A Blessing: Job and the Millennium

[Brother Rick]

While studying Job this thrilled my soul to read today, and I think it will for you too. What a wonderful Lord we have. So I'm working on a study about the Millennial Kingdom, and what it meant to people all throughout the Old Testament. To Adam and Eve, the promise in Gen. 3:15 meant that maybe they'd get back to the garden. To Enoch, well, he was the first man to preach about the Second Coming about 2,500 years before the first coming in Jude.

I can't believe I made the mistake of overlooking Job! To him the promise of the Kingdom meant seeing his Redeemer and having a new body.

Job 19:25-26, "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26) And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:"

That is one of the most exciting passages in the Bible to me. Job is talking about something that Paul speaks about in I Cor. 15 - a new body. Job KNEW that his soul wouldn't simply see God, but that his weak and frail body that had been devastated by boils would one day die and be resurrected to a new and a glorious body free from disease and imperfection. Job knew it 2,000 years before Paul told us the same thing in the New Testament!

But that's not where it ends. Try to put yourself where Job was. His family, other than his wife, is dead and he's alone and miserable. Maybe he wants some recognition or understanding or something. He's one of the most dedicated servants of Jehovah, and is this how he is to die? A broken, beaten, hurting man? Is this his legacy?

Every man wants to leave a legacy. Every man wants to be remembered by something, by someone. Before Job cried the words about one day seeing his Redeemer, he said the following...

Job 19:23-24, "Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
24) That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!"

Job wanted to be remembered and he wanted his life to count for something.

And every hurting saint ever since then has turned to the book that contains the words of Job to find peace and comfort.

God answered the prayer of Job's heart. His words were put in a book.

The best book ever written, the Bible.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Rick Schworer

[John81]

One would think this would put an end to all those stories and sermons declaring that ancient Jews didn't really understand about the coming Redeemer, they didn't have a clue about heaven or what happened to them after death.

Job is considered one of the oldest books of the Bible and at the time Job lived is believed to have been during part of the time which Genesis, the first book of the Bible about the beginning, covers. If Job knew all this way back then, why do so many pastors and Christian authors continue to present the idea that ancient Jews knew none of this?

We would all do better to take the Word as is, like you have done here, rather than to rely on ideas put forth by man.

[Invicta]

Yes. This is also a prominent teaching in Handel's Messiah, "I know that my redeemer liveth."

[Brother Rick]

Absolutly. I think they knew a lot more than people give them credit for. Many say that Abraham and Job were contemporaries, perhaps only seperated by two generations. What Enoch said before the flood blows me away:

Jude 14-15, "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
15To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."