(I woke up this morning and for some reason Elijah was on my mind. This was the result.)
It is very interesting that the name of Elijah was raised in the prophecies leading up to the birth of Jesus. Zechariah was told by an angel that his wife will bear him a son and he willl go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah who will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, an allusion to Malachi 4.
Jesus affirms the prophecy in Matthew 17, when he told his disciples that “Elijah comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.”
In the vision of the transfiguration of Jesus, Elijah was present, together with Moses. (Luke 9:28-36)
Elijah was the prophet who went into a direct confrontation with the forces that were turning Israel into a kingdom that worshipped Baal. After a long drought which he declared would happen, he challenged the forces of evil to a duel on Mount Carmel and in victory, got the people to admit that indeed the LORD—he is God.
But the victory was short-lived and soon Elijah was fleeing for his life and he fell into a deep depression. After a period where he was ministered to by an angel, God spoke to Elijah to help him understand. He is not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the gentle whisper. (See 1 Kings 19)
The full power of God is in the gentle whisper. When you hear the gentle whisper, you will know that the final victory, the victory Elijah had sought, would be nigh.
God is in the gentle whisper.
The birth of John heralded this final battle that God would wage against the evil one, in the form of the birth of Jesus to a poor working class couple in Bethlehem. John’s role was to point him out to the people and proclaim him to be the one, essentially to recognise God in the gentle whisper so others can know him as well.
Though Jesus was a man who could perform miracles, they were powers used to heal, to feed and to free. A gentle man who taught the people the truth about God, the steel in him was only bared when he declared himself the returning king as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey—alluding to the king prophesied in Zechariah 9:9.
He set himself on a collision course against the religious establishment by exposing them as the false keepers of the house, saying “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’ but you have made it ‘a den of robbers'”, quoting Jeremiah 7:11. That confrontation ended when a conspiracy resulted in the execution of Jesus by crucifixion.
Another victory turned to ashes? Not quite, as God raised Jesus from the dead and, in the words of Paul in Philippians 2, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
God raised the gentle whisper to be the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Fast forward to Revelation 20 and we read, “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”
Elijah, looking on from heaven, must surely rejoice at this scene. The one leading this final assault against the forces of evil is that child fleeing from the evil clutches of Herod, that man riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the king crucified, sacrificing his life to save his people.
God is in the gentle whisper.
In that cryptic exchange between Nicodemus and Jesus in the dead of the night, Nicodemus asked, though not in so many words, how do I know that you are the one?
Jesus told Nicodemus that ultimately the solution to the problem of man must be spiritual and only spirit can give birth to spiritual. While our attention is occupied with physical battles the real victory is forged at the spiritual level.
We look for answers in the physical world, in the power of the wind, the earthquake, the fire, to change our lives. God is not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the gentle whisper.
Leon Morris, a well-known bible commentator, tells me that the word translated as “wind” in John 3 is the same word used for “spirit” and “breath”. This is not the wind in 1 Kings 19, which is more a hurricane. It is that gentle whisper.
“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit (wind).” (brackets mine).
It is the gentle whisper that will usher in the new beginning for man.
We too ask, in the dead of the night, in the throes of our depression, in the darkness of our circumstances, where can I find my peace, where can I find my victory, where can I find my rest? And God answers, I am in the gentle whisper.
Look for me there.