The Book of Kings:From Chariots of Fire to the New Testament

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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

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One of the most dramatic moments in all the stories of the Bible is that moment when Elijah and Elisha have crossed over Jordan, and a great whirlwind comes down from heaven, and a chariot of fire with horses of fire carry Elijah away. Really something to have seen, I suppose. It was the moment when power was transferred from Elijah to Elisha, and Elisha received a double portion of the spirit of Elijah, along with his mantle. But there’s a puzzle here. It isn’t so much that change of power. Later on, Elisha will fall sick and die of his sickness. Why was Elijah taken away so dramatically? Why didn’t he just finish his course? Why didn’t he go to bed and die like Elisha did? What’s with his chariot with these horses of fire? Now, the assumption is that Elijah was taken up to heaven, but no one at the time thought so. The school of the prophets sent men all over the area looking for his body, wherever the tornado that took him away might have dropped him. And there’s no real reason from the Bible to think that he went to heaven. There is, however, one more consideration. Jehoram became regent of Judah at about the time, about the same time as Elijah’s departure. Then sometime later, Jehoram gets a letter from Elijah. Strange thing. You’ll find this story in 2 Chronicles 21. Jehoram made high places, pagan high places, in the mountains of Judah and caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit harlotry and led Judah astray. Now, everybody thinks there’s something new in this Da Vinci Code going around about the feminine principle in religion. But, folks, it goes back as far as man goes. that there has always been this commingling of harlotry, of sex with religion. The power of sex tends to lead people down that path. Well, as he’s doing this, and this is in 2 Chronicles 21, verse 12, a letter came to him from Elijah the prophet saying, Thus saith the Lord God of your father David. Now, when you think about this and you go back and track down the chronology of the time, Elijah should have been gone to wherever he was going. But here he is writing a letter back to a king at the time and warning him about how this is going to go and how bad it’s going to be and of the fact that he himself is going to become sick and die. Jehoram reigned for about eight years, so it does seem to be after Elijah’s miraculous departure. But what does Elijah’s departure mean? I can’t say with any certainty, but there are a couple of things to think about. First, the fact that he didn’t get sick and die in his bed and get buried keeps him in the mind of people in a way that’s totally different from the way Elisha went. Nobody talks about Elisha coming back, but Elijah has been a recurrent theme in prophecy ever since. His spirit would live on. If he had merely died, he would not have carried the mystique that he carries down through history. The last chapter of the Old Testament, Malachi chapter 4, ends with this prophecy. God says, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the hearts of the children to the fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. Now, Elijah was long since dead. I have no question in my mind that Elijah died. But God sort of took his death off the table, as it were, because God was not finished with what he stood for. And here, generations later, Malachi, looking to the future, quotes God as saying, I’m going to send Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Okay, we come now down to the New Testament, to Matthew chapter 11. Jesus had met some emissaries from John the Baptist, and as they left him, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John, “‘What did you go out in the desert to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What did you go out there to see?’ A man clothed in soft garments? Those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. What did you go out there to see? A prophet? Oh, yeah. I say to you more than a prophet, for this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. Ah, John the Baptist then was a fulfillment of an Old Testament prophet. Jesus said, I’m going to tell you the truth. Among those born of women, there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist, but whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. Then he makes this remarkable statement. All the law and the prophets prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come. What Jesus has just said is, John the Baptist is Elijah who is to come, the forerunner of the Messiah. Now understand this. He wasn’t saying that John the Baptist was Elijah in the flesh. Elijah hadn’t been living somewhere else and all of a sudden come back as John the Baptist. Elijah died. John the Baptist was born. And yet Jesus said, John the Baptist is Elijah. What it means is he was one filling the prophesied role of Elijah as a forerunner of the Messiah. Now here is the prophecy of the birth of John the Baptist. You’ll find this in the first chapter of Luke. John the Baptist’s father was a priest in the temple. And as he was ministering there before God, an angel appeared and scared him half to death. And the angel said, Don’t be afraid, Zacharias. Your prayer is heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son. You’ll call his name John. You’ll have great joy and gladness. Many will rejoice at his birth. Why? Because he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He will drink neither wine nor strong drink, which means he’ll be a Nazarite. He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. From his mother’s womb, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. Oh, remember that prophecy? He’ll turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the hearts of the children to the fathers. And then he says this, he will also go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. All right. What this angel has done, talking to the priest Zacharias, whose son was going to be John the Baptist, is to identify John the Baptist with the Elijah we just read about in the last chapter of the Old Testament. Then there is this. Some people came to John to ask him about who he was. They said, who are you? This is in the first chapter of John. He said, he confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him then, well, then what? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, no. Well, then they wanted to know, well, what are you going to tell us so we can answer those who sent us? What do you say about yourself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet has said. So Jesus said he was Elijah. John, the Baptist, said he wasn’t. They were both right. John was speaking literally, Jesus figuratively. In a figure, symbolically, John the Baptist was the Elijah to come. Literally, in the flesh, John was John, son of Zacharias. He will also go before him. In the spirit and power of Elijah, John the Baptist fulfilled the role. But wait, is this time, the time of John the Baptist, the day of the Lord? No, no it wasn’t. Then does that mean we are not through with Elijah even then? Well, apparently not. John came in the spirit of Elijah, but as far as we know, not the power of Elijah. Now, there is yet to come one who comes in the power of Elijah. What does that mean?

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So are we through with Elijah? Well, apparently not, because he’s supposed to appear before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. So we go back to the book of Revelation to see if we can find him. In the 11th chapter of the book of Revelation, very late in the development of the trumpets and the plagues and all the bad stuff that’s beginning to happen there, Somebody is told, an angel comes and says, let’s measure the court of the temple. So they go and they measure around. They’ll tread the holy city underfoot for 42 months, the Gentiles will. Then he says this, I will give power to my two witnesses. They will prophesy 1,260 days clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. Some of these things, if you don’t read the Old Testament, they’re going to go right by you like a breeze. You know, this is a statement right straight out of the prophet Zechariah where he talks about these olive trees that empty oil into lampstands. And so this is that these are what those two olive trees symbolized to witnesses. And then he says, if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. If anyone wants to harm them, he must in this manner be killed. He goes on. These have power to shut heaven that no rain falls in the day of their prophecy. And they have power over the waters to turn them to blood and to strike the earth with all plagues as often as they may desire. Now, if you’re a Christian who doesn’t read the Old Testament, you’re probably not going to see this. But what you have here are two individuals doing exactly the same things, having exactly the same powers as Elijah and Moses. It was Elijah who’s sitting on a mountainside when they sent soldiers out to arrest him and said, man of God, come down. He replied, if I am a man of God, let fire fall from heaven and devour you and your 50. And it happened. This is the man who called fire down from heaven to consume the offering on Mount Carmel. So we understand this. He is also the man who stopped the rain for three and a half years. And guess how long these guys are going to be working. And who was it in the Old Testament who turned water into blood and smote the earth with plagues? In Egypt, it was Moses. So these two men carry the power of Moses and Elijah. They seem to immediately precede the return of Christ in the New Testament. And so consequently, here comes Elijah, this time with Moses. In Luke, the ninth chapter, Jesus took Peter, John, and James and went up into a mountain to pray. You’ll find this story in Luke 9. As he prayed, the appearance of his face was altered, and his robe became white and glistening. It was the Mount of Transfiguration. And behold, two men talked with him, who were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his decease, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” Elijah looms large in religious history, and a good part of that has to do with the way he left the scene in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire. One thing, by the way, you should know is that in the Bible, horses and chariots are used for war. They had no other function. They were the armored cavalry of the day. If you have a thousand chariots and horses, you have the equivalent in that day and that army and an effectiveness of a thousand tanks on a battlefield in the desert. Now, what are we to make of all this? I have a good answer to it. I don’t know. But as part of the story, and I thought you ought to know this part of the story, because maybe if we know We will recognize it when it comes to pass, while everybody else sees it and doesn’t understand the significance of what they’re seeing. It does seem unlikely that God is finished with the work of Elijah even yet. After all, Elijah even figures in the Koran. Figure that. So now we come in our story to the work of Elisha, the man who had a double portion of the spirit of Elijah, if you could imagine that. And he went up from there to Bethel, we’re told. We’re now in 2 Kings 2, verse 23. Elisha went up from there to Bethel, and as he was going up, by the way, There came a gang of young men out of the city and made fun of him, mocked him, and said, go up, you bald head, go up, you bald head. Most people assume that this is some reference to what they would say, the alleged departure of Elijah going up into heaven. And they say to him, you go up too. Now, this was a large gang of young thugs. I think the King James Version says little children, but it was nothing like that. Elisha turned back and looked at them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood and mauled 42 of them. Now, this was a big gang. There would have been more than 42 of them because the she-bears couldn’t possibly have caught the fast ones who I’m sure were getting out of there as fast as they could. So a huge gang of young thugs coming out after Elisha. Lessons from this? Well, be respectful of everyone. You never know, especially men with bald head. And it’s a suggestion also, I think, about maybe one way of handling the gang problem, because that little gang of thugs probably never chased any bald men around after this. He went on up there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned back into Samaria. 2 Kings 3, the scene now begins to move forward. Jehoram, the son of Ahab, begins to reign over Israel in Samaria in the 18th year of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and he reigns for 12 years. We’re something like 81 years now after the divided kingdom, after the death of Solomon and the split of the kingdom into two. Now, chronologically, this all gets a little confusing, probably because there is some overlap between Jehoshaphat and his son Jehoram who followed him. Some of the sources on this suggest that there was a time when Jehoram was regent and Jehoshaphat was nominally the king, but he had not actually begun to reign in his own right. I’ll leave that for you to dig that out of the story yourself. The son of Ahab wrought evil in the sight of the Lord. He wasn’t as bad as his dad, Ahab, and certainly not like his mother, Jezebel, because he got rid of the image of Baal his father had made. He made that step. He got rid of that ugly idol. Nevertheless, he cleaved to the sins of Jeroboam, the sons of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. He didn’t get away from that. Now, what was that? Well, it was purely and simply the fact that he set up priests of the lowest of the people. He put in new altars in Bethel and Dan and told the people, you don’t have to go down to Jerusalem to keep those feasts anymore. And he set up his own holy days. So he took away from the people that which would have taken them back to God, the holy days, the festivals, the worship, the time of year in which to worship, and did it all differently. Well, Misha, the king of Moab, was a sheep master, and he rendered to the king of Israel 100,000 lambs, 100,000 rams with the wool on them. Well, it came to pass when Ahab died, the king of Moab said, I’ve had enough of this. He rebelled against the king of Israel. And King Jehoram decided, well, he’ll have to go out and fight. So he went out and numbered all Israel. Now, the numbering process, you encounter this occasionally in the Old Testament where they number the people. I think it was the equivalent of a draft. The draft is always a bad idea, but sometimes that’s the only way you’re going to get much of an army, I guess. Well, he went and sent to Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, and said, Look, the king of Moab has rebelled against me. Will you go with me against Moab to battle? After all, blood is thicker than water. And Jehoshaphat said, Sure, I’ll go up with you. As you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses. And he said, which way shall we go up? He said, let’s go through the desert of Edom. So the king of Israel went, the king of Judah went, and the kings of Edom, and they’re fetching a compass of seven days’ journey. They’re doing an encirclement. Problem, there was no water for an army of this size and for the animals that were with them. And the king of Israel said, you know, I think the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them into the hand of Moab. But Jehoshaphat said, look, isn’t there a prophet of the Lord here? Isn’t there a prophet of Jehovah that we can inquire of the Lord by him so we can go this way? And the king of Israel’s servants said, well, Elisha, the son of Shaphat, the man who poured water on the hands of Elijah so he could wash his hands, he’s here. And Jehoshaphat said, the word of Jehovah is with him. So they sent. The king of Israel sent and brought him down. Elisha walks in and says to the king of Israel, What do I have to do with you? Go to the prophets of your father. Don’t bother me. And the king of Israel said, No, the Lord has called these three kings together to deliver them to the hand of Moab. Elisha said, As the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand, if it weren’t that I regard the presence of Jehoshaphat here, I would not even look in your direction. I wouldn’t even see you standing there. But bring me a minstrel. What? Why in the world did he need a musician at this juncture of time? Stay with me through this break.

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When I come back, I’ll explain. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Kings No.

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15.

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Why in the world would a prophet need a musician, a minstrel, before he could start prophesying? It’s more important than it seems. King David, author of many of the Psalms in the Bible, was both a prophet and a musician. He’s identified in the New Testament as a prophet. Now, this is of enormous value in interpreting many of the prophetic passages in the Bible. Many of them will become clearer to the student of poetry because he will recognize the use of symbolism and structure. People who read the Old Testament, and the New Testament for that matter, and try to interpret it in literal terms, are always going to come a cropper. The structure of Hebrew poetry didn’t depend on rhyming. It used a different kind of form. It was more a matter of structures like parallelism and inverse parallelism. Now, what this means is simply this. Parallelism will take two phrases which mean basically the same thing, and it will place them back to back as a means of the term for it is inapposition, which means you say the same thing twice in different words. This makes it easier to understand what you’re reading because sometimes the Hebrew words are archaic, or maybe even your translation is archaic, and it’s hard to figure what it means. Just realize it’s saying the same thing. Now, inverse parallelism places two opposite ideas next to him, does exactly the same thing. He says, this is the way it is, and then it will say, this is not the way it is, and you can consequently understand these things better. And, of course, there is all kinds of symbolism found in Hebrew prophecy, which is poetic. As I said, people who study poetic structure oftentimes will fall right into understanding what the prophet said. Now, if you know this, you can understand the Old Testament, particularly the prophets, better than you otherwise might, because you’re not going to try to interpret them literally. You’re going to see the imagery that’s there. But I digress. Let’s get back to the story. Elisha said, Bring me a minstrel. And it came to pass that when the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon him, and he said, Thus saith Jehovah, Make this valley full of ditches. For thus saith the Lord, You shall not see wind, neither shall you see rain, yet that valley shall be filled with water that you may drink, you, your cattle, and your beasts. And this is but a light thing in the sight. That’s no big deal in the sight of the Lord. He will also deliver the Moabites into your hand. He’ll deliver them to your front doorstep. And you will smite every fenced city, every choice city, fill every good tree, stop all the wells of water, mar every good piece of land with stones. We’re going to put an end to rebellion out here. It came to pass in the morning that when the meat offering was offered, that behold, water came flowing in by the way of Edom, and the country was awash with water. Now, because they had fetched a compass, that is, they had circled around the Moabites and gotten on the east side of them, When the Moabites got up in the morning and looked to the east, they saw all this water. But with the sunrise, the sun shining up on the water made it look as red as blood. And they said, it’s blood. The kings are slain. They must have gotten up and fought with one another, which was not an uncommon thing to do in the ancient world. Now, therefore, Moab, to the spoil. And so they came rushing in to the camp of Israel, and guess what? Having been delivered to the doorstep of the Israelites, the Israelites got up and smote the Moabites all the way back into their own country. They beat down the cities on every good piece of land. They cast every man a rock, and they filled it, stopped the wells of water, felled all the good trees. Only in one area they left the stones, but they kept right on fighting against it. And the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him. He took 700 men and drew swords to try to break through to the king of Edom. They couldn’t make it. Then he took his eldest son, the one that would have reigned in his stead, and he offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall where they were besieged. What an awful thing for people to see. There was terrible indignation against Israel, and Israel went away and returned to their own land.

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Ronald Dart will be right back. If you would like more information, or if you have any questions, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free. 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit our website at borntowin.net. Please tell us the call letters of this station.

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Not long ago, I published my first book titled The Lonely God. It was such a success that I went and wrote another book. This one is titled The Thread, God’s Appointments with History. It’s based on an earlier set of radio programs titled Christian Holidays, where I go through all the biblical festivals, showing how that they actually represent history, intersections between God’s plan and the history of the world as we’ve seen it. The book will be coming out shortly, so be sure and call in and reserve your copy. You can get in touch with us at 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s a toll-free number. By the way, don’t dial 1-800 or you’ll get something strange. That’s 1-888-242-5344. Thank you for listening, and be sure and tune in again next time. We’re here every week, same time, same place, and we’re on daily on many stations. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart.

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Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.