Elijah (Prophet)

• Elijah (Prophet)

135:6.3He came from the herds­men, like Amos. He was dressed like Eli­jah of old, and he thun­dered his ad­mo­ni­tions and poured forth his warn­ings in the “spirit and power of Eli­jah.” It is not sur­pris­ing that this strange preacher cre­ated a mighty stir through­out all Pales­tine as the trav­el­ers car­ried abroad the news of his preach­ing along the Jor­dan.

97:2.1In the tenth cen­tury be­fore Christ the He­brew na­tion be­came di­vided into two king­doms. In both of these po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions many truth teach­ers en­deav­ored to stem the re­ac­tionary tide of spir­i­tual deca­dence that had set in, and which con­tin­ued dis­as­trously af­ter the war of sep­a­ra­tion. But these ef­forts to ad­vance the He­braic re­li­gion did not pros­per un­til that de­ter­mined and fear­less war­rior for righ­teous­ness, Eli­jah, be­gan his teach­ing. Eli­jah re­stored to the north­ern king­dom a con­cept of God com­pa­ra­ble with that held in the days of Samuel. Eli­jah had lit­tle op­por­tu­nity to pre­sent an ad­vanced con­cept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been be­fore him, over­throw­ing the al­tars of Baal and de­mol­ish­ing the idols of false gods. And he car­ried for­ward his re­forms in the face of the op­po­si­tion of an idol­a­trous monarch; his task was even more gi­gan­tic and dif­fi­cult than that which Samuel had faced.

97:9.19New trou­ble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoeni­cian wife forged Ahab’s name to pa­pers di­rect­ing that Naboth’s land be con­fis­cated on the charge that he had blas­phemed the names of “Elo­him and the king.” He and his sons were promptly ex­e­cuted. The vig­or­ous Eli­jah ap­peared on the scene de­nounc­ing Ahab for the mur­der of the Naboths. Thus Eli­jah, one of the great­est of the proph­ets, be­gan his teach­ing as a de­fender of the old land mores as against the land-sell­ing at­ti­tude of the Baalim, against the at­tempt of the cities to dom­i­nate the coun­try. But the re­form did not suc­ceed un­til the coun­try land­lord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chief­tain Je­honadab to de­stroy the proph­ets (real es­tate agents) of Baal at Samaria.

123:5.12Naz­a­reth was one of the twenty-four priest cen­ters of the He­brew na­tion. But the Galilean priest­hood was more lib­eral in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional laws than were the Judean scribes and rab­bis. And at Naz­a­reth they were also more lib­eral re­gard­ing the ob­ser­vance of the Sab­bath. It was there­fore the cus­tom for Joseph to take Je­sus out for walks on Sab­bath af­ter­noons, one of their fa­vorite jaunts be­ing to climb the high hill near their home, from which they could ob­tain a panoramic view of all Gal­i­lee. To the north­west, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel run­ning down to the sea; and many times Je­sus heard his fa­ther re­late the story of Eli­jah, one of the first of that long line of He­brew proph­ets, who re­proved Ahab and ex­posed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Her­mon raised its snowy peak in ma­jes­tic splen­dor and mo­nop­o­lized the sky­line, al­most 3,000 feet of the up­per slopes glis­ten­ing white with per­pet­ual snow. Far to the east they could dis­cern the Jor­dan val­ley and, far be­yond, the rocky hills of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their mar­ble walls, they could see the Greco-Ro­man cities of the De­capo­lis, with their am­phithe­aters and pre­ten­tious tem­ples. And when they lin­gered to­ward the go­ing down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sail­ing ves­sels on the dis­tant Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

• adopted dress and method of Elijah

135:1.4When six­teen years old, John, as a re­sult of read­ing about Eli­jah, be­came greatly im­pressed with the prophet of Mount Carmel and de­cided to adopt his style of dress. From that day on John al­ways wore a hairy gar­ment with a leather gir­dle. At six­teen he was more than six feet tall and al­most full grown. With his flow­ing hair and pe­cu­liar mode of dress he was in­deed a pic­turesque youth. And his par­ents ex­pected great things of this their only son, a child of prom­ise and a Nazarite for life.

• adopted dress and method of Elijah
• held back 2 years by expectation of return of

135:4.2On re­turn­ing to En­gedi from his mother’s fu­neral, he pre­sented his flocks to the broth­er­hood and for a sea­son de­tached him­self from the out­side world while he fasted and prayed. John knew only of the old meth­ods of ap­proach to di­vin­ity; he knew only of the rec­ords of such as Eli­jah, Samuel, and Daniel. Eli­jah was his ideal of a prophet. Eli­jah was the first of the teach­ers of Is­rael to be re­garded as a prophet, and John truly be­lieved that he was to be the last of this long and il­lus­tri­ous line of the mes­sen­gers of heaven.

135:4.3For two and a half years John lived at En­gedi, and he per­suaded most of the broth­er­hood that “the end of the age was at hand”; that “the king­dom of heaven was about to ap­pear.” And all his early teach­ing was based upon the cur­rent Jew­ish idea and con­cept of the Mes­siah as the prom­ised de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish na­tion from the dom­i­na­tion of their gen­tile rulers.

• denied he was E.

135:4.4Through­out this pe­riod John read much in the sa­cred writ­ings which he found at the En­gedi home of the Nazarites. He was es­pe­cially im­pressed by Isa­iah and by Malachi, the last of the proph­ets up to that time. He read and reread the last five chap­ters of Isa­iah, and he be­lieved these prophe­cies. Then he would read in 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 to­ward the chil­dren and the hearts of the chil­dren to­ward their fa­thers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” And it was only this prom­ise of Malachi that Eli­jah would re­turn that de­terred John from go­ing forth to preach about the com­ing king­dom and to ex­hort his fel­low Jews to flee from the wrath to come. John was ripe for the procla­ma­tion of the mes­sage of the com­ing king­dom, but this ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing of Eli­jah held him back for more than two years. He knew he was not Eli­jah. What did Malachi mean? Was the prophecy lit­eral or fig­u­ra­tive? How could he know the truth? He fi­nally dared to think that, since the first of the proph­ets was called Eli­jah, so the last should be known, even­tu­ally, by the same name. Nev­er­the­less, he had doubts, doubts suf­fi­cient to pre­vent his ever call­ing him­self Eli­jah.

• adopted dress and method of Elijah

135:4.5It was the in­flu­ence of Eli­jah that caused John to adopt his meth­ods of di­rect and blunt as­sault upon the sins and vices of his con­tem­po­raries. He sought to dress like Eli­jah, and he en­deav­ored to talk like Eli­jah; in ev­ery out­ward as­pect he was like the olden prophet. He was just such a stal­wart and pic­turesque child of na­ture, just such a fear­less and dar­ing preacher of righ­teous­ness. John was not il­lit­er­ate, he did well know the Jew­ish sa­cred writ­ings, but he was hardly cul­tured. He was a clear thinker, a pow­er­ful speaker, and a fiery de­nun­ci­a­tor. He was hardly an ex­am­ple to his age, but he was an elo­quent re­buke.

• denied he was E.

135:9.4About three weeks af­ter Je­sus had left them, there ar­rived on the scene at Pella a new dep­u­ta­tion from the priests and Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem. They asked John di­rectly if he was Eli­jah or the prophet that Moses prom­ised; and when John said, “I am not,” they made bold to ask, “Are you the Mes­siah?” and John an­swered, “I am not.” Then said these men from Je­ru­sa­lem: “If you are not Eli­jah, nor the prophet, nor the Mes­siah, then why do you bap­tize the peo­ple and cre­ate all this stir?” And John replied: “It should be for those who have heard me and re­ceived my bap­tism to say who I am, but I de­clare to you that, while I bap­tize with wa­ter, there has been among us one who will re­turn to bap­tize you with the Holy Spirit.”

• Jesus referred to John as E.

158:2.2Pe­ter shud­dered at the thought of the Mas­ter’s dy­ing—it was too dis­agree­able an idea to en­ter­tain—and fear­ing that James or John might ask some ques­tion rel­a­tive to this state­ment, he thought best to start up a di­vert­ing con­ver­sa­tion and, not know­ing what else to talk about, gave ex­pres­sion to the first thought com­ing into his mind, which was: “Mas­ter, why is it that the scribes say that Eli­jah must first come be­fore the Mes­siah shall ap­pear?” And Je­sus, know­ing that Pe­ter sought to avoid ref­er­ence to his death and res­ur­rec­tion, an­swered: “Eli­jah in­deed comes first to pre­pare the way for the Son of Man, who must suf­fer many things and fi­nally be re­jected. But I tell you that Eli­jah has al­ready come, and they re­ceived him not but did to him what­so­ever they willed.” And then did the three apos­tles per­ceive that he re­ferred to John the Bap­tist as Eli­jah. Je­sus knew that, if they in­sisted on re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah, then must John be the Eli­jah of the prophecy.

97:3.6Eli­jah shifted the Yah­weh-Baal con­tro­versy from the land is­sue to the re­li­gious as­pect of He­brew and Ca­naan­ite ide­olo­gies. When Ahab mur­dered the Naboths in the in­trigue to get pos­ses­sion of their land, Eli­jah made a moral is­sue out of the olden land mores and launched his vig­or­ous cam­paign against the Ba­al­ites. This was also a fight of the coun­try folk against dom­i­na­tion by the cities. It was chiefly un­der Eli­jah that Yah­weh be­came Elo­him. The prophet be­gan as an agrar­ian re­former and ended up by ex­alt­ing De­ity. Baals were many, Yah­weh was one—mono­the­ism won over poly­the­ism.

45:4.1513. Eli­jah, a trans­lated soul of bril­liant spir­i­tual achieve­ment dur­ing the post-Ma­te­rial Son age.

158:1.8When the three had been fast asleep for about half an hour, they were sud­denly awak­ened by a near-by crack­ling sound, and much to their amaze­ment and con­ster­na­tion, on look­ing about them, they be­held Je­sus in in­ti­mate con­verse with two bril­liant be­ings clothed in the ha­bil­i­ments of the light of the ce­les­tial world. And Je­sus’ face and form shone with the lu­mi­nos­ity of a heav­enly light. These three con­versed in a strange lan­guage, but from cer­tain things said, Pe­ter er­ro­neously con­jec­tured that the be­ings with Je­sus were Moses and Eli­jah; in re­al­ity, they were Ga­briel and the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek. The phys­i­cal con­trol­lers had ar­ranged for the apos­tles to wit­ness this scene be­cause of Je­sus’ re­quest.

136:3.3Je­sus did not go into re­tire­ment for the pur­pose of fast­ing and for the af­flic­tion of his soul. He was not an as­cetic, and he came for­ever to de­stroy all such no­tions re­gard­ing the ap­proach to God. His rea­sons for seek­ing this re­tire­ment were en­tirely dif­fer­ent from those which had ac­tu­ated Moses and Eli­jah, and even John the Bap­tist. Je­sus was then wholly self-con­scious con­cern­ing his re­la­tion to the uni­verse of his mak­ing and also to the uni­verse of uni­verses, super­vised by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, his Fa­ther in heaven. He now fully re­called the be­stowal charge and its in­struc­tions ad­min­is­tered by his el­der brother, Im­manuel, ere he en­tered upon his Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. He now clearly and fully com­pre­hended all these far-flung re­la­tion­ships, and he de­sired to be away for a sea­son of quiet med­i­ta­tion so that he could think out the plans and de­cide upon the pro­ce­dures for the pros­e­cu­tion of his pub­lic labors in be­half of this world and for all other worlds in his lo­cal uni­verse.

97:9.20New life ap­peared as Je­hoash and his son Jer­oboam de­liv­ered Is­rael from its en­e­mies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gang­ster-no­bil­ity whose depre­da­tions ri­valed those of the Da­vidic dy­nasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The at­tempt to sup­press free­dom of speech led Eli­jah, Amos, and Hosea to be­gin their se­cret writ­ing, and this was the real be­gin­ning of the Jew­ish and Chris­tian Bibles.