Latest / truthunedited / THE REAL REASON GOD TOOK ELIJAH ALIVE TO HEAVEN
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Every human being who has ever lived has died.
- 0:03Speaker 2: Every prophet, every king, every priest God ever raised up
- 0:08Speaker 2: eventually closed their eyes and stopped breathing. That is the
- 0:13Speaker 2: single unbroken rule of human existence since the Garden of Eden.
- 0:18Speaker 2: But one man broke that rule, and the way he
- 0:21Speaker 2: left this earth was not peaceful. It was not gentle.
- 0:26Speaker 2: It was violent. The chariot of fire that we were
- 0:29Speaker 2: taught about in Sunday school did not carry him to heaven.
- 0:33Speaker 2: Read the text carefully. The chariot appeared and separated him
- 0:38Speaker 2: from the man standing next to him. Then a supernatural
- 0:42Speaker 2: vortex of wind and fire seized him and ripped him
- 0:46Speaker 2: off the surface of the earth. The man who witnessed
- 0:49Speaker 2: it screamed and tore his own clothes apart.
- 0:53Speaker 1: His name was Elijah.
- 0:55Speaker 2: And what happened to him on the banks of the
- 0:57Speaker 2: Jordan River is one of the most terrifying, misunderstood events
- 1:02Speaker 2: in the entire Bible. Today, we are going to uncover
- 1:05Speaker 2: what actually happened that day, why God shattered the laws
- 1:09Speaker 2: of human biology for this one man, and the ancient
- 1:13Speaker 2: prophecies that say he is coming back. Before we meet
- 1:17Speaker 2: the villain, we have to meet the weapon God sent
- 1:20Speaker 2: to destroy her. And this is where the story becomes
- 1:24Speaker 2: deeply strange. Moses was raised in the palace of Pharaoh.
- 1:28Speaker 2: David was anointed by Samuel as a boy and groomed
- 1:32Speaker 2: to become king. Solomon was born into royalty. Every major
- 1:37Speaker 2: figure in the Bible has a detailed origin story, a genealogy,
- 1:42Speaker 2: and a family. Elijah has none. The Bible introduces him
- 1:47Speaker 2: in 1 Kings chapter 17 with a single, blunt sentence. Now,
- 1:52Speaker 2: Elijah the Tishbite. from Tishbe in Gilead. And then, without
- 1:57Speaker 2: any introduction, without any backstory, without even naming his father
- 2:02Speaker 2: or identifying his tribe, he immediately speaks a curse of
- 2:06Speaker 2: total drought over King Ahab's head. He simply appears out
- 2:11Speaker 2: of the desert wilderness of Gilead, one of the most rugged, lawless,
- 2:15Speaker 2: remote regions in all of Israel, and walks straight into
- 2:19Speaker 2: the throne room of the most powerful king in the nations.
- 2:23Speaker 2: This is not a polished priest or a royal prophet.
- 2:27Speaker 2: This is a wild man from the backwater frontier. Picture
- 2:32Speaker 2: a rugged, dust-covered figure in animal skins and a leather
- 2:35Speaker 2: belt standing in a marble palace dripping with Phoenician luxury
- 2:40Speaker 2: and telling the king directly to his face, As the
- 2:44Speaker 2: Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there
- 2:48Speaker 2: shall be neither dew nor rain these years except at
- 2:52Speaker 2: my word. Then he vanishes. For three and a half years,
- 2:56Speaker 2: no one can find him. Ahab sends search parties to
- 3:01Speaker 2: every neighboring kingdom. They all come back empty. God has
- 3:06Speaker 2: hidden his operative by a brook in the wilderness, fed
- 3:09Speaker 2: by ravens who bring him bread and meat twice a day.
- 3:13Speaker 2: When the brook dries up, God moves him to a
- 3:16Speaker 2: widow's house in Zarephath, deep inside enemy territory. in Jezebel's
- 3:23Speaker 2: own homeland of Phoenicia. He is untraceable. God did not
- 3:28Speaker 2: send a diplomat. He did not send an army. He
- 3:32Speaker 2: sent a ghost, an untraceable, unaffiliated, rugged desert operative with
- 3:37Speaker 2: no political connections, no family to threaten, and no institutional loyalty.
- 3:43Speaker 2: Elijah was God's asymmetric warfare weapon designed to be impossible
- 3:49Speaker 2: to locate, impossible to buy, and impossible to stop. The
- 3:54Speaker 2: northern kingdom of Israel in the year 870 before Christ
- 3:58Speaker 2: was not a nation that had gradually drifted from God.
- 4:02Speaker 2: This was a suffocating, paranoid police state that had been
- 4:06Speaker 2: systematically redesigned from the throne down to worship foreign deities.
- 4:11Speaker 2: King Ahab sat on the throne, and the Bible delivers
- 4:15Speaker 2: one of its most devastating verdicts about any ruler in
- 4:18Speaker 2: its history. 1 Kings chapter 16 says Ahab did more
- 4:23Speaker 2: to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than
- 4:26Speaker 2: all the kings of Israel before him, not more than most,
- 4:30Speaker 2: more than all of them combined. But Ahab was not
- 4:34Speaker 2: the real architect of Israel's spiritual annihilation. The true threat
- 4:39Speaker 2: was the woman standing beside him. Jezebel was a Phoenician princess,
- 4:44Speaker 2: daughter of Ethbal, king of the Sidonians, a man whose
- 4:49Speaker 2: name literally means with Baal. She did not marry into
- 4:54Speaker 2: Israel's faith. She dismantled it. She weaponized the entire apparatus
- 4:59Speaker 2: of government to enforce Baal worship and launched a state-sponsored
- 5:04Speaker 2: extermination campaign against every prophet of the Lord in the land.
- 5:09Speaker 2: A man named Obadiah, a high-ranking palace official, was living
- 5:14Speaker 2: a terrifying double life. In the dead of night, While
- 5:18Speaker 2: Jezebel slept down the royal corridor, Obadiah smuggled bread and
- 5:23Speaker 2: water to 100 prophets hidden in damp, dark caves, keeping
- 5:28Speaker 2: them alive while royal death squads hunted.
- 5:31Speaker 1: Them by day.
- 5:33Speaker 2: That is how total her program was. To truly understand
- 5:37Speaker 2: why God sent Elijah and why fire from heaven was justified,
- 5:42Speaker 2: you must understand what Baal worship actually demanded. This was
- 5:47Speaker 2: not incense and chanting. Archaeological excavations across the ancient Near East,
- 5:53Speaker 2: at Carthage, Tyre, and throughout Phoenicia, have uncovered the remains
- 5:58Speaker 2: of tophets, sacred precincts filled with the charred bones of infants.
- 6:04Speaker 1: The worship of Baal.
- 6:06Speaker 2: But the darkest practice was the sacrifice of children by fire.
- 6:12Speaker 2: Ancient sources describe hollow bronze statues heated from the inside
- 6:17Speaker 2: until the outstretched metal arms glowed red. Priests placed living
- 6:22Speaker 2: infants onto the searing hands of the idol. Drums were
- 6:26Speaker 2: beaten furiously during the ceremony, not for worship, but to
- 6:30Speaker 2: drown out the screaming. Jezebel imported 450 prophets of Baal
- 6:34Speaker 2: and 400 prophets of Asherah. She installed this entire system,
- 6:42Speaker 2: including the sacrifice of children by fire, into the heart
- 6:47Speaker 2: of God's covenant nation. Every trace of Yahweh worship was
- 6:52Speaker 2: being systematically erased. Into this empire of unspeakable darkness, this
- 6:58Speaker 2: nation drowning in the blood of its own children, God
- 7:01Speaker 2: deployed the ghost from Gilead. And the confrontation that was
- 7:05Speaker 2: about to happen on a remote mountain overlooking the Mediterranean
- 7:09Speaker 2: Sea would be the single most dramatic event in the
- 7:13Speaker 2: history of the Old Testament. Elijah resurfaces after three and
- 7:18Speaker 2: a half years of hiding. He walks directly to King
- 7:21Speaker 2: Ahab and issues the most audacious challenge in biblical history.
- 7:26Speaker 2: Gather your 450 prophets of Baal. Bring them to Mount Carmel.
- 7:32Speaker 2: Two altars, two sacrifices, no fire. The God who answers
- 7:38Speaker 2: by fire He is God. The entire nation assembles on
- 7:42Speaker 2: the mountain. The prophets of Baal go first. From morning
- 7:47Speaker 2: until the time of the evening sacrifice, nearly 12 straight hours,
- 7:50Speaker 2: 450 men scream, dance, and slash their own bodies with
- 7:56Speaker 2: swords and spears until blood runs down their skin and
- 8:00Speaker 2: pools on the stone beneath them. They perform frantic rituals
- 8:04Speaker 2: around their altar in the scorching heat.
- 8:07Speaker 1: Their voices go hoarse.
- 8:09Speaker 2: Their energy drains. Their altar sits cold, silent. Dead wood
- 8:15Speaker 2: on dead stone.
- 8:16Speaker 1: Nothing happens.
- 8:18Speaker 2: Elijah begins to mock them openly in front of the
- 8:20Speaker 2: entire nation.
- 8:22Speaker 1: Shout louder. Surely he is a god.
- 8:25Speaker 2: Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling.
- 8:30Speaker 2: Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened. He is
- 8:34Speaker 2: publicly humiliating the entire religious infrastructure of the kingdom. and
- 8:38Speaker 2: no one can stop him because their God has not answered.
- 8:43Speaker 2: Then Elijah steps forward. He rebuilds the broken altar of
- 8:47Speaker 2: the Lord using twelve stones, one for each tribe of Israel.
- 8:52Speaker 2: He arranges the wood. He places the bull on top.
- 8:56Speaker 2: And then he does something that defies all rational explanation.
- 9:01Speaker 2: He orders the people to drench everything with water. Four
- 9:05Speaker 2: large jars of poured over the sacrifice and the altar.
- 9:10Speaker 1: Then again. Then a third time.
- 9:13Speaker 2: Twelve massive jars of water. Now stop and consider this.
- 9:18Speaker 2: Israel has been in an apocalyptic drought for three and
- 9:21Speaker 2: a half years. Rivers have dried up. Crops have failed.
- 9:25Speaker 2: Livestock is dying. Water is more precious than gold. And
- 9:30Speaker 2: Elijah is commanding them to haul what must have been
- 9:33Speaker 2: hundreds of liters of water. likely carried in agonizing, back-breaking
- 9:38Speaker 2: trips up the steep slopes of Mount Carmel, from cisterns
- 9:42Speaker 2: or the distant Mediterranean coast, and pour it over a sacrifice.
- 9:47Speaker 2: Every single jar poured is a defiant act against common sense.
- 9:52Speaker 2: The trench around the altar overflows. The wood is soaked through.
- 9:57Speaker 2: The stone is drenched. He has made it physically, chemically,
- 10:01Speaker 2: impossibly resistant to fire.
- 10:04Speaker 1: Elijah prays one prayer. It is calm. It is measured.
- 10:09Speaker 2: It is barely a paragraph long, and fire falls from heaven.
- 10:13Speaker 2: It does not simply ignite the wood. The fire consumes
- 10:17Speaker 2: the sacrifice. The wood the twelve stones, the soil beneath them,
- 10:23Speaker 2: and vaporizes every drop of water in the trench. The
- 10:27Speaker 2: blinding flash of divine power descends and annihilates everything on
- 10:31Speaker 2: that altar down to the bedrock. The people collapse on
- 10:35Speaker 2: their faces and scream the words that echo across the centuries.
- 10:40Speaker 2: The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God.
- 10:45Speaker 2: Elijah gives one final order. Seize the prophets of Baal.
- 10:50Speaker 2: Let not one of them escape. All 450 are taken
- 10:54Speaker 2: down to the brook Kishon and executed. This is the
- 10:58Speaker 2: single greatest moment of spiritual victory in the history of
- 11:01Speaker 2: the northern kingdom. Elijah stands on that mountain as the
- 11:05Speaker 2: most powerful human being in the nation. He has just
- 11:08Speaker 2: commanded fire that devoured stone and water.
- 11:12Speaker 1: He is untouchable. He is invincible.
- 11:15Speaker 2: But spiritual adrenaline is a dangerous drug. And the psychological
- 11:19Speaker 2: crash that is coming in the next 24 hours will
- 11:23Speaker 2: be so catastrophic that this same man, the man who
- 11:27Speaker 2: just called down the wrath of God Almighty, will be
- 11:30Speaker 2: found begging to die under a desert bush. The news
- 11:34Speaker 2: reaches the palace in Jezreel. Ahab tells Jezebel everything. And
- 11:40Speaker 2: Jezebel does not panic. She does not weep. She does
- 11:43Speaker 2: not flee. She sends one not weep. She does not flee.
- 11:49Speaker 2: She sends one messenger with one sentence. May the gods
- 11:53Speaker 2: deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by
- 11:56Speaker 2: this time tomorrow I do not make your life like
- 11:59Speaker 2: that of one of them. She does not send soldiers.
- 12:03Speaker 2: She sends words. This is a master class in psychological warfare.
- 12:08Speaker 2: She knows the mind of a man who has just
- 12:11Speaker 2: burned every last ounce of adrenaline, cortisol, and emotional reserve
- 12:16Speaker 2: is more fragile than glass. She does not need to
- 12:20Speaker 2: kill him. She only needs to make him believe she can.
- 12:25Speaker 1: And it works.
- 12:26Speaker 2: Elijah snaps. The man who stood alone against 450 prophets
- 12:32Speaker 2: and called fire from the sky runs. He runs over
- 12:36Speaker 2: a hundred miles south, past the borders of Judah, deep
- 12:40Speaker 2: into the wilderness near Beersheba. He leaves his servant behind,
- 12:45Speaker 2: He walks alone for another full day into the empty,
- 12:49Speaker 2: scorching desert. He finds a single broom tree, a miserable,
- 12:54Speaker 2: scraggly bush barely taller than his own shoulders, collapses under
- 12:58Speaker 2: its thin shade, and prays the most gut-wrenching prayer in
- 13:02Speaker 2: the entire Old Testament. I have had enough, Lord. Take
- 13:07Speaker 2: my life. I am no better than my ancestors. He
- 13:11Speaker 2: is not simply tired. He is suicidal. He wants to
- 13:15Speaker 2: die in the dirt, anonymous and forgotten, in the middle
- 13:18Speaker 2: of nowhere. God's response to Elijah's suicidal crisis is the
- 13:24Speaker 2: most stunning, overlooked detail in the entire Bible. There is
- 13:29Speaker 2: no rebuke, no lecture about faith, no have more faith
- 13:34Speaker 2: or stop being weak. God sends an angel, and the
- 13:38Speaker 2: angel does exactly two things— He bakes him warm bread
- 13:43Speaker 2: on hot coals and sets a jar of cool water
- 13:46Speaker 2: beside his head. Then he lets him sleep. Elijah eats, drinks,
- 13:51Speaker 2: and falls back asleep. The angel comes a second time.
- 13:56Speaker 2: Get up and eat, for the journey is too great
- 13:59Speaker 2: for you. God diagnosed his most powerful prophet's spiritual crisis
- 14:04Speaker 2: as a physical collapse, dehydration, malnutrition. Sleep deprivation after running
- 14:10Speaker 2: a hundred miles on pure adrenaline and terror. God did
- 14:15Speaker 2: not address his theology. He addressed his biology. Before God
- 14:20Speaker 2: spoke a single word about mission or purpose, he fed
- 14:23Speaker 2: him and put him to bed.
- 14:26Speaker 1: Twice.
- 14:27Speaker 2: The creator of the universe looked at his broken servant
- 14:30Speaker 2: and said, You are not faithless.
- 14:33Speaker 1: You are exhausted.
- 14:35Speaker 2: Eat something.
- 14:36Speaker 1: Sleep. We will talk after.
- 14:39Speaker 2: But here is the detail that changes everything about this story.
- 14:42Speaker 2: When Elijah sat under that bush and begged God to
- 14:46Speaker 2: take his life, God completely ignored that prayer. Not because
- 14:50Speaker 2: he was angry, not because he was not listening, but
- 14:54Speaker 2: because God had already made a decision about Elijah that
- 14:57Speaker 2: would shatter every law of human existence. God refused to
- 15:02Speaker 2: let Elijah die in that desert because God had already
- 15:05Speaker 2: decided that Elijah was never going to die at all.
- 15:09Speaker 2: the wilderness season passes. God speaks to Elijah in a still,
- 15:14Speaker 2: small voice on Mount Horeb. He anoints Elisha as his successor.
- 15:19Speaker 2: The mission is renewed. But now Elijah knows that his
- 15:23Speaker 2: time on earth is finished. And so he takes his
- 15:27Speaker 2: final walk, not alone, but with Elisha at his side.
- 15:32Speaker 2: Three times during this journey, Elijah turns to Elisha and
- 15:36Speaker 2: tells him to stay behind. Stay here, The Lord has
- 15:40Speaker 2: sent me to Bethel.
- 15:41Speaker 1: Stay here.
- 15:42Speaker 2: The Lord has sent me to Jericho. Stay here. The
- 15:46Speaker 2: Lord has sent me to the Jordan. And three times,
- 15:50Speaker 2: Elisha refuses with the same fierce declaration. As surely as
- 15:55Speaker 2: the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will
- 15:58Speaker 2: not leave you. They walk from Gilgal to Bethel to
- 16:03Speaker 2: Jericho to the Jordan River. At every stop along the way,
- 16:07Speaker 2: Groups from the sons of the prophets approach Elisha quietly
- 16:11Speaker 2: and whisper the same haunting question. Do you know that
- 16:15Speaker 2: the Lord is going to take your master from you today?
- 16:18Speaker 2: Elisha answers every time with the same terse reply, Yes,
- 16:23Speaker 2: I know, so be quiet. The entire prophetic community of
- 16:28Speaker 2: Israel knows that something unprecedented is about to happen. The
- 16:33Speaker 2: air is thick with the weight of finality. They reach
- 16:37Speaker 2: the Jordan River. Elijah takes his cloak, rolls it up,
- 16:41Speaker 2: and strikes the water. The river parts. The two men
- 16:45Speaker 2: cross on dry ground. This is not a coincidence, and
- 16:49Speaker 2: it is not a small detail. This is a deliberate
- 16:53Speaker 2: divine echo of Moses parting the Red Sea and Joshua
- 16:57Speaker 2: parting the Jordan. God is staging Elijah's final moments on
- 17:02Speaker 2: the same ground and with the same power as the
- 17:05Speaker 2: two greatest leaders in Israel's history. This is not a
- 17:09Speaker 2: quiet exit. This is a coronation disguised as a farewell.
- 17:14Speaker 2: And then it happens. As they are walking along and
- 17:17Speaker 2: talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of
- 17:21Speaker 2: fire appear and separate the two of them, and Elijah
- 17:24Speaker 2: goes up to heaven in a whirlwind. Read that passage
- 17:28Speaker 2: again carefully. The chariot of fire appeared and separated the
- 17:32Speaker 2: two men. It did not carry Elijah. It did not
- 17:35Speaker 2: scoop him up and fly him into the clouds. The
- 17:38Speaker 2: chariot was an angelic escort, a divine military unit creating
- 17:43Speaker 2: a barrier of fire between the mortal world and the
- 17:46Speaker 2: raw power of God about to be unleashed. A perimeter,
- 17:51Speaker 2: a boundary, a wall of light and fire between what
- 17:55Speaker 2: is human and what is divine. The Bible does not
- 17:59Speaker 2: describe this event like a fairy tale. It describes it
- 18:02Speaker 2: like a military extraction. Centuries later, the prophet Ezekiel would
- 18:07Speaker 2: witness a similar phenomenon, the famous Merkabah vision of chapter 1.
- 18:13Speaker 2: Beings of fire, wheels of light spinning inside other wheels,
- 18:18Speaker 2: eyes covering every surface, an atmospheric disturbance so violent it
- 18:23Speaker 2: sounded like the roar of mighty waters and the thunder
- 18:27Speaker 2: of an army. These are not isolated metaphors. They are
- 18:31Speaker 2: the Bible's consistent, cross-referenced descriptions of how God's angelic forces
- 18:37Speaker 2: operate when they breach our physical dimension. Then the whirlwind comes.
- 18:42Speaker 2: Then the whirlwind comes. A violent supernatural vortex of divine
- 18:49Speaker 2: power seizes Elijah and pulls him upward, off the surface
- 18:54Speaker 2: of the earth, out of our physical dimension, in full
- 18:58Speaker 2: view of Elisha below. Elisha watches his master, his spiritual father,
- 19:04Speaker 2: ripped from the earth by the terrifying power of the
- 19:07Speaker 2: living God, and he screams, My father!
- 19:11Speaker 1: My father!
- 19:12Speaker 2: The chariots and horsemen of Israel. Then he tears his
- 19:16Speaker 2: own clothes in two. Jesus himself said in John chapter
- 19:21Speaker 2: 3 that no one has ascended into heaven except he
- 19:24Speaker 2: who came down from heaven. the ancient Hebrew worldview understood
- 19:29Speaker 2: three heavens. The first is the sky and atmosphere. The
- 19:34Speaker 2: second is outer space, the realm of stars. The third
- 19:38Speaker 2: is the throne room of God, the spiritual dimension Paul
- 19:43Speaker 2: references in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Elijah was translated, removed
- 19:49Speaker 2: from our physical dimension, and preserved by God in a
- 19:52Speaker 2: glorified state, held outside of time until God needed him again.
- 19:58Speaker 2: He did not float into the sky. He was extracted
- 20:02Speaker 2: from the natural order entirely. After the whirlwind, silence. Total,
- 20:08Speaker 2: absolute silence. Elijah vanishes from the biblical narrative, and for
- 20:13Speaker 2: 900 years there is not a single word, no vision,
- 20:18Speaker 2: no appearance, no prophecy about where he is or what
- 20:22Speaker 2: has happened to him.
- 20:24Speaker 1: Nothing.
- 20:25Speaker 2: In those 900 years, everything changes. The northern kingdom falls
- 20:31Speaker 2: to Assyria. The ten tribes are scattered and disappear from
- 20:35Speaker 2: recorded history. Judah falls to Babylon. The temple that Solomon
- 20:40Speaker 2: built is burned to the ground. The people are dragged
- 20:44Speaker 2: into exile and weep by the rivers of Babylon, too
- 20:48Speaker 2: broken to sing. They return, they rebuild, but it is
- 20:53Speaker 2: never the same. Alexander the Great conquers the known world
- 20:57Speaker 2: and dies at 32. Greek culture floods the ancient Near East.
- 21:03Speaker 2: The Maccabees revolt and win brief, bloody independence. Then the
- 21:08Speaker 2: Romans arrive. Herod the Great builds a kingdom of marble
- 21:12Speaker 2: and paranoia and massacres infants in Bethlehem. Empires rise, empires collapse,
- 21:20Speaker 2: entire civilizations are born and buried. 900 years of the
- 21:25Speaker 2: world turning without a single whisper about the prophet who
- 21:29Speaker 2: was taken alive. And then, on an unremarkable mountain in Galilee,
- 21:34Speaker 2: a carpenter's son from Nazareth takes three fishermen up a hillside.
- 21:39Speaker 2: His name is Jesus. He tells Peter, James, and John
- 21:43Speaker 2: to follow him. They climb, and at the summit, the
- 21:47Speaker 2: face of Jesus begins to shine like the sun. His
- 21:51Speaker 2: clothes become white as light, blazing with a radiance that
- 21:55Speaker 2: is not reflected, but generated from within. And standing next
- 21:59Speaker 2: to him, talking with him, as if no time has
- 22:02Speaker 2: passed at all, as if 900 years were nothing more
- 22:05Speaker 2: than an afternoon, are two figures, Moses and Elijah. Moses,
- 22:13Speaker 2: who represents the law, who died and was personally buried
- 22:16Speaker 2: by God in a grave no human has ever found.
- 22:20Speaker 2: And Elijah, who represents the prophets, who never died at all.
- 22:25Speaker 2: The law and the prophets, standing on either side of
- 22:29Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. the fulfillment of everything they spent their lives
- 22:33Speaker 2: pointing toward. Elijah had not been resting. He had not
- 22:37Speaker 2: been idle. He had been waiting for 900 years, preserved
- 22:42Speaker 2: outside of time for this exact moment. And he still
- 22:47Speaker 2: has one more appointment left. The very last words of
- 22:50Speaker 2: the Old Testament, the final prophecy before 400 years of
- 22:55Speaker 2: total silence between the Testaments, are about Elijah. Malachi chapter 4,
- 23:01Speaker 2: verses 5 and 6. See, I will send the prophet
- 23:05Speaker 2: Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of
- 23:08Speaker 2: the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the
- 23:11Speaker 2: parents to their children and the hearts of the children
- 23:14Speaker 2: to their parents, or else I will come and strike
- 23:17Speaker 2: the land with total destruction. That is the final sentence
- 23:22Speaker 2: of the Old Testament. Not a blessing, not a promise
- 23:25Speaker 2: of peace, a warning. and the central figure of that
- 23:29Speaker 2: warning is a man who was taken alive from the
- 23:32Speaker 2: earth centuries earlier. God did not take Elijah because his
- 23:36Speaker 2: reward was ready. God did not take Elijah because he
- 23:40Speaker 2: had earned a peaceful retirement. God took Elijah because his
- 23:45Speaker 2: mission was not finished.
- 23:46Speaker 1: It was paused.
- 23:48Speaker 2: He was placed on standby, preserved outside the reach of
- 23:52Speaker 2: time and decay, for a future deployment that had not
- 23:56Speaker 2: yet arrived.
- 23:57Speaker 1: Now open the book.
- 23:58Speaker 2: Of Revelation chapter 11. In the final days, during the
- 24:03Speaker 2: great tribulation, during the reign of the Antichrist, two witnesses
- 24:07Speaker 2: will appear in Jerusalem. They will prophesy for 1,260 days,
- 24:13Speaker 2: exactly three and a half years. They will be unkillable
- 24:17Speaker 2: during their ministry, and their specific powers are described with
- 24:21Speaker 2: terrifying precision. The two witnesses have the power to shut
- 24:25Speaker 2: up the heavens and so that it will not rain
- 24:27Speaker 2: during their prophesying. Who else shut up the heavens? Elijah.
- 24:32Speaker 2: 1 Kings chapter 17. A drought that lasted exactly three
- 24:37Speaker 2: and a half years. The two witnesses have the power
- 24:40Speaker 2: to call down fire to consume their enemies. Who else
- 24:44Speaker 2: called down fire?
- 24:45Speaker 1: Elijah.
- 24:46Speaker 2: 2 Kings chapter 1. Fire from heaven consumed two companies
- 24:51Speaker 2: of fifty soldiers sent to arrest him. The two witnesses
- 24:55Speaker 2: prophesy for 1,260 days, three.
- 25:00Speaker 1: And a half years.
- 25:02Speaker 2: How long did Elijah's drought last? Three and a half years.
- 25:07Speaker 2: And the second witness has the power to turn waters
- 25:10Speaker 2: into blood and to strike the earth with every kind
- 25:13Speaker 2: of plague as often as they wish. Who else turned
- 25:17Speaker 2: water into blood and unleashed plagues?
- 25:21Speaker 1: Moses.
- 25:22Speaker 2: The same Moses who stood next to Elijah on the
- 25:25Speaker 2: Mount of Transfiguration. This is not theological speculation. This is
- 25:30Speaker 2: a pattern so precise, so mathematically exact, across multiple books
- 25:36Speaker 2: written by different authors across different centuries, that it reads
- 25:40Speaker 2: like a deployment order. Moses and Elijah appeared together on
- 25:45Speaker 2: that mountain because they are going to be deployed together
- 25:48Speaker 2: in the final chapter of human history.
- 25:51Speaker 1: The law and the prophets will.
- 25:52Speaker 2: Stand in Jerusalem one more time, facing the Antichrist the
- 25:56Speaker 2: way Elijah once faced the prophets of Baal, calling down
- 26:01Speaker 2: fire the way he called it down on Carmel, and
- 26:04Speaker 2: shutting up the sky the way he.
- 26:06Speaker 1: Shut it over Israel.
- 26:08Speaker 2: Elijah was not taken alive because his chapter was finished.
- 26:13Speaker 2: He was taken alive because his greatest chapter has not
- 26:16Speaker 2: been written yet. He is waiting right now, somewhere outside
- 26:21Speaker 2: our dimension, preserved and prepared and dangerous for his final assignment.
- 26:27Speaker 2: Pull the camera back now and look at the full
- 26:30Speaker 2: arc of this man's life. There was a moment when
- 26:34Speaker 2: Elijah collapsed under a desert bush, dehydrated, starving, completely alone,
- 26:41Speaker 2: and begged God to let him die. He thought his
- 26:44Speaker 2: story was over. He thought the darkness had won. He
- 26:47Speaker 2: thought he was a failure who had accomplished nothing lasting.
- 26:51Speaker 2: If God had answered that prayer, if God had said, Fine, Elijah,
- 26:56Speaker 2: I will take your life, it would have ended right there,
- 27:00Speaker 2: under a broom tree in the middle of nowhere. No
- 27:03Speaker 2: history books, no legacy. He would have missed the still,
- 27:08Speaker 2: small voice of God on Mount Horeb. He would have
- 27:12Speaker 2: missed crossing the Jordan on dry ground, He would have
- 27:16Speaker 2: missed the chariot of fire and the horses of fire.
- 27:20Speaker 2: He would have missed the whirlwind. He would have missed
- 27:24Speaker 2: standing on the Mount of Transfiguration, alive, face to face
- 27:28Speaker 2: with Jesus Christ himself, 900 years after the world thought
- 27:33Speaker 2: his story was over. And he would have missed his
- 27:36Speaker 2: appointment in the book of Revelation, an assignment so significant
- 27:41Speaker 2: that the Antichrist himself will not be able to stop it.
- 27:46Speaker 2: God's refusal to answer Elijah's prayer under that broom tree
- 27:50Speaker 2: was not cruelty. It was not negligence. It was the
- 27:55Speaker 2: single greatest act of mercy in Elijah's entire life. You
- 28:00Speaker 2: might be sitting under your own broom tree right now,
- 28:03Speaker 2: burned out, exhausted, dealing with anxiety that does not make
- 28:09Speaker 2: sense because on paper you should be fine. You have
- 28:12Speaker 2: seen God move in your life before. you have experienced
- 28:16Speaker 2: answered prayers. But right now, in this particular season, you
- 28:21Speaker 2: feel like the empire has won and your story is over.
- 28:26Speaker 2: And maybe you have been praying a prayer that God
- 28:29Speaker 2: keeps refusing to answer. And you are frustrated. You are
- 28:33Speaker 2: angry about it. You think he has forgotten you. But
- 28:37Speaker 2: what if God's silence on that one specific prayer, that
- 28:40Speaker 2: one thing he will not give you, that one door
- 28:43Speaker 2: he will not open, is not rejection.
- 28:47Speaker 1: What if it is protection?
- 28:49Speaker 2: What if God is refusing to answer that prayer because
- 28:52Speaker 2: He is guarding a future that you do not have
- 28:55Speaker 2: the ability to see from where you are standing right now?
- 28:59Speaker 2: Some of God's greatest mercies come disguised as unanswered prayers.
- 29:05Speaker 2: If you are in the broom tree season right now,
- 29:08Speaker 2: I want to hear from you. Drop a comment below.
- 29:11Speaker 2: Tell me what you are walking through. I read every
- 29:15Speaker 2: single one. Subscribe to the channel and share this with
- 29:19Speaker 2: someone who needs to hear it tonight.
- 29:22Speaker 1: I will see you in the next one.