Which Elijah?
Which Elijah?
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes." (Mal 4.5)
"And he (John the Baptist) will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah." (Lk 1.17)
"And if you are willing to accept it, he (John the Baptist) is the Elijah who was to come." (Mt 11.14)
"But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognise him, but have done to him everything they wished." (Mt 17.12)
"Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly." (Jas 5.17)
Far from being disrespectful, the title of this essay ("Which Elijah?") is in fact a plea for respect for that which is Biblical, valid and authentic. Christianity today has a very strong vein running through it, of rampant, unacknowledged idolatry. Texts are taken widely and wildly out of context as the "devout" fashion theological and spiritual opinions to their own tastes, rather than God's.
Apart from the Lord Himself, Elijah is that person who has suffered at the hands of such self-centred and superficial behaviour the most...and we (God's own People) are significantly and dangerously the poorer for that.
In the normal course of events, mention of the Prophet Elijah elicits from most saints a tableau featuring our man hosting a one-day, national revival, which incorporates calling down fire from Heaven, and then hacking a crowd of 450 false prophets of Baal to death. While all of this is the truth, it is an enormous and unhelpful caricature. Not only is this picture (recounted from the Scriptures though it be) hopelessly less than the sum of the prophet, it completely misses his foundations and core.
This convenient and lazy editing and abbreviation of the life of Elijah is responsible for two disasters,
(1) The destructive weirdos who pop-up with depressing regularity claiming to be Elijah.
(2) The "termite-ing" of the Church's foundations through the ongoing diminution and suppression of God's contemplative "stream".
So, will the real Elijah please stand up?...before the Church collapses under the sheer weight and shock of the divine and the diabolical upheavals of these Last Days. Because, before the "great and dreadful day" of Jesus' 2nd Advent, God is going to send us Elijah the prophet, and will we together be able to recognise, receive and become "him"?
"Now Elijah." (1 Ki 17.1)
"As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand." (1 Ki 17.1)
The world would say that Elijah just sprang "out of nowhere"! But with the eyes of faith, we "see" that the prophet came into King Ahab's court from a very particular place...standing still and standing fast before the Lord. Every act of Elijah's was the consequence of his being, which was "to pray with prayer". (Jas 5.17) In other words, he lived to pray. Prayer was his pre-eminent reason for living, and his prophetic words and deeds were consequential...they flowed out of and were empowered by that reservoir. Which is to say that Elijah was a contemplative, who lived in and served God out of that unique "stream" of Holy Spirit unction and power.
The German, Jewish scholar and martyr, Edith Stein (1891-1942), writing about Elijah as a "father" of Christian contemplatives says, "He stood before God's face because this was the eternal treasure for whose sake he gave up all earthly goods (Mt 13.44)...Elijah stands before God's face because all of his love belongs to the Lord...like the angels before the eternal throne, awaiting his sign, always ready to serve. He has no other will than the will of his Lord." (1)
To more fully and accurately comprehend Elijah (a contemplative who expressed his faith prophetically) we need also to understand his context...his prophetic world. I think that we glimpse this as he prepares to go to Heaven by farewelling his "scene" and milieu.
"The company of the prophets at Bethel came out to Elisha." (2 Ki 2.3)
"The company of the prophets at Jericho went up to Elisha." (2 Ki 2.5)
"Fifty men of the company of the prophets went and stood at a distance facing the place where Elijah and Elisha had stopped at the Jordan." (2 Ki 2.7)
I believe that it is completely within the bounds of probability that these "sons of the prophets" (KJV) were in fact communities or extended families (which included spouses and children - 2 Ki 4.1, 4.38, 6.1, 9.1) devoted to a life of prayer and consequent prophetic responsibility. Their genesis is shrouded in mystery,
"The Lord God came down in a cloud...and took of the Spirit that was upon Moses, and gave it unto the seventy elders...when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease." (Nu 11.25)
"And Saul sent messengers to take David: and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying ('to cause to bubble up') and Samuel standing as appointed over them, the Spirit of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied." (1 Sa 19.20-24)
(The common, modern-day idea that a "school of the prophets" can be convened for a weekend, and the fee-paying guests trained to prophesy, is not Biblical. It is an "uncovered" spiritual activity, and could lead to encounters with deceiving spirits!)
To my mind these "companies" or "schools" were undoubtedly the spiritual ancestors of the Jewish "Essene" (2) ("holy"..."reticent") communities. They dotted the "fringes" of Israel for about 200 years around the beginning of the First Millennium. Their history is shrouded in "inconclusive controversy", but most who have an interest agree that the Essene lifestyle quite closely resembled that of later Christian contemplative communities...a commitment to night-and-day prayer, manual labour, solitude and love of neighbour.
Might not one of these communities have been "home" to John the Baptist (God's Elijah for that Day of the Saviour's First Advent), who as a "child...lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel"? (Lk 1.80) Practically speaking, how did a little boy survive the earliest of maybe 20 years living out the back of nowhere? And spiritually, such an association would have been totally consistent with following in the footsteps of his "father" Elijah.
This usually "invisible track" of the Holy Spirit is what I call the contemplative continuum...God's "Third Stream". Through all ages it has been flowing; sometimes hidden from view; now and again (usually at a time of crisis for humanity) bursting out on to the surface of history. It has bequeathed us numerous, luminous marker-posts...the Desert Mothers and Fathers, Benedict of Nursia, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bruno of Cologne, Romuald of Ravenna, Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Therese of Lisieux, Charles de Foucauld, Roger of Taize.
Today in a village in France, every summer thousands of (mainly) young people build a tent city in the fields which surround a house of prayer...Taize. It's founder, Brother Roger, began to "build" this prayer house...this contemplative community...this company of the prophets...when at the age of sixteen he simply thought that a "few...responding in all lucidity to a call to community life and giving their life for Christ" could have an "impact on those around them".
Beyond any shadow of a doubt, I know that God has always put men and women on the earth whose lives are to be poured out praying and living in community. That is to be your work, your vocation, your calling, your ministry. You may be looking and looking, and trying so very hard and yet in vain to find that locus, habitat, "nest", place where you can do this. Do not ever give up!
Because there is now given by Heaven a double portion, a double grace for such a "project". There's an anointing for you to fulfill your own personal destiny to live to pray in a "family" of contemplatives...singles, married couples, families with children. And there's also an additional unction, enabling and empowering to accomplish God's call for His Church to become an authentic "house of prayer for all peoples" (Isa 56.7, Mt 21.13) for the Last Hour of this Age.
I believe that the key to this taking place is the creation of cell-like, little "monasteries" burning with peaceful ferocity in the heart (if possible) of every local church. The heat and light generated by these night-and-day, contemplative communards will incrementally revolutionise the Church; institution and organisation tenderly metamorphosing into the very Body of Christ...a corporate High Priest here on the earth "always living to make petition to God and intercede with Him and intervene for them...who come to God" through Jesus Christ. (Heb 7.25 Amp)
In the days of the antichrist Hitler, the Spirit of Christ moved in purifying opposition by re-calling the Church to the normalcy of "a well ordered and well regulated life (in community), hinging and pivot-ing upon prayer". That's the blueprint and the model for our days, the Last Days. (See www.thetribulationchurch.co.nz & www.revivalstreams.co.nz/books/)
The devil, flesh and world hate God's contemplative "steam"; it's the only "glue" which binds together the Church's local church and missions "currents", so liable to spring apart because of their very similarity. These enemies will come out in near ultimate fury against this imperative reformation of the Church into "a house of prayer", because this reconstitution of God's People both signals and practically spells their final and complete demise.
So, you will have to fight, and fight hard to build what you so clearly "see" with the eyes of faith. Throughout history, authentic reformers of the Church have learnt the hard way what "violence" will come their way when God's own beloved People discover "how drastic a change of life they themselves (are) expected to contribute to the process". (3)
Therefore, to strengthen your heart, be assured of this,
(1) A life of prayer is a valid occupation in the sight of the Lord. All such are Elijah and John the Baptist's "children", called to pray "with prayer"...to live to pray, and pray to live.
(2) The call to live in 24/7 community is likewise a legitimate response to the Gospel, especially for the contemplative-prophet. It is apostolic...a continuum which stretches back to Samuel and Elijah, through the days of the Church's infancy.
Of course every Christian has a calling to pray, and there have been wondrously prevailing pray-ers in every part of His Body throughout history. Likewise, we are all called to love the local church, and be ready at all times to be thrust out into the ever-white harvest fields. It is generally accepted too, that there are in our midst those who are especially appointed to be occupied and "employed" full-time as apostolic leaders, pastors, teachers and evangelists.
But now, at this crucial hour, will we be willing to also acknowledge, accept, receive and support these others...probably the least likely and impressive? Their "trade" is to learn with Mary that "only one thing is necessary...the good part, which shall not be taken away"; to be "seated at the Lord's feet listening to His word". (Lk 10.38-42)
Martha's sister Mary is seen by many as a "mother" of and to contemplatives. Sadly over the centuries her existence and witness has been drowned out and negated in Protestantism's pragmatic "kitchen", by Martha's distracted clattering of her pots and pans. Her complaint that "my sister has left me to do the work by myself" is sad, and fell on deaf ears too! She is unable (unwilling?) to see and accept that Mary is in fact "at work"; she is busy about her "Father's business". (Lk 2.49)
"Now the body is not made up of one part but of many...God has arranged the parts of the body; every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body...Those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable." (1 Co 12.14-26)
Beloved, this really is the Last Hour! And the Church is going to melt and dissolve in the unbelievable and unbearable heat of the Great Tribulation's fires...unless we "own" and embrace one another. We will all fall over and be blown away like so much chaff, unless all, from the most barn-storming apostle to the most reticent hermit, can call out to each other from their own particular "spheres of influence": "I see you...I believe in you...I need you!"
During the great 16th C Protestant Reformation in Europe, the reformer Martin Luther, and the contemplative Teresa of Avila, almost certainly viewed each other as being on opposing sides of that necessary revolution. But I am unwilling to accept this version of history as being final. I am positive that they have already met in Heaven, and I suspect that their being introduced by their mutual Lord and Saviour might have gone something like this,
"Teresa...I want you to meet the man who helped me reform My Church. And Martin, I want you to meet your sister. Her prayers sustained you in our great work. In the world's eyes she appears feeble and insignificant. But to Me, she and her 'children', are indispensable, essential, vital."
"But only one thing is necessary; and Mary has chosen for herself the best part of all, and she is not to be dragged away from it." (Lk 10.42)
(1) "On the History and Spirit of Carmel", quotidiana.org.
(2) The sources for historical information concerning the Essenes are usually deemed "scanty, coloured and unreliable". Nevertheless, in their day, they were one of the three active and dominant "streams" within Judaism...alongside the Sadducees and Pharisees.
(3) "The Waters of Siloe", Thomas Merton, London 1950.
