Join us in this spiritually enriching episode as we explore the legacies of Elijah and Elisha, two of the most powerful prophets in biblical history. Delve into the tales of wonder and miracles as Elisha performs acts that not only show the divine power but also the profound lessons of faith. Discover how Elisha’s acts echo through time and find parallels with the miracles of Jesus, creating a tapestry of prophetic fulfillment and divine intervention.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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I’m still amazed at how many would-be prophets want to pretend to be Elijah. Well, to at least have taken on the mantle of Elijah. I think I’ve mentioned I’ve met at least three or four Elijahs in my time. But what’s funny to me is I don’t recall anyone ever claiming to be a successor of Elisha who had double the power of Elijah. That man is astonishing. Now, of course, there’s a reason for this. The reason is that Elijah was carried away and no one knew about his demise. I don’t know. Are there still people out there who believe that Hitler is alive? I remember for years, I think he would have been 115, and I think somebody was still speculating. He was alive somewhere in Argentina and pulling strings on the world scene. Surely, by now, they’ve all given up. Well, in his day, Elisha swung a much bigger stick than Elijah did. And there’s another curious aside. The idea of two men overlapping but with one succeeding the other is repeated in the Bible. John the Baptist, according to Jesus, came in the spirit of Elijah, and then John the Baptist was followed by Jesus. And apparently, this pattern will occur yet again. There is this scripture that has people always looking for Elijah. It’s Malachi 4, verse 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. I think the Hebrew for curse there is utter destruction. So we look forward to Elijah’s coming. And sure enough, there are pretenders here and there who claim to be that one. But so far, I haven’t heard a soul claim that he is Elisha reincarnated. Now, there’s a curious thing about Elisha in that no need seems to be too small for his attention. There’s this story which I always find fascinating. A woman came to see him. She was the wife of one of the sons of the prophets. Apparently the prophets were in some sort of a school, a college as it were, had a collegiate relationship. And the wife of the sons, one of the sons of the prophets, came to Elisha, saying, My husband has died, and you know that he feared the Lord. Now the creditor has come to take away from me my two sons to be bondmen because of his debt. Elisha said, Elisha, I mean, said, What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house? She said, well, your handmaid doesn’t have a thing in the house except a pot of oil. He said, okay, go borrow you vessels from all your neighbors, even empty vessels. Borrow not a few. Get a lot of them. And when you get in, you shall shut the door upon you and your sons, and you shall pour out into all those borrowed vessels, and you shall set aside what is full. So she went out from him, shut the door upon herself and her sons. They brought the vessels to her, and she poured out the oil. It came to pass, when she’d gotten through filling every single one of those vessels, she said, bring me another one. And they said, well, we don’t have any more. And the oil held up through that whole thing. It was a miracle. It was plain and simple. She came and told the man of God what had happened. He said, go sell the oil. Pay your debt. And you and your children live on the rest. You know, oil was a valuable commodity. And, you know, you come down and buy olive oil these days. It’s cheap. It wasn’t then. It would have been olive oil used for food, used for light. It was even a kind of fuel, if you will, because most of the lamps used olive oil. This miracle echoes what Christ would do when he fed a few thousand people with just a few loaves and fishes. And there’s a sidelight to that that we will reflect on a little later. The woman would have been really glad she was diligent in collecting those jars, because if she had not collected enough, guess where she would have been? In fact, she may have kicked herself for not getting more jars. They could have lived even better. But she didn’t just get enough to cover the immediate need. She got enough for her family to live on for a while. There’s an interesting little short one in Ecclesiastes that I’ve often heard quoted. It says, That’s Ecclesiastes 9, verse 10. And I’ve cited it many times in my life. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. Go all out. In her case, it turned out to be very good that she did. There will be a later case to the contrary. It fell on a day that Elisha passed to Shunem, and there was a great woman who lived there. And she constrained him to have a meal with them. It was so that as often as he passed by, he would turn in there to eat bread with them. And she said to her husband, look, I perceive this is a holy man of God who passes by us continually. He’s always through this area. Let’s make a little room, I pray you, along the wall. And let’s set for him there a bed and a table and a stool and a candlestick. And so it shall be that he comes by us. He will turn in here. She enjoyed having him. It meant a lot to her to have a man of God at her house. Well, it fell on a day that he came there. He turned into the chamber, and he had a nap. And he said to Gehazi, his servant, call this woman, this Shunammite. When he called her, she stood before him. And he said to Gehazi, now, why he didn’t talk to the woman every time? He talked to his servant, and his servant talked to people. I guess Elisha, I don’t know, was he shy? What was it? But he would always try to talk through an intermediary. So he said to Gehazi, speak to this woman and tell her, behold, you have been careful for us with all this care. What can I do for you? Would you be spoken for to the king or to the captain of the host? And she answers, no, I want to stay among my own people. And he said, well, what can I do for you? Well, Gehazi answered him and said, Well, to tell you the truth, she has no child, and her husband is old. Now, this was really important in that world at that time. And he said, Call her. And when he called her in, she stood in the door, and he said, About this season, according to the time of life, you shall embrace a son. Now, this really struck me when I read it, because the wording about this season, according to the time of life, is precisely the same thing that God told Abraham regarding the birth of Isaac. And I don’t know why the translators sail across the top of this thing, because the wording of it is really saying that at this holy day, in the spring, you shall embrace a son. Isaac appears to have been born… on the first day of Unleavened Bread, or on the Passover, because it was on a festival day, and it was in the spring. He said, by this time, give it a year, you’ll have a son. And she said, oh no, my Lord, you man of God, don’t lie to your handmaid. But she conceived and bear a son at the time that Elisha had said to her, according to the time of life, in the spring. When the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went out to his father to the reapers. And he said to his father, Oh, my head, my head. And he told the servants, Carry him to his mother. And when he had taken him and brought her in to his mother, he sat on her knees until noon, and then he died. He must have had something like a heat stroke. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God and shut the door on him and went out. She called her husband and said, “‘Send me one of the young men and one of the asses that I may run to the man of God and come again.’ And her husband said, what are you going there for today? It’s not a new moon. It’s not a Sabbath. It’s not a holy day. She said, it’s okay. So she saddled an ass and said to her servant, drive, go forward. Slack not your riding for me unless I tell you. So she went and came to the man of God to Mount Carmel. And it came to pass that when Elisha saw her way off and said to Gehazi, his servant, look, way over there, that’s that Shunammite woman. Run down there to meet her and ask her, Is it well with you? Is it well with your husband? Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well. That’s interesting because she apparently does not want to say to anyone what’s going on and what has happened to her son except directly to Elisha. Because after all, she didn’t even ask for a son. He gave her this son. It just told her it’s going to happen. And it happened. He was a miracle child. And now she’s trying to deal with this. Finally, she came to the man of God on the hill, caught him by the feet. Gehazi tried to push her away, and Elisha said, no, no, let her alone. Her soul is vexed within her, and the Lord has hid it from me and has not told me. Now, the whys and wherefores of these are interesting speculations all themselves, because God so often revealed to Elisha what was going on before somebody even showed up. And the woman said, Did I desire a son of my Lord? Did I not say, Don’t deceive me? At this point, Elisha knew what had happened. It was clear enough by her words. The action he took is in itself of considerable interest, and I’ll tell you what that means when I come back after this short word.
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Most Christians have no idea how the greatest of Jewish holidays became the greatest of Christian holy days. Ronald Dart’s second book, The Thread, God’s Appointments with History, is now available from Amazon.com or directly from BornToWin.net. Write to BornToWin, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44.
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Elisha may have been puzzled as to why God didn’t reveal this to him, but whenever the woman told him just this remark, didn’t I have to have a son? Didn’t I say don’t deceive me? Immediately he knew. So he said to Gehazi, dress yourself, take my staff in your hand, and get on the road. If you meet any man, don’t salute him. If any man salutes you, don’t even answer. Just get there and lay my staff on the face of the child. And the mother of the child said, As the Lord lives and as your soul lives, I’m not leaving you. So Elisha got up and followed her. Gehazi went on before them. He laid the staff upon the face of the child. Nothing happened. No voice, no hearing. So he went out to meet Elisha and told him, He said, The child has not been awakened. And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead, laid upon his bed. And he went in, therefore, and shut the door upon them two, and prayed to the Lord. And he went up, and he lay upon the child. He put his mouth upon the child’s mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, his hands upon his hands, and stretched himself upon the child. And the flesh of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, walked in the house back and forth a while, went up and did it again. And the child sneezed seven times and opened his eyes. It’s hard to know what he did. Was it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? I don’t think so. I think this child was graveyard dead. And Elisha brought him back to life. He called Gehazi and said, Call this woman. And she called her, and when she came to him, he said, Take up your son. And she went in and fell at his feet and bowed herself to the ground and took up her son and went out. Now, you know, one interesting thing about this story, you may be familiar with it from your old Bible readings, it mirrors the raising of Lazarus by Jesus. In that case, there was a delay of three days before Jesus showed up on the scene to raise Lazarus from the dead. There was probably something very like that in this case. It established in Lazarus’ case that he really was dead. It was not just a coma. And it appears to have been important for establishing that Jesus could raise the dead. Jesus followed on the heels of John the Baptist. Elisha followed on the heels of Elijah. And both of them raised a young man from the dead. When Elisha came down to Gilgal, there was a big drought in the land, and the sons of the prophets were sitting in front of him. And he said to his servants, Set on a great pot, and let’s cook up some soup for all these fellows. So one went out in the field to gather herbs and found a wild vine. He gathered some wild gourds, put his lap full of them, and came in and shredded them into the pot of porridge because they didn’t recognize these particular gourds. And they poured it out for the men to eat. And about the first one that tasted it cried out and said, Hold it, man of God, there’s death in the pot. He thought this is poison because of those mushrooms. They couldn’t eat it. He said, no, bring me some meal. And he cast the meal into the pot, and he said, now try it. And there was no harm in the pot. Just a simple little thing of removing poison, like poisonous mushrooms, poisonous gourds, was healed. There came then a man from another town and brought the man of God bread of first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and full ears of corn and the husk thereof. And he said, Give these to the people that they may eat. And his servant said, What? Can you expect me to set this before a hundred men? There was not enough. He said, give them something to eat, for thus saith the Lord, they shall eat and shall leave something. So he said it before them, and they ate, and there were leftovers, according to the word of the Lord. Once again, a reflection on Jesus feeding a large crowd of people with very little food. Now, I have to conclude that there’s a lesson in here somewhere for us. And one of them is, I guess, that God will take care of our needs one way or the other if we will just trust him. You have to maybe sometimes reach to find anything extra in here, but these are very simple. It’s just a simple matter of taking care of people. 2 Kings 5 brings a really interesting character on the scene of this story. There is a man, his name is Naaman. He’s captain of the host of the king of Syria. He was a great man with his master. He was honorable because by him, the Lord had given deliverance to Syria. He was also a mighty man in valor. He was a fighting man, but he had leprosy. Now, he is something like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in today’s military, except that he was still a fighting man. Nowadays, the chairmen of the Joint Chief were a little old to go into the field with a rifle. This fellow was still ready to fight. He was a general of the armies. He was five-star. Well, the Syrians had gone out by companies, and they brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she waited on Naaman’s wife. I presume we have here a little girl. She’s Israelite. And she said to her mistress, Oh, I wish to God my Lord were with the prophet that’s in Samaria. He would recover him of his leprosy. Now, you know, this man, I think, was a kind man as well as a fighter. This pattern, by the way, is surprisingly common among fighting men. He might have been something like General Tommy Franks, who planned and executed the war against Iraq. I really recommend his book, American Soldier. I don’t think many people have a really good vision of what the best military men are really like. This one, like so many generals, was an admirable man, really appreciated by the people he worked for, and even his wife’s little servant girl wanted him to be well. Well, somebody went in and told him and said, this is what this little maid of the land of Israel said. Well, the king of Syria got word of it. He says, go, go. I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So Naaman saddled up, departed, took with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 pieces of gold, and 10 changes of raiment. Now, that may not sound like a big deal to you, but in days when every bit of clothing anybody wore was handspun, it was expensive. He brought the letter to the king of Israel. Now, when this letter came in to the king of Israel, Behold, I have sent herewith Naaman my servant to you, so you can recover him of his leprosy. Well, this scared the king of Israel slapped to death. He said, What? I mean, who am I? What do you mean? Am I a god to kill and make alive that this man is sending this to me to recover a man of his leprosy? Consider, I pray you, and look, he is seeking a quarrel against me. His response was really pretty natural, because the whole idea originally was to send this man to Elisha. Well, they didn’t know any better. They sent him to the king of Israel and said, Well, I would like for you to recover this guy from his leprosy. And the king, of course, could do nothing about that. He had no idea what it meant, and it was not at all unheard of for a cause of war to be trumped up. But Elisha, the man of God, heard what had happened. He heard the king had rent his clothes, and he sent to the king saying, Why have you done? Why have you rent your clothes? Let him come to me, and he’s going to learn that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and his chariot. You’ve got this huge retinue sitting outside the door of the house, the modest house, I suspect, of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger to him. Didn’t even go outside. He said, go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall come again to you, and you will be clean. Didn’t even lay eyes on him. Naaman was furious. He went away and said, I thought surely he would come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God and strike his hand over the place and recover the leper. You know, I think… He must have expected something like what people expect today of television evangelists and television healers and all the big moves they make to heal people, knocking down whole rows of people when the power of the Spirit comes upon him. Nothing like that. He at least expected him to come out and say something, but he didn’t. And he said, the rivers of Damascus are better than all the waters of Israel. Why can’t I wash in them and be clean? He turned away and went away in an absolute rage. And one of his servants came near and spoke to him and said, My father, which is an interesting term for a man to use to the commanding general. My father, if the prophet had said to do some great thing, wouldn’t you have done it? If he told you to go down and take this city down, wouldn’t you have gone and done it? How much rather than he just said to you, wash and be clean. So he went down and he dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, just what he was told to do. And when he came up out of the water the seventh time, his flesh was like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. I would love to have seen his face when that happened. Think of it. Every time he went down out of the water and came back up, he looked at his hands and looked at his arms. And then he went down again and came back up and looked at his hands and looked at his arms. Nothing changed. And the seventh time he came up, And he was clean. You know, I really think the angels would have been sitting there watching this whole thing and would have laughed when they saw his face and his response to what happened to him. There’s another very important lesson that arises from this. I’ll tell you what that is. But first, grab a pencil and a pad. I want to give you some information, a phone number, and an address.
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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 Number 16. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Naaman, beginning on the first day of the rest of his life, now as a clean man, comes back to Elisha. With all of his company, the whole retinue, he came and stood before him. This time, he actually got to meet him. He said, Now therefore I pray you, take a blessing from your servant. And he said, No, as the Lord lives before whom I stand, I will receive none. And you know, when you think about this, this is the point of the whole thing. This came from God, not from Elisha. And for Elisha to have taken a gift on this occasion would have rejected that or would have denied it. He urged him. He said, No, I’m not going to take it. And Naaman said, Well, shall there not then, I pray you, be given your servant two mules’ burden of earth? For your servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods but unto the Lord. He wanted to take that dirt home and make him a place where he could make an offering to God. And then he went on to say, there is this one thing. In this thing, the Lord pardoned me that when my master goes into the house of Rimon to worship there and he leans on my hand and I bow myself in the house of Rimon, when I bow down in the house of Rimon, the Lord pardoned your servant in this thing. Now, a lot of hardliners about this time, legalists would have said, nope, can’t do that. You got to stand up straight. You cannot even go into that house with your Lord the King. Elisha wasn’t like that. He said, go in peace. So he departed from him. Now, I don’t think that Elisha gave him carte blanche to go into idle temperance. Basically, he didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. He said, go in peace, which, frankly, is a kind of tacit permission to do what it was that he wanted to do. But then, you see, it was something God had to pardon. Elisha didn’t really have the authority to pardon it or not pardon it. But the implication of the story, as told, is that God did look with mercy upon Naaman because his heart was with God, not with this God in the house of Rimen. However, as Naaman went on down the road, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God, said, Oh, good grief. My master has spared this Naaman, this Syrian, and not receiving of his hands what he brought to give. As the Lord lives, I will run after him. I’ll take something from him. So he followed after Naaman. And when Naaman saw him running after him, he got off his chariot to meet him and said, Is everything all right? He said, Everything’s fine. But my master has sent me saying, Oh, I’ve just had some men come from Mount Ephraim, sons of the prophets. Give them, I pray you, a talent of silver and two changes of garment. And Naaman said, Be content, take two talents. And he urged him and bound two talents of silver in two bags with two changes of garments and laid them upon two of his servants, and they carried them back ahead of him. He came to the tower, took them off their hand, bestowed them in the house. He let the men go, and they left. And he went in and stood before his master. And Elisha said to him, Where have you come from, Gehazi? He said, Your servant didn’t go anywhere. And Elisha said, Didn’t my heart go with you when the man turned again from his chariot to meet you? Is this any time to receive money, to receive garments and olive yards and vineyards and sheep and oxen and men’s servants and man-made servants? Is that all that we are about? The leprosy, therefore, of Naaman shall cleave to you and to your seed forever. And Gehazi went out of his presence a leper as white as snow. It’s a tragic lesson. The realization here that we’re not doing this for the money. We’re not doing this to get rich. And in fact, in doing what he did, and in lying to Naaman about what he did, the goodwill was destroyed. A very important thing that God wanted this man to take away from this encounter was lost forever and could never be regained. And the funny thing about this is that Elisha seems never to have wanted anything. He had a place to sleep, had clothes to wear, food to eat. God took care of him.
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He didn’t need any more. at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
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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.
