Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
When the Glory has Departed
March 02, 2012
One can only imagine the immense sadness of the Israelites when they were led in chains from the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, carted away like chattel, only to look back to see their beloved city of God in ruins. They had once had it all, when the Shekinah glory filled the beautiful temple of Solomon. Today, nothing remains, but a broken wall where a broken people wail before God at what they call the ‘wailing wall’, wailing for the departed glory, which was once theirs.
God has always wanted to reveal His glory and power in His goodness and holiness to a people who belong to Him. In turn, they would have to separate from a world that belongs to Satan in sin, where evil exists. God’s people are always called out in separation, for He can only coexist with the goodness intended from the rightness of His creation. He created man to bear good fruit, but sin corrupted the marriage bed of the Garden, shared by God and His perfectly created man. The serpent was the deceiver and man became the deceived.
God revealed His presence or glory to one man called Abraham whom He called into separation acting in faith to the revelation of God’s voice as He called him away from his kinsmen and their gods of the world to come into a special covenanting relationship with Him. His inheritance would serve God by demonstrating the light of God’s ways to the rest of the world. This would be the inheritance of Jacob, the deceiver of mankind, who would stand before Jesus, the perfect Man and Savior of mankind, who came into the world as God in all His manhood.
The glory revealed to Moses, in his position in the cleft of the rock, would be the same glory as that revealed to Peter by revelation when God revealed to him that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of the living God (see Matthew 16:16). It would be upon this solid rock foundation of truth that Jesus would build His church, against which the gates of hell would not prevail.
Peter had the privilege of looking into the face of God, in the person of Jesus, something denied to Moses, who had the same covering place as that of Peter, but Jesus had left His glory behind to enter into the world as a living being to conquer sin in the blood of man by defeating the temptation to embrace the sin of Satan. He would face the trial of humanity as the inheritance of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Rahab, Ruth and all of those who went before Him, having the blood of Adam but the blessing that comes to all, only by the blood of Jesus, and the promise or covenant with Abraham, a father of faith who separated himself to God.
Israel was in agreement with the marriage vows of the Law, as a nation, which saw the glory of God and heard His voice at the time the Law was given to her through Moses. The promise of a blessing and cursing came with it, depending upon the degree of faithfulness of Israel toward her God. But she loved the gods of the other nations and bowed to them while attempting to take the blessing and run with it. To this day she claims it in the memory of what once was, believing Jerusalem still belongs to a people called Israel. But it was a very long time ago when it was passed by, by the Lord, for the church of which Peter and the other apostles were the first stones and foundation of a new spiritual city, which will one day come to this earth.
Jesus passed the keys of the kingdom on to the church, declaring it would not fail to be the over-coming spiritual nation that the nation never was. So, Satan attacked her and took her into the captivity of Roman or Babylonian religion and called the apostolic church, the religion of Christianity. For a time Jesus allowed it and then the liberating process began for her own exodus, this time led by Jesus through the sea to a land and wilderness ready and waiting for His people to conquer and rid it of paganism and all spiritual uncleanness.
America became God’s country from sea to shining sea, where, through His cleansed church, He would rule in truth without the religious controls of Satan and his religious empires. God intended for liberty in the Lord, which only He can give, to shine like a torch from American shores outward to the nations. She was a beauty to behold just as Israel had been in her day as described in Ezekiel, chapter 16.
But over time, she too began to play the harlot with foreign nations and their gods, with the idolatry of multiculturalism dimming her light. The glory and power of God would no longer be seen in her as the light went out and gross sexual immorality, greater than the harlotry of her older sister, Israel, filled the nation. One would be hard-pressed to find the glory, goodness and justice of God within the governments, the courtrooms and the classrooms of America today.
The same Solomon, who saw the glory fill his temple, saw it depart as he set up temples and altars for the gods of his foreign wives whom he brought into Israel, a land promised in covenant to the descendants of Abraham, his father. Except for the remnant saved for King David, Israel was ripped from Solomon, so that he lost that inheritance only to leave behind him, writings of futility and a lost inheritance. He had the promise of a heavenly kingdom under the sun, which could have been his, had he clung to the blessing and basked in the glory of God. But in its departure, it was lost to him forever, which brought him to the understanding that the words of the wise are like goads and the words of the scholars are like well-driven nails, given by one Shepherd. “Vanity of vanities,” says the preacher, Solomon, “all is vanity.”
The conclusion of this whole thing called life is summed up in his final words, Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
Finally, the remnant of Judah was also carried away in captivity, this time, to Babylon; she never learned from the mistakes of Solomon. Those who returned from the captivity, years later, to Judah still had not learned their lesson as they rejected that Shepherd of whom Solomon had prophesied. They cared little or nothing at all as the nails were driven into His hands; instead, they cried out that they had no other king but Caesar.
Take a look today at her state, as she readies herself for the onslaught of an enemy that wants to blast her from the face of the earth. And the sadness of the matter is, that it is all because the glory of God had departed from the very nation, which could have reveled in His protection, which it rejected, when it rejected His Son, who cried over Jerusalem.
If we could presently see His face, I believe we would see tears being shed over Washington and the one claiming to be a messiah, who is worse than Solomon was in his day, who at least came to a degree of understanding of his pathetic condition. Our modern-day messiah is a deceiver, taking America to the brink of destruction, while the glory departs from the false Christian churches, and the wailing begins as the lights go out all over the nation. The Capital shall be enclosed in darkness, when the enemy comes in like a flood. What Babylon did to Jerusalem, it will do again to this shining city on a hill. Once the glory departs in a cloud, so, too, will the water of life give way to the seawaters, with the great ship ‘Lollipop’ disappearing beneath the roaring waves.
One can only imagine the broken hearts of those in the lifeboats who escaped into the night, when the Titanic finally reared its great iron hulk into the air, broke up and disappeared beneath the sea. Many would have heard their loved ones crying out for help as they went down with the massive ship of which men claimed that even God could not destroy, mocking Him until He merely raised His arm of power and allowed the seawaters to engulf it.
The memories of what could have been will never be again, for we only pass this way once, and if we reject God’s glory in this land, then listen for a voice from heaven saying, “So be it!”