Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
A Shining City on a Hill
July 14, 2012
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden (Matthew 5:14).” Jesus spoke these words to His disciples when, having seen the multitudes, He had gone up on a mountain, seated Himself, and His disciples had separated themselves from the multitude to follow Him. He was addressing His future church, and not the multitudes.
What was He telling them? First of all, in being defined in the book of John, Jesus is described as being many things – the light of the world, the truth, the way and the life. In so far as He is symbolized by the sun, and the mountain where He is seated is as the mountain of God, His church, or His portion of the multitudes, is as the moon or the lesser light, which reflects the light of the sun, seated with Him. Being on the mountain height of God, so to speak, they are in that place where the light cannot be hidden. The mountain represents the mountain of truth; for God is a God of truth and the only way to life again in a kingdom, which was once established on earth, but then lost to the devil when he lured man back into the darkness with the lies of religion.
Jesus came to set the captives free from the grip of religion and death. He is the Christ who does battle with Satan, the antichrist, or the spirit that comes against the truth. They wield very different swords – Jesus, the sword of truth, and the devil or Satan, the sword of violence and wars, which kills man. So, the commission to His church was to be His voice for the gospel of truth. She was to go to all nations with truth, and was never called to build buildings to surround herself. That would be like lighting a lamp and putting it under a basket instead of reaching out to all of those who want to be part of the house of Israel, people from all nations for the coming kingdom here on earth, which is the promise of the Lord.
Of course, the kingdom is only for those whom Jesus brings with Him through the cross in a crossover to the other side. Coming through the sea and the piled up Jordan are mere pictures of this. Judah became His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion. The sea saw it and fled; Jordan turned back. The mountains skipped like rams, the little hills like lambs (Psalm 114:2-4).
Jesus went on to admonish His future church to let her light shine before men, that the world might see her good works and, because of her witness, it would come to glorify the Father of mankind in heaven with her (see Matthew 5:16).
From the time of the earliest settlements of the Great Migration from England to America, which led to a group of Puritans, under the governorship of John Winthrop who settled the colony at Massachusetts Bay, to our present-day governors and presidents of the United States, government leaders have referred to America in terms of the vision Jesus had for His church. While still on board his ship, the Arbella, in 1630, John Winthrop admonished his future colonists to be a “city upon a hill”, watched by the world, and seen as the ideal, seated on that hilly capital city of New England, called Boston.
And so Winthrop’s sermon was the first to give rise to the widespread belief in America that she is God’s country. Metaphorically speaking, she is that shining city upon a hill of which Jesus spoke centuries ago, whose foundation is that of apostolic witness to the truth, not religion, and which is the basis for American exceptionalism.
In 1961, before the General Court of Massachusetts, President-elect, John F. Kennedy, rose above his religious background of Romanism to catch the same vision of the Puritan, John Winthrop, who landed on these shores to escape the controls of the religion of their mother country, England. Kennedy saw the nation of his time as being upon another voyage, no less hazardous than that of the Arbella of 1630. He saw his America as committing to tasks of statecraft just as fantastic as that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was by terror without and disorder within. Kennedy added the idea that of those to whom much is given, much will be required, and, by his taking leadership, it would follow that even his life would be required of him.
A nation standing on truth will be hated by the religious nations and people, every bit as much as Jesus and His true church were hated by His fellow Israelites and their religious priesthood. Why is this so? Well, we have to go back to Genesis to find the river waters, and from there to Revelation 17:9, which describes the empires of Satan that are seated on them. “Here is the mind which has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.”
Now, this woman is Babylon the Great, that unity of state and religion under Satan seated in his kind of city, resting on the seven empire hills of the seven religious world empires, which are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, the early Roman Empire and the latter-day Revived Roman Empire. Vatican City and Rome are seated upon seven hills, representing the religious harlotry of man, going all the way back to the Garden where he rejected the mountain of truth of God for the religion of the warring empires of world history, ruled by the antichrist spirit of Satan. Man would be seated upon seven hills of religion, as opposed to being seated on one hill of truth.
There has always been a spiritual war between truth and religion. America, as a nation, was the first and only one to break free of the religious-state grip Satan has on this world. The two nations of America made Jesus Ruler by means of constitutions and covenants, which declare the ruler-ship of the Lord God and His Word. The colonists planted crosses all across this wide nation, claiming it for the church of Christ without borders of religion or any religious denominational buildings. Under her constitutional law, whereby America trusted in God’s ruler-ship in truth, America was created like the kingdom of God on earth, ruled as it is in heaven, where there are no religious controls whatsoever.
Ronald Reagan was known for his Reaganomics, but I believe his true greatness lies in his vision for America, regardless of race or color, resting on Jesus’ message of Matthew 5:14. In Reagan’s farewell address to the nation on January 11, 1989, he spoke these words: “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But, in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks, stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still.”
Many refer to the shining city, but few understand the hill of truth, which is separate from the multitude of nations and is the foundational message for that great city, which will come down from above, dressed like a bride, the Lamb’s wife, having the glory of God with light like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal called the Holy Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, America no longer has visionary leadership, but is caught in the quagmire of satanic, religious leadership, which bows to the empire ruler-ship of Satan. The great Satan is methodically moving his cultic religions into the land and setting up shop with the aid of the media and educational system while, at the same time, demanding that the Bible of truth be thrown out, by means of his religious rights laws. We have dropped the torch of liberty from God, which goes all the way back to the dream of Abraham (see Genesis 15), and, in its place, we have chosen the smoking oven of the empires, which could be seen in the smoking ovens of the would-be, world emperor, Hitler.
It would seem that the vision of a shining city on a hill has been buried forever, were it not for the fact that, though we break covenant, God does not. He will keep covenant with those who overcome the lies of religion and pass through the cross to salvation.
The good news is that Jesus is returning in brilliance much greater than that of the noon-day sun. He is the light of truth and the only way to the kingdom where He will rule again on this earth. Satan and all his lackeys of this world will be thrown out to make room for Jesus and His church of truth to be seated in the capital of Jerusalem of a new, world order and kingdom of heaven on earth.
There will be peace in Jerusalem, in our time.