(This is the transcript of a video by John Thatcher at this link: What Changed with Elijah? Everything!)

WHY?             

Why does Elijah crop up everywhere?

In the most unusual places throughout the Bible, Elijah comes up. And you sort of think, why?

I mean, yes, there was the Mount Carmel incident, but why was it that he keeps coming up? And why was he taken to heaven? Now other prophets were taken to heaven. Why did Malachi say that Elijah would come before the day of the Lord? He was only the second person ever after Moses to go up into Mount Horeb.

And if God said of Moses –

 “I have spoken to my other prophets in dreams and in visions”,

then I’m sure he’d also say, “But to Elijah I spoke face to face.”

And he’s been linked to Moses forever. He’s only the second after Moses to go up on that mountain. He appeared with Moses at the Mount of Transfiguration. No other prophets.

He also turns up in the book of Revelation. No other prophet turns up in the book of Revelation.

Many others have their visions quoted. For instance, Revelation will give visions of the throne room of God, very similar to Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1, but none of the prophets turn up, except Elijah.

Why?

When the people of Israel left Egypt, it says in Exodus 12 that a mixed multitude went out with them.

Mixed Multitude

And I want to just stop there for a minute and think about who that mixed multitude was.

Don’t worry, we’ll get back to Elijah.

Who was that mixed multitude that went out?

And we’d imagine there would have been some Egyptians who would have thought, “Well, this is the true God, even though we’re Egyptians, there certainly is a real God who has inflicted these terrible plagues on us.”

But there’s more than that.

There were also a lot of Canaanites in Egypt which were not Hebrews.

Hyksos 

They were called the Hyksos and had been nicknamed the Shepherd Kings.

And these were people who had come down before Joseph, and they had moved into the land of Goshen, which is in the Nile Delta. So, all of these people had come down, many of them. In fact, they became so numerous that they actually took over the kingship of Egypt.

So, when Joseph came down, the king of Egypt was not an Egyptian. He was one of the Hyksos, one of the ones that had been nicknamed the shepherd kings.

And the Egyptians didn’t know the difference between the Hyksos and the Hebrews, to them they were all Canaanites, didn’t make much difference.

And you sort of stop and you think to yourself, well that explains a lot of the verses in Genesis that I don’t understand. Because Joseph said to his family, when you present yourself to Pharaoh, make sure you make him understand you are shepherds.

Why?

Because Egyptians hate shepherds. Why on earth would you tell the king that you were shepherds knowing he hated them?

Because he wasn’t an Egyptian, he was one of the Hyksos kings – the shepherd kings.

Do you remember when Joseph shared a meal with his brothers and it said, “The Egyptians will not eat with the Hebrews”? They wouldn’t eat with the Canaanites, they would not eat with the Hyksos, they hated them. Absolutely hated them.

And as Joseph works through his plan, he eventually virtually enslaves the Egyptians. The Egyptians had to sell their land to get food after the time of famine.

Hyksos Left

So, these are the people who joined themselves with the Hebrews and left.

Of course, once an Egyptian pharaoh took over, then he punished both the Hyksos and the Hebrews identically, and so they all went out together.

What did God say about these people who were not Israelites?

We read it in Exodus 12:48 –

And when a stranger dwells with you to keep the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised, and let him come near and keep it, and he shall be as a native of the land, for no uncircumcised person shall eat it. One law will be for the native born and for the stranger who is amongst you.

Every native of another place and all native of Hebrews, would join together.

They would become one people.

So, there were many people who joined in with the Hebrews who were not of  Abraham’s line.

So, these people, mixed people, mixed motherhood, probably some Egyptians, lots of the Hyksos, they moved in and they all became Israelites.

Under this condition they must obey the law.

It says there shall be one Law for the native Hebrews and for the people in amongst them.

ONE LAW

Now that’s important.

From this point onwards you’ll find everybody who comes into the land of Israel, who belongs and joins themselves to the Israelites, they all fall in with the law of Moses and obey the law of Moses until Elijah.

Rahab

Rahab the harlot married Salmon.

I feel a bit sorry for her with that epithet, ‘Rahab the harlot’. She obviously had stalks of flax on her roof, but no one calls her Rahab the flax dryer, but she gets what she gets. Some people have said she was actually an innkeeper. That’s possible. I think that it might be a bit of a Me-Too movement thing, but maybe not.

Whichever, it doesn’t matter. She married Salmon and she became a part of the line of David and Jesus Christ.

And she was a Canaanite. And in fact, they disobeyed Deuteronomy 7. The very thing that Deuteronomy said is, “Do not make a covenant with these people – kill them all.”

But do not join with them and whatever you do, don’t marry them. That was absolutely strict.

First thing they did, made a covenant with the people and married Rahab.

Because grace overcomes law.

Because the grace of God is supreme over law.

Ruth

Ruth, she was a Moabitess. It was said,

“No Moabite shall come into the family of the Lord, or to the people of the Lord, unto 10 generations.”

But she came in and married Boaz and also became a pro-genitor of David and of Jesus. And it was fairly obvious when she came in that she was no longer a Moabite.

She became an Israelite. She said, “Your God shall be my God.” And she would have obeyed all of the rules of the law of Moses, everything.

Uriah

Uriah the Hittite, well, I don’t know, but I’m sure he was circumcised, he kept the law, he married into royalty. He married Ahithophel’s granddaughter. He could not get any higher than that in the Hebrew society.

All the Gittites that served David, I’m sure, all kept the law, absolutely.

And so, all of them found salvation by coming into Israel and obeying the law.

What Changed with Elijah?

What changed with Elijah?

Everything!

The first Gentile we see Elijah, convert, if you like, was the widow of Zarephath. She said, “Truly I know this is a man of God – because of the miracles he has performed.”

Did she come into Israel?

No.

Did she keep the law? Not that I know. The Sabbath?

No.

Did she keep the laws of purification for a woman? No.

All of those rules to keep The Law, changed.

Naaman

How about Naaman? Naaman was baptized and completely lost that curse of leprosy.

What did he do then? Did Elisha circumcise him?

No.

Did Elisha tell him to come into Israel to become a part of the family of God?

No.

In fact, he even went back to go into the temple of his own God so the king could lean on his arm and Elisha said, You’re okay, mate.

It all changed with Elisha.

Jonah’s Assyrians

Jonah got sent to the Assyrians to convert them, to tell them of their wicked ways.

And they all, 120,000 people, gave in and they said, “We will worship Yahweh and repent of our ways.”

Do you think Jonah circumcised 120,000 people?

It would take him a long time.

No.

Did they keep the Sabbath?  No.

Did they keep the law?

No.

It all changed with Elijah from that point onwards.

Nebuchadnezzar

How about Nebuchadnezzar? God sought Nebuchadnezzar. God chased him.

God must have loved that man because he chased him and even drove him out to live seven years eating grass like a donkey.

God did everything to win him over. Do you think he joined Israel? Do you think he started keeping the law?

No.

Okay, keep going. Darius, Cyrus, all of these people came to know God, but none of them had to fulfill those laws of Exodus 12, where they had to come in and become Israelites.

JESUS

This brings us to one of the words of Jesus.

In the very first part of Jesus’ ministry, the very first act of Jesus’ ministry, he went to Nazareth, where of course he was not accepted because a prophet is not without honour except in his own country.

And this is what Jesus said, and this is what got them really annoyed.

In Luke chapter 4 –

“I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. (Today we would say Lebanese)

And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet none of them were cleansed, only Naaman the Syrian.”

The crowd were furious, and they took him out to a hill to throw him over to his death, but God saved him. Why did they get so furious? Why were they angry about those two examples?

It wasn’t that they didn’t know Gentiles could be accepted. They knew about Rahab. They knew about Ruth. They knew about the mixed multitude who were not Jewish, but all got included.

But they also knew that the two examples that Jesus picked were the ones who did not come into Israel. They did not keep the law.

They were under the law of faith and grace. And that was why the people of Israel were furious.

And the very first act that Jesus did, they wanted to murder him for it. So why did it all change?

Something I have said before about Elijah, so forgive me if you know it –

Elijah, I believe, was not Jewish, not a Hebrew, not an Israelite. And I’ll tell you why I think that.

1 Kings 17:1 says

“Now Elijah the Tishbite of Tishba in Gilead.”

And you might think, well, if he was from a town called Tishba, then that’s in Gilead.

Well, that’s where he came from. But the fact is that those names do not represent any existing town.

There is no town of Tishba, never was.

The book of Tobit in the Apocrypha says that Tishba was probably a place in upper Galilee. Josephus says it was a place in the land of Gilead. Wiki says it could have been El Ishtib, a place south of Galilee.

Fact is nobody knows, and the reason is they don’t know is because it didn’t exist. Every one of those guesses by those people is 800 years after the event. Just imagine if somebody asked you what was happening 800 years ago somewhere.

Of course they don’t know. They’re trying to make a guess.

The word Tishbite does not refer to a town.

TISHBITE

It actually means –

a captive or a stranger

or a sojourner or an immigrant who is non-Indigenous

So that phrase is saying –

Elijah the Tishbite, is Elijah the non-indigenous person in Gilead.

INHABITANT

Now the word inhabitant. It says “the inhabitants of Gilead”. That Hebrew word means a sojourner, a stranger, non-indigenous again, and it does not mean an inhabitant. It’s the Hebrew word that sounds like Toshav.

It is always translated in our Bible as a foreigner or a stranger.

Only once is it ever translated inhabitant, and that’s with Elijah.

Because they’re terrified to say he was not a Jew. They’re terrified to say that he is non-indigenous, that he was a stranger, and he was a sojourner in the land.

So “Elijah the Tishbite of the inhabitants of Gilead” should read –

“Elijah of the captives or immigrants, the foreigners and the sojourners of Gilead.”

That’s what the word means.

Just out of interest, everywhere else that word appears, everywhere else in the Old Testament,

that word for inhabitants, which is translated inhabitants here, always refers to a foreigner from outside of Israel.

It says the law must apply here, here, here, and “to the stranger in your midst”.

That word stranger is the word inhabitant.

Why did they change it? Out of the 15 times it appears, why change it once?

Because nobody wants Elijah to be a stranger and a non-indigenous person.

The International Standard Version, which is the only one I could find that gets it right, says –

“Elijah the foreigner who was an alien resident from Gilead said to Ahab.”

So he’s an alien resident from Gilead.

One more proof, and I’m sure if anybody’s heard me talk about this before, they’ll remember this.

Ravens

God fed Elijah with ravens.

Ravens are unclean. Ravens are birds of carrion. They eat roadkill.

Can you imagine an Orthodox Jew who’s really hungry and a pig walks into the room with a sandwich in his mouth? Would the Jew take the sandwich out and eat it?

I doubt it. That’s what Elijah did. He took the meat from an unclean animal out of its mouth with its saliva and ate it. What else is there?

Identified AS THE TISHBITE

I won’t read all of the quotes, but over and over Elijah is identified as the ‘Tishbite’.

1 Kings 17:3 says “Elijah the Tishbite who was the inhabitants of Gilead

1 Kings 21 “the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite”

1 Kings  21:28 “The word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite”

2 Kings 1 “The angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite”

2 Kings 1 “Elijah the Tishbite”

2 Kings 9:36 “Elijah the Tishbite”

Almost every reference to Elijah says Elijah the Tishbite. No other prophet is ever referred to repeatedly by the place where they are associated with.

Many prophets are repeatedly referred to by their father’s name. For instance, it’s quite common to find Elisha, the son of Shaphat. That gets repeated over and over and over. Many other prophets too.But none of them get repeated where they came from.

Just Elijah.

That’s the reason I reckon, why – one of the reasons – why the people, when they see these stories, don’t like the thought that Elijah might not have been one of their own.

Spare Seat for Elijah

At the Jewish Passover, they have a spare seat for Elijah because he heralds the coming of Messiah.

So they’ve got that seat.

Just imagine if they knew it was a Gentile.

They had a spare seat there for a Gentile!

Elijah and Moses

Why is it that Elijah and Moses are so commonly linked?

Only two humans that we know of have ever gone up Mount Horeb and talked to God.

They were linked.

Moses and Elijah were linked at the Mount of Transfiguration. And I’ve got to say, if you stop and think about why Moses and Elijah were picked, you’ll find that many people have said, well, that represents the law and the prophets.

I do not believe that. I honestly think that is just lazy.

Why would you pick the one prophet who never, ever spoke about Jesus?

Moses, sure. Moses, the whole law of Moses, just yelled Jesus from beginning to end.

Every sacrifice, every sin offering, every trespass offering, everything that was done in the law pointed to Jesus.  Why would you pick at the Mount of Transfiguration one prophet who never ever mentioned Jesus?

If I was going to pick one to represent the prophets pointing toward Jesus, I’d pick Isaiah. Isaiah 53, what a perfect chapter to represent the coming sacrifice.

Or one of those great other prophecies –

“Unto us a son is given, a child is born, the government shall be upon his shoulders.”

Why not pick that prophet? Or pick the prophets maybe like Ezekiel who speak of a spiritual temple to come? Why pick the one prophet who never, ever spoke of Jesus?

No, there’s another reason.

It clearly speaks of the kingdom. It clearly speaks of the resurrection and Jesus with these two people.

One of them represents those saved through The Law, those faithful people of Israel who were saved under the law of Moses.

The other one represents those who were saved under faith and grace, because it was outside of Israel, outside of The Law. And that’s what Elijah brought.

So, they represented those two groups that will be in the kingdom.

And so, Elijah goes off to Mount Horeb.

And as they go, Elijah’s there in the desert and he’s under a broom tree or a juniper tree, and an angel of the Lord speaks to him and says,

“Have some food to eat, some water to drink”

But he’s got a long journey and then he goes to sleep and does the same thing again.

And so he goes down through a long trip down through the wilderness. He travels for

40 days

Can’t mistake that as the 40 years wandering in the same area.

And who else was up Mount Horeb for 40 days?

Moses.

Moses was up Mount Horeb for 40 days, just like Elijah makes his journey there. And what was the purpose?  Why did God bring him there?

God says to him “What are you doing here, Elijah?” I can imagine Elijah saying, “Well you sent for me”.

The angel came and fed him and said, “You’ve got a great journey.” I presume that the angel pointed him in the direction. I presume the angel said, “You’ve got to go to Horeb.”

But when God said, “What are you doing here?” I don’t think he was talking about, “Why did you come to Horeb?” Because God had summoned him. He’s saying, “Why have you left my people?”

Why have you felt sorry for yourself and gone down to Beersheba where you were safe?

Because that was down to Jehoshaphat’s territory. He was safe here. “Why have you left your job?”

And poor old Elijah says, “I’m the only one left. Everybody’s deserted you except me.”

And God saves up the experience for him. And this is our next encounter with the Lord.

I think that if you had guessed at two physical encounters with the Lord before these talks, would you probably not have guessed of Job and the whirlwind and the voice of God out of the whirlwind?

And would you not have thought of Elijah on Mount Horeb? You probably would have guessed them. But this is the encounter with the Lord.

And God says, I’m going to pass an earthquake, wind and fire before you.

And so, the place shakes with an earthquake, it blows with a wind, and there’s fire. What an awe-inspiring experience that would have been! Imagine how he would have felt. He would have known that he was on the same mount as Moses.

He would have known that Moses had experienced this. He would have known all of that. I wonder whether he was in the same cave as Moses was in when God said, “I’ll pass the back part of me before you”. I wonder if it was the same cave. I’m sure Elijah must have felt the presence of Moses while he was doing this.

And I’ve heard it said, and I feel free to criticise because I’ve said this myself, about 40 or 50 years ago. The message was, with the earthquake, wind and fire, if you don’t want to obey God, you can’t be shaken back with an earthquake, you can’t be blown back with the wind, you can’t be burned back. If you don’t listen to the still, small voice, then you’ll never find God.

That’s not what it’s about!

And you miss the whole message, if that’s what you see.

What you’ve got to ask yourself was, has God ever been in the earthquake, wind and fire?

And He has. Of course He has. And I’m sure Elijah was aware of that.

Moses had experienced the earthquake, wind and fire and God was in it. The mount of God shook with the earthquake, and it roared with the noise of trumpets and wind.

And there was a column of fire on it. And God was interacting with his people and gave them the law, sent Moses back down. God was in the earthquake, wind and fire.

And now he’s not. I’m sure that was obvious to Elijah. He said to Elijah, I’m not in it anymore.

It’s over. Israel have adulterated my faith in them so many times, I’m finished.

I’m just going to read one verse out of Exodus.

Mount Horeb was racked in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke of it went up like a kiln. The whole mountain quaked greatly, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Exodus 19:18

Moses spoke, and God answered him in the thunder.

“What are you doing here, Moses?”

Well, that didn’t happen.

But I can imagine that God was there and his power was there and he made His commitment. He married Israel at that mountain. They shared a commitment there and from that time onward He has always called Israel his wife. An errant wife mostly, but always called his wife.

What God was saying to Elijah is, I’m not in that covenant anymore, it’s finished.

So who am I with now? He says, now I’m with seven thousand who have not bowed their knee to Baal. The bloodline doesn’t mean anything anymore. The important thing now is that those people have not transgressed My Law. They have not gone after Baal.

Later God was to write through Jeremiah the prophet, “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce

and sent her away because of all her adulteries.”

And often people say, Well, didn’t Hosea fix that up?

No, Hosea came before Jeremiah. Hosea was about the offer to bring Israel back as a faithless wife, but she refused the offer. And by the time we get to Jeremiah, I’ve divorced her.

And that’s what Elijah was told.

He was told, I am not in this covenant anymore.

I mean the seven thousand have come to me by faith. So, the covenant was replaced by a covenant of faith and of grace. That’s why all the people who came after this, who were converted, did not come in to keep the law. That’s why the widow of Zarephath did not come down to keep the law.

It’s why Naaman did not have to come down to get circumcised.

It’s why everybody that was baptised in Nineveh, converted in Ninevah, did not have to get circumcised or keep the law because this law has passed. So God starts appointing Gentile kings.

He says to Elijah, What are you doing here? And he says, everybody’s a deserted you God, it’s only me that’s left. God said, I’ve got 7,000 Elijah, that still loved me. I think that was a figurative number.

But of course, Elijah knew. Elijah knew there were people who still worshiped the Lord.

He knew that Obadiah, the servant of Ahab, had hidden the prophets of the Lord in the caves by fifties.

He knew that. Just feeling sorry for himself.

But then he says, Go back and I want you to anoint Hazael. to be king over Syria, and also then to appoint two others, Elisha and also Jehu. But in this particular time, Hazael.

Why is Yahweh appointing kings of other nations? Why is God anointing Hazael?

Because the word’s gone out. Because now the word has spread beyond the limits of Israel.

And now everybody is hearing the message. It will not go out fully until Jesus, but they are all hearing the same message. Nebuchadnezzar, same thing. Cyrus, all the people of Nineveh.

Everybody who heard the message of God was slowly being brought in by faith and by grace, and they came into a new group within Israel.

Well, no they didn’t come into Israel, they stayed out.

And they became a group of people who were faithful to God elsewhere.

In fact, the prophet Isaiah said in chapter 49 –

“I will make you a light to the Gentiles that you might bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”  Isaiah 49:6

That applied to Jesus, but before that, it applied to the prophets of Israel as well. The Jews made the Law exclusive. Yes, you’re allowed to come in if you became a Jew, if you were proselytised. But suddenly it became open to everybody who had faith in God.

Transfiguration

And now we come to the Transfiguration.

Now we come to when Elijah and Moses appeared with Jesus. I believe they represent the two different groups. That is, Elijah was a Gentile, they represent those who come in Through Jesus Christ, Moses represented all those faithful of Israel.

So, those people were gathered together and they represent those saints of the future.

Poor Elijah

And poor Elijah, he lay down under that broom tree and he said, “I’m no better than my fathers.”

I guess there are two ways we could take this –

1 – My literal fathers are all dead- I have failed and may as well be dead

2- Elijah hoped he would be the one prophet to bring Israel back to God – and he failed- no better than all the dead prophets who went before him

I think he had a passion that that act on Mount Carmel would be the final act that would bring all of Israel back. And it didn’t. And here he is lying down saying, I wish I was dead. I’m no better than my fathers. I have failed in exactly the same thing that my father’s failed at.

3 JOBS

And then God gives him those jobs. Have you ever wondered why God gave him those three jobs?

Anoint Hazael

Anoint Jehu

Anoint Elisha

How many did he do?

One. He did one!

He anointed Elisha, that’s the only one. He did not anoint Jehu, one of the sons of the prophets did that.

He did not anoint Hazael, Elisha did that.

I’m guessing here, but I think that was one of Elijah’s last lessons. I think God was saying,

“It’s not about you, Elijah. My spirit will go on. The next prophet will take on my spirit, and the next prophet after that. The word, the power of God will keep going, but it doesn’t start and end with Elijah.”

Perhaps. So, he does go and anoints Elisha, and the two of them go down. They go down towards Jericho. They go off together; I suppose a bit like a master and apprentice.

I can imagine Elijah is the leader, the wise old one, and Elisha is the young one following in his footsteps. And it’s It seems that they sort of would travel on together after that point, that they would go on, the pair of them, but they don’t. They separate. At that point, after Elisha has been appointed, they seem to separate because of the following stories. When Elijah goes to condemn Ahab because of Naboth’s vineyard, it’s Elijah by himself. Elisha’s nowhere to be seen. And when, after that, Elijah abuses King Ahaziah for his evil (for going and asking other gods questions about his health, there’s no Elisha there.

The only reason, the only time when they get together again is when Elijah is about to be taken. And here they go down toward Jericho, and they go down to the fords of Jordan there and they cross over. And at that point the two of them are together. And all of the prophets or the sons of the prophets in Jericho, they come out and they say, just like the prophets in Bethel said,

“Do you know the Lord is going to take your master over your head today?”

They can hardly wait to give him bad news.

Of course he knows. He said, “Yes, I know”. And so, they went on together, the pair of them together,

Chariot and wind

And then down comes the chariots of fire and the whirlwind. And the whirlwind takes Elijah.

The whirlwind, of course, was the means by which Elijah was taken up.

But it was the chariots of fire that I guess catches most people’s imagination.

If you ever like to Google images of Elijah being taken, they’ve always got him riding a chariot of fire, and that’s not what happened. He went up in a whirlwind. The chariot of fire was a testimony to what he was. The chariot of fire was a testimony to Elijah because Elisha said

“My father my father the chariot of Israel and his horseman”

It was Elijah who was the chariot of Israel. And later on, when Elisha himself was to die he died in much less exciting circumstances. He was laying sick in his bed, and the king of Israel came and knelt down next to him and said

“My father my father the chariot of Israel and its horseman.”

And he recognized it was the prophet that was the power of Israel.

It was a prophet who had the power of God residing with him, that was in fact the strength of Israel.

And so Elisha goes on, and the story continues on. And I’m sure we’ll recognize in each of the acts of Elisha, that he represented a greater than Elijah.

 

Elijah and Elisha

I think sometimes, I don’t know about you, but in my brain, I sort of have Elijah as number one and Elisha as number two. It’s not the way it really is. It’s not like that at all.

Elisha did roughly twice as many miracles as Elijah did, because he had twice the spirit.

He received twice the spirit of Elijah. And all of the things that Elisha did were greater.

Everybody knows about the three and a half year famine. of Elijah, but hardly anybody talks about the seven-year famine of Elisha. The Lord brought through Elisha, seven years of famine, twice as long.

And we know that the miracles of Elisha all reflected Jesus. In 2 Kings 2:20  Elisha said,

“Bring me a new bowl and put salt in it. So they did. And he went to the spring of water and threw in the salt. Thus says the Lord, I’ll make this water wholesome. Henceforth neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.”

And Jesus said,

“But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, and that water I’ll give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  John 4:14

It was Elisha preceding what Jesus was to do.

In 2 Kings 4 Elijah went in and shut the door and prayed in the house and then he got on the bed and lays on the boy with his mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hand to hand. And he stretched out and the body of the boy grew warm. And then the boy sneezed 7 times.

Jesus raises a woman’s dead child in Luke 7 –

“He came and touched the beer in the Bear the bearers stood still.  And he said young man I say to you arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak.”

Why? Because I am the resurrection and the life.

The one who believes in me, even though he was dead, will live.

Everything Elisha did prefigured what Jesus was to do. They said to Elijah, in 2 Kings 4

“There was a man bringing first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain. And Elisha said, ‘Give it to the men that they may eat’. But his servant said, ‘How am I to set this before a hundred men?’ So he repeated, ‘Give them to the men that they may eat. For thus saith the Lord, They shall eat and have some left over.’ So he set it before them and they ate and had some left.”

A feeding of the five and the four thousand by Jesus. Exactly the same. The loaves, the amount left over. All of it was prefiguring what Jesus was to do.

Naaman

So Naaman went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of God and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young child.

He was clean. And that symbol of death and the consequences of sin was wiped away from Naaman. Because Naaman was wiped clean as a child when he was baptized by Elisha into life.

John said, I baptize you with water for repentance, but after me comes one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Everything Elisha was doing prepared us for Jesus.

But the greatest miracle, I’m sure you know the greatest miracle that Elisha did, the greatest miracle happened when he was dead. This was the power over the grave –

“So Elisha died and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, a marauding band was seen, and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha. As soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet.”  2 Kings 13:20–21

Life out of the dead body of Elisha. Life from the grave. Life from Elisha’s dead bones like we have life that came out of the grave of Jesus. How obvious was all this?

The people should have been prepared for this. They should have seen all this in the imagery.

And then we come to the time of John.

 I AM NOT ELIJAH

John, said, I am not Elijah. The people said to John the Baptist, “Are you Elijah?” And he said, No, I’m not. But what they meant was, “Are you the literal Elijah who has been sitting up in heaven there and has now come down?” And of course he said, No, I’m not.

But Zechariah had prophesied that he would go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, which he did. John came in the spirit and power of Elijah.

And if he was the one who prepared the way, who was Jesus represented by?

Jesus was Elisha. The Elijah was John, Jesus was the fullness and the greatest, Elisha.

So, when you have a look at the two of them, how John and Elijah prefigured the same acts for Jesus, you’ll see that much of what happened to Jesus at the hands of John the Baptist was prefigured. Elijah ‘baptised’  Elisha with a double portion of his spirit, just as John baptised Jesus in the very same spot. What happened with Elijah and Elisha.

Elijah and Elisha passed over the River Jordan and that’s where Elijah was taken. And John the Baptist in the same river at the same place baptized Jesus and so it was like passing on Elijah’s spirit onto Elisha.

And Jesus after being baptized at that very place, came back again and presented himself to Israel. So, John anointed Jesus at the same place as Elijah had anointed Elisha and given him the power of the Holy Spirit.

And what happened with John and Jesus? After Jesus was baptised, what happened to the pair of them? They split, they went their separate ways. They did not work together, just like Elijah and Elisha didn’t work together. They separated. When did they come together again? When Elijah was about to be taken, when John the Baptist was about to be taken. The only interaction between Jesus and John after that time was when John was in jail and was about to be taken. It was the chariot, it was the chariot of fire that was coming for John. It was the whirlwind that was going to take him up.

And he said to Jesus or, through his followers, he said –

“Ask him whether you are the one to come or whether we should look for another?”

And of course, John knew that they couldn’t coexist. He knew that Elijah and Elisha could not be together. And so when he was in that jail, John knew, I’m not going to get out.

If this is the real new Elisha, I’m not getting out of this, because he knew that this was the time to be taken, because he was following that pattern. It’s why John said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” I don’t know of anywhere else that would have given him the hint of that, except what happened to Elijah and Elisha. That’s how he knew that Jesus was going to go on, but he wasn’t.

And so, he sent his disciples, and he says, “Ask him, are you the one? Or should we look for another?”

I think some people have guessed that that’s shown at the end there’s some lack of faith with John the Baptist. I don’t think so. It was showing that John the Baptist was totally aware that he was not going to get out of this situation. If Jesus was the Messiah, if he was the one who would come, John was not going to survive this. He is now up against the chariots of fire and the wind. And so, he says, “Are you the one or is there another?” It was like Jesus saying to God, Is there some other way?

He knew there wasn’t. I don’t think John doubted. I think John just wanted confirmation.

Is this the end? Is this the place I’m going to die? And it was. And what a beautiful answer Jesus gave.

Jesus could have just said to him, “Go back and tell John yes, I’m the one”. He didn’t. He starts quoting from Isaiah. He says, “Go back and report to John what you’ve seen” –

“The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor, and blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me”.

What that was saying was he was saying to John – “Hang on, mate. Blessed is everyone who is not ashamed of me. Blessed is everybody who hangs on, even at the point where they’re going to die.”

I find it very similar to Paul. The last message of Paul was the last chapter of 2 Timothy. He starts saying things that are so on Paul. He says, “Can you bring me those old books I left? And the letters, the letters, I really want those. Bring me the coat that I left at Troas.”

He’s surrounding himself with all of those things that are familiar.

He’s surrounding himself with everything that had memories because he knows this time he’s not going to get away.

He knows that this time he will die. And the same thing with John.

And so, I look at this message and the encounter with the Lord, it started off to be the earthquake, wind and fire, although the Lord was not in that.

It was the still small voice and that is what is going to convert the soul that lies in sin.

But I think also when we get to the end, we find that the greatest way that we can ever come together with God, encounter the Lord, is through Jesus Christ.

That was how John encountered the Lord.

He saw it in Jesus.

And it was just the quietness of a dove coming and landing on Jesus’ shoulder and saying –

“This is My much-loved Son”.

That was the greatest encounter with the Lord that anybody could have.