PropheticReformation.com

Art Katz - Ezekiel /2

Now with the Lord, but still has much to say...

"Now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table." So Ahab sent a message among all the sons of Israel, and brought the prophets together at Mount Carmel. And Elijah came near to all the people and said, "How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him." But the people did not answer him a word. Then Elijah said to the people, "I alone am left a prophet of the LORD, but Baal's prophets are 450 men. Now let them give us two oxen; and let them choose one ox for themselves and cut it up, and place it on the wood, but put no fire under it; and I will prepare the other ox, and lay it on the wood, and I will not put a fire under it. Then you call on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the LORD, and the God who answers, He is God" (1 Kings 18: 19 and 24a).

The audacity and boldness of Elijah to say those things! This is a foretaste of the last day's Elijah ministry and that is what we need to appreciate. What heightens our appreciation is that it is also a picture of what must yet come: Elijah must first come and restore all things. The prophetic requirement of the last days is tied up essentially with the restoration of that which was lost, the ancient and the original, the pristine and the first thing.

We are not talking about the restoration of the ministry offices as if that is the thing in itself. It is a means to a larger and other end, namely, the "restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time" (Acts 3: 21b). That is to say, both the restoration of Israel after her yet future calamity, known as 'the time of Jacob's trouble', and the restoration of a church to its pristine and original apostolic glory and power. Truth itself needs to be restored that has been lying in the streets. Language itself has suffered terrible abuse and defamation. There is restoration work at every hand, and it is an enormously exhausting work. It would be easier to start from scratch than to have to first undo, pluck up, root out and destroy what men have celebrated and want to see continue and to be preserved, that is something other than that which was given at the first. One can only build and plant after one has rooted up, plucked out and destroyed. How many of us have the stamina to bear the cries and the shrieks of people who do not want to see things rooted up?

There must first come this 'Elijah company' before the Lord Himself returns. John the Baptist was equated with Elijah of whom the Lord described as the greatest of all the prophets, and in doing so, was celebrating the intrinsic 'Elijah' content of what John was. There is a spirit of Elijah, a quintessential, prophetic character that John exhibited that was of spirit and of kind with Elijah and will again picture what is yet future, namely, an 'Elijah company' upon the earth in that same separation, the same audacity and that same confident knowledge of God. They will have the same authority to perform the last day's works of God and to confront a church and a world that have become apostate and challenge them by challenging its prophets and bringing down the demonstration of God and the revelation of God in fire.

If Elijah, who is a prophet of an ultimate end-time wilderness kind, must first come, then what are the constituent elements or the defining characteristics of the Elijah prophet? What kind of prophet must we expect and that God is waiting for, all the more if it is to be corporate? He is not a writing prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah, but rather he is the prophet of action and confrontation. What are we seeing from this prophet in action that is quintessentially the definition of prophet? There are going to be many false prophets. What is Elijah showing in his obedience to be the one fool? What does it show that inheres in the word prophet? Was Elijah drafted or was he a voluntary conscript? He was chosen but that does not mean that he had no choice in the matter and that he could not have refused it.

End-time Confrontation

It says of Ahab that he was more evil than any of the kings of Israel before him. The conjunction, therefore, between a political Ahab and a religious Jezebel, an illicit, strange, ungodly, vile union brings together the worst of things political and things religious, and makes it a consummate power. We need to understand this, because it is a prefiguring of the last day's world religious and political system to which we are now moving. It is the logic of our time. There needs to be some kind of a global authority and resolution of the things that are dividing mankind if there is going to be any sanity on this globe. In order to restore peace and order to the nations, there has got to be some kind of unity that ends the necessity for nations to be at war with each other. This union is foreshadowed by the union of Ahab and Jezebel in the time of Elijah. There is only one who stands up to oppose it, that whatever the benefit that it confers to men in seeming peace, it is not God. "How long will you hesitate between two opinions?" is spoken to an apostate nation that only wants peace at any price, the false thing that allows business to go in as usual.

Elijah sees right through it and will confront it, even when it reaches its most vile form. Jezebel's specialty was destroying the prophets of God. There is something about the Jezebel spirit that is so employed in a hatred against that which is prophetic. It knows that whatever Elijah represents, he threatens the whole system that is implied in the name Jezebel and Ahab. It is to that that God sends Elijah. Elijah's authority, power and audacity are not the statement of what he is externally but what he is inwardly and truly, which is the whole truth of what authority in God is. It is not the audacity that grows from the fact that you are 'macho'. That is a false pompous audacity and is not the basis for confronting Ahab: "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word (1 Kings 17: 1b)."

Prophetic Obedience

Here is a remarkable obedience to the strange requirements of God. The prophet himself is not exempt from the conditions that are established by the judgment that has come through his own word: the brook dried up. He did not pick himself up and go when he visibly saw the brook drying up. Logic, self-interest and the necessity for preservation would say, that if the brook dries, then you have got to find another accommodation. Here is the root of what makes Elijah who he is, namely, he was never once moved to any kind of action or conduct on the basis of his own critique, examination, logic, reason or any kind of thing that men will humanly employ to determine their movements. Only one thing moved that man and that was the word of the Lord.

What if the brook completely dried up and the word of the Lord did not come? We remain where we are. The word of God is not the word of God except unto death. The walk of faith is always unto death. If obedience means my death then that is what it is going to have to mean. There is never going to be a point reached where I can on the basis of self-preservation absolve the principle that is the corner stone of my whole prophetic life. After all, whose life is it? I am moved by one consideration only, namely, the word of the Lord that comes. We need to be so habituated to that, otherwise we need not think that God will honor our word.

It is as if in each instance God is not just calling him to an obedience, but to an ultimate obedience in everything that defies human logic and religious understanding. Elijah was called to go to a city that was the birth place of Jezebel and the center of the very religious, occultic civilization from which she came, and he was to dwell there without analyzing. God spoke and Elijah acts. Any obedience that hesitates is no longer obedience. Any obedience that is partial is disobedience. We must not submit God's requirement to our reason.

The remarkable thing is that nothing precedes this description of Elijah. Here is the full-orbed, totally prepared man thrust on the scene of history in that condition of obedience and without anything to indicate how he came to it. We need to ponder that. Elijah is indicative in type of the last day's Elijah company also trained up for ultimate obediences in obscurity and hiddenness. God can take the ordinary elements of our lives and use them to discipline and train us up in a long preparation that is not recognized nor seen by others.

The Knowledge of a God who Lives

This is a statement to an apostate generation that has lost all sense of the living God. That is why they could take their liberties and follow Baal, and make their altars to false gods and forget the God of Israel: "He no longer lives. Where is He?" That is also the statement of our generation and particularly the secular Jewish people today. There is no sense of God nor reference to Him.

Elijah, however, begins his first statement with, "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives..." What does Elijah mean by that, and why does he begin with that? Having said that, how impressed is Ahab? Is Elijah saying it merely as a point of introduction or is that the foundation of his life and being and his prophetic authority? How does he know that there is a God who lives in an age of apostasy, and why is it that he knows it and the others do not? To what degree does he know that there is a God who lives and how did he get to know it? We have got to know that our God lives before we stand before the Ahabs and Jezebels of our generation.

That knowledge is not cheap. How many of us are satisfied with our present knowledge that is satisfactory for most operating circumstances, but it is not satisfactory to stand before Ahab? Men prefer to remain with the quotient of knowledge that they presently have because anything more would bring requirement. To know God as Elijah knew him is to welcome suffering, to open ourselves and make ourselves vulnerable for such tearing, such trials, such dealings and the things that cannot be anticipated, that except God be God, we are likely to perish in any one of those things. Do we have a knowledge of God just sufficient for our need but not the knowledge of God that exceeds our need, namely, the knowledge of God as a He in fact is and desires to be known? Is the knowledge of God so dear to us that we are willing for whatever it takes to obtain it? The single factor that describes the Messianic age is "that the knowledge of God shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas" and it is the knowledge of God as Elijah knew Him.

Intimate Union

This is a mutually exclusive relationship. If we are going to stand before that God, then we cannot stand before any other. That means that we do not seek the approval of men, nor seek to rise in the religious system and become celebrated. This is to stand solely and exclusively before Him, with full accountability without so much as looking out of the corner of our eye as to how any other man or authority or religious group or prestigious segment will so much as take note of you. It is total and absolute indifference to what men think and say. This is not to encourage some kind of sophomoric, "Well, I do not care what others say." It is rather a refusal to seek acknowledgment from men. We cannot have the two. To stand before God is an absoluteness. How far are we willing to go with God? We will not be able to stand before the judgment throne of God with any kind of confidence, but with unbelievable terror, unless we can say in this life, "As the LORD, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand..."and say it in truth. Whatever the sacrifice in order to make that statement in this life is worth it, just to avoid the terror of standing before the throne of the Lord when he makes that eternal determination of our destiny. We need to know that we stand and to know it in this life.

That one statement out of a man's mouth gives such an awareness of a history with God, of what it takes to make that statement and make that statement to stand as a truth, that even an Ahab will tremble at the hearing of it. It is not a cliché coming out of Elijah's mouth. It resonates with power and authority because it is the word of truth. It is the statement of the logic of his entire life in God. We need so deeply to respect the statement of Elijah and God is so discreet that He draws the shade and we are not allowed to peer in and press in with our vulgar curiosity to find out how it was done. You can believe that it was done with sufferings, anguish, shrieks and cries in the night and, "Where is God?" and the dark night of the soul, that a man can be brought forth at a point of time historically to stand before the most dread enemies of God and make those statements, and not only to make them, but also to invoke a judgment upon the nation by his own word.

Elijah was solely, exclusively and totally God's. He was above culture, tradition, value, history and time. He was in that realm with God and the realm to which we ourselves are called and to which Abraham was called:

It was not just an accidental aspect of the call, but at the heart of it. Those are the places where we are compromised, not because they are necessarily evil, but there is something about the flesh and father's house and about kindred, family and country that keeps us from an Elijah obedience. How many of us would be ruthless about those things, that though we have fathers and mothers, nations and family, as far as we are concerned, there is effectually a total and radical severance? We only move when He speaks. That is the call we have, and the ironic thing is that however precious our forebears and their influence, there is a kind of a tie that connects us that needs to be cut of a soulish kind to release us for the Elijah ministry. It is one thing to shuck off a terrible father and background and a bad past, but how about if it is good? There is a greater danger of spiritual compromise there than in the casting away of that which had no influence.

The Word of Judgment

Elijah was in this quality of relationship and therefore he knew when it was God speaking, even though the word that came seemed to contradict his categories. It implies that Elijah underwent radical, ruthless stripping and purging. Only a man that separated unto God could bring a word of judgment to Israel.

How would you like to be a bearer of a word that initiates that kind of judgment? For Israel that would mean that there would be no food and therefore the end of life, even for children and infants. Is Elijah some kind of unfeeling robot that God has programmed to speak that word? He was a man of flesh and blood and like passions as we and who may well have had relatives in Israel. It was saying 'death' to the nation, Elijah's nation. A man cannot say that unless he is in the place of God that we are talking about. It is an utterness toward God and it has got to come through those who have a nature like ours, men of flesh and blood and that is what glorifies God. God could Himself speak those words to Ahab, but there is as not as much glory in His speaking it Himself as it would be to come from a man of like passions. That is what glorifies Him for such a man is His handiwork and so it is also a picture of the last days.

The Ultimate Place of Union

Elijah's obedience is a statement of an ultimate death that will even allow you to die to what the written word of God says. God is even allowed to contradict Himself, and we are not put off by that because of some insistence we may have that God has got to be contained within His own Word, however much he has exalted it above his own name! The Word describes the raven and such animals as beasts of prey that eat rotting carrion. It is an unclean bird and every Jew knew that, and yet that is the very thing that God selected to feed the prophet. If it pleases Him to exceed to His Word or to set aside His Word or to go beyond His Word, then that is what makes God God. This is not to encourage a loose attitude as if the Word is any flippant thing that we can set aside at will. As we have said, God Himself has exalted His Word above His name, but what if in some peculiar requirement of God, and by His own wisdom, He exceeds His Word or contradicts it or seems to? Is our relationship with Him great enough, where God can be God even beyond his own Word, and we will not limit the Holy One of Israel, even to His Word? I would not entrust this statement to a young believer or someone who is yet alive to himself and wants to justify himself in conduct by taking certain liberties. It can only be entrusted ironically to that one who has the deepest reverence for the Word of God and who lives totally by it. The word of the Lord came to Elijah and Elijah arose and went. It was a requirement beyond the Word, namely, being fed by ravens and being fed by a Gentile widow. He knew the God of the Word and he knew the Word, but here there is an ultimate recognition of God that many of us would balk at, that makes Elijah Elijah just as it makes God God.

To be in this place in God, that does not even limit God to His own Word, and will not even require an explanation when the request is at disparity with the Word, is to be in that ultimate place. Elijah never took God to task: "Does not your Word say that a raven is an unclean animal and You know that I am not allowed to go into a house of a Gentile?" He arose and went according to the word of the Lord-silently.

How did Elijah know that it was the word of the Lord and not the enemy getting him out from the place where God wanted him, moving him to another place outside of Israel itself, and bringing him into the greatest place of jeopardy and danger, the very city and kingdom of Jezebel herself? There is not even a moment's hesitation as even to debate whether it is God speaking or the enemy, who knows well how to imitate God's voice. Elijah had such an absolute confidence that the word that came was in fact the word of God that he rendered an immediate obedience. Such a discernment cannot be performed by a novice. If we have missed previous whispers and intimations of God and calls to obedience, then how will we hear ultimate ones? This is why an Elijah is not formed nor fashioned in a day. He is rather a prized fruit of God with much investment of God to bring such a one, who was flesh and blood and like passions as we, to such a place. He had no more qualification than us. He palpitated; he sweat; he had other kinds of bodily functions as well as the same doubts and struggles. He was a 'son of man,' but he was brought to the place where he could hear the most uncanny statement that violates every known category of religious and spiritual understanding that is authentic about God, and yet recognize it to be God, and instantly to do it.

Why did God send an unclean bird to feed Elijah instead of a bird that was 'kosher'? Ravens were His express and explicit choosing. The last, subtle tyranny of self that will find itself in opposition to God is that thing that we have obtained from God. Even the thing that is correct in God can be employed against God when it has become something religious or something spiritual, as a value in itself. Until God has got that, then He has not got the man. Many of us are in the place, where we have a long history in God and we have been brought a long way from obedience to obedience, but the last thing that would never have appealed to us as being even a potential for opposition to God, is the very thing that is religious or spiritual and which we have celebrated, though it is a correct thing in itself. It only becomes incorrect when it stands as a barrier between a final, last, ultimate and total obedience to God. The only one who can pass that threshold is not someone who is indifferent or casual about the Word of God, but ironically the man who is most insistent upon it.

The realm of the things invisible are the true determinants of godly living. Absolute obedience, even unto death, is the wisdom of God contrary to the world's wisdom where everything is reckoned and effected by things visible. To act and live and have your being in an obedience to an invisible God in the face of the most visible authority that has the power to slay you, and yet be obedient to the invisible God, is the supreme wisdom of God. That is the place to which we are called and that is why it requires such an extraordinary investment of God to break the powers of the things invisible and the things seen that have such a seeming weight, opulence, prestige, authority, cities and skyscrapers. That is the last day's calling of the 'Elijah company,'a prophetic presence that will perform last day's obedience in utterness toward God.

Elijah's Identification with Death

The very thing that Elijah did with this dead son on his own bed is what Christ came to do on the cross, and only by so doing it, did salvation come. They both took death upon themselves, the identification with sin, which in itself is death. The Lord, in union with the Adamic mankind, was standing for it and was one with it by embracing it with all its stink. When Jesus said, "Let this cup pass from Me", it was not a statement of a man who was afraid of physical pain, but the identification with sin and with death, contrary to His own holy nature. Elijah stretching himself out over a dead, Gentile boy is a resonance and a picture of the very same thing. It is a heart attitude that is willing to embrace death and to taste death in exchange for another. It is like the prophet prostrating his body over the dead boy so much as to say, "Take the life that is in me and impart it to him." There is such an identification and a forsaking of himself for the other, that there would have been no resurrection if he had just stood politely at the foot of the bed. It required his prostration. This union with death is the embrace of the Cross.

It says that Elijah prostrated himself over the body three times. Why was the first time not sufficient? God was requiring an all-the-way thing, a final letting go and a coming into such an identification with this thing, that until God Himself answers, you yourself are merged into that death. There is no resurrection for him and there is no resurrection for you. There was a completeness of identification.

Elijah cried to the Lord three times. The Lord heard the cry of Elijah. Unless that same cry is emitted from us, then God will neither hear nor answer. What gives a man the capability to cry? Elijah was qualified to defeat death because he had already passed through death and was on the resurrection side. This is not a man who is being politely religious and doing the correctly prescribed thing. This is a man who has passed through death, and his bringing now the application of resurrection life to defeat death in this instance. How do we pass through the veil of respectable and appropriate prayer to the prayer that is a cry whose voice God hears and answers, and that is sufficient to raise the dead? This is the nub of the matter for God will not answer until He hears the voice of that cry. There is something about the whole environment of present Christianity that is contrary to this existential depth and cry.

Elijah was not some exceptional piece of humanity. The key word that distinguishes Elijah's prayer that affected the elements is earnestly. Other synonyms would be: fervently, intensely and passionately, or to put it in another way, Elijah prayed as God would pray. He prayed in the name of the Lord. He prayed in keeping with God's own constituent make-up and character, and God heard that prayer, for it was, as it were, His own. That which makes the prayer earnest is not the man's temperament, but the man's righteousness. The prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available and is dynamic in its working. There has, therefore, got to be some conjunction between effectual prayer and the spiritual standing of the one praying with God.

The resurrection man is therefore eminently the righteous man. The man who has such an identification with the Cross and the identification with the emptying of self in daily relationship is the man who knows the resurrection. He is so righteous that he knows and detests that God should be served out of his own human energy, his own intelligence or his own ability. What is righteousness but God Himself!

Elijah means, "He is deity". There is such an union with God that you cannot tell where Elijah ends and God begins. "...There shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word." Elijah is a man on the resurrection ground which means that he himself is one with deity. It is no longer Elijah's righteousness. The cry of Elijah is not a piece of human temperament, but God's own cry through a man who is living in the dimension of very God Himself. It is God crying unto God. It is deep answering unto deep in a man who has gone through and beyond the religious categories, and is in the realm of God Himself. That is the key to the last day's activity of God. Merely to be well-meaning, rightly-intentioned, principled, religious and sincere will not avail. The child, or ultimately the nation Israel will remain dead.

The Inadequacy of Man

We need to understand God's hatred for that which has its source in our unaided humanity. Religion is something that emanates from man, that thinks that it is doing God service, but it comes from below rather than above. It seems on the surface to be 'God respecting', but His ways are higher and His thoughts are higher. How can God call a man unrighteous or wicked if there was not a prospect for obtaining God's thoughts and living in His ways? That is exactly the crisis that Jesus brought when He came to Israel and revealed Himself before Israel as the Son of God. The scandal of Jesus is this scandal, which says to religious men: "However well-meaning your efforts are, they fall short of the glory of God. God is calling you up and out and away from that which has its origin in you, and wants to bring you into a dimension in which God is all in all." How was that received when Jesus spoke it? It evoked such a backlash as to bring death to the One who appeared to steal from men the basis for their own righteousness. If that is true, how much more must that be demonstrated by the prophet who by his very call and office is the testimony of Jesus! He has got to be eminently the man of the resurrection, and that alone is righteous, and that prayer alone out of that righteousness obtains the powerful answer of God.

Only that one who has passed through death unto life can embrace death (the boy) without the fear that it will be a loss of life to him. A man who is still clutching his life and living out of his life, however religiously, will not embrace death. He will pray respectfully, but from a distance. The man, however, who has passed through death and whose life then is not his own, can and will prostrate himself over that body without fear. He is already the dead man who has been brought back to life and his cry in not a religious cry but God's very own cry. It is the cry of a righteous man that effects much

We have got to have some sense of the stubbornness of that which is human that wants to establish its own righteousness. Of Israel Paul could say,

If anyone threatens a righteousness predicated upon one's own accomplishment and one's rectitude, one will kill him to remove that threat, and in killing him will reveal and prove that we are not righteous. Elijah's righteousness, his prayers and his obediences were not his own. He is the one prophet perhaps more than any other who mirrors God as God.

The Restoration of the Altar

Elijah's first step after mocking the false prophets was the repairing of the altar that had been broken down. Elijah must first come and restore all things. If this is a pattern of things future, then we have to burrow into the meaning of the restoration of an altar that had been willfully broken down. What does that represent and why twelve stones without which the subsequent sacrifice could not be made nor could the fire have fallen? The restoration of the altar is somehow a classic requirement and must be expected in the 'Elijah prophet' of the last days. First, we have to identify what it represents, because it is an enormously significant act that would be revelatory about the heart of the prophet.

Twelve is the statement of God's divine government. The work of restoration is monumental; it is backbreaking in hefting those stones that had been scattered about. The altar did not fall apart. It was torn down. That implies a rebellion, a vindictiveness, a vehemence and anger against God. It is the utmost impertinence before the Most High, and that is the condition to which Israel had come. All Israel, who had participated or had benignly allowed that kind of thing to take place and had not themselves restored it, is now watching the prophet do so. What is the corollary, therefore, to this significant act for the prophetic call in the last days? That is to say, could our altars also be knocked down? If there is anything celebrated charismatically today it is worship and praise. Is the altar of God knocked down today when it is being ostensibly celebrated in such a welter of tapes, videos, musical groups and worship teams? All this is written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the age have come. If we are moving exactly to this kind of final showdown, particularly as the church is moving towards apostasy and does not even know it, then what does this mean for us who are called to be the 'Elijah band'? What altar has fallen down in our generation? I cannot believe that the Lord is gong to come until there is an Elijah in the earth again in the last days to do this, and if we cannot even identify what it is that has been torn down, then how shall we restore it?

God has said that His house is a place of sacrifice or it is not His house. Whenever it becomes predictable and convenient, then it is no longer God's house. The very first time the word worship is used in the Bible is when Abraham was about to offer his son:

When Abraham said 'worship', you can be sure he meant sacrifice. The very first use of the word worship is in the context of ultimate sacrifice. Worship is a synonym for sacrifice. What does that say of the church today? What does it cost to go to church on Sunday for a few hours? Is it an utterness toward God, or is it a modest and minimal, religious discharge that frees us for our real pursuits? Who is letting God's people get away with it? Who is not laying this to their charge and crying out and confronting them with this superficiality? Baptism has become a mechanical, religious ordinance where people do not know, or they would refrain from, going into a place of death. We are teaching them to sing choruses and to repeat 'Amens' and 'Hallelujahs' and by that to feel that they have done God service. The altars are being knocked down more than we know and, ironically, at the very hour that Christianity is being most celebrated! Worship teams are presently vying for what shall be predominant: the worship or the prophetic word. Men take all kinds of time to 'do their thing' in worship to 'create' the mood and the atmosphere, and instead of the people being prepared for the prophetic word, they are often turned off by it. The worship is inimical to the prophetic word rather than conducive. The thing that is supposed to be calculated to adorn and prepare the way for the word, ironically, somehow becomes the thing that opposes it and is in rivalry to it!

There is something that needs to be restored in truth that is intrinsic to the number twelve and only the prophet will have the guts to do it. He may have to knock down before he builds up. He may have to destroy what purports to be the altar of worship, but is really a plastic counterfeit that cannot sustain the true weight of sacrifice, and induces God's people, as the false prophets of Baal, to a pseudo-religion of convenience.

Elijah is not gathering up stones that just happen to be around. He is rebuilding an altar that once was and did have twelve stones. He is the prophet of restoration. He is bringing back something that once was, but has now come to the place, not only of decline or disuse, but that it had been violently rejected and thrown down. He rebuilds and restores that very thing. It is easier to find some loose stones and put them together for a first time than to take what once was and has now been totally rejected. The work of restoration is greater than the work of inauguration. It is easier to start from scratch than to go back and deal with the things that once were. It is a monumental, backbreaking work. Elijah must first come and restore all things, and unless this word 'restore' is in our spirits, then we are not prophetic candidates.

We can know to some degree whether we have a prophetic calling by the disposition we have to restore the ancient ways and paths, the things that have fallen down or been knocked down and cast aside. What is God intending that was at the first?

In the Beginning...

If we want to see something in its authentic configuration as God intended it, then we must see it in its first expression in the Scriptures. That is why we are given the great patriarchal figures. Abraham is the prototype, the father of faith. The church in the book of Acts is how it was at the first, but no longer is. The church now is increasingly the sum of traditions, denominations, sophistication, modern technology and methodologies, for example, bringing God down through 'worship'. The whole thing invites being torn down, rooted up and plucked out and something restored that God has given from the first, namely, apostolic Christianity. It has got to be at the end as authentic as it was at the beginning, when the glory of God was in the church, that men were afraid even to join themselves to it. Anyone who violated against the Spirit of Truth, was carried out feet first by the young men. To restore that before the Lord comes is an epochal and gut wrenching task, because it is so easy to 'go along'. A prophet has the vision for the original and a jealousy for the glory that attended it. He cannot stomach any deviation, counterfeit or modern day equivalent. He wants the glory of God that was at the first, and wants to see the authentic thing restored and knows that it is going to be such a labor to pick up those stones. The prophet not only restores but he keeps and elevates the consciousness of the true thing before the people of God continually.

The false prophets did not know that they were false. They actually expected that there was a God that would answer them. The vilest form of apostasy is when the people who are apostate do not even recognize or see themselves as apostate, and think that they are fully in the faith. That is the ultimate apostasy and we need to seriously ask whether we are already describing the condition to which the church has come, even in its best and most celebrated forms. We are not just talking about the mainline churches like the Episcopal and the Methodist, but are we are willing to consider those forms of the church that are the most charismatically celebrated in Christendom today? The apostasy is even worse in those places because it is not even recognized as apostasy, and so much so, that when one comes to confront and challenge, then that one is called a 'troubler of Israel' and is shown the back door.

The prophetic man has somehow in the deepest corridors of his heart a little tremor of discomfort, that though everyone is shouting 'Amen' and 'hallelujah' and having a great time, there is something in his own heart that cannot say 'Yea' and 'Amen'. It is not yet the authentic thing, though it purports to be and appears to be and uses all the right language appropriate to being it. The prophet is so attuned to God, who Himself alone is authenticity, that when he comes into the presence of something that appears to be right and is not, then it registers upon his own soul. How can such a man be found and formed in such a way? It is the crying need of the church in this hour because the deception is far more extensive than we know.

Fire from Heaven

There is a symbolic thing here that we must recognize or our sacrifices will be vain, our service will be incomplete and God's fire will not fall. The church will remain in its apostasy. It is an act of a once-and-for-all kind that reverberates. It is God revealing Himself as God, and refuting the wisdom and the logic of the world, and showing that He is greater. Even the stones themselves were consumed in the fire. Something was demonstrated before an apostate Israel who themselves had forgotten their God and had turned to other gods. The gods of Baal were so celebrated and honored that idols had been made about them and for them. It was because they did something for their false worshippers. They gave fertility; they helped in warfare; they helped in finance and in getting a job for you; they helped in a certain worldly wisdom. They were beneficial gods, and if you worshipped them, then they would help you. If you want to get rich quick as a Christian, then you will find an amazing facility in obtaining it through the false gods of this world.

Evidently by the time of Elijah these religions had such sway with Israel that they had displaced their respect for and honoring of their God. God in one moment of historical time has got to make a demonstration of such a magnitude of what He is as God as blows to smithereens everything in which Israel has falsely trusted. God was saying, "I will not only consume the sacrifice but I will set up that sacrifice in such a way as to defy it being consumed. I will put every obstacle and obstruction, everything that by any earthly reckoning would say that fire could not possibly be ignited, and I will show you who I am. Not only will it ignite, but it will consume the sacrifice, the water and even the stones upon which the sacrifice is set, so much am I God."

This was something so indisputable that they had to surrender their notions, their concepts, their attitudes and their traditions. This divine jealousy for the real thing and the real fire is at the heart of the prophetic call, and it will therefore enable a man to wait, and to wait in reproach, and then to be God's agent in the historic moment of God's choosing. There was no guarantee that the fire would fall, and a prophet has got to be prepared even for the bitter disappointment, having done all these things, that the fire does not fall. God does not need to explain, and we suffer the unspeakable disappointment before the people for whom we most wanted to have God's glory revealed. Unless we are prepared for the fire not to fall and bear the inexplicable, unanswered disappointment, then we will not be the men that God will use that it will fall. A man, who is willing in his obedience to do everything according to His word and bear the unspeakable pain of disappointment if the fire should not fall, is likely to see the fire fall. The obedience of a son means the bearing of the reproach of the misunderstandings of men and the inexplicable 'disappointments of God.'

The fire was the testimony of God's complete and comprehensive approval of everything performed by the prophet. What a premium, therefore, on prophetic jealousy for the glory of God, that not any one thing be missed. However much there may be alternatives that might be convenient and at hand, they are not to be employed, but only the stones of God, the twelve stones!

The ministry of restoration is the distinctive call of the last day's prophetic work of God. Israel is going to be restored as a result of it, but it is the church that needs first to be restored in true worship and true faith, true obedience to the word, truth itself, because the church is the pillar and ground of truth. There is an enormous work of restoration for the church, and on being restored, they can be the agent of God's restoration for Israel. A defunct church will not bring fire down for Israel.

Life or Death

The issue of the prophet is the issue of life or death. It always was and will be again, especially in the last days. The time is coming when we will have to confront the false prophets as Elijah did. We can no longer say, "Well, you are entitled to your opinion. You are not compelled to agree with me." Rather, "Your view is actually lulling people into a false security that will ensure their death and I confront you, for it is wrong." Elijah confronted the false prophets and we are coming to the hour where we will no longer be able to keep our opinions to ourselves. The issue of who is really true and who is really false is now being required to come out on the table and be an open matter. No present issue is perhaps more critical for the church in identifying and distinguishing the one from the other.