Prepositioned and ready

Martin Luther got a phrase for his hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” from Job 41:33 (“Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear”) but the verse is not talking about God; it’s talking about Satan and Luther understood the power of the Adversary.

In Job 40 and 41, God describes the two great adversaries of the last days—the behemoth and Leviathan.

Jordan says, “By the way, if you’ve got a new bible, or you’ve got commentary notes in them, for some reason they have absolute no idea who these dudes are. They call the behemoth the elephant, as some think. Scofield has that in his margin notes. A hippopotamus is another one. They try and put dragons and stuff back here and all this stuff. I don’t know what would make a hippo or elephant that scary. The things involved in here don’t fit that.

“Isaiah 27:1 says, ‘In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.’

“Who do you know who’s a dragon, a serpent and Satan (Rev. 12). Rev. 19 is the sword that comes out of his mouth. But look at the last verse in Isaiah 26: ‘For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain.’ We’re talking about the Second Coming here and Christ’s destruction of Satan when He comes.

“The leviathan character in Job 41 is Satan himself. Read through that chapter and you’ll see Satan and descriptions and things about him.

“The word behemoth is really not a translation; it’s more of a transliteration. It’s really something close to the Hebrew word put out in English. The Hebrew word is the word for ‘beast’ in the plural and so it’s the plural form of ‘beast.’ One of the things people miss about this guy is he’s really the 13th animal mentioned in this passage.

“If you’re Mr. 13, does that kind of ring a bell about somebody? Job 38. What he’s literally telling Job is, ‘Look, think about what you know about how creation is laid out? I have it structured in such a way that I have prepositioned munitions and armament.’

“I remember in Desert Storm General Schwarzkopf talking about his tanks outrunning their fueling trucks. You can’t have a tank battle if you can’t get gasoline so you have to have stuff prepositioned.

“I knew some people in Desert Storm who were in the transportation division of the Army who would go ahead of the battle, which was kind of a spooky thing, and go around with big tankers and refuel the tanks. You think, ‘Wow, buddy, the logistics of all that!’ and God literally is saying, ‘Job, I got my artillery and everything out there ready. I did it in Genesis thinking about the last day.’

“The behemoth here in Job 40, when he’s a beast in the plural, is the source of the real rebellion. Go to Revelation 13 and notice how this beast is described: ‘And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. [2] And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
[3] And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
[4] And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?’

“So this beast, the Antichrist, is a leopard, bear and lion combined together. He’s a composite creature. Well, that’s exactly what a behemoth is. This is not isolated imagery here. Hosea 13:7. That’s describing what God’s going to send upon Israel in the tribulation as the Antichrist, in his policies and plans, destroys the nation Israel. So this combining of this beast together is a picture back here in Job—it’s a really a reference to the Antichrist himself.

“Job 40:15 says, ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.’ The ox turns out to be the face of a cherub. Because in one passage, it’s the ox and the face of the man, the lion and the eagle.

"When it says he’s going to be ‘cursed above the cattle of the field,’ that’s because in his nature of who he is he’s a cherub, and that cherub and that ox, when you compare that thing in Ezekiel 1 and Ezekiel 10 and Revelation 4, you see they’re used interchangeably and this guy is connected with that program and so he eats grass as an ox. He’s totally and completely in line with the one that gives him his power.

“Verse 16 says, ‘Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.’ That’s why God said, ‘You’re going to go on your belly. His strength and his force is in the desire-oriented . . . Remember the verse in Romans, ‘Their god is their belly’? You’re driven by your own appetites.

“The psalms describe it as being like a brute beast. Job 40:18 says, ‘His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.’ You go back in Daniel and so forth and see how that’s connected: ‘He is the chief of the ways of God.’ This guy’s going to be controlling. He’s that wicked prince. He’s going to control the rulers of the earth.

“Verse 19 says, ‘He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.’ Now that’s the little ray of sunlight in the passage. Nobody can deal with this guy except God and His Word. The one that can deal with him is going to be the one who’s his maker.

“So this character Paul’s describing is described multitudes of times in Scripture and he’s not a superman, and he’s not a supernatural creature, but he’s empowered and vested by Satan---his coming is after the working of Satan and he’s Satan’s man. And that’s why he’s called ‘the man of sin’ and then he transitions into ‘the son of perdition.’ And leviathan is the one who gives him his power.

“There are 18 major types (individuals) of the Antichrist in the Bible and there’s a lot of situations that prefigure him leviathan and the behemoth.

“The first type is Cain. He’s the original type of the seed of the serpent. I John 3:12. Notice he’s ‘of that wicked one.’ When Eve was pregnant and had that little boy, she said, ‘We’ve gotten a man from the Lord.’ She thought he was going to be the Redeemer. She thought, ’Here’s the seed of the woman that’s going to take us back into the Garden!’ Abel was just a red-headed stepchild, so to speak. They had put all their hope in Cain.

“The rest are Nimrod, Pharaoh (called a dragon in Ezekiel 29, as Satan is in Revelation 12). In Numbers 22 is a dude named Balak. There’s the unholy trio. Balak (the false king), Balaam (the false prophet) and Baal (the false god).

“Ahab is that wicked prince in Israel, like Ezekiel 28 calls the Antichrist. He was opposed by Elijah, just like the Antichrist will be.

“Next is King Saul, then Goliath. In I Samuel 17:4-7, there’s the helmet, the coat, the greaves, the target, the staff and the shield. There are six pieces of armament. His height is six cubits and then there’s the six hundred in verse 7. So when you just take the numbers in the passage you have 666. And this guy’s killed by David, who is the king, the type of Christ.

“Next is Absalom, Jeroboam and Solomon (II Chronicles 9:13). Solomon has a complete turnaround, just as ‘the man of sin’ becomes ‘the son of perdition.’ All of a sudden Solomon moves from the king in Israel, the peaceful man, to a picture of the apostate. If you go down through his entourage there, you’ll see 666 in verses 15-18.

“The rest are Haman, Sennacherib, Nebby, Abimelech, Nabal, Judas . . . last there’s King Herod in Acts 12. This is a real strange one. Herod is persecuting the remnant of Israel. He takes James, the brother of John. James and John and Peter, those three, were the only three apostles that Christ surnamed.

“Christ said, ‘Thou art Peter upon this rock I will build my church.’ He surnamed James and John, ‘The Sons of Boanerges’; ‘The sons of thunder.’ Thunder in the scripture is a description of God speaking. They were going to be God’s spokesmen. In fact, John is the one who goes on later to write the book of the revelation.

“Herod literally seeks to silence the voice of God’s man, but look down if you will to what happens to him. Verse 20. He usurps God’s voice, refuses to give God the glory, and then God kills him. He’s again, a picture of the man of sin, the son of perdition.”