religion into the priesthood of Judaism, which ultimately had a Rome-appointed high priest, who compromised the truth with Romanism. Israel would discover that Rome would never love the people the way God loved His first chosen bride who had become a harlot to Him. She hated His prophets, including the greatest of them all, putting them to death. The religion of Bildad deceives Israel to this day, by delivering an apostate message to the Hebrew people.
The third friend of Job called Zophar, meaning ‘chirper’, leads us to Christianity and the priesthood, which thinks man can be inerrant. This is the priesthood, which takes the true apostolic church into the captivity of religion. Its high priest, the pope, is little more than a chirper who trusts in pomp and ceremony, instead of truth. Christianity would break down into a religion of many parts, a house divided that will not stand, but rather falls as it is doing today under such misguided leadership and misguided advice as that given by Rick Warren, a perfect example of a real chirper.
These are the three religious priesthoods coming against the godly to draw the man of God back into the religion from which he seeks to escape. Job is as the chosen of God whom He allows Satan to attack but not kill, in order to refine him through suffering. He is hated by the world, which is of another spirit, but, by the living Spirit, God plans to have a relationship with Job.
Jesus, represented by Elihu, meaning ‘God is He’, must come to Job with the message of truth, before man can approach the throne of God. It is by the breath of the Holy Spirit that man’s eyes are opened and he comes into understanding. It is the religious spirit of death, which causes blindness, whereas the light opens the eyes to understanding.
Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, the light, the bread of life and the good shepherd of man, who tears open the veil to allow man, like Job, to come back into relationship with God, in order to gain understanding. It is by truth that Elihu can cut through the religion of the three friends of Job to reach him and deliver him to the Way leading back to God and His kingdom.
The result is that Job becomes like the true church, honored of God, while his three friends become like the religious priesthood, which will come under severe judgment. They could never become good shepherds as could Job, for they had none of his understanding. Job was as Jacob who struggled with God and man throughout the nighttime of history, during which time man has been captive to death. The chosen of God are attacked by Satan and, in order to become overcomers through suffering, God will remove all pride from them, which would allow Satan to convince them that they can be like the Most High God.
The book of Job is the story of the chosen of God throughout history, struggling under the attack of Satan, to come back into the image of God, in which they were created, created to love and worship Him as a bride loves and worships her husband. She must submit to Him, in order for Him to love and provide for her and lavish her with all good things as He desires to do, but will not do for a harlot. She must repent of her harlotry and then accept and revel in her redemption with great gratitude, so that God can restore all that was lost to the enemy, when He returns her to a garden kingdom.
The latter days of Job greatly exceeded the former, which gave God the freedom to lavish His love upon His chosen partner, who had learned the hard lessons about religion and chose never again to return to the harlotry of sin, which would mar the perfect relationship he shared with God.
The chosen of the Lord’s true church are ready to go into labor to produce the good fruit Adam and Eve never could produce without the Spirit of life in them. At last, the Pishon River will flow again as the empire waters of religion dry up for Job and for the entire family of man, which will enter into the house of God. There will be no liars in the kingdom when Satan is chained and kept from tempting man with the lures of the flesh, which have led to sin and religious belief systems, ultimately leading to the religious/state.