In talking to Job, Elihu, author of the Book of Job, says to him in Job 33:

“The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. If thou canst answer me, set thy words in order before me, stand up. Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay.”

Obviously Elihu, who could not have had the benefit of book of Genesis since Job was written years before, knew all about how God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life to make Adam a living soul.

And when Elihu said what he said, nobody around him responded, “Wow, where’d you get that idea?!” because it was common knowledge in his day.

“This is not a bunch of ignorant dudes out in the backside of nowhere that don’t have any communication about what God ever did,” reasons Jordan. “The teachings have been handed down to them. Now, think about what isn’t talked about. There’s no reference to the Exodus. The Exodus is kind of a significant event in the history of the nation Israel, isn’t it? It’s the birthday of the nation.

“There’s no reference to Moses or the law of Moses that God gave. There’s no reference to the Red Sea and the passing of the deliverance of Israel across the Red Sea and the coming in of the nation. Job was undoubtedly written sometime after the Flood but before the birth of the nation Israel.”

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Assyria is the land between the Tigress and the Euphrates River and the name actually means “the land between.” The Antichrist, in the last days, is called the Assyrian. Lucifer is identified in Isaiah as the King of Babylon. He’s also identified as the Assyrian in Isaiah. 14.

“That’s Satan’s man, and when God’s people went down into Egypt, Satan sent his man down into Egypt,” explains Jordan. “In fact, Satan himself took up residence in the Red Sea because he didn’t want these people in this land getting back into his land over there.”

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In II Timothy, the last epistle of the Apostle Paul, he writes, “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica.”

Jordan says, “Imagine, a guy’s got his name (positively mentioned) at the end of the book of Philemon and then in the very end he forsook Paul. You read down through that list (in II Timothy) and you don’t expect to find him there. It’s like, ‘What’s he doing there?!’

“You know what, folks, Demas is a warning. You might get all the way up there, but it’s a walk of faith, and it’s a daily application of faith to apply God’s Word to your life.”

*****

One of the things you realize when you learn how to ‘rightly divide the word of truth’ is how you can study all of the Bible with an appreciation for it that nobody else has.

“I had a guy tell me one time, ‘Oh, you (dispensationalist) grace people, you throw out everything west of Romans,’ ” says Jordan. “No, it’s just that we’re liberated to understand everything in the Bible and where it fits. And when you do that, you begin to see and understand as you study that there are patterns—spiritual patterns developed and designed in the Scripture to teach doctrine.

“They’re evidenced over and over in the way the Bible’s put together. For all my Christian life, as I’ve studied the Bible it’s fascinated me how God’s Word has been put together. Not just that He wrote it, but that it’s been supernaturally intended in the way it was collated together and fixed together in the canon of Scripture.

“In other words, the order of the books and the order of the information in the books; all of that is put together in a pattern that demonstrates the spiritual design being worked out in the Scripture.

“The idea is there’s information in the Scripture that, when you just study the Bible from a believing point of view—and you’re not trying to be its critic, but you’re trying to discern what it’s teaching you—you can get your arms around it as a whole, and all of a sudden you see these designs that work through Scripture that are teaching a system of education and edification for the Believers in whatever place you are in the Word of God.”

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Here’s a great passage from China missionary R. Dawson Barlow in his 2004 book The Origin of the Races:

“After many years of studying the Holy Scriptures, I remain categorically convinced that the most effective tool of the ‘god of this age,’ the ‘prince of the power of the air’ (i.e. Satan), has had at his disposal, is the allegorical approach to the Bible. It does not reveal truth. Sometimes the ‘scholars’ seem to be more interested in impressing other ‘scholars’ than in revealing the truth of the Word of God.

“The American Heritage Dictionary defines allegory as follows:

Allegory. 1.a. A literary, dramatic, or pictorial device in which characters and events stand for abstract ideas, principles, or forces, so that the literal sense has or suggests a parallel, deeper symbolic sense. B. A story, a picture, or play in which this device is used. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick are allegories. 2. A symbolic representation.

“. . . Saint Augustine is popularly known as the ‘Father of the Allegorical Method’ of interpreting the Bible. I hate to burst bubbles, but Augustine is not the ‘darling’ of the early evangelicals as is commonly assumed. (Charles) Spurgeon, at the dedication of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, was far too kind when he said (and I quote here from memory), ‘The gospel preached in this place was not new. It was preached by Calvin and by Augustine.’

“. . . My study of church history leads me to believe the deadliest of all the ‘cancers’ infecting the professing, apostate church of Christendom today, is this ‘Allegorical Method’ of interpretation of the scriptures.”