Job Description for a Savior

4323 words long.

Published on 2024-04-26

Abstract

This article describes the pivotal discovery that gave me the conviction that extensive, systematic, chronological arrangements of prophecies exist in the Bible, hidden from view. I made that discovery while studying Job. In that Old Testament book I found nine prophecies of the coming of Christ arranged in chronological order. They cover the whole of Christ's life, from pre-incarnate state, to birth, to healing ministry, to death and resurrection, ending at his second coming in glory. How did I find all this?

While I was researching for my book Job Rises: Thirteen Keys to a Resilient Life, I asked one of the best questions I have ever asked. Every time Job began to sink into despair, what was it about his faith that enabled him to rise up again in hope?

Lie not in wait as a wicked man against the dwelling of the righteous;

do no violence to his home;

for the righteous falls seven times and rises again,

but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.

- Proverbs 24:15-16

I went through all of his speeches and pulled out the signs of hope. What I saw opened up much of the meaning and mystery of the Book of Job to me. In each speech, Job listed another one of his problems (or two!) and set them before God. He knew he did not have the strength to save himself and said as much. He pleaded with God to save him. Collectively, these complaints are his "job description" for a savior. This was the list of everything a savior would have to do to restore his life. It was like Job was interviewing candidates. There is only one person in history who has ever met all those qualifications. Without knowing it, Job was describing Jesus.

In that book I discovered eight requirements. When I wrote Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, I found a ninth. Here is the chapter "Months of Futility" from that second book. Note that this article makes frequent references to other chapters from those books. However, those chapters are not needed to understand the "job description" analysis at the heart of this article.

Months of Futility

Amphigory is beautiful verse of profound apparent meaning that conceals meaningless nonsense. It is Lewis Carroll as prophet and Jabberwocky as scripture. Ecclesiastes is anti-amphigory. Behind a pretense of futility and the methodical deconstruction of every mortal purpose sings a potent song. Job sings his own song, but conceals his meaning beneath suffering.

“Do not mortals have hard service on earth?

Are not their days like those of hired laborers?

Like a slave longing for the evening shadows,

or a hired laborer waiting to be paid,

so I have been allotted months of futility,

and nights of misery have been assigned to me.

When I lie down I think, ‘How long before I get up?’

The night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn.

- (Job 7:1-4, NIV)

Overcoming Obstacles to Understanding

Over six months of study elapsed before I found my first prophecy in Job, when Job said that God “treads on the waves of the sea”, where he foretold Jesus walking on water. I lost count when I reached sixty prophecies. Space does not permit us to repeat them all here.

What obstacles prevent faithful, well-read people from seeing what is written? There are two. The first and easier obstacle is the requirement that you patiently study the Bible, history, and theology and think through things logically and analytically. Easy does not mean quick, as that takes years. Easy means that the difficulties are patience and moderate intelligence. This obstacle is of the head, not the heart.

The second, greater obstacle is an emotional and spiritual barrier. Only an opposing emotional force of greater strength can breach that barrier. The unjust suffering, despair, pain, and immense loss inflicted upon Job trigger a recoil inside us all. No matter how my trials vary from yours, we each share something in common with Job. That shared grief throws up walls in our hearts. We do not wish to revisit our pain.

I endured many years of hardship as foretold in a dream. When it had run its course after my mother died, I enjoyed great peace. It was from that peace, the fruit of a promise made and kept by God that I would endure, combined with empathy born from suffering like unto Job’s that the emotional force was forged.

This resembled my experience with Philippians. Not until I visited Janet Sullivan and experienced the joy of serving someone in desperate need did I receive the power. That power overcame the resistance inside my soul to understanding Paul’s letter about the joy of sacrificial service. Thinking back over other breakthroughs I have had in understanding scripture, in each case there was an emotional obstacle to overcome, a core of unbelief to be overturned. The good news is that none need face that battle alone. The Holy Spirit softens our hearts so that the Word of God may be comprehended and cause us to grow.

Once both obstacles are overcome, with heart and mind cooperating, it is possible to forge ahead.

Prophetic Structures in Ecclesiastes

Compare Job to Ecclesiastes. Job’s prophecies are not arranged as tightly as those in Ecclesiastes. Solomon was precise and deliberate, like a clockmaker.

The first chapter introduces four cyclical structures for prophecy: by generations, by kingdoms, by precise units of time, and spiritual clocks counting things in sevens.
The third chapter describes the human process of growing to maturity and the course of Jesus’ life as a clock of sevens (seven quartets of times) but it doubles as an index into the whole book.
The whole book, divided by the phrase “under the sun” is a precise celestial clock.
The poem in chapter twelve, while a beautiful analogy to the human aging process and nice complement to chapter three, doubles as a prophetic framework of another sort. It chronicles the complete unraveling of civilization in the last days and is explored in A Grand Father Clock & a Silver Cord.

Because Solomon’s arrangement of prophetic material is so tight, every time I saw a hint of a new pattern, if I was right, a whole new set of prophecies would tumble out in a matter of hours or days, like unlocking an overstuffed closet. Not so with Job.

Prophetic Structures in Job

The prophecies in Job are partly structured and partly loose. The ones I identified in Job Rises were:

A “job description” for a savior. The book has nine prophecies that form Job’s expectations of who a savior must be and what he must do. All nine expectations are met in Jesus. They are distilled from Job’s nine speeches, but not every speech has one. (When I wrote Job Rises, I only knew of eight.)
A prophetic outburst. Job 12 contains at least sixteen prophecies, out of chronological order.
An altered creation story. In “Day of Rest: Job 3”, we discussed how Job rearranged the seven days of creation to tell another story. That makes it a spiritual clock.
Leviathan. The chapter on Leviathan, Job 41, prophesies details of the crucifixion of Jesus. This is the original “empire clock”, but unlike Daniel’s four beasts and Revelation’s seven or eight, Job only has two beast empires. (The first is Behemoth, in Job 40, corresponding to Revelation’s beast from the land). However, Leviathan’s empire is ambiguous. By foretelling the crucifixion in chapter 41, one would associate Leviathan with Rome. However Revelation associates Leviathan (calling it the beast from the sea) with the anti-Christ’s final empire.
A disordered clock. Years prior to writing that previous book, I attempted to discern a forty-two part pattern in all of human history and tie it to the Bible. Later, I decided to gather all the prophecies in Job (plus references to Biblical events that happened before Job lived) and slot them by year into the forty-two epochs. Would it reveal a pattern? It revealed the unexpected. From Genesis to Jesus, Job recalled or prophesied at least one event in every epoch. Critical epochs like the Babylonian exile and ministry of Jesus had many. A few prophesies fell in epochs after Jesus, especially the end times.

How did I interpret this? Job is like the back cover blurb for a book, listing key events to tease the reader into buying it and reading the whole thing. Job tells you a little of what will happen in every part of the Bible. Then, when I began studying Ecclesiastes, chapter one lent support to the idea that some books of the Bible give extensive chronological prophecies. I dared to look at Job again and found two:

A Harvest clock keyed off the change in speakers.
A Generational clock covering all forty-two generations from Adam to the Apocalypse.

Speaker changes. Job is a dialogue with five sections which conform to the harvest pattern. It has seven main speakers plus a narrator. There are twenty speaker changes. The nineteen sections of dialogue plus two of narration total twenty-one sections. Each section corresponds to a period in history. Each speaker change represents a dramatic historical change.

Chapters. The Generational clock covers all forty-two generations from Adam to the Apocalypse. Each of Job’s forty-two chapters matches one generation of history.

Even though Job prized every word that proceeded from the mouth of God, he had no idea the riches he had been given! God arranged that out of his suffering, Job would speak words that would become part of the Word of God. Job saw no purpose to his suffering, but from it God outlined His plan for all of human history.

Why does this discovery thrill me? When I was a new believer, I was taught that God reveals His truth progressively. To each dispensation, the Almighty delivers new truths. Each generation is only accountable for what they have received. This never seemed fair to me, but God is God. Who am I to challenge His ways?

Now I see differently. In each generation, God explains His truths more fully and more clearly. However, he delivered all His truths long ago. Job was the first book of the Bible written down. In it are hidden not just a pattern for history, but a chronology of the life of the savior and the fact that he would be both God and the “son of man”. Every permissible means of communicating with God is listed in its pages. (See the article Job and the Ways to Talk to God for that analysis.) A comprehensive ethical standard is exemplified in the life of Job. And most importantly, a righteousness that is by faith is preached which leads to forgiveness and eternal life.

That is what God gave us in the Book of Job. Now to prove it. The rest of this chapter summarizes my findings from Job Rises on the “job description for a savior”. The three chapters that follow will address the harvest and generational clocks, respectively. They show different dimensions to God’s plan than He revealed in Ecclesiastes. Solomon, a wealthy king who never found peace, prophesied God’s plan to raise His church up to full maturity and infuse it with peace in the middle of a world at war. In Job, we have the opposite. A suffering, destitute man whose days ended in abundant peace, prophesied the judgment and suffering that will engulf an unbelieving world. But before that, he cried out for a savior.

Job Description for a Savior

Had I approached my study of Job asking, “How many never-before-seen prophecies can I find to amaze people and help me get unique information about the future?”, would I have discovered much? Perhaps, but it would have been the wrong things. Pride, vanity and a morbid curiosity about the end of the world are suitable for writers of post apocalyptic zombie movies, not Christians.

Instead, I asked the question, “In the midst of his despair, what hopeful statements did Job make that showed his faith lifting him up?” I really wanted to know what made Job rise. Asking that one, simple, correct question unlocked everything. I found Job’s hopeful words, then tried to understand what they meant.

This led to a second, equally important question. At the end, God first rebukes Job and then praises him, saying to Job’s persecutors, “You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:8) So which of Job’s words were blameworthy and which praiseworthy? God wasn’t specific enough for this “bear of little brain” to understand. Months of patient analysis yielded the answer.

When Job tried to argue why his own righteousness was so great that he did not deserve all that suffering and the pain was accomplishing no good, then he was wrong.

When Job both described the qualities and capabilities he needed in a savior and shouted his faith that God would send that savior to him, then he was right.

Job did not speak the truth about himself, but he did speak the truth about God. Once I got that straight, I knew that Job’s every hopeful statement fell into the “right” bucket, not the “wrong” bucket. Once I had those, I asked myself whether they were just things that Job blurted out, or if they described an ordered process. That was how I noticed that almost every hopeful statement described what Job craved in a savior. Job had set up a job interview. Were there any qualified candidates?

How was Job brought to that point? What gave him such clarity? A man with a broken arm needs someone to set it. An unemployed person needs a job. A lonely person needs a friend. Job needed everything! That is how he came up with such a comprehensive list. Job’s righteousness, intelligence and desperate poverty combined into a clearheaded assessment of what had to be done to save him, and what kind of savior would not terrify him, as God was terrifying him. He needed a humble, consoling, sympathetic friend, not a powerful tyrant. Yet that friend needed all the power of God Almighty to finish the job. Impossible!

He didn’t know the name, but Job knew he needed Jesus. The table in a few pages pairs key passages from Job with the quality or capability that Job knew he needed in a savior, followed by the event in the life of Jesus that demonstrated his fitness to meet that requirement.

The first quality in the table is the last I discovered, after my previous book was already published. Job loved God’s word with such loyalty and passion that he was willing to die for it:

“Oh, that I might have my request,

that God would grant what I hope for,

that God would be willing to crush me,

to let loose his hand and cut off my life!

Then I would still have this consolation—

my joy in unrelenting pain—

that I had not denied the words of the Holy One.

- Job 6:8-10, NIV

There are people that willingly die for their principles, for their cause, but not like Job. God’s words were to him like a person, like a loyal friend. While Job’s mind did not know this, his heart did: the Word of God is a person; he is the second person of the Trinity, and he has existed from all eternity.

Job Rises explores in detail the meaning of each of the remaining job requirements, so a summary should suffice.

The eternal Word of God...
... became a man, able to be a humble, gentle and sympathetic friend.
At his baptism, Jesus, anointed savior by the Holy Spirit...
... launched into a ministry of healing, meaning he could heal Job of his painful boils. And that healing signified that Jesus had the authority to forgive sins, which Job craved even more than healing.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus accepted the cup of suffering, agreeing to be the ransom for sinners like Job.
On the cross, Jesus died and descended into the grave to rescue the faithful who had long awaited liberation, because he knew the path out of Sheol.
Jesus rose from the dead, proving he is the redeemer Job cried out for to raise him from the dead.
Just as Job cried out for God to execute vengeance against the wicked and deliver justice to the innocent, Jesus will come again, riding a white horse and bearing a terrible sword to punish God’s enemies and rescue His children.
Finally, Job’s hope that God will refine him as pure gold will be realized. At the rapture of the church, as the Apostle Paul said, “we shall be changed”.

Passage	Activity, Role or Quality	Event in the Life of Jesus

Job 6:8-10	“... I had not denied the words	In the Beginning was the Word
	of the Holy One.”	(Eternal nature)

Job 9	Divine (who can walk on water)	Incarnation and Birth
	but also a man (Daysman) who sympathetically
	mediates disputes between us and God

Job 13:15-16	Savior who delivers us from evil	Baptism, anointed as Savior by Holy Spirit

Job 14:13-17	Healer who renews our health & obtains	Ministry of healing, signifying forgiveness
	safety from God’s wrath

Job 17:3;	Liberator who pays the Ransom to set us free	Jesus accepts the cup at Gethsemane,
33:22-26		agreeing to offer his life as ransom

Job 17:13-16;	Guide who knows the road to Sheol	Jesus is crucified and dies on the cross,
33:27-30;	and can free us from the grave	descends into Hell and frees the prisoners
38:17		trapped in the grave

Job 19:23-27	Redeemer - raises dead to life	Jesus rises from the dead!

Job 21:31	Judge who “denounces their conduct to their	The Second Coming, when Jesus returns
	face?” and “repays them for what they have done”.	to judge the world.

Job 23:10,13	Refining fire who purifies us and	The glorification of God’s saints in Heaven,
	makes us “pure Gold”	who “shall be changed”

Ransomed

My book analyzes each passage to prove the connections, but one illustration is enough for here. In Job 17, we see Job crying out for someone to pay the ransom for his soul:

Lay down a pledge for me with you;

who is there who will put up security for me?

- Job 17:3

If there is any doubt that Job's cry is to be ransomed from the grave, Elihu later in Job tells the suffering man that God will answer his prayer:

His soul draws near the pit,

and his life to those who bring death.

If there be for him an angel,

a mediator, one of the thousand,

to declare to man what is right for him,

and he is merciful to him, and says,

‘Deliver him from going down into the pit;

I have found a ransom;

let his flesh become fresh with youth;

let him return to the days of his youthful vigor’;

then man prays to God, and he accepts him;

he sees his face with a shout of joy,

and he restores to man his righteousness.

- Job 33:22-26

At Gethsemane, Jesus accepted the cup of suffering from the Father. This was his final surrender and acceptance to pay the ransom for the sins of mankind. Jesus paid the ransom with his own life. He paid it for Job and he paid it for us.

(The ransom theory of atonement is one of many proposed by theologians. I believe that the atonement is multi-faceted. The payment of ransom is one part of the whole.)

The Life of Jesus

To Job was entrusted an outline of the entire life of Jesus Christ. These nine events in our Lord’s journey, from his exalted preexistence in glory, to his humble incarnation and ministry, to the glorification of his saints at the end of time are not only present in Job, they are listed in chronological order.

Finding this glorious, systematic account of the Life of Jesus hidden in Job drove me to look for more. I did not find it by looking for prophecy. I found it by looking for resilience, by seeking to understand how Job survived such crushing blows. I found it by trying to understand love.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom

all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have a faith that can move mountains,

but do not have love, I am nothing.

- 1 Corinthians 13:2, NIV

As a new believer, I was fascinated by Biblical prophecy. I tried to “fathom all mysteries” by untangling Revelation to decide if the European Union was the evil empire of the antichrist. That pursuit inflamed my pride and imagination. When I spoke earlier about emotional barriers making it impossible to understand Job or Ecclesiastes, I mean nightmares for months on end. I mean terror and finding it difficult to plan for a future that may never come. (See the article Dreams for an account of my spiritual battle against false apocalyptic nightmares.)

Now when I read Job, do I see an aloof and capricious God who inflicts suffering for no reason? No, I see the overflowing love of God. When I read Ecclesiastes, do I view life as pointlessly moving mountains to unearth meaning that isn’t there? No, I see a God moving heaven and earth to raise me up like His child through every stage of life to full maturity. I see a God with an amazing plan for my joy, happiness and fulfillment. I see prophecies as promises of grace, not a schoolboy’s litany of dates and places of wars to be memorized.

One more thing: even the bad guys in Job serve a noble purpose. Just as heresies provoked the church to embrace a more complete truth, the false comforters, Job’s friends, sharpened one powerful point that should not be overlooked. The last friend to speak was Bildad. His final speech was brief, powerful – and wrong.

Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:

“Dominion and fear are with God;

he makes peace in his high heaven.

Is there any number to his armies?

Upon whom does his light not arise?

How then can man be in the right before God?

How can he who is born of woman be pure?

Behold, even the moon is not bright,

and the stars are not pure in his eyes;

how much less man, who is a maggot,

and the son of man, who is a worm!”

- Job 25:1-6, ESV

Bildad’s speech is as masterful an example of negative philosophy as you will find. Everything that Bildad says man cannot be and cannot do became possible in Christ. It is fitting to ponder it, because it makes a false claim about how God will bring peace: through armies alone. Critically, Bildad ridicules Job for placing his trust in a “son of man”. Job’s words:

Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,

and he who testifies for me is on high.

My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

that he would argue the case of a man with God,

as a son of man does with his neighbor.

- Job 16:19-21, ESV

Job believed that his witness was both “a son of man” and in heaven. What do we learn about that “son of man” by inverting Bildad’s words?

The son of man is a peacemaker.
The son of man commands the armies of God.
The son of man is the light of the world.
The son of man is right before God.
The son of man would be born of woman, yet be pure, free from inherited sin.
The son of man, like the phases of the moon (as seen in Ecclesiastes), will grow brighter with each passing day, from new moon to full.
The son of man is the bright morning star and the sun of righteousness.
The son of man would die, but no maggot or worm feast on him, because death can not consume the resurrection and the life.

When I began my study of Job, I wanted nothing to do with the words of the three friends! After all, they were wrong and he was right. The Lord convicted me that unless I studied the whole message of Job, I would fail to understand many wonderful things. The Lord was right. Without meditating on the friends, how can we understand the periods of history ruled by their words?

Links to the other articles in this section:

Spiritual Growth Introduction to the articles about spiritual growth.

What are Life's Twelve Most Important Questions? If you can answer these questions, you know the way better than the Mandelorian.

What are the Heavenly Treasures? It is one thing to list these treasures, quite another to acquire them!

The Harvest Pattern of Jesus A tactical pattern for overcoming an individual obstacle and reaping a single spiritual harvest.

The Growth Pattern of Solomon Overview of a strategic pattern to help you plan your whole life.

There is a Season The chapter from Peace, like Solomon Never Knew where I first introduced the Growth Pattern.
The Apostle Paul's Discipleship Program Shows how the first seven letters of Paul to the churches are arranged according to the Growth Pattern.
Seven Facets of Spirit-led Discipleship The Sermon on the Mount conforms to the Growth Pattern.

The Motherhood Pattern A strategic pattern for women.

The Law Pattern of Moses The law does more than restrict; it also guides.

The Journey Pattern It is a long journey back to Eden.

Emotional Prophecies of the Psalms

Job and the Ways to Talk to God

Job Description for a Savior Job knew what he needed in a savior. Do you?

Dreams Dreams can guide you, paralyze you, or lead you astray. In my case, it was all three.

Spiritual Warfare Somebody IS out to get you.