The Gospel of Matthew #20: Elijah’s Return

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

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Could Jesus Christ come tonight? Is it possible that you could walk out on your back porch sometime before bedtime and see a great light in the sky as Jesus and all the holy angels are returning to earth in great power and glory? Well, no. No, Christ won’t come tonight. Oh, I don’t mean that he couldn’t come if he decided he would come, but if we’re supposed to believe the Bible, then there are some things that are supposed to take place before Christ returns. What’s the point in Jesus giving his disciples all those signs of his impending return if he’s just going to brush them aside and come anyway? There have been times I have been suspicious that some preachers are afraid that we sinners will not repent unless we think the end is at hand. If we think, well, no, Christ isn’t going to come back for at least another year, well, I’ll plan on getting my repentance together and my act together in about 11 months. And so it’s tempting, let’s say, as a preacher to say, well, now you may not have that 11 months, and of course you may not. So I think that they think they should scare us a little bit about this. They surely scared me, I know, when I was just a boy. One night there was a very bright light in the northern sky, and I was sure Jesus was on the way. My pulse rate went up, and my breath began coming more quickly, and I watched, but he didn’t come. You know, there’s something that has to happen before Christ returns, unless He decides to change the plan and come anyway, but that doesn’t seem likely. There’s something that has to happen. Now, I certainly believe the return of Christ may be imminent, but not tonight. And the reason I think this is because of a prophecy back in Malachi. It’s in chapter 4 and verse 5, where God says to Malachi, “…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 hearts of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Now everyone that studies this knows that this great and dreadful day of the Lord is the end time day of the Lord, that is that period of time leading up to and finishing with the return of Jesus. Now, if I’m going to make the Bible my guide, I have to deal with this. If we’re just going to take it out of thin air, we can say anything we want to. But if the Bible is the authority, we have to consider what God told Malachi. Something, or perhaps someone, has to happen to this world just before the return of Christ. Elijah must come on the scene. But hold it. Isn’t Elijah dead? Oh, yeah. He’s been dead a very, very long time. Well, does this mean he’s going to be resurrected? I don’t think so. You see, Elijah was the great archetype of a certain kind of prophet. He was the austere, what shall we say, bad news prophet. There were prophets from time to time that had a little bit of good news. Most of them didn’t. But Elijah seems to really be bad news. He was bad news in his appearance, bad news in his tone of voice, bad news in his choice of words. He was one very abrupt man. The first speech you hear from him in the Bible, and indeed the last one you hear for about three and a half years is, As the Lord God lives before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain here except by my word. That’s all. And it didn’t rain for three and a half years. Now, he was the archetype of a certain kind of prophet, as I said. And Jesus said that a man named John the Baptist was the Elijah of his day. In fact, the angel that spoke to John’s father plainly identified John the Baptist with Elijah. In Luke, the first chapter, verse 13, the angel spoke to Zacharias, John’s father, when he told him in his old age he was going to beget a son, and his name would be called John. He said in verse 14, you will have joy and gladness, and a lot of people are going to be happy at his birth, for he’s going to be great in the sight of the Lord. He’ll drink neither wine nor strong drink, but he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn toward the Lord their God. His objective, his mission, will be to turn the children of Israel back to God. And he shall go before him. It doesn’t explain that, except the Old Testament context which Zacharias had to know, that the Him was the Messiah. He shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Note, John was not Elijah personally. He was the type of Elijah, one who came in the spirit and power of Elijah. So, you may ask, does that mean since John was Elijah that we have Elijah out of the way? And we don’t have to worry about that, that Jesus could come tonight because Elijah’s already been here. Sorry. Notice the phrase, the spirit and power of Elijah. Now we can argue that John was in the spirit of Elijah in that he had a similar attitude and approach. Both were men of the desert. Both of them were fearless in their condemnation of corruption in high places. Both of them were abrupt and plain spoken. But John did not in any way manifest the power of Elijah. Elijah was a killer. Sorry about that, but he was. After he called down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel that time, and all the people fell down and said, Oh, the Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God. He said, Gather all the priests of Baal together unto me. And he gathered them all together, and he killed every one of them, down to the last man. Elijah was a caller down of fire from heaven on at least three occasions. The first time was on Mount Carmel when a sacrifice was consumed. But the last two times, well, there was somebody who sent a platoon of soldiers after him to bring him in. And they called up to Elijah when they found him on a hillside and said, Man of God, come down. We’re going to take you in. And Elijah said, If I’m a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and destroy you and your fifty. Fire came down and turned them all into toast where they stood on their feet. That happened twice. So don’t tell me Elijah was not a killer. Elijah did away with rather a large number of human beings. Now, when they came and arrested John, they threw him in jail. John was taken by force, something that could not happen to Elijah. On those two occasions when they sent a platoon out to bring him in by violence, if necessary, they died. The third platoon that came out said, oh, man of God, let my life be precious in your sight, and I’m here on orders, and I don’t mean to hurt you. Elijah said, okay, I’ll go with you when he was ready and not before. So a very strong distinction between John and Elijah. And then Elijah called down a three-and-a-half-year drought, and nothing like that happened in connection with John the Baptist at all. So it would seem that we’re not through with Elijah yet in human history. There is to come yet another in the spirit and power of Elijah before the second coming of Christ. And in fact, if you read Malachi, the fourth chapter, you have no other conclusion but that the one he is really talking about, even though John is a type of this one, the one he is really talking about is the one to come just before Christ’s second coming. What about that guy? Well, later in the first century, a man named John, another man named John, fell into a vision and was carried forward into the final day of the Lord, the one that Malachi was talking about. In that vision, God revealed the future coming of two individuals whom he would fill with power who would be witnesses of him. The account is found in the book of Revelation, chapter 11, verse 3. God speaking says, I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. Sackcloth is an outward sign of humility. These guys are not arrogant, clothed in purple and scarlet, sitting up on a high throne somewhere else. These are men down in the dust. They’re men like Elijah, as a matter of fact. And their ministry is three and a half years. Remember that three and a half year drought that Elijah brought down? It goes on to say, These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth, which is a reference back to Zechariah the prophet, who looked ahead to these two individuals as well. Then it says, If any man will hurt them, fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemy. And if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.” Folks, this is the power of Elijah. He goes on to say, these have the power to shut heaven that it rain not in the days of their prophecy. How long is the days of their prophecy? Three and a half years. How long did Elijah bring the drought? Three and a half years. And they have power over waters to turn them to blood and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will. They’re going well beyond anything Elijah was going to do. Here, in these two individuals, we have both the spirit and power of Elijah. There are two of them, just as Elijah was usually accompanied by Elisha. They bring on a drought. They call down fire from heaven. And here is why I suggest that Jesus will not come tonight. There is not a hint that the three-and-a-half-year period of the work of Elijah has started. There’s nobody out there doing that work. It would be worldwide news if it were. Elijah, when he comes on the scene at the very time of the end, will be very, very hard to miss. There are, however, claimants to Elijah’s mission. I’ll talk about them when I come back after these words.

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Now, when you think about it for a moment, as important a character as Elijah is in end time prophecy, You have to know that there are going to be people who come along who will attempt to assume Elijah’s name and work. They often will speak of it as the mantle of Elijah because Elisha’s prayer, I mean his request of Elijah as Elijah was departing, was that he might have a double portion of Elijah’s spirit and that he might have the mantle of Elijah, which he did. And there are those today who would kind of like to claim that. Now, what is funny about John the Baptist is he made no such claim. In fact, he is the one person in the history of the world who had a claim to the work and the mantle of Elijah. And when they asked him, well, are you Elijah? He said, I am not. In fact, no one in his right mind would really want that job. And that tells you something about the people who try to claim it. I think I have personally encountered four or five Elijahs in my time, and maybe as many as a dozen of the two witnesses of Revelation 11. Now, if your math is any good at all, you’ve got to know there’s something wrong with this picture. I mean, you can’t have 11 of the two witnesses, and there’s not going to be but one Elijah, so somebody somewhere is lying or crazy. Now, when the real McCoy comes on the scene, the real one, the one that Malachi was really talking about, what’s going to be odd about him is, probably like John, he will not claim to be Elijah. He will just act in the spirit and the power of Elijah. And that’s when you’re going to suspect something. So, since no one is calling down fire from heaven right now, I would conclude that Elijah is not here yet. So you’ll understand what I’m saying. Let me make it plain. Elijah is not here, nor has he been here since John the Baptist. The person who ultimately may fulfill that role may be here, but he doesn’t know who he is. John the Baptist did not recognize the significance of his role. He said when they asked him, ìAre you Elijah?î ìNo, not me.î Whoever that person is right now, he is not the empowered Elijah of prophecy until he is endowed with that power. Now let me climb a little further out on the limb. Anyone making the personal claim to be Elijah is a fraud. A simple fraud. And you don’t need to take him seriously at all. So perhaps you can understand why I would suggest that Jesus will not come tonight. Soon, I hope, but not tonight. For the one, the voice crying in the wilderness, saying, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, the one in the Spirit, and the power of Elijah, is nowhere evident. Now, in the continuation of Matthew’s account, where Jesus has told his disciples who John the Baptist really was, he talked a bit about the frustration of the prophet’s work. Because I think, in fact, among the most frustrated people on the face of the earth have to be the prophets of God, the real ones. Jesus said, where into shall I liken this generation? What are they like? Well, it’s like children sitting in the markets and calling unto their fellows and saying, well, we’ve piped to you and you haven’t danced. We’ve mourned to you and you haven’t lamented. We don’t understand you. We laugh and you don’t laugh. We mourn and you don’t mourn. What’s the big deal here? For John, he said, came neither eating and drinking. And they say, well, he had a demon. There’s something wrong with this guy. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t drink, he fasts all the time, wears camel’s hair and lives in the desert. Then he says, you said that he had a demon. Then the Son of Man comes eating and drinking. And they say, behold, a man gluttonous and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified over children. By that, Jesus means, you can tell by the results. And he’s saying to these people, you know, it doesn’t make any difference what kind of a prophet I send to you. I send along a fellow who’s eating and drinking and living a normal life, and you won’t listen to him. You say, oh, he’s a glutton and a winebibber. So I say, fair enough. And then I send you a man who won’t drink and doesn’t eat and is a very abstemious man. And you say, oh, well, he must be demon-possessed. You can’t win with you people. So what Jesus in a way is saying to his disciples is we can forget about making an impact. We’ve got to do the job. The prophet has to speak. But the people are going to do what they’re going to do. And in most cases, they’re just not going to listen. And after he said that, then he began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works were done. He began to talk about them and to chastise them verbally. He said, woe unto you, Chorazin. Woe unto you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon. Now, these are Gentile cities out there. He said, if I had done in Tyre and Sidon what I have done here, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. I tell you what, it’s going to be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you. What a condemnation. He’s saying, you’re Israelites. I mean, here you have the promises of God, and the fathers are yours, and the covenants are yours. And I come to you, and I do mighty works, and you won’t hear them. We’re like children in the marketplace to you. If I had gone to Tyre, if I had gone to Sidon and done exactly the same thing, those people would have repented in sackcloth and ashes and would have turned to God with all their heart. There are two very important things to notice, I think, out of this passage. The first is that mighty works do not seem to impress people very much. I would have thought that if you performed a miracle that people would flock after you. Perversely, and this is what’s really weird, people will flock after the false prophet because of his miracles, and then they’ll ignore Jesus himself even though he’s performing miracles. Do yourself a favor and think about that for a moment. What you’re learning from this passage is that miracles and signs turn out to be more effective in leading people astray than in leading people to God. It seems that what God is looking for is faith, and faith doesn’t have to see to believe. The second thing of interest in this passage is that there are levels of tolerance in the day of judgment. Everybody comes up in the day of judgment isn’t treated quite the same. And that rotten, wicked people may find mercy in that day is in this as well, and that’s striking. Because generally speaking, you figure people that bad are done for. Well, he says, no, there will be a level of toleration for Sodom, for Tyre, for Sidon in that day. And apparently, some people who think they are righteous may not find so much tolerance at all. He goes on to say, Now, you remember Sodom, don’t you? the city that gave its name to sodomy, the city that was so wicked that God himself had to come down and see for himself what the circumstances were. It is the only place on the face of this earth, it seems, that really got so bad that God personally cauterized the earth where Sodom had been, burned it, sealed it off to where it could never be of any life there again. Now, he says that if the mighty works that I have done in Capernaum had been done in Sodom, Sodom would have stayed to this day. They would have repented as bad as they were. I guess there ought to be some encouragement in that in a way, that if we are able to find faith, if we are able to find a way to trust in God, however bad we have been is not important. We can find tolerance. We can find forgiveness and mercy with God. He went on to say, I say unto you, It will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. So the men of Sodom, who died in that great fire, are going to stand before God again in judgment and are going to find some level, however small, of toleration before God, and they will find more tolerance than the cities of Judea, where there were righteous people in their own eyes, Find more tolerance in those cities in the Judgment Day. Now, that’s amazing to consider. But at the same time, it’s profoundly encouraging to know that there’s that much mercy with God. Think about that, and I’ll be right back.

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At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hid these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed good in your sight. You know, I really think we often make faith much too complicated. When it comes time to consider all these great things about prophecy and prophets and so forth, we can construct some of the most elaborate and complicated arguments you can ever imagine. But it’s really pretty simple when you get right down to it. It’s the law of God and obedience and power and spirit. You know, if you have children, you are very blessed because you can learn a great deal about faith from your children. God says, the things I’m talking about here, the things I really want you to understand are things that children can deal with. And I want you to deal with them like children would. Simple and straightforward. So when I say you can learn faith from your children, try this. Teach your children to pray. And every night before you go to bed, pray with them. You pray a little bit out loud, and then let your children pray to their heart’s content. I think you will find that the very little ones begin to take prayer very seriously. They say, you tell them God hears them when they pray, and they believe you. They just say, well, if your dad says so, then God hears me. And so they’ll talk to God, and they’ll make their blessings all the way up one side of your street and down the other side of your street, and they’ll remember Grandma and Grandpa, and they’ll just ask God for the things that they want and that they hope for. and that they need. And I don’t know what to make of it, but I do know this, that Jesus took special interest in children. He loved them dearly, wanted them to come to him. Even when his disciples thought he should be too busy for children, he says, go out of the way, let these children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. And since Jesus came to reveal the Father, I think he must look at things pretty much the same way. So maybe we would all be better advised to spend a little more time with children, learning about faith from children. We think it’s our job to teach them. We have Sunday school, Sabbath school, and we get the children in, we sit them around, we teach the children out of the Bible. Maybe, just maybe, we ought to be learning a little bit from the children at the same time. Jesus went on in verse 27 to say, “…all things are delivered unto me of my Father.” No man knows the Son except the Father, and neither knows any man the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. You know, we didn’t know much about the Father until Jesus came and said, I’ve come to show you about the Father. And he said, Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Now, in the context of what Jesus is saying, this is a very encouraging and interesting thing that he is saying here. Because so often religion is made to be something very difficult and very high and very lofty and very burdensome in many ways. And then here comes Jesus saying, look at the children. Suffer little children to come unto me. Of such is the kingdom of heaven. God has hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and he reveals them to babes. Well, then I guess I had better be more like babes if I want to understand the things of God. And here’s Jesus who says, I didn’t ride into town on a white horse. I came in meek and lowly and riding up on a jackass. So here is our king who presents himself in a very modest style, not regal, not chariot-born, not in a great litter carried by all kinds of men, but an ordinary guy, either walking or riding on an ass, and he says, My yoke, the things that I’m going to require of you are easy, and my burden is light. Now, the 12th chapter of Matthew following, he actually rolls into an interesting illustration of that. At that time, Jesus and his disciples were walking through the fields of corn on the Sabbath day, and they were hungry, and they began to eat the ears of corn. Just grabbed a handful and rubbed it between their hands and popped it in their mouth. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, Look, your disciples are doing that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But you go back and look at the Sabbath commandment in Exodus 20, and you don’t find any such prohibition there. It says you’re not to do any work. The disciples didn’t consider it was work to grab a handful of food and eat it. And Jesus said to them, Look, don’t you understand what David did when he was hungry and they that were with him? How he entered into the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat? It wasn’t lawful for them that are with him, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the law how that on the Sabbath day the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? Don’t you understand that there can be exceptions to law from time to time? That the law was made for man, not man for the law. Man wasn’t created to be obedient to the law. The law was created to show man the difference between right and wrong. The Pharisees had built up an incredibly strict, big structure of obedience to God in all of its details. And Jesus said, look, don’t you know that in this place is one greater than the temple? He’s talking about himself. And if you had known what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would have not condemned the guiltless. He said, my disciples have done nothing wrong. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day. Now, I hate to disturb your composure on this, but you know, if you’re talking about the Lord’s day, from a biblical point of view, you’re not talking about Sunday. You’re talking about the Sabbath. Yeah, the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. So, until next time, this is Ronald Dart reminding you… Remember the Sabbath day.

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