With Job’s life and all the bad things that happened to him he understood in the end that what he went through was for the benefit of the “little flock,” or Israel’s believing remnant that will endure through the “last days.”

Indeed, in James 5, a passage written for this group of Israelis living through the tribulation, comes the specific advice, “Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.”

What the Book of Job tells them is that before Israel was even a nation one of their own went through the same kind of experience they’re going to go through.

Like Job, they’re sold into captivity unto satanic bondage and then, as Job 42:10 states, “And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

Moses even affirms this by actually quoting from Job in Deuteronomy 30:3: “That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee.”

Jordan explains, “When Moses said the Lord’s going to turn your captivity, any Israeli standing there who was a believer in the Word of God, and followed the program of God, and knew what God had promised and was teaching Israel, would have known about this fellow Israeli (Job) who had been through all these things and had an end that resulted in exactly what God was now telling them.”

*****

There’s more information about creation in Job and Proverbs than in all the rest of the Bible and those are two of the five Old Testament books containing the information that will equip the little flock in the last days to understand their purpose for suffering and continue trusting in God’s plan.

“Job and Proverbs are in those five books about the heart of the believing remnant that will specifically be taught to them in those last days for their edification—to keep their heart trusting the plan God’s laid out for them in Isaiah to Malachi,” says Jordan.

“There’s this plan God has for redeeming Israel and it’s detailed in the Prophets. Israel needs a heart that is willing to trust that plan; not just know it but trust it. The books Job through the Song of Solomon build into their heart the understanding that they can commit the keeping of their souls to this faithful Creator.

*****

Jesus says to the little flock in Matthew 5: 44, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

Jordan explains, “If there’s anybody who’d despitefully used and persecuted somebody it’s those three dudes that were counseling Job! They said, ‘We’re his friends,’ but, boy, they sure do tear him up.

“They just had a big fight, is what it was. They got mad at each other and they gnawed on him, and he gnawed back, and they gnawed again, and he gnawed back, and they gnawed again, and he gnawed back, and they finally just said, ‘Well, you don’t want to believe what we say—humph!’

“And they sit there like a bunch of stuffed toads and refuse to say anything else. That’s when Elihu says, ‘I’m waiting for you guys to say something and you won’t say anything, and I’ve given you plenty of time, and you just sit there and you won’t answer so now I’m going to talk.’

“You know how that goes—somebody isn’t going to listen and you’re mad and you’ve had a fight. It becomes, ‘So there!’ but Job prays for these dudes. He does just what that believing remnant is going to do.

“God tells Israel, ‘When I deliver you out of the captivity into your blessings, I’m gonna give you double,’ and that’s exactly what he does at the end of the book of Job.

“You’ve heard of ‘the patience of Job,’ and what the Lord does at the end of Job is He turns his captivity, gives him twice as much as he had before and puts a new heart in him where Job’s got a different attitude toward his friends.

“Go look at Job 42 and watch what happens as soon as God does that. Verse 11 says, ‘Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.’

“You see how all of a sudden it’s, ‘Oh, Job, how terrible it is what’s happened to you!’ and every man gave him money and an earring of gold.

“We don’t have time to go through all the verses about how in the Prophets they’re going to come and bless Israel.

“But all those acquaintances, they wouldn’t have anything to do with him earlier. You ought to go back to Job 19 and read what he says about them: ‘All my buddies, all my friends, they just . . . Job who? Who? Don’t know ya, and walk away.’

“Later, of course, they’re all his buddies. Notice, by the way, in that verse (Job 42:11) that his wife doesn’t come back. He got back double everything else but his wife.

“Now that may have been a blessing in itself considering the kind of a wife she turned out to be. God didn’t restore curses to him and that’s what she was—she was a source of the working of the satanic policy of evil in Job’s home.

“You go over and study I John and he tells this believing remnant how to know whether you’re in the true fellowship or not; how you’re really the Israel of God or you’re not.

“He tells them how to spot it, and how they could know for themselves whether they really had the Spirit of God working in them, or whether they were phony.”