Author: Jacinta da Cruz Rodgers

I have been committed to teaching the truth of the Word of God beginning with Trans World Radio on Bonaire, N.A and Swaziland, Africa (1969-1980), then through churches in the United States in both English and Portuguese and then through ministry in Israel (2005-2006). This ministry continues through local Bible studies and outreach to the world via the internet. I have written a book about my life from that of an orphan in Brazil to missionary in 5 countries. You can find out more on the "Book" page of our blog site.

Psalm Ninety

Psalm ninety is a prayer that Moses uttered, registered in the pages of psalms. It is a review of his experiences in the desert, as the leader of the nation of Israel on their route to the Promised Land. In this psalm, he acknowledges God as the eternal God, the Creator, the sovereign and powerful God; man’s brevity of life and his fallen nature. Moses, a man of God, whom He considered humble and worth of respect, a man to whom God spoke face to face and defended against those who rebelled against him as in the case of Moses’ brother Aaron and sister, Miriam. In Numbers 12: 5-9 reads: When the Lord came down to deal with them, He said, Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make Myself known to him in a vision and speak to him in a dream. But not so with My servant Moses; he is entrusted and faithful in all My house. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly and not in dark speeches; and he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was kindled against them and He departed. There has never been a man on the face of this earth who has had such deep relationship with God. Even, in his death, it was God who buried him. Perhaps angels witnessed Moses’ funeral.

Moses expresses this beautiful prayer from his heart with honest desire to acquire a heart of wisdom. He addresses the Psalm to the Lord, saying, Lord, You have been our dwelling place and our refuge in all generations (verse 1). When Moses shines the light on the fact of whom God is, man, in his natural estate, is nothing but dust, lasting as long as a weed of the field. He can never be compared to God in his sinful condition, although created in the image of God. Moses dealt with Israel for forty years. He came to see his people for what they were: rebellious and of hardened heart. He suffered much under their scrutiny of criticism. As an intercessor, he prayed for them in times when God was angry and ready to give up on those people. In this psalm, he writes, Who knows the power of Your anger? And Your wrath, who connects it with the reverent and worshipful fear that is due You? (verse11). We see His power displayed in the early years of Israel’s pilgrimage, when God descended to Mount Sinai to covenant with them; Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, for He descended upon it in fire; its smoke ascended like that of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. (Exodus 19:18). The writer to the letter to the Hebrews describes how Moses felt at that time when God descended to Mount Sinai saying, In fact, so awful and terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am terrified (Heb. 12:21).

Psalm 90, more than any other psalm, (in my opinion), truly testifies the reality of God as a result of Moses have physically experienced Him. When I read this psalm, I sense the deep relationship between God and Moses. Defending Moses, God told Aaron and his sister, Miriam, “I speak to Moses mouth to mouth and he beholds the form of the Lord.” Twice, He spent forty days and forty nights on the mountain in the presence of God. His death happened in the presence of the Lord and He buried him there. He heard the voice of the Lord audibly and not in a dream or vision. So, when Moses wrote this psalm, he was reliving those days in the desert with its challenges and victories. He was well acquainted with God’s wrath and anger in His judgment toward Israel. So, his prayer was one of intercession for them when he said, Who knows the power of Your anger and Your wrath? So teach us to number our days that we may get us a heart of wisdom; Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long-? Revoke Your sentence and be compassionate and at ease toward Your servants. O satisfy us with Your mercy and loving-kindness in the morning, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days; make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us and to the years in which we have suffered evil; let Your work be revealed to Your servants and Your majesty to their children; and let the beauty and delightfulness and favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm and establish the work of our hands- Yes, the work of our hands, confirm and establish it (Ps. 90:11-17).

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One Out Of Ninety-nine

The love of the heavenly Father is unmeasurable. He values one of us as much as ninety-nine of us. One percent equals 99 percent. We are considered as sheep in YAHSHUA’S teachings, as He considers Himself as our shepherd. The lost sheep of the parable of Matthews 18:12-14 gives us an example of how He cares for all of us, not wanting any of us to be lost. The Prophet Isaiah describes our spiritual condition as “like sheep.” Yes, like sheep, we have gone stray; we have turned everyone to his own way. (Isaiah 53:6a). YAHSHUA, looking at the crowd, perceived them as sheep without a shepherd. A picture of the helpless crowds touched the heart of our Shepherd, YAHSHUA. When He saw them, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36). Our Lord compared humans to sheep, because we like sheep, are prone to wander away from the truth. We are independent, stubborn, rebellious, we refuse to follow our Shepherd’s directions. Always getting lost for rejecting His way. However, the love of our Shepherd is like a staff, which He uses to bring us back to Him. “My sheep hear my voice; I give them eternal life.” That’s what life is all about in relationship with the Lord as our Shepherd. His coming to this world to be our Savior was His priority. He said, I am the good Shepherd and I know My sheep (John 10:14). That translates a relationship between Him and His sheep. “He knows them and they know His voice.” It is our Shepherd’s ultimate desire that we, His sheep, walk close to Him, so that we will not stray from the way through all kinds of doctrines and religions, which will lead us to Satan’s hard and rough, dark and gloomy territory. Our Shepherd never loses focus of His sheep. When one gets lost, He goes after it, to save and restore to His fold.

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The Redemption of the Soul

The soul comprises of the intellect, will and emotion. Without it we would have no personality. Created from dust, we are nothing more than just that, a condition in which we will return after we die. What will happen to the soul of man after his death? Which is eternal, the spirit or the soul? Which one is life? Are they both eternal? One has to know that the spirit is not one with the soul as it has been taught. Man is spirit, soul and body. Each one has a specific function in the plan God had when He created man. The soul is sinful; the spirit is our conscience, which guide us to do what is right and convicts us when the soul does not listen to it. We communicate with God through the spirit; when the soul listens to the spirit, it does not sin. But when it doesn’t, the body or the flesh falls into soulish act, which means fleshly or carnal. When YAHSHUA died the redemptive death, it was to redeem the soul. A Christian, who follows the Lord’s teachings, he is guided by the Holy Spirit, Who lives in his spirit. That’s where we receive life eternal, for the spirit never dies. The two destinations presented to him, heaven and hell are two places where the spirit will end up at the end of his life, depending on what decision he has made while alive – to accept the gift of salvation or to reject it. The mind, the control center of the body, has much to do with our actions. The mind that is not renewed by the Holy Spirit, will lead the body to sin through the thoughts – she thought that it was good, then she desired to eat it. The flesh, in harmony with the soul, served as an instrument by which the sinful action took place. Eve, after being tempted, desired the prohibited fruit. Her emotion followed the path of her thought and will- it felt good to her even before trying it, just by looking at it- the lust of the eyes- flesh.

Her spirit accused her of wrong doing, when she told Satan that they were not allowed to eat that fruit. The soul, however, overcame the spirit and Eve sinned. The Bible says, “The soul that sins will die.” Man died the moment he ate the fruit. His death was physical and also spiritual. His spirit which is his life was then condemned to hell. When man dies, his soul ceases to act. The soul is motivated to act through the body’s functions of the heart, which works to circulate the blood through the body. The blood is the physical life of man. The functions of the body will work, even when the soul becomes inert, that is without power to move. So, it is that man is spirit, personality, and flesh. One cannot work independently, for man to act as God created him. The Bible says that as man thinks, so he is. Man thinks with the mind. The mind constitutes a battlefield for Satan to control man. When Adam and Eve sinned, their desires and emotions became dictated by their fallen mind, which influenced their behaviors.

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Valleys, Places of Reflection

Solitude, the master of a valley, predominates the silence of the place. No outside voices, noises, only the mind working the past and dreaming the future. It is the place to get near our God. In prayer and anguish of the soul, we very much depend on Him to alleviate the heavy burden that took us over there. However, it is transient or impermanent as we must go through it to reach our final destination. Many of us give up, without the strength to go on, because our spiritual and mental situations are rachitic and in need of help from above, where our help comes from. But it is precisely in the valley that we receive our strength. It is there that we are broken and more willing to listen. If you and I want to know our God, the valley is a good place to be.

When David was in the wilderness of Judah, he wrote Psalm 63, which reads, God, You are my God, earnestly will I seek You; my inner self thirsts for You, my flesh longs and is faint for You, in a dry and weary land where no water is… My whole being follows hard after You and clings closely to You; Your right hand upholds me… (verses 1,8). Many of David’s psalms are based on his experiences in the wilderness or valley. Painful as it was, he never forsook God. His beliefs were firmed on his faith that God existed and that He answers prayers. He understood the benefits of suffering, as he reflected while facing the wilderness or valley. He said, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn Your statute; before I was afflicted I went astray, but now Your word do I keep (Ps. 119:67,71). He used the challenges before him to acknowledge God’s faithfulness and love. His life was a testimony of endurance in his faith in all the psalms we read. God’s purpose for every believer in suffering is to equip each of us to get to know Him. Without the valleys and wildernesses of life, we would not know our God’s faithfulness, His compassion, and all that that His attributes denote. It is said, “No pain, no gain.” A Christian that has had all without going through deserts and valleys, it is a Christian that does not know God. Or better yet, he is not a Christian at all. The valleys have their twists and uncertainties, they have a way to change and break us; it is in the valley that we are molded, fulfilling God’s purpose for our life.

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But He Opened Not His Mouth

Accusations after accusations against Him, but He did not open His mouth. Surrounded by enemies who desired Him dead, but He did not open His mouth; scourged beyond facial recognition, broken bones and out of joints bones, but He did not open His mouth. His inner strength secured by the ultimate purpose did not fail Him. Tempted by the devil in His hardest hour on earth, but He did not open His mouth, just a prayer to His heavenly Father, releasing forgiveness to those who were nailing Him to the cross, an utterance heard by all. Salvation sprung forth from that prayer and the centurion and his soldiers confessed that YAHSHUA is the Son of God. Under severe pain while they scourged Him over six hundred times, but He remained calm and did not open his mouth. No, the Son of God did not suffer as God, but as a human, with all the extension of pain we suffer. He could never suffer as God, for He is sinless and sin has no hold on Him. He was a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief; He was despised, rejected by man, but did not claim His right of being God. That was the time for Him to fulfill the plan of salvation planned by God and fulfilled by Him to all who were chosen and foreknown by God the Father and consecrated by the Spirit to obedience to YAHSHUA the Messiah and to be sprinkled with [His] blood (I Peter 1:2).

YAHSHUA demonstrated His submission by not opening His mouth during His six unfair trials is a testimony of His perfect and complete obedience “to the extreme of death, even the death of the cross!” Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ YAHSHUA, Who although being essentially one with God, and in the form of God [possessing the fulness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, but stripped Himself so as to assume the guise of a servant, in that He became like men and was born a human being (Phi. 2:5-7). Such a sacrifice He performed to save sinners unworthy of Him! Who am I Lord, and what is my house (asked David) that You have brought me this far? (2 Sam.7:17); and what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You care for him? (Ps. 8:4). A humble man, You O Lord will not abandon. YAHSHUA was spat on, they pluck out hair from His beard and used abusive words to humiliate Him, for men had only hatred for Him. However, when the time came, He opened not His mouth to defend Himself. His silence spoke millions of words, but no one heard. His silence, a gesture that indicated Whom He was, communicated with His Father, agreeing to go through the plan to save mankind. His silence spoke louder than the scream of the crowd; for it rested on Him the peace and the certainty of the fulfillment of prophecy for that time through Him. Surrounded by evil and angry men and a chaotic crowd, YAHSHUA stayed tuned with the Father whose plan was to reconciliate men to Himself. No one noticed the extent of His suffering in the agony of His soul. Only His Father knew, but it was His will for Him to suffer; it was the will of the Father to bruise Him and to put Him to grief and make Him sick (Isaiah 53:10a). And yet, He didn’t open His mouth. At His friend, Lazarus’ funeral, when there were only two weeks left for His own, He felt discomforted and sighed repletely. He knew what was coming next for Him. John reports that He sighing repeatedly and deeply disquieted, approached the tomb. (John 11:38). The thought of His soon coming suffering weighted down on Him. While going to the tomb, again sighing repeatedly and deeply, disquieted, YAHSHUA approached the tomb. It was a cave and a boulder lay against it (John 11:38). No one knew what was in the Savior’s heart. His heart hurt for the people there who were sobbing for Lazarus hopelessly. But there stood One Who could give them hope, if only they would believe in Him! In just a few days He Himself would become the Lamb of God on the altar of His ultimate sacrifice to save men from hopelessness and hell.

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Wake up, Get up, and Pray

The hour had come when our Lord YAHSHUA was to fulfill the will of the Father. Nothing was going to impede Him from accomplishing the most difficult task He had come to fulfill. After partaking of that last supper with His disciples, He knew that His sufferings and death were going to take place in the cruelest way. The shadow of death surrounded Him in an agony of His Spirit and soul in the Gethsemane Garden. He confessed to His disciples the extent of His pain. Arriving at the garden, He took with Him Peter, James and John, and began to be struck with terror and amazement and troubled and depressed. And He said to them, My soul is exceedingly and sad so that it almost kills Me! Remain here and keep awaked and be watching; and going a little farther, He fell on the ground and kept praying that if it were possible the hour might pass from Him (Mark 14:33-35). In the midst of all He was contemplating to suffer, He gave the disciples emphasis on praying. “Pray so that you may not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matt. 26:41b). Three things were important at that hour for the disciples to do: Keep awake, watch and pray. They were to keep awake with the Lord, YAHSHUA in His hour of temptation. But the time of the day called them to sleep, for it was very late. The three times He had called the attention of His disciples to pray, it was definitely to warn them of the presence of the evil one, who had come to temp Him. That was for him the “opportune time.” Satan has a way to visit us at the point of our weakness; he tried this tactic with the Lord.

Suffering as a human being, YAHSHUA was subject to Satan’s temptation at that hour. But the power he thought to have to crush the Lord’s plan failed big time. For in spite of the Lord’s weakness, He never gave up His position of Son of God. And as Son of God, He had greater power than the evil one. However, the disciples were exposed to Satan’s temptation and for them to be victorious, they had to do these three things: Stay awake, watch and pray. The warning was directed specially to Peter. He said to him: Simon, are you asleep? Have you not the strength to keep awake and [watch with me for] one hour? (Mark 14:37). The Lord had warned Peter earlier that before a cock shall crow this day, you will three times deny that you know Me (Luke 22:34). Peter, being warned earlier, still did not connect the Lord’s words directed to him at the garden. Remaining sleeping kept him off guard and weak to fight the temptation. Few hours later, Peter was found denying the Lord, as He had warned him. One cannot sleep, watch and pray. It is impossible to fight the devil while sleeping. There are many people- Christians and non-Christians suffering alone because we are asleep; we are falling into temptation of all kinds, because we are drunk with the things of the world and not able to wake up from it to help the helpless. YAHSHUA asked the question, “Have you not the strength to keep awake and watch [with Me for] one hour?” One hour out of twenty-four hours in the day is very minimal to invest in the life of one who is suffering.

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Listen to the Spirit Call

Soft as a breeze going across the earth, a whisper in the ear is the voice of the Holy Spirit calling you and me, ever so gentle and peacefully His voice echoes in our inmost being- our spirit. Elijah, while running away for his life from Queen Jezabel heard that voice coming in a soft wind. The Lord told him to go out to stand on the mount before Him. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire [a sound of gentle stillness and] small voice. When Elijah heard the voice, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave… (I Kings 19:11-13a). For Elijah to hear the Lord’s gentle voice, he had to be in the right place, that is, the place the Lord ordered him to be. In the quietness of a cave, Elijah defined the voice of God. The Lord God was not in the strong wind, not in the earthquake, neither in the fire; but He was in a “gentle, stillness and small voice.” The prophet Elijah, after winning a great victory over Jezabel’s false prophets, was running away, afraid of her, who intended to kill him. Hungry and tired from a great conflict over Jezabel’s false prophets, whom were all killed, he desired to die. But God had other plan for him, for Elijah was not to taste death. He was to be taken to heaven alive, as Enoch did.

When the Holy Spirit first came to earth, He came in a sound from heaven like the rushing of a violent tempest blast, and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting; and there appeared to them tongues resembling fire, which were separated and distributed and which settled on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit kept giving them clear and loud expression (Acts 2:2-4). The Holy Spirit expressed His power in that day, when He came down to establish YAHSHUA’S church. That was the manifestation of His presence on earth; confirming to all the arrival of His long promised coming. All experienced His power in that place and the tongues of fire. Fire speaks of cleansing. He came to convict the world of sin. Also to abide in every born-again person, fulfilling the words of YAHSHUA to the disciples, when He said, I will not leave you orphans. I will come back to you (John 15:18). The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth; the world will not receive Him, as it hates truth, as it did not receive YAHSHUA, Who is the Way the Truth and the Life. There is a difference between those who know YAHSHUA, and those who don’t. The evidence is on hearing His voice. YAHSHUA said, My sheep hears My voice. His presence in every believer, shows the difference in our lifestyle. Paul calls us sons of light. As sons and daughters of light, we walk according to the dictates of the Holy Spirit, while those of the world, according the dictates of the flesh.

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The Body, Our Earthly Tent

When we think of tents, we think of a temporary shelter used for camping, as well as for revival tent meetings. Although, large enough for many people to congregate, it does not provide the necessary features to satisfy our daily needs. In the second letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes a very interesting comment related to our body as a tent in this earthly home: For we know, he said, that if the tent which is our earthly home is destroyed, we have from God a building, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven. Allegorically speaking, he made the point that the body that hosts our soul and spirit is temporary and will be destroyed. Sin, the culprit of our eternal destination, has changed the direction of our eternal life as well as our life here on earth. Until Our Lord YAHSHUA came and freed us from eternal condemnation, we were slaves to sin and to the flesh, following Satan’s destination-hell. While in this mode, there was no hope for us. The Apostle Paul cries the miseries of a non-generated body expressing hopelessness asking the question: O unhappy and pitiable and wretched man that I am! Who will release and deliver me from [the shackles of] this body of death? Then he answers, O thank God! [He will] through YAHSHUA Messiah, our Lord! (Rom.7:25b). This earthly tent is subject to all kind of temptations and torment of the mind. Without the atonement of our Lord YHASHUA, we are desperately lost. Paul said that the mind of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit itself to God’s Law; indeed, it cannot (Rom. 8:7).

Our earthly tent in its natural form is under condemnation, for no sacrifice of bull or any other animal to cleanse men from sin is enough; it is powerless to take away sins; Hence when He [Messiah] entered into the world, He said, sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but instead, You have made ready a body for Me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings You have taken no delight. Then I said, Behold, here I am, coming to do Your will, O God- [to fulfill] what is written of Me in the volume of the Book (Heb. 10). Here stands the verdict that all who have accepted YAHSHUA as Lord and Savior and live accordingly to the Word of God, are indeed born- again and sealed with the Holy Spirit, Who guarantees their salvation; at the same time, they were given the right of sonship. God has become the Father of the redeemed by the blood of His Son, and waiting, we remain for the promise to be fulfilled, when we will be transformed into our glorified body. While in this body -tent, we groan for our freedom from it, for it is a tent of suffering. “Here indeed, in this [present abode, body] we sigh and groan inwardly, because we yearn to be clothed over with our heavenly dwelling. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under the burden and sigh deeply… (II Cor. 5:2,4a).

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The Holy Spirit, Our Intercessor

The Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity, is our comforter, helper, advocate, Intercessor, strengthener, the Spirit of Truth Who comes from the Father, He will testify regarding Me (YAHSHUA) (John 15:26). He is the Spirit of Truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know and recognize Him, for He lives and will be in you (14:17). YAHSHUA promised the disciples before He left the world, saying, I will not leave you as orphans; I will come [back] to you (14:18). How could the disciples understand this promise, unless they were tuned in to every word that YAHSHUA was saying? After our Lord made known His death and departure from the world, He knew how deeply it would affect His disciples. The words of comfort He offered them echoed through ages to come. In chapter 14:1-3, of John, very well- known verses, spark hope in every believer when reading them: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in Me; In My father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you; for I am going away to prepare a place for you; and when I go and make ready a place for you, I will come back again ad will take you to Myself, that where I am you may be also”. In the midst of sorrow, knowing that their Lord was going to die and leave them, the disciples had these words to lean on for comfort.

The Holy Spirit faithfully leads us into all truth; faithfully teaches us the truth; faithfully convicts us of sin and guides us to repentance. He is preparing every believer in Him to meet YAHSHUA through the work of sanctification- through molding us to be more like Him. Sometimes we hear His voice audible, sometimes softly as He communicates to us through our conscience. In first Peter 1:2 we find the trinity involved in the work of redemption: God chose us, the Holy Spirit sanctifies us and YAHSHUA the Messiah sprinkled us with His precious blood in His redemptive act. Led by the Holy Spirit, we are His children; He has performed the work of adoption when He freed us from bondage to fear; He testifies with our spirit assuring us that we are children of God. That gives us the right to call Him Abba (Rom. 8) for He foreordained us to be adopted as His own children through YAHSHUA Messiah, in accordance with the purpose of His will (Ephe.1:5). Because we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, we are guaranteed our salvation. It is part of our spiritual blessings. Paul gives a list of all the spiritual blessings available to all who believes in YAHSHUA. One of them is we have been stamped with the seal of the long-promised Holy Spirit. He is a guarantee of our inheritance, in anticipation of its full redemption and our acquiring [complete] possession of it – to the praise of His glory (Ephe. 1:13-14). In Him we also were made [God’s] heritage and we obtained an inheritance. Therefore, we live for the praise of His glory! (Ephe. 1).

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Job and His Three Friends

There was upon a time, a righteous man before God and man, a leader of the community in which he lived, and respected by all. There was a day, however when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them, who had been gone to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it, when the Lord made mention of this man’s righteousness to Satan, he answered, Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? You have conferred prosperity and happiness upon him in the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face…. God then put Job to the test. Satan wanted Job destroyed to prove to God that he was righteous because he was blessed with riches. The Bible says that Satan moved God against Job without cause. As a result, he lost everything including his health, his children, and his properties. Job was covered with sores in his body. Day and night, he struggled without sleep. Life was now for him a moan and groan, for pain had taken his entire body. In that condition, he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself. Seeing the misery he was in, his wife suggested to him to curse God and die. But Job called her a fool (and said), Shall we accept good at the hand of God and shall we not accept misfortune?… In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 2). Thinking about Job’s experience, it comes to mind the two women Eve and Sarah who changed the world for their idea contrary to God’s plan for the world.

Much we learn when we read the book of Job, for its poetic writings and for his knowledge of God in Job 9:4-10: “God is wise in heart and mighty in strength; who has [ever] hardened himself against Him and prospered or even been safe? God, Who removes the mountains, and they know it not when He overturns them in His anger; Who commands the sun and it rises not; Who seals up the stars; Who alone stretches out the heavens and treads upon the waves and high places of the sea; Who made [the constellation] the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades and the [vast starry] spaces of the south; Who does great things past finding out, yes, marvelous things without number.” This was the God Job knew and feared and worshipped.

Job had a close relationship with God by the way that he expresses himself. It shows throughout the book. “Oh, that I knew where I might find God, (was his desire) that I might come even to His seat! I would lay my cause before Him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what He would answer me, and understand what He would say to me… He knows the way that I take. When He has tried me, I shall come forth as refined gold; I have not gone back from the commandment of His lips; I have esteemed and treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food; He performs [that which He has] planned for me, and of many such matters He is mindful” (Job 23:3-5,10,12-,14). Amidst his sufferings, Job never denied Who God was; he believed in God’s sovereignty and also in God’s works of sanctification. Knowledgeable of God’s creation, he understood his position with God’s protection and guidance. His relationship with God showed his spiritual maturity in those days when there was not a Bible to be guided by. He was an amazing man of faith, believing even the resurrection of the righteous in the last days, saying, “For I know that my Redeemer and Vindicator lives and at last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin, even this body, has been destroyed, then from my flesh or without it I shall see God, Whom I, even I, shall see for myself and on my side! And my eyes shall behold Him, and not as a stranger! My heart pines away and is consumed within me” (Job 19:25-28).

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